Have you ever had (or been) a power player?

[danzibr]

And by that I mean someone who optimizes to levels of cheese. Not Pun-Pun, but... able to trivialize encounters which the rest of the party find challenging.

I personally have not had such an experience, and not have I played such a character. I'm by far the biggest optimizer in my circle of friends, but I hold back during character creation and during play I try to take the back seat.

[Axier]

Actually, I both love and enjoy to do this, alot. I love finding those munchkinized tricks.

At first, I liked the power, and used the capabilities alot. Then I realized it was kinda boring to play that way, so now I just powergame to game breaking levels, and then play by holding back the power, until it is absolutly the only way to stop a TPK. Its much more fun to make a really broken support character, than the BBGG.

[legomaster00156]

Nope, I haven't done that, except in really high-op games on this forum, in which case I'm not the only one doing it.

[Snowbluff]

Yeah. I am a power player.I always make sure my characters are competent.

I also made one out of my buddy Sjlver. He's pretty Munchkiny at some times. I put some well placed nerfs to keep his Warblade1/Swordsage1/Crusader1/Cleric2/RKV Idiot Crusader from facerolling the encounters. Namely, Boomerang Daze (DC now is 10+1/2 ECL+Str Mod).

[Piggy Knowles]

I always try to make sure my characters are good at what they do, but it's rare I ever build a straight up power character. I usually build to a theme.

I've only once played a character I would actively consider OP, and it was for the last campaign of my group before we switched from 3.5 to 4e. That was an Illumian cloistered cleric 1/archivist 2/master of shrouds 10, abusing both DMM-persist and animate dead in a much more aggressive way than I would normally.

I'm trying very hard to NOT make my current character overpowered. I agreed to play a wizard in a campaign with some house rules, after my initial idea of dragonfire adept was nixed (dragons have a pretty prominent part in the campaign, and the DM didn't really want any PCs with a draconic flavor or too great a connection with dragons). However, some of those house rules include a very permissive spell points system (you get 1 mana point per spell level for each spell you'd be able to cast per day, and each spell costs a number of mana points equal to its spell level), and NO spellbooks or prepared spells... as in the entire Sor/Wiz spell list is at my fingertips to cast on demand.

I set my character up with some personal rules to keep that from being too abusive - basically, a personal philosophy for the character that ends up meaning I'm mostly casting support spells. But dang is it tempting sometimes when I know that there's pretty much always a spell that can completely end the encounter within a round, that I can just choose to cast right away.....

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I know a would-be powergamer who's also a hardcore 3.5phile. Good guy, but I do wish he'd not go on so much about how awesome powergaming his custom "combine the effects of low-level spells into a higher-level spell" homebrew class is, or about how LFQW is a great feature, not a bug.

I also know a couple optimizers who did it for the lulz, and I actually found them quite palatable, possibly because they didn't go for the ultra-broken stuff. One of them optimized a warlock, for example, and helped the party's babarian optimize (well, mainly by dropping him out of a bag of holding onto the enemy).

So, I've come to see optimization and cheese as an acceptable thing, if you have the right attitude. Competitive optimization, I find, is a tad boring or grating on me, who is not an Elite System Master. But competent cheese that doesn't take the game seriously? I can get behind that.

[Slipperychicken]

I played a Wizard once, with Uncanny Forethought, Spontaneous Divination, and a hilariously-short adventuring day. The DM had no idea how to challenge us. The rest of the group got mad because I solved (or could easily solve) all their problems with brainless ease.


In that campaign, encounters went like this...

1. Problem introduced. Everyone else flounders about ineffectually.

2. My character either casts a spell or does something painfully easy and logical (like talking to it).

3. Problem solved, everyone gets mad OOC because they're bad at problem-solving.


Or this:

1. DM declares a cutscene, describes an NPC doing something no-one cares about (or which we can't interact with because shut up), while the PCs stand around like morons letting it happen.

2. I fall asleep or start playing Skyrim. Problem solved.

3. DM eventually ends the cutscene. Everyone shrugs and keeps walking.


Needless to say, they branded me as the party munchkin and blamed me for the fact their DM sucks and can't make interesting plots or encounters ("It's so boring because of your overpowered Wizard!").

[Darius Kane]

Powergamer =/= Munchkin. That's all I have to add here, because I see people mistake those two terms.

[kitcik]

I've never seen this in practice in an RPG.

I pwned Diablo 2 though.

[LordBlades]

And by that I mean someone who optimizes to levels of cheese. Not Pun-Pun, but... able to trivialize encounters which the rest of the party find challenging.

I personally have not had such an experience, and not have I played such a character. I'm by far the biggest optimizer in my circle of friends, but I hold back during character creation and during play I try to take the back seat.

A couple of times in the beginning, mainly because my edition of the PHB didn't come with a nice little disclaimer stating 'clerics and druids outfight fighters'.

[prufock]

Nah, I'm sort of a moderate optimizer at most. I do like to have a theme for my character and make them effective, but never to the point of making encounters a cakewalk. My most optimized build was probably a level 19 sorc/dread witch/nightmare spinner/mage of the arcane order, and he died no less than 3 times (we had a healer who would Revivify me; that's why I felt ok with taking crazy risks).

I don't always try to optimize. I've played monks, currently playing a bard (with restricted sources which limits IC op). I'm probably the most prone to optimize in our party, though we've never really had a situation where the others felt overshadowed.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

A guy in my group who does not really know how to create balanced encounters or even run anything but bruisers ran a game a while back. There were only two of us initially playing, so we each made two characters. The setting/story had some houserules, most notably alignment restrictions and alignment-specifics of abilities were removed, and there was some sort of plague gradually killing off magical creatures. Specific classes were also houseruled a bit, and outright immunity (undead and mind-affecting and crits, etc.) was either a significant save bonus or a percent-based chance to avoid, depending. We started at level 1.

