Why hate optimization?

[SangoProduction]

There is that "what is optimization?" thread. I found it rather annoying because basically one side was saying: "Optimization means this," and the other was "Optimization means that, and you're wrong." Very frustrating argument. Like. Clearly you guys aren't going to even agree on the basis of your arguments, so drop it. Or work to agree on some basis so there's actually a constructive argument. But I digress. [Maybe they have; I haven't read but like half a page.]

It came up that a set of people find optimization absolutely detestable. And mostly what they seem to refer to is T1 or TO optimization (batman and pun pun). And i'm sitting here like... "different strokes for different folks." If you don't like it, don't play it, is generally how most games operate (video and otherwise). Like what is actually the point in hating it?

I saw one say something along the lines of "optimization makes players feel worthless if they aren't T1." And, I could see where they are coming from. I initially had that same sort of feeling, when I learned about Batman wizards, or just how bad monks are compared to even fighter-pretending-to-be-a-monk. But you know? You grow out of it.

Sure, you'll probably not want to play a straight up monk (class - saying nothing of fluff), or take Toughness but...probably for the best, as those were actually limiting your options by picking them anyway.

There's potentially the idea that some guy is going to hog the spotlight by doing literally everything. ...But that's more of a player problem than an optimization one. We all knew a spotlight whore before. Most of the time, they didn't optimize either. They just forced themselves everywhere. I am always optimistic, and doubt most of them had ill intentions, and merely wanted to participate.

[Please. Keep this civil.]

EDIT FOR CLARITY'S SAKE

...OK. Let me lay the foundation for what I mean about optimization, because I am talking about it, so Psyren has a point.

Optimization, in the context of what I am talking about is "how well does you character do their job(s)". I found this definition agreeable, and fits with most usage I've seen.

Optimization is not inherently active, merely a measure. Thus, some classes have very low optimization floors, like monk, while others like Swordsage have high ones - where "optimization floor" is the measure to which they are effective, just using their base kits.

T1 and TO optimization is a subset of optimization, which refers to those who are exceedingly effective at their jobs, and whose jobs are many, or involve many different roles. (As opposed to those who are just supremely optimized for one thing, which probably is more disruptive, as those tend to be binary in either they annihilate their job or they are useless, because their job doesn't apply.)

To deoptimize is to intentionally make the character less effective than the basic kit would normally impart, because they actively work against the tools granted. Like a rogue with a weapon that can't sneak attack.

And "unoptimized" means either "the choices made were subpar for your job" or "little to no effort and/or thought was put in to making yourself effective."


For those who want a more in depth explanation of tiers, you can have Doomeye to thank for finding this again.

JaronK's tier list for 3.5

The following is a repost of something I made over on the WotC forums. I'm not exactly sure which forum to put it on, as it's intended for a variety of purposes. It's here mostly because I'd like to get some feedback from knowledgeable minds, but it's also a useful tool, much like a handbook, and available for use.

My general philosophy is that the only balance that really matters in D&D is the interclass balance between the various PCs in a group. If the group as a whole is very powerful and flexible, the DM can simply up the challenge level and complexity of the encounters. If it's weak and inflexible, the DM can lower the challenge level and complexity. Serious issues arise when the party is composed of some members which are extremely powerful and others which are extremely weak, leading to a situation where the DM has two choices: either make the game too easy for the strong members, or too hard for the weak members. Neither is desireable. Thus, this system is created for the following purposes:

1) To provide a ranking system so that DMs know roughly the power of the PCs in their group

2) To provide players with knowledge of where their group stands, power wise, so that they can better build characters that fit with their group.

3) To help DMs who plan to use house rules to balance games by showing them where the classes stand before applying said house rules (how many times have we seen DMs pumping up Sorcerers or weakening Monks?).

4) To help DMs judge what should be allowed and what shouldn't in their games. It may sound cheesy when the Fighter player wants to be a Half Minotaur Water Orc, but if the rest of his party is Druid, Cloistered Cleric, Archivist, and Artificer, then maybe you should allow that to balance things out. However, if the player is asking to be allowed to be a Venerable White Dragonspawn Dragonwrought Kobold Sorcerer and the rest of the party is a Monk, a Fighter, and a Rogue, maybe you shouldn't let that fly.

5) To help homebrewers judge the power and balance of their new classes. Pick a Tier you think your class should be in, and when you've made your class compare it to the rest of the Tier. Generally, I like Tier 3 as a balance point, but I know many people prefer Tier 4. If it's stronger than Tier 1, you definitely blew it.

Psionic classes are mostly absent simply because I don't have enough experience with them. Other absent classes are generally missing because I don't know them well enough to comment, though if I've heard a lot about them they're listed in itallics. Note that "useless" here means "the class isn't particularly useful for dealing with situation X" not "it's totally impossible with enough splat books to make a build that involves that class deal with situation X." "Capable of doing one thing" means that any given build does one thing, not that the class itself is incapable of being built in different ways. Also, "encounters" here refers to appropriate encounters... obviously, anyone can solve an encounter with purely mechanical abilities if they're level 20 and it's CR 1.

Also note that with enough optimization, it's generally possible to go up a tier, and if played poorly you can easily drop a few tiers, but this is a general averaging, assuming that everyone in the party is playing with roughly the same skill and optimization level. As a rule, parties function best when everyone in the party is within 2 Tiers of each other (so a party that's all Tier 2-4 is generally fine, and so is a party that's all Tier 3-5, but a party that has Tier 1 and Tier 5s in it may have issues).

The Tier System

Tier 1: Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing. Often capable of solving encounters with a single mechanical ability and little thought from the player. Has world changing powers at high levels. These guys, if played well, can break a campaign and can be very hard to challenge without extreme DM fiat, especially if Tier 3s and below are in the party.

Examples: Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Archivist, Artificer, Erudite

Tier 2: Has as much raw power as the Tier 1 classes, but can't pull off nearly as many tricks, and while the class itself is capable of anything, no one build can actually do nearly as much as the Tier 1 classes. Still potencially campaign smashers by using the right abilities, but at the same time are more predictable and can't always have the right tool for the job. If the Tier 1 classes are countries with 10,000 nuclear weapons in their arsenal, these guys are countries with 10 nukes. Still dangerous and world shattering, but not in quite so many ways. Note that the Tier 2 classes are often less flexible than Tier 3 classes... it's just that their incredible potential power overwhelms their lack in flexibility.

Examples: Sorcerer, Favored Soul, Psion, Binder (with access to online vestiges)

Tier 3: Capable of doing one thing quite well, while still being useful when that one thing is inappropriate, or capable of doing all things, but not as well as classes that specialize in that area. Occasionally has a mechanical ability that can solve an encounter, but this is relatively rare and easy to deal with. Challenging such a character takes some thought from the DM, but isn't too difficult. Will outshine any Tier 5s in the party much of the time.

Examples: Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Crusader, Bard, Swordsage, Binder (without access to the summon monster vestige), Wildshape Varient Ranger, Duskblade, Factotum, Warblade, Psionic Warrior

Tier 4: Capable of doing one thing quite well, but often useless when encounters require other areas of expertise, or capable of doing many things to a reasonable degree of competance without truly shining. Rarely has any abilities that can outright handle an encounter unless that encounter plays directly to the class's main strength. DMs may sometimes need to work to make sure Tier 4s can contribue to an encounter, as their abilities may sometimes leave them useless. Won't outshine anyone except Tier 6s except in specific circumstances that play to their strengths. Cannot compete effectively with Tier 1s that are played well.

Examples: Rogue, Barbarian, Warlock, Warmage, Scout, Ranger, Hexblade, Adept, Spellthief, Marshal, Fighter (Dungeoncrasher Variant)

Tier 5: 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. In some cases, can do one thing very well, but that one thing is very often not needed. Has trouble shining in any encounter unless the rest of the party is weak in that situation and the encounter matches their strengths. DMs may have to work to avoid the player feeling that their character is worthless unless the entire party is Tier 4 and below. Characters in this tier will often feel like one trick ponies if they do well, or just feel like they have no tricks at all if they build the class poorly.

Examples: Fighter, Monk, CA Ninja, Healer, Swashbuckler, Rokugan Ninja, Soulknife, Expert, OA Samurai, Paladin, Knight

Tier 6: Not even capable of shining in their own area of expertise. DMs will need to work hard to make encounters that this sort of character can contribute in with their mechanical abilities. Will often feel worthless unless the character is seriously powergamed beyond belief, and even then won't be terribly impressive. Needs to fight enemies of lower than normal CR. Class is often completely unsynergized or with almost no abilities of merit. Avoid allowing PCs to play these characters.

Examples: CW Samurai, Aristocrat, Warrior, Commoner

And then there's the Truenamer, which is just broken (as in, the class was improperly made and doesn't function appropriately).

Now, obviously these rankings only apply when mechanical abilities are being used... in a more social oriented game where talking is the main way of solving things (without using diplomacy checks), any character can shine. However, when the mechanical abilities of the classes in question are being used, it's a bad idea to have parties with more than two tiers of difference.

It is interesting to note the disparity between the core classes... one of the reasons core has so many problems. If two players want to play a nature oriented shapeshifter and a general sword weilder, you're stuck with two very different tiered guys in the party (Fighter and Druid). Outside of core, it's possible to do it while staying on close Tiers... Wild Shape Variant Ranger and Warblade, for example.

Note that a few classes are right on the border line between tiers. Duskblade is very low in Tier 3, and Hexblade is low in Tier 4. Fighter is high in Tier 5, and CW Samurai is high in Tier 6 (obviously, since it's pretty much strictly better than the same tier Warrior).

JaronK

[Madara]

What I've seen around the forum seems to suggest a lot of personal bad experiences with an "Optimizer" at the table (often those who dislike optimizing call them Munchkins).

I wonder if there's a parallel to a young kid playing a trading-card-game against someone who has bought all the best cards and just stomps them? I could see this being a good way to view the experience of being at a table with someone who uses their system mastery. I have a player who's afraid to run anything with me as a player just because I know the system so well.

Part of the matter could just come down to personality and worldview, with some people being black-and-white in their perspective. For them, optimization is the same whether it be Tippy-verse or using a sword when you have a sword-related ability.

[quark12000]

Perhaps someone could define some terms for those of us who are clueless? T1, T0 (I assume the T is tier, but what exactly is that?), batman, pun pun, fluff?

[Psyren]

There is that "what is optimization?" thread. I found it rather annoying because basically one side was saying: "Optimization means this," and the other was "Optimization means that, and you're wrong." Very frustrating argument. Like. Clearly you guys aren't going to even agree on the basis of your arguments, so drop it. Or work to agree on some basis so there's actually a constructive argument. But I digress. [Maybe they have; I haven't read but like half a page.]

To be blunt, you're making the same mistake they are. You apparently have a specific definition in your mind for "optimization" that you don't find objectionable, and just as apparently there are going to be people with a different definition of that word that they do take issue with. Clearly you aren't going to even agree on the basis of your arguments, so better to drop it. Unless of course, you're lucky enough to only have people reply whose definition lines up with yours (which actually includes myself) - but then the thread does nothing to solve the overall communication problem that's annoying you.

[Nifft]

New Player: "Hey guys this is my character, she's tough so she took Toughness."

Player B: "Pssh, sorry kid nothing personal but that's a bad decision. I know this because of a web page that I read about optimization and I can't explain it in a useful way, but just trust me you're making dumb decisions and I'm very smart because I use optimization."

New Player: "That's pretty condescending. You're using this optimization thing to make me feel bad. Therefore I associate optimization with feeling bad and I want to destroy it."

[SangoProduction]

Perhaps someone could define some terms for those of us who are clueless? T1, T0 (I assume the T is tier, but what exactly is that?), batman, pun pun, fluff?

Sorry. Tier 1 and I saw theoretical optimization shortened to TO before. Batman is a wizard, who tries to have basically every tool. Pun pun is a specific TO build. Fluff is basically the character, as opposed to the stats. The role play rather than the numbers.

[ayvango]

When you start to play street football too hard, you could end as a professional player. What was fun become tedious labour betraying the original concept of game as something fun to spend your time on.

[SangoProduction]

To be blunt, you're making the same mistake they are. You apparently have a specific definition in your mind for "optimization" that you don't find objectionable, and just as apparently there are going to be people with a different definition of that word that they do take issue with. Clearly you aren't going to even agree on the basis of your arguments, so better to drop it. Unless of course, you're lucky enough to only have people reply whose definition lines up with yours (which actually includes myself) - but then the thread does nothing to solve the overall communication problem that's annoying you.

This thread is actually tangent to that one, and makes no claims as to what is or is not optimization. I apologize if I misrepresented the intent with the opening paragraph.

[quark12000]

Sorry. Tier 1 and I saw theoretical optimization shortened to TO before. Batman is a wizard, who tries to have basically every tool. Pun pun is a specific TO build. Fluff is basically the character, as opposed to the stats. The role play rather than the numbers.

But what is Tier 1? What are the different tiers? (by the way, I looked up 'pun pun' on Google. Some people have way too much time on their hands!)

And what you call 'fluff' is my favorite part of playing!

[Crake]

To use your analogy of different strokes for different folks, referring to video games, some people absolutely loathe certain kinds of video games and will make that abundantly clear to everyone they meet at every opportunity, so it's the same kinda thing. People are allowed to hate something. They are even allowed to express that opinion. Other people can then read their arguments and decide for themselves if they thing that the arguments are biased, personal hatred, or valid arguments that they agree with.

[Recherché]

Perhaps someone could define some terms for those of us who are clueless? T1, T0 (I assume the T is tier, but what exactly is that?), batman, pun pun, fluff?

Tiers are a rough estimate of how powerful a given class usually is.They go from Tier 1(very very strong potentially) to Tier 6 (tends to be quite weak.) Tier 0 is a hypothetical tier for all powerful characters. In practice it doesn't really exist in normal games. Note that tier is about generalities and potential. Just because the Wizard class tends to be more powerful than Rogue does not mean that an individual Wizard will always lose to an individual Rogue. Player skill matters a great deal as well.

Batman/Batman Wizard refers to a style of playing spellcasters that can be very powerful and effective but requires quite a lot of player skill. Batman wizards rely less on direct damage and a lot more on divination and having the correct tool for every situation available. Batman wizards are among the most powerful characters in D&D but they require a lot of work, planning and a helpful GM.

Punpun is an infamous character that takes advantage of some rules loopholes to obtain nigh infinite power and ascend to God hood. No one actually plays Punpun, he's just the benchmark of how absurdly powerful a character you can make if you know the rules inside and out.

Fluff versus crunch refers to the storytelling aspect of the game versus the numbers and rules of the game. Fluff is calling my character a "Winter witch" while crunch is the part where she's a wizard with a specialty in cold spells. Fluff and crunch don't always line up directly. Sometimes they interact in odd ways. To fluff or refluff something means to come up with a story explanation for a game mechanic. For example if I claim story wise that my Winter witch gained her powers by making deals with Baba Yaga, the witch queen, and the spirits of winter as a way to explain why she can cast spells then I'm fluffing the character that way.

[SangoProduction]

When you start to play street football too hard, you could end as a professional player. What was fun become tedious labour betraying the original concept of game as something fun to spend your time on.

That's a rather reasonable answer that I personally empathize greatly with. Though guides exist if you want to optimize without effort, and high optimization is rarely a prerequisite for most if any games. Even meat grinders generally want to kill you, so they don't actually want you to optimize. Or so I've heard. I've never had a hankering for playing one of them.



...OK. Let me lay the foundation for what I mean about optimization, because I am talking about it, so Psyren has a point.

Optimization, in the context of what I am talking about is "how well does you character do their job(s)". I found this definition agreeable, and fits with most usage I've seen.

Optimization is not inherently active, merely a measure. Thus, some classes have very low optimization floors, like monk, while others like Swordsage have high ones - where "optimization floor" is the measure to which they are effective, just using their base kits.

To deoptimize is to intentionally make the character less effective than the basic kit would normally impart, because they actively work against the tools granted. Like a rogue with a weapon that can't sneak attack.

And "unoptimized" means either "the choices made were subpar for your job" or "little to no effort and/or thought was put in to making yourself effective."

[Psyren]

This thread is actually tangent to that one, and makes no claims as to what is or is not optimization. I apologize if I misrepresented the intent with the opening paragraph.

You might not be defining what it is, per se, but you are actively defining what it is not. For instance, you say the guy who hogs the spotlight by being capable of literally everything is taking optimization to an unhealthy extreme. Again, I actually agree with you on this, but there are folks here who do consider that to be the norm for their games. There is simply no way these viewpoints can be reconciled.

[SangoProduction]

To use your analogy of different strokes for different folks, referring to video games, some people absolutely loathe certain kinds of video games and will make that abundantly clear to everyone they meet at every opportunity, so it's the same kinda thing. People are allowed to hate something. They are even allowed to express that opinion. Other people can then read their arguments and decide for themselves if they thing that the arguments are biased, personal hatred, or valid arguments that they agree with.

Which is why I want to know their reasons.

[Fizban]

What I believe the guy was trying to get across (or part of it anyway), and what annoys me, is how insufferably elitist and gatekeepery the char-op community can be, especially in places where its not called for. New thread, new player, immediate max char-op from a dozen directions. Every time I post about shields, weapon spec, the standard party, CR, or design intent (directly or indirectly related to whatever the topic at hand is), someone feels it absolutely imperative to directly contradict me because "blah blah char-op blah."

I've slugged it out with people for years, and it will never stop because there are enough people that I could fight a new guy every week and never run out of new challengers just raring to tell me how all the garbage I figured out was bogus years ago actually makes me wrong because reasons. I've formulated and refined my arguments down to the simplest in-arguable points, but even then I know the only thing that actually gets them to stop is grinding them down with continuous walls of text until they get bored.

And it's not like I don't understand. I had my char-op phase like everyone else. Even though I knew there was something missing in most of the "spellcaster supremacy" arguments it still took years, experience, and multiple clashes to dig up the bits that I'd always known people were ignoring. The difference is that some people move on, some can at least agree that their playstyle is not the only one, and others define so much of themselves by it that they refuse to see anything else. The irony of people swearing by RAW with no regard for why it was W, ranting about *my* bias when literally their entire problem is that they're imposing their viewpoint onto others, ignoring obvious calculations because it doesn't fit their mantra. It's pretty annoying.

I do not hate optimization (indeed, it is natural for all gamers to optimize, which is an incredibly broad term)- but I hate the destructive culture it wrought across 3.x, including some of the very books themselves, which holds a grip to this day.


