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[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by ExploderWizard

One important part of old school play was that balance was achieved by a good DM throughout the campaign as a whole. A character who was not the pinnacle of effectiveness in combat did not have to be lame.

I see the round by round balance of 4E as a response to the " all me, all now" mindset that comes from instant gratification entertainment such as a videogame. Mature players are not in a competition with each other to see who can dish out the most pwnage in every combat.

Videogames, or having less/little time to play?
I really don't want to drive to the game and sit through the session being mostly passive for several hours.
I suppose if I played D&d multiple times a week over several hours each day, I might found the 3E or 4E participation/instant gratification focus too stressful, because I have to contribute all the time and don't have any rest. But that's not the kind of time I have for playing.

Equal does not have to mean the same. In a GURPS game, players can all start out with the same number of points to spend and yet create characters that are vastly different with regard to both combat and noncombat effectiveness.

And this alone is already a problem. You don't really know how to challenge the players without taking a deep look at their actual statistics. You don't know beforehand if your campaign will be more combat focused or non-combat focused. You don't know if you'll use a lot of wilderness travel or if it will be more space combat. You can't look at the point buy value and say "oh, sure, this is the kind of opposition and challenges the party can face". You don't even have classes that can tell you what the character might be reasonably able to do. If you want an entertaining campaign that fits the characters (providing them "fair" challenges - from easy to hard ones), you need to look at the details. And that is a problem for preparing your campaign or adventures.
It is probably not unsurmountable, but it's still not a trivial task.

If balance for the game as a whole is to be determined solely by what takes place on the tactical grid then we have lost precious elements that separate roleplaying games from skirmish games.

If this tactical grid is where most of the time is spent, balancing this element is crucial. if it's not where most of the time is spent, it's balance or imbalance doesn't hurt.

You can't balance combat vs non-combat, unless you can predict how much of each you will have in a typical campaign.

How do you balance non-combat aspects? Do you know how much people will spend on social encounters, wilderness travel, dungeon exploration or mystery solving?

Argh, getting off topic again...