I guess most people aren't as much into math when it comes to gaming. It's fine when you're playing a wargame, something where you have to carefully balance all sorts of modifier in order to maximize your chances. But a roleplaying is much more based on character, rather than victory. I can see why it doesn't get as much attention in that field. Especially when the Rules Lawyer try to force you to optimize your character because you obviously got it wrong (not that I'm saying you're doing that, of course).
Furthermore, I can also understand a DM frowning upon meddling with those kind of calculations. It's a good thing that you try to understand the basic of a game. But with understanding comes tinkering, then optimizing, and then sometimes, breaking. And it's never good to have someone you got the whole system figured out, and then takes huge advantage of it. Especially if the other players don't.
(As for 4th, I'm no specialist, but I think the discrepancy was a conscious design, rather than a flaw. When characters grow up in level and got all up to the endgame, you want combat to last more than two turns, you want something more epic. Monsters growing in power, hit points and AC is probably the way to make it more challenging, pushing players to manage their resources better, and provide a more epic game. By optimizing your character to the point of matching that discrepancy, you unify the game by making it no more challenging/interesting to kill a goblin at level 2 than a titan at level 24. My opinion, though.)
So uuuuh... What was the question again? Because you exposed something in details, but I'm not exactly seeing much ground for debate here.
I'm involved in game design, but a lot of people just ignore balance when it comes to game design-or possibly, just don't understand it.
It's not about "optimizing your character" it's about "understanding the baseline and trying to fix it as a GM when it's broken." I tend to get a lot of pushback against that.
I'm not talking about optimizing at all. If anything, I'm talking about the Underwater Basket Weavers
edited 12th Jun '12 8:34:01 AM by TheyCallMeTomu
Mmmmh... can't explain that reaction then. Yes, mathematical analysis is a good thing, especially in very rules-heavy games like Shadowrun or Mutants And Masterminds, where proper tuning is important (if not done, it can lead to Game-Breaker). And understanding the underlaying nature of a game system can only be profitable when it comes to make new rules.
I see no problem into breaking up your own system. In fact, without balance, the gale would probably suck. Maybe it's a little... rude to analyze someone else's game? Like, you try to get how it works in order to improve it, with undertones of "I can do better than them"? I don't know.
Maybe you just have players that have been traumatized by a math teacher.
While I buy into the mathematical analysis of power progression, I've found that the people I play with (and the people they play with, and the people those people play with... So basically, I mean anyone who is not me) find that the subjectiveness of the RPG experience overrules a lot of 'balance' issues.
Adding in the effects of a good DM, and multiplying by the teamwork/non-competition aspect, and you'll get a result that matches up with my experience: among a good and decent roleplaying group, a powergamer may feel a little out of place once he or she delves into the deeper numbers (which invariably means that they optimise to game balance). It's this mindset that most people react to, I think. It feels like, at the end of the day, if you're all having a good time tossing dice, moving figures and chugging beers with your buddies, system-side balance doesn't really matter.
Or I could have missed the point you're making...
There's a difference between system-side balance being trivial, and the strange notion that I tend to find people give me that it's actually a bad thing.
You sometimes get to a place where the game assumes you'll do certain things-ala feat taxes in 4E-and players will deliberately say "No, fuck that." It's ignoring game balance for its own sake. But, I mean, the monster's attack and defenses are what they are guys, I'm not going to lower them just because you didn't want to pick up Implement Expertise!
From a design standpoint, I think that P Cs have too many feats at higher levels, and too few at earlier levels. What I would likely do is give players 1 less feat per tier (1, 11, 21) but give all "feat tax" feats freebies-or alternatively, as is being done in a campaign I'm in, bake the bonuses into weapons/armor/neck slot items.
So instead of a +6 weapon, you'd have a +9 weapon.
I do like that idea. It always seemed to me that feats should be more specialized and circumstantial, so your choices would actually reflect the kind of character you want to play, rather than broad, flat bonuses that you need just to survive.
(Also, now that they're not used for maneuvers, they probably shouldn't be called "feats" anymore. Ah, well.)
The problem with doing this sort of mathematical analysis is that you necessarily have to make assumptions on what character-building decisions your players will make. If you balance things based on a certain set of assumptions, then anything not adhering to those assumptions will be unbalanced. I'm generally wary of a mechanical ideal as a baseline of difficulty for balance purposes — assuming that everyone will create the best possible character inevitably leads to a) stagnant metagame, where only a small handful of builds are viable, and b) power creep, as additional material is forced to keep up with the Joneses or be ignored.
