D&D 5e: For real this time?

[Unbeliever]

^ I think this overstates things quite a bit.  In D&D, gp is just such a character resource.  Just like character points in GURPS, et al.  It's one of the many "bins" of character resources out there, which include feats, class levels, skill points, and so on.  D&D just doesn't unify them like the purely point-based systems do. 

And, not having magic items isn't really an option or a meaningful choice, outside of the corner case represented by Vow of Poverty.  It's equivalent of saying "not having feats."  It doesn't really make sense in the system.

Now, what does need to happen is that gold pieces_sub_character resource and gold pieces_economy need to be pretty seriously divorced.  It seems to work that way in practice in many games, but it's worth highlighting. 

As a side note, I'm not a huge fan of expending character resources on consumables.  I feel like it inevitably runs the risk of pulling things out of balance.  This is less of an issue, probably, when the consumables are just an extra reward, like randomly rolled treasure that is on top of WBL or whatever system you choose.  Although in practice they have other issues -- e.g., it's rarely worth it to take an action drinking a randomly rolled potion than it is doing whatever action your character is built for. 

[Ananse]

^ I think this overstates things quite a bit.

Hyperbole and sarcasm have, in fact, never been involved in overstating anything, ever.

In D&D, gp is just such a character resource.  Just like character points in GURPS, et al.

No it's not, and I just said why it isn't. All those other games have cash as well, and all of them explicitly say "Pay character resources for X" where X is something that can actually be bought with cash. GURPS, in 3rd ed's Cyberpunk (and maybe Bio-Tech), had optional rules for using cash to buy cyberware (effectively Attributes), and those were horrible. Outside of that -- and most definitely in GURPS 4th, character points are how you buy things. You can tell your GM that you bought your high-ST torso from Wal-Mart, and she'll say "Fine, now pay the character points for high-ST."

Cash is a fluid resource that is completely unbalanced as to the game system's stat allocation, and that's fine, so long as it cannot feed back into the aforementioned system.

D&D just doesn't unify them like the purely point-based systems do.

Incorrect. None of the games mentioned in my previous post, as a system default, unify cash and character points. None of them. And the only prominent example of that occuring is D&D 1st ed. . . like I just said.

And, not having magic items isn't really an option or a meaningful choice

In 3x, no, but I'm not talking about 3x, I'm talking about a new system. You can tell because I proposed a new system. In a thread about a new system. What are you talking about?

Now, what does need to happen is that gold pieces_sub_character resource and gold pieces_economy need to be pretty seriously divorced.  It seems to work that way in practice in many games, but it's worth highlighting.

This is basically both impossible and irrelevant. Removing an economic entity from an economy -- I can't even parse that. In any event, gold needs to be dropped as an essential PC resource. In a decently-designed game, cash is a character motivation and a plot coupon that has no bearing on character creation (such that having a lot of money is just another stat you can buy on a character sheet).

I'm not a huge fan of expending character resources on consumables.

Consumables are simple enough to handle: allow for a maximum number of consumable-generated effects one can employ at a time and then characters have to make strategic choices about which consumables to use. Give some consumables greater benefits balanced by drawbacks and one could engineer an interesting subsystem.

[Unbeliever]

If you're going to make declarative statements, try not to make them be demonstratively false.  E.g.: 

...

D&D just doesn't unify them like the purely point-based systems do.

Incorrect. None of the games mentioned in my previous post, as a system default, unify cash and character points. None of them. And the only prominent example of that occuring is D&D 1st ed. . . like I just said.

It's been decades since I've played GURPS.  But, somehow I recall that you could buy a gun with $$$ in most settings.  Likewise a car, helicopter, etc.  Somehow I also recall that you could spend character points on getting an advantage, subtly named Wealth.  So, ummm ... yeah, you can spend character points on money.  It's more explicit in other games, like Shadowrun, for good or ill.  I happen to prefer M&M's approach to these things, but D&D has its own way of doing things and its own legacy. 

I was going to bother responding to the rest of your post, but then I realized by your tone it would be a waste of mine and anyone else reading this thread's time.

[Ananse]

If you're going to make declarative statements, try not to make them be demonstratively false.  E.g.: 

...

