I don’t understand how this can be true. Clearly, you’ve got to make a choice at some point. You could move that “effectiveness” slider toward combat, or toward non-combat, but you can’t have it both ways, given that you have a limited number of points.
Well, one way it can be true is if there isn’t just a single slider. There could be multiple sliders. (In D&D, for instance, there’s the Skills “slider”, and the Feats “slider”, and the class “slider”, and the spell selection “slider”, and a number of others.) Not every slider trades off between combat and something else. Of those that do, not every one of those trades off at the same exchange rate.
For another thing, “non-combat” is not a monolithic thing (I somewhat regret using the term myself). Neither is combat, of course, but it’s closer to being monolithic; non-combat is just literally “everything that isn’t combat”. Social interactions are non-combat. Travel is non-combat. Information-gathering is non-combat. Exploration is non-combat. Trap detection/disabling is non-combat. And so forth.
I would understand if you said something like, “a 10% loss in combat efficiency is acceptable, given a 50% gain in non-combat efficiency”; is that what you’re saying ?
I don’t think that’s exactly what I was saying, but I would assent to a statement like that one (if not necessarily that specific statement).
That depends entirely on how you perceive the tradeoffs. Is a 10% drop in diplomatic efficiency worth a 50% gain in combat efficiency to you ?
Ok, let me try to concretize.
Consider some hypothetical D&D player, call him Bob, who is quite competent at character-building and knows the game system very well. Bob sets out to build a character who is well-nigh godlike in the diplomatic sphere; this character is to be so good at social skills that he could solve the Arab-Israeli conflict forever with naught but smile and a wink.
In pursuit of this goal, Bob pulls out all the stops, making use of every class feature, skill, feat, spell, in short, every last character-building resource he has, to make the character good at Diplomacy and such things. And he succeeds. Unfortunately...
He has nothing left with which to build in any combat effectiveness. Understandable. And any attempt to add combat effectiveness would subtract some diplomatic effectiveness, because every last ounce of character-building stuff has been used up in the social-prowess optimization.
My contention is that in almost all cases, the player who builds the suave diplomat, but turns out to be useless in combat, is not like Bob. He hasn’t scoured the game system for every ounce of optimization power. He hasn’t used up all available character-building resources in the most efficient possible way. Rather, he’s just gone ahead and picked some social-interaction-boosting skills/feats/whatever, not given much consideration to combat ability (or tried, but poorly and incompetently), and called it a day.
Unlike Bob, who would have to sacrifice some power in his character’s chosen domain for combat effectiveness, the average “I’m going to play a suave diplomat” player could sacrifice nothing, and be much more effective in combat, by just being better at building characters. He just has to recognize which of the options he’s picked are “worse than worthless” — and usually, there are quite a few.
Even in those cases where a tradeoff legitimately needs to be made, it’s generally small. It’s not as large as 10%; it’s often smaller. And the gains are often larger than 50%. If you’re making a 5% sacrifice in one domain for a 100% gain in another, calling this a tradeoff may be technically correct (which we all know is the best kind of correct), but it’s misleading. If both domains in question are useful, then for the purposes of maximizing your overall effectiveness, such a “trade-off” is a no-brainer.
Well, one way it can be true is if there isn’t just a single slider. There could be multiple sliders. (In D&D, for instance, there’s the Skills “slider”, and the Feats “slider”, and the class “slider”, and the spell selection “slider”, and a number of others.) Not every slider trades off between combat and something else. Of those that do, not every one of those trades off at the same exchange rate.
For another thing, “non-combat” is not a monolithic thing (I somewhat regret using the term myself). Neither is combat, of course, but it’s closer to being monolithic; non-combat is just literally “everything that isn’t combat”. Social interactions are non-combat. Travel is non-combat. Information-gathering is non-combat. Exploration is non-combat. Trap detection/disabling is non-combat. And so forth.
I don’t think that’s exactly what I was saying, but I would assent to a statement like that one (if not necessarily that specific statement).
Ok, let me try to concretize.
Consider some hypothetical D&D player, call him Bob, who is quite competent at character-building and knows the game system very well. Bob sets out to build a character who is well-nigh godlike in the diplomatic sphere; this character is to be so good at social skills that he could solve the Arab-Israeli conflict forever with naught but smile and a wink.
In pursuit of this goal, Bob pulls out all the stops, making use of every class feature, skill, feat, spell, in short, every last character-building resource he has, to make the character good at Diplomacy and such things. And he succeeds. Unfortunately...
He has nothing left with which to build in any combat effectiveness. Understandable. And any attempt to add combat effectiveness would subtract some diplomatic effectiveness, because every last ounce of character-building stuff has been used up in the social-prowess optimization.
My contention is that in almost all cases, the player who builds the suave diplomat, but turns out to be useless in combat, is not like Bob. He hasn’t scoured the game system for every ounce of optimization power. He hasn’t used up all available character-building resources in the most efficient possible way. Rather, he’s just gone ahead and picked some social-interaction-boosting skills/feats/whatever, not given much consideration to combat ability (or tried, but poorly and incompetently), and called it a day.
Unlike Bob, who would have to sacrifice some power in his character’s chosen domain for combat effectiveness, the average “I’m going to play a suave diplomat” player could sacrifice nothing, and be much more effective in combat, by just being better at building characters. He just has to recognize which of the options he’s picked are “worse than worthless” — and usually, there are quite a few.
Even in those cases where a tradeoff legitimately needs to be made, it’s generally small. It’s not as large as 10%; it’s often smaller. And the gains are often larger than 50%. If you’re making a 5% sacrifice in one domain for a 100% gain in another, calling this a tradeoff may be technically correct (which we all know is the best kind of correct), but it’s misleading. If both domains in question are useful, then for the purposes of maximizing your overall effectiveness, such a “trade-off” is a no-brainer.