My experiences with optimization and roleplaying

[WarKitty]

This may be unusual on these boards, but, in my experience, most of the problems in my games have been caused by the players not optimizing.

Case 1: The fighter, exhibit A and B

Two different players, two different, games, same problem. There's that one fighter that just isn't well enough built to keep up. In the first game, I'm not entirely sure what happened. The fighter simply didn't put much into his strength and didn't really work on improving his weapon. Result? He simply couldn't hit anything. This is a sword-and-board fighter in a game with a pair of TWF'ers, both of whom could hit reliably.

The second one was more a problem with AC. She just didn't have much AC or many hit points. The concept was supposed to be a mobile fighter, but she didn't take the feats that would have let her make use of her movement. Result? The fighter got KO'd in almost every battle, wasting time and resources from the other PC's on keeping her alive. Again, in this case, there were several other melee-focused party members, as well as this time having buffs available to her.

In both cases, the unoptimized member simply became a drain on the rest of the party, rather than a useful contributing member.

Case 2: The unoptimized party

To be fair, this one was not entirely their fault. Our more skilled and more magical members dropped out, leaving me to DM for a party that had few abilities beyond "I hit it for x damage." In this case, the difficulty was finding appropriate challenges for the party. Any full casting class quickly overwhelmed them, along with creatures with casting or significant SLA's. Same went for monsters that were incorporeal or difficult to detect. Anything that couldn't be killed by running up to it and hitting it resulted in the party either fleeing or dieing.

The odd thing is, usually the non-optimized characters are also the ones that aren't invested in roleplay. They're the ones that use their one trick and then complain when it doesn't work. They're the ones that sit back playing on their DS when it's not their turn, because they "don't have anything to do." And the thing is, they're often right - they have characters that have one ability and are useless when that one ability doesn't work.

[Jude_H]

Is the underlying assumption that it's a problem for players to lose fights?
Why do you think that?

I've found mechanical inferiority a good motivator for players to look beyond the rote options on their character sheets to play in a way where they aren't inherently inferior. That style of play is much less scripted, less research/paperwork-intensive, and more rewarding, IMO.

[WarKitty]

Is the underlying assumption that it's a problem for players to lose fights?
Why do you think that?

I've found mechanical inferiority a good motivator for players to look beyond the rote options on their character sheets to play in a way where they aren't inherently inferior. That style of play is much less scripted, less research/paperwork-intensive, and more rewarding, IMO.

I have no problem with them losing fights. The underlying problem is that they often don't have any options to win them - at some point, there is no amount of roleplaying that will get past the fact that you're dealing with a couple of guys who's only real in-world ability is to swing a sword really hard. Even with tactics...they don't have the resources to them to sneak up on something or surprise it somehow. Even if they do, they don't have any way to damage it short of running back to town every single time to get supplies that are exactly tailored to the encounter.

In my experience it's been the higher-optimized characters that are more interesting and better roleplayed, because they have the tools to do so. With a sorcerer and a druid, we managed to come up with and execute an elaborate plan that involved posing as a bird-trainer and faking death. With fighters? We'd never had the skills or the tools to get a plan like that off the ground.

[Sarone]

I have no problem with them losing fights. The underlying problem is that they often don't have any options to win them - at some point, there is no amount of roleplaying that will get past the fact that you're dealing with a couple of guys who's only real in-world ability is to swing a sword really hard. Even with tactics...they don't have the resources to them to sneak up on something or surprise it somehow. Even if they do, they don't have any way to damage it short of running back to town every single time to get supplies that are exactly tailored to the encounter.

In my experience it's been the higher-optimized characters that are more interesting and better roleplayed, because they have the tools to do so. With a sorcerer and a druid, we managed to come up with and execute an elaborate plan that involved posing as a bird-trainer and faking death. With fighters? We'd never had the skills or the tools to get a plan like that off the ground.


It doesn't sound it's just the optimizers. What you have is probably a bunch players who want to just go forth and be WoWists, killing the enemies and grabbing their loot. It also sounds like none of them are a spellcaster (or a low selection spellcaster).

What you could do is find out who has a taste for trying a melee spellcaster (there's quite a few). It won't be a catch all for you, and you still will run into problems, but at least the problems can be more mitigated to "hey, we are a hack and slash team of players, but let's about diversifying abit skill/abilities wise." At least that my view on it.

