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I was re-readind the novel "Spellfire" by Ed Greenwood. Terrible book really but I was travelling and bored. It struck me that Wizards/Magic-users were seen as the most powerful things on the planet (bar a few critters). This under 1e was very true at high levels (and some would say 3e also). Anyway has making say a fighter of high level equal to a Mage at high level a good thing? The novel Spellfire really falls apart if we take the balancing of classes view. I will make a statement I may get flak for but... In a roleplaying game is it required that all PC's are "equal"? Perhaps when I was younger I adhered to "the world must be fair" view, but back then I was stuck with 1e so even in my gaming world it wasn't. Just wondering if we have lost something, fear of evil wizards?
Thoughts?
S.
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I do certainly believe that in the quest to make someone who wields untold abilities that reshape space and time to their whims balanced to someone who swings around three feet of steel equal, the guy with the sword isn't going to be the one taking the hit. Just look at 4th edition, wizards have been religated into one of the most boring and useless classes in their little miniatures skirmish game (To anyone who'd like to refute that, "I don't care what your 4e wizard is or does, they are made of suck now compared to everything else in my opinion which is firmly rooted in playing the damn worthless class.")
Magic is supposed to be powerful, otherwise what's the point of spending years learning how to use it?
The age of being proud that your wizard even survived up to higher levels is gone. This is the age of "how many magic missiles can I cast?" :(
The Pathfinder RPG is at least keeping the basic flavor of D&D alive, especially with a lot of the story driven adventures I've seen.
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Excellent points, I think you cut to the heart of my disappointment with later editions - the lost of awe and wonder at the thought of wielding arcane forces or forces of the gods for that matter. You just affirmed that my sense of losing something isn't just me. Now the term Archmage doesn't mean a thing...
I want to jump into this one as well.
It's not just wizards that have suffered allthough they have been the ones hammered the most but clerics and druids have undergone some less than stelar power lose in the name of the almighty "balance"
My first example is the turning,now called channelling, it used to be a nice help out to be able to turn undead,demons and devils. Now it's another way to heal and too much of the game focuses on what was once just a minor thing the class had. Druids, the lose of wild shape from it's previous form has made it so underpowered the druid can't possibly recover. The nerfing of the spells such as harm,call lightning,being able to reverse spells without an alignment hit and now going after class features to stop the fighter class from feeling impotent and ineffective is something that keeps getting worse with every new edition.
The fighter class was something you gave to your kid brother so he could join in and learn the mechanics of playing or the girl gamer that wanted to create a cross between red sonja and a pirate queen from the spanish main. I have nothing but respect for the fighter class when people actually like to play fighters. I know several players that are my polar oposite in the fact if I have to play a fighter I wont play, they feel the oposite, if they have to play a spellcaster for any reason they're not going to play.
Instead of the game system celebrating the unique contributions each party member brings to the team more and more emphasise is placed on making each and every class do nothing more than the other one.
To sum up with a ridiculous analogy if the fighter class feels bad because the wizard can do AoE damage and he cant then are ALL spellcasters going to be capped at 6th lvl spells because bards feel useless or 4th level spells to stop paladins and rangers from crying foul. Balance can be a good thing however the industy has taken it too far and the flavor that made the game so much fun is being lost.
I think the original intention of D&D was that a group of adventurers was a team, where each member has a role to fulfill. When you see it that way, it does not matter who is more powerful or better than any other character. What I am trying to say is, that it is OK that a wizard is powerful, since he needs the cleric for healing, the fighter for keeping the monsters away, so that he can cast spells, and the rogue for finding the dangerous traps that might kill him.
....the fighter for keeping the monsters away, so that he can cast spells, and the rogue for finding the dangerous traps that might kill him.I believe the specific complaints regarding this are that people encounter the problem that at high enough level the casters can fulfill these roles via their spells, making those classes obsolete.
Yup. At higher levels, the traps are mostly magic, and detect magic and greater dispel magic work far more reliably than do Perception and Disable Device. Blocking is better done by a Huge summoned monster with a zillion hp than by a fighter. Etc. But that's the argument of this thread: that at high levels, wizards SHOULD own the universe, and that fighters and rogues SHOULD be peons and slaves. Because, by God, the wizards EARNED it (never mind that the fighters and rogues, through equal effort, earn nothing but relegation to second-class citizen status).
