Rainbow or Monocolor Brokenness?

[Previn]

It has to do with the fact that all devs are fallible. And they're working on complex systems of rules. Basically, if you shoot for a given power level, a lot of your stuff will miss it. If, when designing a supplement, you use the most powerful core elements as your baseline, then most of your stuff will be slightly more powerful or slightly less powerful (assuming you're good enough to avoid WotC-like spreads). Some of the stuff might end up in your "slightly inferior but cool" zone.

Now, if you take "slightly inferior but cool" as a baseline for some of your material, the odds are that you won't hit that benchmark. If your error is on the negative side, the resulting class ends up being so underpowered that "coolness" can't save it. The potential for such error is the reason you don't want to intentionally set your baseline that low.

The first problem is that you're assuming that weaker is always the base line when if you read what I've been saying it very clearly is not. The base line is avenge (i.e. balanced) and abilities are made from there. If you know where the average balance lies, you can generally make weaker but interesting without a problem.

The second problem is that many people seem to have a disconnect that it is impossible to generally 'get it right' when trying to design something, which is ridiculous on many levels.

Your argument isn't that there's anything wrong with have 'weaker but interesting,' it's that you don't trust that someone can do it without screwing up. While I grant that they may be a concern (a fact alluded to it in my first post), it doesn't detract from my point.

They should aim at what they want to achieve.

This is exactly right.

You aim for what you want, and your job as a designer is to figure out if you hit the target you or not. If not, you try again before you release the splat/set/whatever. If you can't hit the target reliably or release what you know to be off target, you shouldn't be designing.

[violence in the media]

You aim for what you want, and your job as a designer is to figure out if you hit the target you or not. If not, you try again before you release the splat/set/whatever. If you can't hit the target reliably or release what you know to be off target, you shouldn't be designing.

Are game designers even evaluated on the quality of their design work, or is it strictly reliant on book sales? Fuck your fluff--if your math fails, that should be pretty damning evidence of your inability as a professional game designer.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

You could make the same argument about movies and broadway. Some people are Connoisseurs, others just eat up whatever piece of garbage that has flashing lights and fight scenes.

And unfortunately, having a well designed mathematical game does not mean that it will sell well. Although, I am awaiting the day when the 2 shall meet.

[violence in the media]

I guess that's the difference in viewpoint. I see game design as more closely related to engineering and statistics than to movies, plays, and literature.

Or, put another way, game mechanics facilitate the procedural generation of stories. Some of those stories may be stupid, or end badly, but the fun is had in their creation, not outcome.

[Roy]

You aim for what you want, and your job as a designer is to figure out if you hit the target you or not. If not, you try again before you release the splat/set/whatever. If you can't hit the target reliably or release what you know to be off target, you shouldn't be designing.

Are game designers even evaluated on the quality of their design work, or is it strictly reliant on book sales? Fuck your fluff--if your math fails, that should be pretty damning evidence of your inability as a professional game designer.

They get paid based on word count. Which is why the lower end systems are filled with things like wank poetry about being Cursed With Awesome.

[Previn]

You aim for what you want, and your job as a designer is to figure out if you hit the target you or not. If not, you try again before you release the splat/set/whatever. If you can't hit the target reliably or release what you know to be off target, you shouldn't be designing.

Are game designers even evaluated on the quality of their design work, or is it strictly reliant on book sales? Fuck your fluff--if your math fails, that should be pretty damning evidence of your inability as a professional game designer.

They get paid based on word count. Which is why the lower end systems are filled with things like wank poetry about being Cursed With Awesome.

When you aim for money and get paid regardless of the quality, I suppose you did hit your design target.

[Username17]

Your argument isn't that there's anything wrong with have 'weaker but interesting,' it's that you don't trust that someone can do it without screwing up.

No. The argument is that "but interesting" is something that fucking anything could have regardless of strength. And that you should be shooting for "but interesting" (or rather "and interesting") every time you make any ability. Therefore you should be shooting for the level that people actually use on the power spectrum, and also try to make it interesting. Shooting for "weaker" is just like shooting for "less interesting" - if you do that you're actively attempting to make the things you are writing less useful to people reading them.