[WarKitty]

It doesn't sound it's just the optimizers. What you have is probably a bunch players who want to just go forth and be WoWists, killing the enemies and grabbing their loot. It also sounds like none of them are a spellcaster (or a low selection spellcaster).

What you could do is find out who has a taste for trying a melee spellcaster (there's quite a few). It won't be a catch all for you, and you still will run into problems, but at least the problems can be more mitigated to "hey, we are a hack and slash team of players, but let's about diversifying abit skill/abilities wise." At least that my view on it.

Except I've seen these same players with different classes be quite wonderful roleplayers. I've even seen them do wonderfully in situations that are almost entirely roleplaying and have little to do with the dice. It's just that, well, I had a dragon for a BBEG, and...they just died. Even monsters below their CR, they just die. They even complain that they don't get interesting monsters, but...every time I put them up against something that's not melee-focused, they die since they don't have the spellcasting support anymore.

[NichG]

My feeling is that this is more of a symptom of the type of player than the optimization level. To a good extent, there are a lot of clever things you can do that are completely non-mechanical (or only weakly mechanical). On the other hand, its no doubt that being a wizard with a handful of spells gives you that many more tools to work with.

But I'd say that someone playing a wizard who just takes a handful of random spells might have more versatility than someone who puts all their resources into being a Mailman-type wizard, so they're not quite parallel concepts.

This makes me want to run a 'commoners with a bag of random magical items' sort of campaign. Figure out how to rescue the princess from the Fortress of Evil as Lv1 commoners using a Portable Hole, a swan boat token, a decanter of endless water, a vial of sovereign glue, Nystul's Pigments, an Immovable Rod, and an Apparatus of Kwalish. (And yes, I realize the optimal answer is to sell the Apparatus of Kwalish and ransom her off, or hire a Lv20 wizard, or something along the lines)

[TroubleBrewing]

at some point, there is no amount of roleplaying that will get past the fact that you're dealing with a couple of guys who's only real in-world ability is to swing a sword really hard.

Ehhhh.... "swing a sword really hard"?

I'd say 'hard-ish'. 'Somewhat hard.' 'A bit on the hard side'.

They're not Barbarians, after all. :smalltongue:

[WarKitty]

Put it this way: the original BBEG was a dragon. Put a level 15 ranger, rogue, and fighter against a CR, oh, 12 dragon. What are they going to do?

That's not the part that bothers me though. That's as much that half our team dropped out of the game. What bothers me is, when I brought the first situation to the board, the main response I got was "tell the entire rest of the team to stop being such munchkins so the one player can keep up and not feel useless."

[Sarone]

Put it this way: the original BBEG was a dragon. Put a level 15 ranger, rogue, and fighter against a CR, oh, 12 dragon. What are they going to do?



Ouch, no need to say anymore. This sounds like a bad bar joke.

But yeah, this really sucks. Unless they really are a bunch of munchkins, this is not the case of players not thinking. Or rather, not thinking outside the box. Especially against a dragon.

Hmm. A ranger, a rogue, and a fighter, all 12th level. No major divine support, no arcane support, but they can stab the something to hell and back, though. Maybe talk their way out of a situation depending on the rogue/ranger. But really, they lack some serious support, and they can't just multiclass now since that will extremely weaken them.

Hmm. Best answer I can think is have a GM wizard/cleric help them out. Otherwise they'll want to get some magic items that can give them some additional abilities.

By the way, what are the races, and do any of them follow the Alternate Rules from the APG?

[TroubleBrewing]

Well, my response would have been something more along the lines of "tell the Fighter and Rogue that there is this wonderful thing called ToB, and it's everything you want to be!"

As far as the Ranger goes, tell him to quit being useless. He's in a solid class, he just needs to pick better stuff than what he had.

[WarKitty]

Ouch, no need to say anymore. This sounds like a bad bar joke.

But yeah, this really sucks. Unless they really are a bunch of munchkins, this is not the case of players not thinking. Or rather, not thinking outside the box. Especially against a dragon.

Hmm. A ranger, a rogue, and a fighter, all 12th level. No major divine support, no arcane support, but they can stab the something to hell and back, though. Maybe talk their way out of a situation depending on the rogue/ranger. But really, they lack some serious support, and they can't just multiclass now since that will extremely weaken them.

