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Balance... whatever it is


Trifletraxor

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My skills are lower. That's it. So I'll miss a bit more often. I can't rely on making that parry every time. Yup. That's a handicap. My point was that it's nowhere near the equivalent of a first level character in D&D attempting to play in the same adventure with even say a group of 5th level characters (much less 10th level or higher). A significantly lower skilled character in RQ *can* adventure successfully. He *can* survive. Assuming the GM isn't simply throwing nothing but uber powerful opponents at the group (I've already discussed methods of balancing adventures that allow for disparate character skill levels) he can even be effective.

It's not just your skills that are lower. You will also have much less stuff and spells, which is the real power here. Iron armor, protection and shield, f.ex. have a loot to say. One of my best characters have 80% with his mace. He have done a lot of adventuring though, and is quite dangerous in a fight. He also have much better chance of escaping a fight going bad.

The problem I have seen with complete newbies in an experienced group is that they die so much more frequent, and have to roll up new newbies. That can kill away some of the motivation for the game. It does of course depend on whether the GM adjust the scenarios and the opposition to fit with characters of lesser strenght too, but it's not all GMs that like to pull punches that way.

SGL.

Ef plest master, this mighty fine grub!
b1.gif 116/420. High Priest.

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The problem I have seen with complete newbies in an experienced group is that they die so much more frequent, and have to roll up new newbies. That can kill away some of the motivation for the game. It does of course depend on whether the GM adjust the scenarios and the opposition to fit with characters of lesser strenght too, but it's not all GMs that like to pull punches that way.

SGL.

I don't see that as "pulling punches". Does the GM throw Rune Lords up against characters all the time? Or does he "pull punches" until the PCs make rune level?

But I would also expect the rest of the group to try and cover for the newbie until he starts to get up to speed. Maybe give him some training on the off hours, have him stick by a skilled warrior for a bit. But then,. I would expect the PCs to work together anyway. Otherwise they will get torn apart anyway.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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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.

However, I was in a mixed-level party in AD&D once, with several PCs of 1-3 Level and several 4-6 level. We went into a room and uncovered an artifact that killed anyone below 4th level with no saving throw. Half the party was killed straight away. When we complained to the GM he said:

1. It was out own fault for uncovering the artefact

2. We didn't have to go into the room

3. He didn't write scenarios for Game Balance, they depended on absolute levels not relative ones

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here. 

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3. He didn't write scenarios for Game Balance, they depended on absolute levels not relative ones

Hehe, it wasn't even a published scenario? He made a scenario meant to take out half the party with no chance of survival? I guess you played a lot more with him afterwards, or what? :D

SGL.

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A GM is either running a scenario designed without a specific party in mind, in which case tweaking to suit the party is often required anyway, or they are custom designing the scenario/encounter to a specific party and the whole issue is moot. I don't see how pulling punches has anything to do with it.

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.

It calls to mind a runelord facing a dark troll and trollkin and deciding not to parry the trollkin...

Help kill a Trollkin here.

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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.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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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.

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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.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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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.

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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.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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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.

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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.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here. 

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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.

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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.

BRP Ze 32/420

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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.

The inverse of this is true as well: the fact that some people have an issue with it doesn't make it a generally bad thing. :)

BRP Ze 32/420

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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.

I think that's the problem; to many, people, if all you're good for is to tie up an opponent while a better fighter does his work, and have no outside combat function, you're close enough to useless for practical purposes.

Or put another way, if you're inferior enough, the fact you aren't technically useless is meaningless to many, if not most players.

That's really my point; you can define the problem away, but at that point you effectively aren't talking about what I'm talking about.

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I think that's the problem; to many, people, if all you're good for is to tie up an opponent while a better fighter does his work, and have no outside combat function, you're close enough to useless for practical purposes.

Or put another way, if you're inferior enough, the fact you aren't technically useless is meaningless to many, if not most players.

That's really my point; you can define the problem away, but at that point you effectively aren't talking about what I'm talking about.

Yes, and you can over simplify your definition of 'useless' or 'inferior' characters to support your unlikely senario.

BRP Ze 32/420

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I think that's the problem; to many, people, if all you're good for is to tie up an opponent while a better fighter does his work, and have no outside combat function, you're close enough to useless for practical purposes.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. In my experience the 'useless' characters are often the ones who take down tougher foes. The "Better Fighter" in fact is who just ties up the enemy, because as we know tough guy vs. tough guy fights in RQ3 can go on for a while before someone gets the lucky blow. The 'useless' guys often get the unblocked swings at the opposing tough guy. Many times has the 'weakling' taken down the top opponent - and the player of the weakling invariably enjoys the experience all the more because of the disparity in power levels.

Help kill a Trollkin here.

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Yes, and you can over simplify your definition of 'useless' or 'inferior' characters to support your unlikely senario.

I haven't seen anything someone has said to make it "unlikely"; what I've seen is people who've said that they haven't seen it. I haven't seen anyone really argue the numerical aspect, which is the only non-subjective part of the process that isn't also campaign dependent. At that point, the only thing you can do is talk about how people respond and what seems to happen in a typical campaign.

