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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 5053858" data-attributes="member: 7006">I think the most telling aspect of this thread came from the OP Kzach when he said the following on Page 1...In this regard... there definitely *IS* an honest feeling of players "not pulling their weight"... because you have characters like the tank having to spend much of his own personal finances to repair equipment caused by party death as a result of the other members of the party/raid not doing their job correctly.  In a video game where there is no DM control and every player is at the mercy of scripted in-game events and programming... if you don't do/have what the game requires of you, then you will fail and certain characters will be more at fault.  And there are easily recognizeable programs and identifiers to tell you who those were.However... in a roleplaying game where there is a true blue human being for a DM... there's no requirement for players to all create equal characters, because the DM should be able to use his skill to work around any potential problems.  If there are two strikers in the party and one of them averages 12.5 damage per round and the other averages 9 damage per round (based upon the decisions the players made in creating their characters), the DM would either already know this or very soon discover it, and thus the encounters he creates for his players will take this into account.  Some encounters would be easier, some harder, some would target the less optimized character, others the more optimized one.  And if the DM doesn't do that... then that's the DM's problem... not the players'.  The DM should know what he has for player characters and plan accordingly.But if the DM's encounters are so predictable that a player is able to recognize that "Hey!  When this PC is here and we face off against this group of five solider enemies and it takes us eight rounds to kill them all, but on the weeks when the PC isn't here and we face off against four soldier enemies and the other four of us can kill them all in just five rounds!"... something is very wrong.Speaking from my own personal game I DM... the archer ranger pumps out much more damage than either the dodger rogue or the feylock (which is not at all surprising, because both the dodger and fey builds are admittedly more geared toward skill and roleplay aspects than strict number-crunching combat).  But the way I get around this potential disparity is to plan for it.  This means I include more roleplay encounters and skill challenges than I might otherwise do with a more combat-heavy group... and when the group does get into combat, I make sure to put the players into situations where the archer ranger cannot *always* stand back and pump out massive dpr.  I either charge the ranger with lurkers so he has to go melee, or the terrain makes him sometimes have to change his tactics.  He still gets plenty of opportunity to cause massive amounts of damage... but never to the extent where the player could ever say "you know... I don't think it's right that I'm doing all this work killing everything, but the rogue and warlock are gaining the same rewards."  He does that... and I would most certainly show him that if he really wants all three strikers in the party to be equally as effective in generating damage... I can certainly make his wish come true.</blockquote>

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