What do you and don't you consider "cheese"?

[Alabenson]

There are certain forms of optimization that most people agree are abusive and have no place in an actual game, such as Pun Pun. However, a great deal of mid-to-high-end optimization concepts seems to lie in a grey area, where some people are completely fine with them and others would almost never consider bringing them into a game.

Therefore, I'm curious, where do you draw the line between cheese and acceptable optimization?

[sleepyphoenixx]

It varies between campaigns and groups but anything that includes the word "infinite" anywhere in it's abilities is probably out in the games i play (obviously doesn't include warlocks).
The same goes for things like free wishes and similar tricks.

[Barsoom]

People have various arguments for various optimization levels, but the truth is, 99% of people will rationalize "acceptable optimization" into "the level I usually optimize".

[DementedFellow]

Even though it is legal, I typically draw the line at early entry tricks.

With certain classes, it's pretty easy to stumble across a powerful build. But when you have someone who knows how to enter more powerful prestige classes before everyone else, they can upset the balance.

[prufock]

Basically anything that seems like it's taking advantage of wording to do things that I'm sure abilities weren't intended to do. IE If it isn't overpowered and game-breaking, I generally don't care. However, the following terms usually pop up in cheese:
- infinite
- loop
- arbitrarily high
- candle of invocation

Cheese: d2 crusader, exploits abilities to roll damage infinitely; never actually stops rolling, so grinds the game to a halt.

Not Cheese: Using Precocious Apprentice for early PrC entry; unless the PrC has game-breaking abilities, entering early won't do much damage on its own.

Cheese: Pun-Pun. Self-explanatory.

Not Cheese: Psychic Reformation, Dark Chaos Shuffle; these are basically the rebuilding/retraining rules turned up to 11. Again, they CAN be broken, but not in and of themselves.

[Ceiling_Squid]

Hm. Hard to say.

I can tolerate high-op as long as it fits within the campaign tone and party composition. Balance and all.

You'll get a million different answers, though, so just to give my personal threshold:

I think it's cheesy when a particular overpowered build is completely out-of-step with the campaign's tone. A bizarre, abuseable combo utilizing some obscure race and odd combination of classes and feats and equipment that don't actually have any proper roleplaying justification, well-developed and consistent characterization behind them, or even a remote fit with the campaign world pains me a fair bit.

Then again, I place a high value on starting with a consistent character concept, and then working to realize that concept. If you're optimizing just for the sake of optimizing, especially if you're using rule loopholes, I might consider it "cheese". Context matters, I guess. A highly-optimized character can be less cheesy to my eye if they at least have a good foundation in the world and a fully-realized personality.

And, you know, not render the rest of the party useless.

[Invader]

Anthromorphic Bat for a druid.

[Krazzman]

I think for me or better said for our Group as is... somewhere between going Warblade over Fighter and Pun Pun.

No seriously said somewhere between Ubercharging and Castertricks is my personal line.

I personally don't like "weak" builds/characters because they don't feel like contributing. If they can do certain things then OK go ahead. But else I think other options should be favoured. But going Ubercharging while the fighter next to me thinks toughness is great? Then I would feel like abusing cheese. Or the Knockdown type of feats. (Deal 10 Damage to get an instant Trip attempt). I don't like them, they are bad designed (in my opinion).

Generally something that takes my character FAR FAR ahead of the rest of the party. With my warblade it was quite heavy as I outperformed everyone in the one role I used (damage) as the others hadn't that many options.

[Eldonauran]

I base my opinion on how trivial the character makes the CR system.

Unoptimized characters tend to struggle with the CR system. Low to medium optimized characters tend to deal with the CR system fairly well. Highly optimized characters make most encounters trivial. Cheesey characters blow the system out of the water. Even if the character is 'legal' with a certain interpretation of a ruling, I consider cheesey.

I play characters that run the length of the optimization scale. I don't play cheesey characters, mostly cause they will never see play in the games I join.