It's not actually all that bad at the moment mind you. A couple new players around the last couple weeks, but with the holidays on things are slower and most of the responses have been reasonably moderate. I expect in a month when activity increases I'll probably have to pull back for a while lest I waste too much time arguing on the internet.

I don't think there's much of a viewpoint that optimization is bad- most people who don't like it just seem to run the game the way they want without trying to force it on others, when they even show up on a forum known for a significant char-op community. Unless there's a whole anti-optimization dominated forum, but that's not a community with much to hold it together. This is the first I've heard of someone making more of a stink than me- and my whole point is that char-op is a choice, not that you're wrong for choosing it.

[SangoProduction]

What I believe the guy was trying to get across (or part of it anyway), and what annoys me, is how insufferably elitist and gatekeepery the char-op community can be, especially in places where its not called for. New thread, new player, immediate max char-op from a dozen directions. Every time I post about shields, weapon spec, the standard party, CR, or design intent (directly or indirectly related to whatever the topic at hand is), someone feels it absolutely imperative to directly contradict me because "blah blah char-op blah."

I've slugged it out with people for years, and it will never stop because there are enough people that I could fight a new guy every week and never run out of new challengers just raring to tell me how all the garbage I figured out was bogus years ago actually makes me wrong because reasons. I've formulated and refined my arguments down to the simplest in-arguable points, but even then I know the only thing that actually gets them to stop is grinding them down with continuous walls of text until they get bored.

And it's not like I don't understand. I had my char-op phase like everyone else. Even though I knew there was something missing in most of the "spellcaster supremacy" arguments it still took years, experience, and multiple clashes to dig up the bits that I'd always known people were ignoring. The difference is that some people move on, some can at least agree that their playstyle is not the only one, and others define so much of themselves by it that they refuse to see anything else. The irony of people swearing by RAW with no regard for why it was W, ranting about *my* bias when literally their entire problem is that they're imposing their viewpoint onto others, ignoring obvious calculations because it doesn't fit their mantra. It's pretty annoying.

I do not hate optimization (indeed, it is natural for all gamers to optimize, which is an incredibly broad term)- but I hate the destructive culture it wrought across 3.x, including some of the very books themselves, which holds a grip to this day.


It's not actually all that bad at the moment mind you. A couple new players around the last couple weeks, but with the holidays on things are slower and most of the responses have been reasonably moderate. I expect in a month when activity increases I'll probably have to pull back for a while lest I waste too much time arguing on the internet.

I don't think there's much of a viewpoint that optimization is bad- most people who don't like it just seem to run the game the way they want without trying to force it on others, when they even show up on a forum known for a significant char-op community. Unless there's a whole anti-optimization dominated forum, but that's not a community with much to hold it together. This is the first I've heard of someone making more of a stink than me- and my whole point is that char-op is a choice, not that you're wrong for choosing it.

That's actually a very interesting answer, thank you. And I agree, I do see that happening. I can't think of a way to fix it, though. The easy fix is "I know about swordsage; I said I want monk." But new players don't know to specify that, let alone know about Tiers. And you can hardly blame people for giving the best advice (as they see it) they can, since no guidelines were given....

But then people ask for guidelines, and that seems to be just as destructive, based on a few recent threads.

About the gatekeeper thing, i'm not so sure about. Perhaps for people with very specific readings like with segmented armor and mithral, fit the bill, where they really like their interpretation. But I'm not sure what you actually mean.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Optimized characters are capable characters. Not every character is optimized to the same purpose, some characters want to deal damage, some characters want to support the rest of the party, some characters want to solve noncombat challenges, etc. There are plenty of characters who can fill two or more roles, but often a party should have characters who are versatile and it's not a bad thing if several characters can cover the same role as long as everyone gets their time to shine.

The issue comes when there are different levels of optimization in the party. Sometimes you and some guys from work start up a game and half the guys and both of their wives have never played before, so you make an intentionally one-sided character so everyone else has ample opportunities to contribute. This is better than trying to tell everyone else how to build/play their character, and it's much easier to accomplish keeping the party on an even level of optimization this way.


Optimizing characters just makes sense, if someone is bad at math they're not going to become an accountant, and if someone spends a career doing something they're going to get really good at it. Some people are lazy and selfish and never try to be any better at their job, and manage to convince their boss that this is the most they're capable of. Everyone else has to pick up their slack, and when the department (party) does well they get just as much credit (XP) as everyone else.

A party of characters goes into danger and risks their life on a daily basis, they want the people traveling with them to be the most capable companions they can find, because their lives depend on the ability of these people to be good at what they do. It makes perfect sense in-character to have a party of optimized character, it makes perfect sense in-character for a character with a much higher level of optimization to not want to travel with that party, and it makes perfect sense in-character to expect the characters traveling with you to be just as capable at their jobs (optimized) as you are.

[daremetoidareyo]

New Player: "Hey guys this is my character, she's tough so she took Toughness."

Player B: "Pssh, sorry kid nothing personal but that's a bad decision. I know this because of a web page that I read about optimization and I can't explain it in a useful way, but just trust me you're making dumb decisions and I'm very smart because I use optimization."

New Player: "That's pretty condescending. You're using this optimization thing to make me feel bad. Therefore I associate optimization with feeling bad and I want to destroy it."

I feel like this dynamic has happened quite a bit and that it should show up in the thread a second time because of how spot on it is.

Plus, this forum and forums like it have a culture that amplifies aspects of the game. Whirlpounce barbarian is a thing here. Throwing that jargon around a new person can lead to a sort of intimidation. Plus, folks are left wondering where the heck the values associated with their in real life games went.

You only have to read one thread about dragonwrought kobolds and you're like, "these guys are crazy!" They're using setting books from three different settings and they are reimagining the length weight age charts to support a reading of the rules that is really close to the text. Who plays like this? I've read about rules lawyers, but that was just rob trying to get a few more D6 onto his fireball. These guys have a list of "defined game terms."

[Madara]

That's actually a very interesting answer, thank you. And I agree, I do see that happening. I can't think of a way to fix it, though. The easy fix is "I know about swordsage; I said I want monk." But new players don't know to specify that, let alone know about Tiers. And you can hardly blame people for giving the best advice (as they see it) they can, since no guidelines were given....

But then people ask for guidelines, and that seems to be just as destructive, based on a few recent threads.

About the gatekeeper thing, i'm not so sure about. Perhaps for people with very specific readings like with segmented armor and mithral, fit the bill, where they really like their interpretation. But I'm not sure what you actually mean.

I mean, if you think about it, back in the old days there was a separate forum for optimization. I think that was a healthy state for the 3.X community to be in. On these boards, however, the main reason for posting on the 3.X board as opposed to general RP is that you're looking for mechanical answers. If you aren't concerned with the specifics of the d20 system, you may as well go to the broader board.

As the 3.X board ages and whithers, the content reflects its nature. For those who enjoy the character-building minigame, we're limited in what is left to discuss. Haven't all the tricks been found? Haven't all the builds been built? For that reason, optimizers are called to any sort of "character help" post.

I think instead of concerning ourselves with the unending communication failure, we should find healthy outlets for the optimizers. Many long-standing players don't originate posts. I don't think I see people asking for build help who have been playing 3.5 since the Wizard Board days. Maybe we should start doing that. Maybe optimizers should ask for build help not entirely because they need it but so they can give healthy example posts with proper guidelines.

Children learn language by being constantly exposed to it. New 3.5 players will learn how to speak our language by having plenty of healthy, meaningful posts to mimic in style and tone.

[Fizban]

The easy fix is "I know about swordsage; I said I want monk." But new players don't know to specify that, let alone know about Tiers. And you can hardly blame people for giving the best advice (as they see it) they can, since no guidelines were given....
No tier knowledge required, but not knowing they need to specify is a problem, and indeed when people simply ignore those specifications.

But then people ask for guidelines, and that seems to be just as destructive, based on a few recent threads.
Guidelines like tiers? The problem there is that it's still locked to a specific style of gameplay that most proponents of tiers don't seem to realize. But people like competitive number ratings and its so much easier to sling those around than re-post/re-write the entire process of grokking how encounters work and where the game's actual baseline (if any) is.

About the gatekeeper thing, i'm not so sure about. Perhaps for people with very specific readings like with segmented armor and mithral, fit the bill, where they really like their interpretation. But I'm not sure what you actually mean.
I'm probably using the term too broadly, replace with "exclusionary" or "dismissive" or somesuch if desired. The chain of "this thing I describe, which is the same as your character, which by extension includes you, is useless." Again it's not rampant, but it's still around.

[Madara]

No tier knowledge required, but not knowing they need to specify is a problem, and indeed when people simply ignore those specifications.

Guidelines like tiers?


I think guidelines as in, "I know I want to play the Monk class but I need help with my feats. I want to be stealthy focused. The character is at level 3 and I don't want to multiclass."

[quark12000]

I think guidelines as in, "I know I want to play the Monk class but I need help with my feats. I want to be stealthy focused. The character is at level 3 and I don't want to multiclass."

Yeah! This kind of thing!

[SangoProduction]

I think guidelines as in, "I know I want to play the Monk class but I need help with my feats. I want to be stealthy focused. The character is at level 3 and I don't want to multiclass."

basically, yes.

[Fizban]

I mean, if you think about it, back in the old days there was a separate forum for optimization. I think that was a healthy state for the 3.X community to be in. On these boards, however, the main reason for posting on the 3.X board as opposed to general RP is that you're looking for mechanical answers. If you aren't concerned with the specifics of the d20 system, you may as well go to the broader board.

As the 3.X board ages and whithers, the content reflects its nature. For those who enjoy the character-building minigame, we're limited in what is left to discuss. Haven't all the tricks been found? Haven't all the builds been built? For that reason, optimizers are called to any sort of "character help" post.
I've still got plenty left to discuss (see: every wall of text I drop), and I'm really only interested in things regarding 3.5. There are still infinite ways to tweak this and that, things to stat and refine mechanics for, tricks undiscovered and tricks forgotten or missed, things left not understood or analyzed in any way other than zomg char-op. There just seem to be very few people indeed who are interested in discussing anything other than optimization (or meta-discussions about optimization) and that is naturally what most new players show up looking for. And then of those few remaining I vehemently disagree with a number of them to boot.

Many long-standing players don't originate posts.
True, I hardly ever post threads. Hardly seems worth it when I expect I'll get a couple mildly interested responses and then nothing- if I'm going to just type to myself I might as well keep it in my notes. I've got one idea for a handbook but it's right at the point where I can use it fine but finishing it in detail is still a massive effort, and most of the rest of the stuff I'd be interested in posting is technically more homebrew than discussion, so it wouldn't even go on this part of the forum- but I don't watch the homebrew forum and I'm pretty sure most of the rest of the 3.5'ers don't either. And really, who wants to read some guy's list of houserules and tweaks? Especially when most of them go directly against prevailing optimization opinions?

Can't say I'd be too interested in a "puppet" thread though. We've got plenty of good posts around, they're just hidden under miles of shorthanded op-focus and arguing a lot of the time. Just engaging with new players as they show up and actually discussing things instead of throwing down op-builds and handbook links and walking away would do the job. And teaching makes you re-learn what you hadn't actually learned.

Edit: ah, guidelines being destructive as in providing them just provokes people.

[emeraldstreak]

Optimization, in the context of what I am talking about is "how well does you character do their job(s)". I found this definition agreeable, and fits with most usage I've seen.

Optimization is not inherently active, merely a measure. Thus, some classes have very low optimization floors, like monk, while others like Swordsage have high ones - where "optimization floor" is the measure to which they are effective, just using their base kits.


I get you but for others optimization is the knowledge required to avoid traps/make things click. In which case, Monk is one of the highest optimization floors.

[unseenmage]

Tiers as a measure of "power" is a misnomer. Tiers as a measure of 'ability to solve problems' has always worked better for me.

My trouble with mundanes is explained by the tier system as viewed this way. In a magical land somebody's gonna eventually get petrified and the bog standard mundane just cannot deal with that.

Doesnt mean mundanes cannot be fun. Just means they eventually have to quest for a depetrification elixer or somesuch and, to me, they cease to be the agent of their own destiny at that point.

Begging full casters for favors takes some of the heroic out of the heroic fantasy, to me at least.

Best way I can describe why I favor Artificers and full casters.


On the other hand I also actively under optimize those same casters with just awful minionmancy. Golems make just awful minions at the levels they're available. So I use them, because they please me and because using Golems to solve problems can be very hard.
On the other other hand having the option to depetrify someone AND awful minionmancy is nice too.


It occurs to me too that problems that are speedbumps to a full caster can be whole questlines for mundanes.
Has been my experience that available playtime affects this too. Living rurally and poor being able to drive half an hour to an hour to IRL game is a luxury. That said we do not waste time on random encounters or unnecessary sidequesting. It behoovs us to play full casters and resolve problems rapidly so as to get something done with our limited playtime.

On the forums I have seen games move at a much much slower pace, arguably because theu have all the percieved time in the world. The wizard obviating a sidequest with a single spell could certainly be seen as cheating your fellow players out of valuable playtime in that circumstance.

So yeah, acceptable optimisation could be practica l or not depending on how quickly a given player/gm/group desires problems to get resolved.

[Grod_The_Giant]

For most people, I'm guessing it's bad experience with a munchkin* making them associate "strong characters" with "jerks." Either that, or stumbling into RAW arguments here/having them crop up in response to a post of theirs and getting lost and exasperated by the whole process.

I wonder if it would be possible to develop (and have a mod sticky) a standard-issue "character help request" form, to help fine-tune responses in ways that people might not know to ask about. Something like:

What sources are available?
How many different sources are you willing to use in one build?
How willing are you to re-flavor material, bend role-playing requirements, and so on?
How mechanically complicated a character are you looking for?
How powerful a character are you looking for-- one who struggles with similar-level/CR monsters, one on equal footing with them, one who can handle monsters several levels higher than expected, or one who can handle monsters many levels higher than expected?
What's your tolerance for "technically legal" stuff-- do you want to avoid anything weird-looking, stick to things where the end result is logical/not too strong, or does anything go?



*Here defined as "a jerk; a cheater; an immature player who attempts to dominate the game via any means necessary, including optimization, cheating, whining, and interrupting."


Unless there's a whole anti-optimization dominated forum, but that's not a community with much to hold it together.
Weirdly, the 5e subforum here tends towards that direction-- post about optimization or a powerful combo you found, and people jump all over the thread screaming about how you're playing wrong and ruining the game.

[Morty]

In my experience, optimization threads are far more often about making a character concept work than they are about getting as powerful a character as you can. If you just want power, a cleric, druid or wizard with a good PrC is basically all you need. But being effective with some characters requires a lot of hoop-jumping and/or particular material, which is where optimization comes in.

[Doomeye56]

Perhaps someone could define some terms for those of us who are clueless? T1, T0 (I assume the T is tier, but what exactly is that?), batman, pun pun, fluff?

JaronK's tier list for 3.5

The following is a repost of something I made over on the WotC forums. I'm not exactly sure which forum to put it on, as it's intended for a variety of purposes. It's here mostly because I'd like to get some feedback from knowledgeable minds, but it's also a useful tool, much like a handbook, and available for use.

My general philosophy is that the only balance that really matters in D&D is the interclass balance between the various PCs in a group. If the group as a whole is very powerful and flexible, the DM can simply up the challenge level and complexity of the encounters. If it's weak and inflexible, the DM can lower the challenge level and complexity. Serious issues arise when the party is composed of some members which are extremely powerful and others which are extremely weak, leading to a situation where the DM has two choices: either make the game too easy for the strong members, or too hard for the weak members. Neither is desireable. Thus, this system is created for the following purposes:

1) To provide a ranking system so that DMs know roughly the power of the PCs in their group

2) To provide players with knowledge of where their group stands, power wise, so that they can better build characters that fit with their group.

3) To help DMs who plan to use house rules to balance games by showing them where the classes stand before applying said house rules (how many times have we seen DMs pumping up Sorcerers or weakening Monks?).

4) To help DMs judge what should be allowed and what shouldn't in their games. It may sound cheesy when the Fighter player wants to be a Half Minotaur Water Orc, but if the rest of his party is Druid, Cloistered Cleric, Archivist, and Artificer, then maybe you should allow that to balance things out. However, if the player is asking to be allowed to be a Venerable White Dragonspawn Dragonwrought Kobold Sorcerer and the rest of the party is a Monk, a Fighter, and a Rogue, maybe you shouldn't let that fly.

5) To help homebrewers judge the power and balance of their new classes. Pick a Tier you think your class should be in, and when you've made your class compare it to the rest of the Tier. Generally, I like Tier 3 as a balance point, but I know many people prefer Tier 4. If it's stronger than Tier 1, you definitely blew it.

Psionic classes are mostly absent simply because I don't have enough experience with them. Other absent classes are generally missing because I don't know them well enough to comment, though if I've heard a lot about them they're listed in itallics. Note that "useless" here means "the class isn't particularly useful for dealing with situation X" not "it's totally impossible with enough splat books to make a build that involves that class deal with situation X." "Capable of doing one thing" means that any given build does one thing, not that the class itself is incapable of being built in different ways. Also, "encounters" here refers to appropriate encounters... obviously, anyone can solve an encounter with purely mechanical abilities if they're level 20 and it's CR 1.

Also note that with enough optimization, it's generally possible to go up a tier, and if played poorly you can easily drop a few tiers, but this is a general averaging, assuming that everyone in the party is playing with roughly the same skill and optimization level. As a rule, parties function best when everyone in the party is within 2 Tiers of each other (so a party that's all Tier 2-4 is generally fine, and so is a party that's all Tier 3-5, but a party that has Tier 1 and Tier 5s in it may have issues).

The Tier System

Tier 1: Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing. Often capable of solving encounters with a single mechanical ability and little thought from the player. Has world changing powers at high levels. These guys, if played well, can break a campaign and can be very hard to challenge without extreme DM fiat, especially if Tier 3s and below are in the party.

Examples: Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Archivist, Artificer, Erudite

Tier 2: Has as much raw power as the Tier 1 classes, but can't pull off nearly as many tricks, and while the class itself is capable of anything, no one build can actually do nearly as much as the Tier 1 classes. Still potencially campaign smashers by using the right abilities, but at the same time are more predictable and can't always have the right tool for the job. If the Tier 1 classes are countries with 10,000 nuclear weapons in their arsenal, these guys are countries with 10 nukes. Still dangerous and world shattering, but not in quite so many ways. Note that the Tier 2 classes are often less flexible than Tier 3 classes... it's just that their incredible potential power overwhelms their lack in flexibility.

