>Balance? What is this? An MMO?
At least Mutants & Masterminds is honest when it openly admits the game forgoes balance for the sake of narrative. It knows it can be broken over your knee, but it trusts you not to do that.
>>43705599
>forgoes balance for the sake of narrative
I'm absolutely okay with this. But when I 3.5 degenerate flaps his facial vagina in such manner - it triggers me hard. D&D, especially 3.5, is rules-heavy combat oriented game.
Though, it is not the point of this thread - post typical /tg/ bullshit that gets you.
>people hating systems for no reason other than because they're not dnd
I played 3.5 for years without the supposed gross imbalance of the game being a problem.
But I played it with a competent GM and players who weren't assholes. So I'm pretty sure that's the difference between me and everyone who complains about it. They suck at running and playing games, and just generally at being decent people in general. The last really shows through in how much they scream about it online.
>>43705728
>But I played it with a competent GM and players who weren't assholes.
God almighty, this.
The real issue is that my entire experience with 3.5 is template-abusing chaotic randumb assholes and a That DM.
>post typical /tg/ bullshit that gets you.
For me it's this:
>>43705728
>Well I have no problem with [this know issue] because I play with BETTER PEOPLE
>>43705759
But it's true. In most cases, a shit system can be mitigated if you have good players who are willing to deal with it like you are.
>>43705728
The first time I played, the party had a Monk, a Finesse Fighter, and a Druid with an animal companion.
The game can just as easily break down with players who don't know what they're doing as it can with system masters.
>>43705776
"A shit system can be mitigated" is different than "the system is good, you just suck".
>>43705492
>Playing FATE because I thought it might be nice to try
"What do you mean I can't channel all of my actions off my Magic stat without spending Fate Points?"
Nigga, your Magic stat is your +4, I am not letting you use that for literally everything.
Either take the -2 penalty that gives you a Fate Point to use it for everything or forget about it.
I almost can't believe people are willing to minmax fucking FATE of all things.
>>43705776
This doesn't make system any less shit.
I mean, you can just toss a ball with your friends and will be entertaining enough, but it doesn't make ball a paramount of leisure time.
The problem with balance in rpgs is unlike in competitive multiplayer games where there can be a shifting meta that accepts one strategy as superior but still has ways for others to counter it allowing other players to build around the dominant strategy creating tiers RPGs with players vs GM the players aren't trying to counter each other and the GM is not encouraged to specifically counter 1 player and probably would counter the other players even if he did target 1 with an abusive strategy
>>43705830
Nobody counters anyone in 3.5 on purpose, yet it still happens.
>>43705728
Been playing 3.5 since it came out and never had a problem. I've never understood the imbalance complaints here, but maybe you've hit on the reason. If a character is lagging in some way, there is always some way to bring them back into relevance, whether it's through encounter design or plot or item or even just the players working together to make it work. We've had level 20 encounters where the fighter was the hero, and level 1 battles where the wizard saved the day. No big deal.
>[System A] sucks because I can't do one specific thing as easily as I could in [System B], why would anyone play [System A].
I see this most often with 3.PF players talking about any system that doesn't allow the same "do anything you want at not cost in 6 seconds" style of magic they're familiar with. Somewhere in the archives should be someone's claim that 4e is shit because they have to rely on slower and more expensive rituals to create castles and reshape stone walls instead of just casting a standard-action spell.
>Defending a terrible rules system by stating that its possible to just ignore the rules
>>43705776
Well, yes. Deep down, you're a bunch of grown men playing pretend and doing improv acting while cracking jokes and eating snacks; this is inherently fun, and so even zero-rules freedom will work with a good enough group. The existence of GM and player discretion means *everything* can work, with the right group. Someone out there is running FATAL and having a blast.
The purpose of a rules system is to relax the requirements of what constitutes a "good enough group" to have fun, and/or to improve the experience that a "good enough group" will have. The better it does at this, the better of a system it is.
That is the problem with D&D. Not that it's somehow "not fun", but that it requires either quite a skilled group to play it and not have the balance problems emerge, or such a well-knit group that the balance problems don't matter.
>>43705830
That is one hell of a run on sentence dude.
>>43705694
It has a detailed combat system that eats up much of the space in the books, but I've never felt that a 3.5e campaign needed to be combat oriented. The combat rules are just there when you need them.
