What do YOU Define as "High Op"?

[ShadowFireLance]

Spawned off an argument, I come to the boards;
I define "High OP" as having the most spells, Ability scores, Etc, He Defines it as having the perfect balance in between them.

What do you define it as?

[Snowbluff]

I label based on the number of awful tricks and higher level abilities I have to use.

[thethird]

In my games High Op is really similar to Low Op something so distant from the rest of the group that it makes the game less enjoyable to the party.

This means that in some groups having venomfire might not be high op, but in others certainly is.

[Eldariel]

High Op is where I'm allowed to restore my spell slots with Lucubration-loops, spawn few extra actions whenever I want to, get Mind Rape on level 7 and so on.

[Grod_The_Giant]

In my games High Op is really similar to Low Op something so distant from the rest of the group that it makes the game less enjoyable to the party.

This means that in some groups having venomfire might not be high op, but in others certainly is.
This is generally pretty accurate. Optimization levels are relative to the GM/the rest of the party.

For a more universal definition, I'd say "the ability to overcome challenges many levels above yours through brute power," probably using rules in ways that were not intended.

Casting Gate to summon a Solar? Powerful, but within RAI. Chain-gating Solars? Not ok.

[Kuulvheysoon]

One word - Tippy. Yes, that is a compliment.

[Tvtyrant]

Any use of optimization that requires a deep understanding of the rules of the game or looking for mechanics outside of player intended sources.

[Barsoom]

Most people define High-Op as "more optimization than I normally employ".

[Uncle Pine]

I define "hig optimization" as the ability to totally overshadow the other players.

[limejuicepowder]

I define high-OP as the difference between "synergy" and "combo."

A low-OP player doesn't worry (or know) about either one, and takes w/e looks appealing to them. They might make a synergy or even a combo by accident, but it certainly wasn't planned.

A mid-OP player makes their character with synergy in mind. Stacking bonuses, mixing classes to shore up basic and known weaknesses, that sort of thing. For example, a synergistic player might take a level of barb in order to gain rage to boost their tripping abilities.

A high-OP player makes combos - he combines abilities to create something that is multiplicatively stronger than any of the base pieces. Vigor + share pain + psicrystal is a basic but good example of this.

[Cruiser1]

I define "High OP" as having the most spells, Ability scores, Etc
"High OP" is using all or almost all of the options available to you when designing your character, to make it as effective as possible. High OP usually involves quite a few source books, careful spell selection, and so on.

Note High OP may or may not include cheese. I define "Cheese" as rules loopholes or interpreting RAW ambiguity in your favor, such as infinite healing via drowning.

Cheese without High OP is a relatively simple build that takes advantage of one exploit, such as chain gating Solars, or a build like "The Wish and the Word" that's simply infinite wishes. High OP without cheese is a semi-complex build that stacks a number of options, which generally don't involve any gray areas in the rules, like Priya the Prismatic Priestess (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=280365) with her 325 Persistent buffs from 42 different source books. High OP with cheese is both rules exploitive and detailed, like Pun-Pun.

[Infernalbargain]

Aggressive divination, or metamagic reduction are good litmus tests.

[Gnaeus]

IMO:
Bearing in mind that none of these is a point, but all are really ranges. A fighter with good strength and sword and shield style with toughness and weapon focus is low op, but a fighter with a 2 handed weapon and power attack could also be low op, even though one is going to be much stronger than the other.

Low op = using classes roughly as intended with a desire to be useful, but with minimum knowledge/effort/desire to build strong characters. A low op fighter will have realized that he needs to have a good strength, and he should put on armor, and have a weapon, but he may be using sub-optimal styles, like TWF or S&B, or split his feats between multiple styles. A Low-op wiz will probably have his highest stat in Int, and will know that his job involves spells, but will probably have poor spells chosen, and is likely to be blasty.

Mid op = using classes roughly as intended, but with a higher level of system mastery, generally playing at a high % of a classes optimum normal power. A mid op fighter may be a charge build or a chain tripper, or may have dropped fighter altogether for ToB. A mid op wizard may have dropped blasting in favor of crowd control.

