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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6934353" data-attributes="member: 6775031">That assumes combat is balanced, but there's no guarantee that you'll ever get a fair fight. And I would argue that their suggested balance assumes you start with a 16, rather than that you maintain a 16 and never improve it, but that's somewhat tangential to the point at hand.If an encounter (not necessarily combat) is so easy that you're going to win regardless, then stats don't matter at all, and it's a moot point. And if it's so hard that you have no chance, then stats also don't matter, because they won't be enough to save you. Your degree of optimization only matters when you're somewhere in the middle, such that bad stats would cause you to fail where good stats would allow you to succeed. For any given encounter, it's more likely to fall into the survivable range of a specialized group than it is to fall into the survivable range of a less-specialized group. There is some benefit to specialization, at least some of the time, whenever the difference between specialization and marginal ability would matter; the Dex-based character is going to make plenty of Dex-based checks - dozens per session - so the difference between a 16 and a 20 is likely to come up. To contrast there is little benefit to individual versatility, since you will rarely be called upon to make a check for something that isn't your specialty; a character with straight twelves will not likely be making any particular stat check with any sort of real frequency - maybe two or three times per session - so the fact that they have a 12 instead of an 8 is unlikely to make any difference.Although really, I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the topic of this thread.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 6934353, member: 6775031"] That assumes combat is balanced, but there's no guarantee that you'll [I]ever[/I] get a fair fight. And I would argue that their suggested balance assumes you [I]start[/I] with a 16, rather than that you maintain a 16 and never improve it, but that's somewhat tangential to the point at hand. If an encounter (not necessarily combat) is so easy that you're going to win regardless, then stats don't matter at all, and it's a moot point. And if it's so hard that you have no chance, then stats also don't matter, because they won't be enough to save you. Your degree of optimization only matters when you're somewhere in the middle, such that bad stats would cause you to fail where good stats would allow you to succeed. For any given encounter, it's more likely to fall into the survivable range of a specialized group than it is to fall into the survivable range of a less-specialized group. There is [I]some[/I] benefit to specialization, at least [I]some[/I] of the time, whenever the difference between specialization and marginal ability would [I]matter[/I]; the Dex-based character is going to make plenty of Dex-based checks - dozens per session - so the difference between a 16 and a 20 is likely to come up. To contrast there is [I]little[/I] benefit to individual versatility, since you will rarely be called upon to make a check for something that isn't your specialty; a character with straight twelves will not likely be making any particular stat check with any sort of real frequency - maybe two or three times per session - so the fact that they have a 12 instead of an 8 is unlikely to make any difference. Although really, I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the topic of this thread. [/QUOTE]

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