Even in that game:
* There's an item that casts implosion, allowing any one to use that particular spell.
* It's possible for Archers to temporarily gain access to those spells (there's one particular item that's handy, as well as one particular dungeon spot)
* Clerics have Mass Distortion, which, against the right enemies, will outdamage any other spell (unless you use the Frenzy exploit); Paladins can gain temporary access to that spell
* If you *do* want to use the Frenzy exploit, you can just have a Paladin provide Frenzy, and an Archer provide Finger of Death or Disintegrate; there's an item that casts Divine Intervention, so you don't even need a Cleric for that (or Paladin with termporary level boost)

I don't think it's necessarily tied too much to attrition, as Skyrim's example mages have a hard time getting damage output to begin with once you're in the upper tiers. Another example being that rangers will often still get that damage output better than mages, and they're usually much worse off due to limited ammunition that you can't simply pick a few flowers and mash a potion together to solve the issue (which we often hear called "potion drinking simulators" in reviews).

That said, to speak of it, I've found it interesting that some games like Codevein and The Witcher have some nice ways of dealing with the attrition issue. If a world were to develop naturally and mages have been around for some time, you'd think there's be alot of things to counter them, mitigate the damage, etc, if they were so all powerful. In the witcher, lore wise mages seem to get a good bit of.. culling... and are not often trusted. So anyone aspiring to do magic isn't likely to learn much. Gameplay wise, you only do get to play as Geralt, and for him the signs are more of a side-arm or an augment, due to mechanics that keep you from using it the whole battle. Similarly, in codevein, magic is regulated by a resource most reliably acquirable via melee attack or parries. In these games, your class more or less determines how you handle close range melee. If it's not your main technique, you're going to be going in and out to get your resource back to start casting again, because you'll seldom have enough for any boss and minor encounters are too frequent for you to try to live without it. These games tend to make magic users more of a mid-range fighter than close or long-range. While not what most people think of with a magic class, it's actually quite effective and more reliably separates them from ranged classes in action-oriented games (where they tend to be the same thing with different resource limitations).

For turn-based games, i've seen some mechanics mostly via "adult games" where skills and magic will often heal simply by using "guard" turns. By allowing you to slowly regenerating over several turns, it once against makes you choose between waiting 2 or 3 turns to cast your top tier spell, or choosing a lower tier spell after waiting 1 turn.

However, making this work for a ranged class isn't easy unless you're using guns with quick reloating (using a turn to reload for example). The trick is to maintain the triangle. I agree that attrition is an issue, but there needs to be a bit better balancing on 1v1 fights. If controlled by AI, your class examples should be able to reliably beat their strength and loose to their weakness (that is to say, your melee should beat a ranger, whom should beat a mage, who should beat a melee focus). Alot of games can't even get to that level, and while i would not mind going beyond that, at this point i'd be happy if we managed to pull even that off anymore. Of course, a good player should be able to overcome their weakness with smart gameplay, like a ranger playing like a mage even if that's not how they're equipped.

Since I'm only going to reply to one you, this feels like a very singularly focused definition of a roleplaying game. The kind that feels more akin to the game-y leveling and looting kind and not one that focuses on players being characters in a world they have to act out in with various decision making and its consequences or, in a video game as opposed to tabletop, something approximating this idea.

Oh, no. The thing within the thing is that you need to be able to have limitations. From the most basic design point of view, you need a rock-paper-scissors system. This is foundational to balance while allowing differences. If you're going to build a game, you need to balance your "pures" out. Then if you're going to allow sub-classes or class mixing, you need there to be good reason to deviate from the norm, but there also needs to be a punishment as well. And no single character should be able to have ease over everything. Of course this is most obvious with a combat system, but this also applies to tihings like alignment. For example, if you have a lawful good character and the campaign involves demon posession of the king (or imposter king), they're probably going to have no trouble getting into the castle (they'll welcome him, after all), but good luck getting that character to have a good reason to kill the king's bodyguard whom is just doing his job. There should always be give and take, or there's no point. And, this should influence the play-style of the character. Now, if you have a team, the chaotic good character is treated like a prisoner to get through the castle "to be judged by the king" only to be released so they can do what needs to be done to the king's right-hand man. It should be through the party and knowing your role within the party that defines you during the campaign.

