View source for Dungeons and Dragons Wiki talk:Article Balance/Archive

== Why I Don't Want to Rename ==

The balance points (not tiers) were named the way they were because it provides direct and immediately comparable information. When something says "Monk", you can immediately say "if I have a Monk in my game, this is probably okay." I obviously can't really say "if I have a Daring in my game, this material is probably okay." That doesn't make sense, nor should it, because it's not how the balance points were designed. I want the balance points to have the property that, just by reading the single word, you know immediately where the material on the page stands. I don't think any of the above changing suggestions have that same property. --[[User:Surgo|Surgo]] 16:49, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

:Your arguement assumes that the person looking at the material actually knows what the balance ratings mean. Allow me to illustrate. "Jim" comes to this website for the first time looking for content for his players. Jim sees [[Defensive Roll (3.5e Feat)|Defensive Roll]] and thinks that the feat is pretty well balanced for rogues. He then goes to [[Sudden Antimagic (3.5e Feat)|Sudden Antimagic]] and thinks that we must be morons because that feat totally doesn't work with a wizard.

:So Jim goes and reads our balance ratings. He now needs to learn all about what balance levels actually mean and then has to remember when he uses this site that monk level is actually the weakest level (Jim used to think monks were overpowered).

:Changing the names won't avoid the learning curve for Jim. It will avoid the initial confusions.

:And using your logic above, if Jim doesn't know what balance points mean and he thinks along those lines (I have a wizard in my game, so anything wizard level or lower is fair game), that wizard who uses fireballs is suddenly going to feel overwhelmed by the fighter that is picking tome feats.

:So, yes, the name monk has a bit of meaning, but only once you understand the whole balance point system. What I'm proposing instead is to strip other implied meanings away from our balance names so that the person is forced to learn what they mean and won't get confused with their existing notions of balance. --[[User:Aarnott|Andrew Arnott]] ([[User Talk:Aarnott|talk]], [[Special:EmailUser/Aarnott|email]]) 18:48, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

::I won't argue against the fact that it still requires understanding what the balance points mean. That much is perfectly clear, thanks to your verbose example. However, there is something else that the set {Monk, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard} has going for it that the above proposals that were not numerical do not have -- order. It's pretty obvious what the ordering is in that set, no matter how you arrange it. I don't really know the order of {Brave, Daring, Heroic, Legendary} is supposed to be, especially when it gets scrambled. If we want to replace Monk, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard, we need to come up with a set that has an obvious order. (And before anyone brings it up, I know there are a few whackos out there that think Monk isn't on the bottom or some other order change. I don't care about the few whackos.) [[User:Surgo|Surgo]] 19:08, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

:::Order without implied "betterness" or other ranking is a tough thing to do, and I thought that suggesting a level was better than another was something we were generally opposed to (I certainly am). It's the only reason I opposed Aarnott's previously suggested labels, but if community says we don't care about that anymore then something clean and straightforward like Aarnott's set is going to be really really easy to work with, even if I find it distasteful. I'm not even sure that the benefits of it don't outweigh the relatively minor drawbacks so much that it's worth stomaching anyway. 

:::Regarding my set, I actually think that there is an order to the alternate names I've suggested, though that might just be because they carry somewhat different connotations for me than for you (ignoring for now the fact that they're in alphabetical order as well). They are largely synonyms of each other though, so I can see where confusion would set in, but I'm not particularly attached to them in any case. If there were words for types / scales of adventures those would fit better than mine, I just haven't found them yet. - [[User:Tarkisflux|TarkisFlux]] 19:27, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

::::To tackle this topic from another angle, what does a rogue level feat mean? Is it the level of power that an optimized rogue would use? Are you really going to argue that Weapon Finesse and Two-Weapon Fighting are "rogue" level feats according to our balance points? I don't think they are (at least according to unwritten conventions on this wiki). What we call rogue level feats are really just feats that fit well in a 3rd tier of power. They don't fit the model of being balanced against an optimized rogue at all (an optimized rogue uses "fighter" level feats). I think this is the main source of my confusion with the system. If you can come up with a good explanation of exactly what a rogue level feat means, then there is no need to abstract the tiers. Otherwise, it is just a point of confusion. --[[User:Aarnott|Andrew Arnott]] ([[User Talk:Aarnott|talk]], [[Special:EmailUser/Aarnott|email]]) 20:19, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

:::::Technically, the SGT can only establish the level-appropriateness of a particular *build* given a single run-through (and then making some assumptions about terrain etc.). A class can possibly be considered SGT-appropriate (or a corresponding point above or below that) if a "typical" build is SGT-appropriate, or if it can reliably be used to make a build which is of the desired level.
:::::You can to an extent attribute a balance point to a non-class component if using that component often brings a build which is on a less-powerful balance point up to the specified balance point. Even then you'd have to be careful about attributing too much of a change to the component. --[[User:Quantumboost|Quantumboost]] 22:35, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

::::::Back to ordering, "Monk" etc. doesn't imply that one is better than the other, it just says what level they are while having an implicit power ordering. For any label replacement, I would like to keep that property. Yeah, it's hard. But I don't think it's intractable. [[User:Surgo|Surgo]] 23:09, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

An important note is that "probably" -- that's pretty important. It's not an exact science, nor should it be. In addition, it's generally easier to nerf stuff that's too good than it is to boost something that's under-performing. This is why I have always wanted people to edge on a liberal interpretation of their material when placing the balance point, instead of a conservative one -- so that over-performance is a more likely occurrence in a game than under-performance. [[User:Surgo|Surgo]] 16:49, April 16, 2010 (UTC)