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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brimshack" data-source="post: 3121093" data-attributes="member: 34694">To me the biggest mistake is in the pretension that balance is a mechanical feature of the game rules rather than a function of actual play. You can tweak, test, and tweak all day, but you will never generate a rule system that can ensure balance in a game. Take a campaign underground and watch the guy playing the Druid become more and more bored. Run several fights in a row and see the guy with the meat shield become the hero of the campaign. Now take the game into the city for some heavy role playing and watch the guy playing that fighter grow more and more frustrated as the other characters solve problems he can't even touch. Of course there are always options that make it possible for one sort of character to accomplish something in sub-optimal situations, but that doesn't change the fact that one sort of game is better suited to one sort of character than another (or visa versa).But that's where the whole misconceptualization of gaming comes into play. The real question isn't whether or not the Fighter is more important than the Wizard or visa versa; it's whether or not each of your players has an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the game. If not, then it could be due to incompetence, the design of the game relative to his character mechanics, or even simply the social dynamics of the table. I think it's the GMs responsibility to try and keep everyone meaningfully involved in the game. For me that means going beyond mechanical balance if need be and actively aiding a character or two. I don't believe in bringing a character down just because it has gotten ahead of the curve, but I am quite happy to throw a small sub-game someone's way, boost the character with a little extra experience and/or magic, and just generally doing what it takes to get a player back into the game. Some clearly consider that unfair to the other players, but I think that misses the point of an RPG. The players aren't competing with each other, and helping one does not by definition hurt the others, quite the contrary. One could easily say it's up to the players, and if someone designs a lemon, then so be it. But that kind of formal sense of fairness works better for one-off type games and systems with few judgement calls. If a player is to come back game after game and enjoy his or her character, then a sense that their own irrelevancy is somehow fair given their choices just doesn't help much. Imbalance is always at least partially a function of the GMs own choices, and a good GM should keep working to correct and recorrect any imbalance in player participation.</blockquote>

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