[ZamielVanWeber]

When you are bending the rules or using feats to do things they were never meant to do, but do by RAW, you are entering cheese territory. Aside from that it is relative to the expectations of the other players and the DM. If you have some people who are not so hot, making a high-end mailman to auto-win fights is simple a jerk move. If everyone is playing to the level except the DM, pile of jerks moves (with the opposite being true).

[Malroth]

Not Cheese: spending several weeks and 1/4 your lv 17WBL creating an Ice assassin of the Blue dragon you defeated last adventure.

Cheese: Shapechanging into a Zodar, wishing for a scroll of Ice assasian of an Alelax of yourself. changing into something else, changing back to a Zodar Wishing for an item of true mind switch then casting the scroll and swapping bodies with it for complete immunity to everything

[RustyArmor]

Most the stated things above but also if you are bending over backwards and your class build it based around more then five books and/or 5-6 prestige classes that you dip in for one ability over taking the class in of itself.

[Eyclonus]

Not Cheese: Dragonwrought Kobold

Powerful but not quite cheese: Venerable DW-Kobold

Cheese: Venerable Dragonwrought Kobold with Loredrake and any templates.

[Shaynythyryas]

Basically anything that seems like it's taking advantage of wording to do things that I'm sure abilities weren't intended to do.

That.

I have the bad, bad habit of trying to pull out basic logic when facing bad wording.

Cheesy : almost every trick you can pull out of complete psi.

[Eyclonus]

Cheesy : almost every trick you can pull out of complete psi.

Never found CPsi to be bad, in that respect, it is bad though, just for other reasons.

[Blueiji]

I think that a character becomes "overpowered" or "cheesey" when it reaches a point at which the DM's only way to challenge it is to negate it's capabilites.

For example, if one was to build an intimidation build so potent that the only viable opponent was one that was immune to fear then they have become overpowered. They've also thwarted themselves, because now if the DM wants to give them any sort of challenge then they have to deny the character their greatest strength.

A build such as Pun-Pun reaches this point many times over, each time rendering itself less suitable for play until it eventually reaches the point of theoretical optimization.

[Forrestfire]

For me, cheese is generally stuff that either breaks the game into little tiny pieces (any of the TO builds, anything involving the words "loop," "infinite," "chain," or "candle of invocation" as a starting point) or stuff that strongly invalidates both other players and the CR system (CoDZilla played to full strength, wizards played to full intelligence).

In my opinion, what is cheese and what isn't comes with intent. If you're playing a cleric/druid/wizard/archivist/artificer with the goal of being the strongest there is, to the point of imbalancing the game, then it's cheese.

Playing a tier 1 caster with the intent of supporting your party and maybe preparing one or two castings of a cheese spell in case of life-threatening situations would not be cheese in my opinion.

Another example: Aptitude weapons, when combined with crit-fishing and lightning maces are cheese. In a campaign I'm in, the DM is allowing me to use aptitude on my monk/soulknife/soulbow to apply stuff like stunning fist and boomerang ricochet. This is (at least in my opinion) not cheese.

[LordBlades]

For me, cheese varies from game to game. I define cheesy as 'stuff that's not playable without breaking something' (either the mechanical consistency of the game, the setting, or simply the play group due to one character that's out of sync with the group, power-wise).

This includes everything that's pure TO (infinite and arbitrarily larger loops mainly), and from game to game can vary from 'not much else' (if it's a high-powered almost everything goes game), to 'a lot of things' (if it's a low power game where the party melee is a S&B fighter, I'd consider a warblade cheesy).

[Jack_Simth]

There are certain forms of optimization that most people agree are abusive and have no place in an actual game, such as Pun Pun. However, a great deal of mid-to-high-end optimization concepts seems to lie in a grey area, where some people are completely fine with them and others would almost never consider bringing them into a game.

Therefore, I'm curious, where do you draw the line between cheese and acceptable optimization?
Cheese in specific: Something that's either used as very clearly not intended by the designers, or is at an optimization level above acceptable parameters for the gaming table in question (varies by table).