You're seriously arguing in favor of Savage Species here, and that hurts my mind.

-Username17

[Previn]

Your argument isn't that there's anything wrong with have 'weaker but interesting,' it's that you don't trust that someone can do it without screwing up.

No. The argument is that "but interesting" is something that fucking anything could have regardless of strength.

"Additional material can add on new options without having to be more powerful as long as the new options are significantly interesting."

Is the actual argument, from my first post in this thread. I find it disingenuous that you seemed to have skimmed over all the other points and posts to latch onto "but" and then started applying it as an absolute to launch arguments that I've clearly already dealt with.

And that you should be shooting for "but interesting" (or rather "and interesting") every time you make any ability. Therefore you should be shooting for the level that people actually use on the power spectrum, and also try to make it interesting. Shooting for "weaker" is just like shooting for "less interesting" - if you do that you're actively attempting to make the things you are writing less useful to people reading them.

Just because something is 'weaker' on the power scale, doesn't mean it's unusable or won't be used, in fact the weaker ability may be so close, that a mathematical analysis must be done to determine that it is weaker. Nor does it mean that 'balanced' abilities are not or cannot be interesting. You're missing the point that interesting can make up for weaker, especially if the difference between 'balanced' and 'weaker' has no effective impact on the game (i.e. our monopoly dog that starts with 1 more dollar than the other pieces).

Basically we're back to the Sorcerer vrs Wizard comparison. Both are interesting, and both do wonderfully in 3.x. The wizard is better, but some players will take the sorcerer for the interesting casting mechanics.

You're seriously arguing in favor of Savage Species here, and that hurts my mind.

-Username17

Depends on your view of the power level of Savage Species, which is based on the power level within your games. It spans a wide dearth of balance levels depending on what material you choose from it.

But as a concept 'players can play monsters?' Yes, Savage Species was excellent, it was merely the execution of the mechanics that lacked.

Learning to separate the difference between what was done, and what could be done, rather than dwelling on 'book or set x was terribly balanced and thus interesting never makes up for any weakness no matter how small' would go a long way to understanding my point of view.

[PhoneLobster]

Someone said "Savage Species" three times, apparently summoning me.

in fact the weaker ability may be so close, that a mathematical analysis must be done to determine that it is weaker... ...especially if the difference between 'balanced' and 'weaker' has no effective impact on the game

So if you redefine "weaker" as "functionally identical" then being "weaker" isn't bad at all!

You're missing the point that interesting can make up for weaker

But it CAN'T provide an excuse for weaker. Because it did not need to be weaker to be interesting.

It is not a zany trade off where the weaker something is the more room there is for it to be interesting.

And in a game about kicking ass it's more the case that being stronger adds interest so a weaker item is working uphill to be "interesting" in the first place.

Being mechanically weaker is a stand alone flaw separate to (or maybe even OPPOSED to) being more interesting.

Depends on your view of the power level of Savage Species, which is based on the power level within your games. It spans a wide dearth of balance levels depending on what material you choose from it.

Er. What?

Savage species provided approximately 3 sorts of monsters (more like 4.5 but it was intended to be 3).

1) Zero hit die monsters with LA.
These almost uniformly were inferior to 0 LA core players hand book races. So if your balance level was "much much weaker than the actual rules as written" then I suppose this one WAS an option!

2) Monsters with monster hit die and LA.
These guys covered a range of power levels. But did so within the same creature entries. So if you wanted to add a minotaur to your game you couldn't do it below his LA+HD, because he was too strong, and by the time you met the LA+HD requirements he was too weak.

His abilities covered a range of power levels, they just did it in a way which you could never ever meet in actual game play.

3) Monster "classes" with inbuilt LA.
These guys were a nightmare of power level range. Basically identical to the "HD+LA" monster but you could start failing to meet the power level of your game from level 1!

They were complex and there were a lot of them, so maybe one or two managed to meet their actual character level in power level at some point in their progressions. But NONE of them met that power level for the entire progression, or even anything close to the majority of it. And you HAD to progress through the entire monster class, skipping several HD along the way, before you were allowed to take real class levels.