Of course, given that tabletop gaming is a cooperative rather than competitive environment, balance against enemies is much less important than balance against allies. If your fights are too easy or too hard, then the GM can tweak the encounters one way or the other. Where real trouble starts is when one character outshines the rest of the party (or falls significantly behind everyone else). You want to give all your players an equal chance to contribute, so comparing builds to other builds of the same level is a much more useful exercise than comparing them to enemies.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Probably a lot of reasons people tend to tune out game balance.
As already mentioned, people may tune out due to simply not understanding, and not wanting to expend what they suspect would be a lot of time to understand, your arguments. As mentioned, personal experience has a tendency to trump all, so if they've never had balance problems with the system, they're probably not interested in studying it thoroughly.
I suspect some people may take a complaint of imbalance and a suggestion as almost a personal insult. Saying that they've been playing the game wrong, or they're not actually enjoying playing the game, or they're ignorant fools for daring to enjoy playing an inefficient system. Clearly this isn't your intention, but when have people ever been rational?
Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.Jov: Eh, I guess that's a solid argument, but I think some people need to know what game they're playing. Underwater Basket Weaver and all that.
I'm not opposed to optimization - as a GM, I certainly make a point of telling my players what is or isn't an efficient use of their points - but as a player, I pick things that best fit the growth of the character from the things they have faced, whether or not those things are numerically the most advantageous. If a party is radically unbalanced compared to each other, then the GM probably should point that out to the players, possibly allowing new characters or rebuilding to help bring the party to a fairly equal level. If the party is radically unbalanced compared to the enemies the GM is using, then that is straight up the GM's fault.
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - SilaswIt depends on what type of game you're running. 4th Edition Dn D for instance assumes that character builds are combat oriented-though they can get generic utility-and most other things are handled in a freeformy matter. So, when someone deliberately deteriorates their build for whatever reason, they're playing against the basic intention of the game.
More to the point, that's more a side issue. I'm more talking about how, for instance, 3rd edition Dn D has this really nasty system where the difference between your lowest defense and highest defense at low levels is much lower than at high levels-it's a system that doesn't scale properly. But when you bring that up, when trying to objectively discuss game design, and you'll frequently get people going into reactionary defensive mode rather than actually discussing the points being raised.
Hmmm, I wonder why this thread was created.
Math is an important part of my evaluation of balance - Fire Emblem teaches battle math very well. For tabletops, combat is touchy - sometimes it's everything, sometimes it's not as important.
edited 14th Jun '12 8:58:42 AM by Erock
If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.Oh, don't get me started on divination. If there was ever a power that I could excise from every single role-playing game, ever, it's divination.
I remember one game where the GM tried to force me to take it. I ordinarily try to avoid doing this, but I actually Rules Lawyer-ed my way completely out of it. He even tried to do the "oh, you'll still have it; you just won't control it" when I reminded him that would cost experience points, and there was no way in Hell that I was spending my hard-earned experience on a power I hated.
On the topic of the thread itself... one thing that has led me to come to my stance of embracing game imbalance is the growing belief that it's impossible to actually balance things outside of a perfect mirror match. I feel almost like my time gaming and prepping for game would be better served to make the imbalance work for me to make encounters more fun for all.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

I often find that, when discussing game balance, people don't seem to understand my methodology. Now I'll say right now that I basically focus almost entirely on 4th edition, because I think it's the standard of having a wide variety of items in play, while still having a relatively balanced core.
Obviously, there's a shit ton of individually unbalanced elements, but that's not the core.
Here's the thing. Whenever I break out "the basic math" I tend to get odd stares. For instance-enemy attack and defense scales by level. Player attack and defense scales by half level... plus by ability scores (unless you're a heavy armor wearer) ... plus by tier-if you remembered to pay your feat tax... plus by enhancement bonus... plus occasionally by tier AGAIN, depending on gear that's voluntary.
I broke it down and, if you ignore everything aside from Half Level and ability scores, it turns out that by 30th level, there's actually a +11 discrepency in 4E-with 6 explained by enhancement bonuses, 3 by feat bonuses, and then ... well, the other two isn't officially explained, but 80% of Epic Destinies have a +2 bonus to an ability score, so it's really only off-by one.
But here's the thing-it's that exact kind of mathematical analysis-the idea that, as I player/Dungeon Master, I can actually analyze the game math-that seems to occasional get people glossy eyed. It's discussing HOW to balance things and how things are balanced (rather than just complaining about, say, minor action attack powers or whatever) that seems to be the most isolating.
Was wondering what everyone else thinks about "methodology."