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One of the balance controls used in previous editions of the game that was left out of 3e (thereby skewing the classical roles and relative power levels of the classes) was different XP-to-level requirements for different classes. Remember that Wizards progressed much more slowly than Fighters. A Fighter and Wizard that traveled and adventured together wouldn't be the same level; the Fighter would be higher level. By the time those Wizards reached those higher levels, they'd been "in business" a long time.
-Skeld
If you're speaking about 4E balance then yes, definitely. If you're talking about Pathfinder "balance" then no. The flavor is still there. No matter how many heads your fighter cuts off, it pales in comparision to opening a gate to another dimension or stopping time or even turning invisible.
Sure your fighter can tap into this power through magic items but it takes the magic users to create them. Back in the day when a simple magic sword was hard to come by and very few and far between, the magic users were supremely powerful. Now their ability, more than any other class, has been spread around in the form of fairly common magic items.
Despite this fact, the flavor and base assumptions that go with DND are still there. You could write a fictional novel about Pathfinder and it wouldn't seem much different than a book written for 1E or 2E. I can't even imagine how one would write one based on 4E.
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Agree
Back in 1e and 2e, one of the scariest things you could meet was a Lich. Worse than a dragon. Able to produce multitudes of magic missiles as a last ditch effort and fireballs that were visable for miles away.
Now, they do not deserve their CR's. Unless they can get a meat sheild up to stop the fighter, he'll have a lich chopped up into zombie bits before he can get any but his quickened spells off.
Agree
Back in 1e and 2e, one of the scariest things you could meet was a Lich. Worse than a dragon. Able to produce multitudes of magic missiles as a last ditch effort and fireballs that were visable for miles away.
Now, they do not deserve their CR's. Unless they can get a meat sheild up to stop the fighter, he'll have a lich chopped up into zombie bits before he can get any but his quickened spells off.
Back in 1e and 2e, the lich and the fighter played Rocket Launcher Tag. If the lich got a spell off, the fighter died. But if the fighter won initiative, he ran in, full attacked the lich (who was standing still for it, and automatically lost his one spell that round, because there was no casting and moving, and there were no quickened spells)... and killed it in 1 round. Which was why the lich had blockers, and the fighter was forced to cut his way through them first.
Now the lich's blockers are useless, because the fighter can move diagonally across the battlemat grid to avoid them. But the fighter gets only one attack, and the lich easily casts defensively while moving -- and the fighter, instead of saving on a "2" or better, now saves on a "19" or better. The fighter dies automatically now, instead of winning 50/50.
Individual spell effects were a lot more impressive in 1e -- love those 20-dice fireballs! But in exchange, the combat, initiative, saving throw, and level progression systems in 3e were skewed so far in the casters' favor -- particularly at high levels -- that the fighter is now a sad mockery of his former self.
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Actually a lot of people still play 1st edition AD&D. Myself for one, and many of my friends. The used-book stores in the area see very solid sales of old PHBs and DMGs. I've still not found a good quality Monster Manual 1...
People still play 2nd edition, and 3rd, and 3.5 and for some reason people even play 4th edition... :3
Blah blah blah, generic rip on 4e, blah blah blah.
Because of the power inbalance very few groups play beyond level 10 or 11. Balance allows hi-level play fun for the people who don't want to play a magic using class.
Power to the swordsman.
Blah blah blah, generic rip on 4e, blah blah blah.
Because of the power inbalance very few groups play beyond level 10 or 11. Balance allows hi-level play fun for the people who don't want to play a magic using class.
Power to the swordsman.
This.
Unfortunately this thread has already been transformed into an excuse to rant at 4th Edition.
I especially love how the 4e Wizard got called a "damn worthless class." Opinion or not, it's tough to take that kind of jab seriously.
Yes, in your fantasy world it might be "common sense" (ignoring, for the moment, that we're talking about a make-believe world where magical elves exist) for your magic user to be more powerful than your not-a-magic-user, but D&D is a game. If the game is not fun for some of the players because of an incredible balance discrepancy, the game is not as good as it could be.
Blah blah blah, generic rip on 4e, blah blah blah.
Because of the power inbalance very few groups play beyond level 10 or 11. Balance allows hi-level play fun for the people who don't want to play a magic using class.
Power to the swordsman.
This.
Unfortunately this thread has already been transformed into an excuse to rant at 4th Edition.
