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Message: <blockquote data-quote="grickherder" data-source="post: 4739616" data-attributes="member: 68043">I have disagreed with this point in the past in this thread.  I now admit to being wrong about that.  All you need are two players in the same group who emphasize different things and you can end up with a wider gap in their in combat performance that before the publication of PHB2.  One play might make a character with a 16 in their primary stat and be satisfied with their combat performance while another takes a 20 and takes every possible feat, power and whatnot to eek out as much of a bonus to hit as possible.  They've got expertise, they've multiclassed into avenger for a couple rounds of rerolls and are taking paragon paths to maximize their combat effectiveness, with the flavour of the paragon path be damned. So what problems does this actually create in play?  Is the person who took a 16 because they didn't really care if they rocked in combat going to start caring?  In most cases probably not.  The person who will care is the one who wanted to rock but didn't know the ins and outs of character optimization.  So let's just say for arguments sake that it becomes a problem.  That the optimized characters are putting out hits and damages and effects as if they are a couple levels higher.People will find my solution to these problems (or at the very least my means of mitigating them) to be unsatisfying.  It's the exact same answer that's been given for when a character becomes unbalanced in old D&D, 1st edition 2nd and 3rd.The DM intervenes.  Be it through encounter design and monsters making different tactical choices.  Or through a direct intervention.  Basically it's time to renegotiate the social contract and say either "you guys who aren't optimizing your characters need to start!" or "you guys who are optimizing your characters need to dial it back a bit."For encounter design and monster tactics, the first rule of that should be to know the party you are designing encounters for.  Let's assume 2 non-optimized characters, 1 middle of the road characters and 2 optimized to the max characters.As the DM, I need monsters the weakest characters are going to want to attack that they can actually hit.  I need average monsters as well and I need tougher monsters that the optimizers can take down.  I also need to set up the encounters such that if the optimizers don't do their job and take down/control/defend against the strong monsters, it's obvious that they are failing in their job rather than the other characters being too weak.  In short, encounter design becomes difficult, but still not impossible and still easier than 3.x where you're trying to design for a high level spell caster being present while everyone else isn't.  I bet I can even do it without people realizing that's what I'm doing.Some people will find that reprehensible though.  They'll make the point that the fact that the DM has to intervene or change how they're designing encounters is proof of a flaw-- if the game was working properly the situation should never come up.  That the optimizers and non-optimizers might have to get together and find a middle ground is proof that the game can't work for both simultaneously.  I think expecting the rules to make it so you never have to think about your social contract or never have to rely on the DM to make things work is asking too much.  It's asking for perfect balance.  I think Smeelbo pointed out the flaws with that expectation in his paragraphs referencing Everquest.Sadly I think you're describing reality here.  As I said earlier in this thread, you probably have the pulse of the gaming community better than I and perhaps PHB2 sales are driven by people who might buy it for the one awesome feat. Yep.  I've had to drift/house rule skill challenges quite a bit to make them do what I want.  I'm interested to see what DMG2 has to say about skill challenges.  Perhaps that book will overcome this short fall. This is where I am as well, but none of my players will take the stupid feat!  I can't exactly report back that it's not causing a problem if no one ever takes it.  Well, except for that it's not causing any problems because no one is taking it.</blockquote>

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