I’ve been going pretty hardcore on this whole True Campaign Managery thing. That means I’ve been writing some pretty heavy shit. It also means that I haven’t really been writing about gaming but, rather, about people management. And, while you definitely need to learn that crap — and while I’m definitely the only one willing and able to teach it — that ain’t why I got into this business.
Mainly, I got into this business so I could get paid to pick fights on the internet with sweary, ranty, hyperbolic — but totally correct — hot takes on controversial issues and insult anyone who dared to disagree with me.
My point is, I need a palette cleanser and I’m itching for a slapdown. So I’ve searched through the list of topics my supporters have flung at me over the weeks and months for something I can give a spicy, fighty take on.
So, today, I’mma talk about game balance.
Is Game Balance Worth a Damn?
For some reason, I’ve got the question “Is game balance worth a damn?” in my big ole notebook of supporter-suggested topics. I don’t know who suggested it or when or why and I don’t care. I need something I can rant and ramble about between True Campaign Managery lessons and I’m not up to doing an Ask Angry Mailbag. So, I’m gonna explore the idea of game balance in tabletop roleplaying games today. What is game balance — in TTRPG terms anyway — and why is it something you absolutely should worry about and why has it got nothing to do with whether or not you must balance your Dungeons & Dragons encounters to your player-characters’ levels.
Which, by the way, you must do. If you’re running any edition of D&D published at or after the turn of the millennium, your world absolutely must level up with your player-characters or else you’re a shit Game Master running a shit game. And if you disagree, feel free to comment below because I’m itching to play Whack-a-Moron.
But maybe, if you’re really, really nice and I have some extra time, I’ll tell you why that’s how it be.
For now, though, game balance. Which has nothing to do with balanced encounters. Except for everything.
Why Can’t We Talk About Game Balance Like Reasonable Adults
It’s almost impossible to have a reasonable, objective, critical, and dispassionate discussion about game balance. Which is fine, by the way, because I only ever aim for half those checkboxes. But why’s it hard to talk about game balance like adults? It’s down to two things. First, because game balance is one of those things whose meaning is really obvious until the minute you actually try to, you know, tell anyone what it means. That’s when you realize it’s really hard to pin down and no one agrees with you when you do. So everyone’s just screaming past each other.
And this ain’t a gamers on the Internet thing. Game designers have the same problem. Search online for game design definitions of game balance and you’ll discover that they’re like snowflakes. Actual flakes of snow, I mean, not Internet snowflakes. I’m saying that no two definitions are alike, not that they all pretend not to be alike even though they are so they can all feel super special and spend all their time screaming at each other over imagined sleights and ruining fun for everyone in every community ever.
Even game designers can’t really talk about game balance.
And that’s because, second, game balance isn’t about math and stats and probabilities and damage outputs and shit like that. It seems like game balance is all about math and so it’s all quantitative and measurable and objective — especially in tabletop roleplaying games — but it really, truly isn’t. Game balance is really qualitative. You can’t math it.
Game balance is a practice, not a thing. It’s a thing you try to do, not a thing that is. Game balance is about making shit fair. That’s why it’s so qualitative. Because you have to say things like all else being equal and assuming an average and reasonable player all the time.
Game balance is ensuring that players have a fair chance to succeed at whatever your game is about succeeding at. If it’s a competitive game, it’s about ensuring that two equally skilled players are evenly matched. That the game’s systems and mechanics and options don’t get in the way of the players pitting their skills against each other. And if the game pits the players against in-game challenges, game balance is about ensuring the players’ skills are fairly matched to the challenges they face.
Which has nothing to do with balancing combat encounters. Well, it does. But that’s so far downstream of all this shit that they’re practically different topics. Except they’re not. But I’ll only explain that if you behave and when I get some extra time.
Really, game balance is how your game’s mechanics interrelate and interact and compare with each other. And it’s about how those dynamical interactions between the game’s mechanics and systems affect the outcomes of the players’ actions.
But really really… game balance is ultimately about ensuring that your game’s mechanics provide players a satisfying gameplay experience.
Is Game Balance Worth a Damn?
Read that last paragraph again. The single sentence that starts, “But really really…” Now consider the question posed in that heading here. The answer should be fucking obvious to anyone who’s not a moron.
Yes, game balance is worth a damn. Game balance means ensuring your game’s mechanics provide a satisfying gameplay experience. Is there anything worth more of a damn than that?
So, why would anyone question whether game balance is worth a damn unless they’re missing key brain lobes? There are actually two reasons a non-mouthbreather might ask the question. First, it’s because they see game balance as a single, solitary point on a line. Or in space. And you probably think that too, don’t you? Admit it. When I started talking game balance, you immediately pictured some kind of seesaw scale with players on one side, challenge on the other, and a precise tipping point in the middle. That’s what you think game balance is, right?
Second, it’s because they think game balance means following D&D’s — admittedly somewhat shaky — encounter design rules to the absolute letter every damned time. Maybe you think that too. Maybe you think game balance means pitting your player-characters against a precise number of precisely built encounters following a precise difficulty budget or whatever. Except that’s not really game balance. It’s the end result of a balanced game design.
Now, I’ll come back to the first point in a bit. Maybe I’ll get to the second point too. Who knows?
Game Balance is Really About Player Skill
When you get down to it, game balance is about how much of an impact player skill has on the outcome of your game. And that is one of the things that makes game balance a tough topic. In many of the dumber corners of the internet gamer space, the term player skill is basically a slur. You can’t say it. You can’t suggest that a game — especially a tabletop roleplaying game — should test a player in any way. Otherwise, you’re being evil and noninclusive and you’re gatekeeper or some other dumbass horseshit like that. Fortunately, I’ve driven away all the mouthbreathers who say such shit so I don’t have to address that dumbassitude.
Game balance is about the extent to which the player’s interactions with the game’s mechanics affect the outcome of the game. In other words, it’s how much the player’s choices swing the odds in their favor. A game that isn’t balanced at all isn’t too hard or too easy. Instead, an unbalanced game is one in which the players’ actions don’t change the outcomes in predictable ways. Unbalanced games are impossible to win, no matter the choices you make, or they’re impossible to lose, no matter the choices you make, or they’re totally random so the choices you make don’t matter.
Bringing the game into balance means letting the player’s choices and actions determine the outcome. This means that making good choices and taking clever action becomes important. That’s player skill and how important player skill is varies by the game. When the designer chooses where to balance the game, they’re deciding how big a role player skill plays. And the threshold for right and wrong choices. And how forgiving the game is of wrong choices.
Thus, where the game is balanced — and how big a swath the balance cuts across the spectrum — is extremely important. If the game’s too forgiving or too easy — whatever that means — the players’ victories don’t mean anything. They don’t feel earned and so they’re not satisfying. If all you’ve got to do to win is spam the Attack button over and over — or if you can pick your favorite attack every time — that ain’t a satisfying gameplay experience. You’re not doing anything to win.
On the other hand, if the game’s too hard or unforgiving — however you define that — it’s frustrating. The game’s demanding too much of you and the challenges don’t feel fair. It might take you hours or days or weeks before you can consistently beat the game’s challenges. Or maybe you never can. Maybe the game is demanding a level of skill that’s totally beyond you.
The Myth of Perfect Balance
See why it’s dumb to think of balance as a single, punctual pivot? Game balance is a broad space on a very wide spectrum. You’re trying to land somewhere between Too Easy and Too Hard and there’s a lot of space between those extremes.