I especially love how the 4e Wizard got called a "damn worthless class." Opinion or not, it's tough to take that kind of jab seriously.
Yes, in your fantasy world it might be "common sense" (ignoring, for the moment, that we're talking about a make-believe world where magical elves exist) for your magic user to be more powerful than your not-a-magic-user, but D&D is a game. If the game is not fun for some of the players because of an incredible balance discrepancy, the game is not as good as it could be.
Damm right.
Yup. At higher levels, the traps are mostly magic, and detect magic and greater dispel magic work far more reliably than do Perception and Disable Device. Blocking is better done by a Huge summoned monster with a zillion hp than by a fighter. Etc. But that's the argument of this thread: that at high levels, wizards SHOULD own the universe, and that fighters and rogues SHOULD be peons and slaves. Because, by God, the wizards EARNED it (never mind that the fighters and rogues, through equal effort, earn nothing but relegation to second-class citizen status).....the fighter for keeping the monsters away, so that he can cast spells, and the rogue for finding the dangerous traps that might kill him.I believe the specific complaints regarding this are that people encounter the problem that at high enough level the casters can fulfill these roles via their spells, making those classes obsolete.
Exactly.
It's not a very strong argument.
I find it funny that what people actually mean when they say "D&D flavor" in this thread is how powerful spellcasting characters are compared to everyone else. That's D&D flavor?
People want to play wizards and priests because of the awesome and elite hyper-powered abilities they gain at high levels. People want to play warriors and rogues because they want to kick ass at lower levels. Essentially that is the balance that D&D struck in earlier editions. My assessment has always been that D&D is fundamentally unsuitable to high level play simply because of the issue of wizards sidelining other players (to the point of getting bored with campaigns that go much past 12-13th level or so). No real solution has been presented to solve the problem, and certainly 4th Edition's anodyne, "Everyone's the same!" approach certainly isn't the solution for D&D (despite being reasonable for an original or stand-alone game).
Aside from adopting wholly different level scalings so high-level wizards and priests are relatively nerfed compared to their current abilities (which would result in a lot of moaning from wizard and cleric players), there isn't really a viable solution that I've seen.
However, as tricky as the situation is in D&D it's far, far worse in the various STAR WARS roleplaying games, where they try to 'balance' Jedi with non-Jedi characters, which is never going to work. Luckily, there are ways round that (everyone else in the party turns out to be Force-sensitive as well! How about that? KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II pretty much did this to get round the problem).
I can't even imagine how one would write one based on 4E.
Steven Erikson's MALAZAN novels are, I think, an excellent taste of how a 4E world would look turned into fiction. i.e. complete and total mayhem at almost all times with the reader not really being able to follow WTF is going on and common warriors able to unleash as much mayhem as the ultra-powerful sorcerers. It was actually one of the first things I noticed about 4E whilst playing it.
The books are still pretty good, although there's a distinct lack of explanation for how the planet hasn't been blown to pieces by all the ultra-powerful wizards/magic-wielding swordsmen/hyperpowered priests charging around the landscape.
... Unfortunately this thread has already been transformed into an excuse to rant at 4th Edition. ...
I wonder why so many people rant at the 4th edition?
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... Unfortunately this thread has already been transformed into an excuse to rant at 4th Edition. ...I wonder why so many people rant at the 4th edition?
There are plenty on posts here on the messageboards and other places on the net, most of which are repeats of the same old, tired things ad infinitum which you're more than welcome to review at your pleasure but it's highly recommended not to bring up again ^_^.
Anyway, back to the OP....
I've been debating about this question all day and am still digesting it. Right now, it's not so much a balance issue per se is competition has altered -- not ruined -- D&D. Specifically, WotC is now targeting a new audience whose taste are not so much based on tabletop wargames and miniatures but on collectible cards and Internet rpgs.
I must be the only person who likes spell-casters at lower levels and melee characters at higher. Melee characters are boring at lower levels. "I run up and swing my sword." Spell-casters are boring at higher levels. "I point at it and it dies."
I find the opposite true in both cases. You have nice options available to you but you still need to be creative.
I must be the only person who likes spell-casters at lower levels and melee characters at higher. Melee characters are boring at lower levels. "I run up and swing my sword." Spell-casters are boring at higher levels. "I point at it and it dies."
