Game Balance

Perfect balance simply doesn't exist, and when a game tries to be balanced, it becomes boring, a sword that does 10 damage per second vs a dagger that does 1 damage but attacks 10 times per second is creating the illusion of choice (armor aside), realistically not all jobs pay the same amount for the same effort, sometimes things are just that good and nothing compares to it.

Now in RPG context, as long as it manages to be fun and everybody gets to shine for a bit then it's good enough, if that doesn't happen everybody would blame the GM and not the system unless it's actually a broken piece of garbage and at that point why are you even wasting your time with it?

>If all you care about is good combat mechanics, play a video game, they're way better at it than P&P could ever be.
Unless you're a system like Ryuutama or Golden Sky Stories where combat is non-existent, you should have decent idea of how you want combat to play out, especially since that's what the players are going to interact with the most.

Hell, part of the reason why balance was such a sour spot in 3.PF was caster supremacy coupled with shitty combat rules that made the whole thing feel like less of a tabletop RPG and more like a shitty video game.

I mean, you could either move and hit someone once or stand still and make multiple hits. You could talk as much as you wanted as a free action but you couldn't use free action to pull a weapon to your grip using a cord. Actions that would normally be assumed were hidden behind shitty feats.

It just made combat a chore unless you were a caster, then you could just cast a spell.

see A grossly imbalanced game will make it harder for everyone in the party to have fun, especially if they're new and don't realize how badly they screwed themselves over by not choosing the optimum path, which causes them to focus on the mechanics at the cost of roleplay, which can breed THAT GUYS and power gamers should nobody step in to say "hey, there's no reason why you shouldn't build for proficiency and for plot."

Plus, nobody likes being the weakest link in the chain, especially when their character concept ends up being drastically weaker than they envisioned.

Not him, but skirmish wargames are better than Pnp for combat. At least the other guy is TRYING to kick my ass in a wargame.

>Hell, part of the reason why balance was such a sour spot in 3.PF was caster supremacy coupled with shitty combat rules that made the whole thing feel like less of a tabletop RPG and more like a shitty video game.

>I literally can't stop shitposting

I wonder when you'll grow out of using every opportunity to exaggerate just so you can show people how much you don't like something.

Here's your (you).

So what, do you aggressively pat your enemies on the head until they decide to leave or something?

>Ignores everything wrong with 3.PF
>Smugly proclaims someone's a troll just because they criticized PF.
Typical 3aboo, can't wait to see you argue in circles about how 3.PF was the best because it's popular for being the best for the umpteenth time this week.

Also can't wait to hear how everyone who doesn't like 3.PF is a troll/hater/contrarian/never-actually-played-the-game/butthurt/etc. because you can't actually defend your system's flaws.

You already got your (you).
No need to go out of your way to paint yourself as a contrarian troll when you were already called out on it. How fucked must your head be to think you weren't already obvious enough?

Not nearly as effective when you spam the same canned response in every other thread in the catalog chief. I'd say go back to /pfg/ but last I heard even they don't want you around.

>I literally can't stop shitposting

>This is probably stealth bait, but fuck it.

It's hardly stealthy. It's just the same contrarian trolls doing the same things they did two weeks ago. They come in cycles, and today is just a particularly bad day for them.

The most important part of game balance is to make sure your player's characters each have a role to play. If someone's character is just their, and is strictly worse at everything, then that can easily soil a player's attitude towards the game. The issue with game balance is that their will always be those who search for exploits, and those who just don't see synergies between abilities. Then on the GM's side, they aren't always great at involving lesser players, or putting actual obstacles and not XP sack irritants for the more powerful characters. A game can be great fun with a Master and his Apprenntice styled play with an obvious in balance between party members, but the Master can't be allowed to solve every problem.

I GM a lot... my experience is that players don't care so much about the raw numbers. What they want are their moments to be important and contribute to the narrative, be it a fight or social setting. Also this contribution doesn't need to be good - it can also be fun to play up a weakness, which promotes teamwork and character growth. The worst is when there's a long period of time when a character is just sort of there and has nothing to do or add to the encounter.

The highest notes I see a player hit are when they do the "I have just the right thing!" sort of exclamation, be it a skill, or magic item, or point in a debate even. If a character is lacking somehow, make sure they have enough cards in their hand to keep them engaging.

At the same time though, there shouldn't really be a "master" in a party of apprentices in the first place unless caveats are made between the members of the group with the apprentice(s) knowing straight up "hey, you're going to be dead weight for a while unless the GM gives you something later on to keep up."

I mean, some people like playing underdogs who become big dogs later on, but most people would be pretty miffed if they signed up to play a certain character concept, only to find out that it's far weaker than everyone else in the party and it's now too late to choose another concept.

>good combat mechanics
>play a video game
Name a video game with good combat mechanics, so that I can laugh at you some more.

Mount & blade

Fighting games?

I actually quite like the modern XCOM series, but I feel like it's a step below 4e.

Balance is important to ensure that, when you publish a game, none of it is wasted. A severely unbalanced system just means you're wasting page space on options people will never want to use or that aren't worth using despite how cool the fluff is. You don't need everything to be exactly equal, there'll always be an optimisation gap, but someone shouldn't be punished by the system for trying to build a character that seems thematically appropriate to the premise, and your system should give them the proper information to make informed decisions if there are options that are more niche or specialised available. If two things cost the same character creation or progression resource, there should be a good reason for both to exist. If one makes the other obsolete, you have a problem.

A few times, I've put forward the idea of just making all casting MAD, with Int affecting bonus spells, Wis affecting your resistances, and Cha affecting the DCs of your spells.

