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Kaulesh
2010-12-09, 11:35 AM
Basically the topic. Does anyone else unintentionally optimize to the point of absurdity?

As a few examples, my first real game was a Call of Cthulhu one-shot. I played a journalist. Language, driving, lockpicking, some social skills, and some first aid/medicine seemed important, so I dumped the majority of my points into those. True, I was useless in a fight, but I was nearly unstoppable elsewhere. Little did I know at the time, but that's exactly where you should be for CoC.

Now, I'm a decker in Shadowrun 4e. As my GM said we didn't have to worry about licenses and ratings as long as the item wasn't highly restricted or forbidden, I thought "Why not get all of my programs and my comm's stats at 6?" The GM is struggling to find numbers appropriate for my skill. After telling me to roll to crack a PAN and doing it handily with a pool of 16 dice on the first try, he's beginning to get the picture. I suppose cracking a PAN is a bad example as most firewalls are below a 6 rating. As for other skills, I'm not bad with a gun either. Looking back, my character is actually built on slightly less points than the others.

I don't optimize intentionally. Anyone know of a way to tone down my character creation when I don't realize I'm doing it? My thought process goes something like "I should be good at what I do, so I should dump most of my resources into that." It's not an issue of backstory - I give them equipment and skills that they would plausibly have with the backstory they have as well, not just stuff that makes them good at what they do.

The next game will be high fantasy, high magic. I'm going to try my hand at running it, so I need to fix this before then. Do I just need to give notable enemies crap stats then go wild from there? Face it, this is a premade campaign world and I like making characters. It's inevitable that I am going to reroll some of the Fighters into Warblades or something.

Tiki Snakes
2010-12-09, 11:43 AM
Generalise more, perhaps? In both the above examples, you've taken a few things and made sure you were really good at them. Perhaps just spread it around a bit more, round the characters out a bit further than you normally would?

Master_Rahl22
2010-12-09, 11:50 AM
Another option is to pull your punches, so to speak. I don't know anything about Shadowrun, but maybe you could use less dice than 16? If it were d20, don't add all of your bonuses for your +Yes skill check, leave a few off. If you find you're always outshining the other players or forcing the GM to rework things just because you're too good at them, then yeah you should probably scale it back.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-12-09, 11:52 AM
The next game will be high fantasy, high magic. I'm going to try my hand at running it, so I need to fix this before then. Do I just need to give notable enemies crap stats then go wild from there? Face it, this is a premade campaign world and I like making characters. It's inevitable that I am going to reroll some of the Fighters into Warblades or something.
As a Player, you're doing what you're supposed to be doing - and your SR GM was stupid to remove restrictions on rarity.

As a DM you need to "optimize" at the level of your Players. If you're playing D&D3.5, it's important to figure out how good your Players are at optimization. If they're very good and you want to make it a high power game then make sure there is at least one Tier I in the party and then go wild.

Otherwise, you just need to limit your "character building" to the BBEG and maybe some lieutenants - and not use any class about Tier III.

So... tell us about your Players.

MightyTim
2010-12-09, 12:01 PM
I think your problem is that upon character creation, you're asking the question "Which skills/abilities make sense for this class to have?" when the question you should be asking is "Which skills/abilities make sense for my character?"

The important distinction here is that your first concern is making your character a good [class], not making them a realistic person. While people will tend to fall into the roles that they will work best at, that doesn't mean that every character should be perfectly suited to their class.

So start with your character's personality and take into account any quirks they may have that could prevent them from being quite as effective. This could be as simple as making an unusual class/rase combination, or a phobia of the undead, or a barbarian who has unusually good social skills.

Kaulesh
2010-12-09, 12:13 PM
There have been lots of posts while I was writing this. I'm tackling them mostly in order.

*facepalm*
How did that not occur to me? I'm writing it down as my overthinking the problem. Thanks for hitting me over the head with the obvious stick. No sarcasm here, I'm being completely serious.

Anyway, I'm also writing the Shadowrun stuff down as a quirk of the system. Our troll has an average amount of work in it - high body, high strength, a good set of armor. The player gets to toss 26 or so dice at any roll to soak damage, more than my van gets to throw. Such is the nature of Shadowrun. This kind of answers one of the other posts as well. I'm not exactly outshining as what I originally saw as optimization was just a quirk with the system. Everyone is tossing fistfulls of d6 at their problems.


As for my players, one is a BSF who likes to hit things over the head with a stick until they stop moving. One, if he comes back, plays the typical mage - smart, frail, and more than slightly insane. The current GM, I don't know. I've never seen him in game. He's probably pretty good at this stuff. My significant other will play whatever I help her build. She likes the idea of magic and stuff like that, so probably a spontaneous caster of some sort, maybe a psionic character so she doesn't have to worry about readying spells or how many spells per level she has.Two fair optimizers, one decent, and one who does his own thing. I'll shoot for third tier, optimizing the lower and pessimizing the upper.


I'm not exactly asking myself what skills make sense for my class. I do have a concept that I build to. For the decker, that would be inserting an exaggerated me into the game. I'm good at what I do as a computer guy and I'm bad at most other things, so I did the same with him. He's slowly rounding out as a real person when I gain karma - I haven't actually spent any karma in any of his specialized areas. Those have mostly been in things like driving, perception, and social skills.

CubeB
2010-12-09, 01:57 PM
As a general rule, if you put all of your effort toward one thing, you'll generally be really good at it.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. - Bruce Lee

Also, don't be afraid to handicap yourself. I know someone who played a Feral Barbarian in D&D (With all the cheese that entailed), but insisted on using a spear unless they really needed a pounce.

ericgrau
2010-12-09, 02:52 PM
In a d20 system you need to check the modifiers of the PCs vs the DC and make sure they need to roll a 5-10 against AC and saves. 5 for a high stat + high BAB / high save, 10 otherwise, and 15+ only if they really suck at it and shouldn't be doing it. Ditto for the monsters. 2 attempts instead of 1 is typically equal to a +5 on a single attempt. All that's just a ballpark but if monsters are auto-hitting the PCs on all but a 1 and PCs need to roll a 16 to hit or save, you know something is wrong. Don't forget to include any typical buffs too.

Likewise do checks for unstoppable forces / immovable walls or - more likely - "keyholes": things that can only be stopped by 1 thing. You can be certain the PCs will try something else entirely. Don't say "It isn't my fault you didn't prepare X". It's your fault the monster was so narrow that there's only 1 X instead of many.