Mathematical framework of True20, compared to M&M and D&

[Baduin]

This topic requires really a rather long discussion, but I frankly lack the time and a motivation to do it properly. I will therefore cut short to the conclusions.

The designers of D&D 4ed put much work into its mathematical foundations, trying to ensure that the difficulties for checks will remain proportional to characters' abilities, that damage will remain proportional to hit points, etc. Most importantly, they want the creatures of a given level to be a good (neither too difficult nor too easy) challenge for characters of that level. Wizard of the Coast even empoys a mathematician specializing in the game theory. They were not the first to do so, however.

"Mutants and Masterminds" game has a very simple and efficient way to ensure the proper mathematical proportions between characters - the power level and trade-off between attack and defense etc. ensure that the numbers of all characters of the same level will remain in the same range.

True20 was based on M&M, but uses a lot of converted D&D elements. Many of them tend to escalate out of all proportion with other numbers, so at higher levels game tends to become unbalanced. See eg Smite:

"You can charge a blow with the power of your determination. You can use Smite Opponent once per day per four warrior levels, rounded up. When you strike a favored opponent in melee, you can activate this feat: add your Charisma score to your attack roll and half your warrior level to your damage. If you smite an opponent who is not actually a favored foe, there is no additional effect, but the smite use is wasted."

As it can be easily see, at 20 level there is enormous difference between damage you can inflict on your favored opponent and all others. This can be made worse with stacking of bonuses, of course. You can take Rage, max Bluff skill and take Challenge feat to bluff as a move action, (or simply take Light Shaping as a favored power and fight invisible), take Sneak Attack etc. Or you can take Enhance Ability as a favored power. This all adds up to quite unbalanced numbers.

It is even worse with Adepts. At higher levels their attack and defence bonus is useless. They can boost it, of course, with Combat Sense and Enhance Ability. But there is no need to - it is better to simply turn invisible, Blink, fly, or even better - Phase and become utterly invulnerable, blasting everyone with Psychic Blast (with unlimited range).

It is obvious that at higher levels there will be necessary quite serious intervence by Narrator to keep the game on tracks. All this could be quite easily avoided by ensuring the proper mathematical framework.

What I would hope, optimally, would be a True20 second edition based on the framework of M&M, but a bit pre-packaged, so that you could build a character by selecting proper powers and feats and it would come out more or less balanced, without the need for additional intervences by Narrator. (The first thing to do would be to forbid the stacking of modifiers).

At present the thing to look for would be the announced "comic book fantasy" supplement for Mutants&Masterminds. I hope that this would prove a solid base for fantasy games, which could be adapted for True20.

[Dragonspawn]

I don't know if this will help, but you are comparing different approaches to game balance.

1) In True20 & D&D 3.x both, "game balance" is enforced to a degree with classes (roles in true20) which provide baseline numerical bonuses per level (attacks, saves, max skill ranks and so on). Beyond that, each character has a number of game elements (weapons, armor, feats and spells/powers) which they can add to go above and beyond the limits set by level. As you state, in True20 you can try to unbalance things if you only select offensive options, but you are also forgetting about things like defensive feats and powers (Warriors have Toughness, Experts have Defensive Roll and Adepts have various powers). It sounds like the escalating toughness option might be a good one for you since you seem to like the idea of toughness scaling to level just like attack and defense.

For my money True20 is more balanced than D&D 3.x due to defense scores scaling with attack bonuses.

2) Mutants and Masterminds handles game balance differently. Instead of having a class and level baseline, it imposes absolute limits based on power level. For example, if you are power level 10, your skill bonuses cannot exceed +15, and your attack and damage bonuses must average out to +10 or less, as must your defense and toughness bonuses. In this game, the powers, options and feats you chose can never boost your abilities over the restrictions imposed by your power level.

3) D&D 4E isn't out yet, so making comparisons to its game balance is rather futile, since most of us are not playtesters and thus cannot know exactly how it will handle game balance in spite of all the vague talk about the math. Once we know how the game works, we can take off the hood and see how it runs.

It may turn out that True20 may not be the ideal system for you. A lot of people talk about game balance like it is an absolute value, but it can mean slightly different things to different people. I find True20 to be balanced well enough for my own needs, even without the absolute restrictions of M&M (which I also love).

Thats my 2 cents at any rate.

