It’s becoming an habit, you know? 
Hmm…
I know when I played GS for years balance became a huge issue. For me personally I like the idea of balance just for PvP instances.
The only time class had a bearing was against social or wordly entities; ie, a ranger would have a clear advantage fighting a woodland creature in a forest. Less so in an urban situation or versus an elemental creature, etc.
That same ranger, thrust into most social situations, was at a great disadvantage. Moreover, the best human diplomat would find conversation with woodland creatures impossible; the ranger his or her savior in that instance.
Time, place, skills. Clear advantages for class, but when infighting takes place desire, cunning and boldness rule.
And firepower. When there are tales of battles won with the winning side armed with obsolete equipment, modern warfare proved that victory is in most part due to good logistics and superior firepower.
But it is the MMOs that have created the need in PnP for “balance”.
MMOs need “balance” so that there are multiple choices that are “efficent” builds. Why? Because they don’t have a referee who can tailor the adventure to give everyone something to do.
In PnP playing, the “balance” is play time and play opportunity. If your ref gives everyone equal time and equal opportunity for fun over the lifetime of the campaign (because, you cannot always give equal time and op for each session), then it’s all good. But if one player constantly dominates and none of the other players get much time/fun, the balance is off.
I know it isn’t “officially” a pen-and-paper setting, but Warhammer 40K have to be the coolest “space opera” setting ever!
Thank God it’s still hanging in there. 
So, in the end, MMOs are the evil that ruined our RPGs! 
Hmmm… well thinking about it…
It might have been the “point system” games that really started it. Companies like FASA - Battletech and Shadowrun for example - put a lot of emphasis on “fair and balanced” for everyone involved.
All MMO did, was introduce the mainstream crowd. RTS probably had a hand in it as well - with the craze to make every side as balanced as possible - along with “ladder scoring games” like Diablo.
Battletech was NOT an RPG. It was a Mech Table Top Combat— and it rocked! DEATH FROM ABOVE!!
All point systems were highly exploitable. That’s the main problem with them. Most game designers felt that once a GM/ref became sufficently experienced, they’d ban all the major exploits.
I found Shadowrun to be relatively “balanced”, so long as you avoided the “lone character doing something” problem (decker on a data run, mage on an extended astral scout, etc) and all the major players had near the same level combat reflexes. But I haven’t done Shadowrun since mid-second edition. No clue how crazy things might have got since then.
Again— in a PnP RPG, the balance is in play opportunity and ref time. In MP combat (PvP), you effectively want a rock/paper/scissors if you want a purely “fair” or “unexploitable” system. If you make it pure rock/paper/scissors, it will be boring and not unique— so of course, you need more and then you get back into needing “game balance”, because some combination is just to strong compared to other things, or some combinations are just to weak and cost-inefficent.
But it’s not about what we’re talking. We’re talking about balance between characters, when IMO you’re talking about balance between players.
You beat me to it OLF. The topic you are bringing up is a “whole other can of worms” related to games and gaming.
Brings back memories (at conventions) of all night bickering sessions over it. The ale helped smooth things over though
Heh… I forget I have to be exact with you guys.
When “feats” are a good concept, I always hated how each and any other supplement added new feats so powerful it makes the old ones useless – pretty much forcing you to redesign your NPCs and PCs. Prestige classes have a bit of this stigma, but way less and in a more manageable way.
For my part, after reading the supplements, I decided to stick to the basic books… and the Draconomicon because I like dragons.
[ 11-28-2007, 10:46 AM: Message edited by: OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol ]
And thus you’ve hit it right on target.
When all is said and done: WotC doesn’t really care for balance - all they want you to do, is BUY more books. They make the old feats/skills/classes/races obsolete, because they want you to use the new ones… and earn them more $$$.
The “core” books are arguably the most balanced you’ll ever see a game setting, because the designers were aiming to make everything as “fair” as possible. However when “expansions” are added into the equation, it’s all about out doing the material that went before it, so people will buy it.
