informed choice of potential actions and outcomes may be available to a very experienced player but I dare say they'd be the minority;
balancing is also about difficulty levels. How you can say that an encounter is difficult? There might be a spell which wipe out enemy in no time. Also this spell might be a staff of magus for example. Actualy, the process Larians redo all the skills doesnt have a sense. DOS1 has some balance, flaws were known. It is better to polish a system than start from scratch. I am absolutlly sure that new skill/spell system will be hardly inablanaced at least 6 month after release. So If you like unexpected spells results and suprise then you will get it.
Talking of over-equalising, I'm somewhat reminded of a current rant about the CD "loudness war" where the EQ of everything is ramped up to the point where all finesse, fidelity and interest is lost. That may or may not be a good analogy, but I couldn't help but think of it.
Loudnes war is old story. I see loudness war like all wanted the max spell, all wanted source level spell, so everyone use max dB. Missing dynamic. When all is maxed, how you can know it is not a minimum ? Good example of wrong balancing.
