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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5904437" data-attributes="member: 6668292">He said "nobody is ever dead weight", not "everyone always contributes meaningfully to combat". Though in my experience, people usually contribute to both.Well, I'll disagree here. It depends on the 1st level character. He probably won't contribute much to combat (though he'll contribute a tiny amount, via flanking, another guy the bad guys have to account for, etc.), but he can certainly contribute to other things. Gathering food quickly, navigating, or dealing with animals/plants (like gathering herbs) if nobody has any survival skills. Knowledges about any number of topics (cities, nations, religion, undead, other planes, weather, and on and on). Social aspects (including leadership, negotiation, intimidation, lying, detecting the truth, etc.). Patching wounds, treating diseases, poisons, or infections, discovering what was used to kill a creature, removing status effects, lessening penalties (from fatigue, etc.), etc. Scouting ahead, keeping an eye out for things, or an extra guy on shift during the night. Crafting goods for the PCs, or making money for them on the side by selling it. And that's not talking about one more guy to lug around heavy stuff.I could easily add a hit die 1 NPC that would help my players out, and the game assumes that hit die 4 is "the average settled adult". They might find him in danger in some of the combats they jump into, but against local bandits and the like (hit die 3-5), the NPC could definitely contribute (if he's a warrior or magician).Now, can the NPC beat a PC in any area the PC has covered? Nope, not really at all. He'll get trounced. But, he can definitely make a difference, and he can definitely still get his time to "shine". So, yeah, I can pretty much say your "outright wrong" and "easily proven" statements are way, way too broad for me to accept at face value. I have absolutely no problem envisioning PCs of wildly variable levels getting a lot of screen time, as I've seen it (in 3.5, a level 8 PC getting a ton of screen time when the rest of the party was level 23).Yeah, you're more or less correct when it comes to combat. I just feel that there's a lot more to the game than combat. But, when it comes to D&D, I remember your view (unless it's changed since the "Is D&D About Combat" thread), so I expect our disagreement is somewhat fundamental, rather than superficial. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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