[Toliudar]

Cheese in specific: Something that's either used as very clearly not intended by the designers, or is at an optimization level above acceptable parameters for the gaming table in question (varies by table).

As is so often the case, I agree with Jack.

[Rebel7284]

Beholder Mage.
Planar Shepherd with 10-1 speed planar bubble.
Synchronicity chaining on a character with recharge capabilities.
D2 Crusader.
Wish economy.

[Petrocorus]

To my mind, it also depends of the power level of other character of the party. In a high level party with a straight cleric, a straight druid, a straight wizard, a straight artificer; an overoptimized bard gestalt paladin-marshal/divine crusader/contemplative/fochlucan lyrist is not that cheese, because is just on par (and not even really) with the rest of the party.

OTOH, in a party with an archer rogue, a dwarven defender and a shifter ranger/barbarian trying to play Wolverine; a not-optimized druid or cleric is already a bit cheesy.

On a quite related note, i think that DMM:persist is cheese. I can't imagine what the writer were thinking.




Cheese: d2 crusader, exploits abilities to roll damage infinitely; never actually stops rolling, so grinds the game to a halt.

How can you do infinite damage with a crusader?



Not Cheese: Using Precocious Apprentice for early PrC entry;
Not Cheese: Psychic Reformation, Dark Chaos Shuffle;

I've always thought that Precocious apprentice was specifically made to be an early entry trick for Arcane hierophant and the like, or gish PrC.

Psychic Reformation is not cheese at all if it is not combine with an overoptimised Inspire Greatness. It just allow to correct previous skill point repartition and has an xp cost.

What is Dark Chaos Shuffle?



Cheese: Shapechanging into a Zodar, wishing for a scroll of Ice assasian of an Alelax of yourself. changing into something else, changing back to a Zodar Wishing for an item of true mind switch then casting the scroll and swapping bodies with it for complete immunity to everything

What is an Alelax?

[Karnith]

How can you do infinite damage with a crusader?The d2 crusader (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3300686&postcount=38) is an exploit using the Aura of Chaos stance after receiving the effects of an ally's Imbued Healing (Luck Domain) to deal infinite damage by rolling infinite d2 dice for damage.

What is Dark Chaos Shuffle?It refers to two spells from Fiendish Codex I: Embrace the Dark Chaos and Shun the Dark Chaos. The first lets the spell's target exchange any feat it possesses for any Abyssal Heritor feat for which it qualifies. The latter lets its target exchange any Abyssal Heritor feat it possesses for any non-Abyssal Heritor feat for which it qualifies. If you alternate castings of the spells, you can trade out any feat you possess for any other feat you qualify for at a minor XP cost. You can even trade out racial feats, like an elf's weapon proficiencies.

What is an Alelax?
An Aleax is a type of creature detailed in the Book of Exalted Deeds. They are copies of a creature called into being by deities, and exist only to attack the creature that they have copied. One particular ability, Singular Enemy, is abusive if accessible to PCs because it makes the Aleax immune to attacks that don't come from the creature that it is a copy of.

Thus, if you make an Ice Assassin of an Aleax of yourself, you can force it to fail its saving throw against a True Mind Switch, and hence gain Singular Enemy, which prevents anything else from ever harming you by attacking.

[bot]

Basically anything that seems like it's taking advantage of wording to do things that I'm sure abilities weren't intended to do.

+1 wholeheartedly.

Also Cheesy is
- more than one template
- early entry
- certain items
- flaws
- much more

[Tvtyrant]

Cheesy: Doing something that you know will make the game difficult for the other players/DM.

Uncheesy: Doing something that the game should have allowed from the get-go.

So Psychic Reformation shouldn't be a power, it should be a fundamental rule of the game (IMO.) Dark Chaos Shuffling away racial feats/bonus feats off of limited lists into general feats is to me cheesy however.

[Petrocorus]

The d2 crusader (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3300686&postcount=38) is an exploit using the Aura of Chaos stance after receiving the effects of an ally's Imbued Healing (Luck Domain) to deal infinite damage by rolling infinite d2 dice for damage.

