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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 3285604" data-attributes="member: 22424">No, I think I got that. The point I was trying to get at, though, was that since virtually every step is the same as some other step, to balance the whole for every situation, you really only have to balance a tiny number of the cases, and the rest will follow.The counter-argument to that, of course, is "imagine a square mile with some unknown number of mines hidden in it." There, since you don't know where the mines are, you really have to do the exhaustive search through the possibility space.(Though the minefield analogy falls down because no-one actually dies from an imbalanced RPG. So perhaps it's enough for us to say "this field is probably clear", and then put up big warning signs as and when the problems are found.This is very analagous to the development of an operating system for a computer. It is literally impossible to find all, or even most of, the bugs, and it's certainly impossible to predict all possible developments in hardware and driver design. Does this mean we can't produce a working OS? Does it mean we can't produce a 'good' OS? Surely the answer must be 'No'?)Sorry, but I think you might have missed my point. My contention was that the designer could neglect cases if:1) Inherent imbalances are essentially irrelevant. The dragons vs. commoners example is a case of this: it's irrelevant whether commoner A is slightly more powerful than commoner B if they're both dead before they get to act.2) The case is so obscure that while it could happen in theory, in practice it never will. I will readily concede that a system that doesn't account for these cases isn't truly balanced... but I will argue that it doesn't actually matter provided all the cases that really will occur have been dealt with.3) The variation in the situation is sufficiently small. There's no need to consider both "party vs orcs" and "party vs hobgoblins" - the effective difference is small enough that it can be neglected. Again, doing so leaves the system open to some 'wild card' imbalances... but they're probably sufficiently small to be ignored.I should note that 'perfect balance' is a myth - even in Chess one side goes first. But within broad parameters...?All of this I agree with.</blockquote>

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