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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3503691" data-attributes="member: 4937">I agree with pretty much your whole post.I'd like to add that balance never never ever means:<s>3). How powerful are you compared to the characters in other campaigns?</s>That question isn't even really meaningful.  As a mental exercise, your 10th level character may in fact be more powerful than a 10th level character in another campaign, but this is largely a meaningless mental exercise because generally speaking characters from two different campaigns cannot interact except in these mental exercises.  Moreoever, even if it is the case that you are more powerful in a head to head comparison, it may be that the other character is more powerful within that campaign than your character is in yours.  For example, its concievable that the other character at 10th level could be the highest level character in the whole campaign world, whereas in your campaign every barkeep is a retired 10th level adventurer and anyone important is 20th level or higher.  In such a campaign, where even the orcs are 8th level warriors and every village hedge wizard wields world shaping artifacts, your impressive abilities at 10th level might not mean much.  Whereas, in a campaign where NPC's top out at 9th level and you have the world's only +3 longsword, you might be the important person and relatively more powerful than anything you actually meet.And both games may, or may not be, balanced.Likewise, someone mentioned that the game is balanced if a group of 6th level PC's use 20% of thier resources against a CR 6 challenge.  That is true, but that is just one completely arbitrarily chosen point of balance designed to meet the goals of a particular designer/DM.  And more than likely, it is a compromise between the goals of several designer/DMs.   The game is still balanced if a group of 6th level PC's are expected to use 20% of thier resources against a CR 4 challenge, and the game is still balanced if a group of 6th level PC's are expected to use 20% of thier resources against a CR 8 challenge.  If one party uses 32 pt buy, lots of splat books, lots of 3rd party resources and has a high magic campaign, and another party uses 24 pt buy and has a low magic campaign with a more restricted selection of feats and classes, both campaigns can be balanced and there is little point in comparing characters of the two.   What matters is consistancy and fairness, and not how your character compares to Bob's in a wholly different campaign.What matters is whether you have the oppurtunity to gain resources sufficient to overcome the challenges you face.</blockquote>

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