Oh myyyy.... that's cheesy.
The most difficult part of that build is to find a melee weapon which does d2 damage. For medium characters, i only found the shuriken in the SRD.



Thus, if you make an Ice Assassin of an Aleax of yourself, you can force it to fail its saving throw against a True Mind Switch, and hence gain Singular Enemy, which prevents anything else from ever harming you by attacking.


Wow, that's even more cheesy.

Thanks for all the info.

[Renen]

+1 wholeheartedly.

Also Cheesy is
- more than one template
- early entry
- certain items
- flaws
- much more

Flaws are cheese? Thats a pretty low cheese tolerance ceiling

[VariSami]

Flaws are cheese? Thats a pretty low cheese tolerance ceiling
I also find the flaw system cheesy which means that taking flaws is cheesy even if they themselves are not. After all, taking minor harm to unnecessary abilities for extra feats is quite overpowered even if you are not overtly minmaxing.

[Mithril Leaf]

I'm about 3/4 of the way between the playground average and Tippy style. Anything that is not indefinitely infinite goes for me. For example, Ice Assassin traps that mass produce totally loyal epic level wizards is too cheesy for me. Using a venerable dragonwrought kobold to get epic feats pre-epic is not cheese, just high op.

[NeoPhoenix0]

Cheese: cheddar, havarti, provolone...(really long list)
Not cheese: american and velveeta

Seriously thought it depends on the players and campaign. It is generally fine as long as you can have fun. This is why my group has a you can do anything you can explain once agreement. This means you can pull off some awesome things but never break the game again that way. Your reset button is disintegrates itself.

Here's a list of always cheese of the top of my head:
most polymorph subschool shenanigans
advanced gate, wish, miracle uses
warmage or beguiler into rainbow servant
wizard 1/sorcerer 19 with versatile spellcaster

[ericgrau]

It does vary. My group generally doesn't like X to Y substitution. They know about some strong spells and abilities, but not most others. They don't like heavy prestige multi-classing. And too much combo stacking isn't outright disallowed but is frowned upon a little, and something players tend to hold back on depending on how much they feel like "abusing the game". Things like psionic body + 10 psionic feats for a lot of hp is borderline. My favorite is the hard ban on monks for being way overpowered, because of some monk optimization tricks that appeared in forums a decade ago :smallbiggrin:.

Obviously these boards set the bar quite a bit higher.

I have yet to become crazy enough to throw away a lot of my time on DMing. But personally I would disallow X to Y and any combos w/o an upper limit and basically everything my group would do except the monk ban. On top of that I'd bring all power creep down a peg, +1 spell level for example, so that the other 90% of options are just as good. But I don't think anybody else is so strict, except those who outright ban all splatbooks. I would only run things that way to open up more viable options, not to limit players like it might seem. The good stuff would still stay with the minor nerf. In fact I'd encourage players to make things up out of thin air if they needed it for their build, and I'd set the spell level or whatever.

[logic_error]

Hi.

I consider Polymorph and its variants along with the feat leadership a Cheese.

[cerin616]

To me, the difference between creativity and cheese is similar to the difference between first and third degree murder.

You still killed a guy, but 1st degree you intentionally killed the guy, and made a plan on how you would kill the guy.

Ill allow cheese if you dont really realize how cheesey you are getting, because chances are you didnt just go wizard 20 to break the game. But if the players knows what they are doing, and are intentionally trying to b reak the game, well then i get a little less forgiving.

[Gigas Breaker]

Things my DM has said no to that I agree with: Planar Shepherd, Thrallherd, nightsick stacking.

Things one of my DMs said no to that I'm like wut: healing belts.

Things that are ok by my DMs: optimized sonic Dragonfire Inspiration.

Everybody is different.

[JaronK]

I find most people define cheesy as simply something they wouldn't expect or wouldn't do. As such, I refuse to call anything cheesy.

Instead, I go with "overpowered for this particular game" or "inappropriate for this particular game." In some games I have banned anything other than commoners. Other games have allowed gestalt classes with brutally powerful combos. It just depends on the game.

