D&D has a bit of a identity crisis. It's a lot of things to a lot of people. For the mainstream, it's a way for a group of friends to group roleplay. You don't

D&D has a bit of a identity crisis. It's a lot of things to a lot of people. For the mainstream, it's a way for a group of friends to group roleplay. You don't really want someone to be left behind because of a bad build. If someone's boyfriend stops playing because it's too hard, eventually the couple drops off, which leads to more people abandoning the game. It's still board game-ish and not a full roleplaying system. Something like FATE is more suited to RP, but you have to actually write characters in depth. There's more emergrnt stories, but that's too much effort for people who just want to kick orcs and roll dice. The character builds metagaming has branched into Pathfinder and roguelikes, where you get a tighter loop of whether your wizard build can kill liches.