Development Info Josh Sawyer on Utility and Balance in Game Design

[Murk]

Well, you don't need to use pathfinder. The interesting thing about D&D is that it's stupid.

Here's an excerpt from the player's handbook of 3.5.

First sentence:

It has been suggested by people with a better understanding than I of the ruleset that Open Locks is a legacy skill carried over from previous iterations when 'skills' as we know them didn't exist, and attributes handled most checks. Skills were something thieves had specifically (hide/move silently/open lock/find traps/etc.) and since they were so iconic of being a "thief" that they carried over because "what kind of thief doesn't know how to pick a lock?"

Anyway, I am all bout removing unnecessary skills but adding useful skills.

 

[tuluse]

The interesting thing about D&D is that it's stupid.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Well... it is not really stupid. DnD was never meant to be some perfectly balanced system. It was always about flavor and roleplay. The DM plays an important part of a chaperon there, by modulating rules and altering description to suit the campaign.

 

[EG]

Well... it is not really stupid. DnD was never meant to be some perfectly balanced system. It was always about flavor and roleplay.

Flavor and roleplay are bad elements of RPG, though, as this thread advocates.

 

[tuluse]

You should be able to provide flavor and balance. For example, since open lock is more specific than disable device, how about rogues get a bonus to it? This reinforces the reason it exists (rogues should be able to pick locks) and lets you have two overlapping skills that can both be useful.

 

[Papa Môlé]

That's exactly what his New Vegas mod was about : enforcing balance and meaningful choices in character building. If you want to judge him, judge him on that, not on buzzwords or some expression that somehow pushes your hate button.

If everything is equally useful, then it's useless to make choices in the first place. Making choices is hard because, if you make wrong choices, there is a real possibility of bad shit happening. This "balance in everything, at all costs" thing is misguided, to say the least.

Everything is not equally useful in the same way. You are like one of those people who confuses equality of gender or race under the law with meaning everyone has to act and look the same.

 

[Captain Shrek]

You should be able to provide flavor and balance. For example, since open lock is more specific than disable device, how about rogues get a bonus to it? This reinforces the reason it exists (rogues should be able to pick locks) and lets you have two overlapping skills that can both be useful.

One time bonuses are not that great as some think. If skills are available to all AND there is no severe scaling, they don't work.

 

[tuluse]

Better than not having the bonus at all right?

If you want to get more complicated the bonus could scale with level.

 

[Murk]

You should be able to provide flavor and balance. For example, since open lock is more specific than disable device, how about rogues get a bonus to it? This reinforces the reason it exists (rogues should be able to pick locks) and lets you have two overlapping skills that can both be useful.

Mostly unnecessary as that level of ability is handled by Rogues having more skill points, special feats that give bonuses to those skills, and focusing on dexterity.

Ideally, I'd do away with classes altogether and still have templates you can take that allow for greater overlap and variety.

Disable Device is a trained skill, so you can't just dump points into it -- you have to possess whatever requirement. Rogues get Disable Device as a class skill, but other classes have to take special training or sacrifice some other ability to take that, meaning that if you want to be a Cleric who can disable device as good as a Rogue you're going to lose something where-as a Rogue just gets it as part of the starting package.

So what I'm saying is, that "balance" of flavor and role is already implemented.

 

[Murk]

Better than not having the bonus at all right?

If you want to get more complicated the bonus could scale with level.

that idea of scaling was introduced with some fan-made rules. The idea that some feats provide an immediate benefit and also provide additional benefits as based on a scaling attribute.

For instance -- there was no cleave, great cleave, or supreme cleave instead there is just "cleave" and it gives additional benefits depending on your BAB. Something like:

BAB 1-5: basic cleave ability
BAB 6-10: greater cleave ability
BAB 11-15: supreme cleave ability
BAB 16+: (I forget what went here)

That way you don't feel like you're wasting feats and it allows for initially useless feats to become useful later and vice versa.

I donno, to me playing D&D is as much playing with and around the rules as it is killing orcs and looting gold.

Metamagic feats scaled with spellcraft skill, defensive feats like Dodge or Combat Reflexes scaled with the Tumble skill, etc.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

You could also make it so that the bonus is enough to just edge you over the hump on the most difficult checks. If the max skill level for the level cap (or the target level of a given area) allows you to succeed at DC 16 checks, then a +2 bonus is the only way you'll get at those DC 18 chests with all the phattest lewt.

 

[Roguey]

Opening a safe with dynamite should also require some knowledge of explosives because otherwise you might just blow up the contents as welll.