Second, you don’t just aim for the midpoint between Too Easy and Too Hard. Your balance space is a design choice. Why? Because the midpoint ain’t the right answer for every game. Some people — let’s call them Filthy Casuals — prefer games that don’t ask too much of them. They need some challenge — or else they’d not be playing games at all — but they don’t want to make themselves ninja masters to win. They’re in this gaming thing for other intrinsic rewards. Other gamers — let’s call them True Gamers — prefer to work hard for their victories. They’re in games — at least partially — for the sense of achievement that comes with mastering a challenge.
Basically, every player’s got their own Too Easy and Too Hard flag planted somewhere on the broad challenge spectrum. When you design a game, you pick a space in that spectrum you think works best for the people you want to play your game. And, in so doing, you’re limiting your audience.
But let’s add another dimension to this big-ass mess of a thing.
Matching Skills and Challenges
I said above that game balance is about how different game mechanics compare and contrast and relate and interact. And to grok that, you’ve got to understand that the phrase game mechanic is a very broad thing. Everything is a game mechanic. Rules — like how to roll attacks and determine damage — are game mechanics. Systems — like how hit points are lost and regained and what happens when you lose them all — are game mechanics. So are characters’ abilities — like feats and class abilities and racial abilities and spells and magical items — and game constructs — like player-characters and monsters and traps and hazards — and encounters and adventures. Even you — the Game Master — are a game mechanic.
And how all those different mechanics interact? That’s all part of the very complex thing that is game balance.
But to give this discussion some focus and make things a little clearer, I want to talk specifically about two broad ways of balancing tabletop roleplaying games. They’re not the only ways to look at balance in tabletop roleplaying games, they’re just to narrow the discussion.
First, there’s game balance between the player’s options and choices. How does any option any player might choose compare to any other? Let’s call that Balance Between Options.
Second, there’s balance between the player’s options and choices and the in-game challenges they must overcome. How does any ability or resource or game mechanic the player might use to interact with the challenges compare to the game’s challenges themselves? Let’s call that Balance To Challenges.
How Roleplaying Games Challenge Players
There are lots of ways games can challenge you. I could write a whole, long-ass thing about the different kinds of challenges even just in tabletop roleplaying games. In fact, I think I have. I kinda remember doing something like that. But forget that. It doesn’t matter. Right now, I’m going to focus on three broad, general kinds of challenges. This ain’t an exhaustive list and it ain’t even the only way to break down challenges. I just want to explain some more shit about game balance.
Remember, by the way, that a challenge refers to the extent to which your choices affect the odds of winning. It refers to how hard the right choices nudge the odds in your favor and how badly wrong, stupid choices tank your chances of success.
First, there’s the challenge that comes from making a good, strong character. That means picking combinations of skills and abilities that give the edge over the challenges you’ll face. And picking options that synergize with those of your teammates. And equipping your character well. And using your level-ups wisely. Or whatever.
I know some of y’all don’t think of character creation as a challenge. And some of you scream your idiot heads off that it shouldn’t be possible to make a good character or a bad character. I get that you’re not personally into that kind of challenge, but don’t mistake your preferences for objective game design rules. Dumbass.
And consider what I said above about the game balance lens and all that shit about Too Easy and Too Hard. If the game’s totally winnable no matter what shitty character you make, your character choices don’t matter. It’s just a skinsuit you drape on yourself. It means nothing. I know some people want that and the people you want to entertain will determine your approach to character creation but I also know that, no matter the target audience, D&D 5E has the wrong character creation system. But that’s a fight for another time.
For now, I just want you to acknowledge that Character Creation Challenge is a thing and it’s perfectly valid even if you’re too stupid to like it.
Next, there’s the challenge that comes from making the right choices and taking the right actions when confronting an in-game obstacle. Solving problems and winning fights. That’s Tactical Challenge. The challenge of making the right choices in the moment.
Finally, there’s the challenge that comes from properly predicting and preparing for the challenges you’re gonna face. It’s the challenge that comes in deciding what supplies to bring, what spells to prepare, and what equipment to equipt when you set out on this or that quest. Let’s call that Planning Challenge.
Of course, each of these challenges affects the others. At least, to some extent. The character you make determines the options you’ve got. And your preparation further determines what you’ve got on hand to face your challenges. The point is just that each of these challenges represents a different kind of player skill. Character Creation is a skill. Intelligence Gathering and Forward Planning is a skill. Creative Problem Solving is a skill. Tactical Decision Making is a skill. A game can test any or all of those skills and many, many others. And your strengths in one area can cover for shortcomings in another. If you suck at tactics, but you make strong characters and you always have the right tool for the job, you can still win.
The reason I highlighted those particular skills is that they complement the two kinds of balance I mentioned earlier. Balance Between Options determines the extent to which your game tests Character Creation Skill. Balance to Challenges determines how much your game tests Tactical Skill. And both kinds of balance play into Planning Skill.
Again with the Myth of Perfect Balance
I already explained how it’s dumb to see game balance as a single point. How it’s a big ole range and how it’s a design choice based on who you want playing your game. But the implications of that shit probably ain’t clear to all of you.
Remember that, while balance is about presenting players with fair challenges — with the caveat that fair is a broad, sliding scale — balance is achieved by balancing the game’s mechanics against each other. And the goal ain’t to make everything perfectly balanced.
Consider, for example, Character Creation Challenge. If every option is equal — if you can somehow manage to perfectly balance every option even though that’s fucking impossible given the open-endedness of roleplaying games and that most of the options are situational and incomparable — if every option is equal, there’s no place for skill anymore. There are no good choices and bad for players to learn and recognize. Same with the combat math. If the hit points and damage outputs are all perfectly balanced, then there’s nothing the players can do to change the odds. And nothing that forces them to git gud. Nothing that forces them to step up their game to meet a serious threat.
Moreover, there’s no way the players can cover one skill with another. If your game only tests Tactical Skill, say, but character creation is perfectly balanced, players who are better at Planning or Character Creation can’t leverage those skills to set themselves up for success.
The point is, a good game’s got to test several different skills and its mechanics have got to be a little unbalanced. Otherwise, it’s all just a crap shoot. And flip a coin; you win on heads isn’t a challenge, it’s a crapshoot.
Of course, you can take this too far in the other direction too. It should be possible to make a good character, for example, but if you can unwittingly or ignorantly make a character that renders the game unplayable, you’re in for a shitty time. And if one wrong choice in the first round of an epic, ten-round, three-stage boss fight makes the fight unwinnable, that’s also a pretty shitty time.
This is why game balance is an immensely difficult, immensely complex, immensely fiddly pain in the ass and why every game designer’s got their own take on the process. And also why the hyperbolic statements dumbass gamers make that boil game balance down to simple rules like, “Every character should be equally viable,” should be ignored. Or laughed at and insulted.
Is Game Balance Worth a Damn?
After reading everything I wrote above, if you’re still asking whether game balance is worth a damn, you’re beyond my help. Because game balance is abso-freaking-lutely worth a damn. It’s complicated, it’s fiddly, it’s finicky, it’s highly qualitative, and it’s a giant pain in the ass, but it’s at the core of what makes a game a game. It’s about how a game challenges its players. And a game that provides no challenge is not a game. It’s an activity. It’s an experience.
Likewise, a game whose outcome is an even-odds crapshoot isn’t fun to play. And a game that’s too easy is meaningless and unsatisfying. And a game that’s too hard is frustrating.
But how much do you — the average Game Master — have to give a damn about balance? Frankly, you don’t have to think about it at all.