High op for me involves functioning above a classes normal power with the use of combinations that are either disproportionally powerful or actually not intended. Anything that operates significantly above the normal power of a T1 I regard as high op. You probably won't get a high op fighter, but if you do, he will be doing amounts of damage that require exponential notation. An undead tainted scholar, or a planar shepherd or similarly high powered PRCs, coupled with use of the game's most powerful spells. Wizards who never leave their demiplane and adventure via astral projection. Dragonwrought Kobold sorcerers casting at levels above their character level. Rainbow Warsnakes or Shadowcraft Gnomes.

Theoretical optimization involves things that are not intended for play and break the game by virtue of their normal operation. Stuff like jumplomancers or Pun-Pun.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I define "High OP" as having the most spells, Ability scores, Etc

This couldn't be any more inaccurate. Just having high ability scores, just having a lot of spells, even the two combined, won't make a character high-op.

High-op is having an extremely high level of synergy between all of your character's abilities. It's having multiple class features, racial abilities, items, and/or spells contributing to how good he is at his chosen niche or role.

A high-op character doesn't care whether he has 18's across the board or the NPC elite array. He doesn't care if he gets all the spells as long as he gets enough spells to be good at what he does, which could be very few. You could put a high-op character with the NPC elite array and only a few spells in a party with a character with 18's across the board and access to every spell, and that high-op character would still easily overshadow the guy with all 18's. This is especially true considering the player who made the high-op character has a high understanding of the game's mechanics, whereas the player who made the character with all 18's obviously thinks that having high ability scores automatically makes a powerful character.

[ddude987]

To me high OP is punpun or other infinite loops or cheesing level 9s at level 1.
To one of my most recent DMs a Barbarian 20 is high op because of how much damage it does and a gish is considered cheese.

[Hecuba]

My definitions (keeping in mind I play all 3 with different tables):

Low-Op: Unplanned builds. Synergy, if present, is not necessarily accidental but remains secondary to the basic function of abilities. Feats and features might (but not must) be chosen for fluff with no regard to mechanical implications. Items may suit known needs (i.e. securing an item to provide death-ward when a specific known enemy can level-drain), but are not generally used to proactively introduce new tactical options.

Median: Builds are planned in a general sense, but not necessarily for all 20 levels. Synergy is present and may represent a novel ability that supplements the character's feats and class features, but does not overshadow them. Feats and features are chosen with an eye to creating such synergy or facilitating goals later in the build. Items are proactively chosen to suit projected needs (i.e. securing an item to provide death-ward when undead are a know feature of a setting) and cover known tactical gaps(flight).

High-op: Builds have complete detailed plans including feats and features. Ability synergy is significant and may be more important to the execution of the character's tactics than the standard effects of the base abilities that comprise them. Items cover possible needs (i.e. securing an item to provide death-ward because you don't have a reliable method to cast it) and introduce new (non-opponent specific) tactical options (escape tools, burrow speed).

EDIT: ooh-- I can generalize this.
Low-op: unplanned and reactive
Medium-op: proactive relative to quests and campaigns and moderately planned builds.
High-op: well planned and proactive relative to the setting as a whole.

[Seharvepernfan]

(entire post)

I second this.

[Averis Vol]

I cannot give a lot of good examples, but basically for me, High op starts with greenbound summoning and anything beyond.

[Emperor Tippy]

My definitions:
Low Op: Takes less than five minutes to have mostly developed the character.
Mid Op: Takes less than an hour to develop the character.
High Op: Takes more than an hour to develop the character.

More useful metrics:
Low Op: Pretty much playing a class straight out of the book. Feats, spells, and classes are pretty much all taken solely on the basis of "that sounds cool".
Mid Op: The individual says "I want to be X class" and its feats, spells, and other classes are chosen to fit that theme.
High Op: The player says "I want to do X" and then figures out how to stack spells, feats, and various classes to become very good at doing X and to make X useful and relevant to the party.

TO: As high op except usefulness in play and relevance to the party are forgotten, its just about being the best at a very specific thing.

[zlefin]

i'm not entirely sure, and i'm pretty sure my use of these boards gives me a much different perspective on optimization levels.
But i'll try to make an answer
I'm going to go with a CR-based approach:

op-ness is how well a character/party go up against challenges of selected relative CR; optionally adjusted for tier list effects.

