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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6852609" data-attributes="member: 2067">5e in general requires less specialization to get the job done, enabling and rewarding characters who are a bit more general. Basic humans don't specialize, but that doesn't make them underpowered, necessarily - everyone's gotta make a dump stat roll on occasion, and Humans won't suck as bad as others there.One of the ways 5e gets away with this is by doing things like making proficiency less of a potent boost - proficiency isn't required to do adequately in most things. The tension that I'm personally not happy with there is between "I can be this awesome character in my head!" or "I can be maximally mechanically effective."In 5e generally, there's not much tension there. The awesome character in your head will be decently mechanically effective whatever it is. You don't have to max out your abilities and min/max to the gills to simply keep pace with the game. If you DO min/max, you'll be great at certain mechanical elements, but lousy at others, and a diverse challenge set will lure that out, but it's clearly opt-in. In general, "I suck at Persuasion checks" isn't the same as "I can't do well on Persuasion checks," because even if the PC has an 8 Cha and no proficiency, that's just a -10% penalty, at the worst. They can still do well. A 15+ is a good result at any level. Making the gulf between the proficient and nonproficient wider reintroduces that tension. Now, "I suck at picking locks" is closer to "I can't do well at picking locks," because with an 8 Dex and no proficiency, you just can't do well. No matter how high you roll, there is a ceiling that you will never be able to pass through. Now, you have to weigh being the character you want to be vs. being the character that will be mechanically sufficient, because it's possible to make a character that isn't mechanically sufficient. There are "trap" options ("Why did I take proficiency in bagpipes when I could've taken something useful?"), there are FOO strategies (like the Skilled feat). Character-building becomes a sort of meta-game about the campaign (what's the DM like? What challenges does he use? Does he prefer Perception checks or Investigation checks? Does he let dice achieve big results when RPing or can I afford to dump that and just be really personally persuasive and that'll be fine?). None of these will be especially new to folks who played 3e or 4e (though 4e significantly mitigated this in the realm of skills specifically), and it's not like that ruins games, but they're an aspect of those systems that I personally didn't like much, so I'm happy to run a game that allows for someone who wants to play the "I hit someone in the face" character to still contribute significantly to a scenario where everyone needs to roll Persuasion checks or something.</blockquote>

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