But then you have a skill that makes you good at killing things and good at opening containers and that's bad.

Actually, I don't even understand why Explosives was made into a combat skill in the first place (except for Bethesda's streamlining fetish and hate for the Throwing skill). I think it should be more of an utility skill than anything else, letting you destroy obstacles, arm and disarm all sorts of explosive-based traps, craft your own bombs, collapse radscorpion caves and so on. Oh well, it isn't really relevant to this discussion.

Throwing wasn't good enough to hold its own compared to the other combat skills. As far as New Vegas goes, explosive weaponry was unique enough to support its own playstyle. Sawyer's mentioned that if he's ever allowed to make another Bethesda Fallout spin-off, he'll consolidate the weapon skills to just guns (regular and energy), melee (including unarmed), and explosives.

 

[EG]

Sawyer is banned from Fallout.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

You could also make it so that the bonus is enough to just edge you over the hump on the most difficult checks. If the max skill level for the level cap (or the target level of a given area) allows you to succeed at DC 16 checks, then a +2 bonus is the only way you'll get at those DC 18 chests with all the phattest lewt.

And that happens to the MOST retarded way of doing things. It is basically a fuck you to the guy who had a skill as a class skill and invested in it to know that chests were SCALED not to match HIS skill.

As always, I am humbled by your gentle wisdom and scrupulous avoidance of hyperbole.

Although, as an FYI, static difficulty set with a target skill level in mind isn't strictly "scaling" just because it's too difficult for some characters.

 

[Murk]

EG

Eh, over consolidation in skills doesn't bother me if there's something that still provides branching. Such as there's only 1 skill for all ranged combat but what gun you use and how effectively you use it also depends your PE, STR, etc.

So, high STR but low PE and AGI = miniguns and rocket launchers but you suck with rifles, pistols, lasers, etc.

In that case all you're doing is shifting what attribute (primary or derived) you use for success. My guess is he didn't mean what I am thinking above.

 

[Murk]

really? Can you prove that? Have you spent an iota of your brain trying to see where it leads?

Yeah, to games like Gothic 2. Which is great.

 

[EG]

No, no. Weapons (and other actions) can be dependent on no more than one attribute.

Otherwise it's complicated and complication is bad.

 

[Murk]

You said 'static difficulty' -- Gothic 2 (despite no classes or parties) uses static difficulty. No scaling. It is an approach I like.

Table-top RPG modules/campaigns are often tailored with a specific level range in mind and difficulty settings that are pre-determined. You don't grind for XP in D&D table-top, you play a series of challenges out -- this means that resources are generally finite and having a character pick feats like "+2 to open locks" is the difference of whether you open the Uber chest or not.

Different games, same idea -- are you willing to invest resources and incur opportunity costs in order to excel at one (or few) things.

 

[Roguey]

No, no. Weapons (and other actions) can be dependent on no more than one attribute.

Otherwise it's complicated and complication is bad.

Actually he'd be fine with up to three if nothing else can modify any one aspect.
http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/3/entry-121-tunin-tips-and-tricks/

Avoid allowing a base value to be modified by more than three inputs. That is, if you have a base damage value for something, you should ideally allow it to be affected by no more than three things. The fewer inputs you allow to modify a value, the more significant the effects of those inputs are. Additionally, the range is generally more constrained and predictable for a player. In turn, this makes tuning content easier.

E.g. how long you can hold your breath underwater. It's affected by your Constitution score, your Swim skill, and your Breathing Bonuses (a catch-all of non-stacking bonuses specifically for holding breath). As long as you know the max Constitution score, max Swim skill, and the highest Breathing Bonus, you know exactly how long a character can hold his or her breath underwater at any given point in the game. Because you only have three inputs to worry about, it's easy to track everything that goes into this system. Player attempts to min-max the system are limited to those three categories, which means that non-min-maxers can still be "competitive".

Now let's say you decide to expand this system. You allow all Breathing Bonuses to stack. A player can have a Breathing Bonus from up to three different perks and Breathing Bonuses on any/all equipment he or she can wear, up to eight "slots" worth. Even if the values used on these perks and pieces of equipment were relatively minor, the spectrum of minimum and maximum have increased dramatically. It becomes more difficult to predict where a character will be on this scale at any given point in the game, and the min-maxer has an extreme advantage over the casual player, making content tuning difficult.

