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<blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 8959050" data-attributes="member: 20564">Before getting into the details, I want to say that making character building &amp; advancement &quot;fair&quot; may be a fool's errand.&nbsp; I can play Marvel Heroic Roleplay doing a buddy drinking night with Thor and Hawkeye and their misadventures and have a great time, as either of them.&nbsp; But not a soul will tell you they are balanced against each other.What we're really looking for is equal spotlight time.&nbsp; And a lot of that can be controlled by the GM.&nbsp; Yes, there are mechanical ways to help, but they at best will only be part of the situation, so strong GM direction is needed no matter what.You even get interesting cases like Fate where your aspects being compelled - used in a way that causes trouble, but also grants you meta currency to be cooler later - is spotlight time for the character.&nbsp; Masks: A New Generation has similar themes, where one of the playbooks, the Nova, has the primary issue is that they are too powerful, and can't always control it or prevent collateral damage.It's only in games like D&amp;D where failure is so often a punitive case rather than just another fork of the story and part of the expected up- and down-beats you'd see in novels, movies, and the like where trying to balance characters against each other mechanically (in addition to the GM making sure to spotlight each character) should take on any design weight.You know, that got longer than expected, let me leave this as it's own post and I'll talk about details in a separate one.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Blue, post: 8959050, member: 20564"] Before getting into the details, I want to say that making character building & advancement "fair" may be a fool's errand. I can play Marvel Heroic Roleplay doing a buddy drinking night with Thor and Hawkeye and their misadventures and have a great time, as either of them. But not a soul will tell you they are balanced against each other. What we're really looking for is equal spotlight time. And a lot of that can be controlled by the GM. Yes, there are mechanical ways to help, but they at best will only be part of the situation, so strong GM direction is needed no matter what. You even get interesting cases like Fate where your aspects being compelled - used in a way that causes trouble, but also grants you meta currency to be cooler later - is spotlight time for the character. Masks: A New Generation has similar themes, where one of the playbooks, the Nova, has the primary issue is that they are [B][I]too[/I][/B] powerful, and can't always control it or prevent collateral damage. It's only in games like D&D where failure is so often a punitive case rather than just another fork of the story and part of the expected up- and down-beats you'd see in novels, movies, and the like where trying to balance characters against each other mechanically (in addition to the GM making sure to spotlight each character) should take on any design weight. You know, that got longer than expected, let me leave this as it's own post and I'll talk about details in a separate one. [/QUOTE]

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