If you’re running a by-the-book game and a published adventure scenario, game balance ain’t your problem. The system and scenario designers took care of it. You just have to execute the game. Assuming the designers did a good job.
And, to put the kibosh on any hyperbolic bullshit, D&D’s designers did do a good job on D&D 5E. It’s balanced fine. As fine as anyone could possibly balance any tabletop roleplaying game. Because they’re damned near impossible to balance. When people bitch and moan about D&D’s balance, it’s usually because they don’t personally like where the designers decided to balance 5E. Because they purposely choose to plant the Too Easy and Too Hard flags in approachable, forgiving places. That ain’t bad design or bad balance. And the fact that the vast majority of D&D’s players feel like the game challenges them meaningfully and they’re perfectly happy to play D&D for years and years and years without ever coming close to losing means the designers hit their mark. If you don’t like where they put the bullseye, that’s a you problem.
Now, if you design your own game content — or futz with published content to make it your own — it might seem like you’ve got to sweat the whole game balance thing. But you don’t. The system’s designers took care of that too. They balanced the game’s systems and they provided a bunch of scenario design instructions. If you follow their rules and set difficulties the way they tell you and if you build monsters and traps and encounters and hazards the way they tell you, you’ll end up with balanced, fair, fun adventures.
Game balance is definitely worth a damn, but if you’re just running games — or homebrewing content — it ain’t a thing you have to give a damn about. Better, smarter people have it handled. Just trust them. And if your players are having fun, it’s working fine. This means your dumbass assessment of whether shit’s Too Easy or Too Hard just doesn’t matter.
The end.
Epilogue: Yes, The Game Must Level with the Characters
I promised that if you behaved and if I had some word count left, I’d talk about whether the world’s supposed to level with the characters. And I’m gonna. Briefly. But I’m also going to say this…
It’s a complicated subject. It ain’t straightforward. I’m only going to address a little part of it here. What’s complicating it is partly that most of y’all don’t understand how you’re supposed to use the tools D&D gives you. And Pathfinder. And all the rest. D&D doesn’t actually expect you to balance all your encounters perfectly and it does expect you to exercise some discretion. In fact, D&D gives you the tools to adjust your game — somewhat — to your players’ challenge tolerances. So if your players are finding your fights Too Easy or Too Hard, it probably ain’t the system. It’s you.
Now, I admit that D&D is really bad at explaining itself. I get that. I’m not blaming you. It’s evil, bad D&D that ruined your games. It’s not your fault. But it is your responsibility to learn how to fix it. Especially now that I’ve pointed it out.
So let me know if you want that shit.
Meanwhile, let me address the screaming, shrieking, idiot oliphaunt on the battlefield. There’s this dumbass open question about whether, in their explorations, players should encounter only level-appropriate baddies or if they should occasionally trip over a beholder or a red dragon or whatever that they’ve not got a smurf’s chance in a blender of taking in a fight.
People make lots of arguments about contrivance and realism and verisimilitude and every last one is complete and total horseshit. Those ain’t good criteria around which to build a game. Or even an activity. And, “I’m a simulationist,” ain’t an excuse, it’s just a different way of pronouncing, “I’m a complete moron.” Simulationism and narrativism aren’t different approaches because game design subsumes both simulation and narrative. But that’s a whole other thing.
It’s like this: if you’re running any modern edition of Dungeons & Dragons for any average players, they’re going to assume they can fight anything they face. And that’s because D&D has been built on that exact assumption for the last 25 years. If you drop a challenge in front of your players that they’ve got no chance of overcoming, you’re an asshole. You are no longer playing fair. You’re being a dick. That’s not how D&D works. If you don’t like that, find another system and recruit different players, but don’t piss and moan about how that’s not how it should be. Do you know why? Most players like it better that way and thus D&D has been built around those assumptions.
And yes, old editions were different. Want an old edition approach; run an old edition! For old gamers!
Now, I ain’t just saying this shit because the game tells scenario designers to provide balanced encounters. The assumption that the player-characters can always take a hostile baddie in a fight runs much deeper than that. Most of what’s on the character sheet is about making a combat badass and you’re constantly growing in combat power. The text blurbs that introduce the game and half the artwork in the books tells everyone, “If you encounter a baddie, you have the tools to kill it. You’re a monster killer.”
Modern D&D actually shows a very sophisticated understanding of game design. It expects — and empowers — scenario designers and Game Masters to present and run well-designed gameplay experiences. So, for example, it’s on the scenario designer — through the Game Master — to set proper goals and expectations. That’s just how games work. It’s something Gygax and Arneson didn’t know because sophisticated game design hadn’t been invented yet. But it means modern players respond to the challenges they face based on the signals they receive and the patterns they’ve experienced.
If the players beat 90% of the monsters they meet with the tools they’ve got, they’ll assume they can kill 100% of the monsters they meet. It won’t occur to them that they’ll encounter a monstrous, hostile thing they can’t outright gank. If, on the other hand, the players get into trouble half the time and have to avoid a lot of fights, they’ll default to combat avoidance first and only fight when left with no choice. That ain’t how modern D&D works. That’s old school D&D. Old school D&D was all about finding ways not to fight. Which is why it’s not fun. Fighting is fun! Who wants to create a combat badass in a game called Dungeons & Dragons and encounter a hostile dragon and not slay that fucker? No one. That’s stupid.
D&D is also not balanced to allow players to extricate themselves from unwinnable fights. I’ve talked before about the lack of ways to handle retreat and evasion, but this is deeper than that even. The way damage and hit points and monster abilities scale, a party that gets into a fight they can’t handle might be half-dead before anyone’s turn comes up. Players sure as hell don’t have two or three rounds to enact an escape plan. D&D scales from well-trained, badass normal to epic-level demigod. If you punch above your weight class, the only way you’ll have time to apologize is with your dying breath.
D&D also ain’t designed to telegraph monster power levels. And most Game Masters and scenarios designer fucks that up further by reskinning monsters and advancing monsters and using whatever monster they damned well want at whatever level they’re running. By the book, in D&D, there are dragons I can kill as low as 3rd level. Meanwhile, I can run into an orc I couldn’t kill at 5th level if he’s been advanced a little. So the only way players can determine what’s too big a threat is to let it punch the tank and see if he survives or if he’s converted into a fine, red mist.
As I said, though, this is a very complicated issue and I’m only addressing one specific aspect right now. I’m telling you whether the player-characters should ever stumble over a potentially hostile monster they can’t beat in a fight. No. They never should. If you’re running any edition of D&D published this century, you can’t build your game that way. And if you do, you’re wrong. Sorry.
Does that mean you can’t ever build an encounter around an unwinnable fight? Or a flight from danger? Of course not. You just have to do it deliberately and do it right. This isn’t to say you should do it. Those encounters suck. But the fact that it’s a sucky idea doesn’t mean I can’t be convinced to explore this topic more the next time I don’t know what to write.
You know what to do.
One thing I noticed when moving from D&D to Worlds Without Number – and having mentally prepped the players that “This game holds no punches, it gives as good as it takes.”:
Fighting and Combat doesn’t need to mean “roll for initiative”
My players encountered a big scary golem thing very early in the first dungeon. They recognized this thing was dangerous for people with just two hit points. But they wanted to get past it.
So the planned and figured out how to use their characters skills to win the encounter. (By rolling a big boulder they created with magic down the stairs).
The dungeon was balanced, but not balanced in a 5E “roll for initiative” kind of way.
