Does It Hinder Roleplaying?

[Darth Paul]

Let me begin by admitting this- I'm not 100% sure what "Optimization" means when it comes to D&D characters, but I think have a pretty good idea. It sounds a lot like what we used to call "min-maxing", designing your character to do a specific thing, do it incredibly well, but not much else. I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong.

But is this really neccesary to enjoy your gaming? In fact, doesn't it get in the way of roleplaying?

Sure, I've played some 18 STR 8 INT fighters, but I've also had a blast playing clerics with 14 WIS and 18 STR whose family made them go into the priesthood because they were the youngest son. We have had entire parties with "theme" weapons, in which every character (wizards and sorcerors included) took the Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword because we were such complete bastards. I spent a wizard's 3rd-level bonus feat on proficiency in the Longsword so my character could look like the miniature I was using.

Yet in the midst of all this fun, I have contended with min-maxing party members who seemingly plotted out their character progression in advance on a chart from Level 1 to Level 20 (assuming we would live that long). Their characters would manufacture magic items from sourcebooks I had never heard of, much less read, custom-picked to make them AC 23 (while I thought my AC 19 was pretty darn good). They spoke every language thanks to their endless skill points, while wielding exotic weapons with feats that made them whirlwind death reapers. I wasn't jealous, just amazed at the time and effort they were willing to put into something we play for a few hours on Saturday nights. And it's not that they weren't entertaining to watch, but if they needed three different sourcebooks and a calculator to build a character, where's the fun in that?

So, I don't know, maybe I'm rising in defense of "sub-optimal" characters. For one thing, "optimal" is dependent on a lot of factors, not least your campaign setting and the DM thereof. I recall a particular player who felt he had the most "optimized" character of them all, who leaped to confront some assassins with his +15 saving throws, only to discover that the poison they used killed instantly if you failed your save, or killed slowly if you made your save. So, the DM still took out his "perfect" character who outshined all our "suboptimal" characters, not that we used that wording. (Alas, because of roleplaying, I went on a quest to find him an antidote, because he was poisoned trying to save my life. The idiot.)

I'm not trying to insult anybody here, I'm trying to ask an honest question. Doesn't all the planning, and scheming, and fiddling with skill points and feats to get the most "optimized" character, get in the way of just plain old roleplaying? Does anyone ever add a feat or take a spell because it's something their character would do? How optimized do characters neeed to be for us to have fun playing them?

[Eldan]

At its most basic level, optimization is one thought. "I want my character to be able to do this. How do I make it so he can do it well?"

It comes at all levels and I'm rather sure everyone does it to a degree. You want to be good at hitting things with a sword? You choose a class that is good at that, i.e. a fighter. Then you further optimize and buy him a sword. Then you choose the feat power attack instead of skill focus: spellcraft, because it helps with your concept. THat is really low level optimization, but still optimization.

It doesn't even have to be about power. Even a rather weak concept can be optimized.

Honestly, the only way not to optimize would be to take only things that don't help yoru character in any way, and even that would be, in a way, optimizing for weakness.

An example? "I'm a rogue who has studied some magic". If you just claim he did, the rules don't support that at all. But putting some skill points into spellcraft? That's working on a concept. Optimizing.

Taking a feat your character would learn? I see two problems with that. For me, first of all, feats are a rules construct, not something the characters in the game know about themselves. Second? Taking that feat puts a concept you had into rules. That's optimizing.

OF course, there's power gamers too. There's overlap.

[Juntao112]

Doesn't all the planning, and scheming, and fiddling with skill points and feats to get the most "optimized" character, get in the way of just plain old roleplaying?

No.
.......

[Firechanter]

Short answer: no, it doesn't. To claim that pursuit of the one is detrimental to the other is known as the Stormwind Fallacy.

[Grod_The_Giant]

A character needs to be "optimized" to about the same level as the rest of the party. Too much, and you steamroller encounters all by yourself, making the rest of the group unhappy; too little, and you get frustrated due to inability to contribute. But what that level is depends on the group. For some guys, a "rogue dabbling in magic" means you take ranks of Spellcraft and UMD, and maybe a single Wizard level. For another, it means a Rogue/Beguiler/Unseen Seer/Arcane Trickster.

You also need your character's mechanics to match his fluff. If your "sneaky wizard" can't sneak in any meaningful way, that's a problem that needs to be addressed. If your master swordsman can be out-dueled by random town guards, you're not playing the character you wanted to. Optimization is how we make sure that the fluff and crunch match.

It's also worth differentiating among similar terms:

Optimization is a fairly neutral term, meaning making a character effective. It can be divided into Practical Optimization (building a character for a game) and Theoretical Optimization (academic exercises in RAW, with no intention of being used in a real game)
Min-maxing is a fairly negative term, meaning scrounging for every benefit at the expense of flavor.
Munchkin is a negative term, meaning someone whose optimization is disrupting, inappropriate, and often turns into out-and-out cheating.

[Vinegar Tom]

Interesting and controversial thread! May I draw everybody's attention to a comic available elsewhere on this site? I refer in particular to a Fighter called Roy, who explicitly has a high INT score inherited from his father, who wanted him to be a Wizard. At no point are we ever shown Roy winning a battle with his maximized STR, yet he defeated Thog, who was clearly much stronger than him, by being a skill-monkey. I rest my case.

[A Tad Insane]

It can, but not necessarily. Some tricks and opinions are hard to apply to role playing, such as the initiative of he seven fold veil, but some are loaded with role playing opinions if you let it, such as the ur priest

[Alex12]

Some degree of optimization is required, really. If you rolled 8,9,10,12,14,18 for your stats and are playing a Wizard, you're going to have your Int be 18, not 8. That's optimization, to a degree. You're not going to take Skill Focus (Profession(underwater basket weaving)) unless you're playing in a game that for some reason has heavy emphasis on Profession(underwater basket weaving)/
Remember, you're an adventurer, a person who goes out and risks his or her life on a regular basis. If you're below the competence level needed to survive doing that, you're going to get a lot of chances to roleplay a deceased individual.

[eggynack]

I rest my case.
What case? Your argument only shows that poor optimization doesn't hinder roleplaying much, which it kinda doesn't. Low optimization doesn't hinder roleplaying to a significant degree, and neither does high optimization. What high optimization would mean in Roy's case is that, as Thog notes, he would be using his intelligence in a more productive manner, picking up something like knowledge devotion, or some levels of warblade. Part of Roy's character is that he is a straight classed fighter for some reason, but it's really a secondary character aspect to the idea that he's a melee fellow at all. It'd all work out pretty well, and you'd get a character with pretty much the same flavor, except with a more cohesive and elegant build.

[The Oni]

It *can,* if your optimization sacrifices fluff and authenticity. Or if you do Old Man Henderson style optimization to eliminate any possible weaknesses (or the lazy version, my character has no motivations beyond power because Chaotic Neutral). But if your character is both powerful and authentically feels like he's part of the world, then no, roleplay is in no way hindered. The other thing is, you don't necessarily have to optimize for power. You can also just optimize for awesome.

In Pathfinder, yes, my flying overrun specialist gathlain abused Monk/Fighter/Crusader Cleric bonus feat shenanigans to get tons of feats at 7th level, but those feats were for the purpose of turning him into a living, breathing Patriot Missile, not a becoming a batman wizard or a gish. In-game, he fights like this because he was born small and with wings in a world full of enormous hungry feybeasts and did everything he could to compensate for his size. But the real reason he fights like this is because it's ****ing cool. Ragnvald isn't even close to the strongest character I've played, but he's hella fun to play, and that's all that matters.

[Red Fel]

I'm not trying to insult anybody here, I'm trying to ask an honest question. Doesn't all the planning, and scheming, and fiddling with skill points and feats to get the most "optimized" character, get in the way of just plain old roleplaying? Does anyone ever add a feat or take a spell because it's something their character would do? How optimized do characters neeed to be for us to have fun playing them?

First off, an answer: No, optimizing does not interfere with roleplaying. In some ways it makes things more challenging, particularly if the "fluff" elements of various classes/feats/abilities lead to disparate results, but the two are not inherently at odds. This position, often espoused, is what is described as the "Stormwind Fallacy." Quoting the relevant portion:

The Stormwind Fallacy, aka the Roleplayer vs Rollplayer Fallacy
Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not mean that they cannot also roleplay, and vice versa.

Corollary: Doing one in a game does not preclude, nor infringe upon, the ability to do the other in the same game.

Generalization 1: One is not automatically a worse roleplayer if he optimizes, and vice versa.
Generalization 2: A non-optimized character is not automatically roleplayed better than an optimized one, and vice versa.

To put it differently, don't hate the game, hate the player. There are some optimizers who do so to the exclusion of roleplay, it's absolutely true. Certainly, as I've suggested above, creating a character who combines sources from a CE, LG and TN perspective, a pacifist who assassinates while playing with bunnies, or any number of seemingly incompatible features, makes it pretty gosh-darn hard to nail down who this character is as a person. Nonetheless, that's an individual issue, not an issue of optimization.

As others have mentioned in this thread, "optimization" means "designing your character to do something well." Maybe you're optimizing around smiting, or charging, or tripping; around using persisted buffs, overwhelming social skill rolls, or Wild Shape; or you simply want a God Wizard. Doing so does not preclude you from roleplaying.

In fact, the argument could be made - although it is not a universal one - that optimizing your entire build in advance can free you up to roleplay more. If I know what my character is, what I've designed him to be and precisely where he's going, I know his past, present and future. I can make him, as an individual, into that precise person. If I know my Barbarian is going to take levels of Rage Cleric, I can have him start studying religion (despite being illiterate). If I know my Wizard plans to take a jump into Abjurant Champion, I may start having him watch the Fighter's combat training more closely. I can use my foresight into my character's future to develop his present personality.

But short version? Optimization and roleplay are two entirely different matters. A player can excel in one, both, or neither; it's an individual style.

[Eldan]

Interesting and controversial thread! May I draw everybody's attention to a comic available elsewhere on this site? I refer in particular to a Fighter called Roy, who explicitly has a high INT score inherited from his father, who wanted him to be a Wizard. At no point are we ever shown Roy winning a battle with his maximized STR, yet he defeated Thog, who was clearly much stronger than him, by being a skill-monkey. I rest my case.

Yes, he is really quite optimized for his role.

[Spore]

Short answer: no, it doesn't. To claim that pursuit of the one is detrimental to the other is known as the Stormwind Fallacy.

Still, I have seen choices on EVERY character ever that are suboptimal (reading as: not the best) that should be done because the character would've done that.

Example: My character is of the opinion that Dragons are the ultimate life form and everything else is garbage. And while getting two sorcerer levels before another bunch of levels as Dragon Disciple is strictly better my character would NEVER give up getting closer to dragonhood for a puny spell level. Even IF I have to spend my feat suboptimally due to the lacking spell level.

[Eldan]

Still, I have seen choices on EVERY character ever that are suboptimal (reading as: not the best) that should be done because the character would've done that.

Example: My character is of the opinion that Dragons are the ultimate life form and everything else is garbage. And while getting two sorcerer levels before another bunch of levels as Dragon Disciple is strictly better my character would NEVER give up getting closer to dragonhood for a puny spell level. Even IF I have to spend my feat suboptimally due to the lacking spell level.

That just means that you aren't optimizing for spell power, but for dragonness.

Really, that is what optimization is. You set yourself a goal, then think about how to achieve it.

Q: "I want to be more like a dragon. How?"
A: "Be a dragon disciple". 5

[Juntao112]

What if it was a choice between Dragon Disciple, Dragon Devotee (http://dndtools.eu/classes/dragon-devotee/), and Dragonheart Mage (http://dndtools.eu/classes/dragonheart-mage/)?

[squiggit]

It can't because the two concepts aren't even in the same field of play. Roleplaying is how you act and Optimization is refining how those actions work on paper. It's like asking if having a big engine in a car hinders your ability to have a good paint job.

[deuxhero]

No.

You can have a psion that's functionally immune to damage, can throw heavy objects for great damage (or just utility) and has a bunch of utility powers, but he can be an interesting character and may even show restraint on his true power to avoid ruining the game just as well as you can have monk/rogue with non-sentential motives, disruptive playstyle and acts totally against his described alignment and motives.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

A Fighter who takes Weapon Specialization and Iron Will is min-maxing, because he's minimizing the impact of his obvious weakness while maximizing his ability to perform his chosen role. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this, and this will have absolutely no impact on the player's ability to role-play his character. It can actually enhance the role-playing experience, because if he claims to be a great warrior in-character then the character's capabilities within the game mechanics had better be able to represent that!

Here's the original post introducing the Stormwind Fallacy:
Originally posted by Tempest Stormwind
05-15-06, 03:58 PM
I still stand by the argument that this is a fundamental difference between old school (basic D&D: 1 race/class, AD&D: very limted multi-classing) vrs new school (I buy a book and there is a class in their and I want it gimmie gimmie). The trend I see is old school = roleplayers, new school = optomizers.

Note to New school people: Don't listen to what you hear, you aren't a dork if you roleplay. It is ok to indulge in what D&D is all about, roleplay. If you try it and have a good DM, I guarantee you'll have a blast and won't care so much about optomizing.
Okay, that's it.

I'm hereby proposing a new logical fallacy. It's not a new idea, but maybe with a catchy name (like the Oberoni Fallacy) it will catch on.

The Stormwind Fallacy, aka the Roleplayer vs Rollplayer Fallacy
Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not mean that they cannot also roleplay, and vice versa.

Corollary: Doing one in a game does not preclude, nor infringe upon, the ability to do the other in the same game.

Generalization 1: One is not automatically a worse roleplayer if he optimizes, and vice versa.
Generalization 2: A non-optimized character is not automatically roleplayed better than an optimized one, and vice versa.

(I admit that there are some diehards on both sides -- the RP fanatics who refuse to optimize as if strong characters were the mark of the Devil and the min/max munchkins who couldn't RP their way out of a paper bag without setting it on fire -- though I see these as extreme examples. The vast majority of people are in between, and thus the generalizations hold. The key word is 'automatically')

Proof: These two elements rely on different aspects of a player's gameplay. Optimization factors in to how well one understands the rules and handles synergies to produce a very effective end result. Roleplaying deals with how well a player can act in character and behave as if he was someone else.
A person can act while understanding the rules, and can build something powerful while still handling an effective character. There is nothing in the game -- mechanical or otherwise -- restricting one if you participate in the other.

Claiming that an optimizer cannot roleplay (or is participating in a playstyle that isn't supportive of roleplaying) because he is an optimizer, or vice versa, is committing the Stormwind Fallacy.

How does this impact "builds"? Simple.

In one extreme (say, Pun-Pun), they are thought experiments. Optimization tests that are not intended to see actual gameplay. Because they do not see gameplay, they do not commit the fallacy.

In the other extreme, you get the drama queens. They could care less about the rules, and are, essentially, playing free-form RP. Because the game is not necessary to this particular character, it doesn't fall into the fallacy.

By playing D&D, you opt in to an agreement of sorts -- the rules describe the world you live in, including yourself. To get the most out of those rules, in the same way you would get the most out of yourself, you must optimize in some respect (and don't look at me funny; you do it already, you just don't like to admit it. You don't need multiclassing or splatbooks to optimize). However, because it is a role-playing game, you also agree to play a role. This is dependent completely on you, and is independent of the rules.

And no, this isn't dependent on edition, or even what roleplaying game you're doing. If you are playing a roleplaying game with any form of rules or regulation, this fallacy can apply. The only difference is the nature of the optimization (based on the rules of that game; Tri-Stat optimizes differently than d20) or the flavor of the roleplay (based on the setting; Exalted feels different from Cthulu).

Conclusion: D&D, like it or not, has elements of both optimization AND roleplay in it. Any game that involves rules has optimization, and any role-playing game has roleplay. These are inherent to the game.

They go hand-in-hand in this sort of game. Deal with it. And in the name of all that is good and holy, stop committing the Stormwind Fallacy in the meantime.

[NichG]

The thing to watch out for isn't 'optimization' itself, but for what I'd call 'compulsive optimization' and the various personalities that tend towards it. For example, I've run into players who are very competitive and basically can't stand to not have the strongest character in the party - something that can be pretty disruptive since that kind of player also tends to need to constantly prove their 'superiority' over the other players. In a case like that, 'optimization' isn't the cause of problems with RP, but that particular kind of optimization is a symptom of something underlying that will tend to cause RP problems.

Similarly, a lack of trust between a player and the GM can be the cause of compulsive optimization - they're afraid the GM is going to put forward unreasonable challenges, pick on them, nerf things randomly, kill their character, etc, and by optimizing they can retain some measure of control. A player who doesn't trust the group or worse is afraid of the group isn't going to be in the mindset to RP well in general.

[Gemini476]

What if it was a choice between Dragon Disciple, Dragon Devotee (http://dndtools.eu/classes/dragon-devotee/), and Dragonheart Mage (http://dndtools.eu/classes/dragonheart-mage/)?

Or, for that matter, the Dragon Shaman or Dragonfire Adept?

Or the Wyrm Wizard.

Or any other prestige class from Dragon Magic, really, like the Pact-bound Adept. Not to mention Draconomicon.

Really, there's a lot of classes out there that have a theme that makes you more like a dragon to begin with. The real choice might be why they are taking two levels in Sorcerer when there are more dragony classes out there, some of which even worship dragons!

That's some pretty poor dragonpriest optimization right there, I tell you what. Without their sorcerous might a Dragon would just be a stronger Lesser Dragon, and that would just be horrible. (No offense to players of Xorvintaal, but even you guys get things in exchange for that. Dragon Disciples pretend to be dragons by growing wings, breathing fire, and hitting people with claws. That's hardly even half of what being a True Dragon is about. Even Kobolds understand that.)

[Faily]

I'd personally say it varies so greatly on who the player is (some players are about creating the most powerful character in the group, rather than playing the character), but in general I would say: No, optimizing does not in itself hinder roleplaying.

I have 4 different D&D groups, and I'd say that out of those players, only 2 players actually have an issue with really roleplaying. One hardly knows how to build a character most of the time, and the other one often gets ideas into his head on what would be powerful (but mostly a niche-build). But both of them have a problem that lies more in getting into the "roleplay" aspect, which isn't related to their ability to build characters, for better or worse.

One of the other groups have a high concentration of rather clever players who can put together builds from several splatbooks, and still make incredibly interesting characters, who are also quite good at what they do... without nescessarily going for the "easiest route" of power-gaming. Our current campaign (playing War of Burning Sky btw, which is tons of fun, check it out), features: Dwarf Knight (aiming for Deepwarden and Dwarven Defender-combo), Dwarf Cleric (future Runecaster), Elf Paladin (Pious Templar + Champion of Corellon Larethian), and Halfling Wizard (Master Specialist & Archmage for the future). All players have spent time looking through several splatbooks and options and created what they consider the most optimized characters for what they want to do, but that does not get in the way of everyone creating an interesting and dynamic group with good roleplaying.

Optimization does not mean worse roleplaying, but it can enhance roleplaying, imo. At least for myself, the time I spend looking in splatbooks, I find all sorts of ideas for character concepts that I want to play because I thought it sounds like a fun idea to roleplay.

Sure, not everyone considers the fluff, but it is rather incorrect to claim that people who build a character that is optimized is not "roleplaying" enough.

[thethird]

Answering your questions from a personal perspective, although I'm pretty certain they were intended as rhetorical.


But is this really neccesary to enjoy your gaming?

Actually yes, I do enjoy playing the game, but I also enjoy thinking about the game and thinking about how I'm going to play the game. I expend more time thinking about the game if the decision making is more complex.


In fact, doesn't it get in the way of roleplaying?

Why would it? As I tried to point above I have more fun when thinking of the character. And I think more of it when I need to make complex decisions. The time that I spend thinking of my character doesn't impede my roleplaying, if any it improves it. Because I will be more familiar with a character that I've thought for several days than something that I just scribbled directly out of a base class of the PHB. Those decisions I made, will also be giving it distinctive traits. Useful distinctive traits, as opposed to skill focus (underwater basketweaving), that will come up in game and will give me a chance to roleplay them.


But if they needed three different sourcebooks and a calculator to build a character, where's the fun in that?

Let me, first, rephrase the question. If they copy the class levels just from the PHB where's the fun in that? Using only three different sourcebooks, would be the PHB the Monster manual, and the DMG... Which is just core. Those 3 sourcebooks are always assumed. Aren't they? If the question is where's the fun in using ALL the sourcebooks. I will try not to repeat myself, and say that there is a guilty pleasure in system mastery and synergy. It is a cathartic experience when a build comes together.


Doesn't all the planning, and scheming, and fiddling with skill points and feats to get the most "optimized" character, get in the way of just plain old roleplaying?

Why would it? Are you attempting to say that you are not capable of roleplaying an optimized character? I see that more as an excuse "I'm a poor roleplayer so I cannot roleplay an optimized character" than any other thing.


Does anyone ever add a feat or take a spell because it's something their character would do?

All the feats, skills, and spells I add are because my character would have them. For example, one of my wizards didn't have ANY spell that inflicted damage in the enemies. This was repeatedly satirized and depreciated by the rest of the party both IC and OoC. Still he was the most reliable party member and the best when it came to dealing with enemies. Was it optimized? Heck yeah (Spontaneous Diviner Hummingbird familiar Elven Generalist into Urban Savant who lives in Sigil). Did I think over all the spells he selected? Yes.


How optimized do characters neeed to be for us to have fun playing them?

For "us" I don't know, I cannot generalize. For me? The character needs to be good and capable at the roles I want it to fit. So yes, I need optimization.

Of course for me personally, optimization is anything that involves a decision making. Let's pose an example, a core level 1 fighter. His stats will determine the feats that he has available, but the feats that he chooses are from an optimization point of view. You can say, I don't optimize, but the thing is you choose something. D&D is a game about decisions, about choosing one thing over the other. When you choose something you are inherently saying that the thing you are choosing is better for you/your character than the thing you are not doing. That is optimization.

[Talya]

Still, I have seen choices on EVERY character ever that are suboptimal (reading as: not the best) that should be done because the character would've done that.

Example: My character is of the opinion that Dragons are the ultimate life form and everything else is garbage. And while getting two sorcerer levels before another bunch of levels as Dragon Disciple is strictly better my character would NEVER give up getting closer to dragonhood for a puny spell level. Even IF I have to spend my feat suboptimally due to the lacking spell level.

That's called "Optimizing to a theme."

That's my thing, really. I have an idea, and then I find everything possibly thematicly appropriate to it. Then I put it together and try to make it work effectively. You can build more powerful and versatile characters if you ignore the theme, so to go with a strong theme and then also make it effective requires some strong optimization.


And it's not that they weren't entertaining to watch, but if they needed three different sourcebooks and a calculator to build a character, where's the fun in that?


Only 3? If I only used three sourcebooks to build a character, I feel like I'm missing out on most of the game. The game isn't three sourcebooks. It's ALL the sourcebooks. If they're all available, comb through all of them to look for ANYTHING thematically appropriate to your character, and then see if it fits.

Calculator... no. Why would anyone use a calculator?

[jedipotter]

I'm not trying to insult anybody here, I'm trying to ask an honest question. Doesn't all the planning, and scheming, and fiddling with skill points and feats to get the most "optimized" character, get in the way of just plain old roleplaying? Does anyone ever add a feat or take a spell because it's something their character would do? How optimized do characters neeed to be for us to have fun playing them?

Yes it does, very, very often. An optimizer is making the best roll-playing character they can to play a roll-playing game. Though the number on the sheet have little to do with role-playing.

In defense: yes there are players that optimize AND role play. But.....then there are many more that don't. And that is where the problems start. Zoron is not a elven mage with a rich, full, and detailed history, personality, and traits, he is ''my character #9 archmage build ''.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Still, I have seen choices on EVERY character ever that are suboptimal (reading as: not the best) that should be done because the character would've done that.

Example: My character is of the opinion that Dragons are the ultimate life form and everything else is garbage. And while getting two sorcerer levels before another bunch of levels as Dragon Disciple is strictly better my character would NEVER give up getting closer to dragonhood for a puny spell level. Even IF I have to spend my feat suboptimally due to the lacking spell level.

Why wouldn't you just spend three levels (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030912a) to get it instead of wasting an extra seven taking Dragon Disciple? There are no prerequisites to that, other than the fact that characters must have at least 1 HD, so you can spend your 2nd-4th level on it and be a Half-Dragon Sorcerer 1 at ECL 4. Granted you would be better off with a level of Crusader or Warblade over Sorcerer with that, but you're still delaying your 'dragonhood' by eleven character levels by using Dragon Disciple.

[thethird]

the number on the sheet have little to do with role-playing.

Then why would they affect role-playing at all?

Or in another words. If role-playing is the only thing that matters, to the point that the numbers on the sheet don't why do you have numbers on the sheet in the first place? Free form is a really fun way of conducting a game, and it is one of the few role playing experiences devoid of optimization.

[Flickerdart]

Interesting and controversial thread! May I draw everybody's attention to a comic available elsewhere on this site? I refer in particular to a Fighter called Roy, who explicitly has a high INT score inherited from his father, who wanted him to be a Wizard. At no point are we ever shown Roy winning a battle with his maximized STR, yet he defeated Thog, who was clearly much stronger than him, by being a skill-monkey. I rest my case.
If you think that a D&D game plays out exactly like a comic book, you're gonna have a bad time.


In defense: yes there are players that optimize AND role play. But.....then there are many more that don't. And that is where the problems start. Zoron is not a elven mage with a rich, full, and detailed history, personality, and traits, he is ''my character #9 archmage build ''.
And if your build is rubbish, then all of that rich history is shown to be a bunch of nonsense when his spells fail against the most trivial of foes. Writing up a character is all well and good, but if you can't put your money where your mouth is, then all that writing is pointless. No amount of words to the tune of "Zoron is a mighty wizard who has studied his profession for centuries" will make your character be an actual powerful wizard. I don't know about you, but for me roleplaying in the present (playing D&D) is much more interesting than rolepaying in the past (writing up backstories).

[Sir Chuckles]

Yes it does, very, very often. An optimizer is making the best roll-playing character they can to play a roll-playing game. Though the number on the sheet have little to do with role-playing.

In defense: yes there are players that optimize AND role play. But.....then there are many more that don't. And that is where the problems start. Zoron is not a elven mage with a rich, full, and detailed history, personality, and traits, he is ''my character #9 archmage build ''.

1) Stormwind.
2) The numbers on your sheet pretty much do reflect your character's role-play. I don't imagine a mounted Knight not investing in Ride or taking feats to up his mounted skills, or even taking Wild Cohort for a permanent horse companion.
3) ...and with those comments, the thread will implode and not end well.
4) Seriously, are you here for no reason other than to piss people off?

[PraxisVetli]

Phone won't let me quote.
But.
I agree with optimizing to a theme. Pick the one thing that defines your character, and be really good at whatever that is. Because why wouldn't you be? In a terrifying world of Displacers and Dragons and 'rasques, if all you have is that sword, why would you not be as good with that sword as you possibly can?

I also would agree with optimizing to the group. If its Team Wizard, don't show up with a Monk.

On the other side, don't bring Mordekenian to Team Orc Rogue.

As long as the group is generally playing on the same field, then the optimization and roleplaying should never interfere with eachother.

[Vedhin]

And it's not that they weren't entertaining to watch, but if they needed three different sourcebooks and a calculator to build a character, where's the fun in that?

Doesn't all the planning, and scheming, and fiddling with skill points and feats to get the most "optimized" character, get in the way of just plain old roleplaying?

In my case, the fiddling is one of the things that I find most entertaining. I like searching around and finally finding everything I need to get the mechanics to fall into place. And I admit to often using a calculator, but I also admit to being a math nut who just likes using calculators.

Plus, oddball mechanical combinations tend to make for good background seeds. One of my characters took levels in Barbarian (must be nonLawful), then Monk (must be Lawful), and then levels in another class that required nonLawful. In the end, the explanation for the alignment switches ended up forming one of the important parts of my character's backstory, and influencing their personality. I liked that character, and their fluff wouldn't have turned out that way without the crunch influencing it like that.


Interesting and controversial thread! May I draw everybody's attention to a comic available elsewhere on this site? I refer in particular to a Fighter called Roy, who explicitly has a high INT score inherited from his father, who wanted him to be a Wizard. At no point are we ever shown Roy winning a battle with his maximized STR, yet he defeated Thog, who was clearly much stronger than him, by being a skill-monkey. I rest my case.

Yeah, Thog is one of the best roleplaying+optimization character's I've seen. He's a CE half-orc (not so optimal) barbarian, who dipped Fighter for feats and Dungeoncrasher. He's dumped mental stats in favor of physical ones. And he plays it to the hilt. He acts like a destructive fool, because that's what he is.

[Piggy Knowles]

Focusing on optimization and nothing else can certainly hinder roleplaying, sure. But it doesn't have to - if someone's a bad roleplayer, then they're a bad roleplayer, and the fact that they optimized isn't the problem.

There are a lot of people out there that like D&D not as a roleplaying game, but as a tactical experiment, or as a way to build cool builds and test them out. That's cool, they're allowed to have fun too. I'm not going to tell anyone they're playing the game wrong. But sometimes, when they mix into groups with people for whom D&D is primarily about roleplaying, they give the impression that optimization and roleplaying are mutually exclusive. They don't care about the latter, and they really really care about the former. Again, no judgment - that kind of game can be fun. But that's a problem with the player, rather than an issue inherent to optimization.

Most people prefer some balance of the two. I do, myself. There is nothing about optimizing your character that prevents you from roleplaying well.

[Darth Paul]

The thing to watch out for isn't 'optimization' itself, but for what I'd call 'compulsive optimization' and the various personalities that tend towards it. For example, I've run into players who are very competitive and basically can't stand to not have the strongest character in the party - something that can be pretty disruptive since that kind of player also tends to need to constantly prove their 'superiority' over the other players. In a case like that, 'optimization' isn't the cause of problems with RP, but that particular kind of optimization is a symptom of something underlying that will tend to cause RP problems.

I like this answer best of all. And clearly it was my mistake in using the term "optimization" while leaving out "compulsive".

