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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6300917" data-attributes="member: 2067">Nope, I'm just thinking about what I would want to play with. I don't want to have something on my character sheet I'm not going to use in play, and so if it's not something I'm going to use in each session (regardless of what the DM throws at me), it's not something I can count on to use in play, so it's just taking up space that could be better used. I also don't want to have to remember abilities that only come up once every few real-world months (if that), or bother trying to figure out how to use them. I want game elements I can play with, not things that just sit there on my sheet. As DM, I also don't want to give my players these albatross abilities that they just have to hang around their necks. I want a narrow list of effective decision points for my characters to make in actual play, which means irrelevant abilities just gum that process up as they sort through them looking for the thing that applies. Again, big gulf between "not immediately useful" and "use at least once per session." Also, the myopic specialization thing is kind of a different problem. Making sure PC's have abilities that are broad enough to come into play at least 1/session doesn't necessarily yield hyper-specialization -- it actually fights it, in that PC's won't try to pump up their traps abilities without being aware that traps are a sometimes thing. This is still more about hyper-specialization than about frequency of ability use. You'll get no argument from me that hyper-specialization is generally something you want to avoid, but that's not the same problem as having pointless abilities just hanging out gettin' ignored week after week. Traps are a sometimes thing, so they shouldn't be something a character is able to define themselves around. Traps fit in the broader category of "stuff that can catch a party unaware," and THAT's something with a lot more frequency, and something that it makes genre sense for a rogue to be good at picking up on before it kills them. That's like giving a character who wants Super Tiger Repellant a suit of metal armor instead. It protects you from tigers, but it doesn't  JUST do that. It's a broader ability you'll use more often. Again, this is more about the binary quality than about the frequency of use. Yeah, of course, having a narrow pool of things that work is problematic. But that isn't an issue that a bunch of occasional-use abilities solves. Have an ability that is hammers and screwdrivers and tiger repellant, and suddenly you've got something you don't have to wait for the perfect moment to use!It'd be power creep, to be sure. And possibly redundant with qualities like Evasion. It's really just an argument for a rogue re-design. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Short of THAT, sure, swapping out one ability you'll rarely use for another ability you'll rarely use is balanced, but the OP seemed like the issue they were trying to SOLVE was the rare use. That swap isn't going to satisfy that goal. If you want something to be used more often than a rogue's trap stuff, you'll need to make it BETTER than the rogue's trap stuff (that is, broader).</blockquote>

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