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Well I expect this to quickly become a battle-royale over everything except the actual topic of balanced encounters. Hopefully not, but we'll see.

Quote from: Skarg;1029022"Balancing encounters" is to me a sign of a GM or designer not thinking of the game world as an actual dynamic situation. It seems pathological to me when the only things PCs meet are things they can defeat in combat, or things the GM lets them know they're not intended to fight.

I would say that's a step too far. I would call it "practical." Perhaps hewing far too far to the side of practical, but not "pathological." Weekly televised action adventure series like Dr. Who or Hercules: the Legendary Adventures do the exact same thing. The opposition that shows up to battle the heroes are neither unbeatable (unless the plot centers around the protagonists figuring out how to beat them at the 40 minute mark), nor trivial. It's done because it is remarkably convenient. Same with gaming-most of the DM's time can be spent on designing those parts the PCs are going to spend much of their time interacting with. Also convenient in terms of game-time. The PCs do not have to trial-and-error their way to areas of their difficulty level. All of these game design tendencies* came about for reasons. And most of them, I am convinced, revolve around limited gaming-time and prep-time more than most other concerns.
*And let's remember that these are tendencies. You can absolutely play sandbox games in most versions of most games. And lots of people do.

As to the GM or designer not thinking of the game world as an actual dynamic situation. Sure s/he does. It's over there. Behind implied ("That Valley of Dungeon has 12 dragons circling overhead. You don't like your odds"), or stated ("I don't have the Giant Lord's keep planned out yet because that's way above your level") gates.

Quote from: S'mon;10290373e/4e/5e Balanced Encounters are designed so "the players have to actually engage the game fully, consider every option, and work through it as a team" in order to win. The whole point is that every fight should feel like a challenge where they could lose, but if they pull together they should win. The practical result is that games often feel grindy - "not ANOTHER desperate battle..."
I find the opposite of your post - it's the easy/trivial fights and the unwinnable fights that create the feel of a living world, that encourage immersion, and that give rise to the most interesting roleplaying.

A ruleset that encourages the DM to flesh out the areas where the PCs aren't going to end up spending most of their time (either because it is trivial to them or to deadly) is both more immersive, and more work. So there are trade-offs, but in general I find it a positive.

Quote from: Omega;1029062As for more regular balance in RPGs. What I've found is that in actual use it rarely happens. Even a glance at 5e D&Ds CR system shows you that balance can go instantly out the window since the DM can assemble encounters that are easy, or are brutally hard. Or even impossible or unlosable encounters with the right loadout. And to add confusion to the matter there are many who consider that to be balance.

Well of course. Rumors that entire generations of gamers (or just 'modern gamers') want their food cut up into bite sized portions or whatever are greatly exaggerated. 5e really has been, IMO, an honest attempt to make a system that works for as many playstyles as possible. I'd like to have seen a few more things in-the-books (optional gp=xp rules and a pursuit system, for instance). But the CR system absolutely works in this regard.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1029012No, it doesn't.  I means making sure that the table has fun.  If throwing a higher level threat (and by that I mean something that the players can't handle) that forces the players to plan around and/or avoid, but they enjoy themselves?  Than you've found the right balance.

Thats not how most everyone I've seen use it. Balance for them means that every class has the exact same DPS at X level and every monster has the exact same DPS at X level or in X numbers. For others it meant "No chance of losing".

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028999Balance is about making everyone feel 'useful'.  Whether it be one person coming up with the plan, another delivering the one lines, the other smashing heads via dice rolls, whatever.  Balance is when everyone feels they've had fun.

I have never heard anyone using mutual usefulness and general fun as the defining criteria of balance.  Do you find it difficult to communicate with people when you employ definitions that are exclusively used by you?

Since everyone else here seems to understand balance to be about evenly weighing factors of opposition (i.e., using appropriate Challenge Rating/Monster Level/Difficulty Class/etc.), I'll add my vote to the unbalanced world.  I think it's a vital element of the sandbox and the dungeon in general.  Players learn more about the world and its inhabitants and devise their plans based on their understanding of their opposition in order to avoid situations they see as unwinnable and try to create their own overwhelming advantages.

