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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Number48" data-source="post: 5784170" data-attributes="member: 6688047">The first thing I have to say in this subject is about the subject of balance. 4E is empirically balanced, 3E wanted to be balanced and the editions before that made no attempt at all at balance (try playing a pre-3E halfling and you'll know what I mean). But what is the purpose of balance and how is it measured? This goes deep into game-theory and behavioral psychology. 4E ignored those aspects and went straight for mathematical balance, and the detractors of 4E noticed it right away and it made them itch. The deeper meaning of balance is having each person at the table feeling that they have the most powerful character. To achieve that, though, it must be empirically very difficult to quantify what is best. To complicate this, each person at the table should feel they have the best character under the rule system regardless of the how heavy RP or combat the campaign is.How do we get the incredible depth of choice in 3E that leads us each to believe that we have the best, while still having the empirical balance of 4E so that one complicated build, chain of abilities, spell combination or style of play doesn't cast certain characters as better?I have an answer, I think. Two rulesets. In pretty much every edition of D&D we have handled combat and noncombat differently from each other. Let's embrace that. We have the noncombat rules where we apply all our myriad options and builds to be the best we can be, and we have our combat rules that balance the action and move it forwards in a way that is very difficult to break. We can have the RP of 3E and the combat of 4E because these systems really only lightly touch upon each other to begin with.</blockquote>

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