How to obtain balance in RPG design.

[shadzar]

Well lets just throw some ideas out here and see what comes from them.

First you have to decide what you are trying to balance. For a competitive game, then you need to balance the participants against each other, for a cooperative game you need to balance the the sides of opposition.

Lets take a mixed game first like Call of Duty as an example of both competitive co-op. You have to start the design with the mindset you will have X vs X people, adn they should have the chance to balance forces. First you limit the number to 16 vs 16, 8 v 8 or whatever so that the size is the same. Then you have to give them options that will work for both sides to make them fair. Fairness is what balance is afterall. So if one side can lob grenades, then the other should be able to as well.

This is the same way many RPGs work in a sense. Two opposing forces balance force vs force against each other.

Take the old Goldeneye game and you get into the PvP style play os a full competitive game. Where all people start with the same chance roughly and are balanced, but they can soon eclipse others by accumulation of items and such. So you strive to balance the start to give everyone a fair chance at the beginning to be able to get better through play. No RPG I know of really works like this.

Now back to CoD example. While there you have two opposing sides with the same choices, most RPGs do not lend this to play. The player's will have one set of rules, or design mechanics to use, while the NPC/monsters/etc wil have slightly or vastly different rules. This means the mixed format really doesn't work.

So what does that mean for RPG design balance. The only way to truly balance the game, is through the true co-op method. You note the opposing forces, and give them equal chance within themselves and a relative power level equal to each other. This may mean some in either group is weaker than others, so long as both sides are equal in total power to be a close match. This could be actual combat, or anything else where a situation arises that produces opposing sides. A door for example could be the opposition to the PCs.

So as long as the proper balance on the opposing sides is met, then either side can vary within itself. Balance also doesn't mean a 50/50 chance of success. Taking the door for example, it would be balance with other factors, such as whether what lies beyond would be balanced once success at getting through it is met. But enough of that side example, and back to the main idea about balance for now.

So if all sides are balanced against each other, rather than their own component parts, what does that mean for game design? Well first it means the game is a co-op, where the players will work together. Well what happens when the wizard does everything and the fighter just sits there? Well there are many things that can be said for this, but it depends on how you look at the game. How would you design for such to not happen? You give options for the fighter to do, and the player must work with them. So does that mean you shouldn't make the fighter and wizard have the same power level all the time? How could you?

How do you quantify the physical with the metaphysical? Within a class-based game, you can never balance the classes, because there is no metric by which to measure all parts of the game and its options for said classes. This also goes with a game having more than one race/species/etc. Does a +2 bonus to some strength score equate to another race having +2 in agility? Maybe so long as that strength only ever goes against that agility. But both will be applied to many other things. The only way to balance this way would be to simplify everything to just a numerical value, and quantify it such that all things are equal, and can only be used in a predetermined fashion.

SO to our fighter and wizard, how can you quantify them? You cannot. You will not be able to break things down to a number and have any real meaning to those numbers. The reason is because you cannot predetermine the actions. You can use any number of methods to try, or you can force a prescribed list of actions and results, that will maintain the designed balance, but such a thing only happens in the theoretical design process. Once in use, such would only work if you could get someone to play a game, where they just compare results, and have no free0will to swerve off the path and try something for themselves. Odds are the game would not be played long except by diehard players.

So how do you obtain the design balance within an RPG. The best you can do, is make sure the game works, and that the opposing sides have similar strengths and weaknesses, and be prepared that other things will happen that you cannot predict. You also must explain the game is cooperative, and that competition, while gratifying to yourself at times, is not the focus of the game. Most RPGs strive to get through a course of events together, and that is where the balance is created by the players, never by the designers outside of guidelines to let the rules arbitrator balance the sides opposing the players so that the game is not too easy or too hard to play, that it loses the ability of said players to have fun.

So then a fighter will always be worse than a wizard in a game? No. This is the only place design balance can truly come into play, by giving options for the fighter when they have exhausted all theirs through personal ability, or game resources. Also the group working together where one player is not playing at the expense of the others is and the group dynamic must be allowed to work. Since those cannot be quantified, you have to explain the strengths and weakness, in the design and offer something to be done. There will always be times even when options are left to be had, that players will not wish to use because they just flat out don't like it. So the best you can do is to do what you can in design and understand people are different and have different tastes. Strive to let all players and the rules arbitrator know how the game works, and what they should do to obtain balance.

