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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5215126" data-attributes="member: 61155">Yeah - there will always be a range of capability in any system in which you have, well, any options available to characters and players. If you can choose to have a higher or a lower ability score, that means one character will be more accurate than the other - no avoiding that. 4E had a very good start with this - tying bonuses carefully to different types to avoid too much stacking, and making it so giving up bonuses in one area typically helped you elsewhere. Since then, the disparity has certainly grown... though I think it is still close enough overall to not be a gamebreaker. An average PC and an optimized PC can play the same table and both contribute to a fight, as opposed to requiring entirely different games to challenge them. Nonetheless, some of the burden can end up on the DM. An entire party of optimized characters will require tougher challenges than a party of PCs fresh out of the box.  In general, the ability of a 4E party involves both how characters are built, and how they are played. A party of highly-optimized characters who simply rush in and hit things will do about as well as a part of non-optimized characters who use quality tactics in battle. On the other hand, a party of non-optimized and non-tactical characters will have troubles. Still, I've found that to be rare. In the game I'm running, the group actually doesn't have a leader at all! But by epic-levels, most characters are bringing something to the table that will help the party or weaken the enemy, or provide at least some sort of boost. And even a non-optimized party can learn the tricks to regularly get combat advantage on their enemies, or focus fire at the biggest threats, and so forth.  The real danger, I think, comes from diving right into epic level play. That's always going to be tricky. You haven't had the time to get to know the character, how it works or what it is capable of, much less how it can work alongside the rest of the party to best effect. You haven't had the chance to adapt to the rhythm of higher level combat, to know how to respond in most situations. That's going to create grind more than any raw numerical issues, and more than any specific combination of PCs you actually have. Trying to draw any conclusions about the system from that just isn't going to be useful - the group is stepping into the game with an already existing handicap, and the DM will probably need to softball things and give them a chance to adjust.</blockquote>

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