My first character was a Gold Dwarf standard Sorcadin (Paladin 2/ Sorcerer 4/ Spellsword 1/ Abjurant Champion 5/ Sacred Exorcist 8 build). I used the Harmonious Knight sub levels for Paladin, and in my group Sorcerer 1 gets Draconic Heritage or Eschew Materials as a bonus feat, and a bonus Draconic or metamagic feat at every five levels. I got a Badge of Valor and picked up Dragonfire Inspiration, so from level 3 my character was adding 2d6 sonic damage to everyone's attacks.

My second character was a Killoren Druid with VoP and a Magebred Warbeast Wolf companion (DM let Magebred by, but wouldn't allow a Riding Dog, go figure). His people were dying to the plague that was killing off magical creatures, so the good cause that all of his wealth was donated to was to hire adventurers (the rest of the party) to help find the source of the plague and stop it to save his people. I was also able to substitute the effect of the Enrage Animal spell with Whirling Frenzy.

The other player's first character was an OA Samurai 2/ Paladin 18 build, using Charging Smite and Harmonious Knight. Due to some background he had a Ritiik instead of a Katana, and Samurai gave him proficiency in it. He had Improved Trip so the free trip from the Ritiik gave him another attack, and then he dealt the initial hit's damage again when he pulled it out. Charging Smite + Rhino's Rush is just brutal. He had a Badge of Valor to inspire for +2 to hit and damage. He also had Wild Cohort for a Magebred Warbeast Wolf companion.

His second character was a Cloistered Cleric going for a Cheater of Mystra build, something like Cleric 5/ Divine Oracle 4/ Dweomerkeeper 1/ Contemplative 1/ Dweomerkeeper 9. He was a big fan of Summon Undead, especially since the Owlbear Skeletons benefited from Inspire Courage.

After a few sessions two other people we normally play with also wanted to join in, so they each made one character.

The first one made a Whisper Gnome Druid, also with a Magebred Warbeast Wolf companion. He had some summoning feats and hid behind a tower shield and cast spells every fight. Also used Whirling Frenzy for Enrage Animal's effect.

The second one made a DFI Savage Bard, using a shortbow with Wild Cohort for yet another Magebred Warbeast Wolf companion. I think he was adding +4d6 fire damage for most of the game. Note that DFI is a noninstantaneous magical fire, so opponents who take damage from it have to make a reflex save or catch on fire. Details are in the back of the DMG.

The DM was just throwing full-attack-again HP sponges at us for the entire game. When we mopped the floor with them he just increased the number of opponents instead of using any sort of tactics. Eventually at probably level 5 we ran into a Large Black Dragon, so at least Young Adult at CR 9. We lured it into a low end of the cavern so it couldn't fly, so it landed and came at us.

All four wolves got top initiative so they all four charged in and lined up across the front of its space. It took a step to the side and breathed a Maximized Clinging Breath across all four of them. They all made the saving throw, and the DM nearly fell out of his chair when we told him that they all had evasion. The Bard hit it with Glitterdust and it rolled a 1 on its save, so it was blinded for five rounds. The Cleric started summoning, the Druids enraged their wolves, and the Paladins spent a round moving up to get in position to charge/flank it.

The second round the enraged wolves full attacked and the other two moved around to flank since it couldn't AoO blind, and one managed to trip the dragon. The Paladins charged in, the Owlbear Skeletons showed up, and the dragon full attacked from prone and didn't get a single hit. Over the next three rounds the dragon continued to full attack from prone and never hit anyone, and the party managed to kill it before it could breathe again. Its breath would have been back up right after the glitterdust ended, and it would have gotten up from prone on that round, but it didn't last that long. The party of 5th level characters killed a CR 9 dragon without taking a single point of damage or even using very many spells.

That was the last time that guy DMed anything, which was probably three years ago. We bring it up every now and then, and he's apparently blocked it from his memory. Everyone else had a lot of fun.

[Magesmiley]

Sometimes trivializing encounters isn't so much power gaming as it is how you approach encounters. Very difficult encounters if approached with a coherent and intelligent plan often turn into cakewalks.

Some players tackle a dungeon by stumbling blindly from encounter to encounter. Others tackle them like a SWAT team. Care to guess which one usually makes it look like a cakewalk?

Quite often there is an overlap between power-gamers and those who approach dungeons more tactically. I think that it is often their style of planning and how they handle encounters that makes the difference, more than that they've assembled an effective combination of character abilities.

When I play, I do assemble effective characters. I don't generally try to break the game, but I will try to get whatever schtick I focus on to be as effective as possible. Sometimes the schtick I pick isn't the most combat effective, but one I find to be fun to play with.

[Morcleon]

Yes. Very much so. I can actually only play psionics and ToB melee at my maximum power level, so anything else only comes out somewhat game-breaking. I do tend to hold back though, not using the best option for everything until boss battles/crowning moments of awesome. :smallbiggrin:

[Medic!]

I wouldn't consider myself a power-gamer (especially from the playground's pov), but at our RL table, I think I'm secretly branded as one. My last power-gaming shenanigan that I'm sure gave our DM fits was playing a Crusader with a +1 vicious, vampiric spiked chain with a couple levels of Warblade (for the will save counter, wall of blades, and some insightful strike action.) Admittedly I might have stepped over the line a hair by making the spiked chain my item familiar for a hefty concentration boost...but beating the will save on the BBEG's cut-scene moment of uh-oh was totally worth it.

[Lord Haart]

Usually, my main priority when building a character is to give him all the abilities he would logically have; remaining space i use to adjust his power level to anticipated power level of party, including a blatant down-optimization if necessary (like making a shapeshifting druid with WoP focused on melee combat and tripping, who can feel adequate in a low-optimized melee party while still having spells for whatever good spells can do without making straight fighters feel useless). Of course, there is some reverse influence (building a role adherring to some class or mechanical combo), but why bother with details when i can make it sound easy?

