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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4751327" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, but when players focus their characters, by taking a 20, they WILL be a lot more narrow than if they take an 18 in their primary stat, or heaven forbid a 16 (which lets you really be a very generalist character and still capable at your main shtick). If you have a party of 5 specialists, then there is likely to be something that the party lacks in terms of expertise in some area. Probably someone will be OK at that thing, but not top notch.If every weakness in every party is just house-ruled away, then you have nothing but 20 primary stat characters! Why WOULD a group of players ever build otherwise? INT is a key stat for knowledge in particular and any party that is short on having a 14 or 16 int character in it is going to have problems.Now, the way to handle those problems IMHO is proper adventure design. In other words if the low int party misses the magic detection check then they simply miss an option they could have taken to make the adventure go down a different path. One that maybe relies on less combat and more skills. It isn't necessarily a BETTER option, but a different one that rewards a different type of focus.If the low int party misses a magic item, then well, they will be short an item. Not a huge tragedy. In fact it is exactly the way things SHOULD be. They took awesome stats to be better in combat. The high int party instead found the nice magic item that gives them a similar (but maybe a bit lesser) combat edge. After all, both groups sooner or later are going to face boss man, and both will have to win a fight. So I actually see the "high int group can get some reward for it" as a feature, not a bug.Of course it isn't a perfect example either, the group could be simply super optimized in INT and another group in WIS, etc. Where it really should be nice is the case where you need TWO characters that are reasonably good at something instead of one that is super good. Adventure design in 4e really is an art form!</blockquote>

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