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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 3283158" data-attributes="member: 22424">Ahah! Suddenly, I understand what it was you were getting at with regards to scope.In that case, the answer is "no - it is not possible to balance an RPG across the spectrum of possible situations."That said, one can argue that the vast majority of those possible situations are either irrelevant, improbable, or so similar to one another that the designer wouldn't need to consider them.Returning to your "square mile" analogy - for the vast majority of the steps involved in traversing the mile, the scenario is exactly the same as the one before it, so nothing new is gained. Therefore, we can abstract these out of our considerations. In fact, therefore, only four steps are of relevance - the first step from east to west, the first step from west to east, and the first step south at each end of the square mile. Suddenly, we go from 2,640 days down to less than an hour, and all the 'interesting bits' of the walk have been done.So, to RPG design...I would argue that the designer can ignore a great many cases where the outcome is obvious. For example, it is irrelevant whether the 5th level Fighter is more or less powerful than the 5th level Wizard if they find themselves in combat with 20 Great Wyrm Red Dragons. Since both will die within the first round, who really cares?Likewise, there's little point in dealing with the corner case where the Fighter and the Wizard, equipped only with a tea cup, and dressed in kilts and green hats must soothe the ruffled feathers of the Aaracockra warlord who took offense at their stand-up comedy routine. It's a (deliberately) absurd scenario, and therefore can be considered beyond the scope of the game.And then, of course, there's no need to consider both the Fighter & Wizard vs. 2 Orcs and the Fighter & Wizard vs. 2 Hobgoblins scenarios - they're close enough to be considered the same 'step'.By reducing the set of 'important' scenarios it might be possible to get to a position where balance is possible.However, there also exists the need to balance the sets of available options against one another. No-one would argue that a lone Bard is as powerful in combat as a lone Fighter, just as no-one would argue that the Fighter could out-do, or even equal, the lone Bard (assuming a 'proper' implementation of the Cha stat and associated skills). But how do you judge the one against the other?All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that I (mostly) agree with you that balance is probably not something that can reasonably be achieved. And yet, I'm still not convinced that it should simply be discarded as a goal - if the designers don't put considerable effort into trying to make the game balanced, then we'll end up with a total mess, as opposed to the slightly ordered chaos we currently have. And, to be honest, I prefer slightly ordered chaos to simple unbounded chaos.</blockquote>

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