>>43705874
Just getting a bad match up one time happens to every build, but if it was a PvP meta and say for example lightning based build was considered the strongest in a vacuum so the majority of other players used build that had a way to counter that it would be a healthy meta where the Lightning players would switch to build the counter some of the other builds RPG s can't do that because it would be very on flavorful for the whole world to become non-conductive
>>43706291
Man, dots and commas, use them please!
>>43706258
>Huge amount of rules are dedicated to combat.
>Nearly every class feature is dungeoncrawling-oriented if not straight up combat-oriented.
>Spells and magic items center around careers in killing monsters and taking their stuff.
Dude, it's okay to say it's a combat-focused game. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, if more people realized it instead of thinking it's supposed to handle any sort of fantasy game, attitudes towards the system would improve because people would stop trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
>>43705751
>>43705728
PREACH
Also Pathfinder is not a bad system you are a bad player/GM
>>43706258
>but I've
And I never felt it your way. Because our experiences are subjective.
But you said it yourself that most of the content provided is about combat. Premade adventure modules are almost exclusively combat heavy. If you'll look around the forums dedicated to 3.5 - you'll see the most discussed topics are always about crunch related to combat. Even the horrible concept of ivory tower design illustrates how combat oriented this game is.
I mean, it was just a glorified dungeon crawl that had a long run and developed a hip of other nifty extensions.
>>43706385
Pathfinder is objectively a bad system.
>>43706385
>Also Pathfinder is not a bad system you are a bad player/GM
>>43706188
>Someone out there is running FATAL and having a blast
Not that I ever want to meet such a person.
>>43706438
Quite literally no worse than 3.5
Your objectivity is subjectivity
>>43706467
3.5 is an objectively bad system. But at least it wasn't as influenced by the developer's politics.
>>43706438
There is no objectively bad system that isn't F.A.T.A.L. anon.
That said it is my subjective opinion that Pathfinder is bad,
>>43706487
who gives a shit about the devs politics? They made the system they wanted to play. Whats wrong with that?
>>43706516
I dunno, considering it fails to work as advertised, I'd say that makes it an objectively bad system.
Like, as much as I dislike FATE, I can't call it an objectively bad system. It does what it says that it will do. It not doing what *I* want doesn't make it objectively bad. I can, though, still call it a subjectively bad system as I disagree with the system's focus/"gaming philosophy."
However, objectively bad system ≠impossible to have fun with. My neighbor and I had fun throwing nails at each other as kids and it was a blast; that doesn't mean playing that game wasn't an objectively bad idea.
>there are people in this thread who don't think pathfinder is a horrible and broken mess of a game.
Goodness people. Even /pfg/ knows full well how horrible paizo is at game design, no one there will ever defend the system as being any bloody good without massive amounts of 3rd party content to overhaul the thing.
>>43705492
If I get a player like this, I usually just have an encounter that is way too hard, like a group of dragons versus level 1 player characters. Then, when the player complains, I go "balance? what's that?" and they usually shut up. Then I just roll back the last 30 minutes and continue as normal.
>>43705728
yeah but if you have competent GM and players you don't need any rules. You could just freeform RP and have fun. The whole point of the rule systems is so that you don't need competent players to have fun.
>>43705718
>people hating systems for no reason other than because they're dnd
>>43706520
So if I decided to write a setting with a bard named Pike Pearls whose songs about orcs' inherent savagery get him kicked out of most cities and he insists on telling stories about a reincarnated drow who's not a drow this time with a dinosaur companion who aids the rebellion she fights beside by seducing the enemy leaders, you'd be fine with that?
>>43706866
>reincarnated drow who's not a drow this time with a dinosaur companion who aids the rebellion she fights beside by seducing the enemy leaders,
That sounds pretty cool
>>43706796
personally I think vanilla pathfinder works pretty well.
but what do I know? it's only one of 30 odd other systems I use regularly
>>43706839
>thinking that actually happens
Every time I've seen people trashtalk D&D it's because of actual issues with the system or editionwar shitposting.
I mean, I'm sure there are hipsters out there that do this shit, but in the vast majority of cases, people either hate on D&D for the mechanics or having one of the worst playerbases in all of traditional gaming.
>>43706835
>yeah but if you have competent GM and players you don't need any rules. You could just freeform RP and have fun. The whole point of the rule systems is so that you don't need competent players to have fun.
There is a middle ground between considering RAW immutable and just throwing away all the rules and doing whatever you want. Or have you never heard of rule 0, or the concept of house rules?
