Good examples of 5e Play

[No brains]

Are there any good recorded sessions of 5e out there? I'd like to see if the optimisation strats I see here work out in practise. PBP or vlogs would be nice, anything that lets me see the turns.

I've been playing a character that shouldn't work according to most of the op theories I've seen and I want to know if I'm an outlier or if I could be doing things even better.

[Sir cryosin]

Are you just looking for videos of people playing or character creation videos?

[No brains]

Are you just looking for videos of people playing or character creation videos?

I'm looking for people playing. I want to see how much optimization matters in real play. I need to see people playing to verify this.

Both high and low optimization games would be useful to me.

[EvilAnagram]

I'm looking for people playing. I want to see how much optimization matters in real play. I need to see people playing to verify this.

Both high and low optimization games would be useful to me.
I honestly can't think of any actual play that would work terribly well for these purposes. Usually there are too many house rules and homebrew (Critical Role), too little adherence to the rules (Adventure Zone), or too much drinking (Crit Juice). You'll just have to test this out for yourself.

I can tell you from firsthand experience that a Beastmaster Ranger can play through ten levels next to a Sorcadin and a Wizard without feeling underpowered in the slightest, and that's on the extreme ends of power disparities.

[CaptainSarathai]

I'm looking for people playing. I want to see how much optimization matters in real play. I need to see people playing to verify this.

Both high and low optimization games would be useful to me.

You wouldn't see it even if there were. Optimization in 5e is borne-out over time. It's not really that you're going to see some super-huge damage number compared to everyone else, all the time. You'll see it maybe once every few sessions. What you won't see is the optimized character landing 5% more of their attacks, or passing more saves, or being more successful on skills. You won't notice the "skill monkey" making rolls on every skill, because he's overshadowed by players who only have 1 good skill check.
Even in combat - you either build for DPR and get overshadowed most turns by whoever decides to blow their per-day-load on the badguy, or you go for the biggest daily shot and spend the rest of your time basking in the afterglow of a massive mushroom-cloud of a Nova.

Optimization doesn't really swing that much in D&D. As long as you play your class intelligently, you won't feel a disparity until you hit ~15th level, at which point yes, some characters feel a bit laggy. Most games however END around 15. So there's that.

You also have to consider that while you might see the SorcAdin doing really cool stuff mixing spells and smite hits, you probably didn't see him getting his butt handed to him for the first 6-8 levels. Multiclass characters are usually most effective over a window of levels, and are gimped before and only average or actually slightly worse after.

It's also DM dependent. If you build a crazy Agathys Barbarian with PAM and GWM, and then your DM has your party handling diplomatic missions or going "Oceans Eleven" all the time, you're going to have the most amazing combat skills to never see the light of day. And that's the other issue with optimizing: you can't be the best at everything, no matter what the Bard tries to tell you.
It can even come down to the types of enemy you face in combat. I once built a Rogue/Ranger who was engineered to scythe down hordes of enemies like someone unleashing a BAR at Agincourt. Unfortunately, the DM favored throwing f-huge Dragons at us, and I rarely got off more than one piddling shot because there were no additional targets to hit.

Lastly, optimizing can ruin a campaign. The DM is faced with a few options to deal with you. Either he increases the difficultly in order to keep you from single-handedly wiping his game, or he starts responding directly to your character. Have a wizard that deals tons of Fire Damage? Hello Flame Elemental, he's resistant. Some DMs will even use this opportunity to kill you so that you can both have a talk about not overshadowing the party. That, or they flat out laugh in your face and direct the campaign away from whatever you're good at. Like fighting? Great, now it's a roleplay-heavy game.
Other times the DM just lets you roll them. It gets boring for you, for them, for the other players, everyone quits and it's all your fault.
Rarely, a DM will do what I do: cheat you of your effect:
Jen's unoptimized Barbarian hits for 7 damage. Good for her.
You hit for 17 damage, with the same attack plus a ton of optimal stuff besides. Good for you, you did 17 damage. I only record 10 though, and the monster doesn't really die any faster. All DMs have the reign to do this, they call it "adding Hit Points to balance an encounter." I call it what it is: nerfing the god-mn powergamer.

And to end my post: you sound new. I didn't mean to sound unfriendly at all, and still don't. I am curious though, what you think you've found that is so optimal. New players have a tendency to fixate on something and not realize that there are other classes and methods for arriving at the same damage or even more. If you don't have an idea of how much damage say, a SorLock can do each turn, then yeah, PAM+GWM on a Barbarian is going to look like just the best thing ever. It's even worse if you're not entirely sure of a rule interaction, like the fact that you can't use Sentinel+Warcaster to throw Booming Blade, and can't even throw Booming Blade at 10ft without Spell Sniper.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I honestly can't think of any actual play that would work terribly well for these purposes. Usually there are too many house rules and homebrew (Critical Role), too little adherence to the rules (Adventure Zone), or too much drinking (Crit Juice). You'll just have to test this out for yourself.

Yeah. I think all the ones I've seen have similar problems. Acquisitions Incorporated (https://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/show/acquisitions-incorporated-the-series), The Escapist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf4beESGByA) (unfortunately no longer recording) and Heroes of Awesome (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu1wY6Jm5pU&list=PLtk51oTcFVK9U1QfOj18dAWu80QXEN9sG&index=1) (they start with 4e but switch to 5e in episode 14) all play fast & loose with the rules to some extent.

Well, they might be worth a look anyway.

