I have heard enough from people who say that 4E railroads characters into set paths, I find just the opposite is true. You take just about any character concept and try to build a 4E and a 3.5 character (including pathfinder) and I have found that 4E does a much better job. Here is my real life case in point; I have a player who is in my 4E campaign and in a pathfinder campaign, he enjoys both campaigns for the role-playing and the people, so I would say we have controlled for those variables;-) Now, he had a concept for a halfling fighter that used a shield offensively, as much as a short sword in combat (he is a classics major and that is how Romans fought). In pathfinder it was a really forced and illogical character because the system didn’t really allow it, he had to be almost 20th level before it really worked at all. Balance this with a 4E fighter who gets a shield bash type attack or variation at almost every level, and even at 1st level he had a feel for that kind of fighting, and by eleventh level there is even a paragon path for shield fighting. I will allow that a power gamer would choose a dwarf over a halfling, but you can still generate a viable character, and halflings even have some neat abilities vs. larger foes (which is pretty much everybody!) which make it a very fun character to play.

As a DM, sometimes you have to groom the player’s skills a little bit. It’s a little manipulative sometimes but it actually helps both types enjoy *more* of the game.

If you have a mixed group…I also recommend really defining what kind of DM *you* are…if you don’t enjoy powergamers in your campaign…you should run your game the way you choose. We can only try to please people so much. If it is against your nature as a DM, then you shouldn’t have to run that type of game. I mean thise solely if a powergamer is disruptive.(I.E. picking fights for no reason…)

We can’t get together as often as we’d like, we try to meet twice a month. This necessarily limits some game depth because people just can’t keep track of minute details and plot twists between breaks of as much as four weeks and, of course, Real Life.

What we have evolved into is a campaign that revolves around Obsidian Portal and Role-Playing all campaign events except combat, which must be done FtF. My power gamers don’t contribute heavily to the between on-line stuff, and my role-players love it, and when we meet the dice fly and everyone has a great combat time because everyone has there basic gaming needs satisfied.

This may not work for everyone, but we have been gaming as a group for over ten years and it works for us.