JaronK

[Alex12]

My general rule of thumb is if I look at the combo and think "that's stupid and shouldn't work that way" then I consider it cheesy. Most infinites, loops, wish-abuse stuff falls into this category (though the d2 crusader, oddly enough, doesn't ping my cheese detector)
Also, if it depends largely or entirely on setting-specific stuff like Pazuzu or planes with a different time flow, then it's cheesy.
Taking more than one template, in most cases.

[EyethatBinds]

A four armed Sahuagan with four stump knives (and improved critical) is cheese. The Saint template is cheese, so is the feral template. Duelist/Invisible Blade/Sword Sage/Battle Dancers are cheesy.

War Mage, while not cheesy is just too focused on combat, more than even the fighter class (so I ban WM). It's too difficult to avoid making psionics cheesy, they have so many save or die spells. Avasculate can be cheesy, but not overly so, unless you find a way to make it affect multiple people.

Anything a straight class fighter does isn't cheesy.

[Karnith]

Anything a straight class fighter does isn't cheesy.
How do you feel about charge-based tactics? Straight fighter may make the best charger, but one would be easily capable of dealing hundreds, if not thousands, of damage per charge.

[TuggyNE]

Cheese in specific: Something that's either used as very clearly not intended by the designers, or is at an optimization level above acceptable parameters for the gaming table in question (varies by table).

Basically, this.

I find it funny that most responders here have higher tolerances for stuff that I'd consider cheese than I do; I find DCFS quite cheesy, Planar Shepherd very cheesy, Venerable DWK cheesy, Abrupt Jaunt rather cheesy, and Naberius+HWF quite cheesy, just as a minor sampling.

[JaronK]

Anything a straight class fighter does isn't cheesy.

Sweet. My Fighter 6 with his WBL spent on a Candle of Invocation so he can get endless wishes will be so happy!

...Though I do get your intent of course.

JaronK

[Traab]

I figure, if you need to ask the dm for permission, thats a sign you are entering cheese territory.

[NeoPhoenix0]

Basically, this.

I find it funny that most responders here have higher tolerances for stuff that I'd consider cheese than I do; I find DCFS quite cheesy, Planar Shepherd very cheesy, Venerable DWK cheesy, Abrupt Jaunt rather cheesy, and Naberius+HWF quite cheesy, just as a minor sampling.

I forgot about those. I agree with you on all except Naberius and Hell Fire Warlock. It is probably not intended to work that way but it just puts it in the ball park of a blaster sorcerer. So, I only consider it kinda cheesy.

[JaronK]

I figure, if you need to ask the dm for permission, thats a sign you are entering cheese territory.

I ask the DM for permission for absolutely everything, because I want to know what's going to fit in their games. Usually I also ask the other players.

JaronK

[Traab]

I ask the DM for permission for absolutely everything, because I want to know what's going to fit in their games. Usually I also ask the other players.

JaronK

I suppose i was working under the impression that, barring playing with new people, you would already be aware of the general level of acceptable, but I hope you get my intent.

[Barsoom]

I suppose i was working under the impression that, barring playing with new people, you would already be aware of the general level of acceptable, but I hope you get my intent.Speaking for myself, I believe I get your intent, but disagree with it. It can never hurt to ask the DM.

[Jack_Simth]

Speaking for myself, I believe I get your intent, but disagree with it. It can never hurt to ask the DM.

Um, have you never had someone get seriously upset with you for asking too many questions?

[JaronK]

Even when playing with the same group of people, I find tastes change. So I'm usually going to ask questions like "what general themes are you hoping for in this game?" and "what's the power level you're generally aiming for?" I'd rather have a player get that right than have them show up for the first game with a character that's completely inappropriate (something I've seen far too often, even with players who know me pretty well).

JaronK

[Petrocorus]

Basically, this.

