I am considering making a homebrew class, and I am wondering how I can make sure it is balanced? The general consensus on the internet is playtesting, but how do I make it generally balanced before playtesting (I don't have huge amounts of time to playtest)?
Are you making a class or a subclass? Subclasses are easier, full classes not so much.
For one thing, subclasses are smaller so there’s less to balance and also less to screw up. When designing a subclass for an existing class, we have other existing subclasses against which to compare. There is also no shortage of forums etc. where we can gather a large sample of opinions about those preexisting subclasses, posted by a wide variety of people with a vast array of combined experience from which we can learn. What we learn from those sources can help us while we run out comparisons against the other subclasses. All of that helps us make informed decisions about our subclasses during the research, designing, and writing stages. By the time we reach the stage where seeking outside opinions about our subclass, it’s already in a pretty good place. That means we can weigh the feedback we get with an informed and critical eye as to whether or not we think that feedback is correct. That’s all prior to the playtesting phase. So you can see how there is a lot to help get things fairly well balanced prior to playtesting.
Classes on the other hand are much, much more work to do. For one thing, they are much, much bigger. That alone makes a huge difference. In this case, size most definitely does matter. Every stage of the design has to be bigger, the time involved in every stage ends up taking longer, the planning, research, writing, everything ends up being more extensive... it all adds up.
The obvious place to start is the planning phase. The better your plan, the smoother everything after that goes. When you end up eventually deviating from your plan, even that will end up being easier if your plan was thorough enough in the first place. Every class in 5e can fill a number of different rolls it can fill within a party. Even the most basic class in D&D, the Fighter, could be a front-line beater, a tank, a shooter, etc. So, what roles does your class potentially fill? How does that fit with the lore of your class? Will your class be heavily dependent on its subclasses to shape it as it levels with many subclass features throughout, like a Fighter? Or will the subclasses mostly add flavor and nuance to the main class, with relatively few subclass features like the Bard? Having a strong concept of these things will let you be more effective during every stage of things. It really doesn’t help when you get to a point where you need to know these things only to realize you don’t and have to return to the stage planning again. (That might very well happen anyway, but thinking about these things in advance will even make that less of an inconvenience.)
Research is next, since your class has to fit in with the rest of 5e, so you need to know how it’s going to fit into the fold. You don’t need to use these as a mirror for your class so much as a set of counterweights against which it can be checked for balance. It won’t really be practical to compare your class against all of them, so which ones make the most sense? Why? Knowing what you are balancing and why you feel those counterweights are appropriate will not only make that task easier, it will also help you be able to defend your choice. You’re not looking for an argument about anything, but eventually you’re gonna get to the feedback stage. Someone will inevitably ask “why did you include....” and you’re going to respond with something like “Because X Class has that sorta thing and Y Class had that other sorta thing, so I felt this sorta thing was fitting.” But when they ask “why did you consider those points?” and if you’re not really sure of your answer to that question....
When well armed with your blueprinted plan and a set of scales and measures to check things against, it will help things go more smoothly once you finally start writing the class. This phase will likely take a good amount of time, no matter what, but the fewer decisions left until this point, the faster it will go, and the more closely balanced things will likely already be at this stage, which will save time down the line.
I am considering making a homebrew class, and I am wondering how I can make sure it is balanced? The general consensus on the internet is playtesting, but how do I make it generally balanced before playtesting (I don't have huge amounts of time to playtest)?
Are you making a class or a subclass? Subclasses are easier, full classes not so much.
For one thing, subclasses are smaller so there’s less to balance and also less to screw up. When designing a subclass for an existing class, we have other existing subclasses against which to compare. There is also no shortage of forums etc. where we can gather a large sample of opinions about those preexisting subclasses, posted by a wide variety of people with a vast array of combined experience from which we can learn. What we learn from those sources can help us while we run out comparisons against the other subclasses. All of that helps us make informed decisions about our subclasses during the research, designing, and writing stages. By the time we reach the stage where seeking outside opinions about our subclass, it’s already in a pretty good place. That means we can weigh the feedback we get with an informed and critical eye as to whether or not we think that feedback is correct. That’s all prior to the playtesting phase. So you can see how there is a lot to help get things fairly well balanced prior to playtesting.
Classes on the other hand are much, much more work to do. For one thing, they are much, much bigger. That alone makes a huge difference. In this case, size most definitely does matter. Every stage of the design has to be bigger, the time involved in every stage ends up taking longer, the planning, research, writing, everything ends up being more extensive... it all adds up.
The obvious place to start is the planning phase. The better your plan, the smoother everything after that goes. When you end up eventually deviating from your plan, even that will end up being easier if your plan was thorough enough in the first place. Every class in 5e can fill a number of different rolls it can fill within a party. Even the most basic class in D&D, the Fighter, could be a front-line beater, a tank, a shooter, etc. So, what roles does your class potentially fill? How does that fit with the lore of your class? Will your class be heavily dependent on its subclasses to shape it as it levels with many subclass features throughout, like a Fighter? Or will the subclasses mostly add flavor and nuance to the main class, with relatively few subclass features like the Bard? Having a strong concept of these things will let you be more effective during every stage of things. It really doesn’t help when you get to a point where you need to know these things only to realize you don’t and have to return to the stage planning again. (That might very well happen anyway, but thinking about these things in advance will even make that less of an inconvenience.)
Research is next, since your class has to fit in with the rest of 5e, so you need to know how it’s going to fit into the fold. You don’t need to use these as a mirror for your class so much as a set of counterweights against which it can be checked for balance. It won’t really be practical to compare your class against all of them, so which ones make the most sense? Why? Knowing what you are balancing and why you feel those counterweights are appropriate will not only make that task easier, it will also help you be able to defend your choice. You’re not looking for an argument about anything, but eventually you’re gonna get to the feedback stage. Someone will inevitably ask “why did you include....” and you’re going to respond with something like “Because X Class has that sorta thing and Y Class had that other sorta thing, so I felt this sorta thing was fitting.” But when they ask “why did you consider those points?” and if you’re not really sure of your answer to that question....
When well armed with your blueprinted plan and a set of scales and measures to check things against, it will help things go more smoothly once you finally start writing the class. This phase will likely take a good amount of time, no matter what, but the fewer decisions left until this point, the faster it will go, and the more closely balanced things will likely already be at this stage, which will save time down the line.
I hope that was somewhat helpful.
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Thank you so much! That was very helpful! I appreciate it.