4)Templates with LA
Not described as a monster PC method by the book's authors, but there nonetheless.

All the problems of the monster HD+LA method and more How it was ever appropriate for a character to gain LA+3-5 levels worth of power as an advance payment for what amounted to an XP mortgage when no one else got to do that no one ever explained.

But as a concept 'players can play monsters?' Yes, Savage Species was excellent, it was merely the execution of the mechanics that lacked.

Savage species was a direct, and deliberate, and openly admitted, slap in the faces of everyone who wanted playable monster characters.

It's mechanics were deliberately crap and unsalvageable. And it was released as a "3.25" product largely incompatible with everything ever.

Learning to separate the difference between what was done, and what could be done, rather than dwelling on 'book or set x was terribly balanced and thus interesting never makes up for any weakness no matter how small' would go a long way to understanding my point of view.

Are you seriously claiming that because people are interested in playable monster characters that Savage Species, despite being in every way mechanically bad for their monster characters and their games, was in fact a GOOD book?

[Draco_Argentum]

They should aim at what they want to achieve.

This is exactly right.

No its not, its a fucking retarded non answer.

Since you agreed with that tripe and called Savage Species something other than complete crap I'm done here.

[Fuchs]

What I am saying is that if a Dev says "I want to make a feat/spell/option that's insteresting and not underpowered, but since I'll be missing my goal anyway, so I am aiming at slightly more powerful than I actually want so it'll not be underpowered" then I'd wonder what exactly the dev is thinking. Either he can accurately judge a feat/spell/power, and then he can revise it until he has met his mark, or he can't. But if he can't, he won't be able to meet his "slightly above the goal" mark either since presumably he'll not even know what that would be.

Game design is not "you have just one shot, so better aim high", it is "pick your target, and bloody shoot until you hit it. I don't care how many bullets you use up", only the one that hits counts - devs need to revise and revise and test until they know what they hit.

The problem is most devs can't see whether or not they hit what they aimed at, and some might not even know what they aim at.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

It has to do with the fact that all devs are fallible. And they're working on complex systems of rules. Basically, if you shoot for a given power level, a lot of your stuff will miss it. If, when designing a supplement, you use the most powerful core elements as your baseline, then most of your stuff will be slightly more powerful or slightly less powerful (assuming you're good enough to avoid WotC-like spreads). Some of the stuff might end up in your "slightly inferior but cool" zone.

Now, if you take "slightly inferior but cool" as a baseline for some of your material, the odds are that you won't hit that benchmark. If your error is on the negative side, the resulting class ends up being so underpowered that "coolness" can't save it. The potential for such error is the reason you don't want to intentionally set your baseline that low.

The first problem is that you're assuming that weaker is always the base line when if you read what I've been saying it very clearly is not. The base line is avenge (i.e. balanced) and abilities are made from there. If you know where the average balance lies, you can generally make weaker but interesting without a problem.

Whether "weaker but interesting" is always the baseline is irrelevant. If it's the baseline for anything, there's a real possibility that you'll miss the target on the low side and produce something unplayable.

The second problem is that many people seem to have a disconnect that it is impossible to generally 'get it right' when trying to design something, which is ridiculous on many levels.

Based on actual game design history, there's nothing ridiculous about it. In fact, it's ridiculous to assume that designer will usually "get it right."

The thing is, not only are RPG rules complex, but RPGs themselves are open-ended. Unlike a board game, where you can put hard limits on what players are allowed to do, RPGs encourage people to find new uses for their characters' abilities (though 4e seems to be trying to nip this in the bud). Therefore, once the game's released "into the wild," some features of the game will have more or better unanticipated uses than others. Thus the spread between power levels will be greater than you thought.

Thus, there will be error somewhere in the design process, no matter what you do.

Your argument isn't that there's anything wrong with have 'weaker but interesting,' it's that you don't trust that someone can do it without screwing up. While I grant that they may be a concern (a fact alluded to it in my first post), it doesn't detract from my point.

