souridealist
2014-01-29, 03:55 AM
So, my gaming experience up until now has been primarily in two different groups. One group was devoted to a campaign that even as a newbie, I could tell was not exactly par for the course (I wrote up the highlights on the Evil DM Stories thread, but essentially: things were weird and there was a major and malicious artifact or power-set for everyone). The other group was a little more casual, and never struck me as particularly powergamey or like anyone was overwhelmingly optimized, or anything like that. You picked what you wanted to do, set yourself up to do it as well as possible, and if the party had a task their builds weren't designed to handle then we'd figure something out. Possibly by banging our heads against it, if we had low INT or WIS scores. We weren't the best roleplayers, but it wasn't mindless hack-n-slash either (one time we nearly got toasted by an umbral dragon because the party alchemist was convinced, CONVINCED that a local sorcerer was evil.) My characters tended to do a bit less damage than the rest of the party, but hey, I was new at this, they were universally character types I'd never built before, and I could usually be useful enough. It was fun.
Now, recently, due to being five hundred miles away from the previous groups for the moment, I've joined a new collective. I sat down to build my character, applied the central principles I'd learned with my old group, and built a character who I was pretty sure would have kept up with the characters they would've created.
And everyone in the new group has looked at my character sheet and said HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.
FTR, the bit people focus on have usually been my stats. It was point-buy, we're seventh-level gestalt characters, and I'm a tiefling with stats as follows:
STR 6 DEX 18 CON 14 INT 19 WIS 14 CHA 5 before magic items. With magic items I have DEX 20, INT 23, and everything else is unchanged. I'm a rogue/wizard and it's Pathfinder.
So... old group weirdly high-optimization for people who never seemed to emphasize that aspect? New group wimps? I'm just strange? And has anybody else had moments like this?
Now, recently, due to being five hundred miles away from the previous groups for the moment, I've joined a new collective. I sat down to build my character, applied the central principles I'd learned with my old group, and built a character who I was pretty sure would have kept up with the characters they would've created.
And everyone in the new group has looked at my character sheet and said HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.
FTR, the bit people focus on have usually been my stats. It was point-buy, we're seventh-level gestalt characters, and I'm a tiefling with stats as follows:
STR 6 DEX 18 CON 14 INT 19 WIS 14 CHA 5 before magic items. With magic items I have DEX 20, INT 23, and everything else is unchanged. I'm a rogue/wizard and it's Pathfinder.
So... old group weirdly high-optimization for people who never seemed to emphasize that aspect? New group wimps? I'm just strange? And has anybody else had moments like this?