Sadly some players will always seek the competitive game in a cooperative game, and that is just part of life. Something that individual groups have to deal with on their own.

Now if you wanted to balance a class based game within the classes, you might be able to, but the problem will arise, when played that some things will always be used by someone with free will and free thinking of their own outside of what it was, so it would not be possible to try to perfect the balance, but you could get damn close.

So as I see it balance in an RPG cannot solely come from its design, but is mostly obtained from the group of players in it so long as those players have freedom of choice of actions.

Other ideas, or interpretations on balance in RPG design ....

[Psychic Robot]

for a cooperative game you need to balance the the sides of opposition.

Stopped reading there.

[Itay K]

Once in use, such would only work if you could get someone to play a game, where they just compare results, and have no free0will to swerve off the path and try something for themselves. Odds are the game would not be played long except by diehard players.

Surely I'm mistaken and you did not just condemn the Testing Phase of product design (RPG or otherwise) as a pointless exercise?

[shadzar]

Once in use, such would only work if you could get someone to play a game, where they just compare results, and have no free0will to swerve off the path and try something for themselves. Odds are the game would not be played long except by diehard players.

Surely I'm mistaken and you did not just condemn the Testing Phase of product design (RPG or otherwise) as a pointless exercise?

Testing should be done, but you have to make sure you know what you are testing and why, otherwise you will fail.

Take any class, and look at balancing it against another. Well you have some nice balance there. Now the party is equal in power to itself. How does this help when the party is not fighting within itself, but fighting another force?

How do you know that class X will perform action Y, so that you can balance the result of the sides against each other? You cannot.

So what I am saying is, you can try to balance the opposing sides, but it will never work the way you plan, no matter how much testing you do. You can predict the most often used based solely on quantitative functions. What does the most damage, and when to use that. But what is something happens outside your planned and accounted for possibilities. That will throw the designed game balance off right then and there.

Look at magic missile and using it to push a button or something of the past.

Now it cannot do that in D&D, because of special wording to try to limit the functions to a specific set of rules. What will be the enxt magic missile, and how tight can you make the rules before you remove the freedom of choice to use the abilities yourself.

Also what is to stop someone now form using magic missile to try to push a lever? Metagaming the functions of it in game? The reason it was used to try to push things was what it does in the game world, not the codified rules of it. So why can it not be done? Well by the rules it won't work, but would you deny someone the attempt of a logical means by which to perform a ranged action such as moving a lever or pushing a button?

Also what if the group playing see the "force" as being able to actually moved physical objects as they wish they game world to be. Should they not be allowed, or when they exert such choice to a simple and obvious use for such a spell will such use cause problems further down the line because of such a simple alteration to adhere to what they see as common sense within the game.

You can design the intent of the spell to, for most purposes, not exert actual physical force such as to move objects. Then look at 4th and say you do give it the ability to move objects in a minor way as that. Does magic missile then gain Push-1, what happens to the game balance from such strict rules structure now that an at-will can push things?

Why shouldn't the spell be able to exert a small amount of force since it goes along with most fiction that still follows Newton's laws even for magic. Where an explosion has a concussive force and causes a reaction in equal and opposite directions.

Can a meteor swarm really not make a hole in the ground when the meteors hit? Can it really not set combustible things on fire? You can make the strict rules and guess people will adhere to them, but that really only works for video games, where the choices are severely limited. You cannot climb the hill because you have reached the end of zone, or cannot climb the tre because the animations are not programmed.

The freedom of choice on a broader spectrum for an RPG is lost on video game RPG simulators. When it happens in an actual RPG, such as tabletop, then you have high risk at losing any strict structure designed which would disrupt the balance.

Take warhammer as a strict ruleset. You cannot run of the table or you have lost the unit, you get X wounds, can only move so far, etc. You are bound by much stricter and "balanced"* rules that cannot be created for an RPG. The RPg is really about freedom of choice, which most scripted event video games do not have. You follow the story, or get stuck like a railroading DM. Even MMOs don't have the freedom of choice, because you must follow prescribed paths rather than be able to take another path to the same end.

So unless you remove the freedom of choice to deviate from the guessed method at any point, how much testing would be needed to get any kind of balance for the game?

[Kaelik]

Of course he did.

