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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GMforPowergamers" data-source="post: 6293365" data-attributes="member: 67338">yes and no... there is a range of power and one person may shine at there specialty, but there is atleast a basic amount that level have to mean...       If my level 5 character is a drow (LA+2) and has 2 levels of rogue and 1 of fighter, and I have +1 elven chain and a +1 dagger, and your level 5 character is a Dwarven Cleric of a war god level 5, and yet another PC is a Human Wizard level 5... a set of 2 goblins and a few rats would be a challenge for a group of my characters, and would be a speed bump at best to the other 2, an oger with a level of anti paliden would be a good challaange for your character but would drop me like a rock, and the wizard either totally owns the encounter (right spells prepped) or dies as fast as me (wrong spells prepped). BUT we are all 5th level...yes witch is why I can run a kobold tribe as villains for my Saturday night crew even at level 3 or 4, and would never throw them against a dragon...ever, but Tuesday night might face a CR24 dragon before double digit levels... but the problem is when you mix the two... when one player is ready to fight kobolds and the other is ready to slay dragons...and what do you do when your 5 players have 2 way above base line (higher AC saves and damge plus atleast 1 or 2 cool encounter enders) and 1 of your players is just about on base line (some ways a little above and some ways a little below) and 1 of your players is a fair bit below base line, and your final player is WELL below baseline...throw an encounter that one of the 2 power houses can't solo and you might as well just tell the weakest player to sit out or die... throw an encounter that really challenges those 2 power houses togather and the others might as well make a beer run... it is BOTH a rules problem and a group problem. No rules should default to angel summoner and BMX bandit.   4e is far from perfect, so is PF and 3.5... but in this reagard I will take 3e every time... I have seen this done, start game by asking everyone to play... I will give 2 examples of it backfireing though..1) my 4e game I had an over powered Ranger at 11th level just shy of soloing =level challenges and totally soloing lower level challenges... I asked him to retrain expertise, focus, and another feat I can't remember the name of and he got PISSED... I did get him to calm down when I pointed out in the last fight our rogue did a victory dance when he called 121 damge... with an action point a daily and and encounter power, when he (the ranger got pissed the next round when his action point and encounter + atwill "only" did 132 damage...2) our last 3.5 game we all agreed was going to be all out power plays... I showed up with an uber wizard build, another player had a psion built for super charms, a third player had a cleric decked out to be a super healer, and the fouth player was a fighter/rogue with 2 short swords... The psion died encounter 1 to our first SoD and brought in a druid... me and the druid took turns ending encounters... when that game ended the fighter/rogue pointed out he hadn't rolled an attack roll in 4 sessions... and still may not work...  lets see, the rogue is quick and stealthy, but the wizard has spells that can do that... the fighter can be strong and durable but the cleric can heal and make himself large size...what do you do when you CAN'T play to both the less powerful character AND not have the more powerful character step iin? I hope that was a joke</blockquote>

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