Can somebody explain the bias against game balance?

[Garthanos]

Aren't those cases of mechanics which exist to enable unbalanced characters to play out (in some sense) as though they were balanced?

For the Unisystem yes
Character power versus Player power is the dynamic going on. If you have mechanisms which give the player power to compensate for lower character power ... Fate is another good example... if you take aspects which only buff your character up then they are likely to restult in you gathering fewer fate points... which means you the player earn less power over the narative by other routes.

Ars Magica uses a pigeon holing and makes sure each player has access to all three holes ;p. It is possible to introduce mythic heros who are not mages in to it... but as this is highly untested etc... etc... you are flying your own canvas to do it.

 

[Benimoto]

Nice description of hiding the median. The game is balanced so that you think you are doing better than you really are; the median is hidden. By making you think that 0 is at the centre of the number line, while the centre is really +4, you keep thinking "Wow, we're doing great!" when, in fact, you are doing average.


RC

Sure, there's a little of that going on. If a character has a +0 when alone, and more usually gets a +1 or a +2 in a group, then that both promotes group play and pushes the median a little, making the character feel more powerful in a party.

In my experience though, the games I'm thinking of will typically balance around the "common" synergies granting a +1 or +2, but good play or good luck will push bonuses into the (just handwaving here) +4 or even +6 range.

In the broader context of the thread here, this kind of synergistic play gives an interesting spin to the optimizing game. The OP complains that imbalanced systems allow either one highly-optimized player to make the rest of the group irrelevant, or conversely hangs a poorly-made character around the rest of the group's necks like a millstone. By sharing bonuses among the group, or even making them purely altruistic, it takes away from the selfishness that the OP was complaining about.

 

[Nifft]

In the broader context of the thread here, this kind of synergistic play gives an interesting spin to the optimizing game. The OP complains that imbalanced systems allow either one highly-optimized player to make the rest of the group irrelevant, or conversely hangs a poorly-made character around the rest of the group's necks like a millstone. By sharing bonuses among the group, or even making them purely altruistic, it takes away from the selfishness that the OP was complaining about.

IMHO this is one of the most interesting things about 4e.

Look at the complaints about the Pacifist Cleric: "He makes everyone else too good!"

Cheers, -- N

 

[Hussar]

The Unisystem comments are second hand, Ars Magica is fairly robust. Magi are the most powerful, Consori are the middle, and Grogs are the bottom. It specifically recommends a troupe style of plat with each PC running a Magus, a Consor, and a Grog or three. There's not really much to fiddle with, the system is similar to Storyteller.

We appear differ on what robust means, I guess. You seem to mean "I can take it apart, put it back together wrong (meaning different then how it was originally) and it still works."

I mean "It won't break down unexpectedly on me in the middle of a game because someone took three apparently innocuous things and put them together and blew up the power curve, and the game doesn't give me any tools to recover."

I would say that both are examples of robust rule systems. If you can change the rule (to a degree) and the mechanics just keep right on trucking, that's a robust rule. Conversely, if you mix and match multiple mechanics and you can keep right on trucking, those are robust mechanics as well.

My belief is that balanced mechanics are inherently more robust than imbalaced ones.