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<blockquote data-quote="GreatLemur" data-source="post: 3199610" data-attributes="member: 28553">First off, balance--as has been pointed out--is not technically possible.&nbsp; In a game this deep, driven by plot and choice, and adjudicated by a human being, you're inevitably going to be comparing a lot of apples and oranges.&nbsp; You can't mathematically balance Favored Enemy: Magical Beasts against, say, Rage unless you know how often you're going to be running into enemies with the Magical Beast type.That said, you definitely want to try to maintain balance--or the appearance of balance--as much as possible.&nbsp; You don't want the guy who picks an odd class and race combination because to end up feeling cheated when the game actually gets going and he doesn't get to do half as much cool stuff as the ultra-efficient min-maxer sitting next to him.&nbsp; Interesting characters are a good thing and should be encouraged.Now, on the other hand, a game that starts from the beginning with some assumption of--and agreement upon--unbalanced characters, maybe that can work just fine.&nbsp; In Ars Magica, not everyone is playing a Magus at the same time.&nbsp; I think in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer game there's a campaign variant where one or two people play powerful supernatural ass-kickers (slayers and vampires) while everybody else plays their merely-human buddies.&nbsp; And, hell, then there's Rifts, where the characters ranged from cyberpunky lowlife to TOTALLY METAL GOD-DEMON FROM DIMENSION BADASS.&nbsp; So maybe one could successfully run a D&amp;D game where half the players are dragons and the other half are their human riders, or something like that.&nbsp; As long as the players know what they're in for, I imagine it could work.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="GreatLemur, post: 3199610, member: 28553"] First off, balance--as has been pointed out--is not technically possible. In a game this deep, driven by plot and choice, and adjudicated by a human being, you're inevitably going to be comparing a lot of apples and oranges. You can't mathematically balance Favored Enemy: Magical Beasts against, say, Rage unless you know how often you're going to be running into enemies with the Magical Beast type. That said, you definitely want to try to maintain balance--or the appearance of balance--as much as possible. You don't want the guy who picks an odd class and race combination because to end up feeling cheated when the game actually gets going and he doesn't get to do half as much cool stuff as the ultra-efficient min-maxer sitting next to him. Interesting characters are a [i]good[/i] thing and should be encouraged. Now, on the other hand, a game that starts from the beginning with some assumption of--and [i]agreement upon[/i]--unbalanced characters, maybe that can work just fine. In Ars Magica, not everyone is playing a Magus at the same time. I think in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer game there's a campaign variant where one or two people play powerful supernatural ass-kickers (slayers and vampires) while everybody else plays their merely-human buddies. And, hell, then there's Rifts, where the characters ranged from cyberpunky lowlife to TOTALLY METAL GOD-DEMON FROM DIMENSION BADASS. So maybe one could successfully run a D&D game where half the players are dragons and the other half are their human riders, or something like that. As long as the players know what they're in for, I imagine it could work. [/QUOTE]

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