D&D just doesn't unify them like the purely point-based systems do.

Incorrect. None of the games mentioned in my previous post, as a system default, unify cash and character points. None of them. And the only prominent example of that occuring is D&D 1st ed. . . like I just said.

It's been decades since I've played GURPS.  But, somehow I recall that you could buy a gun with $$$ in most settings.

I literally just said that in my last post. Literally. Like, just read it. I mentioned, offhand, that you can just get cash with character points:

In a decently-designed game, cash is a character motivation and a plot coupon that has no bearing on character creation (such that having a lot of money is just another stat you can buy on a character sheet).

I know my posts can be dense, but why bother replying if you're not going to read them?

I was going to bother responding to the rest of your post, but then I realized by your tone it would be a waste of mine and anyone else reading this thread's time.

Um, I think deliberately ignoring someone's post in order to make a point is pretty rude and I don't think I deserve that, so I very much appreciate your commitment to no further rudeness. I'm not even sure where this hostility of yours comes from; nothing I posted was even remotely controversial.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

LA has never been a good answer to anything in the history of mankind.

Nonconsumable magic items should be a function of the broader character development system, not a function of gold obtained (just as they are in many solid games -- GURPS, HERO, FATE -- that are, oddly, spelled in all-caps). Thus, a new resource needs be created from which magic items can be drawn, and that resource should probably be expendable on some other character asset in order to make Not Having Magic Items a meaningful choice. (And that other asset should, of course, provide benefits worth forgoing magic items.)

Character power isn't a function of in-game economy, but of the character creation system we use to ensure inter-PC balance and challenge-appropriateness. Throwing the ridiculously variable in-character economy into the mix is simple insanity, as WBL has shown conclusively. It would only begin to make sense if one adopted a D&D 1ed-style rule where gold collected counted as xp, and that, though less insane, is thoroughly stupid.

Note that if this new resource helped pay for racial advantages, it could make a lot of sense. "Sure, you're a werewolf, but now you're naked and unarmed. Which isn't really a problem." And, oh, look at that, LA waddles into the dustbin of history alongside WBL and the Christmas Tree, all thanks to the Motherfucking Competent Game Design Faerie.

'Course I was just doing that post off the cuff
as an immediate reaction to FlameCows.
(not that it's possible to read my kitty avatar's mind)
 

Magic Items could be balanced on the schedule
of feats instead, or a gear approximation, or
spells, or Z or Y or X.  3e does have a power
curve that fits closely to Spells.  4e added in
monster levels = caster levels (I suppose).

So when I said "LA" for lack of a better term,
I was putting a Magic Item on about the same
schedule as Monsters levels = Caster Levels.
They don't have to be.  And it can be called
something else entirely.

[Ananse]

Sure! That all makes sense. Part of the point is that once you drop the legacy assumptions of 1-3ed, it's actually a really easy problem. Almost no modern game suffers from this problem; D&D is stuck in the late seventies on this score.

To elaborate on the above in more detail (spoiled for length):

(click to show/hide)

Posit a pool of resource points called, say, background points. (Or maybe Pridian Points, or Nudiusterian Points, and yes I've been waiting to use those words for some time.) The number of background points you get goes up as you gain levels. Background points can be spent on bling. The bling you have access to goes up as you gain levels. You can reallocate background points every level so long as it's thematically appropriate (e.g., however you like, just make up a good in-game reason). Background points can also be spent on things that d20 would handle with level adjustment, templates, non-class hit dice, and other contrivances. Again, what you are eligible to purchase is determined by level.

There's nothing sophisticated about this; it's a restricted point buy. It's been done, we know it can work.

In my view, you don't want to use the same pool of points as feats. Magic or their equivalent are too granular to be handled by a set of 12-20 "chunks" of feats, and feats themselves, because they're so painfully limited, should be broad affairs that have large impacts and always scale. Indeed, feats aren't really suited to solving any characterization problem due to those characteristics. Compared to other RPGs, feats in d20 are weird.

