Why is balance being defined in terms of combat capability? It is possible to have a balance of mechanical effectiveness across PC builds without having all PCs be equally effective in combat - for instance, by having some be better at social conflict.
Indeed, it is possible. But I wasn't speciffically talking about combat capability - though most of the time balance remains inside that little box-, I was answering to your previously stated "how comparable mechanical effectivity precldues you from playing a concept"(or something like that), which I read as "everybody falls within this limited range of capability on area A, area b and Area C, nobody can deviate outside those ranges" and so I began saying that under that setup character concepts that require you to be bad at something and be better at something else aren't possible. -I started with sucking in combat to be good somewhere else because sucking at everything else in order to be an uber broken combatant is a munchkin thing, and sometyhing I don't care about doing-
I'm not sure what system you have in mind. The only edtion of D&D I know of where this particular build is possible is 2nd ed AD&D (using some priest variant) - in all other editions clerics, who are the best healers, are also at least passably effective melee combatants.
Indeed 2e rules in this respect, but you can also be bad at combat with almost any clase but the warrior group, and you don't even need the pacifist kit to be bad at combat. 3.5 also allows this kind of character in the early levels, a healer with maxed charisma and a pair of exalted feats (gotten via flaws) can heal almost three times as much as a cleric, however it needs a certain degree of DM goodwill at later levels to keep up -merely not sticking to 4 equal cr combats per day mantra and instead throwing more lower CR ones-
4e permits approximations to it via pacifist cleric builds.
Which proved to be too unbalancing and had to be errated to be less pacifist and less healer, now a days pacifist healers have to be controllers in sheeps clothing or they only slow down combat -or worse they eat away valuable surges before time-. Because the system is balanced on having four PCs constantly pounding at things, if one of them is only there not causing damage the whole thing falls over itself.
I don't entirely see how this is an argument against balance. If you're against balance, what does it even mean to say that the system "expects" a player to be mechanically effective to some or other degree?
The whole idea that I could trade down offensive capability in return for healing capability, and thereby remain a valuable contributor to combat, seems to rest on an assumption that balance of mechanical effectiveness is important and should be preserved acros builds.
Like I said, I'm not against balance, I'm just against balance with a reduced tolerance to outliers -see my previous paragraph- and that example is just the tip of the iceberg, on my very first 4e game I got healed to death!, because we had three leaders and only one of them was a warlord and at the time I didn't know that mindless healing could be bad for you.
I just want to know what this example has to do with anything. It's very easy to make a character who is bad at fighting in 4e - you put an 8 in their primary stat. Then as a bonus give them a weapon they aren't proficient with and no armour. In fact the only games I can think of where you can't play someone who's bad at fighting are Mythender, Feng Shui, and Wushu. And that's because they are about playing badasses - you might as well play someone who can't drive in a racing game.
On the "Put an 8 on primary stat", for starters it doesn't make you suck in combat, it makes your character unplayable -unless you are a lazy warlord-. On the "use no armor and fight without proficiency", that doesn't makes your character someone who is a bad combatant, not working on your defenses is borderline suicide and not giving your all sabotages the party, and since you still aren't better out of combat, you aren't carrying your weight. Certain characters on other editions -like the healer mentioned before, a priest of love, an utility sorcerer, a thief-cleric of thievery- have been genuinely bad at combat, they would give their all and take all of the same risks, not refusing to use the weapons they know, retaliate in self defense, but still be better off the frontlines and moreover giving a valuable contribution out of combat to offset their near uselessness on it.
What balance provides is information. It means you can't accidentally create someone bad at fighting. Is there anything wrong with the idea you can't accidentally create someone bad at something they are supposed to be good at?
I'm not against that degree of transparency (and like said before neither agaisnt balance), the problem is IN 4E EVERYBODY IS SUPPOSSED TO BE GOOD AT COMBAT, combat is so involved that nobody can get away with sitting out of it, 90% of a characters abilites are combat related, and a turn missed without attacking severely endangers the party, on previous editions you could spend a round of two setting up a backstab, buffing an ally, healing people, distracting, getting out of danger's way, but on 4e you are just wasting everybody's time if you don't do actual damage on your turn. The problem isn't balance, the problem is it being too narrow
