Two of these things, comparative power and unforeseen occurrences, are often in the hands of the game master—or at least, they should be if the RPG is balanced in the first place. The potential effects of abilities and strategies is also a factor of game balance, although a designer may wish to examine these things from a risk-based standpoint as well, and use risk to maintain balance. A risk doesn’t have to be immediate and decisive. Just applying a cost adds risk to an ability. If the character must pay to use the power, it may find itself unable to call upon it when it really needs to. It is good to establish this sort of risk; it steers ability use away from simple memorization of every skill the character has and more towards strategic play.
The most important aspect of risk, though, is the system of randomness. Most role playing games use die rolls to determine the results of random chance. The number of dice rolled, the range of numbers on each die, the frequency of rolls, the availability of retries, the nature and proliferation of bonuses, all tie in to adjusting the level of risk in the RPG.
The Risk: As with all these challenges, the challenge of maintain risk has risks of its own. And, as always, there are problems with overemphasizing and underemphasizing the work you put into this challenge.
Too much risk can easily occur in a role playing game. This can be because there are few flat bonuses on checks. A numerical bonus—+1, for example—to a die roll helps to stabilize the check. It adds a flat increase to your chance of hitting a certain target score, directly modifying the percentage chance of doing so in a clear way. If these bonuses—and corresponding penalties—are uncommon or unavailable in your RPG, you place more in the hands of chance than some players may be comfortable with.
Too much risk can also occur from too many rolls. If your system allows a roll to attack the opponent, a roll to determine how well the opponent defends, a roll to determine the damage done, and a roll to offer a chance to reduce that damage, you are offering a much greater range of possibilities, which can impact game balance. When balancing a role playing game, the range of potentialities may be considered, but the average is often used as a deciding factor. An ability balanced for a situation of average rolls can cause much greater effect if one or more rolls are much different from the average. Each additional roll adds more chance to change the balance of that ability, taking more out of the hands of the game designer. This is particularly dangerous with offensive abilities, where risk takes on a very clear connotation. Simple rule of thumb: the main characters are subject to more attacks per game by far than any enemy, even a recurring villain, and those foes are to some extent expected to fall eventually anyway. As such, main characters are essentially guaranteed to eventually suffer a really bad roll. If that roll comes at the wrong time, it can turn an otherwise standard action into an inescapable deathblow. Yes, characters should risk death, and yes, anything can happen in combat. However, if you plan for your RPG to allow for games that last for prolonged durations, you have to modify risk enough that the main characters have a reasonable hope of survival.
Low-risk, however, isn’t good either. It makes the game a purely analytical, statistical calculation. Low risk can come from few or no die rolls or too many bonuses, obviously, but there is also the chance that an RPG can have too many rolls, and thus become low risk. For example, if upon casting a fireball at a group of opponents, each one gets an entirely separate defense, there is no real risk. If the chance of defending is 40%, you can expect that on average, two foes in five will block the attack. Of course, if it is all handled by a single check, there is the chance that the fireball will do nothing—highly unlikely and annoying besides—or that it will wipe out the entire enemy force at a go—more likely perhaps, but still not necessarily good, especially if it was a villain’s fireball!
Likewise, if when sneaking through a dungeon, four characters encounter five guards, and each guard makes a separate check to detect each character, there is no risk. If the guards have any chance at all of detecting the party, you can virtually guarantee that at least one will spot at least one character. Risk implies randomness, chance, and multiple checks sometimes only reduce the range of possible results.
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