Examples: Sorcerer, Favored Soul, Psion, Binder (with access to online vestiges)

Tier 3: Capable of doing one thing quite well, while still being useful when that one thing is inappropriate, or capable of doing all things, but not as well as classes that specialize in that area. Occasionally has a mechanical ability that can solve an encounter, but this is relatively rare and easy to deal with. Challenging such a character takes some thought from the DM, but isn't too difficult. Will outshine any Tier 5s in the party much of the time.

Examples: Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Crusader, Bard, Swordsage, Binder (without access to the summon monster vestige), Wildshape Varient Ranger, Duskblade, Factotum, Warblade, Psionic Warrior

Tier 4: Capable of doing one thing quite well, but often useless when encounters require other areas of expertise, or capable of doing many things to a reasonable degree of competance without truly shining. Rarely has any abilities that can outright handle an encounter unless that encounter plays directly to the class's main strength. DMs may sometimes need to work to make sure Tier 4s can contribue to an encounter, as their abilities may sometimes leave them useless. Won't outshine anyone except Tier 6s except in specific circumstances that play to their strengths. Cannot compete effectively with Tier 1s that are played well.

Examples: Rogue, Barbarian, Warlock, Warmage, Scout, Ranger, Hexblade, Adept, Spellthief, Marshal, Fighter (Dungeoncrasher Variant)

Tier 5: 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. In some cases, can do one thing very well, but that one thing is very often not needed. Has trouble shining in any encounter unless the rest of the party is weak in that situation and the encounter matches their strengths. DMs may have to work to avoid the player feeling that their character is worthless unless the entire party is Tier 4 and below. Characters in this tier will often feel like one trick ponies if they do well, or just feel like they have no tricks at all if they build the class poorly.

Examples: Fighter, Monk, CA Ninja, Healer, Swashbuckler, Rokugan Ninja, Soulknife, Expert, OA Samurai, Paladin, Knight

Tier 6: Not even capable of shining in their own area of expertise. DMs will need to work hard to make encounters that this sort of character can contribute in with their mechanical abilities. Will often feel worthless unless the character is seriously powergamed beyond belief, and even then won't be terribly impressive. Needs to fight enemies of lower than normal CR. Class is often completely unsynergized or with almost no abilities of merit. Avoid allowing PCs to play these characters.

Examples: CW Samurai, Aristocrat, Warrior, Commoner

And then there's the Truenamer, which is just broken (as in, the class was improperly made and doesn't function appropriately).

Now, obviously these rankings only apply when mechanical abilities are being used... in a more social oriented game where talking is the main way of solving things (without using diplomacy checks), any character can shine. However, when the mechanical abilities of the classes in question are being used, it's a bad idea to have parties with more than two tiers of difference.

It is interesting to note the disparity between the core classes... one of the reasons core has so many problems. If two players want to play a nature oriented shapeshifter and a general sword weilder, you're stuck with two very different tiered guys in the party (Fighter and Druid). Outside of core, it's possible to do it while staying on close Tiers... Wild Shape Variant Ranger and Warblade, for example.

Note that a few classes are right on the border line between tiers. Duskblade is very low in Tier 3, and Hexblade is low in Tier 4. Fighter is high in Tier 5, and CW Samurai is high in Tier 6 (obviously, since it's pretty much strictly better than the same tier Warrior).

JaronK

[SangoProduction]

I get you but for others optimization is the knowledge required to avoid traps/make things click. In which case, Monk is one of the highest optimization floors.

Possible, but that's not the way most people use the term optimization floor, such that I've seen, and as this isn't a thread meant to debate what is or is not the definition, I'd prefer if we kept to using the definitions given (as far as this thread goes), just as a basis for common understanding.

The tiers thing was a criticism I take responsibility for. I didn't finish the sentence for some reason...or the rest of the explanation there. Derp. I don't know how that happened.

[Blackhawk748]

In my experience, optimization threads are far more often about making a character concept work than they are about getting as powerful a character as you can. If you just want power, a cleric, druid or wizard with a good PrC is basically all you need. But being effective with some characters requires a lot of hoop-jumping and/or particular material, which is where optimization comes in.

This is what i used it for, help in making a weird concept work. Now i dont really post for help anymore unless i really cant think of a way to make an idea work or i just want more suggestions.

ANd on another note thats always what optimization meant to me, "How to best make the character do what i want it to do." and feats like Toughness dont actually do that, which is why i consistently advise new people not to take them. Now im not a "Monks suck be a Swordsage" guy, but sometimes the answer really is Swordsage.

[Darth Ultron]

I hate optimization as it ruins the game.

Once a player goes down the optimzation lane, they are saying they have no interest in role playing. And as we are talking about a role playing game, they are really saying they are not going to play that game: they will only be playing a roll playing game.

In short, they want the table top role playing game like D&D and make it a table top rule playing game like Risk or Clue. Or even worse, a video game.

Now sure, optimizers will say must be super optimized to role play, but this huge disconnect just makes no sense. Why does a character need 100 hit points to be funny? Why can't the player role play a funny personality if the character only has 30 hit points?

Then you get the demigod problem: the player that wants the character to be ''good at what they do'', but they have the huge disconnect that ''good=demigod''. For the optimizer ''being good'' comes down to ''always succeeding and never failing ever''.

And from a game experience, I have seen very few happy optimizers. The vast majority are always worried about more optimization. How can they get just one more plus or one more thing. It is always out of reach as they just want more and more and more. they don't even have time to play the game, as they are playing the numbers game to try and get more.

And then there are all the players that get swept up in the opritimaztion lie, but they don't have the experience, ability or game mastery to do so. So they are lost in the limbo that somehow they are playing the game ''wrong'', but they don't know what to do about it.

[Morty]

This is what i used it for, help in making a weird concept work. Now i dont really post for help anymore unless i really cant think of a way to make an idea work or i just want more suggestions.

ANd on another note thats always what optimization meant to me, "How to best make the character do what i want it to do." and feats like Toughness dont actually do that, which is why i consistently advise new people not to take them. Now im not a "Monks suck be a Swordsage" guy, but sometimes the answer really is Swordsage.

I mean, it's not always "weird", as 3E D&D tends to make a lot of concepts way more difficult to play than they need to be, until you pile up some splatbooks. It's also true that optimization often results in characters that are just more fun to play. I can't see any deep roleplaying experience derived from Toughness or Dodge.

[Crake]

I hate optimization as it ruins the game.

Once a player goes down the optimzation lane, they are saying they have no interest in role playing. And as we are talking about a role playing game, they are really saying they are not going to play that game: they will only be playing a roll playing game.

In short, they want the table top role playing game like D&D and make it a table top rule playing game like Risk or Clue. Or even worse, a video game.

Now sure, optimizers will say must be super optimized to role play, but this huge disconnect just makes no sense. Why does a character need 100 hit points to be funny? Why can't the player role play a funny personality if the character only has 30 hit points?

Then you get the demigod problem: the player that wants the character to be ''good at what they do'', but they have the huge disconnect that ''good=demigod''. For the optimizer ''being good'' comes down to ''always succeeding and never failing ever''.

And from a game experience, I have seen very few happy optimizers. The vast majority are always worried about more optimization. How can they get just one more plus or one more thing. It is always out of reach as they just want more and more and more. they don't even have time to play the game, as they are playing the numbers game to try and get more.

And then there are all the players that get swept up in the opritimaztion lie, but they don't have the experience, ability or game mastery to do so. So they are lost in the limbo that somehow they are playing the game ''wrong'', but they don't know what to do about it.

No offense, but this is entirely your anecdotal experience. The 100 hit points connection with being funny makes no sense, I don't think anyone has ever said to themselves "I want to make a joker character, i need to have the most hp ever". A better example would have been to ask "why do you need 30 charisma to play a funny character". And the answer is, because more charisma means you're more capable of being funny when it mechanically matters.

Now of course, since humor is a subjective thing, you can't always be funny to every person ever, but, a more reasonable comparison would be: I want to play a character who's tough. Now in that circumstance, having 100 hp or having 30 hp actually matters. How can you possibly call yourself tough if you have low hp? You can call yourself tough, but the mechanics of the game disagree with you, since you always drop in one or two hits, not very tough at all now, are you.

Same goes for calling yourself a master swordsman, but not being able to hit the far side of a barn with a sword, or any other character concept. If you want to play something, you need to actually be able to represent that with mechanics, because despite what you seem to be saying, D&D does have rules, and if your character is a terrible mechanically, then it won't live up to the hype of your roleplay. The two go side by side.


Once a player goes down the optimzation lane, they are saying they have no interest in role playing.

Also nice stormwind fallacy.

[death390]

Hi my name is Alex, i am a optimization munchin. i use my system mastery to break characters as bad as possible. but i am at least responsible to not use my most broken characters and simply do it to test myself and do it. this is why i have bad (in a good way) characters such as: christopher moss tree the evergreen treant who wears crystal armor and has hide in plain sight; my one armed pixie barbarian with greater flyby attack, a whip-dagger, and whirling frenzy; yet have the lvl 3 shadowcraft mage who gets 8th level spells by 6th level (shadow).

i am the Mr. Fixit of my group who plays the only spellcaster (ranger doesn't count) in the group of 8 people. i use optimization to get what we are missing on my character to help everyone. just last session i had to take a tumbling leap into a spiked pit trap to save my dragonfire adept with cure light wounds, after he fell in for the second time that session after trying to jump it (DC 10 failed) while he was bleeding out and stabilized at -9 only because of me.

[Fizban]

Weirdly, the 5e subforum here tends towards that direction-- post about optimization or a powerful combo you found, and people jump all over the thread screaming about how you're playing wrong and ruining the game.
That is. . . unfortunate. Guess I'm glad I don't hang out over there either.


I can't see any deep roleplaying experience derived from Toughness or Dodge.
I actually can (though I do buff Dodge to +2 to give it more bite and roll both Toughnesses into one 2+level feat). +3 hp is a huge difference at 1st level- you can roleplay a "tough guy" version of a normally squishy class much easier if you actually have nearly twice as many hp as most people in that class, able to just take a sword hit without worrying where you'd usually avoid it at all costs. It's particularly important for armies of properly 1st level non-elite NPC dudes, effectively doubling their survival time and thus effectiveness: nations with boot camps that Toughen their guys up are way better on the battlefield. And on the PC, you get to further roleplay how someone who used to be the tough guy eventually comes to grips with not being the tough guy anymore, as more hit dice dilute that toughness feat and he needs to act more like a squishy- then you learn to let go and retrain toughness into something else.

Dodge isn't great on its own, true, but with some sort of tweak to boost it and build aiming for full AC, it just makes you that much harder to hit than someone otherwise the same but with no Dodge- so again, easier to rolelplay the guy who's good at dodging if you can dodge (that's the problem I have with monks, they can't actually dodge like a kung-fu movie).


No offense, but this is entirely your anecdotal experience. . . Also nice stormwind fallacy.
That's kinda the whole point of this thread man, asking people why they personally are annoyed by something. Anecdotal experience is absolutely admissible. And this sort of dismissive community-defined fallacy response is the exact sort of thing that cheeses me off. Even if I agree with your explaination of how mechanics support roleplaying (as I literally just did the exact same thing above), the attitude is all wrong.

And the thing that the stormwind fallacy ignores is that. . . it's still a trend. Just because some or even most of the optimizing community doesn't do a thing, doesn't mean a bunch of them don't still do it. DnD is a game, and there are certain types of people who play games in order to optimize them no matter the cost to the rest of the players, or even their own enjoyment of anything but that optimization. Those people give optimization a bad name, and no shouting of stormwind fallacy will change that.

[Darth Ultron]

No offense, but this is entirely your anecdotal experience. The 100 hit points connection with being funny makes no sense, I don't think anyone has ever said to themselves "I want to make a joker character, i need to have the most hp ever". A better example would have been to ask "why do you need 30 charisma to play a funny character". And the answer is, because more charisma means you're more capable of being funny when it mechanically matters.

It is bad enough that optimizers can't role play a funny character without something mechanical like a 30 in charisma, as a character with a charisma of like 11 simply can't be funny...or anything.

It is just beyond worse when the optimizers go off the deep end and say they must have high, or ''good'' everything to role play. Even when somethings like hit points don't have any effect on role playing.



Now of course, since humor is a subjective thing, you can't always be funny to every person ever, but, a more reasonable comparison would be: I want to play a character who's tough. Now in that circumstance, having 100 hp or having 30 hp actually matters. How can you possibly call yourself tough if you have low hp? You can call yourself tough, but the mechanics of the game disagree with you, since you always drop in one or two hits, not very tough at all now, are you.

This is yet another problem. A player will pick something like ''tough'' and then just randomly pick something mechanical, like ''hit points'' and then say ''my character must have a lot of hit points to be tough''. But something like ''tough'' can mean a lot of things, not just ''a got hit points''. And this is where the big disconnect is: the player could just be honest and say ''I'm roll playing and only care about the number of hit points my character has''....but they don't: they whip up the whole optimizing toughness cover and then hide behind it.



Same goes for calling yourself a master swordsman, but not being able to hit the far side of a barn with a sword, or any other character concept. If you want to play something, you need to actually be able to represent that with mechanics, because despite what you seem to be saying, D&D does have rules, and if your character is a terrible mechanically, then it won't live up to the hype of your roleplay. The two go side by side.

And this is the problem of ''master swrodsman'' vs ''demigod of swords''

[Matthias]

I suspect part of the stereotype lies in the fact that, if you're in this hobby and you're indifferent towards the RP side of things, you must either really be into the G side of it or deserve to find a hobby that suits you better. So a lower proportion of players who actively optimize will actively roleplay (and visa-versa, for parallel reasons,) even though there's nothing about one that interferes with the other.

[KillingAScarab]

It is bad enough that optimizers can't role play a funny character without something mechanical like a 30 in charisma, as a character with a charisma of like 11 simply can't be funny...or anything.Optimizers can't be funny? Have you seen The Reclamator (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=16451172&postcount=269)?

[Florian]

I don´t "hate" optimization, as it´s a core part of the d20 system, I just dislike certain aspects of it and try to avoid/disallow them at my table when gm´íng.
- RAI always beats RAW
- Setting is important / crunch doesn't come devoid of meaning, there is no refluffing
- This is a group game, there will always be a session zero and group character creation, everyone can veto a not fitting character.

@Darth Ultron:

I rather get the feeling that you have problems with two very integrated aspects of the d20 system.

The core dice mechanics are prone to be very "swingy" (*), so you're expected to find ways to even the odds in your favor to counter this. If a character is supposed to be consistently good or at least above average at some tasks, then you must start stacking the odds in your favor, mostly by enforcing the mechanical side of it.

"Player Empowerment" overrides the "Mother May I?"-style of gm´ing by giving the players the tools to announce an action and possible resolve it on their own without needing any gm interference. Yes, that means that "Perform (Comedy)" can be resolved mechanically without the player having to be funny, but it´s also easy to weave it into the ongoing narrative.

(*) Compared to systems like L5R or Splittermond that can generate very smooth bell curves.

[Dimers]

When you start to play street football too hard, you could end as a professional player. What was fun become tedious labour betraying the original concept of game as something fun to spend your time on.

?? The quest to get better at something is at right-angles to enjoyment of it. My main job skills are cataloging and customer service. As I've grown more optimized for each of those, my enjoyment of my work time has increased. I certainly haven't felt like improving my social skills or Dewey Decimal experience has become a tedious betrayal of what I enjoy.

I analyzed Terraforming Mars in terms of tag spread, corporate-era versus standard play, how things differ in the solo game, the value of 'standard projects', and so on, and I have more fun playing now than I did when I couldn't explain my wins/losses.

Yes, some people prefer keeping a sense of mystery and wonder rather than investigating to find out the why of a thing. Some people have more fun without the burdensome compulsion to improve. But that's hardly universal to humanity.


On the forums I have seen games move at a much much slower pace, arguably because they have all the percieved time in the world. The wizard obviating a sidequest with a single spell could certainly be seen as cheating your fellow players out of valuable playtime in that circumstance.

An especially lovely point. And it highlights the fact that a character can (and should!) be optimized to meet the needs of the playgroup, not just for what that player is trying to accomplish. The character shouldn't be built in a way that pisses off the GM, shouldn't be built to 'Leeroy Jenkins' in a group that likes subtlety or only have social abilities in a kick-down-the-door game, shouldn't be built to teleport the party if the players like exploration or the GM has a fun wilderness thing planned ... That's why e.g. the Jumplomancer will never see real play. Even if all the RAW is acceptable in a given game, the ridiculousness of the maneuver isn't going to fit a group's preferred playstyle.

A "diplomancer" takes advantage of 3rd-ed D&D's poorly-thought-out Diplomacy skill rules to make basically anyone she meets into a fanatical follower. That just requires a very high Diplomacy roll. The Jumplomancer is a specific kind of diplomancer, adding in one particular prestige class that lets any skill substitute for Diplomacy. Since Jump skill gets bonuses from movement speed, it's very easy to get a ridiculously high roll. So whenever you jump, people nearby start following your orders with a smile, throwing flowers at your feet and trying to get you to marry their children.

[Florian]

?? The quest to get better at something is at right-angles to enjoyment of it.

I think this is more about the "arms race" that can happen when ramping up the complexity to still create a challenge. Look up some of what Cosi is writing about what a gm should prep and pre-plan to keep some "pro players" happy and engaged. Not my cup of tea.

[Dimers]

While I agree that that can be a problem, and I wouldn't enjoy being in such an arms race myself, high-op play isn't inherently unenjoyable. It's just a matter of what kind of game you and your group are looking for. I don't like high-op poker but I prefer my Advanced Civilization high-op. I want Tier 3 play in D&D 3.5 (so, poor optimization for good classes and strong optimization for bad ones) but I find 5e insufficiently heroic if the players don't optimize. Ya know.

[ericgrau]

Cuz differing power levels are unfair and ruin the game for everyone. The DM's encounters are either too easy for the stronger players or too hard for everyone else. It's fine if everyone optimizes equally, but this is difficult to pull off on practice. It's way easier with limited optimization and/or lower limits on what's allowed. With DM experience the limits may be raised, but it's hard. Most build tricks discussed on these boards are beyond what most DMs are capable of handling. Even well meaning players often guess wrong when trying to guestimate the optimization level of the group and/or proper and fair ways to handle it.

