Weakening the Jedi for the Sake of Balance

[Mr. Mask]

Remember that old MMO of Starwars? They added in a Jedi class, and everyone was upset; since it completely subverted Jedi being a rare and powerful as the game had it before. I've been wondering about just this concept...


One player says, "I want to play a jedi," or, "a ninja," or, "a drow fighter!" This brings up the problem that the kinds of characters and roles they're thinking of tend to be quite powerful, perhaps a lot more powerful than the adventure's dangers and the other players.
So, rather than a Jedi, you play as an Apprentice Jedi, who is on the same level as the Smuggler. Same with the ninja. For races which are powerful, to make up for those bonuses, you end up playing as a, "sickly drow fighter" or a, "level four drow fighter among level 6 characters".

While I don't mind the Apprentice Jedi/Ninja, I sometimes wonder if it must always be the case. The problem of races in RPGs rubs me the wrong way, and this point in particular has made me ponder if there are better ways around this issue.


One thing I've often found particularly depressing, is that while so much roleplaying freedom is sacrificed in the name of balance, many RPGs (specially DnD) are far, far from balanced, without a careful GM. Looking online, you can find builds that totally break the system, way more than playing as a drow with your friends.


Do you have any thoughts on this? Maybe experiences with this problem, ideas of how to get around it, or points that it isn't so much of a problem as it's made to sound.

[Jack of Spades]

Edge of the Empire (the newest Star Wars RPG) is actually pretty impressively balanced-- which is partially because a player character can currently only be a Force sensitive rather than a full-blown Jedi.

Also, it's more point-buy than it is class-based, which really tends to nip a lot of balance problems in the bud no matter what kind of game you're playing. You do choose classes, but those are more for dictating where your character starts than where he or she goes.

[kyoryu]

There's a difference between "Hey, Jedi are cool, I dig the whole idea of having to master your feelings and being constantly tempted by the Dark Side," and 'Hey, Jedi are cool because they're super powerful.'"

In a level-based game, your level describes (or should describe) your power level. A level 1 Jedi is level 1. End of story. (What level 1 *means* is of course game dependent).

Saying "I should be super powerful because I'm a Jedi!" is no different than somebody expecting to be super powerful at level 1 as a wizard because Gandalf.

To steal the concept of "name levels" from D&D, your class (path) may be Jedi, but you're not really a Jedi until level <x>.

Other games handle these things in different ways, like DFRPG balancing powers with refresh, to allow "normals" to still contribute in a game full of vampires and wizards.

[TeChameleon]

*shrug*

I'm not sure that the problem is necessarily all that major. I've seen stories of a player deciding to be the lone non-Force user in an otherwise all-Jedi party, and because he played intelligently and made good use of his resources, he was able to utterly shred what was supposed to be a tough Sith encounter, while the Jedi players were struggling somewhat.

Frankly, probably the simplest possible way to balance things out is to limit the gear that the Force users get. Basically the Batman solution- his wonderful toys help even the playing field for him. Since, really, how often do you see Jedi using stun nets or adhesive grenades or whatever?

[TuggyNE]

In a level-based game, your level describes (or should describe) your power level. A level 1 Jedi is level 1. End of story. (What level 1 *means* is of course game dependent).

Saying "I should be super powerful because I'm a Jedi!" is no different than somebody expecting to be super powerful at level 1 as a wizard because Gandalf.

To steal the concept of "name levels" from D&D, your class (path) may be Jedi, but you're not really a Jedi until level <x>.

Pretty much this, exactly. (I can never understand why people want different classes or archetypes or whatever to be of wildly different power level at the same character level, but a number of posters on this forum do. Puzzling.)

[Grod_The_Giant]

The bigger issue is mismatched expectations, I think. "I want to play a Jedi 'cause I just finished The Force Unleashed and Jedi are awesome butt-kickers!" is a perfectly valid expectation. So is "I want to play an underdog smuggler who gets by on wits and luck in a universe filled with things that are bigger than you." But when "powerful Jedi" and "underdog smuggler" are in the same party, THEN we get conflict.

There aren't many systems that can do both well. Fate tends to do OK-- it was actually a big theme in the Dresden Files version. The more skill and power you have in terms of stunts, magic, and other fancy stuff, the fewer fate points you roll with. The Jedi has "RAW" power, but the underdog has narrative power.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

You fool! Only the Chosen One can bring balance to the Force!