Hmm. Best answer I can think is have a GM wizard/cleric help them out. Otherwise they'll want to get some magic items that can give them some additional abilities.

By the way, what are the races, and do any of them follow the Alternate Rules from the APG?

Well, the campaign's past dead now due to outside issues, so I wouldn't worry about that.

[Sarone]

True, but still.

It just sounds like the guys might have been overconfident. Or they didn't realize what they were facing.

Either way, in this case it's not optimizing that has gotten them. It was not taking stock of what they have and what was missing.

[WarKitty]

True, but still.

It just sounds like the guys might have been overconfident. Or they didn't realize what they were facing.

Either way, in this case it's not optimizing that has gotten them. It was not taking stock of what they have and what was missing.

Still...my point was that as a DM they were kind of a headache. Even putting them on a normal dungeon crawl, they'd end up running from pretty much everything. They were an unoptimized party, however they got there. And it was an impediment to their roleplaying, because they no longer had the resources available to use creatively.

[Tengu_temp]

The odd thing is, usually the non-optimized characters are also the ones that aren't invested in roleplay. They're the ones that use their one trick and then complain when it doesn't work. They're the ones that sit back playing on their DS when it's not their turn, because they "don't have anything to do." And the thing is, they're often right - they have characters that have one ability and are useless when that one ability doesn't work.

I wouldn't say "usually", because I've seen plenty of exceptions (from either side), but it is the case quite often, in my experience. A player who is too inexperienced and/or apathetic to invest in his character mechanically will also often not invest it from a roleplaying point of view either.

[Crow]

Sounds like a DM problem to me, especially scenario 2. Scenario 1 is a little different.

Complaining that the players' characters aren't optimized enough sounds like lazy DMing. Just tone down the encounters. It doesn't matter if the CR's end up *below* what they "should" be able to handle, as long as the game is (challenging and) fun for the players.

[WarKitty]

Sounds like a DM problem to me, especially scenario 2. Scenario 1 is a little different.

Complaining that the players' characters aren't optimized enough sounds like lazy DMing. Just tone down the encounters. It doesn't matter if the CR's end up *below* what they "should" be able to handle, as long as the game is (challenging and) fun for the players.

Except it wasn't fun for the players or the DM when I did that, because "toning it down" required taking out most of the strategic options that the game provides. The CR isn't the problem; the problem is that they couldn't handle encounters that didn't play directly to the strengths of the characters.

[ImperatorK]

You can't eat a cake and have still a cake.

[NichG]

Solution as a DM: alter the magical loot to fill up gaps in their abilities. Heck, make it plotty in the sense of 'to fight the dragon you will need this magical armor (that lets you fly)'.

As far as what to do as a Lv15 Fighter, Ranger, and Rogue in that situation? Kill the dragon in its sleep by stoppering up its cave and setting up a fire so it asphyxiates? Maybe bargain with it or manipulate it? Join it and betray it later at an inconvenient time? I'd push to figure out a non-combat solution if I were a voice in that group, rather than going for the straight-up fight.

[balistafreak]

I'd push to figure out a non-combat solution if I were a voice in that group, rather than going for the straight-up fight.

You forget this is D&D. The stereotypical method, in fact even expected, is to "slay the dragon", it's in our mythology for a reason.

So you want to do this. The game's mythos encourages it.

Problem is, you can't, not without being rofl-stomped because the dragon has several defining abilities that a Ranger, Fighter, and Rogue will be hardpressed to overcome should the dragon be played with any degree of intelligence - breath-weapon kiting while flying is enough to force the Fighter and Rogue to rethink their main methods.

Also, high-level dragons can cast spells, with all this implies in 3.5.

So our party can't do something deeply engraved in the game's mythos involving a dragon. This is a feel-bad moment, and while it is certainly plausible and even more entertaining and role-play worthy to find "a creative solution"... sometimes you just want to live the dream, slay the dragon, save the damsel, loot the hoard, and ride home against the sunset.


Sounds like a DM problem to me, especially scenario 2. Scenario 1 is a little different.

Complaining that the players' characters aren't optimized enough sounds like lazy DMing. Just tone down the encounters. It doesn't matter if the CR's end up *below* what they "should" be able to handle, as long as the game is (challenging and) fun for the players.

