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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9151264" data-attributes="member: 8461">I'm of the opinion that such an evaluation has limited (at best) impact with regard to the practicalities of play, and so is of only modest worth.That's sort of what I'm getting at, though: since it can only work in overarching abstractions with limited applications due to the incalculable diversity of the play experience, balance is subjective as well. Hence, better to lean into the verisimilitude, which embraces that.It's not a question of obstacles; it's a question of calculating those abilities on paper versus using them in play. You can calculate the latter very well as an abstraction, but in terms of actually applying that to game-play, it's limited at best.I don't see how it doesn't. It's a demonstration that fine-tuning "balanced" options will only have modest impact on improving the play experience, because the play experience is broader than what such calculations are able to take into effect. The focus on verisimilitude is that it recognizes that the entire experience is subjective, and so needs to be understood with regard to the context that play is happening in; doing so allows for (in my opinion) more to be "gotten" from the course of play. Context, in other words, is everything.Even if we leave aside methods of interaction that don't necessarily rely on the game mechanics per se (interpersonal interaction between PCs and NPCs/monsters is a big thing here, as I've seen plenty of "social" mechanics be eschewed in favor of role-playing the encounter without any sort of crunch), those finite sets often rely on combinations of options, with the potential results being large enough that they might as well be infinite for all intents and purposes. And in many instances that's before you take into account some variables that aren't even part of the standard sets of tools.Because, in my experience, the level of balance that you're talking about (presuming that I've understood you correctly) requires restricting options in order to move from the theoretical to the practical. Things like limiting mundane (i.e. non-magical/supernatural) abilities to "per day" or "per encounter" usage, for instance, tends to hurt people's sense of how the world works if there's no good in-character reason for why they can't do such things more often. Obviously, personal variance will mean that some people don't mind that, but I feel fairly confident in guessing that a not-inconsiderable number of people would.Really, it gets back to what I said about chess. It's a very finely-balanced game, but nobody uses it to role-play.</blockquote>

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