Things in abstract.

[Username17]

Here are some really general statements about game balance, made in completely abstract terms so that people don't jump in and confuse the issue by talking about realism or character archetypes or any of that shit that doesn't have the strength to jack off a fly in the context of a discussion about game balance.

Here's some measurements:

Focus: Your focus can be "Red" or "Blue". You have 4 points to distribute between Red and Blue, and can have any combination thereof (be it 3 Red/1 Blue, 0 Red/ 4 Blue, or whatever).

Power: Power is a number. Having more of it is good, and your power number goes up over the course of a campaign. You do not have the power to "spend it", nor can you trade anything else for Power at any exchange rate at all.

Actions: At any given time, on your turn, you may perform an Action. An action will be Red or Blue, and it will be categorized as "Scissors", "Paper", or "Rock". You can learn to be able to perform new action, and this ability is a "technique".

Style: At any given time, and changeable only during your turn, you are protecting yourself with a style. A style is "Scissors", "Paper", or "Rock", and is inherently neither Red nor Blue.

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OK. When you make an action against someone else, you add your Focus in whatever the color of the action is. You subtract the Focus of the victim in that color. Further, if you use a Rock action against someone using a Paper style oyu are at a penalty, and if you use it against a fool using a Scissors style, you get a bonus.

Let's see how this works out. The maximum bonus you could be at is using a Red Rock action against someone with all Blue Focus and a Scissors Style (or a Blue Paper action against someone with a Red Focus and a Rock Style, but there you go). The minimum bonus you will ever actually get is to make a Red Rock action against an opponent with a Red Focus and Paper defense (since if you had Red Focus, you'll be damned if you're going to make a Blue action and vice versa, we can assume that the Focus values cancel leaving this a simple case of "unfvorable attack" rather than "unfavorable attack vs. unfavorable focus", which is just never going to happen).

So if the bonus for getting the "right" attack off is +4, we have a spread of +8 to -4. If the basic attack hits on a 14+, we got a spread of to-hit numbers within a power level of 6+ to 18+. Assuming that we go total focus, you don't automatically beat enemies then, until you are 15 power points ahead. Interestingly, in this case being a split focused character is a defensive advantage, and therefore makes you better against weak enemies (you outgrow all opposition that is 13 power levels below you), and worse against strong enemies (you are outgrown by enemies 13 power levels beyond you).

Imagine, for a second, that such characters had a specific finite number of Techniques. Guess who gets screwed?

If you guessed "The split focus guys", you are totally right. Let's say that everyone is able to have 2 styles and 3 techniques. The guy with "Red Focus", then, has 3 Red styles, which is all three attack forms. He also has 2 defense forms - perhaps Rock and Paper. The poor guy with Red and Blue Focus at 2, however, can only have 2 Blue Techniques if he wants to take advantage of his access to Red Techniques at all. Let's be kind, and say that he has Paper and Scissors (he also has Red Rock). For simplicity, let's assume that Split-focus guy has the same defenses - Paper and Rock styles.

The Red guy is going to potentially be able to catch the Split guy off guard, because he can throw three things instead of just two like his foe. Practically, his attack will only be Paper or Scissors - since his victim can't throw Scissors style, there's no point in throwing the Rock. So if the Red guy throws Paper attack, he wins or ties; if he throws scissors attack, he wins or loses. There are game theory papers based on how much of each possibility each player should throw, but let's just say that the Red guy wins a lot more than he loses.

Meanwhile, the Split Guy is going to, against his Red opponent, throw Blue all the time. He's happened to gained the same kind of advantage since his lack of Rock attack is meaningless against an opponent with a lack of Scissors defense.

And when the Red guy makes a Red Attack, he is about 50% likely to tie, and about 25% like to lose, and his Red Focus is 2 points better than his foe's, and he ends up, on average, about 3 points up on the attack (hitting on a 11+, on average). And when the Split guys makes an attack... he is making it with his Blue Focus of 2 against a zero, and he is also, on average, about 3 points ahead of his victim (again, hitting on an 11+, in gestalt).

But what if he's fighting the exact same opponent, except Blue? Well, our Split character is in the same position defensively (with an opponent getting a +3 average attack leverage), but his offensive position stinks. If he makes a Red Rock attack every time, his opponent can switch to Paper defense or even Rock Defense continuously and leave him at +/- 2. And if he pulls out a sneaky Red Scissors defense, he's still only crawled up to +2 if the ruse even works (and a hefty -6 if it doesn't).

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So what do we learn here? We learn that defensive Specialists need to get extra attack forms for free, because otherwise they fall behind. It simply costs more to defend yourself properly than it does to attack properly, because you only have to pay for the attacks that you are actually going to use.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1098134203[/unixtime]]
So what do we learn here? We learn that defensive Specialists need to get extra attack forms for free, because otherwise they fall behind. It simply costs more to defend yourself properly than it does to attack properly, because you only have to pay for the attacks that you are actually going to use.

Right, defenses inherently cost more than offenses, and thus if you require people to spend points to upgrade defenses, they'll be falling behind full blown attack specialists. Thus I believe defenses should scale by character level.

