NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5820452" data-attributes="member: 54877">It's already been mentioned a couple of times in these discussions and circled around more than that, but I'll state it more baldly: A big part of the disconnect/fuss over the line between balance and "being useful" on one hand, versus character differences and weaknesses on the other hand--is ultimately caused by over-specialization in class mechanics, rather than balance or lack thereof. That is, there is nothing wrong with the idea that Bob the Socially Awkward Fighter is built so that he really can't contribute in social settings--even with intimidate--provided that is satisfactory to Bob's player (and potentially the group, depending on how the table views minimal contribution). There is also equally nothing wrong with the idea of Sally the Social Butterfly Fighter (or in many editions, "Fighter"), with the same caveats.  And likewise, there should be plenty of room in between those extremes. There is, however, something terribly wrong with this gross distortion of the "fatal flaw" in mythic characterization, being systematically enforced by class limits, as if every Fighter was not only Achilles or Odysseus, but instead of having the "fatal flaw" was a walking basket case of broadly and deeply felt flaws. It's as if we said that Robin Hood stealing from the rich and giving to the poor meant that he had to ignore all laws, all the time while simultaneously performing every kind of good works imaginable to make up for it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I realize that at the table you need to exaggerate the effect a bit to make it felt, much like the actors on the stage need to be more expansive compared to film, but there are still limits! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> You can, of course, get around this by not having much in the way of mechanics for most things outside of combat and a bit of key exploration, and "roleplay it". That will work for some people. But if there is to be mechanics for wider exploration and social areas, then "totally inept" should be something that is relatively rare. And of course part of this problem in 3E and later is that the nature of the roll and the modifiers thus far has made narrow uber specialization the way to be somewhat useful, whereas in many cases, a more interesting and toned down mix would better fit the intended characterization. TL;DR: If you design mechanics for all three pillars such that hyper-specialization is rewarded and expected, you cannot reconcile the preferences of those who want some broad competency with those that want more weaknesses.</blockquote>

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