Back to background points and magic items. In-game justification is simple. Magic items bond to the user, and a user only has so much "juice" to yield to magic items. Bigger items require more juice. Some items have really powerful effects, but only minor versions of these effects can be unlocked with lower amounts of juice -- which is measured by expenditures of background points. Being a member of a powerful race or having extra magical powers due to bloodlines or species eats up juice, too, which makes paltry humans pre-eminent tool users.

So Sally Swordsyourface gets a Sacred Shortsword at level one and pours background points into it. At level 10, she can pour even more points into it (discovering its True Power) or switch over to this one magic dagger she found and put points into that (becoming Sally Switchblade, because d20 totally has switchblades). (D20 tried something similar to this and ended up printing the worse book in 3.5, but it's not a bad idea.)

Meanwhile, Wilbur Werewolf is a half-drow half-human werescorpion (and his family never lets him forget the latter) and spends his background points on those varied heritages and virtually no magical items. He could, especially as he goes up in level and gets more points, reallocate points to magic items and reduce his racial powers, or split evenly between the two.

The trick will be making sure that everybody has You Must Be This Tall To Ride abilities. This can be enforced by making certain classes of effects mandatory at certain levels. "You're level 10, so you have to buy something that grants flight or planar travel." It's a bit crude, but it could work. Keep in mind that a new edition would rewrite the monster manual, so we could readjust these Must-Have powers to fit the world we're trying to emulate with the new system (which is an issue; see below).

Thus, at, say, level 13, Wilbur is going to have to buy himself a pocket plane of Arcadia that he can travel to in order to Go to the Adventure, while Sally can buy a magic item or sword upgrade that lets her slice gateways into other worlds into existence. The theme is completely irrelevant; the hard part is, again, deciding what flavor of crazytown you want d20 to look at at each serious jump in power and making sure that both the class levels and the background points provide the minimum necessary to engage those challenges. But once you've done that, this system makes it easy to meet the demand. Just make the choices strictly structured so you don't end up with the sheer unpredictability that pure point buy systems have (because if you have that unpredictability, point buy systems are mostly superior).

Keep in mind what this does. In one fell swoop, we've either solved or at least seriously addressed --

• WBL
• LA
• Templates
• Powerful Races
• Monsters as PCs
• Animal and Racial HD
• Christmas Tree PCs
• Magic Item Trap Options (partially)
• Encounter Reward Balance (partially)
• Vanilla Humans (a start -- this one vexes me in particular because it's a problem which is _purely_ the result of lazy design almost without exception)
• PC scaling (partially)
• Ditching a magic family heirloom axe for this magic sword you just found with more plusses.

Having considered the above, I have to comment:

D&D bleeds from self-inflicted wounds, its problems resulting from the design team's refusal to address real issues and instead shove their collective heads into whatever orifices are handy. Given the dramatically awful bit of PR his online playtest game created, I have to wonder if Mearls even cares at this point. I don't think I'm notably clever for coming up with this scheme; I am surprised that Mearls is lackadaisical even though he displays only a passing familiarity with why his brand is tanking, and amazed that Hasbro seems just fine with that.

Anyway, a d20 system that created a semi-point buy would begin to address its more pedestrian issues, though there are still huge genre and conflict resolution mechanics issues to hit. You'd still need to ask and answer "what does the d20 system emulate?" before even starting -- something the designers haven't done for a decade, at least.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

 

... once you drop the legacy assumptions of 1-3ed, it's actually a really easy problem. Almost no modern game suffers from this problem; D&D is stuck in the late seventies on this score ...

Yeah yeah D&D legacy stuff.  Slay enough sacred cows and people go more apoplectic than the 3e/4e edition war.

... So Sally Swordsyourface gets a Sacred Shortsword at ...

  ... umm , I wanna meet her.

[Ananse]

Yeah yeah D&D legacy stuff.  Slay enough sacred cows and people go more apoplectic than the 3e/4e edition war.

Acknowledged, but that's a marketing problem. Marketing is for making people want things, regardless of the need. The "edition war" only occurred because WotC deliberately created it, not just by creating 4e, but by specifically scorning 3e and encouraging others to do so. Bizarrely enough, this means that the marketing didn't fail, but the designers of 4e are utterly incompetent at marketing.

