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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 9174953" data-attributes="member: 996">See, that's why I find the definition of balance that includes maximizing player choice more useful that whatever unstated definition of balance you're using that deem a terrible, choiceless game somehow 'balanced.'What is that definition, BTW?Thus the requirement those choices be both meaningful and viable.I mean, the latter is /better/ wouldn't you agree?A better balanced game will tend to offer more agency.The cost of balance is less imbalance, honestly.  Complaints about 'how a system is balanced' typically boil down to some of the choices seeming less meaningful - which means it's not actually as well-balanced as it could have been.  If you layer too many restrictions on a system to 'balance' it, you're effectively reducing player choices again, which means you're not balancing it, you're just working with the imbalances it presents.  It's similar to taking an imbalanced system with a number of non-viable choices, and just excising those choices.  The result is a smaller game that wastes less space and avoids offering 'traps,' but it's still not any better-balanced, because it isn't providing any /more/ choices that are both meaningful and balanced than it did before. That's another thing useful about this definition, it recognizes that banning or otherwise removing choices is not as good a solution as fixing choices that are non-viable or render other choices non-viable.Making choice of character meaningless would be self-defeating if you're trying to get a better balanced game. Perfect balance, is impossible, of course, so trivially it's true that you cannot balance a game for an infinite number of possible ways it might be run.  But improvement is always possible.  5e, for instance, might be balanced in a game that consisted of little more than time-important, 6 or so encounter 'days' consisting almost entirely of combat vs enemies the party outnumbers.  That's /very/ narrow.  Balance in every conceivable campaign might be unattainable, but balance in more than just /that/ is not too much to ask, indeed, balance in the mode of play surveys show to be the most common 1-3 encounter days, would seem prudent...With 'viable' as the bar rather than optimal, that's not an impractical thing to work towards. D&D traditionally fails very badly at establishing any sort of balance across campaigns with different emphasis because it makes some classes very flexible and others more highly specialized.  Fighting Man and Thief, very specialized, Cleric, less so but forced into healing primarily, Magic-User as flexible as his spell list.  Casters in general and wizards in particular have become ever more versatile as the game evolved ("changed slowly over time," 'k?  Developed. Whatever), while non-casters have at times become even more specialized.  Classes (if a game goes with them at all) can be differentiated without being given functions so limited and inflexible that they might sit out sessions, or theoretically, even whole campaigns.  When they aren't you have "the netrunner problem" which, of course, is a failure to balance classes....</blockquote>

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