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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 4115779" data-attributes="member: 537">You have fallen into the common trap of thinking of roleplaying as character-building. There is nothing that states being true to your character concept requires, or must be associated with, mechanically suboptimal choices.There are indeed SOME gamers who associate roleplay with character-building, and in Robin Laws' scheme, they are called method actors. These are the people who consider taking a bard and then playing up his uselessness in combat to be an excellent way of differentiating themselves from the rest of the group. Needless to say, this definition of roleplay is not universally held.In your 4E example, Thogg's player would roleplay by thinking up possible ways in which he can relate his ass-kicking schtick to each situation at hand. The DM then assigns skill checks deemed appropriate to the proposed solution, which may or may not coincide with the skill that the player had in mind. In a harmonious group, they'll probably coincide more often than not; even if not, 4E characters have much more flexibility where noncombat skills are concerned than 3E ones, so Thogg will rarely be caught completely without options. Thogg thus manages to express his ass-kicking schtick, his player remains engaged, and everyone is entertained by Thogg's asskicking antics.There will no doubt be some situations where no plausible asskicking solution can be found, but you can't have everything.This can be contrasted with the situation in 3E where Thogg either kicks ass, stands on the sidelines, or actively sabotages his party members' efforts to find a solution by inappropriately kicking ass.</blockquote>

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