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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9024610" data-attributes="member: 6790260">My point was that balance is, almost always, actually really important for fun to happen. It's a bit like saying "I'd chuck out the atmosphere on the spaceship if it would increase safety." There are very few situations where completely venting the entire atmosphere of a space-faring vessel would be an actual improvement to safety--and if it were an improvement, that would mean things had gone truly horrifically wrong.Hence, even bringing it up as a "I'll happily sacrifice it for fun" is specious at best. Actually good, effective balance enhances fun in 99.999% of cases. It does so in a huge variety of ways:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">enabling both GMs and players to play "no holds barred," because the underlying system won't break if they do, and thus no one needs to hold back;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">reducing or even eliminating dull "calculation," because if most paths are closely balanced against one another in quantitative measure, then qualitative measure must prevail;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">fairly and earnestly supporting nearly all player preferences (e.g., races, classes, specializations, etc.) and player goals (e.g. how they see a character evolving over time);</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">promoting both interoperability (a character can leave one game and join another quite easily) and a shared understanding of impact or significance;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">making rules errors (regardless of their source) generally quite obvious and, in the ideal case, quite easy to fix as well;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">reducing cognitive load for the GM, both via reliably functional systems that don't need constant checking and second-guessing, and via well-made tools that perform their intended function consistently;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">and, consequently, freeing up significantly more time for GMs to focus on the things that absolutely require their attention, like crafting new adventures, building on expressed player interest, and exploring possible new developments.</li> </ul>It's continuously infuriating to see people constantly portray "balance" as though it were this horrible boogeyman that must be fled from, if not at all times, then at least constantly defended against, lest it poison the beauty and fun of D&D.Balance is a very significant part of what enables D&D to be as enjoyable as it is. But "balance" is not, and has never been, perfect mathematical uniformity (because equality and uniformity are two very different things.) It is not, and has never been, the ridiculous strawmen people love to knock down (pick your poison, they're a dime a dozen.) "Balance" literally just means making sure options are sufficiently evenly matched, despite being different, that you cannot usefully employ mathematical analysis to distinguish the "best" one. That, over a sufficient range of time and within reasonable statistical boundaries, you can be confident that most options will perform close enough to the same amount, by different means, such that you have to start making value-judgments, not number-cruching, in order to decide what is the correct choice in most situations.Such balance is quite achievable. It takes effort, to be sure, but it's far from impossible. And it almost always makes MORE fun. While it might not be impossible for it to somehow, someway make less fun...that's going to be incredibly, almost incalculably rare.Chucking balance means making more broken combos. It means making more trap options. It means making more things that are unplayable. In what world is that productive for improving the group's fun? I mean, I guess if the group gets their jollies by one person being godlike and everyone else fawning over them for it. That's certainly one of the playstyles of all time.</blockquote>

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