Well, at least you did understand my point. While it is possible for something to end up slightly weaker "cool" enough for people to want to play, aiming for that point makes you more likely to unintentionally produce something unplayably weak.

They should aim at what they want to achieve.

This is exactly right.

Wait, what were we talking about here? I thought we started out talking about supplements. If you're designing a supplement, you can't do whatever you want. Your goals have to be dictated to a certain extent by the base system you're writing for.

Now, if you're designing a game from scratch, then you can pick whatever power level you want.

Depends on your view of the power level of Savage Species, which is based on the power level within your games. It spans a wide dearth of balance levels depending on what material you choose from it.

But as a concept 'players can play monsters?' Yes, Savage Species was excellent, it was merely the execution of the mechanics that lacked.

And the reason the execution "lacked" was because the design goal was to make monstrous PCs inferior to the standard races because monsters are so cool. Sad but true. I'm too lazy right now, but I'll dig up the Rich Redman quote that proves it tomorrow if you want me to.

Game design is not "you have just one shot, so better aim high", it is "pick your target, and bloody shoot until you hit it. I don't care how many bullets you use up", only the one that hits counts - devs need to revise and revise and test until they know what they hit.

The thing is, in the real world these projects are done on a deadline. So you don't get to retest an infinite number of times.....

The problem is most devs can't see whether or not they hit what they aimed at, and some might not even know what they aim at.

However, this is probably true, and that adds substantially to the errors introduced by other factors.

[Fuchs]

If a dev needs an infinite number of tests to get it right - to hit the bandwith of acceptable results - then he's in the wrong job. Same if he needs to aim too high to make sure he doesn't hit too low.

I think much of the problem supplements were not really aimed at all, just blindly fired.

[Previn]

Whether "weaker but interesting" is always the baseline is irrelevant. If it's the baseline for anything, there's a real possibility that you'll miss the target on the low side and produce something unplayable.

Whether "perfectly balanced" is always the baseline is irrelevant. If it's the baseline for anything, there's a real possibility that you'll miss the target on the low side and produce something unplayable.

Exactly what is your point? People can make mistakes?

[Previn]

Perhaps I am not explaining myself well enough, let me try in another way:

Our made up power scale goes from 1 to 10, with 1 being so weak that no one can reasonably play with it and 10 being so powerful that there's no point in playing.

Our goal for power/balance is 6 or 7ish. There are some 8 and 9 things, but only a handful and they tend to be the exception. We can make a new thing at a 6 and have it be weaker or on level depending what it is compared to. We can even work with a 5 without any real problems as long as we make it significantly interesting for the players.

This is where the comparison to Savage Species comes in. If we say Savage Species is a 2 on the balance level, it's a problem because it's too low. However just because the concept was done poorly before (too weak compared to casters), doesn't mean that everything will be a 2 just because it isn't a 7. We could still do a new Savage Species (or other new book) at the level of 6, or 9 or even 10.

Understanding the degrees that we can work within is key to understanding the concept I'm trying to present.

[Leress]

Why can't it be a 7 and be significantly interesting?

This is where the comparison to Savage Species comes in. If we say Savage Species is a 2 on the balance level, it's a problem because it's too low. However just because the concept was done poorly before (too weak compared to casters), doesn't mean that everything will be a 2 just because it isn't a 7. We could still do a new Savage Species (or other new book) at the level of 6, or 9 or even 10.

No one is saying that playing as monsters was too weak, all it being said is that Savage Species screwed the pooch.

[Grek]

Don't mention screwing pooches, Frank gets pissed about that.

[Caedrus]

Don't mention screwing pooches, Frank gets pissed about that.

[Roy]

[Crissa]

I'm pretty sure it's screwing dragons that really sets him off.

-Crissa

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Whether "weaker but interesting" is always the baseline is irrelevant. If it's the baseline for anything, there's a real possibility that you'll miss the target on the low side and produce something unplayable.

Whether "perfectly balanced" is always the baseline is irrelevant. If it's the baseline for anything, there's a real possibility that you'll miss the target on the low side and produce something unplayable.

Exactly what is your point? People can make mistakes?

