Balance... whatever it is

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by soltakss

We have PCs in put party with different combat abilities. The people with the best abilities tend to shield the people with the worst, unless things are really desparate and they can't.

If you have a combat where the two good fighters can link together and take on more than 2 opponents, then the weaker fighters can be protected to a certain extent.

If everyone just charges and takes on all comers, then the weaker PCs will die. But that's because of stupidity not game balance.

Yup. I was in a D&D group where my mage was considered to be a heavy hitter by all the PCs. In fact, I was the weakest characters. I was a level behind everyone else, was spending XP to create magic items, had a lousy AC, and 14 hit points.

I did, however, has a great DEX, and used a bow, boosted with as much magic as I could wrangle. I also had hired a bodyguard whose job was to keep melee fighters from getting to me, since I knew I couldn't rely on the party. I even outfitted the bodyguard with the best weapons and armor I could find, and gave him a magical potion. He didn't charge up into combat, and just had to hang back and be ready to act as a barrier. He got hit about twice as open as I did. Pretty much everything he had to fight had two or three arrows in it before it reached him.

Meanwhile each week about half the party kept dropping and 2-3 guys died. So balacing out character levels isn't really accomplishing much.

A group that works well together can and will be more effective and powerful than the numbers on paper.

[Gnarsh]

Originally Posted by Rurik

Most fights are not even. Usually the characters are outnumbered by weaker foes, or outnumber stronger foes. In the first case the weaker party members have plenty of oppurtunity to faight balanced foes. In the latter case they often get ignored as the foes focus on the tougher party members. The newbies often get unnoposed attacks on the enemy, and I have found often in games as a result deal the killing blow. And as a player (and for the character as well) the enjoument gained by your 'farmer' killing the enemy Rune Lord is far greater than that of a Rune Lord killing an equal foe.

And this hits the nail on the head. Unless you've got a GM that counts the number of characters in the party and always faces the party with an exact match numerically (which is just plain poor GMing), you should always have an opportunity for everyone to contribute.

Who's the powerful uber-foe going to focus on? The guy in the massive runeiron armor with the big glowing sword covered in runes? Or the guy wearing leather armor with a scimitar and looking kinda wimpy? Heck. Even the "take some fire" concept doesn't work. No one's going to concentrate fire on someone wimpy. They're going to try to take out the big threats first. That inevitably means that tougher PCs are challenged (cause they're the ones getting ganged up on), while weaker PCs aren't just getting walked over and are often able to make some critically important contributions to any encounter.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Gnarsh

And this hits the nail on the head. Unless you've got a GM that counts the number of characters in the party and always faces the party with an exact match numerically (which is just plain poor GMing), you should always have an opportunity for everyone to contribute.

Who's the powerful uber-foe going to focus on? The guy in the massive runeiron armor with the big glowing sword covered in runes? Or the guy wearing leather armor with a scimitar and looking kinda wimpy? Heck. Even the "take some fire" concept doesn't work. No one's going to concentrate fire on someone wimpy. They're going to try to take out the big threats first. That inevitably means that tougher PCs are challenged (cause they're the ones getting ganged up on), while weaker PCs aren't just getting walked over and are often able to make some critically important contributions to any encounter.

Yup.
Had a fantasy campaign where one of the PCs was a wimpy street urchin. Early on, a character from "modern day" gave the kid a 9mm pistol to protect him (to the modern day PC, a little kid was being threatened by monsters).

Sure enough, most foes tended to ingore the wimpy kid. He took down quite a few foes with head shots.

[Nightshade]

I'm not going to beat this to death, but I still stand by my opinion that as written, the RQ3 previous experience could all too easily create characters that were simply inferior than other characters in the group to the degree that the weaker characters had nothing particularly useful to do. And I don't consider that in any way a virtue.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

I'm not going to beat this to death, but I still stand by my opinion that as written, the RQ3 previous experience could all too easily create characters that were simply inferior than other characters in the group to the degree that the weaker characters had nothing particularly useful to do. And I don't consider that in any way a virtue.

Ture of any RPG with random character generation, especially random Characterstics. The 'farmer" with straight 18s is probably going to have a better chance than the vet with 12 years soldier experience and all 3s (8 INT and SIZ).

Not that players can't screw up point based character creation either.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Ture of any RPG with random character generation, especially random Characterstics. The 'farmer" with straight 18s is probably going to have a better chance than the vet with 12 years soldier experience and all 3s (8 INT and SIZ).

Sure. The fact that RQ3 had not one or two, but three different random elements in it was all part of the picture. The only redeeming feature with the attributes was they did at least have a curve on them, and on all but Int and Size, its a fairly flat one. But Int and Size were as bad as the age roll, and the random profession roll was a big linear die roll.

Not that players can't screw up point based character creation either.

Sure. But at least the virtue there is they have some control over the results; if nothing else, if another character looks functional, there's nothing stopping them from, if desired, simply building one exactly like it. That's not desirable on other grounds, but it at least doesn't leave them wondering why they came to the game.

Edit: And note, yes I'm aware there was a suggestion you could just pick; but if you actually liked having some variance in characters, that wasn't desirable on _other_ grounds.

[soltakss]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

I'm not going to beat this to death, but I still stand by my opinion that as written, the RQ3 previous experience could all too easily create characters that were simply inferior than other characters in the group to the degree that the weaker characters had nothing particularly useful to do. And I don't consider that in any way a virtue.

Generally that isn't really a problem. I've played in games with PCs of different strengths/levels and they have worked fine.

Several times we had to, say, pick a lock and someone rushes to the door, gets his picks out and the player asks "What's the basic?". You let people do what they can. Sometimes the weakest PCs can have a major effect on a game.

Even in combat the weakest PCs can get strong ones out of difficult situations.

I've had players with powerful characters have less to do than players with weaker characters just because the weaker character got more involved in the game.

So, it's never been a problem in any of the RQ games I've played.

It's been more of a problem in games such as AD&D where a 1st level Magic User just cannot keep up with a party of 4th level PCs.

[Daefaroth]

Originally Posted by Gnarsh

Balance is important, but it's not just about balancing individual encounters. It's also about making the game world feel like it's a real place, with real consequences and rewards and in which the NPCs at in ways that make sense. So sure, sometimes that means that a horde of baddies are going to descend upon the player character's heads. Other times, that's going to mean that enemies will slink away in the night to plot some other less suicidal method of obtaining their goals...

Exactly! Running an opposing force just like they're a party of PCs can really wake up the players when they discover some of their favorite tactics can be used against them. Nothing is more sobering than finding out an enemy is being run intelligently with a thought to effective group tactics.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by soltakss

Generally that isn't really a problem. I've played in games with PCs of different strengths/levels and they have worked fine.

And I think _generally_ it is a problem; that's my point. The fact some people have no issue with it doesn't make it a generally good thing.

[drohem]

I disagree about RQ3's previous experience system creating useless characters. Certainly, with a completely random character generation system, there is the possibility to create superior and inferior characters; and I do not see this as a problem. However, these characters are not the norm, and so when they do appear it only makes those characters all the more interesting to play, IMHO.

No one is useless in RQ3 combat. Every combatant is usefull, if only to occupy an opponent.