Balancing 3.x

[Anguirus]

1.) I have no idea why anyone here believes that I intend on DMing this system and not playing it myself. I would much rather play in it than DM it and I never said or implied anything to the contrary.

2.) The reason that fun being subjective is important here is that it means that this project is of value to me because it would re-create a fantasy trope that I would find fun to play. I recognize that for the vast majority of people it would not be an enjoyable experience but I am confident that I could find a group of people in this big wide world of ours that are of similar mind to me.

Knowing OBJECTIVELY what your target audience finds fun is important for designing a game system. I don't disagree with that one bit. My target audience for the project is myself. Can this thread be over now?

[PhoneLobster]

1.) I have no idea why anyone here believes that I intend on DMing this system and not playing it myself. I would much rather play in it than DM it and I never said or implied anything to the contrary.

Actually you did. See you are taking the role of designer. Whether you are then GM or Player as well you are the guy who inflicted the system on a much larger number of players than just yourself.

Presumably you are (imagining) playing this game with at least two other guys who you like the idea of putting away in the corner. And that's twice as many guys to feel sadistic glee over.

but I am confident that I could find a group of people in this big wide world of ours that are of similar mind to me.

See riddle me not. The intersection of the minority of guys who like to play D&D and much smaller minority guys who like to sit in the corner for hours very pointedly NOT playing D&D is presumably very, very, very, very, very, small.

So small I would regard your claims that even you are in it as requiring a fairly hefty burden of proof. Just as I would be very doubtful if you claimed you greatly enjoyed regular recreational self trepanation and intended to gather a group of like minded D&D players to enjoy a variant D&D game involving actually treppanning each other at the game table.

My target audience for the project is myself.

So... you are...

A) Designing a complex game to play by yourself.

B) Intend to make yourself sit in the corner for half of it.

C) Will variously have comparatively superior/suckier power to... no one at all, you are playing by yourself.

???

[violence in the media]

You forgot:

E) PROFIT!!!

[RandomCasualty2]

Except when you hold an opinion on a matter that can be determined by observing reality.

Like what gamers enjoy spending their gaming time doing.

We can like, go have a look and see the answer to that one.

It isn't sucking.

So an opinion contrary to that is objectively wrong.

So you can prove people aren't having fun playing sucky characters?

People play RPGs like Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu or Bunnies and Burrows, all that feature characters that suck... and yes, some people enjoy playing those games because they find them fun.

Some people want to play commoners in D&D. I have no idea why, but some people enjoy starting at the bottom.

People enjoy Everquest, where your character starts as such a piece of shit that an ordinary bat can kill you. And as you level up, you only get weaker, as creatures that are "an even fight" require a companion and later even a party to battle. It literally does everything it can to make your character seem like a total pussy. Yet it had tons of subscribers at its height. People who played it up to level 60. So obviously a lot of people must have had fun playing sucky characters.

Now you can make statements like "The majority of people wouldn't find that fun." And that can be a relatively objective statement sometimes. But that doesn't mean someone who thinks it's fun is wrong, it just means he doesn't agree with the majority.

Believe it or not PL, there are gamers out there beyond you and your gaming group, all with different opinions of what's fun and not fun.

[PhoneLobster]

Heck, Anguirus could have said, "In my opinion, forcing the wizard characters to run a cheese grater along their legs every time they cast a spell would make the game more fun," and he wouldn't be wrong.

So.

IF we say "OK you can have that"

In what way can we now ever EVER have a useful discussion of RPG design?

No really?

It's the end of fucking objective reality. No one can give criticism or advice because EVERYTHING FUCKING GOES.

[Roog]

(1) "I find this fun" is subjective.

(2) "Other people find this fun" can be shown to be objectivly true, but is difficult to prove to be false.

(3) "A significant proportion of people find this fun" can be shown to objectivly true or false.

#Edit
The truth of (1) is generally only useful when providing evidence of (2) or (3)

The truth (2) is generally only usefull if you have a group already assembled who share the taste.

[RandomCasualty2]

IF we say "OK you can have that"

In what way can we now ever EVER have a useful discussion of RPG design?

Actually it's an important starting point to make sure that everyone has the same goals. Sometimes your goals are simply incompatible so you in fact can't have useful discussions of RPG design.