IMO optimization should almost always be low to low-moderate to makie it easier to prevent such issues. A little more can be done with only small problems, but it's better not to.

[Florian]

It's just a matter of what kind of game you and your group are looking for.

This is part and parcel for the "social contract" any group will establish. Only problem with "optimization" in context of system mastery is hitting the sweet spot for a group and not over- or undergoing it, or, worse, going into the area where it becomes fully self-serving. I'm with Fizban in this regard, that the attitude of "OP or else" that is prevalent with some users and discussions is highly annoying and destructive.

[Crake]

It is bad enough that optimizers can't role play a funny character without something mechanical like a 30 in charisma, as a character with a charisma of like 11 simply can't be funny...or anything.

It is just beyond worse when the optimizers go off the deep end and say they must have high, or ''good'' everything to role play. Even when somethings like hit points don't have any effect on role playing.

A character with 11 charisma will be midly funny at the best of times. 30 charisma is excessive to be sure, but a decent charisma score does help. If you're going to let players out play their ability scores then what's the point of having them to begin with?



This is yet another problem. A player will pick something like ''tough'' and then just randomly pick something mechanical, like ''hit points'' and then say ''my character must have a lot of hit points to be tough''. But something like ''tough'' can mean a lot of things, not just ''a got hit points''. And this is where the big disconnect is: the player could just be honest and say ''I'm roll playing and only care about the number of hit points my character has''....but they don't: they whip up the whole optimizing toughness cover and then hide behind it.

While you're right, being "tough" can cover many aspects, the other end of your argument fails to hold up. It's not that you should't worry about hp, it's that you should worry about all the other things that being tough entails, such as fortitude saves and endurance of various sorts. That said, you're being so antagonistic and argumentative that I'm fairly sure you're just trolling. That and the fact that your entire post basically is just stormwind fallacy after stormwind fallacy.


And this is the problem of ''master swrodsman'' vs ''demigod of swords''

The difference between master swordsman and demigod of swords is just a matter of character level.

[SangoProduction]

It is bad enough that optimizers can't role play a funny character without something mechanical like a 30 in charisma, as a character with a charisma of like 11 simply can't be funny...or anything.

It is just beyond worse when the optimizers go off the deep end and say they must have high, or ''good'' everything to role play. Even when somethings like hit points don't have any effect on role playing.

Except no one is saying that they must have 30 charisma to roleplay a funny character. You are kinda taking an example to explain why one would want high charisma for them, to an extreme. He even specifically states that the 30 charisma is only if it needed to come up mechanically, which is separate from roleplaying. But then you say that he is saying that he must have 30 charisma to roleplay.

Also, we should probably get out of the out-group, in-group mentality. We are all simply talking about a game. We are all just people, and a group of people, particularly the group that you may be trying to describe, probably don't share many of the characteristics of those you ascribe to them.


And this is the problem of ''master swrodsman'' vs ''demigod of swords''

...again, you are going to an extreme. His example was "hit the far side of a barn." That's quite a minimal requirement. He didn't say he must be able to cut down gods with a sword.

[lbuttitta]

When you start to play street football too hard, you could end as a professional player. What was fun become tedious labour betraying the original concept of game as something fun to spend your time on.
But just like some professional football players enjoy the game, so also do some optimizers (like me) enjoy their craft. For example, I really enjoy optimizing a character; I view it as a game inside the game.
So, I disagree that optimization is viewed as a chore.

[SangoProduction]

Cuz differing power levels are unfair and ruin the game for everyone. The DM's encounters are either too easy for the stronger players or too hard for everyone else. It's fine if everyone optimizes equally, but this is difficult to pull off on practice. It's way easier with limited optimization and/or lower limits on what's allowed. With DM experience the limits may be raised, but it's hard. Most build tricks discussed on these boards are beyond what most DMs are capable of handling. Even well meaning players often guess wrong when trying to guestimate the optimization level of the group and/or proper and fair ways to handle it.

IMO optimization should almost always be low to low-moderate to makie it easier to prevent such issues. A little more can be done with only small problems, but it's better not to.

Agreed. That's why, when I post my games, I make clear the level of power I am expecting from my players. (And often...I am far too easy on them. But everyone has fun.) Having a character that underperforms while one overperforms can be quite disheartening. Though mostly that's when their roles overlap, like an unoptimized blaster sorcerer and a fighter. Or that one dude who brought an uber charger to a random table.

I've never actually experienced it with those who are of different roles, though. Having a wizard lock down enemies while the martials take a couple turns to finish them off, tended to go over rather well, especially when some of the enemies escape or save the control. ...Which, I guess, implies high but not impossible save DCs.

Wait. I correct that, I did have one time when a player cast that blinding cloud thing on enemies, and the DM just threw up his hands and said "yeah, they can't fight, you win." That did kinda ruin the whole encounter, and had the wizard trying to ask the DM to retcon it so he didn't even prepare the spell. But I think I may be a bit off topic to what I'm talking about. I imagine it's more of the DM having recently heard of how OP wizards are, and just giving up at the first sign of it.

[SangoProduction]

But just like some professional football players enjoy the game, so also do some optimizers (like me) enjoy their craft. For example, I really enjoy optimizing a character; I view it as a game inside the game.
So, I disagree that optimization is viewed as a chore.

For some, it's not their cup of tea, and drop out, though. Those who like to optimize probably don't hate optimization. I believe he was hypothesizing about those who hate optimization, rather than talking broadly about it.

[lbuttitta]

I hate optimization as it ruins the game.

Once a player goes down the optimzation lane, they are saying they have no interest in role playing. And as we are talking about a role playing game, they are really saying they are not going to play that game: they will only be playing a roll playing game.

In short, they want the table top role playing game like D&D and make it a table top rule playing game like Risk or Clue. Or even worse, a video game.

Now sure, optimizers will say must be super optimized to role play, but this huge disconnect just makes no sense. Why does a character need 100 hit points to be funny? Why can't the player role play a funny personality if the character only has 30 hit points?

Then you get the demigod problem: the player that wants the character to be ''good at what they do'', but they have the huge disconnect that ''good=demigod''. For the optimizer ''being good'' comes down to ''always succeeding and never failing ever''.

And from a game experience, I have seen very few happy optimizers. The vast majority are always worried about more optimization. How can they get just one more plus or one more thing. It is always out of reach as they just want more and more and more. they don't even have time to play the game, as they are playing the numbers game to try and get more.

And then there are all the players that get swept up in the opritimaztion lie, but they don't have the experience, ability or game mastery to do so. So they are lost in the limbo that somehow they are playing the game ''wrong'', but they don't know what to do about it.
Optimization does not preclude role-playing. Role-playing is independent of game mechanics, and in some cases, a mechanical choice gives you an idea about how to role-play your character. (Also, I've never seen an optimizer try to claim they need 100 hp to be funny or anything remotely similar.)

The "demigod problem" is something I've seen, but not to the degree that you describe, where it interferes with the game. On that point, I partially agree with you.

As for new players attempting to optimize, I can't speak to that, but, having once been a new player myself, I know there are tons of (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?59-D-amp-D-3e-3-5e-d20) valuable resources (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=kdkqd0nlekmtiqfb8kqno5bki5&board=15.0) for new players trying to learn about the game.

[SangoProduction]

I don´t "hate" optimization, as it´s a core part of the d20 system, I just dislike certain aspects of it and try to avoid/disallow them at my table when gm´íng.
- RAI always beats RAW
- Setting is important / crunch doesn't come devoid of meaning, there is no refluffing
- This is a group game, there will always be a session zero and group character creation, everyone can veto a not fitting character.


Interesting. I would very well possibly have a problem with your particular gm'ing style, as it can be rather hard to tell what is RAI (unless you're getting into really sketchy stuff), and I rather like having the crunch be merely what the character can mechanically do, rather than imposing its characterisation on mine. I like the session 0 thing though. I use it myself. But the simple solution is that I wouldn't personally join your game. Nothing against you.

I once played a Mana Addict (sorcerer with a level of barbarian), who'd fly in to a magically-induced rage if he ran out of- or low on- spells. As well as a "techno-mage" psion, whose powers were a bunch of devices, as he walked around in "full plate" that was some psuedo-magical mech suit.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I optimize my characters because, and this may be an odd concept but bear with me, I like my characters. Some posts mention how 'always winning is boring', but when losing means you STOP playing your character, to me it's worth it.

I'm sure there are games out there where the party can fail, repeatedly even, and still end up alive and having fun. But in games I play in, if someone screws up and someone else doesn't pick up the slack, somebody dies. And even if you're at the level where death is just a pain to deal with, sometimes it's just that.

It's also why I get annoyed by anti-optimizers. Buddy, half the time I'm pulling your ass out of the fire, I'd like to have some assurance you can do the same for me.

[PersonMan]

Role-playing is independent of game mechanics, and in some cases, a mechanical choice gives you an idea about how to role-play your character.

I disagree with this, actually - I think that mechanics play a very large role in roleplaying (heh) because they describe how things are, and how things work; even mechanics your character isn't using can easily change their entire life. In my opinion, mechanics and roleplaying should be intertwined, as both have a great impact on the other. The impacts of something like being heavily resistant to the cold, a mechanical difference between this human barbarian and the others they grew up with, could be minor or major. The effect of the Rage class feature, or even simply having a very high Fortitude save - these all change the character's life, their past, and thereby their present.

And, in a more direct sense, mechanics like 'I only have 5 maximum HP' and 'my Fortitude save bonus is -1' have a direct, immediate effect on a character's actions. They know they're unlikely to be standing after they take an axe in the chest, or after testing that strange liquid, and act accordingly. On the other hand, the guy who grew up with DR 2/lawful, +2 natural armor and 18 Constitution is a lot more likely to shrug off the same risks, because they're much less dangerous to him, as determined by the game mechanics that govern their interaction with the world.

[martixy]

Quick reminder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJX4ytfqw6k

Optimization is a tool that facilitates several different character concepts like kicking butt(being powerful obviously means you'll do that effectively), being super cool, playing a favourite role(power to not die means you keep playing your favourite role) and a bunch of others where mechanical performance representative of fluff is an essential part of the concept. This excludes TO, which is fun, but a different game altogether.

P.S. This thread needs a mediator. It's turned(like the other) into a complete clustrertruck of people talking over each other. How christmassy.

[SangoProduction]

Optimization is a tool that facilitates several different character concepts like kicking butt(being powerful obviously means you'll do that effectively), being super cool, playing a favourite role(power to not die means you keep playing your favourite role) and a bunch of others where mechanical performance representative of fluff is an essential part of the concept. This excludes TO, which is fun, but a different game altogether.

P.S. This thread needs a mediator. It's turned(like the other) into a complete clustrertruck of people talking over each other. How christmassy.

Did you mean to put this in the other optimization thread? There's only one person here who actively talked past the others, and even he was directly responded to. I think this post, if intended to be in this thread, is actually incredibly ironic.

[EldritchWeaver]

And this is the problem of ''master swrodsman'' vs ''demigod of swords''


...again, you are going to an extreme. His example was "hit the far side of a barn." That's quite a minimal requirement. He didn't say he must be able to cut down gods with a sword.

Hearing Darth Ultron, I get the impression that anyone who can hit the broad side of a barn is a "demigod of swords". Someone who doesn't hit the broad side of a barn is then a "master swordsman".

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if something like max-ranking a skill goes against DU's views of a good character.

[Madara]

Interesting. I would very well possibly have a problem with your particular gm'ing style, as it can be rather hard to tell what is RAI (unless you're getting into really sketchy stuff), and I rather like having the crunch be merely what the character can mechanically do, rather than imposing its characterisation on mine. I like the session 0 thing though. I use it myself. But the simple solution is that I wouldn't personally join your game. Nothing against you.

I once played a Mana Addict (sorcerer with a level of barbarian), who'd fly in to a magically-induced rage if he ran out of- or low on- spells. As well as a "techno-mage" psion, whose powers were a bunch of devices, as he walked around in "full plate" that was some psuedo-magical mech suit.

I guess at this point it may be a bit late for me to bring this up but considering the more freeform nature of this post....

I would really like to hear some info on what....anti-optimizers(please give me another term to use in reference to those who follow this position) would like optimizers to do. Like, I'm hearing "don't optimize." But I'm curious what that looks like once you've seen the man behind the screen.

How do you non-optimizer folks recommend I would hypothetically ween myself off of optimization?

[Nifft]

I guess at this point it may be a bit late for me to bring this up but considering the more freeform nature of this post....

I would really like to hear some info on what....anti-optimizers(please give me another term to use in reference to those who follow this position) would like optimizers to do. Like, I'm hearing "don't optimize." But I'm curious what that looks like once you've seen the man behind the screen.

How do you non-optimizer folks recommend I would hypothetically ween myself off of optimization?

Don't.

Instead, optimize towards the goal of supporting your party and the goal of supporting your character concept.

You don't need to exceed the previous world's record, you just need to contribute to the success of your group.

So: pick a concept that's interesting, then optimize to make that concept work. When you have a choice of being generous or selfish, be generous -- you can probably afford it.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

There's no such thing as 'not optimizing' unless you intentionally make an ineffective character. Any character with Dex higher than Str who takes Weapon Finesse is optimizing. Anyone with a low will save that takes Iron Will is optimizing. Anyone who learns/prepares spells that they expect will be useful is optimizing.

One guy I previously played with absolutely adheres to the built-in flavor of everything printed, and contributes very little to character development or role-playing. He's also decidedly against optimization, but IMO that's more due to his lack of creativity and effort. Most of his characters are ineffective compared to the rest of the party, unless someone hands him a predetermined build. Even then, he tries to replace feats or dip classes that make the character significantly worse or delay the next thing he needed to qualify for, because it happens to look better at the time. Based on personal experience, I view non-optimizers who aren't ignorant of game mechanics as lazy, uncreative, unintelligent individuals like him.

[EldritchWeaver]

Don't.

Instead, optimize towards the goal of supporting your party and the goal of supporting your character concept.

You don't need to exceed the previous world's record, you just need to contribute to the success of your group.

So: pick a concept that's interesting, then optimize to make that concept work. When you have a choice of being generous or selfish, be generous -- you can probably afford it.

While I agree that this is a good way to solve this, this might not be enough. I play a character who is primarily a healer and a rogue, because there was no one capable dealing with the niche. Still the fact, that I can stealth better than the ranger (and my char is hyper-optimized in Stealth, to make Hellcat Stealth work even with the penalty effectively 100%) annoyed the player, who also wanted to explore the dungeon. And nearly got caught immediately, when I let him. Some players can't be pleased.

[Madara]

There's no such thing as 'not optimizing' unless you intentionally make an ineffective character. Any character with Dex higher than Str who takes Weapon Finesse is optimizing. Anyone with a low will save that takes Iron Will is optimizing. Anyone who learns/prepares spells that they expect will be useful is optimizing.

One guy I previously played with absolutely adheres to the built-in flavor of everything printed, and contributes very little to character development or role-playing. He's also decidedly against optimization, but IMO that's more due to his lack of creativity and effort. Most of his characters are ineffective compared to the rest of the party, unless someone hands him a predetermined build. Even then, he tries to replace feats or dip classes that make the character significantly worse or delay the next thing he needed to qualify for, because it happens to look better at the time. Based on personal experience, I view non-optimizers who aren't ignorant of game mechanics as lazy, uncreative, unintelligent individuals like him.

That last sentence might be a wee bit harsh for the tone this thread needs to maintain.

To be clear, I'm asking people who are non-optimizers for their thoughts. As much as clarifying that there is "no such thing as 'not optimizing'" may be necessary to the optimizer folks, the primary goal of this thread seems to be to hear the more unheard voice in a constructive manner.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I guess at this point it may be a bit late for me to bring this up but considering the more freeform nature of this post....

I would really like to hear some info on what....anti-optimizers(please give me another term to use in reference to those who follow this position) would like optimizers to do. Like, I'm hearing "don't optimize." But I'm curious what that looks like once you've seen the man behind the screen.

How do you non-optimizer folks recommend I would hypothetically ween myself off of optimization?
I don't think "weaning yourself off optimization" is quite the right way to put it-- not only because of the inherent stigma in the words, but because you really can't un-learn how the game works. If you're stuck with people who do see things that way, for whatever reason, and want to avoid an offensive character...

Stick to unique roles. If someone else has made any real investment in something, avoid it, or at least make sure you're equal or inferior to them at it. If there's a melee Fighter, don't bring a Spirit Lion Whirling Frenzy Barbarian.
Aim at non-flashy roles. Be a tank, rather than a damage dealer. Buff, instead of blast. Invest in knowledge skills, not social ones. Standing out less
Build as narrowly as you can. Use few sources, and in particular limit multiclassing and "weird options." This is a perception thing, but having a "class" line that overflows the space on your sheet is one of those things that can (often wrongly) make people scream "cheese."
Be familiar. Don't dig up some weird variant class from an obscure splatbook. Another perception thing-- a powerful Wizard can get cheers, while even a less-powerful Dread Necromancer can get accusations of broken-ness simply because they're different.

[martixy]

Did you mean to put this in the other optimization thread? There's only one person here who actively talked past the others, and even he was directly responded to. I think this post, if intended to be in this thread, is actually incredibly ironic.

I admit I may have hit the reply button in the wrong tab. Let's just appreciate the irony. :)

One, somewhat cynical point I'd like to contribute to this thread is this:
Char-op can be very intimidating to newcomers. I know how impenetrable it seemed to me when I first started - with all those terms like RAW and uberchargers and batman wizards and DCFS and chain-gating left me completely flabbergasted... Some may never break through that initial block, they might not be interested, they might not have the time or just be too stupid to get on the level of reasoning required there. Heck, some might be opposed to the idea a priori.

On a more personal note, I myself, as a consummate munchkin frequently find issue with how these boards seem to approach the topic. Too often do people get stuck here in a TO mindset even when a more practical approach is warranted. It starts to get old after a while. It can't make me hate optimization, as I mentioned in my ill-targeted reply, it's just a tool, but it can create a warped perception in people which does nothing to make them appreciate the more mechanical aspects of the game more.

@Madara, hearing from non-optimizers here might be unlikely due to the filter bubble the impenetrability of the subject tends to create.

[quark12000]

I don't hate optimization, what I understand of it, I just don't like when some people say you can't play certain races with certain classes, or you have to take certain non-core feats or classes or prestige classes. We don't all have every book, and some of them are very expensive because they're out of print, believe me, I've looked.

