Trap 3
Everything has to be awesome.
Borderlands illustrates this absolutely perfectly for me. For those who are not familiar with it, it includes a weapon drop system that is randomized based on the power and type of creature that you kill, as well as the area in which you kill it. This leads to a phenomenon that most people who play the game are familiar with. You end up collecting terrible weapons that you wouldn't use even at 10 levels lower dropping from enemies at a frequent rate, weapons that you used to use at an uncommon rate, and then a new weapon to use every couple levels, or what seems like 15 bajillion hours later. People hated this (at least, people I knew), because, well, you just killed a boss, and he dropped some crap weapon that you can't use, they wanted something interesting dropping every time. While that makes sense from a player's standpoint, it's a horrible idea from a developer's standpoint. Those crap weapons need to exist to make the good weapons actually be good. If you constantly got better weapons (or even good weapons) you would end up with vastly overpowered weapons halfway through the game, and it would just not be fun. Not only that, but the choice would be hard, and people don't like that. And finally, it would make all of the guns seem the same (at least guns of a certain type). Does that last one sound familiar?
The reason so many guns were worthless was a mathematical certainty. If you have a good gun, then you have three options on any weapon drop: a better gun, the same gun, or a weaker gun. If there's a finite limit to power (which there is), then you will eventually run out of better guns, and every gun will be as good or worse. It's just a matter of how fast that happens. The slower you go, the more bad guns you'll experience on the way to the best, the faster you go the more time you'll spend with the best (making encounters too easy if you get better guns faster than you need them). And there's always room for complaint here because of it, since the balance is a subjective thing.
That same principle applies to D&D, though for a slightly different reason. In D&D, you have so many options that the likelihood of it not being a good option increases with each new system you add. Heck, each new tiny little ability (skill use, feat, etc.). It's a matter of complexity, it's so complex that it's absolutely impossible for any one person to look at every reaction and say "yup, that's going to affect this in this precise way". You can whine and such about how the core game is poorly balanced, but knowing what they knew then, it was balanced. Knowing what they know now, it's not. That's why ToB came out. And the classes like Beguiler, Warmage, Dread Necromancer, Binder, Incarnum, etc. The later you go into a system's development, the more reasonable the abilities become (note the balance and design on early supplements and core vs later supplements). And it's still really hard, because there's still combinations that they don't think of checking for.
So not every character has to be awesome. It’s okay to be okay. Sure, the game has a I-WIN mentality, but if you fit in with the group, then it’s okay to be average. And if you want to be the best, be the best, but don’t force everyone else to be the best right along with you. Every player is different and if you want to get people to improve, focus on talking about it in a friendly way, “Hey, ya know, if we work out your buffs ahead of time, we can really improve our chances of survival.” That’s a good way to put it. Ordering the Wizard to set aside certain slots for buffs, that you “need” because the combo is perfect with your X, will only make people want to strangle you.
How to make a character be worthy of lore, but at the same time not break the plot?
Jokes aside, it only works if everyone have similar source of power.
