ClaytonCross
Kinder reader Inflection wanted
You are indeed wrong.
If, for whatever reason, characters end up being powerful to the point where it's making the game less enjoyable if it's not taken into account, it makes the game more difficult to run.
If you find yourself making the game more difficult to run, you should stop doing whatever it is that's causing the problem.
That doesn't mean you need to create incompetent characters. It just means don't play like an arse.
In what way is hand-crafting every encounter to take each character's statistics and capabilities into account somehow just as easy as not having to do that because everyone is more-or-less balanced?
So if a player uses creative and effective tactics which cause that player to succeed they are playing like an "arse". I have had my GM get mad at the same thing because he wanted a player fall unconscious or inflict major damage to the party as a whole with out a TPK. Then we beat it like a minion because of good use of tactics. After all when a player becomes good at something its usually not them who see the game as less enjoyable. It also doesn't make it more difficult for them. I never said it was easy for the GM... I said more rewarding for everyone. Usually hard work on the GMs part equals more fun for everyone during the game. That said, if a GM is finding the work too much usually the better GMs just move the games further apart so they have more time to prep. If a GM finds to the work of GM a pain and uninteresting it kind of seems like they would be happier as a player assuming they can get someone else to step up. I personally enjoy building for sessions and I enjoy seeing what players do each session. The more work and better prepared I am defiantly seems to make a difference, though I usually spend about 4 times the number of hours we play setting up for each session. As a result I am glad let another GM do the work sometimes.