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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gimby" data-source="post: 5052198" data-attributes="member: 49875">I agree that its pretty much down to the group, and the nature of the ineffectualness.If you are presenting people with status-quo challenges or running a module, then there is more of an obligation to pull your weight in overcoming those challenges as the setting assumes that you are all competant.  If you are tailoring the challenges to the party, then this is less of an issue because you can simply factor the ineffective character out of encounter design.  This isn't specifically combat effectiveness either - if your module is all high politics then you can't rely on Ug the Barbarian to pull his weight either.  The somewhat seperate issue is when the character is being antagonistic to the group in some fashion and getting them into trouble - this again depends strongly on the group.  In some cases, this provides interesting extra adventures, in others it just distrats from what the rest of the group is doing.  Another thing to consider is spotlight hogging - outliers with overall effectiveness much higher or lower than the party risk this by either dominating the game or focussing it on protecting/rescuing them.  Again, this may or may not be a problem depending on your group dynamic.  Essentially, it comes down to your group and the tone of your game.  If you are into meat-grinder dungeons or high stakes politics or somthing similar then an "effective" character is probably required.  If you are into somthing more relaxed/silly then probably not.  The only clear case is where a player has deliberately made an ineffective character and is then complaining about how much they suck.  Thats always out of order.</blockquote>

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