'Balancing' Races?

[frogspawner]

Originally Posted by sladethesniper

Balancing races is like balancing character creation...why?

Personally, I'm not hung up about balance.

But it's not necessarily about slapping down the powergamer. Maybe it's just to avoid a fledgeling roleplayer being disappointed, to find their interesting character choice is inneffectual compared to their friends'.

Viewed that way, balanced character creation (which must include races) is actually an aid to good roleplaying.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by sladethesniper

Balancing races is like balancing character creation...why?

People are not equal, nor are races...a western heart surgeon is not "balanced" with a an afghan warlord, a somali pirate, a new york gang member or catholic priest...not better or worse, just not balanced.

Because few players enjoy playing the character in the group that can't accomplish anything while everyone else is being 'awesome'.

No, life isn't balanced, but luckily game playing is about escapism, or else why do we spend so much time focusing on the exciting elements of the character's lives rather than dealing with their day to day action as a weaver or a farmer?

Luck was used as a 'balancing' factor, with the caveat that 'everyone has an equal chance' of rolling an 18. This was the earliest form of character balancing, but not necessarily the most fun when someone rolled extremely well and someone else got stuck with someone extremely poor... many are the stories of players intentionally getting their characters with poor stats killed so they could roll up another one.

Ultimately, I started this thread as a means of discussing how to make racial options for a campaign setting with an eye towards making certain that no one was too advantaged compared to anyone else. If you think such things are unnecessary, fair enough, but that's not really what I was trying to discuss.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by frogspawner

Personally, I'm not hung up about balance.

But it's not necessarily about slapping down the powergamer. Maybe it's just to avoid a fledgeling roleplayer being disappointed, to find their interesting character choice is inneffectual compared to their friends'.

Viewed that way, balanced character creation (which must include races) is actually an aid to good roleplaying.

Thank you, yes, that's exactly it!

[threedeesix]

I don't thinks it's about balance as much as incentive. When writing the character chapter of Chaos & Catacombs I didn't try to balance the races as much as give a reason to like them all. As a writer trying to emulate D&D I couldn't ignore all the racial abilities. So instead I gave an ability to humans that would hopefully make them as "interesting" as the other races ability wise, though no attempt at balance was made. This can be said for the professions as well as many "D&D" professions have special abilities bordering on powers.

I'm not going to get into the details as I feel that what the playtest will be for.

Rodney Leary

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by threedeesix

I don't thinks it's about balance as much as incentive. When writing the character chapter of Chaos & Catacombs I didn't try to balance the races as much as give a reason to like them all. As a writer trying to emulate D&D I couldn't ignore all the racial abilities. So instead I gave an ability to humans that would hopefully make them as "interesting" as the other races ability wise, though no attempt at balance was made. This can be said for the professions as well as many "D&D" professions have special abilities bordering on powers.

I'm not going to get into the details as I feel that what the playtest will be for.

Rodney Leary

That's why my suggestion of Humans getting more Hero Points. I can't put a 'value' range on it, but I think its certainly something that would have appeal.

[Skunkape]

The biggest problem I see with trying to balance characters is that you've got to determine what constitutes a benefit as far as your game play is concerned. Until you get that idea resolved, making one characteristic, (meaning stats, powers, etc.) worth more than another is really only just speculation.

What I would suggest to find a way to 'balance' characters would be to examine how every aspect of the character will work for your campaign. Let me explain in a way that hopefully, I'll get my point across in.

Let's say as a GM, your campaign will be one that's mainly hack and slash. Obviously, any stat that helps with combat, whether we're talking melee or magic, would be worth more than a stat that helped strictly with role-playing. So for instance, the STR stat would be worth more than the APP stat in that campaign because STR helps in combat, while APP helps with role-playing.

If your campaign is one that deals with political intrigue or other role-playing aspects, more than combat, then APP would be worth more than STR. I'm generalizing to the extreme here, but you should get my point.

So how do you come up with a method of balance? To me, you’ll have to look over what kind of campaign you’re interested in running and then try to determine which stats, powers, skills, etc. are going to be the most important. Then those same abilities would be worth more to have at higher levels. Until you get that information set, I don't see how you'll be able to 'balance' characters for your game.

I hope that gets my point across?

[sladethesniper]

Originally Posted by Skunkape

The biggest problem I see with trying to balance characters is that you've got to determine what constitutes a benefit as far as your game play is concerned. Until you get that idea resolved, making one characteristic, (meaning stats, powers, etc.) worth more than another is really only just speculation.

What I would suggest to find a way to 'balance' characters would be to examine how every aspect of the character will work for your campaign. Let me explain in a way that hopefully, I'll get my point across in.

Let's say as a GM, your campaign will be one that's mainly hack and slash. Obviously, any stat that helps with combat, whether we're talking melee or magic, would be worth more than a stat that helped strictly with role-playing. So for instance, the STR stat would be worth more than the APP stat in that campaign because STR helps in combat, while APP helps with role-playing.

If your campaign is one that deals with political intrigue or other role-playing aspects, more than combat, then APP would be worth more than STR. I'm generalizing to the extreme here, but you should get my point.

So how do you come up with a method of balance? To me, you’ll have to look over what kind of campaign you’re interested in running and then try to determine which stats, powers, skills, etc. are going to be the most important. Then those same abilities would be worth more to have at higher levels. Until you get that information set, I don't see how you'll be able to 'balance' characters for your game.

I hope that gets my point across?

Skunkape has stated what I thought I was trying to say, although he did it in a more appropos and easily understood manner.

Distilled, I think it comes down to the GM, with player input, determining what the campaign will focus on. From that information, make characters to fit that campaign instead of making a campaign to fit characters, which has happened far too many times in my experience.

frogspawner's point:

But it's not necessarily about slapping down the powergamer. Maybe it's just to avoid a fledgeling roleplayer being disappointed, to find their interesting character choice is inneffectual compared to their friends'.

Viewed that way, balanced character creation (which must include races) is actually an aid to good roleplaying.

is valid, and comes close to what I think Tywyll was trying to discuss.

I agree that coming up with an incentive for players to choose a certain class/profession/race, especially for new players, is important...but, again, in my experience, a beginning player's first character is usually a joint effort between that player (who has a "cool" idea), other players (to point out what would make it "better") and the GM (to give guidance initially and approval to the final character).

Therefore, it seems to me that what it ultimately comes down to is finding a niche for each race/class/profession combination. Some niches can be found in racial stats, profession bonuses and other "crunchy bits", others are found in the setting and the remainder are for the GM to make.

The caveat to that is "coolness". I have played just about every race, including "lame" ones, because the GM said: "We are playing a game about a Goblin tribe...make your goblin...and here's the mods I'm allowing".

It was a fun game, even though I lost my first character in the first "combat" round of the first fight to a 9 year old girl with a butcher knife...critical strike...she was hiding in the cabinet...

Therefore, I would posit that even though a goblin would NEVER, EVER be something I would have chosen to play (along with Twillek violinist/mob lawyer, a D&D druid, or a homeless ex-corporate middle manager, a human District Attorney, a Quickling Mercenary that rode around on his Yak Man slave...) due their ultimate failure as combat monsters, I enjoyed playing all of them because the Characters fit the campaign...





Ahem...so...I think balance is a GM issue with rules/stats playing a minor supporting role, if at all.

Again, all my opinions.

- STS