The problem is that some challenges are binary in nature. How do you tone down an encounter involving a Basilisk for a party of fighters? It's a classic mythological enemy. If When a Basilisk petrifies your arse, you're going to need spells to handle that, and when half the people in your fighter-only party are stoned - well, maybe that explains why they have a party of fighters? :smallamused:

How do you tone down an encounter involving a dragon for a part of fighters? It's a classic mythological enemy. It zooms around and breath-weapon kites you - heck, that's in their mythology. They can shoot arrows or maybe even heavier artillery at it but that's probably not an effective method for them. (Barring a crack team of archers, would admittedly be pretty badass.)

Sure, the DM and fighters can agree that "these guys are too tough", but now you don't get to fight any "cool and unusual" monsters, and you feel dumb... like the party of fighters you are.

[Starbuck_II]

You can't eat a cake and have still a cake.

As Dylan Hunt said, that is the Nu of the sitution: some people want to eat cake not have yet. Some want to have it not eat it.
What you should strive for is to have cake and eat it.

Was the dragon flying? A Bola can trip it causing it to fall.
It would take knowledge to buy one though. But it helps if you are facing flying creatures.

[NichG]

You forget this is D&D. The stereotypical method, in fact even expected, is to "slay the dragon", it's in our mythology for a reason.

So you want to do this. The game's mythos encourages it.

Problem is, you can't, not without being rofl-stomped because the dragon has several defining abilities that a Ranger, Fighter, and Rogue will be hardpressed to overcome should the dragon be played with any degree of intelligence - breath-weapon kiting while flying is enough to force the Fighter and Rogue to rethink their main methods.


A party of fighters is like D&D's equivalent of the hobbits compared to Aragon, Bard, etc. If you're playing Bilbo, you should sneak past or trick Smaug, not try to kill him with a dagger. The issue here is more about being aware of your level of power compared to the world, and dealing with things appropriate to that level of power.

Or to put it another way, if you want the Fighter, Rogue, Ranger party to be killing dragons rather than tricking them or sneaking past them, use a lower CR dragon. That group could kill a CR 6 dragon with even minimal cleverness. With more cleverness, the CR can go up: fighting it in a cave where it can't fly very high, or using a net or some other way to restrict its flight. Fight it somewhere that its poor maneuverability prevents it from just staying airborne and burning the party. With the ranger, maybe even a bit higher. A CR 6 dragon is an 'even' encounter for them, so thats the sort that they should be slaying and walking off into the sunset.

Otherwise, you're doing the equivalent of asking a group of farmboy heroes fresh from the countryside to immediately go and slay Pit Fiends and the like. It just doesn't look like you're doing that because the CR system doesn't take into account party composition and player skill.

[PersonMan]

A party of fighters is like D&D's equivalent of the hobbits compared to Aragon, Bard, etc. If you're playing Bilbo, you should sneak past or trick Smaug, not try to kill him with a dagger. The issue here is more about being aware of your level of power compared to the world, and dealing with things appropriate to that level of power.

Yes, that's great, apart from the whole 'can't sneak or trick well' problem. If 99% of what you can do is 'hit it with [weapon]', then trying to sneak(in any way that isn't just 'take the long way around the mountains to avoid the dragon'), you have a very low modifier(which means the dragon will quite possibly find/see you) and you have little to no ability to trick the dragon-mechanically, few or no ranks in Bluff and a probably-not-stellar Charisma.

Being very sneaky is being powerful. Being cunning is being powerful. They're different kinds of power than "'port in, blow it to pieces", but they're still power. If your only power is limited ability to hack things apart, well...then you don't have the power to sneak or trick, which places you in a bad position against enemies that need to be sneaked past or tricked.

[WarKitty]

I think the fighter tried to use an intimidation check...

[Snails]

This may be unusual on these boards, but, in my experience, most of the problems in my games have been caused by the players not optimizing.

Reading between the lines, my guess is your players are not very creative and failing to "take the bull by the horns". The optimization level of their respective PCs is just a symptom of this deeper issue.

The original (previous) problem was the differences in approach of the players in the group. That problem has been solved, in a fashion that is not necessarily unreasonable.

Now you have a bunch of players with so very similar a take on the game, that they are all stuck in the same rut.

It is not a question of optimization whether to take something other than a melee specialist. A party consisting of a crappy wizard, a crappy rogue, and a crappy bard could yield boatloads of fun, if only the players themselves were to get a little excited and creative.

