Inspired a bit by the thread, Ridiculous Things You Saw Done With Point-buy,

In principle, ultra-specialist characters can potentially be pretty interesting, having to work around their limitations and leverage their strengths.

Certainly in fiction, there are fun plots around, for example, a super-soldier who can't manage civilian life at all, or an analytic genius who is forced to live by his wits, or a prodigy who is barely on the edge of functional, or a smooth-talker who gets into situations that he can't talk his way out of.

However, in RPGs, such characters tend to be disparaged as broken and/or munchkin. So, what allows ultra-specialist characters to work well? What problems are there with them, and how do you solve those problems?

Personally, I don't tend to find them a problem in games. It does mean that as a GM, I have to think a little more deliberately about throwing in stuff within their specialty and outside their specialty. It doesn't have to be exact, though.

Quote from: jhkim;815439However, in RPGs, such characters tend to be disparaged as broken and/or munchkin. So, what allows ultra-specialist characters to work well?

Three things.

1. Players who are willing to accept and even enjoy the bitter with the sweet. Too often players create an ultra-specialist as some sort of I WIN button that want to always be able to push and they get upset when their specialist is challenged outside of their area of expertise.

2. GMs who are able to challenge the ultras-specialist outside of their area of expertise while also allowing enough chances for the specialization to be useful so that the player doesn't feel that their PC's expertise is pointless.

3. Other players who are able to enjoy the competence of someone else's PC without getting envious or feeling superfluous because some other PC is a lot better than their PC in the specialty.

While all three types of people can cause problems, #1 is the most common problem.

The end result of ultra-specialisation taken to its logical conclusion is 'spotlight time' - the decker decks, the Face talks and the street samurai sams, and in between waiting for your turn in the action you may as well go get the pizza.

Also, I don't think it should be expected to make the GM adapt their world /adventure design to compensate for your min/maxing. If you built a brain-in-a-jar with gargantuan combat skills, it shouldn't be the GM's problem that your PCs jar was fatally broken by goblins in the first combat encounter.
 
Now for combat characters, the flip side of this is that the GM adapting their adventure to suit the combat character is what breaks the game for everyone else. The GM beefs up the challenges, which consequently steamroll the other PCs which weren't combat-optimized.

Specialization only makes the leap to munchkinism when a game is one-dimensional. For example, a combat specialist in a game that is simply one combat after another. For most of those examples to work, socializing/diplomacy/politics must play a large (if not primary) role in the game to some extent.

Variations on this theme is a popular thread, especially concerning point-buy systems, which are perceived to be uniquely vulnerable to "Johnny One-Note" characters.  GMs or players feel (or are encouraged to feel) that it's possible to create single-skill characters who will dominate campaigns by their sheer awesomeness.

My experience is that the notion is twaddle.  I've have good success, over the years, at convincing newbies that becoming superhuman in one skill will leave them up the creek in every other aspect (even if I didn't place a ceiling on how good a startup character can be in any one skill).  But even so, I'll take an example I've seen in GURPS discussions, a character with Stealth-25.  

O noes!  How can this awesome stealth dude be stopped?  He can never be heard!  He can sneak up on anyone!  Surely he must be the God of Awesome in any campaign!

He surely can ... in any situation that can be solved solely by being stealthy.  What about negotiating with the baroness?  Oops.  Deciphering the ancient text?  Oops.  Fighting the line battle against the Forces of Ugly?  Oops.  Getting the ship through the storm intact?  Oh well.  Scaling the sheer wall in a rain storm?  Splat.  As BSJ says, he may as well be the one always told off to get the pizza.

The few players over the years who've ignored my advice about designing characters destined to be useless 90% of the time have found -- somewhat to their surprise and dismay -- that I really was right that they'd be useless 90% of the time, that their seven minutes a session of Being Awesome wasn't enough, and invariably switched out after a couple of runs.

We had a problem of One-Trick Ponies in Champions back in the day, but players rarely stuck with those characters - too limited.

Boring characters are boring.