Based on your comment about punishing your players for having an opinion you don't like, you're probably a shitty GM anyway.
>>43706938
Well, you're in luck, because it's James Jacob's self-insert, I mean wafiu, I mean past character who was adapted into Pathfinder.It hurts me that she exists, just ask in the forum about her and her WIS score.
>>43706835
>If I get a player like this, I usually just have an encounter that is way too hard, like a group of dragons versus level 1 player characters.
There's nothing wrong with having unbalanced encounters, though. It's not like they have to fight the dragons, they can always run away.
>>43706962
Virt, is that you?
>>43706866
>dinosaur companion who aids the rebellion she fights beside by seducing the enemy leaders
That's one hell of a dinosaur.
>>43707060
When is it ever not virt?
He's just scared to put his trip on because he knows he's gonna get his ass banned and humiliated again.
>>43707071
You know, normally I would have corrected that run-on sentence, but in retrospect I wouldn't even be surprised if the dinosaur could seduce the enemy leaders.
>>43707012
What the fuck are you even saying? One anon argues that rules exist to give a shared framework or reference to the game, and that the more cohesive the group, the less those rules are required because there's a natural, innate cohesiveness. You respond with the assertion that he's ignoring a middleground between iron RAW and total freeform and give a reminder that Rule 0 exists.
What you're saying doesn't have much to do with what you're responding to. It's like you're having a totally different argument.
>>43706970
I agree with you.
The sad part is when they trashtalk people for enjoying a game they like playing when their arguments about 'imbalance' and 'caster supremacy' and 'bad system' don't sway the people they're arguing with.
>>43707012
Didn't you know, Rule 0 and Houserules aren't allowed for Pf because it makes the game playable.
>>43707132
You can have good experiences with it (I know I have), but Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition is still horribly unbalanced from a gameplay perspective.
>>43706341
>dots
???
>>43705830
>>43706291
HOLY SHIT NIGGA, USE YOUR DAMNED PERIODS! Is English your second language, or are you just an idiot?
ITT: Stockholm Syndrome at its finest.
>>43706796
>no one there will ever defend the system as being any bloody good without massive amounts of 3rd party content to overhaul the thing.
that's because /pfg/ thirsts for the semen of dreamscarred press like desert travelers thirst for water
they're not really an unbiased source on the competence of paizo
>>43707327
>pointless namefag
>being an idiot
As expected
They consume 3pp because DSP is actually competent at game design and balance (most of the time), actually makes an effort to communicate and take criticism from thier consumers, and are usually frank abiuttgame design decisions and when they fuck up.
Meanwhile Paizo is the complete opposite, save for the B-team and Mark, since they can do good with the minor splats without the horrific executive meddling.
>>43706355
>>43706434
My point is that while the system is combat heavy, and many of those who play it are all about combat, the groups I've been in generally are story focused and we've never felt bogged down by 3.5e's numbers. We can go whole sessions with barely touching our dice.
I'm not saying everyone has to be this way or that 3.5e is flawless, I'm just saying the system has never been an obstacle for us.
Occasionally we get a power gamer that comes in with his 1337 minmaxed builds, but they realize soon enough that we're either not the right group for them or they start getting into the RP aspect
>why not play simpler system?
Because 3.5 and now 5 are familiar and easy for our purposes
>>43708119
>Because 3.5 and now 5 are familiar and easy for our purposes
See, you could have switched from 3.5 to, say, Savage Worlds like 7 years ago instead of waiting for 5e to come out. If you don't touch dice anyway, may as well paly a system that's not bloated to shit.
>>43708191
That's the thing though. I know they're bloated, I have all the 3.5 books on pdf and both editions mm/phb/dmg in paper. However I never feel overwhelmed or obligated to keep my nose in the books. They're just there for reference, like monster ideas, reasonable item prices, etc.
The very core of the system seems basic to me: roll a d20, add relevant modifiers, did you meet the target? And a step further for combat, if you hit, roll appropriate dmg die and add modifier.
Simple enough to understand in 2 minutes, strong enough to not feel like we're in a mother-may-I scenario.
I'll take a look at savage worlds but I don't really feel like anything is missing from the dnd editions I play. Except maybe use rope skill in 5e :P
>>43708119
I can open a bottle of beer with my keys quite successfully.
In fact, I don't have a dedicated opener for beer bottles at all, since I always use keys.