I've learned is to deliberately not craft encounters with consideration to the player characters.  I don't care what the party composition, power level, equipment, etc, is.  My players regularly surprise me with tactics that allow them to defeat things that I thought would be really scary.  At the same time, they know well by now that when there is every indication that hell lies beyond that doorway, they should really expect hell.

Balanced encounters largely put the Player Characters in a "usually" favorable position. This is done for a couple of reasons: 1) The intent is that they'll face an array of encounters, ranging from easy to very difficult in any given adventure or day and 2) that balanced encounters goal is to drain a party of it's resources by about 20 to 25% of their resources (ie. Spells, hit points, potions, item effects, etc.) Consider the notion that your average adventuring group encounters 4-5 battles in any given day. They typically have an easy battle, 2 to 3 "balanced" encounters, and then a difficult one when their resources are low. Obviously this changes depending on how well they handle each encounter because 'hey sometimes monsters get lucky and score big'. Not to mention that they could quite easily face a difficult encounter right off the bat too, having them waste MORE resources and thus making encounters afterwards much more difficult.

In the end basically it boils down to the type of game you want to run. With sand box-y style of games it's not unheard of to face impossible, very challenging, or difficult encounters the entire time (hey the inn keeper TOLD YOU about the Trolls in the warrens...) that pits the PCs in almost certain unfavorable conditions all the time. IF you survive, the tales and treasures are well worth it...but only IF.

Quote from: Headless;1028918I realize I don't want balanced encounters.  I've written about it before, kind of groping towards this thought.  Alot of my posts have been abput this issue.  What crystallized it was a line from William Goldmans intro to his abrigement of the Princess Bride.  He says by the time the actors and director are in a room doing a reading the success or failure of the movie is decided.  

Sun Tsu says if you win a hundred battles you will lose the war.  

Balanced encounters come out of a war game background (I think I wasn't there at the beginning).  But they are very different from a literary background.  Jane, from Firefly says "I'll kill a man in a fair fight, or to avoid a fair fight." Written hero's mostly have that attitude.  

Balanced encounters come down to the dice, a few other things, choice of spells, a bit of positioning but a lot of dice.  Any commander who lets the battle be decided on the battle field is eventully going to lose.  

I am playing Chatholul Mystery on the Orient express.  I keep trying to avoid dice becuase a couple bad rolls in a row can kill me.  In some encounters one bad roll can kill me.  Its a canned adventure so I can't avoid the dice, its literally a rail road.

In my game last week my players got womped.  They approached a ruin they knew was inhabited as if it was empty.  (They could see the garden half planted, they correctly identified the territorial makings of a large Minatuar) After ransaking the witches rooms they stepped out the door and go hit in the face with magic fire and a spiked chain.  3 rounds 3 downed heros.  They wake hanging upside down grom a tree, escape, run, and decide to go back in the middle of the night.  I wasn't expecting that.  The spell caster wasn't either.  They know where the traps are, they know right where he sleeps.  They creep in and kill him.  

One roll one dead wizard.  


Two encounters decided before initiative was rolled.  I was very happy about that.  My players had a great time.  

Any way these are a bunch of rough thoughts in favor of unbalance.

Well, yes, I agree:). Sounds like a great session, BTW!

Though Sun Tzu says nothing of the sort;). He said "if you know yourself and know the enemy, in a hundred battles, you won't be defeated, if you know yourself but not the enemy, you will lose once and win once and if you know neither, how can you expect to win?"
But yes, a good game with unbalanced encounters is successful when the players have internalized Sun Tzu's approach. My best player is an example of this, though she'd never read the treaty:D!

Quote from: AsenRG;1029126Well, yes, I agree:). Sounds like a great session, BTW!

Though Sun Tzu says nothing of the sort;)

Well he did say it was best to win without fighting, and "There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare." "If you win a hundred battles you will lose" is only a slight exaggeration, indeed in counter-insurgency war it is pretty much dead on - the insurgents only need to survive and keep fighting, as in eg Vietnam, to ultimately destroy their enemy's will to fight.