Thus even 4th edition won’t be balanced… because soon after the “core books” are released, the expansion stuff will throw everything off track. And thus in 2012, WotC will be promoting a 5th edition with “balance” again. Or perhaps a 4.5 edition between then. The consumers are being played as fools… :roll:
Same goes for MMO. The new “classes” and “levels” they introduce every year or so, are there for you to continue subscription and/or buy the expansion disks (if they sell them). Balance might be a factor, but all said and done, it’s all about the “eye candy” to lure new gamers and “new powers” to keep the old.
[ 11-28-2007, 12:08 PM: Message edited by: Nargrakhan ]
Well, of course: they’re a business, not a charity. It’s up to the gamer to know what to buy and use, not up to WotC. As a business, releasing new material is the obvious thing to do.
The consumer who buys every and all books regardless of his needs IS a fool. A business has a duty to its owners and employees to earn money and make people buy their stuff. It’s up to the customer to be clever enough to determine what he really needs, regardless of how much he’s being told he needs a product.
If you’re such a sheep and fool you’re buying a supplement material because it’s out and has new rules people say you absolutely need, then blame yourself for your stupidity and lack of will.
[ 11-28-2007, 12:19 PM: Message edited by: OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol ]
Aye. You’ll get no arguments from me.
However it’s a deception when they claim “balance” is the largest factor in 4th edition, when we both know it’s the $$$ that’s the largest factor. If WotC wanted balance, they’d stop with the core books, and tweak them as needed to maintain that balance. Not add more “earth shaking” material that completely turns the system upside down… or give munchkin and powergamers more ammo. 
Ragnarok Online - which I love to death - is a prime criminal in things like this. The game already had a “ranged attack family” in it, but they eventually added Tetragrammaton Clerics (aka Gunslingers) after the massive Equilibrium fanfare in Korea. The previous archer/hunter/bard classes were already having balance issues - but rather than address these, the company went ahead to produce a totally new “shooting class” that added even more headache… because the “new shooters” were looking like they’d outclass the “old shooters” - so they tweaked the old ones to compete with the new ones: but did not consider the overall game system itself.
[ 11-28-2007, 12:32 PM: Message edited by: Nargrakhan ]
Here’s my thought on balance: The game should be fun for all participants: players and GMs. If I don’t have anything to do right this second because one of my teammates excels in this area – then I should have stuff to do later. Otherwise it gets boring. If I just sit around the whole time because one of my teammates’ characters is broken, and he easily solves all problems, then balance is an issue.
Demanding that all characters be equally viable is a chimera, a fools’ errand. It just can’t work that way AND be a flexible system.
The system should also be parsimonious. Options should never be superfluous – if there’s 2 classes exactly alike, except that 1 has equal or better stats in all respects … one of those classes needs to be axed.
It’s late, though, and I really ought to be getting to Mass Effect. I mean, sleep.
EDIT: The above is really why easily obtainable configurations that are basically indefensible, are bad – because people who take them will outshine anyone who doesn’t.
[ 11-29-2007, 12:46 AM: Message edited by: Nandemonai ]
I agree with the esteemed Nandemonai.
As for achieving balance—it’s the play opportunities that matter— nothing else. That determines the fun balance. That is all we humans care about. How much fun is it, and if we are having it or not. In MMOs, that unfortunately translates primarily into killing things (monsters, NPCS, other PCs) in combat, because otherwise, you might as well be in a MUD or MUSH and just standing around RPing there with other people— or even, gasp! Dare I say it? I dare! I dare — on an IRC channel, typing at the others in a channel RPing whatever you guys are into. And those are generally free, after all. No monthly fees, no microtransactions.
Nargrakhan, you are talking about a very experienced character in 2nd edition Shadownrun. From a starting/just generated character, it’s fairly balanced. All those character builds are all reasonably balanced whether it’s the cyber-samuri, the combat mage, the recon shaman, the decker, the rigger, or the jack of all trades/private eye/fixer type. But— from a group gaming point of view (play balance), it was best to run the decker solo, or give the decker character big one on one time outside normal group gaming time, and letting the decker make some basic skill rolls to do things “online” with the group in the middle of the run, instead of that “solo” digital data crawl style thing they had back then.
