Dungeons and Dragons Wiki talk:Article Balance

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Other Balancing Type

Hey, I was wondering if anyone here had used the Shadowcraft Studios Class Pont system and their thoughts on its usefulness for testing class balance? --92.236.245.154 14:50, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks to me that this system you are referring to says that the Monk is more powerful than the Wizard. I don't think it's very useful. --Foxwarrior 15:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The system is terrible. It's absolute faffing nonsense. Its costs are outright wrong, its class ranking is obviously wrong, and its ability prices are stupid. You can get KI Strike and Comprehend Languages... or Sneak Attack +10d6, for the same cost. HMMM. Karrius 19:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

You know, I was going to let this go. I really was. But two days after the fact, looking at it from a variety of angles, all I have to say to the above statement is this: the stupid... it burns!

Don't get me wrong, I love the rogue. Give me a rogue and put him up against an equivilent monk and I'll skewer the bastage 101 different ways. But only one of those ways was a fair fight, and that fair fight took a very specialized build/prestige class combo to pull off. Toe to toe, monks beat the shit out of most of the crap they come across. Monks are very good at what they do, and what they do is punch through adamantine with their bare hands while understanding everything that is going on around them... while dropping from orbit. I ran a campaign for a guy who used to train a swat team before he quit his job, as apparently the stupid of his higher ups was burning as well. He was able to take a fighter and some craft skills and earn the average character wealth of a 20th level character... by level 6. By simply planning and making use of every advantage (like selling a live wyvern he captured to the highest bidder, or trading devil parts for gunpowders raw ingredients) he made a team of characters that was able to take down my grand campaign villain, a great red wyrm Ravagwer of Tiamat level 10, by 12th level in one round. Class is a skill set; a box of tools as it were: trying to use tools were they don't work will suck balls, but using the right tools for the right task will always work.

The preposed point buy system works, and it works well. As the local pariah, I probably doomed any hope it had of being advocated by anyone else, but frankly I don't care. I like it.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 03:31, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

And here I thought Karrius's comment was redundant, because the point system was so obviously unbalanced. Did you notice that if you replace the Bard's casting with Cleric casting, its point cost will go down? You are correct, Spazalicious Chaos, the stupid... it burns! Also, your anecdote is mostly irrelevant to this discussion. --Foxwarrior 05:03, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Monks are not good at doing much of anything past low levels, and they're only ok there because the bar is so low and people are so close together in terms of bonuses. Their stats pull them in too many different ways to be effectively kept up (and simplifying that with feats is often a trap), they have extremely obnoxious hoops to jump through to maintain functional weapon bonuses and damage values with their unarmed strikes (and using other weapons to avoid those issues makes several of their class features worthless), and their high level special abilities are either counter productive (dimension door), extremely limited in use, too low in DC to be functional, or some combination of all three. They're not all bad, but they lack significant good.

Unless you're ignoring wealth by level and giving them artifact weapons or whatever I guess, like you're doing in your irrelevant example above. In that case, yes, if you let people become super rich and buy power well above their level they will perform above their level. Well done with that point, which doesn't actually say anything about the power of a class at a particular level and more about the power of high level gear at a low level. What a completely useless thing to add to a conversation on balancing class features by charging point costs for them. You might as well hate the point cost system referenced because it doesn't matter what your class features are, you're just going to buy extremely powerful items other people your level can't afford and then walk over stuff. Why you choose to like it when it's pricing things that are obviously irrelevant based on your example is beyond me. - Tarkisflux 06:33, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Spaz, the reason you are a pariah is because you insist on making senseless, inane comments likely intended to illicit an argumentative response that proves your obviously flawed theory totally wrong and then muddling the issue with examples that have nothing to do with the issue(s) at hand. Stop doing so, and you will look less like either a pariah or a blithering idiot. Until then, you will just continue to get canned for supporting something that you only appear to be arguing for for the sake of argument itself. - TG Cid 20:33, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Nah, I like this beacuse it obviously a watered down version of besm that roll-players can wrap their heads around. Obviously.

However, I find it disturbing that annecdotal evidence is discreditied on this wiki. We are talking about a table-top RPG, people! A rule only works if a group of people says it does. That same group of people can only say it does if they have actually played it and are left with good and/or fun memories. Thus, it seems very odd that the one form of validation that can proove or disproove a rules effectiveness is not a valid argument. It almost makes me wonder if some of the people on here are just creepers masterbating in the dark over a game they heard about. I know that is what WotC does nowadays, but I'm hoping I'm right when I say that this probably only makes up 2% of our posters.

In short: I like the idea, I don't give a rats ass if anyone else does, and we all need to remeber that this game is an anecdote factory that runs purely on people talking with eachother.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 04:29, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Potato. -- Jota 04:40, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Potato. --Undead Knave 04:47, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Potato. -MisterSinister 05:05, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Potato. --Foxwarrior 05:12, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Anecdotes are basically self-quotations. While they make okay evidence, they have to be supported, just like a quote. As such, you first need to frame your anecdote. Explaining why you are giving an anecdote briefly and what to look at is most important. Then you post the anecdote. It is usually best to keep the anecdote separated from this description, and to keep this description separated from the content before it, That means you need multiple paragraphs to use an anecdote, and it cannot come out of the blue. Both parts of these were missed. Finally, you need to explain how the anecdote is indeed supporting evidence to your main argument. You actually do this a bit, and it seems your anecdote supports your argument. Given this small lecture on prose, I will explain why your anecdote doesn't work in game terms.

