Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 8764856" data-attributes="member: 7030563">It helps, but only if you don't have to talk, and only if someone else doesn't already speak Gnoll.I am not debating that Wizards can dominate the game, they can, I am saying that rarely Happens.  Actually, IME it has never happened in play in 5E with a Wizard or a player who was predominantly a Wizard.   I have had players dominate the game and overshadow other players, but to date they not been Wizards.  They could have been better at it if they were Wizards, and often they are flat BAD at many of the things they don't let other players do better.The worst offender IME was an 8 Charisma Barbarian Pirate I played with who wanted to intimidate everyone.  I am not sure he even had the intimidate skill, but he wanted to role play his mean Pirate character. So in session 1, level 1, we needed to find out about the house on the hill we were hired to investigate.  We walked into the bar in town to gather some information from townspeople and he stole a glass  of beer from a patron's table and then broke it on the bar and told the bartender he better tell us everything about the house or he was going to tear the place apart.  Didn't matter that literally any other party member and frankly a number of different approaches would have worked better, "that is how my character would act" and he felt like the Pirate reputation feature from his background should make this sort of behavior effective and warranted.  He did similar at the town church.  The game dissolved after 3 sessions of this kind of stuff.My point is this problem does not happen because of class power, it happens because of other dynamics at play.I think you misunderstood my point.  That example was an example of why my initial build would have been overshadowed due to play style.  You are absolutely right, I could have done the same thing with say a high-charisma enchantment Wizard who planned on taking things like tongues and friends but instead went with a combat focus and spells like fear.   I probably could not have switched gears like that if I was playing a Bard that was built for roleplay though. I could have done that with a fighter too because making a high-skill fighter is tough to start with and it is a combat -oriented class.  What I couldn't do with a fighter is go the other way.  If I built a fighter to play a combat-oriented game and it turned out we were playing WBW and not planning on any combat at all ..... well then I would  be screwed where a combat-focused wizard or combat-focused ranger would probably be fine.The point of that is building a character for a different game then you are playing can lead to you being overshadowed and not knowing the rules or not wanting to flex will make it a poor game even if you can flex your character. I like combat focused games, I like games with no combat, but I think a lot of players are not that broad.  There are some players (thinking of one friend in particular) that hate everything except combat.  It wouldn't matter if he "could" switch and play a more balanced character, he would still hate the game and be overshadowed.The point is not knowing the game you are playing, or not playing the same game as the other players and DMs leads to being overshadowed.</blockquote>

Verification