The Balancing Act

Balance

Balance might be the #1 thing talked about in gaming when you go into game theory and play. We talk about balanced rules, balanced parties, balanced encounters...

Here's the thing.
Mechanical balance isn't possible. Not really. Not without harming the game itself. Because for true 'mechanical balance', you need to have the mechanics control the decisions that the players make - right at character creation. It needs to control the choices players can make in an encounter. It needs to control the choices the characters make in the setting. It needs to control the choices the characters make as they level up. What gear they get. What bonuses they get. Who they encounter. What they can get from each encounter. What they can gather out in the world.

The characters get pushed into smaller and smaller boxes, with less and less choices, all in the name of 'balance'. And what this does is make the character sheet really bland, and the mechanics really bland. You can still have a good game session -- but that's solely because of the game master making it interesting -- in spite of the mechanics, because the mechanics certainly don't make it interesting.

For example:
Game Engine:  You have three attributes from 1 to 6.  Your have a skill from 1 to 6. You roll 2d6 and add attribute + skill to get a total vs a DC.  Any ability you get does the exact same thing:  +1d6, remove the lowest, when you perform a specific task.  Weapons are 1d6, 1d6+1, 1d6+2, 2d6.  You can get an ability that does +1 to damage.  Armour is -1d6, -1d6+1, -1d6+2, -2d6.  You have an ability that gives a +1 to your soak. That's the entire game engine.  All your choices boil down to just that and nothing more.

Magic?  'You get a +1d6 on rolls involving this, or it does between 1d6 to 2d6 damage, or it gives a +1 to damage that doesn't stack with anything else, or it reduces damage or gives a +1 sto soak that doesn't stack with anything else'.

It's a perfectly functional game engine.
It's just boring as hell. It does not give the players a lot of room to do neat stuff - stuff that makes them stand out from the other characters mechanically.

Joe Canuck
Race: Canadian (+2 Nice, +1 Fight)
Class: Barbarian (Hockey Player) (+2 Fight, +2 Tough)

Attributes and Skills
Fight: +5 (Hockey Stick (Great Sword): +3)
Nice: +4 (Passive Aggressive: +2)
Think: +1 (Weather: +1)
Tough: +3 (Hockey Padding (Armour): +2

Abilities
War! -- when using Fight in battle, roll 3 dice and take the two best. When using Nice in battle, roll 3 dice and take the two worst.
Peace! -- when using Nice outside of battle, roll 3 dice and take the two best. When using Fight (for intimidation for example), roll 3 dice and take the two worst.
Cold, Eh? -- when resisting cold attacks or cold weather, roll 3 dice and take the two best. When resisting hot weather, roll 3 dice and take the two worst.
Two-For -- you get a +1 bonus to resist getting drunk.

Weapons
Hockey Stick: 2d6 damage
Hockey Padding: 1d6+2 damage reduction
Hockey Puck: 1d6 damage, range 20m, 40m if using a Hockey Stick.

Sure, the character has flavour (this is my job after all), but ... really... there's not much there as far as mechanical uniqueness.  Any other character made using this system's going to look pretty much the same raw-mechanics-wise.

The games I prefer are the ones where the players get a lot of choices out of the gate on what to make - they can make characters that stand out as completely different from one another, mechanically, even if they're the same race and class and with the same backgrounds. The player might make choices that cause the character to stand out in some seriously 'broken' ways.

Case in Point: My sister's Pathfinder character has a +50 Stealth. And Hide in Plain Sight. And can run with only a -5 to Stealth. And partial cover to hide with. She is god among ninja.

'Broken!'

Uh huh. But here's the thing.  Have you watched movies, anime, cartoons, read books, comics, etc? These kinds of characters tend to exist in these settings. It's a thing. So why can't characters in games be like that?

'But where's the challenge? What about the other players?'

She doesn't want to be challenged in Stealth. Her rolls are usually crap. You want to challenge her? Give her enemy a good AC, a lot of Hit Points, some counter-attacks, and make it immune to crits or immune to precision damage. If you want to go the mechanics route. Of course, doing that all the time's lame as hell.

