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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5750862" data-attributes="member: 54877">I see having game system balance, itself, as an unmitigated good thing.&nbsp; If you can have a transparently balanced system, then everyone at the table knows it.&nbsp; If this is important to that table, you will enjoy it.&nbsp; If it is not important to that table, then at least everyone will have a good gauge to determine how much they want to diverge.&nbsp; (Joe might be reasonably happy playing a rogue 2 levels below Jane's wizard, because that is an amount of imbalance he is willing to tolerate.&nbsp; If it was 4 levels lower, not so much.)&nbsp; That is, this kind of balance is a measuring stick, and no one wants a set of rulers where the inches or centimeters vary from ruler to rule, and even over a single ruler. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />&nbsp;People that say they want deliberate system imbalance to reflect a world imbalance, or other such arguments, are thus answered.&nbsp; Nothing is stopping you!&nbsp;And as already said a couple of times, anything that cuts out DM work helps.&nbsp; This is my main reason for wanting a certain amount of balance.&nbsp; The players at my table will want it.&nbsp; To the extent that the system doesn't provide it, I must.&nbsp; I'll take some of that as going along with the job, but it is &quot;work&quot; for me--i.e. not fun.&nbsp;The pursuit of game system balance, however, is not so much the bed of roses.&nbsp; Thus, the fair gripes with &quot;balance&quot; are always against not the end itself, but the means and discernment.&nbsp; If you make a system significantly harder to run because you try to exactly balance Joe's secondary blacksmithing profession with Jane's basket weaving hobby, then your discernment is probably lacking.&nbsp; (I suppose there could be a system where this was important.&nbsp; I doubt it for D&amp;D.)&nbsp; It just wasn't important enough to cause that much trouble in the core system.&nbsp; If you try to do this by tying it to some more critical part of the system, then your choice of means is also bad.&nbsp; You've risked imbalance where it matters to get &quot;more balance&quot; where it doesn't.&nbsp;Then when it comes to more playstyle oriented decisions like risking balance to maximize flavor, I prefer sharp application of the 80/20 rule.&nbsp; Say that you have a D&amp;D system with 400 spells.&nbsp; We'll arbitrarily say that 300 of them are no problem either way--they are well balanced and flavorful just the way they are (or more likely, &quot;good enough&quot; on both counts).&nbsp; Chances are, of the 100 that are a problem in either balance or flavor, there is probably a handful of things that can be done to the system to move them into the &quot;good enough&quot; category.&nbsp; So you'd evaluate that handful of things and determine if those means are ok (i.e. no serious side effects on others things that can't be handled).&nbsp; If so, include those 80 spells.&nbsp; Drop the other 20.&nbsp;&nbsp; Doesn't matter if the flavor sucked or they broke balance.&nbsp; Just drop them.&nbsp;&nbsp; You've got 380 good enough spells.&nbsp; That's plenty.&nbsp;So things that can be easily balance but weren't--that bothers me.&nbsp; It makes me do work that should have already been done.&nbsp; But things that are balanced at heavy cost, especially when not all that relatively important, also bothers me.&nbsp; That effort probably had an opportunity cost that prohibited more important balance elsewhere.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5750862, member: 54877"] I see [B]having[/B] game system balance, itself, as an unmitigated good thing. If you can have a transparently balanced system, then everyone at the table knows it. If this is important to that table, you will enjoy it. If it is not important to that table, then at least everyone will have a good gauge to determine how much they want to diverge. (Joe might be reasonably happy playing a rogue 2 levels below Jane's wizard, because that is an amount of imbalance he is willing to tolerate. If it was 4 levels lower, not so much.) That is, this kind of balance is a measuring stick, and no one wants a set of rulers where the inches or centimeters vary from ruler to rule, and even over a single ruler. :D People that say they want deliberate system imbalance to reflect a world imbalance, or other such arguments, are thus answered. Nothing is stopping you! And as already said a couple of times, anything that cuts out DM work helps. This is my main reason for wanting a certain amount of balance. The players at my table will want it. To the extent that the system doesn't provide it, I must. I'll take some of that as going along with the job, but it is "work" for me--i.e. not fun. The [B]pursuit[/B] of game system balance, however, is not so much the bed of roses. Thus, the fair gripes with "balance" are always against not the end itself, but the means and discernment. If you make a system significantly harder to run because you try to exactly balance Joe's secondary blacksmithing profession with Jane's basket weaving hobby, then your discernment is [I]probably[/I] lacking. (I suppose there could be a system where this was important. I doubt it for D&D.) It just wasn't important enough to cause that much trouble in the core system. If you try to do this by tying it to some more critical part of the system, then your choice of means is also bad. You've risked imbalance where it matters to get "more balance" where it doesn't. Then when it comes to more playstyle oriented decisions like risking balance to maximize flavor, I prefer sharp application of the 80/20 rule. Say that you have a D&D system with 400 spells. We'll arbitrarily say that 300 of them are no problem either way--they are well balanced and flavorful just the way they are (or more likely, "good enough" on both counts). Chances are, of the 100 that are a problem in either balance or flavor, there is probably a handful of things that can be done to the system to move them into the "good enough" category. So you'd evaluate that handful of things and determine if those means are ok (i.e. no serious side effects on others things that can't be handled). If so, include those 80 spells. [B]Drop the other 20[/B]. Doesn't matter if the flavor sucked or they broke balance. Just drop them. You've got 380 good enough spells. That's plenty. So things that can be easily balance but weren't--that bothers me. It makes me do work that should have already been done. But things that are balanced at heavy cost, especially when not all that relatively important, also bothers me. That effort probably had an opportunity cost that prohibited more important balance elsewhere. [/QUOTE]

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