[Thrudd]

It really depends on what type of game you want to play, and partly what Star Wars era we are talking about and what Star Wars content you are trying to replicate. If you are looking to replicate the feel of the original trilogy, then jedi are rare and the most a player should start out with is a force sensitive or apprentice level character. If you want to replicate the prequels, or the video games, or some of the comics and cartoons where the jedi are all incredibly powerful, then you either go all jedi, or no jedi for your players. In other words, it is up to the GM to make sure the game is fair for everyone, and if that means restricting certain classes then so be it. It really depends on the story you want to tell.
There are game systems where it is possible to have characters of very different ability levels in the same group without problems of unfairness (these systems tend to be cinematic or narrative based rather than simulation or math based), and maybe Star Wars is the type of setting that best fits in a system like this, rather than force-fitting (no pun intended) it into a D&D shell. To be most faithful to the films, novels and comics, certainly, a less numbers-crunchy and more free-form storytelling method is probably appropriate.

For d20 Star Wars, if you really wanted to "un-nerf" the jedi relative to other classes, give level caps to all non-jedi classes. Make it E6 or E10 or something for all except force-users. If you want a mixed party, play a campaign that only goes up to level 6 or so. If you want a super jedi/force unleashed game, start with everyone as jedi at level 6.

[Weiser_Cain]

Jedi should be balanced by Sith, a level adjustment, and the fact they have a giant target on their back because mooks know they're dead if they don't take that guy down asap.

I think the Jedi should be epic bad asses but then have to deal with the baggage with being a game changing character, the temptation of the dark side and so on.

Oh and lightsabers should kill most things on contact.

[Ranos]

If you don't care about balance, the system *does* allow you to play as a powerful jedi among weak mundanes. Just have the jedi start as high level, already full-fledged, among low-level mundanes. There's nothing restricting your freedom.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Also, it's more point-buy than it is class-based, which really tends to nip a lot of balance problems in the bud no matter what kind of game you're playing. You do choose classes, but those are more for dictating where your character starts than where he or she goes.

Clearly, you've never met GURPS before. Point-buy systems are even MORE strongly encouraging of min-maxing, and you can often have just as huge a disparity between relative power levels of equal point characters.

[endoperez]

Look into Ars Magica. Sometimes I feel like I do nothing in these forums except rant about Ars M, sorry about this.

ArsM is a point-based/feat-based system, and there are basically three tiers of characters. Three "classes", so to speak.

The Grogs are the mundanes, the NPCs. A player might want to play as a grog for a specific scene (e.g. a stable boy picks up the sword and joins the party, trying to act as a hero), but usually not for the long haul.

The Companions are the adventurers, the heroes, the important people. Bards, knights, seers, healers, village elders, famous marksmen, monster hunters, holy men. They are exceptional, unique, often famous. They deal with the problems mundanes can't, and they're similar to adventurers in many other games, possibly a bit weaker.

Then there's the mages. Ars Magica is all about the mages. The mages are basically what D&D Wizards are accused of being. They're game-breakers. Only mages have magic resistance. There's no save-or-die spells, no save-or-lose spells. It's just you-die, or you-lose. A starting mage character who specializes in killing people can point a finger at a person, and he or she dies. An average earth-specialization mage has no trouble magicking a permanent castle in a matter of days, at most, if he knows the appopriate spells. The number of spells known isn't limited, new spells can be researched easily. The last thing is used to make it all work.

Mages are very powerful. Mages become more powerful, not by adventuring, but by studying and copying spells. That takes a long time.
Mages measure time in Seasons.
Every player has a mage character, AND a companion, and grogs.


While the mage is in his tower, researching a spell, it's the Companions and Grogs, the adventurers and mundanes, who handle things in the meanwhile. When a bridge needs to be fixed and a wizard knows the spell, that's not an adventure, that's a random encounter. When the mage who can stop people's hearts needs to ask for a unicorn's advice but doesn't know a dog from a pig, now that's an adventure.

The other mages would stay back in the Covenant, so the magus of Perdo Corpus would be accompanied by hunters and foresters (the grogs, NPCs), and then there'd be a bard wanting to compose a ballad of such a rare and noble hunt, and maybe there'd be a young noble lady accompanied by her father's knight. The other players.

[Jack of Spades]

Clearly, you've never met GURPS before. Point-buy systems are even MORE strongly encouraging of min-maxing, and you can often have just as huge a disparity between relative power levels of equal point characters.