I have him on ignore and I can still tell you what his entire argument (so much as there is a sensible one) is from the two quotes that have been made.

He's Shadazar, his argument goes something like this:

1) Balance doesn't really matter in mechanics, because DMs can always fix things.
2) Balance doesn't really matter in the mechanics, as long as you attach bullshit fluff "handicaps."
3) Powerful abilities are fine as long as they have powerful drawbacks. Celerity is a fine spell, all you need to do is have the DM shoot a player who gets immunity to daze.
4) Playtesting is impossible, player creativity will always trump mechanics anyway.
5) Any ability can only be used in the way that the DM thinks it should be, so if someone can synergize two effects by dipping classes, I would ban that. You don't have to think about that sort of thing.

Nevermind that half of those contradict the other half. It's shadazar.

[Red Archon]

I think he's trying a new tactics. Those gargantuan walls of text written by a dry, admittedly dyslexic guy are enough to keep anyone from actually reading them. He gets no counterpoints, he wins. In Shadzarville, Kentucky.

[Itay K]

So unless you remove the freedom of choice to deviate from the guessed method at any point, how much testing would be needed to get any kind of balance for the game?

It's clear that any system that allows a certain MTP element will induce a "wobble factor" on mechanics, but that certainly doesn't preclude thinking of scenarios common and/or essential to the kind of story your system is meant to function in.

Throwing up your hands and saying "I can never be 100% certain of anything so I might as well give up and just throw some numbers at the players until they go away" just isn't useful; At that point, you might as well go completely freeform.

TL;DR -
10 write rules you think are appropriate.
20 make up some arbitrary test cases.
30 test them.
40 if results are satisfactory to your genre, goto 20
50 else goto 10

There. My point is, this process should happen before the actual game begins and should continue until the results seem appropriate.
Deliberately failing to perform this on a published rule only to hoist the work on the DM is worse than not publishing that rule.

Players WILL break the system. That doesn't excuse a system that's broken to begin with.

[shadzar]

So unless you remove the freedom of choice to deviate from the guessed method at any point, how much testing would be needed to get any kind of balance for the game?

It's clear that any system that allows a certain MTP element will induce a "wobble factor" on mechanics, but that certainly doesn't preclude thinking of scenarios common and/or essential to the kind of story your system is meant to function in.

Throwing up your hands and saying "I can never be 100% certain of anything so I might as well give up and just throw some numbers at the players until they go away" just isn't useful; At that point, you might as well go completely freeform.

TL;DR -
10 write rules you think are appropriate.
20 make up some arbitrary test cases.
30 test them.
40 if results are satisfactory to your genre, make up some more test cases.
50 else return to 10

There. My point is, this process should happen before the actual game begins and should continue until the results seem appropriate.
Deliberately failing to perform this on a published rule only to hoist the work on the DM is worse than not publishing that rule.

Players WILL break the system. That doesn't excuse a system that's broken to begin with.

I quoted an important part here to start with. Exactly what kind of story do the different RPGs (you can stick with D&D editions if you want me to follow you and understand, or others, but have to give me some info on them) mean to function in?

Does each edition have a specific type of story it strives to have you follow?

I think most apparently 4th edition does. While they remove rules for most roleplaying since there is not much to rule about it, the sheer volume of rules for combat makes it seem that is the function of D&D. Many have said so by that sheer volume of rules and focus that it can be hard to see the location of roleplaying elements for a newcomer or older player alike. There is still room for roleplaying, but the emphasis of the rules subject matter is clear, and could mislead the function of the game.

I am not saying you cannot have balance, but again what are you trying to balance? Does each class in a class based system that uses different rules for the opposition, need to be balanced against each other, or should the player party be balanced against the obstacles they will face? Most times I heard about balance it is akin to infighting in the party over who has the better shtick. This cannot be the function of even 4th edition D&D right? One player trying to better the others?

So while you can try to get close, and make all things fair, that wobble room, will give way when someone sits down to play, that is not onboard with the a major function of the game, in that it is not competitive between the players. He who collects the most loot isn't the winner. Instead it is cooperative in order to survive to the goal set forth by the group of players.

I ask what is broken say in AD&D about fighters and wizards, to continue the obvious example, in terms of balance? Is it the rules, and that someone CAN abuse them, or is it those who purposefully seek to abuse them?