[Username17]

Right, defenses inherently cost more than offenses

Not... exactly. Defenses suffer an increased cost increase from having more variety than do attacks. Attacks become cheaper the more different kinds there are, because you need less of them relatively to have a good sample available. Defenses cost more the more different kinds of attacks there are.

That is, to have enough attacks, you just need to have a level appropriate bonus in enough of them that no enemy is likely to be immune to all of them (which is usually about 2 or three, regardless of how many attacks exist in the game). Meanwhile, to have enough defenses, you have to have a level appropriate defense against every single attack in the game.

This means that open-ended attack types can't work, because if the pool of possible attacks is unlimited so too do the number of defenses any particular character individually has. But it doesn't mean that people can't adjust their defenses, and it doesn't mean that people can't invest in defenses.

It just means that attacks and defenses can't trade for each other one for one. You can still hand out "defense points" that come more easily than attack points. You can hand out defenses really cheap. You can have defenses fall on people when they do other things. There's lots of things that you can do.

But if you just set defenses to Power Level, there's really no difference between attacks either. So really you've set it up so that nothing is varying, and you may as well just abandon the idea of character customizability altogether. Everyone has a defense value and an attack value, and neither can actually be adjusted because one of them can't.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1098163912[/unixtime]]
But if you just set defenses to Power Level, there's really no difference between attacks either. So really you've set it up so that nothing is varying, and you may as well just abandon the idea of character customizability altogether. Everyone has a defense value and an attack value, and neither can actually be adjusted because one of them can't.

Well ok, that's a good point... perhaps it might be better to hand out a set number of defense only points each level and work from there, that way people can still customize their defenses. And really I don't see too much problem with someone overspecializing in defenses, so you wouldn't even really need any diminishing returns for defenses, because the basic defensive trend tends to be to spread it around, since you're forced to use all your defenses at once, rather than one defense in a round.

[Username17]

And really I don't see too much problem with someone overspecializing in defenses

But there is - it's the same problem as specializing attacks when you get down to it. If you are immune to Blue enemies and always go down in one punch to Red enemies - that might seem like a bad deal. But since you are in a party - it's actually a great deal. Against Red enemies, you run away or get sucker punched and wait out the combat. But your friend is immune to Red enemies, so he just wades in and always wins.

Therefore, the party always wins against Red and Blue enemies - but nothing is ever particularly in doubt and the game experience is noticably worse.

Overspecializing defense has a lot of problems. The fact that it's the same problem as overspecializing Offense should not surpise us. Offense and Defense only have meaning relative to each other and are therefore inseperable in game balance discussions.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1098308855[/unixtime]]
But there is - it's the same problem as specializing attacks when you get down to it. If you are immune to Blue enemies and always go down in one punch to Red enemies - that might seem like a bad deal. But since you are in a party - it's actually a great deal. Against Red enemies, you run away or get sucker punched and wait out the combat. But your friend is immune to Red enemies, so he just wades in and always wins.

This assumes that your opponent has only one attack form and also that you can win initiative to pull off the retreat. But most of the time, having focused defenses sucks ass.

Using classic D&D terms, you have AC and 3 save types as your primary defenses. So lets say you put everything to AC and have no saves. Great idea, until somebody hits you with a save ro die or hold spell. Similarly putting all your points in one save isn't very good either.

The thing with defenses is you don't choose what defense you use, your attacker does, and that means you're better off having all of them than only one maxed out defense. It isn't like attacks where you can always count on using that one attack form and not care if your other attack forms are total shit. There is going to be a point that your abysmal reflex save will bite you in the ass, and it's going to hurt badly.

[GhostWhoTalks]

Sorry to interject...

Something you just said just struck me as odd. And I know that old history is often considered not fair play but really this just screams out at me as rather blatant.

Not too long ago... (Re: Buff spells as quickened spells?)

No, sometimes you may get a free action, other times you wont'. But against heavily buffed opponents, remember you can always just run away. Right, just run away and come back in 2 minutes, so even if he gets his buffs off, they aren't anywhere near perfect.

Remember if they're 1 round/level buffs, you can just run the hell away and come back later. So you now have some options

-Surprise him
-Don't get surprised yourself
-If you do get surprised run away.

Or to reiterate. "You can always just run away"

If need be replace heavily buffed with "guy with red/blue attack" and 1 round/level buffs or 2 minutes with "the duration of combat" where appropriate.

Just felt it needed mentioning.

Carry on now, just ignore this.

[RandomCasualty]

There's a difference between running away from a heavily buffed cleric than there is from running from any potential threat.

First, you cna generally soak one hit from a buffed guy without a problem, he outnumbers you but he doesn't outnumber you enough to make a one round kill, at least not without a critical. A save or die is another story. It hits you at range, and you fail because of your abysmal save and you die.

Also, buffs take time, even with quicken. So you can quicken one buff and rush in, but big deal. You're not hitting any harder than a fighter. And if you spent the entire round buffing they use that entire round to retreat.

Basically you can expect to lose initiative against a buffed character and still possibly retreat. You just can't expect to do the same against someone when you've got a super weak resistance.