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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5745400" data-attributes="member: 177">No, not impossible.  But still easily recognized.Well, here's a place where the difference between social and combat encounters typically differ - social encounters usually have tighter bandwidth constraints, if you will.  In your usual combat encounter, the GM is running a bunch of monsters/NPCs, and expects many players to engage at once.  Social encounters tend to be much more narrow - there's one or two NPCs, and they each take a lot of GM time to interact with each player.So, the fighter problem can be partially solved by throwing more of the right kind of monsters at the party, so it is clear that both those fighters are necessary and useful.  It is usually harder for the GM to do that for social encounters.And if the sharp fighter really is still stealing the thunder, maybe engaging in more cooperative tactics, rather than solo, would help.  And, of course, sometimes making that cooperation such that the less-sharp player's going to be the one taking the big hunks out of the BBEG, while he fights off the goons...I'm not talking about being "threatened" by other people's thunder (that's a completely different issue), or comparing ponies.  I'm talking about how there's only one GM, and only so many hours at the table, such that thunder is effectively a limited resource.  Most players won't mind if you get your thunder, so long as they get their fair share.Imagine that "thunder" is a pot of soup.  You can dish it up in bowls and spread it around, but each night there's only so much of it.  How much of it do you take?  This isn't "hand holding" - this is having a care that the other folks at the table matter, and ought to have their time, too.  The effect I'm talking about is one reason why many people find 1e's long-term balance (fighters are strong at low levels, wizards at high) fails.  At early levels, fighters tend to get the lion's share of the thunder, and wizards are dissatisfied for large portions of a session.  The situation tends to reverse at high levels.That may seem equitable in the long run, but in reality, it isn't very satisfying for many players - thunder needs to be more equally distributed over a session, or a small number of sessions, rather than an entire campaign, to be engaging.</blockquote>

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