[RPG] Balancing players’ rolls, not characters

Jon Chung, a known expert at optimizing for White Wolf games, lays it out this way:

• Tier 0: Mortals
• Tier 1: Minor Templates
• Tier 2: Vampire/Werewolf
• Tier 3: Changeling/Promethean

  Linear vs exponential split

• Tier 4: Geist
• Tier 5: Mage

His suggestion is that mixed games work best when you don't go more than one tier apart or cross the linear/exponential gap. For example, it's his contention that there's no amount that could make vampires and mages equivalent; the sheer scope of the Arcana to which mages have access rapidly dwarfs the capabilities of a vampire. His suggestion would be to use something like the rules from World of Darkness: Second Sight or Hunter: Witch Finders, which give the feel of magic users without the power of awakened mages. A Tier 2/3 game might work, especially if it's one that is, as you describe, more focused on intrigue than on conflict.

In response to your secondary question -- mostly that last idea. The Created are going to be magical and physical powerhouses compared to the vampires... but they have massive problems when dealing with humans and have limited access to certain Merits. Emphasize the different arenas where the types are strongest, and you'll have a balanced game.

Secret Rolls

You could simply ask that the players roll all of their checks in secret, then tell the other players the result. The success of a lie depends on the player's bluffing skills. You can choose between announcing the difficulty of any roll (if your system has such a concept), allowing players to be sure that such-and-such a result will fail, and by how much. Alternatively, you could ask the player to announce their result without revealing the difficulty, forcing them to make an educated guess if they want to fail.

To make the rolls secret, players might:

• Roll behind their hand, a piece of paper, or a 'player screen';
• Roll in an opaque box, or rolling cup (such as those that come with perudo, and other dice games);
• Use a dice-rolling app on their phone without showing other players the screen.

I did this for death saving throws in my last D&D 5e campaign. This allowed players who wanted to save their characters to lie when they failed. This could easily work the other way round. You would just need to have your players' word of honour that they wouldn't try to pass failures off as successes.

Policing Rolls

If players are rolling into a pot, you could ask that a player who has just rolled in the pot should pass the pot to you to check, before shaking the pot to obscure the result from the other players. The success of this depends on:

• The number of players (more players makes passing the cup to you in secret more difficult for those further away);
• The number of rolls (more rolls makes this a more tedious, and time consuming exercise);
• Number of dice used per roll (more five in the cup are more likely to knock against each other);
• Number of faces on dice used (more faces makes the die more likely to roll around during 'transit').

Essentially, in a game with frequent rolls (particularly d20 rolls, as in D&D, or rolls of many dice, as in Edge of the Empire), or many players, the system is likely to be tedious, and difficult. In a game with infrequent rolls of dice with fewer faces, and fewer players, the system could work effectively.

If players are using a dice-rolling app, the success of the system depends on the number of players, the number of rolls, and the players' willingness to hand their phone to you frequently.

If players are rolling behind something, you have to be willing to get up and come round to them for every roll. That would be very tedious in a game with frequent rolls.

Regardless, I still do not recommend the checking system, as I have found that it is always better to trust one's players. For example, as far as I can tell, no-one has yet cheated my death saving throw system, despite the possibility being there, probably because of the guilt involved in doing so.