Game balance

From: David Cake <dave_at_...>
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 01:37:45 +0800

        I was going to post a short essay on the general issue of game balance, but then it got eaten by a machine crash (curse Adobe!). Then, in the meantime, David Dunham neatly summarised my major point.

>In general, having lots of different abilities (or in this case,
>grimoires and spells) is handy. But it's often not nearly as useful
>as having a couple of powerful abilities.

        Game balance is preserved by having characters with roughly the same experience be roughly equivalent in power. Having lots of nice abilities is good, but it, in the end, you win about 50% of contests with people as experienced with you, all is well.

        Basically, this comes down to ability levels in your most commonly used abilities. If ability levels are roughly the same, characters are roughly equivalent. Edges and all that stuff don't matter much in the end - they really just give you an advantage when facing people roughly as good as you, they aren't important when there is a big disparity in ability. Feats and all that stuff don't really matter - once you have a basic 'Kick Ass' feat of some kind, any others don't really help you win contests against others much. Sure, having more feats are cool - because it lets you use your ability against things other than other characters (spirits, the environment, just about anything you can name), occasionally get your opponent defending with a low powered ability, and most importantly lets you do neat stuff (be more active in the game).

        But when it comes down to it, game balance is preserved by maintaining roughly equivalent ability levels in your best abilities. Lots of choice of feats, spells etc are cool because they let you use your important ability more, but really they just make the game more interesting for you and let you do more stuff.

        Gaining cool new abilities does not make you tougher. It makes you more interesting. This is a good thing (and feats and spells are good mechanics, because they encourage you to do so), but only a very minor game balance consideration.

        Actually, having lots of abilities actually weakens you in the long run (though augments slightly compensate you initially), which is a hidden (and fairly big) flaw in HW. The more abilities, the more you spend HPs on them, and the less HPs you have to spend on your primary abilities, and the more chance you will get stuck in a contest with some low powered ability.

        You get compensations for having lots of abilities. A reduced chance you will end up in a contest with no good defending ability, for example. But its not that useful (you can usually argue yourself into defending with something, and you can often avoid such contests). The primary reward for having lots of abilities is your character gets to do stuff more often, and is thus more useful and more fun to play.

	So, things that are threats to game balance include -
	- making one magic system more expensive than another for 
roughly the same effect
	- making one persons choice of primary combat skill more 
expensive than another for roughly the same effect *
	- effectively changing the rate of advancement for the 
magicians of an entire culture.
	Things that are not threats to game balance
	- abilities with powerful effects if you win, but that are 
not at high power levels. Strike Dead With a Glance 12 is not that scary.
	Cheers
		David

PS I know not everyone posting in this thread actually plays the game much... see if you can tell which ones?

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