For the sake of being answerable, I will state a specific scenario that happened to me some months ago while I was DMing. I would like to note that broader answers, that give general advice that applies to more situations than the one stated, will be gratefully received.
My Style of DMing
I am a DM that usually goes by the idea that every character and player should have their individual moments in the spotlight in order to feel important. During a session, I will try to give my players an opportunity to use their skill, that every optimizing guide said sucked, but they wanted to try anyway. Sadly, encouraging 'individual spotlight moments' usually means there will also be times when their PCs are in the shadow. Nonetheless, I think that deliberately encouraging 'spotlight moments' is a fun way to play the game. That said, I am open to answers suggesting how to provide the party with a more shared spotlight.
The Scenario
So, I was running this homebrew campaign with a 4-PC party. They had their Skill Monkey Face Bard, who was there for role playing and social interactions (in-game). Every time I said "You see a city", he would smile and think about all the talking he would get to do with every NPC I'd throw at him. He would make me create a name for every damn hobo in the city because he would talk to every single one. I was fine with this.
And then there was our Barbarian. I don't remember his stats accurately, but it was probably something like 8 CHA, 8 INT, 16 STR, 16 CON. Every time I said "You see a group of apparently hostile creatures" he would thank God he was playing D&D instead of watching a movie with his GF.
Here is the problem: the Barbarian (the player, not the PC) would get extremely distracted during the social interactions. And the Bard would get bored at every combat, most of the time just saying "I shoot my crossbow" – even when I was calling for him because he was supposed to write down his loot. He hadn't even realise that the combat was over, lol.
The Player's POV
I tried to talk to them, and both gave me a similar answer: They felt like there was nothing they could do. I tried to explain that in every situation there is something they could do to help the party, even if it is slightly OoC, I wouldn't mind if they were having more fun like that. But, I feel like I failed miserably explaining this to them. The Barbarian would keep feeling useless everytime we would do a role-playing section and the Bard would feel useless everytime we would do dungeon crawling.
The Question
Honestly, I feel like it is my fault that they were feeling useless. Maybe I was putting too much importance on rolls during social interacions, so yeah, the Barbarian would feel frustrated failing every attempt to do something. Maybe, during combat, I didn't give the Bard ways to explore his social spells in a fighting style.
Anyway, the general question is as the title: "How can I help my players not to feel useless?". Suggested sub-questions that I believe would help me are:
- How do I avoid creating scenarios like this, where my players feel frustrated or useless?
- How do I (or can I?) make my players understand that their characters can't succeed in everything, but that shouldn't stop them from trying to help the party the best they can?
- What can I do, if my players already feel useless, to better fix things?
While similar to this question, it focuses on players that have different playstyles. In my case, the different preferences from the players actually came from the way they built their characters, and the feeling of being useless came when they were in a suboptimal situation for their characters. The same Barbarian played a Bard in another campaign and would happily go to cities. I obviously would not like (and my players probably wouldn't like this either), all the PCs to share the same strengths and then just to focus a campaign on that aspect of the game (eg. if everyone played charismatic social PCs and we only did social interaction and role-play).
Also related to this, but the system difference might make it hard to translate the answers (mainly, because I know nothing about the mentioned system). Specifically, I need a little more on the how, since I feel this is system-related.
Related to this and this question, but from the perspective of the DM, not a PC, and not limited to just combat, though combat is applicable.
Best Answer
Low stats do not mean low participation.
Just because a character does not have high numbers in a particular stat does not mean they cannot participate in any particular encounter. As someone who's played a 5e bard, the fact that you and your player think they're worthless in combat is baffling to me. Why are they only shooting a crossbow when they're arguably one of the most versatile casters in the game?
Likewise, just because your barbarian has low CHA and INT doesn't mean they can't interact with NPCs. I've seen (and played) characters who were obnoxious, dumb oafs that nevertheless manage to engage in entertaining social interactions. A low CHA does not mean that you're shy--it just means you might be bad at lying, for example.
Ultimately, a character is more than their character sheet--they (ideally) have personalities, motivations, and preferences beyond their specific stats. In fact, it's sometimes more fun to have characters that are really bad at things they like to do, like a talkative CHA 6 character.
Explain this to your players.
Your players need to understand that they do not need to be slotted into specific gameplay niches. Most social interactions, for instance, don't actually require rolling checks--your barbarian can still talk to bartenders and ask for information. Likewise, almost every class has something useful to do in combat! Because you say that your players are willing to play both combat and RP, you should emphasize to your players that their gameplay is not fully determined by their stats. Instead of asking themselves, "Who has the best stats to engage in this interaction?" they should be asking, "What would my character be doing in this situation?"
This problem is also partially due to the players' self-imposed limitations. For example, if the bard doesn't have damaging spells, then they're throwing that part of their class away. How would you react to a fighter that refused to use a weapon? Hence, you need your players to accept that they should build characters that are useful in your campaign. When I played a bard, the only damaging spells I really used were Vicious Mockery, Dissonant Whispers, and Fireball--the rest were utility spells, and it worked well.
Create situations where character abilities are relevant.
Once you have buy-in from your players, you should build scenarios and encounters where players' abilities are relevant.
For social encounters, you can build in checks that are not CHA based. PHB 175 describes this variant:
Therefore, your barbarian might be able to roll a Strength(intimidation) check to intimidate an NPC with a feat of strength, or a Constitution(performance) check to win a drinking game.
On the combat side, you can introduce intelligent enemies that will negotiate with the PCs during a combat. I've played and run a number of encounters that were half combat and half conversation--the skill monkey could play tricks that cause goblins to run away in fear, for example.
You'll have to be careful not to overuse these "crossover" tricks, lest you devalue the other side, but they're a useful tool to allow talkers to participate in combat and combatants to participate in talking.