That's staggering. The 4e design team effectively contributed <i>nothing</i> to Hasbro. Had they simply refused to go to work each day and presented an eleventh-hour rehash of 3e as 4e, they would have made Hasbro more money (since Pathfinder wouldn't have had a chance).

Oh, by the way, that resource pool described above could be used to help determine the relative worth of various monster abilities, which means that it could be used with polymorph, metamorphosis and the like to create a "customization pool" of abilities. This would be a complete fix of the shapeshifting effects line, unlike the PF patch.

So that nails nearly all the bullshit problems of 3e except noncaster relevance (which is a problem of poor genre conceptualization) and basic combat rules issues.

[littha]

You act as though those customisation point based systems are balanced by default. I would like you to read some white wolf systems.

[veekie]

^^
They tend to be even LESS balanced than classed systems, any time resources are allocated as points(case in point, GP usage for equipment), it opens up a great deal of room for optimizability. Even exponential costs don't really help there, they just worsen the problem for those with lesser skills. Only way they work that I've seen is the M&M method of hard caps on what you can do with the points.

[Ananse]

You act as though those customisation point based systems are balanced by default. I would like you to read some white wolf systems.

I already addressed this. It isn't a pure point-buy system since everything that is purchaseable is heavily restricted by level and package based restrictions -- e.g., in order to get claws, you have to buy something that has claws, which makes it more difficult to laser in on high-op combos. This isn't really any noticeably different from how magic items are handled in 3e and 4e right now: they're a menu of character assets you can buy in each case. As such, both existing systems can be interpreted as a poorly-implemented point-buy. What a resource pool does is, at a minimum, standardize costs and effects and adds in explicit level associations for the same.

In effect, what you really have is a second class-based system stuck to the original one, where "werewolf" is a possible alternate to "guy with awesome sword."

Second, WW is a terrible example of this going poorly and I'm frankly confused as to why you'd think that the Storyteller's semi-kinda-optional-mixed-point-buy system is an example (and wouldn't mind hearing why). GURPS and Champions are better examples of the problems and benefits, both, of point-buy systems: even with the GM being extremely mindful and carefully houseruling certain combinations, the difference between high-op and low-op can be staggering. This is despite the fact that the game assets may be mostly appropriately priced, since clever combinations of assets are worth more than the sum of their parts.

In Storyteller, Merits and Flaws are optional in oWoD, and most of the character design problems are derived from the fact that every other option is either a trap option or a must-buy. Storyteller is shit before you get to looking at it for combinations, emergent behaviors, or unintended consequences.

[Bard]

GURPS and Champions are better examples of the problems and benefits, both, of point-buy systems: even with the GM being extremely mindful and carefully houseruling certain combinations, the difference between high-op and low-op can be staggering. This is despite the fact that the game assets may be mostly appropriately priced, since clever combinations of assets are worth more than the sum of their parts.

And is this a bad thing? Really?
I would concur it's bad design and could ruin a game if we were talking about a wargame or a Player vs Player videogame of some sort, but I fail to see the need to overbalance things in a traditional pen and paper RPG.
Some people are more powerful, some are weaker, some things and choices are better than others... those are all things that make the world more fun to play in and character creation more fun to do (as long as there's at least a way to make any character concept work). If I'm playing in a "high" magic fantasy setting such as most of Dnd ones are, I expect mages to be vastly more powerful than mundane *anything*. I expect that even having the same experiences some more talented (read: well built) characters will be just better than others.
Sure, that means putting a bit more work on the party and DM when creating the character builds for the party to keep >playing characters< on an acceptable range of power between each other, but in my opinion it's well worth the effort. Also it allows to decide to play, with the same game, at various levels of power in a meaningful way (different classes and playstyles) instead of relying on some cheap "you get less/more points" mechanic.

PS: As far as point buy goes M&M is way worse than those two, there's some combos that let you get tens of times the point worth out of a character.

[bhu]

And is this a bad thing? Really?
I would concur it's bad design and could ruin a game if we were talking about a wargame or a Player vs Player videogame of some sort, but I fail to see the need to overbalance things in a traditional pen and paper RPG.