I find the opposite true in both cases. You have nice options available to you but you still need to be creative.
You can kill things easily with either one depending on your build at high or low level. You can also be equally ineffective. I have never seen the above as a problem unless the player chooses not to do anything else.
I've played both fighter types and arcane casters in rather "classic" lineups, and found both classes to make equally important contributions. My fighter stayed quite busy, and was effective his whole career (hit 21st). He pounded the crap outta things, and got pounded back. In fact, our cleric and stealth guy did some amazing things, too.
Guess I just had a great DM.
People want to play wizards and priests because of the awesome and elite hyper-powered abilities they gain at high levels. People want to play warriors and rogues because they want to kick ass at lower levels. Essentially that is the balance that D&D struck in earlier editions.
If what you said was correct, you'd get much the same effect by playing a caster backwards: start at 20th level and "kick ass" at the start, then lose levels instead of gaining them, until you reach 1st. But guess what? NO ONE would play that game regularly (as opposed to once as a novelty). Because it's not fun to start off good, and get comparatively worse and worse. That's why levels go UP, why we have levels at all. In your ideal game, only casters are actually allowed to have more fun as the game progresses; all the non-casters are supposed to get progressively more and more fed up and annoyed with the whole thing, until they quit in total disgust. That's not any game I would want to play, whether as a caster or a non-caster.
I've played both fighter types and arcane casters in rather "classic" lineups, and found both classes to make equally important contributions. My fighter stayed quite busy, and was effective his whole career (hit 21st). He pounded the crap outta things, and got pounded back. In fact, our cleric and stealth guy did some amazing things, too.
Guess I just had a great DM.
The DM, matters a lot. Most of the time the ability of the fighter is based on the assumption that the DM never holds back and plays with 100 efficiency. I have never seen a DM do that, and there would be more players dead if they did.
If what you said was correct, you'd get much the same effect by playing a caster backwards: start at 20th level and "kick ass" at the start, then lose levels instead of gaining them, until you reach 1st. But guess what? NO ONE would play that game regularly (as opposed to once as a novelty). Because it's not fun to start off good, and get comparatively worse and worse. That's why levels go UP, why we have levels at all. In your ideal game, only casters are actually allowed to have more fun as the game progresses; all the non-casters are supposed to get progressively more and more fed up and annoyed with the whole thing, until they quit in total disgust. That's not any game I would want to play, whether as a caster or a non-caster.
Interesting misreading of what I was trying to say. I should have written 'kick more ass', since wizards and priests still have important roles at lower level, just as warriors and rogues can still make vital contributions at high level, it's just the focus of the game shifts.
As someone else said, how badly that shift happens and what effect it has on the game is more down to the DM than anything else though. Whenever anyone starts complaining about high-level wizards blasting their way through the campaign whilst the other players are left twiddling their thumbs, my first question is why has the DM has let that situation develop?
And if the answer is that designing a well-balanced high-level encounter which the wizard can't just blast through in one round and leaves the fighter something to do in 3rd Edition requires only slightly less planning time than the Allied assault on Normandy, I would take that as a fair answer ;-)
If what you said was correct, you'd get much the same effect by playing a caster backwards: start at 20th level and "kick ass" at the start, then lose levels instead of gaining them, until you reach 1st. But guess what? NO ONE would play that game regularly (as opposed to once as a novelty). Because it's not fun to start off good, and get comparatively worse and worse. That's why levels go UP, why we have levels at all. In your ideal game, only casters are actually allowed to have more fun as the game progresses; all the non-casters are supposed to get progressively more and more fed up and annoyed with the whole thing, until they quit in total disgust. That's not any game I would want to play, whether as a caster or a non-caster.Interesting misreading of what I was trying to say. I should have written 'kick more ass', since wizards and priests still have important roles at lower level, just as warriors and rogues can still make vital contributions at high level, it's just the focus of the game shifts.
As someone else said, how badly that shift happens and what effect it has on the game is more down to the DM than anything else though. Whenever anyone starts complaining about high-level wizards blasting their way through the campaign whilst the other players are left twiddling their thumbs, my first question is why has the DM has let that situation develop?
And if the answer is that designing a well-balanced high-level encounter which the wizard can't just blast through in one round and leaves the fighter something to do in 3rd Edition requires only slightly less planning time than the Allied assault on Normandy, I would take that as a fair answer ;-)
You hit the nail on the head.