Hi Angry. My name is Don and I’ll be your moron today. About your statement, “in their explorations, players should encounter only level-appropriate baddies” – Are you referring to just random encounters?
I am one of those verisimilitude world-builders. If there’s a big red dragon living in the distant hills, word gets around. It’s there to develop the setting, and maybe telegraph a future encounter. I’m not going to randomly attack the party with it. But if my 1st level party decides to go dragon-hunting, I would tell them straight-up that their characters would know it would mean certain death. Rumors are there’s a lich building an army far up north. The players know not to march their characters there. Like, duh. Could you clarify your position on this?
I put all sorts of dangerous crap in the world, but I also provide clear information about said danger. I hate leveling the world up with the characters with a passion. The world exists. The characters exist. Adventure’s beckon. And it beckons from level-appropriate directions. I also don’t level up low-level foes (for the most part). A kobold is a kobold. Except maybe a chief or something. Maybe a legendary orc champion. But just because they are 8th level and wanna go bop kobolds on the head for some reason, the kobolds aren’t all going to be 8th level kobold villagers now. It would just be a field-day for kobold bopping. And then maybe the ogre friend of the kobolds hears about it and comes looking for the party.
No, I am not just referring to random encounters. I said what I meant to say.
Thanks for your comment. You’re a shit Game Master and you run a shit game.
And it’s a damned good thing your players are better at listening to you warn them of danger than you are recognizing danger. Because I totally warned you that if you commented, I was just going to insult and swear at you.
The funny thing about this post, though, is that it doesn’t contain a single actual argument or counterpoint. I wrote a thousand words of very reasoned analysis based on actual game designed principles. Your argument is, “Well, I don’t do any of that.” I mean, I assume you’re arguing that you run a great game. But clearly, you don’t. Because what you’re doing is shitty for a lot of reasons. Many of which I spelled out. So, by not saying, “Gosh, I never recognized what a terrible thing I’m doing and how much better my game might be if I didn’t do this shitty thing,” all you’re really doing is wallowing in your decision to remain ignorant of your crap game mastering.
Well, I can’t help you. I can lead a dumbass to knowledge, but I can’t make them thing. But I do weep for your players.
And don’t bother telling me how happy they are. First, I don’t trust you to make that assessment given your poor reading skills and inability to learn. Second, abuse victims often defend their abusers. And third, your players may not know they could have an actual good game if they actually left your crap table. And fourth, your players might be missing the same brain lobes you are. In which case, I’m happy you idiots all found each other.
In all seriousness though… and you clearly do struggle with reading… what you’re describing is not what I discussed. And I was very fucking clear about precisely the narrow question I was answering. The fact that you allow the players to hear that big threats exists somewhere in the world that are currently beyond them and then, if they decide they want to go confront those threats, you tell them, “Don’t, it’ll just get you killed,” is not what I said. Not at all. You are literally not allowing them to meet anything they can’t handle. You’re putting a rumor about it and forbidding them from approaching it until they have the right stats. It’s still a really shit thing to do, but it’s not the same thing. And you’re actually kinda close to a revelation, but then you backed off at the last minute and swerved into stupid.
The thing is, if you advertise a dragon and the players say, “Awesome, let’s go fight that,” and then you have to say, “No, you can’t fight that. You don’t have the numbers,” is just telling your players that the players can’t go anywhere or do anything. They can only confront level-appropriate challenges. Until they have the stats, there is nothing they can do to confront that actual exciting, fun, interesting threat. Until they have the levels, they’re just out of luck. “No. That’s too big for you; go fight the rats in the basement until I give you enough XP so that you can go fight the dragon. Your place is cellar rats. Suck it.”
And there’s nothing the players can do about the dragon out there. If it were a video game, at least they’d be able to just grind levels. They could choose to fight random goblin encounters in the world map until they had the levels to fight the dragon. But you wouldn’t let them do that, would you? So all you’re doing is teasing players and then railroading them.
Are there right and okay ways to do this? Yeah. Kinda. But in a stat-based game, all a beefgate does is remind the players that it’s their stats that will determine what they can do. And since they can’t control their stats — you give them experience based on the adventures you actually let them play — they’re just stuck waiting for you to give them permission to fight that dragon.
But yay for your realistic world.
[EDIT] P.S.: You know your players don’t need you teasing them with rumors of dragons to know dragons exist, right? Like, it’s pretty clear from the title of the game and the artwork. Your players know the world contains bigger, badder things like dragons and beholders and demigods they’ll someday fight. So, really, you ain’t acheiving any actual versimilitude by rubbing their faces in all the shit they can’t handle yet. You’re just reminding them that reality isn’t fun.
Hi Angry, Thank you for your continued work on the site. If teasing the players with rumours of a dragon results in the players wanting to go find the dragon. Would you then turn that into an adventure about figuring out how to defeat the dragon? Which could be anything from discovering a specific weakness that can be exploited or a dragonslayingmacguffin or simply an adventure that is about gaining enough lvls as they explore and search and advance up through the mountain to find its lair, dragon boss time? Creating oppertunities to chase “their dreams” so to speak? a round about way of saying “okay, thats your declared intention. How are you going to do it?”
You’re giving me flashbacks to the time I made the mistake of playing Curse of Strahd.
God this blog has been dogshit lately. Ramped up the hostility, dropped the fuck down the quality.
I’m guessing the fact that you’ve been defending the same “Too Easy” game design that you were ranting against went right over your head. Perhaps that’s what WotC money does to your brain, you actual paid shill?
I’m so glad I never subbed to your Patreon. Go ahead and delete this in a fit of asshurt, I’ll laugh my ass off when you do.
I may be hostile and my writing may be dogshit and I might be totally inconsistent, but I will not be accused of taking a check from WotC. WotC is not paying me for any of this shit. I keep hoping they will if I just cheerlead enough for them, but they ain’t taking the bait. Do you know someone there? Can you get me a meeting? I would love to be a paid shill.
At least you admit it.
Whoah there friend let’s not bring God into such an absolutely Godless comment.
I’ll handle this.
This is me just letting you know that I’d love to learn more about how to fix the game’s balance for my players so I can exercise my responsibility
Moron here.
My 3.5 DMG tells me that 10% of the fights in my adventure should be unwinnable.
It was made by game designers smarter than me, and it’s worked really well for my adventures. I had to kill two players before they figured it out, but my players *think* before every fight now and seem more invested.
About the dead players there isn’t much I can do, we held a nice service, but their spouses are pissed.
Look, dumbass…
Actually, you raise a good point. Apparently, I’m smarter than Monte Cook too. Because the fact that 10% of the fights are unwinnable and that the DMG literally says, “The PCs should run. If they don’t, they will almost certainly lose,” means that maybe Monte Cook should be reading my site. After all, as I noted, it’s one thing if half your fights are unwinnable, but quite another if the players can win 90% of their fights because then, the other 10% will be a screwjob. It’s a good thing most published products and scenario designs just ignored that dumbassitude.
So, I admit it; I was wrong. I’m sorry. The D&D designers are morons too. It’s a lucky thing you’ve got me.
“I’m telling you whether the player-characters should ever stumble over a potentially hostile monster they can’t beat in a fight. No. They never should.”
Hi Angry, I love you and all your work.
The essence of my moronity is this: should the players always be able to push the button labelled “fight”?
They have an audience with the fully guarded king, wanting something from him. If they can’t convince him to give it to them somehow, can they just bloodbath the place to get it? Doesn’t that negate any form of social challenge? Or are you talking about obviously hostile monsters specifically and my example is one of the encounters built around unwinnable fights I shouldn’t run?
