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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6177304" data-attributes="member: 6681948">I think it largely depends on the situation.  Can that axe wielder land a blow?  Can he even close in enough to use his axe?  Range can be a significant advantage.  In most of the source material, the nimble, agile knife thrower tends to do pretty well against the hulking axe wielding brute, but generally because he plays to his own strengths, and avoids close combat with the Brute.An issue rarely addressed, but unquestionably characters that can buff the group are more effective in large groups than small groups, and more effective with certain teammates than others.  There are a host of moving parts.  I commented a while back on spell choice in Zeitgeist.  Since we seem to see a lot of human/humanoid opponents, spells like Charm Person or Hold Person that only affect such targets seem much more effective than in a typical "lots of weird monsters" game.If he invested skill points in that knowledge skill - but why would the Duke listed to someone with knowledge of trees in assessing strategic decision?  And if he will, why would he not give equal consideration from a Bard, or a Wizard, or a Rogue, with the same level of Knowledge of Nature?Provided he has invested in the Intimidate skill.  And here, his CHA Dump hurts him.  A Rogue with an equal investment in Intimidate should be just as able to intimidate people more, probably, as he will have more CHA).  A Bard, not so much as it is not a class skill.Unless, of course, we give the Barbarian (or the Fighter) free bonuses to these abilities to make up for the fact they CHOSE to dedicate their character resources to combat, and be less effective (or even completely ineffective, dedicating all resources to combat) in non-combat situations.   To the 5e issue, one suggestion (which I could get behind) is giving each class (and race?) choices of combat and non-combat (or even melee, ranged combat, social and exploration, if we want those three pillars, and a difference between melee and range) abilities.  Within each pool there could be plenty of choices.  But you can't trade between pools - you can't, for example, trade in all your non-combat abilities for greater combat prowess (or focus exclusively on melee, or on social skills, if we create finer pools), so you can't build a character who is useless in a broad aspect of the game.  Different classes would clearly have a different mix (maybe fighters would be 2/3 combat, 1/3 noncombat, while Bards might be 1/2 social, 1/4 exploration, 1/4 combat, just to pick numbers out of the air).  The rules could also carry some advice for the mix between the various types of challenges, and how to give all the characters their opportunities to shine.  Obviously, if your game features meaningful challenges which are primarily or exclusively combat-focused, then your players will gravitate to characters with more combat focus themselves.  Perhaps some of those "class area of focus" abilities should include the ability to shift the nature of the challenge (eg. a Social ability to convert a combat encounter into one which can be resolved by social means - such as the classic "wait, you don't want to kill me because..." ending the battle in favour of social interaction, at least if the ability is used successfully).That's definitely one opinion.  That being the case, are you good with: - roll for each stat once, and what you roll is what you get - roll for race - roll for class (perhaps a chart for each race with stat-based modifiers, and for history when leveling up) - roll for skills (table skewed to class skills and/or racially favoured skills) - roll for feats (again, skewed by class/race) - roll for spells known (wizards, sorcerers) - roll for starting level (it's called "d20 system", right?) - roll ONCE in front of the group - what you get is what you play?All of these are varying levels of randomness over character power and abilities.  Lots of others could be evaluated.  The last will be, I expect, especially unnerving for some - it's funny how many "randomly rolled" characters are above the statistical averages, isn't it?There seem to be two very different concepts you link together.  I am in favour of mechanical differences.  However, I am also in favour of those mechanical differences balancing out overall such that different classes/races/choices are not "weaker" or "stronger" in an overall sense.</blockquote>

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