Quote from: Spinachcat;815709We had a problem of One-Trick Ponies in Champions back in the day, but players rarely stuck with those characters - too limited.

Boring characters are boring.

Except that the majority of superheros ARE one trick ponies. (well usually 2 trick, but you know.)

It is what you DO with your one trick that matters.

Which is why I preferred MSH as in that you could spend karma to learn stunts with your powers and be creative with what you have and the environment.

Boring everything characters are boring.

My experiences have lead me to prefer systems that easily allow characters breadth.

Otherwise you can find yourself in power struggles over game focus at various levels. Even good people eager to cooperate to find a fun game, implicit issues of spotlight time and having fun can warp a game if people are hyperspecialized.


I now prefer characters who can always take part, just in different, odd ways reflecting their character.

Quote from: Will;815716I now prefer characters who can always take part, just in different, odd ways reflecting their character.

Tunnels and Trolls was like that. Effectively 2 and a half classes and the characters of the same class had no mechanical variance. Fun game for that very reason. Differentiation was through personality, appearance, and other nuances.

There's a certain kind of ultra-specialist character I don't mind at all: that's a character that is designed to focus on one special thing (say, an archer or pilot or scientist) and puts all their effort into being really great at that thing, and only mediocre on everything else.  But they are doing so for in-character in-setting reasons, their character, in the world is likewise trying to be the 'best possible' archer/pilot/scientist or whatever.  No problem there.

What I don't like, is people who go "meta" and try to manipulate the rules on things like feats or advantage/disadvantages especially, in a way that involves trying to manipulate rule details in ways that they were never actually intended, and that don't actually reflect the reality in the game world.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;815474The end result of ultra-specialisation taken to its logical conclusion is 'spotlight time' - the decker decks, the Face talks and the street samurai sams, and in between waiting for your turn in the action you may as well go get the pizza.

While there are some games like this, I've seen plenty of games where it has been fun to participate even if you are markedly less skilled than the top character. That is, if a fight breaks out, the tiny hobbits may still have an exciting time even though they aren't killing nearly as many orcs as the wizard or the elven archer. Conversely, some of my favorite social interactions in-game have been with characters who aren't very socially skilled. Often the sneaky character can't do everything himself, so he has to sneak other characters in with him - making them struggle to be sneaky while he runs interference for them.

I recall one of my favorite characters was a drunken boxing style martial artist. He was hellishly effective as a martial artist, but was a drunken liability in most other situations. It was plenty of fun playing up his drunken incompetence in non-combat situations, but he was worth the problems to have him to deal with fights.

Quote from: Omega;815714Except that the majority of superheros ARE one trick ponies. (well usually 2 trick, but you know.)

It is what you DO with your one trick that matters.

I'm not sure about the majority - but at least a significant number of them are - The Hulk, Professor X, and Shadowcat come to mind. And yeah, I find characters like these can be really fun to play and to play with.

Specialization can be a lot of fun, giving characters both more moments of triumph and greater hardships as well. Specialized characters even make more generalist characters stand out in comparison, as they get the experience of being frequently useful when those specialized characters aren't. We see the desire for specialized characters across numerous games and genres of games, from classes to splats and races and so on.

I think that specialization within a reasonable context for a well developed character is different from min-maxing. Min-maxing places power gaming at a premium, neglecting character development and theme in exchange for mechanical power. Min-Maxers also usually focus their specialization on those areas that they perceive will be the most useful while selecting weaknesses that they think will never arise in game.

I have used specialism as part of chargen before to allow a PC with weaker stats to remain useful to the party.
I figured it was a lot like rel life where universally competent people often don't dig too deeply into any one area.

There is a difference between specialization characters and one trick ponies. The former are preferable while the latter just become annoying in one form or another over time.

Quote from: jhkim;816150It was plenty of fun playing up his drunken incompetence in non-combat situations, but he was worth the problems to have him to deal with fights.

i think the focus here should be on "it was plenty of fun playing" and not on "he was worth the problems". the problems were part of the fun.

i prefer characters that can create "fun problems". specialised characters usually have that potential built in by being crap at a lot of stuff.