April 17, 2009
In the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, much stress has been made on balance. In any given situation, the game designers have made efforts to guarantee the usefulness of each and every PC. Without having to resort to creativity or imagination, every character is required to be equally useful in all imaginable scenarios.
In order to judge the impact this has on my own playing experience, I compare today’s methods to my favourite character classes from the days of 2E. Back then, my favourite classes were:
1. Rogue
2. Paladin
3. Fighter
Rogues were my preferred class. Weaker than average in combat, the Rogue had a defined skill-set from 1st level. Over the course of their development, they became more competent within their skill-set, but did not develop new skills or powers. The character developed.
Second-favourite was the Paladin. A combat machine with powers that grow and expand as they level up, Paladins have a small (but mighty) power-set that is easy to track and manage. Arguably the most powerful character class available.
Not a favourite, but always enjoyable was the Fighter. No skills, nothing special. Slight combat advantages in comparison to most other classes. What made the Fighter special was that while the other classes all have abilities and skills that the players do not have, a player could imagine that if covered in chain mail and carrying a two-handed sword, they might be able to strike down a goblin themselves. There was always something beautiful about playing a fighter.
Why these classes? Part of it was that they had simple power sets that did not change greatly over time. There was no need to keep track of a myriad of different spells and powers. No need to re-imagine the way your character reacts to situations at each subsequent level as they get access to more powerful spells. These classes merely become better as they level up. No bookkeeping required.
The other part of it was that these are the least-balanced characters in the game.
The Rogue is the weakest from a traditional combat-oriented point of view. They benefit the party in mostly tangential ways; Paladins are so over-powered they had to put a strict code of conduct on them, to try to prevent power-gaming; Fighters, of course, had nothing special about them. There was something about being at the extreme of the balance that made the game more fun — a character that needed to prove they belonged or was a hanger-on (at one extreme), or that everybody expected to bail them out of a jam (at the other). The middle ground was always so much less interesting.
In fourth edition, though, the middle ground is all that’s left. So much attention has been paid to balance that the extremes are no longer achievable. And a character with a small set of powers/abilities that remain constant over the course of the game, as they slowly master those powers? Gone. Now there is an ever-growing set of powers as the character increases in level, regardless of the class chosen.
You cannot even be a plain fighter anymore — just a guy with a sword. You have to pick powers, and do all the bookkeeping that the Wizards and Clerics used to do.
And what about those Wizards and Clerics? With the short list of spells (er, powers) available in fourth edition at each level, they get less interesting as they level up. My traditional Wizard strategy (I never liked playing Clerics much) would be to use the most powerful spells at the current level as my combat spells, while changing the low-level spells to things that are interesting — Tenser’s Floating Disk, and the like.
Again, fourth edition takes this away. With only a small handful of low-level spells available (at least in the PHB), the choices of low-level powers for high level characters have disappeared. Not powerful enough to be worthwhile to use in combat, they do little but add colour, but there are no colours available.
And that seems to be the problem. The fourth edition of D&D appears to have far more options at first, but on closer inspection, I’m increasingly feeling that it is more limiting than the editions that came before it.
I read an interesting quote today: It’s not about balance. It’s about choice, attributed to Suzy Welch. This article was already bouncing around my brain at the time, and the quote fit my thoughts perfectly: I feel that my ability to choose how to play has been sacrificed at the altar of balance. And I don’t like it.
