There are things that are worthless-- that provide no value. There are also things that are worse than worthless-- things that provide negative value. I have found that people sometimes confuse the latter for the former, which can carry potentially dire consequences.
One simple example of this is in fencing. I once fenced with an opponent who put a bit of an unnecessary twirl on his blade when recovering from each parry. After our bout, one of the spectators pointed out that there wasn't any point to the twirls and that my opponent would improve by simply not doing them anymore. My opponent claimed that, even if the twirls were unnecessary, at worst they were merely an aesthetic preference that was useless but not actually harmful.
However, the observer explained that any unnecessary movement is harmful in fencing, because it spends time and energy that could be put to better use-- even if that use is just recovering a split second faster! [1]
During our bout, I indeed scored at least one touch because my opponent's twirling recovery was slower than a less flashy standard movement. That touch could well be the difference between victory and defeat; in a real sword fight, it could be the difference between life and death.
This isn't, of course, to say that everything unnecessary is damaging. There are many things that we can simply be indifferent towards. If I am about to go and fence a bout, the color of the shirt that I wear under my jacket is of no concern to me-- but if I had spent significant time before the bout debating over what shirt to wear instead of training, it would become a damaging detail rather than a meaningless one.
In other words, the real damage is dealt when something is not only unnecessary, but consumes resources that could instead be used for productive tasks. We see this relatively easily when it comes to matters of money, but when it comes to wastes of time and effort, many fail to make the inductive leap.
[1] Miyamoto Musashi agrees:
The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him. You must thoroughly research this.
D&D. (3.5 for the games I usually run, Pathfinder as a secondary diversion, which I also refer to as "D&D"; it's close enough for the moniker to be accurate.)
Sure, that's all true. What I meant was not that there are no tradeoffs to make if you want your character to be effective at both combat and things that aren't combat. Rather, as I said, there is no tradeoff, in the sense that you do not have make a single choice between being effective in combat and being effective at other things. You can do both. You can do both very effectively, in fact, more than effectively enough to succeed at nearly every challenge you face, and negligibly different in overall effectiveness in either domain from your party mates. You might be a little less effective at combat than the purely-combat-focused character, and a little less effective at (that sort of) non-combat stuff than the purely-non-combat-focused character, but just a little.
Of course, the more you try to do, the less effective you get. But the fact is, there is so much low-hanging fruit in both domains (especially the non-combat domain) that you can sacrifice very little combat effectiveness for large gains in other domains. In fact, you might sacrifice nothing in practice; a lot of what you lose is potential combat effectiveness, which may or may not ever translate into actual combat effectiveness.
Anyway, that's getting a little far afield. The point is, if someone builds a character who is just really bad at combat, and justifies this by saying "but I'm a suave diplomat!", my question will be: how hard did you try to make this character combat-effective? Did you even try? Most of the time, it will be the case that a skilled player will be able to build a character that is at least as diplomatically effective, and still good in combat!
Because the even larger question (the one that started this subthread, three posts up) is whether someone should deliberately build a suave, diplomatic character who is bad at combat. My answer is no, they should not, unless being bad at combat is a specific goal. Otherwise, it's grossly unnecessary. Even if you're suave, diplomatic, and... acceptably competent in combat, that's still better. And it's so easy to make that improvement. So, so easy. There's no reason not to — again, unless you are specifically and deliberately make a combat-ineffective character. (In which case, as I said before, by all means go forth and play how you like.)
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... (read more)