To borrow a metaphor form the NRA, guns don't kill people, people do. This of course meaning a gun cannot seek to harm another, but some action must be performed to make it work, like loading, the trigger being triggered, etc. A gun wont load itself and sek someone to fire upon.

So are the rules at fault if people CAN screw up the game with them, or are those seeking to screw up the game at fault?

What can a designer really do to prevent someone from fucking with the game, and how much should they invest into preventing it, without noticing they are making a game of less choices, and more scripts and railroads?

Now it is hard as hell for me to read the 4th edition books, cause how sick the wasted space makes me feel, and even near impossible to read the crap 3.x books. But I recall little mention in those games about how to play, while in contrast previous edition explained to people in more places how to play, and that previous function of the game, cooperation.

Does 4th edition give any example of how to work with other players in a class's section to make sure this class will be fun for you, and helpful to the playing group as well?

Say 3rd edition had a big focus on the function of optimization due to the volume of abilities, and rules. The designers see a lot of optimization and thinks people like it because it is rampant, and put a lot to optimize in 4th.

Now was the problem the lack of optimization prior to 3rd so more focus on it was wanted, or was the problem there was too much that you had to optimize in 3rd that caused people to have to focus on it?

Was making a game devoted more to optimization the right way to balance 4th because people were doing it, or was noticing that optimization was requiring so much time because a fault in 3rd that could be avoided in 4th.

That would balance the players time.

There are many things to balance, so which one to work most on? I just think "balance" of the player classes against each other is pretty dumb, since they are not intended to be opposing each other, but working together instead. So trying to prevent something from being broken, does not require weighing it against another player ability, unless it is supposed to be used against them, n'est pas?

What point is there to balance the powers of Han and Luke even to each other, when they are both fighting against the Empire, and not each other? How would it break the game to have Han and Luke with different powers when hey are working to stop Bobba and Jabba for freedom?

[Itay K]

Shadzar, your post is illegible. Please try to be as concise as possible.

[Starmaker]

3) Powerful abilities are fine as long as they have powerful drawbacks. Celerity is a fine spell, all you need to do is have the DM shoot a player who gets immunity to daze.

That shit had stopped flying 10 years before in fucking MTG of all things.
I recall Mark Rosewater's post about overpowered Magic cards. The bit about the attempts to nerf Black Lotus by adding more and more ricockulous restrictions was especially funny. They basically printed Lion's Eye Diamond for the lulz thinking that the card was unusable and realized breaking the mana curve was too fucking powerful no matter the drawback after someone nearly won a tournament with it.

[Kaelik]

3) Powerful abilities are fine as long as they have powerful drawbacks. Celerity is a fine spell, all you need to do is have the DM shoot a player who gets immunity to daze.

That shit had stopped flying 10 years before in fucking MTG of all things.
I recall Mark Rosewater's post about overpowered Magic cards. The bit about the attempts to nerf Black Lotus by adding more and more ricockulous restrictions was especially funny. They basically printed Lion's Eye Diamond for the lulz thinking that the card was unusable and realized breaking the mana curve was too fucking powerful no matter the drawback after someone nearly won a tournament with it.

In case you missed it. That was my guess on Shad's post. And I personally disagree with most or all of it.

[Parthenon]

This is.... complete bullshit. Starting off with your main idea about balance and going off from there.

• The "forces of opposition" shouldn't have 50% chance to win. That means that the party as a whole dies within just a few encounters.
• The "forces of opposition" is a bullshit term. You define it as both a single door and the same door with a dragon behind it. WTF?
• Of course it matters if one or more players isn't contributing. If the fighter gets bored because they're useless then the fighter class is unbalanced.
• Stop pretending that you can't quantify classes against "the forces of opposition". The SAME game test does just that.
• So what if peoples free will means they'll do different things. One should balance based on the norm or average style of play at least try to balance based on the expected gameplay as well as the extreme gameplay.
• Giving up and saying that things can never be balanced is useless and bullshit. You should strive to make it better and usable.

Balance doesn't come solely from design but it good design is needed and your idea of balance needs to be better than this bullshit.

You have a point that players can do odd things and then the DM has to make rulings on what happens, but this doesn't affect the fact that you can decide on a balance point and then test to make get as close to that balance as possible for the vast majority of games.