The objective part of RPG design is analyzing if the actual mechanical effect matches with the described design goals. An analysis of fighters sucking is about the mechanical failure in implementing the design goal that "all classes are balanced."

But before you can even argue mechanics, you need to know the design goals.

[Judging__Eagle]

I don't like playing characters that suck.

I'll dumpster-dive for characters that are already competent, and decent. At one point in time... I played a melee Ranger, that didn't used ranged attacks except for spears. It was a stupid build, and a dumb idea, but I think that everyone can be young and foolish once.

I don't like DMing for characters that suck.

I will do my best to help the players realize their character concept. Help them find out what the players want in their characters, and give them powergaming advice.

I like to pull the long knives out on the PCs, and enjoy the tense moments of "will they, won't they" succeed.

I don't like it when my Party Members suck.

After about a year and a half of having a 1/2 BaB spellcaster that did more damage than a fucking Warforged Jugger-Zerker (the player was given the worst advice, over and over by the DM, and always took it); and was the closest thing to a non-cleric spellcaster in the group (we had a cleric, a ranger, a 'healer' NPC, and I was running a NG Archivist that had made nice with the local druids and paladins, and church via in-game RP; so the 'limits' on spell access were minimal).

I brought this up to the DM (the group had now had several sessions where we talked about how the power disparity in the group was noticabley growing; the DM kept using very bad ways to deal with the problem; instead of increasing the weaker PC's power, he tried to limit 'crafting time' on the stronger PCs), and the whole group (the specific statement being "I'm sick of this being 'two spellcasters, and the rest of you guys are mooks' I shouldn't be outdamaging Stax's Warforged Fighter/Barbarian/Frenzied Berzerker/Warforged Juggernaut; but I am, and I'm hardly trying, I just hit stuff that moves towards me and the other casters").

The game got called; and I started to run a series of adventures using Tome material. Those games ran much better. I got to run actual RP encounters that the other DM would never run.

Seriously, his reactions to what we did are summed up in things like this:

"what? you want to talk to the giant who attacked your hired river boat, and spare his life, in exchange for him working for you and getting paid in food, and combat? Nah... he'll go run outside during a meteorite storm. Lalalalala! I can't hear you! He's going to die! Lalalala! Oh, what the fuck? You guys kept buying Wands of Lesser Vigour, and are using them on the Giant to keep him alive, and drag him to safety.... god, I hate you humanitarian bastards. Okay, he keeps following you guys."

"What? You don't want to execute the Emerald Claw guys that surrendered? But they're like Necromancer-Nazis! They won't convert to your side, no matter how much you show them that you guys are more effective, and haven't lost to them yet. Well.... uhm... they're all indoctrined and brainwashed, so yeah, you can't interact with them at all. You have to imprison them, or kill them. You can't rehabilitate them. Lalalalala"

"I'm a storyteller. Lalalalala. I like lots of RP."

I hated that hypocritical asshole. He was ultimately harmless, but he didn't even fucking realize that all the RP that we wanted to do, wasn't the stupid "in town" rp that he wanted to force on us. We wanted conflict and tension in our RP, and often that meant RPing and interacting with our enemies, or creatures that we met during our character's adventures.

I mean, this was a group that he had played with, and watched them take over a tribe of goblins, and invite them to live in the area around the PCs 'new' castle, or prefer to make chained up Kobolds indentured servants instead of killing them or letting them go into the wild.

=============

Fun may be subjective, but if the game is Dungeons and Dragons, and you don't want to kill Dragons; then get the fuck out of the Dungeon.

Only people big enough to face the Dragon, are allowed to go on this ride.

[Kaelik]

I don't like playing characters that suck.

[useless stuff]

Fun may be subjective, but if the game is Dungeons and Dragons, and you don't want to kill Dragons; then get the fuck out of the Dungeon.

Only people big enough to face the Dragon, are allowed to go on this ride.

Next time skip the personal story and just post this part.

[Anguirus]

Heck, Anguirus could have said, "In my opinion, forcing the wizard characters to run a cheese grater along their legs every time they cast a spell would make the game more fun," and he wouldn't be wrong.

So.

IF we say "OK you can have that"

In what way can we now ever EVER have a useful discussion of RPG design?

No really?

It's the end of fucking objective reality. No one can give criticism or advice because EVERYTHING FUCKING GOES.

