Is there a problem when a fighter with very low charisma is part of a party that enters into negotiations in a royal court setting? He would be useless in that one type of encounter, but not useless as an overall party member.
There is a problem, but it isn't as big of a problem, statistically speaking.
In the negotiations scenario- in games, fiction and real life- it is usually 100% acceptable for members of one side or the other to remain non-participatory or even absent. It may even be wise to arrange for such. Letting one person or a subset "do all the talking" is commonplace.
If a group is in combat, a present non-participant is both a rarity and a detriment. Odds are good such a person will be targeted by his allies' foes. He could even become a human shield or hostage. Keeping that person from harm can cause his allies to act counter to their own survival in order to preserve them.
Dramatic, yes- but really a role more befitting an NPC. It is..."aheroic."
I think a lot of commenters are coming at it from this direction:
- that combat is the most important part of a game
- that characters who don't take part in fighting are useless to the party (regardless of their other skills)
- that dirt farmers or peasants are unskilled people
Well, I don't agree with the third proposition, and the first two are HIGHLY dependent on the nature of the campaign.
What I read, however, was a nebulous depiction of your PC's participation in combat
when it arose. How, people asked, does someone without spells, weapons or armor contribute when combat arises? How does he avoid becoming a casualty? You simply stated things like:
"While they fought, I poked around in the bushes, or dug in the dirt."
"On top of that, do you really think that the only way to stop an ogre (or any other monster) is to attack it, stun it, teleport the party away, etc.? There are a lot of ways to effectively deal with a situation like that without needing to fight or cast spells, particularly if the monster (or human opponent) doesn't see your character as a potential threat in any way. "
"Most warriors don't pay any attention to the peasant farmer running around in the background when they are faced with an armed, dangerous opponent, and I used that to my (and my party's) advantage."
"There are a lot of ways to win fights against opponents you can't hope to defeat directly. "
...without actually explaining how you helped or how you avoided being targeted by enemies once you did. That's why Neonchameleon raised the specter of the Oberoni fallacy.
And then this:
"In that hypothetical situation, during the battle the ogre wouldn't be thinking of me at all, because he would be too busy fighting with people who were a real threat."
I'm sorry, but I agree with Celebrim- in the scenario where the ogre is looking for a meal, his best bet is to pick out the weakest target- your PC- grab it and run away, and damn the warriors. Or he could strike the weakest (your PC again) and kill it, then retreat until the corpse was abandoned by its protectors.
Both are common and successful hunting tactics of RW predators that don't have a third of the smarts of a typical ogre.
As Celebrim pointed out in the last post of the thread, even wolves are that smart.
On the previous thread, in particular, they vacillated between ignoring my clarifications to my statements and claiming that I was deluded (or lying). The amount of hostility is amazing.
Because your "clarifications" lacked clarity. Nothing directly or clearly answered the repeated questions of how you did so without DM interference. People were looking for some kind of mechanical underpinning to your assertions, specific skills, rules, etc. to look at, and you offered none.
That's why I keep saying this is a communications issue.
It's like this: you made an assertion, and a rather bold one. Others asked how you did so, looking for ways within the rules they could look at and examine and see if they could reproduce your kinds of results for themselves. But every answer about your PC was devoid of any game mechanics people could examine in the context of D&D. You couldn't even reveal what class the PC was. The PC is black boxed. Redacted.
IOW, the hostility that arose didn't arise from people making assumptions, it's that your responses didn't answer their questions with any degree of specificity.