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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8560781" data-attributes="member: 6877472">Balance to me, has a few levels.  First is: "spotlight time".  If one character does more damage,  negotiates with most of the NPC's more successfully, and solves all problems with an extensive toolkit of abilities, I find that problematic.Next, we have fun.  In a Pathfinder game, one player had decided to play a super high AC, very mobile, Dex-based Swashbuckler.  Most of the time, they weaved in and out of combat, avoiding damage, and dealing some themselves- not a super high amount, and sometimes they'd just use a bow if they were worried about taking a lot of damage.  At first, I didn't mind it- their AC didn't matter, as they spent so much time avoiding enemies outright, and their damage contribution, while it could be noticeably higher, still seemed to help get the job done.But then we had a few hard fights, and I noticed something.  Everyone else was focusing on defense as well, except for the group's Fighter, who used a big sword and opened themselves up to use Great Cleave and Lunge, and enjoyed the reach and damage granted by Enlarge Person.  Since this person was most likely in the thick of it, they started taking a lot more damage.  And then they started to go down, because when in doubt, the enemies tended to be near the Fighter, and not near the Swashbuckler.  And with the larger damage output, it made sense for the Fighter to be a priority target anyways.  Which meant he kept dropping to 0 hit points, and it occurred to me part of the problem was the Swashbuckler refusing to take his fair share of the beatdowns, lol.I don't go out of my way to create enemies specifically to tear down one player- as a DM, since I have infinite opponents to set into the world, I feel that's a bit cheap to pick on someone's weak points often.  I generally set attack and defenses of enemies so they have a reasonable chance to hit the median AC characters, and a reasonable chance to be hit by the median attackers.This came to a head during an incident where the party (due to poor decision making) got separated in a dungeon.  And the Swashbuckler proceeded to waltz past every enemy they encountered because they simply were too hard to hit.  The rest of the players were less than thrilled to see that one player could solo the content they were struggling with.This is the moment I had to step in and make adjustments to the campaign, because one character was sucking the fun out of the proceedings.  Bad terrain, traps and enemies that inflicted "crowd control" effects, and smarter tactics from opponents were employed, so that no one character could become an island.</blockquote>

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