In the framework in which these balance points were built, and all balance on the wiki is built around is that there is a specific wealth by level. Why? Because it is in the core rules. If you give 720,000 gold pieces to a character that the rules say should have 15,000, then of course balance is going to get screwy. Gold gives extra features. Not only that, but the features can be tailored. If there is one battle left, and you have 720,000gp, you are going to spend it preparing for the final battle and not save any of it. Well, unless you roleplay that you shouldn't because your character wouldn't do that. Of course you are probably going to win. If you can attribute most of the characters success to wealth instead of class (which you can test by replacing the class levels with Commoner), then you are showing the balance of equipment instead of the balance of classes. As such, your anecdote is useless on the grounds that is misses the point.

--Havvy 05:24, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Idea for inconsistencies

Alright, sometimes, a class does not fit into a single balance point. Not because its abilities are highly variable depending on factors outside the class itself (which is simply Unquantifiable), but because it is different balance points at different levels. GW and I were discussing this in chat, and he used as an example a hypothetical class that gets nothing at all until level 15, at which point they get Wish at will as an SLA. He argued that it would be wizard-level, because you need to look at its highest point. My view was that you have to consider the class as a whole. But really, neither of those work -- it is quite distinctly wizard-level at level 15, but monk-level below that. It's inaccurate to call it one or the other, and also inaccurate to call it anything in between. So...why don't we label classes by spans of levels? The Wishful Commoner would be "Monk [1-14], Wizard [15+]", and would have both balance points in its metadata. There's really no reason to restrict everything to the four power curves we have defined. Thoughts? --DanielDraco 04:04, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Approval of mine you have, yeeees. --Ghostwheel 04:07, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I would label it bad homebrew and slap a delete template on it.

Less dismissively, I can't actually think of a reason why that design paradigm would be at all useful in game. At one level it's playing one perfectly legitimate game, and at another it's playing a completely different one. That's not a consistently designed class, nor one whose inconsistencies add to the game in any way I can fathom, so I can't see any reason to support it or anything like it.

On a more technical level, doing this would basically ruin the attempt we have made to have material searchable by balance point. You would have to specify a character level and balance point to do any searching, and you would then probably want to confirm that it didn't change at a higher level than your game. I don't even know if we can code that, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to because of the other reasons that supporting those sorts of things doesn't appear useful. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 04:17, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Why is an alternate power curve automatically bad? If they could be quantified, I'd guess Wizard to be roughly exponential, Rogue to be roughly linear, and Monk and Fighter to be different kinds of logarithmic. Why can't you have, say...a linear progression of higher slope? Or an exponential curve with a lower base? If someone feels like Fighter is a good place to set power until level 6, and Rogue is best after that, that's a perfectly legitimate viewpoint. Or if they're trying, as designers often do, to capture the feel of a character struggling, starting from nothing, and gradually gaining power and prestige until they're formidable forces of the universe, why can't they have a class slide from Monk all the way up through to Wizard over its progression? If the four curves we have are legitimate, others can be too.

As for coding it, it might work to make each of the four balance points (plus Unquantifiable) into separate properties and assign their value to the set of levels that falls into that balance. It might require making a search page specifically for this to facilitate people who don't know how to work semantic search, though. --DanielDraco 04:24, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I was specifically disagreeing with your example as valid, though I guess that could have been more clear. Alternate curves are not automatically bad, but I would argue that curves with severe jumps in the slope rate of change at any point are poor design and actually bad (like your original example). If you wanted to have a linear progression with a higher slope, you could do that. Go ahead and plot it out if you like, it's somewhere between two of our existing curves and you could just pick the one it was closer to and call it that without losing too much. If it's stronger or weaker than the reference classes in a balance point for a couple of levels, that's hardly an issue. The reference classes themselves suffer these problems. Making an exponential curve with a lower base is pretty difficult to do though. Generally speaking, classes can and do start near monk (even wizard level ones) by virtue of every curve largely overlapping at the start of the game, with monk leaving the group around 4 or 5, fighter around 8 or 9, and rogue falling behind wizard sometime after that. Trying to start an exponential progression with a lower base than anything else is like starting with an NPC class, if that, and working your way up. It's not invalid, but we don't have anything else on the wiki that could even be played with it at low levels, which is problematic for the class in general.

If someone wants to make a class that bends a curve slightly more or less than the reference cases they are welcome to do that and I won't call foul. It happens all of the time already since no one who writes something new actually maps it exactly to our reference cases (which don't even map exactly to each other). Claiming that the balance points we have don't support that sort of thing takes them to be more rigid and narrow than I believe them to be. It's one of the reasons Surgo (rightly IMO) fought against people trying to put exhaustive lists of abilities on the various balance points to facilitate assignments. As soon as you rigidly define the curves, you tell people that their work has to exactly fit into them or you have to start making weird exemptions and additional categories. As it stands, their somewhat broad definition allows authors to pick a best fit for their work and have it work reasonably well with others in the same category. More granularity might make it more obvious which levels you expect a class to under or over perform at, but that just makes matching material together more difficult in general.

That coding is an option, but the actual format would need to look something like |monk=1,2,3,4,5 |fighter=6,7,8,9 |etc to have the numbers be actually searchable. We can't do ranges, since SMW isn't smart enough for them and only looks for discrete values. And values on the low end aren't going to mean as much as values on the high end because of divergent progressions and low level clustering. But it would probably work, which addresses my technical objections. And if there's sufficient support for it or something substantially similar I'd be willing to put it in. I don't see any actual benefit in it though, and think it's probably a step backwards even, but I'd put it in if I got outvoted on it. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 06:58, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll note that I am against this idea. Partially due to the clunky implementation (which would make adding a new class a pain for authors and require a project to change all existing content). It also just doesn't jive with what we have for feats (which don't have a variable balance range). And, really, I see balance ranges as broad strokes, not fine ones. Making them any more granular seems like a step backwards, as Tarkis noted above. --Aarnott 18:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Ranger = Monk?

