Quote Originally Posted by Blue Lantern View Post
Balance does not mean "it does what the designers intended", it means that when given a choice in how to create and personalize my character, the possibilities open to me are pretty much equivalent, not equal, from a mechanical stanpoint. I also disagree that this make choices pointless, if anything make them more meaningful, I can choose abilities that fit my idea without worring that the character end up too weak or too strong.
Well, I'd like something very near that: the ability to make a more or less decently-performing character with either next to no system knowledge, or next to no attention paid to effectiveness, combined with the ability to make a somewhat better-performing character with the application of a good bit of knowledge.

The need to optimize to create a "viable" charachter (for a given definition of given) only exists in an imbalanced system, if, for instance, the feats for archery are equivalent in power to the ones for two handed fighting, then there is no need for me to have to optimize only to create an archer that can stand his ground against an unoptimized thw fighter.
Also if that is the case I can create an optimized archer that is better at archery that an archer who for some reason put some character resources into other things, maybe for flavour, maybe for the sake of having a second option, but without the former completely overshadowing the latter.
I don't see this as a bad thing.
Yeah, that's basically what I'd like. I'd say that the need to optimize only occurs in severely imbalanced systems (such as 3.5); a perfectly balanced system, however, makes choices so similar in overall mechanical effectiveness that it loses a certain interesting dimension. (It is also ferociously hard to design.)

A good system neither requires nor eliminates optimization; it should be possible to roll up your first character and have fun with it without spending 35 hours reading the various options and their explanations, and it should also be possible to make an even more interesting and effective character after spending that time.