NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DinoInDisguise" data-source="post: 9457969" data-attributes="member: 7045806">I think this falls into white board analysis. Theory isn't always a good predictor of reality, especially with human behavior which is notoriously unpredictable. I think the DM's thumb being on the scale also throws this type of analysis off. As a change in math may be imperceptible due to the variable nature of DM choices.This points to a couple of issues I see with the argument of balance as a whole and, in a way, the applicability of such analysis. It's unclear the player base cares about this, at least en masse. And from 4e's response we know that even "near perfect" balance, from a mathematical perspective,  would be catastrophic to the game's broad appeal. Even 4e's balance, which was not perfect, caused complaints of classes feeling "samey." This means any push towards balance is walking a fine line.So our question ends up, what level of balance matters to players. And does that level of balance overcome the weight of the DM's thumb in such a way that a change would make a meaningful difference in player perception. And that is assuming players perceive any meaningful imbalance.We see in this very thread, that people dispute issues having to do with this analysis because they don't share the resulting experience. Which lends credence to the idea that effect of the mathematical imbalances vary from table to table. This reinforces the idea that DM's have a broad effect on player perceptions of balance. And it leads me to question whether the imbalance theorized with "average effectiveness per action" rises above the level of "noise" when put into a real game.I, for one, have not seen any relation between engagement and class chosen. And DnDBeyond surveys show that, at minimum, any imbalance is not causing playability issues on a wide scale. So I am skeptical that this math is anything more than theorycrafting.EDIT: Fixed some grammar issues.</blockquote>

Verification