Quote Originally Posted by zinycor View Post
First: if a single character is able to take down an encounter by himself either:
-It was an encounter that was fit for his particular skill set (like a group of monsters being killed by a well placed fireball). In such case is perfectly ok.
- The GM needs to provide different kinds of challenges, that are less fit for this character, or simply up the difficulty.
- The game is utterly flawed and you should either change it or leave it.
- the character is only good at combat and other kind of challenges would allow the other characters to shine.

Second: regarding the infiltration, the party would be underestimating the abilities of a Jack of all trades.

One thing that is important to remember in regards to the spotlight is that the spotlight needs to be shared across the campaign as a whole, is perfectly normal for some characters to shine more in combat,others to shine at infiltration, others at solving supernatural problems, etc. The important is that across the campaign everyone got a chance to shine.
Maybe so, but I don't see how that backs up your claim that overspecialized or overgeneralized characters are great because they promote teammwork.


I also don't see how they are underestimating the Jack of all trades, if he has no (or almost no) abilities that are unique or numbers that are higher than his teammates, why would they ever let him do anything? His only time to shine is when you need a backup because one of his teammates is incapacitated.


Also, I am getting kind of a disconnect between how you view shstems and how you view GMs. You say that any system that allows wildly divergent characters is flawed, but at the same time any DM who tries and restrict players for party cohesion is also flawed. In my mind p the opposite should probably be true.
Say, for example, you were making a Marvel comics RPG. I would think the System would be flawed if it couldnt create characters as imbalanced as, say Thor and Daredevil, but at the same time I would think there would be every expectation that GM would place different limitations on characters in a Defenders game than they would an Avengers game or an X-men game.