EDIT: RandomCasualty2 makes too much sense.

[Nicklance]

I find it hard to believe you would equate class balance or rules mechanics with choices.

You might as well suggest that the DM gets his players to run full psychological profiling and behavioral tests to ensure that the DM has found exactly the right players to play with.

[Leress]

Question, shad, how many PnP RPGs have you played?

[Dakira]

I just think "balance" of the player classes against each other is pretty dumb, since they are not intended to be opposing each other, but working together instead. So trying to prevent something from being broken, does not require weighing it against another player ability, unless it is supposed to be used against them, n'est pas?

I think I understand what you're talking about, but I think something should be said for keeping all the players involved in the game. Yea the "sigma 6" perfection is impossible to attain but designers strive for the sigma 5. Here are two reasons imho:

1) The need to balance players exists because they are working together on a similar level. A player who does significantly more than others can leave the others without much to do. This is a group game after all and keeping all the players working together is important. A player who does very little comparatively, can lose interest and even the group. This has happened before.

Going back to the overpowered player, the DM may even increase the combat difficulty to provide for some challenge while the others are fighting for their lives at low levels. This too, I have seen happen.

2) In many systems, NPCs are built like players. If you don't balance them out, problems arise. They may come across an over/under-powered NPC or group of NPCs which can/will make things bland/frustrating.

[Nicklance]

1) The need to balance players exists because they are working together on a similar level. A player who does significantly more than others can leave the others without much to do. This is a group game after all and keeping all the players working together is important. A player who does very little comparatively, can lose interest and even the group. This has happened before.

Going back to the overpowered player, the DM may even increase the combat difficulty to provide for some challenge while the others are fighting for their lives at low levels. This too, I have seen happen.

No. The moment the DM can get it into his head that fights need not always feature a full party means there are always ways to compensate and provide a reasonable challenge to every player, even if its a little awkward or clumsy.

In-game, create encounters that force the more powerful player to move away from the party in order to encounter some challenge single-handedly, and deal with the character on his own level and terms.

Get the rest of the party together for your usual challenge, adjusted to account for 1 less member.

In the opposite, where you have 1 relatively new player in a party of veteran powergamers (or such), give unique single-member encounters specifically for the new player in order not to make him feel intimidated, and to help facilitate his increasing ability to understand and function well in the game.

Explain to your players out of game why you're doing this and hope some compromise can be made so that roleplaying isn't compromised. In a normal playing group, such arrangements are taken in stride or even readily accepted most of the time.

2) In many systems, NPCs are built like players. If you don't balance them out, problems arise. They may come across an over/under-powered NPC or group of NPCs which can/will make things bland/frustrating.

This is the work of the DM. Its his responsibility to adjust the NPCs on the fly. If the NPCs are built in a modular fashion, its not so much of a problem. The most important thing to know in a game is that its dynamic and things will and have to change almost constantly to suit the play.

The willingness to adjust and change makes it a very challenging part of DM-ing and as a fellow DM myself, I can empathize with the shit that DMs get many bloody times. Takes practice, but it can be done.

[RandomCasualty2]

So what if peoples free will means they'll do different things. One should balance based on the norm or average style of play.

Actually this is rather dangerous game design. It is in fact what led to a lot of the imbalance in 3E (and 4E for that matter), where the designers assumed that people would play like they do. Instead of one style of play being used as the norm, I think the game should be analyzed from several different style approaches, and in the end the style that you want people to take is the one that is made the most effective by the rules.

D&D does a really terrible job of style balancing because people who play the game "as the designers intended" do a lot worse than people who play the game more strategically.

Shadowrun is a good use of style design, where the game rules and the world itself encourage the kind of hit & run raids that the game is based upon.

[shadzar]

Question, shad, how many PnP RPGs have you played?

All D&Ds, Shadowrun (long ago), VtM (LARP more than PnP), Rifts...a few others I played but once, and don't really remember much about them.

Mostly a D&D player because it is the genre I prefer to play in. With guns and such of modern and future I prefer miniature/video games over PnP RPGs.

[A Man In Black]

[Psychic Robot]

Words.

Balance makes the DM's job easier and it makes the game more fun for the majority of people. It's not fun spending an hour in combat, plinking away for 2d6 + 5 damage while the wizard is flying around, shooting lasers, and killing seventeen enemies per turn.