Low might have trouble with cr-1 encounters. Normal would be even versus cr-appropriate. High tends to beat cr+2; very high slaughters cr+4.


PS Hecuba's answer is better

[Togo]

I use a 5 point scale, based on how long the character will survive and how likely they are to achieve their goals.

5) Character is put together based on a theme or concept, with little consideration for mechanical effectiveness

4) Character is built with mechancially appropriate choices for what the character is supposed to be good at. The character may become noticeably more effective as a result, and start distorting some of the balancing mechanics in the game.

3) Character is built to mechancially maximise capabilities, and to circumvent or ignore the capabilities of others.

2) Character is built with the specifics of the game in mind. Mechanical advantage is discarded in favour of flavour or in-game considerations, and the character attempts to maximise both their character sheet-based cababilities and their capability to act and thrive within the game.

1) Character is fully integrated into the game world as a key part of it under the control of the player. Game mechanics may be altered to better represent the character's perceived role within the game, and the character sheet becomes the least part of the character's capabilities. The character will prosper as long as the game does, and possibly longer.

[Jeff the Green]

My definitions:
Low Op: Takes less than five minutes to have mostly developed the character.
Mid Op: Takes less than an hour to develop the character.
High Op: Takes more than an hour to develop the character.

More useful metrics:
Low Op: Pretty much playing a class straight out of the book. Feats, spells, and classes are pretty much all taken solely on the basis of "that sounds cool".
Mid Op: The individual says "I want to be X class" and its feats, spells, and other classes are chosen to fit that theme.
High Op: The player says "I want to do X" and then figures out how to stack spells, feats, and various classes to become very good at doing X and to make X useful and relevant to the party.

TO: As high op except usefulness in play and relevance to the party are forgotten, its just about being the best at a very specific thing.

I like these definitions, but it should be noted that it probably takes me a lot longer to develop a character than for Tippy, so by default any given build would probably be higher op for me than Tippy.

[DustyBottoms]

*Snip*

I couldn't have explained it better than that, bravo.

[Eldonauran]

Probably not the most popular answer, but IMO, when you are able to trivialize the CR system, not with luck or excellent planning but with little effort* or risk to the party.

*- Casting color spray (for example) and rendering the fight moot is not something I consider little effort. When you are able to completely wipe an encounter of equal CR without expending daily resources (assume the monsters are played intelligently) consistently, I consider the characters high op.

I play in, and am most comfortable in, mid-op games. It allows me room to crank up the optimization on a build that isn't quite up to par and allow them to hold their own with other mid-op characters.

[Jack_Simth]

I define high-op via a modified version of Pit Fiend Equivalent numbers (modified based on level).

That is:

Pit-Fiend-Offense: How many Pit Fiends (or replacement well-known critter of appropriate CR to the level of the game) can my character kill, on average, in ten rounds if the Pit Fiends (or replacement) just sort of sit there and take it.
Pit-Fiend-Defense: How many Pit Fiends (or replacement well-known critter of appropriate CR to the level of the game) does it take to one-round my character, on average?

This gives me numbers, which actually make for a useful comparison, even though it's still significantly flawed.

I first encountered this method on these forums, although I don't remember exactly who introduced me to it.

[Emperor Tippy]

I define high-op via a modified version of Pit Fiend Equivalent numbers (modified based on level).

That is:

Pit-Fiend-Offense: How many Pit Fiends (or replacement well-known critter of appropriate CR to the level of the game) can my character kill, on average, in ten rounds if the Pit Fiends (or replacement) just sort of sit there and take it.
Pit-Fiend-Defense: How many Pit Fiends (or replacement well-known critter of appropriate CR to the level of the game) does it take to one-round my character, on average?

This gives me numbers, which actually make for a useful comparison, even though it's still significantly flawed.

I first encountered this method on these forums, although I don't remember exactly who introduced me to it.

Hmm, I like that idea.

