Quote from: -E.;355882If everyone's optimized for a different aspect -- and every aspect has a role to play in the adventure -- then you have balance.

That is one way to play it, and not at all wrong. Another way would be a more generalized party, with specialties, but no optimizations; while yet another would be a mix of optimized and non-optimized characters. It's all good.

QuoteIf the game's designed so that I can optimize for multiple aspects (say be the best fighter, the ship's captain, and the best navigator), I'd consider it a game-design flaw.

It sounds like you'd agree.

Pretty much. In a well designed game you can be good at two or three things, but not "the best". I put "the best" in quotes to indicate something like world class. You can be the best navigator in the crew and still not be very good if no one else can do it at all.

QuoteIn your games do you have niches or classes defined (either explicitly or otherwise) or do you leave it to the players to figure out what their niches will be for any given game?

This sort of thing is best handled by the group level. They know what they want to do better than I do.

QuoteIt's pretty clear from the answers here (both yours and the other ones) that my view of balance as primarily a combat issue isn't widely shared -- everyone who's responded sees combat as being just one of many aspects and not even a particularly dominant one.

Cheers,
-E.

Well, that's how I run games. I had a new player come into one of my games. He promptly tweaked his character out as a combat monster. I OK'd the character. He played it for a few weeks, then came to me saying he wanted to redesign the character. When I asked why, he said that he made a character that was too optimized for combat. He couldn't do anything else well, and felt left out when the others we not in combat. So we toned it down a bit - no longer world class, but still a master. Then he could pick up other skills and broaden his interests a bit. That's what I meant when I said optimization can be it's own punishment. Itraps you into one thing. I don't know how others play my games, but however they do, it should work out fine.

-clash

Quote from: HinterWelt;355919"Balance" much like the concept of "fair" in life is an affectation. People bring their own ideas of what a "balanced" game is to a system and seldom is there anything objectively balanced to draw on.

I am with you on this Clash. More, I have designed my games so a character can begin the journey in one direction, then switch or pick up skills unrtelated to his "class"...kind of like life. I am not a "game designer". I am not a "software developer". I am not a "gourmand". I am not a "coffee snob". I have skills in all these things and they do not make me "better" or "equal" or "balanced" with the next human being.

Now, do not get me wrong, "balance" is a comforting idea, just like the idea that the world is "fair" and you will get your chance. Also, I am not saying that game balance should be banned!!!111!!111! from game design but it is not my method and I think it bring a lot more problems than it solves.

As usual, we are cloned from the same donor, Bill!

-clash

Looking at 4E D&D, the one notion of "balance" which appears to be preserved with some precision in 1-on-1 combat duels, is for the case of a hypothetical "normal humanoid" where all the ability stats are 10 with no bonuses (and ignoring stat boosts at higher levels, for the sake of argument).

With the attacks and defenses having a +level/2 modifier, a hypothetical "normal humanoid" of any level has a 55% probability of hitting another "normal humanoid" of the same level (give or take one level up or down).  The +level/2 modifier preserves this 55% probability.

I suspect this is possibly what the 4E designers started off with.

In earlier editions of D&D/AD&D, the base attack bonus varied from class to class (instead of a flat +level/2).  It didn't appear that "balance" on the level of a 1-on-1 combat duel was the objective.

Quote from: flyingmice;355846A long time ago, S. John Ross told me that whatever is done in game design to limit abuse by bad players also serves to limit use by the good players.
-clash

Amen Brother!

The same goes for design that limits abuse by bad GMs.  A lot of elements of modern game design seem to be bringing on the era of the "nanny game", trying to curtail or prevent bad GMs or bad players.  You start down that road and you too easily end up with the "this is how the game should be played" result, ie. most Forge games.

You get a rockin' GM who doesn't railroad and gives his players a real immersive world to sink their teeth into, no one talks about "screen-time", "shared authority" or "narrative focus", they're too busy having fun roleplaying their asses off.

Lots of replies! I was off running a game, so I have to catch up.

Quote from: HinterWelt;355919"Balance" much like the concept of "fair" in life is an affectation. People bring their own ideas of what a "balanced" game is to a system and seldom is there anything objectively balanced to draw on.

I am with you on this Clash. More, I have designed my games so a character can begin the journey in one direction, then switch or pick up skills unrtelated to his "class"...kind of like life. I am not a "game designer". I am not a "software developer". I am not a "gourmand". I am not a "coffee snob". I have skills in all these things and they do not make me "better" or "equal" or "balanced" with the next human being.

Now, do not get me wrong, "balance" is a comforting idea, just like the idea that the world is "fair" and you will get your chance. Also, I am not saying that game balance should be banned!!!111!!111! from game design but it is not my method and I think it bring a lot more problems than it solves.

