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<blockquote data-quote="Shayuri" data-source="post: 7650325" data-attributes="member: 4936">Well, in fairness, I'm not even talking about what I'd consider to be 'overspecializing.' But D&amp;D, as a system, encourages characters to be built with a kind of 'theme' that guides the overall design. If you pick feats and powers at random, or according to purely flavor-driven criteria, you will arrive at a character who is noticibly behind the curve in terms of combat performance.And in a game as mathematically precise as D&amp;D, that's not a small consideration.Don't get me wrong...I really like the idea of of throwing in special encounters like this, to keep players on their toes, encourage and reward creativity and roleplay, and break up the humdrum routine that encounters can start to fall into after awhile. In particular I think it's useful to avoid the kind of, &quot;Oh look, another Balor, and it's been buffed up a bit. Hah,&quot; sort of blase' reaction that players AND characters develop at high levels. SOME of that is fine. It's part of the reward for getting there. But it's good to have tools to disrupt that, and this system looks like one such tool.I just squirm when I think of it being used more generically, or frequently. It undermines a lot of expectations that players use, and NEED to use, to design effective characters. That's why it has the effect it has. But as a player, I'd be pretty annoyed if it showed up a lot.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Shayuri, post: 7650325, member: 4936"] Well, in fairness, I'm not even talking about what I'd consider to be 'overspecializing.' But D&D, as a system, encourages characters to be built with a kind of 'theme' that guides the overall design. If you pick feats and powers at random, or according to purely flavor-driven criteria, you will arrive at a character who is noticibly behind the curve in terms of combat performance. And in a game as mathematically precise as D&D, that's not a small consideration. Don't get me wrong...I really like the idea of of throwing in special encounters like this, to keep players on their toes, encourage and reward creativity and roleplay, and break up the humdrum routine that encounters can start to fall into after awhile. In particular I think it's useful to avoid the kind of, "Oh look, another Balor, and it's been buffed up a bit. Hah," sort of blase' reaction that players AND characters develop at high levels. SOME of that is fine. It's part of the reward for getting there. But it's good to have tools to disrupt that, and this system looks like one such tool. I just squirm when I think of it being used more generically, or frequently. It undermines a lot of expectations that players use, and NEED to use, to design effective characters. That's why it has the effect it has. But as a player, I'd be pretty annoyed if it showed up a lot. [/QUOTE]

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