You can talk about how well a proposed system achieves a design goal. My proposal to re-balance 3.x on a macro scale by unbalancing it on a micro scale could be criticized like this "That doesn't re-balance classes because martial characters still can't interact with large sections of the game world, you never know how many encounters are going to happen in a given day, and because later encounters tend to be more important from a narrative perspective (i.e. boss battles)." These are valid objective criticisms of my proposed system given my design goal.

You can't say "that design goal makes the game objectively less fun"

[Judging__Eagle]

Actually, not liking to DM for characters that suck is pretty important.

Characters that suck bore me. A game where the PCs bore the ref is going to result in an equally boring game. I don't want to be bored, I want to have a really good story to tell later.

About how a character's innate powers simply bend the expected direction for an encounter sideways, and then takes an equally unexpected option; or how a single character deals with a challenging monster (of their own CR no less).

[PhoneLobster]

You can't say "that design goal makes the game objectively less fun"

For the last time, yes you can.

Some design goals are bad goals. Making your players unhappy is a bad design goal

If you cannot take that advice then there is no point in your posting asking for advice about your bad design goal and your bad design plan.

You can sit here all day claiming you are the one man in a million who WANTS to suck and that you have the one group in a billion that all also want to suck with you.

But thats just you telling really stupid fucking lies. It's insulting and it offends me. You AREN'T the one group of super masochist retards in a billion and I say that with the absolute confidence of utterly unimaginable odds in my favor.

If this were an argument about whether having an all Furry campaign with hefty graphic Yiffing encounters we could, almost, have an argument about how there might be groups of individuals out there who would want in on that. But we aren't you are arguing about a group of people who simultaneously want to play the game AND to not play it. A lot. That is unreasonable in the extreme. Self contradictory, fictional, utter bullshit.

No one but no one drives to their friends house to sit in the corner for 2 hours wearing a dunce hat while their friends play D&D that they are ostensibly occasionally a part of.

If you think otherwise I suggest you try experimenting with inflicting that on your group of masochists and see how much they like it. But since that's your plan anyway...

[Anguirus]

You don't interact with people that are different from you very often do you?

To the people that gave advice, thank you.

[Roy]

First off, fuck you Kaelik and suck a barrel of cocks.

With that said... ignoring the wanking about super characters you made, who does want their party to suck? Well, aside from delusional fuckers like the original poster no longer worth responding to.

And even when you get someone that does, how often do they want them doing nothing? Even with games like Paranoia, the whole point is to fuck with the group for the lulz and make them die in hilariously awful ways, not force them to do nothing.

[mean_liar]

You can't say "that design goal makes the game objectively less fun"

For the last time, yes you can.

Some design goals are bad goals. Making your players unhappy is a bad design goal

I think its clear for most that having an enforced encounters per day minimum is a bad way to go about it for the reasons you've articulated, though I think to some degree you're engaged in hyperbole.

The spellcasters, even after dealing with encounters 1-2 (or 3) are still going to meaningfully contribute and the non-spellcasters (assuming they're optimized) aren't going to just be window dressing for those encounters, either. They're presumably going to be outshined, but to extend that to say that some people are absolutely going to be bored out of their skulls for hours regardless of the encounter is needless hyperbole.

"There are better ways to do it" is a good start, and "here is a way to do it within the paradigm of DnDv3.5" is even better.

Honestly, I just try to manage things as best as possible with powered-up custom PrCs for the non-spellcasters so that they can keep up with whatever power curve the spellcaster players are setting in the game.

[NativeJovian]

Fun fact: a character "sucking" is entirely relative to other members of the party. Really.

We're talking about tabletop games, here, not computer games or MMOs or something. Literally everything in the game is tailored specifically to the group playing. This is why you have a DM; to make shit up for the players. Any DM worth his salt makes sure that the difficulty level of his encounters are appropriate to the ability of his players. If you throw a dracolich with 20 levels of cleric at a level 4 party, you're either an idiot, an asshole, or giving your players a giant "DO NOT GO HERE" sign. The world that the players encounter exists solely for their entertainment; everything derives from them.

This means that the only way you can suck is if you suck in comparison to your allies. If you're playing a Fighter when everyone else is playing a CoDzilla, then you suck. If you're playing a CoDzilla while everyone else is playing a Fighter or a Bard or a Monk or something, then they suck, but only because you made them suck. Since the party will be facing things that are appropriate to their characters' power (not some mythical "level appropriate" encounter) anyway, it only makes a difference if one character's power is significantly different than another's.