Depends, what do you define by "D&D flavor"?
AD&D used to handle different progression curves for classes (Fighter's one being a hyperbole while a wizard's was a parabole). A fighter's advantage was survivability but it was pretty much the vanilla class. Wizards had the promise of great power... if they -ever- managed to make it alive past lvl 1 with their next-to-none HPs. Magic was hard, and dangerous (back in AD&D Lightning Bolts used to bounce back at you if they ever hit a thick wall), but was -real magic-, the magic of fairy tales.
Nowadays people no longer want rules that allow them to narrate fantasy tales, they want "fair and balanced", they want all classes to be equal all the time, and they want swords and spells to be direct, 1-1 equivalents, they want things as simple as possible... now, I'm not saying this is necessarily bad, but games like 4E and PF (which is sort of a 3.9999999999: 4E's objectives, 3.X' rules) depend entirely on plot devices out of the game's intended scope whenever they want to narrate high fantasy (alien magic paradigms, magic cities, NPC-only rituals, etc). 4E and PF can be very fun as long as your players don't mind the PCs and the world having different rules applying to each other respectively, otherwise your table will frequently suffer from arguements like this one:
Player: How come Karzoug can drop a frikkin meteor on the planet?
GM: Because he's a runelord, and has rune magic that allows him to do level 40 rituals.
Player: Okay I'll spend the next three years studying Karzoug's grimoir and lear rune magic.
GM: You can't.
Player: WHY!? He's an epic-Tier wizard, I'm an epic-Tier wizard!
GM: ...er, because he lived ten thousand y..
Player: BULLSH33T! He -spent ten thousand years sleeping-, all he did he did it in his natural life!
GM: Okay because the ritual isn't in the book!
Player: If he did it then it exists in the world!
GM: BECAUSE HE'S AN NPC! BECAUSE I SAY SO!
Player: GO EFF YOURSELF!
GM: GET OUT OF MY TABLE!
Who of these two is wrong? The answer is... BOTH. The GM didn't bother to know his players enough to foresee the kind of things this guy expects from the game and warn him beforehand, and the player, well... why is he even playing!? Just from half reading the PHB he should have known it wasn't the right game for his playstyle.
Is 3E DnD? Is AD&D DnD? Is 4E DnD? Is Iron Heroes DnD? Well, they ALL are. Which flavor is "DnD's flavor"? The answer is: The one that fits your style. Save yourself grief, pick your DnD and stick with it.
Nowadays people no longer want rules that allow them to narrate fantasy tales, they want "fair and balanced", they want all classes to be equal all the time, and they want swords and spells to be direct, 1-1 equivalents, they want things as simple as possible...
I don't think any of this is actually true.
People want a system that is fun to play no matter what character you want to pretend to be, and they want to be able to experience fantasy tales.
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To the OP - novels make for bad models for RPG games, except in very basic ways (and D&D novels also often make mistakes or take liberties with the rules) as they are about entertainment, not how to practically design classes so a team of players can have fun. Balance isn't the be all and end all but for an enjoyable game it is pretty important unless you just want the spellcasters to enjoy themselves. Previous editions handled this by making the magic-user require twice as many xp as the fighter, but I suspect that isn't the solution most people are looking for now.
In a roleplaying game is it required that all PC's are "equal"
No.
I created a world where elves were better (defined as: more monstrous HP, starting ability points, racial feats) than dwarves who were slightly better than gnomes who were better than halflings who were better than humans. Each race had a racial magical item (elves made staves, dwarves/rods, gnomes/potions {but higher than 3rd), halflings/wands, humans/scrolls) the secret of which was kept like the USA tries to keep military secrets. Furthermore, each race could cast 9th level spells in one particular school and 8th in two and 7th in the others (humans could cast 8th in all, none in 9th).
Why play human? They 2E multi-class (two classes at the same time; to represent the accelerated learning curve humans supposedly have). What did my players choose? Only one went halfling, all the others went human.
Why did I make a world so decidedly unbalanced?
I was tired of crunch not being equal to the fluff.
Of course, the thrust of your post is, "Do classes need to be balanced?" And I've unbalanced races. But my point is that an unbalanced game can be an enjoyable one.
YET-ANOTHER 4E BASHING?