Weird, I just noticed ranger was listed as monk level. That's surprising, really? I always saw ranger equal to, or slightly better, than straight Fighter. That is, a ranger is basically a fighter who is forced into a limited specialization, but I've found rangers, in general, make better TWFers than fighters due to the lack of Dex requirement and overall rangers end up more useful outside of battle than a fighter. That's why I'm puzzled, a ranger is just a more versitile fighter, so I would imagine it would be fighter level. -- Eiji-kun 03:23, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Ghost added it the other day, and I haven't gotten around to asking him about it yet. I'm curious as to his justifications as well though. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 03:37, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd imagine that it's in part because they are so specialized -- they get so-so damage against a narrow range of foes, or piddling damage against a moderate range of foes, depending on how thinly they spread their favored enemy increases. I wouldn't consider them more versatile than fighters at all.

Also, it may be true that they're better two-weapon fighters than Fighters are, but Fighters aren't very good two-weapon fighters to begin with. And for that matter, I'm honestly not sure Rangers are better at it anyway. The requirements for TWF aren't that prohibitive, and a Fighter can get more reliable bonus damage with each of those hits with Weapon Specialization than a Ranger can with favored enemy.

Also also, the Fighter balance point is generally considered around the more optimal Power Attack tactic, I believe, which would make the argument that Rangers are better at TWF than Fighters irrelevant anyway.

Also additionally also, regarding the utility outside battle, unless I'm mistaken, GW considers power outside battle to be no power at all. Which is...questionable, but understandable, and would further explain the placement in Monk-level. --DanielDraco 04:32, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Damn, edit conflict. Will post what I had, and will read above change after.

My rationale is as follows: Classes that have class abilities that when used make them worse (samurai, ranger) are monk-level. A fighter has full BAB going for it, as well as feats. That means that at least he can be built for the most viable build in a core-only game--that is, power attacking when you have full BAB, perhaps into spirited charge or something similar.

The ranger, on the other hand, becomes weaker when using his class abilities; twf is crap without a secondary source of damage, and the ranger who uses it will be mediocre compared to a fighter using a two-hander and power attack. And ranged combat is just crap in core-only, producing little damage that's not at all viable.

That's what I figured, at any rate. --Ghostwheel 04:36, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

EDIT: Incidentally, in a core + CW-only game, a samurai who didn't use their class abilities would be low fighter-level if he just got a 2-hander and used power attack like a "regular" fighter does. It's using their class abilities that makes them monk-level. --Ghostwheel 04:39, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't be too sure about the requirements for TWF being taxing. When you have Str and Con to handle, getting a third important stat really takes a chunk out of your point buy. I fully know that TWF is suboptimal in general, though I wouldn't call it BAD, just uninspiring. On bonus damage, both ranger and fighter struggle to obtain it through items rather than class features which grant a minor boon (weaspon specilization and favored enemy respectively), so I would really consider them even on that.

The other thing that bugs me about that arguement is that it ignores the other features ranger has. None of these features are amazing, no sir, but I wouldn't say any of them hurt. They have a flankbuddy, they have spellcasting which however humble does have a few gems and, more importantly, the ability to use magic items with said spells without UMD or shinanigans, and the skills. I don't know if DD's assesstment is correct, but I very much thing out of combat powers ARE important in the scheme of things. Not all campaigns will be an endless stream of melee fights. Sometimes they need to track something. Sometimes they need a competant scout or stealth. The fighter can't supply in these situations, he literally doesn't have any class features besides swinging his sword better.

That's what gets me there. The ranger is a pile of mediocre powers (various class features) and so is the fighter (feats up the wazoo). The options to have an optimal attack method (two handing power attack) are available to both, but I don't see how the fighter pulls ahead just because its a 'class feature' for him.

....actually, on further thought, one could argue the fighter doesn't really HAVE class features, being nothing but feats. The only thing unique he gets is the weapon specailization chain, and that's not worth anything.

That basically is what I'm seeing this on. The fighter's benefits are "the weapon spec chain" and "feats are cheap" due to their number, while ranger is "utility" and "better TWF". Neither of those are nessicarly dependant if it's taking power attack or not, I'm considering that as something they both have. And with that, the utility aspect is prevallent enough that it has a (small) advantage over the fighter on average. There aren't any good feat chains which are so feat intensive that fighter is the only logical choice. All the good fighter feats usually can be done in with 2 or 3 feats.

Incidentally, the ideal ranger probably IS two-handed power attacking with the archery style (or TWF if you can't afford the Dex). Yeah, I'm not using one of its class features, but that's less important than the fact that I'm doing the same thing the fighter us, but with more utility. Not employing a class feature doesn't decrease their power, it just doesn't add any additional power to the grand total, and I'd say the rest of the features make up for "more feats than you really need". -- Eiji-kun 06:47, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

So the question here would be, "What is the Fighter doing with his feats to make himself Fighter-level?" They gain a lot from the first few feats, but the returns from each feat decrease as they run out of useful options. I think this is close enough and open-ended enough that it's going to have to come down to the math. I agree that it's irrelevant the extent to which they are using their class ability -- BAB is just as much a class feature as any unique ability. --DanielDraco 14:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