[skunk3]

I don't hate optimization, what I understand of it, I just don't like when some people say you can't play certain races with certain classes, or you have to take certain non-core feats or classes or prestige classes. We don't all have every book, and some of them are very expensive because they're out of print, believe me, I've looked.

Most people don't have all of the books... I'd be willing to bet that most people use .pdf files that they never paid for, at least when it comes to the non-standard core stuff. :P

Personally, I admit that I use nothing but .pdf files but I kinda justify it in a way because at one point I owned all of the 3.5 books, modules, etc. Everything.

I'd recommend aquiring the .pdf files and using them instead of messing with hard copy books. It's so much less clutter and way more convenient.

[Crake]

While I agree that this is a good way to solve this, this might not be enough. I play a character who is primarily a healer and a rogue, because there was no one capable dealing with the niche. Still the fact, that I can stealth better than the ranger (and my char is hyper-optimized in Stealth, to make Hellcat Stealth work even with the penalty effectively 100%) annoyed the player, who also wanted to explore the dungeon. And nearly got caught immediately, when I let him. Some players can't be pleased.

I actually had a similar character, we were playing spheres of power, so i picked up basic and advanced magical training, and basically spent all my feats and half my rogue talents on pretty much gestalting rogue/life sphere/warp sphere. I picked up a couple of levels of incanter for more talents, and a level of shadowdancer for hide in plain sight (i actually hate hellcat stealth, if you're in shadowy or total darkness vs someone with darkvision, you're left with your pants down. Really makes hiding in caves or the underdark impossible). She now runs around taking 10 on stealth checks for something close to 50 on her stealth check at levle 12, practically invisible.

As totally optimized as that sounds, I built her organically in that direction, and didn't even put that much effort into it. Max ranks in stealth, a ring of chameleon (which I upgraded from +10 stelath to +15 stealth), and 3 feats to get into what's generally considered a sub-optimal prestige class. She's good at precisely one thing, and that's not being seen under any circumstances. Rogue's edge for stealth is pretty sweet too, means she can snipe with cantrips for only like a -5 penalty, most things can't see her anyway, so -5 isn't much of a big deal.

[quark12000]

Most people don't have all of the books... I'd be willing to bet that most people use .pdf files that they never paid for, at least when it comes to the non-standard core stuff. :P

Personally, I admit that I use nothing but .pdf files but I kinda justify it in a way because at one point I owned all of the 3.5 books, modules, etc. Everything.

I'd recommend aquiring the .pdf files and using them instead of messing with hard copy books. It's so much less clutter and way more convenient.

Well, I just couldn't do that. I'll have to stick to the three core books that I have.

[Madara]

Well, I just couldn't do that. I'll have to stick to the three core books that I have.

Yet in this forum you'd hear that perhaps you should "include psionics" because they're in the free SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/) and are considered a more balanced system than the core casting. Still, I'm sure you get plenty of flexibility by homebrewing or tweaking that which you do have when needed.


And yeah, @martixy, you're probably right. I was holding out hope that I might seem friendly enough (and I am genuinely interested in hearing what they'd suggest.)

@Grod_The_Giant, you make good points (ones I was already aware of but nonetheless good ones). Perhaps this serves as a good reminder that when handing out optimization wisdom, we should include suggestions on how to be a team player and what ways optimization is healthy at the table. We've been treating the Force RAW like a power source when really it's a thing that connects all of the game and all characters. :smallwink:

[quark12000]

Yet in this forum you'd hear that perhaps you should "include psionics" because they're in the free SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/) and are considered a more balanced system than the core casting. Still, I'm sure you get plenty of flexibility by homebrewing or tweaking that which you do have when needed.


I've never been a fan of psionics and to me that site looks a little sketchy. Can't tell if that's actually free stuff or just stuff someone is saying is free.

[Madara]

I've never been a fan of psionics and to me that site looks a little sketchy. Can't tell if that's actually free stuff or just stuff someone is saying is free.

Weird. I guess I never saw that site as one that's sketchy seeming. Did they add ads or something? Last I checked their site was very clean and minimalist.

This is the official Wizard's site stuff (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35). It's messy but there.

As for psionics, they are a bit of an acquired taste it seems. I know that a lot of people support its use with the flavor filed off. Nonetheless, free stuff can always be savaged for useful bits.

[Nifft]

I've never been a fan of psionics and to me that site looks a little sketchy. Can't tell if that's actually free stuff or just stuff someone is saying is free.

That site is the exact opposite of sketchy.

There are plenty of other sites with legally free game info:
- http://dndsrd.net/
- http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/srd.html
- https://www.rpgcrossing.com/srd/home.html


All of them are labeled as "SRD" sites. You won't find stuff like Beholder stats or XP-per-level values because those are excluded contents -- any site with those would be guilty of unauthorized information sharing.

[unseenmage]

Another reason I request help from optimizers is that I am rubbish at calculation, but my comprehension is great. I have dyscalculia so crunching numbers can take me many times longer than it should. However, if someone else can tell me that x feat is better than y class ability for z reason then I can build on that.

Additionally, I have learned to label my thread titles as RAW, TO, etc to help facilitate the conveyance of useful info.
I usually request RAW so that I know just what rules I would be breaking or bending if I were to interpret RAI or houserule for effect.

These threads, often even with the above explanations spelled out, still suffer a preponderance of antiRAW or antioptimization responses that are usually unhelpful in the given endeavor and rarely well elucidated.

Admittedly I am fascinated with many of the more difficult to adjudicate elements of the game. Simulacrum being a more recent fascination. (The sheer volune of misinformation and commonly accepted houseruling has been enlightening), but exploring these elements helps our table adapt them to actual play instead of just banning them offhand.

I've played high op and even TO with my current GM in IRL games. And I'm going to be GMing for them playing a Diplomancer soon. We have had and anticipate future fun. So for me the 'optimization is the antithesis of fun' arguement just fails to hold water. Though I get that this is anecdotal evidence at best.

[Fizban]

Thread asks why someone would hate optimization, someone who hates optimization responds, in less than one page the OP and more have dogpiled them about how they're wrong and need to change their mind.

Well done gents.

I especially like how right after I told Crake off for being antagonistic and how shouting about the stormwind fallacy didn't mean anything, his very next post continued shouting about the stormwind fallacy while accusing the very person who the thread should be welcoming of being argumentative (hey, did you know that accusing someone of trolling is itself trolling under the forum rules?). If you don't want to argue then stop arguing, let the man say his peace in the thread that directly asked for it without directly contradicting him. Though seeing the OP immediately go from reasonable to straight opposition is right up there too.

I'm pretty sure that's why martixy's saying this thread is the same as all the others (because it is).

(Not to say some of you aren't doing a fine job, you lot just keep being fine).

[unseenmage]

Wanting to contribute to the conversation but holding, or heaven forbid explaining why, an opposing opinion doesn't seem as sinful to me as it's being made out to be...

[Jormengand]

Thread asks why someone would hate optimization, someone who hates optimization responds, in less than one page the OP and more have dogpiled them about how they're wrong and need to change their mind.
It's almost like when someone says some stuff that's just factually incorrect, people are allowed to challenge it.


I especially like how right after I told Crake off for being antagonistic and how shouting about the stormwind fallacy didn't mean anything, his very next post continued shouting about the stormwind fallacy

It's almost like when someone says some stuff that's just factually incorrect, people are allowed to challenge it.

[quark12000]

Weird. I guess I never saw that site as one that's sketchy seeming. Did they add ads or something? Last I checked their site was very clean and minimalist.

This is the official Wizard's site stuff (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35). It's messy but there.

As for psionics, they are a bit of an acquired taste it seems. I know that a lot of people support its use with the flavor filed off. Nonetheless, free stuff can always be savaged for useful bits.


That site is the exact opposite of sketchy.

There are plenty of other sites with legally free game info:
- http://dndsrd.net/
- http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/srd.html
- https://www.rpgcrossing.com/srd/home.html


All of them are labeled as "SRD" sites. You won't find stuff like Beholder stats or XP-per-level values because those are excluded contents -- any site with those would be guilty of unauthorized information sharing.

Sorry, but any time I see something for free, I become instantly suspicious. That's just me.

[Nifft]

Sorry, but any time I see something for free, I become instantly suspicious. That's just me.

Uh... are you paying us for advice?

That would be new.

[Fizban]

Sorry, but any time I see something for free, I become instantly suspicious. That's just me.
You're probably not aware of the Open Gaming License, which is part of why 3.x was so popular: the core rules (minus a bit of level up info) were made freely available to everyone, and anyone could publish their own work based on those rules as long as they included a copy of the OGL, which made their work part of it. That's why in addition to the tons of 1st party books from Wizards of the Coast (who own DnD), there were also tons of 3rd party books from other gaming companies. SRD stands for System Reference Document, which is those core rules, and many srd sites also include a couple other books designated as OGL, like Expanded Psionics Handbook and Unearthed Arcana.

Additionally, WotC had years of articles on their website with freely available stuff, including excerpts from their own printed books and stuff that got cut from those books but was put online anyway. I just linked one of them in your barbarian thread.

And I suppose I might as well throw in on deliberate optimization reduction: I don't find it that hard. You know what your first pick would be so go for second best, just good enough. The real question is weather or not you'll have fun playing that way- I can only take a couple steps down myself.

[quark12000]

You're probably not aware of the Open Gaming License, which is part of why 3.x was so popular: the core rules (minus a bit of level up info) were made freely available to everyone, and anyone could publish their own work based on those rules as long as they included a copy of the OGL, which made their work part of it. That's why in addition to the tons of 1st party books from Wizards of the Coast (who own DnD), there were also tons of 3rd party books from other gaming companies. SRD stands for System Reference Document, which is those core rules, and many srd sites also include a couple other books designated as OGL, like Expanded Psionics Handbook and Unearthed Arcana.

Additionally, WotC had years of articles on their website with freely available stuff, including excerpts from their own printed books and stuff that got cut from those books but was put online anyway. I just linked one of them in your barbarian thread.

No, I didn't know about the OGL/SRD stuff. Thanks. I have seen d20 systems used for a lot of non-Wizard games and wondered how companies did that without being sued!

Is there a way to tell what is authentic SRD stuff?

[Fizban]

All OGL material must have a copy of the OGL- but that doesn't make it any more "authentic" than anything else (most websites will have it as a link near the bottom of the page). People like to draw a line between 1st party material from WotC, 3rd party from other people, and homebrew, but in the end its really all the same. Either way, you won't find anything from 1st party WotC online in large quantities for free legally, just the stuff I mentioned. My preferred srd site is http://www.d20srd.org/index.htm . They got bought out fairly recently so I'm told the site's got ads now, but I don't notice because adblock.

The "guide to free dnd" threads will have links to an srd site and then all the WotC articles and excerpts that were available when the thread was posted, generally speaking. Most of those links will be broken since WotC changed their website/archive architecture several times, but once you have the name of something you can google it up just fine.

There are other wiki sites that also have homebrew on them, which many people don't like, because a wiki where anyone can put up their homebrew is. . . a wiki where anyone can put up their homebew.

[upho]

I'm sorry for failing my Will save to not respond to Darth Ultron, thereby filling the thread with questions that I guess will go unanswered. But to me, his views are extremely weird. And if I didn't believe they're ultimately based on misunderstandings and bad experiences of jerk players, I'd probably view his statements as not just factually wrong but downright insulting to me, the people in my group, and likely many of the GitP 3e/PF regulars.


I hate optimization as it ruins the game.

Once a player goes down the optimzation lane, they are saying they have no interest in role playing. And as we are talking about a role playing game, they are really saying they are not going to play that game: they will only be playing a roll playing game.

In short, they want the table top role playing game like D&D and make it a table top rule playing game like Risk or Clue. Or even worse, a video game.Just to make certain I'm not reading this wrong: you are saying that someone who practices theoretical and/or practical optimization cannot be interested in the ROLE aspects of the game, but only the mechanical aspects, right?

If that is the case, I am (along with several other people in the hobby) obviously some kind of living paradox! :smallamused:


I enjoy and practice both theoretical and practical optimization in rules-heavy games, and have been doing so since way before any internet forum dedicated to RPGs existed
I usually spend a lot more time developing ROLE playing aspects than I spend optimizing mechanical aspects of a PC
I wouldn't be playing D&D/PF or any other RPG if not for the ROLE play aspects
I enjoy free-form as well as rules-heavy RPGs
I have been very involved in what would become known as Nordic Larp (https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Main_Page) - perhaps most famous for its focus on immersion and ROLE play - since the late 80-ies
I'm an occasional professional stage and film actor, primarily as a result of my interest in RPGs and specifically the ROLE playing aspects
I can go on, but I think you get the geist of it.

And just FYI: I also like tabletop strategy games, but mostly for different reasons. I also believe D&D/PF would make for a pretty bad/boring such game.


Now sure, optimizers will say must be super optimized to role play, but this huge disconnect just makes no sense.They do? I don't think I've ever heard that outside of jokes. Examples?


Why does a character need 100 hit points to be funny? Why can't the player role play a funny personality if the character only has 30 hit points?What does "a funny personality" have to do with hp? This sounds absolutely absurd, making me suspect that you've completely misunderstood what someone has said. And exactly what makes you believe this is how "optimizers" think?

If you were actually referring to not having mechanics backing up your ROLE play where needed, that is however something that easily can produce a huge disconnect. And this is coincidentally also one of the major reasons for practical char-op.


Then you get the demigod problem: the player that wants the character to be ''good at what they do'', but they have the huge disconnect that ''good=demigod''. For the optimizer ''being good'' comes down to ''always succeeding and never failing ever''.Never seen that either. Examples?

Moreover, how good a character has to be in order to be considered ''good at what they do'' is ultimately defined by the game's expected power level. But generally speaking, ''always succeeding and never failing ever'' is virtually always firmly in the realm of TO. If a character I play would somehow accidentally end up being that good in a party of PCs which generally aren't, I'd immediately talk to the GM about making some changes to my character build to tone down the effectiveness of the related mechanics. Perhaps more importantly, I'd also call such "self-nerfing" a good example of Practical Optimization.


And from a game experience, I have seen very few happy optimizers. The vast majority are always worried about more optimization. How can they get just one more plus or one more thing. It is always out of reach as they just want more and more and more. they don't even have time to play the game, as they are playing the numbers game to try and get more.Sorry, but I have to ask if most of the people you play with are jerks, just plain stupid, or both? I cant see how they could be anything else, or they would've understood that being "always worried about more optimization" will most likely simply make their game less fun. At least once they've seen an actually seriously OP or game-breaking PC in play.


And then there are all the players that get swept up in the opritimaztion lie, but they don't have the experience, ability or game mastery to do so. So they are lost in the limbo that somehow they are playing the game ''wrong'', but they don't know what to do about it.Long story short, they've missed that the ultimate goal of practical optimization is to make the game more fun for everyone involved.

Unfortunately, that goal is often taken for granted and is rarely spelled out in posts giving PO advice.

[DMVerdandi]

I think the problem is this...

1. META: 3.5 is Not the game you want
It's not. It is it's own beast, and honestly, if you are playing this game in 2017, you either grew up with it, or people around you are influencing you to choose the game. It's not exactly the most eye-catching thing at barnes and noble. Now, with 2 games of distance away from the present, and also the more forgivable 5e existing, as well as the much more customizable PATHFINDER being a thing, You are going to have to accept some baggage.

That baggage is the whole kit and caboodle of optimization, and 3.5 is DEEP in that. It's not GOOD, however, but as people have said before, it has a lot of trap options, alongside some really god-level capabilities. We know from time and experience that the lower the tier list you are on the worse you are off falling for traps, such as poor skill allocation, fluff only feats, and even choice of class in itself.


After kind of thinking about it in this thread, I had an epiphany:[ U]Tier is an indication of how much you have to optimize to have an effective character[/U]
Read that again, just to really let it sink in.

New players don't understand that. They think that the higher the tier, the more complex and hard the character becomes to play, when the inverse is true. Tier one characters are inherently effective, so the amount of optimization you need is very little. It becomes cosmetic at that point. I CAN take toughness for all of my feats for a tier one class, and honestly? They will become better for it. They have a more effective chassis. Now at low level, you can still get TPK'd in a all tier 1 party like it was nothing, IF you don't know the little tricks for low level survival, but once you understand the best choices for survival low level, it's cake.

So really again, that maxim kind of rings. The fact is, optimization is NOT really something tier 1 classes have to necessarily concern themselves with with. If I spend all of my feats on shenanigans for a cleric, at the end of the day, at level 20, that is still a cleric. If I DON'T pick natural spell for a druid, and just pick more trap feats, it's completely fine, because in the end, he can still fall back on all of the class features that can carry them.


Unfortunately for some, the ideas that they want to execute are outside of the actual crunch FOR the game, so they end up with ideas that they want to execute, made from pure imagination, but aren't grounded in the reality of the rules. You wanna play free form? Go ahead. You wanna be a stage actor and larp? have fun. You want to play this game at the same structure as one would with say a board game, then those ideas are either going to have to be worked around, or fluffing something differently.

2.You aren't listening to the crowd
Springboarding off the first point, the vocal majority understands the usefulness and application of optimizing. Just because you choose to use a Spear or a Spiked chain, instead of going for the orcish shotput as a weapon doesn't mean that you are a munchkin. Just because you realize that two weapon fighting isn't an optimal choice, and advise against it, doesn't mean that someone is "mean" or stifling your creativity.
Even in real life, two weapon fighting is considered unoptimal. Cinematically it's cool, but you know... it takes you away from focusing on your primary arm.

Should the game have not had so many options that sound appealing, but in reality make you worse at what you are doing? [You know...like a trap...] Absolutely.

Secondly, in class choice, I see two things often with new players. The first is a die-hard focus on playing one class all the way to 20, and the second is wanting to multi-class and fill up every level to create some sort of jack of all trades, but with spellcasting classes. The problem is that the game only has certain classes that multiclass well. It's GOOD when you dip various full B.A.B classes, but doing that with spellcasters is not only "not optimal" but since spells work on a spellcaster DC, your spells become completely worthless, It's not that you can play that literary dabbler that has his hands in everything and brings it all together. That is done by taking factotum, which was a relatively late edition to the game.

When everyone says "Hey, it's not going to work", and going against the grain and saying "make this for me, or solve my problems that I am making for myself" It makes everyone just not want to help.
If you have a garbage build and you are trying to get other people to help, and you won't listen to reason, and there IS no mechanical fix, you just sound stubborn.
Homebrew, remake it, or stop whining to others when they tell you that you are trying to get a circle to fit through a square. It's like a person with car problems that says tells you to fix the car, as a mechanic, but won't listen when you tell them to do something, or stop doing another.