Maybe my issue is that in reading through the optimization threads, I have trouble differentiating this from good old-fashioned power-gaming, where the goal is to be a Fighter/Mage/Rogue with a 25 AC and a +5 Sword of Everything Slaying by the time you reach 9th level. Or maybe, as suggested above, there are underlying issues for some members of my gaming group that I haven't pondered. (Although with one, we have all pondered them at length and realized that, since she's the wife of one of our members, we just have to live with it. *sigh*)

Thanks, all. You have given me food for thought.

[Talya]

It's amusing to see opinions about optimizing when the opinion-giver thinks something is overpowered, and the example given of an OP cheesy character build is something that is woefully unoptimized.

25 ac is just about acceptable at 9th level. Seriously, if you're on the frontline, level +15 is about where you should be aiming as a MINIMUM for armor class, or else you're just going to get shredded. (Don't forget, 21 AC at 2nd level is pretty easy for a fighter or paladin or cleric with no magic gear.)

And any Fighter/Rogue/Mage type is going to SUCK. Optimizers tend to focus. The only time you'll multiclass at all before level 6 is if you need to in order to meet the prerequisites of a prestige class you want to go into. And then you're going to suck until your PrC starts bringing it all together several levels later...

[Vedhin]

And any Fighter/Rogue/Mage type is going to SUCK. Optimizers tend to focus. The only time you'll multiclass at all before level 6 is if you need to in order to meet the prerequisites of a prestige class you want to go into. And then you're going to suck until your PrC starts bringing it all together several levels later...

Yes, "theurge" type characters tend to be horrible. There are some passable prestige classes (typically those that need only 1 level in one of the classes).

Though noncasters might well multiclass early. Fighter dips are common, and there are things like the multiclass feats in Complete Scoundrel.

[Talya]

Yes, "theurge" type characters tend to be horrible. There are some passable prestige classes (typically those that need only 1 level in one of the classes).

Though noncasters might well multiclass early. Fighter dips are common, and there are things like the multiclass feats in Complete Scoundrel.

Yeah, if you never want to cast a single spell, then multiclassing isn't so bad. Although you probably still want to focus. You might take those 1 or 2 levels of fighter on your barbarian. But it's not to make you better. It's to enable the fact that you want to be a tripper, and it fits your theme, and you need the spare feats. You'd still have been stronger having gone straight barbarian for a bit and picked up those extra daily rage uses.

Theurge-Feats are an exception. Daring Outlaw almost makes Swashbuckler useful, and rogue becomes borderline durable. The real gem there is Swift Hunter (although that's costing you spellcasting early on.)

[Darth Paul]

It's amusing to see opinions about optimizing when the opinion-giver thinks something is overpowered, and the example given of an OP cheesy character build is something that is woefully unoptimized.

25 ac is just about acceptable at 9th level. Seriously, if you're on the frontline, level +15 is about where you should be aiming as a MINIMUM for armor class, or else you're just going to get shredded. (Don't forget, 21 AC at 2nd level is pretty easy for a fighter or paladin or cleric with no magic gear.)...

The example was meant to be sarcastic.

Where are those AC bonuses coming from? AC 25? I have never had a character get better than AC 22, EVER, and that's including magic bonuses.

Full plate is +8. Max AC bonus in full plate is +1. A large shield is +2. So there's 21, as you say- but I have never had a 2nd level character that could afford full plate. Breastplate is the heaviest armor I ever wear, it's all a starting PC can afford and it is the best armor that lets you move at full speed.

All the combinations of armor + dex restrictions add up to +8 max, except for padded (+1 armor, up to +8 dex bonus). When we find magic armor or shields, they are usually only +1 and almost never plate. Magic items that add to AC go to the spellcasters and rogues that can't wear heavy armor and have low/no hit points.

Maybe we run magic-and-treasure-poor campaigns, I don't know. Or maybe we just try to optimize the whole party, rather than the individual characters, so everybody is about on par. Yeah, sometimes when I'm a fighter I get a little shredded, but that's the fighter's job. We take damage so the wizard doesn't have to. We also dish out a lot of damage at close range, but then again the spell-users (which I also play) do some serious damage from the rear of the party- and also do a lot of healing to keep the fighters up in the front. Everybody gets a time to shine, everybody has some fun.

[eggynack]

Where are those AC bonuses coming from? AC 25? I have never had a character get better than AC 22, EVER, and that's including magic bonuses.
Well, there's always the super easy druid way to pull it off. Wild shape into a desmodu hunting bat for a base AC of 20, cast luminous armor for +5 to AC, and an effective extra +4 against melee attacks, and do no other things. You can obviously do a lot better than that with little effort, but I've hit the number and am thus satisfied.

[Talya]

A level 9 character should have acquired about 36,000gp worth of wealth.

That's not enough to get into the really silly stuff, but let's take a look and what you can get cheaply with that.

+2 full plate is going to run you about 4000gp. AC 21
+1 ring of protection will set you back 2000gp. AC 22
+1 amulet of natural armor is another 2000gp. AC 23
+2 large shield (generally a bad idea) 4000gp. AC 27.

That has used less than 1/3 of a level 9 character's wealth on defense, without doing anything cheesy.

[Svata]

Calculator... no. Why would anyone use a calculator?

High-level character's skill points, for classes with high skill points/level, whether due to high INT (Wizard, Psion) or to high native skill points (Rogue, Bard, Ranger), or both (Factotum).

[Zanos]

I have never had a character get better than AC 22, EVER, and that's including magic bonuses..
*Scratches head*

I am perplexed by this.

[Eldan]

Yeah, that's confusing me too. Have you just never played over level 3? Because how could you possibly have a fighter without at least some magic armour? Don't your wizards ever use buffs on themselves? A wizard with good stats can beat AC 22 on level 1, if he really tries. PRobably not worth the slots, but he can.

[Darth Paul]

Yeah, that's confusing me too. Have you just never played over level 3? Because how could you possibly have a fighter without at least some magic armour? Don't your wizards ever use buffs on themselves? A wizard with good stats can beat AC 22 on level 1, if he really tries. PRobably not worth the slots, but he can.

You can possibly have a fighter without magic armor if magic armor is not found in the campaign, I suppose. My 10th lvl dwarf fighter has not a lick of magic armor. +3 thundering waraxe, check- magic armor, no. I have a Druid with a Ring of Natural Armor, not the same thing as armor.

Yes, a wizard can buff his AC up temporarily with Cat's Grace and Mage Armor, but I'm talking about permanent AC, not temporary bonuses.

I am amused by the statistics on what wealth a 9th level character should have acquired. Put all the characters I have played in the last 5 years together, and they may have earned that much cash combined. Or does that include magic item value? Because in our world, you can't just trade in magic items down at the Mage's Guild and get others that you prefer. Magic is supposed to be rare and wondrous, well worth striving for, not something you pick off the shelf at Magic-Mart.

Again, that's probably a peculiarity of my gaming group, who have been using a shared campaign world for years now, where we have separate DM's areas joined to a common city where we all run urban adventures. But even before that, we have never given out huge treasures or great magic items. 3000 gp is about what a 9th level PC in our world has. And we walked uphill both ways to the dungeon to get it, too! :smallbiggrin:

[Grod_The_Giant]

Maybe we run magic-and-treasure-poor campaigns, I don't know
Take a look at the Character Wealth by Level table in the DMG-- it's on page 135 of my copy. Look at the Magic Items chapter.

When we find magic armor or shields, they are usually only +1 and almost never plate. Magic items that add to AC go to the spellcasters and rogues that can't wear heavy armor and have low/no hit points.

You're running magic-and-treasure-poor campaigns. Not a bad thing in and of itself, as you're all having fun... but quite different from the way 3.5 was designed and balanced.

[eggynack]

I am amused by the statistics on what wealth a 9th level character should have acquired.
That's, y'know, wealth by level. The actual statistics that are fundamental to the game. Low wealth campaigns are a thing, and a thing you're apparently engaged in, but they tend to increase the imbalances that are already native to the game, which isn't the best. In any case, I think it's fair to claim that you're playing a game that is unusual in the quantity of magic items available.

[Vedhin]

I am amused by the statistics on what wealth a 9th level character should have acquired. Put all the characters I have played in the last 5 years together, and they may have earned that much cash combined. Or does that include magic item value? Because in our world, you can't just trade in magic items down at the Mage's Guild and get others that you prefer. Magic is supposed to be rare and wondrous, well worth striving for, not something you pick off the shelf at Magic-Mart.

Again, that's probably a peculiarity of my gaming group, who have been using a shared campaign world for years now, where we have separate DM's areas joined to a common city where we all run urban adventures. But even before that, we have never given out huge treasures or great magic items. 3000 gp is about what a 9th level PC in our world has. And we walked uphill both ways to the dungeon to get it, too! :smallbiggrin:

For better or worse, WBL is what 3.5 was "balanced" around. The Magic-Mart is part of it.

On one hand, it's good for item dependent classes. On the other, sometimes it's nice to just have magic be rare and wondrous, without being too harsh on, say, Monks.

[Eldan]

YAgain, that's probably a peculiarity of my gaming group, who have been using a shared campaign world for years now, where we have separate DM's areas joined to a common city where we all run urban adventures. But even before that, we have never given out huge treasures or great magic items. 3000 gp is about what a 9th level PC in our world has. And we walked uphill both ways to the dungeon to get it, too! :smallbiggrin:

THing is, I'd love to have magic items rare and incredible in my campaings. I try to do it,even. But experience has just shown that without it, my groups get slaughtered against level-appropriate enemies if I play them even semi-intelligently. Those Wealth by Level tables are in the DMG for a reason.

[Zanos]

THing is, I'd love to have magic items rare and incredible in my campaings. I try to do it,even. But experience has just shown that without it, my groups get slaughtered against level-appropriate enemies if I play them even semi-intelligently. Those Wealth by Level tables are in the DMG for a reason.
Virtual WBL works okay. It's around here somewhere, you basically have Soul Points equal to your WBL you use to purchase magic item effects but they're tied to your character instead. Also frees you up as a DM to have the party rewarded with lands and titles without them trying to sell it off and buy millions of gold worth of magic items.

I might run it eventually.

[squiggit]

THing is, I'd love to have magic items rare and incredible in my campaings. I try to do it,even. But experience has just shown that without it, my groups get slaughtered against level-appropriate enemies if I play them even semi-intelligently. Those Wealth by Level tables are in the DMG for a reason.

Best answer IMO is to fake it. Homebrew a quality of weapon above masterwork that mimics a +2. Offer mundane weapon qualities that mimic enchantments that don't need to be enchantments. Defending, Distance, Keen, Merciful, Mighty Cleaving, Thrown and Wounding shouldn't even be magical anyways. Stuff like Bane and Vicious can be given nonmagical variations with a bit of refluffing. There's a couple books that have nonmagical upgrades to weapons that can be done too and I really like the idea of compiling that and expanding upon it, the abilities of nonwizardly craftsmen feel greatly neglected.

You can also run inherent bonuses which is a variant rule from... somewhere. Maybe I'm thinking 4e (I know it's in 4e Dark Sun) and not 3.5, but still. Essentially players get Vow of Poverty style scaling benefits without the poverty part (maybe some more stuff on top of that) so a magic weapon can be more of a special item than simply a thing you're expected to see every day.

[jedipotter]

1) Stormwind.
2) The numbers on your sheet pretty much do reflect your character's role-play. I don't imagine a mounted Knight not investing in Ride or taking feats to up his mounted skills, or even taking Wild Cohort for a permanent horse companion.
3) ...and with those comments, the thread will implode and not end well.
4) Seriously, are you here for no reason other than to piss people off?


Lets take that mounted knight and show you....

Mounted Knight Rond. He is the son of a minor noble. This father made a lot of bad deals, so the family is in money troubles. Rond would like to help, but he knows little about money. He is just a warrior. He also wants to make a name for himself outside his family. He figures that becoming an adventurer could solve both problems, maybe someday he can do a great deed like slay a dragon. Rond is a more fancy, noble warrior that has not yet experienced real war. He is charming and knows how to talk to people, as he has had lots of experience being the son of a noble. He also, very often, rubs people the wrong way as he sees nobles as better then commoners.

So how do you make this build? Max out Ride and Balance and Handel Animal. Take feats like mounted combat, weapon focus, and wild cohort. But, note, he does not take anything to support the role playing story. And this is the big problem: D&D does not give enough skills and feats and abilities to do two or more things to the extreme an optimizer would say they 'must' do so to have fun. To support the role playing, Rond should have a couple charisma based feats, and even a high charisma. Plus he should have a 'wealth' type feat or two, and skills like profession (horse showmanship).

But no optimizer would ever waste skill points on profession (horse showmanship), as that would take away from skill that have use in combat, like Ride. He will have high spot and listen too, so he has a chance to see/hear the foes first, even though that does not fit with his story either. And he won't waste a feat slot on a Charisma feat. And he won't even have a high charisma, as no optimizer would ever have a knight with like a strength of 11 and a charisma of like 16.

And how do the things written on the character sheet help a player role-play? How do you role-play the ride skill? ''I get on my horse''? Not much role-play there.

And you can role play a mounted knight that does not have the mounted combat feat just fine, but a character that has a maxed out mounted charger build won't role play anything but being a well built game character.

[squiggit]

but a character that has a maxed out mounted charger build won't role play anything but being a well built game character.
Or they're roleplay anything you damn well please that fits the archetype of a mounted charger. This feels more like an imagination issue than anything else.

[Urpriest]

You can possibly have a fighter without magic armor if magic armor is not found in the campaign, I suppose. My 10th lvl dwarf fighter has not a lick of magic armor. +3 thundering waraxe, check- magic armor, no. I have a Druid with a Ring of Natural Armor, not the same thing as armor.

Yes, a wizard can buff his AC up temporarily with Cat's Grace and Mage Armor, but I'm talking about permanent AC, not temporary bonuses.

I am amused by the statistics on what wealth a 9th level character should have acquired. Put all the characters I have played in the last 5 years together, and they may have earned that much cash combined. Or does that include magic item value? Because in our world, you can't just trade in magic items down at the Mage's Guild and get others that you prefer. Magic is supposed to be rare and wondrous, well worth striving for, not something you pick off the shelf at Magic-Mart.

Again, that's probably a peculiarity of my gaming group, who have been using a shared campaign world for years now, where we have separate DM's areas joined to a common city where we all run urban adventures. But even before that, we have never given out huge treasures or great magic items. 3000 gp is about what a 9th level PC in our world has. And we walked uphill both ways to the dungeon to get it, too! :smallbiggrin:

Remember, a DM who doesn't expect to provide level-appropriate armor (or wealth in general) is going to give you a houseruled bonus to compensate. As you and your DM are well aware, AC in D&D scales with magic items (armor, natural armor, deflection), while attack bonus scales with level. Any DM who actually intends to give less than normal treasure will have noticed this, and implemented a houserule to counteract it, because otherwise the game's math breaks in a very straightforward, easily predictable way. If your DM hasn't been doing this, then the lack of wealth is probably unintentional. Likely your DM forgot to keep track of the balance of low vs. high treasure encounters, perhaps due to missing the parts of the DMG describing them. I'm sure that if you discuss this with your DMs you can clear the situation right up.

[Darth Paul]

THing is, I'd love to have magic items rare and incredible in my campaings. I try to do it,even. But experience has just shown that without it, my groups get slaughtered against level-appropriate enemies if I play them even semi-intelligently. Those Wealth by Level tables are in the DMG for a reason.

Then I guess we're not playing 3.5 D&D, we're just playing 2nd Edition AD&D with skills and feats. But most of us have been playing for 30+ years and play characters well above their actual character level, just by being unconventional, fearless, and inventive. As 3rd level characters, we defeated a Young Blue Dragon by hiding under the desert sands and stuffing a Bag Of Holding over its head when it landed to take the bait we left out (spoiler- the bait was me, the rogue. CRAP). I don't know how level-appropriate that was, but the DM clearly expected us to go run & hide when we saw wings go over our heads, and went "Ah crap" when we said "Let's see if we can catch it!"

Of course, since it was a wilderness encounter with a flying creature, there was no lair we could find and no treasure. You see how these things go?

The most magic that rogue has ever had is a +1 short sword, +2 Ring of Armor, and a Ring of Invisibility. We do buy magic items at cost, I gave an over-harsh impression- but when a treasure for an entire dungeon adds up to less than 5000 gp split 5 or 6 ways, that's not a lot of magic either, mainly potions and scrolls. So we get by on low cunning and ingenuity. It's alternately terrifying and exhilarating, which IMO is just how it's meant to be.

[eggynack]

Stuff
So, your character concept is, "A guy that sucks at the thing he does,"? Seems pretty accurate, I think. You can do that, and it is your prerogative to do so, but for any character that doesn't have incompetence as a core character trait, optimization is going to be a part of that if you don't want crazy gameplay/story segregation. See, you've constructed this situation where an optimized character might not work, because the character is supposed to be bad, but most characters are the opposite of that, at least within their core proficiency. Alternatively, you could always handle the charisma focus by building a zhentarim soldier, which would also reflect his kinda jerkish nature, and turn the feats towards the horse stuff. That seems better to me.

[Flickerdart]

Lets take that mounted knight and show you....

Mounted Knight Rond. He is the son of a minor noble. This father made a lot of bad deals, so the family is in money troubles. Rond would like to help, but he knows little about money. He is just a warrior. He also wants to make a name for himself outside his family. He figures that becoming an adventurer could solve both problems, maybe someday he can do a great deed like slay a dragon. Rond is a more fancy, noble warrior that has not yet experienced real war. He is charming and knows how to talk to people, as he has had lots of experience being the son of a noble. He also, very often, rubs people the wrong way as he sees nobles as better then commoners.

So how do you make this build? Max out Ride and Balance and Handel Animal. Take feats like mounted combat, weapon focus, and wild cohort. But, note, he does not take anything to support the role playing story. And this is the big problem: D&D does not give enough skills and feats and abilities to do two or more things to the extreme an optimizer would say they 'must' do so to have fun. To support the role playing, Rond should have a couple charisma based feats, and even a high charisma. Plus he should have a 'wealth' type feat or two, and skills like profession (horse showmanship).

But no optimizer would ever waste skill points on profession (horse showmanship), as that would take away from skill that have use in combat, like Ride. He will have high spot and listen too, so he has a chance to see/hear the foes first, even though that does not fit with his story either. And he won't waste a feat slot on a Charisma feat. And he won't even have a high charisma, as no optimizer would ever have a knight with like a strength of 11 and a charisma of like 16.

And how do the things written on the character sheet help a player role-play? How do you role-play the ride skill? ''I get on my horse''? Not much role-play there.

And you can role play a mounted knight that does not have the mounted combat feat just fine, but a character that has a maxed out mounted charger build won't role play anything but being a well built game character.
If he's a charismatic nobleman type who hasn't a lick of war experience and focuses on charisma, why is he a fighter? His very first instructor would have told him to take a hike after seeing the kid's lacklustre skill with a blade.

No, instead of complaining about how optimizing is bad and gets in the way of roleplaying his ultra-special character, an actual optimizer would grab something like a Marshal dip or Knight or Bard or White Raven-focused Crusader to create a boy who puts on a brave show but in the end is much more comfortable with words than swords. A nobleman would never have a lowly Profession skill (earning money through a trade?), but Perform (dressage) would let him show off just as well while also being actually useful and having Charisma synergy. Wealth feats? His family is broke, he hasn't got two coins to rub together. Leave that in his backstory instead of forcing it ham-handedly into the mechanics.

Roleplay the Ride skill by describing your character's comfortable handling of horses, the extra fancy way he swings into his saddle and the ease with which he dodges enemy arrows as he leads the charge. The fact that you can't roleplay Ride isn't a failing of the skill, but your own failing.

My Rond the Knight has all the fighting ability he needs to contribute to his party, all of the Charisma to hold his own at a fancy masquerade ball, fits the fluff you've put out better than yours does, and doesn't complain about how the system is wrong.

If you think the point of optimization is to build whatever's powerful, you're doing it wrong. Optimization is for taking a character concept and then making that character concept viable. If your character concept doesn't include Spot and Listen, don't take Spot and Listen (they're not class skills for you anyway) but make sure that you're competent at whatever it is you want to do. And remember that being bad at stuff isn't a character concept. Nobody hires an adventurer because he's bad at stuff. Adventurers don't survive by being bad at stuff. You need to have a redeeming quality that makes your character fun for the other players to play with - and that means being good at something.

[Necroticplague]

So no magic items, AC 23-25, before level 9, no cheese? Seems easy enough.

Start with any race without hit to CHA or DEX. base stats: CHA 18, dex 16, rest is irrelevant.
Level0:AC 13
Level1:Battle dancer (CHA to AC, like monk). AC:17
Level2:Ghost template class (CHA to AC as deflection bonus). AC:21
Level3:Ghost template class level 2(+2 CHA). AC:23

There, for three levels,no feats, no items, permanent AC 23. And it works for almost any race. Pick something with a bonus to CHA or DEX (like elf), and it gets a little higher. And that CHA also fuels the DC for telekinesis, and maybe some other things you might decide to do. By level 5, two more levels of ghost could give you +2 more CHA, increasing it to 25.

[RedMage125]

It can't because the two concepts aren't even in the same field of play. Roleplaying is how you act and Optimization is refining how those actions work on paper. It's like asking if having a big engine in a car hinders your ability to have a good paint job.

I just want to say that this is not only hilarious, but also showcases the point thoroughly. If I was in the habit of sigging other people's quotes, I would sig this because I love it so much.

[Rubik]

So no magic items, AC 23-25, before level 9, no cheese? Seems easy enough.

Start with any race without hit to CHA or DEX. base stats: CHA 18, dex 16, rest is irrelevant.
Level0:AC 13
Level1:Battle dancer (CHA to AC, like monk). AC:17
Level2:Ghost template class (CHA to AC as deflection bonus). AC:21
Level3:Ghost template class level 2(+2 CHA). AC:23

There, for three levels,no feats, no items, permanent AC 23. And it works for almost any race. Pick something with a bonus to CHA or DEX (like elf), and it gets a little higher. And that CHA also fuels the DC for telekinesis, and maybe some other things you might decide to do. By level 5, two more levels of ghost could give you +2 more CHA, increasing it to 25.But you optimized! That's inexcusable! You can't roleplay that!

[Darth Paul]

Remember, a DM who doesn't expect to provide level-appropriate armor (or wealth in general) is going to give you a houseruled bonus to compensate. As you and your DM are well aware, AC in D&D scales with magic items (armor, natural armor, deflection), while attack bonus scales with level. Any DM who actually intends to give less than normal treasure will have noticed this, and implemented a houserule to counteract it, because otherwise the game's math breaks in a very straightforward, easily predictable way. If your DM hasn't been doing this, then the lack of wealth is probably unintentional. Likely your DM forgot to keep track of the balance of low vs. high treasure encounters, perhaps due to missing the parts of the DMG describing them. I'm sure that if you discuss this with your DMs you can clear the situation right up.

Hit points also scale up with level, you don't need a ridiculous AC if you can take a hit or 3 and still stand up. We are all (with a few exceptions) DMs as well as players, and it is intentional that we keep magic and wealth reasonable in our various campaigns, so that a party of mixed level can have the 9th level fighter challenged by monsters that, at the same time, won't one-hit-kill the 6th-level ranger. We also make efforts to maintain balance wihin the party, giving some magic items to the lower-level characters which will keep them competitive with the rest.

Basically we expect a party to either figure out how to overcome their enemies, or else be bright enough to retreat if they realize they can't. Every once in a while, we say "Thus endeth the party," and we roll new characters. Years ago, a new member of the group didn't want us to think he was a coward by retreating and leaving my character behind, even though I told him to. After the TPK, we said, "Next time, remember- it's OK to run away."

Magic items are only vital if you're facing a creature with DR or immunity, and there are plenty of spells like Magic Weapon and Shillelagh that negate that problem. Playing smart with the resources you've got is much more satisfying to me, and makes it that much more satisfying when you do find your +2 Thunderer (I looked it up, it's only +2).

[Vedhin]

Best answer IMO is to fake it. Homebrew a quality of weapon above masterwork that mimics a +2.

They have those up to +5 in a 3rd party Dragonlance book. For armor too.



Mounted Knight Rond. He is the son of a minor noble. This father made a lot of bad deals, so the family is in money troubles. Rond would like to help, but he knows little about money. He is just a warrior. He also wants to make a name for himself outside his family. He figures that becoming an adventurer could solve both problems, maybe someday he can do a great deed like slay a dragon. Rond is a more fancy, noble warrior that has not yet experienced real war. He is charming and knows how to talk to people, as he has had lots of experience being the son of a noble. He also, very often, rubs people the wrong way as he sees nobles as better then commoners.

So how do you make this build? Max out Ride and Balance and Handel Animal. Take feats like mounted combat, weapon focus, and wild cohort. But, note, he does not take anything to support the role playing story. And this is the big problem: D&D does not give enough skills and feats and abilities to do two or more things to the extreme an optimizer would say they 'must' do so to have fun. To support the role playing, Rond should have a couple charisma based feats, and even a high charisma. Plus he should have a 'wealth' type feat or two, and skills like profession (horse showmanship).

But no optimizer would ever waste skill points on profession (horse showmanship), as that would take away from skill that have use in combat, like Ride. He will have high spot and listen too, so he has a chance to see/hear the foes first, even though that does not fit with his story either. And he won't waste a feat slot on a Charisma feat. And he won't even have a high charisma, as no optimizer would ever have a knight with like a strength of 11 and a charisma of like 16.

And how do the things written on the character sheet help a player role-play? How do you role-play the ride skill? ''I get on my horse''? Not much role-play there.

And you can role play a mounted knight that does not have the mounted combat feat just fine, but a character that has a maxed out mounted charger build won't role play anything but being a well built game character.

Rond sounds like a Knight from the PHBII. Makes a decent tank and mounted combatant, and can grab Charisma-based feats like Goad and Imperious Command comfortably. Family is in money troubles and Rond isn't good with money, so he shouldn't have money feats (this is my interpretation of this part of the concept. He got Ride and Handle Animal, along with some combat experience, hunting for sport. His Wild Cohort is a horse (it's named, but I'm bad with names), who he was gifted with when he was a child, and who has been his companion for a long time. If you want a fluff skill, Perform (Weapon Drill) could reasonably be extended to demonstrations of mounted combat skills. He might not have Spot and Listen-- he'll want Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, and Sense Motive, because he knows how to talk to people. After that, he still wants Ride and Handle animal. Knight is a melee class that can get by with lower Strength (though you'll likely want 13 for feats), and benefits from high Charisma, so that stat distribution is acceptable. As for Ride, anyone can ride a horse. Someone with maxed out Ride is one with their horse. They hardly even need to give an order-- the horse anticipates them so well it does things almost before they tell it to.

[Darth Paul]

So no magic items, AC 23-25, before level 9, no cheese? Seems easy enough.

Start with any race without hit to CHA or DEX. base stats: CHA 18, dex 16, rest is irrelevant.
Level0:AC 13
Level1:Battle dancer (CHA to AC, like monk). AC:17
Level2:Ghost template class (CHA to AC as deflection bonus). AC:21
Level3:Ghost template class level 2(+2 CHA). AC:23

There, for three levels,no feats, no items, permanent AC 23. And it works for almost any race. Pick something with a bonus to CHA or DEX (like elf), and it gets a little higher. And that CHA also fuels the DC for telekinesis, and maybe some other things you might decide to do. By level 5, two more levels of ghost could give you +2 more CHA, increasing it to 25.

Battle dancer- in a supplement I've never heard of.
Ghost template- doesn't your character have to die and become a ghost to have the ghost template? Because that sounds a little extreme to me just for an AC bonus. On the other hand, the opportunity for some great roleplaying when you tell the DM you want to be killed and come back as a vengeful ghost...

So here's my other 'thing' with this optimization deal; it seems to be something where "s/he who has the most supplements wins." Which is also super-irritating as a DM, when somebody throws a class feature or spell or an entire character class at you that you've never heard of before, but since it's published under the d20 License, it must be OK, no matter how unbalancing it seems.

I just would feel so much happier if TSR came back and took it all over again... Or if we just agreed that there was a Player's Handbook, a DMG, and a Monster Manual. And that's it.

Yeah. I'm a fogey. I deal with it all the time. :insert nonexistent Eugene Greenhilt smiley:

[Vedhin]

So here's my other 'thing' with this optimization deal; it seems to be something where "s/he who has the most supplements wins."

To be fair, splatbooks tend to be better for the characters who are worse off. The most broken things are Core, after all (There are a handful of nonCore broken things).


Yeah. I'm a fogey. I deal with it all the time.

Well, from the sound of things you also manage to pull off low-wealth campaigns well, which is quite an accomplishment from my point of view.


:insert nonexistent Eugene Greenhilt smiley:

Eugene would have a frowny, not a smiley.

[torrasque666]

So here's my other 'thing' with this optimization deal; it seems to be something where "s/he who has the most supplements wins." Which is also super-irritating as a DM, when somebody throws a class feature or spell or an entire character class at you that you've never heard of before, but since it's published under the d20 License, it must be OK, no matter how unbalancing it seems.

I just would feel so much happier if TSR came back and took it all over again... Or if we just agreed that there was a Player's Handbook, a DMG, and a Monster Manual. And that's it.


I understand this. First attempt at DMing and a guy hits me with a Dragonborn Raptoran Dragonfire Adept(I don't remember on the class. Might have been Dragon Shaman) as I had only banned psionics because as far as I knew, that was all there was(I was, and still kinda am, unfamiliar with psionics). I thought that all the stuff was Core, Completes, and Campaign settings. LOL nope. THEN he tries to bring out some obscure feat from Dragon(Races of Power issue I think) so he could apply metabreath feats to his class feature... Exasperating as all fck and I know realize I should have just said "Nope. Not familiar with those books. Not allowing it." but then I just kinda panicked. Then he switched when I said I'd be applying AoE damage to structures and that I will have no problem if he causes a TPK by burning a building down with his party in it(obvy houseruling burning, since I hadn't really looked it up yet.)


But I agree with that grievance about optimizing. If you don't have ALL the supplements and ALL the Dragon, then the one who does is going to out-whatever you.

[Grod_The_Giant]

But I agree with that grievance about optimizing. If you don't have ALL the supplements and ALL the Dragon, then the one who does is going to out-whatever you.
Ehh... the guy who seeks to overwhelm you by throwing ill-explained obscure material at you isn't going to magically become a better player just because he's limited to core.