True, I haven't played GURPS.

But I still feel point buy is generally more balanced than classes. The min/maxing and power disparity is a bit easier to level out in point buy than the whole "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" thing is. In point buy, it's a simple matter of picking the right bits to buy that will get the job done (to a degree, of course). In class-based games, you can find out at level 10 that your entire build is going to start being badly outpaced by your companions. At the very least point-buy gives a bit more hope to someone who's fallen behind.

That, and I'm lucky enough not to play with people that min/max very much.

Look into Ars Magica. Sometimes I feel like I do nothing in these forums except rant about Ars M, sorry about this.

You Ars Magica, me Deadlands Classic. We all have our pet games.

[Waar]

Concept =/= power level, and in any rgp that allows for advancing power level it should be perfectly possible (but not always easy) to maintain the difference.
For instance a jedi apprentice and a jedi master may have the same concept/class but their power levels are far from each other. Similarly a legendary bount hunter might be an even match for a jedi master while both would hoplessly outclass the padawan.

In games with character levels this is often solved by making the master and the legendary bounty hunter high level, and the jedi padawan low level.
Intentionally unbalancing a team (making some members flat out better than others) is often a bad idea for ooc reasons, so making the jedi great at what it does is probably best balanced by just as significant drawbacks (a jedi might for instance be extremely dangerous in melee, but lack ranged attack and utillity options) making it iteresting but ultimately quite balanced.

[RochtheCrusher]

My players are always asking to be things they can't be, for power reasons. Like, say, dragons in a game where the plots are not dragon-sized.

It is crucial to remember as a DM that your players want to be challenged, but most people are not good at challenging themselves. That is why they need you at all, and it's why they need you to stand firm. If you let them conquer everything easily because, "Jedi powers can do that," then you are doing them a disservice.

That said, the problem only really comes up when what they want to be is truly synonymous with power. A weak dragon with human stats and no flight isn't a dragon, and a Jedi who can't move objects further than he could physically throw them isn't a Jedi. In these cases, you have a few options:

1. Deny the option by virtue of being overpowered.

2. Raise the playing field. If everyone's a dragon or a Jedi or a high-powered Senator, you can balance for that and play a different sort of game, with higher stakes.

3. Introduce a major, cool flaw. Luke and dying Yoda were somewhat balanced by the fact that Yoda was short, awful at any physical labor, bad with technology (a major part of the setting) and sickly. It also didn't hurt that Skywalker was the one with the agency, the one who could actually decide his course while Yoda interacted with the story mostly through Diplomacy rolls and Bluff checks. Luke and the Dooku-trouncing Yoda do not belong in the same party.

4. (And perhaps the best.) Let the player know that they're creating an NPC.

"I do like the character concept, man, but think about it. This guy is on the Jedi Council... He simply has better things to do than help Ian out with his smuggling ring."

"But, but, (cool backstory)."

"Oh, it definitely is awesome... look. We have two options. We could have your guy be framed, expelled from the Jedi Order, and have some sort of ill-contrived Force Lock put on his power level to shoehorn him into the party, oooor..."

"Or what?"

"Or, there's an NPC opening for someone in power who's concerned about all this smuggling... Someone who could maybe help mentor Tom's character and trying to track down the smuggling party to stop the Death Stick trade. You know, along with the other pile of stuff on his plate. If you roll up a droid or something, I could have your badass character stay in power, untouched, and you can play his interactions with Tom and the rest of the party. You write me notes about what he's scheming, I write you notes about what he knows from his connections, and you'll get to play him every couple sessions... just not in battle."

All told, I think that works out a lot better than having a party member whose power makes everyone else feel useless, or than telling the person that their awesome idea isn't wanted. It requires a player you can trust a little, obviously, but doesn't everything?

[Alejandro]

I have a large amount of experience on this, having run and played in quite a few Saga Edition games, GMing for and at times playing Jedi PCs. Saga (with one exception that I will note below) does a good job of balancing Jedi and non Jedi PCs.

In the main group I GM for, the PCs are 10th level; halfway through their progression. In terms of raw combat effectiveness, the most powerful of the group is actually the 10th level Soldier/Gunslinger that wields two heavy blaster pistols and loves Doc Holliday. He wipes out enemies faster than any of his teammates, including the Jedi PCs, and he has more HP than anyone else in the group except one of the Jedi.

