Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Is having all PCs be equally useful not the ideal?Well, sure, and at the same time the high DEX guy has "amazing riposte" or something that does a slightly different but pretty much equally useful effect.
Is having all PCs be equally useful not the ideal?Well, sure, and at the same time the high DEX guy has "amazing riposte" or something that does a slightly different but pretty much equally useful effect.
In general yes, but of course there's nothing wrong with saying "and in this specific situation your DEX fighter really got to shine with that move." So, GOOD spotlighting IMHO involves a fairly short time in the spotlight and shining it around on everyone reasonably often and in roughly equal measure. BAD spotlighting is that thing where one character is indispensible for the entirety of three whole sessions because "undead" or something, while another one or two are pretty much boned.Is having all PCs be equally useful not the ideal?
Firstly: I see what you did there. (Bolded for emphasis.)In general yes, but of course there's nothing wrong with saying "and in this specific situation your DEX fighter really got to shine with that move." So, GOOD spotlighting IMHO involves a fairly short time in the spotlight and shining it around on everyone reasonably often and in roughly equal measure. BAD spotlighting is that thing where one character is indispensible for the entirety of three whole sessions because "undead" or something, while another one or two are pretty much boned.
Never heard that. But it makes sense."Optimizing the fun out of the game" is not what's going on here.
The principle driving this is a thing called Loss Aversion Bias: People hate a loss about twice as much as they like a win. Meaning you have to win (in this case land a hit) about 67% of the time to feel like you are actually winning. And lo and behold, the 5e devs thought of this, if you dig into the DMG tables, a character with a starting 16 who pumps the main stat with ASIs will hit a generic monster 65% of the time, close enough to "feel right", even more so when you consider situational bonuses.
While you might not think a mere 5% loss in accuracy that stems from starting with a 14 instead of a 16 would matter, it is enough to change that 65% into a 60%, going from skirting the "this feels good" squarely into the "this feels bad" side of the equation.
And yes, obviously not all people are as susceptible to Loss Aversion as others, which is why that 60% feels fine for them.
Sure, but absolutely not equally useful in all things. That's just boring.Is having all PCs be equally useful not the ideal?
No, of course you want strengths and weaknesses between various characters; ideally everyone would contribute equally but in different ways. You know, like if they all had some sort of… ability… and each character has a different one of these “abilities” that they focused on… primarily. Perhaps influenced by their class. In this hypothetical scenario, I would imagine you’d want everyone in the party to be similarly competent in the whatever ability their class primarily focused on, but generally be less competent in the abilities the other characters’ classes focused on.Sure, but absolutely not equally useful in all things. That's just boring.
Going a step further, it'd be pretty cool if we had some way of quantifying what a particular character is contributing. Not in a prescriptive, restrictive kind of way--purely descriptive, like how one can say that any version of Barbarian you play, you're meant to be pretty durable, due to high HP and Rage giving resistance to physical forms of damage (and then certain Totem Barbs are even moreso, having resistance to nearly all forms of damage.) Some kind of label or term that could quickly and concisely indicate "I can consistently contribute X." Just seems like it would be really useful.No, of course you want strengths and weaknesses between various characters; ideally everyone would contribute equally but in different ways. You know, like if they all had some sort of… ability… and each character has a different one of these “abilities” that they focused on… primarily. Perhaps influenced by their class. In this hypothetical scenario, I would imagine you’d want everyone in the party to be similarly competent in the whatever ability their class primarily focused on, but generally be less competent in the abilities the other characters’ classes focused on.
Amusingly, I rolled something very similar to this for a currently running game and am playing a 4 STR fairy wizard. It's not been too much of a handicap so far and has been a source of a lot of amusement, but I really wouldn't want to try it on a non-full caster.I wouldn't. Nobody can really cover the 3. It's true that if someone else is with me, they might see something that I do not with my 3 wisdom and crappy perception, but it's inevitable that there will be many instances where I'm the only one who might notice something, but my 3 kills me. Or falling into a pit or other trap and the 3 dex kills me. Or where I'm the one conscious and have to drag my companion, but nope, because 3 strength. Or...
That 3 is going to hurt you much more than the 18 will help.
I find that maxing out the stat really depends on what the character is designed to do -
For one character I played recently, a Battlemaster Artificer, I wanted to max out his Intelligence because it improved both his spells and his weapon attacks (due to a class feature, he used Int as his weapon attack stat most of the time), and because the concept for him was that he was the smartest guy in the room.
For a dwarf rogue I'm playing right now, the GM wanted rolled stats, so I didn't really get to choose to max out (or even have his highest stat in) his dexterity. Careful choices, however, gave me a stat array of 16, 15, 15, 15, 10, 7. Having only a +2 in his attack stat doesn't stop him from being an excellent skill monkey.