[No brains]

@ CaptainSarathai

It's not that I think I've found something optimal, it's the opposite. I'm playing something that's regarded as being kinda crappy and doing reasonably well with it. I made my character before I actually had my own PHB and while they're barely above a randomly generated character, they've done pretty well. If I do this well with a 'low-op' character, I want to see if it would be worth it to go 'MLG' with building a character.

Also if I can do well with a character that is apparently just of non-obvious quality, maybe I can still have fun if I make a character that is total crap. Maybe I can make a gnome barbarian or a kenku cleric fun. I just want to see some examples of either diamonds shining or even turds showing their polish. I'm just curious if optimization is all that it's cracked up to be.

[Sir cryosin]

@ CaptainSarathai

It's not that I think I've found something optimal, it's the opposite. I'm playing something that's regarded as being kinda crappy and doing reasonably well with it. I made my character before I actually had my own PHB and while they're barely above a randomly generated character, they've done pretty well. If I do this well with a 'low-op' character, I want to see if it would be worth it to go 'MLG' with building a character.

Also if I can do well with a character that is apparently just of non-obvious quality, maybe I can still have fun if I make a character that is total crap. Maybe I can make a gnome barbarian or a kenku cleric fun. I just want to see some examples of either diamonds shining or even turds showing their polish. I'm just curious if optimization is all that it's cracked up to be.

Your not going to find it in podcast's or videos because there isn't a lot of optimization in them. Because they are built for entertainment purposes.

What character are you talking about give us the run down on your character plz.

For the most part if you build to your class stats then your find a 16 at level 1 a 18 at level 4 your on a good path.

In my group we have a player that plays what she wants and we always advice her on things that can help her builds but we don't over optimize her pc. Then there is a player that always builds to were he can't be hit damage is not his main concern. He just don't want to take any damage. Then we have me I love playing the bad asset hero type. I want damage and ton of it. If I'm not playing healer support type. We have not had any problems.

[Chugger]

The good people at Yogscast do High Rollers on You Tube, iirc, and while some of the players are a bit odd and doing extreme roll-playing (ahem, Cam, ahem), Mark is a pretty good DM and seems to do the rules quite well. You could pick up how to do DMing from him, and his descriptions of what players see - I like how he does that. He's very colorful - it's pretty good. And Cam the trickster cleric is actually pretty amazing - he pushes it to the edge w/out managing to tpk everyone (he's entertaining, though sometimes it looks like the 2 girls who play are going to kill him - they're the more sensible ones in the party). Give it a look. It's free.

[Armored Walrus]

[B]Maybe I can make a gnome barbarian or a kenku cleric fun.

IME optimal decisions in play trump optimal character building every time. Every. Single. Time.

So if you're good at the "game" portion of "roleplaying game", then it hardly matters what character you pick up. I see no reason you couldn't make a gnome barb or a kenku cleric fun, unless you're the type that would never be able to make a roll without thinking "If I had gone goliath that would have hit."

Some might point to Liam's character, Vax, as an example of an OP character (in Critical Role) in the last dozen episodes or so, but I don't think that's the case. He certainly does overshadow folks in combat, but part of that is simply how he talks through every single step of his turn, whereas Travis (Grog) just rolls his dice and does his damage. I suspect if you sat and added it all up over a number of episodes, you'd find them doing pretty close to the same damage per round. On the other end of the spectrum, if you want an example of how a good character can be rendered completely ineffectual, just watch Marisha (Key'lith) in nearly any episode.

[Ravinsild]

IME optimal decisions in play trump optimal character building every time. Every. Single. Time.

So if you're good at the "game" portion of "roleplaying game", then it hardly matters what character you pick up. I see no reason you couldn't make a gnome barb or a kenku cleric fun, unless you're the type that would never be able to make a roll without thinking "If I had gone goliath that would have hit."

Some might point to Liam's character, Vax, as an example of an OP character (in Critical Role) in the last dozen episodes or so, but I don't think that's the case. He certainly does overshadow folks in combat, but part of that is simply how he talks through every single step of his turn, whereas Travis (Grog) just rolls his dice and does his damage. I suspect if you sat and added it all up over a number of episodes, you'd find them doing pretty close to the same damage per round. On the other end of the spectrum, if you want an example of how a good character can be rendered completely ineffectual, just watch Marisha (Key'lith) in nearly any episode.

Or that Beast Master Ranger who literally never uses, and can't use, her bear because it doesn't scale and will die and if she uses it (it will never do anything because it's like level 1 and they're high level) it would waste her turn. So she's basically a Hunter with a bear, and still kind of bad at it anyway.

[Fflewddur Fflam]

Are there any good recorded sessions of 5e out there? I'd like to see if the optimisation strats I see here work out in practise. PBP or vlogs would be nice, anything that lets me see the turns.

I've been playing a character that shouldn't work according to most of the op theories I've seen and I want to know if I'm an outlier or if I could be doing things even better.

5e is constructed to be so ridiculously easy on PC's that even if you tried to make the crappiest character in the world, you'd still do pretty well with it.

5e is not 3e or 3.5e where you had to figure out every little nuance in character advancement to stay ahead. You're always going to be "ahead" in 5e, it's pretty damn easy.

[scalyfreak]

It's not that I think I've found something optimal, it's the opposite. I'm playing something that's regarded as being kinda crappy and doing reasonably well with it. I made my character before I actually had my own PHB and while they're barely above a randomly generated character, they've done pretty well.

I'm going to echo Sir cryosin and ask you to please post details on the character you're playing, mainly because I'm curious.

The most important consideration is that you have fun playing your character, and you don't have to be optimized to do that. It helps, sure, but isn't a requirement.