The Jedi are also very good at battle, but in a different way; they have more defensive options than the Gunslinger does. They can deflect blaster shots and melee attacks, or repulse enemy Force power attacks, and so on.

The one unbalanced facet in Saga is that any character can take a skill focus feat for their character that greatly strengthens a particular skill (Han Solo has Skill Focus: Pilot) and Force use is based on Use the Force skill checks. A Jedi character that takes this skill focus at level 1 will be able to pull off Force power results much higher than were generally intended at lower levels, and this, along with other facets (many Force powers don't scale with the character as you level up) means that Saga Jedi PCs can be much 'stronger' at low level play, but then in mid and high level play, they even out with non Jedi.

A very common fix to this (which I use) is to only allow Jedi PCs to take that skill focus once they reach Jedi Knight, at a moderate level. This balanced things out nicely.

[valadil]

Without the imbalance, Jedi aren't really Jedi. If I wanted to run a game with balanced Jedi, I'd run generic sci-fi with cheap Jedi ripoffs. If I wanted to run a Star Wars game, I'd only do it with players who I trusted to coexist in an imbalanced game.

[Weiser_Cain]

If I wanted to run a game with balanced Jedi, I'd run generic sci-fi with cheap Jedi ripoffs.

So, Mass Effect but without Adepts?

[Gamgee]

*shrug*

I'm not sure that the problem is necessarily all that major. I've seen stories of a player deciding to be the lone non-Force user in an otherwise all-Jedi party, and because he played intelligently and made good use of his resources, he was able to utterly shred what was supposed to be a tough Sith encounter, while the Jedi players were struggling somewhat.

Frankly, probably the simplest possible way to balance things out is to limit the gear that the Force users get. Basically the Batman solution- his wonderful toys help even the playing field for him. Since, really, how often do you see Jedi using stun nets or adhesive grenades or whatever?

Tell me about it, our group only had a single Jedi who was regularly out performed by the soldiers, and in particular soldier/scout mix character. Since they played so intelligently. Not to say the jedi player was dumb, he is quite smart himself but there are things free men can do that no Jedi can just due to them being so much more adaptable.

[Black Jester]

Actually, with the exception of really extreme cases, balancing is not necessarily very important for an RPG. Or, it only has the importance it gets through attention. If you deliberately ignore the concept, you probably won't miss it much.

After all, RPGs are not a competitive environment; as you are not competing with the other player characters (one can argue that players are competing for attention but that takes place on a different level), an thus, the abilities of each character are not as relevant in comparison to each other. What matters is the importance of each character for the story and that every player is treated fairly, but that is mostly unrelated to character power levels. A very powerful character can still be sidelined by the antics of a fun and highly entertaining comic relief character with no particular power. Problems only occur when one character can so easily overshadow everyone else that he can make their story arcs futile and can thus 'trespass' on other player's screentime.

Actually, I don't think that real balancing is actually an option, or a particularly realistic aim. Disparities between characters are more often the result of player decisions and plans, and the ability to create and play an interesting characters -but that is something you really cannot control. There are no rules which prevent player ingenuity while at the same time allow everyone to make meaningful decisions. The best thing one can hope for is to treat every player with respect and attention. After all, it's the players who really matter, the characters are just a vehicle.

One thing I actually rather dislike about enforced balancing, is that I always have the impression tat a part of the discussion is actually driven by envy - the issue is not what each character gets, or what each character needs to fulfill the intended role, but that it is somehow a catastrophe when someone gets any form of real or imaginary advantage. I think it is usually a good idea to focus more on making the own character interesting and fun to play with, than to worry about other characters and their strengths.

I have played plenty of games (including the original D6-based Star Wars RPG, which does neither claim nor try to balance characters with the exception of total excess) where there was a significant disparity between character power levels and with a few exceptions (namely: having an obnoxious player abusing his character's power to blackmail the other characters into doing his bidding) there were no problems, as everybody still felt relevant (and in the case where there were problems, it had more to do with the players being obnoxious, and not so much their character's power).

[Buddha's_Cookie]

Back to the question proposed by the original poster You can solve this problem with fluff rather than crunch. If the player is set on playing the drow or the minotaur, think about how people would react to seeing them. A shop owner might refuse service to a drow out of hate (I he knew what a drow was) or close up the shop in fear of a minotaur. Just keep in mind how NPCs would react if at all.

