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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1646475" data-attributes="member: 10201">Same reason it happens in literature--why, pray tell, didn't Gandalf just dump the ring in Mt Doom? Or, to borrow a .sig line i once saw, why didn't the King of the Eagles fly Frodo there, instead of waiting until he'd done all the work to show up and fly him away? Literature is *full* of contrivances--whole genres are basically built of them (action-espionage, mystery, reality TV). Some are more blatent than others, and any given person will be bothered more by some than others. For you, someone not using their abilities to their fullest at all times breaks SoD. For others, so long as there's a plausible reason, it's not a problem. Oh, and on the snide stab: you know, perhaps getting into character, and not participating meaningfully in the encounters, was fun for that player--it's at least reasonable to assume she wouldn't have done it otherwise. Just because you wouldn't enjoy it doesn't mean it "isn't fun." I'm bored to tears by rollercoasters and the like--doesn't mean i complain when my friends want to go to Six Flags, i just don't go with them.Unless, of course, that balance is achieved by having each character have different strengths. Let's take an example that everyone here is probably familiar with: D&D3[.5]E. Let's say you have a group of 15th level characters, and they get in a big fight. Now, let's further assume i'm playing the wizard of the group, and i've built the character to be fun for me. That means she has few or no spells useful in combat--let's say that the combat-worthy spells were all used on the previous encounter. Ta-da, i'm in your situation B: my wizard certainly isn't going to engage in melee with anything that can give a 15th level fighter or barbarian a challenge, and i probably can't even hit if i use a missile weapon--plus, i'm just likely to attract attention. My point with this example is two-fold. First, that it doesn't take much effort in a well-balanced system to create a character that has nothing to contribute in some encounters. [The combat-and-adventuring-optimized fighter, similarly, might be completely useless when the party petitions the emperor's court.] It is an unreasonable goal to have everyone contribute to every encounter, because to do so you'd have to have characters that are more homogeneous than most people want to play. Second, that you can't make a blanket "if you have nothing to do, something's wrong" statement about intra-party balance. I, frex, am bored to tears with combat in complex tactical systems. So i almost always make a non-combat character--not one who's not very good at combat, but one who is utterly useless in, and/or psychologically incapable of, combat. Only time i enjoy combat in RPGs is when i don't have to deal with all that crunch--systems like Over the Edge, Everway, or Four Colors al Fresco. So, if i have my character hide in a ravine and i go make a sandwich during combat, i'm actually having *more* fun than if i stick around at the table and participate in the combat. Likewise, there's the apocryphal "wake me up when the killing starts" player, who is not only not unhappy to not participate in the social stuff, exploration, and so on, but is actually happier not to. Such a player has no problem with non-combat scenes in the adventure--they understand that they make the other players happy, and/or stitch the combats together and give them meaning--they just don't personally have in investment in them. Somebody being left out is only a problem if they don't want to be left out.Ok, now back to situation A, above: what does this have to do with intra-party balance? Seriously--i don't understand how that's an intra-party balance point. That sounds like a problem of the GM forgetting the characters' or monsters' capabilities, and might be indicative of a balance problem, but is more likely just a sign of poor planning.</blockquote>

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