Balance, in general, is severely overestimated in terms of importance in D&D - and for that matter, any other human-run tabletop game. Despite claims of a "rule 0 fallacy" where the game is thought to be inherently unbalanced if the DM has to intervene contrary to the rules, in reality this "fallacy" itself is a Stolen Concept Fallacy - the entire GAME is designed to be run by a human who can adapt and change things.
GMs are very useful for injecting imagination, inventiveness and humanity into non-player creatures and organisations in the game. When they start to define how the general "physics" of the game world works, however, I find it to be deeply unhelpful to genuine shared storytelling and roleplaying in the extreme.
The "rule 0 fallacy", as I perceive it, boils down to a rejection of broken communication. RPG rules are a communication to the
players of how the game world works. Their
characters already know this perfectly well; they have grown up in the aforementioned world! But, without detailed communication, the
players have no real clue of how the game world is supposed to operate, especially with regards to activities that they are unlikely to have experienced first hand in this "real" world or any other - like fighting with swords, base jumping without the benefit of a parachute or casting magic spells. If the GM modifies or invents the "physics" of the game world on the hoof, the players are left with no useful model of how their character behaviour might affect the world at all. They are being asked to play characters who, we can only presume, suffer from random delusions and flawed memories. While these things are not unknown in the "real" world, they usually come for some reason and associated with predictable patterns...
Rejecting this in order to focus on the letter of the words is selectively rejecting one aspect of the system while accepting the rest and then complaining about a problem that creates.
Not really. A lack of "balance" in game rules speaks to something much more problematic than that: it suggests that the world is built on a lie (or series of lies). The rules of how a world works have implications for, well, how that world works. If the rules of the world were stated to be that gravity pulls things down, but all rivers ran uphill, then that would indicate that the "rule" about gravity was false. In this case, (a) how have any intelligent creatures in the world failed to notice this, and (b) what is the rule that keeps creatures and objects from "flowing" up into the air?
A world where rivers run uphill might exist - but the rest of the world would assuredly not look just like the "real" world if they did. Balance works in the same way - as a cursory glance at real-world economics will show you. If money buys stuff, then rich people will have more and/or better stuff. If wizards are really more powerful than rogues, then everyone will try to be a wizard and no-one will voluntarily be a rogue (and I'm talking about the people in the imaginary world, here, not the "real" world players sat around the table).
As an aside, the growing unrest in the world today is starting to show quite graphically what happens when "lack of balance" starts to become manifest.
While this can be true for a particular campaign or game group, it's based on the idiosyncracies of that group and how it plays. A game group that plays exactly according to the rules as written and allowing every official supplement but no house rules or third party supplements at all is a theoretical standard and reflects how almost no one actually plays, much like balance comparisons at level 20.
Lack of balance in an imaginary world, unless it is taken fully into account in the structures and description of that world, breaks the plausibility of that world. This is irrespective of the group or the style of play the world is intended for. Lack of "balance" in a system is really an incoherence between the system and the game-world that it is described as working in. This means that either the world or the system is a lie - a lie to the players who are supposed to be playing the roles of creatures in it.
That said, it is important for each character to feel useful. This, however, is the job of the DM.
Quite disconnected from what has gone before, here, I will say that if my character's usefulness in the world and relevance to the story rely entirely on the contrivance of one participant in the game, I'll go and read a book, thanks. Same basic situation, less hassle and probably better writing style/story quality.
Don't allow characters that can do anything to do anything.
So, you are literally saying that the GM should lie to the players about the nature of their characters' capabilities as communicated by the rules? That they should say "here are the rules; they tell you what your character's abilities will do, except that I'm lying here and I will arbitrarily declare that you can't do some of it"? Isn't that essentially saying "you can choose to play any character you like but they will all actually be the characters
I like because you actually have literally no say in this game whatsoever"? Whatever is the point in me playing in such a "game"?
If you have a rogue with good lockpicking abilities, don't grant the wizard a 'knock' spell in random loot, for example. If he really insists on buying one, ask why. Point out that if he's using it he may be taking away a major role from the rogue.
So, what, all wizards in this world voluntarily eschew the "Knock" spell so that those poor little rogue fellows don't feel useless (even though they are)? Surely, that will last exactly as long as the rogues offer wizards their services for free...
This is an example of the "rules" and the description of the game world between them lying or worse. They paint a picture of a world that literally cannot work. The communication that the players have received about how the game world works is valueless - untrustworthy in the extreme.
Think for a moment about the "real" world. When I was young, facility in doing repetitive arithmetic was something you could get a job with. There were many skills like it that you might live on - like being a computer operator (basically keeping the computer running by changing storage tapes, running housekeeping software and so on) - that are no longer a meal ticket as they used to be. What has happened? No-one learns those skills any more, that's what's happened. So why, in our imagined roleplaying world, do obsolete rogues persist in learinign lockpicking skills that simply won't earn a crust in the "modern" world?
If one person is insisting on doing things that make the others obsolete the problem isn't with the game system it's with him powergaming at the expense of friends.
I agree - which is exactly what happens when the GM takes control of the physics of the game world without communicating those physics to the players. The real rules that are being played by become distinct from what is written in the rulebook when the GM declares fiat to be the only valid "rule" - and then the players are left with nothing to base their actions upon but a tissue of useless lies and social pressure on the GM - the old, hackneyed "playing the GM rather than the game".
If a player insists on making an ineffective character for roleplay reasons, people should explain to him that he'll... be ineffective. If a player is inexperienced, others should take him in hand and show him how to avoid pitfalls of character creation, and the DM should be generous in allowing reversion of choices for the inexperienced.
If a player chooses an ineffective character, the main question is how the character has survived so long despite being congenitally unsuited to the world, surely?
Balance is about balance in your group. Sure, some rules are ill-considered, but mostly the problem isn't the systems; it's the people that want the system to compensate for their poor social skills.
Worlds are not run by social skills. I'm not able to walk or do my job because the world is being polite to me and letting me be effective today. If that were true, I would be perpetually filled with anxiety that the world might change its attitude tomorrow... I know that I can do these things because I know how the world works (in very general terms).
Likewise, I couldn't win an Olympic sprint next week if I could just convince the world that it could really happen and it would be cool if it did - I would have to train and have a degree of natural aptitude as a sprinter (don't hold your breaths, folks!)
In short, social skills are all very well, but creatures living in a world have some actual, experiential knowledge about how those worlds work. By saying that the only real "rules" are the picture in the GM's head of how things should be, you are robbing every player of any analogue to the model that their character must, if they are sane, have of the world they have (presumably) grown up in.
If they are not to be implicitly a lie, those rules must fit at least tolerably with the game world as described by the situations and events that happen in the game. They must not, in other words, imply things that the game suggests are untrue. Put another way, they must be "balanced" as the game world represents them to be.