Does this mean keys aren't keys but bottle openers?
>>43708390
I'm not sure why you're advocating for a system you've stripped down to the point that its not the same game any more.
>>43706866
Oh my god I need to know more!
>>43706188
I understand the hate FATAL gets. I've read it, it's entirely awful.
But why the attention? It's more notable now for its awfulness and gets more play as a joke than jf people had just ignored it.
>>43708437
I'm not so much pushing my preferred systems on you guys as I am just sharing why I don't have a beef with something many fa/tg/uys seem to hate
>>43706385
>Pathfinder is not a bad system
Er...
Okay, I agree with you, but need an asterisk. Pathfinder is not a bad system *if* you are working out the design oversights that have no eratta, and play it loose.
>>43708698
Its a meme. At this point, people reference it because people reference it.
>>43708119
>the rules are good
>we don't use the rules
>but still feel the need to comment that the rules we don't use are good
>won't change systems because the rules that we don't use will be different
>>43709198
Yes it sounds retarded when put into those terms
>>43708930
>Pathfinder is not a bad system *if* you are working out the design oversights that have no eratta, and play it loose.
Do you realize how circular this line of reasoning is?
>>43709867
Yes. It's a sickness.
>>43710096
It's a symptom of assuming that your conclusion ("[thing] is best") is true and then looking for reasons to support it.
>>43705492
What's wrong with getting rid of balance? For games based around dungeon crawling or generally encouraging optimisation, I could see why you *might* want it, but for fluffy narrativist or crunchy simulations I don't see why you'd ever require it. And in the latter case you'd want to avoid it.
>>43710309
It kind of comes down to how you're defining balance. People tend to mistakenly use the word to mean "Options X, Y, and Z are all equally strong," which leads to this dumb argument about balance vs realism or balance vs story. It should actually be that X, Y, and Z give you roughly equal value for their cost, where value and cost are often hard to measure given hidden resources. Let's say you were making a crunchy simulation about modern operators operating.
>GUN AND SWORD SHOULD BE BALANCE
>no one uses fucking swords
>swords are not in the game
>swords are now balanced (in that they are not an option)
>GENERIC MODERN RIFLE VS PISTOL BALANCE
>generic modern rifle is objectively better at direct shootouts than generic modern pistol
>generic modern pistol is smaller and lighter
>generic modern pistol is better for people whose primary job is not getting into direct shootouts but still might need to deal with garbage level threats
>balance achieved
In the stupid version, generic modern rifle, generic modern pistol, and sword would all do five damage per round, and range wouldn't be a thing. No one ever proposes this, so it's not worth arguing against.
>>43710269
Did you miss the "er" and all those conditional modifiers I applied to the "good" word?
>>43705492
I don't believe balance exists.
http://johnwickpresents.com/games/game-designs/chess-is-not-an-rpg-the-illusion-of-game-balance/
Try and forget the biais toward who wrote this article.
>>43710525
That article makes the false assumption that DPS is the only type of balance that matters. Evenly dividing the spotlight is important, but that's easier when a particular character isn't rendered useless due to what another is capable of.
Everyone should feel like their character brings something to the table, and nobody wants their character to be replaced by a simple spell or magic item.
>>43705925
Sauce?
>>43710525
>trying to balance classes is bad
>instead, make sure classes are all be able to contribute meaningfully and get a fair amount of time to do the thing that they're good at
The point about damage by weapon is decent (fun fact: dungeon world does damage by class almost always ignoring the specific weapon) but not actually relevant.
>>43710587
Sure. But I don't know why some games need to work out this way when there are tons of games out there, not necessarily hippie ones, that don't give a shit about "balance" and still work perfectly.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess is your perfect exemple of a D&D clone that doesn't need any form of balance, because it relies almost exclusively on player skill instead of character skill. Or if you take hippie games, Apocalypse World doesn't give a shit if say, you've got -1 in Hard, even if you do try to solve every issues with violence, because success or failure isn't a matter of challenge, it's a matter of making the game go forward.
To me, a game is objectively good when it does what it wants to do efficiently, that's as simple as that. Take Paranoia for exemple, it doesn't account for balance or fairness since it's not important to the game. Now, I can't really tell what D&D 3E+ is made for since I can't enjoy it as a system, be it read, played or GMed, but if someone does know what the design intentions are behind it, as in "what does that game does?", we'll know if it does what it wants to do well, and if it's a good game at all or not.