Unfamiliarity is a pretty valid reason to ban things, but I do think it should be tempered with "but since I know you're interested, I'll try to read up on this so you can use it next time. Can I borrow your copy of Dragon Magic?" Ignorance is an excuse as long as you're actively trying to overcome it.

[torrasque666]

Ehh... the guy who seeks to overwhelm you by throwing ill-explained obscure material at you isn't going to magically become a better player just because he's limited to core.

Unfamiliarity is a pretty valid reason to ban things, but I do think it should be tempered with "but since I know you're interested, I'll try to read up on this so you can use it next time. Can I borrow your copy of Dragon Magic?" Ignorance is an excuse as long as you're actively trying to overcome it.

All fine and good for physical games, but doesn't work so well on Roll20.

[Juntao112]

Yeah, if there's one thing that can't be done on the internet, it's the acquisition of information.

[Kantolin]

So no magic items, AC 23-25, before level 9, no cheese?

Gnome or Halfling Fighter 1

Full Plate (9AC)
Tower Shield (4AC)
Size (1AC)

= 24AC, presuming dex of 12. Level 1.

You can also fight defensively for 2ac, and/or have combat expertise which can get you 1-5AC. Or dodge feat for an extra 1ac, but dodge isn't a very useful feat in general.

Dwarven defender can get you a +4 to your AC if you opt to go that route (In which of course you couldn't be a halfling or gnome, but that's okay)

And of course, there's spells - magic vestment is always a valuable spell anyway.

Of course, a large or greater air elemental is CR 7 or 9 and has a +19 or +23 to hit, and the CR 7 dire bear also has a nasty +19 to hit, so an uncomfortable chunk of these things are hitting a 24AC on a 5. Ouch.

...now a succubus can't hit you, but succubi don't attack people anyway (And touches won't interact with most of this AC).

You can accomplish similar ACs if you can get your dexterity up high enough - padded armour is 1AC/8dex. Of course, getting your dexterity up that high without magic items is gonna be rough. If you have a dex of at least 20 (Halfling or elf can do it at level 1), then the spell mage armour lasts for hours and gives you a +4.

Finally, note that you can play a cleric who uses a tower shield and focuses on spells that don't have attack rolls attached to them at all. Heck, with that you won't even need to be proficient with the tower shield - your initiative will suck, but them's the breaks. Cast hold person on things.

This can also be done with a druid, notably in the pre-wild-shape period. Well, by 'this' I mean the tower shield (tower shields are wooden unless you have the I think complete warrior's metal tower shield) - you won't be able to wear full plate unless you can get it made out of dragonhide or something, but you can achieve similar parity with other armours anyway. Hide behind your tower shield and summon stuff or use flaming sphere or whatever. Later wild shape into something with hands.

Finally, the paladin can take his heavy warhorse (4 natural Armour) and plunk it in full plate barding (9 Armour with the dex) is 22 AC, which the paladin's bonus makes 26AC as soon as you get it, upgrading to 28AC at paladin 8. Not too shabby!

Riding dogs can do the same +4naturalarmour thing for druids and rangers (although core ranger animal companions suck) and they won't have the size drawback. This can also get them +2/+4/+6 AC at druid levels 3, 6, and 9. (Or Ranger level 6, 12, and bloody 18. Poor Rangers)

So hey.

[ryu]

All fine and good for physical games, but doesn't work so well on Roll20.

And suddenly he responds by emailing you a copy of the PDF.

[Darth Paul]

Yeah, if there's one thing that can't be done on the internet, it's the acquisition of information.

On the other hand, nothing makes a gaming session flow like running a web search in the middle of it.

I do see the point of players who, having invested cash or credit in a cool-looking supplement, want to use that material. But I think it's only polite and fair if they go to the DM, let's say, a week or two in advance and say, "Hey, I want to try playing a class from this sourcebook, would you mind lookng through it and tell me if you think it will fit in your campaign?" Then, and this is equally important, not get bent out of shape if the reply is "No, I think I'd rather just stick with the campaign we have, or wait until we start a new one and let you play the character then." Because there is so much stuff out there, and such a wide difference in the amount of time and research that players are able to spend on gaming (what with having jobs, families, and the like), that it can get to seem like an arms race at times.

[Necroticplague]

Battle dancer- in a supplement I've never heard of.
Ghost template- doesn't your character have to die and become a ghost to have the ghost template? Because that sounds a little extreme to me just for an AC bonus. On the other hand, the opportunity for some great roleplaying when you tell the DM you want to be killed and come back as a vengeful ghost...

So here's my other 'thing' with this optimization deal; it seems to be something where "s/he who has the most supplements wins." Which is also super-irritating as a DM, when somebody throws a class feature or spell or an entire character class at you that you've never heard of before, but since it's published under the d20 License, it must be OK, no matter how unbalancing it seems.

I just would feel so much happier if TSR came back and took it all over again... Or if we just agreed that there was a Player's Handbook, a DMG, and a Monster Manual. And that's it.

Yeah. I'm a fogey. I deal with it all the time. :insert nonexistent Eugene Greenhilt smiley:

Obscurity doesn't effect power level. The Battle Dancer is a really crappy class. It just happens to have a useful dip.

If you want an in-character justification, becoming a ghost isn't usually something you chose to be, its something that happens. From a mechanical standpoint, it gives you a heck of a lot more than just CHA to AC. Incorporeal (and associated miss chance and stealth ability), ethereal (and associated movement and stealth ability), undead traits (and associated immunities), telekinesis (and associated ranged fighting and battlefield control ability), and access to [Ghost] Feats (some of which are fairly good).

Would you believe I don't own any sourcebooks? With the proliferation of the Internet and how old the system is, its easy to have access to all the information you need for very complicated builds without owning anything.

Except that environment very strictly limits players. Like take spellcasters. They can deal with a fair chunk of issues just staying in core, and they can branch out with spell selection alone. Now for fighters...they have less options. Sticking with core, they can do a bit of charging, some spike chain control, and nothing else of real note. You earlier mentioned them absorbing hits, but summons can do that even better (thanks to DR and HD>level of summons). And what if you want to build a grappler, a scrapper who strangles monsters to death, like the legendary Beowulf? Well, in Core, you're screwed. Outside of core, you can have grappling tentacles grafted, pick up levels in Black Blood Cultist, be a goliath, be a psywar with Expansion, wield a set of scorpion claws, take the Erth's Embrace feat...
So what's wrong with more options, especially when most aren't horrendously powerful, and are only useful when combined?

[Jeff the Green]

More level 9 AC:

Strongheart Halfling Monk 1/Wizard 5/Enlightened Fist 3
Carmendine Monk (+5)
Dexterity (+2)
Greater Luminous Armor (+8)
Barkskin (+4)
Shield of Faith (+3)
Shield (+4)

For a total of 36, plus melee attacks against you take a -4 penalty. Granted, you need a friendly cleric and Druid, but even if you only have the latter, Protection from Evil is almost as good as Shield of Faith.

[Juntao112]

On the other hand, nothing makes a gaming session flow like running a web search in the middle of it.

I do see the point of players who, having invested cash or credit in a cool-looking supplement, want to use that material. But I think it's only polite and fair if they go to the DM, let's say, a week or two in advance and say, "Hey, I want to try playing a class from this sourcebook, would you mind lookng through it and tell me if you think it will fit in your campaign?"
And no one has said otherwise; in fact, the person I was responding to was saying how difficult it would be to even get the information across, which I think we can both agree is not terribly difficult now.

[Darth Paul]

Gnome or Halfling Fighter 1

Full Plate (9AC)
Tower Shield (4AC)
Size (1AC)

= 24AC, presuming dex of 12. Level 1.

So hey.

Right, forgot about the tower shield in my earlier reply.

So, where is the first-level character getting the 1500gp to pony up for full plate armor? The weight is halved for the character's size, but cost remains the same according to my book.

Once again, it's theoretically possible, but in my world it don't happen.

One more thought & then I'm gong to sleep;

I keep reading the word "build" in reference to characters. "Your character build." "A 9th level wizard build." I have never thought of a character like that, ever. A "build" is an inanimate thing, like the way I assemble a model kit. I think of my characters- and my friends' characters, and Rich's characters- as living, breathing, though imaginary, people. I didn't "build" them, I put flesh on their bones, I breathed life into them. They are as near to art as I will ever get to creating. I am a talentless hack when it comes to most things, even though I flatter myself that my written word has the occasional zing- but when I create a character, I am Stephen By-Gods King himself, and those characters are real once they get on paper (or, these days, into the Character Generator). Their flaws and virtues will come out as I play them, and I may discover things about them that I never put there. The very process of the play will demand that I take certain feats and skills as they level up. Not because it's what is optimal, but because it's what the character's life demands.

I don't have a 10th-level dwarf fighter- I have Gimlet, Son of Groin (yes, I stole the name from Bored of the Rings, but now he has his own history). Justinian the Wizard, 13th level (who turned a dragon into a herring). Kotor the Annoying, 12th-level Druid. Quick Mike the rogue. Too many to name. None of them would be considered optimized, I'm sure, but they are all their very own selves. Yet at the same time they are just figments of the imagination.

It's a kind of magic. I can't understand it, but I love it. It's the act of creation between players and DM. It's the release valve for the frustrated actor in me. All those things.

And that's optimal, I guess, because it does what I want it to do.

Good night.

[Flickerdart]

So here's my other 'thing' with this optimization deal; it seems to be something where "s/he who has the most supplements wins." Which is also super-irritating as a DM, when somebody throws a class feature or spell or an entire character class at you that you've never heard of before, but since it's published under the d20 License, it must be OK, no matter how unbalancing it seems.
A competent wizard 20 using all-core feats and spells can never be defeated by a mundane character using any amount of splatbook material you want, outside of egregiously contrived situations or Pun-Pun grade cheese. The later books actually close the balance gap by introducing middle of the road options such as Crusader that make it viable to play a guy without a spellbook stapled to their butt. That Dragonfire Adept torrasque666 mentioned? That's a pretty average T4. Your run of the mill Bard or Barbarian will probably outperform him most of the time. Dragon Shaman? T5, worthless class.

Having said that, the game came out in 2003 and stopped getting updates seven years ago. If you insist on DMing, at least make a bit of an effort to keep up with content that's older than some of the game's players, eh?


I just would feel so much happier if TSR came back and took it all over again
TSR never cared about balance in the first place. 2nd edition was the game where the designers deliberately made the mage bad for the first half of the game, and the fighter bad for the second half.

[Kantolin]

But I agree with that grievance about optimizing. If you don't have ALL the supplements and ALL the Dragon, then the one who does is going to out-whatever you.

I dunno...

In one game, I asked if I could be a Spirit Shaman from the complete divine, and had a fun backstory attached to it. The DM didn't know what a Spirit Shaman was, so I cheerfully gave a brief explanation and offered to give more if he'd prefer.

Said DM became upset because Spirit Shaman is noncore, however, so I swapped him into being a druid as that's core. This then meant, however, that the character rather abruptly got more powerful due to both needing less stats (Spirit Shaman need wisdom and charisma to cast, Druids are just wisdom and also have wild shape), an extra feat (I had taken spontaneous summoner so I could use summons, but a druid can do that by default), and an animal companion.

Said DM noted that my gator animal companion was alarmingly close to the party's monk in overall potency, and after talking a bit more I decided that maybe this wasn't a good game to try to join after all. :P


Realistically, opening up noncore allows a lot more fun options than problematic options. In core, you're likely to end up with a cleric/wizard/fighter/rogue party where the wizard prepares knock and makes the rogue worthless.

Out of core has what... the samurai, hexblade, swashbuckler, scout, ninja, spellthief, warlock, warmage, wu jen, shugenja, spirit shaman, favored soul, psion, psychic warrior, soulknife, wilder, knight, dragon shaman, beguiler, duskblade, incarnate, totemist, soulborn, binder, shadowcaster, warblade, crusader, swordsage?

The vast, vast majority of those classes are sub par. Nothing there competes with druids clerics or wizards, and only two or three can compete with the sorceror? If anything, I'd be worried about allowing noncore options because it will probably reduce the overall power level of your game, and most people don't want that.

[Kantolin]

So, where is the first-level character getting the 1500gp to pony up for full plate armor? The weight is halved for the character's size, but cost remains the same according to my book.

Once again, it's theoretically possible, but in my world it don't happen.

Reasonably true. Full plate is pretty expensive at level 1 - this was mostly showing it was extremely plausible by the goal level of 9. It's just that you stated that you're not using wealth by level at all, just 'no magical gear' - I thought the example given was in fact using full plate.


Of course, being in banded mail only reduces said AC numbers by 2. That's still 22 AC at level 1. 21AC if you're using chainmail. More if you use combat expertise / dodge / fighting defensively / spells / a combination of these.

These examples should show that it's very reasonable to have a 24AC by level 9 (and, in fact, by much lower level).

Edit: At least, I /thought/ 'I don't use wealth per level' was the statement! Whoops, I may have been mistaken on the subject entirely, and I apologize. Do you use wealth per level at all?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I do see the point of players who, having invested cash or credit in a cool-looking supplement, want to use that material. But I think it's only polite and fair if they go to the DM, let's say, a week or two in advance and say, "Hey, I want to try playing a class from this sourcebook, would you mind lookng through it and tell me if you think it will fit in your campaign?" Then, and this is equally important, not get bent out of shape if the reply is "No, I think I'd rather just stick with the campaign we have, or wait until we start a new one and let you play the character then." Because there is so much stuff out there, and such a wide difference in the amount of time and research that players are able to spend on gaming (what with having jobs, families, and the like), that it can get to seem like an arms race at times.
Oh, sure. The game should never be an arms race; that's why we keep stressing the need for everyone to be optimizing to the same degree, be it monks with weapon focus or batman wizards. No-one wins an arms race; everyone wins a cooperative game.

Personally, I think the game gets boring if you just use the same material over and over again. You can have infinite personalities, but D&D is a crunchy enough game that the rules you're using are important to how things "feel." Play too many druids, or clerics, or barbarians, or what have you, and they'll all start to feel the same when the dice hit the table.

[Pandyman]

On the other hand, nothing makes a gaming session flow like running a web search in the middle of it.

I do see the point of players who, having invested cash or credit in a cool-looking supplement, want to use that material. But I think it's only polite and fair if they go to the DM, let's say, a week or two in advance

Doesn't that mean that building the character in advance is the best way to go about making sure all the source materials are approved and ready at the table during the game session? I'm sorta confused about your original concern about optimizing a character in advance now.

[Darth Paul]

Doesn't that mean that building the character in advance is the best way to go about making sure all the source materials are approved and ready at the table during the game session? I'm sorta confused about your original concern about optimizing a character in advance now.

Only if you want to go out of core.

It takes 10 minutes to roll a character. 20 if you have to choose 1st-level spells. 1 hour if you've never done it before, but have someone to guide you through it.

That's my experience, anyway. Because I don't have a concern with "optimizing" per se, I just go with what looks good and make the best of it as the character lives on.

And now I'm going to bed, as promised in my last edit to my last post. Good night.

[RedMage125]

Dragon Shaman? T5, worthless class.

And this is why I rant about people misunderstanding the purpose of the Tier System. It is not some measure of which classes are "worthless" and should not be played. It's meant as a guide for DMs to understand to scope of the capabilities of the classes their players are playing. It measures the class' power and versatility (and other qualifiers, but those are the biggest) and compares them to a wide spread of possible scenarios, ranking them into Tiers based on what they are capable of.

It is also a guide to players to have an idea of where and how they will fit into a group when they join. If the party already consists of Wizard, Cleric, Artificer and Druid...playing a Fighter may make you feel left behind. Or maybe, in order to help you NOT feel left behind, he'll let you play a Desert Half-Orc/Half-Minotaur Dungeoncrasher, and you'll enjoy your role in the party more. But if your party is Monk, Fighter, Rogue, then maybe Venerable White Dragonspawn Dragonwrought Kobold Sorcerer is a bit too OP.

I'm not the Dragon Shaman's biggest fan, and I'm not defending the class. But it seems, based on comments like this, that your understanding of the purpose of the Tier System is faulty. If you re-read the whole article, from the beginning, and read all the way through the FAQs, you will see that JaronK is explicitly not in favor of using the Tier System like that.


Darth Paul:
Flickerdart is, however, correct in his assessment of TSR. More to the point, TSR went under, they are gone as a company, they are not coming back. And we should all thank whatever higher power we believe in that the license was bought by people who actually care. Magic the Gathering was founded by a guy who loved D&D, but wanted a means of playing it in quick sessions. WotC also absorbed a good chunk of TSR's staff when they bought TSR. People like Sean K. Reynolds and Monte Cook. 3rd edition, when it first came out was, in many ways, an attempt to stay faithful to a 2e feel while making the actual mechanics simpler, more streamlined, and coherent. But there were a lot of holdovers, and the dichotomy of power between Fighters and Wizards over the course of a 20 level spread is one of them. People cite Wizards as "able to do everything" and Fighters as "very limited" or "one-trick ponies". But at level 2, the situation is drastically different. A level 2 wizard is not much more than a fragile nerd with 3 spells per day (4 if he managed a 20+ INT out of the gate), and maybe 10 hp. Meanwhile, the Fighter has more than 2 times the hit points, easily 10 more AC, and can hit much harder, more often.

Also, one of the main reasons TSR went under was spreading themselves too thin. They made some great products, but accidentally garnered too much product loyalty to those lines. When you had people who were diehard Dark Sun fans, or Spelljammer fans, or Planescape, whatever, they were not as interested in the products not of that line. Sure there were generic products, but more and more, those products started becoming less useful for some of those other settings. TSR simply could not sell enough copies of the latest Planescape/Ravenloft/Forgotten Realms books when they were printed to make a significant profit, and the fans were spread out all over the country, if not the world. Printing and Shipping costs are extremely significant, and sadly, they were not getting the returns on the products they were putting out.

Sorry Darth, but TSR is just not ever going to "come back"

[Flickerdart]

It takes 10 minutes to roll a character. 20 if you have to choose 1st-level spells. 1 hour if you've never done it before, but have someone to guide you through it.
And when exactly are you supposed to come up with the breathtaking personality and backstory that every non-optimized character apparently has?


If you re-read the whole article, from the beginning, and read all the way through the FAQs, you will see that JaronK is explicitly not in favor of using the Tier System like that.

I don't really care what JaronK thinks about how the tier system should be used. A class that is "capable of doing only one thing, and not necessarily all that well, or so unfocused that they have trouble mastering anything, and in many types of encounters the character cannot contribute" is a terrible class.

[LordBlades]

So here's my other 'thing' with this optimization deal; it seems to be something where "s/he who has the most supplements wins." Which is also super-irritating as a DM, when somebody throws a class feature or spell or an entire character class at you that you've never heard of before, but since it's published under the d20 License, it must be OK, no matter how unbalancing it seems.



You are flat out wrong here. A core only, must spend all his skills in Craft and Profession and all his feats on Skill Focus (craft and profession skills) is stil going to be miles better than an all books allowed non-caster. If anything additional books make the game more balanced, as they make the casters a bit better, but the non-casters much better, thus reducing the gap.

Magic items work largely the same : the classes that need them most are those at the lower end of the power spectrum. A full caster can fly, see invisible creatures, by-pass DR etc. on his own, a non-caster needs magic items. As it's been said, a druid can beat AC 25 at level 5 with just 1 spell and no items.

[RedMage125]

I don't really care what JaronK thinks about how the tier system should be used. A class that is "capable of doing only one thing, and not necessarily all that well, or so unfocused that they have trouble mastering anything, and in many types of encounters the character cannot contribute" is a terrible class.

So...you are saying you have a better understanding of the Tier System and it's intended purpose than the guy who created and established it?

I see.

[LordBlades]

So...you are saying you have a better understanding of the Tier System and it's intended purpose than the guy who created and established it?

I see.

It is perfectly possible to agree with the tier ranking of a class while disagreeong with how JaronK suggests to use the tier system.

Personally, I agree that tier 5s and 6s (which per JaronK's rating vary from 'somewhat competent at a single thing' to 'woefully incompetent at everything') are pretty terrible classes, from a desugn standpoint at least (if the DM doesn't build encounters tailored around giving them a chance to shine they can't contribute much). This doesn't mean they can't be played in a game where everybody is playing equally low-powered classes.

[Adverb]

Then I guess we're not playing 3.5 D&D, we're just playing 2nd Edition AD&D with skills and feats.

As someone who's played editions 1 through 5, but mostly 2 and 3 - yes, you're playing a 2nd-ed campaign. You have better math (addition is always good, rolling high is always good), multiclassing is less weird (no longer "if you're a half-elf you can do basically anything you want, if you're a human you can't multiclass at all but there's this side rule that lets you do something which is like that"), and you no longer have an XP bonus for having your class' favorite stat be high. Sorcerers exist now which is freaky, and backstabbing is easier, but is a flat damage bonus rather than a multiplier.

But, you don't get much in the way of treasure, and the stuff that you do get can't be used to easily purchase magic items, and I bet you don't often see the magic-item-making feats in play often either. You don't leave core much, which means there's a huge chunk of the game you're missing. That chunk is better balanced (mostly) but feels less like the D&D-of-old. (Incidentally, there are some classes you should check out that you'd probably like - particularly Knight and Scout.) The easy availability of magic is integral to the balance of 3.5, and the wide variety of classes and feats is pretty integral to how most people feel about it as an edition.

On the other hand, 3.5's ethos really frowns on "I drop a bag of holding on the dragon, thus saving the day" stuff, or really anything that's that level of clever but for which there's no explicit or implicit mechanic. 2E, on the other hand, loved that **** and would eat it up with a spoon.

So, yeah, Paul, you're playing 2E. But you're having a lot of fun with it, which is sweet. Also, good news! You're going to have a pile and a half of fun with 5th edition, seriously.

[Pandyman]

It takes 10 minutes to roll a character. 20 if you have to choose 1st-level spells. 1 hour if you've never done it before, but have someone to guide you through it.

That's my experience, anyway. Because I don't have a concern with "optimizing" per se, I just go with what looks good and make the best of it as the character lives on.

And now I'm going to bed, as promised in my last edit to my last post. Good night.

That's not really what I was saying though. You wanted players to tell the DM a week or two in advance about a supplement, but expressed distaste in planning a character build in advance in your original post. The only way I see around this is to present the DM with all your supplements and saying, "I may or may not want to use anything in these books in this campaign. I don't know what I want to use yet, so i need you to tell me what is and isn't acceptable out of these 50+ books." That seems a lot worse to me than someone being able to say, "I'm taking 4 levels of this one class out of this specific supplement book, and I'm planning to use it for some expressed purpose in my character build."

I have quite a few supplements available to me, so if I don't have a build setup in advance the roleplaying situations can often inspire me to remember something from a supplement that my character might take. There's a lot of cool supplement material out there, and a lot of the material excites me when it's moderately relevant or might help my current character. For new dms that aren't as familiar with the supplements, I think it's better to have a build thought up so you can tell a new dm what to expect from your character as you level up.

[LordBlades]

Not to memtion the whole prerquisite system fir feats&prestige classes kinda forces you to plan a build in advance, at least to a point.

[Firechanter]

Not to memtion the whole prerquisite system fir feats&prestige classes kinda forces you to plan a build in advance, at least to a point.

Even better: if you want to play a Warblade, and not risk painting yourself in a corner, you have to plan your build _backwards_, i.e. start with the 9th-level maneuvers you want and "reverse-engineer" the build to make sure you meet all the prereqs.

[Sir Chuckles]

There is definitely an overall sense of "What I'm doing is absolutely right" coming from you, Darth. Nobody here, except some of the worst of us, will ever tell you that what you're doing is wrong as long as everyone is having fun.

But you have to get the idea that splatbooks, planning, character building, and the like are badwrongfun, because it's doing what we're not doing to you to us. Optimization does not equal min/max or power gaming, and neither equal munchkin-ing. They can overlap, but that is because optimization is a tool, and, like any other tool in the universe, it can be used in both a good and a bad way. We've described to you the good way, but you still see things like a Ghost Battledancer as a bad thing. That could be a really compelling character, or even villain. The Ghost Salsa Warrior! How is that not great (if used in the right campaign)?

The campaigns you've described are great, I love those kind of planning campaigns, but such things do not last long without proper care by the DM. That dragon? I'm sorry to say, it should have eaten or at least hindered you much more. Have you seen a dragon's intelligence score? And their wisdom? Remember that 10 is a perfectly average human being, and that 18 is meant as a tiny fraction of the normal population.
Wealth-by-level is in the game's raw under chassis mechanics. It is assumed that the Fighter has a big flaming sword at some point. It is assumed that the Rogue is packing a few wands and scrolls, maybe even a +1 Teleporting Dagger of Bane. It's why AC and to-hit bonuses scale the way they do, and why you see the weapon-wielding enemies, and even the NPCs in many modules and setting examples, packing magic weapons. Yes, even that one obese Rogue 4 is using +1 weapons.

You can and should optimize properly to enhance, reinforce, and support your character's fluff. Note that I said properly, as in PO. Practical optimization. Many of the builds you see on the internet are TO, Theoretical optimization. They're often not meant for use in games, and when meant for use in a game, it's a game that is vastly different from your low-wealth ones. It's a pretty common misconception that everyone here is actively playing a Batman Wizard 24/7. I'm currently playing a Warblade using unarmed fighting, a Goblin Rogue that took Improvised Weapon Proficiency, and a freakin' Neanderthal Barbarian/Wizard/Rage Mage. Neanderthal has a penalty to Intelligence, dang it. I optimized it to be a primal raging brute who's shooting magnificent amounts of lightning.

Optimization is not about a +5 Sword of Slay Everything, it's about making a literal Neanderthal into a Born of Three Thunder Wizard.

[Seto]

But you have to get (over ?) the idea that splatbooks, planning, character building, and the like are badwrongfun, because it's doing what we're not doing to you to us. Optimization does not equal min/max or power gaming, and neither equal munchkin-ing. They can overlap, but that is because optimization is a tool, and, like any other tool in the universe, it can be used in both a good and a bad way. We've described to you the good way, but you still see things like a Ghost Battledancer as a bad thing. That could be a really compelling character, or even villain. The Ghost Salsa Warrior! How is that not great (if used in the right campaign)?

Well, personally I agree that Optimization, per se, does not hinder roleplaying and that the Stormwind fallacy really is a fallacy. However, I sometimes have problems with some character concepts. Or actually, with a certain way of building characters. Here's what I mean : I consider that roleplaying is not hindered as long as optimization means you have a cool character concept that you represent mechanically... and the mechanic choices you do are reflected accordingly while roleplaying. Indeed, crunch has a tendency to represent what you can do, not who you are. And that, I think, is the point where it falls apart. Because sometimes focusing first and foremost on what your character can do (which is a valid way to proceed) can have huge impact on who he his, that optimizers do not always take into account.
I'll give an example : multiple templates really are a pet peeve of mine. If you want to do a lot of damage, that's nice. But if that means your character is a Water Orc/Half-Minotaur/X other templates, the perspective shifts. Because IMO the point of such a character is not that he does a lot of damage with an axe, it's that he's (in most worlds) a unique creature, considered by most everyone as a monstrosity, and probably has huge issues regarding his identity and his reason to exist. However, most people fail to take that dimension into account, and act (mostly) as if this was a perfectly normal character to play, and nothing more than a logical choice to optimize a concept (hard-hitting Barbarian). This, to me, is a typical example of how optimization can hinder roleplaying : by treating crunch choices as numbers, without thinking about where (from a fluff perspective) these numbers come from.
(Plus, I'd be extremely cautious with such a character, as IMO it stretches believability : it's not a problem of power, but of verisimilitude. In my game, I would allow it, but you'd have to justify and roleplay the hell out of it. People who play such characters while treating templates as nothing more than "I have +8 STR" annoy me to no end. Sorry I'm ranting.)

Tl;DR : Conciliating roleplaying and optimization is not "What do I want my character to do ? Let's make them good at it, how can that be done ?". That's simplistic. You have to add "What do my optimization choices mean in terms of roleplaying for my character ?" as a last question. It's not only a matter of translating a concept into numbers, but also of translating back those numbers into the base concept, even if that means changing it. It's a dialectic.

[ryu]

Well, personally I agree that Optimization, per se, does not hinder roleplaying and that the Stormwind fallacy really is a fallacy. However, I sometimes have problems with some character concepts. Or actually, with a certain way of building characters. Here's what I mean : I consider that roleplaying is not hindered as long as optimization means you have a cool character concept that you represent mechanically... and the mechanic choices you do are reflected accordingly while roleplaying. Indeed, crunch has a tendency to represent what you can do, not who you are. And that, I think, is the point where it falls apart. Because sometimes focusing first and foremost on what your character can do (which is a valid way to proceed) can have huge impact on who he his, that optimizers do not always take into account.
I'll give an example : multiple templates really are a pet peeve of mine. If you want to do a lot of damage, that's nice. But if that means your character is a Water Orc/Half-Minotaur/X other templates, the perspective shifts. Because IMO the point of such a character is not that he does a lot of damage with an axe, it's that he's (in most worlds) a unique creature, considered by most everyone as a monstrosity, and probably has huge issues regarding his identity and his reason to exist. However, most people fail to take that dimension into account, and act (mostly) as if this was a perfectly normal character to play, and nothing more than a logical choice to optimize a concept (hard-hitting Barbarian). This, to me, is a typical example of how optimization can hinder roleplaying : by treating crunch choices as numbers, without thinking about where (from a fluff perspective) these numbers come from.
(Plus, I'd be extremely cautious with such a character, as IMO it stretches believability : it's not a problem of power, but of verisimilitude. In my game, I would allow it, but you'd have to justify and roleplay the hell out of it. People who play such characters while treating templates as nothing more than "I have +8 STR" annoy me to no end. Sorry I'm ranting.)

Tl;DR : Conciliating roleplaying and optimization is not "What do I want my character to do ? Let's make them good at it, how can that be done ?". That's simplistic. You have to add "What do my optimization choices mean in terms of roleplaying for my character ?" as a last question. It's not only a matter of translating a concept into numbers, but also of translating back those numbers into the base concept, even if that means changing it. It's a dialectic.