Of course, "anticipated power level of party" is a relative (and sometimes near-unknown) value and i generally prefer my characters to be effective in what they do, so my op-fu still has its uses. Confusions also happen; there was that one time when an unexperienced GM said he'll go easy on us because we have no healer in party, and then was very surprised and, sadly, more than a bit upset when my psion 5/pyrokineticist 1 (guess which one of these two classes has no place in truly high-op builds) went all nova with metapower (quicken x3) energy missile and dropped his big bossy ogre almost by himself. We also had a wizard in party who was still outdamaging me by a margin (and that was about the only time my character even used energy missile in that campaign; most of his achievements were related to either burning buildings with enemies inside, tricking enemies into entering buildings or blowing buildings on top of enemies), so i feel justified.

There was also one time when my friend (who back then thought he is a great optimisator when in reality he, well, isn't) was going to DM and i rolled some pretty poor stats (13, 11, 10, 9, 9, 9). I would reroll them, of course, but he told me i must reroll them because, in his words, it's impossible to make a character of even average power with stats like these and i'll inevitably be weakest one in the party.
Of course, challenge was accepted.
Result? Well, i went full-on mad genius mode, used an idea from somewhere on this forum (can't remember an author; anyway, it didn't work as proposed because Obese flaw can't be had by medium-sized characters), crossed it over with most kinds of cheese i could fit in and made a cadaver, mix-and-match mutant that i take pride of; double so, since first-level optimisation is pretty limited in cheese, and triple so because he had a strong character as well (he was circus performer by heritage, with some dragons in his family, and spend his youth as a measly do-anything-survive-anything cohort to a paladin before marrying her, settling down, picking up family business and becoming fattest man on Faerun).

Isaac Onestone
Male Human Stalwart Battle Sorcerer 1

Strength 8 (9 base -1 middle age)
Dexterity 6 (9 base, -1 middle age, -2 deformity: obese)
Constitution 14 (13 base, -1 middle age, +2 deformity: obese)
Intelligence 10 (9 base, +1 middle age)
Wisdom 11 (10 base, +1 middle age)
Charisma 12 (11 base, +1 middle age)

Feats: Hidden Talent — Expansion, Dauntless, Willing deformity, Deformity: obese, two flaws, some stalwart and battle sorcerer bonus feats.

Spells: 0-level — Prestidigitation, Ghost sound, Launch item (for throwing inhaled potions and all that nigh-obscure poison-subsystem stuff); 1-level — Benign transposition.

Familiar: raven.

Still not Pun-Pun, but with 17 hp and 20d6 no-save damage up to three times per day (for those unfamiliar: being very, very heavy, enlarging yourself to be even more heavy, telling your raven to fly over enemy's head and switching places with him leads to massive, massive damage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtWAOrbK9D0&feature=my_liked_videos&list=LLJzCrvKSoqwnTef3jpsRB-w)) he was definitely overpowered for lvl 1. He also had cheap poisons and handle animal'ed circus dog (and mule, but this one is so cheesy i would use him for anything but carrying stuff only in the most dire circumstances) thrown in for a good measure, and his experience as a cohort totally justified tucker kobolds' tactics.
I didn't actually play him, through; as expected, the guy got bored before the week ended and started recruiting into a star wars campaign instead (didn't fly, either). Perhaps one day i will yet play this character, either in a very high-optimisation game or, more probably, with same backstory but toned-down mechanics. Still, it's an act of crazy cheese-golem-crafting that counts.

[Dr.Epic]

Yep. I usually do it with barbarians though. I took out the end game boss with one attack thanks to a lucky crit roll.

[gallagher]

I mean, I pretty much play clerics with my power kept in check, so as to not outshine the party, but I do always make sure to keep some of the extra power laying around in case I need it.

So no, I dont persist my buffs to outdo the martial classes, nor do I attempt to pretty much handwave every combat with my god-given might.

So if I have any cheesey tricks, I roleplay the heck out of them

[lightningcat]

I almost never go full-bore powergamer. But I always want my character to be effective, and I like to keep a trick or two up my sleave to blackmail the DM with (for when he gives us one of those puzzles that he thinks are easy, but no one can figure out after 4 hours). Once this involved explaining how I could get the world blown up, we got a hint for the puzzle right after that break. :smallbiggrin:

On the flip side, I had to help a freind rebuild his Gunslinger just to be useful, and then he was dumping out more damage than anyone else. But that wasn't an high-op game, the only spellcaster was a badly done Summoner.

[Archmage1]

I may or may not be a powergamer.

I think it more comes down to player skill than base power level though, although the base power level helps. Anyone can google for an insane build now, so powergaming has changed a bit, IMO

As a side note, I am running a spellthief 12, in a party of me, dmm persist cleric, and ulti mag wizard, and am dominating the others in the damage and party support categories, which just makes me sad. The DM is seriously considering nerfing spellthieves...
In a different game, I decided to be lazy, and go with a wiz 5/incantatrix 5, which has not been nearly as amazing(although we have not really gotten into any tricky battles, so I have been rather lazy, and burned 2nd level spells)

[eggs]

I used to much more than I do now.

My initial attempts at character-building before opening the DMG/MM or really knowing what different numbers were worth were a bit less than breathtaking. Monk/Clerics punching inflicts, Swashbuckler/Wizard/Bladesingers who suffered from insane turtle-syndrome, and so on. Strangely, that Bladesinger was the character that my first group thought marked me as a min-maxer/munchkin/powergamer/whatever the local hep term is, but that was okay, since we were all pretty into dorking out over character builds and figuring out how gaming the game could work.

Then I moved around a bit, started playing with different groups, and realized pulling hokey tricks like "I Alter Self into a Lizardman with 6 natural armor and three natural weapons" or "I planar bind a nightmare and glabrezu, take them to my extradimensional storage space, possess the glabrezu, activate the nightmare's astral projection, then plane shift back to my office, so I'm a giant demon who can't die now, okay?" wasn't really fitting in with beer-and-pretzel gamers who don't pore over monster manuals or through splatbooks or plan builds in advance. It was basically playing a different game than anyone else, and just wound up leaving every party frustrated.

So I wound it in pretty tightly for a while, but when 4e came out, satisfied everything I wanted 3e to be, but still wasn't that fun, I went on a long old school/indie game binge that I suppose I'm still on.