It's clearly fair to say different people mean different things by balance -- that was the whole point of the the thread... but saying balance causes problems make a lot of assumptions about the mechanism used to create balance.

Hero is an example of a hugely flexible game that made a real attempt at balance. It's probably my poster child for a game that's both extremely flexible and... at least reasonably... balanced. It's clearly a game that put a lot of thought into balance, at any rate.

I've played all kinds of games in it and I have to say that claims that it's somehow crippled because of it's care about balance seem... wrong to me.

Like 180-degrees wrong.

I'd be interested to hear your analysis of it.

Quote from: flyingmice;355951Well, that's how I run games. I had a new player come into one of my games. He promptly tweaked his character out as a combat monster. I OK'd the character. He played it for a few weeks, then came to me saying he wanted to redesign the character. When I asked why, he said that he made a character that was too optimized for combat. He couldn't do anything else well, and felt left out when the others we not in combat. So we toned it down a bit - no longer world class, but still a master. Then he could pick up other skills and broaden his interests a bit. That's what I meant when I said optimization can be it's own punishment. Itraps you into one thing. I don't know how others play my games, but however they do, it should work out fine.

-clash

Do you do super-hero games? Because those typically have a good deal of combat and (in my experience) get the best results when everyone's relatively even in power.

Unlike games focused on more realistic characters, supers games usually let you be a great scientist or a super detective or whatever fairly cheaply and only really charge for combat stuff -- so you get a scenario where no one's left out of the game for being a combat monster (even the combat monster has a few points left over for some other stuff).

If you do supers games, do you have the same approach?

Quote from: ggroy;355963Looking at 4E D&D, the one notion of "balance" which appears to be preserved with some precision in 1-on-1 combat duels, is for the case of a hypothetical "normal humanoid" where all the ability stats are 10 with no bonuses (and ignoring stat boosts at higher levels, for the sake of argument).

With the attacks and defenses having a +level/2 modifier, a hypothetical "normal humanoid" of any level has a 55% probability of hitting another "normal humanoid" of the same level (give or take one level up or down).  The +level/2 modifier preserves this 55% probability.

I suspect this is possibly what the 4E designers started off with.

In earlier editions of D&D/AD&D, the base attack bonus varied from class to class (instead of a flat +level/2).  It didn't appear that "balance" on the level of a 1-on-1 combat duel was the objective.

That sounds about right. Question: in 4e, is everyone expected to fight at about the same level, regardless of class? If so, that would be a radical departure from AD&D...

Quote from: CRKrueger;355993Amen Brother!

The same goes for design that limits abuse by bad GMs.  A lot of elements of modern game design seem to be bringing on the era of the "nanny game", trying to curtail or prevent bad GMs or bad players.  You start down that road and you too easily end up with the "this is how the game should be played" result, ie. most Forge games.

You get a rockin' GM who doesn't railroad and gives his players a real immersive world to sink their teeth into, no one talks about "screen-time", "shared authority" or "narrative focus", they're too busy having fun roleplaying their asses off.

... I'm struggling to see the Hero system as a "nanny game."
But it's (as I said above) a poster child for "balance."

I don't think balance is in the same category as the other things you've listed -- those are all story-telling elements. Balance is just having rules and a character build system that's had a lot of thought put into it.

Do you see Hero as either

a) A "nanny game" or
b) A game you wouldn't consider especially focused on balance?

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.;356001Do you do super-hero games? Because those typically have a good deal of combat and (in my experience) get the best results when everyone's relatively even in power.

Unlike games focused on more realistic characters, supers games usually let you be a great scientist or a super detective or whatever fairly cheaply and only really charge for combat stuff -- so you get a scenario where no one's left out of the game for being a combat monster (even the combat monster has a few points left over for some other stuff).

If you do supers games, do you have the same approach?

Cheers,
-E.

Not much. In fact, hardly ever. When I do, I tend to focus a lot on the heroes' secret identities and relationships. My Supers game of choice, Tim Kirk's Hearts and Souls, doesn't put a huge emphasis on the powers, instead focusing on why they do what they do. Before that game came out, I refused to run or play supers games.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;356003Not much. In fact, hardly ever. When I do, I tend to focus a lot on the heroes' secret identities and relationships. My Supers game of choice, Tim Kirk's Hearts and Souls, doesn't put a huge emphasis on the powers, instead focusing on why they do what they do. Before that game came out, I refused to run or play supers games.

-clash

That makes a lot of sense -- meaning the focus of your games and the style you play to. That would de-emphasize combat as a focus and make balance a much less important consideration.

