Legendary Actions and More of Talakeal's Gaming Horror Stories

[zinycor]

AD&D and 5E are fairly well designed class based systems, so its not surprising you aren't seeing any big discrepancies there, but Werewolf is can be pretty messy mechanically, its odd you haven't run across anything there. Heck, something as simple as making a character who uses guns instead of fighting in close combat can be a huge trap in that game.
.

Well WoD is a piece of **** of a game when it comes to rules. But never found any balancing problems while playing it.

In my experience bad characters come in a few types:

The overspecialized guy who is feels bored and useless when his specialization isn't relevant.
The overgeneralized guy who doesn't actually do anything better than the rest of the party and this feels bored and irrelevant as the specialists handle everything.
The glass cannon who puts all his point into offense but spends most of the fight hiding or unconscious because he can't actually take a hit.
The brick wall who puts all of his points into defense but has so little offense that he just gets ignored.
(...)
And of course there are people who, by accident or intentionally, find a broken ability or combination of abilities to exploit a flaw in the game.

None of those is a bad character at all, In fact quite the opposite, those are great characters that can't solve every problem or situation at a game but can be very important at others. I would argue that these are great characters that promote playing as a team.

The guy whose stats don't match up with their skills, for example a D&D mage who puts his highest score into strength or a fighter whose highest score is intelligence.

This is the only example of a bad character, since it comes from a misunderstanding of the rules of the game.

And yeah, you can just cover it up with RP, but most groups go into the game with a problem solving mindset, and most people are, in my experiance although I guess not yours, atleast a little bit comepetitive or envious of spotlight time, and this causes problems. I know, for example, that I have tried in several 5E groups to play a pure an academic abjurer with no direct damage spells, and I am fine with playing a character who spends a lot of time in the background, but it seems to really annoy both the other players and the DM that I spend most rounds in combat assisting another or going full defensive because I don't have any blasting cantrips.

I have played that sort of character to a great effect. I believe that, as it always is, the problem wasn't on the build of the character, but a player problem.