A reply about balance...

ABOUT BALANCE IN D&D...

Here's actually the problem... (and believe me, I know what I'm talking about)...

Want balance?

Rock, paper, scissor. That's balance.

This is also balance...

ROUND 1: FIGHT!

A mirror-match. Both players have the same options. Perfect & complete balance.

Balance could also be achieved in a game like Street Fighter (or at least as near as humans can perceive for balance) by having multiple characters all with the same reasonable ability to beat one another.

As this applies to D&D...is absolute bullshit.

See, the issue is, in something like Street Fighter, the game has ONE OBJECTIVE with a very rigid, systematic methodology for achieving it: use attacks to reduce your opponents life to zero.

This is not (repeat NOT) the case in D&D. Reducing HP to 0 is not the goal of D&D. D&D is not that simple of a game.

If every class is equally good at combat, that means that if a class is better in another aspect of the game then that class is IMBALANCED. Now, consider, that the game has infinite potential situations for classes/characters to engage in. Ergo, there are infinite opportunities for classes to be imbalanced. Therefore, obsessing over balance in the combat portion of D&D, is useless until the rest of the game is designed so as to support mechanical interaction so that it can be likewise balanced perfectly.

Otherwise the attempts to "balance" the classes are completely half-assed. Would it surprise me to know that the game has been undergoing half-assed design work for quite some time? Uhhhh...no not at all...

This is all <b>further</b> compounded by the fact that the average (vocal) game player is absolutely awful at mechanically playing games and even worse at recognizing what is (im)balance and what is their own suckiness.

Don't believe me? I've done QA for tabletop, card games, video games and board games. People are absolutely infantile when it comes to playing games. EVERYTHING that beats them is "broken". Anything they can't do is "unfair". And the whiners are the loudest.

Furthermore, they tend to myopically focus on one aspect of the game. In D&D's case, this is especially true as they zero in on combat and nothing else. This is further exacerbated by the build-methodology employed in the game design of, for instance, 3.0/3.5 where a class is less important than the component game options the class can choose from. That is why you can have an awful Fighter...and a competent one...or a useless Wizard or a competent one. And have it based ENTIRELY on decisions made to construct the character...the fact that the system allows characters to be built that do not even meet the systems own (asinine) combat design goals is proof of how over-designed it is.

Idiot players whined for more options, more choices and more power for their classes so that Fighters could equal Wizards without realizing that the <b>very concepts</b> used to make those classes mean that if a system is expanded and options are given the ONLY RESULT POSSIBLE is that the spell-casters will become more powerful. They were lucky that the designers were just as stupid as they were and listened to them...and the result was exactly what someone with half a brain for design would expect.

Then, this is YET AGAIN, compounded by the fact that many DMs run games like morons with no attempts at tactical acumen...and if they do, they get accused of being "unfair" and often back down. Wait...you mean if you leave the artillery untouched the ground troops will get obliterated? A BUH?!?

So, you have whining players demanding something that will only magnify the situation they are complaining about. They get what they claim they wanted...and when the "problem" arises even worse than before they take no responsibility for how they are running the game or any mitigating factors (like whining when someone is targeted "unfairly") and instead insist the game be "fixed" again. Hence we get 4th Edition which is, of course, all about "balance"...

And how did that end up going? Not so great...a game where the system intrudes on the reality of the game...where the logic of reality takes a back-seat to the system...and by design. And why? To pay homage to the unruly bitch "Balance". A system more combat focused than any other...and one where combat is boring and incredibly drawn-out.

Want proof that the designers don't know what they're doing with even basic progression-based game  mechanics? How many iterations and revisions did Skill Challenges go through? I think the last count was (legitimately) 17 or so. Yyyyyeah...

Combat has been fetishized. It has become an obsession of the system. This has added complexity but no elegance to combat. This complexity will always magnify imbalances. This focus has dominated the game to the point where all balance decisions are being drawn against combat...which is stupid and short-sighted.

Instead of looking to the 99% of reality left untouched by sound game design (leaving that up to blogs like this one...) the combat system has been expanded, bolted-onto, revised, "improved", "streamlined", bloated, fondled and consecrated...because it is easy. Because it is all they know how to do...and, because it is almost all that is presented to players, it is all players are familiar with.

And they lose. Every time. They lose because all this combat is handled far better by video games that only become more sophisticated with every generation. It is a losing battle. The designers are Germany marching into Russia without winter clothes. Idiotic. Futile.

They lose because they are focusing, instead of on the game and it's strength, on a minor subset of the game that was NEVER going to run as well (or be as balanced) as could be possible because it's still all math being done by human beings oftentimes without even a table and minis to do so.

D&D design will be back on track when there's more about worlds and reality and less about new ways to poke with a sharp stick.

Don't hold your breath. In the meantime people like Alexis should carry on...the work there is good, worthwhile and useful to a DM running a WORLD...which is probably exactly why it will never be published by anything officially connected to D&D.