Hi All,

I have not played 3E yet, just getting my head around it. second read through. But it seems to me, now I have read the Wizard and Priest books and looked through all the career cards etc, that the Wiz and Pri are more powerful and flexible than every other career. They get a lot of extra stuff free, like their Talent and basic actions like cantrips. Is this right, for those that have played with them? And if so, is this on purpose.. I know it is a common fantasy trope. Even DnD up to 3e has the hyper powerful Wiz and Clerics, as long as you live through the crappy first few levels.

Basically, is my rules reading perception correct? And is this just a Warhammer thing, suck it up to those players who miss out on picking the spell slinging careers?

Don't forget that they also get spell failure cards they get to draw on a Chaos Star.

GravitysAngel said:

Oh yeah, but does that balance out.. I mean in play? What I am thinking is to make any PC buy his Talents actions that are normally free. I think that would balance it, but play is often very different from a read through. But this is something that needs to be done a character creation, obviously.

EDIT: I'll have another look through the spell fail cards now, but don't some of them effect all the players as well??

Machpants said:

Keep in mind that wizards aren't running around wearing armor. That's a lifesaver in this game. Secondly both wizards and clerics have to generate power and favor which unless you want to take the difficulty to quick cast means most spells happen every other turn while a fighter type is swinging his sword EVERY turn.

Yeah armour is def a biggy, but only for the Wiz. As to quick cast, any Wiz worth his salt is going to max out on INT and Spellcasting training.. Because they are casters (and are pretty much stuck as casters for all their careers) they don't need to spread their creation/advancement points. Casters are just so different to all the other careers in that way.

But my replies are all conjecture, and I don't want to seem like I have made my mind up already Outside theory, has anyone GM'd/played a decent amount of play time with a caster and how did you find them, power wise?

Just thinking over, I may just sort my perceived problem with removing the casters cards from the career pile, then they won't pick 'em!

I have a caster running around with a 4 INT, trainned, with specializations.

He feels that quickcasting is a double edged sword and gets really upset when his spell fails from quick casting. As such he's actually been holding back on quickcasting.

He also knows he's a squishy and with no soak he never gets in close combat.

I would NOT consider him at a higher power level than the rest of the group, espcially since the damage spells he uses seems to do the weakest damage out of the party. If I'm not mistaken his magic dart does int +3 damage most times which is 7 damage of which most monsters soak up. Compare that to my fighter running around with a 5 str and 7 great weapon, he's out damaging the wizard 12 to 7 every turn and that's IF the wizard quickcasts.

Sweet, this is just the sort of stuff I want to hear. When reading rules it is so easy to get the balance wrong.

Keep them coming

Wizards and priests have very different social/fluffy restrictions on them than other character types do as well. There's plenty of mistrust out there when it comes to wizards of any stripe and priests have obligations thrust upon them by their faith and their cult superiors. Play these up when interacting with the populace and NPCs. That's the non-crunchy drawback to running one of these types in the Warhammer world. something many players overlook but a crafty GM will make sure comes up enough to make an impact in the non-combat part of the game. There's a reason both caster types get their own minibooks with plenty of specific fluff in them.

Machpants said:

If you're worried, don't let your characters minmax. Require a character history, and direct their build so that it matches that history. My wizard ended up spending a lot his points so that he would have skills and talents that would make sense with his history; therefore, he's not overly powerful.

I always feel sad when I see questions like this because it speaks to the decline of roleplaying. Pen and Paper RPGs have never been "balanced". They aren't computer games where the developers have to make sure that every possible player choice doesn't carry with it some sort of disadvantage. Try playing a AD&D first level monk and see how balanced that felt. And yet, I loved playing low level cannon fodder, er, monks.

Do you want to know why people play wizards vs priests? Or Slayers rather than rat-on-a-stick salesmen? Because they want to roleplay those characters. Because table top games are infinitely flexible and infinitely expandable, only those who think in terms of stats are going to care about whether or not character X is "better" than character Y. A good GM should be making sure that everyone is having fun, regardless of how may dice of damage they are dealing out.

Just my old school $0.02.

Grashnak said:

Very true.

However, since roleplaying games are structured with a rule system that arbitrates the interactions of the player characters with their environment, skills, powers and abilities DO MATTER.

Sure some GM's don't care so much about the rules and focus more on the roleplaying. That can be good. But not every GM is that way. No matter how well some people can roleplay, it all comes down to a throw of the dice .

Through skills, abilities and powers, they can affect the course of the story in a tactile way. They're like sports equipment: sure it all comes down to the player's skills, but having proper accessories (good shoes, skates etc...) can make all the difference.

Grashnak said:

I'll never understand this view point.

