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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9151307" data-attributes="member: 8461">I think that the options you're outlining are far more granular than just classes; they're individual class abilities, feats, backgrounds, spells, magic items, etc. Multiply those into various combinations, and the possibilities are large enough that they're greater than can be casually calculated. And that's before you get into issues of contextualizing any given combination in terms of the play experience.Those options can be looked at and compared to each other, but they can't be compared to the unrestricted possibilities of what can happen in any given session, which makes me question how much utility they have, regardless of how well they're balanced.Sure, but in many cases that removes options, which strikes me as paving the way to tightening balance via restriction of what can be done, which runs the risk of the game and verisimilitude being in conflict. When you're in danger of saying that an ability based purely on muscle power is so good that it can only be done once per day, to reuse that example, that tends to not go over well (that I've seen).Far better to be less worried about the potential of abusive combinations; I know people like to point to Pun-Pun as emblematic of everything that was wrong with 3.X, but I don't remember ever seeing anyone try to make/play/run Pun-Pun at the game table. A lot of the specters that get hunted down in the abstract tend to be non-issues in actual play, that I've seen.To reiterate, I perceive a mismatch between the idea that balance maximizes options and the results of that put into practice. Balance, presuming again that I'm understanding you right, requires controlling and quantifying variables and their interactions. But leaving aside that the circumstances of play are a host of variables that can't be quantified, bringing various options into parity with each other almost always requires some things to be reined in (unless you boost absolutely everything to match the highest gradation of functionality), and that's the point where you introduce restrictions, potentially at the cost of immersion via groundedness via verisimilitude.In other words, balance can be over-tightened. Far better to let it serve as a guideline and let each table take care of the rest.</blockquote>

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