"balance" in rpg systems

[ggroy]

[Murtak]

In the context of rpg games, has anyone precisely defined what "balance" is exactly?

First you have to ask yourself what is to be balanced. The usual suspects are:
- players vs monsters
- players vs other players
- players vs other players, in the context of defeating monsters
In any case, balance means the chances of victory for both sides are even. Most people extend this to mean "too close to argue over", with varying ideas of what "close" means. For myself I usually still accept odds 60/40, though not happily. Anything more than that is too unbalanced for my tastes.

For example, is there a precise statistical/mathematical criteria for "balance" in rpg games?

Of course not. Any game worth playing is too complex to precisely analyze. There are some decent ideas for eyeballing though, such as Frank's "defeat half of 10 challenges of your level" gauntlet.

[ggroy]

[Murtak]

The one obvious tool for such a quantitative analysis that I can think of offhand, would be to run monte carlo simulations. Albeit the number of scenarios can be really huge and take up a lot of computer time in the simulation. The simplest case would be one player fighting one monster.

Not doable on any hardware present on the planet or even all the hardware. Not even close. You could do it with 4th edition DnD I guess. 3rd edition, Shadowrun, pretty much anything else - no chance. How do you account for Polymorph? Dimension Door? Diplomacy? Heck, anything that requires or rewards smart play is next to impossible to model on a computer.

Now, Frank's gauntlet is essentially a monte carlo simulation. But I don't think it can be run on computers.

[JonSetanta]

Balance in PvP: Fairness. Equal chance given identical resources, although perhaps not equal in player talent.

Balance in PvE: Predictable results for good player effort. Rewarded creativity. Great chance but not necessarily guarantee that PCs survive, as long as players aren't throwing lives away.

[Zak]

Balance is when my char is better than others, but the rules obfuscate it so the rest of the group and the DM don't realize it.

[Thymos]

There is a massive difference in the word balance based on what context your using it for.

Most have already brought up balance between 2 sides fighting each other.

There's also balance for character creation. This usually means all choices are actual options. We care about imbalance here because unbalanced choices cause a lot of wasted space on unusable abilities. Anything too weak might as well not exist in the best case, are traps for beginners in the worst case. Anything too strong makes everything that's not as strong as it is too weak.

The idea behind balance in combat is that skill will determine the winner, not character class. Things will never be perfectly balanced, but we don't need that. All we need is for skill to be a far larger indicator of who is going to win than the character classes. In 3.x though fighters don't stand a chance showing that there is an imbalance there.

There's also balance between subsystems (making sure all skills are equal), Environment/Maps/Opponents (aka. making sure the Monster Manual does not have so many creatures immune to sneak attack that you can accidentally royally fuck over the rogue player).

[Morzas]

I always thought it was meant in the same way it's meant in fighting games: Each character has strengths and weaknesses that make them all roughly as useful as each other, so that the choice of what character type to play is based on personal preference instead of "I have to take this class to be useful", "I can't not take this class because it's so broken" or "I love this class, but it's far too weak to actually be feasible".

In trying to build a Monk in Pathfinder (my DM likes it for reasons I cannot comprehend, I'm giving it a shot), I've been feeling that last one a lot

[MGuy]

It wouldn't make sense if it was like a fighting game. Fighting games are all 1 on 1 (or team) show downs. Rpgs have you fighting different monsters and set ups. I agree with Murtak and Thymos's answers as to what Ba;ance would mean.

[Quantumboost]

I think Manxome/Antistone once formalized balance as the degree to which the implementation of a game system meet the designer's (expressed or implicit) intentions. Which included "including a character/class/race in the game" as implying useful".

A rudimentary net-search didn't turn up the article though.

[hogarth]

"Balance" means "each reasonable set of choices should be fun to play".

[MGuy]

That depends on what your definition of "fun" is.

[Username17]

"Balance" means "each reasonable set of choices should be fun to play".

Counterexample: Party Betrayal Characters are fun to play.

-Username17

[Morzas]

It wouldn't make sense if it was like a fighting game. Fighting games are all 1 on 1 (or team) show downs. Rpgs have you fighting different monsters and set ups. I agree with Murtak and Thymos's answers as to what Ba;ance would mean.

My post says nothing about fighting against other players. I said that I think the word "balance" has the same meaning that it does in the context of a fighting game as it does in an RPG: Each character has strengths and weaknesses that make them all roughly as useful as each other, so that the choice of what character type to play is based on personal preference.