Why is your kingdom ruled by a fully guarded potentially hostile monster.
Like, holy mother of fuck, you even directly quoted me saying POTENTIALLY HOSTILE MONSTER!
If you can’t understand what you already read, nothing I type here will help you. Dumbass.
I’m so dumb that I cannot even fathom a ruler that isn’t a potentially hostile monster, and it’s deadly to attempt to kill them.
I’m sorry you can’t separate fantasy from reality. I know that’s how it is in real life in the modern age, but in the fantasy world, you can have benevolent rulers.
I know I _can_, but it seems like you’re saying I have to? And I don’t even know if I can: even the most benevolent ruler plausible is in the “potentially hostile monster they can’t beat in a fight” category because they are a ruler and therefore have oodles of deadly force at their disposal.
I do love the point about not shoving the lack of stat in their faces. I want to understand the whole thing. I’m also willing to wait until you have more to say.
So, I got called out for not giving this question it’s due. Let me try to explain the hangup.
The hangup is on the term “monster” and also on what “potentially hostile” means. I thought I was being very clear in narrowing the scope of the question I was dealing with, but, well, I forgot the golden rule of Game Mastering: you can’t ever be clear enough for players. Because players are dumb.
It’s like this: if the players encounter something in a context wherein it’s reasonable for them to expect violence if they interact with the thing, it is then also reasonable for them to take the offensive and hit the thing back first. When the heroes come on a red dragon in a cave or a warband of orcs marching across the countryside, in most games, it’s reasonable of them to expect to be attacked if spotted and likewise it is reasonable of them to assume a violent stance from the get go. Maybe not to attack outright, but to have weapons drawn and initiative dice primed and ready to roll.
That is what “potentially hostile monster” means. A king in his throne room is not that. Unless he’s the goblin king in the middle of goblin town and you’re not doing any moral-relativist horseshit or having a dumbass online debate about whether evil creatures are evil. They are and we ain’t having that out here.
If the players encounter such a creature in their adventures — one that they can reasonably expect violence from — and that thing is powerful enough that the players’ characters have little to no practical chance of winning the battle, then you’re a shit game master running a shit game. And that is the only thing I’m saying right now.
If you put a thing that looks like any other thing the players would assume they’re supposed to fight, but expecting them to avoid the battle or run away because it’s obviously too powerful for them, no matter what warnings you give or how you telegraph it or whatever else, that is BAD GAME DESIGN.
If that is not the specific situation you’re asking about, you’re debating me on a point I didn’t make.
NOW ARE WE CLEAR?
I’m so thirsty for scenario design it hurts.
So you carefully design the encounter to be a tough challenge (should the players choose to fight it). But it so happens in play that the previous encounter was a bit of a hassle. Couple of saving throws missed, enemy rolls a crit, the party spell casters panic a bit and fire off their heavy hitting spells. The players know they need a short rest, and of course they decide that the – as yet unscouted – room with the big bad is the perfect place to have it.
There you go: a sudden very deadly encounter, obviously shit game design and a shit DM. Time to empty a bucket of teletubby-wash over the dungeon: lower the DC of the boss, bar the door with a “must have recently short-rested”-magical lock, NPC Paladins teleport in to save the day.
Nah, of course not. If the players figure out they are mollycoddled to that extend all tension will leave the campaign. Give them an out, but make them pay for it. If the players insist in being morons, have them make an intelligence roll. If they still insist on suicide, kick their ass.
Then you have Filthy Gamers, who enjoy a nice, meaty challenge but not deciphering the developer’s moon logic. How did we even survive all those 80s adventure games?
We weren’t pussies and knew what fun was.
I’m curious if you think the mainly-OSR-games approach of combat being something to be avoided is an element of bad design within that context?
I agree that for modern D&D, with an average group of players, that just doesn’t really work.
But in many OSR games the challenge is more often ‘what can you do to accomplish your goal/get the treasure without fighting and/or dieing’ and making decisions to stack the odds in your favour often involves trying your best to not fight things.
Which admittedly isn’t something everyone likes, and often frustrates people who want to be heroes and slay dragons and all that other modern d&d stuff, but, works well for a significant enough number of players that it’s a thriving corner of TTRPGs.
This seems to be out of the scope of what you were addressing in the last section here, which was more focused on the more modern games.
The OSR games are still balanced, at least the modern adaption of them are (despite what people like to claim), but, they definitely have a very different range of difficulties, challenges, and priorities they try to balance around.
It’s boring. I like combat. Why the hell would I want to avoid combat?
Fair, it certainly doesn’t appeal to everyone.
I tend to like it, but it makes the game feel more like a puzzle or strategy game than the more action/tactics focus of the later games.
Is there no value to having too-tough monsters as gating, like a golem blocking a path in a megadungeon; or as risks to create interesting decisions, like choosing to save a few day’s journey by cutting through a deadly monster’s territory?
I feel like you missed a few laps. But don’t worry. I’ve got you covered next week.
While reading this I had the instinctive reaction of “No, that’s not right” when you talked about character creation balancing. But reading further, I realized that the problem in 5e isn’t the ability or not to make bad characters; but it’s how LOCKED IN you are if you do.
There are relatively few choices to make in 5e chargen, and even fewer of those have a lot of impact. Even worse, most of them happen before campaign start/on the first 3 levels, meaning decisions can have far reaching consequences you couldn’t have predicted 10 levels ago (thinking of the classic “my favored enemy is dragons, there are no dragons in this campaign until level 15”)
Only arcane casters get saved a little bit, since they get to choose the spells they learn, meaning they aren’t locked in until the last second, and even then they can swap them out at some point too. You can multiclass, but often that is also a trap unless you have in depth knowledge of the system.
By contrast this reminds me of the ARPG Path of Exile. For those who don’t know, PoE has an INCREDIBLY in depth character creation/building element (go look a the passive tree, most people have a small stroke the first time they open it). Some would say that character building is the real game; it’s at least 75% of it for a lot of the community.
It’s very, very VERY easy to make an absolute dogwater character. You can also make hilariously overpowered ones. And that’s not even getting into farming strategies, which have their own depth (and passive tree).
But the great thing is, if you realize a character you’re making is bad halfway through, the game gives you full ability to pivot in a completely different direction. You’re going to be a little gimped, sure, but even that can be remedied later (it’s not free, but it’s also not that hard to even fully respec; gear is another issue).
All of which is to say, if a hypothetical sexy gaming genius ever were to create their own TTRPG system, wouldn’t it be cool if it had ways to pivot more or less hard, and maybe even ways to respec? So it couldallow players to flex the knowledge and skills they gained since the campaign started without retiring characters.
I always liked the skill system in RuneQuest where you got better at the things you actually do.
This is why I dislike D&D5e’s approach to character advancement. It frontloads a lot of decision making – which is obscured by the “system knowledge fog of war.”
My first trip into 5e is a perfect example of that. I followed the “quick character” generation in the PHB. And had very little knowledge of what I should have. Even my gear selection hampered me.
It didn’t help that the party had two clerics either, the other being a much better built cleric. Which more or less made me feel like the party healer.
I would argue the issue is in how character generation in 5e works, rather than needing a “respec” system. I’ve played other RPGs where I’ve not felt my characters fall behind, because the leveling process let’s you balance out things.
Heck just making character generation about rolling your stats and skills takes so much out of players hands.
