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<blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 8091580" data-attributes="member: 14159">With spellcasters, you can usually get enough of a diversity in spells that they won't be TOTALLY helpless outside their specialization.&nbsp; A flame mage might not be able to do much against a Red Dragon, but they'll can&nbsp; have buff spells and protective magics, and there are &quot;neutral&quot; attack spells like Magic Missile which can fit a lot of play styles.The problems I've seen have been when someone gets an idea for a &quot;cool&quot; character off some movie or TV show and tries to make it in D&amp;D, only to find that a D&amp;D adventure works differently than a movie or TV show that is perfectly scripted to let the highly specialized character show off their abilities and never touches much on the weaknesses or downsides of this plan.&nbsp; That or D&amp;D does a poor job of conveying their plan, because their concept is rather silly and wouldn't work in anything but a comedy game.I knew a guy once who, after watching some anime, really, REALLY wanted to play a fighter who specialized. . .in CHOPSTICKS!&nbsp; It was in some obscure anime he watched.&nbsp; He wanted to play a fighter who didn't wear armor and poked people expertly with chopsticks.&nbsp; We were playing AD&amp;D 2e, so maybe a monk, with this as some kind of monk weapon might have worked in later editions, but rolling up a fighter, but not wearing any armor, and taking chopsticks that do 1 point of damage, and then using that as your main weapon?&nbsp; You're just weaker in every way than Bob the Generic Fighter with his plate mail and longsword and shield.&nbsp; He got angry because his character wasn't as &quot;cool&quot; as the anime was, and quit.&nbsp; We'd tried pointing out during character creation how it wouldn't work, but he insisted it would, because it was just so cool it couldn't fail.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="wingsandsword, post: 8091580, member: 14159"] With spellcasters, you can usually get enough of a diversity in spells that they won't be TOTALLY helpless outside their specialization. A flame mage might not be able to do much against a Red Dragon, but they'll can have buff spells and protective magics, and there are "neutral" attack spells like Magic Missile which can fit a lot of play styles. The problems I've seen have been when someone gets an idea for a "cool" character off some movie or TV show and tries to make it in D&D, only to find that a D&D adventure works differently than a movie or TV show that is perfectly scripted to let the highly specialized character show off their abilities and never touches much on the weaknesses or downsides of this plan. That or D&D does a poor job of conveying their plan, because their concept is rather silly and wouldn't work in anything but a comedy game. I knew a guy once who, after watching some anime, really, REALLY wanted to play a fighter who specialized. . .in CHOPSTICKS! It was in some obscure anime he watched. He wanted to play a fighter who didn't wear armor and poked people expertly with chopsticks. We were playing AD&D 2e, so maybe a monk, with this as some kind of monk weapon might have worked in later editions, but rolling up a fighter, but not wearing any armor, and taking chopsticks that do 1 point of damage, and then using that as your main weapon? You're just weaker in every way than Bob the Generic Fighter with his plate mail and longsword and shield. He got angry because his character wasn't as "cool" as the anime was, and quit. We'd tried pointing out during character creation how it wouldn't work, but he insisted it would, because it was just so cool it couldn't fail. [/QUOTE]

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