Wait you mean that and much weirder isn't the natural, expected result in a game world where pretty much anything remotely similar can breed naturally, and the vast majority of things not really similar at all can still consensually breed with magic, and everything else is bribed or threatened into breeding for magical science by insane wizards every Tuesday? What's the world coming to?

[LordBlades]

Also, it's the DM's job to control the world. If a Half-minotaur water orc mineral warrior is considered a monster in your campaign, it's your job to make people treat him as such. Just because one may be a monster does not force one to see itself as such.

[Eldan]

Multiple templates are weird if you play them straight with by-the-book fluff, yes. I think they sort of work if you refluff them, however. At least for many of them. Your half-minotaur water orc? Well, almost all his abilities really come down to stat bonuses. So, fluff him as an orc who's simply that strong. Done. Maybe claim he's a demigod if your DM doesn't think normal orcs should be that strong. Plenty of mythological precedence for that.

[NichG]

This gets into deeper thickets involving questions of game philosophy: how independent should mechanics be from the universe they describe or the story they're used to tell, etc. There's usually some degree of abstraction between the mechanics and what characters are intended to experience in-world, and the right way to handle that is a matter of some debate.

For what its worth, I think a good chunk of the 'optimization vs roleplay' conflicts come from people implicitly picking different answers to that question and then assuming that everyone else is using the same answers. Someone (person A) who takes the position that mechanics are nothing more than a completely invisible minigame that they have to play to make their character work the way they want will have no problem with the multi-templated water orc thing. Someone (person B) who takes the position that the mechanics represent specific in-game things will see that and say 'you're sacrificing RP for optimization!'. And in Person B's game, that's true, but it wouldn't necessarily be the case in a game run by someone with the same outlook as Person A.

I tend to think that either extreme position is pretty absurd. At the extreme of 'mechanics all correspond precisely to ingame things' you have characters being explicitly aware of hitpoints. At the extreme of 'everything can be refluffed' then I don't really see the point of using the mechanics at all - e.g. why not just say 'okay, everyone can make a homebrew race/class with the numbers appropriate for your character' and skip the convoluted template stacking - its not as if the water orc/etc/etc example is playing anywhere near the numbers the game was designed for, so just letting players pick their numbers won't particularly break anything new.

There's a lot in the middle though.

[Talya]

High-level character's skill points, for classes with high skill points/level, whether due to high INT (Wizard, Psion) or to high native skill points (Rogue, Bard, Ranger), or both (Factotum).

Easily done in one's head.

[Seto]

See previous post

Agreed. My stand is B-oriented without being deaf to what A has to say. (Indeed Eldan's refluffing suggestion sits better with me than just applying templates and ignoring fluff outright, or applying fluff without reflecting about how weird that makes the character).

I'd also like to come back on something I read in the first page and found interesting (an entirely different question, but still in the scope of the thread).


In fact, the argument could be made - although it is not a universal one - that optimizing your entire build in advance can free you up to roleplay more. If I know what my character is, what I've designed him to be and precisely where he's going, I know his past, present and future. I can make him, as an individual, into that precise person. If I know my Barbarian is going to take levels of Rage Cleric, I can have him start studying religion (despite being illiterate). If I know my Wizard plans to take a jump into Abjurant Champion, I may start having him watch the Fighter's combat training more closely. I can use my foresight into my character's future to develop his present personality.

That's actually a very interesting point. I agree with the idea that developing a character works better and with more coherence if you know where you want to take them. You can drop hints as to their future, subtle things that justify your choices to come and allow the character to be better construed as a personality. That's a storytelling perspective.
However, I'd also argue that you need to stay open and flexible about it ; because that story is being built by several persons at once, and can take unpredictable turns. And some of my best and most fulfilling experiences in my years of roleplay, come from having to change and adapt my plans to new and excitings things that happened in the adventure and because of the other players. It's important to remember that ultimately the decision is always yours, and the DM can't and shouldn't prevent you from carrying out your original design ; but imagine your character gets trapped in Hell for some time ; when they escape, wouldn't it be awesome to make them swear revenge and take a few Hellbreaker levels, even though they were originally supposed to take another route ?

TL;DR : A good roleplayer has both plans for their character and the ability to change those plans in order to make the most of the story.
Your thoughts ?

[LordBlades]

TL;DR : A good roleplayer has both plans for their character and the ability to change those plans in order to make the most of the story.
Your thoughts ?

While I agree that this os a sound approach in theory, in practice it seldom works (unless it's some relatively minor aspect (a feat, a few sp etc.).

Take hellbreake entry requirements for example:

Skills: Bluff 8 ranks , Knowledge (the planes) 4 ranks , Sense Motive 8 ranks

Feats: Combat Expertise , Improved Feint , Undo Resistance

Language: Infernal

Special: Sneak attack +2d6, skirmish +2d6, or sudden strike +2d6

Odds are that if you're not already on the way to hellbreaker by the time you're trapped in Hell, you won't be able to enter it before the campaign ends, no matter how thematically appropriate it would be. It takes a min of 5 levels (fighter2/rogue 3) I think for a person to meet the 3 feat and 2d6 sneak attack requirement.

[Eldan]

e.g. why not just say 'okay, everyone can make a homebrew race/class with the numbers appropriate for your character' and skip the convoluted template stacking - its not as if the water orc/etc/etc example is playing anywhere near the numbers the game was designed for, so just letting players pick their numbers won't particularly break anything new.


Oh, I do that too. But if there is already something that works, why not take it?

[Urpriest]

Hit points also scale up with level, you don't need a ridiculous AC if you can take a hit or 3 and still stand up.

That's false in a really obvious way, so I'm not sure why you said it. Hit points scale because damage scales: Sneak Attack dice increase with level, as does Power Attack, as do most spells. AC scales because attack bonus scales. The two address different mechanics, and if you wanted one to compensate for the other you'd also have to adjust the scaling of the other mechanic, which it doesn't sound like you do.

In fact, in many ways your rule exacerbates the issue, since Power Attack gives much more damage when you know your opponents will have lower than level-appropriate ACs, so hit points would be even less of an effective stopgap.

These are all things someone in your group would have pointed out the first time you suggested this kind of structure, so I'm curious how you managed to silence them without actually addressing their concerns.

[Elderand]

These are all things someone in your group would have pointed out the first time you suggested this kind of structure, so I'm curious how you managed to silence them without actually addressing their concerns.

Or the whole group comes from 2nd ed and doesn't have the knowledge or capacity to spot these issues.

[Vedhin]

TL;DR : A good roleplayer has both plans for their character and the ability to change those plans in order to make the most of the story.
Your thoughts ?

I agree with this, but unfortunately the nature of D&D 3.5 doesn't cater to this. Many options run into what I call the "Risen Martyr problem". For those not in the know, it's a prestige class from the Book of Exalted Deeds. It can be summed up as "I sacrificed myself for a good cause, but I couldn't rest in peace until the villain was defeated, so I came back". It has nice fluff and decent abilities, but can only be entered after death. It requires Nimbus of Light and one additional Exalted feat. The problem being that Nimbus of Light is a horrible feat, and only really worth it as a prerequisite or if you really want to glow.

Basically, feat taxes get in the way of changing plans like this.

[Urpriest]

Or the whole group comes from 2nd ed and doesn't have the knowledge or capacity to spot these issues.

That's not really enough. You'd have to have a group that not only comes from 2nd ed, but doesn't get that new editions of games tend to have new mechanics and new balance concepts that need to be figured out. So basically, 2nd ed players who have also never played any video games or any other RPGs, but who nevertheless chose to update to 3.5.

[Darth Paul]

Sorry Darth, but TSR is just not ever going to "come back"

And there is never going to be another episode of Firefly. But, dammit, I miss the things I miss.

[Faily]

I sometimes get the impression that some people think that "optimization" is some sort of dirty thing that might lower their precious snowflake characters. :smalltongue:

Saying "character build" is a pretty standard thing. You put something together via using six numerical values (the ability scores) and applying written forms of formula to that again (feats), only to add on some more numbers which are dependant on one of the former numerical values (Intelligence for skills) in addition to a fourth factor determined by an imagined profession of the construct (Class).
Sure, you could say "character construct", or "character golem", "character formula", "character biology", etc... but it's really just semantics when discussing the mechanical part of your character. You know, the reason why you have a character sheet with all these little numbers and fields to fill in.

You can say that you're character is the savviest thief in the kingdom, who woos maidens every evening, and his fingers are so light he can steal the queen's undies while she's wearing them without ever noticing, and is as silent as the night and can escape every prison. But unless you actually have something to support that claim (like a decent Charisma along with Bluff and Diplomacy, and high Dexterity and many ranks in Sleight of Hand and sneaky-skills in general)... then that concept falls apart easily the moment your GM asks you to roll a die to check for your pickpocketing.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to look down upon those who take the time to look through something other than the 3 Core books to find something that supports their idea of a fun character to play. A bad roleplayer is a bad roleplayer, regardless of their skill with optimizing. Heck, just finding stuff outside of Core does not equal optimizing.

[Seto]

While I agree that this os a sound approach in theory, in practice it seldom works (unless it's some relatively minor aspect (a feat, a few sp etc.).
(and Vedhin)

That's a good point. One that might seem obvious, but wasn't obvious to me because I learnt to roleplay in a system with little to no crunch. Which D&D3.5 is everything but.
However, what 3.5 has going for it in that regard is the truly huge and exceptional variety of skills, spells, PrCs, and basically character options. That means that, given enough knowledge of these options (or a quick thread in here :smallbiggrin:), you can change your plans according to roleplay, AND find a fitting mechanic. In other words, even if you're a Barbarian and not a Rogue, and therefore ill-suited to Hellbreaker, you'll probably be able to find something that, fluff-wise, is close enough and fits your character better. It won't have Hellbreaker mechanic capabilities unless you talk to your DM to allow other requirements for Hellbreaker, but you still can play some kind of PrC focused on revenge/breaking out of prison/killing Lawful outsiders/hunting down Fiends, etc. You get my drift. Last time I wanted to play a graceful-dancing-warrior type with a Chaotic bend, I was amazed by the sheer number of different PrCs and feats that could fit my idea.

[Vedhin]

In other words, even if you're a Barbarian and not a Rogue, and therefore ill-suited to Hellbreaker, you'll probably be able to find something that, fluff-wise, is close enough and fits your character better. It won't have Hellbreaker mechanic capabilities unless you talk to your DM to allow other requirements for Hellbreaker, but you still can play some kind of PrC focused on revenge/breaking out of prison/killing Lawful outsiders/hunting down Fiends, etc. You get my drift.

In this case, Hellreaver would be a good idea. It's all about slaughtering fiends, and the prereqs are alignment, a few skills, and Power Attack (almost a given for a Barbarian). It uses a "Holy Fury" mechanic, so it fits thematically with Rage. Plus, the class is one of the few decent in-combat healers.

That's really one of the nice things about 3.5. The sheer wealth of options means that almost any concept can be made to work. Some are easier than others, but it can be done.

[ryu]

I sometimes get the impression that some people think that "optimization" is some sort of dirty thing that might lower their precious snowflake characters. :smalltongue:

Saying "character build" is a pretty standard thing. You put something together via using six numerical values (the ability scores) and applying written forms of formula to that again (feats), only to add on some more numbers which are dependant on one of the former numerical values (Intelligence for skills) in addition to a fourth factor determined by an imagined profession of the construct (Class).
Sure, you could say "character construct", or "character golem", "character formula", "character biology", etc... but it's really just semantics when discussing the mechanical part of your character. You know, the reason why you have a character sheet with all these little numbers and fields to fill in.

You can say that you're character is the savviest thief in the kingdom, who woos maidens every evening, and his fingers are so light he can steal the queen's undies while she's wearing them without ever noticing, and is as silent as the night and can escape every prison. But unless you actually have something to support that claim (like a decent Charisma along with Bluff and Diplomacy, and high Dexterity and many ranks in Sleight of Hand and sneaky-skills in general)... then that concept falls apart easily the moment your GM asks you to roll a die to check for your pickpocketing.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to look down upon those who take the time to look through something other than the 3 Core books to find something that supports their idea of a fun character to play. A bad roleplayer is a bad roleplayer, regardless of their skill with optimizing. Heck, just finding stuff outside of Core does not equal optimizing.

I would just like to point out that a thief that unaware of his surroundings with that kind of talent is horrifying prospect.

[Firechanter]

I may be out of context here, but I just wanted to comment on this:


Last time I wanted to play a graceful-dancing-warrior type with a Chaotic bend, I was amazed by the sheer number of different PrCs and feats that could fit my idea.

Yeah, unfortunately the pool of approx. 800+ PrCs and 3000 feats in 3.5 is not exactly evenly split between imaginable concepts. Apparently there are more options for Dex Fighters than you can shake a stick at, but try building a Ranger/Cleric or Bard/Cleric ("Chanting Priest") synthesis and you quickly run out of options. :/

[Darth Paul]

On the other hand, 3.5's ethos really frowns on "I drop a bag of holding on the dragon, thus saving the day" stuff, or really anything that's that level of clever but for which there's no explicit or implicit mechanic. 2E, on the other hand, loved that **** and would eat it up with a spoon.

So, yeah, Paul, you're playing 2E. But you're having a lot of fun with it, which is sweet. Also, good news! You're going to have a pile and a half of fun with 5th edition, seriously.

1) I was imprecise, we were only allowed to stuff his head into the bag, we still had to fight the entire rest of the dragon until it suffocated- which almost killed us. And I thought the implicit mechanic for that sort of thing was "roll to hit the body to get it on in the first place, STR check every round to keep it on". That's what we had to do if I recall. Plus, y'know, fight a dragon minus its breath weapon.

2) Oh, no. No, no, no. Not an entire new edition, please. My group is only barely caught up to 3.5, haven't touched 4 by mutual agreement; and we have no interest in trying at our age (the core group is average age 50, with a leavening of new generation in their mid-late 20s) to re-learn the rules of D&D yet again. I am prepared to accept that each new rule set may be genuine attempts to make a better game, but increasingly they seem more like attempts to get our money. (Again, "fogey".) It's as if WotC had merged with Microsoft and were coming out with a new operating system for D&D every 3 years, which makes us buy all-new books if we want to stay current. Honestly, I don't even know what was wrong with 3rd edition that 3.5 was supposed to have "fixed", so why come out with 4, much less 5? How many tries before they get it right? This isn't a video game, you don't publish a new version every year, it's just a rule set.

I just don't understand the world anymore.

[thethird]

1) I was imprecise, we were only allowed to stuff his head into the bag, we still had to fight the entire rest of the dragon until it suffocated- which almost killed us. And I thought the implicit mechanic for that sort of thing was "roll to hit the body to get it on in the first place, STR check every round to keep it on". That's what we had to do if I recall. Plus, y'know, fight a dragon minus its breath weapon.

This is not supported by the rules, so it is just DM call, and as such is independent from edition and optimization, so it is something tangent to the discussion.


Honestly, I don't even know what was wrong with 3rd edition that 3.5 was supposed to have "fixed", so why come out with 4, much less 5?

Among other things 3 to 3.5 eased several rules, simplifying them. It reduced the number of skills, and streamlined them. On the same vein it also made monsters and pcs work similarly, monsters have feat based on their HD. Several spells were brought down a notch (even if it was far from fixing it, haste and harm needed the change). Most interesting non caster classes and PrCs appeared in 3.5. Etcetera.

[LordBlades]

In this case, Hellreaver would be a good idea. It's all about slaughtering fiends, and the prereqs are alignment, a few skills, and Power Attack (almost a given for a Barbarian). It uses a "Holy Fury" mechanic, so it fits thematically with Rage. Plus, the class is one of the few decent in-combat healers.

That's really one of the nice things about 3.5. The sheer wealth of options means that almost any concept can be made to work. Some are easier than others, but it can be done.

Hellreaver is a good example of a good class you could take on the fly, unfortunately such things are a minority in 3.5. More often either the PrC sucks or it has sucky requirements or both.

Edit: By su ky PrC I mean a PrC that actually makes you worse at it's supposed shtick (like a cleric/warpriest is a worse combatant than a straight cleric) and by sucky requirements I mean stuff most players wouldn't take on their own merits (like x ranks in Craft or feats like Endurance or Toughness).

[Darth Paul]

Or the whole group comes from 2nd ed and doesn't have the knowledge or capacity to spot these issues.


That's not really enough. You'd have to have a group that not only comes from 2nd ed, but doesn't get that new editions of games tend to have new mechanics and new balance concepts that need to be figured out. So basically, 2nd ed players who have also never played any video games or any other RPGs, but who nevertheless chose to update to 3.5.

What do video games have to do with it? Knights of the Old Republic was fun, but not relevant. Likewise, Call Of Duty. Other RPGs that don't use d20 are also kind of not my point.

The combat mechanics didn't change, though. D20 roll +attack bonus hits your AC. Attack bonus goes up with level. Hit points go up with level. AC is dependent only on armor, magic, and dex. That's a constant through all the editions that I have read. (Even though THAC0 did it backwards, the principle was the same.)

The Challenge Rating is a monster that a party of that level should be able to overcome, correct? So someone was telling me that the party is also assumed to have a certain defined amount of wealth, magic items, and so on, by that level, and my job as DM is to put 36000 gp per character in their hands, each, by 9th level? Plus magic items? Because we used to call that a Monty Haul campaign.

We assume that a 9th level party should be able to overcome a 9 CR encounter by being badasses. 9th level is Name Level, when a Wizard is a Wizard and so on (yeah, that's a 1st Ed. reference). If you drop them in the forest with only non-magic items, the spellcasters should still be able to prepare the right magic to compensate for that. And the players should be cunning enough to make up for the disadvantage.

"Balance" is provided by the DM knowing that no PC currently has a +3 weapon or magic that can duplicate a +3, and therefore not putting them up against an opponent which is invulnerable to anything less than +3. Character survival is provided by the players realizing that, if they find themselves up against such a creature anyway, then this is an encounter they aren't going to win and it is time to pop smoke and run for the hills. The game rules don't provide balance, that's the DM's job. It's 1/3 of the DM's entire job (storytelling and campaign setting being the rest).

I suppose it's an issue of campaign style here. Our group is down in the dirt, dig for every gold piece, keep track of your rations, "you will be lucky to live to 6th level let alone 9th". I can't recall any of us ever using a prestige class. Epic stuff is not even to be considered. The highest level any character has ever reached was 15, and that was by a lucky draw from a Deck of Many Things. So maybe we're too basic for these considerations to occur to us, or maybe what 3.5 considers "unbalanced" is what we consider "how it's supposed to be". The party is supposed to survive by the skin of their teeth, escape in the nick of time, and wonder how they lived through the battle, right? Because that's what makes a great story.

[aleucard]

A level 9 character should have acquired about 36,000gp worth of wealth.

That's not enough to get into the really silly stuff, but let's take a look and what you can get cheaply with that.

+2 full plate is going to run you about 4000gp. AC 21
+1 ring of protection will set you back 2000gp. AC 22
+1 amulet of natural armor is another 2000gp. AC 23
+2 large shield (generally a bad idea) 4000gp. AC 27.

That has used less than 1/3 of a level 9 character's wealth on defense, without doing anything cheesy.

A little nitpick. I thought Nat. AC didn't stack with Armor AC?

Optimization is how you make sure that your toon's fluff actually works while also keeping pace with the other players (if your toon does things completely outside the other players' scopes or does them in a way that is cooperative, this matters much less). Monk 20 as a Kung Fu Master is an iconic example of why this is necessary from both a gameplay and a roleplay stance (he's going to be an anchor on most standard parties' necks, and he feels like playing Steve Erkel wearing Boxing Gloves), but others exist too. If you don't have optimization and try to play certain character archetypes, then your party and DM are going to have to work around you in order to make the game work (either because you're a liability or because you found a way to call in Cthulu on accident at level 10). The best optimizers can make any character idea fit any level of play (with some limit, some just simply can't be done without homebrew at certain levels). The problem comes when the players are so busy with tricking out their character sheets that they forget the significance of that first word.

[LordBlades]

The game rules don't provide balance, that's the DM's job. It's 1/3 of the DM's entire job (storytelling and campaign setting being the rest).


Thing is, while the DM can balance the world vs. the party, there's much less he can do about intra-party balance. Casters without items work just fine (and if they feel like it, they can drop a few feats into Item Creation and craft their own gear). Non-casters without gear are dead weight and a drag on caster resources.

[Talya]

If something drastic happens that changes the direction a character is going in, I think a DM should be willing to work with the player to rebuild to whatever extent makes sense to keep the character in theme and mechanically relevant.

[Firechanter]

A little nitpick. I thought Nat. AC didn't stack with Armor AC?

Where are you getting that? Generally, only bonuses of the same type do not stack, but even to that there are exceptions. While I could imagine that monstrous NatAC wouldn't stack with manufactured armour, I can't find any evidence of that right now.
Maybe you're thinking of a Druid's Wild Shape that might give you NatAC, but makes manufactured armour meld and not apply its bonus?

Generally, all of Armor, Shield, Deflection and Natural bonuses stack with one another, but not with themselves. Therefore, an Amy of Nat.Armour won't stack with Barkskin. However, there are indeed certain sources of Natural armour that do stack with each other, such as the Epic feat "Armor Skin" that stacks with Barkskin or Ammies of Nat.Armour.

Normally you assign a portion of your WBL to AC, and since the various sources are differently priced, it's common practice to always upgrade the next-cheapest bonus type. So your "upgrade path" for AC looks like this:
Armour +1
(Shield +1)
Deflection +1
Natural +1
Armour +2
(Shield +2)
Armour +3
(Shield +3)
Deflection +2
Natural +2
etc

However, you may skip one or the other item type depending on your ability to self-buff or bum those buffs off fellow party members. Magic Vestment and Barkskin are long-lasting, so you can save a ton of money that way. A smart support Cleric would take Reach Spell, Chain Spell and DMM Chain and buff her entire party with just a handful of slots.

[Necroticplague]

What do video games have to do with it? Knights of the Old Republic was fun, but not relevant. Likewise, Call Of Duty. Other RPGs that don't use d20 are also kind of not my point.

Because other games tend to have a stronger focus on balance, trying to make differing options equal. As opposed to dnd, where it was initially intentionally unbalanced, and then when they tried to re-balance things, they failed because of grandfathering too much stuff in.


The Challenge Rating is a monster that a party of that level should be able to overcome, correct? So someone was telling me that the party is also assumed to have a certain defined amount of wealth, magic items, and so on, by that level, and my job as DM is to put 36000 gp per character in their hands, each, by 9th level? Plus magic items? Because we used to call that a Monty Haul campaign.

Actually, that 36000 is your wealth. You magic items come out of that.So if you have a 10,000 gp weapon, you're assumed to have 10,000 less of other items. Its not necessarily your job, but if you don't do it, you're gonna have to make adjustments to encounters. Yes, magic items became more necessary as time went on. That's just the way things went.


We assume that a 9th level party should be able to overcome a 9 CR encounter by being badasses. 9th level is Name Level, when a Wizard is a Wizard and so on (yeah, that's a 1st Ed. reference). If you drop them in the forest with only non-magic items, the spellcasters should still be able to prepare the right magic to compensate for that. And the players should be cunning enough to make up for the disadvantage.

O.k, lets take a non-spellcaster, level 9. Strip of his gear, throw him in any environment. Going back to ghosts because I know the rules for them fairly well: a random commoner-turned-ghost is CR 2.5 (.5 nonassociated class level, +2 CR template). Now, how does this non-mage deal with it? Throwing things at it won't do anything, it doesn't tire so they can't outrun it, it flies while they can't.....while a spellcaster can magic missile it to destruction. Lack of magic items just mean the spellcasters get the glory. Now, with level appropriate wealth, the fighter might have a ghost touch sword he can use, or a glove of javelins made of force (the javelins, not the gloves) to throw at it. So without wealth, no amount of "badass" will save the level 9 fighter from a challenge less than one third his level.


"Balance" is provided by the DM knowing that no PC currently has a +3 weapon or magic that can duplicate a +3, and therefore not putting them up against an opponent which is invulnerable to anything less than +3. Character survival is provided by the players realizing that, if they find themselves up against such a creature anyway, then this is an encounter they aren't going to win and it is time to pop smoke and run for the hills. The game rules don't provide balance, that's the DM's job. It's 1/3 of the DM's entire job (storytelling and campaign setting being the rest).

So part of your job is recognizing that they aren't going to be able to handle everything that's supposed to be an appropriate encounter? Geez, its almost like there weaker than the system assumes they would be.


I suppose it's an issue of campaign style here. Our group is down in the dirt, dig for every gold piece, keep track of your rations, "you will be lucky to live to 6th level let alone 9th". I can't recall any of us ever using a prestige class. Epic stuff is not even to be considered. The highest level any character has ever reached was 15, and that was by a lucky draw from a Deck of Many Things. So maybe we're too basic for these considerations to occur to us, or maybe what 3.5 considers "unbalanced" is what we consider "how it's supposed to be". The party is supposed to survive by the skin of their teeth, escape in the nick of time, and wonder how they lived through the battle, right? Because that's what makes a great story.

Hey, if you're all fine with a campaign where the fighters are held to the mercy of the wizard feeling like helping them, and you have to hold back what kind of challenges you can throw at them, more power to you. Just pointing out, that is what you're creating, and that it is very different from the assumed, due to how the system works.

[Talya]

Notice, Darth Paul, that the monsters have a notation in their entry, "Treasure." It may say "Standard." It may say "double." In the case of certain monsters like dragons, it may even say "triple." Some monsters say "none."

there's a random treasure table associated to those. Standard treasure means rolling once on that table. Double means you roll twice. Triple means you roll three times! Pretty simple. In addition, they also have any items that their monster entry describes them as having, or any equipment you give them to make them tougher.

If you simply give a party "standard treasure" encounters all the way from 1st to 9th level, they will end up, on average, with wealth fairly far in excess of WBL. It won't be customizable, they'd lose a lot of wealth selling stuff they don't want and buying things they do with the proceeds, but I've found on average the random treasure tables outpace WBL.

[LordBlades]

If you simply give a party "standard treasure" encounters all the way from 1st to 9th level, they will end up, on average, with wealth fairly far in excess of WBL. It won't be customizable, they'd lose a lot of wealth selling stuff they don't want and buying things they do with the proceeds, but I've found on average the random treasure tables outpace WBL.

I thonk WBL table assumes you spend part of what you gain on consumables. WBL won't be very accurate anyway because there's no way to accurately gauge the % of items a party will keep (instead of selling).

[Firechanter]

So if you have a 10,000 gp weapon, you're assumed to have 10,000 less of other items. Its not necessarily your job, but if you don't do it, you're gonna have to make adjustments to encounters.

Actually it _is_ the DM's job to take care that each PC is equipped with the right amount of WBL. Says so in the sidebar on page 54, DMG.

@LordBlades:
Yes, roughly 10-15% of Standard Treasure is expected to be spent in consumables.

[Necroticplague]

I think WBL table assumes you spend part of what you gain on consumables.

Actually, I thought their was a sidebar that explicitely pointed it out. average rolling treasure from CR appropriate encounters gives you than WBL, but a good chunk will be lost in selling stuff, and another chunk will be lost in using up potions, scrolls, wand charges, ect.

[aleucard]

I thonk WBL table assumes you spend part of what you gain on consumables.

Either that or a sizable chunk of your fights are the 'no treasure' kind. Repairs, too (though since breaking something causes all enchantments to go byebye even if the item's repaired last I checked, this isn't that much). Either way, I think we can just write this off as yet another thing the designers completely borked and call it a day.

[Millennium]

So part of your job is recognizing that they aren't going to be able to handle everything that's supposed to be an appropriate encounter? Geez, its almost like there weaker than the system assumes they would be.
No, part of your job is recognizing that CR assumes that the hypothetical party is also perfectly equipped to handle that fight, and your party is not.

A party that is perfectly equipped for every encounter is not a party, it's a pantheon. This is a game about heroes, not gods, and so it is the DM's job to recognize when a party is ill-equipped for a specific encounter, and balance to compensate.

Hey, if you're all fine with a campaign where the fighters are held to the mercy of the wizard feeling like helping them, and you have to hold back what kind of challenges you can throw at them, more power to you.
Planning party-appropriate encounters is not "holding back," it's a basic DM skill. So is throwing in the occasional party-inappropriate encounter: they need to be used sparingly, and always deliberately, but judicious use of situations where the party is just plain in over its head can make for some great moments of tension and suspense. But those moments have to be possible: the game just isn't as fun without them. Overinflating the player's wealth, just so that you don't have to do the work of balancing things, shortchanges your players in the end.

[ryu]

No, part of your job is recognizing that CR assumes that the hypothetical party is also perfectly equipped to handle that fight, and your party is not.

A party that is perfectly equipped for every encounter is not a party, it's a pantheon. This is a game about heroes, not gods, and so it is the DM's job to recognize when a party is ill-equipped for a specific encounter, and balance to compensate.

Planning party-appropriate encounters is not "holding back," it's a basic DM skill. So is throwing in the occasional party-inappropriate encounter: they need to be used sparingly, and always deliberately, but judicious use of situations where the party is just plain in over its head can make for some great moments of tension and suspense. But those moments have to be possible: the game just isn't as fun without them. Overinflating the player's wealth, just so that you don't have to do the work of balancing things, shortchanges your players in the end.

Considering I make a habit of single-handedly dragging low-wealth settlements I pass at low levels out of the third world in less than a few hours each just so I don't have to bother actually paying for things and am treated like royalty there's an argument to be made I'm much more productive and worship worthy than most of the gods in the eyes of said settlements.

Hell I've seen the party cleric worship the cause of himself and ascend to godhood after level 20. Now what is actually stopping pretty much any mortal with a sense of initiative, planning, and talent from quite literally becoming a new god?

[Elderand]

Hell I've seen the party cleric worship the cause of himself and ascend to godhood after level 20. Now what is actually stopping pretty much any mortal with a sense of initiative, planning, and talent from quite literally becoming a new god?

The fact that there are no rules for ascending to godhood, just DM fiat.

[Faily]

As some pointed out, after a certain level it is hard or impossible to defeat an encounter simply because a non-caster cannot deal with it without magic items. Any incorporeal monster will eat a non-magic party alive. After that, you get to consider things like Damage Reduction, or things like Trolls and their regeneration.