Though, I haven't tried running it in a game, and most of my groups dislikes playing casters. Those who do like it, tend to play blasty rather than controlly.

Which, is a valid part of the disparity counter argument, that very few casters play super optimally.

Asymmetrical game balance certainly has its place, but speaking as a storyteller/DM fuck you if you actively lump the responsibility for balance onto me and expect me to call you a "game designer" or anything other than an asshole.

You don't define "balance" so I'm ignoring that bit. People heap all kinds of notions onto the word.

>play a campaign where some PC's were definitely much more powerful than others
Sure. I've played several superhero games, and used to play RIFTs fairly often. It can be fun, but I generally prefer games where everybody is kind of on the same level.

What makes it suck is when one character can do almost *everything*, and doesn't need the other players.

Superhero groups are a great literary template for this. Any comic with Superman has to gimp him or send him far away for the others to get any spotlight. Because if Superman is there, he's just going to win singlehandedly.

Whereas X-men had a variety of powers, ranging from awesome to lame... but Cyclops can't solve everything with eye blasts.

Well, sometimes superhero stories manage it by what are effectively metamechanics. The story will bend around itself to ensure that everyone gets a chance to be awesome, regardless of their power level, because their emotional connections to other characters, their ideals and beliefs and who they are as a person are more important, the powers just acting as an exaggerated metaphor for those traits and a way of explaining why they have an impact.

>thinly veiled D&D hate thread
You fucked it up in the last line, dipshit.

...

Always nice to see that old sack of lies and bullshit trotted out. Really confirms the bizarre desperation 3.PF fanboys have to blame all wrongs on something else and to never admit any fault in their pure, perfect system. It always strikes me as bloody strange behaviour from the people who won the edition war, they've never been able to stop fighting it long after their victory was complete.

You should really indicate in the filename that that pic is being sarcastic, it's hard to tell over the internet.

>Superhero groups are a great literary template for this. Any comic with Superman has to gimp him or send him far away for the others to get any spotlight. Because if Superman is there, he's just going to win singlehandedly.
You mispelled "The Flash" user.

3aboos once again proving themselves to be the worst community ever spawned. Take this trophy.

Silent Storm

Panzerkleins ruin the game, also it's worse than Jagged Alliance 2.

Panzerkleins force you to change up your tactics, and they only show up in the last few levels. They serve as end game enemies just fine.

>also it's worse than Jagged Alliance 2
And?

This. Each player needs an effective role they can play.

The real criticisms about caster supremacy aren't about damage. It's the idea that the caster can fly off and have his own battle up in the sky or he can cast invisibility, knock, detect traps, etc. and now the thief is worthless.

And not to pick on D&D, this is also a major problem in shitty sci fi games. A pilot and one guy controlling the weapon systems could be the only ones active in combat while everyone else sits with their thumbs up their asses. It's even worse since you're just splitting the actions of one 'ship' character between multiple people. Hell, with cyberspace in a crappy system, most of the party isn't even aware of what's going on in a scene and that shit tends to be fiddly and slow-paced.

>also it's worse than Jagged Alliance 2.

Man, that's like comparing a 4x game to SMAC. You're probably right that it's worse, but you're an asshole for doing that.

Right, and if you're playing a game where everyone gets the same number of meta points, then they're balanced mechanically, and the description is just window dressing. Doesn't matter if you defeat the villain by kicking him into the sun, or by bringing him to remorseful tears with your speech about justice and human decency.

An interesting approach I've seen a few systems take is exchanging those meta points for in universe power. So you might have Jimmy Olsen and Superman in the same game, but while Superman has all the power he can't indirectly influence a situation, while Jimmy is always stumbling onto just the right thing at the right time, having circumstance favour him or otherwise being able to bend the narrative in interesting ways.

I've never seen a system implement it well enough for me to be happy with it, but as a concept I think it has a lot of potential.

>A pilot and one guy controlling the weapon systems could be the only ones active in combat
This is a major issue I've always had with scifi systems. A lot of the cool shit is set aside as a separate mini-game.
>ship to ship combat
>cyberspace style hacking
>scientific research

I think one of the reasons the D&D formula has endured is that it narrows the scope of the game. You're a group of adventurers, out for treasure and glory. Magical research mostly takes place off screen, and if you go off on your own to be a scholar or a merchant, then you're probably retiring the character.

I've always wanted to try designing an RPG based around a group of characters controlling a single thing, whether that's a tank, a spaceship, a naval vessel or a giant robot. I feel like you could do something really cool if you managed to nail a set of mechanics that was all about teamwork and cooperation, not leaving anyone out no matter how you're doing it. But every time I've started on it I've really struggled to get past that basic concept and figure out how to implement it. Some day someone will, and it'll be fucking amazing.

>Is it possible to have a fundamentally unbalanced RPG that is unaffected by the disparity, or even improved by it?
Rogue Trader

The programmer has to make assumptions in order to can the game for sale. He cannot handle unexpected problems on the fly. That's why you get tired of a game when you've exhausted the limited problem set he provided. The computer is basically serving you a math problem and you solve it. That's not a game, that's a career you can begin through Everest College. Almost every game is about the same simple arithmetic, and the logic we rely on every day is eventually thrown under the bus in every one of them, because if they made one with real logic we'd play it forever and they'd never sell another game and go out of business. You might as well be interminably playing Super Mario, you're solving the same problem with a different skin on it.

That is one of the most pointlessly reductive bits of faux-intellectual idiocy I have ever read.

True. Boardgames are usually more fun, when balanced.

Hell, it doesn't even manage to make claims that are fundamentally true, but utterly fucking useless and misapplied. It has to lie in order to be as stupid as it is. That's pretty impressive.