Having played a lot of Champions it's not about over balancing, it's about trying to keep in party disputes to a minimum because one or more PC's outshine the other.  Unlike the rest of my rl group I twigged on to how to make characters for champions early in the game, which made headaches for the GM.  Anything that was a challenge for me would vaporize the rest of the party.  Anything that could challenge the other members of the party I could solo easily.  My PC's often were powerful enough to make a better BBEG than the ones done by the GM.   In such situations the less powerful members of the group get pissed off because they effectively can't do anything without the more powerful party members help.  The more powerful party members get bored because nothing is a challenge and they resent the constant sniping from everyone else, especially after pointing out to them how they could easily redesign their character to make it work.  Depending on how PC's spend their points they can end up with either The Hulk or Squirrel Girl.  Parties work wel when they stay roughly at similar levels of power and have a role to fill.  In point based systems, it's easy for one or more players to screw up and have no role to fill by virtue of being too weak to do anything.

[Ananse]

And is this a bad thing? Really?

What you are questioning is ambiguous -- it's impossible to tell if you're saying it's a bad example or a bad result. Could you clarify?

I fail to see the need to overbalance things in a traditional pen and paper RPG.

Wait, I'm confused. The system I was proposing was less likely to allow for high-op combos than typical point-buy systems. It should be noted that whether or not that that's a generally good thing, it's considered a good thing for D&D because that's why classes exist. GURPS was, in part, a reaction to that, which is why it has no classes. If you don't like the restrictions and don't mind the possibility of high-op combos, then that's an argument against D&D in general, since classes are pretty much one of the few things that D&D has to have to be D&D, most people believe.

In other words, if you don't want the restrictions, you don't want classes and you don't want D&D, which is perfectly fine. But if you want classes, then you're buying into the restrictions, so it's weird to say, "hey, how come this isn't a pure point-buy?" Pure point-buy systems are not, by definition, class systems.

I'll come right out and say that point-buy systems are better, imo, than class systems, but that doesn't mean that the latter don't have some great uses -- bhu goes into that. (And I could post anecdotes about GURPS along the same lines.)

That said, I don't know what you mean by "overbalance." Clarify?

[Bard]

And is this a bad thing? Really?

What you are questioning is ambiguous -- it's impossible to tell if you're saying it's a bad example or a bad result. Could you clarify?

Yeah sorry for that, I didn't realize it when I wrote it.
I was just asking if the fact that a system isn't balanced and allows for different power levels in character created with the same "reource pool" is necessarily a bad thing. I don't see it as one (within some limits of course) in certain kind of games such as super hero and high-magic settings. (Batman and Superman are both heroes, but Superman is infinitely more powerful than Batman on the paper, same goes for the characters in lots of fantasy books like for example Wheel of Time)

Wait, I'm confused. [etc, etc]
That said, I don't know what you mean by "overbalance." Clarify?

Here I wasn't talking about the merits or demerits of the specific systems (point-buy, class, mixed, multiple pools point buy), I was just pointing out that I don't think that traditional RPGs need  to be balanced like other kind of games, it is fine if there are more powerful combos and useless ones, if some classes, options, stuff-you-can-buy-chains or whatever are better than others. It was an answer to what seemed to me the trend of the thread of "D&D system is too unbalanced, here's some alternative to fix it", not to the single proposals.

And is this a bad thing? Really?
I would concur it's bad design and could ruin a game if we were talking about a wargame or a Player vs Player videogame of some sort, but I fail to see the need to overbalance things in a traditional pen and paper RPG.

Having played a lot of Champions it's not about over balancing, it's about trying to keep in party disputes to a minimum because one or more PC's outshine the other.  Unlike the rest of my rl group I twigged on to how to make characters for champions early in the game, which made headaches for the GM.  Anything that was a challenge for me would vaporize the rest of the party.  Anything that could challenge the other members of the party I could solo easily.  My PC's often were powerful enough to make a better BBEG than the ones done by the GM.   In such situations the less powerful members of the group get pissed off because they effectively can't do anything without the more powerful party members help.  The more powerful party members get bored because nothing is a challenge and they resent the constant sniping from everyone else, especially after pointing out to them how they could easily redesign their character to make it work.  Depending on how PC's spend their points they can end up with either The Hulk or Squirrel Girl.  Parties work wel when they stay roughly at similar levels of power and have a role to fill.  In point based systems, it's easy for one or more players to screw up and have no role to fill by virtue of being too weak to do anything.

