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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 5793915" data-attributes="member: 1465">I want to point out a few things, even if I understand that these will sound like a strenuous defense of 3ed... I apologize, but 3ed is the only D&D system I used to know really well after all <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> I don't want this to sound against any other edition, just because it is based on saying something good of one edition in particular.1) I have no problems with rotating spotlight. That's exactly what "roles" mean to me, so if I play a roleplaygame, that's what I am expecting from it: different characters shining at different things. It doesn't bother me the least.2) From what I've seen in my experience, already in 3ed there was hardly a class that sucked in combat. All the fighter types had obviously good and straightforward combat-related features. Rogues had sneak attack, which required a very different approach to combat based on finding ways to activate the bonus damage; IMHO playing a Rogue in combat was actually more exciting than the average Fighter (unless you approached the Fighter with an attitude towards specializing in feats that opened up for more combat options). All spellcasters had a lot of combat spells, both tactical and simpler damage-dealer or buffs. Combat was not when some classes sucked (I only had issues with Monks and Bards in combat, but I've never understood how much the problem was in the class design and how much in players' abilities). In fact I want to point out that when I hear fans of 4ed, they generally say that 4e did a good job at actually making the fighter-types better in combat and toning down the spellcasters a bit.3) In theory, 3ed already offered some non-combat stuff to do to many classes, mostly via skills, spells and class abilities. Personally I think only Fighters and Monks had seriously quite too little to do out of combat, besides forcing/sneaking their way somewhere. These should definitely needed more. But more commonly, characters who had nothing at all to do out of combat were the result of players maxing them for combat, e.g. trying to only get themselves combat feats, offensive/defensive spells, and asking all the time how to make their skills useful in combat (e.g. every fighters spending all their skill points in Climb, Jump and Swim because maxing them out is "must-have", except that they never used those skills but cried they couldn't afford others...). Now it sounds like players would like to be forced to take non-combat stuff because they realized they suck out of combat, but I could bet that later on the same players will want the right to give up the non-combat mandatory abilities in exchange for more combat ones whenever they are not interested. Somehow this brings me back to the period when the forums were full of threads about wanting to play "gestalt" characters...4) OP's quote: "The flaw is that getting equal spotlight time is very dependent on how well the DM, the adventure itself, and the players can smoothly shift the spotlight fairly. A combat heavy DM is going to frequently have a bored skill monkey player. Likewise, a fighter shines in combat, but in a session filled with intense RP and skill checks, they might as well go play Nintendo.". So what...? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> The group (players + DM) have the responsibility of making the game together. It is impossible that the game takes care of this. The DM and players must agree together on what are the characters and the adventures. A DM that runs adventures only based on her own agenda, not realizing that some PC are unsuitable, sucks as a DM. A player that obtusely wants to play one and only PC archetype at any cost even if this forces the DM (or others) to play a game they dislike, sucks as a player. So in your example, a combat-heavy DM runs a combat-heavy game for combat-heavy players, period, and no one gets bored. Otherwise if the group is balanced, the DM must avoid unbalanced sessions, is it hard? Yes, sometimes it's hard, but it's also her damn job! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> If the DM isn't having fun in doing this, then again the group's game just need to be rediscussed and rearranged.</blockquote>

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