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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6245605" data-attributes="member: 42582">I thought [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]'s point was fairly simple: ECL and CR are both presented as tools for the GM to use to judge the mechanical strength/difficulty of various game elements that can be deployed independently of the classes of the particular characters concerned. This generates an implication that differences of class don't matter to the deployment of those tools, that is, don't matter to the mechanical strength/difficulty of various game elements.To flip it around: if a Nth level fighter was not comparable in mechanical effectiveness to an Nth level MU, then you couldn't deploy a tool like CR or ECL to judge mechanical strength/difficulty without knowing the class of character involved. Given that the rules nowhere suggest that CR or ECL is class-dependent in this way, they generate an implication of comparable mechanical effectiveness across classes of Nth level.And another way of describing that implication is as an implication of mechanical balance of effectiveness across the classes.It seems pretty straightforward to me, and insofar as 4e and D&Dnext have GM tools in the same functional space they generate the same implication.</blockquote>