Balancing Melee/Wizard skirmishes
 

So, allowing for variances such as dice rolls, tactics, and Lanchester's Laws, is it really just as simple as making sure each side has the same total number of attribute points?

Re: Balancing Melee/Wizard skirmishes
 

Wizards have the advantage in a single big fight. Heroes have the endurance to take on several closely spaced challenges.

Re: Balancing Melee/Wizard skirmishes
 

But if it's just heroes vs. heroes/monsters, or wizards vs. wizards, it's just total the attributes on each side [modulo the issues noted above], correct?

Re: Balancing Melee/Wizard skirmishes
 

If you use point totals it will be fairly balanced as long as you don't choose weird weapon/armour combos or have one side with all Missile weapons and the other with none, etc.

Re: Balancing Melee/Wizard skirmishes
 

No, it's not as simple as total attribute points.

Even without talents, spells and equipment to consider, more powerful fighters start to become superior to lesser fighters with just a few points difference, but the "entry cost" to get even an incompetent fighter is about 24 points (ST+DX+IQ at 8), which has extremely low combat value.

e.g., A ST 14 DX 14 IQ 8 warrior (36) can kill quite a few ST 10 DX 10 IQ 8 warriors (28), and a ST 15 DX 17 IQ 8 warrior (40) can kill often knock out two or three DX 12 or lower foes per turn with sweeping blows.

Design matters a lot, too. And talents (especially in Legacy Edition) can be worth several points' worth of advantages without costing more than 1-3 points.

If you want fair balance, I would suggest either:

System A:

Each side has the same number of figures at the same point totals. e.g. Maybe 2 x 30-point, 4 x 32-point, 2 x 36-point, per side.

System B:

Describe one side, and then one player describes a force they think can beat that force. Then the other player chooses which force description they want to play.

example:

Start with 4 36-point dwarves, one of which can be a wizard.

Player 1: I think I can defeat the dwarves with 8 30-point hobgoblins and 4 32-point orcs.

Player 2: Ok, so do I! I choose the orc force!


It may also be wanted to take talents into account in your descriptions. Such as, and talents that give a combat bonus count as half their memory points when valuing that character.

Re: Balancing Melee/Wizard skirmishes
 

If you want to balance monsters with special attacks and abilities against your fighters then you'll need either a deep understanding of the rules or some sort of firepower table to squish the different aspects down to a single number that can be summed.

https://www.hcobb.com/tft/firepower.html