Complete Mage: worth it?

[Steve]

Complete Mage has a lot of class features, prestige classes, and feats in it that can be considered seriously imbalanced if properly abused. However, every single one of them is excellent for flavor purposes. They provide excellent character concepts and give characters abilities that make excellent sense in context.

Is it worth it to allow such an abusable book for the sake of making characters that fit your players' concepts?

My main points on imbalance would be some very easy to break abilities in the Ultimate Magus, the Abjurant Champion (5 levels of full BAB and full casting progression, something even the eldritch knight doesn't have), Reserve Feats (infinite use abilities as long as you have a spell readied, also yet another +1 to CL), and the Master Specialist, which offers amazing benefits to wizards with no real detriments (and can be entered at third level).

But once again, all those classes are great roleplaying-wise, for reasons I won't fully elaborate.

For discussion purposes, you can also look at Complete Champion for the same dichotomy.

My main question is this: is it more important to ensure that game balance remains intact or that your players make a character that they enjoy playing?

[grond]

I think both are very important, and both are possible. More and more I'm turning into a core rule books person, however I can still understand the diversity that supplements add. All the same, anything that overly unbalances one class, or eliminates its weaknesses, has an adverse effect on the players whose characters don't benefit from similar advantages. I'm a cheese head.
My opinion is that unique and enjoyable characters are more a product of the environment they are played in than the specific mechanics of their creation. In other words, I think characters who are forced to be PLAYED creatively are ultimately more rewarding, especially if the game environment is managed to encourage and reward this line of creativity. It makes things difficult because the players have learn how to use parts of the game that aren't spelled out in character class descriptions, and the DM has to work with that, and make it possible. That's my thought on the matter, sorrry if it is a wordy one. My wife suggested the cheese head comment and it is true, although off topic.

[Dmitri]

If game balance becomes an issue, talk to the player. For example, any straight wizzy or cleric or druid can be unbalanced. But if the player plays the PC as part of a group, and remembers to be considerate of all the other players and the DM, it is not an issue.

I like the book, and as a player who used a Reserve Feat once, without a respec available it is a waste - at upper levels, you just don't need the pittance for damage that they do, or the meager effect. Abjurant Champion, though, is pants on head retarded.