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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3507028" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ok. Yeah, that's where you are getting confused.  It's not.  The poster didn't actually say much of anything about balance.  Instead, he defined 'balance' entirely in a way in which it is never generally used, and then proceeded from that definition.Pretty much.  To the extent that the original poster said anything about balance, he said that balance was whatever could be obtained in the published rules short of an infinite number.Let me try to reconstruct his argument.He begins by saying that there are widely different views of what is an exceptable power level.  He notes that different people may have different expectations of what is a normal number of hitpoints, attack bonus, or saving throw bonus.  He then asks?  Who is right?  What is the correct power level to play at?He then proposes two standards for determining what is the right power level.  First, that it have an upper bound, and second that it be determined by the person who is most 'informed' on how to obtain high power levels.  In other words, the proper and correct power level for play is whatever the highest power level that can be obtained by someone who knows the rules sufficiently to obtain the highest power level.  Or, in other words, power gamers should build as powerful of builds as possible under the rules and this should be taken as the standard by which everyone should be playing (if they aren't, its because they are poorly informed), and the rules are only 'unbalanced' if they allow the possibility of infinitely high values.  Otherwise, its 'balanced' if it is legal, irrespective of any other considerations.He then goes on to say that any other considerations we might have, any other standard we might have to judge power level (as he calls it 'balance'), is heavy handed, inflexible, and unfair.  I think one easy way to misunderstand his argument is to think that he's saying that the DM presents the players with some rules and then from that the player is allowed to build whatever the most powerful character he can from those rules.  But that's not really what he is saying.  He's saying on the contrary that the player presents the DM with some rules, say the wealth by level guidelines in the DMG, and then the DM is beholden to follow those guidelines or else he is being heavy handed, inflexible and unfair.I rejected his definition for a lot of reasons, but the simpliest statement of my objection is that if his definition of 'balance' is correct, then all games are balanced by definition and we can never speak of a game that isn't balanced (except, as he would have it, one where the rules weren't being followed).  But of course, in practice, if you've played alot of competitive games, you know that they often aren't in fact balanced.</blockquote>

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