[Baduin]

Simply said, I like True20 and I think it would be much more popular if it could be used without a lot of preparation and supervision by the Narrator. True20 works well enough at lower levels and as long as nobody seriously tries to break it.

First I have a question for you first: which character levels do you use in practice?

As to the points you raised:
1. I like the lack of scaling Toughness, but if Toughness does not scale by level, damage shouldn't either. True20 is indeed much better balanced than D&D 3ed, but I see no reason not to improve it further.

2. System of Mutants&Masterminds provides a real balance. System of D&D (and its variant in True20) with class based escalating bonuses to attack etc, works at lower levels, and at higher levels balance disappear.

3. I am not very interested in D&D 4ed by itself, but the basic ideas about its mathematical balance which have been released seem to me to be interesting. But you are right, such a discussion will be much easier after D&D 4ed have been released.

[saankiip]

The designers of D&D 4ed put much work into its mathematical foundations, trying to ensure that the difficulties for checks will remain proportional to characters' abilities, that damage will remain proportional to hit points, etc.... Wizard of the Coast even employs a mathematician specializing in the game theory.

This is why I like True20 much better, and why I will most likely stick with it over another edition of D&D (like we need another one!)

[77IM]

2. System of Mutants&Masterminds provides a real balance.

Sort Of... I love the M&M Power Level system, and agree that it helps balance a lot by putting everyone on an even keel, quantitatively.

However, it is still possible (in fact, easy) to create an imbalanced character in M&M due to qualitative differences.

For example, your comments about Adepts using invisibility, Blinking, Psychic Blast, etc. are even more true in M&M, where there's no mechanical reason not to get a heroic horde of Duplicates with Disintegration, Invisibility and Insubstantial. So plenty of GM oversight is still needed.

I think what makes M&M better balanced is that it is explicit about this. Everybody knows not to worry about massive bonus stacking because PL caps it, and everybody knows to worry about power selection because there's no mechanism in place to try to balance that stuff at all. I see this in contrast to most other game systems which purport to create balanced characters when really there are plenty of edge-case power combos that can break things.

-- 77IM

[Ninasie]

What I would hope, optimally, would be a True20 second edition based on the framework of M&M, but a bit pre-packaged, so that you could build a character by selecting proper powers and feats and it would come out more or less balanced, without the need for additional intervences by Narrator. (The first thing to do would be to forbid the stacking of modifiers).

At present the thing to look for would be the announced "comic book fantasy" supplement for Mutants&Masterminds. I hope that this would prove a solid base for fantasy games, which could be adapted for True20.

Personally I hate class balance. It's the differences that make each character unique and useful in their own right is the thing that makes roleplaying so much fun. The kind of thing that you are describing may well be fine for you but it would turn me away from True20. "Total Balance" is not something I look for in a RPG, I look for a cool setting or a nice set of rules that I can tell a good story with, one that my players can use to create characters which they want to play.

I recently ran an "urban fantasy" game, where all the characters had some kind of supernatural ability. One player created a sorcerer and managed to get through the first adventure (about 5 - 6 sessions) without using any supernatural powers right up until the final confrontation. He enjoyed that session, but admitted that he was a little sad because he had to use his magic to get out of the situation.

For me it's far more important to have a good time rather than ensure that all characters are equal. I guess that is one of the reasons that D&D fell out of favour with me, yes you *can* customise your character, but one bard/wizard/ranger is much like the next one.

True20 breaks the mould of D&D by taking the class creation out of the game designers hands and putting it into the players hands. That's why it's important for a narrator to be part of the character generation process, so that the player and narrator are both happy that the character will be able to function in the game world and the story being told.

If you're going to run a "Buffy" style game and one player wants to play a "Xander" type character with no powers who is just a regular guy, would you make them a "super normal" person so they are "balanced" with the other characters?

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I think it depends on what someone means by "balanced": do you mean contributes an equal amount of mechanical success in one or more important parts of the game, or do you mean niche protection such that each character has a specialty that the group can do without only in special circumstances? (I may be exaggerating on that latter choice, I don't know.)

My personal preference is for a game system to be clear, that is its easy to see how the mechanics fit together to contribute to the mechanical effectiveness of a character. I should be able to know what choices make me effective at what I want to do without having to essentially ask someone else to make the character for me. I speak from experience: I keep making low-effect characters in D&D because I keep thinking that the system will support my roleplaying-based choices with effectiveness (which I'm going for in addition to concept). M&M by contrast has an open system that I can see the parts for and know when I'm making a mistake.

