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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3431578" data-attributes="member: 4937">That's almost always the case in any argument, so I'd say that is a safe bet.No, it wasn't.  Please reread the initial post again.  Do you see the word 'specialization' anywhere in that post?  In fact, the original poster wants to make so clear what it is that he's talking about that he writes 'over specialization' as a single word.  So, if you are just talking about specialization in general, then I'm afraid you've carried the conversation onto a slight tangent.Classes do force a certain degree of specialization on to a player, but in practice they tend to do the opposite compared to any other system that we would compare them to.  Classes force a certain degree of breadth to a character which in practice you never see except from pure role players in other sorts of game systems.  For example, in a point system, a wizard concept would never 'waste' as many points on base attack bonus as a wizard in D&D 'wastes'.  While in theory you can create characters of greater breadth with point buy than classes, in practice this almost never happens except in games were the focus is so much on roleplaying that conflict of any sort never even comes up.  By far, the most specialized characters I've ever seen were created in WW's Story Teller system and Amber diceless roleplaying.I disagree.  I disagree that this is by definition, and I disagree that this is true in practice.  By definition, a skill-based system also allows a greater oppurtunity for specialization than a class based system.  And by your own admission, "And of course while many people choose not to take those options for RP purposes, and more power to them, those characters will never be as effective at the gamist aspects of D&D as those who do even a modicum of "powergaming.""  It likewise follows that those characters in point buy systems which do not take the oppurtunity to over specialize will never be as effective at the gamist conflicts in those systems as those who do not do do even a modicum of specializes.  And hense, in practice, your 'jack of all trades, master of none' is almost never seen except by newbies that envision thier character as 'master of all trades' or pure role players - for which the system itself is almost irrelevant.Again, we have the same point of disagreement.  Classes are not specializations, pure and simple, in that no class is so specialized that they only do one thing.  Even the Wizard is 'forced' to pay for what is largely useless base attack bonus advancement.  Classes aren't specializations.  They are niches, but the goal of keeping archetypes separate and distinct is only part of the goals of having a class system.  Two of the other goals is keeping those archetypes balanced and broad enough to be, for lack of a better word, interesting.Again, this thread is not about specialization so much as 'overspecialization'.  Even if I were to concede that 'classes were specializations pure and simple', and I don't, it would have no bearing over whether or not I could argue that PrC's are examples of over specialization.  From either view it is pretty straight forward to advance the argument that classes are as specialized as they need to be without the need for a new sort of even more specialized class.</blockquote>

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