It's very That Guy.


It may sound harsh, or "elitist", but this is an old game that doesn't easily fit everyone's imagination. It has it's own internal logic and consistency, so getting mad at people telling you it doesn't work that way is an exercise in futility.

[Blue Jay]

Just to make certain I'm not reading this wrong: you are saying that someone who practices theoretical and/or practical optimization cannot be interested in the ROLE aspects of the game, but only the mechanical aspects, right?

If that is the case, I am (along with several other people in the hobby) obviously some kind of living paradox! :smallamused:

Darth Ultron's rhetoric is rather extreme and exaggerated, and this makes him a very easy target for criticisms like this. But, that doesn't mean that there isn't a kernel of truth in what he's saying. It's best to look for that kernel, rather than to get caught up in the hyperbole.

In open discussion like this, people tend to vilify and tear down reasoning that's based on generalizations. Calling the Stromwind Fallacy is an example of people doing this. It's certainly true that being a good optimizer doesn't preclude also being a good roleplayer, but that doesn't mean that it's common for someone to be both. And if it's not common to be both, then the general observation will be that players are usually either good optimizers or good roleplayers. And, Darth Ultron has incorrectly concluded that there is a causative relationship there.

I think maybe there's also a tendency for a player's greatest strength to sort of overshadow his lesser strengths. So, say there's a guy who's a pretty good roleplayer, but he's an exceptionally good optimizer. His optimizing skill kind of stands out, and his roleplaying skill looks less impressive by comparison. So, maybe good optimizers tend to be underrated as roleplayers, and vice-versa?

[Florian]

Just to make certain I'm not reading this wrong: you are saying that someone who practices theoretical and/or practical optimization cannot be interested in the ROLE aspects of the game, but only the mechanical aspects, right?

I think its possible to make the valid point that any character that is based around a pre-planned build has a "character development" that is entirely divorced from what is happening in the actual game. This becomes more pronounced when talking about heavily transformative builds, you know, the ones that start as "A" by necessity to be "B" later on, like, say, an Sorcerdin build that starts as Paladin and will move over to be a full caster later on.

Its a bit of a major flaw with the class and level structure, that you have to get your stuff together before the "adventure" (*) and don't actually benefit by taking the appropriate feats, skill ranks or PrC in reaction to what the character learned and experienced during that "adventure" (*).

(*) Take an unprepared Fighter to an elaborate social scene and the character feels mechanically inadequate, even when the player can naturally still participate by simply roleplaying it, pick something like Skill Focus: Diplomacy and some cross class ranks in Diplomacy after that scene and you've practically wasted resources. It´s sad.

[Melcar]

I hate optimization as it ruins the game.
Once a player goes down the optimzation lane, they are saying they have no interest in role playing. And as we are talking about a role playing game, they are really saying they are not going to play that game: they will only be playing a roll playing game.

In short, they want the table top role playing game like D&D and make it a table top rule playing game like Risk or Clue. Or even worse, a video game.

Now sure, optimizers will say must be super optimized to role play, but this huge disconnect just makes no sense. Why does a character need 100 hit points to be funny? Why can't the player role play a funny personality if the character only has 30 hit points?

Then you get the demigod problem: the player that wants the character to be ''good at what they do'', but they have the huge disconnect that ''good=demigod''. For the optimizer ''being good'' comes down to ''always succeeding and never failing ever''.

And from a game experience, I have seen very few happy optimizers. The vast majority are always worried about more optimization. How can they get just one more plus or one more thing. It is always out of reach as they just want more and more and more. they don't even have time to play the game, as they are playing the numbers game to try and get more.

And then there are all the players that get swept up in the opritimaztion lie, but they don't have the experience, ability or game mastery to do so. So they are lost in the limbo that somehow they are playing the game ''wrong'', but they don't know what to do about it.


Firstly, I consider your post an extreme exaggeration to prove a point/ trolling, I will address it non the less.



I hate optimization as it ruins the game.

Firstly, a blanket statement like “it ruins the game” is clearly untrue. If players are having fun, which from past experience is when people play equally to a certain style, optimization is great. Again, optimization means different things to different people. For Tippy, it means something about having underwear sewn with strings of red dragons for others it means taking weapon specialization. The thing is, if the table agrees to a certain play style anything can be hugely fun. So, I call your blanket statement incorrect.


Once a player goes down the optimzation lane, they are saying they have no interest in role playing. And as we are talking about a role playing game, they are really saying they are not going to play that game: they will only be playing a roll playing game.

If your roleplaying a powerhungry wizard, you are going to take the things that make you better at surviving and killing your enemies so you have less competition. And considering how most fantasy setting, be it Tolkiens, Harry Potter, Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance etc., are ripe with evil wizards grapping for power, surviving is about becoming more powerful. And that’s in itself is a totally valid goal or character concept.


In short, they want the table top role playing game like D&D and make it a table top rule playing game like Risk or Clue. Or even worse, a video game.
Again, that surely depends on the person at hand. Personally, I like the idea of playing a powerful wizard, that’s fun for me, but I don’t ahead and Shapechange into a Zodar for free wishes, and still only take options that fit the way I consider cool fluff. But that fluff must be on an option that makes my character better at being a wizard… So, I’m not multiclassing into fighter, not only because it would be a bad option, but because that’s does not further my characters in game goals. So, for me, my roleplaying options and “powegaming” options are the same. (Btw, my wizards ingame goal is to uncover/ decipher the code that is magic… as trying to find the Higgs Boson of magic, so that means encountering some nasty dudes, therefore more power is needed to interact with beings not willing to part with their secrets or artifacts, which must be had to further my research.)


Now sure, optimizers will say must be super optimized to role play, but this huge disconnect just makes no sense. Why does a character need 100 hit points to be funny? Why can't the player role play a funny personality if the character only has 30 hit points?

I have never heard this argument before, but see my above point. If becoming a great swordsman or wrestler is what your fighter’s life, HP is probably a good thing. It seems to me you are equating being good at something mechanically as being bad at roleplaying… again not true at all!


Then you get the demigod problem: the player that wants the character to be ''good at what they do'', but they have the huge disconnect that ''good=demigod''. For the optimizer ''being good'' comes down to ''always succeeding and never failing ever''.
Well surely the game is not about loosing encounters and dying? So yes optimizations is about getting the most out of your build. And why wouldn’t you? Would you deliberately dump strength when playing a fighter??? If not, then you are in effect doing the same thing as the ones you say you hate!


And from a game experience, I have seen very few happy optimizers. The vast majority are always worried about more optimization. How can they get just one more plus or one more thing. It is always out of reach as they just want more and more and more. they don't even have time to play the game, as they are playing the numbers game to try and get more.

That problem is due to a lack of player to DM interaction. Not saying that the DM in question is bad, but the disconnect is in opposing play styles, not the play style itself.


And then there are all the players that get swept up in the opritimaztion lie, but they don't have the experience, ability or game mastery to do so. So they are lost in the limbo that somehow they are playing the game ''wrong'', but they don't know what to do about it.
I have never seen this happen, so unsure of what to make of it…

[Max Caysey]

Well, I just couldn't do that. I'll have to stick to the three core books that I have.

You're basically only using 3% of available options... why omg why? The later stuff printed is actually more balanced than the CORE. Also having direct classes and options makes "optimizations" less necessary!


Ayways... On a optimizations note. I totally respect everyones point of view, but I must say that the there seem to be one underlying truch in all the haters... and that is two things actually

1) Jerk players... who are stomping other players with their builds

2) A discrepancy between level of optimization

3) A DM who is not able to present correct level encounters for all players in the group!

So that was three things... if there are no jerks, everyone plays to the same level and a great DM... Everyone will have fun!

[RoboEmperor]

This is my personal experience/history.

Goal: Construct Master
Problem1: Need wealth to get its shtick going
Problem2: If construct dies, you are screwed. You cannot accrue enough wealth for a replacement for several levels.
Possible Solution: Wealth Optimization. Various spell combos and rule lawyering resulting in infinite wealth.
Result: Ruined the game. Wealth limits are very important to the enjoyment of the game and giving everyone 9999999999999gp ruined it. There was no way of making it work.
Fault: Mine. I was at fault. I was the optimizing power gaming rule lawyer that ruined everyone's fun.

Modified Goal: Expendable Permanent Minion Master
Solution: PLANAR BINDING line of spells. Minions are powerful, permanent, free, and expendable because they cost nothing to reacquire.
Problem1: Shtick comes online at level 9. Pushed back to 10 or 11 if I want to do something else with my character (sorcerer with dips).
Possible Solution: Early Access Optimization. After a lot of versatile spellcaster debate and whatnot through this forum, came up with a Nar Demonbinder build. Level 8 access to lesser planar binidng.
Problem2: Nar Demonbinder drops off very badly, especially with only 1 level 8 spell slot.
Problem3: Planar Binding can backfire and TPK the party.
Problem4: Requires downtime for spamming debuffs and and retrying when outsider succeeds save.
Solution: Spell DC optimization and Charisma Check Optimization to maximize 1 day planar binding resulting in extreme amount of class dips. I got 7 classes/PrCs in my final build.
Result: People called me a power gamer because of the complexity of my build. I did what I did to be the least bothersome as possible to the party and they have a problem with it.
Solution: Switched to Pure 20 cleric. 100% success rate with Lust Domain and Surge of Fortune.
Result1: A DM had a problem with free service. he went on to cite some obscure sci fi novel series no one ever heard and kept quoting "There is no free lunch" while he completley rewrites the rules for regeneration because "nothing in the world is immortal and everything should die."
Fault: DM. If he wanted to use d&d to create a world of his fantasies where he is god and everything works as he thinks how it should work, he should've said it up front so I don't join his game.
Results...5?: Finally found a game where people play d&d. No homebrew or house rule bull****. Everything was RAW. Everyone was experienced and had a good mastery of the system. Gentleman's agreement in place and no one abused it. Everyone was optimized and it was the best game ever.

Most common discussion I had: "Why don't you cast heal or buffs and abandon summoning or planar binding?"
My response: I'm not interested in playing a spellcaster. I'm interested in playing a creator of monsters, but since that's not viable I'm interested in playing a demon master. The entire reason I play d&d is because it's the only RPG system out there that lets me obtain permanent minions. You take this away and I'll play Skyrim or some other videogame. So if you want me to spend 4 hours a week doing nothing except healing and buffing you so you can kill **** while I twiddle my thumbs doing nothing, then go **** yourself.

Observation1: Experienced d&d players have no problems with me, my character, or my optimization. It's only the noob****s that do.
Observation2: People who have a specific goal they want to achieve in the game optimize. For me it was being a demon master. Others it's dealing the most epic damage in a charge, being a master in every skill, be invincible, etc.
Observation3: People who don't have a specific goal they want to achieve in the game don't optimize. It's the difference between "I want to be Aragorn and kill stuff with a sword" and "I want to be a walking tornado of blades so I'm gonna optimize as many attacks I can cram into my character."
Observation4: It's always the noobs who have a problem with optimization. Noob DMs railroad and when they fail to railroad because the PC is too strong they throw a tantrum and blame optimizers. If the noob is a player he'll get mad because he's weak and the optimizer is not.
Observation5: It's always the lazy apathetic players who have a problem with optimization. Excited players who are excited about the game spend their free time reading books and online webpages because they love their character and want to cram everything they want to do in the game into their character. Players who just want to punch stuff obviously doesn't read anything in their spare time and get mad when people who do outperform them.
Observation6: If your optimization goal is "Never be useless" and "always able to do something", all the noobs are going to hate you with a passion. Specialized optimizers get less flak.
Observation7: Some people just want things to be simple. Simple swordsman fighitng a simple monster supported by a simple wizard. These people aren't noobs, but they hate optimizers. Optimizers love complexity so they introduce levels of complexity simple people don't like, and as such they hate the optimizers.

Conclusion1: Virtually all optimization haters are noobs so feel free to completely disregard their whining.
Conclusion2: Some people like to keep things simple and these people hate optimizers. Fortunately 5e created a simpler d&d experience these people can switch to, but there is nothing wrong with people wanting simple games, which is why interviews are important. I believe most of the anti-optimization people on this forum who aren't noobs are these types of people, people who want a simple game without spending hours reading 10 books to build their character.
Conclusion3: There is nothing wrong with optimization. Excited enthusiastic people optimize their characters during their free time and a game with only these types of people is the most fun as the sheer uniqueness of each character and each campaign and NPC is astonishing.

So simply put, ignore all the noobs, and either join a simple game and be simple, or join a complex game and be complex. Don't be simple in a complex game or be complex in a simple game.

In the past 2 threads I've been seeing a lot of "Simple games are better, complex games are bad, so optimizing is bad", or "complex games are better, simple games are bad, so optimizing is good." which isn't really about optimization. It's about people claiming their personal tastes are superior to others. I am guilty of this as well, but I firmly believe if you don't like optimization you should switch to 5e.

[SangoProduction]

I've never been a fan of psionics and to me that site looks a little sketchy. Can't tell if that's actually free stuff or just stuff someone is saying is free.

The SRD is actually the officially allowed to be public stuff. And besides, even if you were concerned about the ethics there, we are 2 editions behind the current iteration. Buying a 3.5 book isn't supporting 3.5. It's essentially abandoned content.

[Melcar]

This is my personal experience/history.

Goal: Construct Master
Problem1: Need wealth to get its shtick going
Problem2: If construct dies, you are screwed. You cannot accrue enough wealth for a replacement for several levels.
Possible Solution: Wealth Optimization. Various spell combos and rule lawyering resulting in infinite wealth.
Result: Ruined the game. Wealth limits are very important to the enjoyment of the game and giving everyone 9999999999999gp ruined it. There was no way of making it work.
Fault: Mine. I was at fault. I was the optimizing power gaming rule lawyer that ruined everyone's fun.

Modified Goal: Expendable Permanent Minion Master
Solution: PLANAR BINDING line of spells. Minions are powerful, permanent, free, and expendable because they cost nothing to reacquire.
Problem1: Shtick comes online at level 9. Pushed back to 10 or 11 if I want to do something else with my character (sorcerer with dips).
Possible Solution: Early Access Optimization. After a lot of versatile spellcaster debate and whatnot through this forum, came up with a Nar Demonbinder build. Level 8 access to lesser planar binidng.
Problem2: Nar Demonbinder drops off very badly, especially with only 1 level 8 spell slot.
Problem3: Planar Binding can backfire and TPK the party.
Problem4: Requires downtime for spamming debuffs and and retrying when outsider succeeds save.
Solution: Spell DC optimization and Charisma Check Optimization to maximize 1 day planar binding resulting in extreme amount of class dips. I got 7 classes/PrCs in my final build.
Result: People called me a power gamer because of the complexity of my build. I did what I did to be the least bothersome as possible to the party and they have a problem with it.
Solution: Switched to Pure 20 cleric. 100% success rate with Lust Domain and Surge of Fortune.
Result1: A DM had a problem with free service. he went on to cite some obscure sci fi novel series no one ever heard and kept quoting "There is no free lunch" while he completley rewrites the rules for regeneration because "nothing in the world is immortal and everything should die."
Fault: DM. If he wanted to use d&d to create a world of his fantasies where he is god and everything works as he thinks how it should work, he should've said it up front so I don't join his game.
Results...5?: Finally found a game where people play d&d. No homebrew or house rule bull****. Everything was RAW. Everyone was experienced and had a good mastery of the system. Gentleman's agreement in place and no one abused it. Everyone was optimized and it was the best game ever.

Most common discussion I had: "Why don't you cast heal or buffs and abandon summoning or planar binding?"
My response: I'm not interested in playing a spellcaster. I'm interested in playing a creator of monsters, but since that's not viable I'm interested in playing a demon master. The entire reason I play d&d is because it's the only RPG system out there that lets me obtain permanent minions. You take this away and I'll play Skyrim or some other videogame. So if you want me to spend 4 hours a week doing nothing except healing and buffing you so you can kill **** while I twiddle my thumbs doing nothing, then go **** yourself.

Observation1: Experienced d&d players have no problems with me, my character, or my optimization. It's only the noob****s that do.
Observation2: People who have a specific goal they want to achieve in the game optimize. For me it was being a demon master. Others it's dealing the most epic damage in a charge, being a master in every skill, be invincible, etc.
Observation3: People who don't have a specific goal they want to achieve in the game don't optimize. It's the difference between "I want to be Aragorn and kill stuff with a sword" and "I want to be a walking tornado of blades so I'm gonna optimize as many attacks I can cram into my character."
Observation4: It's always the noobs who have a problem with optimization. Noob DMs railroad and when they fail to railroad because the PC is too strong they throw a tantrum and blame optimizers. If the noob is a player he'll get mad because he's weak and the optimizer is not.
Observation5: It's always the lazy apathetic players who have a problem with optimization. Excited players who are excited about the game spend their free time reading books and online webpages because they love their character and want to cram everything they want to do in the game into their character. Players who just want to punch stuff obviously doesn't read anything in their spare time and get mad when people who do outperform them.
Observation6: If your optimization goal is "Never be useless" and "always able to do something", all the noobs are going to hate you with a passion. Specialized optimizers get less flak.
Observation7: Some people just want things to be simple. Simple swordsman fighitng a simple monster supported by a simple wizard. These people aren't noobs, but they hate optimizers. Optimizers love complexity so they introduce levels of complexity simple people don't like, and as such they hate the optimizers.

Conclusion1: Virtually all optimization haters are noobs so feel free to completely disregard their whining.
Conclusion2: Some people like to keep things simple and these people hate optimizers. Fortunately 5e created a simpler d&d experience these people can switch to, but there is nothing wrong with people wanting simple games, which is why interviews are important. I believe most of the anti-optimization people on this forum who aren't noobs are these types of people, people who want a simple game without spending hours reading 10 books to build their character.
Conclusion3: There is nothing wrong with optimization. Excited enthusiastic people optimize their characters during their free time and a game with only these types of people is the most fun as the sheer uniqueness of each character and each campaign and NPC is astonishing.

So simply put, ignore all the noobs, and either join a simple game and be simple, or join a complex game and be complex. Don't be simple in a complex game or be complex in a simple game.

