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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 8763428" data-attributes="member: 72555">No, 4e doesn't produce a balanced game.I played 4e extensively.  Suppose we start with per-essentials.A level 30 PC in 4e has 18 feats, 3 encounter powers, 3 daily powers, 1 paragon path, 1 epic destiny, 1 race, 1 theme, 1 class, 1 subclass, and about 10 items of consequence.  By the rules, swapping items around isn't all that hard, except for your top-tier ones (L 25+ ones).In my experience, a well optimized PC can easily make each of those picks generate a character that is 10% better at their job (the easiest of which to quantify is damage) than a run of the mill choice.18+3+3+1+1+1+1+1+1+10 is 40 choices.  If choices are a mere 5% better than baseline, that gives us 1.05^40, or 7x competence ratio between an optimized PC and an unoptimized one.Even by level 11, you have 6 feats, a half dozen items, 3 encounter powers, 3 daily powers, 1 class, 1 theme, 1 subclass, and 1 paragon path; if optimized choices average 5% better than baseline that produces a character 3x as competent as a baseline PC (1.05^22 =~ 3).  And sure, paragon path doesn't matter much; but I skipped utility powers, so there is still more than enough room.And this isn't theory crafting.  I've played games where this happens, watching a PC that was fine at level 1 devolve to incompetent by Paragon tier.  Why?  Because at level 1, picking everything for flavour was viable!  You got to pick class, race, theme, 2 powers and 1 feat.  6 picks, even if the optimizer was 5% better in each choice, they where only 34% better at their job.  They could contribute; heck, they might not notice!Then each optimized choice accumulated, and you kept falling behind because you picked every feat and every paragon paths and powers for flavour, not for mechanical optimization purposes.  What worked fine at level 1, generated an incompetent PC by level 11.What more, monsters split the difference.  If you didn't do any optimization, the number of rounds to kill an average encounter grows with level in 4e, and the number of rounds it takes for them to kill you also grows.  Higher level monsters mainly became deadlier not from higher damage or more HP, but from higher ATK and defences -- so if you failed to optimize accuracy, you are reduced to your turns consisting of a lot of "miss".And different classes did have a different optimization ceiling in practice.  The ones that did best?  Almost always the ones with more options to pick between (PHB1 classes).</blockquote>

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