[GungHo]

I don't really understand the focus on "balance" in a non-competitive tabletop game, but I'll try:

The "balance" in Star Wars for Jedi is in the fluff. Sure, the Force lets a force user do something no mere fringer or scoundrel can do as far as moving things with their mind, jumping like grasshoppers, and having weird prophetic daydreams. But, depending on what era you're playing in, a force user may be hunted, rare and poorly trained; or socially segregated and bound by codes; or feared by everyone; or given other significant, focused hurdles that prevent them from running amok. They're also not one man armies and can easily be matched by someone who has arranged their skillset/techset specifically around stopping someone who is a force user, both in the fluff and in the mechanics.

To make a similar-ish comparison... no one worries about someone rolling a Space Marine and screwing up a Rogue Trader game because they can easily intuit "heck, there's no reason for this Space Marine to be hanging out with this Rogue Trader". It helps that the books are seperate, but that's not really what stops the crossovers. I'm not sure why people can't follow that same thought if they're playing a full-bore Leaping Jedis Old Republic game.

[kyoryu]

But I still feel point buy is generally more balanced than classes. The min/maxing and power disparity is a bit easier to level out in point buy than the whole "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" thing is.

I'll disagree. I think it's much easier to balance a class-based game than a point-buy game, for the simple reasons of combinatorial complexity.

The fact that a particular class-based game *isn't* balanced (and I think that the D&D balance issues are more an issue of shifting playstyles than anything) doesn't mean that as a whole, class-based games are unbalanced.

For the purposes of balance, I also generally consider 3.x to be a point-buy system, with very coarse skills (which call themselves classes). The combination of the combinatorial explosion, along with the level of indirection between classes and the actual abilities they grant you make 3.x more subject to charop than most games.

[nedz]

Actually, with the exception of really extreme cases, balancing is not necessarily very important for an RPG. Or, it only has the importance it gets through attention. If you deliberately ignore the concept, you probably won't miss it much.

After all, RPGs are not a competitive environment; as you are not competing with the other player characters (one can argue that players are competing for attention but that takes place on a different level), an thus, the abilities of each character are not as relevant in comparison to each other. What matters is the importance of each character for the story and that every player is treated fairly, but that is mostly unrelated to character power levels. A very powerful character can still be sidelined by the antics of a fun and highly entertaining comic relief character with no particular power. Problems only occur when one character can so easily overshadow everyone else that he can make their story arcs futile and can thus 'trespass' on other player's screentime.

Actually, I don't think that real balancing is actually an option, or a particularly realistic aim. Disparities between characters are more often the result of player decisions and plans, and the ability to create and play an interesting characters -but that is something you really cannot control. There are no rules which prevent player ingenuity while at the same time allow everyone to make meaningful decisions. The best thing one can hope for is to treat every player with respect and attention. After all, it's the players who really matter, the characters are just a vehicle.

One thing I actually rather dislike about enforced balancing, is that I always have the impression tat a part of the discussion is actually driven by envy - the issue is not what each character gets, or what each character needs to fulfill the intended role, but that it is somehow a catastrophe when someone gets any form of real or imaginary advantage. I think it is usually a good idea to focus more on making the own character interesting and fun to play with, than to worry about other characters and their strengths.

I have played plenty of games (including the original D6-based Star Wars RPG, which does neither claim nor try to balance characters with the exception of total excess) where there was a significant disparity between character power levels and with a few exceptions (namely: having an obnoxious player abusing his character's power to blackmail the other characters into doing his bidding) there were no problems, as everybody still felt relevant (and in the case where there were problems, it had more to do with the players being obnoxious, and not so much their character's power).

You seem to be viewing balance from a player-fairness point of view ?

You should look at it from a GM POV perhaps ?

If I'm trying to create a challenging encounter for a party then an unbalanced party becomes a nightmare. If PC A is markedly more powerful than the rest of the party then they can leave the rest of the characters playing bit parts.

The worst case of this I had was in an AD&D 2E game with a Schrödinger OP PC. Sometimes he would participate in an encounter, and sometimes he wouldn't. So if I pitch a hard encounter at the party, and he doesn't show, then it's a near TPK; if I pitch an encounter at the power level of the rest of the party, and he does show, then it's a waste of time running it.