Quote from: RebirthTeam;1028985Having unbalanced encountered is an invaluable tool in a story tellers pocket. Not only is it great for story telling and creating that tension in the players, but it always seems to work as the perfect team cohesiveness building situation.

When the exchanges tend to be too easy, players can just breeze through it, do a few dice rolls, and never really get into character. That is a huge problem, especially when the GM refuses to let players die, but that is another post altogether. Once this no longer works (usually they realize this once the character dies), the players have to actually engage the game fully, consider every option, and work through it as a team. The difficulty and calculations pull so much of the players attention, next thing they know, they are completely immersed in the game.

This also refers to difficult puzzles and role playing situations.

Quote from: S'mon;10290373e/4e/5e Balanced Encounters are designed so "the players have to actually engage the game fully, consider every option, and work through it as a team" in order to win. The whole point is that every fight should feel like a challenge where they could lose, but if they pull together they should win. The practical result is that games often feel grindy - "not ANOTHER desperate battle..."

I find the opposite of your post - it's the easy/trivial fights and the unwinnable fights that create the feel of a living world, that encourage immersion, and that give rise to the most interesting roleplaying.

That last line is how I feel, but I don't see it as exactly the opposite of RebirthTeam's post. I agree with RebirthTeam that if there isn't enough challenge or risk some players may not take things seriously, and that very difficult combats that are possibly winnable with attention, cleverness and teamwork can be great immersive fun. However as S'mon wrote, immersion and involvement also come from a world that feels and works like a living world, which means there would also be easy/trivial fights if the party is strong enough to go looking for combat, and also some they shouldn't attempt unless the party are like demigods. A game universe where every (or even many) battles are calculated to be a certain difficulty level operates in a surreal way, and some players would tend to notice and relate to it as a series of calculated exercises rather than being in a plausible gameworld situation.

This is part of why I like to use combat systems that have not-so-predictable risks, and limited healing options, so that even the easy encounters have some potential risks of consequences that players should pay attention to mitigate, and are entertaining when things don't go as expected.

Quote from: Skarg;1029022"Balancing encounters" is to me a sign of a GM or designer not thinking of the game world as an actual dynamic situation. It seems pathological to me when the only things PCs meet are things they can defeat in combat, or things the GM lets them know they're not intended to fight.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1029092I would say that's a step too far. I would call it "practical." Perhaps hewing far too far to the side of practical, but not "pathological." Weekly televised action adventure series like Dr. Who or Hercules: the Legendary Adventures do the exact same thing. The opposition that shows up to battle the heroes are neither unbeatable (unless the plot centers around the protagonists figuring out how to beat them at the 40 minute mark), nor trivial. It's done because it is remarkably convenient. Same with gaming-most of the DM's time can be spent on designing those parts the PCs are going to spend much of their time interacting with. Also convenient in terms of game-time. The PCs do not have to trial-and-error their way to areas of their difficulty level. All of these game design tendencies* came about for reasons. And most of them, I am convinced, revolve around limited gaming-time and prep-time more than most other concerns.
*And let's remember that these are tendencies. You can absolutely play sandbox games in most versions of most games. And lots of people do.

As to the GM or designer not thinking of the game world as an actual dynamic situation. Sure s/he does. It's over there. Behind implied ("That Valley of Dungeon has 12 dragons circling overhead. You don't like your odds"), or stated ("I don't have the Giant Lord's keep planned out yet because that's way above your level") gates.

I left out the context that my perspective was that of a simulationist sandbox player/GM.

From the perspective of a player/GM of set-piece encounters and campaigns that link them or have other assumptions about framing encounters that should always be something you can defeat, sure. Though even there, I'd like there to be some encounters that you probably won't win and that have some options to avoid and/or flee from or take other approaches than fighting. And I want there to be chances of unexpected outcomes, and interesting choices and dilemmas to face when/if things go south. Otherwise, it seems like we'd just be pretending the PCs are facing any challenge.