[Jack_Simth]

Hmm, I like that idea.
Not originally mine, but it's the only useful way I've found to communicate optimization goals for a game. Saying "high op" or "low op" is extremely subject to the experience of the involved parties. The guy who's used to Batman-Wizards and DMM(Persistent Spell) clerics might consider PFO and PFD numbers of 10 to be mid (normal) op. The guy who's used to playing bards for the RP might consider taking Natural Spell on a Druid to be High Op. Unless you're very familiar with the person you're trying to communicate with in this regard, simply saying "high op" or "mid op" or "low op" isn't very useful.

[Darth Stabber]

High op is like pornography, they take up too much of my time I'll know it when I see it.

[NM020110]

My definitions are probably broken, but here they are. Presently tailored to 25th level gestalt, so the examples should probably be reduced if you're looking at a different level.

No-op: What the WotC playtesters did...
Low-op: Abilities are used effectively. A character at this tier should be able to face any single encounter from any book (excluding most gods and the immortal's handbook) without concern while holding back.
Mid-op: Low-op's power, but more so. A character at this tier should be able to face against the entire population of any given plane without concern.
High-op: A character of this tier should be able to compete with an intelligently played greater deity, or a pun-pun that lacks the ability to create new abilities.
Highest-op: A character of this tier is an ability-unlimited pun-pun or entity of equivalent power...or the DM.

[tiercel]

There's a lot of good discussion (including the simple fact, as has been pointed out several times, that optimization levels are relative) here.

Alarm bells go off for me as a DM when a player wants to try something that, if I allow it in my game, will force me to rethink the game world.

Namely, "if the PC can really do this, then would an NPC/BBEG--of presumably higher level--also be able to do this, or to have already done this, and would that simple fact change my plot/campaign setting?"

Not all such things are high-op, some are simply high-power without particular optimization.

Basically it's an Anthropic Principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle) for a campaign world; if a particular spell, combination, build, or action is inconsistent with that campaign world existing as it does, then either I have to come up with a reason why the campaign still looks like it does, actually alter the campaign, or disallow the action from working the way it would seem to.

If my campaign doesn't have a history of entire cities being annihilated by locate city bombs or shadow-pocalypses, there must be a reason why. "No one in the history of the world has ever thought of this before" just doesn't cut it for me, unless we are really playing a First Age dawn-of-civilization first-PCs-ever-in-a-world-of-NPC-classed-extras sort of campaign (in which case, don't place any big bets on there ever BEING a Second Age).

Again, this is more about power than optimization per se, but any amount of power (from optimization or straight up) that forces this kind of reconsideration as a DM is, to me, "high."

[ericgrau]

Spawned off an argument
Well there's the problem right there, arguing over a relative term. How high is high?

Offline in my gaming groups it's minor power creep. Online it seems to be 5 part combos and exploiting rules loopholes and oversights. And even many of those are considered normal until they hit infinite or semi-infinite.

I think it's an actual problem in two cases:
(1) Player disparity. When the DM can't provide an exciting dangerous challenge to one player without accidentally killing another, or making him so useless he might as well not be playing. This case can be fixed as easily with boosting the weak player as it can nerfing the strong player.
(2) Rocket tag. When optimization reaches the point of ultimate attacks and defenses. Every situation depends on whether or not you have photographic memory and endless book searching free time. One fight the party easily walks over it and it's boring, in the next fight there's a slip up and it's an automatic failure or even a TPK. Games are supposed to be fun. OCD planning followed by near zero struggle is not fun. The game is ruined even if all the PCs and monsters are equal.

[tonberrian]

Low-Op: Encounters have to be designed around you to let you contribute
High-Op: Encounters have to be designed around you so that you don't trivialize them.
Mid-Op:encounters don't have to be designed around you.

[ShadowFireLance]

Well there's the problem right there, arguing over a relative term. How high is high?


The Dm I'm arguing with is able to animate and control 150,000 HD Zombie Dragons.
I'm refering to a character such as my favorite, who had no ability score below 100, and his highest was pushing the 300's. All at level 30 with no loops, or epic spells, in addition to having every Useful caster like ability in the game.
(Arcane, Divine, Incarnum, Binder, Etc)

[Sgt. Cookie]

Wizard/Sorcerer/Mage of The Arcane Order/Ultimate Magus.

[danzibr]

I define high-OP as the difference between "synergy" and "combo."

A low-OP player doesn't worry (or know) about either one, and takes w/e looks appealing to them. They might make a synergy or even a combo by accident, but it certainly wasn't planned.

