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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fifth Element" data-source="post: 5531106" data-attributes="member: 48135">It's much more than a 5% difference in attack bonus, surely. But that stat-16 character has the same limited resources as the stat-18 one, and has invested them differently. If he has a lesser attack bonus, he necessarily has other advantages. Whether these other advantages make up for that difference in attack bonus is a matter of perspective, and cannot be solved mathematically, unless a damage-per-round calculation (or something similar) is all you're after.From this perspective, a defence-focused character will always be suboptimal because his attack bonus could be higher due to his resources being invested in defence rather than offence. Even if his AC is 10 points higher than the attack-optimized character, he's suboptimal because his attack bonus trails by 3 points. There's just too many mechanical aspects to a character; you can't point at one and say "suboptimal."I absolutely agree, and find that 4E is much better in this regard than previous editions. However, given the enormity of available options, "the math" will never be perfect, and trying to make it perfect detracts resources from other aspects of the game. To me, as long as it's within an acceptable range of balance, it's fine and we don't need to be picking over every feat and power.It's certainly a tradeoff, but not just in the direction you're arguing. If you get too obsessed with balance like this, you limit the design space too much (IMO). You might have some cool new idea to try out, but you find it's too difficult to balance and worry that the CharOp people will break the hell out of it, so it goes in the dustbin.Balance is definitely a concern. But it's not the only concern. That's the trouble with relying too strictly on CharOp: the numbers are not the only thing that matters. As long as things are not obviously out-of-whack, that's probably good for most of your market, and trying to fix it for the rest may harm it for the majority.</blockquote>

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