See, here's the problem. That extreme charop board min/maxing is not playing the game. It's D&D's version of cheating. Antisocial behavior and its effects are not products of the game system, nor should the system be designed around trying to prevent abuse. Abuse and balance are unrelated concepts.
See, here's the problem. D&D started out life and until 4e remained a hacked tabletop wargame. (4e is closer to a hacked tabletop boardgame). And a big part of many wargames, especially fantasy wargames is selection of your starting forces. Which means that a big part of game design is making sure there aren't exploits in the design process, and things with the same supposed points cost are about the same value.
And where is the line between abuse and balance? You speak as if it is obvious. Whereas I look at the 3.5 SRD and compare the Druid to the Monk. Playing a druid straight out of the PHB and just picking Natural Spell, a good animal companion, a few good spells, and Wild Shape is going to beat the tar out of even the most abusive monks going.
But practically I think a heavy focus on system mastery is unwise because it kinda sucks as gameplay, because the learning curve is brutal and once the best "builds" are discovered people just look them up online. i.e. it's the opposite of the classic formula for a good game: easy to learn, hard to master. It tend to be hard to learn, easy to master.
Likewise. On a tangent that's one of my biggest disappointments with 3.X, and one of the things I like 4e the most for. 3.X is hard to learn, fairly easy to master. Whereas the more I look at 4e the more I find.
Have you ever read or played 1e? It's a pretty coherently gamist RPG by my estimation. I don't think you tried very hard not to offend people who like pre-3e editions best.
And listening to Old Geezer on RPG.net, it was even more gamist in play than it was presented in the books.
I also disagree with your analysis of 4e. I basically agree with
pemerton's earlier reply to you. My frustrations reading pemerton's posts arise from the fact that he's not always clear just how much theoretical and practical knowledge he relies on for his way of playing 4e that is not in the 4e DMG.
All I can say here is that I learned most of my DMing skills from 4e - and the way I DM looks IMO very like the way pmerton does (I'd never claim to be as good a DM as pmerton, but believe the approach to be fairly simmilar). I have theoretical knowledge from other sources, but had very little practical experience of DMing other systems until I'd been DMing 4e mor than a year.
Am I to understand that the only way that two players could create characters that were not exactly equal in power is if they set out to do so?
The only games where you can have two characters that are exactly equal in power are either character-sheet less (e.g. Fiasco, Dread) or where you have identical character sheets (most likely in games like 3:16)
"Abusive and problematic behavior" is the responsibility of the person doing the behavior and no one else.
Except those encouraging and enabling it. And where does the abusive line start and end? A 3.5 PHB only Druid or Wizard using abilities all in relatively obvious ways could be seen as abusive and was certainly broken.
Spotlight time brought by the class abilities.
From what I can tell, your definition (and many if not most 4e-enthusiasts' definition) of balance is, "Total balance between characters in combat damage output and battlefield effectiveness."
"in combat damage output". Um... I don't know which 4e you've been looking at - but not the one with strikers, leaders, controllers, and defenders. Strikers do the highest damage output - it's what they are about. (Unless controllers are spreading the damage to everyone).
Let's put it another way---who's REALLY at fault for a min / maxer "overshadowing" other players in a D&D game? Is it the rules? Or the DM, the offending player, and the other participants ALLOWING the min / maxer to knowingly upset the agreed upon social contract that the group's fun AS A WHOLE is more important than any one player?
Yes. All of the above. Plus the players who
aren't min-maxing because they are not playing an unashamedly gamist game as a gamist game - that is in the way it was intended to be played. You speak of a Social Contract as if it was formed out of whole-cloth and packaged in the box containing the game. This simply isn't the case.
Which means that the social contract that you talk about as being normal is strictly contrary to the social contract that happened at E. Gary Gygax's table and that a lot of old school play runs on. There, picking the best spells you can get your hands on and using them as effectively as possible is simply part of smart play - and this is all you need to do to break a 3.0, 3.5, or PF wizard. So if you want your game to come with this
it needs to be written down and included as a part of the rules.
Yes, the PCs are not competing. The players are
Of course this an exaggeration of mine, I'm just saying that there are players (how many, I'll let you judge by yourself but IMHO quite a lot) who approach the game with a competitive spirit, that they want to prove themselves to be better than others
And if you listen to really old school players (Mornard, Zak S, and others), they talk about "Player Skill" as something that is important and to be praised.
It brings me back again to the simple question: "Should the Fighter really be the best at fighting?"
The question is not whether but by how much.
"One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation."
I have slightly higher standards, so my equivalent in the Game Designer List would be:
"One of my advisors will be an average fifteen-year-old. Any balance issues in my game that he is able to spot will be corrected before publication."
Nice! But replace the average fifteen year old with an average fifteen year old
gamer please. (Would XP if I could).
B. The only reason I'd ever consider playing 4e EVER is because somewhere, in there, in all that muck, is a game that pemerton really likes to play. And I'm pretty sure I'd like playing in a 4e game run by pemerton.
The problem is, other than pemerton's description of his 4e campaign, I've yet to encounter a walkthrough, discussion, or play report of 4e (in addition to the 3 times I actually played it) that made want to touch the system with a 10' pole. Your baseline description of a 4e "session," replete with combat slogging and narrow, linear narrative is spot on with my sum total experience.
The weird thing here is that pmerton's descriptions of his 4e campaign are almost entirely in line with my play experiences and the way I DM. And I more or less learned to DM with 4e.