But the discussion on WBL and wether or not the party gets loot according to level isn't actually on-topic, btw. That is getting more into the gripe of "old school" and "magic marts".

[ryu]

The fact that there are no rules for ascending to godhood, just DM fiat.

When they have more worshipers than half the cast of greater deities? Hogwash.

[TrollCapAmerica]

The Challenge Rating is a monster that a party of that level should be able to overcome, correct? So someone was telling me that the party is also assumed to have a certain defined amount of wealth, magic items, and so on, by that level, and my job as DM is to put 36000 gp per character in their hands, each, by 9th level? Plus magic items? Because we used to call that a Monty Haul campaign.

We assume that a 9th level party should be able to overcome a 9 CR encounter by being badasses. 9th level is Name Level, when a Wizard is a Wizard and so on (yeah, that's a 1st Ed. reference). If you drop them in the forest with only non-magic items, the spellcasters should still be able to prepare the right magic to compensate for that. And the players should be cunning enough to make up for the disadvantage.

"Balance" is provided by the DM knowing that no PC currently has a +3 weapon or magic that can duplicate a +3, and therefore not putting them up against an opponent which is invulnerable to anything less than +3. Character survival is provided by the players realizing that, if they find themselves up against such a creature anyway, then this is an encounter they aren't going to win and it is time to pop smoke and run for the hills. The game rules don't provide balance, that's the DM's job. It's 1/3 of the DM's entire job (storytelling and campaign setting being the rest).

I suppose it's an issue of campaign style here. Our group is down in the dirt, dig for every gold piece, keep track of your rations, "you will be lucky to live to 6th level let alone 9th". I can't recall any of us ever using a prestige class. Epic stuff is not even to be considered. The highest level any character has ever reached was 15, and that was by a lucky draw from a Deck of Many Things. So maybe we're too basic for these considerations to occur to us, or maybe what 3.5 considers "unbalanced" is what we consider "how it's supposed to be". The party is supposed to survive by the skin of their teeth, escape in the nick of time, and wonder how they lived through the battle, right? Because that's what makes a great story.

We got alot of stuff in common.I came from 1st/2nd ed and the central players in my group did as well.The DM in particular is also still firmly in a very 2nd edition mindset and yet is one of the best ive ever played with

Still

1] The CR system is more of a guideline.Thats why the Alip can be CR3 despite its stupidly powerful Wisdom drain.Its best used as a rough idea of where these creatures would provide a good challenge for the standard set when they test played the game.Its also important to remember that the difficulty has been ramped up so no more 50 HP Dragons or a Grazzit plinking you with a 1D4+4 acid dagger and Magic missiles

2] Ok first is 36K in items not 36K+items next 2nd edition Peso dont translate into 3.5 dollars.36000 GP isnt a "Monty Haul" campaign its a fairly reasonable amount.Of course much like the CR problem alot of that doesnt match up either as some items are worth alot more or less than what is printed [Compare the Staff of Power to the Candle of Invocation sometime].

3] 3.5 assumes a greater level of player control and most of the above mentioned items will be found bartered for or crafted by the PCs rather than found on the floor somewhere.This isnt a bad thing especially considering how random item tables in old editions made it impossible to do certain things [God help you if you used any weapon but a long sword back then because you arent allowed to get over a +3].I also remember countless times ive had a DM hand me "Something cool" randomly that ended up being worthless to my character ie My Wu Jen getting a fire elemental companion when he was gonna specialize in water or my Cleric getting a wind-up winged archer figurine that did 1D8 damage a shot but took a round to wind and the warblade was routinely putting out 50+ damage a round by that point

4]There is no "name" level since the early 80s.The level standards also deviate quite a bit and since you generally level faster in 3.5 than in old days the closest thing to "name" level would probably be in the teens

[Rubik]

As some pointed out, after a certain level it is hard or impossible to defeat an encounter simply because a non-caster cannot deal with it without magic items. Any incorporeal monster will eat a non-magic party alive.Note that the tarrasque is CR 20, with 48 HD, and it's fluffed as being an apocalypse-level monstrosity capable of ruining entire civilizations.

And it can be put down handily by a CR 3 shadow or wraith with a 100% success rate.

That's the same thing that happens to a magic equipment-less fighter; it doesn't matter what level he is, he has a 0% chance of success against a CR 3 creature.

[Mcdt2]

When they have more worshipers than half the cast of greater deities? Hogwash.

Still DM Fiat that mere worship does anything at all. In my campaign worlds, godhood is something more, something inherent in the Power themselves. As a matter of fact, in the longest running campaign I did (since concluded, but I'm considering a sequel of sorts) the two most powerful deities are only even known about by a handful of beings, maybe 100-200 total, many of whom are Gods and Powers themselves, and not a single person worships either of them. Meanwhile, a former player (who left the group both in and out of character) has something close to 3 billion worshippers, as a result of her extensive expansionist policies for her kingdom, and despite being half-divine even before her 1000+ year reign as God-Empress (daughter of a minor god, represented mechanically with half-celestial and her cleric powers), she still has yet to achieve any level of power beyond Divine Rank 0 (primarily, she is immortal and has some minor (well compared to being a level 40 cleric) abilities/resistances. This irritates her to no end, as one of her previous allies (the players) became one of the two massively powerful deities mentioned above (by stealing the mantle of the being who they were sent to destroy, no less), and the other two also become lesser gods (one granted divinity after his death, the other used epic magic to travel to other realities and steal power from gods).


Having said all that, I realize this is getting a tad off topic, so to try and connect this to the original topic-

That campaign was, at least during the latter half, a VERY optimized group of players. We were playing gestalt, and everyone save for one was playing a different t1 for one half (we had a Druid//Ranger, Cleric//Samurai (a homebrew version), a Wizard//Psion, and one character with a mish mash of classes that ultimately ended up with all 9 ToB disciplines, full sneak attack, 4 arms, and a Vow of Poverty (again, a homebrew version)). And ultimately, the player who optimized the most was the one who actually did the most roleplaying. He had an elaborate backstory, spoke in a character voice, and managed to scheme and connive in a way both matching his LE alignment and still having a valid reason find himself putting his trust in the hands of a mostly Good party.

[Flickerdart]

When they have more worshipers than half the cast of greater deities? Hogwash.
A deity has followers because it is a deity; it is not a deity just because it has followers.

[ryu]

A deity has followers because it is a deity; it is not a deity just because it has followers.

Quite the opposite actually. The deific power of spell-granting can, in-fact, be done with a bit of faith in a cause with no third party required.

On the other side of the coin worshipers as a whole are one of few things a deity will fight to the death to protect or else become a vestige. That is the fate of forgotten gods.

[TrollCapAmerica]

I got a character to throw out there for people to judge

This character was created by a guy bragging about how wildly OP his build was.He created a grappler A Fighter/Monk with grappling feats that was going into Reaping Mauler.It was one of my early 3.5 games and I didnt know the grappling rules so he was able to grapple them pin for damage with Earths Embrace and get an off-hand attack because apparently you can use a light weapon while grappled.I would eventually fully read the rules on grappling and see all this couldnt be stacked together but even right then I looked at the character and thought "Your never going to be able to grapple anything thats a big threat.This isnt OP this is a gimmick"

Ok so he was a terrible optimizer and lacked reading comprehension but his role playing ability?Even worse

The guy couldnt talk about anything but how bad ass he was and how he could take on anything "with my 18 strength" [Said in character once].He ends up unintentionally coming off as something out of Cho Aniki that looked really comical at best

Ive noticed this sort of thing alot.Far too often the people that talk about something being OP[Negative or positively] dont actually have a clue what works and doesnt mechanically.

Conversely the best optimizers ive seen can do that because they study the system love the game and want an excellent all around character.They can do both because they love D&D and want memorable awesome characters.I can honestly say ive never ran across a truly competent Optimizer that still wasent capable of making a solid character

[Red Fel]

Conversely the best optimizers ive seen can do that because they study the system love the game and want an excellent all around character.They can do both because they love D&D and want memorable awesome characters.

While I think this is a bit of an over-generalization, I think it's also a very good point.

Not all, but many optimizers do so because they enjoy the game. To create a novel character is a pleasant and entertaining experience. Many others do it for the challenge - the act of going from concept to practice is a thrill. In both cases, being able to play the character well after going through the design stages is the awesome capstone to a 10-level PrC of joy.

Hire me to write your metaphors.

I happen to love the creative exercise. I enjoy learning new things about a game I enjoy, applying those to flesh out a concept, and seeing an idea bud into a fully-fleshed build. More than that, I love taking that build and applying it in a real game. Seeing what worked and what didn't is nice, but taking a list of numbers and statistics and turning it into a character is profoundly rewarding for me, and I doubt I'm alone in that regard.

Being able to play a character you've built - not just play them in terms of dice, but play the character, truly justify the build decisions by putting a personality in charge of them - really is a major reward of the process. At least for me. And it would be cheapened if I weren't to put a character, a mind and a spirit, into each of these builds.

[Flickerdart]

Quite the opposite actually. The deific power of spell-granting can, in-fact, be done with a bit of faith in a cause with no third party required.
Sure - so what does it have to do with being a god? There's way more to being a deity than granting spells.

[ryu]

Sure - so what does it have to do with being a god? There's way more to being a deity than granting spells.

The fact that even a single worshiper grants basic deific power to a cause they choose themselves?

Further the other half of the argument that states that forgotten gods become vestiges rather than fully fledged deities.

[Kalmageddon]

I've come to realize that "Stormwind Fallacy" means "99% of optimizers can't roleplay to save their life, but since that 1% that can exists you are not allowed to say optimizers are bad at roleplaying".

[Talya]

I've come to realize that "Stormwind Fallacy" means "99% of optimizers can't roleplay to save their life, but since that 1% that can exists you are not allowed to say optimizers are bad at roleplaying".

94.3% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Everybody optimizes. If you are playing a big strong barbarian and choose to put most of your point buy points into strength and constitution, you're optimizing.

There is only one correlation between level of optimization and ability to roleplay that I've ever seen: Basic tactical and strategic ability is a type of intelligence, and generally intelligent people tend to put together less corny roleplaying ideas.

[banana-for-ever]

Power gamer here. Yeah, all we may want to do (or at least in a good portion of cases) is have a character as strong as possible in a given area and yes, if we're not careful, we forget that it stops making sense. I mean, at one point I had my bard spitting fire because the ability was linked to a feat that gave a bonus to my inspire courage, even though it wasn't compatible at all with anything in my character's personality. Optimization ruins role-playing when you forget what your character is supposed to be like just to make him stronger.

[Millennium]

Everybody optimizes. If you are playing a big strong barbarian and choose to put most of your point buy points into strength and constitution, you're optimizing.
This is true, to some extent. A little bit of optimization doesn't even hinder roleplaying.

But there are degrees. It is one thing to use a little common sense when assigning your ability scores, and quite another thing to fetishize the optimal.

[Hecuba]

The Challenge Rating is a monster that a party of that level should be able to overcome, correct?

No, that is not correct. The Challenge Rating is system is sketchy at best, but the intended targets for an equal CR encounter are:
A single equal level PC should be expected to win 50% of the time.
A Party of 4 PCs of equal level should have to spend about 1/4 of their daily resources to overcome the challenge.

Depending on how deadly you like to play, a skin-of-your-teeth challenging fight that you have to be badass to beat will generally be EL+2 to EL+4.


By way of a more specific example: a party of level 9 PCs is not a CR 9 encounter. It's a CR 13 encounter.



So someone was telling me that the party is also assumed to have a certain defined amount of wealth, magic items, and so on, by that level, and my job as DM is to put 36000 gp per character in their hands, each, by 9th level? Plus magic items? Because we used to call that a Monty Haul campaign.

The 36000GP/character includes the value of their magic items.

[Rubik]

I've come to realize that "Stormwind Fallacy" means "99% of optimizers can't roleplay to save their life, but since that 1% that can exists you are not allowed to say optimizers are bad at roleplaying".I'm pretty sure you made that up, and that it isn't at all accurate.

Source, please.

[Alex12]

No, that is not correct. The Challenge Rating is system is sketchy at best, but the intended targets for an equal CR encounter are:
A single equal level PC should be expected to win 50% of the time.
A Party of 4 PCs of equal level should have to spend about 1/4 of their daily resources to overcome the challenge.

Depending on how deadly you like to play, a skin-of-your-teeth challenging fight that you have to be badass to beat will generally be EL+2 to EL+4.


By way of a more specific example: a party of level 9 PCs is not a CR 9 encounter. It's a CR 13 encounter

This has always amused me, I'll admit. According to those rules, if you've got 2 parties fighting each other, and both parties are of equal level (in your example, all participants are level 9), then, by CR math, both parties are overmatched.

[Shining Wrath]

If your character is a collection of numbers designed to "win" encounters then you are hindering roleplaying.

If your character has a personality and, given that they are routinely going into places where creatures out of nightmares attempt to eat them, makes the best choices they can in accordance with that personality, that's optimization *enhancing* roleplay.

Even a low-IQ fighter would presumably learn tricks of the trade during "down time". One assumes that fighters hone muscle memory and so on, like baseball players practicing their swing over and over. That's where feats come from.

I suppose it's possible you could have someone so devil-may-care, or so convinced of their own specialness, that they would adventure without trying to be good at it. For more than 90% of PCs, though, getting better at what they do is a matter of survival.

[Shinken]

This has always amused me, I'll admit. According to those rules, if you've got 2 parties fighting each other, and both parties are of equal level (in your example, all participants are level 9), then, by CR math, both parties are overmatched.

No, it means the encounter is going to be overpowering. People are going to die, magic items are going to be expended until the last charge, spellcasters will be down to cantrips. Which is what happen when two parties at the same level fight.
It's all there in the DMG.

[Kantolin]

I actually noticed I didn't directly answer this:


But is this <optimization> really neccesary to enjoy your gaming? In fact, doesn't it get in the way of roleplaying?

In my personal experience, people who don't roleplay well/much/often are people who don't roleplay well/much/often.

One of the people in my extended group couldn't roleplay his way out of a paper bag. He can't roleplay his way out of a paper bag as a fighter, nor can he roleplay his way out of a paper bag as a samurai, nor can he roleplay his way out of a paper bag as a warblade, nor can he roleplay his way out of a paper bag as a pathfinder-soulknife, and all four of these things have happened.

So well... in my opinion no, it's not necessary to enjoy your game. It may be necessary for certain concepts, however.

For example, I wanted to play a hound archon champion of goodness sort. When I looked up the rules on how level adjustment worked, however, I discovered that this meant that he'd have to be level 11 to start. Not a problem - the game was originally going to start at that level anyway.

Unfortunately, a hound archon has the approximate BAB and HP of a level 11 commoner, so they are summarily absolutely /horrible/ frontliners. In fact, being on the front lines is about as healthy as a wizard who isn't casting spells being on the front lines (In fact, I had comparable HP to the party wizard's /familiar/ due to him having a good con!). This left me with three major choices on a roleplaying front.

Choice A: Decide that I'm not actually playing a champion of goodness, I'm playing a fresh-out-of-the-academy rookie who has never actually swung his sword at more than a training dummy before. The celestial equivalent to the bratty-kid-who-picked-up-a-sword-this-morning.

Choice B: Find methods of making my character able to at least reach the point where I can function as a frontliner without being horrible and sucking.

Choice C: Sigh, decide that apparently I can't actually play my nifty hound archon idea, and roll up a (Much more effective) human barbarian or something.

Now, if I was in a more serious or a gritty campaign, A wouldn't really be an option. Or well it /would/, but I would either be a cowardly hides-in-the-corner-with-a-crossbow or would die very quickly, and my goal was to be the 'knight in shining armour' type so sitting in the back with a crossbow wouldn't fit at all. Not to mention the theme of 'the plucky kid who picked up his sword this morning' probably wouldn't fit in a grittier game.

In a more lighthearted and less immediately fatal campaign, however, I could at least be the 'worthless tagalong kid'.

Most players... well, most players I'm used to would rather not intentionally be terrible at their theoretical job, and thus would rather aim for something closer to B to at least achieve parity. This is especially true if after a few runs, the party cleric says, "Wow, archons are really cool thematically! Hey, I have planar ally on my spell list! I can call a /trumpet/ archon to help out! (Or another hound archon)" which may incidentally make you feel even worse at the job you were already bad at.

Now, is something /wrong/ with being useless? Nope! Or well, not intrinsically. If the game being played is 'A crack team of experts and specialists being sent on an urgent infiltrate-and-rescue mission into hell' then being useless is pretty counter-intuitive to the intent (unless /everyone/ is useless, and it's either a comedic urgent mission or one of those 'the demons have killed everyone of actual relevance').

But most people don't like /being/ useless. Being a hound archon and standing next to the rogue, and having the rogue be dramatically better than you to the point of making you insignificant, let alone the cleric who could summon your boss... isn't for most people. Being dropped by mooks isn't very fun, especially when the DM says 'The bad guy fireballs you' and you make your save and still drop.

Most people would rather have their hound archon be a champion of the light, and not a plucky little kid. If I said my hound archon was a champion of the light, and he was about as good at hitting things as a commoner and worse than a fighter half his level, then he's either a charlatan or an idiot... which is fine if your goal is to be a charlatan or an idiot, but not fine if that isn't.

So really, 'is optimization okay' depends on your goals. With a lot of classes, if you just grab whatever feat out of a hat, you'll probably end up being pretty poor. And if your goal is 'poor combatant' that's fine, but if that's not your goal then you should probably put some more thought into it.

I know I've been on the other end of the issue before too - a friend of mine and I were making a squire/knight combo thematically. I went with power attack to represent 'isn't as skilled and thus is inaccurate and usually just swings as hard as he can', while he went with the weapon specialization tree to show 'master of the sword'. We were then very unpleasantly surprised when my squire was pretty objectively more useful than his knight. It felt really wonky - we ended up trying to use house rules to try to repair it, and then just ended up altering our builds so that the knight was more useful so it'd match. Had we done the concept recently, we'd probably have made the knight a crusader-or-warblade and the squire a mildly capable fighter, or perhaps the squire some sequence which resulted in him 'being also a warblade but having lower level maneuvers'. Or made them both fighters but one is better built than the other. Or something.

(As a final note, this statement about the hound archon is not a theoretical problem - I did in fact end up playing that hound archon. He was pretty dang useless, but it was a blast!)


It sounds a lot like what we used to call "min-maxing", designing your character to do a specific thing, do it incredibly well, but not much else. I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong.

Realistically, optimization is 'whenever you select something that makes your character better at his job'. The only way to completely avoid intentional optimization is to roll randomly for your feats, roll all your stats in order, roll randomly for your class, and probably roll randomly for your race. Or I suppose to consciously pick feats that don't do anything for your character (Fighters can /take/ quicken spell if they want to), but even then you're probably optimizing how worthless you can make a character. :P

I mean, my preferred playstyle (and that of my group) is of sufficiently low optimization levels that non-metamagic'd fireballs are a perfectly acceptable action, but even I end up 'optimizing' to hit that extremely low bar. Via doing things like selecting feats that help my character, and not selecting feats that do not.

Or well, optimization levels have nothing to do with roleplaying. Would Justinian the Wizard have been suddenly ruined as a character if he had quicken spell? If Gimlet, instead of a fighter, had a different mechanical class but was totally the 'nonmagical gruff fighter who hit things with his axe' (or whatever he was; do not assume this is 'making him into something he's not'), would he have been ruined as a character or something? I mean, it doesn't /sound/ like your goal with any of those character you listed was 'rookie upstart who isn't very good at their job', so them not-sucking probably wouldn't hurt them at all, right?