A mid-OP player makes their character with synergy in mind. Stacking bonuses, mixing classes to shore up basic and known weaknesses, that sort of thing. For example, a synergistic player might take a level of barb in order to gain rage to boost their tripping abilities.

A high-OP player makes combos - he combines abilities to create something that is multiplicatively stronger than any of the base pieces. Vigor + share pain + psicrystal is a basic but good example of this.
Hmm. I like this definition quite a bit.

[drack]

This couldn't be any more inaccurate. Just having high ability scores, just having a lot of spells, even the two combined, won't make a character high-op.

High-op is having an extremely high level of synergy between all of your character's abilities. It's having multiple class features, racial abilities, items, and/or spells contributing to how good he is at his chosen niche or role.

A high-op character doesn't care whether he has 18's across the board or the NPC elite array. He doesn't care if he gets all the spells as long as he gets enough spells to be good at what he does, which could be very few. You could put a high-op character with the NPC elite array and only a few spells in a party with a character with 18's across the board and access to every spell, and that high-op character would still easily overshadow the guy with all 18's. This is especially true considering the player who made the high-op character has a high understanding of the game's mechanics, whereas the player who made the character with all 18's obviously thinks that having high ability scores automatically makes a powerful character.
I like this one most having read the thread. There are some things I would add though, and I may as well throw up my own low/mid/high summary, I'll use level 15 monostalt as a base for examples.


Low op: The classes can be anything, you're not randomly rolling up a character, but like all characters you pick something nice that fits with your concept. You don't put any undue thought into it, and if you do out of habit, you intentionally pluck out abilities that work together until you have trouble fighting encounters of your level.

Example

A mage with some connivance spells like wood woose to make it tea, who freely casts them, and keeps some basic ones like fireballs and such ready when the encounter goes bad. Alternatively when someone slips a more optimized sheet in front of you, and you have no idea how to play it, then the character will be low op.


Mid-op: The simplest explanation would be a cross between high and low op. in high op I'll mention "tricks", a mid-op character should have somewhere from 1-2 to 3-5 of these depending on the group and nature of the tricks.

Examples

A hurler that throws monsterous boulders for massive ammage or a charger that does much the same. A metamagic mage focused on damage, an assassin with a few poisons and most of their character dumped into the hide skill, a death spell mage with DCs 2-3 times their character level


High op: The first step is looking at this "synergy" that everyone's going on about. I tend to call a chain of synergies that all further one ability. For instance f you take a bunch of feats to further charging damage, or find a combo of spells that works particularly well together. Anything of the sort. A High op Character is one that interweaves these tricks making them synergize each other, and giving more then enough individual threads of them to never use the same trick twice on an opponent. A High op character wastes next to nothing and all flows together smoothly. Furthermore all of this must integrate into their character as how everything fits into the way their character acts must also "synergize" with these tricks, else they be much weaker then they should.

Example

A charger that has several modes of transportation, several modes of attack, which can augment those in a number of ways, whom has contingencies in place for the most expected counter-assaults, enough "speed" to keep up with the enemy, and some abilities to ensure both survival of him/herself, and that their attacks actualy hurt the enemy.


However I like to think of there being both high op characters and high op players. As many have mentioned a high level of optimization requires familiarity with the rules, the ability to find synergy between abilities, and a mind for keeping numbers high enough to get what they want, and low enough such as not to waste levels doing so.

I suppose thus my amendments would be how smoothly one ability must flow into another, and because without this their character would be a wreck, and not just in the mechanical sense.

In regard to your argument with your GM though, I would say the following.
1) "Golden rule, gm is always right, listen and obey.", though that is only really advice if the argument pertains to that game.
2) Not really sure how they would have gotten a 150,000HD undead without GM fait, though if you can get a character with ability scores over 100 and most of the casting abilities in the game, then it's either a game that easily allows such silliness, or you both are playing at a rather high level of optimization to do such without any broken 3.0/homebrew/broken variants/old versions of errata-ed abilities that I probably wouldn't allow. I mean that's well above my op. :smalltongue:
3) In any case I'd hope that the quoted explanation of op helps you and your GM come to an agreement such that any arguments could be solved, since I hate conflict, and it's rarely a good thing to start threads because of arguments.
4) On the off chance this was just to vent (I know it can be terribly frustrating to have an unyielding GM who always whips out GM fait and GM is always right), I think I saw a "things we hate" thread floating around for that. In any case best of luck to you and your DM! :smallbiggrin:

