Quote Originally Posted by Crake View Post
I kinda feel like you're deliberately missing the point. Character concepts aren't people. When you have four players around the table, and you throw a challenge at the players, and one of the players says "wow, this isn't the challenge I wanted to do", that's the player excluding themselves, not the challenge excluding them. However, when you throw a challenge at the players and two of the players say "wow, there's literally no way I can contribute to this challenge" that's the challenge excluding the players. You're dancing around and mincing words, talking about excluding concepts, but at the end of the day, while low magic challenges may exclude the ability to face a high magic challenge, high magic challenges exclude players from participating, something that a lower magic challenge does not do.
I have to kinda diagree with you here, because challenges in general are party solvable ( or should be ), but not every character can solve every challenge

even if it was a no magic world, there are some challenges that have "this is obviously directed at player X" regardless of the existence/solvability of it.

The simplest example is trapsmithing, "only" rogues can do it.

party needs to overcome a physically demanding challenge, example "defeat 1vs1 barehanded against the tribe champion to be allowed passage in their lands" -> the strongest/most martial character of the party is the one that will attempt it.

these "not for the wizard" challenges are just as excluding as a challenge that would require a magic solution (the magical batteries of the portal needs to be powered)

I find it very unrealistic that every challenge a DM prepares for the party needs to be politically correct and be somehow solvable by every player of the table. Different players will have the spotlight in different encounters.

it should be a matter of table etiquette that the magic dude don't upstage the martial dude on a martial-themed challenge by summoning a beatstick