When D&D started, the idea was to play individual heroes instead of the faceless generic units of tabletop battle simulations. That's what I have enjoyed about D&D (the one where demi-humans were classes), 1E, 2E, 3.0, & 3.5. Whenever I wanted battlesim I played Warhammer 40K. WotC seems to have taken D&D back to faceless generic units in 4E with its miniature driven battlesim. Don't get me wrong, I think 4E does a very good job of it. If that floats your boat, fantastic; I just don't want it to dock in my harbor. If I just want to throw a squad of orcs against a squad of heroes, I might play it.
However, I prefer to play a more role-playing game over a roll-playing game. So, to me, yes, some of the inherent "flavor" (hmmmm, needs garlic) of D&D has been lost in this new edition. More so than when I lost my THAC0, non-weapon proficiencies, straight-up spell immunities for uber-high INT and/or WIS, regeneration for high CON, and just one spell at first level.
[tangent]
But who plays in these games where the wizard cheeses through everything and the fighters do nothing important? In the games I play in, the wizard always ends up balancing him/herself by not casting their best spells because "I might need it against something bigger later on."
But I do think that spellcasters have too many spells in 3.x at lower levels. Remember casting your one spell for the day and then charging into melee, hoping to roll a 19 or 20 just so you would do d4 + nothing before you got pasted? I went through many wizards that way. But when one made it to 5th level, you knew you could breath! My 28th level wild pyro mage (2E) always wielded his plain-jane redwood quarterstaff he started with because up until 4th level, the wizard had more melee kills than the dwarf fighter!!! That was hilarious and memorable.
[/tangent]
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Nowadays people no longer want rules that allow them to narrate fantasy tales, they want "fair and balanced", they want all classes to be equal all the time, and they want swords and spells to be direct, 1-1 equivalents, they want things as simple as possible...I don't think any of this is actually true.
People want a system that is fun to play no matter what character you want to pretend to be, and they want to be able to experience fantasy tales.
unfortunately I agree wuith Dogbert, not because he is an old friend, not because PF nerfed my cleric... again
but lets face it Scott... check the spell list... every edition its nerfed, why? because the players cry foul because the wizard/cleric/druid cand o more with their magic than they with they swords... tot he point of making even the most common spells a bit more wortless...
magic is now made to last seconds,, or minutes when it lasted minutes or days, the game has focused in the ned of magic items to pass the problems the players has on hand, without them the challenges of their levels are close to insurmoneable...
PF as ruleset has not the flavor I need for this...
Pathfinder as a setting sitll has... i just need to solve the issue of those pesky details of NPC/PC rules differences and everything will be fine...
but aye... I for one almost decided to not buy PF RPG because of the flavor... people would not understand... they have shown it in other threads so we won't begin there... but the fact was that after reading the previes of the classes I knew that I would not enjoy a game run entirely on PFRPG... actually I would hate it... and its sad... because I was so much in love with the idea of Pathfinder RPG that it certainly hurts...
but thats me, if others still love and enjoy it, more their pwoer and paizo's :)
I think the original intention of D&D was that a group of adventurers was a team, where each member has a role to fulfill. When you see it that way, it does not matter who is more powerful or better than any other character. What I am trying to say is, that it is OK that a wizard is powerful, since he needs the cleric for healing, the fighter for keeping the monsters away, so that he can cast spells, and the rogue for finding the dangerous traps that might kill him.
This is what I always figured too. We were playing a 2nd ed Planescape campaign last year and while the wizard was cool and powerful the fighter was the one who took care of the creatures with the 80% spell resistance. A lot of things depend on circumstances in D&D with regards to what is best or "more powerful".
As for balance vs. flavor; I would much rather have flavor. Game balance via rules only lasts as long as the human factor allows it. As I said in an older post, I'd rather play an unbalanced and flavorful game with mature and creative players than a well balanced game with Knights of the Dinner Table wannabes.Knowing that 3.X/PF and 4th, along with many other games, were designed to be WELL balanced has taken away some of the sense of atmosphere I felt. The older editions seemed to be mostly written in a, "Well, this class will be able to do this and be like that while the other will be this way," without any real regards to balance. To me this focus on balance has kind of broken the 4th wall and stripped away a bit of my suspension of disbelief because I am more reminded that I'm in a game.
Of course, the thrust of your post is, "Do classes need to be balanced?" And I've unbalanced races. But my point is that an unbalanced game can be an enjoyable one.