This means that you can totally have a game consisting of Fighters and Bards and Monks if you want to -- the DM simply lowers the difficulty level. Alternatively, you can totally play as a group of all-destroying CoDzillas -- the DM just raises the difficulty level instead. You only get problems when someone wants to play a Monk and someone else wants to play a CoDzilla, because then either the monk is dying constantly to encounters aimed at the difficulty level of the CoDzilla, or the CoDzilla is constantly one-shotting the encounters aimed at the difficulty level of the monk.

Of course, in a well-designed system, it wouldn't be possible to have a significant power-gap within characters of the same level. But given that we're using 3.X, rather than a well-designed system, that's neither here nor there.

[Roy]

Fun fact: a character "sucking" is entirely relative to other members of the party. Really.

We're talking about tabletop games, here, not computer games or MMOs or something. Literally everything in the game is tailored specifically to the group playing. This is why you have a DM; to make shit up for the players. Any DM worth his salt makes sure that the difficulty level of his encounters are appropriate to the ability of his players. If you throw a dracolich with 20 levels of cleric at a level 4 party, you're either an idiot, an asshole, or giving your players a giant "DO NOT GO HERE" sign. The world that the players encounter exists solely for their entertainment; everything derives from them.

This means that the only way you can suck is if you suck in comparison to your allies. If you're playing a Fighter when everyone else is playing a CoDzilla, then you suck. If you're playing a CoDzilla while everyone else is playing a Fighter or a Bard or a Monk or something, then they suck, but only because you made them suck. Since the party will be facing things that are appropriate to their characters' power (not some mythical "level appropriate" encounter) anyway, it only makes a difference if one character's power is significantly different than another's.

This means that you can totally have a game consisting of Fighters and Bards and Monks if you want to -- the DM simply lowers the difficulty level. Alternatively, you can totally play as a group of all-destroying CoDzillas -- the DM just raises the difficulty level instead. You only get problems when someone wants to play a Monk and someone else wants to play a CoDzilla, because then either the monk is dying constantly to encounters aimed at the difficulty level of the CoDzilla, or the CoDzilla is constantly one-shotting the encounters aimed at the difficulty level of the monk.

Of course, in a well-designed system, it wouldn't be possible to have a significant power-gap within characters of the same level. But given that we're using 3.X, rather than a well-designed system, that's neither here nor there.

Fail. And many straw men.

A level 20+ anything will slaughter level 4 anythings. Except maybe Omnifiscers. Thank you Sherlock Holmes for that brilliant deduction.

However, level 4 stuff is a routine encounter for that party. They can and should be able to blitz through any given encounter of that sort with next to no effort as there are many such encounters, and otherwise they get their face raped by Iterative Probability. The individual challenges come from stuff higher than level 4, because guess what? Routine encounters involve you literally fucking outclassing the enemy by a ratio of 4 to 1, as there are 4 level 4s in your party and one on Team Monster. This is also why when you fight a single level 8, or 2 6s, or 4 4s it is actually somewhat of an even match.

While a party of CoDzillas is unlikely to notice any opposition weaker than a Sorcerer at all, a party that is simply competent can in fact fight anything in their level range and most likely succeed. Which means as a DM, less time coddling the gimps by wondering if they can actually do the things they're supposed to, and more time making the games you want to make, and yes that means a mother fucking Mind Flayer ( level 8 ) is beyond the manipulation plot for level 5 adventurers and is serving as the BBEG thereof without needing to be the slightest bit concerned as to whether or not the clearly appropriate monster level and story wise is too much because your players suck.

Stop trying to justify your gimpitude by shifting the blame to the DM. He has enough to do as is. And indeed he fucking can't if he tries, because if the party is stuffed up with junk like Fighters, no one can carry all the dead weight, and therefore you automatically have to disregard 90% of every Monster Manual ever, and about 80% of the humanoid NPCs. When you can't even handle the game on Easy Mode, it's time to /quit. Maybe take up basket weaving, and I don't mean as a justification for your character sucking.

[Kaelik]

Thank you NativeRetard for making a post that has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion in this thread.

When you've actually read the design paradigm that we are talking about making people suck, come back and admit that your post has nothing to do with anything.