I’m playing Worlds Without Number these days, and I really like the generation and progression paths of that game. Most things are randomly generated, but you can pick some things that makes it so that you never really start off “really bad” – although others might have been more lucky.
At leveling you have full choice as how to spend your skill points – Meaning Skills and Stats at higher levels are a “points buy.” It’s still possible to make some mistakes at this point – but it’s probably less overwhelming – and the players are more informed, so they can help each other to make decent choices.
I disagree that unwinnable encounters aren’t part of modern D&D: Storm King’s Thunder and Hoard of the Dragon Queen are two official 5e modules that come to mind that feature some unfair or outright impossible fights pretty early on. I’m sure there are more modern examples, but I stopped running official content a while back.
I do agree that unwinnable encounters always suck. If you have a campaign, adding an unwinnable encounter will not make it better. In fact, it’s liable to make it worse because that encounter will suck. That said, even though an unwinnable encounter must suck, the campaign it is in does not necessarily suck.
For example, my players ran into an unfair fight and they recognized the danger and had to flee. That sucked. They even left behind some shinies in the ordeal. But after avoiding that area for a while and coming back stronger, they annihilated the MFer who had previously given them trouble. That was very cathartic.
And that’s the point. The unwinnable encounter sucks, but you try to make up for it by having a second encounter that’s better than usual. It probably still averages out a bit south of sh!tty, but at least it has the emotional contour of a game that’s fun.
Official doesn’t mean good. Or well-designed. Professional game designers can design shit games. See, for example, Storm King’s Thunder and Hoard of the Dragon Queen. And it’s really funny that you bring up the second considering that, shortly after it’s release the one, specific “unwinnable encounter” in HotDQ was extremely controversial and many Game Masters lambasted WotC pretty heavily for its inclusion.
And if you have an unwinnable encounter, putting a good encounter after it doesn’t matter because THEY DIDN’T WIN THE FIRST ENCOUNTER.
I’m not sure I understand the second paragraph: After the players lose the first encounter they aren’t dead? Because losing the first encounter doesn’t kill them? Because the game still progresses forwards with continuity even if you don’t win every single possible encounter? Because if that were the case you sure the fuck couldn’t call the thing we’re playing a GAME?
As has been noted in this blog and elsewhere, modern D&D is structured so that the following is true:
1. It is difficult to identify an unwinnable (as opposed to merely hard) fight before entering the fight – D&D’s monster design doesn’t telegraph monster threat levels beyond a very vague low vs not low CR. Basically anything above CR5 can plausibly be between CR5 and CR 20 based on physical description alone.
2. Anything that a party can’t beat will very quickly smear PCs across the floor – by the time the group realizes that they might not be able to win, retreat is likely to involve consigning multiple PC to death because everyone who is downed or committed to melee can’t fall back.
3. By RAW, most creatures capable of wiping a group of PCs are also really good at chasing PCs down with fast move speed, alternative movement types and various special abilities – even if the party successfully identifies the need to withdraw before PCs are on the ground, it is unlikely that they can withdraw without leaving half the party behind to delay while the rest of the party scatters. The players effectively get to choose between definitely saving one or two PCs, or maybe saving 4-6 PCs by fighting to the death in the hopes of getting lucky.
4. Most of the tools that the party has which could help in their retreat are likely to shut the monster down and let them clean it up. If the monster can be hindered enough to be fled from, it can probably be hindered enough to be kited to death.
5. D&D characters aren’t built around retreat so the game plays like shit when the team is forced to do so – I’ve played a game where our party was faced with a literally unkillable enemy, and “I double move away” got really old really fast. Narratively handling retreat mitigates the tedium but makes it no less dull and one-note.
All together, it is in fact quite likely that a single unwinnable fight run like a conventional 5e encounter will kill most or all of the party.
All of these things are possible to compensate for as the GM, but at that point you are fighting the system in so many places and also fighting player perceptions that have been shaped by the game mechanics. You really should be asking if 5e is the game you should be playing if you want this kind of thing to be a major facet of your campaign.
Wow. Nicely summed up.
Like with most games, there’s also the perception of the players. If you have only played hack and slash action RPGs, and then play Dark Souls or Elden Ring, you will have a bad time. Not because those games are bad, but your mindset isn’t in the right place.
When I switched to Worlds Without Number I told my players that combat can be dangerous, and the I wouldn’t scale combats in the players favor.
On top of that the players started with very low HP. This instantly made the players view any encounter as a puzzle to be solved, rather than always to be fought. Which in and of itself is fun.
I do still throw in obvious “win able situations” too of course, to balance things.
I wanted these things, and I agree 5e wasn’t really the game for me. Heck trying to balance encounters to be “fun” for the players was a pain in the a$$.
How many of you are getting a kickback every time you mention “Worlds Without Number?” Because it seems to suddenly coming up a lot? And can I get in on that deal? I could use the cash.
I think I understand what you’re saying. “Unwinnable” isn’t the same as “inadvisable.” A genuinely unwinnable encounter is effectively scripted. A *highly inadvisable* fight might TPK the party, but it’s not as if you’re forcing them to fail, especially if you telegraph the danger they’re in ahead of time.
That is not at all what I am saying. “Highly inadvisable” is also not good. The goal of good game design is to match the player skill necessary to the level of gameplay challenge. That puts a player in what is called a “flow state,” a sweet spot of high engagement where challenges are neither frustrating nor dull. Of course, in tabletop roleplaying games, this concept often gets lost by mistaking the balance of character statistics to the required rolls needed to accomplish a task as “challenge” or “difficulty” and equating it with game balance.
Talking about the world leveling up is reminding me of a great article I saw here about designing adventures in challenge rating tiers in order to preserve a sense of power progression as the PC’s level up within an adventure or series of adventures. Do you think you will bring this topic back when we get to true scenario designer-y?
Mot sdefinitely.
I think it’s worth adding that in addition to the types you mentioned, the balance of different strategies is relevant to the distinction brought up between older and newer d&d. In newer editions, the strength of combat as a strategy is high when it used to be disincentivized.
This is not only old Vs new DND, it is game system “feature”. Different game systems codify their challenges in different ways. Old DND is about survival with any means necessary while in new, combat gets you where you need to be most/all the time.
There’s shades in between. WH40k comes to mind specifically only war. You win by combat but the designers incentivize the GM to tune balance towards the too hard side making the gameplay experience more about getting the maximum advantage Vs the enemy you have to fight. In a sense the challenge here is to win combat on the drawing board and it has provisions for handling TPKs to move the game forward. Modern DND expects you to jump in a fight and mostly figure it out and win on the fly (char creation and prep are somewhat important).
The other end of the spectrum is mutants and masterminds, again you need to fight but most of the time the fight is an ongoing search for the vulnerability of the enemy, (solving a riddle through lasers and super strength) while combat unfolds. this where the fun of the gameplay lies.
In the end, read the damn book you are running to figure out what is the gameplay that it supports and (try to) give your players the appropriate challenge (both for their competency level and that the system allows/expects)
This was more of a rant than a direct reply
When you say winnable, are you including pyrrhic victories?
The way I interpret this is, the way to the baddie is as long as we determine it to be, giving ample of opportunities to train and side-track if needed, not slap a dragon in front of them and if they attack it, it’s suddenly level 5, hmm?
Guess it’s time for me to be insulted have fun.
