The First Test
Your first test actually doesn’t require rolling any dice. It’s time to ask the most important question when it comes to game balance: why wouldn’t I take this class? Be brutally honest with yourself and ask yourself why you wouldn’t take this class if you qualified for it. You should be able to come up with at least two reasons why not to take it that doesn’t involve the answer “I’m class X and it’s targeted at class Y.”
Do not limit this question to yourself; ask as many of your friends and gaming group as possible. If you can gather at least two or three reasons not to take this class that sound honest and compelling, you’re good to go on to actual playtesting. If you can’t conjure at least two reasons not to take the class, or even worse no reason at all, you’ve created an overpowered class and need to step back to the design phase and rework your abilities.
Asking this question first will often highlight the more severe game balance problems before you begin playtesting and give you time to edit before releasing the game to a wider playtesting pool. Generally the fastest way to fix this is to remove some special abilities, change the base attack bonus or save progression, or remove a few spellcasting advances.
Diceless Playtesting
Before I playtest a class in a live environment, I find it helpful to run through a few scenarios on paper first. I build the class at a few levels and put it up against two challenges it should excel at and two challenges it should have trouble with. I don’t roll dice, however; I simply take the average result on every single roll and see how the class does.
This generally gives you a good sense of whether you’re in the ballpark as far as power level goes with this class. Try to play intelligently and fairly and record how the class performs. If it does well where it should and has trouble where expected you’re generally good to go and will probably only make some minor tweaks.
If the results are a bit unexpected, it’s time to determine why. Did a single ability have unexpected synergy with something else? Did you grant too many levels of spellcasting or a base attack that was too good that made things easier than they should have been? Figure out what part of the class created the anomaly and try to fix it using the information you gathered.
Open Playtesting
Once you’ve done a bit of rudimentary playtesting, it’s time to release the class into the wild and let others use it themselves. Try to get at least one person in your group to playtest it in your home game at the very least. Take notes on what abilities seem to get a lot of use and which ones are infrequently used. Take note of whether it seems too powerful or not powerful enough. Take copious notes during the process and tweak the problems as they occur.
Don’t neglect the power of the internet in this process, either. Post your class on a message board and ask others to playtest it for you. Be polite in asking for feedback and listen honestly to suggestions that are put forward. The only way you’ll be able to make final changes and edits is by getting enough feedback in live situations to gather accurate data.
There is no set amount of playtesting when it comes to an individual class. I’ve had classes that were more or less ready to go out of the box and some that take me over six months to correct and modify until they were balanced and useful. Keep on playtesting until you feel as if the class is working as intended.
Talk to Optimizers
While you’re playtesting you should also enlist the help of any and all character optimizers that you know (there’s generally one in ever group). Give them the class and tell them to break it wide open. Challenge them to find every exploit, loophole, and broken mechanic in the class.
These folks, love ‘em or hate ‘em, are often very mechanically minded and will often give you very brutal but useful advice. They excel at finding the little errors or loopholes in your class that can be exploited. Just as they can break a class they can also suggest ways to close the loophole and balance out the class.
Now, you don’t have to take heed of all of their combinations and suggestions, of course. If their exploit or power combo involves half a dozen classes and obscure feats, chances are that it’s obscure enough that you don’t have to worry overly much about it. Still, take heed of their suggestions and combinations, for they’ll save you a lot of heartbreak and work.
Beyond asking them to break the class open, ask these guys and gals about suggestions for fixing the broken combinations and wording. They’ll often be able to give you excellent advice on wording and bonus types that will fix what’s broken. Optimizers are a valuable resource for us designers (God bless ‘em).
Reworking the Class
After you’ve gotten a few comments and notes from playtesting, it’s time to revisit the class and modify it using your notes and comments. Luckily most corrections and additions will generally suggest themselves through your notes. At this point in the process about all you’ll really be doing is adjusting numbers, moving around the order of granted abilities, and other small changes.
This is also the time in which you’ll make final decisions on mechanics for your custom special abilities. Hopefully your players or others have suggested a mechanic for what you want and filled in the holes in your design process. If they haven’t, and you still have an ability that just doesn’t quite work, you should consider dropping it and replacing it with something else. It’s likely that you’ve tried to create something that just won’t work within the game rules.
Conclusion
With playtesting done and your final edits made, there is just one step left; writing all that beautiful fluff and getting your class out into the world. My final article in this column will hold a few suggestions for writing fluff and a couple of methods for getting your class out in the world.