So Eiji, are you saying that just full BAB is enough to make a character fighter-level? If so, then the Warrior NPC class and the Samurai from CW should probably be bumped up to fighter level along with the ranger. That said, I'm not sure I agree, and if we're looking at the straight math, I think the ranger using either fighting style (rather than just two-handing a single weapon with power attack) will fall *way* behind an equivalent fighter just using power attack and maybe even spirited charge. --Ghostwheel 16:13, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

A Ranger is fully capable of using a two-handed weapon with Power Attack, though. If that's the best way to play one within the bounds of reason, then that's how it should be considered. If that makes it so that Samurai and Warriors are only very slightly inferior to Fighters, than either they should be upgraded to Fighter-level, or our low balance points should be reconsidered and redefined to have a clearer dividing line. --DanielDraco 20:36, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Its not about the BAB (though it helps). The question should be, "this class has full BAB... and what else". Warrior has nothing else, so it's still monk. Samurai has barely anything (gimped TWF and intimidation) so its still monk. Monk has the "what else" but most of it isn't useful, it doesn't has full BAB, and suffers from MAD so its still monk. Fighter has something, excessive feats. Ranger also has something, oodles of moderate utility and all the stuff that makes up ranger.

I'm saying its rank should be a sum of its whole parts, and the usefulness or use of one particular feature should never be a deciding factor. -- Eiji-kun 22:13, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

-Curse you edit conflicing Eiji!-

The monk balance point applied to classes is for those that are falling behind by level 4 or so, because beneath that point life is really cheap and even the weakest guys can still contribute. The fighter balance point can be extended out to level 8ish before higher balance classes really start to leave them behind. Getting hung up on damage at these levels seems pretty silly, since a tripstar build is a fighter level option and isn't dealing impressive damage. Fighters get to do that or some other useful one-trick-pony thing with their bonus feats and are respectable in combat because of it. In contrast, all of the monk's abilities are combat related and they still suck at it by level 4. They don't keep up with Fighters in combat, don't gain enough skill points to contribute substantially to other areas, and basically don't have anything else to fall back on to justify their inclusion in the party. Warriors are in a similar boat since they don't have the same feat ability as fighters and aren't contributing much after level 4ish, so they're fine where they are. I have never cared enough about the samurai to have an opinion.

That baseline stuff out of the way so people know where I'm coming from, I can talk about the ranger. The ranger does not fall behind in combat like the monk does, largely by virtue of getting to use real weapons, having full bab, sources of minor bonus attack/damage, and slightly better bonus feats, but they do still fall behind the fighter. Regarding their specific options, TWF is not the best option for them but it's also not required that they take it. And the bow isn't amazing but carries a significantly smaller risk of engagement (and thus death) and is a better option for full-attacking for most of those levels. Behind the fighter is still behind the fighter though, and since they're not keeping up with the "do well in combat" guy they need to do well somewhere else to justify their inclusion. Their animal companion doesn't really do it, as it's generally a minor combat boost (though it could actually be a significant one if the bow ranger went horse archer) and doesn't add plot utility because of their limited understanding. The delayed growth it gets does not help it here. They get more skill points than the fighter and monk though, have good class skills, and since skills matter at these levels still that's something going for them that increases their utility over both of the reference classes. They also get spells, but their spellcasting is largely not combat relevant (late acquisition = low DCs; few combat relevant spells in the first place). It is fairly utility oriented though, with several useful defensive, healing, or plot related effects available to them at he level they first show up. The ability to wand/scroll that stuff without UMD is also useful, as it allows them access to useful effects when they show up in item form (often before they spell is available to the ranger).

I think all this adds up to is a class that is neither a star nor a pauper in combat, and somewhat useful out of combat. Which is substantially more than a monk level class. It's a shit load weaker than I thought it was, but it could justify its presence in a fighter level group after level 6 pretty easily. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:32, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Huh, that was eloquent. While I can debate you the usefulness of an animal companion (even a gimped weak one), I agree with your analysis. +1 to that.

(EDIT: In related news, a good idea has been brought to me. What do you think of having examples of the upper and lower bounds of each of the tiers in question? Yes, balance points are always going to be fuzzy but it may be easier to figure out what tier fence-sitters are in if you can say "generic barbarian is about as strong as fighter gets" or "tripstar fighter is about as weak as rogue gets". What do you think about the idea?)-- Eiji-kun 00:14, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I, for one, think that complete lists of SRD classes (and feats/spells/etc) by balance point would lead to more useful discusstion, and be more useful themselves.--Ideasmith 16:37, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Before new stuff, I messed up a bit. While I stand by my assessment, I put a higher emphasis on utility than the current balance points really specify at those levels. While that looks like an oversight that I'd prefer just be written into them, I'm not going to do that yet in case someone has a reason not to. Reasons for doing that include making it easier to justify effective support/moderate combat classes as rogue level even when they can't really hold their own in combat against equal CR creatures for the majority of the game. That would imply that monk level options lack both support and combat utility in general as well.

Even without that mattering in the current balance points, I think the ranger probably maintains fighter level when played with a bow. They are quite competent with the bow past low levels, especially if built for them, and can target foes already engaged by their party members. It's also a valid counter for early flight based monsters, which begin to show up after monk level classes have become largely irrelevant. So even with my previous focus on things that don't actually matter in balance points as written, I think there's sufficient reason to move them up.

New stuff - There are already some sketchy boundaries for the balance points based on builds Eiji, and I don't think anything more than that is helpful or even useful (for reference, current writeup has Spirited Charger with proper gear in as low as rogue goes, while Tripstar is just highish fighter due to being useless against flyers). That's before we get into trying to get a consensus out of people for the actual build placements and the role of gear in the builds. As normal, if there's strong wiki support for it we can do it over my objections, but someone else gets to head up that discussion.

