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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7016877" data-attributes="member: 996">That'd be a fair version of 'meaningful' in the context of the definition of balance that I find most useful.  I'd be open to a broader take on meaningful, taking player preference and potential impact and I guess "framing" into it, as well as actual, final impact.  That's a familiar phrasing from outside the hobby. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  I'd call that 'fairness.'  If every player has the same opportunity to make the best choices, there can be many bad and few good choices, and making the right choices is must part of learning the game - but it's fair.  Even if a new player might not think so, at first.  Fairness <> balance, IMHO, but a balanced game is going to be pretty fair as a consequence.  OTOH, 'equality of result' is another extreme that doesn't equate to balance, at all, being a much more absolute and prescriptive concept than 'viable,' the other thing choices need to be in addition to 'meaningful' to contribute to balance.Balance applies at both levels.  You can give the players many meaningful & viable choices at chargen, and many more (typically more granular and situational) in play.  And, yes, a game can contain one choice that's arguably better than (as opposed to strictly superior to) another as long as both remain viable.  And, yes, especially in play there may be some non-viable, even disastrous, choices available, and a cloud of 'chaff' meaningless/useless choices as well, if you like.  That's one of the classic conundrums. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  I don't want to come off as too much of an evangelist for one definition, but the one I like - that a game is better-balanced the more (relatively speaking) choices it provides that are both meaningful and viable is helpful in resolving it (in a way other than unnecessarily sacrificing balance for choice).  The key is that balance is about providing more choices.  A game where there are no choices - no meaningful choices, for instance - is not that balanced.  So there's no variation vs balance trade-off, since balance /requires/ a great deal of  variation (without which, you have no meaningful choices).  (You still have a point though, that I'll get into later...)   Personally, I'm willing to cut a game a lot of slack in the 'meaningful' category, since subjective elements can make some choices more meaningful to some gamers than to others, but you clearly don't feel that way, so let's consider Campbell's thought, above, about each choice /making an impact on the play space/.  If you really did have some choices that had no impact on the specific experiences of play, they'd be meaningless to that level of rigor (they might be very meaningful to a given player, and it doesn't hurt to let such players make those choices, it just doesn't contribute to, nor much detract from, balance).  D&D hasn't ever been in danger of perfect balance, but that failing is not for a lack of choices or for a lack of meaningful differences among them - it's the presence (even prevalence) of non-viable choices 'traps' or (if no one's really tempted to take them) 'chaff.' Yep. If you can tolerate or compensate for the profound imbalances described in optimization Tiers - playing all the same Tier, for instance, or playing E6 where the problems are less profound - 3e's wild customizeability is still pretty awesome.  I love to play it when I get the chance, but I'm not really up for trying to run it again, for that reason. Still, it was a wonderful step forward from the tightly class/race- bound classic game.  4e was better-balanced than other editions of D&D, but relative to broader comparisons or theoretical ideals of balance, not so much.  Not that it isn't fair to call it 'very balanced' in this context, just, y'know, perspective.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />   Of course, there's no arguing with how you felt about them, that's a personal, subjective experience.  But, objectively, the classes were quite different from eachother in many ways.  After coping with the radical imbalances of the prior edition, though, feeling like lesser imbalance muted the differences among classes is understandable.  Like stepping from a lethally frigid environment into a merely uncomfortably cool one could feel overwhelmingly hot at first.No, it's not.  And, it would be ruinous to balance if they were to contribute /identically/.  But it's perfectly reasonable to aim for them each being viable within each pillar independently of the other.  There's a good reason to aim for that, too, as it Empowers the DM to run campaigns that emphasize the pillars differently.  Maybe not incumbent on RPGs in general (and this is the general RPG forum), but I want to point out that 5e, in particular, has among it's several impossible goals, supporting the full range of playstyles supported by each past edition... ... and, I'd presume, more besides.</blockquote>

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