Why is it considered a decline that newer games are striving to ensure that every player, no matter what character class they choose, has the same potential to achieve greatness?

Every character type should, RAW, have an equal opportunity to affect the flow of the story, albeit differently, of course.

Necrozius said:

Every character does have an equal but different opportunity to affect the flow of the story in "unbalanced" games.

In the "games must be balanced" point of view, first you have to establish how the system is to be "balanced". And in doing so you've fixed what constitutes greatness. That is, whatever metric was used to balance the character classes, be it damage/round, kills/encounter, powers/day, or whatever , implicitly determines how greatness is measured. Because as you've stated a game should be balanced so that all characters have an equal opportunity to affect the flow of the story.

So by definition, in a "balanced" system the ways in which you can actually affect the flow of the story have been fixed and determined for you. It's been spelled out for the players what the expected behavior is by way of the rules, and if not explicitly stated, there will be a very strong implicit statement on the matter.

So they will achieve greatness by having the greatest "dps" or "killing the most minions per round" or surviving the most hits or whatever other measurable and quantifiable metric was used.

For me at that point, you're playing WoW or any other computer RPG where such things have to be systematically coded into rules that a computer can follow. And those are games that I greatly enjoy. But that's not limited to computer games, there are a variety of pen & paper RPG's that also mimic that model to great success.

However, in pen & paper RPG's I'm not limited to only that mode of play.

In a pen & paper RPG I don't have to make a deterministic axiomatic system that underlies the whole experience. The ways in which a character can achieve greatness are unbounded. And if you'd like to play a game where the player can influence the world through any means, not just by how many action cards, or how high their characteristics are you end up with a game that cannot be balanced, period. Because the ways in which greatness is achieved are not wholly contained within the rule system but are also outside it.

In other words, in a "doesn't need to be balanced game" the awesome doesn't come from the fact that the Monk can cause as much damage as every other class. But rather from the fact that the character is a monk. A monk with a story to tell, specific drives, emotions and goals that push the character forward through the story. That's where the awesome is, in how that character moves forward from where he started to where he ends when the game ends, using the means available at his disposal whatever those may be.

Frodo can't be as powerful as Aragorn (high elf-blooded) or Gandalf (servant of gods like sauron served Morgoth), and they affect the flow of the story since they have some personnal capacities to do so (stealth, social encoutering, Will Power...).

But I wouldn't like a setting where the hobbit are equal during battle encounter to Legolas or Gimli for balance sake with some rule twist.

Lexicanum said:

Waoh... That's such a quote for RP-gamers. Putting it down in my signature LEXICANUM.

willmanx said:

Thanks willmanx, I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks that way. I was just speaking my mind out.

Lexicanum said:

I'm a guy that's 100% storyteller, 100% character actor by robin laws gamer profile but I don't agree with any of this. If you think unbalanced is ok then do away with the rules. Roleplaying has always been at it's core a game of cops and robbers, where the rules exist to make sure stupid fights like "I shot you" "you missed" don't break out. The dice enforce the structure.

When you begin to make a character concept that can do anything and everything better than another character concept you make the latter character concept the fat kid that nobody ever likes. "I shot you" "Oh no sorry you suck at aiming. you missed fat kid"

That's why there is balance in game design because no one wants to be that fat kid. Without balance everyone chooses the optimal character choice.

Now it's nice and wonderful for people to protest and say "I really roleplay, I'd play the fat kid" but the truth is from a game standpoint your a shmuck if you do. From a game standpoint all you do is hurt the party. You roll dice and fail much much more than your teamates. From a roleplaying standpoint playing a failure might be fun for 1 or 2 sessions, but by session 10 if you aren't annoyed you're crazy.

Sinister said:

I think a great deal depends on the type of campaign and the player in question. In some games, the Fat Kid might have other skills or abilities that benefit the party, or perhaps he can deliver comic relief and Warhammery pathos on a consistent basis.

Herr Arnulfe said:

If he has other skills and abilities, then he is balanced. That's my point. He doesn't have to be as good as others at some things, but he has to be better than others, at other things. That's balanced.

As for the comic relief, anyone can be comic relief with the right roleplaying, so why punish a particular player or character?

Sinister said:

Well, in some games the Fat Kid's haggling, evaluation and blathering skills might not be very useful, so other PCs might wonder what he's actually contributing. On paper he's balanced, but in reality he's often not.

I think there's also something to be said for comic relief characters actually being mechanically disadvantaged in key ways. The lowly Peasant who's mechanically equivalent to everyone else isn't really an object of pathos; you must suspend disbelief to make him so. Likewise, mechanically balanced Elves aren't actually the mysterious and smug master race; you must convey that through RP instead.

