I am going to make a rickety transition from the combat roles thread to this one.
The ARC only brought up a gap regarding passive damage from Weapon Proficiencies and Backstabs. Any other gap you reference is one of your own devices, and not one that they have openly recognized. Does that mean that it has no opportunity to exist? No. But please do not state it as though they are designing rules based on it, as they have not made mention of it.
From what I read, ARC says that scaling up the build cost for profs and backstabs helps to reduce the gap between low and high level players. To me, this indicates that ARC cares about the power gap between players and that other changes might also help.
Also, I don't know how much clearer I can be on this point: I don't know what the objectives are for the new rules. I would like to know. I am trying to figure it out.
To answer your question, ARC described the alleged "gap" as existing particularly with regards to Weapon Proficiencies and Backstabs. They are not the only contributor to differences in capabilities between lower and higher level players, but they are the contributor that ARC chose to identify and address in this fashion due to its direct impact on other aspects of the game, specifically monster statting.
Again, I haven't seen ARC describe
the alleged "gap" (huh?) as existing particularly with regards to Weapon Proficiencies and Backstabs. They say that changing profs and backstabs should help to reduce the gap. Doesn't that mean that other things should help reduce the gap too? Reducing wand damage maybe?
That's why I have been asking for clarification on what the rules are supposed to improve. Are we trying to make combat more fun for 15 build characters?
So all this stressing about how ARC only wants to address profs and backstabs is part of the problem. There needs to be some underlying performance deficiency or this whole thing is a waste of time. The rules project will be a waste of time if we start off by saying "Weapon prof damage is too big."
As Robert Mager would say: We are finger-pointing, naming a culprit and hinting at a solution instead of probing for the problem by asking
Why is this so? What causes it?
For example, monster statting isn't a performance problem as I understand it. A problem might be "NPCs make errors playing their cards." If that is a performance problem, then the new rules should systematically help NPCs play their cards more accurately. Playtesters could even measure how many errors NPCs make using the new rule system and provide useful feedback on how well the rules help people perform better.
- The suggestion to re-read the playtest packet came specifically from a need to ensure that correct information was being communicated to the general player base. Any ideas of punishment are solely of your own creation. The comparing skills and equal weight comes from your post saying: "I just don't see any logic with making profs more expensive to reduce the gap while introducing meditate and blast gas to increase the gap.", which once again refers to an out of context "gap" that you had somehow derived from the section on passive damage reductions. As so far as your next question on abilities goes, again, there is no published ARC stated intention of "evening the playing field" for anything aside from constant sources of passive damage. The design behind the change, as stated by ARC in the "Clarifications of Intent" thread, regarded monster body points as a contributing factor, and wished to change the nature of combat away from a "grind the monster down" model by reducing both monster body points as well as these sources of passive damage.
- We talk about maximum purchased numeric damage because anything outside of that operates off of a fictional hit percentage that varies from individual to individual and situation to situation with extensive variables and as such cannot be regarded as reliable data. If you wanted to say, "Meditate should allow casters to throw with more confidence because they have the ability to regain missed spells, which might amount to more spells landing over the course of an event", then that would be a perfectly reasonable statement. Unfortunately, however, you said "...while increasing high level spell and alchemy damage...", which is untrue, because high level spell damage did not actually change. And why do I mention Alchemy damage changes? Because you specifically said that high level Alchemy damage had increased, so I was addressing it. Taking the opportunity to review your previous posts prior to continuing the thread may help eliminate fragmented issues like this, and maintain a higher level of discussion coherency for the outside reader.
Context could be your friend. I think that meditate will help high level casters do more damage in the new rules than in the current rules. Alchemists will also do more damage because they can hurt more stuff. High level alchemists will do more damage because they have more money to throw (and can hurt more stuff). Then comes the important question: Why are we helping high level casters and alchemists dish out more damage with the new rules? I have a feeling that Tevas will reply (again) that spell damage has not changed. True, my eighth level spell does the same damage in both rule sets. But over the course of an event I will deal more damage if I get back missed spells.
Also, regarding this out of context gap that I somehow derived (invented?). Actually I am searching for the performance gaps that the new rules should help us overcome. This is backwards and we shouldn't have to guess.
If ARC wants good feedback, they need to tell us the performance objectives and how we should measure them.