Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5577753" data-attributes="member: 61155">You absolutely have variance in power levels between characters in 4E, and the degree of difference has only grown since the start of the game.  Despite this, however, 4E works hard to make it so that against an average opponent, the average character will be able to reasonably contribute in combat, and similarly, the average character will have several options for contributing in terms of mechanical skills outside of combat. The optimized character is obviously better than this basic character, but rarely to a degree that they are not able to both be involved in the same combat. You may often have a situation where an optimized character does twice the damage of the non-optimized character. You will not often have a situation where the non-optimized character is incapable of hitting enemies that are trivial to the optimized character.  This is in comparison to previous editions, where it was much easier to end up - either due to a poorly chosen build or poorly rolled stats - with a character who was in a completely different league from a truly optimized character. Or, in terms of skills, some classes have them in abundance while others could end up with virtually none. Now, this certainly wasn't a problem in every group - veteran players could assist new players in avoiding bad choices, and experienced players could accomplish many things with a character without the stats or skills ever coming into play.  Nonetheless, 4E made a deliberate effort to ensure that every character had, by default, a certain level of combat effectiveness and a certain variety of non-combat skills, and made an effort at limiting the difference between non-optimized and optimized characters. Pemerton said that he felt that 4E let him build a character focused on concept, and do so without feeling suboptimal. Perhaps a better word would be simply 'competent'. A PC who invests their various character resources into flavor and concept and fluff will still have a certain level of competence built in.  This is even entirely outside from how player skill can impact effectiveness. As you note, you can easily have, in past editions, a character who is mechanically weak at combat, yet a creative player can find many ways to still contribute. That remains true. But at the same time, the player who doesn't want to find those other options and would like to just be able to help out directly in combat, even if they don't want to focus on it?  4E supports that. Maybe not perfectly, but it is hard to deny that it was a deliberate design goal.</blockquote>

Verification