Sinister said:

I don't think a game where a dwarf hunter is better than a human hunter means I have to do away with the rules. The rules are part of the language used to interact with the story and the world and provide a common language with which to represent the concepts our characters embody. To do away with the rules is to do away with that common language and devolve into the kind of scenario you're talking about.

In "balanced systems" all the points of contact with the story are mediated completely by the rule system. Something like Burning Wheel / Burning Empires comes to mind in that respect. Where anything that's relevant is a governed by a roll. You even get to roll on whether or not a description is usable as an in-game benefit. Those are what I consider balanced systems, where everything that can affect the story goes through the rule system.

In "unbalanced systems" there can still be balance but the balance itself comes from elements outside of the rule system itself. So in effect the rules are unbalanced, but other factors outside of the rule system mitigate it (like the fluff/canon). Take for example Warhammer, you have the priests and you have the wizards. Wizards are much more likely to suffer both the effects of chaos and social repercussions (even when backed by a College). So the balance comes from areas outside of the rule system. The rule system doesn't summon a witch hunter to make the wizards life a living hell if he goes spell-casting happy. Likewise, the rule system doesn't enforce people acting differently towards the wizard.

Dwarves vs humans is another case. For starters they're not humans and they will be discriminated against at some level. A dwarf won't become an elector count or emperor of the empire, despite the high-esteem humans have for dwarves. The world differentiates between them and the opportunities available to one will not be available to the other. Similarly with Elves.

The main problem with "unbalanced systems" is that there is a close interrelationship between the setting and the rules. And deviating from one or the other can have impacts on the overall balance. If you allow the group of min-maxed Elves and Dwarves to act as if they were Humans, then clearly the human player will feel like the fat kid.

Yet an imbalance can crop up in "balanced systems". A character that's strongly invested in social attributes will be next to useless in a combat-centric game. So in the end I reject the notion of a "balanced" game, because balance can only be achieved if you severely limit the definition of balance to a narrowly-defined set of activities. So in open-ended scenarios it becomes impossible to prove it is balanced.

Lexicanum said:

Balance can also be achieved by providing equal screen time to all PC specialties, but few GMs or scenarios actually accomplish this. More often, combat is the main challenge and other challenges are relegated to window-dressing. D&D gets around this by acknowledging that combat is the primary focus of every PC whilst other skills are merely tertiary. WFRP wants to be more of a sandbox game where talking, stealth and fighting are all equally valid options, but in practice the books tend to favour combat as the most interesting solution to most problems.

Any good roleplaying game seeks to make it's characters have the same level of advantages and disadvantages. Fluff aside. Fluff can and does dramatically change the game as with some person playing an elf in the Birthright setting with a bunch of elf hating humans. The elf is at a huge fluff disadvantage as he will not be liked by the rest of the players. This does not mean that the system goes out of it's way to make the elf superior or inferior to the humans. The fluff did that. The players are balanced enough to have an equal share in the success and failures.

Ultimatley however, the power level of characters needs to be balanced or in the same ball park, if I let one of my players play a great old one from cthulhu and the other players all have to be standard investigators and I insist on a long running campaign, it WILL fall apart. I've given on player way to much power relative to the other players and he has carte blanche to do whatever he desires.

There's a reason why the leveling character system was invented to compare the realative power of PCs against each other and against monsters. RPG game design has always been concerned about this. Even this game groups characters into "ranks" which indicates a power level. I doubt anyone would want to play in a rank 5 game where the GM said, "sorry but YOU have to play rank 1".

As far as races are concerned, there's quite of abit of fudging that can be done, especially in the warhammer world to create differences and still have the characters in the same ballpark as each other.

Herr Arnulfe said:

Sadly very few games focus on non combat conflict. I think AD&D birthright, and legend of the five rings do a good job bringing politics and social courtly behavoir into the game. Call of Cthulhu brings the whole you can't win conflict. Most games however, combat is the central theme, which is too bad, because with the right amount of creativity there's all sorts of non combat conflicts you can create. The problem is, that all other conflicts tend to take more story elements to craft, while combat doesn't even need context or backstory, you just throw orcs out and say "fight". I think because it's so easy, it creates lazy GMs that the industry caters to.

Herr Arnulfe said:

Pretty much, and I've yet to come across a system that has rules to that effect. Hence in my opinion even "balanced systems" are broken, unless they take the route of saying, like D&D does, "combat is the primary way of affecting the story".

Otherwise, the rule system would need rules that limit or regulate the type of encounter. Reduce the likelihood of combat based on the number of previous combats in the game. In other words most rule systems don't even balance those parts out, they just leave them to be played out on the table without enforcing an equal distribution of play time and effect on the story.

Merely having an option of going the "diplomatic" route isn't equalize playtime. If the game is truly balanced the rules would have to provide penalties or incentives to balance things out.