No, her challenge is 100% roleplay.
She's hunted by an entire religion. The place she was making into a sanctuary got taken over by said faith. She's been globe-trotting to search for the secrets of becoming a goddess.  She's trying to make allies to do this - and has already made enemies.
And the rest of the group?  We're all along for the ride and enjoying it. And that's all that matters.  It doesn't matter if her numbers in Stealth are far beyond sane. Each player has built the character they want to play. Mechanical balance be damned.

This is why I liked Exalted, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, Anima: Beyond Fantasy, Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea, and TORG -- to name about a 1/25th of the roleplaying games I've played and run. All these games have something in common: they give the players the freedom to choose, to build who they want to build, and don't really sweat 'balance' to do so.

No, you want balance?  This is how you get balance: The players and game master work together to make sure everyone has fun.

That's it.  That's the big secret.

The players cooperate to ensure everyone at the table is invested -- ensuring they support each other 'on screen'. They make sure everyone feels involved at the table.

The game master knows where to move the 'spotlight' to shine on a specific player, to ensure that player feels a part of the game and important. The game master knows how to give everyone at the table something to do. And the players keep an eye on that and support those decisions.

That's balance.
Everyone feeling they're contributing to the game, and everyone having fun.

Is it work?
Yeah, it's work. It requires a mature gaming group, and a game master that knows what they're doing, and a group that's willing to back the GM on it and accept the odd mistake that might come from it.

And not everyone has that skill set. And sure, the mechanics can prop the GM and the players up a little bit - but too many people expect the mechanics to do the heavy lifting to make the game balanced -- and no mechanic is ever going to do it well without sacrificing player agency.

For the vast majority of RPGs, however, the mechanics aren't built for it. They're there to build a character and help that character throw down in combat, with usually 25-50% of the mechanics set up for battle.

Things it doesn't usually keep in mind?
Non-combat options. Politics and subterfuge. Characters making allies, cutting deals, and exchanging favours.  It doesn't cover characters who talk to their enemies and find common ground, then exchange goods and favours.

You know, roleplaying.
By the way. Roleplaying unbalances the game. It gives players options and actions that mechanics aren't meant to 'balance'. And the only way to reign that in is to not let the players interact with the world in any meaningful way.

Then you have those games which allow you to make decisions during character creation. 'Pick a Race', 'Roll / Pick your Attribute', 'Pick your Skills', 'Pick your Archetype / Class / Role', 'Select your Special Abilities / Class Features / Feats'.

You give players the freedom to do that, and the characters will usually not be balanced when they come out the other side. They all had the same choices, but some combinations work better than others, and some characters work very well with a player's playstyle, while another player might not be able to do that well.

Oh, well, there went the balance.
For an example?  In 1e 7th Sea, I made a character with three combat styles and a magical art. This is not normal. He started out, effectively, underpowered when compared to the other characters at character creation -- but because of his magical art (essentially, a combat adept who bumps up their physical traits over time) -- he came out pretty good, very quickly.

Because I knew what I was doing.  I doubt any other player at the table would have ever thought of that. Was he unbalanced? Mechanically? Hell yes. Was the table unbalanced? No, because the GM knew what they were doing, and the table knew what they were doing, and we supported one another.

Everyone has fun.
That's what makes the table balanced. Not mechanics.

So.
What if the game master wants a game engine which helps keep strict control of the numbers, so there's no surprises.  What if the players don't want to see one of the group make a god-character in comparison, and want to keep everyone on even keel through the campaign?

If they are having fun... and everyone's invested, and everyone feels like they're contributing to the game ... then cool. The table's balanced, and that's all that matters.

It isn't the mechanics doing it, though. It's facilitating it, but it isn't doing that. The group is. The group has their way of working together, ensuring everyone is involved, and works with the game master.

You could have the most balanced game engine in the world, and the campaign can still be run into the ground by a player who knows how to work the setting. The mechanics can't stop it. The GM and the players have to work together to make sure everyone's involved - so it comes back to the group, not the engine.

But then, my table is not your table.
My table's needs are not your table's needs.
You do what you need for your table to have fun. Because that's what's important.