It wasn’t until all the bonus books, and then the second round of bonus books that built on top of the first bonus books, really turned a newly generated character into something “unbalanced” — and even worst, made players spend more than 3 minutes generating the character. Easy character generation was necessary when your ref ran the adventures more punk then fantasy, making you walking dead meat with a question mark of where you’d drop all your fluids (blood, cyber-hydraulics, whatever).
But, as has already been pointed out— that’s the problem all system have when expanded too much.
However, even a heavily experienced character in SR was still very vulnerable. It took a lot of kharma to advance to that point, and that means surviving many adventures intact before most character builds could effectively “solo” full-time. Any character with that strong a play history aught to be busy constantly looking over their shoulder in SR, because they’ve made a lot of enemies, and their competing shadow runners are liable to be framing such big and heavy characters for their own misdeeds. After all, what company middle manager wants to admit that his company got raided by some nobodies and now everything is all futzed up, when he can instead tell his bosses that it was some serious shadow steppers that have been featured 3 times on “In the Shadows!” and who has a couple of hot “street produced” movies about him/her? “Obviously it just goes to show just how much their competition was willing to pay to sabotage/steal their work.” the middle manager will tell his bosses.
Or— consider— one of the major corps that they’ve been sabotaging, stealing, and generally being a pain to has gotten their very top team to go out, obtain the runner (and his core running buds), and drop them all off into the mega-corp’s privately ran “Running Man”— a pay-per-view corporate mega-event where the corp has constructed a couple of buildings worth of death traps and combat opportunities (maybe even with one or more competing teams)— where the only way the runner gets to live is to make it from the lowest sub-basement to the very roof— alive, mobile, and still conscious. Your super experienced character will find he’s back to the basics then— no contacts, no equipment (other than what the ref provides as they scrounge up stuff), and most of their mad skills are useless. Better hope that if your super experienced “solo” gets to the roof, the corp is actually going to keep its word— and not just drug the runner and make him (or her) be one of their chip slaves (probably to an up and coming overly ambitious shark in senior management to be shown off as a trophy). Or plant a micro-explosive in an inconvienent spot so the runner can never go near the corp’s listed properties again if he doesn’t want it to explode. Or a whole slew of other dark possibilities.
Shadowrun was not a kind world. It was merely a cyber-punk world that had hidden rainbows and the occasional strong beam of sunlight piercing the smog and ever-overcast/raining skies (ie, a world with hope). But it made up for that by having even more ways for people to get screwed over and, if they are lucky, die quickly. Because much worst lurked in Shadowrun than just dieing slowly.
That brings me back to my point about balance— in a PnP game, you have that ref who can adjust the adventures and what is happening so that all players get decent play opportunities. You don’t get that in a MMO, because the ref is the computer, which only cares about the scripted/designed adventure/quest. That’s why a power-gamer or a munchkin can “ruin” more RP centered/oriented builds opportunities for fun. Which is why you need “balance”— so there are a decent number of efficent builds to use while on such things or while fighting other players.
[ 12-01-2007, 01:33 AM: Message edited by: Darkstar ]
And another one of the DP9 Old Guard leaves:
http://dp9forum.com/index.php?showtopic=4241
Honestly… I don’t think anyone is left from the original founders. Suckage to the extreme.
Company really isn’t DP9 anymore. 
I though the whole pen-and-paper RPG genre was dead long ago.
What IS dying though, is the turn-based RPG. Nowadays the game companies have become focused on real-time RPGs, which is why most RPGs on the market are nothing more than glorified hack 'n slashes.
PnP is still swinging. It’s hard to beat for geeks— get together with some friends, have a lot of fun, eat some snacks. Very cheap as long as you aren’t a game collector and have to get all the books for all the games you play.
Some people would just rather be face to face when they game.