>>43710710
>but if someone does know what the design intentions are behind it
to make money, and commoditize the pnp market.
i guess it succeeded.
>>43710677
That's one thing I really like in Dungeon World, I'd like to use it in a more trad' game someday.
The thing is, he's not saying balancing classes are bad, he's saying there is an assumption around here that roleplaying games rely on balance to work, and that it has no basis in the reality of the game. And what I'm saying is it doesn't need to exist at all in games that don't require it to fulfill their agenda.
Dogs in the Vineyard doesn't need balance, thus, it has none.
The issue with a lot of post WotC RPGs these days is that they think about balancing their games, the same way they think about tons of stuff that sounds necessary and obvious, like say, "how should we manage hitpoints" instead of first thinking about what would be cool to do what you're supposed to do in said game.
Vampire : The Masquerade doesn't need a splatbook for guns. Now, I agree that, say, Cyberpunk does, since it states that Style is everything, so it's better to use a cool ass gun. But it fails at making it a good part of its system by foregoing any actual rule to push people toward Style, since everybody with common sense and who knows the system is going to take the best gun.
>>43710748
Sure, I'm not saying it's not a successful game.
But I don't think it makes it a good game, does it?
Even if it were great, I don't think that's what would make it so, is what I mean by that.
>>43710748
Also, I'm gonna get back to LotFP and point out Raggi's business model is everything WotC isn't, and it made a shitton of money, and is still gaining popularity days after days (tho it has its community of haters too, but D&D 3.X does have that trait in common with it).
So yeah, it's not "the" solution as far as "but how do we sell a game that doesn't do the thing this way?".
>>43705492
No this is Patrick.
>>43706385
Pathfinder's not a bad system, but it could use some improvement.
I want to kick the guy who wrote the Arcanist class in the goddamn face.
>>43705492
The only person I've met in real life who said something like this was some ungodly horrible looking neckbeard who interrupted my group playing a game of D&D 4th Edition to bitch at us for not playing Pathfinder instead of "that World of Warcraft rip-off game". This event only reinforces my belief that 4th edition is best edition and that most critics of it are morons.
>>43710905
>it could use some improvement.
You win the platinum medal for understatement senpai
>>43710786
>Dogs in the Vineyard doesn't need balance, thus, it has none
I'm not familiar with DitV at all (unless it's the one with the words->fists->guns escalation mechanic, in which case I've heard of that) but I really doubt that the system allows one character to render a second character obsolete, so that probably isn't true. You're using the "SWORD EQUALS GUN" definition of balance.
>>43705728
Consider the 8th level druid. Now, an 8th level druid can do many things, like cast spells or shapeshift, but they also get an animal companion. At 8th level, their animal companion is likely to be a brown bear. Now, a Brown Bear gets 3 attacks a round, is Large (he gets free attacks whenever anyone moves up to him), has a 27 strength, and can make grapple checks as a free action whenever it hits you. An 8th level fighter, for comparison, can only make 2 attacks a round, although he probably has better accuracy and AC and he should have more tricks to use than a bear.
>But that's just one of the druid's abilities. The druid can also turn into a brown bear. So every time she wakes up in the morning, whatever else she does, an 8th level druid is, at minimum, 2 brown bears.
>Except one of those brown bears can cast spells. There's a feat in the PHB that lets you cast spells while wildshaped without any penalty at all. Oh, and any magic cast on the druid automatically affects its animal companion for free. Druids get many, many spells that benefit animals, so this is a useful power.
>So a druid is like two bears, each of them capable of more attacks per round than a fighter, except both bears can fly (Air Walk), both of them have magically enhanced claws, and one of them is throwing lighting bolts and and turning the ground to spikes and summoning more bears.
>That's caster supremacy. One guy gets a sword and armor, the other person is an aggressively hegemonizing ursine swarm.
>>43710990
Understatement? That's just how I feel, anon.
By the by, the kineticist has some mildly concerning design elements and recent splatbooks have seemed just a tad biased towards magic-users.
>>43711047
>i don't know anything about this game so i'm just going to assume things
>>43711092
>>43711096
>implication that there is a character that can invalidate another character on the level of bear that summons more bears and also can cast spells vs fighter who is comparable to one bear
>"I doubt that"
>lol prove me wrong
No.
>>43710786
>Dogs in the Vineyard doesn't need balance, thus, it has none.