Some of my favourite moments were challenges where it was about not being eaten by a monster that was too strong for you. Final Fantasy XII and Monster Hunter (Tri) / (Unite) also had moments like that. Once in the form of a T-Rex that you have to avoid while hunting a cactus and once where you have to avoid the flagship monster while hunting small monsters. The monsters that were too strong were not opponents to crush but were more of an obstacle like lava or a tornado or ice storm. Teaching players that not everything that can growl is automatically a defeatable enemy but sometimes just a hungry boulder like Indina Jones that is not defeated with bonk but with run. Sounds like a pretty normal game thing. But I don’t play D&D, so I guess my frame for encounters is strange? I think Players should be challenged if they have strategies to test if a fight is winnable and if they have ways to retreat if they realise they have already made too many mistakes against the new opponent to win. Players can make it their goal to slay the big bad dragon, then hopefully start with good preparation. Maybe they actively look for dragon slayer weapons like in Fire Emblem. Do small quests to afford better armour. Help NPC to get information about the dragon. In a computer game players would probably just bluntly level up like in Skyrim just make 2000 iron daggers, but since that doesn’t give EXP in most TTRPGs I guess they are forced to find other methods to increase their power level, which in the best case leads to a cycle like in Monster Hunter where playing the game is automatically the way to increase your power as well. Another thing is, when do I know that an encounter is impossible? A combination of luck, resources and brains has occasionally seen players box themselves out of situations we thought were impossible. So putting up an invisible wall in the form of defeating a monster that really is impossible sounds stupid. But just put up a ‘LV too high’ enemy and see if the players can find a way to cheese it like a Medusa with an invisibility spell and flour, why not?
Fortunately, you’re spared being insulted. First, because I’ve already addressed the same fundamental failure to read key points in response to moronic comments. You probably missed them because of your difficulties in reading and comprehending language. Second, because I’ll be visiting exactly this point next week. But here’s the short story, if you can do the exact same thing to create an aspirational goal of defeating a monster in the long term WITHOUT having to risk the players getting absolutely fucking wrecked by a combat they can’t win FIRST, and you choose to instead just let them trip into a fight they can’t win instead, that’s shit game design. You do not have to let the players risk getting killed in a completely unwinnable fight to create this sense of growth and aspiration. So don’t. Dumbass.
Sorry… I guess I did have a few insults.
“Game balance is really qualitative. You can’t math it.”
I’d phrase that slightly differently – you can’t math *some* of it.
And there-in lies the danger. It is very easy to fall into the trap of focusing on the elements that you can quantify easily, and ignoring the problems that can’t be easily verified via hard maths or logic. Which isn’t to say that maths can’t be valuable – the enormous pile of 3.x era DnD material that was overtuned, a trap option or just outright broken due to obviously flawed mathematical design is testament to that. But so is understanding the softer elements that go into balance, and you can’t make truly great content without covering both the hard and soft factors.
Generally, I’d say that the strength of numerical analysis is giving you a rough estimate on how a very specific thing will behave without wasting play time. It isn’t a substitute for playtesting, and it won’t give you the entire picture of how things mesh together, but it is a really strong tool for sanity testing mechanics. Once sanity has been established, however, the usefulness of number crunching drops off dramatically.
And that is exactly the misconception I am speaking against. No. You cannot math game balance. But you can trick yourself into thinking you can. And this is how.
Thank you for so diligently and eloquently explaining why nuD&D is the wrong game for me. “Know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em” is an essential part of an enjoyable challenge for me.
What, if anything, are useful ideas for knowing the difference between “The challenge is gathering the resources you need before arriving at The Spot, and this challenge is just very very hard” and an impossible challenge? As a concrete example, I’m imaging the party having to fight a dragon that’s beyond their character level, in an adventure with a bunch of dragon-specific magic items that the players are challenged to find and gather before the dragon fight starts. If I allow for the possibility that the players might choose to trigger the dragon battle before they’ve found enough of the items to have a reasonable chance of victory, what’s the best response here? Taking the challenge component out of their hands, and just giving them a do-over in the form of “no you don’t you’ll obviously fail if you do that, do something else”? Calling the entire dragon fight the consequences of failure and running it even though it’s basically impossible? Just fudging die rolls and monster stats so that whatever number of the items the party finds turns out to be the right one?
In the Angry way, an adventure should be small, usually no bigger than 5 sessions. Therefore, you wouldn’t be designing an adventure where the characters gains 3 or 4 levels. And, in D&D, one level usually is not enought to a fight change do unwinnable to winnable.
But lets say you are building a big adventure where the character slowlly gather itens and levels to beat a dragon, over the span of several sessions. This wound’t be dropping an unwinnable fight in front of your players. Which is exactly the only thing he was talking about in the article.
But but, in an older series about adventure design, Angry did touch on the subject of adventures where you desing several steps for the player to complete before a climax. I sugest you take a look. Just search the site for “macrochallenge” and “scenes”.
Right, but my point is that the scene that happens at the end of the macrochallenge is ‘an impossible scene’ if you’ve failed the macrochallenge that proceeded it.
“There’s a dungeon with a sleeping dragon in it, you need to find the-”
“Quit talking, there’s a dragon, I go attack the dragon.”
[The DM knowing that if you go straight into the sleeping dragon’s chamber without any of the five dragon slaying items it will definitely kill you]
I’d say the problem with that scenario is why are you requiring those 5 specific mcguffins? Does every dragon have their own unique mcguffins or are all dragons affected by said mcguffins?
It should probably be more like general solutions to specific problems, like for instance, the dragon is intelligent, the dragon can fly. Why would the dragon sit around like a toad and be hacked up by swords when it can just do fly-bys and toast you? That is a specific problem that needs solving, and there are many potential solutions to said problems, like maybe they taunt the dragon down, maybe the dragon needs to occasionally land because flying is tiring so you wait it out and pursue it if it flees, or they steal its loot or egg(s) and lug it into a small enough space where the dragon can’t easily fly. Or the dragon happens to lair in an old castle that has a handy ballista on the crumbling ramparts waiting to rip through its wings.
The point being, that problem has flexible solutions that are available at the location without an accompanying mandatory fetch quest. Now there could be some specific advantages you only get from a mcguffin, like maybe render its breath attack useless or do half damage, or shuts off a wind aura that makes it invunerable to physical projectiles or whatever, but at least some of those capabillities ought to have alternative solutions or if not, they ought to, at most, just make the fight harder without them.
Are you running the kind of game where you can allow a near guaranteed TPK gated behind a single wrong choice or failed skill check, without the campaign ending there and then, if not then it shouldn’t be designed that way. That specific 5 mcguffin dragon ought to be sealed behind 5 mcguffin requiring doors/seals or something to that effect, it shouldn’t be lazing around in a 1-5 level dungeon. If you failed the preceeding macro challenge, no access to the dragon.
The root problem is “your character isn’t good enough” makes a crappy obstacle. Your players are going to want to fight the dragon, but the best tactic is to gather all the power-ups first. The challenge lies in choosing to play a bunch of game that isn’t the game you’d rather be playing. It’s not satisfying.
You need obstacles that actually prevent the players from fighting the dragon (or you could just let them fight a dragon). Maybe the giant, flying, magical, fire-breathing lizard can’t be bothered to fight the PCs. Maybe they have to find an ancient word that they can yell at the dragon so hard it can’t fly anymore. Maybe the word is written in a dungeon with a bunch of opportunities to recover ancient, dragon-slaying artifacts. However you do it, once the players can choose to fight the dragon, fighting the dragon shouldn’t feel like the wrong choice, and when they fight the dragon they should feel like they can win.