In the past 2 threads I've been seeing a lot of "Simple games are better, complex games are bad, so optimizing is bad", or "complex games are better, simple games are bad, so optimizing is good." which isn't really about optimization. It's about people claiming their personal tastes are superior to others. I am guilty of this as well, but I firmly believe if you don't like optimization you should switch to 5e.

I think you are pretty close to the mark here... And I actually like your bluntness. However...

One of my best friends actually like the feeling of playing a low level simple game. For him, that hits the spirit/mood of stories like LoTR... and he enjoys kicking in the door as a level 1... where checks fail and stuff like that... and I agree with him most of the time. He is a very experienced player and a great DM, who himself have build some super complex powerful builds... So he can, he often chooses not to, but he very rarely misses his mark in terms of matching the overall optimization level of the party and setting... Both as a DM and as a player...

So even though I think that you are right in the majority of things... my friend seem to not fit your conclusions! :)

[Crake]

Thread asks why someone would hate optimization, someone who hates optimization responds, in less than one page the OP and more have dogpiled them about how they're wrong and need to change their mind.

Well done gents.

I especially like how right after I told Crake off for being antagonistic and how shouting about the stormwind fallacy didn't mean anything, his very next post continued shouting about the stormwind fallacy while accusing the very person who the thread should be welcoming of being argumentative (hey, did you know that accusing someone of trolling is itself trolling under the forum rules?). If you don't want to argue then stop arguing, let the man say his peace in the thread that directly asked for it without directly contradicting him. Though seeing the OP immediately go from reasonable to straight opposition is right up there too.

I'm pretty sure that's why martixy's saying this thread is the same as all the others (because it is).

(Not to say some of you aren't doing a fine job, you lot just keep being fine).

I actually never noticed your post, cause I noticed darth ultron's response and responded to that without looking at much else. To respond to it now: The main issue I had with what darth ultron was saying was that he was framing it as fact, not experience. And honestly, in my experience, there is actually little to no correlation between a player optimizing and a player lacking roleplay. If anything, I've noticed an opposite trend, as players gain more system mastery, they also gain more confidence in roleplaying, but I believe that to be correlation, not causation; as a player gets more experienced at the game in general, their competence in all aspects of the game increase.

[Pleh]

I don't hate optimizers. I play with too many of them I like very much for that to be possible.

I do find it grating at times when trying to prepare and run a more standard adventure for them, only to find out they should be considered several levels higher than their sheet would indicate due to game breaking optimization.

I then start looking for what few weaknesses they do have so my only method for challenging them isn't stuck with raising the CR (and making XP and treasure rewards all wonky).

When I'm a PC alongside them, I just try to be Char Op enough to tag along.

Optimization is just a tool, neither good nor bad. It's all about how you use it. Most bad uses for optimization are really just runaway competitive spirit that gets a little more aggressive than is helpful for an essentially cooperative game. It's defended as being necessary to overcome challenges, but that can't be true unless the DM is equally aggressive and competitive with their challenges. Sure, there can be mistakes in DMing leading to unintentionally steep challenges, but I've always felt it was more a thing for the DM to retcon unreasonable difficulty than players to be ready for every possible thing.

[RoboEmperor]

I think you are pretty close to the mark here... And I actually like your bluntness. However...

One of my best friends actually like the feeling of playing a low level simple game. For him, that hits the spirit/mood of stories like LoTR... and he enjoys kicking in the door as a level 1... where checks fail and stuff like that... and I agree with him most of the time. He is a very experienced player and a great DM, who himself have build some super complex powerful builds... So he can, he often chooses not to, but he very rarely misses his mark in terms of matching the overall optimization level of the party and setting... Both as a DM and as a player...

So even though I think that you are right in the majority of things... my friend seem to not fit your conclusions! :)

He fits under "likes simple games" in my conclusion, which is conclusion2. Skilled people who hate optimizers are people who like simple games. There's nothing wrong with this and I respect this and I respect people who prefer simple games.

[Yahzi]

Like what is actually the point in hating it?
The mechanics are there to let us tell a story. The mechanics should not be the story.

It's the difference between reading a novel and critiquing a novel's grammar. Yes, of course you have to have decent grammar in your novel; but the grammar isn't the point.

Also, over-optimizing just makes the DM's job harder. In a world with INT 30+ wizards, you are not the first person to think of that combo. Every time you invent a new trick, the DM has to explain why that neat trick hasn't already taken over the whole world.

[Melcar]

He fits under "likes simple games" in my conclusion, which is conclusion2. Skilled people who hate optimizers are people who like simple games. There's nothing wrong with this and I respect this and I respect people who prefer simple games.

Might be right... but he doesn't hate optimization, he just likes simple games more, but its really more of a everything in equal amounts and everything has its time and place for him... He DMs both a highly optimized game and a simple game, and has both optimized and simple characters... I think however, that if he had to choose one game for the rest of his life it would be the simple one...

EDIT: Or more precisely, he would choose a low level game... not necessarily a simple!

[gooddragon1]

After kind of thinking about it in this thread, I had an epiphany:[ U]Tier is an indication of how much you have to optimize to have an effective character[/U]
Read that again, just to really let it sink in.


http://creaneyps.wa.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Facebook-like-button.png



New players don't understand that. They think that the higher the tier, the more complex and hard the character becomes to play, when the inverse is true. Tier one characters are inherently effective, so the amount of optimization you need is very little. It becomes cosmetic at that point. I CAN take toughness for all of my feats for a tier one class, and honestly? They will become better for it. They have a more effective chassis. Now at low level, you can still get TPK'd in a all tier 1 party like it was nothing, IF you don't know the little tricks for low level survival, but once you understand the best choices for survival low level, it's cake.

So really again, that maxim kind of rings. The fact is, optimization is NOT really something tier 1 classes have to necessarily concern themselves with with. If I spend all of my feats on shenanigans for a cleric, at the end of the day, at level 20, that is still a cleric. If I DON'T pick natural spell for a druid, and just pick more trap feats, it's completely fine, because in the end, he can still fall back on all of the class features that can carry them.


The explanation sounds good too. Though I still don't like having to prepare or think about all the possible spells involved in tier 2.

[quark12000]

Well, I just couldn't do that. I'll have to stick to the three core books that I have.


You're basically only using 3% of available options... why omg why? The later stuff printed is actually more balanced than the CORE. Also having direct classes and options makes "optimizations" less necessary!


I don't really understand the question. Why only use the books I have? Um, because they're the only books I have and can't afford to buy out of print stuff.

[AnimeTheCat]

I personally don't take issue with optimization/optimizers. I often feel at odds with them on this site, but I can attribute that to:

1) not clearly explaining exactly what it is I'm trying to do.
I often feel like I'm being very clear on what I'm trying to do, but I've noticed something about that too. When I am incredibly clear as to what i'm intending, such as explaining a character concept, explicitly stating what I don't want, and including available resources, I get hardly any response. It's discouraging to say the least.

When I'm less clear, so that I at least get some response, the response tends to be "You should play [inster TOB class/Inster Full Casting class]" and then going further to explain how to warp spells and other schenanigans to morph something into a warped view of what I was intending.

I don't think it comes from a bad place, but I think many people that frequent this particular forum tend to have a similar train of thought and due to that some newcomers to the forum may see these things repeted in chorus and think it's the only possible way, or even the norm.

What I've realized is that the way I play is radically different from the way others play. For example, in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?544609-The-Wildest-Empathyest) I listed my "build" for wild empathy and then ended the post with "Am i missing anything else to further bolster Wild Empathy at level 1 (I know about the +2 synergy bonus for 5 ranks in Handle Animal) or does that about cover it?" Clearly that was a post about optimizing wild empathy at level 1, but the thread divulged into a bunch of things that weren't that. In fact, none of the people who responded even made mention to anything further that I could do except the first post about traits and flaws. This is a case of both of my gripes where I thought I was being pretty specific, but the only things mentioned were unavailable or otherwise non-requested bits of information.

This is a gripe in general abou the forums, and less about optimization I suppose, but is incredibly relatable to many threads I see on optimization.

I suppose what I would see as a "fix" (if there is such a way to fix the internet... lol) would be to have the experienced individuals create something of a template for newcomers to use when requesting help on their character. Have it include a vision, must haves, must not haves, available content, etc. Something to be used as a resource so that people needing/wanting help aren't just bombarded with "Play X caster" "Do this build" "Lol noob" nonsense. If people are complaining about it in this thread, it must be happening to someone somehwere, so to shurk it off as something that doesn't exist or doesn't happen is rude to say the least.

2) Just... the internet... It's hard enough for me to articulate my point in person, let alone through text on a screen.

I think what would help everyone is this:
- If you are seeking assistance, be as complete as possible and be sure to include what you want and do not want
- If you are seeking to provide assistance, ensure you know what the individual seeking assistance is looking for before jumping to conclusions. Sure, this will take longer than just posting what you want to tell them to do, but it will help the individual learn and will help them to have better experiences with optimization as opposed to harsh or negative experiences. This also gives the individual requesting assistance the chance to catch something if they forgot about it in their original post or if concepts/themes/resources changed.

I know some people already do this, but if as a community we all do this, I feel like things could go a bit smoother and individuals like Darth Ultron can have better experiences with optimization and understand it as a process for making your roleplaying desires reflected in in-game mechanics. Ultimately, that is the purpose of optimization. Make your character mechanically do what you thematically want it to, not to break the game (unless that's the game you're playing in, but even then you thematically want your character to break the game so... circular reasoning).

[Darth Ultron]

The core dice mechanics are prone to be very "swingy" (*), so you're expected to find ways to even the odds in your favor to counter this. If a character is supposed to be consistently good or at least above average at some tasks, then you must start stacking the odds in your favor, mostly by enforcing the mechanical side of it.


Except you need to stop and step back. You say it is swingy and you are expected to find ways to even the odds. Like your being forced to do it, against your will. Like, what, the rule book is possessing you, or something.

And, again, why *must* a character always *have* to be good or above average? Is there some reason a character can not be anything else?



"Player Empowerment" overrides the "Mother May I?"-style of gm´ing by giving the players the tools to announce an action and possible resolve it on their own without needing any gm interference. Yes, that means that "Perform (Comedy)" can be resolved mechanically without the player having to be funny, but it´s also easy to weave it into the ongoing narrative.


Guess this is part of the whole Everyone Collective that bows down and follows the Almighty Rules. The beyond wacky idea that a player will say ''sorry DM, my character does X and page 77 says so and you can't do anything, hahahahaha!" And I do get there are wacky DM's that roll over and just say ''yes, player, all hail the rules''. Though, any even average DM can just say whatever they want to have happen in the game, and yes ignore the rule on page 77.


A character with 11 charisma will be midly funny at the best of times. 30 charisma is excessive to be sure, but a decent charisma score does help. If you're going to let players out play their ability scores then what's the point of having them to begin with?

I very much agree that a player should role play out their characters ability scores. Though I think a player should role play out all their ability scores, both high and low and everywhere in between. And this is where the optimizer problem comes in: they can only roll play high ability scores. They don't even have low ability scores, other then their official dump stat, but that will always be in a useless ability for the character(what a shock).


just trolling. That and the fact that your entire post basically is just stormwind fallacy after stormwind fallacy.


Sure is amazing how this 'hot air myth' not only means your right always, but you refuse to even talk about it.


Except no one is saying that they must have 30 charisma to roleplay a funny character.

No one except the optimizer. The optimizer can't role play, so they want to roll play to obscure that fact.


Optimization does not preclude role-playing. Role-playing is independent of game mechanics, and in some cases, a mechanical choice gives you an idea about how to role-play your character. (Also, I've never seen an optimizer try to claim they need 100 hp to be funny or anything remotely similar.)

This is true of any non optimizing player or ''normal player''. The problem is the optimizer not being able to accept ''my character might fail at something some of the time'' and ''I must win the game!"


Hearing Darth Ultron, I get the impression that anyone who can hit the broad side of a barn is a "demigod of swords". Someone who doesn't hit the broad side of a barn is then a "master swordsman".

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if something like max-ranking a skill goes against DU's views of a good character.

The problem is, for a level appropriate encounter:

Normal: the master swordsman should hit roughly half the time.

Optimizer: The Super Duper Master Swordman must hit EVERY time! pew pew!

[Florian]

@Darth Ultron:

Because were talking about a game system that doesn't do gradients but can only generate a "pass" or "fail" binary result, starting with a d20 vs DC 10 (so 50% chance) and going upwards from there. IMHO its perfectly fine to suck or outright fail at things, but it´s pretty bad to suck and fail at things that your character is supposedly good at, which should be reflected by the results of your rolls. (No, I don't expect my Wizard to be good at hitting things, that'd be absurd, but I expect my Wizard to be good at knowing things, being a gentleman and a scholar....)

And nah, its really more about reducing the need for gm judgment calls and shifting a lot of them over to the general rules. The goal is to provide for an overall smoother gameplay, as not everything has to be judged on the fly or discussed. But yeah, RAW fetishism can lead to very.. odd... results and people, especially on this board, are overdoing it with the whole empowerment thing.

Edit: Look at game systems that work differently and you get different player reactions.

[Jormengand]

Guess this is part of the whole Everyone Collective that bows down and follows the Almighty Rules. The beyond wacky idea that a player will say ''sorry DM, my character does X and page 77 says so and you can't do anything, hahahahaha!" And I do get there are wacky DM's that roll over and just say ''yes, player, all hail the rules''. Though, any even average DM can just say whatever they want to have happen in the game, and yes ignore the rule on page 77.

Have you tried free-form? What's the point of playing a game with rules if you're going to ignore them?


The problem is, for a level appropriate encounter:

Normal: the master swordsman should hit roughly half the time.

Optimizer: The Super Duper Master Swordman must hit EVERY time! pew pew!

Now this is how I know you haven't read any of the rulebooks.

Let's go down the monsters on the SRD. Aboleth, CR 7, 16 AC. Fighter with 18 STR and 7 BAB, with no relevant feats (and really, what fighter has no relevant feats) hits on a 5, 80% of the time. Aboleth mage, AC 18, CR 17. Wizard with STR 12 ("Not even a real swordsman") hits on a 9, 60% of the time. Fighter with STR 8 ("Pretty rubbish swordsman") hits on a 2. Achairai, mediocre swordsman hits 50% of the time, allip, if the fighter could actually hit it at all with its incorporeality, he'd hit on an 8 (65%). If you give the fighter a decent sword he should be hitting all the angels more than half the time (the solar he can hit more than half the time anyway), he can barely miss most of the higher-level animated objects, and so forth. With no more optimisation than "Hmm, if I want to be good with a sword maybe some strength would be good", he's hitting more than half the time on most enemies. This isn't even accounting for weapon focus or anything.

Even a mediocre swordsman is hitting more than half the time. And, well, no duh, because every miss is a round where the player is doing nothing. A swordsman who puts in even a modicum of effort will indeed be hitting almost all the time. He will have a nearly 100% success rate at his own job, heaven forbid!

Meanwhile the wizard is casting magic missiles which never miss since level 1.

[tadkins]

I have a mixed relationship with optimizing.

On one hand, I like to build as an effective character as possible. I don't like feeling powerless and so I try to get some optimization in there.

On the other hand, from what I've learned on these boards over the years, if I'm not playing something like a god wizard or a CoDzilla, there's always that slightly nagging feeling that I'm doing it wrong. If I want to deviate from that in the least; playing a wizard/archer gish, a beguiler, or heaven forbid a pure martial class, then I am already not optimized and am doing it wrong.

[Arbane]

After kind of thinking about it in this thread, I had an epiphany:[ U]Tier is an indication of how much you have to optimize to have an effective character[/U]
Read that again, just to really let it sink in.


Yep.
The joke I heard is that the tier number is the number of different sourcebooks it takes to make a passable character of that class.


And, again, why *must* a character always *have* to be good or above average? Is there some reason a character can not be anything else?


Because outside of Paranoia or Kobolds Ate My Baby, I suspect most RPers like playing competent characters. I personally think it's good roleplaying to not want to die, which is what a steady regimen of failure often gets you in a violent setting. It's also often good roleplaying, in a high-risk situation, to not want to have to drag along Gilligan.

If we really crave failure, humiliation, and suffering, that's what we have the dice for.

[Scots Dragon]

*snip*

I think this gets at a kernel of my problem with most optimisation advice. It's not so much that people talk about building characters that are powerful in their advice, it's that people talk about building characters that have almost no resemblance at all to answering the question being asked and which more or less just hijack the entire thing to talk about their favourite feat chain or prestige class combination that might only be tangentially related to what's being talked about.

If at all. I think we're going to need a new phrase to go alongside the Stormwind and Oberoni fallacies.

I'm not going to name it after myself, especially since I've been wanting to change this username for ages, but the vague definition is 'whenever the advice being given on a requested optimisation topic is completely and utterly irrelevant to the question being asked'.

[Malimar]

After kind of thinking about it in this thread, I had an epiphany: Tier is an indication of how much you have to optimize to have an effective character
Read that again, just to really let it sink in.

New players don't understand that. They think that the higher the tier, the more complex and hard the character becomes to play, when the inverse is true. Tier one characters are inherently effective, so the amount of optimization you need is very little. It becomes cosmetic at that point. I CAN take toughness for all of my feats for a tier one class, and honestly? They will become better for it. They have a more effective chassis. Now at low level, you can still get TPK'd in a all tier 1 party like it was nothing, IF you don't know the little tricks for low level survival, but once you understand the best choices for survival low level, it's cake.

So really again, that maxim kind of rings. The fact is, optimization is NOT really something tier 1 classes have to necessarily concern themselves with with. If I spend all of my feats on shenanigans for a cleric, at the end of the day, at level 20, that is still a cleric. If I DON'T pick natural spell for a druid, and just pick more trap feats, it's completely fine, because in the end, he can still fall back on all of the class features that can carry them.

I was initially compelled by this point, but then I realized, no, it is often (but not always) not true. The most effective out-of-the-box no-optimization-needed characters are the three Tome of Battle classes (which are all t3 IIRC), whereas wizards are crap on a stick without a bit of effort put into optimizing them.