But one of the thing's that's kept me and most of the rest of my group going back to 3e every once in a while is that it facilitates the "power-playing" and fiddling and twinking character builds for power purposes (not aiming to dominate any games, but approaching the builds with the kind of mentality that would have been way out of place in the sort of casual game where no one reads extra rulebooks or pushes game numbers in their offtime). I get the impression that most 3e-holdouts I've gamed or spoken with play with a similarly increased powergame-mindedness, since that's frankly one of the major things the 3e system facilitates that simpler or currently-supported games don't.

[Slipperychicken]

Some players tackle a dungeon by stumbling blindly from encounter to encounter. Others tackle them like a SWAT team. Care to guess which one usually makes it look like a cakewalk?


Now I really want to do SWAT-style dungeon crawls. It always strikes me as bizarre that some of the most skilled, competent people in the world would act like PCP-addled 4 year olds in combat.


Me (as a 24 INT Factotum): "So if we're going to risk our lives as a team, and the fate of the entire kingdom rests on what happens in that tournament, let's talk tactics. So who ca-"

[Entire table loudly groans and whines like the adult-sized children they are, looking for any excuse not to discuss tactics. ]

[gallagher]

Now I really want to do SWAT-style dungeon crawls. It always strikes me as bizarre that some of the most skilled, competent people in the world would act like PCP-addled 4 year olds in combat.


Me (as a 24 INT Factotum): "So if we're going to risk our lives as a team, and the fate of the entire kingdom rests on what happens in that tournament, let's talk tactics. So who ca-"

[Entire table loudly groans and whines like the adult-sized children they are, looking for any excuse not to discuss tactics. ]

have you ever considered keeping their attention by promising that a hobgoblin would hit another hobgoblin in the face with a pie, with the bonus twist that they didnt know it was filled with acid?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I've only used my optimization powers for evil once, with a character I've mentioned here before. For my last semester of college, my group's secondary DM ran a D&D game while I (the primary DM) ran SWSE. For that campaign, the premise was that an evil archmage had killed a few gods a few centuries ago and was consolidating his power to take over the whole Prime and later the rest of the multiverse, with the gods unwilling to intervene thanks to the aforementioned god-killing capabilities. Our party, citizens of one of the few remaining cities not taken over by the archmage's forces, was tasked with retaking the Prime and taking this guy out.

The rest of the party all wanted to play casters, so they asked me to make a martial+skillmonkey character to cover the noncaster roles, and I agreed since I usually DM and hadn't had a chance to play anything besides a party healer/buffer in years. I went all-out, knowing I would be the only directly combat-capable party member and knowing that the DM wasn't going to mess around with the enemy forces--the Archmage was a transmuter/Red Wizard/incantatrix, as we managed to work out from the opening campaign fluff document and some DM hints, and his lieutenant was a druid/planar shepherd/dweomerkeeper. So I (ab)used dips, templates, bloodlines, PrCs, and grafts to make a vaguely monk-ish character who, by the end of the campaign at 12th level, was unhittable except on crits by CR 20 monsters, hadn't failed a save since level 3, could fly at over Mach 11 (yay demon wings!), could kill several hundred mooks per round, had good enough Hide and Move Silently (and the attendant HiPS, Darkstalker, etc.) that instead of rolling for it I just declared that he "went into stealth mode," and could achieve all of this in an antimagic field except that his fly speed was reduced to Mach 2 and his reach was reduced to around 40 feet.

I didn't overshadow the other PCs, as the campaign consisted of infiltration, misdirection, diplomacy, and crafting primarily and the rest of the party was optimized for their own specialties (though not quite to the same extent). The party diviner kept tabs on all of our conquered allied cities and teleported us anywhere if there was a problem, the party crafter fabricated and outfitted entire fleets during downtime, the party minionmancer crewed our fleets and cities with his undead and demons, and the party buffer kept everyone alive and enhanced. Basically, the party played Populous meets Diplomacy meets Sim City most of the time as we rolled over the continent, with my contribution being that I was a super-thief who could get in anywhere without being detected. When we ran into a flight of a half-dozen mind-controlled great wyrm dragons, a fortress full of high-level casters, or similar threats that diplomacy, subterfuge, and bribery couldn't handle, I removed it with extreme prejudice.

Sadly, the campaign ended on a cliffhanger because the last session never happened, what with final exams and graduation and all. It was to be the final assault on the Archmage's Atlantis-like sunken city in the middle of the continent, surrounded by layers of force walls, antimagic, and marilith shock troops and full of as much magical defenses as a bored Archmage with 300 years, practically unlimited gold and XP, and a stratospheric Int score could come up with. I will definitely give our secondary DM credit: he often had to rely on me for rules knowledge and optimization advice, but once he had that he could certainly pull out all the stops.

[danzibr]

The DM was just throwing full-attack-again HP sponges at us for the entire game. When we mopped the floor with them he just increased the number of opponents instead of using any sort of tactics. Eventually at probably level 5 we ran into a Large Black Dragon, so at least Young Adult at CR 9. We lured it into a low end of the cavern so it couldn't fly, so it landed and came at us.

All four wolves got top initiative so they all four charged in and lined up across the front of its space. It took a step to the side and breathed a Maximized Clinging Breath across all four of them. They all made the saving throw, and the DM nearly fell out of his chair when we told him that they all had evasion. The Bard hit it with Glitterdust and it rolled a 1 on its save, so it was blinded for five rounds. The Cleric started summoning, the Druids enraged their wolves, and the Paladins spent a round moving up to get in position to charge/flank it.

The second round the enraged wolves full attacked and the other two moved around to flank since it couldn't AoO blind, and one managed to trip the dragon. The Paladins charged in, the Owlbear Skeletons showed up, and the dragon full attacked from prone and didn't get a single hit. Over the next three rounds the dragon continued to full attack from prone and never hit anyone, and the party managed to kill it before it could breathe again. Its breath would have been back up right after the glitterdust ended, and it would have gotten up from prone on that round, but it didn't last that long. The party of 5th level characters killed a CR 9 dragon without taking a single point of damage or even using very many spells.