Heck, even Arthur (My hound archon named himself Arthur of Arc, as those are two famous human heroes that he merged the names of; this helped show his naivety) could have been improved a bit without hurting the concept. After all, while he shouldn't be as good as the party's fighter or psychic warrior, it wouldn't have utterly ruined the concept for him to have a little bit more HP than the party's toad. :P

~~~~~~~

Edit: As one last note, uh... from having played through a few of the old Gygaxian modules in AD&D, Gygax was way more of a monty haul DM than I'm used to. In most of his games, you get sufficient magic items and stuff that it was /overpowering/. In 3.5, Wealth By Level gets you magic items for competency and versatility, which is a lot more understandable than... was it a vorpal sword at level 4? It was something similar to a vorpal sword at level 4. In the groups which played those modules by the book I made sure to bring a book to read in case I was the one who didn't coincidentally use the appropriate gear (and that was often me, as I personally prefer spears to swords, but most modules seem to forget that people in history use spears too. Sigh.)

[Kraken]

In my experience, I actually don't agree with the assertion that super-optimizers are any significantly more likely to be poor roleplayers than people who put little thought into their abilities. I've plenty of people who both don't optimize and don't roleplay well, and I think there are just as many such people, perhaps more even, than people who optimize but are poor at roleplaying. I think the group in question simply faces a disproportionate amount of scrutiny because they're inevitably going to stand out more come game time, whereas people who are both poor at roleplaying and optimizing are more likely to fade into the background. I don't really buy the assertion that if you take someone who is good or bad at roleplaying, and suddenly force them to optimize to some high or low water mark, that suddenly they will become better or worse at roleplaying their character.

[Segev]

I've come to realize that "Stormwind Fallacy" means "99% of optimizers can't roleplay to save their life, but since that 1% that can exists you are not allowed to say optimizers are bad at roleplaying".

Yeah, speaking as a powergamer, optimizer, and role player, I am actually one of the better role-players in my groups of friends. I tend to optimize my backstory as much as my mechanics, and I play characters with definite goals and personalities behind everything they do.

One of my favorite concepts that I'm fairly sure I'll never get to play due to how overpowered the build is is a rules-legal, heavily personality-driven design to get into Beholder Mage by level 6.

A human wizard was in a party of adventurers who, through the course of their group's career, became well-known Beholder-slayers. The wizard witnessed, in his studies and work, a Beholder Mage or two in action, and grew envious of their mystical might; they could do things that he simply could not, no matter how powerful he became.

So he hatched a plan, and in the course of working out the details discovered the Elan. He convinced them to let him undergo the ritual. A first-level Elan Psion was thus born, with the plan and goal to develop his psychic powers to the point he could master a Beholder body, which he would obtain by paying a higher-level wizard for the casting.

I'd honestly love to play this character from level 1, because it'd be exciting to develop him to the point of his big change, and to play through the struggles - including the fact that the innate Fly speed isn't carried over as part of PAO - of being a Beholder working up through levels of Beholder Mage and Cerebromancer.

But it would be HIDEOUSLY powerful by level 8 or so, and the major weakness of move speed overcome by level 11 at the latest (when it gets Overland Flight).

RP and Optimization and even Powergaming are not mutually exclusive. What makes a person a good player at the table is more about awareness of and care for others' fun, which a myopic focus on personal powergaming can hinder. And that is the essence of where the Stormwind Fallacy comes from: myopic focus on powergaming at the expense of others' fun leads people to conflate powergaming with "bad roleplaying."

Consider that excellent role playing can still be bad gaming: "It's what my character would do" is a phrase that I'm sure evokes shudders of irritation or revulsion from many of us, and technically is role-playing. It's just most often used when role-playing is being done at the expense of being a good tablemate to the other players.

[Rubik]

I enjoy faffing about with D&D 3.X's ruleset, especially when designing characters. I optimize to the theme I have in mind, and I oftentimes come up with a game mechanic that I want to build around, then design the character's persona off of that. I'm even quite good at thinking outside the box when it comes to using my abilities in oddball ways, and squeezing as much utility (and power) out of what I do.

And yet I'm also good at writing fully fleshed-out characters with personalities and motivations, which tie in neatly to my optimized character builds. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7XkmnK-DY9YVVJJTWtYTDVZRWs/edit?usp=sharing)

How does my enjoying playing with the rules of the game suddenly invalidate my ability to formulate and write deep, flavorful characters? Did my ability to create characters for stories suddenly die when I learned the rules of the game and how to play around in the rule set? Is it impossible for a person to be good at more than one thing, or enjoy more than one thing? If so, how does that even make sense?

[LordBlades]

Actually, from what I saw in practice, the only level (TO excluded) at which optimization significantly influence each other is at the very bottom:

-if you don't optimize, odds are your character will suck (mechanically)
-odds are your back story does not depict Sir Missalot who cannot hit the broad side of a level-appropriate barn

Hence, a lack of optimization often causes pure role play (RPing a competent character without the mechanics to back him up).

[Ansem]

You can optimize and roleplay perfectly fine, it would seem harder to roleplay with an unoptimized character, as if you have no speciality then what is unique about you, your character or it's personality?

[RedMage125]

Darth Paul:

I think it's time you realized someting. You've been arguing your points for several days. So here it is:

The way you play regarding player wealth is the MINORITY.

That's it. You're not "wrong". And you're also not doing anything "better" than anyone else. But you are in the minority. Seriously, my level 5 Pathfinder Wizard wakes up with an AC of 17. One Mage Armor spell and he's at 21, throw a Shield spell in there, and he's AC 25. At level 5. Single-class Wizard. Only one magic item involved, and that's a Ring of Protection +1.

What's causing problems is people trying to help you, and you perceiving it as them telling you why you're "wrong". The only "wrong" way to play D&D is the way that makes the players at the table not have fun. But in a "standard, by the RAW" playing of 3.5e, the Wealth-by-Level guidelines are meant to keep players in enough magic items so that their AC, saves, attack bonuses, etc. do not fall so far behind CR-appropriate monsters that the party has a hard time being effective. Your group has fun playing, and more power to you. But you're not going to convince anyone here that your way is "better", just because it's better for your group. Don't even let anyone tell you that you're "playing it wrong", and on the same note, don't ever say that to anyone else, especially when YOU are the one deviating from the rules.

All your arguments regarding "Well, AC doesn't matter if you've got the hp to take a few hits" are flawed, and deeply. Defense in D&D means exactly one thing: Keeping your hit point total positive. Getting more hit points is one way to do this, yes, but it's far more effective to never lose them at all. That's just simple logic. I'm sure you can see that. Defenses are also a lot more affordable to enchant than offensive abilities. Armor and Shields enchant for half the cost of a similar enchant on weapons, so 2,000 gp gets you a +1 enhancement to your armor and your shield. All you need to find is one wizard or cleric who has Craft Magic Arms and Armor, pay them 1,000 gp for each item, and wait one day per item (because item creation takes 1 day for every 1,000 gp). Saving throw-improving items are also cheap.

36,000 gp per character at level 9 is not "monty haul". Your 3.5e DMG has the numbers on page 134, those numbers dictate that if you make a character above 1st level, that's how much money you should get to "buy" your starting gear. Notice that "buy" is in quotes. It's not meant to be a literal "here's 36,000 gp, run to Magic-Mart". But rather, that is the VALUE of the gear that a character of level 9 SHOULD have acquired as he levelled up to that point. So if I were to join your level 9 game and make a level 9 character, I would have 36,000 gp worth of magic stuff. I am quite within my rights to say, fluff-wise, that my character earned that in earlier adventures. "Oh, this magic armor? Took it off a hobgoblin cleric in the Barrow of the Forgotten King. The magic greataxe? Orc Warlord. Sucker gave me a nice scar, too, wanna see?".

Also, didn't you say you had a +3 Thundering Waraxe? Are you aware that that weapon is worth 32,320 gp by itself? Maybe your DM IS giving you proper wealth by level, you just don't have it spread out among your offense and defense.

Back to the main topic at hand...Optimization is not about "winning" at the expense of "roleplaying". I once believed as you did, long ago. I thought min-maxers and power gamers were a terrible blight on gaming everywhere. Then I had a guy in my game group. Not a great min-maxer, but totally all about kicking in doors and beating monsters. Combat was all he seemingly looked forward to. Used to look through the Monster Manual between games, comparing the monsters' STR scores to his character's so he could brag about what things he was "stronger" than. He was also the only player I had that kept a first-person perspective in-character journal, and wasn't even fishing for extra "roleplaying xp". I never even asked him to do it. He came to me once between sessions and asked for the name of an NPC villain they had defeated, because he had forgotten it, and then he showed me the journal he was working on. I realized I needed to revise my opinion of him.

I've since opened my eyes and seen that Stormwind Fallacy is correct. Optimization is just "making my character the best I can with what I have available". As has been said, it can make roleplay even easier, because you have the mechanics worked out, leaving you free to focus on story and interaction.

Of course there are exceptions. Yes, there are still people out there who "rollplay" instead of "roleplay". Some gamers DO, in fact, min-max at the expense of story and character. There are people whose objective is they must have the "best" character at the table, because their ego is so fragile. These kinds of people look at something like the Tier Ranking system through this twisted lens, and would never consider a class below Tier 3, because they have to be "better" than at least someone at the table. The point is: These individuals are neither typical, nor are they representative of most "optimizers". In fact, most optimizers here, who have been giving you advice, would dislike such people just as much as you do. Probably more, because those kinds of gamers give the false impression that all Optimizers are like that.


Note that the tarrasque is CR 20, with 48 HD, and it's fluffed as being an apocalypse-level monstrosity capable of ruining entire civilizations.

And it can be put down handily by a CR 3 shadow or wraith with a 100% success rate.

That's the same thing that happens to a magic equipment-less fighter; it doesn't matter what level he is, he has a 0% chance of success against a CR 3 creature.

Or, you know...you're flat wrong and the tarrasque would ignore both shadow and wraith, because they can do nothing to it.
From the MM Entry on the Tarrasque:
"Special Qualities: Carapace, damage reduction
15/epic, immunity to fire, poison, disease, energy
drain, and ability damage, regeneration 40, scent,
spell resistance 32"

So a shadow or a wraith has a 0% success rate against the tarrasque. Because all it can do is ability damage, to which the tarrasque is immune.

I've actually gotten to fight the Tarrasque. I bumped my CL to 22 for a Shapechange spell and turned myself into a Solar (after casting all my buff spells on everyone else), which of course gave me control over TWO Solars (because of a familiar's Share Spells trait). So I could bypass it's DR, but it could not bypass mine. At one point, the Tarrasque swallowed me. Rater than play the grappling game, I just changed into a wraith and walked out the stomach.

[eggynack]

Or, you know...you're flat wrong and the tarrasque would ignore both shadow and wraith, because they can do nothing to it.
From the MM Entry on the Tarrasque:
"Special Qualities: Carapace, damage reduction
15/epic, immunity to fire, poison, disease, energy
drain, and ability damage, regeneration 40, scent,
spell resistance 32"

So a shadow or a wraith has a 0% success rate against the tarrasque. Because all it can do is ability damage, to which the tarrasque is immune.
Against a shadow, there would be a stalemate, because neither side has a way of meaningfully impacting the other. The shadow deals strength damage, as you've noted, so the tarrasque would indeed be immune. However, wraiths do constitution drain, which the tarrasque has no immunity to, and the tarrasque still has no way of interacting with the wraith. I would still stick with the common allip method of tarrasque destruction though, because wraiths use constitution drain against the tarrasque's massive 35 constitution, while allips use wisdom drain, against the tarrasque's quite reasonable 14 wisdom.

Edit: I just noticed that you also underlined immunity to energy drain. This is a completely irrelevant immunity here, as energy drain is this (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#energyDrained), while constitution drain is this (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#abilityDrained).

[Rubik]

Or, you know...you're flat wrong and the tarrasque would ignore both shadow and wraith, because they can do nothing to it.
From the MM Entry on the Tarrasque:
"Special Qualities: Carapace, damage reduction
15/epic, immunity to fire, poison, disease, energy
drain, and ability damage, regeneration 40, scent,
spell resistance 32"

So a shadow or a wraith has a 0% success rate against the tarrasque. Because all it can do is ability damage, to which the tarrasque is immune.

I've actually gotten to fight the Tarrasque. I bumped my CL to 22 for a Shapechange spell and turned myself into a Solar (after casting all my buff spells on everyone else), which of course gave me control over TWO Solars (because of a familiar's Share Spells trait). So I could bypass it's DR, but it could not bypass mine. At one point, the Tarrasque swallowed me. Rater than play the grappling game, I just changed into a wraith and walked out the stomach.Right. Shadows deal ability damage, not ability drain, and the tarrasque is immune to ability damage. It still can't do a thing to allips or wraiths, who curbstomp it and hard.

[edit] *Sigh* Ninja'd Allip'd again.

[RedMage125]

Against a shadow, there would be a stalemate, because neither side has a way of meaningfully impacting the other. The shadow deals strength damage, as you've noted, so the tarrasque would indeed be immune. However, wraiths do constitution drain, which the tarrasque has no immunity to, and the tarrasque still has no way of interacting with the wraith. I would still stick with the common allip method of tarrasque destruction though, because wraiths use constitution drain against the tarrasque's massive 35 constitution, while allips use wisdom drain, against the tarrasque's quite reasonable 14 wisdom.

Edit: I just noticed that you also underlined immunity to energy drain. This is a completely irrelevant immunity here, as energy drain is this (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#energyDrained), while constitution drain is this (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#abilityDrained).

You do know "Epic" DR is a higher form of "Magic" Dr, right? So Big T's natural weapons strike as if they were Epicly Enchanted Magic Weapons, because any creature with DR strikes as it if its weapons bypassed that DR. So the Tarrasque may have a 50% miss chance against an incorporeal foe, but he can still hurt them. And it would likely only take one hit, maybe two. Compare that to how long it would take to drain the tarrasque's Constitution.

You are right, of course, about the wraith. I forgot they do drain and not damage. I was thinking they did CON damage. Either that or I was confusing them with Specters. Specters and Shadows would be useless. Allip's a good idea. Never thought of that. Good Lord, Shapechange into an Advanced Allip (or 2, if you have a familiar), and completely immobilize the Tarrasque in a few rounds.

[eggynack]

You do know "Epic" DR is a higher form of "Magic" Dr, right? So Big T's natural weapons strike as if they were Epicly Enchanted Magic Weapons, because any creature with DR strikes as it if its weapons bypassed that DR. So the Tarrasque may have a 50% miss chance against an incorporeal foe, but he can still hurt them. And it would likely only take one hit, maybe two. Compare that to how long it would take to drain the tarrasque's Constitution.

The tarrasque's natural weapon's do strike as though they were epic weapons... for the purposes of overcoming DR. They do nothing against an incorporeal foe.

[RedMage125]

The tarrasque's natural weapon's do strike as though they were epic weapons... for the purposes of overcoming DR. They do nothing against an incorporeal foe.

And incorporeal foes can only be harmed by magic weapons...with a 50% miss chance. So Big T has a 50% miss chance to hurt them. At 6 melee attacks per round, statistically, he's going to hit at some point.

[eggynack]

And incorporeal foes can only be harmed by magic weapons...with a 50% miss chance. So Big T has a 50% miss chance to hurt them. At 6 melee attacks per round, statistically, he's going to hit at some point.
The tarrasque only has magic weapons for the purposes of overcoming DR. Incorporeality isn't DR. The tarrasque has crapsack nothing weapons for the purposes of bypassing incorporeality.

[Rubik]

And incorporeal foes can only be harmed by magic weapons...with a 50% miss chance. So Big T has a 50% miss chance to hurt them. At 6 melee attacks per round, statistically, he's going to hit at some point.Incorporeality isn't DR, JSYK.

[Adverb]

In my day, we used to have to roll our dice uphill.

[Juntao112]

And incorporeal foes can only be harmed by magic weapons...with a 50% miss chance. So Big T has a 50% miss chance to hurt them. At 6 melee attacks per round, statistically, he's going to hit at some point.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk)

Damage Reduction (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#damageReduction)

A few very powerful monsters are vulnerable only to epic weapons; that is, magic weapons with at least a +6 enhancement bonus. Such creatures’ natural weapons are also treated as epic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

[RedMage125]

The tarrasque only has magic weapons for the purposes of overcoming DR. Incorporeality isn't DR. The tarrasque has crapsack nothing weapons for the purposes of bypassing incorporeality.

Fair enough. You are correct. I can admit when I'm wrong.

However, it would take a wraith, even a dread wraith, an awfully long time to kill Big T, because the CON drain part of their attack gets a Fort save to negate. And Big T's Fort save is +38. So he only fails on a natural 1, and even then ONLY because of the ruling that a roll of 1 on a saving throw is always a failure. I think there's an optional rule in the DMG that a roll of 1 is considered a -10, and a roll of 20 should be considered a 30. If you did that, a dread wraith would not be able to drain Big T's CON, because even a roll of 1 (counting as -10) would give him a 28, which still beats the DC 25 Fort save the dread wraith offers.

Allip is a better choice, even though it won't kill Big T, just incapacitate him. But that makes it easy for everyone else to then beat on him, to prepare him for the Wish.

EDIT: found the variant, DMG page 25, it's in there for attack rolls, not saves or skill checks. I usually use that variant for skill checks that involve opposed checks. So if the level 20 Rogue with max ranks in Stealth rolls a 1, the level 2 human guard without ranks in Perception rolls a 19, that level 20 Rogue is still undetected. On a side note: has anyone ever noticed the sidebar on page 171? It's "Siderbar: variant-No Sidebars for variant rules". I lol'd.

[Rubik]

Why would anyone want to kill the tarrasque? Knock it unconscious, tie it down with riverine, then saw parts off to use as reflective armor and housing materials.

[Hecuba]

This has always amused me, I'll admit. According to those rules, if you've got 2 parties fighting each other, and both parties are of equal level (in your example, all participants are level 9), then, by CR math, both parties are overmatched.

That's because an Equal CR encounter isn't an equal match.
It's a fight you should be able to do 4 times a day with a reasonable expectation of success.

[Juntao112]

Why would anyone want to kill the tarrasque? Knock it unconscious, tie it down with riverine, then saw parts off to use as reflective armor and housing materials.

"And that's the story of how I made my first million gp."

[Flickerdart]

-odds are your back story does not depict Sir Missalot who cannot hit the broad side of a level-appropriate barn
This might just be my favourite sentence.

[Faily]

Reading all the things you guys can do to the Tarrasque, with only using Core. <3

I always love seeing how broken the 3.5 Core can be, when the OP has been crying about people going to sources outside of Core to make their "dirty optimized characters". :smallbiggrin:

[Rubik]

Reading all the things you guys can do to the Tarrasque, with only using Core. <3

I always love seeing how broken the 3.5 Core can be, when the OP has been crying about people going to sources outside of Core to make their "dirty optimized characters". :smallbiggrin:I think you mean "damn dirty optimized apes," don't you?

[Raimun]

Wait, what? AC 23? That's insane. That must have took an advanced calculator, several splatbooks and countless hours of work! Days, even!

Ok, I'll be serious. What if your character's backstory included the fact that he is a master swordsman? You know, kind of like many of the iconic fantasy heroes are? That's a pretty standard concept, right? So, shouldn't your character's actual capabilities, ie. stats and special abilities, actually reflect that? Or are you being too power hungry if you wanted to play a master swordsman? In a game of heroic fantasy? Would it be okay to effectively play a deluded "warrior" who just gets beaten up in fights but still insists he's the heroic swordmaster? And it's not even supposed to be a parodical take on traditional mythic heroes? ... And he's not even supposed to be deluded?

Or would it be perfectly okay to go to town with Feats, Class Features and items so your character has a cool fighting style and can confidently back up his claim for mastery of the blade that outclasses regular town guards? Even if that kind of thing wasn't possible in Core OD&D or AD&D?

And yes, I might be wrong but I think even finely tuned living whirlwinds of death can be interesting characters. I've read/watched/played enough fiction to think otherwise.

Of course, you could always try to make a really mediocre hero but that doesn't really spark my imagination for a fun build or an interesting backstory. I think both of them are vital for a good character.

[the_other_gm]

Part of the problem with the "those darn optimizers, at least I can roleplay!" scenarios is that it often just talks about a single character.

A single character in a group of 4-5.

When i make my characters, one of the first things that goes through my mind (beyond "what would be fun to play") is "how do I make a character that contributes to the group's success? How do I make a PC that isn't a liability and pulls his own weight?"

When i play, there are at least three other guys on this side of the screen that will be relying on my character for help and very rarely do i see the people complaining about optimization telling us how their character actually contributes to the group's overall success in ways that aren't "man i rolled well" or "i outplayed the gm" which are character independent, all things considered.

When I play I make sure my fighters are capable and strong so they can pull their own weight, that my wizards are flexible and potent so I'm not just a glorified commoner in a funny hat, that my rogues are skilled and deadly so they can be relied on and my clerics non-existent because I really don't care for most divine classes. Nothing against those that play 'em, I just don't like 'em :P

When I play It's not just about my special little snowflake, but rather all about the group. How can I support these guys? Can they rely on me?

5 pages of backstory and a funny accent doesn't help the party when you're knee-deep in goblins and the ceiling is slowly descending on your party. I want to see the party succeed and if that means doing a few changes to my concept so be it: It's rather difficult to roleplay a dead PC (for the most part).

[Alex12]

It's rather difficult to roleplay a dead PC (for the most part).

Does Necropolitan count?

[NichG]

5 pages of backstory and a funny accent doesn't help the party when you're knee-deep in goblins and the ceiling is slowly descending on your party. I want to see the party succeed and if that means doing a few changes to my concept so be it: It's rather difficult to roleplay a dead PC (for the most part).

And yet, this is part of where the impression that optimization interferes with roleplay comes from. Its a chain of effect between the players wanting the GM to run a harsh campaign (or the GM wanting to run a harsh campaign) leading to heavy constraints on character viability, which in turn leads to heavy constraints on what kinds of roleplay can occur. The end result being that the entire situation - campaign, GM, and players - leads to a focus on mechanics at the cost of limiting viable roleplay, and that mechanics focus naturally lends itself to optimization.

Whereas if the GM ran a game where less-optimized parties could still be viable, then there is less pressure to optimize character power at the cost of other factors.

In general, a by-the-book game using stuff directly out of the monster manual requires a minimum of optimization to be easily survivable by the PCs. When DMs start optimizing encounters, monster builds, etc you start to get into an arms race, and that arms race can crowd out a lot of character personae and archetypes.

[Jeff the Green]

And yet, this is part of where the impression that optimization interferes with roleplay comes from. Its a chain of effect between the players wanting the GM to run a harsh campaign (or the GM wanting to run a harsh campaign) leading to heavy constraints on character viability, which in turn leads to heavy constraints on what kinds of roleplay can occur. The end result being that the entire situation - campaign, GM, and players - leads to a focus on mechanics at the cost of limiting viable roleplay, and that mechanics focus naturally lends itself to optimization.

Whereas if the GM ran a game where less-optimized parties could still be viable, then there is less pressure to optimize character power at the cost of other factors.

In general, a by-the-book game using stuff directly out of the monster manual requires a minimum of optimization to be easily survivable by the PCs. When DMs start optimizing encounters, monster builds, etc you start to get into an arms race, and that arms race can crowd out a lot of character personae and archetypes.

Actually, I suspect a lot of it is just regular old human biases. We tend to see patterns when they're not there because it's better to see wind in the grass as a lion than to see a lion as wind in the grass. So someone who has a random string of experiences with high-optimization/low-roleplaying or low-optimization/high-roleplaying is likely to notice it and assume it's a pattern. Then there's confirmation bias, where someone who has that idea will ignore the high/high and low/low people and seize on the high/low and low/high people as confirming their hypothesis. Add on to that the fact that people tend to write on forums about grievances, so you're likely to hear about someone disrupting a game with their high-op character with less personality than a wet noodle but not about the high-op character who's also well roleplayed and fits in with the party. And then finally the fact that it's a lot easier to give advice about mechanics than about roleplaying (and it's also something that isn't necessarily as amenable to just learning by experience, so advice is more often necessary), so you have the impression that communities that care about optimization don't care about roleplaying.

Hell, since we're naming principles and laws and fallacies, let's call it JtG's Doctrine: All roleplayers are people, a fact from which stems all that is right and all that is wrong with roleplaying games.

[Flickerdart]

it's better to see wind in the grass as a lion than to see a lion as wind in the grass.
What if you see a lion in the wind as grass?

[Jeff the Green]

What if you see a lion in the wind as grass?

Then you have bigger problems than predation on your hands. :smalltongue:

[Darth Paul]

Hey, if you're all fine with a campaign where the fighters are held to the mercy of the wizard feeling like helping them, and you have to hold back what kind of challenges you can throw at them, more power to you. Just pointing out, that is what you're creating, and that it is very different from the assumed, due to how the system works.

It's almost as if you're assuming that spellcasters don't want to help the fighters, out of their own self-interest. Or better yet, because they're all in the same party together. I can't recall the last time a spell-user in our party told the fighter or rogue, "Sorry, I prefer not to cast a spell for you, I have better things to do."

[NichG]

Actually, I suspect a lot of it is just regular old human biases.

You don't think that being in an environment that punishes you for ever optimizing for anything that isn't about raw power would have an effect on how you choose targets for optimization?

Perhaps its more of a forum zeitgeist thing, but every time one of these discussions happens I see the same argument get trotted out about how choosing not to play a hypercompetent character is somehow inherently unrealistic/unfair to the other players/etc. So I'll admit that my observation is mostly based on what seems to be this particular forum subculture. But I do think that there is an effect there - if every game you're in is pushed to the redline, then you're going to feel compelled to optimize for power rather than for other factors just for self-defense.

[Jeff the Green]

It's almost as if you're assuming that spellcasters don't want to help the fighters, out of their own self-interest. Or better yet, because they're all in the same party together. I can't recall the last time a spell-user in our party told the fighter or rogue, "Sorry, I prefer not to cast a spell for you, I have better things to do."

Assuming that everyone's on the same team, while generally a safe assumption, doesn't fix it. It frequently ends up with casters (especially divine casters) being frustrated that they don't get to do anything interesting with their spells because they have to use them to make the mundane characters barely competent and the mundane characters frustrated because without the magical support they're not even barely competent.

To use a real-life metaphor, I was horrible at organic chemistry in college. Couldn't react my way out of a paper bag with a mole of (C2H5)2O and a sparker. We had group tests too, which always ended with me barely working out the easiest problem (with help) and the more competent students spending time helping me understand it and tackling the harder questions, which probably took more time than it would have for them to just do the entire test on their own. No one came out of those tests feeling good, even if we ended up getting good scores.

[eggynack]

It's almost as if you're assuming that spellcasters don't want to help the fighters, out of their own self-interest. Or better yet, because they're all in the same party together. I can't recall the last time a spell-user in our party told the fighter or rogue, "Sorry, I prefer not to cast a spell for you, I have better things to do."
I suppose, but it's not like there's some onus to necessarily do so, and at the same time, it's all a matter of degree. I mean, how many spells are we talking about here, and at what point is the wizard allowed to say, "I gotsta have some spells for my own purposes," without being a jerk, in your estimation? Sure, a buff here and there is fine, but the demands of a truly a-magical character can be rather intense at times.

[Flickerdart]

It's almost as if you're assuming that spellcasters don't want to help the fighters, out of their own self-interest. Or better yet, because they're all in the same party together. I can't recall the last time a spell-user in our party told the fighter or rogue, "Sorry, I prefer not to cast a spell for you, I have better things to do."
They might want to help the fighters. They might love helping the fighters. They might drool and faint over the opportunity to help a fighter. But it will become more and more obvious that those fighters aren't actually bringing anything useful to the table except for being a meat puppet on which the casters can apply stacks of prodigious buffs.

[LordBlades]

It's almost as if you're assuming that spellcasters don't want to help the fighters, out of their own self-interest. Or better yet, because they're all in the same party together. I can't recall the last time a spell-user in our party told the fighter or rogue, "Sorry, I prefer not to cast a spell for you, I have better things to do."

From a RP perspective: What's the wizard/cleric/druid's reason for keeping around (while going into very dangerous places) a guy who depends on his help (buffing) to do a worse job than him at fighting (any tier 1 can easily self buff to be better at fighting than a fighter)?

[Darth Paul]

For example, I wanted to play a hound archon champion of goodness sort. When I looked up the rules on how level adjustment worked, however, I discovered that this meant that he'd have to be level 11 to start. Not a problem - the game was originally going to start at that level anyway.


The entire campaign STARTED at 11th level? You can do that?

Suddenly the whole "character build" phrase becomes clear to me. It had honestly never occurred to me that anyone generated characters at a level higher than 1st, to play them up to as high a level as they could before the eventual end of the campaign (if it had an end). But I suppose if one had to generate a high-level character from scratch, then yes, one could assemble the pieces like a kit-bashed model, from here and there.

But where would the emotional investment come from? Then it really would feel like a video game, where you are dropped in and told you are Aragorn son of Arathorn and it's time to fight the War of the Ring. Huge difference from starting your character from 1st level and earning every xp.

Or am I just being a fogey again?

[Flickerdart]

But where would the emotional investment come from?
From spending more than 10 minutes on the character? From writing a backstory that isn't "my guy was a dirt farmer nobody and then put on a rusty hat and picked up a bent sword to risk life and limb against goblins?"

[Jeff the Green]

Or am I just being a fogey again?

Yes.

Or maybe you're just not interpreting LotR as I do. Because when Frodo et al. meet him, Aragorn's not a 1st-level character. 3rd, more likely.

With a wider reference pool of fantasy literature to draw on the idea of always starting at 1st becomes even more laughable. One of my favorite series, the Elenium by David and Leigh Eddings, doesn't have a single protagonist (aside from a literal child) who can be easily modeled as below level five. Even the eighteen-year old queen who spends most of the series locked in a crystal and never picks up a weapon needs more than one level to get her sheer diplomancy skills.

[LordBlades]

The entire campaign STARTED at 11th level? You can do that?

Suddenly the whole "character build" phrase becomes clear to me. It had honestly never occurred to me that anyone generated characters at a level higher than 1st, to play them up to as high a level as they could before the eventual end of the campaign (if it had an end). But I suppose if one had to generate a high-level character from scratch, then yes, one could assemble the pieces like a kit-bashed model, from here and there.

But where would the emotional investment come from? Then it really would feel like a video game, where you are dropped in and told you are Aragorn son of Arathorn and it's time to fight the War of the Ring. Huge difference from starting your character from 1st level and earning every xp.

Or am I just being a fogey again?

To many people there's more emotional investment when building a character that's not likely to die from a random NPC mook crit. Level 1 is largely luck based. I for one don't really feel like investing the time to write several pages of backstory and/or character personality stuff knowing that this guy can die to a random mook and there's nothing I can do about it (even Reincarnate is out of price range).

[ryu]

The entire campaign STARTED at 11th level? You can do that?

Suddenly the whole "character build" phrase becomes clear to me. It had honestly never occurred to me that anyone generated characters at a level higher than 1st, to play them up to as high a level as they could before the eventual end of the campaign (if it had an end). But I suppose if one had to generate a high-level character from scratch, then yes, one could assemble the pieces like a kit-bashed model, from here and there.

But where would the emotional investment come from? Then it really would feel like a video game, where you are dropped in and told you are Aragorn son of Arathorn and it's time to fight the War of the Ring. Huge difference from starting your character from 1st level and earning every xp.

Or am I just being a fogey again?

Just going to point out that video games have successfully made me legitimately cry more and harder than literally any other medium. Best tear-jerker of them all is Mother 3 by the way.

[eggynack]

The entire campaign STARTED at 11th level? You can do that?
Indeed, you can. It's just a different kinda game.


Suddenly the whole "character build" phrase becomes clear to me. It had honestly never occurred to me that anyone generated characters at a level higher than 1st, to play them up to as high a level as they could before the eventual end of the campaign (if it had an end). But I suppose if one had to generate a high-level character from scratch, then yes, one could assemble the pieces like a kit-bashed model, from here and there.
That's not really the source of character build. If you toss me into a campaign at first level, chances are I'll have a good idea of that character's entire progression up to level 20, either before the first session, or before the second if I didn't have time to map it out for the first. You see this way you do things, tossing in bits and pieces together in ways that feel right, as an art. Something that comes to you organically as a game progresses.

Well, doing it the optimizer way is an art too in a lot of ways. You have to construct something that fits perfectly, with all of the elements working together in a way that reflects the character, without sacrificing too much in the way of elegance. If we were just putting together a model, then it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. There are dozens upon dozens of books, all containing little pieces of characters that could fit perfectly into this cogent whole. If you want to see some of this stuff in action, take a look at the iron chef competitions (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?349040-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-in-the-Playground-LVII) we hold every so often. Look at all of that meticulous work that goes into making a winning build.


But where would the emotional investment come from? Then it really would feel like a video game, where you are dropped in and told you are Aragorn son of Arathorn and it's time to fight the War of the Ring. Huge difference from starting your character from 1st level and earning every xp.
It is different, but that doesn't make it better or worse. I could say the exact same thing about the games you play, starting at level one. Why not begin at level zero, roleplay out your time as an apprenticeship to a blacksmith, and stuff of that kind? There're obviously plenty of stories there. Some games are about people starting from nothing, and becoming the kinds of heroes they'll need to be to eventually save the world. Some games are about epic heroes, fighting against evil that's greater than anyone can even comprehend. Some games are about what are virtually gods, duking it out for political power on a landscape that spans multiple planes. All of these are valid.

[georgie_leech]

Just going to point out that video games have successfully made me legitimately cry more and harder than literally any other medium. Best tear-jerker of them all is Mother 3 by the way.

"Lucas' Franklin Badge reflected the lightning back!" :smallfrown:

[Flickerdart]

Just going to point out that video games have successfully made me legitimately cry more and harder than literally any other medium. Best tear-jerker of them all is Mother 3 by the way.
Nonsense. It's not true art unless you go through the character's every childhood fight, laboriously working towards a day when your guy might get to do something cool. Of course, that cuts out all of the Ancient Greek stories where protagonists such as Hercules, Perseus, Jason, Hector, Achilles and so forth are set up as great heroes with a bit of backstory and then let loose unto the world, and plays such as Macbeth and Hamlet where we meet the titular characters as royals and not peasants scrambling towards the top, and graphic novels like Watchmen, where we don't spend more than a token few panels to explore the origins of Rorschach and Ozymandias.