[Black Jester]

That's still thinking from a balance point of view. I usually don't. I design plots around verisimilitude and let the game runs its course without having any specific encounter in mind.
I mean I have an opposition and a location, but if the PCs are stupid enough to attack head on or to walk into one of the many traps and ambushes, the players really deserve to see their characters die as gruesome and humiliating as appropriate. Seriously, if there is one thing I just love is the player who *knows* that he's going to face against a superior force, attacks anyway without any plan, get his character killed because it never occurred to him to run away and that complain about the encounter design.

This of course, works the other way around as well. I expect the players to come up with plans and lay taps, and if they aren't horribly stupid, these usually work. The session before the last one, the players killed a wyrm ( a legless, flightless dragon in this setting) and usually monster way beyond their reach in any direct fight by luring it into a canyon and let the walls collapse on it. The adventure before, they learned as much as they could about their undead opponents, captured one of the creatures after learning how loyal they are and used it as bait to lure the rest of the pack into deadly, deadly sunlight.
By now, I usually have the players face one or two opponents that would probably completely impossible to defeat in a straight-up fight, to either impose a challenge of how to overcome it anyway or to have a threat the PCs have to avoid at all costs.

But admittedly, these aren't D&D games, and I had more problems with 3.X and 4th edition encounter design than I was used to because this approach of matching the strengths of the players seems both so dull and formulaic and essential to the game nonetheless. But even then, overkill with a few opportunities for tactical advantages for the players usually works best for me.

To return to the STAR WARS example, well, back when we played the game (the original Star Wars RPF by WEG - still the best in my opinion) we knew pretty well the firepower of an Imperial patrol cruiser not to mention something as huge and breathtaking as a star destroyer, and we knew how dangerous their boarding parties were and that the best tactics was usually to avoid the attention of the Empire, because terrible stuff used to happen otherwise. The characters weren't even close to be balanced (not because of the jedi but because of the really annoying invulnerable wookie) but that wasn't the point -when you are only a small smuggler/rebel gunrunner crew, you don't want to fight in a fair fight against your opponent - ever because it rally doesn't matter that the stormtroopers will miss you with their first shot when they hit you with the second (and have enough backup to get a second one).
This idea of balanced encounter is basically the idea that you are somehow entitled to a fair chance no matter what you do as if the universe owes you a favor. I think that's annoying and the concept of a balanced encounter isn't worth to sacrifice the setting's consistency.

[TuggyNE]

I don't really understand the focus on "balance" in a non-competitive tabletop game

Balance in a team game is based on the idea that everyone should be useful, and moreover that they should be useful in a way that is not directly replaceable by another party member's talents. Weak balance is where that is technically true, but the overall utility of one character is still substantially less on the whole than that of a different character, so that while they might still have a niche, it's not a very big one. Strong balance evens that out to where it's difficult to tell which character is more or less useful overall. (Team sports are generally fairly strong in balance, but not perfect; there's usually a position that is at least somewhat more significant, but MVPs can sometimes be selected from other positions as well.)

This can also be explained from the perspective of not wanting to overshadow or be overshadowed.

[A Tad Insane]

I think kyoyu has the jist of it. Little Anny, after a week of training, would be a jedi, but would be the easiest bounty for Jango Fett, who was equal to Obi Won, but loses to the higher level Samuel L. Jackson.

[Black Jester]

This can also be explained from the perspective of not wanting to overshadow or be overshadowed.

The problem is balance doesn't work. Or at least the kind of balance deriving from establishing character power conformity. For once, you have to 'balance' odd things against each other. If one guy gets a small bonus on all rolls and skills related to sailing, swimming, balancing or climbing for being an able seaman and the other one gains a small bonus to social abilities when trying to flirt with the opposite sex due - are these balanced? they are both situational, they can both be used from time to time, they do very little in combat.. You can only ever guess and make assumptions and hope that your spitballing isn't too far from the mark.
Then, add hundreds of other abilities or circumstances to the mix which might form a synergy effect or not. What happens if our flirtatious lady's man character gains the ability to swap gender? Or if the sailor can also use his super sailing skills to steer and navigate majestic airships? This whole idea of balancing is so situational that it loses most meaning if the circumstances change more or less dramatically.
The best thing you can hope for is to make sure that everybody has a few glaring weaknesses, he can only truly compensate through aid and teamwork; that way, the characters are at least mutually dependent on each other.

