Wow. Guess I kinda stuck my hand in a hornet's nest there.
I'll preface this by saying my earlier comment(s) were meant to be tongue in cheek.
This does underscore one occasional problem with high level play though. You have people who love tweaking characters and doing the numbers to precisely take exactly -this- many levels of -that- to get -this- ability which when combined with -that- ability will...etc etc.
And you have people that just want to play a simple 20th level monk. Or wizard. And while you CAN tweak and optimize those characters, not everyone wants to...or can. So you do get wildly differing power levels between PC's.
Sometimes that's a problem, sometimes less so. Like Jemal was saying, if everyone has their own thing going, that's usually fine. But D&D is primarily a game about combat, so it's not really fair to compare noncombat abilities (like trapfinding) to combat abilities (like being unhittable, or doing astronomical levels of damage). No one wants to be "trapboy."
I can't blame Jemal or anyone else for optimizing and such. I do it myself, and while I do it to a lesser extent, that lesser extent isn't because I'm somehow truer to the game or whatever. It's because I don't have the patience to cobble as many of those rules together.
I guess it's only really a problem when it underscores differences in the kind of game people want. Jemal likes high power, "fantasy superhero" games. Someone else might prefer a more...demure approach. And while -any- level 20 character is capable of amazing feats, not all level 20 characters are created equally.
I was proud not long ago for making a ninja/shadowdancer that had AC in the mid 40's, and did 30ish damage per hit using Sudden Strike.
Sigh. Back to the drawing board.
