What do we mean by "balanced"?

[johndallman]

As far as I can see, for GURPS this means that a trait is not notably more or less powerful than other things of similar cost and purpose. It's a reasonably competitive choice in character design.

Obviously, the usefulness of traits varies by genre, setting, play style and point level of the game, so "balanced" is considerably less absolute than it is in games where the genre comes baked into the rules and the settings are detailed in published material.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

For me:
Balanced = less need of extensive rules knowledge and analysis.

The example would be Basic Magic vs Sorcery: the latter I can analyze on a case-by-case basis by virtue of the fact that it's built using a system I'm already going to have to be familiar with.

The former requires reading lists of individual spells and, sans anything like a point-breakdown, determine whether each is suitable for what I want to do. Far more likely for me to slip up, and that's not even counting analyzing the cost/benefit ratio of Basic Magic being skills vs advantages.

[vicky_molokh]

Balance is most relevant for cases when looking at two or more different ways of achieving the same thing. In that case, things are unbalanced when under 'naturally occurring', 'common' and/or 'assumed' circumstances, of the two ways which are considered both 'viable' according to logic, one is mechanically significantly superior in terms of cost, effect, flexibility etc.

I'd say this can be demonstrated by the following quote:

Originally Posted by Leeky

Foolish girl! I am a druid, I have special abilities that are more powerful than your entire class! Come to me, my animal companion!

It typically results in making some characters in a group useless, overshadowed, incapable of surviving, overpriced, or otherwise invalidated.

So of course if some niches are totally non-intersecting, you don't really bother balancing them mechanically, but instead have to focus on the topic of story balance - how often opportunities for either niche to do something interesting and important comes up (without looking like make-work! see the controversies around hackers in cyberpunk games).

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

Balanced = less need of extensive rules knowledge and analysis.

That seems to me a concept more like "playable," or "straightforward."

[Maz]

Most often when we talk about balance its usually because Something is UNbalanced. And usually, as I see it. It falls into three categories.

1) Its too cheap compared to another similar effect. For instance pure IQ! is not balanced with skills as its much cheaper to just pay for IQ.

2) It breaks the game in some way. For instance some spells from classical Magic that breaks the economics of the setting. Or the MUNCKIN power that can kill everyone on a planet.

3) Setting specific combos that only become unbalanced when combined with other things. For instance the Weapon master shield combined with Sharp edged shields in a lowpowered classical DF-like game.

[Edit] just thought of a 4th.
4) Traits so powerfull and cheap and usefull in a specific game that you HAVE to buy them. For instance Combat Reflexes in many games. Or any form of Weapon Master.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by johndallman

That seems to me a concept more like "playable," or "straightforward."

It can apply to those, too. But if something is balanced that means I am less likely to need to go myself and figure out how to make it playable.

[Stormcrow]

What "balance" means to me has nothing to do with equalizing trait effects and character-point costs. Sure, you can do that, but it's not the end-all activity that some like to characterize it as. Character points are useful for roughly, kinda-sorta keeping starting-character abilities within spitting distance of each other, and for regulating character improvement, but they're not a useful balancing mechanism.

For me, a far more important application of "balance" is the classic one in RPGs: making sure an adventure or campaign is neither too difficult to achieve your objectives nor so easy that it becomes boring. It's about hitting that sweet spot where you really don't know whether you'll succeed, and the excitement that both success and failure bring when you find out.

[AlexanderHowl]

It means that characters of the same point value are capable of accessing the same type of abilities. When you have gateway advantages that cannot be developed after character creation, it creates a permanent imbalance in characters. In general though, characters of the same point value should have equivalent general utility in the game, even if they do not have situational utility (a character with 40 points in Lockpicking and Stealth should have the same general utility as a character with 40 points in Broadsword and Shield, even if their situational utility is radically different).

[JazzJedi]

In my games, I don't require much in the way of point balance. Characters and abilities are described in concept, and then designed using the rules to simulate them. After making characters, I have a player who loves to calculate every character's point cost, and this can vary considerably. Our last campaign had characters ranging from about 300 to 700 points (a modern psionics, monster hunters, like campaign). We've all been playing GURPS for almost 30 years, and when we stopped worrying about points - about 10 years ago - we found much more diversity from our characters and we actually enjoy the relative inequality.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

....making sure an adventure or campaign is neither too difficult to achieve your objectives nor so easy that it becomes boring.

And for some of us we need the system to handle as much of that as it can. Otherwise we're going to fail.

Originally Posted by JazzJedi

....and when we stopped worrying about points - about 10 years ago - we found much more diversity from our characters and we actually enjoy the relative inequality.

That would annoy the hell out of me: if I don't care if the characters are point-balanced I rapidly slip into "Why do I want to use rules* at all?"

*Game rules, not guidelines in general.