3.5 is inherently imbalanced, but is that really an issue?

[Ignimortis]

I don't understand why you would want to make those distinctions, especially not the Warblade/Fighter one. There's justification for having NPC classes or monster progressions that are numerically appropriate for their level, but not full characters either in terms of tactical depth or story impact, but those aren't supposed to be equal to PCs at all, so it's sort of irrelevant.

But the distinction you're making between the Warblade and the Fighter is that one of them is good and the other one is not. That's exactly the distinction you're supposed to make by having one character have more class levels than the other one. And if it's not and you can imagine how a Fighter could be balanced with an equal-level Warblade, your argument is baseless.

Basically, you still haven't explained why we would want to be able to make equal-level characters at different power levels, just reiterated that you would in fact like to do that. How does simply having the "Fighter" be a Warblade of whatever level people aren't expected to be super human at not do everything you want while also allowing "level" and "CR" to be useful terms that convey meaningful information?

To be honest, I consider the default Fighter to be an NPC class. It doesn't have enough going on to make it a good PC class, and so I use it as a distinction between characters who have been formally trained to fight (Fighter, often gestalted with other things) and those who have not and who picked up some small measure of skill through surviving their life (straight Warrior levels). So this distinction exists in my setting - there are, so to speak, swordmasters, sword users and sword swingers, who can all be about equally as tough and maybe even have similar out-of-combat skillsets or lack thereof, but the difference in raw combat skill still would be noticeable to an outside observer - this dude just attacks and defends well, this dude just smashes his club around, and this dude just did a triple somersault and beheaded someone with a single blow.

As only one of the three is now considered a PC class on its' own, there are no conflicts about inter-PC balance. Warblade is better than Fighter, that's how it is. If you're a Fighter PC, you should have a Rogue or Ranger or Paladin gestalt to have other stuff that Warblade doesn't get, otherwise you're pretty redundant.

Yes, that is how a level system works. If you don't like that, you can play something that doesn't use a level system. And that's fine. Not everything wants or needs a level system. But D&D is going to use one, and that means it's going to have the knock-on effects of having one as well.

Well, 3.5 gives me enough space to not do things like "every fighter of this style is a Fighter and they just differ by character level". If I wanted a single, somewhat consistent power level for all and every class in the game, I would play 5e or just homebrew a bunch of similarly powerful classes and ditch all the default ones. I can have characters of very different combat skill-levels be pretty similar to each other in raw vitality and proficiency in certains skills. Same with casting - you can have a Warmage and a Wizard at the same time, one is probably going to outshine the other, but the option is there.

Player > build > class. And character personality is greater than them all in determining how effective a character is. I've seen it numerous times, although, obviously, I prefer talking about one specific example.

So, should I take your answer to be, "no, nerfing the Wizard class will not help balance in this type of case, where something higher on the food chain than 'build' is the primary determiner of character contribution"?

Pretty much, yes. All the easily available and powerful options in the world don't matter if you choose not to take them. Thus, the player either needs to be guided to those options (if they don't like being constantly outshone and just don't realize how powerful their class can be), or they can be very well left alone if they're fine with what they have.

The wizard gets mechanical spotlight time for making the fortress, but the narrative spotlight still goes to the one who came up with the idea, no matter how much you deny it. That's pretty much the point of this narrative power side discussion: anyone in the party can have narrative power regardless of mechanical power, and that mechanical power doesn't somehow give anyone any more narrative power, because the ability to direct the narrative is a player ability. If nobody had ever suggested to make a fortress at the mountain pass, then the wizard's ability to cast wall of stone is pretty irrelevant toward the narrative, isn't it.

Ah, but the wizard has the power to make his narrative idea a reality. The fighter doesn't. Isn't that narrative power? Being able to influence the narrative by yourself?