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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5971545" data-attributes="member: 996">'Fun' is ultimately a subjective experience, and can be the result of many factors beyond the mechanics of the game (nerdrage over an early rev-roll, for instance).  Balanced mechanics don't make a game fun (or un-fun) they simply make it less likely that the game will be ruined by having most of the choices it presents obviated.  Really, that's what it comes down to.  A fair 'definition' of a balanced game is one that presents choices, and most (all if it's perfectly balanced) of them are meaningful and viable compared to eachother.  An imbalanced game presents choices, and many of them are worthless 'traps' that are inferior, while a few are overpowered 'must-haves.'4e, for instance, had good class balance, with only a few under-supported classes, and no clearly overpowered ones - but, it had terrible balance among its feat choices, which consisted of legions of low-value feats, a few 'must-have' feat-taxes, a few abuseable combos involving feats, and many strictly-inferior 'trap' choices.Whether you agree with that definition of balance or not, is there anything wrong with a game trying to minimize the number of inferior and/or overpowered choices while maximizing the number of meaningful choices overall?  Removing options doesn't create balance.  If it did, then a badly imbalanced game where one class were utterly superior to all others, and thus was the only class anyone ever played would be functionally identical to a 'balanced' one.Nod.  A good approach to compensate for an imbalanced game, one that I recommended a lot in the 3.x days.  So, it sounds like you are putting effort into it, and to some extent subordinating the story or 'verisimilitude' of you world to maintaining some rough serial balance for your players.Very few of which are actively hampered by a well-designed game.  (There might be theoretical exceptions - such players who set out to 'win' the game by getting the most powerful character and ruining the play experience for everyone else at the table - but I've never heard anyone claim that sort of style, so I think we can discount the 'need' for imbalance.)</blockquote>

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