Not every game needs 1v1 fights. You can have fights with multiple participants on each side, and then you can have attacks that hit areas, like spells or modern weapons. Such attacks might use a resource, but they can win encounters far faster than single target attacks could, saving resources that would need to be spent on healing, and also saving time. (Just imagine fighting the berserkers in Bard's Tale 1 without using magic or breath attacks.)

It's better to reward players who take the more focused characters rather than punishing those who take more balanced characters.

(See, for example, Civilization III, where pre-release Dark Ages were replaced with Golden Ages at one point in development.)

I think that, too often, balanced character builds often end up being non-viable. We see this happening with skill point systems, for example, or even with multi-casters in systems like D&D 3rd Edition.

Remember that, in a turn-based game, a balanced character may have more options, but they can still only act once per turn, unless the character gets a (usually high-level) ability that allows it, like Final Fantasy 5's Red Mages.

I remember my brother doing something similarly, in Balder's Gate he created a mage build with high strength, but started as a fighter with a specialization in the staff, went to like level 10, then dual-classed to mage, and using all the collected spells wrote them into his book leveling up nearly instantly to level 10, to which he had all the advantages of a 10th level fighter that was also a mage.

Again, a very limited idea of how a game should work. But if we're going to make up scenarios, since I'm working on a campaign for a future tabletop session, I'll allow you to apply your own logic to it.

As an alien tourist to a 1950s Earth style planet, it is your duty to uphold the masquerade as an alien. However, a late crime lord's prized necklace has shown up in your hands while carousing fake Las Vegas, and the mafia has failed to seize the alien tenement you're staying in. Out of frustration, the necklace is tossed into the streets, once again to be lost. This has stirred up a gang war between the already contentiously led fake Italian mafia and the fake Irish mob, since the mob's leader, widow to the late crime lord in question, has put a bounty on the necklace's return, but the mafia wants it for ransom since its bounty is already worth a fortune and they want to extort more money out of the widow. Two outside factions come in play as an oil baron wants the necklace for his wife, and the fake FBI wants it as evidence to put away organized crime. The tour company has blamed you and the rest of the tenants for this whole affair, and since the alien agents that usually cover things up are on strike, armed security teams are quarantining you to the city lest you be forcefully deported. Your job is to resolve this while minimizing the amount of chaos. And above all else, never reveal your alien nature.

This is going off topic, but this whole balance idea belongs in multiplayer. In singleplayer, it's just limiting for the sake of being limiting. Keep in mind that a player buys a game to enjoy it, they're not a hired actor paid to play a part someone else wrote, so even if you say that various challenges are designed to be overcome in different ways, requiring a similar skill level in the specific area, sometimes the way in which a character is "supposed" to overcome a challenge won't be to the player's taste, and allowing a wider range of skills, neither blocking "non-class" skills entirely nor forcing the depth vs. breadth choice regardless of time and effort put into it just opens up more options (and actually forcing that choice may well softlock the player, when they're not skill enough in any area to advance).

of course, which you'll notice in my previous responses the big picture is how it works with the team. However, the simplest way to balance is to do simulated 1v1 runs. If your mage is loosing to your tank, it's off balance. Ideally your tit for tat should be equal, but that's bit much to expect. I agree that your red mages aso get wiped rather easily. At t he end of the day, everything needs to be risk vs reward. To have any challenge at all, excessive rounding should result in punishment. For example, looking at the TES system: if you're levelingu p every skill equally, the drauger should be training.

You've created a premise, but you never created a reason to pick any of the factions over the other. If all you care about is getting home, you find the necklass and toss it to any one of the factions. You make the choice entirely irrelevant. Some my choose the FBI, because their human selves believe that's what they should do, but that' the only thing representing a reason to choose. Not only should there be risks and rewards for each choice to distinguish them, but each potential player should have quirks that make the decision harder to make. Right now, the decision is easy: who's the closest?