This IS a serious issue I admit, and one that I often encountered in most groups I tried outside my ""usual"" ones. That is why I was mentioning the need for the party and the DM to discuss and create character builds (not sheets, the full builds or at least a gross idea of what they'll be) in advance, to make sure they're not too far apart in power. Most of the games with "fun and complex character creation" (D&D, Champions, M&M in primis) share this issue and the need to compare and balance sheets ahead of the game. But I don't feel like it's that big of a drawback.

[Ananse]

I appreciate the clarification.

I disagree with one of those points, though, and spoiled the response for length.

(click to show/hide)

.  . .I don't think that traditional RPGs need  to be balanced like other kind of games . . .

With respect, sir or ma'am, this is totally wrong.

I can't emphasize the wrongness enough. Or the respect. (I don't mean to insult.)

First, let me say what I think you mean -- that way, if I've got you wrong, you can correct me. You're saying that traditional RPGs don't have to worry too much about the relative power levels of characters within the same party. That is, variations of power between PCs is not a large concern in a traditional RPG, you are saying.*

That is way, way off.

*Again, feel free to correct me if that's not what you're saying; I don't want to strawman or misunderstand.

The entire point of a point-buy system is to prevent intra-PC power disparity. And the point of a class system is to rigidly enforce intra-PC power equivalence! Class-based systems are even more hardcore about this concept than point-buy systems. When you see people talking about "party roles," this is part of the concept they're addressing. Assume, for a moment, that party roles are a concept that should be preserved. If you have a PC that encompasses multiple party roles and a PC that only has one, or has his roles trumped by that other PC, then the first PC gets more screentime than the second. That's unfair to the second player; he has less opportunity to do meaningful stuff in the game. (Note the word "meaningful" there, as in plot-relevant.)

Point-buy systems kick these problems to the GM and other players to handle directly while putting costs on game assets that, ideally, prevent role unfairness. Class-based systems take the problem from the GM and players both and simply restrict what you can play, enforcing the roles in the mechanics. This can be good for quickly making characters (unless your design is fucked -- see also d20) and for reducing role overlap (unless your design is fucked -- see also d20) at the expense of player -- and actually some GM -- liberty.

So, yeah, this is the most important thing in RPG economics. It determines how you're setting up character creation. A traditional RPG is very much concerned about the relative power level of its PCs.

Indeed, I can only think of two, possibly three, exceptions to this concern, and both mildly challenge the traditional RPG category:

1) Toon. The point of the game is to make people laugh. If your character has three times the points of another PC, your obligation is the same. Indeed, being more powerful can be worse than being weak because failure is funny.

2) Paranoia. Pretty much the same issues as Toon, though less egregious. Still, that game does respect some notion of play balance; its loose design may be just a function of the fact that the designers can get away with it. So what if you're mutant powers are better than his? You're gonna die every five minutes anyway, and the other PCs will just shoot you more often out of fear of your abilities. That's not nearly as bad as --

3) Ars Magica. One PC is the mage. She is ubar. She has tons of powers. The other PCs are grogs. They no do magic. They suck. They're expendable. Every adventure, players switch roles such that everyone gets a turn at being the mage. Nifty idea, though in practice, who could reliably get game sessions that make sure everyone has a fair turn? In any event, this was a selling point of the book because the idea was so novel, and is still so amazingly rare.

So intra-party PC power is hella important, and rarely dismissed in design as a result.

Also, I don't think that's really a concern when it comes to magic items/racial powers (what a Background system would cover). Most of the power disparity in d20 is due to class disparities, not gear and race disparities, and I don't think this new system would make things worse on that front.

[veekie]

I was just asking if the fact that a system isn't balanced and allows for different power levels in character created with the same "reource pool" is necessarily a bad thing. I don't see it as one (within some limits of course) in certain kind of games such as super hero and high-magic settings. (Batman and Superman are both heroes, but Superman is infinitely more powerful than Batman on the paper, same goes for the characters in lots of fantasy books like for example Wheel of Time)

Key difference. These are non-interactive media, they are there to be read or watched, not played. Thus power levels in such cases are essentially irrelevant, it's based on what would make an interesting story, not what is fun to play.

