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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lyxen" data-source="post: 8621941" data-attributes="member: 7032025">Ultimately, for me, the only balance that matters is that of fun for all players, including that of the DM. If some people have fun at the expense of others around the table, it's very likely that some of these people will find that they don't enjoy the hobby that much.Now, some people consider that that balance of fun can only be achieved if people around the table have the same amount of power to influence the game. As an aside, I've met a lot of players who do not think that way, and who are perfectly happy to see other mostly influence the game, and to follow the adventure and the story, contributing only occasionally.But on the other hand, there are certainly people who, unchecked, would dominate the table. And, not so curiously, these are also people who certainly don't want to have others dominate the table. So now we come down to the power of influence, and in the end, it sort of stems from what the characters are able to do in the game, because, apart from just talking, it's still your characters who have the power to act in the game world and therefore to influence the game. Hence the concept of balance at the level of the characters, technically.At this stage, I'd like to point out that it's already a fallacy, because even with characters of equal "power", the ability to talk and influence others is personal to the players and you can have characters who are absolutely equal and still some players dominating the table, usually through personal charisma or intelligence (of any kind of intelligence, for example social one and not necessarily IQ).It is a further fallacy when you consider that the game is extremely complex and that, if you only have a look at the three pillars, it's impossible to have characters that are absolutely equal in power for all pillars, therefore some will probably be more powerful in some pillars and others in other pillars, but then you see how artificial it is since it also then depends as to how much time the table spends on various pillars, etc.But in the end, if you ask around, you will find that there are a lot of people elsewhere and around here who consider that D&D is a combat game (based on the further fallacy that there are, according to their count, more pages dedicated to combat in the rules). And in any case, balance in the other pillars is extremely hard to measure and enforce through rules, since it comes down even more than anything on the personal capabilities of the players.Hence that focus on technical combat balance for the characters, as a means to ensure overall balance of the game and, hopefully balance of fun for the players. Which is also why, if you look at all the elements above, I also find that technical balance way overrated, because it's such a miniscule factor in the potential fun at the table, and so easily overridden (if only in the fact that because the DM sets up the fights, the conditions of said fight have an even stronger influence than the characters' capabilities) by other factors that unless there is clearly something very wrong in terms of effects on the combat pillar, I won't even bother looking at it.</blockquote>

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