Not that it matters, but aren't all characters in DitV made using the same resources?
"Imbalance" in DitV (note the scare quotes) can only possibly come from badly defining your traits, or for reasons of spotlight hogging that sit outside of the rules of the game.
Thus, it's a balanced game, albeit not in the sense that D&D is (or isn't).
>>43711215
exactly, which is what makes people like >>43711047 fucking morons
>>43711524
Well but you can't really say "this game does not care about DPS, so balance is not a concern".
The majority of narrative games has rules for character creation that are equal for every participant, and that's exactly for reasons of "balance" - every player has the same starting point for bringing things into the narrative.
Other, more crunchy games do the same thing with a lot more numbers, because in them "spotlight balance" doesn't (only) mean "who gets to speak more" but also "who gets to DO more things".
In a cooperative game, I feel that's essential. It can be excused if the game has explicitly different roles (see Ars Magica for example), but usually that's because balance gets out of the door and comes back through the window.
Balance is necessary. This is actually a very simple argument, but somehow the notion got so ingrained in a certain vein of criticism towards D&D (and some specific versions of D&D) that everyone wants to take distance.
>>43706010
inb4 dungeon world
>>43711047
Ok I'm back, so, from my perspective (correct me if I'm wrong), game balance includes in its definition : prevents the creation/making of a character that renders another obsolete.
So I'm going to ask you, still in a civil manner by the way : why does a game has rules that make it so that a character can render another obsolete. And in what matters are we talking about? Not roleplaying I suppose, so maybe in a specific situation? Or in a common situation in which all characters partake (so we'd talk about say, combat balance?)
>>43711096
You're not contributing at all and making me look like a moron. Please refrain from doing so.
>>43711215
Okay, then could you expand on what makes (or doesn't make) D&D 3.X balanced? I'm asking for this version specifically because I think me and you are well aware that various D&D editions don't behave in the same way, and assume that we're talking about the most commonly played around here.
>>43711524
Dude, really, what the hell is wrong with you, for once there's a civil conversation with opposed points of views, don't go and spoil it with your shitty attitude, please!
>>43711683
I see what you mean, I think. So the issue of balance is important to character skill based games, can we agree on that point? We're talking about post 2E D&D, GURPS, Call of Cthulhu, for exemples.
I can see the issue in the maths here. But it makes me wonder why people play this games or haven't solved the issue. I know a few games I love despite their flaws, like Cyberpunk 2020 which is completely retarded in many ways, but it's essentially a matter of bending it to suit your own needs that makes it "balanced", I don't think there's an objective solution.
So what about everyone makes his own house-rules, like it's said in Men & Magic?
That said, I'm going to take my leave again. Take care, /tg/, I've learned things tonight, and thank you for that, hope I brought something useful to you too.
>>43712458
>Okay, then could you expand on what makes (or doesn't make) D&D 3.X balanced?
Not him, but it really boils down to one main thing. Characters without spells get to do basically 2 things. Deal damage in combat, and use skills outside of it. There are some other minor tricks, but they tend to be very ineffective for various reasons. Their class doesn't really give them anything to contribute outside of just numbers.
Conversely, spellcasters can do a wide variety of things. They can deal damage in combat, and use skills outside of it. They can summon other things to deal damage for them, or use skills they don't have. They can cast spells that replace skills, or end fights without needing to deal damage. They can cast spells that do things impossible with normal skills. They can create magical items that can circumvent the normal limits they have on how many spells they can cast.
It is far too easy for Wizards to overshadow others, in both a narrative and mechanical sense.
>>43712757
>Get to do basically 2 things
I take it the game requires characters to have X or Y feat/skill to do anything that is in the rules? Like, do you need a specific feat to use the fiction to your advantage? Say, you climb up a hill and jump down on a goblin, how would that go in this version?
The thing is, from what I'm reading I'm beginning to think the main reason the game isn't balanced is that it tries to make too much rules instead of rulings, no? I don't really see what it adds to the game aside from your realisation (and I think caster supremacy isn't a minority opinion), what I mean is, wouldn't there be more balance if there were less situation-specific rules that prevent X character to do Y? And if it did, would it be a loss for the game?
>>43713001
>The thing is, from what I'm reading I'm beginning to think the main reason the game isn't balanced is that it tries to make too much rules instead of rulings,
No, the main reason the game isn't balanced is that the game isn't balanced.