I think the game system and the types of foes and the variety of their difficulty level and how understandable that is to the players, and what they can do about it, all make a difference. I often play games where most foes are humanoid fighters who don't vary in power/abilities/immunities/hitpoints nearly as severely as D&D monsters do, and if you have experience you can get a decent sense how strong enemies are by their number, equipment, injuries, how they look, and how they operate. And where even so, the specific outcomes are uncertain and the gameplay is about managing risks and dealing with lasting casualties and other dangerous situations as they unfold.

The TV show examples also seem like they have problems to me, in that just as you say, the danger level and outcomes tend to be very confined and predictable and so the action usually seems entirely contrived and the situations just decoration and/or forced to cause a plot outcome, and rarely bother to set up circumstances where the way they happen really makes much sense. As such series continue, they tend to look more and more like going through motions with no substance, and there's no real engagement with the combat situations.

And yet even TV shows that make little attempt at plausible action, often do sometimes have some situations where the protagonists overpower some foes easily, and then others where they are overpowered... even though it all very rarely has any other outcome than the good guys win in the end (possibly sacrificing some sidekicks for dramatic effect from time to time, usually also with a forced artificial feel to it).

Such shows also mostly disappoint and/or don't interest me, except in the rare moments where they do feel somewhat like there's an actual situation with actual reasonable and unforced outcomes.

Quote from: Skarg;1029133the rare moments where they do feel somewhat like there's an actual situation with actual reasonable and unforced outcomes.

The early seasons of Game of Thrones were great that way. But by and large naturalistic outcomes seem incredibly rare in TV action drama.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1028924When people say "balanced encounter," they don't actually mean an encounter where each side has an equal chance of winning at the beginning (e.g. a war game). They mean an encounter where if the party plays smart, they are pretty much guaranteed to win.

My experience with 4e (both sides of the screen) is that this eventually gets very boring and creates a culture where players feel they have been treated unfairly if a battle goes south. So yeah, I prefer imbalanced "encounters;" this creates a culture where a big component of the game is estimating whether or not you have the overwhelming force needed for a decisive victory, or whether you can use terrain/tactics/preparation to provide the force multipliers you need (e.g. in 5e, parking the fighter in a narrow corridor and using Dodge every round as the ranged party members annihilate the enemy), or whether you just need to run. It adds much more depth to the game.

This on all counts.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1029083Example: The LBB OD&D rules --

Dungeon- Monsters will automatically attack and/or pursue any characters they 'see,' with the exception of those monsters which are intelligent enough to avoid an obviously superior force. There is no chance for avoiding if the monster has surprised the adventurers and is within 20 feet, unless the monster itself has been surprised.
Pursuit: If the adventurers choose to flee, the monster will continue to pursue in a straight line as long as there is not more than 90 feet between the two. When a corner is turned or a door passed through or stairs up or down taken the monster will only continue to follow if a 1 or a 2 is rolled on a 6-sided die. If a secret door is passed through the monster will follow only on a roll of 1. Distance will open or close dependent upon the relative speeds of the two parties, men according to their encumbrance and monsters according to the speed given on the Monster Table in Vol. II. In order to move faster characters may elect to discard items such as treasure, weapons, shields, etc. in order to lighten encumbrance. There is a 25% chance that any character surprised by a monster will drop some item. If he does, roll for the possibilities remembering that only these items held could be so dropped. Burning oil will deter many monsters from continuing pursuit. Edible items will have a small likelihood (10%) of distracting intelligent monsters from pursuit. Semi-intelligent monsters will be distracted 50% of the time. Non-intelligent monsters will be distracted 90% of the time by food. Treasure will have the opposite reaction as food, being more likely to stop intelligent monsters.

Wilderness-Castle Inhabitants will pursue on a roll of a 1-3 if they are hostile to the party, and only on a 1 if they are basically neutral. Evasion is the same as described below for monsters.
Evading: This action is a function of the size of the party of adventurers and the number of monsters, modified by surprise, terrain and comparative speed. Use the following table as a guideline.

Balanced encounters are bullshit. But you have to make sure your players understand, especially if they are new to your games and may come from other groups where balance was artificially enforced, that not every encounter is meant to be one they can win, and there's time they may have to cut and run.