That was the last time that guy DMed anything, which was probably three years ago. We bring it up every now and then, and he's apparently blocked it from his memory. Everyone else had a lot of fun.
Sounds like an awesome group. I'd like to DM a party like that.

Me (as a 24 INT Factotum): "So if we're going to risk our lives as a team, and the fate of the entire kingdom rests on what happens in that tournament, let's talk tactics. So who ca-"

[Entire table loudly groans and whines like the adult-sized children they are, looking for any excuse not to discuss tactics. ]
I wish my team did this. Or players I DMed.

Anyway, is going Kalashtar Psion with 3 power shards in a low optimization group cheesy? I'm limiting myself to only using one shard per power. Oh and I'm the only one with a Belt of Battle while the others have generic +2 armor and the like.

EDIT: Hey PairO'Dice Lost, you still have that build?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

EDIT: Hey PairO'Dice Lost, you still have that build?

I probably have it on my hard drive somewhere, I'll see if I can find it. I usually use Mythweavers for sheets these days, but I was running out of boxes to list my abilities; the feats alone, at one feat per line, overflowed the "spells known" section. :smallbiggrin:

[TuggyNE]

have you ever considered keeping their attention by promising that a hobgoblin would hit another hobgoblin in the face with a pie, with the bonus twist that they didnt know it was filled with acid?

Acid-spitting beetles. "It's funny because it's true!" :xykon:

[Slipperychicken]

I wish my team did this. Or players I DMed.


Talking about tactics, or avoiding talking about tactics? :smallconfused:

[Wings of Peace]

I'm a high-op player by preference. I consider the story I'm about to tell an example of me being a power player because the rest of the group was pretty much entirely low-op.

Our DM was terrible and diplomacy had failed. Near the end of the campaign (we were level 3) my Wizard died along with any passion I still had for the game. Since this was a game group of close friends I didn't just want to leave however so I did the only mature thing I could. I rolled out a human Warblade with a Greatsword that did 3d6 + 6 naturally and would combo Burning Blade with Mountain Hammer Strike when it was time to actually kill things. By the numbers my damage output was equal to the combined total of our 3 other PCs and I had worked in some infinite healing out of combat shenanigans (for myself) to prevent wearing out. Prospects of leveling any time soon were dim so I optimized to our current level rather than planning for the future.

Got away with it by playing him as a lazy mercenary that sucked up to the DMNPC a lot so the chick actually running the game loved him. I would like to say I regret responding to a bad situation with a childish response, I don't. It felt great.

[Curmudgeon]

Just once. For "Tomb of Horrors (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051031a)" I built a 10th level Rogue who walked through most of the module, automatically succeeding to find and disarm pretty much everything in that trapfest. (The location-based traps, which didn't exactly translate to 3.5, were an exception.) Generally I avoid this sort of game power excess by specifically favoring the "weaker" classes, so that I can optimize as much as I like without dominating the game. In ToH, though, the Rogue is the power class because they're on point for 94% of the module.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I usually play powerful support characters. In groups with relatively low optimization, my shenanigans are either appreciated ("Buffs mean I get more plusses") or go unnoticed ("Blind/nausea/stun doesn't do damage, meh"). In high op groups I fit right in, so it doesn't really fit the OP's definition.

The one potential exception is where I went outside of my comfort zone and played a meleer... which happened to be a full-casting Incantatrix persisting lots and lots of spells. I did make the character for a high-op group, and the erudite kept up, but I might have gone overboard relative to the mundanes.

[ThiagoMartell]

I've done this a few times... and I regret all of those.
The first time was on a FR campaign. I was playing a Cleric and then went into Malconvoker. The game was pretty fun, but the DM was simply not ready for the versatility and power I had with all the buffing and minionmancy. Other players got bored, game died.
The other was with a homebrew system a friend of mine had created in a sci-fi setting. I pointed out a few problems with the design, but since he didn't fix it immediately, I exploited it with my character. Even though I was new in the group and they had been playing for 3 years, I was suddenly the most powerful guy at the game. Thankfully, it led to the system being reworked. However, the players enjoyed the previous state of the system better. The game died.
Another was in GURPS (2nd edition). It was a Supers game and my character was a mystical martial artist of sorts. With body control spells and cinematic martial arts skills, I was basically invincible in combat. The GM did very balanced stories, though, with investigation and social interaction being at least as important as combat. It was very weird to see the flying brick saying "dude, that monster is scary, you go first", though. It was simply against genre. Eventually I made a new, more balanced, character. Felt a lot more fun.
As a DM, the campaign I DMed last year was all about powergaming. They were all very optimized. It meant building encounters was very time consuming. Most encounters were actually very fun to run, but building them was a major pain the ass. Asked my players to tone it down in our current campaign, I'm enjoying it a lot more right now. I need less time to prepare and the time I do need I use mostly to decide which groups are doing what, write detailed descriptions about specific places and so on so forth. It's a very sandbox-y game and I doubt I would have had time to build it the way it is if I had to spend time worrying about the average damage a chimera would do or checking if effect X could be cancelled by spell Y. Since my party is mostly mid OP, I can throw stuff from the bestiaries at them and have it be a cool encounter. Add environmental features, one or two battlefield control spells and background drama and that's it, we have a memorable kickass encounter. Last game they fought a vampire inquisitor jumping from rooftop to rooftop under heavy rain. Any optimized caster would have ended the encounter in a single round.

[only1doug]

My groups tend to think of me as a bit of a optomiser.

I made a character for one group, another player had already made an uber-charger and there was a druid and a cleric/warpriest who often used rightous might and divine power so I wasn't too concerned about holding back too much.

My character was a gish, Silverbrow human Duskblade 5/wizard 1/ abjurant champion 5 / eldritch knight x

at L18 he had BAB 17, Caster level 17, casting as a 11th level wizard. we were using spellpoint and wounds variant rules so he mostly buffed himself in the mornings and then melee'd all day (with shield cast as required)

heart of earth, air, fire and water made him immune to those dangerous criticals.
Greater mighty wallop on a +3 holy adamantine maul yeilded 6d8+2d6 damage vs evil foes.

the ubercharger dropped out and the druid and cleric weren't that well optomised... I was unfortunately overshadowing the rest of the party slightly.