No, the point is that the consequences of your mistakes vary depending on what you're shooting for. If you're shooting for balance and you're good, your worst result might still be playable. If you shoot for "a little weak," even if you're good, your error range now probably includes "unplayably weak."

If a dev needs an infinite number of tests to get it right - to hit the bandwith of acceptable results - then he's in the wrong job.

A deadline means that anything that requires a large enough number of tests won't be up to snuff when the product comes out. Now, you could argue that a good designer should only take one or two editing cycles to get the job done. However, your own language suggests that you expect some things to need a lot of redesign ("pick your target, and bloody shoot until you hit it. I don't care how many bullets you use up").

If we say Savage Species is a 2 on the balance level, it's a problem because it's too low. However just because the concept was done poorly before (too weak compared to casters), doesn't mean that everything will be a 2 just because it isn't a 7. We could still do a new Savage Species (or other new book) at the level of 6, or 9 or even 10.

Sure, but you'd have to scrap part of their design philosophy, the part you espouse:

this thread[/url]]The design guidance that I had was to make ECLs slightly worse than playing a standard race character. Otherwise all the Wizards of the Coast campaign worlds (it's been almost a year and I still want to say "our") become invalid. Look at them. Dragonlance, FR, and even Greyhawk are populated almost entirely by standard race characters. Not just the RPG products, but the books as well. In order to maintain that racial balance, we provided a mechanical reason for standard race characters to be more common.

Translation: Monsters are so cool they must be made slightly weaker or everybody will play them. (Plus some BS about how, if there are more PC monsters, the DM somehow can't still make the rest of the world look however he/she wants).

The key here is that they got to "sucks" by aiming for "weaker, but cool."

[Roy]

I'm pretty sure it's screwing dragons that really sets him off.

-Crissa

Show us on the doll where the bad dragon dog touched you.

[Kaelik]

Two things:

1) Someone claimed that more balanced = less variety.

Guilty Gear XX is the best/most balanced fighting game you will ever play, it also has the most variety of any fighting game you will ever play. Die False Balance v Variety Continuum, Die!

2) Previn. You have no idea what you are talking about. First of all, no one cares what your first point was, because no matter what it was, it followed the statement, "I have to disagree with this." aimed at someone else's statement. For you to have a point, you have to demonstrate the incorrectness of that thing you disagreed with.

"I disagree with you, Hitler is a great guy. He once painted something and this doesn't make him a great guy, but he did paint something," is not a valid debate tactic.

You are arguing a nonsensical position. The original poster asked if when adding new content it should be up to the standard as existing content. Not if it should be the exact equivalent power level, but up to the same standard.

The point is that when adding Benign Transposition, you are faced with a choice:

1) You can make it of comparable worth to Glitterdust (IE people will prepare both).
2) You can make it better (people only prepare BT).
3) You can make it worse (People only prepare Glitterdust).

They aren't actually the same level, but that is okay, because they can still be compared.

The point is this.

You can have the same worth, IE both spells as they currently stand.

You can have it be better (something no one has ever claimed, IE Benign Transpo has a range of long and give both parties invisibility).

Or you can have your much touted 'Weaker but more interesting' BT has a range of 10ft. Note that it is exactly as interesting as it was with a longer range. Note also that no one will ever use it.

This is because as everyone else has already clearly explained, interesting v powerful continuum is another false continuum. Interesting and powerful are the same thing, because both are measures of how much people want to use them.

[Psychic Robot]

Guilty Gear XX has hard caps on what characters can and cannot do. It basically amounts to DM fiat, except it's programmed in. ("Sorry, rogue, your sneak attack gets cut off at 50 points of damage this round because the game breaks otherwise.")

[Kaelik]

Guilty Gear XX has hard caps on what characters can and cannot do. It basically amounts to DM fiat, except it's programmed in. ("Sorry, rogue, your sneak attack gets cut off at 50 points of damage this round because the game breaks otherwise.")

I'm sorry, what?

That's nothing like the scaling damage based on combo and progressive gravity. It's not DM fiat if it works exactly the same for every single character in the game.

Also, it has shit all to do with balance v variability.