[Nicklance]

Words.

Balance makes the DM's job easier and it makes the game more fun for the majority of people. It's not fun spending an hour in combat, plinking away for 2d6 + 5 damage while the wizard is flying around, shooting lasers, and killing seventeen enemies per turn.

You didn't really read what I've said yes?

[RobbyPants]

Words.

Balance makes the DM's job easier and it makes the game more fun for the majority of people. It's not fun spending an hour in combat, plinking away for 2d6 + 5 damage while the wizard is flying around, shooting lasers, and killing seventeen enemies per turn.

Exactly. I've always found ways in the past to make my games work, but I don't like the fact that I had to put in that extra work.

[Psychic Robot]

You didn't really read what I've said yes?

You talked about adjusting encounter difficulty based on player. While this is fine, your suggestions are impractical and unwieldy. You said that the DM ought to "create encounters that force the more powerful player to move away from the party in order to encounter some challenge single-handedly."

By creating a special encounter for one of the PCs, you're forcing one PC into combat while the rest look on and watch, which means that they're going to be out of the game, wanting to play some Smash Bros. while you run your mini-encounter with the powerful PC. And that's fine for a minute or two, but when encounters can drag on for fifteen minutes or more, then your solution isn't very good.

Then you go on to suggest giving "unique single-member encounters specifically for the new player in order not to make him feel intimidated." This is fine GMing advice in general, but again, you're not divvying up screentime in a manner that's not going to be annoying to the other players. While the newbie is off brandishing his sword at a few commoners, the veteran players are going to be bored, wondering when they can resume playing the same game.

Finally, you go on to say that it is the DM's "responsibility to adjust the NPCs on the fly." First of all, this is, again, a huge hassle. Second of all, it feels like cheating. If the PCs are fighting a wyvern and I decide that it is dead when it still has 25 hit points remaining, then the PCs haven't actually defeated a wyvern. They've won the battle through an invisible deus ex machina. They might think that they've won, but I don't like pulling punches because it takes away the accomplishment from the PCs (even if they don't know I've pulled a punch).

At the point when you've taken the challenge out of the game and made it so that the PCs always win, all the time, then there's just not much of a point to playing a stats-based game. You would be better off sitting in a circle, playing Magical Tea Party and Cooperative Storytelling Hour.

[Crissa]

Balance in game design is not about opposing powers, but instead about cooperative powers.

It's like putting in two rocket engines in a vehicle - if they're of different size, the rocket will veer off course. So it's important that the output of each is balanced to the other, even if their fuels are different.

-Crissa

[Murtak]

Balance is about choices. In RPGs this typically means character development. Ideally any and all choices (race, class, feats, skills, etc) should be equally viable. I know of no game for which that is true though. The next best setup would only have bad choices which are obviously bad (ex: a scrawny sage taking power attack). Again I know of no game where that is true. So we may have to settle for a game where most choices are viable and where most bad choices are obvious. At least I know games which come close to this.

So if balance equals choices, how do we achieve balance? First of course we will have to decide what to balance - presumably this is character generation. So we don't care whether there are powers which are useless in specific encounters. But we do care whether there are powers which are useless or underpowered on average. Thus any choice a player can make that is clearly superior to others is terrible for the game as it invalidates all other choices the player could have taken. A choice which is inferior is also bad, but not nearly as much. So the adjustment algorithm is: if it is too good, nerf judiciously, if it is too bad, power up cautiously.

We don't yet have a way to measure "too good" or "too bad" though. The same game test is a good concept, but fails to take teamwork into account. But the concept can be applied to any game: Ask yourself "What challenges are the characters supposed to encounter?" and "What is the expected outcome." - then design a sample set of encounters - design sample characters - run the gauntlet - check results - adjust - reiterate.

Obviously this is a crapton of work. Less obviously it can be made a lot easier by choosing some guidelines in advance. Rule of thumb: fixing a design mistake in testing is ten times as much work, fixing it after the writeup is done is a hundred times as much work. But even if you design carefully this stage will take ages. On the bright side though you can fluidly shift into playtesting, which is can be nearly as much fun as playing the final game.

Oh, and one other thing to keep in mind: Balance does not necessarily equal fun. In my experience it helps a lot and some modicum of balance may be required for fun, but I have also seen perfectly balanced games which sucked.