It really does not matter whether the 15th level party needs to run away from a CR 13 or CR 11 or CR 9 dragon. Are they exploring the abilities they have when faced with unusual problems so that everyone has some fun?

Even feats chosen at random is not a barrier to fun, if the players are engaged and creative.

[ScionoftheVoid]

Or to put it another way, if you want the Fighter, Rogue, Ranger party to be killing dragons rather than tricking them or sneaking past them, use a lower CR dragon. That group could kill a CR 6 dragon with even minimal cleverness. With more cleverness, the CR can go up: fighting it in a cave where it can't fly very high, or using a net or some other way to restrict its flight. Fight it somewhere that its poor maneuverability prevents it from just staying airborne and burning the party. With the ranger, maybe even a bit higher. A CR 6 dragon is an 'even' encounter for them, so thats the sort that they should be slaying and walking off into the sunset.

Okay, but the problem occurs when the party, based on its class abilities rather than wealth, can only take down dragons of around CR 6. Up to maybe 10, say. Those are horse-sized, at most. That's not particularly impressive. Regardless of level, since none of those classes grant flight except maybe Ranger through its Animal Companion - which is still easily taken out because it's frail and dragons have breath weapons as their signature ability. And even the least intelligent dragon is probably smart enough to not lair in a place which puts it at a disadvantage, so you're probably not managing up to CR 10. To match favourably against any kind of impressive dragon requires wealth put into the things the base classes lack.

Which means all that stands between you being toast is your magic items. Which means you can't go against any dragon with third level spells because you'll be dispelled and wrecked by the dragon (because by that point all of them are smart enough to reasonably dispel you). So you're now limited to reasonably facing elephant-sized dragons. Who don't have any Wands of Dispel in their hoard. And you'd better not get the age category wrong with your lack of Knowledge: Arcane in-class because otherwise you could very easily be stomped. And a dragon could make a pretty penny by luring adventurers to it by disguising itself as a weaker species or age (provided it was intelligent enough, with all the magic and general power that comes with that intelligence).

Meanwhile, other, more competent, adventurers are outclassing you and shoving you out of the dragon hunting business. And every other business, why should they pay for a full-scale attack to drive off a goblin war camp when they can hire a single Wizard to clear the thing with a single Cloudkill spell and maybe one or two more to get rid of anything that survives (which has been weakened by the Con damage)? Why pay to have people risk their lives clearing out an Owlbear nest when a casting or two of Shape Stone could probably deal with the problem cheaper? More optimised parties could secure a niche by dealing with it before a more powerful group passes by. How is this party healing itself? Rest (unusable, it removes the only advantage - you'll get it done faster)? The Ranger's casting (much the same problem)? Excessive amounts of wands (affordable for most parties. Most parties don't have "hit it with a stick" as their only notable combat ability, so they'll be getting hit often enough that wands become very expensive - possibly worth the wait for the next group)?

Basically, if you're that unoptimised the only real reason to adventure is DM fiat. I won't say that wouldn't work, but it would require having fun only being able to deal with straight-up beatdown encounters. This group of players wasn't having fun with that - more optimisation would have helped significantly.

That said, I can't remember why I felt compelled to write this. Hopefully someone will be able to get something from it anyway.

[Gardener]

Even feats chosen at random is not a barrier to fun, if the players are engaged and creative.

That's a big "if". I'm not saying you can't have fun with absolutely any way of playing D&D, but with the far more limited range of abilities presented by "all core melee" or "choose feats at random" or whatever, it demands more engagement with a less interesting range of options, and a far greater degree of creativity for less obvious and impressive results - bolas can trip the dragon, buying you maybe one round if you can beat a dragon on a Strength check. Fly buys a lot of rounds of closing in to melee, and frees the players' creativity to work on making the fight go better, rather than simply struggling to make it go at all.

Put simply, limited, weak and/or unvaried options are a restriction on creativity and, to an extent, fun. Not an insurmountable one, by any means, but a real and present one.

Also, did the dragon have a cave lair? They're usually disguised and trapped, but rogues are good with traps and doors, and the ceiling prevents or minimises fly-kiting. Yeah, it means tunnels can be flooded with breath weapon, but it gives you an actual fight rather than slow slaughter. Also, they're not too keen to abandon their hoard, so they'll stay and fight for at least a while.

