User:DanielDraco/On Balance

Fair and Balanced
...are not the same thing. There's a phenomenon known as "rocket tag", in which both sides have preposterously powerful attacks, and neither side has the means to defend themselves enough to survive a single hit. The end result is that whoever lands the first blow wins. Now this sort of situation is perfectly "fair" &mdash; by which I mean both sides have access to the same sorts of abilities, and are equally capable of using them &mdash; but it is anything but balanced (for my purposes, anyway). The offensive power is disproportionate to the ability to endure it. In D&D 3.5e, there are many offensive abilities for which there can be no possible endurance &mdash; if you're blinded permanently and can't cure it, there are no two ways about it: you're screwed, and there is no salvaging the combat. So for me, an attack is balanced only if it is fair and it can be endured, and a defense is balanced only if it is "fair" and it can be overcome.

Apples v. Oranges
A major issue that's come up again and again in the subject of determining balance is how to compare, say, a Rogue to a Wizard. Played optimally, a Rogue is not going to throw out crippling debuffs, and a Wizard is not going to deal much (if any) direct damage. You can do all the math you want, but the bottom line is that you cannot compare such differing things without playtesting them, be it an actual game or a one-off combat staged for the sole purpose of the test.

But when you do this testing, don't pit optimized characters against each other to see which would be the stronger one in a real-game situation. There's flawed reasoning there in that the vast majority of the time, when two characters with class levels fight, one of them is an NPC and is not optimized to the extent that a PC will be.

Another fallacy to avoid is the idea that single combat works the same as team combat. There's a popular method of testing class balance called the Same Game Test which makes this mistake. It has a list of monsters which are statted in ways that it deems to be appropriate for their CR, and asks you to simulate combat at each level against the CR-appropriate encounter. If the class will win 50% of the time, it's balanced. What the SGT fails to account for is teamwork. The Rogue is pretty fucked if it's on its own and isn't Blinking yet. The Bard isn't fucked, but that's because it is using completely different tactics from the ones that it would use in most actual parties. Some classes function more or less the same whether in a team or on their own, such as the Fighter. But there are other classes which are focused primarily on shifting the conditions of the combat, e.g. with buffs, debuffs, or battlefield control. The usefulness of those classes in team combat is simply not reflected in a one-on-one fight.

So the only way for a test's results to fully reflect the way a class performs in actual combat is for the test to be an actual combat. That means an encounter of whatever power level you feel is appropriate, and a full adventuring party fighting it. Play it through, and you should get a general idea of which classes were overperforming and which were underperforming. No, it's not fully objective. Complete objectivity really isn't possible here.

If you really need a concrete metric, then count the number of wasted rounds for each character. A wasted round would be something like the Fighter spending his round to deal 5 damage to a monster with 15 hit points immediately before the Rogue deals 20 damage to the same monster. The monster falls on the Rogue's turn whether that Fighter did his damage or not, so the Fighter's round was wasted; he should have been able to do something more meaningful with his turn. There won't be a 1:1 match between number of wasted rounds and underpoweredness, but for those of you who need something to measure, there's at least a correlation to examine.

Utility Belts
There is more to the game than combat. Utilitarian power is difficult to measure, but ignoring it altogether is not the proper response to that. If you can one-shot a Balor but you get killed by the first punji pit in your way, you're still a pretty fragile character. Some games may not really need utility abilities, and that's okay &mdash; just make sure the combat is balanced and you'll be okay. But if there is call for disarming traps, finding a fugitive, or anything else that can't be simplified to "stab with pointy thing", you need to consider utility.

And I Helped
So you've realized that the class that you were planning on playing is unbalanced. What does it take to get it on par? What should you aim for when you try to fix it?

The core of D&D &mdash; played the traditional way, anyway &mdash; is that it's meant to be played by a group of characters who all contribute to the group's goals. Each character, therefore, has to contribute in a way that is either unique or cumulative. By this I mean that if two characters are doing the same thing, they had better both be contributing meaningfully to it; conversely, if they cannot combine their efforts in the same task, they need to be doing different tasks.

For example, it's okay to have two characters just dealing direct damage to an opponent because damage adds together and therefore both characters contribute. If one of them is doing less damage than the other, the solution is simple: raise and/or lower their damage until they're comparable.

If you have two trap-monkeys in the party, though, one of them is going to sit idly by every time a trap needs to be disarmed, since two characters cannot work together on that in any way that is meaningful. This is one of the main problems with Wizards and other primary spellcasters; they can do everything, and therefore take they jobs away from characters whose abilities need to be unique.

Wesley Crusher
If a class can do too many different things well and leaves little room for people to help, you need to narrow their scope.

If the DM is willing to do the work required for this, a good way of narrowing focus is to have the character choose a particular function they intend to have, and then only allow them to get class features which either fit that function or are not strong enough to overshadow other party members. Note that the character needs to have a function, not a theme &mdash; "fire" would not be an appropriate category, because there are a hell of a lot of things you can do with fire, and the problem is really not alleviated. A more fitting choice would be "protection" or "damage-dealing".

For campaigns that include a significant number of noncombat situations which must be resolved, it's a good idea to give each character two functions instead of just one &mdash; one combat function and one noncombat function (e.g., a wizard might choose "crowd control" and "divination"). It's okay for there to be a little overlap (like using divination to learn things helpful to a combat situation), just as long as the character doesn't start making other characters useless.

Another perfectly valid solution is to just remove such classes from the game as an option for PCs.

The Monk
Classes that can't contribute at all

The Flip of a Coin
Some abilities are just too powerful to allow. Save-or-dies, save-or-sucks, and other insta-win abilities are problems in and of themselves. A combat can immediately boil down to one moment without any tension or work to get there; it ruins the dramatic flow and the challenge of the encounter. These abilities shouldn't be allowed at all &mdash; not for players, and especially not for enemies.

Vance to the Rescue
One might argue that, since these spells are limited in their use, it's not really a problem &mdash; there's careful budgeting to be done. And that's partly true; sometimes, a character's I Win spells will be used up before they get to the boss fight. But the odds are that nearly all of the combat spells they have on hand are either insta-win or battlefield control &mdash; after all, why would you prepare anything else? They might have some debuffs thrown in there, but those are mostly meant to soften up tough foes for the insta-wins. So if the character is depleted of spells that will let them play rocket tag by the time they face the boss...well, at that point they're pretty much entirely out of helpful spells entirely and will be cowering in the corner for the whole fight. Or if they saved their useful spells for the boss fight, then they play rocket tag after all, and can ruin the encounter.

The bottom line is that a primary spellcaster, played well, is an annoying little gremlin that throws an adamantine wrench in the works and then buggers off when it has no more wrenches. It starts the day entirely too destructive for any reasonable encounter, and remains that way until it runs out of spells, at which point it's pitifully weak. It has no place in a game with any semblance of balance.

Dire Straits
Just because characters should be specialized, that doesn't mean they should be helpless outside their specialty. Every character, for instance, should be capable of at least some token amount of damage.