[RandomCasualty2]

You can sit here all day claiming you are the one man in a million who WANTS to suck and that you have the one group in a billion that all also want to suck with you.

But thats just you telling really stupid fucking lies. It's insulting and it offends me. You AREN'T the one group of super masochist retards in a billion and I say that with the absolute confidence of utterly unimaginable odds in my favor.

Actually not. Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia have gone through several editions, so apparently your belief that gamers who want to play weaker characters being an insignificant minority is clearly not correct, given this minority was sufficient enough to generate sales to keep these games going.

Now, if you're talking about D&D only, then I think it is generally safe to say that the majority of people want to be good in combat. Part of the game design goals of D&D is in fact that every PC can contribute to a fight. In fact, they're all supposed to contribute equally. If you're talking about a new game however, this design goal may not apply.

[NativeJovian]

Stop trying to justify your gimpitude by shifting the blame to the DM.

You're missing the point entirely. I'm not trying to justify the guy who wants to play a Fighter in the party of CoDzillas -- he's a jackass bringing the team down. But at the same time, the guy playing a CoDzilla in a party of Fighters and Monks and Bards isn't justified either -- he's a jackass who wants to be better than everyone else. When JE says "I don't like playing characters that suck", he's talking like there's some objective standard of sucking. There's not. It's all relative to the other people in your party, because the strength of your party is what determines the challenges you face. A DM is going to send stronger enemies at a party of CoDzillas than a party of Fighters, even if they're both the same level.

Short version: your group needs to be on the same page regarding what power level they're playing at. If JE wants to play CoDzillas, that's fine, as long as his group is alright with playing the CoDzilla rocket tag version of D&D.

A Fighter playing in a group with other Fighters doesn't suck. A Fighter doesn't suck until he starts getting mixed in with CoDzillas. You can play a Fighter and not suck -- but only if you're playing with other Fighters. If one guy in the group is powergaming while the rest are happy playing as Fighters and Monks, that's when you run into problems.

Thank you NativeRetard for making a post that has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion in this thread.

Yes, I'm so very sorry to interrupt your semantics discussion about opinions vs. beliefs vs. facts that's so very obviously relevant to balancing 3.X, which is theoretically what this thread is about. I was responding to JE's comment about "I don't like playing characters that suck" and the responses to that, which is sure as hell more relevant to balancing 3.X than the dissertation on argumentation that you people were having in here.

[IGTN]

With a party of fighters, the DM can easily accidentally wipe the party by pulling monsters out of the Monster Manual labelled for them and just using tactics like the monsters are supposed to.

A party of archer clerics doesn't have that problem; a DM accidentally might send too weak of an encounter, but has to go into encounters labelled as "should wipe the party" to send an encounter too strong for them.

[NativeJovian]

True, but that's because CRs suck, not because a particular character or party sucks. I'm taking it for granted that a DM is better at balancing encounters than the MM is, because really that's not very hard.

[RandomCasualty2]

True, but that's because CRs suck, not because a particular character or party sucks. I'm taking it for granted that a DM is better at balancing encounters than the MM is, because really that's not very hard.

Well no, this particular problem is mostly because of class imbalance, not necessarily because of monsters with a poorly assigned CR (of course those do exist too).

Fighters really can't win against average creatures of the same CR at higher levels.

Beating creatures of your same CR is probably the only really good balancing benchmark the game has.

[NativeJovian]

Well no, this particular problem is mostly because of class imbalance

Also true, and as I said, in a well-designed system all classes would be equally powerful at the same level, but since we're dealing with 3.X instead of a well-designed system...

The group I play with has an understanding that if players start using ridiculous powergaming builds, then the DMs will start using ridiculous powerful monsters. Making your party more or less powerful doesn't actually change the difficulty of the game -- it just changes the monsters they face. But, this breaks down when there's wild differences of power within the party. That's what I mean when I say that "sucking" is relative.

[RandomCasualty2]

The group I play with has an understanding that if players start using ridiculous powergaming builds, then the DMs will start using ridiculous powerful monsters. Making your party more or less powerful doesn't actually change the difficulty of the game -- it just changes the monsters they face. But, this breaks down when there's wild differences of power within the party. That's what I mean when I say that "sucking" is relative.

Yeah, that's generally how most groups handle it. Monster opposition scales to PC power.

Though there are cases, like running a module, where the power of your opposition is fixed.