The thing about it is, you need to build RPGs with multiplayer in mind, even if it's never your intent. RPGs are cimpetitive in nature, and if you don't find that balance you'll find your customer base complaining that "the only viable clsss is the tank class" (becaue it's always the tank for some reason). This is a separate issue worth discussing. Indeed this needs to be addressed as well. No class should exist without an answer to it's own weakness. It shouldn't be enough to overtake, bute, for example, if you're in a agme with dungeons that require switches to be hit a certain way, your tanks and mages should be able to throw stones where ranged characters would shoot bows. Ranged and mages should be armed with at least a dagger. Similarly, a fireball spell would be expected of anyone who plans to travel incase they need to light a fire to keep warm. For turn based games you can do something similar. In real life, different types of armed soldiers have different weaknesses, and they work together to overcome them, however they always have at least a makeshift backup plan. For example, jet ighter low on fuel, you will have a list of long roads and even alternate runways on your plane somewhere. Tank crews have guns that can be held in their hands should they have to leave the tank. In any realistic lore, you're going to have options to cover you because your life is on the line, even if those options are not ideal.

I often find people overthink in a direction that I can only describe as misled, so I'll give you this: You're obviously angling for a "good" choice in all this when all choices range from morally grey to morally dark grey to outright black. If you want a "good" faction, the fake-Irish mob is the most community driven in this setting but are still a criminal organization that still extorts and murders and are going to continue to do so regardless of the outcome. The fake-FBI aren't "good" because the people leading this investigation are not only corrupt, but straight up racist. The most pragmatic option in this case is to just side with the oil baron because no one's going to mess with a famous, charismatic billionaire.

The entire point of this journey isn't to simply pick a side and give them the necklace. It's always going to change hands no matter what due to circumstances beyond your control, and even if you do go ahead and play kingmaker right away, without deescalating the situation in some fashion, this is just going to ratchet up the gang war that the alien security is going to have to clean up, messily if need be. See, the balancing act is that you have an open ended goal with restrictions: End the gang war with minimal chaos. You are basically overpowered, but you can't make too much noise. You can do whatever it takes to reach this goal, but you have a deadline. You can pick a side and make everyone else mad. You can count the cards all you like, just don't let the dealer catch on. How the players end up dealing with that situation is the most interesting part of the game.

Do I have to keep posting this offending video ? https://youtu.be/acj4v_n2r64

Thing is, that Ranger/Cleric dual-class in Dark Sun is more akin to the Ranger/Cleric dual-class in classic Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, where you get access to the entire Druid spell list (except for Druid-only HLAs), not just those your Ranger level would allow access to.

I don't see the problem in a fighter being easily able to beat a mage 1v1 if a party of 6 mages can easily beat a group of 396 berserkers that a party of fighters would have trouble with.

Also, don't forget the possibility of mage tanks. You could, for example, have a class or build that's capable of such powerful protective spells that such a character can go into the front ranks and tank hits as well as, or better, than a fighter decked in full plate armor. And yes, it's possible to balance this.

Then again, there's the fact that tanking isn't necessarily an optimal strategy. For example, if burst single-target damage isn't too much of an issue, and multi-target healing is readily available and more efficient than single-target healing, then tanking isn't as good of a strategy. Or, if a tank build isn't capable of surviving being focused down by large groups of enemies, one tank is not going to be enough to keep other characters alive. I could also mention something like Disgaea's combo system; if you try to have one character take all the hits (and the level difference isn't too big; in particular, this means you and the enemies are probably still at double-digit levels), then enemies will combo your character, and combos can easily get past defense.

I disagree.

Also, keep in mind that tanks usually don't have multi-target damage capabilities. (Of course, then I think of SaGa 2, where you can hit a group of enemies with a weapon that's literally a tank, and which acts as a shield at the same time.)