No, the only way it's possible to have a good narrative where you're invested in the character is to start with them being weak and incapable and then take a couple of years in real time to bring them up to relevance.

[Darth Paul]

Just going to point out that video games have successfully made me legitimately cry more and harder than literally any other medium. Best tear-jerker of them all is Mother 3 by the way.

OK, fair enough. Uncharted 2 is in that realm. It was a bad comparison, I was wrong. Nevertheless, I don't 'get' making a starting character at high level in a tabletop RPG. I didn't do anything to earn being X level other than show up. Just... feels... wrong to me. Fine for you, if that's what you do. But there would be no hilarious shared past adventures the party had on their way to becoming X level, no old enemies waiting to pop out of the woodwork... no history. Unless you invent it yourself, which is fine for "what I did to become 1st level", but I think stretches to reach 11th or whatever level.

[ryu]

"Lucas' Franklin Badge reflected the lightning back!" :smallfrown:

I know right?! Not to mention the whole everything leading up to and directly after that... Without a doubt the most brilliantly built up and executed strong sad in the entire medium.

[DarkSonic1337]

The entire campaign STARTED at 11th level? You can do that?

Suddenly the whole "character build" phrase becomes clear to me. It had honestly never occurred to me that anyone generated characters at a level higher than 1st, to play them up to as high a level as they could before the eventual end of the campaign (if it had an end). But I suppose if one had to generate a high-level character from scratch, then yes, one could assemble the pieces like a kit-bashed model, from here and there.

But where would the emotional investment come from? Then it really would feel like a video game, where you are dropped in and told you are Aragorn son of Arathorn and it's time to fight the War of the Ring. Huge difference from starting your character from 1st level and earning every xp.

Or am I just being a fogey again?

Or perhaps your characters didnt all meet each other at level 1? Your characters all had their own individual adventures and backstories that may or may not overlap until you actually end up getting together and deciding to work together?

To use the video game example, take Fire Emblem:Radiant Dawn, which is a sequel to Fire Emblem:Path of Radiance. On of the main groups, the Greil Mercenaries, is introduced at a significantly higher level than the other groups. When you play as this group you also fight enemies that are stronger than the ones you fought with your original group, The Dawn Brigade. But those characters eventually meet up (first as enemies actually. Lots of grey morality going on here that makes two pretty much good groups fight each other) and the lower level group eventually catches up to the higher level one since they just get more screen time.

But The Griel Mercenaries have AN ENTIRE GAME to explain why they're higher leveled. They had an entirely separate adventure in their "back-story." They're not characters who were created SOLELY FOR THIS CONFLICT and that's why they didn't all start at level 1.

D&D characters can do the same thing. When you make a back story, sometimes you want to include things more exciting than being a kid on the street or a guy who just joined the military, or some dude on the farm. Maybe you want to make a character who actually did try the whole solo adventurer thing and that's why he's not level 1. Maybe you want to make a character who WAS PART OF ANOTHER GROUP before joining with your current party...and that's why he's not level 1. Maybe you just want to make a character who already fleshed out the combat style you want them to have...which is sometimes not possible from level 1 (I'm looking at you Magic Fighters. Even duskblade doesn't really feel like a Magic Fighter until level 3, and that class is litterally designed to fill that role <_<). Whatever the case is, anything that involves risking your well being (aka overcoming a challenge) is worthy of XP, and if your backstory includes more than just doing stuff commoners do on a daily basis then it's entirely plausible for them to have leveled up and aquired wealth during such escapades.


Oh and to chime in on the Wizard buffing fighters thing...The Wizard has a limited number of spells in his spellbook (the sorcerer has even fewer spells known), and he can't prepare everything every day. That's just part of playing the wizard (not denying his power, but this is at least sort of a limitation for a while). The wizard has to be the party's battlefield manipulator, the debuffer, and sometimes the buff bot, in addition to his out of combat responsibilities (things like transporting the party places). Now that's all fine, but with the very low wealth you seem to be describing and with little book diving, he's not going to have room in his spellbook for the kinds of spells the fighter types like. Consider just the things competing for 2nd level spells. We've got Glitterdust, Resist Energy, Detect Thoughts, Web, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Gust of Wind and Fox's Cunning from just the player's handbook. And you want him to pop a bull's strength on you because you couldn't get a +4 Strength item for 16k? Hell he'd rather take craft wonderous item and MAKE IT FOR YOU (for a fair price of course. He's spending XP and time on it after all) than have to prepare that spell every day.

[Flickerdart]

I didn't do anything to earn being X level other than show up.
You didn't do anything to become a wizard other than show up. Better go and Google up some magic spells, and don't come to the session unless you're riding a conjured demon.

[georgie_leech]

OK, fair enough. Uncharted 2 is in that realm. It was a bad comparison, I was wrong. Nevertheless, I don't 'get' making a starting character at high level in a tabletop RPG. I didn't do anything to earn being X level other than show up. Just... feels... wrong to me. Fine for you, if that's what you do. But there would be no hilarious shared past adventures the party had on their way to becoming X level, no old enemies waiting to pop out of the woodwork... no history. Unless you invent it yourself, which is fine for "what I did to become 1st level", but I think stretches to reach 11th or whatever level.

Which means you prefer stories where begin as a relative nobody, and work your way upwards. There's nothing wrong with that. Starting at higher levels are for telling different stories. To borrow from a few different mediums, no longer are you following Rand as he sets out of the village, but Lan Mandragoran as he protects Moiraine as she searches for the Dragon Reborn; you aren't Frodo, desperately tiring to escape the Ringwraiths and reach Rivendell, but Aragorn son of Arathorn, Chieftan of the Dúnedain and Heir to Isildur as he journeys to oppose the Dark Lord Sauron; you are no farm boy, ripped from his home at young age, but the child of the last great Hero, destined to lead a revolution against the tyrannical ruler that is your brother.

To reiterate, there's nothing wrong with starting at high or low levels. It just changes which stories you tell, or at least where they start. Rand doesn't stay that hapless country farmer, after all.

[Forrestfire]

Nonsense. It's not true art unless you go through the character's every childhood fight, laboriously working towards a day when your guy might get to do something cool. Of course, that cuts out all of the Ancient Greek stories where protagonists such as Hercules, Perseus, Jason, Hector, Achilles and so forth are set up as great heroes with a bit of backstory and then let loose unto the world, and plays such as Macbeth and Hamlet where we meet the titular characters as royals and not peasants scrambling towards the top, and graphic novels like Watchmen, where we don't spend more than a token few panels to explore the origins of Rorschach and Ozymandias.

No, the only way it's possible to have a good narrative where you're invested in the character is to start with them being weak and incapable and then take a couple of years in real time to bring them up to relevance.

While Flickerdart is being overly snarky about it, he has a very good point. Level 1 is a point in someone's life where they are barely competent at living, much less competent at adventuring. It really depends on what you're playing, really. The majority of characters in fiction start at levels higher than one, sometimes way higher than one. If I'm writing my character to be something that isn't a barely-trained squire, an apprentice wizard, or, say, a petty thief, then starting at higher than level one is mandatory.

One of my favorite characters I've played was pretty much a grad student at a mage college. She had a fairly detailed backstory, and had gone through a variety of different situations, learning combat and magic, and a fair bit of her gear had a backstory reason as well (she had an adamantine fireplace poker she stole from her dorm that counted as a heavy pick, an enchanted shiftweave outfit that served as the school's uniform, and a few other trinkets. Also a house.). I would never have made this character if I was starting at level 1, since the combination of levels required to get into the stuff I was using (Swiftblade and Abjurant Champion) would have been aggravating to go through the long way. Does this make the character any less valuable regarding the memories gained from playing? No. She was very fun to play, and her backstory allowed me to take a very different set of action than the other characters in the party, some of which could even be considered sub-optimal (accidentally triggering traps because she's never gone dungeon delving, panicking at the prospect of having to kill, and the like). My emotional investment was also fairly high, because the character felt like a real person I was playing. There was no disconnect between the fluff and crunch, it all flowed rather well.

... That got away from me a bit. My point is that, like optimization, starting level has nothing to do with how well the character can be roleplayed and/or how much emotional investment is had. That comes from you, not the game.


EDIT:

OK, fair enough. Uncharted 2 is in that realm. It was a bad comparison, I was wrong. Nevertheless, I don't 'get' making a starting character at high level in a tabletop RPG. I didn't do anything to earn being X level other than show up. Just... feels... wrong to me. Fine for you, if that's what you do. But there would be no hilarious shared past adventures the party had on their way to becoming X level, no old enemies waiting to pop out of the woodwork... no history. Unless you invent it yourself, which is fine for "what I did to become 1st level", but I think stretches to reach 11th or whatever level.

Having no old enemies, no history... That sounds like an issue with the backstory and possibly the DM, in my opinion. Admittedly, I had an amazing DM running the game with the aforementioned gish, but she had a ton of history. The character even had some of the shared past adventures, because she joined the party after showing up to investigate why my previous character (a ghost from 70 years prior to the campaign and her great-great aunt) was ordering custom magic items from beyond the grave. There was a lot of stuff I could do with that history in place, in addition to the backstory of the character letting me play as part of the world when the party visited her home city. Inventing that sort of stuff yourself is perfectly fine, and it generally is pretty awesome when it works.

[Darth Paul]

Nonsense. It's not true art unless you go through the character's every childhood fight, laboriously working towards a day when your guy might get to do something cool. Of course, that cuts out all of the Ancient Greek stories where protagonists such as Hercules, Perseus, Jason, Hector, Achilles and so forth are set up as great heroes with a bit of backstory and then let loose unto the world, and plays such as Macbeth and Hamlet where we meet the titular characters as royals and not peasants scrambling towards the top, and graphic novels like Watchmen, where we don't spend more than a token few panels to explore the origins of Rorschach and Ozymandias.

No, the only way it's possible to have a good narrative where you're invested in the character is to start with them being weak and incapable and then take a couple of years in real time to bring them up to relevance.

Your sarcasm is noted.

But there's a reason why I prefer Firefly to Star Trek, and it's because the little stories are more interesting and more intimate. The group of heroes on an epic quest are fun to watch, but not to be. Not until you earn your place among them by starting out small and working your way up. Merry and Pippin were the most interesting of the four hobbits (in the novel); they were the ones who actually were adventurers. Frodo was a tragic hero; Sam was... Sam. Aragorn and the rest were mythical figures already. (Although Gimli was hilarious.)

If you want to play a mythical 20th level character from scratch in D&D, I will not criticize, you made your case. But I don't see the point, unless I played him from Level 1. (Still my goal.)

[eggynack]

Your sarcasm is noted.

But there's a reason why I prefer Firefly to Star Trek, and it's because the little stories are more interesting and more intimate. The group of heroes on an epic quest are fun to watch, but not to be. Not until you earn your place among them by starting out small and working your way up. Merry and Pippin were the most interesting of the four hobbits (in the novel); they were the ones who actually were adventurers. Frodo was a tragic hero; Sam was... Sam. Aragorn and the rest were mythical figures already. (Although Gimli was hilarious.)

But Firefly's characters have bunches of backstory, involving war and whatnot, and they're all talented in their field of choice. They're likely not first level characters in their proverbial 'verse. So, in your stated narrative preference, you would likely be doing what you've expressed a distaste for.

[gooddragon1]

Generally my character's backstories are very similar to this:


As in I draw this on the page.

Doubles as a holy symbol.

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111129234310/althistory/images/4/44/Circle-with-slash.png

[Urpriest]

The entire campaign STARTED at 11th level? You can do that?

Suddenly the whole "character build" phrase becomes clear to me. It had honestly never occurred to me that anyone generated characters at a level higher than 1st, to play them up to as high a level as they could before the eventual end of the campaign (if it had an end). But I suppose if one had to generate a high-level character from scratch, then yes, one could assemble the pieces like a kit-bashed model, from here and there.

But where would the emotional investment come from? Then it really would feel like a video game, where you are dropped in and told you are Aragorn son of Arathorn and it's time to fight the War of the Ring. Huge difference from starting your character from 1st level and earning every xp.

Or am I just being a fogey again?

Oh for pete's sake!

It's 2014! You used to play 2e! I'm assuming that at some point in between, you actually read the DMG!

The rules to play at higher levels are right there in the 3.0 DMG, and right there in the 3.5 DMG. Wealth by level, standardized treasure generation, the idea that an equal-CR fight is about 1/4 of your daily resources...it's all there. It's as if, over literal decades, you never actually read the vast majority of one of the three core books, despite the fact that you seem to rarely use any of the other ones. That, or you never considered that people without biases from 2e might actually play the way the DMG suggests that they play.

I don't think you're that stupid, because stupid people don't choose to play one of the most complex, mathematical, nerdy games in existence. You're probably an intelligent person, probably someone who enjoys reading, who enjoys numbers and statistics and maybe the occasional spreadsheet, because otherwise why would you have chosen to play D&D? That's why your attitudes in this thread are utterly baffling to me, why I can't seem to put together a series of events that would have led you to have the opinions you do. I'm sure there is one, I'm sure that in the end you and I are not so different. I just can't conceive of how.

[Undertucker]

I think the biggest problem here is the terms used and what individuals interpret them as...
There is also disparity in what each person see's as "too OP", this has been made clear several times in this very thread with the comparisons of AC and magic items based on the original post. I find this quite common when relatively large numbers start happening too. A lot of people start calling "too OP" when a dip-friendly martial character deals triple digit damage at mid-high levels and forget that the core only Wizard is capable of clearing a room of mooks or one shotting the biggest threat with a single spell by then.

Optimisation is not the same as Power Gaming or Munchkining. As has been stated, optimisation itself is only the tool, the method of become better at a certain thing. Being better at performing your chosen role in the game does not mean you can't RP that character well. It doesn't make any sense for it to be said that "Big Bad Bob swings his sword too good, so now all he can say is 'hurr-duurrr' while covered in blood and has no other personality." You could think of BBB similar to The Hound from GoT, sure he's just the big tough guard dog type but there are deeper character elements that come up through the story and that's where the RP is. Just because Bob is good at his job and worked for the best dips/feats doesn't mean he loses his personality traits.
The flip side of this, however, is that if Big Bad Bob CAN'T swing his sword in the biggest baddest fasion available to him, then he really doesn't deserve that title. In this regard, optimising him to perform the task of swinging his sword as well as possible enables playing the role.

Now, you could easily make your character concept "Steve the peasant farmer, forced to defend his town from the goblins." This guy would not be big nor bad, he would probably have at least a few ranks in a profession or craft and may even have commoner as his 1st level. By making this choice though you are still optimising. You are trying to be the best "Steve the peasant farmer" that you could be. The level of power involved, compared to Big Bad Bob, would be much lower but if that is appropriate for the game/group he'll be played with there's no problem.

And this is where the good Optimisers separate themselves from the pure Power Gamers or Munchkins. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you add the right templates with the right classes, the right spells and the right feats you can make Steve challenge the gods (eg, pun-pun). But a good Optimiser would pass up on some, or all, of those options because having three templates, or whatever the situation is, doesn't optimise them for their intended concept and power level. I'm sure everyone's been there at some point too, where they knocked up the most ridiculous build notes with parts taken from every source they could find and thought to themselves "yeah, this build has the biggest numbers, so I HAVE to win.." There comes a point when you move past the phase of "must have biggest numbers!" and start looking at "..but how can Steve be a better peasant fighter and work well with his party?"
In my mind both the optimisation and roleplay start at the same time. The moment you need to build a new character and ask yourself "What am I going to play, and how am I going to play it?"

Regarding "builds"; I build a character plan from 1 to 20 so I can think about my character's future goals and how they'll get there. Everyone has a plan in real life (go to school, get a qualification, get a good job, etc) so it makes sense my clever Goblin does too (start as Int based monk, study the Goliath race while taking levels of Stoneblessed, perform experiments that lead to a lvl in Goliath barbarian to make the beginings of The Hulk, etc). In this example the roleplay would lead him into an "accidental" discovery of The Hulk, which could be predicted based on level and then worked into both the character's and the world's story. This kind of experience would be very difficult to have spontaneously occur without heavy house rulling (and like someone else in here mentioned, why 'brew it when a RAW method exists?). This also tends to eliminate DM shock, assuming they know what they're doing, when my version of The Hulk starts rage-breaking things because they've already seen the 20 level progession and approved it for their game.

In conclusion:
If you've played a character concept sucessfully, he did well at his intended role and he contributed roughly evenly to the party, then you optimised him to succeed in that way.
If you then roleplayed that character well, to what ever personality he was supposed to have in your concept, then you've just proven the two are not excusive.


As a side note: It would probably be an interesting experience for you to read over the tippyverse to see how crazy things could be "normally" if taken to the logical conclusion of a self aware D&D world. It sounds like it would differ greatly from the world you play in.

[Talya]

Your sarcasm is noted.

But there's a reason why I prefer Firefly to Star Trek, and it's because the little stories are more interesting and more intimate. The group of heroes on an epic quest are fun to watch, but not to be. Not until you earn your place among them by starting out small and working your way up. Merry and Pippin were the most interesting of the four hobbits (in the novel); they were the ones who actually were adventurers. Frodo was a tragic hero; Sam was... Sam. Aragorn and the rest were mythical figures already. (Although Gimli was hilarious.)

If you want to play a mythical 20th level character from scratch in D&D, I will not criticize, you made your case. But I don't see the point, unless I played him from Level 1. (Still my goal.)

With the exception of River Tam, everyone who got on that boat for different reasons starts the series between levels 3 and 12ish. (With Book, Mal, Zoe and Jayne being the ones at the top of that curve, Simon and Kaylee being closer to the bottom, and Wash and Inara somewhere in between.)

I prefer my campaigns starting between levels 3 and 8ish. More than that, and there's too much background material lost.

[NichG]

Again I think this is a big difference in expectation. Lots of people around here seem to have the expectation that a 'normal' character is fairly high level, and that nothing you do before Lv9 or so has any hope of being significant to the world.

But if you have a campaign where most veteran soldiers are Lv1, then having your 'master swordsman' be a Lv1 character who has the honor of having an actual level of Warblade instead of, say, Warrior, could be completely consistent. It all comes down to the expectations set by the campaign world.

Similarly, all of the 'why do the wizards bother keeping the fighters around?' comments presume that this isn't a group where 'fireball wizard' is the standard. But in a game where AC 21 is considered high for 9th level characters, shouldn't you be thinking 'huh, I guess they probably are playing at the fireball wizard level'? In which case, the fighters are just as critical as the wizards.

Different tables and different expectations create a different pattern of 'what is logical' and what is not. The forum zeitgeist does a pretty bad job of analyzing games of that sort.

[ryu]

Your sarcasm is noted.

But there's a reason why I prefer Firefly to Star Trek, and it's because the little stories are more interesting and more intimate. The group of heroes on an epic quest are fun to watch, but not to be. Not until you earn your place among them by starting out small and working your way up. Merry and Pippin were the most interesting of the four hobbits (in the novel); they were the ones who actually were adventurers. Frodo was a tragic hero; Sam was... Sam. Aragorn and the rest were mythical figures already. (Although Gimli was hilarious.)

If you want to play a mythical 20th level character from scratch in D&D, I will not criticize, you made your case. But I don't see the point, unless I played him from Level 1. (Still my goal.)

Clearly someone has never been annoyed by an overly long tutorial or otherwise being kept in the early stages of a game for much too long.

Sorta like that moment in Morrowind on your first playthrough where you realize that low-level combat is horrible, nonsensical, and loaded with misses to the point you have to grind for like an hour before that slightly larger rat in the corner is no longer capable of beating you to death for your lunch money.

[Flickerdart]

But there's a reason why I prefer Firefly to Star Trek
Malcom Reynolds has years of war experience and commanded 2000 men during the war. Zoe fought alongside him through most of it. Wash was top of his class in the Academy and had a reputation so big that captains fought over who would get him, and we see him pull off ridiculous stunts with the Serenity. Inara has achieved a very high position in society. Jayne is a seasoned mercenary who owns more guns than some militaries. Simon is a fully certified medical doctor - an accomplishment that takes quite a long time. Shepherd Book has a mysterious past that manifests as a wide and deep field of knowledge, serious social connections. River Tam is a psychic gunslinger.

None of these characters are level 1 even when we're introduced to them.

[Sir Chuckles]

If you say that the high level* character did not do anything to earn that level, then it's the fault of the player, not the optimization, not the campaign.
Writing a backstory is a skill. Writing a background past the very earliest adulthood training is an extension of that skill, and not being able to even imagine writing a story that goes beyond basic training. How did your character obtain that +1 Flaming Greatax? You don't, and likely can't, write "I defeated an Eye of Gruumsh and took this ax from him as a prize." into a Fighter 1's backstory because it causes serious dissonance between the writing and the sheet.

There's nothing wrong with starting at level 1, it is the very beginning of a character**, but there is something wrong with finding it impossible to start anywhere else, because you're stating "I cannot and will not attempt to play, understand, nor accept your style of gameplay. This is despite the fact that you have not done the same to me."
It's definitely seeming more and more like we're never going to be able to use conversation and debate to sway your position. Instead, I think it would be best for us to invite you to play with us in either a homebrew campaign around 8-12th level, or even do something as simple as break out a module like Red Hand of Doom, where players start at 5th level and reach about the former level.

* I'm going to state that 11th level is not high level. It is mid-level. In my opinion, it's probably where many characters shine, and often where some begin to diminish.

** And, again, being able to write past the very beginning is a character creation skill that tests storytelling and usually optimization.

Final note:
The expectations between us in gameplay, character building, player ability, and character ability is oceans apart. We're attempting to build a boat out of iron, and you're insisting that iron can never float. When we explain how, you retort with wood would make more sense.

[the_other_gm]

Your sarcasm is noted.

But there's a reason why I prefer Firefly to Star Trek, and it's because the little stories are more interesting and more intimate. The group of heroes on an epic quest are fun to watch, but not to be. Not until you earn your place among them by starting out small and working your way up. Merry and Pippin were the most interesting of the four hobbits (in the novel); they were the ones who actually were adventurers. Frodo was a tragic hero; Sam was... Sam. Aragorn and the rest were mythical figures already. (Although Gimli was hilarious.)

If you want to play a mythical 20th level character from scratch in D&D, I will not criticize, you made your case. But I don't see the point, unless I played him from Level 1. (Still my goal.)

I vehemently disagree with you.

I've earned my right to have the fun I want by buying the books/reading the SRD, learning the game and making time aside from my week to play. Little else is required and if more is asked it is entirely my right to disagree and leave.

Grinding up from level 1 to 20 isn't necessary for fun. I've played that game and to be honest the bookends were both largely comprised of bull (for similar, yet different, reasons). The most fun I did have was somewhere in the middle when my character was established as a competent adventurer. When i had options on how to deal with what came before me. When we could face the magical and interesting and not roll our eyes at the oncoming TPK but rather with a grin and the optimistic outlook that we actually have a chance of coming out alive that isn't just a roll of the d20.

Grinding out the first 2-3 levels that comprise mainly of "roll a skill/check VS a DC where the dice matter more then your actual check value" or "your swordsman will be missing every other swing if the enemy is wearing anything other then a wet paper bag" doesn't build character or history, it's just tedious.

I would much rather roll up a 4th level character and have the time it takes to go up to 5th level take the same amount of time as leveling from 1st to 5th in any other campaign. That way I can still build up relations, history and whatnot without having to deal with the swingy-ness of low levels.

[Kraken]

By the time she's thawed and got her head screwed back on (as much as it can be, anyway), River is definitely the highest level character in Firefly. Hell, she's a damn super munchkin/Mary Sue (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6fD0WGVaw). Her melee and ranged combat skills are unsurpassed by the other characters, she's capable of incredible feats of acrobatics and stealth, she's got engineering and piloting skills, and oh yeah, she's psychic.

[Jeff the Green]

Again I think this is a big difference in expectation. Lots of people around here seem to have the expectation that a 'normal' character is fairly high level, and that nothing you do before Lv9 or so has any hope of being significant to the world.

But if you have a campaign where most veteran soldiers are Lv1, then having your 'master swordsman' be a Lv1 character who has the honor of having an actual level of Warblade instead of, say, Warrior, could be completely consistent. It all comes down to the expectations set by the campaign world.

Similarly, all of the 'why do the wizards bother keeping the fighters around?' comments presume that this isn't a group where 'fireball wizard' is the standard. But in a game where AC 21 is considered high for 9th level characters, shouldn't you be thinking 'huh, I guess they probably are playing at the fireball wizard level'? In which case, the fighters are just as critical as the wizards.

Different tables and different expectations create a different pattern of 'what is logical' and what is not. The forum zeitgeist does a pretty bad job of analyzing games of that sort.

It's not a matter of different expectations. A game where AC 21 is normal for a 9th-level character that expects to be swung at is emphatically not a game running by standard 3.5 rules. As in, it's a game where CR is thrown out the door (because that character will be hit by many CR 9 things on a 2), where WBL is thrown out the door (because getting AC >21 is trivial when you have a couple thousand GP), and it's probably a game where a lot of magic is thrown out the door (because, as I pointed out in my example, it's very easy to get AC in the 30s with no magic items at all).

A game where a level 1 warblade is a master swordsman is also vastly different from standard 3.5 rules, because there are rules about what gives you XP, how much you get, and how many it takes to level up. I mean, unless a master swordsman isn't expected to have beaten at least seven lesser swordsman, because that's how many commoner 1s you have to defeat to get to level 2.

[NichG]

It's not a matter of different expectations. A game where AC 21 is normal for a 9th-level character that expects to be swung at is emphatically not a game running by standard 3.5 rules. As in, it's a game where CR is thrown out the door (because that character will be hit by many CR 9 things on a 2), where WBL is thrown out the door (because getting AC >21 is trivial when you have a couple thousand GP), and it's probably a game where a lot of magic is thrown out the door (because, as I pointed out in my example, it's very easy to get AC in the 30s with no magic items at all).

Right. Many games are not run in a standard way. Learning to understand this and adapt to it without trying to convince the people running their games that way that they're 'doing it wrong' is a useful skill to cultivate. I mean, out of the D&D 3.5-based campaigns I've played in or run, maybe 2 of 11 have been 'standard' in the sense of keeping to all the little bits and pieces like WBL and being generally by the book.

Assuming that everyone puts running things in 'forum standard form' (e.g. mostly RAW, some RAI, players and DM both employ a particular level of optimization for power) above all other considerations tends to lead to a lot of histrionics and futile attempts to convince eachother about what basically amounts to a matter of style.

[Anlashok]

Learning to understand this and adapt to it without trying to convince the people running their games that way that they're 'doing it wrong' is a useful skill to cultivate.
That seems like a weird thing to admonish him for when he hasn't really said anything particularly bad and when the theme of the thread has been "optimizers are terrible people".

[the_other_gm]

the other problem i have with that "1st level guys are masters" world is that it isn't actually as internally consistent it claims.

the second you start fighting higher level (level 2+) fighter-classed enemies or even just enemies with a modicum of skill with ANY weapon, as a player you start realizing the old "masters" your PC knew probably trained at a McDojo (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mcdojo).

[Kantolin]

The entire campaign STARTED at 11th level? You can do that?

I must admit, I'm a little sad that out of that whole post, the response I got is that one. Oh well though, that's the internet for you, and apparently this was quite a surprise to you so it's understandable.


I suppose if one had to generate a high-level character from scratch, then yes, one could assemble the pieces like a kit-bashed model, from here and there.

Most good builds begin from wherever you start the game. People will often note a build 'Doesn't actually blossom until Xth level', which is usually theurge builds.

Also, perhaps ironically, most of the strongest builds are just strong from start to finish. Druid 20, or Wizard with a couple prestige classes (Or without!) tend to beat out many fighter types that dip all over the place to compete. Dipping tends to hurt spellcasters, and spellcasters tend to be the most powerful options.


But where would the emotional investment come from?

Does this imply that you have no emotional investment in your character despite, to quote you:


I think of my characters- and my friends' characters, and Rich's characters- as living, breathing, though imaginary, people. I didn't "build" them, I put flesh on their bones, I breathed life into them. They are as near to art as I will ever get to creating. I am a talentless hack when it comes to most things, even though I flatter myself that my written word has the occasional zing- but when I create a character, I am Stephen By-Gods King himself, and those characters are real once they get on paper (or, these days, into the Character Generator).

So do you mean that this /doesn't/ happen until after you've started? I do have a friend like that, so that wouldn't actually surprise me.

But that does mean you sit down at table with 'Elf, fighter' and maybe a name? Who hasn't done anything at all until this morning where he tried to pick up a sword?

...which is actually okay, but I mean, you do that /every time/? Your characters don't have friends or family? Your characters don't /do things/ before they were at the Festival of the Scythe and the evil lich and evil dragon showed up? I mean, even 'Hey you use a sword pretty well, where'd you learn how'?

Although, I suppose:


It takes 10 minutes to roll a character. 20 if you have to choose 1st-level spells. 1 hour if you've never done it before, but have someone to guide you through it.

That makes relative sense now, as now it sounds like you come to table with uh... "Kevin, NG gnome psychic warrior, power known is expansion, level 1 feats are combat expertise and trip'.

Which... I guess is technically alright. It certainly would take, at most, 10 minutes to come up with the character. I actually have a friend that does that. It drives me crazy as a DM, so I try to work with him to come up with a backstory together so he's not always Mr. Amnesia, but eh. Also his characters end up /really/ similar to each other... but again, that's alright. You can't really be 'wrong' about how you have fun.

But you then shouldn't say that people who start at a higher level than 1 are bad at character stuff. I mean pfft, both the level 1 and level 5 character can go fight orc warriors/barbarians and talk over a campfire about it.


Then it really would feel like a video game, where you are dropped in and told you are Aragorn son of Arathorn and it's time to fight the War of the Ring.

See, /this/ implies 'and there is no backstory' again, which implies heavily that when you make characters, they /are/ dropped in and told 'You are a halfling rogue'. Can't even be Merry - he did a healthy chunk of stuff before setting out and has backstory you don't see... just 'some halfling rogue'.

Which, once again, is okay. ^_^ There is no wrong way to do things. I'm not as fond of doing that myself, however, as I prefer more richly fleshed out characters that weren't just dropped into the world as the gam


Huge difference from starting your character from 1st level and earning every xp.

Kind...of? Let's say a DM is running a game where you fight a dragon at the end, and his henchmen are goblins and orcs.

If you are level 1, you are a farmer or something who picked up his sword this morning, or /maybe/ you are a guard. Oh no there are orcs attacking the city! You go fight them and fail to accomplish anything because the orcs are better than you, so you're forced to go get help to stop the orcs that killed your family and town.

If you are level 5, you can be the captain of the guard. Oh no there are orcs attacking the city! The other guards come to /you/ to help lead the defense. You try to organize your guards as best you can, but these orcs are extremely well trained and have some of the dragon's magical gear and your guards don't. Rapidly you find yourself falling back and falling back until you realize this battle was lost before it started and order the retreat... but are too late to save the majority of the town. You have failed to accomplish anything, so you're forced to abandon the town and get help to stop the orcs that killed your family and town. The few survivors blame you for the deaths of their loved ones, and granted it's partially your fault: Why didn't you order the retreat much much sooner? Hubris? What will happen /next/ time you're in a leadership position?

You can't /really/ do B when you are barely capable of tying your shoes without collapsing, which is what tends to happen at level 1.

Now, both groups can then /become/ the legendary high level commander who's brilliant leadership helps them take back their town. The catch is that person A then has no emotional investment to leadership and is more 'Haha now I'm level 20 I can beat up orcs', while person B has very high odds of being extremely paranoid about any of his soldiers dying on him, and if a stray orc catapult catches a pack of his soldiers will have unpleasant flashbacks that he wouldn't have had before...



But there would be no hilarious shared past adventures the party had on their way to becoming X level,

What? Your friends did nothing at all up to where the game started also? O_o


no old enemies waiting to pop out of the woodwork...

What? The bad guys did nothing at all up to where the game started /as well/? o_O


no history.

Yigads, the entire world did nothing at all until the game started?

...that actually would make a pretty awesome story in and of itself. 'And then suddenly everyone simply was on this plane which didn't exist before'. Kind of a cosmic game between the gods - like analyzing 'what if the deities of the world created life as though it /had/ existed for awhile - so at Date 00 there simply /were/ cities that nobody built and lots of people that never had parents.

*Writes that down*


Unless you invent it yourself, which is fine for "what I did to become 1st level", but I think stretches to reach 11th or whatever level.

You know, I've done a /metric ton/ of games that started from level 1, and I've been a fighter in a large chunk of them (fighter was my favorite class for awhile). In literally 0 of them did I end up becoming the captain of the guard.

Heck, in one of our level 1 games that went from 1 - 25 over the course of several years, it ended with a character ascending to godhood. But we never had like... the captain of the guard, or the leader of a mercenary company, or a graduate from a prestigious academy of swordsmanship, or heck even the priest of a church.

It's always farmer who picked up sword and wants to be the captain of the guards, acolyte who's studying so he can have his own church some day, wizard's apprentice of a wizard who never shows up in plot again that learned to cast his first first level spell that morning, and kid that has been surviving on his wits despite not having enough skills to actually hide.

...which, once again, is absolutely fine!

Just not literally every time. :P Yeesh. Sometimes I want to be Rydia from FF4, who was literally level 1 (down to 'dies in one hit to anything') but was forced to go adventuring with the butcher who murdered her mother and entire hometown otherwise soldiers would kill her. Sometimes I want to be Cecil from FF4, who was a seasoned warrior that could travel from town to town with relative security and deal with his environment, commander of the Red Wings, and most people knew /of/ him and were concerned by what he could accomplish. Sometimes I want to be Tellah from FF4, who was an archmage of legendary reknown that was off to rescue his daughter whom he perceived kidnapped.