Shirt of Wraith Stalking gives hide from undead.

at one point i fell into a pit with a skeletal tyranosaurus, it didn't see me until I attacked and it didn't last long enough to injure me.
The Dracolich we encountered later lasted about 3 rounds of the party full attacking.

[mucco]

Me and my group (other three) are all optimizers. We take turns DMing, and it is painful :smallbiggrin:

DM 1: high power campaign, party of optimized T1/T2s, tons of rules arguments and drama, one battle lasted 7 hours once
DM 2: required everyone to be T4 or T3 nerfed to even start the campaign; takes ages to prepare game sessions still
DM 3: is content with throwing HP sponges most of the time, which makes for terribly easy encounters after a while
DM 4: powergames while DMing, which sometimes results in near-TPKs saved by fiat. Railroad over 9000 to contain the PC capabilities

But we have fun anyway!

[Krazzman]

Hmm let's see.

In my first game I played an elven rogue... nothing special, pretty much wrong choice of feats and everything.
One of the players was an Archery Fighter and the other was a Dwarven Druid. Everything was fine, we had fun. Later (the party already was level 10) a Wizard and a Paladin/Purple Dragon Knight joined us.
The Wizard (dunno, was ok I think) but the "paladin" had Leadership and was a Mounted Charger build. Whopping 200 dmg easily while the other did far less. (Mainly because the DM thought... hmm fighter give him a greatsword :D and we mostly fought undead and... well archery against undeads is effective isn't it...).

Nowadays in our Group I'm the Pillar of encounterchanging... We are level 4 atm (1 Favoured Soul, 1 Bardlock, 1 Druid, 1 Rogue/Ranger and me Warblade/Fighter). One Troll sneaks up to us and one charges us. Before the Troll can do anything he is tripped and gets hit by a flaming sphere and sneak attacks. The other get a trip attack but isn't tripped... sadly. We kill the first with the flaming sphere and the second with an acid flask.
My damageoutput is 2d4+15 (full PA) and maybe +1d6. The Bardlock has 2d6+1, the Rogue 1d6+1/1d6+1 (TWFing), the Favoured soul 1d8+2 (and he could use power attack) and the Druid has 1d6+1+1+1d6(electrical), her AC (a hawk) doesn't really do anything in combat.

If my character dies (which could be a possibility) I'm going to play a "optimized" sorcerer. Maybe a beguiler or something else with casting.

[RoyVG]

Usually I just check guides or tips from other people to see what is recommended. After that I usually start searching to find other things that I like.

I built mostly to be fun, or to have one trick that I can do very well, with some backup abilities as well.

A Warforged Juggernaut level 12 that dealt 11d6+3xStr damage on a bull rush, and could grapple after an 'unarmed strike' with his Magebane BattleFist. For backup, he also had a Great SwordBow. A combination of 'This makes me stronger' and 'This makes me more fun' with a slight emphasis on 'stronger'. Sadly I never got to use it because the campaign for which he was made ended soon after. O well, if my WF Artificer wasn't there, we would have all died in that volcano anyway.

Or my Whisper Gnome Swordsage level 6 or 7 that had Darkness at will and could through it and hide in it as a swift action. Was going to go Shadow Sun Ninja, but the campaign ended (or rather my life ended) before I could get my second level SSN. He had decent utility for the party. The Silence was especially good to be just that little bit more ninja. The SSN 1st level ability combined with a Tomb-Tainted Soul Dread Necro helped the party stay healthy at all times (Punch Kobold, Acquire Healing). This Dread Necro also resurrected the Dragon that ate me after I killed it back with a torrent of gold from my destroyed Bag of Holding. (houserule that it spilled all contents when destroyed). Best character death in any of our campaigns so far. This was definitly a character with an emphasis on fun. I wanted a ninja, and I got a ninja.

I never build to be overshadowed by other players, beside at a few instances like certain skill or doing specific tasks like scouting and stealth, though I tend to be overshadowed by someone else who is a heavy optimizer. Right now he is a shield wearing character with a high AC and build solely to optimize his AC (around 30 AC at level 3, with a homebrew class). So far only the party members haven't been able to hit him. hen he gets hit, immediately he goes like 'F**k it, I can't do anything, I die after a second hit' and he starts retreating. He somehow gets countered often :smallbiggrin:.

[molten_dragon]

Yep, I definitely am. I don't generally go super cheesy, because the rest of my group don't optimize much, and I don't want to overshadow them.

But there have been a couple short campaigns we've played in where everyone has played really overpowered cheesy characters, and I've had a blast in those.

[danzibr]

Talking about tactics, or avoiding talking about tactics? :smallconfused:
Actually talked about tactics. I love the current group I'm with (my parents, brother and his wife, and we play via Skype), but... some strategy would be nice.

[Togo]

I'm certainly capable of being a powergamer. I try and avoid doing so, at least in the classic sense, because it dramatically lowers the chance of the party reaching high level.

In my experience powergaming follows a rough progression, as follows:

1) Realising that some powers are just better than others.

2) Realising that some combinations of powers are just better than listed powers

3) Realising that selecting combinations for your character that best matches the challenges your group faces is just better than trying to get a character to be arbitrarily good at everything

4) Realising that challenges rise to match your character's ability to overcome them, and attempting to disguise your most powerful combos

5) Playing along for a bit with a character that could solve every problem in sight, but arbitrarily deciding not in order to give other players a chance, and to stop the DM making things harder for everyone. Wondering why you feel a bit detached from everything.

From there it gets a bit murky. You can go to:

6a) Deciding that killing a dragon with a weak character is more of an achievement than killing the same dragon with a powerful one. Creating genuinely underpowered characters and then trying to use them more effectively than the rest of the party. In other words, giving up on winning D&D the character creation game in order to have more fun with D&D the fantasy adventure game.