>>43713550
That poster is sort of right in that you can shift the responsibility of balance to the GM, but you're not going to get that ever in a rules heavy game, especially one that deliberately obscures how it works to the players and creates this weird culture where understanding how math works is cheating or something.
>>43705492
>MMO
>Balanced
>>43706258
Noncombat is not immune to balance flaws. In fact, they're where it's most obvious because some characters are straight up disallowed from ever contributing anything worthwhile in it while others dominate it like it's nothing.
>>43713001
The game has too many rules because it's treated as a business. You can publish a basic set of rules that works just fine, but then you're expected to start pushing out more and more material, and you end up with overly restrictive rules and too many things to balance.
>>43710834
What is his business model exactly?
>>43707197
It is a World of Darkness thing.
>>43710478
>ignoring the issue over giving it a solution
>>43710478
What.
>gun is loud, or has to have sound suppressors and are therefore less likely to get through body armour
>sword is quiet and will fuck your shit through most bulletproof armour if they get in range, also relatively cheap
Operators operating? 5 damage should be putting you in crit from any of these blows, depending on where you get hit.
>>43712458
Other anons have already replied about this, but the problem with 3.X balance is that there's too wide a gap between how classes can approach problems/situations in game.
It's not even amatter of rules vs. rulings. Some characters have, for the same expenditure of resources (levels and possibly feats), access to a wide variety of tools that help or directly trump possible situations in game.
Of course it's not a problem limited to 3.X. For example sometimes issues of balance come up in games like Shadowrun or M&M, where you have two options that for cost the same but offer significantly different benefits. And since in games like those what happens in the game is mediated more directly by what's written on the character sheet, the issue becomes harder to work around.
Can GMing solve balance issues? Not really. It can find a way to work around them, for example by ignoring part of the rules that are known to cause issues. At the level of the single table, some things may never come up. But that is not really a solution.
>>43705694
>>43705599
>At least Mutants & Masterminds is honest when it openly admits the game forgoes balance for the sake of narrative.
Iduno, M&M (3e) gave me a strong impression of putting balance in the cornerstone with the PL caps.
Effect strength and accuracy; different kinds of defence; they all are on sliding scales with fixed sum.
The book even warns you that leaning too heavily on one scale side can break things and so the GM should take a good look at it.
The game's breakable point lies in ability to get much more variety if you play things right, not in having much more power to them.
>>43711078
That's a goddamn beautiful explanation and I'm capping it for reuse.
>>43720789
It's already pasta.
>>43707234
I don't have thumbs and use talk to text check thousand one Arabian Nights your , privilege
>>43705817
>"What do you mean I can't channel all of my actions off my Magic stat without spending Fate Points?"
>Nigga, your Magic stat is your +4, I am not letting you use that for literally everything.
Same problem in M&M with magic arrays.
I generally just split magic into schools (at player's discretion), those are narrow enough to not do everything but still broad enough to let them have fun.
>>43705958
It was virt wasn't it.
>>43712458
>So I'm going to ask you, still in a civil manner by the way : why does a game has rules that make it so that a character can render another obsolete.
Game design errors giving uneven spread of features.
>And in what matters are we talking about? Not roleplaying I suppose, so maybe in a specific situation? Or in a common situation in which all characters partake (so we'd talk about say, combat balance?)
In majority of situations. It's a purposefully extreme situation to show really bad case of imbalance.
More to the point it can be shown as: if Character had Class B instead of Class A and could do everything Class A can do and then some more things, then balance is broken.
There are also always situations in which the imbalanced aspect does not matter, sure. They do not excuse the imbalance.
For example: you have a warrior kind of guy, kick ass, be meatshield, that kind of thing. First instinct is to make a Fighter class. BUT, if you instead make him a warpath Cleric, he'll still be doing all the same things and more. It doesn't even need to affect roleplay much, clerics do not have to proselytise on every corner. Thus Cleric > Fighter.
IF a cleric was limited to whitemage healbot, they wouldn't have a balance conflict with fighter due to different niches. But there still could be a conflict with, for example, a summoner who can just summon creatures that are as good as the fighter.
>>43705728
I made my own light-weight, kind of OSR:y system and play tested with some people I usually play heavier systems with - 5E and Rogue Trader.
Guess what? The experience was better. The players were more in-universe and there was more player skill.
System matters.
>>43720926
Well first time I saw it and a cap is easier to use.
