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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 9188090" data-attributes="member: 7030563">This depends mostly on the individual table and to a lesser extent on the size and make up of the party.  A larger party can afford to have more specialized characters.You can also afford to specialize a lot more if one of the three pillars is emphasized more than others and if your DM selects hand-picked magic items or affords methods of making magic items. It is much more difficult (and less optimal) to specialize if magic item drops are random with no time craft your own.As an example play a combat-focused game with 8 PCs where the players just "magically" stumble on their preferred magic item and a GWM-PAM-Sentinel build is pretty awesome.  Play a game with 3 PCs and random magic that is more focused on the social pillar and that build just flat sucks.  By about level 10 or so it even sucks in combat since the chances of randomly finding a magic Glaive or Halberd are very low.  Same with the famed XBE-Sharpshooter builds that perform so well in the whiteroom.Same thing goes with the Skill Expert or actor feats.  These are awesome feats for just about any class if the social part of the game is emphasized more than the others, but can be weak if it isn't.This depends entirely on the individual players and their personalities and desires.   One player sitting out of 80% of the game can be very good or even ideal on certain tables with certain players and usually when this happens it has nothing to do with mechanics.  It is almost always either story or personality driven.Sometimes it is not good and it is really bad, but when that happens it is still usually either personality or story driven.For example Willie the Warlock's parton comes to him at the begining of a session and tells him he needs to come to the shadowfell for some sort of mission.  Frank the Fighter and Rick the Rogue are always up for adventure and are going with him like good buddies do.  Pete the Paladin says he doesn't traffic with undead so he wishes them the best but he is staying at the inn.Pete's player is going to miss 80% of the game in this session.  Depending on the social contract between the DM and the players this can be good or it can be bad.  With another player Pete might just handwave his dislike of undead and go to the Shadowfell with the party anyway even though the player would say Pete wouldn't do that.  In all of these circumstances though the guy playing Willie is almost certainly going to get a larger share of the gameplay than the other characters at the table.</blockquote>

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