I run a variety of games. The one I'm running now (was running tonight) is quite combat heavy (combat about once every other week). The one before it... much less so (the PC's were pretty overwhelmingly dominant combat-wise). While the generic systems I play tend to treat combat balance as at least a tertiary priority, it's not always a priority in the campaigns, themselves (trying to work out adventures where everyone has at least something to contribute *is* a priority for me, but not an absolute one).

For me a balanced system is definitely a nice-to-have.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.;356001That sounds about right. Question: in 4e, is everyone expected to fight at about the same level, regardless of class? If so, that would be a radical departure from AD&D...

A party of players is typically at the same level.

The opponents the party fights in encounters, generically is roughly one generic badguy/monster of the same level for each player, if one is to go by the encounter construction guidelines in the 4E DMG.  (A minion is one quarter of a normal monster).  So it too is approximately a 1-to-1, if one uses generic monsters.  If one uses minions, then one generic monster is replaced with four minions.  Tougher monsters or mini-bosses can replace two or more generic monsters, depending on how tough they are.

For example, if a generic monster is 100 XP points, then an encounter fighting a five player party will be 500 XP points.  The encounter is built up from the monsters XPs summing up to 500.  A minionized version of a generic monster will be 25 XP, in this example.  (Minions die when hit once).  The monsters chosen don't have to be the same level as the players.  But higher level monsters eat up more of the 500 XP encounter budget.

In 4E, generic monsters of any level (irrespective of race, class, etc ...) are constructed starting with "cookie cutter" stats.  The crunch related to the monsters' race, class, etc ... are added in on top, which may change some of the stats and abilities.

In practice I've found that most 4E generic monsters are killed after 2 or 3 hits, when they're fighting 1-on-1 against a corresponding player party of the same number and level.

EDIT:  It seems that going to higher levels including magic weapons, stat boosts, etc ..., the 4E designers may have attempted to maintain a 3 hits kill for generic monsters at almost any level.  An unstated implicit assumption of magic weapons perhaps points to possibly why hit points go up really fast in 4E monsters.  Sort of munchkin-like when it comes to magic perhaps.

Quote from: ggroy;356013In 4E, generic monsters of any level (irrespective of race, class, etc ...) are constructed starting with "cookie cutter" stats.  The crunch related to the monsters' race, class, etc ... are added in on top, which may change some of the stats and abilities.

In practice I've found that most 4E generic monsters are killed after 2 or 3 hits, when they're fighting 1-on-1 against a corresponding player party of the same number and level.

EDIT:  It seems that going to higher levels including magic weapons, stat boosts, etc ..., the 4E designers may have attempted to maintain a 3 hits kill for generic monsters at almost any level.  An unstated implicit assumption of magic weapons perhaps points to possibly why hit points go up really fast in 4E monsters.  Sort of munchkin-like when it comes to magic perhaps.

It sounds like the designers put a lot of thought into how long they wanted fights to last (in general) and what the PC's ought to be like (including accounting for magic items)

All things being equal, this sounds like effort that would make the game more enjoyable (caveats apply) -- as a GM, I can be reasonably assured that a given opposing force will be perform as-expected against the PC's... which is never a bad thing.

My guess is that not everything's equal, though -- as I understand it the "price" for this level of reliability could a fairly un-inspired or restrictive set of PC options.

But thanks for this analysis -- it sounds like 4e's definition and approach to Balance are reasonably aligned with what I was thinking about!

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.;356074It sounds like the designers put a lot of thought into how long they wanted fights to last (in general) and what the PC's ought to be like (including accounting for magic items)

Looking more closely at the to-hit mod to the d20 attack rolls in 4E, I did an analysis of it in an enworld post at:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/5061101-post14.html

With a player's primary stat starting at 18, along with the assumption of enhancement bonuses (of magic weapons) in the 4E PHB and the regular player stat boosts at higher levels, the to-hit mod of the d20 attacks rolls are approximately:

to-hit mod = level + 3, at heroic tiers of levels 1 to 10
to-hit mod = level + 2, at paragon tiers of levels 11 to 20
to-hit mod = level, at epic tiers of levels 21 to 30.

Not quite exact, but close enough to:

to-hit mod = level/2 + stat mod + enhancement ~ +level

If one does a similar analysis for the defense stats which are directly dependent on the player's primary stat, such as fortitude for a fighter, ranger or paladin, one approximately has:

fortitude = 10 + level/2 + stat mod + enhancement ~ 10 + level

EDIT:  This 55% to-hit probability may also be preserved for a player's attack using it's primary stat, against an opponent's defense based on it's primary stat.  (The player and opponent are of the same level).

EDIT:  Interesting how this 55% probability of hitting a target in combat is implemented, albeit buried in the mechanics of stat mods and enhancement magic bonuses.

I'll have to think more about how AC works in 4E.