[Skarg]

GURPS has the same problem but worse because of the wider variety of fruits and vegetables that go into the equation. Nonetheless, 4e makes a valiant effort... but it's a bit silly, because a scientist and a gladiator are just different.

It's slightly more relevant in TFT, but it depends on what the situation is. Talents are almost never worth a full attribute point except for doing part of the thing they do. Of course that makes XP not work for a balance estimate in the current system because talents actually cost more than attributes by quite a bit for most people. Unless you consider XP an opportunity, and it's up to the player applying the XP to make appropriate use for whatever situation, which sort of works for an ITL campaign (except for the various peculiarities some of us have been musing about).

Really though, I think that if you want to evaluate relative abilities of full characters in TFT, what you really do is look at what is actually on their sheets, and consider the situation. Or you don't - you play out the situation and find out what happens. Part of playing it out is describing things so players (and NPCs) have a chance to react appropriately (e.g. You notice he looks extremely strong and skilled and is carrying two large axes and wearing fine plate that seems to have been repaired countless times) - then situations can tend to balance things, and GMs can let go of trying to predict risk and control outcomes more than makes sense.