[WarKitty]

Reading between the lines, my guess is your players are not very creative and failing to "take the bull by the horns". The optimization level of their respective PCs is just a symptom of this deeper issue.

The original (previous) problem was the differences in approach of the players in the group. That problem has been solved, in a fashion that is not necessarily unreasonable.

Now you have a bunch of players with so very similar a take on the game, that they are all stuck in the same rut.

It is not a question of optimization whether to take something other than a melee specialist. A party consisting of a crappy wizard, a crappy rogue, and a crappy bard could yield boatloads of fun, if only the players themselves were to get a little excited and creative.

It really does not matter whether the 15th level party needs to run away from a CR 13 or CR 11 or CR 9 dragon. Are they exploring the abilities they have when faced with unusual problems so that everyone has some fun?

Even feats chosen at random is not a barrier to fun, if the players are engaged and creative.

This group actually includes 2 very good roleplayers and one who's so-so. (One of the roleplayers is mechanically new - and still has the best character that's left. The other is the exception to the rule and has a bad case of ingrained stormwind fallacy.) I'm just finding that they don't have the tools to be creative with. It's like putting a character in a jail cell with two pieces of firewood, a ball of string, and a handful of copper coins - might be hard to contrive an escape plan no matter how creative you are.

[Snails]

I may have been a bit off base, but they are all stuck in the same rut nonetheless. They may be fine roleplayers, but they are still, in some sense, neglecting their PCs.

It is not necessarily a problem in D&D to show up to a gun fight with a knife. It is a problem for everyone in the party to be carrying a knife and no one has a gun.

Past level 5 or 6, D&D can be very unforgiving of poorly rounded parties. Some kinds of adventures become very, very hard to complete. A smallish party exacerbates the problem greatly.

I played a PC in a party that went to level 12 with the paladin as the primary healer for most of the trip -- there were issues but we went in with our eyes wide open, so we were mentally prepared to figure out how to work around our shortcomings. Halfway into level 12, we decided it would be hopeless to complete the adventure laid before us without more healing power, so we had to figure something out (e.g. recruit an NPC cleric by some means).

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Solution 1: Break WBL
Your party might not have a magic user per se, but their over-leveled equipment is its own magic user! Lots of great weapon abilities (Dispelling) and wondrous items (Phoenix Cloak) can really even the playing field.

Solution 2: Use "interesting" monsters at much, much lower CR
Some people think it's a problem that creatures like Shadows are still a major problem for an unoptimized level 12 Fighter/Rogue/Ranger party. I see it as an opportunity to keep using the wealth of interesting lower-level creatures as the group goes on. Maybe throw in some orbs of bodily restoration as loot later on.

Solution 3: The grinder
Kill them until they learn to make better characters. Inform them that this is going to be a deadly world, and only well-prepared, well-rounded groups survive. Punish them when they inevitably deviate. This is my least favorite solution; while it's potentially the most effective in the long run, it can also cause a coup, for in the long run, all DMs are dead.

[NichG]

Yes, that's great, apart from the whole 'can't sneak or trick well' problem. If 99% of what you can do is 'hit it with [weapon]', then trying to sneak(in any way that isn't just 'take the long way around the mountains to avoid the dragon'), you have a very low modifier(which means the dragon will quite possibly find/see you) and you have little to no ability to trick the dragon-mechanically, few or no ranks in Bluff and a probably-not-stellar Charisma.

The party in question had a rogue and ranger, both of whom get Hide and Move Silently as class skills, and the rogue has Bluff. That meant that 2/3 of its members were stealthy, which is quite a bit more than the usual situation. :smallsmile:



Okay, but the problem occurs when the party, based on its class abilities rather than wealth, can only take down dragons of around CR 6. Up to maybe 10, say. Those are horse-sized, at most. That's not particularly impressive. Regardless of level, since none of those classes grant flight except maybe Ranger through its Animal Companion - which is still easily taken out because it's frail and dragons have breath weapons as their signature ability. And even the least intelligent dragon is probably smart enough to not lair in a place which puts it at a disadvantage, so you're probably not managing up to CR 10. To match favourably against any kind of impressive dragon requires wealth put into the things the base classes lack.


