At first I always thought power balance and tabletop RPGs was kind of a weird thing
I mean, why are players complaining about their cleric is too good at healing?
You guys are on the same team! Act like it.
I played cooperative board games before like Pandemic, Dresden Files, Dead Panic, Dead of winter
Zombiecide, Zombies, Apocalypse, Zombiecide,  Black Plague,  a lot of zombie games come to think of it. I guess you could say there's an...
Infestation!
I'll let myself out now
Anyway in Cooperative board games. I've never had power balance be a big issue
So why is it a problem in cooperative RPGs?
For that matter, why is the GM complaining about the power of the characters?
You are literally more powerful than Gods. You control fate and reality.
You are so powerful you do not have stats.
But joking aside. I do think there are some legitimate problems here, so let's take a moment to deconstruct the issue
The first issue I'll talk about is the conflict that occurs between the players.
Earlier I said that this problem doesn't usually happen between the players in a cooperative board game, and I think the reason is
That there's usually some cognitive dissonance between the player and their own character in a board game because they were just handed one
Whereas, in an RPG they have to make their own.
So, what that means is that if their character is ineffective in an RPG some people think....
"Oh that must mean I built my character wrong"
Also, I think that part of the issue is that people play in order to feel powerful and be badass and grow their own character
And don't care at all about the narrative or working with the others at the table
All they care about is if someone is doing even more badass things that it seems to take away their thunder.
Or, if there's a PC that can do everything they can do, only better, and it makes the player feel like they're useless
Often only one person the group wants to be "the hacker" or "the wheel" because they want to have a specialization that they own
However, because they have to work together to solve a problem and if they're focused on their character being amazing
Then the rest of the team is not going to help them and that's a pretty toxic group to be playing in
And it can just kill the narrative
When was the last time you saw an action or adventure movie where the characters were just arguing about how awesome they were?
I mean where was that seen in Lord of the Rings where Legolas and Gimli spent the entire battle just bickering about who has the most kills?
I mean- I mean other than all those scenes where it did happen
Or like, what if in Guardians of the Galaxy two people were arguing about who gets to pilot the ship?
At least they were arguing in character! My point still stands!
Part of the problem comes from what I like to call "Alpha Gamers"
I usually don't have a problem in my games with "Power Gamers" per se
I think that if someone wants to have a capable character then I don't think that that's an issue
My problem is when I get an "Alpha Gamer" who is someone who wants to be...
The most damaging person in the group
And, oh God, if you get two of those people at this table and they keep trying to one-up each other...
It sucks!
*Gasp* Oh my God.
Legolas and Gimli were the Alpha Gamers
No wonder Sauron kept trying to kill them
I classify power gamers into two groups. Good ones and bad ones.
The good ones just view the game differently than I do.
I, as a player don't enjoy endlessly poring over splat books to optimize a build
But they do, and I can't really fault them for that
I appreciate that they like the challenge and will complain if the encounters are quote "too easy"
Then there's the bad ones. The Whiners.
I think the reason why people hate these power gamers is because these people are never happy
They whine that the encounters are not tailor-made for them, they whine that the enemies are not weak to their attacks.
They complain about not having enough magic items, they complain about other people having too many magic items
These people will complain about everything!
I didn't play in this one game, but a friend did where there was a paladin who was a whiner.
This guy complained to the GM all the time and the GM gave special exemptions for his character just to get him to shut up
So he got to cast wizard spells
And also could backstab as a rogue
And also started off with more wealth and the rest of the other players combined
And extra stat points
And extra magic items
And also was still fucking whining
And the GM at the end of all this was like why is he still complaining?
I gave him all his free things, and I'm like you idiot. That's why he does it all the time
Also, am I the only GM who had to deal with this issue?
I had another weird situation where all of my PCs had made tall characters and all of them
Wanted to be known as the tallest one in the group
So they kept making taller and taller characters
Until they were running around these freakishly weird proportions like ten-foot tall, rail-thin, 100lbs?
I had half of a mind to start role-playing it as, "the village people are running around town"
"When suddenly they noticed several long shadows casting it in darkness"
"They look to the setting sun to see several freakish abominations coming over the hill are they humans? Elves?"
"Perhaps they once were."
Daddy, Daddy, what's that?"
"Get in the house junior."
"But what-"
"I said get in the house!"
"What do you mean I have disadvantage to persuade the Blacksmith?"
I mean, even in single player video games you still have to balance the game.
If there was an ability that instantly killed enemies for no cost
People would always use that ability to the exclusion of everything else.
So, I think balance among the classes is important so they don't invalidate each other.
When a few options appear above the power curve and makes it so that way those options always get chosen
Then there's power balance issues between the GM and the players
Usually if it's just a difficulty problem the easiest solution is just to ramp up the challenge
And the DMG encounters are scalable, so instead of running two medium difficulty monsters and three easy ones, you can run two hard and three medium
The only challenge that comes in is when one of your players is trying to play the game on hard mode and the other player wants to play it on easy mode
If you set the difficulty too high to challenge one player, it ends up with another player getting vaporized in a fight.
Dungeons and Dragons is a mostly well-balanced game at least out core rule books.
I think the quadratic wizards & linear fighters is a bit of an issue
The homebrew and supplemental stuff is hit and miss... Mostly miss
The big issue is that high level magic in D&D can be game breaking so you might have to ban some things.
If your players are cutting out chunks of content they can't deal with like scrying to figure out where the major villain is,
Or resurrecting someone who's supposed to be dead, or transmute the ending boss into a frog and drop them off a fucking cliff!
I worked so hard for that finale you asshole
Although in those instances, it's usually my fault for not designing the encounters properly, or not changing the narrative to suit the players decisions or...
Not letting them know upfront what I'd allow
Overpowered characters are yet to be a serious problem for me although
Although, I recently, mostly GM 5th edition and had GM'd a little of Fourth Edition.
Fifth Edition is pretty well balanced
While Fourth Edition was a Game that was so finely balanced
You could drop the motherfucker off a fucking skyscraper, and that shit wouldn't so much as have a scratch
I have yet to come across the "I ascended into godhood at level 4 problem."
Power balance is never going to be an exact science
When people complain about balance in RPGs I'm a little skeptical sometimes
After all how can you really balance summoning an army of plague rats versus turning into a sky lizard?
Do you just compare damage?
What about defenses? HP?
However, there's another y factor that I haven't addressed that some of you probably have been waiting for me to talk about
Roleplaying!
Sometimes imbalance can be used for good reasons for role-playing, for example a paladin against undead and demons is going to be super effective
But it totally makes sense narratively, so many people don't mind
Or, that's a big part of the reason why a lot of people roll for stats is to add realism or surprise to the game
So that all the characters are not cookie cut outs and the imbalance is what makes it appealing
I mean I'm sure that's why a lot of people roll for stats and
Definitely not because rolling for stats statistically gives higher numbers than point buy
And people definitely wouldn't lie and opt to use one system or another purely due to them trying to make a Mary-Sue who was good at everything
And definitely wouldn't get pissed off at other players at the table if they rolled high
And definitely wouldn't roll and roll and roll until they got really high stats and write them down on a beat up tattered scrap of paper
that they would use for all their characters and carry around with them for 10 years because that was the one day they got three 18's!
Definitely!