Except that Red Mages can wear better armor than White Mages (FF3's Devouts are basically advanced White Mages who focus on higher level spells), along with a shield (which doesn't hinder spell casting, but in FF3 you can't dual wield while using a shield, and in 3D FF3 that's a major loss in physical damage, though at least changing equipment doesn't use a turn), and therefore are less likely to die from enemy attacks.

I'd disagree, and in particular for games that use skill point systems, or D&D 3e-style multclassing, the inherent drawbacks of spending your skill points or levels too thin are enough to make balanced characters not really viable.

I can think of one game, Quest 64, that actually, in a way, rewards creating a balanced character. Focusing on particular elements can give you powerful spells (like Avalance and Magic Barrier, the latter of which is arguably game-breaking) sooner, and make your spells of that element do more damage/healing, but there's an interesting mechanic that helps balanced characters: Your physical attack damage is higher if your spirits are balanced than if they're not. In other words, if you want to focus on staff damage, the idea is to maybe get the staff damage spells from Fire, but then balance your spirits. (Worth noting that, for balanced builds, staff attacks tend to outdamage spells. Then again, I note that this is a low-attrition game, since the most powerful spells cost only 3 MP, MP regenerates by walking around, and hitting an enemy with your staff restores 1 MP.)

You're too focused on variations of classes when we're having issues with companies struggling with basic class forms. A mage tank plays like a melee tank, except they accomplish the same thing with magic instead of armor. Get the base classes right first and worry about variants later.

It needs to be worth saying that the human player countering their class weakness should be achieved by playing your class like the one that has advantage. For example, i've seen an excelent video where a human solos (well, aside from the mandatory AI guests that go down quickly) a difficult mission (the one that most people first loose in that game to realize how hard it can be) in Final Fantasy Tactics while underleveled using a ranger. His trick was to immediately deal with the Knights by playing his ranger like a mage, the rest he played normally. Tanking is pretty effective against a ranger and reasonably so. The idea is the tank will progress on the ranger who can't aim, do full pull, and keep distance at the same time. Eventually the tank will catch the ranger and it's game over for the ranger. Ranger is effectively the "tank magic damage instead" or "avoid." This goes back to how dex-class varies per game. Sometimes it's a ranger, sometimes it's a thief, etc. Either way, they focus on targeting one target and hopefully getting a high damage "snipe shot" in. Mages hit a number of targets or a single target while staying just out of range. Tank just progresses on the target like it doesn't even hurt. I think this gets ignored because rangers are becoming rarer encounters in games compared to before (or at least it seems that way).

In a party, the idea is the white mage keeps the tank alive while the mages do the real work and the tank bodies the damage. You see this played out really, really well in MMOs. In Final Fantasy tactics, i usually use tanks and 1 ranger and 1 or 2 mages (both which have white magic as secondary) for this very reason. It's very effective This is what makes the 1v1 test hard to use. On the flip side, having single-target vs multi-target versions of spells helps the balance. Teset with single target versions and multi-target versions just spreadt he damage over like a blanket. until you see tht the white mage uses spells to make up for armor (back to your mage tank, since that's what a white mage is).

A fully balanced character should not be viable. That doesn't mean you can't have balance, but if you're fully balancing all skills, you don't specialize in anything, and you're not taking on a real role: which defeats the whole purpose. But a good "red mage" would have some basic phyiscal armor, use white magic to become the tank that they are, pick one physical weapon to be good with, and some black magic for when hugging the enemy isn't a good idea. In particular, the red mage should have most difficulty with mobs of enemies, while being versatile against any solo boss, but they will still ultimately still employ the mage strategy (oddly enough, this is your Geralt or codevein mages).

I used to think about the jack-of-all-trades hero before, but even they need a supportive team and should need that supportive team. Even if that team is only 1 other person, there should be a team. This is where modern RPGs are breaking, because everyone's the hero of the day, not a cohesive team, and they're not balanced right for it, either. Oddly enough, as much as i hate MMOs, they're doing better at this.