So fight the impressive dragons when you're level 25. It just moves the bar on what level means, so long as the entire party is unoptimized. You just have to drop the preconception that 'Lv8+ = Wuxia, Lv13+ = Supers, Lv 17+=Gods'. As another poster commented, it means that certain things don't become moot as quickly or even never become moot, which can make for an interesting experience if you make use of it.



Meanwhile, other, more competent, adventurers are outclassing you and shoving you out of the dragon hunting business.


This assumes a degree of accessibility of features in the world that may not be present (and in some sense shouldn't be present if you're DMing for a group like this). If, in general, you're trying to make the party be awesome, its bad form to upstage them by filling the world with NPCs who are better optimized. You might ask "but why wouldn't the NPCs optimize?", and the answer is as simple as positing that your build is not actually a conscious choice and/or that few if any people are even remotely aware of the full set of possibilities out there. I mean, look at famous NPCs for settings like Faerun - they're horribly optimized.



Basically, if you're that unoptimised the only real reason to adventure is DM fiat. I won't say that wouldn't work, but it would require having fun only being able to deal with straight-up beatdown encounters. This group of players wasn't having fun with that - more optimisation would have helped significantly.


DM Fiat exists always, in the construction of the setting, the selection of the plot, etc. The main thing is to make sure the world is internally consistent and that its not just randomly 'and powerful loot falls on you!'.

[WarKitty]

I think the main issue that no one's catching there? Is that the entire group showed up expecting to be heroes. Not farm boys, not unlikely everyday people, heroes. That's the entire reason behind having them play at level 12 instead of 2.

Granted, this may be more a tier problem than an optimization problem. But the point is - without some sort of optimization, your supposed heroes are turning out to be extremely ineffective.

And I do expect the CR system to work at least in some manner, because it's there for the DM guide. As a DM, I only have so many hours a week to prepare for the game. I also have a group that likes to go off the rails and find random areas to explore, so I have to be able to grab a suitable encounter fairly quickly. There is only so much judging and modifying I can do on the fly.

[NichG]

And I do expect the CR system to work at least in some manner, because it's there for the DM guide. As a DM, I only have so many hours a week to prepare for the game. I also have a group that likes to go off the rails and find random areas to explore, so I have to be able to grab a suitable encounter fairly quickly. There is only so much judging and modifying I can do on the fly.

Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is, the CR system is utterly borked. It doesn't work for unoptimized groups. It doesn't work for super-optimized groups. It doesn't work for anything in between. Dragons are very strong for their CR. Ogres are very strong for their CR. Also 'That Damned Crab'. Correspondingly, various other things are extremely weak for their CR (though we tend not to remember them given that they end up being road bumps at best).

[Crow]

Warkitty; What is it you want us to say? Your players are idiots?

My last long-running game had a Ninja, Monk, Fighter, Rogue, and Battle Sorcerer, and the only one remotely optimized at all was the Battle Sorcerer. (They went from levels 1 to 25/26 btw...except the monk) As the DM, I built my campaign and chose opponents in such a way as to challenge the players, but not overwhelm them. For just about every CR, there is enough variability to select enemies that a given group can handle.

For instance, in the MM alone;

CR8 - Mindflayer/Treant
CR12 - Basilisk, Abyssal Greater/Purple Worm
CR16 - Golem, Greater Stone/Mature Adult Blue Dragon
CR 20 - Balor/Tarrasque

The variance is even greater the more sources you introduce, not to mention npc's with class levels. As DM, it's your job to craft fun, challenging encounters for your group. Part of that is knowing your group, and planning accordingly.

The exception to this is if you are running a full-out sandbox campaign. Then whatever the PC's stumble on is pretty much their fault :)

[Delwugor]

Your second situation was a good game which went downhill because of external situations, it stinks but it does happen ... way too often. I've found the best is to start a new game with new characters.

I do think the first situation is a GMing problem. You had a certain criteria that you expected the players to meet, but you allowed these "un-optimized" characters. A GM has the right to disallow any class or character that does not meet the underlying expectations. Or even better to help the players build character which meet game requirements.

[WarKitty]

The first one was pretty much a sandbox game. I'm not saying that there was anything wrong with the players; I'm just using it as an example of how a lower-optimized group can limit the game even when the players are good.

The first one...one was a classic case of "only there because significant other plays." Irritating, but there was only so much I could do. The second I was not the DM for.