Note Rydia (who is a mage) doesn't become 'an archmage of legendary reknown' at any point in the game due to... well, because things actually happen in the world and thus she's busy. Her being level 1 has removed backstory options.

(I suppose the no-backstory-at-level-1-option which it sounds like you use does still exist at level 10, too. Wouldn't appeal to me, but eh - there's no wrong way and all.)

[NichG]

That seems like a weird thing to admonish him for when he hasn't really said anything particularly bad and when the theme of the thread has been "optimizers are terrible people".

My intent was to 'admonish' the thread in general. There've been several posters trying to convert the OP to their style of play or to somehow 'logically disprove' the OP's style. I apologize though, since its not Jeff in particular who was doing so, and my post in response to his makes it a more direct admonishment than a general statement.

[eggynack]

Yigads, the entire world did nothing at all until the game started?

...that actually would make a pretty awesome story in and of itself. 'And then suddenly everyone simply was on this plane which didn't exist before'. Kind of a cosmic game between the gods - like analyzing 'what if the deities of the world created life as though it /had/ existed for awhile - so at Date 00 there simply /were/ cities that nobody built and lots of people that never had parents.

*Writes that down*

Holy crap, yes. That sounds frigging amazing. I figure that everyone would just kinda poof into existence in certain roles, and would be vaguely apathetic about those roles, because they literally acquired them ten seconds ago. Maybe some people act in rote obligation to the roles that were arbitrarily assigned to them, while others just drift off some other way, and everyone's reasonably cool with that happening, cause why wouldn't they be? There be lots of ways to pull this off awesome style.

[NichG]

Holy crap, yes. That sounds frigging amazing. I figure that everyone would just kinda poof into existence in certain roles, and would be vaguely apathetic about those roles, because they literally acquired them ten seconds ago. Maybe some people act in rote obligation to the roles that were arbitrarily assigned to them, while others just drift off some other way, and everyone's reasonably cool with that happening, cause why wouldn't they be? There be lots of ways to pull this off awesome style.

I'm running a campaign somewhat similar to this (weapon fired in a major war wiped the memories of everyone in the world), and the biggest problem is getting the players to find coherent motivations for their characters that actually drive them to do stuff proactively.

[Svata]

The entire campaign STARTED at 11th level? You can do that?

But where would the emotional investment come from? Then it really would feel like a video game, where you are dropped in and told you are Aragorn son of Arathorn and it's time to fight the War of the Ring.

Certainly. My favorite character that I am currently running started as a 20th level gestalt Sorc//Wiz/IotSV Elven Baelnorn (essentially a good lich who guards something). The reason for him becoming such is that it was a punishment from Corellon Larethian himself, for running away and not defending his home of Alantuli from destruction, so he would guard it eternally in a state of undeath. The whole reason he's left is that some force came and raised all of the dead as zombies, and lead them through a portal, which came out into some sort of massive, dimensionally locked, prison, warded with god-level abjurations, which Irvoi (my lich) and several others are venturing through, fighting the forces of another lich and a mummy queen. The forst thing he asked said mummy queen about, before even asking for the purpose of the prison, was if she knew what the creature that had abducted his town was. So I'm invested.

Also, the video game line was clearly spoken by someone who has never played Persona 3 or 4. Those are the only games that ever made me cry.

[Jeff the Green]

My intent was to 'admonish' the thread in general. There've been several posters trying to convert the OP to their style of play or to somehow 'logically disprove' the OP's style. I apologize though, since its not Jeff in particular who was doing so, and my post in response to his makes it a more direct admonishment than a general statement.

No worrys, I didn't take it as being particularly acrimonious.

I do think that either you missed the point of my post or I wasn't clear enough. It's fine to play non-standard D&D. I have my own houserules that, while not as extensive as some, do take up three or so pages of 11 pt bulletted type. To some extent it's impossible to play 3.5 without houserules (c.f. the dysfunctional rules threads). However, it does obligate one to say so up front if asking for help and not be surprised when people play under a different paradigm.

It's as if I were to go on to a video game forum and ask for help beating Gizamaluke from Final Fantasy IX (I'd use an example from a more popular or more recent game, but I haven't played any...) and when they tell me to blind him with Soulblade and have Vivi's slow him and stock up on Echo Screens I freak out and call them munchkins for not playing a level 1 no-equipment game like I am.

Or if I were to go on a medical forum explaining that I just got out of the pool and was short of breath, and when they told me to take deep breaths and asked whether I had a muscle cramp I get angry that they're assuming I'm a person when clearly I'm a trout and they're powegamers for having thumbs.

Okay, so maybe metaphors aren't my strong suit.

[Kantolin]

Holy crap, yes. That sounds frigging amazing. I figure that everyone would just kinda poof into existence in certain roles, and would be vaguely apathetic about those roles, because they literally acquired them ten seconds ago. Maybe some people act in rote obligation to the roles that were arbitrarily assigned to them, while others just drift off some other way, and everyone's reasonably cool with that happening, cause why wouldn't they be? There be lots of ways to pull this off awesome style.

It could be cool with them literally having nothing before that - especially as that'd lead to a 'So wait, that's it?' sort of feeling. You'd find a lot of things that had no connections to anything.

But it /also/ could be cool if, say, what actually happened was 'Two completely unrelated material planes swapped, and your jobs/classes/etc became something either close enough or perhaps radically different. This guy is an ex-paladin and cannot fathom why, and is working to try to discover when he learns that that was an imperfect swap - the other person was lawful neutral or sommat.


I'm running a campaign somewhat similar to this (weapon fired in a major war wiped the memories of everyone in the world), and the biggest problem is getting the players to find coherent motivations for their characters that actually drive them to do stuff proactively.

That's a very good point though - gotta do some checks to make sure it doesn't get stale or result in 'Okay, so what next?' Definitely a good one to have a nice discussion with your players about beforehand, heh.

Edit:


Or if I were to go on a medical forum explaining that I just got out of the pool and was short of breath, and when they told me to take deep breaths and asked whether I had a muscle cramp I get angry that they're assuming I'm a person when clearly I'm a trout and they're powegamers for having thumbs.

Thank you, Jeff - I obviously didn't need that soda I was drinking, haha.

[ryu]

Certainly. My favorite character that I am currently running started as a 20th level gestalt Sorc//Wiz/IotSV Elven Baelnorn (essentially a good lich who guards something). The reason for him becoming such is that it was a punishment from Corellon Larethian himself, for running away and not defending his home of Alantuli from destruction, so he would guard it eternally in a state of undeath. The whole reason he's left is that some force came and raised all of the dead as zombies, and lead them through a portal, which came out into some sort of massive, dimensionally locked, prison, warded with god-level abjurations, which Irvoi (my lich) and several others are venturing through, fighting the forces of another lich and a mummy queen. The forst thing he asked said mummy queen about, before even asking for the purpose of the prison, was if she knew what the creature that had abducted his town was. So I'm invested.

Also, the video game line was clearly spoken by someone who has never played Persona 3 or 4. Those are the only games that ever made me cry.

Also good examples. There was not a single NPC that didn't have some kind of believable sympathetic angle. Hell even King Moron had some real depth if you took the time to learn about him.

[Jeff the Green]

But it /also/ could be cool if, say, what actually happened was 'Two completely unrelated material planes swapped, and your jobs/classes/etc became something either close enough or perhaps radically different. This guy is an ex-paladin and cannot fathom why, and is working to try to discover when he learns that that was an imperfect swap - the other person was lawful neutral or sommat.

Ooh, that could be fun. You could also do it where the mechanics of the worlds were different. So you wake up a wizard but don't have a spell book and your buddy wakes up with a spear and an inkling that he should be able to jump over buildings but he keeps falling on his ass and your other buddy in the white and red cloak is very confused about why her healing spells are so friggin weak compared to the monsters' attacks and why the things she summons are dinky little animals instead of gods.

[Svata]

Also good examples. There was not a single NPC that didn't have some kind of believable sympathetic angle. Hell even King Moron had some real depth if you took the time to learn about him.

And when the characters that die do so especially Shinjiro (P3) and Nanako(P4) it hits like a train, because every last named character was just so well-written. Even Morooka, though his was more shock than sadness.

[ryu]

And when the characters that die do so especially Shinjiro and Nanako it hits like a train, because every last named character was just so well-written. Even Morooka, though his was more shock than sadness.

All I know is that when Nanako died I wanted to remove someone's brain with a melon-baller.

[Svata]

All I know is that when Nanako died I wanted to remove someone's brain with a melon-baller.

Yep. The original reason I didn't shove Namatame into the TV was because I was waiting for a "strangle him to death with your bare hands" option.

[ryu]

Yep. The original reason I didn't shove Namatame into the TV was because I was waiting for a "strangle him to death with your bare hands" option.

And naturally I'd done the entire social link with her by then. She was little sis dammit!

[Trundlebug]

The entire campaign STARTED at 11th level? You can do that?

Well, just as your group pursues non majority play style, mine does also. Most of my commoners/experts are 1-4 with 5's and 6's here and there. Small frontier town militia man is often commoner1-2/warrior1-2/ranger or scout/1-2 so may be as high as 6th. That is rare though and often a plot symptom. Metropolis? Expect Aristocrats at the 6-9th level at gala's and balls. The not so upper crust. Those lvl's often have a smattering of PC levels.

In this world level 3 PC's are nothing compared to that town's wandering minstrel and that mean barkeep and his 2 sons may well knock the group flat if they don't bury a blade in their ribs first.

I haven't started a group under level 3 in a long time. I also level slower.

Point is this play style isn't the norm for most but that means nothing in the world of D&D. I realize that. Why don't you?

[Svata]

And naturally I'd done the entire social link with her by then. She was little sis dammit!

I hit rank 10 the day before

[ryu]

I hit rank 10 the day before

Ouch... just... just ouch.

[NichG]

No worrys, I didn't take it as being particularly acrimonious.

I do think that either you missed the point of my post or I wasn't clear enough. It's fine to play non-standard D&D. I have my own houserules that, while not as extensive as some, do take up three or so pages of 11 pt bulletted type. To some extent it's impossible to play 3.5 without houserules (c.f. the dysfunctional rules threads). However, it does obligate one to say so up front if asking for help and not be surprised when people play under a different paradigm.

It's as if I were to go on to a video game forum and ask for help beating Gizamaluke from Final Fantasy IX (I'd use an example from a more popular or more recent game, but I haven't played any...) and when they tell me to blind him with Soulblade and have Vivi's slow him and stock up on Echo Screens I freak out and call them munchkins for not playing a level 1 no-equipment game like I am.

Or if I were to go on a medical forum explaining that I just got out of the pool and was short of breath, and when they told me to take deep breaths and asked whether I had a muscle cramp I get angry that they're assuming I'm a person when clearly I'm a trout and they're powegamers for having thumbs.

Okay, so maybe metaphors aren't my strong suit.

Well, I think in the present thread at least the OP has been pretty clear about the kind of game that he normally plays. Maybe not to the extent of explicitly posting house rules, but comments like the AC 21 thing are pretty indicative. One reaction people can have is to recognize that and adapt to it as they continue to post, as some of us have been doing. Another reaction is to protest that there's no way that the game could work that way and try to convince the poster that their experiences are impossible and could not have happened that way, which is generally not very productive since, well, their experiences usually did happen the way they describe.

My hope is to encourage the former approach above the latter. Its useful to recognize when someone is trying to get something different out of the game, playing in a different way, etc, and then to try to meet that style halfway (or re-evaluate if what one wanted to say would actually be useful to them or not).

I'll grant it applies as much to the OP as anyone else, of course, but the best communication comes from both sides making the effort.

[Serafina]

Any skilled optimizer is aware of most of the options the game has to offer.
Any skilled roleplayer is aware of most of the options the game has to offer.

Optimization-options are stuff like "this combination allows me to counterspell anything almost at-will".
Roleplay-options are stuff like "magic scarred her, so she dedicated most of her studies to defenses against it".
Optimization-options are stuff like "this combination allows my Sorcerer to operate off Intelligence and use a spellbook".
Roleplay-options are stuff like " grew up in a Wizard-family, but developed sorcerer-powers she wanted to hide"
Optimization-options are stuff like "this combination allows me to have an animal companion despite not being a ranger/druit"
Roleplay-options are stuff like "my character has an intense bond to an animal".
Optimitation-options are stuff like "this combination allows my Magus to dual-wield a sword and a staff very well"
Roleplay-options are stuff like "my character is basically Gandalf as shown in the movies".

So yes, i'd actually argue that being a skilled optimizer can enhance your skill as a roleplayer - because you open up more possibilities for characters you can play beyond just the usual fare.
Yes, that doesn't cover actually playing the character - but that goes both ways, just because someone can write an amazing backstory doesn't mean he is able to play that character well.

[RedMage125]

Darth, if you missed it, I suggest reading my last post (#151), especially regarding your obvious position in the minority. And then there's the part about how while you are not "playing it wrong", neither are people who play differently than you. Tat part you should read twice.



If you want to play a mythical 20th level character from scratch in D&D, I will not criticize, you made your case. But I don't see the point, unless I played him from Level 1. (Still my goal.)

Do you know what a strawman is, Darth? Until you brought this up, people here weren't talking about regularly starting characters at level 20. But rather, starting a character at level 5, or 9, or 11...whatever.

It's a common trend among those people who still play 3.5e to start characters at level 3, sometimes 2, because, as has been said, making it through level 1 is mostly about luck. Level 1 characters, excepting maybe Fighters, are often frail.

let me ask you something. Your group is level 9, yes? If I moved to your town, and met you guys, and after finding out that you played D&D, asked to join your gaming group and was admitted, would I be permitted to make a level 9 character? Or at least level 8 (I've seen some DMs that insist newcomers be one level below the rest)? Or would you guys make me start out at level 1? Because a level 1 character would be WORTHLESS in a group of level 9s. The rest of the group would have to protect him from all harm, and he would be able to do NOTHING to contribute. There's not even a way to accurately chart how much XP a level 1 character gets from a CR 9 or 10 encounter, because it's so far beyond their ken. And furthermore, if a character is so powerless that everyone else did the fighting, the 1st level person doesn't really deserve any.

Last time I played a 3.5e game, I joined the group when they were level 12. It was a Forgotten Realms game, and I revisited my last FR character, a True Neutral Sun Elf Wizard, whom I had played from level 1 to level 5 before the DM moved away. I made him at level 12 and he joined the group. He had even more personality growth and change during the course of the next 6 levels than he had an opportunity to have at the low levels.
Spoiler blocked for space, but here is that character and his growth:

Tessrel Moonshadow was raised in Evermeet, an exclusively Elven community. That, combined with his own heritage as a Sun Elf, led him to an extremely ethnocentric outlook. He flat-out believed that all other races were inferior to elves. And he was cold-at best-to the half-elf in the party. He began adventuring because he wanted to seek out greater magical secrets in the world.
Now, a note here. Tessrel was occasionally obnoxious, yes. But that was a flaw with room for growth built into him from the beginning. The plan was that after adventuring with a mixed-race group of adventurers, and seeing a non-elven-exclusive world, that he would gradually learn the value of what the other races had to offer. Led to some funny converstions in-character with the 1/2 elf monk, who had been orphaned and raised in an all-human monastery, and therfore knew nothing of his elven heritage.
Now, when I decided to bring him back at level 12, I decided that the "racist" overtone of the character would be better served as already being in the past. He was TN because his views on Good/Evil/Law/Chaos were purely academic. He was a scholar, and only his Art interested him. Eventually, we came to Myth Drannor, recently reclaimed by the elves, and Tessrel had discovered one of the lost rings that allowed entrance to Myth Drannor's academy of magic. He managed to convince Darcassian (the last headmaster of the school who had merged his consciousness with the school itself) that they were allies, and set about trying to restore the school's former glory. The Shadovar had defaced a shrine to Mystra in the school, and even though Tessrel's patron was the Elven Pantheon, he still had great reverence for Mystra. When I levelled, I took Fabricate, even though I was entitled to another 7th level spell, just so I could restore the shrine. More and more as that campaign progressed, Tessrel found himself devoting his energy selflessly to a greater cause - the good of the elven people and the reclaimed glory of Cormanthor. I even at one point informed my DM that I felt like I was gradually shifting into a Neutral Good alignment.
Tessrel became less the "scholarly mage who only cares about learning new magical secrets" and became more "wizard dedicated to a cause greater than himself". And all of that growth in play started at level 12.

Just because a character does not start as a level 1 does not mean he never grows or changes. Frankly, your assumption that such is the case offends me, personally, because I have experienced more positive change and growth with a character I jumped into a game with at level 12, than I have seen with some people who played from 1 to 18. Sure, they were good people when they started, and mighty heroes when they finished, but their personality never seemed to be affected by what they had experienced.

It's a pretty short-sighted and closed-minded thing to assume that anyone who doesn't play like you do must be doing something wrong. Or taking shortcuts somewhere. Or even to assume that they have "less" personality and character in their characters than you do. I hope that you can open your mind and learn to see that just because the preference of others is different, that it does not necessarily imply a value judgement between the two. That is, one does not have to be "better" or "worse" than the other, they can both just be Different.

[eggynack]

Or would you guys make me start out at level 1? Because a level 1 character would be WORTHLESS in a group of level 9s. The rest of the group would have to protect him from all harm, and he would be able to do NOTHING to contribute. There's not even a way to accurately chart how much XP a level 1 character gets from a CR 9 or 10 encounter, because it's so far beyond their ken. And furthermore, if a character is so powerless that everyone else did the fighting, the 1st level person doesn't really deserve any.
Yeah, I was in a game that ran things like that, on death, which was silly. The plan I would use, and would have used, if I had had more time, is a wizard. You run it as a conjurer with abrupt jaunt, because that's a form of defense that pretty much never goes dead, and you use the spells that remain good, even when facing enemies way out of your CR range. That means less spells that need failed saves to be good, and more stuff like enlarge person, identify, silent image, and obscuring mist. It's not a great situation, and you stand a good chance of being exploded into a fine mist, but it's probably the best chance out there of surviving into high levels, and contributing until you get there.

[RedMage125]

Yeah, I was in a game that ran things like that, on death, which was silly. The plan I would use, and would have used, if I had had more time, is a wizard. You run it as a conjurer with abrupt jaunt, because that's a form of defense that pretty much never goes dead, and you use the spells that remain good, even when facing enemies way out of your CR range. That means less spells that need failed saves to be good, and more stuff like enlarge person, identify, silent image, and obscuring mist. It's not a great situation, and you stand a good chance of being exploded into a fine mist, but it's probably the best chance out there of surviving into high levels, and contributing until you get there.

Problem is, a party of level 9 characters should be able to handle a CR11 foe, yes? How much XP does a level 1 character get for a CR11 foe? According to the DMG's experience point awarding system, there's no means of handing out XP for a challenge 8 levels or more above you. Something else must be going on, and it should be Ad-Hoc XP awarding (i.e. DM fiat).

[ryu]

Problem is, a party of level 9 characters should be able to handle a CR11 foe, yes? How much XP does a level 1 character get for a CR11 foe? According to the DMG's experience point awarding system, there's no means of handing out XP for a challenge 8 levels or more above you. Something else must be going on, and it should be Ad-Hoc XP awarding (i.e. DM fiat).

Could be deriving a value from observed formulaic pattern of change by level-gap?

[RedMage125]

Could be deriving a value from observed formulaic pattern of change by level-gap?

It's not about the numbers being "missing", ryu. The point is that a party of all level 1 characters could not handle a CR 11 encounter without some kind of DM Fiat. So the DM should make up the XP awards.



The table doesn’t support awards for encounters eight or more Challenge Ratings higher than the character’s level. If the party is taking on
challenges that far above their level, something strange is going on, and the DM needs to think carefully about the awards rather than just taking
them off a table. See Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards, page 39.

[NichG]

In oldschool style, you often have a 'stable' of characters spanning various levels, so if your Lv9 guy is off training you go and do a story about his Lv3 squire for a bit. That's actually a fairly reasonable way to bring in a new player and still have them start at Lv1. Also, levels made a bit less difference to survivability in older editions due to the scalings generally being shallower (fewer bonuses from stats, fewer quadratic components to scaling, AC pinned almost entirely to wealth rather than level, etc). Have the higher level characters toss a +2 sword and a full plate at a Lv1 fighter and he'd basically be interchangeable with a Lv3 fighter, and then fast-track him to advancement by having some of the Lv3-4 characters from the stable go adventuring with him.

[eggynack]

Problem is, a party of level 9 characters should be able to handle a CR11 foe, yes? How much XP does a level 1 character get for a CR11 foe? According to the DMG's experience point awarding system, there's no means of handing out XP for a challenge 8 levels or more above you. Something else must be going on, and it should be Ad-Hoc XP awarding (i.e. DM fiat).
Well, presumably something of some sort would happen, and I wouldn't just receive 1/0 XP. I was mostly considering the problem from the player side, under the assumption that the other side could work itself out without all that much difficulty. I mean, maybe some difficulty, sure, but not a quantity that's unmanageable.

[Necroticplague]

It's almost as if you're assuming that spellcasters don't want to help the fighters, out of their own self-interest. Or better yet, because they're all in the same party together. I can't recall the last time a spell-user in our party told the fighter or rogue, "Sorry, I prefer not to cast a spell for you, I have better things to do."

Yes, but their are different types of helping in context of this ghost encounter without equipment:

A:use magic missile to end it in one shot
B: use two spells buffing up the fighter (Fly and Magic Weapon on whatever stick he can pick up) so that he can have a possible (50% miss chance, assuming he hits its AC) shot at hitting it, assuming you don't only get off one of the two spells before being grappled by the ghost, thus rendering the fighter still unable to do anything useful (He can't fly, he can't reach, his weapon isn't magic, he can't hit).

As you can see, all but the most idiotic person would chose A, because it has a higher chance of success at lower cost. So the wizard gets to do something, while the fighter is sitting their, twiddling his thumbs. And this isn't a unique scenario without items to compensate. Its just easier to solve the dang problem than have somebody else do so. And even if the wizard is willing to buff up the fighter, that doesn't change the problem that the fighter is dependent on the wizard's buffs. Not really much of a badass if you have to go over to your nerdy friend for help over simple challenges, now, are you?

[Brookshw]

It's not about the numbers being "missing", ryu. The point is that a party of all level 1 characters could not handle a CR 11 encounter without some kind of DM Fiat. So the DM should make up the XP awards.

Actually I've played in those games (admittedly it was 20 years ago) and with a skilled DM it really wasn't a problem.

Nod to NichG for some excellent points regarding the matter of expectations to which I agree.

As to Firefly, while the characters do have backstories in depth and such they are pretty much scrambling to get started rather than a well funded and supplied group such as Star Trek which I assume was what Darth was getting at. Really you could model Firefly as starting at level one (though apparently they didn't, can't say I'm surprised). For some it may challenge their Verisimilitude if they were level one, but that's a far cry from being the only possible reaction.

Always strange to contrast TV or V.Games to PnP for a certain value in that TV doesn't have a mechanics tied to it and V.Games tend to be restrictive narratives. Not to mention the whole marketability element.

[eggynack]

Really you could model Firefly as starting at level one (though apparently they didn't, can't say I'm surprised). For some it may challenge their Verisimilitude if they were level one, but that's a far cry from being the only possible reaction.
I'm pretty doubtful that they would be. They pull off shooting stuff with a pretty high level of consistency, which would seem to fit in with a higher level than one. At least three or four, I'd figure, and I'd estimate the same for the non-shooting cast members, who tend to be around the upper echelons in their given fields. It helps that they've all been doing this for years.

You point out above this quote that the point is for the party to be rag-tag, but in a sense, that is my point as well. You can be a party of level one characters, struggling to get a foothold against foes far more put together and competent than you are, or you can do the same at level five, except with somewhat more competent party members, and an even more ominous opposing force. The basic premise here, that you need to start at level one to pull off this sort of plot, is an obviously flawed one. Highly skilled fictional characters get in over their heads with only their wits to save them all the time.

[Firechanter]

Personally I prefer starting games at level 4-ish. At that point, the character is already reasonably competent and resilient to not be one-shotted by a lucky mook. While at the same time still being a blank enough slate to allow plenty of character development, and not having already experienced dozens of adventures before the game even started.

Granted, in our AD&D2 group we've also started playing at level 1, but just because it's part of the oldschool experience. Then again, rolling up a new AD&D character takes like 60 seconds. Laying out a build for a 3.5 char can take days, so you don't want to have that work go to waste.

This way or other, regardless of system of starting level, I never write up big backstories for my chars. I just start playing and see where it goes. Then occasionally I still can fill in the blanks.

[Brookshw]

I'm pretty doubtful that they would be. They pull off shooting stuff with a pretty high level of consistency, which would seem to fit in with a higher level than one. At least three or four, I'd figure, and I'd estimate the same for the non-shooting cast members, who tend to be around the upper echelons in their given fields. It helps that they've all been doing this for years.

You point out above this quote that the point is for the party to be rag-tag, but in a sense, that is my point as well. You can be a party of level one characters, struggling to get a foothold against foes far more put together and competent than you are, or you can do the same at level five, except with somewhat more competent party members, and an even more ominous opposing force. The basic premise here, that you need to start at level one to pull off this sort of plot, is an obviously flawed one. Highly skilled fictional characters get in over their heads with only their wits to save them all the time.

Phone's dying so I'll be brief. As to the firefly bit that can just as easily be expressed by high rolls on their part and low rolls by their opposition. It not impossible for those to likewise have played out (for earlier episodes) starting at first level. There are also marketing reasons my battery won't let me go into that give it a reason for being such (ironic considering firefly's fate).

Of course with wbl taken into account how they have the ship.....

As to the second, sounds like you're saying challenges can be built for various levels and in accordance with different expectations. Well no arguments here.

[Flickerdart]

In oldschool style, you often have a 'stable' of characters spanning various levels, so if your Lv9 guy is off training you go and do a story about his Lv3 squire for a bit. That's actually a fairly reasonable way to bring in a new player and still have them start at Lv1.
I don't really see how you're supposed to become invested in a character that is just a lackey for one of the other characters, standing in the sidelines powerless against the opposition whenever anything of consequence (read: an encounter) happens.


As to the firefly bit that can just as easily be expressed by high rolls on their part and low rolls by their opposition.
Years of live combat experience can't be expressed by a high roll.

[Brookshw]

Years of live combat experience can't be expressed by a high roll. unless you're trying to tell me I should ban a character in a campaign starting at level one who, by way of example, has either years of training and live exercise in some military academy or survived the campaign against the dirty goblin hordes as part of their backstory then I think you rather can. I've certainly seen both those examples in games but never heard a player complain that we were starting at level 1.

You'll also find plenty of examples in various rpgs of great swordsman and knights who are amazingly low level.

Mal's level 12 by the book right? Should be able to take what, let's say 10 shots, and keep on trucking? Been a while since I've seen the show but can't recall any such moments....

[LordBlades]

unless you're trying to tell me I should ban a character in a campaign starting at level one who, by way of example, has either years of training and live exercise in some military academy or survived the campaign against the dirty goblin hordes as part of their backstory then I think you rather can. I've certainly seen both those examples in games but never heard a player complain that we were starting at level 1.

You'll also find plenty of examples in various rpgs of great swordsman and knights who are amazingly low level.


Both approaces are fine IMO. When they start breaking down:
-when there's both a veteran and a rookie in the same party and they're equally competent.
-when the veteran doesn't feel any more competent than mook NPCs.

[Darth Paul]

Your group is level 9, yes? If I moved to your town, and met you guys, and after finding out that you played D&D, asked to join your gaming group and was admitted, would I be permitted to make a level 9 character?


Funny story about the very first time I met my current group, mid-1983; their characters were 7-8 level (1st edition) and I had a 1st-level cleric. They kept me safe in the back of the party for the first few levels, I did some healing, fought mooks, did a lot of roleplaying, and gained just short of 2 levels per adventure because the xp they were gaining was HUGE compared to my level. So very very shortly, I was a 7th-level cleric (Paul deGood), most of the party was 9th level by then, and we were travelling to a dungeon on the Negative Material Plane to confront the Devil Himself (yeah, it was a Christian pantheon, but Asmodeus was there too).

Nowadays, one of us would start a new plot thread in one of the areas we DM (in our shared world) and everybody would roll new characters, including you. Then, as that group approached level 8/9/10, other characters from other areas of the world could find reasons to journey to that area, if someone wanted to play a Wizard instead of a Rogue, or if a character died and needed a replacement. At 35-40 game sessions per year, we advance levels pretty regularly around here and it's not hard to get to 9th level in 6 months if the same DM runs the game each weekend. My latest Paladin, Heinrich, started in October (?), I have only been able to play about 7-8 times due to work and health issues (I get migraines and work most weekends; the weekend thing is going to change soon) but he is most of the way through 4th level and almost ready to summon a warhorse. Some of the characters with him are 5th level now and I think there is a 6th level Rogue in the group, but we make it work.

Replacement characters once one has died, in a higher level campaign, we usually handle by getting one out of our established stable.

I assume you also have a stable of established characters that you have played from 1st level, so that would be the other option for you joining our group. We would trust you that you had played this character and earned your magic items the old-fashioned way. :smallsmile:

I really don't want to disparage how anyone else generates characters, but TO ME (and to our group) it just feels like cheating to make a character at a level you didn't gain by playing. I know it's not, if you mutually agreed in your group that you can do that; but if I came to your group and you told me "We are starting this campaign at 10th level, make a character," I would have a totally bemused look on my face and feel utterly lost the whole time. I don't know how to start a character at 10th level. I just... don't.

I am not optimized for that play style. I am too old school.

[Forrestfire]

Huh. I personally do not have a stable of characters hanging around, and would consider it wrong to use old characters if I did. Not only are they mostly from different games with different house rules and custom things, but they also have detailed backstories tailored to the campaign they hail from. Almost none of these characters were played from 1st level, because the general consensus among all of my groups is that we'd rather start at a less luck-based level. The idea of just using a character of X level from another campaign is utterly alien to me. :smallconfused:

Is the knowledge that someone may have played said character from level one worth the hassle of completely rewriting their backstory, to the point of having what is essentially a new character with the same mechanics and items? At that point, why not just roll up a new character and be able to do something new instead of just rehashing an old character?

[Arkhaic]

I think it's the way they do backstory and character development. They don't unless you actually played through that adventure in a group.


Edit: Or they do so in ways that diverge from their character's actual competence. It's like a video game that starts you off at level 1 and tells you that you're captain of the guard. But you have to grind on snails like everyone else.

[Darth Paul]

Point is this play style isn't the norm for most but that means nothing in the world of D&D. I realize that. Why don't you?

I suppose... because I had never before in my life visited any kind of D&D or gaming forum, and I had no idea there were this many of you out there. I come from the days of yore when we were a tiny despised minority of geeks and I had no clue that there were so many variations to this game. Just the number of books alone is enough to frighten me out of my wits. And maybe I miss the days when there were 3 books, some dice, and some lead minis, and all the rest was in our heads. My group and our style is the only one I have ever known, in my tiny rural-ish (well, small city surrounded by farmland) community. So this is all new to me, all over again. I am baffled, like a Catholic dropped into a Shaker service.

And I hate and fear change. There, I admitted it.

[Darth Paul]

Huh. I personally do not have a stable of characters hanging around, and would consider it wrong to use old characters if I did. Not only are they mostly from different games with different house rules and custom things, but they also have detailed backstories tailored to the campaign they hail from. Almost none of these characters were played from 1st level, because the general consensus among all of my groups is that we'd rather start at a less luck-based level. The idea of just using a character of X level from another campaign is utterly alien to me. :smallconfused:

Is the knowledge that someone may have played said character from level one worth the hassle of completely rewriting their backstory, to the point of having what is essentially a new character with the same mechanics and items? At that point, why not just roll up a new character and be able to do something new instead of just rehashing an old character?

No need to re-write the backstory, there are enough interdimensional gates and things in D&D to account for your stranger finding themselves in a strange land... which we have done before as the in-game mechanic for getting an old character out of retirement. Even a dispensation from a deity, to get a hero where they need to be. (Although that's more epic than we usually get.)

[Forrestfire]

... In which case most of these characters would, if played as themselves, have their own personal plotline of trying to get back, as they all have their own lives, friends, family, and goals. Without rewriting backstories, their only reasons for being with the party are likely to be out of character ones and possibly a temporary alliance. Heck, many of the retired characters from old campaigns I still have saved would be able to return by themselves through spells. Even if they don't, they'd warp the plot around them or break character, neither of which is a particularly desirable result.

Well, I guess a few characters could have gone there on their own initiative through an interdimensional gate or something.

The other major issue is that many characters are different power levels because of different campaign expectations. I think if, hypothetically, I were to bring any of my characters to your group, I'd need to completely rewrite them or just play them much weaker than normal (like the mage character I talked about, with an AC averaging in the mid-high 30s when buffed up).

[Arkhaic]

Also, someone from another group would be more likely to use the rules outlined in the book. Stuff like Wealth By Level and similar rules that your group seems not to use. If everyone but one person has way less money than they should, even if that person happens to be something really stupid like a 12-int wizard focused around fighting with a whip they still might break your game if they have and use UMD or something.


Edit: Or, say, a psionic character coming into a campaign that uses the Transparency rules wrong. If you screw that up, a psionic player in an arcane world is basically on god-mode.