Class Design and Game Balance

Discussing the differences between 4e and 3.5/Pathfinder is hard, at least for me. Seeing the differences is easy but why they are there and how they affect game play is much more nuanced. It cuts to the heart of the differences between the games. I'm going to start with a bit of an analogy and deviate from it as necessary. I spent a week thinking about these things and the best way I can describe it is like this:

• 3.5 is a lot like a *nix (linux or unix) system. It has some powerful tools and is often very flexible and extensible. However, there are a lot of places where the system relies on user skill and the documentation is often full of "here there be dragons."
• Pathfinder feels like a distribution or gui on top of 3.5. It patches up the rough spots, adds some new tools, and overall makes things pretty without rewriting or hiding significant portions of the underlying system.
• 4e is like OS X. Sure, if you are skilled or adventurous, you will see and maybe play with the *nix roots underneath it, but many people have no idea they lie beneath the surface. But for the most part, users interact with it the way the company thought they should.

None of these are bad, and all of them have their pros and cons. For inexperienced or rushed players and DMs, 4e's system has a lot going for it. It tends to provide a satisfactory experience to many players without hours of planning. It diminishes the swing of earlier editions, something that many DMs I know were trying to fix in their own games anyway. It concentrates on the parts of the game that are easy to simplify and which often create conflicts at the table, combat. By removing the easy out from players' control and giving it to the DM, we should have fewer disagreements and fights over whether or not something would work. To me, it also makes the game much more cooperative than competitive.

For experienced and invested fans, Pathfinder offers a ton. Having multiple systems for similar elements means there is more to master, making the game less boring over time. The detail in 3.5 and Pathfinder is often wonderful; it tends to be a much more simulationist game and easier to "feel." Players who love resource management will find a home in the system because that's a core element of it.

But I'm not here just to make broad generalizations about the games. While these are just my initial thoughts of the system, I'm not sure I know Pathfinder well enough to prove these. So, let's explore the class mechanics for a bit.

Multi-classing and Game Balance

Pathfinder classes follow the multi-class rules and philosophy from 3.5 and earlier editions. That is, you have your character level and your class level and there should be penalties for multi-classing. So, in Pathfinder, when I create a character, I pick a favored class and I can not change that class once I choose it. Every time I level in that class, I get a bonus. However, I can choose to level in another class instead. I gain all of the class abilities of a character of that level.

Given how 3.5 and Pathfinder both handle "game balance" this is some powerful stuff. The more choices your character has, often the stronger they are (up to a point of course). Take the wizard for instance. In my experience, spells are incredibly powerful in earlier editions compared to similar level melee attack. The best way to balance the characters is by 1) limiting the number of spells per day they can cast and 2) making them pick the spells before they know what they will be up against (at the start of the day).

Compare this to 4e's system where character classes by and large are expected to do a similar amount of "damage" per encounter. Sure, their output might focus more on giving buffs and debuffs or other conditions during the battle. On the whole, however, they are expected to have a similar impact on the fight. Thus, we should be less interested in building a balanced character than we are on building a balanced party. As a result, multi-classing becomes less important for game mechanics. This is further emphasized by the amount of handwaving 4e DMs tend to do. Rarely do we care about the exact numbers of ammunition, difficulty of travel, etc. Places where this changes are games where resource management come back into play, such as for Dark Sun.

Class Design

This shift of emphasis has further repercussions on class design. Classes in Pathfinder feel like they should be narrowly defined and limited since it is adding just one component to a character. Providing too many classes that are themselves mixtures of other classes just feels wrong. It provides the versatility without the balance penalty.

Also, while this system of class building provides lots of options to players, that's not always a good thing. I found it way too easy to build a character that doesn't act the way I think it should. That's because the game encompasses such a broad range of options that an inexperienced DM or group might not provide enough feedback to each other about what their game is about. I know my friends have complained about this since the early days of 3.5. On the other hand, some players absolutely love the ability to go through and mix and match. To each their own.

In 4e, the classes themselves shouldn't be too strict. I should be able to build an interesting character while sticking to just one class build. If I want to go for a particular feel for a character, that should be found in the sub builds, such as the rogues Trickster (Artful Dodger) and Brawny (Brutal Scoundrel). A lot of the specialization in 4e happens on the power choice level. The downside is that many players look at the output of the power more than they look at how it defines their character, so there's often a mishmash of diverse powers.

Unfortunately, this is a subtle distinction and goes against the previous editions' way of doing things. 4e struggled with it a fair bit, as shown by the evolution of the fighter between PHB and the essentials books and the renaming of the PHB1 fighter to weaponmaster. I think it's interesting to see how both systems added sub-builds to their own games, with cleric domains and the like.

Leveling Rates

While not exactly about classes, I want to mention a quick bit about leveling rates. In both games, a PC levels after reaching a certain amount of XP. One nice thing Pathfinder offers is the ability to accelerate this leveling process, offering slow, medium and fast XP thresholds. The only thing I wonder about with this is the use of XP as a reward in a fast system. For instance, offering 50 XP for bringing food for a game makes a lot more sense in the slow system, which requires 3000 XP to get to level 2 but is worth a lot more in the fast version, which requires just 1300 XP.

Obviously, with an article of this length, it's hard to go into all of the details and nuances of the two systems. Hopefully over time I'll get a better feel for both.