I'm a half-competent optimizer, though I often deliberately eschew the most obviously powerful options, and the one wizard I've played is extremely weaksauce -- though part of that is she's still level 2, and wizards don't start being even potentially boss until at level 5 or 7 or so. Even druids, which on paper you'd think are strong without any thought, are easy to play extremely poorly (see the legendarily unoptimized playtest druid, or literally every druid I've ever seen in actual play except one -- druid is just too complicated, has too many moving parts, for a newbie to use one to even minimal effectiveness). Low-to-mid-tier rogues, warlocks, and dragonfire adepts can do decent fistsful of dice of damage right out of the box (people scoff at their "subpar" damage, but I scoff at those scoffers) and, as much as we like to pretend otherwise, damage is a huge part of the game and most parties don't contain uberchargers with DPR in the thousands. I'm playing a sorcerer whose most effective contribution to the party is casting Mythic Enlarge Person on the fighters (aside from once in a long while one-shotting a squad of salamanders with a Mythic Coldball). I'm playing a low-level psion with desperately limited PP/day that makes him the least effective party member in a group of can-fight-all-day-without-a-rest ostensibly "low-tier" (aside from the highly optimized cleric) characters. I'm playing a cleric who didn't bother taking DMM and is contributing the least out of all the highly-optimized party who are mostly t2-3.

Yes, much of this is anecdata, but it's very consistent across my experience that optimization floor (how little you have to optimize to have an effective character) is divorced from tier. If tier represents anything relevant to this point, it represents optimization ceiling.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I think this gets at a kernel of my problem with most optimisation advice. It's not so much that people talk about building characters that are powerful in their advice, it's that people talk about building characters that have almost no resemblance at all to answering the question being asked and which more or less just hijack the entire thing to talk about their favourite feat chain or prestige class combination that might only be tangentially related to what's being talked about.

If at all. I think we're going to need a new phrase to go alongside the Stormwind and Oberoni fallacies.

I'm not going to name it after myself, especially since I've been wanting to change this username for ages, but the vague definition is 'whenever the advice being given on a requested optimisation topic is completely and utterly irrelevant to the question being asked'.
I think it's called "the internet." That said...


I think what would help everyone is this:
- If you are seeking assistance, be as complete as possible and be sure to include what you want and do not want
- If you are seeking to provide assistance, ensure you know what the individual seeking assistance is looking for before jumping to conclusions. Sure, this will take longer than just posting what you want to tell them to do, but it will help the individual learn and will help them to have better experiences with optimization as opposed to harsh or negative experiences. This also gives the individual requesting assistance the chance to catch something if they forgot about it in their original post or if concepts/themes/resources changed.
This is the sort of thing I was suggesting on page 1: we should try to have a semi-standard set of questions for people asking for help, to try to identify their comfort level with optimization stuff.



I wonder if it would be possible to develop (and have a mod sticky) a standard-issue "character help request" form, to help fine-tune responses in ways that people might not know to ask about. Something like:

What sources are available?
How many different sources are you willing to use in one build?
How willing are you to re-flavor material, bend role-playing requirements, and so on?
How mechanically complicated a character are you looking for?
How powerful a character are you looking for-- one who struggles with similar-level/CR monsters, one on equal footing with them, one who can handle monsters several levels higher than expected, or one who can handle monsters many levels higher than expected?
What's your tolerance for "technically legal" stuff-- do you want to avoid anything weird-looking, stick to things where the end result is logical/not too strong, or does anything go?

[Venger]

beautifully said, someonenoone11, all that is correct.


The mechanics are there to let us tell a story. The mechanics should not be the story.

It's the difference between reading a novel and critiquing a novel's grammar. Yes, of course you have to have decent grammar in your novel; but the grammar isn't the point.

Also, over-optimizing just makes the DM's job harder. In a world with INT 30+ wizards, you are not the first person to think of that combo. Every time you invent a new trick, the DM has to explain why that neat trick hasn't already taken over the whole world.

you should play with darth ultron

[Darth Ultron]

Because were talking about a game system that doesn't do gradients but can only generate a "pass" or "fail" binary result, starting with a d20 vs DC 10 (so 50% chance) and going upwards from there.

What game are you talking about? Not 3.5E D&D, right?

Because lets take 3.5E D&D. Say on round one you roll and your character misses....does the whole game world explode? Well, no, not in a normal game. In a normal game the player can try again the next round or do something else. So every round, every couple minutes of real time, the player can roll an attack again...or try to do something else.



And nah, its really more about reducing the need for gm judgment calls and shifting a lot of them over to the general rules. The goal is to provide for an overall smoother gameplay, as not everything has to be judged on the fly or discussed. But yeah, RAW fetishism can lead to very.. odd... results and people, especially on this board, are overdoing it with the whole empowerment thing.

Except in a normal game a DM will have to make dozens of judgment calls. It is nice to think that somehow ''the rules'' cover everything...but that is just silly.


Just to make certain I'm not reading this wrong: you are saying that someone who practices theoretical and/or practical optimization cannot be interested in the ROLE aspects of the game, but only the mechanical aspects, right?


No, i'm saying most: not all. It is more like you already have plenty of players that hate or dislike role playing and the players that love roll playing. And the rules lawyer players and the aggressive ''it is me vs the DM'' type player. All those types of players are the types that became optimizers. So the vast majority of optimizers are all ready from the hate or don't want to role play types of players.



What does "a funny personality" have to do with hp? This sounds absolutely absurd, making me suspect that you've completely misunderstood what someone has said. And exactly what makes you believe this is how "optimizers" think?

I agree most optimizers are absurd. They will demand things like having maximum hit points, no matter what. It is an easy tell of an optimizer.



Firstly, a blanket statement like “it ruins the game” is clearly untrue.

Well, the answer is why I hate otimization.



If your roleplaying a powerhungry wizard, you are going to take the things that make you better at surviving and killing your enemies so you have less competition. And that’s in itself is a totally valid goal or character concept.

I agree, but note that does not say anything about optimization. And this is another perfect tell for an optimizer. A normal player will take a feat that fits a character concept/goal even if that feat is not ''the super duper best most awesome mechanical roll playing feat ever''. An optimizer won't.



I have never heard this argument before, but see my above point. If becoming a great swordsman or wrestler is what your fighter’s life, HP is probably a good thing. It seems to me you are equating being good at something mechanically as being bad at roleplaying… again not true at all!

Again a normal gamer can role play no matter the character, character mechanics or rules. It is just the optimizer that has the problem.

And note we are not talking about becoming a great swordsman, as that does imply that the character has to be a ''not great'' swordman to start...and the optimizer won't accept that. They must have the highest everything for their character ''now''.



Now this is how I know you haven't read any of the rulebooks.

Let's go down the monsters on the SRD. Aboleth, CR 7, 16 AC. Fighter with 18 STR and 7 BAB, with no relevant feats (and really, what fighter has no relevant feats) hits on a 5, 80% of the time. Aboleth mage, AC 18, CR 17. Wizard with STR 12 ("Not even a real swordsman") hits on a 9, 60% of the time. Fighter with STR 8 ("Pretty rubbish swordsman") hits on a 2. Achairai, mediocre swordsman hits 50% of the time, allip, if the fighter could actually hit it at all with its incorporeality, he'd hit on an 8 (65%). If you give the fighter a decent sword he should be hitting all the angels more than half the time (the solar he can hit more than half the time anyway), he can barely miss most of the higher-level animated objects, and so forth. With no more optimisation than "Hmm, if I want to be good with a sword maybe some strength would be good", he's hitting more than half the time on most enemies. This isn't even accounting for weapon focus or anything.

So wait your saying a 7th level fighter, right? With a melee attack of +11, will hit an Aboleth 80% of the time? And your saying, what, that is good or bad? But, ok, the 7th level fighter does not stand much of a chance vs an Aboleth Mage....but that is a CR17, so that is way above a 7th level fighter.
So then you toss in the 7th level wizard? What attacking with a staff or a spell? Hits 60% of the time?

So, your numbers are all over the place....so not sure what your point even was.



Even a mediocre swordsman is hitting more than half the time. And, well, no duh, because every miss is a round where the player is doing nothing. A swordsman who puts in even a modicum of effort will indeed be hitting almost all the time. He will have a nearly 100% success rate at his own job, heaven forbid!

Meanwhile the wizard is casting magic missiles which never miss since level 1.

Woah, just note this optimizier delusion: If a character misses, then they are doing nothing. So, this is just the other side of ''my character must always hit'' and ''I must win the game''.

And if your complaint is about the spell magic missile, then 4E is for you say you can have a fighter with an encounter power of ''allays hit pew pew''.

[unseenmage]

...big snip...

If the goal is to RP without the G then why are you here? D&D 3.x/PF is a LOT of the G. So much so by its very nature it can get in the way of the RP, as evidenced by all these similar threads.

If you 'hate' it here so much then why not find one of the many games out there where you can RP without any optimization or optimizers at all?

I'm not telling you to go away. To be clear I am genuinely curious as to why you are persisting in an environment that you clearly dislike.
To me, it is this disconnect that casts your posts in the light of trolling.

But just in case that perception is false, and hey this IS all being conveyed via pure text and without in person social cues, please educate me as to what about this game and community you DO enjoy?

[Arbane]

Woah, just note this optimizier delusion: If a character misses, then they are doing nothing. So, this is just the other side of ''my character must always hit'' and ''I must win the game''.

And if your complaint is about the spell magic missile, then 4E is for you say you can have a fighter with an encounter power of ''allays hit pew pew''.

Yeah, everyone knows only wizards are allowed to have always-hit powers.

[death390]

I think you are pretty close to the mark here... And I actually like your bluntness. However...

One of my best friends actually like the feeling of playing a low level simple game. For him, that hits the spirit/mood of stories like LoTR... and he enjoys kicking in the door as a level 1... where checks fail and stuff like that... and I agree with him most of the time. He is a very experienced player and a great DM, who himself have build some super complex powerful builds... So he can, he often chooses not to, but he very rarely misses his mark in terms of matching the overall optimization level of the party and setting... Both as a DM and as a player...

So even though I think that you are right in the majority of things... my friend seem to not fit your conclusions! :)

i think your friend is the exception that proves the rule (there is always at least 1).


Except you need to stop and step back. You say it is swingy and you are expected to find ways to even the odds. Like your being forced to do it, against your will. Like, what, the rule book is possessing you, or something.

And, again, why *must* a character always *have* to be good or above average? Is there some reason a character can not be anything else?



Guess this is part of the whole Everyone Collective that bows down and follows the Almighty Rules. The beyond wacky idea that a player will say ''sorry DM, my character does X and page 77 says so and you can't do anything, hahahahaha!" And I do get there are wacky DM's that roll over and just say ''yes, player, all hail the rules''. Though, any even average DM can just say whatever they want to have happen in the game, and yes ignore the rule on page 77.



I very much agree that a player should role play out their characters ability scores. Though I think a player should role play out all their ability scores, both high and low and everywhere in between. And this is where the optimizer problem comes in: they can only roll play high ability scores. They don't even have low ability scores, other then their official dump stat, but that will always be in a useless ability for the character(what a shock).



~snip~

No one except the optimizer. The optimizer can't role play, so they want to roll play to obscure that fact.



This is true of any non optimizing player or ''normal player''. The problem is the optimizer not being able to accept ''my character might fail at something some of the time'' and ''I must win the game!"



The problem is, for a level appropriate encounter:

Normal: the master swordsman should hit roughly half the time.

Optimizer: The Super Duper Master Swordsman must hit EVERY time! pew pew!

a apprentice or journeyman swordsman i could understand being average. but a MASTER SWORDSMAN? he SHOULD hit most of the time that is why he is a MASTER.

the rules are there for a reason. are they great and infallible? no! do they tend to work overall? YES! Rule 0 is there for a reason! it is the DM's prerogative to alter the rules to fit their concept. however most of the people i have played with prefer RAW except in cases that the rules don't work or make no sense.

i agree that the attributes are there as a good guideline for character style. that does not mean that the 8 Charisma warrior can't be funny. just that most of his funny-ness should be related to warrior humor. meanwhile the Bard with 22 charisma should be able to entertain almost everyone. i personally am an introvert so i tend to dump Charisma because it fits my style more. that doesn't mean that i can't have a funny moment, just that they should be more 'rare'. even as a optimizer i tend to use the feat lost tradition to redirect a charisma casting character to another stat because i would not be able to appropriately play a high charisma character.

i can roleplay quite well, even as a optimizer. the trick is to figure out a goal and find ways to do so in game. hell even if i have my build planned out that just means i have a reason (or need to make one) to go looking for specific things.

as for must succeed all the time bit, that is impossible even for the optimizer. there is no way to get everything beyond unlimited wishes.

now do i want to succeed 90% of the time at something that i specialize in? hell yes. but i pay for that by being bad at something else. my current character is bad at the charisma related skills. but as a stealthy character i am good (on par with non-op ranger), i am also good at being knowledgeable, and ok at physical/survival skills.

[Darth Ultron]

If the goal is to RP without the G then why are you here? D&D 3.x/PF is a LOT of the G. So much so by its very nature it can get in the way of the RP, as evidenced by all these similar threads.

That is not the goal. I want the mechanics and role playing to work together to make a well designed character.



I'm not telling you to go away. To be clear I am genuinely curious as to why you are persisting in an environment that you clearly dislike.
To me, it is this disconnect that casts your posts in the light of trolling.

This is a rant/hate thread. Why do I hate optimization: ok, here is my answer.

It is not like this is a ''lets talk about how super duper cool and awesome optimization is'' thread and I'm crashing the thread or anything.

And, over all, the hard core ''optimizing zealots'' are not Everyone...a lot of gamers are in the middle. And they are the ones I'm doing it for.



But just in case that perception is false, and hey this IS all being conveyed via pure text and without in person social cues, please educate me as to what about this game and community you DO enjoy?

The ''community'', well not so much of the people in the Everyone Collective that all ''think the same things'', but everyone else is fine.

And the game is great...loads of fun. You can hate optimzation and love the game.

Optimization is the idea that your character ''must'' be a demigod to have fun. I know that is false. A player can have fun with any character.

The optimzer is saying ''my fighter must be a weapon master, always, and always hit and always do a ton of damage every single round or I can't have fun.

I'm saying that is not the only way to play the game.

[EldritchWeaver]

I was initially compelled by this point, but then I realized, no, it is often (but not always) not true. The most effective out-of-the-box no-optimization-needed characters are the three Tome of Battle classes (which are all t3 IIRC), whereas wizards are crap on a stick without a bit of effort put into optimizing them.

...

Yes, much of this is anecdata, but it's very consistent across my experience that optimization floor (how little you have to optimize to have an effective character) is divorced from tier. If tier represents anything relevant to this point, it represents optimization ceiling.

My personal grieve with the tiers is, that they don't tell about the optimization floor. Which you rightly noticed, is the true measure of how easy it is to screw up a character. If you rank classes according to the floor, then wizard is right along with the monk.


What game are you talking about? Not 3.5E D&D, right?

Because lets take 3.5E D&D. Say on round one you roll and your character misses....does the whole game world explode? Well, no, not in a normal game. In a normal game the player can try again the next round or do something else. So every round, every couple minutes of real time, the player can roll an attack again...or try to do something else.

I haven't been in any game yet nor ever heard of one where "you miss" results in "the world explodes". Could you please choose some more realistic examples? Or at least formulate them differently. Like "Missing only means that you can try again."?



Except in a normal game a DM will have to make dozens of judgment calls. It is nice to think that somehow ''the rules'' cover everything...but that is just silly.

There is a difference between making a decision based on a rule framework like "player gets a +2 circumstance modifier" and ignoring any rules, deciding if a character hits just on a whim.


And note we are not talking about becoming a great swordsman, as that does imply that the character has to be a ''not great'' swordman to start...and the optimizer won't accept that. They must have the highest everything for their character ''now''.

So any character has to start at the bottom of the barrel, because that's the sole valid playstyle? I have played over the years a number of systems, and I noticed one thing: I don't like playing impotent and superfluous characters. I want to have some impact on the world (and even if it is nothing of note outside of those to whom it matters). I don't want to succeed automatically, I want to have a fighting chance. And a fighting chance against hordes of enemies implies via simple mathematics, that you are above average. That you need to be above average or you just die. And for the record, I don't need to be the one who can do everything, I need my niche where I excel. That is my reason to play the game. To do things I cannot do on my own. Not to play effectively a clone of me.

That being said, even if you have optimized characters, you can still end up going against opponents where your strengths don't help. It just shouldn't be every encounter. Some encounters should be an easy victory.


So wait your saying a 7th level fighter, right? With a melee attack of +11, will hit an Aboleth 80% of the time? And your saying, what, that is good or bad? But, ok, the 7th level fighter does not stand much of a chance vs an Aboleth Mage....but that is a CR17, so that is way above a 7th level fighter.
So then you toss in the 7th level wizard? What attacking with a staff or a spell? Hits 60% of the time?

So, your numbers are all over the place....so not sure what your point even was.

Let's ignore the aboleth wizard part. The point is that CR 7 enemies can be hit with a chance of more than 50% by just having a fighter 7 with 16 Str. That means you are even at low point of optimizing a somewhat capable character in this aspect.


Woah, just note this optimizier delusion: If a character misses, then they are doing nothing. So, this is just the other side of ''my character must always hit'' and ''I must win the game''.

Actually, what is the difference between failing to hit and doing nothing? Outside of fluff implications - which might be important in the game - there isn't one that I can see. The enemy has the same hit points, has the same conditions applied to him, is still as capable as a threat as before. That is a problem independent of optimization, although optimization and the direction of optimization influence the degree of how much that is a problem.

[Jormengand]

Woah, just note this optimizier delusion: If a character misses, then they are doing nothing. So, this is just the other side of ''my character must always hit'' and ''I must win the game''.

Uhm...

In 3.5, at least, a character who misses with a weapon attack absolutely, literally, and in every situation I can think of other than fighting defensively, does nothing but waste their action. A character who misses really is doing nothing.

[Darth Ultron]

a apprentice or journeyman swordsman i could understand being average. but a MASTER SWORDSMAN? he SHOULD hit most of the time that is why he is a MASTER.

The problem here is the disconnect. A master swordsman is, by the rules even, a higher level character. So if your charater is say 2nd level, they are NOT the most super duper awesome master swordsman in the world (you know, unless your playing in a campaign setting like Eberron). But the optimzer thinks thier character must be a 'master' from birth.



now do i want to succeed 90% of the time at something that i specialize in? hell yes. but i pay for that by being bad at something else. my current character is bad at the charisma related skills. but as a stealthy character i am good (on par with non-op ranger), i am also good at being knowledgeable, and ok at physical/survival skills.

This is a good spot to separate optimization from a normal player that just wants to have a good character.

Normal Player: A mid level specialist (so this would be 10 on D&D 1-20 scale) to a normal player should be able to do: Simple and Easy tasks with just about no chance of failure, do Average tasks more then half the time, