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Message: <blockquote data-quote="1of3" data-source="post: 6299178" data-attributes="member: 48555">OK. Let's get a few steps back. What is this about? Niche Protection. What is niche protection? Niche Protection is an indirect form of Spotlight Management. What is Spotlight Management? Spotlight Management is the idea that each character should shine once in a while and how we can make sure of that.There are several ways to manage spotlight. You can make NPCs, location and plot elements that are tied to a character's background or interests. You can hand out equipment earmarked for a character. Those are fairly direct methods.Niche Protection makes the following further assumptions: The PCs go adventuring. During adventuring certain tasks and problem wills arise. These situations can be split into certain types of standard problems. These types are called niches. A character is said to "have a niche", when he or she is qualified to solve that type of problem and expected to so in usual circumstances. When a problem arises that fits a characters niche, the character therefore has spotlight. Therefore niche protection is a form of spotlight management, but less direct then the methods above."Divine magic" is not a niche, because characters cannot overcome divine magic. Closed doors, invisible enemies, negative energy effects those are things you can overcome. And you can specialize in overcoming them. So the problem is not that niches have to presented in "plain English", "negative energy effects" certainly would not qualify.The niches you can specailize in are potentially indefinite. Whether they are useful in terms of securing spotlight, depends on the campaign. It doesn't matter if your character can do it unless there is the regular opportunity to say: "Oh, that again. Melissandra, they are all yours."The fact that a character is a cleric can, of course, be used to spotlight him. There might be an old temple, filled with the magic of the gods. But that is not niche protection, but a fairly direct form of spotlight management.</blockquote>

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