If the purpose of the adventuring party is to beat up the monsters and take their treasure, with the GM as the opposition, then I understand the concept of party balance. It's no fun having one player doing all the fighting and the others just dying. That's easy. Compare damage done per round, keep it level.
If you've moved towards contests not necessarily involving combat, it gets harder: whether a PC with X points in Hitting Things is the same "level" as one with X points in Persuading People depends on what sort of contest you run into most often. But you're still competing at Win Contests, the GM is still the opposition.
If you've got a GM and players cooperating to create a shared story, where does "party balance" come in? I can see a concept of some characters being better suited to making interesting story than others, but much of that is likely to be down to player talent than numbers, isn't it? Thinking about the Fellowship of the Ring, it isn't exactly a balanced party in terms of PC-power, but the characters who get the best lines are usually the ones with the *least* power. And that is a good story: if our games came out like that, I don't think we'd be complaining.
HQ is, I think (?) intended to help us do the "shared story" thing (yes, you can play it other ways, but...). Yet character generation rules seem to be concerned with keeping all PCs at the same level of PC-power: party balance. What am I missing here?
So far I've run games on the assumption that PCs "should" be at roughly the same level of in-game power. Those games have worked, but am I limiting myself and my players too much? If I'm writing a story, sharp contrasts in power are fun - would the same apply in a game? Has anyone tried it?
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