We should all follow Gary Gygax's example on caster balance

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Libertad
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We should all follow Gary Gygax's example on caster balance

Post by Libertad »

And bring equality between caster and noncaster classes:

Magic-use was thereby to be powerful enough to enable its followers to compete with any other type of player-character, and yet the use of magic would not be so great as to make those using it overshadow all others. This was the conception, but in practice it did not work out as planned. Primarily at fault is the game itself which does not carefully explain the reasoning behind the magic system. Also, the various magic items for employment by magic-users tend to make them too powerful in relation to other classes (although the GREYHAWK supplement took steps to correct this somewhat).

...

The logic behind it all was drawn from game balance as much as from anything else. Fighters have their strength, weapons, and armor to aid them in their competition. Magic-users must rely upon their spells, as they have virtually no weaponry or armor to protect them. Clerics combine some of the advantages of the other two classes. The new class, thieves, have the basic advantage of stealthful actions with some additions in order for them to successfully operate on a plane with other character types. If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D & D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly, or the referee is forced to change the game into a new framework which will accommodate what he has created by way of player-characters. It is the opinion of this writer that the most desirable game is one in which the various character types are able to compete with each other as relative equals
Gary Gygax, Strategic Review 2.2 1976

And who said that inter-party class balance is a relatively modern, 3rd Edition conceit?

Discuss.
Last edited by Libertad on Fri Apr 20, 2012 12:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by hogarth »

There was no class equality in 1E AD&D, possibly even less so than in 3E.

Level 1 wizards were unarmored single-shot wands of sleep who would go down with one hit while level 1 clerics got armor, weapons, more hit points and multiple spells.

Level 16 wizards were casting Polymorph Any Object, Simulacrum and Maze while level 16 fighters were poking stuff with sharp sticks.
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Post by Libertad »

But the point was that Gary Gygax saw inter-class balance as an ideal, even if it didn't fit within his current iteration of the game.

I often see people talk of the desire for relative balance as something exclusive to the 3rd/4th Edition fanbase or not a problem. But Gygax himself remarked upon the potential problems of unrestrained spellcasters. High-level casters were intentionally designed to be more powerful, but Gygax and other designers tried to balance it out by making them weak at low levels. It wasn't a good way of doing things, but metaphorically speaking they were pioneers crossing uncharted waters. In 3rd Edition there was a lot less restraints on full casters, and we got a "weird wizard show."
Last edited by Libertad on Fri Apr 20, 2012 12:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by hogarth »

Libertad wrote:But the point was that Gary Gygax saw inter-class balance as an ideal, even if it didn't fit within his current iteration of the game.
No, he just took an unbalanced game system, pointed at it and said "Look! It's balanced!"

Just like every version of D&D, ever.
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Post by Lokathor »

He didn't claim it was already balanced. He said it was best when it was balanced right after admitting that it wasn't balanced. The implication being that the MC needs to carefully watch what goes on to keep things in balance. This is where the idea of "secret class features" like artifact swords comes in.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Libertad wrote:I often see people talk of the desire for relative balance as something exclusive to the 3rd/4th Edition fanbase or not a problem. But Gygax himself remarked upon the potential problems of unrestrained spellcasters
Oh so in addition to the obvious idiocy of such people, they are also ignorant of the D&D's history.

This does not surprise me.
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Post by shadzar »

2e PHB wrote:Wizards cannot wear any armor, for several reasons.

For similar reasons, wizards are severely restricted in the weapons they can use.

This freedom is not without its price, however. It means that the wizard must find his own source for magical knowledge: libraries, guilds, or captured books and scrolls.

Whenever a wizard discovers instructions for a spell he doesn't know, he can try to read and understand the instructions. The player must roll percentile dice. If the result is equal to or less than the percentage chance to learn a new spell (listed on Table 4), the character understands the spell and how to cast it. He can enter the spell in his spell book (unless he has already learned the maximum number of spells allowed for that level). If this die roll is higher than the character's chance to learn the spell, he doesn't understand the spell. Once a spell is learned, it cannot be unlearned. It remains part of that character's repertoire forever. Thus, a character cannot choose to "forget" a spell so as to replace it with another.

Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.
i still dont see the problem of balance unless the DM just opens all the locks and gates and allows a wizard to just get any spell they want when they gain a new level. (of course this is what 3rd did)

to answer your question....
And who said that inter-party class balance is a relatively modern, 3rd Edition conceit?
the people stating that are meaning numerical balance, not functional balance. 3rd created a single XP table. 3rd remove class restrictions and racial level limits
2e PHB wrote:Class Restrictions and Level Limits

The limits also exist for play balance.

Ask your DM for the level limits imposed on nonhuman characters.

Copyright 1999 TSR Inc.
2e DMG wrote:Racial Class and Level Limits

Mage: (allowed)

Human: unlimited
Elf: 15 (one 7th level spell)
Half-elf: 12 (one 6th level spell)
when 3rd's idea of balance and "player agency" came about it removed MANY of the components of the system that balanced wizards. likewise any previous DM that opened those same doors.

the "same" number across the board is NOT what inter-party balance was about, but about keeping some thing in check and it existed, though most probably threw it out.
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Post by Juton »

Lokathor wrote:He didn't claim it was already balanced. He said it was best when it was balanced right after admitting that it wasn't balanced. The implication being that the MC needs to carefully watch what goes on to keep things in balance. This is where the idea of "secret class features" like artifact swords comes in.
Having talked to a few Grognards, it becomes apparent that MC's had to do some work to make sure people where semi-equal. Back then playing a Magic-User was risky because you might find crap spells then be useless. The biggest balancers for Clerics was their gods giving them crazy missions or being the party's wand of CLW. The worst thing that could happen to a Fighter was that their random loot was lame. In the most extreme cases, if a character was too strong (or even too weak) the MC would just make rocks fall and have that character die. It was accepted back then.
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Post by kzt »

Juton wrote: Having talked to a few Grognards, it becomes apparent that MC's had to do some work to make sure people where semi-equal. Back then playing a Magic-User was risky because you might find crap spells then be useless. The biggest balancers for Clerics was their gods giving them crazy missions or being the party's wand of CLW. The worst thing that could happen to a Fighter was that their random loot was lame. In the most extreme cases, if a character was too strong (or even too weak) the MC would just make rocks fall and have that character die. It was accepted back then.
I was waiting in line at Gencon when they released the 1st edition DMG and I don't remember anyone doing anything like that.
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Post by Doom »

Ditto here...you didn't achieve balance by "rocks fall" on the weaker classes. You achieved balance by giving a "+5 axe of uber resistance" or the like to the weaker classes.
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Post by Juton »

Doom wrote:Ditto here...you didn't achieve balance by "rocks fall" on the weaker classes. You achieved balance by giving a "+5 axe of uber resistance" or the like to the weaker classes.
The anecdote they told me was about a thief character who started with the very lowest rolls possible to make a thief. This was using the method where you rolled your stats in order. The resulting character was very pathetic and the player whined a bit about it so at the beginning of the next session rocks fell and that player got to roll up a new character. Notice that I am saying MCs made rocks fall on weak characters not weak classes. I take it that this type of mercy killing wasn't particularly common.
Last edited by Juton on Fri Apr 20, 2012 3:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by shadzar »

Juton wrote:
Doom wrote:Ditto here...you didn't achieve balance by "rocks fall" on the weaker classes. You achieved balance by giving a "+5 axe of uber resistance" or the like to the weaker classes.
The anecdote they told me was about a thief character who started with the very lowest rolls possible to make a thief. This was using the method where you rolled your stats in order. The resulting character was very pathetic and the player whined a bit about it so at the beginning of the next session rocks fell and that player got to roll up a new character. Notice that I am saying MCs made rocks fall on weak characters not weak classes. I take it that this type of mercy killing wasn't particularly common.
anecdotes are like opinions, and assholes...everyone has one, and many stink.

rolling 3d6 in order doesnt make a class weak either, it just gives a low probability for the extremities.

go look over how hard it was to get to get those super-wizards,-fighters, -thieves, etc

"very lowest rolls possible", so this person got all 3's rolling 2d6 in order?

your anecdote is half there and just meaningless if you dont have any more info that vague speak.

also 1st edition had more than one method of rolling, 2nd added even more.

seriously your anecdote just sounds like the worst group of players commented on the worst possible case scenario.

how many really did random treasure, random dungeons,random whatever?

