Ahnehnois
First Post
It's also only sharing if the people who aren't in the spotlight willingly participate. This could happen for any number of reasons, some mechanical, some not. It could be that a character's abilities are useless in a given fight or banned by some external authority, but it also could be that some social interaction only involves one character and not the others, or any number of things.It's only "spotlight sharing" if your DM shines the spotlight on the activities your character is good at.
Given that almost all D&D parties consist of more than two characters, it stands to reason that the typical D&D player can expect to be actively engaged only a minority of the time. Learning to share the spotlight is inherent to this hobby.
I certainly don't. In fact, I don't have time to worry about things like balance. I just run the game and let it play out, without thinking too much about things like that. Some variation between characters is inherent to the game, but large enough variations to merit special attention, let alone active intervention, are rare enough that I don't see the point in devoting time to preventing them.To me, balance enables easier adventure design for the DM. Not all of us have time for tailor-made adventures