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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 5135396" data-attributes="member: 19675">I've been in the RPG hobby since 1977, and in that time, I've played games that were very balanced and some that were not balanced at all.Balance isn't in and of itself a bad thing.  It can become a bad thing if you start radically reshaping & reflavoring things in order to make things balanced.  In 4Ed, one example of this is the structure of races- they ALL have 2 stats with +2 and no negative modifiers.  This means that races that are known for strength are only marginally beefier than races known for being dexterous, and races known for dexterity are only marginally more nimble than those known for being charismatic, etc.  Sorry, but it bugs me that a 350lb Minotaur, Goliath, or Dragonborn is only slightly stronger than an 80lb gnome (assuming stats are distributed identically and the only differences are from the racial mods).  That's a difference in mass equivalent to a 9 year old and an NFL Nose Tackle.On the other side of the scale you can get games like RIFTS.  Personally, I don't have a problem with the game's lack of balance- there are other mechanical oddities to that game that mess it up- because the lack of balance results from accurately depicting in the mechanics what was depicted in the fluff.  A Glitterboy SHOULD be much more powerful in combat than a Vagabond.  However, not everyone feels the same, and running a RIFTS campaign without taking that intrinsic lack of balance into account can lead to utter disaster and hard feelings.So, the complaint isn't about balance itself being bad, but a slavish adherence to balance at the expense of simulation/modeling, adherence to tropes or the weakening of things that had been powerful but evocative- IOW, balance at the expense of fun.</blockquote>

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