RPGS, BALANCE OF POWER AND DIFFICULTY

However it is a nice topic to debate too. Horror RPGs are RPGs as well and they need balance, a balance wich is obviously directly opposite (and thus is prone to being studied together) to the fantasy RPG.

After all, how to make your heroes grow (An inevitable RPG mechanic) while still making them feel weak is as much as of a relevant question to this topic, as is how to make them grow without making the game stale for a fantasy RPG!

So this makes me think that we're hitting the wrong button... We're at edges. What lies amidst Horror RPGs and Fantasy RPGs alike? What is this, that is the root to RPG, and the focus of balancing?

I see two issues that are being debated even limiting ourselves to traditional RPGs.

The first issue is the situation where the characters are expected to be at level 20 in one dungeon, but in a later dungeon the characters are expected to be at level 40. You want the players to feel that their characters are stronger during the latter dungeon, but you also want the enemies to at least be as challenging as they were during the former dungeon.

I suggest making enemies actually look stronger as you progress. Typically, the bigger they are, the stronger they look. Recolors however do usually not work towards this purpose. If you take an imp, recolor it and rename it to "demonette" it won't actually feel like a stronger enemy. In some cases it may work though. Imagine you have a green slime names "Slime" and then a purple slime names "Poison Slime." It is intuitive that a slime made out of toxic substances is stronger than one that's not, even if they are in the same sizes. In most cases though, recolors don't intuitively feel stronger than the original monster.

Chance is you only have so many models and feel the need to use recolors. What you can do then is to mix things up a bit. In a certain dungeon, some of the monsters are recolors of monsters from former dungeons, but other monsters are new models that not only are stronger stat wise, but also look stronger as well.

You can also try to convey the impression that the monsters are getting stronger via the story. However, having the heroes defeat monsters in hordes can easily result in the monsters coming of as pushovers rather than the heroes as awesome. It's also not as simple as just having NPCs say that the monsters are really strong, but I'm not going to try to cover how you successfully convey that impression in this post.

As for more methods, I think LockeZ covered a lot of good tricks.

The other issue comes when the characters are expected to be at a certain level, but are in a considerable higher level due to grinding.

First of, if a dungeon is supposed to be tackled at level 20, but the player grinds up the characters to level 30+, then I assume that the player isn't even interested in having a challenge. There are probably some exceptions to that, but I think that the player has some responsibility in not ruining the game for her-/himself.

However, I think that the game should be made so that playing it the "right" way is the fastest path. Let's say you make a boss that is so hard it takes the average player (among the target audience) twenty tries to beat it without grinding and the average attempt takes five minutes. That means it takes the average player one hour and forty minutes to beat it. Now, let's say that the player can instead get past the fight by first grinding for an hour. This means you have made grinding faster than using the brain. Well, twenty tries is a bit extreme, but you can replace that example with five tries average and fifteen minutes grinding for the same result.

If you make it so that grinding is faster than using your brain for an average player, then I think the fault lies in you as the developer. However, if you successfully make a game where figuring out the correct strategy is faster than grinding oneself past the challenge, then it's the player's responsibility to not ruin the game for her-/himself. Well, assuming you gave the player a reason to trust you that is.

Of course, even if the player doesn't purposefully break the game, she/he may still end up in a higher level than expected due to other circumstances. The dungeon may be twisty and it can take a varying amount of time to get trough it depending on how quickly the player takes the right paths. Or you make your sidequests really appealing and now can't assume that a player who takes them necessarily wants the extra power the sidequest provides.

In this case you need to make sure your dungeon and bossfight works for a range of levels. Figure out the minimum and the maximum reasonable level and get your game to work within that range.

How you do that is another question, but as a rule, bosses who solely consist of you hitting them hard and healing the damage they inflict are the first ones to be broken by over-leveled characters.