Balance that has IMPACT

Comments · 124

• MY

  @MysticExtra · 1 month ago · pinned

  I've always wanted to find a way to express this idea of balance over time and I remember you showing me this chart and feeling like you hit the nail on the head without so much as a word uttered about what you were gonna say. And of course, you go make the excalidraw video and articulate it perfectly. Peter, this is why we all look up to you!

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• BE

  @benjimanblakely2293 · 1 month ago

  This is certainly somewhere the Cypher System, 4e DnD, and  Draw Steel shine on.

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• KA

  @kayosiiii · 1 month ago

  I do agree with the central thesis, but I do have some counterpoints. <br><br>The reason you have overlap is so that the party so that you don&apos;t have to have a member of every class present in order for a party to function. If we take something like opening locks, &nbsp;the knock spell is there in case the party does not have a rogue, as long as there is an opportunity cost for memorizing a particular spell, this works really well. The problem with 5E D&amp;D is that they reduced the effectiveness of skills (through bounded accuracy) without similarly balancing magic and reduced the opportunity cost for using the knock spell.<br>Basically rogues got worse, wizards got better.<br><br>One thing I like about having the situation being unbalanced is that it makes it more likely that an intelligent GM will realize that mechanics are just one way of making a Player Character have impact. By taking into account the non mechanical specifics of the characters, a GM can craft an adventure that has important impactful decisions for each player in a way that can really elevate the game above what you would get if you were relying on mechanics alone to do this task.

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• LA

  @lance555 · 1 month ago

  The Draw Steel Elementalist class is a great case study for this, especially the fire specialty.<br><br>The Elementalist gets access to a lot of really cool spells that don&apos;t require any class resource; therefore, you don&apos;t need to be in combat to use them.<br><br>I used the spell Return to Formlessness to create handholds and footholds for the party to climb walls on two occasions, and I have used it to destroy the core of a magic cannon.

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• CA

  @Capt.Fail. · 1 month ago

  The biggest issue when it comes to balance in TTRPGs, I think, is the problem of assumptions. <br><br>In order to create a baseline of balance, you need a framework of assumptions under which the balance is considered. For D&amp;D, it’s the whole 6-8 encounter adventuring day attrition model. In your suggestion of balance, it’s some configuration of how often certain situations appear and how important it is when they do. <br><br>If a table breaks these assumptions, then balance is also thrown off. Tables don’t usually run the recommended number of encounters, so Long Rest based characters (largely casters) do better than they’re intended to compared to Short Rest characters.<br><br>If a table doesn’t run situations in a proportionate way to how you balanced classes for “spikes of utility,” then the classes built for situations that don’t really occur or aren’t important end up feeling useless. And it seems, to me, extremely difficult to weight these situations appropriately in design because of just how flexible TTRPGs are as a medium. &nbsp;Which correspondingly makes balance extremely difficult (at least when it comes to utility; “combat” is a much more narrowly defined space, and I think balance there is much easier to achieve consistently).<br><br>All of this assumes you do accurately design to your baseline, of course. The actuality of D&amp;D is non-spellcasters will die before the spellcasters’ effectiveness ever drops to their level (they aren’t waiting around for their moment to shine, they’re dead before it ever arrives).

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• DE

  @deeps6979 · 1 month ago

  There&apos;s also something to be said for how various classes interact and change the impact curve. The caster might start with a full spell pool, but it&apos;s often the lower-impact actions over time that save the casters from having to waste resources. The rogue picks the lock instead of casting Knock, or the trained medic does healing instead of using a spell slot. So the casters have <b>lower</b> impact (maintaining high potential) until needed. <br><br>And you&apos;re certain right, it&apos;s about having good choices, which means the system and the GM need to create opportunities (ie, the Pillars of Play). <br>I think that&apos;s why I generally stick to casters and/or utility characters (why I like Bards so much), because the <b>frequency</b> of making interesting decisions is higher, even if they&apos;re not earth-shattering. <br>It&apos;s also why I find the typical fighter archetype to be really boring. Systems frequently giving them limited skill selection and limited reach makes them typically not good for much besides the occasional Athletics check. They&apos;re consistent and usually effective for combat, but in most other contexts, they&apos;re basically wooden props with a bored player behind them. Extra flexibility could be brought in at the system level by making sure the character has <b>some</b> other noncombat influence, like writing all backgrounds to have a social skill relevant to that background or ensuring each class has a way to approach each &quot;pillar&quot;/game mode with some kind of effectiveness.

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• SA

  @samchafin4623 · 1 month ago

  Making the other players wait for the mage to run out of magic bullets to feel relevant reminds me of the old-school D&amp;D design of making the magic-user waiting levels to feel as useful or relevant as the fighter. As always, very thoughtful; thank you.

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• AR

  @ardidsonriente2223 · 1 month ago

  I try to get players to do something together in most scenes, or create specific challenges for each PC to shine. If someone has not done something interesting in a while, I try to facilitate an opening for them, unless they are just happy watching the havoc from a calmer place. <br><br>I do this through story, scenes, pnjs, foes and obstacles, sometimes using the weather, or the landscape, clues and questions, and sometimes by forcing serendipity. I rarely need to push hard, the players normaly take the spot with ease. All they need are a few toys to interact.<br><br>So balance... narrative balance requires care and attention, so everyone, no matter the character archetype, power level or stats, can have the spotlight and do something cool. <br><br>I totally forget about mechanical balance, because it is never a problem. When the focus is on the characters and their story, assymetries became a feature, imbalances turn into puzzles to solve, and the raw numbers lose relevance.