The idea of putting balance points on all the classes, feats, and spells/powers in the SRD was floated around a couple of years ago Ideasmith, but Surgo shot it down. I'm not actually sure why that was the case though. I don't have any real objections to it, but am worried that the attempt would be messy. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 17:51, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe the specific suggestion was shot down because it involved messing with SRD pages. Since my suggestion would not involve doing more than linking to the pages (if that) it might well fly. Assuming I remember/interpreret Surgo correctly.--Ideasmith 18:15, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Naming Conventions

Anyone have a problem with changing "rogue level" to "warblade level"? With the optimization you need to go through in order to make the rogue class what we right now define as rogue-level, it seems to make more sense to newcomers (and to me) to rename it that for the sake of clarity.

Edit: While we're at it, we may also want to change from "points" to "ranges", since "points" seems to imply that there's a single point, while "range" inherently implies that there's a range to fall in. --Ghostwheel 19:42, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

As it stands, rogue level really does mean "Balanced against ToB" for this wiki. I completely agree. Warblade is really a better frame of reference, I think. --Aarnott 19:45, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I've already pointed out on IRC that the rogue is partially useful because it's easily available as an SRD reference on this wiki as opposed to having to go to a sourcebook for ToB, but I also have no disagreements with the claim that the warblade is in all a better measuring stick for that balance level. - TG Cid 22:17, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not opposed. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 02:05, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like we have 4 people who are fine with it... I'll start making the changes on this page, could someone run a bot to replace "rogue" with "warblade" everywhere on the wiki where it appears in an author box? Thanks. --Ghostwheel 03:04, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Unless I had something like 20 people sign on already, I wouldn't want to change it same day. It's a wiki, people aren't here all the time, and we wait to institute changes like this until after they've had a reasonable period of time to check it out. So we give this at least a week, and then change things over if it still looks good.

As for the technical bits, we've been having issues with ReplaceText lately. I'll probably just edit the author template to accept both and display Warblade. But not yet. This gets some discussion time first, even if it's unlikely to actually change the outcome. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 03:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Whelp, at least when the decision goes through, we can just revert the page back to my edit :-P --Ghostwheel 05:17, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I like 'Rogue Range' much better than 'Warblade Range'. I played 3.5e for only two years, but I never ran into any Warblades? Heck, I'm going to have to go and research what the heck a Warblade is, right now. Haha. Besides, simply being introduced to 'Balanced Points' on this wiki was enough for me to get the idea of what you guys are trying to accomplish. Using the Rogue Class really did help me to understand the power differences already found in the SRD Classes. But that is just me. --Jay Freedman 05:59, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Both Bard and Psychic Warrior are, according to the archive, at Rogue balance point. Both are accessible without purchasing an out-of-print book. would either of these be a better choice than rogue?--Ideasmith 12:37, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Both bard and psychic warrior need that extra "oomph" of optimization in order to actually reach the kind of damage we're talking about--in fact, the bard is all over the place, since on one hand it be wizard-level with its various spells and abilities, or fighter-level if it isn't used very smartly, so that's a bad example all-in-all, I think. The psychic warrior starts at fighter-level, and remains there if you choose poor feats and powers, but can become rogue-level with the right selection. Unlike either of them though, the warblade is rogue-level out of the box without much need for optimization at all. --Ghostwheel 16:58, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

On the same vein, I suggest that we rename Fighter-level to Barbarian-level. Fighters require a lot of good feats and a solid build to be what we consider "Fighter-level". Barbarians just need Power Attack and they can perform as well as the optimized fighters of this level of play. So, for clarity, naming it "Barbarian" will be helpful, I think. --Aarnott 23:59, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Makes sense, I can get behind that. --Ghostwheel 00:09, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Another thought was to go back to the old suggestion from before--instead of using class levels which could easily raise hackles (MONKS ARE THE MOST POWERFUL CLASS EVAR!!), perhaps we might consider non-specific names. So for example, instead of Monk, Barbarian, Warblade, Wizard, it could become something like Mortal, Daring, Heroic, Legendary/Mythic, or something like that. I think that would make people want to understand what we mean by that more even, rather than assuming things based on the class they see before they understand the system we have in place. --Ghostwheel 00:47, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I second Ghost’s proposal, for it adds much greater lucidity and mitigates predisposition; with the succession: Mortal, Heroic, Legendary, Mythic--Franken Kesey 00:57, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

→Reverted indentation to one colon

I'd definitely prefer Mortal, Daring, Heroic, Mythic. Calling our "3rd" tier Legendary is a stretch, I think. And I definitely support it that way :). --Aarnott 01:07, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

What Aarnott said. --Ghostwheel 01:07, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

TIL that Mortals can teleport more than 400 feet once per day. --Foxwarrior 01:24, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

How about Weak, Competent, Solid, Powerful? --Ideasmith 01:35, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Nah, MDHM is better as far as conveying power levels. I support that naming convention in particular because it lines up with things I have pointed out earlier.Change=Chaos. Period. SC 02:15, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Weak also implies "bad", which we'd like to avoid, especially when the next level up is "competent". Monk-level, as we call it now, is a perfectly acceptable balance level to play at. I don't want to be telling people that like playing monk-level games that their characters are incompetent. --Aarnott 16:15, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I have previously argued for a similar naming convention, and prefer it to the class based naming convention we presently have. Surgo's primary objection to such a scheme at the time was that it couldn't be used easily in a sentence. As he has indicated he doesn't really care what direction we take this discussion (and I think his objection was overstated anyway), I don't think that's relevant anymore.