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I've said it before, and I'll say it again. In my experience the 'useless' characters are often the ones who take down tougher foes. The "Better Fighter" in fact is who just ties up the enemy, because as we know tough guy vs. tough guy fights in RQ3 can go on for a while before someone

This, however, assumes the tough guys always match up, which at least until you get into the ranges where there's a certain selection going on (i.e. Gloranthan runic versus non-runic characters) is a big assumption; its just as likely for the match to be strong versus weak because that's how the positioning and movement happens to work out, at which point all the weak character does is desperately hope he can stay alive until his more capable buddy deals with the riff-raff he's gotten tied up with and can come help him.

Because the ugly truth is, he's not sure of surviving against even his opposite number, as with low parry rolls, that just turns into a question of who rolls his hit successfully first.

Its fine if all your fights are many on ones where the tough guy on the opposite side ignores the weaker opponents to clang away at his opposite number, but that's anything but a typical RQ fight in my experience, and in anything but those, a combatant with lousy combat skills is in trouble.

After all, its not like parrying the dangerous opponent while you spend the round putting down his weaker sideman is, on the whole, a particularly bad tactic in RQ.

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I think that's the problem; to many, people, if all you're good for is to tie up an opponent while a better fighter does his work, and have no outside combat function, you're close enough to useless for practical purposes.

Ah, now I see what you are getting at.

However, most of my games have had people whose job it is to soak up damage from two NPCs, thus freeing up a bigger hitter to work his way through the line. In our c urrent game we had exactly that situation - a bow-using Desert Tracker and a shaman desperately parried and dodged while the beefed-up Storm Bull killed NPC after NPC, not needing to worry very much about his opponents because the others were soaking up the opposition. Similarly, in Spirit Combat, the Shaman finished off the spirits while the others soaked them up, taking hits and hoping they wouldn't be beaten to easily.

Or put another way, if you're inferior enough, the fact you aren't technically useless is meaningless to many, if not most players.

Maybe, it's all a matter of perception. If the PCs were victorious because PCs held up the opponents long enough for them to be killed then we'd be happy.

That's really my point; you can define the problem away, but at that point you effectively aren't talking about what I'm talking about.

It's all a matter of opinion.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here. 

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However, most of my games have had people whose job it is to soak up damage from two NPCs, thus freeing up a bigger hitter to work his way through the line. In our c urrent game we had exactly that situation - a bow-using Desert Tracker and a shaman desperately parried and dodged while the beefed-up Storm Bull killed NPC after NPC, not needing to worry very much about his opponents because the others were soaking up the opposition. Similarly, in Spirit Combat, the Shaman finished off the spirits while the others soaked them up, taking hits and hoping they wouldn't be beaten to easily.

You'll note, however, from the description of the two characters that they have useful outside combat capabilities; one's a shaman and the other, from the sound of it, a tracker and outdoorsman. Combat is important in every RQ game I've ever seen, but its not the sum of a character's function. The problem with some of the results that table could produce is that it didn't even leave an outside function.

Examples in point:

One of my players generated a civilized sailor of fairly low age (as I recall, he was 18 or 19); he actually had slightly above average attributes (I recall a fairly high Dexterity and decent Strength), but that wasn't enough to pull up his combat skills above about 35%, the lowest in the party at that time. He had Boating and Shiphandling which no one else did, but those rarely came up (in fact I'm not sure the Shiphandling ever did). Even his Swimming wasn't particularly better than most of the group. There just wasn't much purpose the character served other than to be someone who could help hold the line (but noticeably worse than anyone else in the group by at least 10% in his skills.

In contrast, at one point in an RQ game I rolled up a 20 year old Civilized Scribe. Now he wasn't exactly a fighting fool either (as I recall my best weapon skill was my dagger; I ended up getting by early with just my default use of crossbow and 2h spear a lot) but his Lores, language skills and one or two others were high enough I actually served some kind of purpose in the party and was willing to tough it out until my combat skills (and magic skills) made him a bit more generally viable, because I like scholar-heroes.

Now some of this is campaign dependent of course; in a more watery campaign, the Boating on the first character might have mattered more (but at that point the horsemanship skills of such types as Herders would have been more useless) but that really doesn't matter; what the issue is is that the randomness of the system could just too easily throw out a character who served no purpose. This was made all the worse because there are whole classes of skills that its usually bad ideas to let even the second best person with them use (negotiation skills and things like Devise come to mind) unless you can't help it.

Maybe, it's all a matter of perception. If the PCs were victorious because PCs held up the opponents long enough for them to be killed then we'd be happy.

I'm sure some of it is; other people would not have likely been willing to deal with the scribe as I was above. But in the end, I'm hard pressed to see why its a virtue that they should _have_ to. Even with a competent character, getting one you're not interested in playing isn't a virtue; when the system can stick you with one who isn't even competent within his own areas of speciality, I'm just not able to see that as a good thing.

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I haven't seen anything someone has said to make it "unlikely"; what I've seen is people who've said that they haven't seen it. I haven't seen anyone really argue the numerical aspect, which is the only non-subjective part of the process that isn't also campaign dependent. At that point, the only thing you can do is talk about how people respond and what seems to happen in a typical campaign.

Yes, you're senario is subjective. I did state that I find your senario unlikely. As far as statistically possible, just look at the Occupation tables.

Are you saying that your typical campaign experience is that one player has a young farmer while every other player has generated an experienced warrior type?

BRP Ze 32/420

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