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• AV

  @averagearchergaming · 1 month ago

  I have a working theory about why this takes place, and it is linked to what is perhaps my greatest criticism of the D&amp;D rules: The presence and use of Hit Points, or an equivalent additive/ablative measure of health or life... particularly when it is abstracted in the way D&amp;D has always done.<br><br>What I mean by additive/ablative is that as the measure is reduced by damage on a point for point basis until it reaches a set threshold at which point the character either dies or becomes incapacitated (ablative), and that the total available points increases as characters progress through development and advancement (additive). And by abstracted, I mean the fact that a &quot;hit&quot; with &quot;damage&quot; in D&amp;D does not actually mean that you hit your opponent and caused damage to them; it may mean that your attack came so close to them that their resolve has been shaken, and thus they lost a little bit of combat effectiveness (which is why healing is so easy in that game, and why a good night&apos;s rest can literally bring you from death&apos;s door to being completely fine.)<br><br>In these games, physical weapons tend to remain static in how much damage they can inflict. They do the same amount of basic damage whether their target is a common peasant or a seasoned mercenary. The result is that a slashing blow from a sword could easily dispatch a low-level character, while a higher-level character can easily shrug off multiple such hits - even <b>critical</b> hits - without slowing down. 10 hit points means death to a level 1 commoner... but to a level 10 warrior, it&apos;s barely a scratch.<br><br>Meanwhile, magical effects tend to scale with the character&apos;s progression. The higher their level, the more damage their spells can cause - and so their effectiveness and relative power inevitably outpaces mundane combat options.<br><br>To put it another way, martial characters in such games rarely have the ability to keep pace with even their own progression in terms of the ability to contribute meaningfully in combat, while arcane characters in these games typically have no such impediment.<br><br>The systems where, in my experience, this problem is either completely or largely avoided are those where health/life (and the loss thereof) is handled with a &quot;Wounding&quot; system that stays relatively consistent even as the characters advance in capability. Savage Worlds and Shadowrun are two good examples. A beginning Novice level character in Savage Worlds can take 3 Wounds and stay functional; the 4th Wound lays them out. The exact same is true for a hardened Legendary level villain. 4 Wounds and they go down. Shadowrun is similar, throughout all its editions.<br><br>As a result, each archetypal character style remains largely relevant - even at high enemy levels - because they have consistently applicable methods of contributing to the fight in their own way. They are much more balanced.

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• TH

  @The_Adjudicator_Distemperance · 2 weeks ago (edited)

  You asked how games accomplish this well?<br><br>This video focuses a lot on the impact between standard RPG classes, but in a classless game, like mine, where characters learn Talents/feats/special abilities only, that&apos;s what defines what archetype they are, and your latter example of characters with more equivalent impact spikes (who are thus &quot;balanced&quot;) is definitely more the norm (as long as the game is designed well and each Talent has relatively similar levels of circumstantial impact)!<br><br>With classless characters, there usually isn&apos;t a &quot;spellcasting&quot; class feature that unlocks multitudinous options and power, each Miracle Talent is equivalent to a single spell, so you choose what you learn wisely to suit your character&apos;s archetype or to help with scenarios you want mastery over. In these systems, characters you&apos;ve decided you want to be roguish can do roguish things with roguish Talents, but they could also elect to learn a roguish-flavoured Miracle as well, if their Abilities (Ability Scores) can support that Talent.<br><br>This is the way it works in my game, Distemperance: The Fated.<br><br>The way I need to ensure equivalent impact between characters then rests on how I&apos;ve designed the Talents, how it&apos;s the Adjudicator&apos;s job to challenge weaknesses and highlight strengths, and how the procedures for Encounter Design, scaling, and the circumstances of the narrative support those things.<br><br>Different, but the same really. Games where classes are designed well will introduce balance through impact like Peter represented in the video in similar ways - for classless games you just don&apos;t need to think in terms of the class as the unit of where the impact arises, you move it down to the &quot;Talent&quot; level.<br><br>Balancing things that aren&apos;t character-facing is a topic not covered in this video, but, Peter, you&apos;ve covered it in detail in other videos about Encounters. Encounter/ GM vs player balance exists - it is something you ensure you have the scaffolding for in game procedures you design and in GM prep to develop spaces for ideas to become concrete in the arising narrative, but it&apos;s something that should remain fluid within that scaffolding, so you can adapt and challenge your players in line with their expectations or the tone your are trying to portray.<br><br>Thanks for the great video!

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• CH

  @christhiancosta1844 · 1 month ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wro4bQZGeWg&amp;t=361">6:01</a> I&apos;ve been saying this for years at point<br><br>Nice to see it on YouTube

• LA

  @LandonWilliams-r7h · 3 weeks ago

  Awesome advice. I certainly agree. I believe Daggerheart does a good job at each character hashing their own niche.