It can be, yes, but balanced games tend to have a leg up.
It may be that a game system which is inherently unbalanced appeals to some. For whatever reason - being rewarded for system mastery, enjoying a greater challenge, nostalgia, etc. - there is appeal for some in a system with clearly defined "better" and "worse" choices.
But experience has shown us that does not hold true for a significant portion (probably a majority) of the gaming community. Aside from tabletop roleplaying games, the most significant innovation in game design takes place in the board game, miniatures game, card game and video game arenas. All of these place tremendous value on balance, and this is an emerging trend. The idea of gaming innovation itself is fairly new, only seeing significant development within the past few decades. Those who create games have slowly come to learn that games which take care to balance their mechanics appropriately are generally more successful.
So, yes, some people prefer their games like that. Game creators are continuing to discover, however, that most people who play games appreciate balance.
People want a system that is fun to play no matter what character you want to pretend to be, and they want to be able to experience fantasy tales.
I never said it wasn't fun, you know I've defended 4E more than once. It may not be 100% my cup of tea, but I'll always defend 4E's honesty regarding itself and its objectives. =)
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Of course, the thrust of your post is, "Do classes need to be balanced?" And I've unbalanced races. But my point is that an unbalanced game can be an enjoyable one.It can be, yes, but balanced games tend to have a leg up.
It may be that a game system which is inherently unbalanced appeals to some. For whatever reason - being rewarded for system mastery, enjoying a greater challenge, nostalgia, etc. - there is appeal for some in a system with clearly defined "better" and "worse" choices.
But experience has shown us that does not hold true for a significant portion (probably a majority) of the gaming community. Aside from tabletop roleplaying games, the most significant innovation in game design takes place in the board game, miniatures game, card game and video game arenas. All of these place tremendous value on balance, and this is an emerging trend. The idea of gaming innovation itself is fairly new, only seeing significant development within the past few decades. Those who create games have slowly come to learn that games which take care to balance their mechanics appropriately are generally more successful.
So, yes, some people prefer their games like that. Game creators are continuing to discover, however, that most people who play games appreciate balance.
To some extent, I suspect the emphasis on balance emerges from PvP in computer games, which is (I hope) less of an issue with tabletop games. My experience of imbalance in D&D, however, is that players have become frustrated because they found their PCs overpowered by others in the party and ended up feeling a spare part. I would suggest that this nostalgia in 1e/2e for imbalance forgets that the 4th level magic-user was probably hanging with a 6th level fighter and 8th level thief who all had the same number of xp. Unfortunately, 3e changed this inherent balance without stripping away the impact of high-level spells.
As for balance vs. flavor; I would much rather have flavor.
I'm not sure I'd call that "flavor" for the reasons I mentioned in my earlier post, but I need a firmer degree of congruence in my games regarding the game's rules being the world's rules and physics, I don't like handling a different set of rules for PCs and NPCs. While it's true that the GM should never feel constricted by the rules, on that same side of the coin, a solid system is one that doesn't constrict neither the GM nor the players, but instead becomes their tool to build upon and take on a variety of directions to serve both the game and the tale the gaming table as a whole is weaving (I'm a hopeless thespian-schooled roleplayer, I know).
Regarding fantasy games, it all boils down to: If I can't narrate a Conan story, if I can't narrate the Excalibur movie, and if I can't narrate The Last Unicorn or Sleeping-frikkin-Beauty, then I have no use for that particular system in question. Actually, I -do- can use 4E for all the four examples, just add some rituals, some extra (positive) roll modifiers and a couple Combat Options and it can do the job -beautifuly-... yeah, I know I wouldn't be abiding by the RAW (I never do), but it's not the same thing adding a couple things than having to houserule and overwrite the whole book as I'd have to do with some other games I'd rather not mention. The difference between building on a gaming system and actively oppose and substitute it is to me the deciding factor between using and not using it.
Why are people talking as if Pathfinder somehow balanced 3.5 or something. The system itself is inherently flawed with respect to balance. The classes aren't even balanced compared to themselves. I can create two versions of any class where one is really good and the other is terrible.
All Paizo did was ramp up the melee characters a bit and nerf a few spells and abilities that they felt were a little too good. There's still no way that it's anywhere near balanced. Maybe just a little closer.
