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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xect" data-source="post: 4285222" data-attributes="member: 68302">I think it's pretty evident that 4th edition shifts the focus for the 'skill' aspect of the game from character creation to character usage.In 3rd, the deciding factor behind a characters', and particularly a martial character's, effectiveness was the build. Builds ranged from disproportionately powerful to entirely useless.In 4th, not so much so. While you could probably create a useless character with a determined effort, doing so by mistake is unlikely. And barring actual holes in the rules, you wont see hugely powerful characters.On the other hand, party composition and combat tactics take a larger role in 4th. When it comes to the actual fighting, I think even wizards will find that their range of viable options in a particular combat situation has improved.Given that character optimization was a major (perhaps the main) part of 3rd edition, it stands to reason that vastly diminishing that aspect of the game will not go down well. Personally, I'm looking forward to not having to balance my encounters to allow 4 characters ranging from sucky to munchkined to shine each on their own. Perhaps I'll even find the time to set up exciting encounters rather than spending hours crunshing numbers just to avoid completely failed encounters.</blockquote>