Thou shall Not optimize!

[silverwolfer]

Who here has a favored moment, when your god-in-a-can , was going whoop ass on the boss, and suddenly got changed into a chicken by a wish spell?

[Deimess]

I've found the funniest (maybe not best, but definitely funniest) way to deal with optimized characters is a mirror of opposition.

Edit: That being said, optimization is not a "bad" thing. But it is hilarious watching players fight their own creations.

[Medic!]

In a gestalt tabletop game I had a venerable jermlaine druid 4/monk 4 (we called him Yoda, even did the voice!) in a party going after a bunch of "powerful evil casters etc" to obtain pieces of a sword of demon-slaying in need of reforging.

We got into our first dungeon, a necromancer's lair. The entire surrounding area for several miles was dead and poisonous/blighted from his evil stain and magic.

When we confronted him he attacked and I responded by shapechanging (the phb2 variant) into my Predator Form (Housecat!) and attacking the evil turd. Every time he tried to cast, I had a stunning fist readied and waiting, and the first two times, he failed his save.

Things were lookin good!

Then he made his save, and casted Phantasmal Killer...I laughed. He did it again and killed our rogue, I went back to my distracting attack plan while waiting for the party to finish up with a summoned creature.

The badguy stops for some dialogue, offering a deal etc etc. Our paladin says "You want us to leave you alone and go kill your ex-lover who is also a powerful necromancer by carrying your [Final Fantasy IV BombRing] into her house....this sounds like a good plan."

The druid in me goes "Nope nope nope" and is instantly Power Word Killed at level 4 by an enemy "you guys could have beaten."

EDIT: After accepting the bad guy's deal, the party buried the tiny druid far away in an untainted place, and mysteriously met up with a Hellbred Warlock//Scout who decimated every encounter forever after with liberal amounts of dispells and eventually hellfire and skirmishstone. The campaign ended with us slaying the demon BBEG without the reforged demon-slaying sword, and when we each got a super-wish, I wished everyone we'd killed that day back to life to resurrect the dominated innocents the party had killed. POOF BBEG is alive again! My favorite campaign ending ever.