The next thing is, this form of balance only ever affects characters, not players. A tactical more advanced and more outgoing character will still be able to influence the game more than a more impulsive and inattentive one, even with a nominally much weaker character. Aaand, character power has little to do with how important a character might be for the plot. The hobbits are by far the weakest members of the Fellowship, remember?

Now, there are extremes of imbalance where the differences are so massive that one character will basically hog everyone else's screentime and force themselves into the role of the most precious little snowflake. That can be problematic (and usually requires th Gamemaster to intervene).

[nedz]

...

But admittedly, these aren't D&D games, and I had more problems with 3.X and 4th edition encounter design than I was used to because this approach of matching the strengths of the players seems both so dull and formulaic and essential to the game nonetheless. But even then, overkill with a few opportunities for tactical advantages for the players usually works best for me.

Balance is essential in what used to be termed Heroic game systems.

That is: game systems where character development is handled by providing significant mechanical advantage rather than plot or story goals.

The problem is balance doesn't work. Or at least the kind of balance deriving from establishing character power conformity. For once, you have to 'balance' odd things against each other. If one guy gets a small bonus on all rolls and skills related to sailing, swimming, balancing or climbing for being an able seaman and the other one gains a small bonus to social abilities when trying to flirt with the opposite sex due - are these balanced? they are both situational, they can both be used from time to time, they do very little in combat.. You can only ever guess and make assumptions and hope that your spitballing isn't too far from the mark.
Then, add hundreds of other abilities or circumstances to the mix which might form a synergy effect or not. What happens if our flirtatious lady's man character gains the ability to swap gender? Or if the sailor can also use his super sailing skills to steer and navigate majestic airships? This whole idea of balancing is so situational that it loses most meaning if the circumstances change more or less dramatically.
The best thing you can hope for is to make sure that everybody has a few glaring weaknesses, he can only truly compensate through aid and teamwork; that way, the characters are at least mutually dependent on each other.

The next thing is, this form of balance only ever affects characters, not players. A tactical more advanced and more outgoing character will still be able to influence the game more than a more impulsive and inattentive one, even with a nominally much weaker character. Aaand, character power has little to do with how important a character might be for the plot. The hobbits are by far the weakest members of the Fellowship, remember?

Now, there are extremes of imbalance where the differences are so massive that one character will basically hog everyone else's screentime and force themselves into the role of the most precious little snowflake. That can be problematic (and usually requires th Gamemaster to intervene).

Player > Build in terms of effective encounter resolution and so this is the only meaningful metric. Balance can be achieved by having weaker players play stronger characters, but it rarely seems to turn out that way in practice. Moreover it's very hard to base discussion about a game system in terms of a theoretical group of players — "Only Johnny can play a Jedi" ... because Johnny is known to be a less effective player ... may produce a more balanced game, but it's hardly a viable solution except in Johnny's group. This latter point is why our discussions of balance, per force, focus on the characters.

Ed:
And it is the extremes we normally worry about. Unless every encounter situation is identical, which would be tedious, a given character will be weaker or stronger depending upon the problems to be resolved.

But if you have one character who routinely trivialises challenges then this gets quite dull too.

Take the situation where one player skilfully role-plays their way past some guards only to have the Jedi pull the old mind trick on them. How is this fun ?

[Sidmen]

This idea of balanced encounter is basically the idea that you are somehow entitled to a fair chance no matter what you do as if the universe owes you a favor. I think that's annoying and the concept of a balanced encounter isn't worth to sacrifice the setting's consistency.

Uh, no. The idea behind balanced encounters is to empower GMs with the tools necessary to gague what, exactly, their players can be expected to overcome. Now, for incredibly familiar systems or experienced GMs, you might be able to do this by just eyeballing everything. But for me, its really irritating to send a 100XP Exalt against my party of 3x 50XP Exalts and have him wipe the floor with them (random example), when I had intended them to be able to push past him.

Its like setting out some battle droids (to use a Star Wars example) to oppose a pair of Jedi, and the Jedi getting curb stomped because you didn't realize that they were literally impossible to defeat.

Knowing that a Level 1 character (of any type) can meaningfully contribute to a CL 1 encounter is vitally important, especially when you don't have the memory or time to memorize exactly what that Level 1 character can and can't do.

Of course you can always set a CL 5 encounter against those lower-level characters, that's a choice and you can know that the high-level opposition should be a HUGE challenge. Where, if the game designers had thrown balance to the wind, you could find the party trivially blowing through what you though SHOULD be a challenge.