For a group game, you need the following:
-Everyone must be able to contribute. In combat, this is simple, outside combat, not so simple.

-Comparable challenges. You know what happens when a hit that would take out only a quarter of one player's health would oneshot another player? Or offensively, when one player can oneshot things which would otherwise tank the rest of the party indefinitely. A one man show.

-Variety. If everyone is doing the same thing, that diminishes the inter-character potentials. Variety is what makes combat more than just a countdown contest of numbers.

Contrasted with how point buy systems, barring specific adjustments, face difficulty:
-Freedom to allocate your points is freedom to overspecialize or overgeneralize. You might become a one trick pony, and then the trick might never come up, or you become a jack of all trades and find that none of them are strong enough to do anything.

-If you can trade between offense and defense, you risk losing comparability. M&M3E solved the problem one way, you can trade caps between types of offense or types of defense, but not trade offense with defense. There still remains the risk of a newbie digging themselves into a hole by grabbing cool powers instead of essential capabilities, for starters, how are they to know better?

-Finally, with any point buy, there will eventually derive ideal arrays. If the system is capped, you'd hit all the important caps first before doing anything else. If it's using escalating costs, you'd find the middle ground of expenditures. What all this does is kill variety, paradoxically, offering unlimited choice is a very good way of getting only a handful of similar options, whereas tightly constrained paths supports more branching. Think of it as a a plant analogy, a tree is rigid, but the rigidity can support elaborate structures, a vine is fully flexible, but it'd only support simple structures, because anything complicated collapses.

[Nytemare3701]

On that note, there IS a way to make a point based system balanced, but it's boring as hell. If at every point of the game, every point is worth exactly as much as the last, and exactly as much as putting it in another place, then that would be by definition perfectly balanced.

The problem here of course is that overspecialization has to (oddly enough) grant bonuses to neglected stats, while generalization has to grant synergy bonuses to single stats.

+2 STR & +2 DEX also gives +2 CON
+4 CON also gives +1 to STR and DEX

This is really heavy handed, but can be fluffed around pretty easily (being stronger and faster naturally makes you more durable, while being extremely resilient means you can push yourself harder to move faster or lift more)


I'm not saying this is the best way of doing it, but DOES work within the limited scope of such a system.

[veekie]

It could, at the cost of increasing bookkeeping. Sort of like how hard caps lock in an optimal state(you always want to meet them), but can encourage diversification after said state is reached.

[Bard]

You're saying that traditional RPGs don't have to worry too much about the relative power levels of characters within the same party. That is, variations of power between PCs is not a large concern in a traditional RPG, you are saying.*

I was saying quite the opposite really
I think that inter-party balance is the only things that matters in a traditional RPG, and that can be achieved by planning and sharing with the rest of the party (or at least the DM) your character plan in advance, so he/everyone can judge and balance it against the others.
What I am saying is that I don't think it's needed for said balance to be integrated in the system itself, and that *ALL* character created by said system should be balanced against each other.

Key difference. These are non-interactive media, they are there to be read or watched, not played. Thus power levels in such cases are essentially irrelevant, it's based on what would make an interesting story, not what is fun to play.

This is a good point, as is the rest of the post, and I admit I may have exagerated the issue in my example
I might be too used to D&D, but I don't mind if the "wizard" of the situation is more powerful and versatile of my sword and board crusader. He is using magic, I'm waving a stick. If we had the same level of power or usefulness it'd make me feel like magic was not powerful enough

On a side note, caps did not do much for M&M, there where huge loopholes derived by its versatility... stuff like overspecialized forms changeable as a reaction "I'm a glass cannon but if you shoot me, I'm suddenly a rock", or perfect sensory abilities coupled with reaction-timed teleport portals, or powers like object creation that could do *EVERYTHING* with just 1 point for an alternate use (and the fact that creating a bubble around someone worked much better than trapping him with a dedicated power).
This is actually a good example of a game that's totally unbalanced but it's tons of fun as long as the party compares characters and balances them before playing.