[ShadowFireLance]

drack, I'm not entirely sure if you're more like the Joker or more like Bane. :smallcool:

[drack]

I vote joker, he burns through money, which makes him a shifty kinda nifty dude. Bane just got digs. :smallcool:

[NichG]

For me the scale is based not just on what gimmicks appear on the character sheet, but also the player's awareness and attitude of how the character is put together. A player who doesn't know what they're doing can lower the optimization level of a character because they ignore their best options or apply them incorrectly.

Low-Op: The character is constructed in a way that ignores the inherent relative power levels of options in the system, (e.g. without player awareness of these differences). Basically, the character may be powerful or weak, but only because of random factors in the player's tastes rather than any sort of design that went into the build. Thus a fireball wizard, a warblade with randomly chosen maneuvers, and a TWF Fighter are both low-op, even if the warblade and wizard will generally be more effective than the TWF Fighter.

Medium-Op: The player has a basic awareness of the 'proverbial wisdom' of character building in the system. Here you have things like 'I should use a two handed weapon and power attack a lot if I want melee damage output, because TWF requires very specific tricks to be better' or 'I should take Improved Toughness instead of Toughness if I really want HP' or 'the extra feat from Human is really good compared to lots of other 0LA racial options'. Basically this is the optimization level you eventually reach if you play the game a lot but don't really book dive across multiple sources. The high end of Medium-Op might involve things like picking the best one-off spells for your caster (like a wizard using Color Spray, Web, or Gate to their fullest). At this level, players have experience about how the game plays out and use that knowledge to design their characters.

High-Op: The player has a deep understanding of interactions and details within the system, but also of the inventory of options available to them. Thus, they may design a character ahead of time in such a way that they have the proper 'timing' of levels to take advantage of multiple options from multiple sources that build up to some particular hyper-competency. Here you might have things like early-entry tricks to PrCs and the like. At this level, the player's choices are guided not just by what is most optimal locally, but more and more by considerations of global optimality (e.g. less 'how can I be a really good bard' and more 'how can I best produce a character that has bard-like thematics, even if bard has no place in the build'). At this degree, the question isn't picking the best spells for your caster, its arranging so that your caster can cast all the best spells spontaneously (e.g. doing something like hyper-real shadowcraft mage stuff).

TO: Utilizing all aspects of the system as written, including things that would degrade the game's stability if actually run that way by a DM (e.g. things that any sane DM would ban or fix, like infinite loops, un-restricted Polymorph Any Object tricks, Pun-Pun, etc).

Cheese: Rather than specific things, I'd classify this as a player attitude of pushing things till they break the game as a whole for their current group. That is to say, cheese is anything that exceeds the op level of the rest of the table. So even Gating in a Solar would be cheese at a low-op group.

Munchkinry: Like Cheese, but often via rules-illegal methods that are either made to work by badgering the DM to let it work or by willful misinterpretation of the rules. Cheese could be accidental disregard for the op-level of the rest of the table, but Munchkinry is willful disregard to the point of using any trick to push for that higher op level even if the player is actually capable or understanding of it.

For the record, I'd say my group plays in the low high-op bracket most often, with forays into high medium-op. We stop short of Team Solars and Tainted Scholar kinds of things, but we've had our uberchargers, 30 attack per round thrown-weapons builds, maximized timestop plus delayed spells combos, omni-mages, and the like.

[drack]

I'd agree with the first for sure, and last part to an extent. I'd also add that "op" as others have suggested is a sliding scale for gauging power, and only by someone telling you what they consider to be XXX-op can you know that they're actually saying about it. For instance I'd consider the above pretty common mid-op. It really depends on what the person is used to being exposed to. :smallbiggrin:

[Endarire]

Low Op: Optimization level far below me.
Medium Op: Optimization level around where I am.
High Op: Optimization level far above me.

Joking aside, optimization level is more of a feel thing.