In short, I'm for it and don't see any bureacrat vetoes of it. I would suggest one change though. I'd prefer Legendary to Mythic, so that the progression was MDHL instead of MDHM and we don't reuse the letter M. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 17:30, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

While we're changing these, I think it should be balance ranges or tiers instead of points, since each tier/range can contain a wildly divergent array of classes, each one more or less power than the last. I'm not even sure "balance levels" fit, since they're not really levels... tiers then? "This class is mortal tier," or somesuch? And yeah, Legendary is fine in my mind. --Ghostwheel 18:07, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

→Reverted indentation to one colon

"Balance Tiers" is bad for term confusion reasons, and I oppose it. I'd take ranges though. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:49, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm somewhat opposed to calling Monks "Mortal Tier". A level 20 Monk is an outsider who doesn't appear to age, is immune to diseases and poisons, turns into a wispy ghost thing, teleports about a sixth of a mile every day, kills people 20 days after he's last been on the same plane as them, and (barely) survives skydiving into lava without a parachute. I'd suggest a name like "Wimpy Tier", but apparently that's bad form. "Modest" or "Moderate" tier, maybe. "Simple"? --Foxwarrior 02:06, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Using terms that do not actually denote a degree of power (e.g., "Mythic," "Heroic") is problematic because it does not form an obvious scale. A new user will not be able to distinguish between them without having to research our system. And even then, they have to memorize the sequence. It's not casual-user-friendly -- and our chief problem here on the wiki is appealing to casual users who happen to stumble upon us. On top of that, it carries implications even more than terms like "weak" do. "Legendary," "Mythic," "Heroic," and the like carry a very profound meaning, and their scope extends far beyond a simple metric of power.

On the other hand, terms that directly describe a degree of power in a scale of superlatives and comparatives has the issue of making people shy away from the ones labelled "Weak." So what we need is a system with terms that form an obvious scale, but carry no connotations. Basically, we can't use words, because it's impossible to accomplish both of those with verbal descriptions.

So I'd suggest abstracting it to letters or numbers. I'd suggest letters, since with numbers there is the ambiguity of whether we are scaling top to bottom or bottom to top; with letters, people generally understand A to denote the highest category. So I'd suggest something along the lines of A-Class, B-Class, C-Class, and D-Class. Sure, it's boring, but it's about as clear as possible, and it minimizes prejudice about as much as we can while still actually providing information. --DanielDraco 02:32, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Any obvious letter scale is going to include negative connotations. Aside from standard references to letter grades, similar classifications schemes are used in all sorts of regulatory structures to denote product quality. The information provided by such a scheme to a casual observer who is not aware of what we are doing with it is that "this material is better or worse than some other material". It's not even clear that we're referring to playstyle concerns instead of quality. As such, I remain firmly against such a scheme.

Attempting to come up with a balance indicator that doesn't require someone to look at the page is a fools errand. I would rather get people to say "Huh? What does this mean?" and follow the link to an explanation than assume that they understood it because it was overly simple and 'obvious'. If we want to increase casual user accessibility, we should make the balance page more casual friendly by including playstyle examples, hiding the detailed balance stuff in a spoiler block, or whatever. We should make it easier to learn what we mean with our terminology, rather than make our terminology so easy that it invites confusion from those who aren't confused enough to look it over.

I think there is an actual progression in the MDHL setup, but it's a vague progression. Which I think is an actual good thing, in that it pushes people to read what we're actually talking about. But if you want something with more meaning than that, then it needs to be meaning within the game, and we should stick with class labels for the ranges. Letter and number ranges carry too much baggage, both in denotation and assumptions. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 04:28, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Letter scales are also familiar in regulatory structures for tournaments in all sorts of games (mostly video games) where multiple classes/characters are available. They indicate power, and nothing else. Yes, there can be connotations pulled from analogy to letter grades, but far stronger connotations are intrinsic in the MDHL thing.

And the terms used for MDHL don't even make sense. Mortal means you are capable of death. Daring means you're brave. Heroic means you save people. Legendary means a lot of people think highly of you. None of those have anything whatsoever to do with power levels, and I'm baffled by any of them being suggested to indicate power.

Making people go elsewhere for information is good? If we can provide a gloss of info at a glance, and require further reading only for further information, I think that's ideal. If there's a field that says, "Power level: A-Class", people will think, "Oh, it's in the highest tier of power." If they see "Power level: B-Class", they'll think, "Oh, it's in the second-highest tier of power." They won't need to read anything to know that. If they want the finer points of how we determine that, then they can read up on it. There's no reason to require detailed information in order to understand a vague categorization. --DanielDraco 04:45, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

So, are those rankings there to limit people into a particular overall grade, or to keep people from making poor decisions, or what? I'm not a part of that culture, and I have no idea how they'd be used, or which character I'd want in such a situation. Is your contention that because a (likely small) subset of people use letters in a way that doesn't do the things we don't want, we should going to make the assumption that most people in our casual group do as well? That's a pretty big leap DD. I'd say it's a bigger leap than my MDHL leap, but I figure that's because of "it doesn't apply to me and it does to you" bias. So I figure I'll go on hating letter schemes with obvious rankings, and you'll go on loving them because you are familiar with how they work from other contexts, and we'll just agree to disagree on that and move on.

