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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6049987" data-attributes="member: 87792">And, as  @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=49017" target="_blank">Bluenose</a>  (can't xp, sorry) points out,  @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=957" target="_blank">BryonD</a> 's quote is almost entirely wrong.  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseus" target="_blank">Perseus did not fight Medusa at all</a>.  He hacked her head off while she was asleep - and that wasn't a fight, it was a puzzle every bit as much as silly games involving <a href="http://xkcd.com/1134/" target="_blank">wolves, goats, and cabbages</a> are.  So Perseus didn't fight Medusa, there wasn't a fight, and the math wasn't even slightly swingy.  Literally the only point on which Bryon is not simply flat out wrong in his sig is the 'Perseus was a hero' claim.On the other hand if we look at an actual fight in Greek myth, <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/hydra.html" target="_blank">Hercules vs the Lernean Hydra</a>, there was a fight, the math wasn't terribly swingy, and the encounter was balanced.  Or how about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector#Hector.27s_last_fight" target="_blank">Achiles vs Hector</a>?  Balanced in Achiles favour and not terribly swingy [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ygRholyh5g"]as seen here [/ame]There are two sorts of story that make the cut most of the time.  The epic clash betweeen approximate equals in which the combat is balanced, not terribly swingy, and is about the people concerned.  And the work of an utter bastard trickster that does something like coup de grace Medusa when she is asleep or pour out of the wooden horse, butchering drunk Trojans, and unlocking the gates while they are having their victory celebrations.  This always takes some rigging by the protagonist and the battle has been won before the first sword blow lands unless there's a complete screw up.Of course it's impossible to balance all possibilities.  What balanced math does is provide information about how the head on approach is going to work.  Or if rigged, a given approach.  If a fight was truly perfectly balanced, no one would ever win.  But with balanced math you can estimate very accurately what is going to happen assuming there aren't an unusual number of surprises.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ygRholyh5g" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ygRholyh5g" target="_blank"></a>Edit note: the ENWorld parser that automatically turns links into videos is really annoying.</blockquote>

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