[77IM]

To me, balance means: All character-creation choices are equally fun.

Generally, most people find that being useless in a situation is unfun, and being unable to participate is also fun. So, in a perfectly balanced system, no matter what choices you make during character creation, you will be roughly as useful as everybody else, and you will never be sitting on the sidelines watching an encounter. Traditionally, balancing mechanics have been focussed on combat, since combat is a large part of most games, but lately some games make an effort to balance other encounters as well (making sure everyone can participate in some fashion in the exploration or puzzle-solving or social-interaction encounters).

Obviously perfect balance is not possible because every campaign is different and an ability that might be balanced in general could wind up sucking or being awesome. A classic example is a D&D campaign focussed on undead: cleric's turning becomes overpowered, but rogue's sneak attack is suddenly lame. Also, certain character-creation choices might be gimped due to setting constraints, e.g., "I want to play a really dumb wizard" won't work in most D&D worlds -- unless the player enjoys having no spells, skills, or combat ability, in which case the character is still "balanced" because that player is having fun.

My personal preference is for a game system to be clear, that is its easy to see how the mechanics fit together to contribute to the mechanical effectiveness of a character.

I agree. I think simpler systems (like True20) tend to do this better because there are fewer hidden synergies between special abilities.

-- 77IM

[iwatt]

True20 was based on M&M, but uses a lot of converted D&D elements. Many of them tend to escalate out of all proportion with other numbers, so at higher levels game tends to become unbalanced. See eg Smite:

Elemental Blast is out of whack with the rest of damage in true20. So is the conversion of spell effects and Breath weapons.

The fact of the matter is that True20 is built on non-linear increases to damage, as exemplified by Combined Attack and Criticals. Crits add +3, combined attack adds +2. Basically, a +2/+3 is supposed to represent a doubling of damage.

But somehow they went with a simplified rule for converting multiple dice of damage from D&D to true20, which is linear.

I've propsed befoer to go with a doubling of damage rule of thumb:

For every doubling of the base D&D damage, add +2 to damage.

So a d6 becomes +2, 2d6 becomes +4, 4d6=+6, 8d6=+8, 16d6=+10

For elemental Blast this becomes:

Level Damage
1 +2
2-3 +4
4-7 +6
8-15 +8
16+ +10

Which gives an initial bump and then slows down. You could start the damage at +1 instead of +2, for a lower power setting.

[ValhallaGH]

Elemental Blast is out of whack with the rest of damage in true20. So is the conversion of spell effects and Breath weapons.

I never understood why they didn't say "for each die after the first, increase the damage bonus by +1" for the general guidelines section. It's clear, simple, quick, and gets values that are in line with the rest of the system.

Elemental Blast is a really odd duck. It fills a necessary role in the system, a damaging magical blast of energy, but does it in a way that makes it low-to-no utility at low (1 to 3) level and too good at high (12+) levels, except against very tough monsters in which case it may be useful but is unlikely to have full effect (either the monsters will not get hit by the targeted version or they will make their reflex saves and take only half effect [don't even mention Evasion]).
Unless you follow the Improved Strike model, I don't see how to scale Elemental Blast so that it is consistent, useful, and not stupidly powerful at high levels.

[iwatt]

I never understood why they didn't say "for each die after the first, increase the damage bonus by +1" for the general guidelines section. It's clear, simple, quick, and gets values that are in line with the rest of the system.

That is a quick and dirty fix. Not bad.

Elemental Blast... the potential for abuse is there, if you really min-max. Like you say, at higher levels you ain't hitting as much (1/2 attack bonus), but I'm not so sure about the half damage on reflex, unless it's the critters good save. In that case you switch to the next broken power: Dominate

[langeweile]

Elemental Blast fix that worked like charm: Dmg = 1/2 lvl + Int (or key ability, if you prefer)

[Baduin]

Elemental Blast is actually scaled correctly - but only assuming you are using it for a D&D style game. If you will give warriors swords with +5 enhancement to damage and plate armor with +5 enhancement, and send them all to fight Balors and ancient dragons, Elemental Blast won't look so impressive.

[ValhallaGH]

Especially a Fire blast.