I find it funny that most responders here have higher tolerances for stuff that I'd consider cheese than I do; I find DCFS quite cheesy, Planar Shepherd very cheesy, Venerable DWK cheesy, Abrupt Jaunt rather cheesy, and Naberius+HWF quite cheesy, just as a minor sampling.

What's DCFS?

[Barsoom]

What's DCFS?

Dark Chaos Feat Shuffle. You start as an Elf, with 5 4 racial weapon proficiencies. Then, use Embrace the Dark Chaos to replace those with Chaos feats, and finally, Shun the Dark Chaos to replace the chaos feats with any feats you want. Five Four (almost) free feats, basically.

[Karnith]

You start as an Elf, with 5 racial weapon proficiencies.
What Elf subrace gets 5 racial weapon proficiencies? Normal (high) elves only get 4, as far as I know (longsword, rapier, longbow, and shortbow), and I'm always looking for better options.

[LordBlades]

I ask the DM for permission for absolutely everything, because I want to know what's going to fit in their games. Usually I also ask the other players.

JaronK

From my experience, it's best to do that.
Especially when the DM isn't very experienced, it really helps to let him know what your character can do. I've seen it more than once: plotline X 'ruined' (it's usually not ruined, just not turning out as the DM hoped and that's quite disheartening for many people) or encounter X trivialized just because of one ability of one of the PCs that the DM was unaware of.

[Barsoom]

What Elf subrace gets 5 racial weapon proficiencies? Normal (high) elves only get 4, as far as I know (longsword, rapier, longbow, and shortbow), and I'm always looking for better options.

Hmm. For some reason I thought the shortsword is also included there. Shows how little I know of cheese. So, four free feats, not five.

[Duke of Urrel]

I can't draw a hard and fast line between cheese and non-cheese, but I think I can form a general concept that is objective rather than subjective.

In the game of D&D, the Rules As Written are always only an approximation of reality. They always oversimplify things in the interest of making the game easier to play, and we all accept this oversimplification, at the cost of realism, because it's in everybody's interest.

However, sometimes one can interpret the RAW in such a way that the game both becomes less realistic and clearly serves the interest of one player, or one monster, but not anybody else's. I think we can agree that when this happens, it's cheese.

According to this definition of cheese, it is an unavoidable thing. Some of it is always there, because the game of D&D is a fantasy. Even when the RAW represent aspects of our world, they simplify it, so there is no such thing as a cheese-free interpretation of them. However, whenever there are two competing interpretations of the RAW, and one is less realistic than the other and obviously serves the interest of one creature to the exclusion of all others, the less realistic interpretation is always the cheesier one.

Of course, the question of how much cheese should be tolerated, even as I have defined it here, is unavoidably subjective.

[ArqArturo]

Planar Shepperd. Cheeeezy.

[sideswipe]

its all relative, there are obvious rule exploitations. but to be honest if you have a party of 4 exploiters then just crank up the CR until they meet things that threat them like disobeidient children. also tweaking the world they are in to their power is both rewarding and debilitating to the party. there is no problem with optimising if the entire party does.

on the other hand, if there is one power player in a fair party then just dm approve his or her character before they start. if it ends up being a campaign of " hey ,insert player here, can you beat this challenge? no? ok party wipe" as the rest of the players are over shadowed then its no fun and just say no.

so personally its campaign specific

[kkplx]

I also find the flaw system cheesy which means that taking flaws is cheesy even if they themselves are not. After all, taking minor harm to unnecessary abilities for extra feats is quite overpowered even if you are not overtly minmaxing.

All it does is give you acces to 1 or 2 more feats, allowing for more options and especially for picking a not-human race. I'm tired of playing humans, but the feat @1 is so ****ing important for almost anything that isn't a melee class. From what I've seen many DMs on this forum even houserule 1 additional feat @ 1 as standard, or simply adapt the PF feat progression.

If you're willing to take a token penalty for 1 or 2 feats that should be the standard to begin with, more power to you. It's not fun spending most of the first 10 sessions shooting a Crossbow/bow with a constant -4. And that's what those 2 feats ususally get used for by me. Point Blank and Precise Shot.