And yes, within reason making people look elsewhere for information is good. It's what gets them on the same page (when that page isn't the first thing they read). It's what will keep them from saying "This overpowered shit is A-Class material? Fuck this site." It's what will let them know "Oh, I want C material" if they don't happen to land on it and not get confused by the seemingly low ranking. By selecting something that is easy to understand and conveys the information that you recognize, you are actively asking everyone who doesn't see things that way to get hung up on preconceptions and make a poor decision. Confuse and reframe is a real sales technique because people do actually get hung up on their preconceptions, and breaking them out of those by not giving them what they expect is a good way to get through to them, as long as they can easily learn what is meant by it.

As for MDHL, I mostly agree with your definitions. And even with them, I think that there is a clear progression in terms of story scope based on those terms, whether it's in good or evil form. You're welcome to disagree, and I think it's clear that you do. You haven't commented about retaining the present class names (or I missed it), but let's try something else. Would a combined scheme, like Mortal (D-Class) or D-Class (Mortal) be less offensive? - Tarkisflux ^Talk 06:06, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Ditching the SGT

I've talked about it before, but I'm actually going to propose something that we can hack away at (or totally discard if we think it is stupid).

First off, I think it would be good to define the goals of a good balance system:

• Allows categories for homebrew to fit in that fit certain playstyles for how strong characters are expected to be and what kind of capabilities they have.
• Is capable of being applied to any sort of homebrew that introduces character options and preferably can even be applied to things DMs use (like monsters).
• Is easy to use and, generally, won't cause huge arguments over what category a particular article should fit in.
• Can categorize utility abilities as effectively as combat abilities, because, really, a +100 to spellcraft should not be in the same category as a +2.

Just to emphasize why I think the SGT falls short:

• It isn't applied to items (or at least the current version isn't).
• The challenges we compare against are pretty much a categorical pass/fail. "Can I fly? Nope. I fail that one. Can I use a strong ranged attack? Yep. Okay I pass that one".
  • This can lead to a class (if we take it literally) where the class feature at 1st level is "flip a coin, if you get heads, you win the encounter, if you get tails, you lose". This would be considered rogue level. We have no base definition to say that this is a really stupid idea.
• The challenges are mostly combat oriented, but we try to throw in a few utility challenges to hopefully offset any classes with tons of utility but little combat.

My idea is to make a list of general traits that fit each balance level. A good article will be able to meet the traits for the balance level, but not have ANY in a higher balance level and try to have few in lower balance levels. Otherwise, we can call it poorly designed. Note: this means a lot of SRD classes would be considered poorly designed, which I think most people can agree on anyways.

I'm going to use our current naming conventions, but they are definitely not set in stone... This is an example of how the list might be formed.

Classes

Note: These assume no items, but do assume the Big 6 are used. Items are categorized separately. As a result, use Balanced Wealth for basic level bonuses because it gives an even spread of where they should come from.

Classes that fit in the Mortal range usually have traits that include...

• Bad ranged options available at 1st level
• No spells
• Combat options are generally limited to the default ones (disarm, trip, etc)
• Very limited access to strong status effects (dazed, stunned, paralyzed, etc.)
  • Duration of these effects are very short or have a negligable save DC
• No save or die effects
• Rely on damage to defeat opponents
• 16 in Strength
  • Level 1 damage ~11 at +4 (Warrior with greatsword)
  • Level 6 damage ~17 at +12/+7 (Warrior with greatsword)
  • Level 11 damage ~19 at +20/+15/+10 (Warrior with greatsword)
  • Level 16 damage ~24 at +29/+24/+19/+14 (Warrior with greatsword)
  • Level 20 damage ~28 at +36/+31/+26/+21 (Warrior with greatsword)

Classes that fit in the Daring range usually have traits that include...

• Martial ranged options available at 1st level
• No spells or very low-powered "fighter-level" spells (ie. Paladin/Ranger)
• Additional combat tricks (Rage, sneak attack)
• Limited access to strong status effects (dazed, stunned, paralyzed, etc.)
• Save or die effects have an easy DC, but may exist at very high levels
• Rely on damage to defeat opponents
• 16 in Strength
  • Level 1 damage ~16 at +4 (Barbarian with greatsword and power attack 1)
  • Level 6 damage ~22 at +12/+7 (Barbarian with greatsword and power attack 2)
  • Level 11 damage ~30 at +20/+15/+10 (Barbarian with greatsword and power attack 3)
  • Level 16 damage ~35 at +29/+24/+19/+14 (Barbarian with greatsword and power attack 3)
  • Level 20 damage ~42 at +36/+31/+26/+21 (Barbarian with greatsword and power attack 4)

Classes that fit in the Heroic range usually have traits that include...

• Spells, when present, usually deal direct damage
• No save or dies until upper levels (15+).
  • Otherwise, they should have a low DC.
• Flight around level 10.
• Strong status effects available, but short lasting and single targeting.
  • Save or lose spells that are really short duration and single target are fine.
• Abilities tend to have a fair DC of 10 + 1/2 character level + ability mod
  • Spells model this closely enough
• Single or 2 attribute dependancy.
• 16 in Strength
  • Level 1 damage ~18 at +4 (Punishing Stance, Sapphire Nightmare Blade)
  • Level 6 damage ~32 at +12 (Punishing Stance, Bonecrusher)
  • Level 11 damage ~65 at +20 (Punishing Stance, Rabid Bear Strike, -4 PA, )
  • Level 16 damage ~100 at +29 (Punishing Stance, Diamond Nightmare Blade)
  • Level 20 damage ~130 at +36 (Punishing Stance, Strike of Perfect Clarity)

Classes that fit in the Legendary range usually have traits that include...