As someone who facilitates roleplay and simulations more often than I run games, my answer is if you’re running a modern DND, then this is something that needs a session zero or more explicit conversation. If you feel you can trust your players to trust you, then you can foreshadow it. If they beeline the boss I’d have NPCs that don’t want to watch people go to their execution stop them and plead with the pcs to not kill themselves.
With regards to the dragon, I would introduce feels bad mechanics. When I call for initiative, I call out “have you acquired [name], the [epithet] of [location]?” Five times, with each no adding a consequence. (No weapon? Dragon has regeneration/resisted element. No protection? Everyone has vulnerability to breath weapons etc) On the third no I would also add that they are effected by a aura of malice that strips fear resistance and immunity in addition to allowing the dragon to dictate your saving throw roll with a reaction. It’s upgraded aura of panic that will be revealed round one will ensure the party only gets 5 rounds to try things before they’ve all ran away if they didn’t prepare enough.
The dragon will be too arrogant to care to run down weaklings, even if it’s minions will be more proactive now. In addition, I’ve given them a list of consequences for each object so they still have a choice to skip out on two if they can get work arounds (fighter acquires a flaming weapon to turn off the Regen instead of the weapon, everyone gets potions of evasion to make the breath weapon weaker) and they know that they’ll want a fear immunity on top of having 3 items just to be safe.
I’d also flaunt rules like initiative when fighting it, calling turns out as “the dragon chooses to go first, the dragon decides it’s Fightin’ Fred’s turn”. Perhaps one of the consequences is that the dragon doesn’t have to play fair and can skip a player turn once per round.
I really liked this article. And you’re dead on about OD&D and 1st edition, if you’ll pardon the expression. It was just expected in the 1970s and 1980s that characters would die – even if your players weren’t foolhardy or unlucky enough to go after a beholder or type VI demon at 3rd level, there were plenty of spells, poisons, and monster effects with a “save or die” outcome. I play pretty cautious PCs thanks to those days.
Where it gets challenging for me as a DM is to balance the expectations of the modern or casual player who expects a balanced game and a solid chance of defeating enemies they encounter, with the player who WANTS a simulation or sandbox. And who loses “immersion” if they get the sense that there are no enemies that are (currently) beyond them. As you say, perhaps I need to sit that player down and explain that this is a game, and not a sim.
Some people like the risk of death, so it really just comes down to knowing how to read the room. Call of Cthulu vs d6 Star Wars. D&D has the flexibility to go either way.
Modern D&D actually does not have that flexibility. Getting the flexibility requires a Game Master or Scenario Designer to change the system. But this also isn’t about the risk of death. The risk of death is “what are the odds one more character’s die given an ostensibly fair challenge and what’s the swing on odds; how big a window does ‘fair challenge’ entail.” This is about the characters tripping over an impossible challenge, having to surmise it is an impossible challenge, and having to do so quickly enough to escape before the impossible challenge destroys them.
I appreciate this post a lot, and I’ve been wanting to read something like this ever since listening to your flash chat on Open Worlds.
After reflecting on this article for a while I have come around a bit to it. It’s also because I started thinking about these in terms of Dark Souls or Baldurs Gate 1+2 or certain Final Fantasies etc and how great it is that you can come across enemies of any power level in any area, instead of “the room of level 1 monsters” followed by “the room of level 2 monsters”. But…… if something looks tough, you can just quicksave, have a go at it, and if you win, good on you! If you lose, oh well, just reload (or if it’s Dark Souls just keep going back over and over until you get that lucky run that beats the boss). But you can’t do that in a tabletop campaign, can you? If the party mis-estimates the threat posed by the wandering beholder and they get wiped, they could lose 3-6 months of campaign for nothing. Like the equivalent of if you decide to test out fighting Emerald Weapon in FFVII and you lose, the game just deletes all your saves. Flip it the other way around: Imagine you’re running a true open world D&D game, except at any time, a quorum of players can just declare “quicksave” and then they can do whatever they want, if they decide they don’t like the outcome they just revert to the game state back to where the quicksave was, if they like the outcome (somehow this time the red dragon only rolled 1’s), they continue on until the next time they declare quicksave. Probably not fun to for the GM.
At the risk of your sanity I would happily read another 10 articles about this same game balance/open world stuff, tackling the subject from more angles. For example:
– What about persistent entities, like the city guard? Do they always just happen to be a level range comparable to the party, or should they be a set level?
– The arguments you made about why true open world doesn’t work, are they truly insurmountable? ie, assume you consider open world to be more important than anything else, but you still recognise that the players need to have fun. Can you overhaul the rules enough or create a system to make it work?
Honestly, there is absolutely no good reason to build a “true open world” when you can just fake it anyway. It’s much less work and you get much better results anyway.
The reason I hate the term Game Balance and you touch on it, is that everyone has different wants, needs, desires, or who the fuck knows, ideas of what makes a game Balanced. I despise the term because no one knows what they want or even how to fix it. I like the term ‘Fair’. Does everyone get a chance to feel special or have fun doing something they want. If so, the game has reached it’s objective. The issue is that not everyone knows WTF they want until they don’t get it or they feel they are being overshadowed by someone else. Basically, the only reason we even need Game Balance or fairness is because, us as humans, have a need to feel special and are upset when someone out shines us. So we have to make games Balanced because we are whiny little babies that never learned to play correctly.
While I get where you are coming from, that is actually not a very good analysis of Game Balance. Nor is it really Fariness. Fairness is not about everyone getting the chance to feel special or have fun. Fairness is, instead, the feeling that an outcome was earned. Or, at least, being able to accept an outcome. Specialness is actually the opposite of Fairness. Specialness is a desire to be treated differently from others. To believe that something about yourself puts you above others. You are unique, you are not like others, you are…
Fairness also has nothing to do with the Intrinsic Motivations that drive us to play games. Or, at least, very little to do with it. Fairness and Game Balance are much less subjective than many other aspects of Game Design. I’m not saying they’re completely objective, but the core concept of Fairness varies very little from person to person in terms of gameplay mechanics and Game Design. It’s got a much more fixed definition than something like Challenge or Difficulty or Expression or whatever.
Sorry to be a slow reply on this. Really helpful article; I’d come to the conclusion a while ago that D&D 5e is not at all “finely balanced” as some people claim, but that this doesn’t mean you don’t care at all. This is great at explaining why, and bringing in some more parts to balance – we often think of balance only in terms of “is one character ability/item OP compared to the other characters?” and “is this encounter reasonable?”
And i totally agree you shouldn’t throw your players at something they’re not able to fight. Apart from anything else, D&D lacks the save points and “???” above high level enemies.
But… I still feel I should run a world where there are big threats – a dragon in the mountains, etc. And surely nothing really stops low level characters trying to find and kill it? (Unless as DM we create obstacles)
Or do we let them run in over their head *if they specifically try to* (just as we’d not prevent other stupid decisions if they understand the risk and really want to)
Can you give us a good model for having a world where these things exist without breaking your recommendations above?
By the the end of the my very long True Scenario Designery course, all your questions will be answered. So stay tuned…
Awesome! Thanks, really appreciate both the big series and these more one-off articles.
I think every character should be more or less equally viable – just not in all circumstances. Or, said another way, there should not be any options that someone could take during character creation that are *definitively* suboptimal. At least by themselves, I’m not talking about synergies here. Instead, whether a character is ‘good’ should depend on the adventure you’re playing.
Of course, there will always be some options that are stronger than others because there’s no such thing as perfect game design. But I think “every tool has its use” is a good target to shoot for.