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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kzach" data-source="post: 5067843" data-attributes="member: 56189">Yes, it does.Yes, they do.A 14 in a prime stat in 4e is not optimising on any scale known to man or geek.No, he doesn't.There's nothing 'highly efficient' about putting an 18 in a class primary stat. Highly efficient would be putting a 20 in that stat and getting Weapon/Implement Expertise at 1st-level.An 18 in a primary stat isn't 'laser-focused', it's simply what the system is balanced around and although there are rare instances where a 16 is used in a prime stat for some hybrid or half-elf or weird charop builds that only start to shine at 20th-level and suck until then, putting a 14 in a prime stat is just daft.This isn't 2e. Comparing the two is a ridiculous argument.I'll concede that there are some groups who don't care if they suck. But as we saw in a previous similar thread, most people don't want their characters to die constantly and never succeed in their missions. That requires having a reasonable character, not a deliberately gimped bunch of non-adventurers who fail at everything.4e is on a bell-curve. 18 seems to be about where it's balanced around a 50/50 chance to hit every time you attack. For every +1 higher or lower, the chance to hit/miss increases exponentially instead of a flat 5% per plus on a d20.Consider in a 10 round fight that a character with a primary stat of 18 will hit roughly around 5 times out of 10 attacks. Just reducing this to a 17, will change this to about 3 times out of 10 attacks. At 14, he'll hit maybe once a combat*.So now you have a character that is nothing more than a bag of hit points. He contributes nothing else to the group. Combats will now take 2-4 extra rounds to complete. And as the defender of the group, he doesn't fulfil his role, so someone else has to take up his slack.And given his low prime stat, I doubt his skills are anything to talk about either, so he's also contributing failure to skill challenges.Now sure, some people might think that's fun, but I doubt many people see him as anything but a liability that detracts from the overall enjoyment of the game for everyone at the table.*Yes, I don't know the exact numbers, I'm just parroting what I've read on charop boards. If that is incorrect, sue me.</blockquote>

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