• Full spellcaster with "wizard level spells" (this would be defined elsewhere)
• Save or Die effects starting at 7th-9th level
• Save or lose from 1st level
• Flight around level 5
• Teleportation around level 9
• Single or 2 attribute dependancy.
• Minions that can give more actions per round (by acting themselves)
• Utility spells/abilities that can avoid skills completely or trivialize them (knock, glibness, fly)
• Don't usually win through damage, but rather save-or-die or save-or-lose effects.

--

So that is a rough idea. We can make a page to expand on it if people like this idea. The main thing is that a class should fit for the most part into one category. It's okay for some overlap in definitions as well. I feel that once you cross a certain threshold upward, a class should be considered part of that balance level. And if it is generally monk-level, for instance, with a couple fighter level abilities, it probably should be either nerfed or beefed up.

Thoughts? --Aarnott 18:17, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

One thing to note. Feel free to come up with better definitions. This is a very rough draft. The main illustration here is how it would be implemented. --Aarnott 18:46, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I think I like this better than what we have. With some clear guidelines, that can always be updated when edge cases show up and are argued, we could have a very solid way of defining classes without getting into the subjectivity of the SGT, items, etc. --Ghostwheel 23:29, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I got asked to take a look at this and chime in on text. I don't really care, do what you want. Surgo 15:15, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

So are there any objections to moving away from the SGT and more towards a checklist system similar to what Aarnott put up? I like it a lot, and even if things don't fit perfectly, we can fit any specific material into the place where it mostly closely appears to fit. --Ghostwheel 23:32, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I like this, except one thing which I think should be changed. Absolute statements like "no spells" and "no save or dies" should be eliminated and replaced with something a little more lax. Otherwise, there will be those who take those particular criteria as gospel, and stupid arguments will arise. EDIT: GW changed them. But it's something to keep in mind if we add criteria in the future.

Also, even with that change, arguments will arise. There should be a way of settling them. Maybe have some designated "experts" on balance. Balance would be determined by general consensus of users (including those experts), unless an expert feels that there is no informed consensus, in which case they make an official ruling. The distinction that the consensus must be informed is important, so that we can step in if a dozen people are commenting on a wizard clone and saying, "i tink dis is rogue;" sure, there's a consensus, but no justification is given. If experts disagree, the majority among them is what we go with. --—Preceding unsigned comment added by DanielDraco (talk • contribs) at

"Let the experts decide" is a poor way to establish a more objective definition of balance than the SGT. Given that classes, feats, items, and spells can (and should, in my incredibly humble opinion) do all sorts of totally freaky things, coming up with definitive and specific limitations is always going to result in a fair number of holes. This is why I feel that the SGT's flexibility, which lets the tester use tactics that befit the abilities of their creation, is a more appropriate fit for balancing things in a game as broad as D&D. Unfortunately, the SGT doesn't define any real method for picking terrains or enemy tactics, doesn't define how the classed enemies are built, completely ignores equipment, and has no way of determining balance points for items, feats, spells, or monsters.

As our balance points stand currently, the SGT is our last-ditch way to settle arguments, and every person has a slightly different set of "a little more lax" statements that they use to judge balance most of the time. --Foxwarrior 02:29, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

“

Given that classes, feats, items, and spells can (and should, in my incredibly humble opinion) do all sorts of totally freaky things, coming up with definitive and specific limitations is always going to result in a fair number of holes.

”

Yes, and that is precisely why absolute objectivity is an impossible and silly goal. And why attempting such an objective measure by using something like the SGT is just plain deluded. There HAS to be a judgement call. There is simply no other way to get a good measure. And if the community at large fails to generate a consensus through intelligent discourse, then some smaller group has to make a decision, and they should be people who have demonstrated themselves to have sound judgement. --DanielDraco 02:41, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

We had a group of experts once, and it ended badly. Any proposal to recreate a privileged group along those lines seems similarly doomed to failure in a volunteer community, and I'd strongly consider vetoing it. Due to the flux of participants, any disagreements need to be capable of being resolved by fair community discussion and vote or we may as well just use admin/bureaucrat fiat and call it such.

Also, and this is a totally selfish request, but can someone who cares about making this happen strip the proposal out and put it in a new page with some formatting? It's work to follow right now, and I really don't feel like giving it the read it might deserve. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 04:39, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

This is not the same. The idea of my suggestion is to have decisions primarily made by the community. The idea of "experts" is only to moderate it when that doesn't work out. The experts are secondary. The driving force is community decisions. It's much the same as how anyone on the wiki can make an edit, but the small group of admins monitors those edits to make sure things are going the way they should.

Really, the focus of my suggestion is to put this guidlines system in place, and have the categorization decided by community. I'm basically suggesting a decision-making process for these guidlines where it starts with the author setting it to what they think it is; if that fails, the community steps in and sets it to what they think it is; if that fails, we have a group of people to make a final decision.

All that said, I don't want to draw too much focus away from the topic at hand. It's just a possible specific implementation of the guidelines suggested. --DanielDraco 04:54, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Ya know. If I could just add more than one Balance Point to an Article. It would really solve all of 'my' problems. IE: This item ranges in power from 'This Level' to 'This Level' depending on play style. I think the DM's who browse the page would appreciate that. Rather than hoping for a very specific level and having it misrepresented somehow. --Jay Freedman 11:11, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Omitted Classes

Why are the Wilder and Paladin classes not on this page? --Franken Kesey 19:22, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Because this isn't a comprehensive list of all Wizards of the Coast base classes and their balance points? --Dr Platypus 10:07, 20 April 2012 (UTC)