6b) Noting that narrative and plot elements can still thwart your powers, and focusing on making your character powerful within the game world rather than powerful within the game system. Wondering why you ever thought that powergaming involved your character sheet at all.

Obviously, you can stop and have fun at any point along that progression.

The most effective powergamers I ever met were a bunch of 12-year-olds. They were successful partly because they recognised early on that the key was to manipulate the story and setting, not the game system, and partly because their DM was also 12, and thus didn't put any breaks on them.

[ThiagoMartell]

I'm certainly capable of being a powergamer. I try and avoid doing so, at least in the classic sense, because it dramatically lowers the chance of the party reaching high level.

In my experience powergaming follows a rough progression, as follows:

1) Realising that some powers are just better than others.

2) Realising that some combinations of powers are just better than listed powers

3) Realising that selecting combinations for your character that best matches the challenges your group faces is just better than trying to get a character to be arbitrarily good at everything

4) Realising that challenges rise to match your character's ability to overcome them, and attempting to disguise your most powerful combos

5) Playing along for a bit with a character that could solve every problem in sight, but arbitrarily deciding not in order to give other players a chance, and to stop the DM making things harder for everyone. Wondering why you feel a bit detached from everything.

From there it gets a bit murky. You can go to:

6a) Deciding that killing a dragon with a weak character is more of an achievement than killing the same dragon with a powerful one. Creating genuinely underpowered characters and then trying to use them more effectively than the rest of the party. In other words, giving up on winning D&D the character creation game in order to have more fun with D&D the fantasy adventure game.

6b) Noting that narrative and plot elements can still thwart your powers, and focusing on making your character powerful within the game world rather than powerful within the game system. Wondering why you ever thought that powergaming involved your character sheet at all.

Obviously, you can stop and have fun at any point along that progression.

The most effective powergamers I ever met were a bunch of 12-year-olds. They were successful partly because they recognised early on that the key was to manipulate the story and setting, not the game system, and partly because their DM was also 12, and thus didn't put any breaks on them.
*slow clap*
Well said, my friend. Well said.

[Krazzman]

I'm certainly capable of being a powergamer. I try and avoid doing so, at least in the classic sense, because it dramatically lowers the chance of the party reaching high level.

In my experience powergaming follows a rough progression, as follows:

1) Realising that some powers are just better than others.

2) Realising that some combinations of powers are just better than listed powers

3) Realising that selecting combinations for your character that best matches the challenges your group faces is just better than trying to get a character to be arbitrarily good at everything

4) Realising that challenges rise to match your character's ability to overcome them, and attempting to disguise your most powerful combos

5) Playing along for a bit with a character that could solve every problem in sight, but arbitrarily deciding not in order to give other players a chance, and to stop the DM making things harder for everyone. Wondering why you feel a bit detached from everything.

From there it gets a bit murky. You can go to:

6a) Deciding that killing a dragon with a weak character is more of an achievement than killing the same dragon with a powerful one. Creating genuinely underpowered characters and then trying to use them more effectively than the rest of the party. In other words, giving up on winning D&D the character creation game in order to have more fun with D&D the fantasy adventure game.

6b) Noting that narrative and plot elements can still thwart your powers, and focusing on making your character powerful within the game world rather than powerful within the game system. Wondering why you ever thought that powergaming involved your character sheet at all.

Obviously, you can stop and have fun at any point along that progression.

The most effective powergamers I ever met were a bunch of 12-year-olds. They were successful partly because they recognised early on that the key was to manipulate the story and setting, not the game system, and partly because their DM was also 12, and thus didn't put any breaks on them.

This is a good post. But for my group this would be some problems if it weren't for my character. This let's one start thinking...

Explanation:
The Rogue/Ranger is a newbie. He is fine, doesn't know the rules but we help him so far. My GF has a pretty low power build at the moment, no real dmg, not that survivable etc(it's gonna change as soon as she get's her second arcane archer level), the Druid has a not that optimal spell selection (so far she didn't use SNA at all), her animal companion was used to pick up a rod. The Favoured Soul also doesn't seem to use spells like... at all (except a buff here and there) and is all in all pretty low in terms of power. I play a Warblade (specifically not ubercharge) and I don't rip the encounters to shreds but I can make good use of my abilities. I trip enemies, have ranks in climb (I can shine with that in this group[at least in this adventure arc]), balance and tumble. If it weren't for me the party would've died in a random encounter on level 2. And that was just a fighter with a two handed weapon and power attack.
Ok, 27 HP on level 2 might be a bit much but I've been real lucky with my rolls so far. 11/12, 9/10 and 9/10. Havin 49 HP on level 4 feels a bit like cheating to me but it saved my groups some rolling up new characters. Most of the time I don't use Punishing Stance because an extra d6 of damage would mean my average damage would go from 12 & 20 to 15.5 & 23.5... compared to 8 (EB with PBS), 16 (TWF with 1d6 sneak attack 9 without sneak attack) 6.5 & 9.5 (one handed PA) and 10 (Druid has a +1 Shocking Shortspear but most of the time uses blastspells).

We were "tested" by Talos at level 3. This means we were attacked by some sort of Cloud elemental thing. Everyone except for me was hit by lightning a few moments ago and as such wasn't fully healed. This cloud thing used some sort of area attack and dropped everyone except the rogue and me. We then killed that thing in 3 hits. A 2 round encounter, knocked out 3 of 5, knocked one to single digits and me half of my life. Imagine if I hadn't decided to play a Warblade and instead had played a fighter... 2 points less reflexsave, on average 2 points less hp (at least 3 less actually) we probably would've died there. I don't know what monster it exactly was and what CR it had but I think it wasn't that much higher in cr.
On level 3 in a Battle against a Horde of Orcs I slaughtered orcs right to left, tanked the bigboss-orc and knocked him down into single digits. Our Bardlock counted who had killed how many and except for me everyone was at 7/8 kills with me at something about 15/16. At level 1 we fought Kobolds, pretty easy, most were 1hit-kills for everyone. Then we fought some level 1 orcs and some monsters (3 pretty big Str-Draining spiders) and such. I don't think the DM adjusted the adventure since I was there (he told he used it some time ago already and is now making up new stuff) but most of the time I feel that when I don't bring the damage we would have a TPK every session.
I might be wrong on this and it is really like you said: the DM adjusted encounters to challenge me and the others now seem to not contribute that much.