* From a single value, avoid deriving multiple values in different subsystems. When you do this, you have created a complex balancing problem for yourself. The classic example of this is the ability score system in pretty much all editions of (Advanced) Dungeons & Dragons. Ability scores affect skills, the use of class abilities (e.g. a paladin's lay on hands), and various class-neutral statistics (hit point bonus from Con, AC bonus from Dex). Every time you adjust one of these skills, abilities, or statistics, you affect the value of the stat that has an input into them. Logically, any time you adjust inputs into the value from which these other values are derived, you affect the expected range of the derived values. The fewer things a single value affects, the easier balance will be for you.

 

[Murk]

@ Shrek

A fighter incurs a penalty of the open locks skill unless it is a class skill, unless he's willing to burn a feat on it -- even then, his max level of that skill is still capped at almost half of what it would be had it been a class skill. A level 10 fighter can have, at most, an open locks skill of (10+3)/2 = 6.5, and each rank of open locks would cost not 1 skill point but 2 skill points.

Factor in contextual information like Rogues getting 4 times as many skill points as fighters and suddenly taking open locks is a very bad idea for a fighter.

This means that in a class-based party based system, rogues pick locks and fighters tank.

It also means that you can have a perfectly fine game without scaling chests and providing static one-time bonuses.

Before you call anyone a dumbfuck, make sure you understand (or at least know) the rules which you are attempting to explain.

 

[EG]

You watch. He'll defualt to this: "the fewer inputs you allow to modify a value, the more significant the effects of those inputs are. Additionally, the range is generally more constrained and predictable for a player. In turn, this makes tuning content easier."

 

[Murk]

I have been talking about game design in general, and D&D specifically. You responded to my posts that were talking about D&D.

EDIT: Even on your own point -- my argument stands. In your example some chests are so hard that only the Rogue's +2 bonus is the difference of opening it or not.

So what? It adheres to the them of a class based system -- some challenges can only be overcome by having the right resources/classes and not everyone can be a master of everything.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Now let's take the case where there are chests that are always +2 than max ranks in that skill for that area:

In this scenario ONLY and ONLY rogues can open them assuming they invested in class skill OPEN LOCKS.

Let's say that out of ten chests only 2 chests do this.

Since you want to make sure that the 2 chests are actually worth the trouble, you make them special loot bearing containers.

This means ONLY and ONLY rogues can actually get them.

What does that mean? It means FUCK YOU if you are a fighter who invested in Lock pick skills.

If there are NO SCALED chests then that one time bonus is useless!

I'm having trouble following your argument (I know, I know its because I'm retarded. I'm working on that, but its really hard!). Your main complaint seems to be that the Rogue would be able to open chests the fighter can't and, consequently, get rewards that are unavailable to the fighter. But isn't that what giving a specific class a bonus to open locks is supposed to do? Give them benefits that aren't accessible to characters without that increased ability?

 

[Murk]

Dude, you're arguing that class based differences in skills should be non-existant in a party based class based game and attempting to insult my intelligence?

Are you joking?

EDIT: When you respond to a post that specifically details D&D class dynamics with an example about "fighters" and "rogues" and even write "standard D&D assumption" in it, but you didn't mean D&D at all... then well bro, that's your fault.

If you meant my examples don't apply because you mean specifically PE then just say "no dude, your examples don't apply because they are general ones and we are talking about PE specifically".

Or you can keep posting the word dumbfuck over and over like an sophisticate.

EDIT 2: In an effort to make sure I'm not talking out of my ass I went back and re-read the last two pages to make sure I didn't miss some relevant point about the discussion like an idiot.

The discussion started off about D&D and actually stayed on D&D.

 

[Grunker]

Haha, are people discussing lockpicking's validity now?

Real talk: in my table-top games we remove lockpicking and just use disable device. ;D

I was going to propose an "Opening" skill as a lark, but "Disable Device" is more euphonic.

Damn your creativity, and such.

Or he's just playing Pathfinder, http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/disable-device

Man, I wish P:E used Pathfinder as its base. I would have no problem with them changing the non-magic classes to better fit Josh's utility vision. In fact I'm quite certain Josh would do a great job a putting some of 4th edition's right ideas into Pathfinder and make a glorious game.

Can you really use Pathfinder rules in a video game just like the OGL? I always wondered about that, it's p. unclear. In fact the only reason I know the OGL can be used without legal issues is because KOTC did it.

Everything here is under OGL and as free and open to use as the 3.5 SRD: www.d20pfsrd.com

(and yes, that link contains everything Pathfinder except art, flavor and setting, which is all retarded anyway - the link contains all rules, even non-Paizo ones, and it's all open for use)