Gary designed his shit for people to play through. people played adventures that had PLACED treasure, or designed their own.

random generation was aded so that people could get into the game quickly, and in case they ran out of planned stuff, they wouldnt have to wait on the DM to design a full dungeon to keep playing.

do you really think, as your anecdote suggest, that people likely just played in random geomorph dungeons?

when you have a worst-case character rolls, MOST DMs would tell someone to re-roll it or just pump the stats to make something worth playing. nobody with common sense was forced to play a character with all 3's. nor did anyone with common sense even have the character played just long enough to be killed by rocks or blue bolts, or something else, so the player could roll a new character.

the only time "hazard death" came from a player that didnt like their character was in the event it just really wasnt working for some strange reason, and they were EXTREME case, not normal ones. and more times than not, the PC just wandered off, and another one under the same player was found in that city, along the next path, or what have you.

you cant use anecdotes from bad RPGers as some sort of, "this is how it was", because people unable to use the system are not proving faults with a system.

hydro-electric power plants are not flawed because the Ethiopians you gave them to dont know how to use them, and dont have enough water for them to work.

also your anecdote doesnt show that it was a balance issue. it doesnt mention the wizard making the thief less balanced, the thief class itself being a problem...jsut that there was bad dice rolls at char-gen.

it doesnt matter what game you play, you are going to have problems if you use a lower quality device. it isnt about class balance, its about the method used to roll characters and a group of bad players or bad DM that didnt see that the thief with all 3s wasnt meant to be played..
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Post by Lokathor »

Juton wrote:
Doom wrote:Ditto here...you didn't achieve balance by "rocks fall" on the weaker classes. You achieved balance by giving a "+5 axe of uber resistance" or the like to the weaker classes.
The anecdote they told me was about a thief character who started with the very lowest rolls possible to make a thief. This was using the method where you rolled your stats in order. The resulting character was very pathetic and the player whined a bit about it so at the beginning of the next session rocks fell and that player got to roll up a new character. Notice that I am saying MCs made rocks fall on weak characters not weak classes. I take it that this type of mercy killing wasn't particularly common.
Something akin to this has happened to me before, so I can attest to it not being a total fluke.
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Post by Username17 »

Gygax's big problem as far as balance went was that he was never going to be able to provide different character types competing as relative equals because he was wedded to a theory of intertemporal balance. While in theory it is possible for one player to be the big man early in the campaign only to have another player be the big man later on - the reality is that different games proceed at different speeds and stop at different points. So there's actually no possible line fit you could make that work for the game in general. At best it might work for a single campaign, but one that lasted longer or ended earlier than the single campaign it worked for would be unbalanced.

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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Why are people still talking about the 1st Edition DMG as if it had any merit other than its historicity? Various people here have said that the book was so bad that it gave them ovary and testicular cancer. And not just to humans, either; I'm pretty sure if you Ask Ant, you could probably get a long list of ants that got cancer in body parts that don't even exist for their species.
Libertad wrote:But Gygax himself remarked upon the potential problems of unrestrained spellcasters.
Oh, boo hoo. And James Wyatt complained about the poor implementation of 4E D&D's treasure system and Andy Collins whined about how races determined your character too much.
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In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by CapnTthePirateG »

I must say, I don't really have as much respect for Gary as others. Sure, he did the math, but he also set up DM-power wanking we still can't get rid of.
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Post by JigokuBosatsu »

In other news, "Weird Wizard Show" is going to be the name of my next album.
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Post by FatR »

One lesson that is quite relevant to caster/noncaster issue should indeed be taken from Gygax. But it is not about the ways to achieve balance, because his approach to balance reduces fun for someone at almost any level in the game. It is about trying to incorporate a wide range of external influences into your game, something that DnD had long forgotten in favor of basically recyling itself. Gygax ideas on casters were clearly influences by their portrayal in contemporary fantasy, as frail (or at least physically unexceptional) men, that were pretty vulnerable if caught in close quarters, but wielded tremendous instant win powers, after mastering their art.