In a lot of fighting games and RPGs, there is an obviously powerful character that outshines the other ones. This is usually because they have more options than the other ones, they can shore up their weaknesses without having to sacrifice very much or that the system that they're in is just flawed.

I guess a good example of this is the character T. Hawk in Street Fighter II. He's a weak character, but he has one insanely powerful throwing loop. The fact that his throwing loop is extremely powerful means nothing if he can't ever get close enough to get it off, though. His predicament is similar to the Fighter in D&D 3.5, in that the Fighter can focus on one thing, say, tripping, and possibly dominate his foes with it if not for the fact that at later levels, foes can fly, can trap him in a force cage, can teleport away, etc. The fact that his tripping is very powerful means nothing if he can't ever actually do it.

I'm not trying to say that fighting games and RPGs are similar, this is just a thought that I had.

[hogarth]

"Balance" means "each reasonable set of choices should be fun to play".

Counterexample: Party Betrayal Characters are fun to play.

-Username17

If everyone thinks that's fun to play, then what's the counterexample?

[Murtak]

Because they are fun to play, not fun to play with.

[hogarth]

Because they are fun to play, not fun to play with.

So you would never play "Paranoia" because it has "party betrayal characters" and therefore is unbalanced? What the fuck are you talking about?

[Murtak]

For some people, ruining everyone elses fun is fun. That is an extreme example, but generally speaking, what is fun for one person is not necessarily to the next or to the rest of the group.

[hogarth]

For some people, ruining everyone elses fun is fun.

Let me be more specific: "Each reasonable set of rules choices should be fun to play."

"I'm being an asshole" isn't a rules choice, it's a lifestyle.

[Murtak]

Even someone playing an underpowered character can ruin the fun for everyone else. I don't think "fun to play" has anything to do with balance. I can't even see a correlation.

[hogarth]

Even someone playing an underpowered character can ruin the fun for everyone else.

Then it's not fun to play, is it?

(Hint: the point that you're not quite following is that balance can be relative.)

[Caedrus]

Balance (in one usage, often relating to character building) is basically an acceptable degree of equilibrium (opportunity cost / risk vs reward) between the merit of various choices. A balanced option stays within this acceptable degree of equilibrium, while an unbalanced one goes outside of this range (either not desirable enough, or too desirable).

In other words, "When you can feel the indecision between two choices? That's balance, right there."

Balance (in another usage, often relating to encounter balance) is basically an acceptable degree of equilibrium between the capabilities of a character / player and the challenges presented them, or other characters / players (basically, entities they're supposed to be competitive with, in terms of capability). Again, something that is balanced stays within this acceptable degree of equilibrium, whereas something that is unbalanced goes outside of this range (the challenge is too one-sided, one way or the other)

Balance (in yet another usage, usually relating to composition of a group of choices, such as "a balanced party") refers to a suitably diverse allotment of choices in order to spread out one's capabilities to cover various bases, achieving a sort of equilibrium across various roles and / or purposes. A balanced set covers all the bases adequately, whereas an unbalanced set puts all your eggs in one basket (such as a party of just Warmages).

Which usage you're looking at obviously depends on the context in which the word is used.

Because they are fun to play, not fun to play with.

So you would never play "Paranoia" because it has "party betrayal characters" and therefore is unbalanced? What the fuck are you talking about?

Wow, reading comprehension failure much?

What Frank actually was saying was that your definition of balance as "fun to play" is bullshit. That doesn't mean that "fun to play = unbalanced."

And Frank is right. If he wasn't, not fun to play would mean unbalanced, and thus if I wasn't a fan of something, it would be a valid statement for me to call that something unbalanced. Likewise, if I found playing a CW samurai fun, then I could call it balanced. These two statements are both horsecrap for obvious reasons.

[hogarth]

What Frank actually was saying was that your definition of balance as "fun to play" is bullshit.

I (deliberately) didn't define it at all (because, as you point out, it varies wildly from person to person). So how can the definition be "bullshit"?

[Caedrus]

I (deliberately) didn't define it at all (because, as you point out, it varies wildly from person to person). So how can the definition be "bullshit"?

Well now that's just a lie.

"Balance" means "each reasonable set of choices should be fun to play".

That, sir, is a definition.

(because, as you point out, it varies wildly from person to person)

And where, exactly, did I make that claim?

[hogarth]

I (deliberately) didn't define it at all (because, as you point out, it varies wildly from person to person). So how can the definition be "bullshit"?

Well now that's just a lie.

"Balance" means "each reasonable set of choices should be fun to play".

That, sir, is a definition.

I didn't define "fun to play".