[Rubik]

At first, I liked the power, and used the capabilities alot. Then I realized it was kinda boring to play that way, so now I just powergame to game breaking levels, and then play by holding back the power, until it is absolutly the only way to stop a TPK. Its much more fun to make a really broken support character, than the BBGG.This is what I do. I had a shaper psion who I optimized for stamina. After level 4 or so he never ran even halfway down on pp except for one mass battle (that literally lasted hours of in-world time) and the one time I nova'd on the BBEG. I even managed to take down an epic undead dragon with lots of templates, and I was only ECL 16. I played smart with my options to apply force just enough to make encounters easier for the party, without hogging the spotlight for myself (quite so much, at least). However, I carried the party on several occasions, when the DM misjudged how difficult it would be for the rest of the party to deal with.

My character was evil, and it got the point wherein the the party was terrified I would turn on them because I probably could've taken them out, had I wanted to. But what other party of decent people would routinely risk their lives to protect mine? I made my investment, so I wasn't about to ruin that for the evulz.


Actually, I both love and enjoy to do this, alot. I love finding those munchkinized tricks.I don't cheat, however.

[edit] However, I do have a VERY T.O. build which could wipe the floor with anything but Pun Pun (including just about any homebrew I could imagine), and I'm fairly sure I could give Pun Pun a run run for his mun mun, if the mood struck me.

[danzibr]

[edit] However, I do have a VERY T.O. build which could wipe the floor with anything but Pun Pun (including just about any homebrew I could imagine), and I'm fairly sure I could give Pun Pun a run run for his mun mun, if the mood struck me.
Hmm, do you have this listed anywhere?

[Rubik]

Hmm, do you have this listed anywhere?Nope. In fact, I'm not even really finished with it yet. However, I started with a pair of dvati twins with the Human Heritage feat (fluff says there's human somewhere in my past, so it works), turn both bodies into elan for immortality and elan bonuses, take 1 level in society mind and 19 levels in Magic mantle/spell-to-power erudite, use Extra Spell to grab Bestow Curse, Gate to pull in a wyrmling prismatic dragon, the Fusion power to gestalt with it, Bestow Curse on myself to age to great wyrm (and thus gain an extra 58 HD), Astral Seed and suicide to become a gestalted entity permanently, invest XP in a thought bottle, receive negative levels down to 1, fail all the Fort saves to permanently lose those levels, pull the xp back out of the thought bottle and level up as a level 20 society mind/10 illithid savant/48 epic illithid savant (using Metamorphosis to qualify, as it changes your type, subtype, and race), use the IS's ability to grab class and racial features to nab: the erudite's [power learning, spell to power ability, and Magic mantle] so I can manifest all powers and spells without the limitations of unique powers per day, as well as the mongrelfolk's ability to qualify as any race, use Metamorphosis to turn into a tree and a VERY heavily metapsionic'd Awaken spell (as there's no limit to how many times you can stack metapsionics, and you can Empower it as much as you like) for arbitrarily high stats (and since I have tons of epic feats I can apply Empower hundreds, if not thousands of times), and craft every item slot I've got with tons of item enhancements which grant feats (and believe me, there are a lot of them; I've managed a huge number of feats so far -- honestly, I kind of lost count somewhere around 800) and Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle them into useful ones...

And then I use Extra Spell to pull in every single non-epic spell in the game. And since I can leave one of my dvati bodies on a plane with the flowing time trait along with my Epic Leadership minions (of which I have over 35,000,000, due to feats and an insane Cha score), I can basically research epic spells as a free action with regards to non-flowing time planes, and manifest them spontaneously. And since I used illithid savant to ALSO grab the metamind's font of power ability, I have infinite power points to manifest with (because Temporal Reiteration is my friend). I pulled in everything from the choker's quickness ability to the chronotyryn's dual actions, so I have dozens of standard actions each round, and with a manifester level several hundred high (yay manifester level boosters) I can use Linked Power over and over and over on each power to use each action to manifest dozens and dozens of powers all at once. Supernatural Transformation to turn my psionics [ps] ability into [Su] so it's undispellable, does not provoke, and my base ML equals my HD...

Etc, etc. Really, this is just the tip of things.

[Snowbluff]

So it's all the Psionic cheese? Man, I have to pick up on those infinite mind body switchy things sometime. :smalltongue:

[PairO'Dice Lost]

turn both bodies into elan for immortality and elan bonuses,

Elans don't actually work like that, as elan is a race rather than a template; the elan ritual resets you to a base elan regardless of your previous race or power level, so you'd just end up with either two completely unrelated elan or one single elan body if you tried that with dvati. If it's immortality you're after, though, there's a 1st-level-only feat in Dragon called Wedded to History that grants immortality, so you can get around that problem.

[Rubik]

So it's all the Psionic cheese? Man, I have to pick up on those infinite mind body switchy things sometime. :smalltongue:The base of it is, yes. However, there's item creation cheese, spell cheese (given that I can spontaneously cast every spell from every list in the entire game, epic and not, without limit), epic spell cheese, DCFS cheese, and all sorts of other cheese.

Note that this wouldn't be even 1% as powerful if I couldn't use spells.

[Rubik]

Elans don't actually work like that, as elan is a race rather than a template; the elan ritual resets you to a base elan regardless of your previous race or power level, so you'd just end up with either two completely unrelated elan or one single elan body if you tried that with dvati. If it's immortality you're after, though, there's a 1st-level-only feat in Dragon called Wedded to History that grants immortality, so you can get around that problem.It was for immortality, yes. However, since both bodies share one soul, both resulting elans would also have to share the same soul, which means all the important bits of the dvati would have to remain, since the elan transformation doesn't create or destroy souls.

However, Wedded to History would definitely be preferable, due to the transformation needing a houserule regardless, since it's straining the rules to the breaking point.