To the other(s) who want less balance and desire spell casters to have the old school powerful magic that everyone fears, use the 3.0 versions of all of the spells. Maybe use different progression based on class so that spell-casters advance the slowest. I can't imagine that it'd be very hard to restore that flavor that you're looking for.
An argument can be made that saying "It's not fair to non-casters!" is whiny and juvenile, that the fighter's player should "man up" and accept the fact that the game really isn't intended to be as fun for him. But by the same token, the whole "I play a wizard and the game is only fun for me if I get to be better than all the other characters!" is equally so. Hell, we're all juvenile to an extent, if grown adults are still playing make-believe.
However, there are games specifically designed to cater to wizard-wannabes; Ars Magica, I think, doesn't even HAVE other types of characters. I'm sure there will soon be a Harry Potter RPG in which you can Hogwarts out and make fun of all the poor, pathetic Muggles. There are games with no wizards as well, like James Bond 007. But there's really only two major games that have 'em both, and that are ostensibly intended to be equally fun: 4e and Pathfinder. 4e achieved balance at the expense of wonky flavor, in my opinion. Pathfinder hasn't come close to achieving any real balance; all it's done is annoy the caster fans by nerfing spells, rather than returning to a 1e-style chassis in which casting defensively doesn't exist, and in which a 12th level fighter can kill any monster in existence in 2 rounds, and any wizard in one, if he wins initiative and can reach his target, and in which a high-level fighter needs a "2" or better to save against any effect, no matter how powerful.
An observation, I have noticed that the issue often comes down to the definition of balance a person is striving for.
No one (Ok very few people) argue against game balance. But people have different ideas of what is balanced (not talking mathematically, but the idea itself).
Some want an overall game balance.
Some want class balance (especially in the usefulness & spot light department).
And others want combat ability balance.
A few years ago, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with the scale tipping towards wizards/clerics in terms of raw might and power. Wish, Miracle, and the like are ridiculously powerful spells that can fundamentally alter the fabric of reality. Nowadays, I am not so sure. About a year ago, I was railroaded into playing a barbarian, and I was enraged(forgive the pun). I had always played casters up to that point, and so I was ready to have my barbarian have a convenient accident so I could make the character I wanted. After a few months of play(monthly game) I discovered that the barbarian was frighteningly effective both in and out of combat. To my surprise, I wasn't tanking at all, I was just playing the character, who liked to wade into combat and fight on his own, sometimes to his detriment. Life and limb are risked when spells are thrown around, and maybe it's because I've been rolling particularly well when it comes to saves(knock on wood), but I don't miss spellcasting as a player. There is a simple elegance to non-spell-based combat that is direct and a lot more effective than praying someone fails their save. For the most part, I'm stronger, faster, more versatile and much more deadly than any spell. I can't help but disagree with the question posed by the topic now- while flavor certainly plays a major role in the game, I think it's up to the individual player, working with their DM, to strike out a balance for themselves, as opposed to relying on the game to do it for them.
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But who plays in these games where the wizard cheeses through everything and the fighters do nothing important? In the games I play in, the wizard always ends up balancing him/herself by not casting their best spells because "I might need it against something bigger later on."
But I do think that spellcasters have too many spells in 3.x at lower levels. Remember casting your one spell for the day and then charging into melee, hoping to roll a 19 or 20 just so you would do d4 + nothing before you got pasted? I went through many wizards that way. But when one made it to 5th level, you knew you could breath! My 28th level wild pyro mage (2E) always wielded his plain-jane redwood quarterstaff he started with because up until 4th level, the wizard had more melee kills than the dwarf fighter!!! That was hilarious and memorable.
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You know thats kinda funny. It made me remember back to my one high level wizard in 2e AD&D (because it took so long and they didn't have high survival rates). I distinctly recall that it was that character with his budding uber power made me learn how to work with the DM. I learned to hold things in reserve long before hitting high level (16+) but then I learned not to totally try and cover all my weaknesses and to not use the you-dead-now spells against non uber threats because it allowed more roleplaying. I learned that working with the DM and other players (but still against the Bad guys) is much more fun for everyone.
Sorry that just was me reminiscing, fuzzy feelings and all.
Edition wars....again? Seriously?
This is why I play Savage Worlds now. We have one edition which is near perfect and it's fun. Characters are balanced in more ways than just "who can do the most damage".
It's also probably the easiest ruleset to use with novels or adventures based on them.