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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9503292" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Nothing can achieve that. Nothing. It's not possible to design a game that is truly achieving every single goal that every single subgroup wants on an equal footing. Something must be the starting point, or all you have is "numbers matter?? I guess??? And...you talk about them??????" That's not a rule system. That's not a guideline. It isn't even a suggestion. It's the barest glimmer of an idea.In other words, leaving 4e fans completely in the dust, rejecting anything they want as utterly verboten.You're not making a very good case for "big tent" here. You're making a case for "my tent, go find your own tent."I'm making a case for "there has to be a first tentpole, but we can make sure the overall tent covers a lot more ground."They are not the same degree of difficulty. Period. Otherwise we wouldn't see the massive, MASSIVE proliferation of absolutely craptacular house-rules, homebrew, and 3PP. Designing things well is hard. Designing things poorly is extremely easy.Yes you are. That's my point here.Balance is difficult to achieve. Well, balance that's actually fun is difficult to achieve; I was assuming we both recognized that trivialized "no choices matter because everything is literally identical" balance was as bad as having zero balance at all.That's my point. The game hasn't done that yet.You are presuming from the start that my argument is simply false. But given the continuing complaints about caster/martial balance across 5.0's run--where people, IIRC including you yourself, swore up and down that there was absolutely no problem whatsoever--only for 5.5e to come along and buff martial characters...I hope you can see why I reject this "ideally" as a simply false assumption. As a result, the entire paragraph that follows is moot; it depends on an assumption that is false, and IMO 5.5e directly demonstrates that it was already false with 5.0, and could still be false with 5.5e. We have yet to see it go through its paces properly, though, so it is hard to know exactly where it will land. It will certainly be better than 5.0, what with the Fighting Style and Weapon Mastery changes that are (for once) genuinely locked in for martial-focused characters and not for casters. (As much as I wish I could get them on my Warlock...I'm glad that it frustrates me that I can't. That means martial characters finally have a something that is special to them that casters would love to have but can't get without some real, mechanical sacrifices.)Sure they do. I was using real-world examples. They're talking about different things. But since I need to clarify...If you take, say, two copies each of n distinct objects and randomly throw them into a box, what is the probability that they land in the box in a symmetrical pattern? I think you'd agree the answer is "effectively 0." The possible number of asymmetric states is extremely high. However, even if they are arranged spatially asymmetrically, it is also possible that you could still end up with equal weight on one side as you have on the other--meaning, even though the collection is not symmetrical in one sense, it would still be "balanced" in another sense.Spatial symmetry is a difficult property to create without carefully trying for it, and adding even small elements can break that symmetry very easily. Do you disagree with this assertion?Chaos and disorder, aka high entropy, is the natural state of things, unless work is done to arrange them nicely. Do you disagree with this assertion?Creating a balanced system--and especially creating "asymmetrical balance," which is when two things use different structures but achieve measurably pretty-close-to-equivalent value/utility--is extraordinarily difficult. The much more likely states are either dull, trivial "balance" which is either offering no choice at all, or offering an illusory choice where the different options are in fact identical other than possibly a change of name. If you agree with both of the previous assertions, I don't understand why you wouldn't agree with this assertion.</blockquote>

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