However, fantasy changed massively since then. Probably because with its wider acceptance and continued development as a genre, magic-users as main characters became increasingly common. Nowadays, unless the author explicitly makes a point of writing low fantasy, you can bet, that the protagonists will be closer to Rand al'Thor or Kelsier, than Conan. I.e., they will have both physical and magical competency.

So, basically, the most genre-appropriate way to balance fighters and casters nowadays, is to make mojo-less fighters a strictly low-level concept and telling grognards to deal with it. If Kratos can sling spells in every game without compromising his manliness and hardcoreness, their characters should be able to as well.
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Post by TOZ »

So you're saying modern fantasy wizards should be patterned on this guy?
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Post by ishy »

TOZ wrote:So you're saying modern fantasy wizards should be patterned on this guy?
Depends, who the hell is he and what would that patern entail other than being colourblind. (the wikipedia is way too much irrelevant information for a wizard imo)
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Post by hogarth »

TOZ wrote:So you're saying modern fantasy wizards should be patterned on this guy?
Fun fact: When I was a kid, I read the book "Myron" by Gore Vidal. In it, "Whizzer White" was used as a substitute for the word "[EDITED]" (with other Supreme Court justices standing in for other curse words). So now I can't hear his name without thinking of a woman's naughty bits.
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Post by TheFlatline »

ishy wrote:
TOZ wrote:So you're saying modern fantasy wizards should be patterned on this guy?
Depends, who the hell is he and what would that patern entail other than being colourblind. (the wikipedia is way too much irrelevant information for a wizard imo)
A supreme court justice and an athlete if memory serves.

The point being saying "fuck it, insta-win with melee and magic" as your new pattern for mages kind of blows for games and game balance.

And Rand is a shit example. As soon as he learned Balefire he basically stopped carrying around his sword and abandoned blademaster (of which he only dabbled in) more or less entirely. Even after he went all zen and stopped using balefire he still doesn't use a sword (I think his sword hand got vaporized anyway).
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Post by FatR »

TOZ wrote:So you're saying modern fantasy wizards should be patterned on this guy?
No, I'm saying that modern fantasy fighters - by DnD's definition of "fighter" - should not even be player characters. The whole concept is dated and unfit for crazyland of DnD.

Once this is done, we can decide then, how to split magic between classes that actually are allowed to have mojo. Maybe one of them even can be called "Fighter", assuming it is given a magic source of its own, like artifacts-as-class-features.
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Post by FatR »

TheFlatline wrote: The point being saying "fuck it, insta-win with melee and magic" as your new pattern for mages kind of blows for games and game balance.
"Melee and magic are separate and supposedly equally valid schticks" blows far harder, though, as one edition after another proves it to be an anathema to balance and/or fun.
TheFlatline wrote:And Rand is a shit example. As soon as he learned Balefire he basically stopped carrying around his sword and abandoned blademaster (of which he only dabbled in)
By "only dabbling in" you mean "one of the top swordsmen in the entire fucking world?". And the fact that non-powered sword arts were obsoleted by the improvement of magic (as they inevitably should be) does not erase the fact that if you are a main character you probably can do both nowadays and the whole idea of "physically weak wizard" does not exist even in blatant DnD derivatives, like Slayers.
Last edited by FatR on Fri Apr 20, 2012 11:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by shadzar »

CapnTthePirateG wrote:I must say, I don't really have as much respect for Gary as others. Sure, he did the math, but he also set up DM-power wanking we still can't get rid of.
get rid of the power mad DMs form ALL editions. it isnt the games responsibility, its the players. YO choose to play with bad DMs, and let them run games or play, rather than forcing them out; then you only have yourself to blame for encouraging them.
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