Balancing special powers by weakening them

if you have weak powers that do little to influence the game, what is the point of having them in the game anyway

I'm not a fan of this design element for several reasons:

1) It's harder to balance many powers because of the combinatorics.

2) Many weak powers often results in the "tyranny of min/maxers" who figure out the best possible combination of abilities, then abuse everyone with them. This forces others to either a) play the same way, or b) play at a significant disadvantage. We see this in MMORPGs all the time.

3) Personally, I believe that powers should be significant and distinct. Picking up a "magic sword" that adds 0.1% strength, then finding a magic shield that adds another 0.05% strength, just aggravates me.

A side note on #3: you see values like this all the time in MMORPGs. These mechanics aren't tuned low for ease of balancing or for fun -- they're tuned that way to keep players addicted. Random loot drops are the food pellets in the giant Skinner Boxes that we call MMORPGs. Keeping the numbers low ensures players must grind a long time before they out-level the content. This, in turn, lets the designers stay ahead of the majority of the population, creating new content quickly enough to keep people invested in the game.

In theory, anyway. In truth, most people eventually complete the grind and retire to the "end game" where min/maxing percentages is the only way to thrive. Having spent 5 years helping develop DC Universe Online, I can say the parts of that game I enjoy are mutually exclusive with the mechanics described above. And most of the players agree. DC had a relatively short grind and leveling curves that let you advance without worrying too much about gear bonuses of 0.5%. Most people enjoyed that experience, then hit a wall in the end game where gear bonuses became all important. We lost a *lot* of people when the design shifted to "lots of little weak abilities."

Keep abilities significant and distinct.

Well what Mark has suggested with my "depletion" time, is a method of balancing Powerful abilities with *Down time*. So let's say you have an ability which is relatively strong, what we do is have the ability last until "End of Turn" (One of the turn phases) and then force the player to turn the card on its side at position 3 and wait 3 turns until it gets depleted.

What is cool about this is the following: the depletion time forces you to think if you will use a strong ability or a weaker one (lower depletion time). When a card is still depleting, you still CANNOT play ANOTHER ability card...

This is the balancing between ability (stronger vs. weaker) that I am planning on using in my game.

Regards.

P.S.: It also gives value to the Special Abilities since players will use them as much as possible...

BTW a single turn is a long time... since some Character Classes have like 6 Action Points (AP) and can fight 2 times on one turn...

Amen.

Why do you want to penalize the player for *finding* a better weapon? I am currently working on a dungeon crawl where the rewards are random. If the player who is playing the role of a Fighter earn the *best* sword from his reward pile, well why should I penalize him? It's his luck that he has earned the weapon... I don't want to penalize him.

Earning that sword EARLY in the game will make the earlier part of the game easier (as compare to another fighter who has not earned the sword). But in the end, during the last levels of play, the game will even out and his *great* sword will only be *good enough* on the last levels because monsters earn a bonus each level...

No need to penalize anyone, as the game naturally progresses, it gets harder as you go further into the dungeon.

This. The point is that the Sword *is* stronger, and is *always* stronger, except for a situation\skill.
It's the same principle that leads to the classic "Two Handed Sword deals more damage, but you can't use a shield" or "Thief can backstab but only with a knife".

The positive effect should obviously be strong enough to balance (and exceed) the drawback, and players must perceive that the item is *really good*, expecially in X given situations, while in Y situations is *a bit punitive* (and obviously X should be greater than Y!).

Well those seem to me 2 acceptable options. But having a sword+2 not be able to cast a spell is not a great weapon at all... So if you are a fighter maybe it doesn't matter (in this specific case). But if you have a sword+3 that does fire damage (+3)... Well then again you add a layer of complexity.

But one thing for certain, I will add a "Circle" (for lack of a better term) to all my monsters. Examples are elements, like Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Undead. This is partially to better identify the monsters and things like "Turn Undead" which would work on any undead monster.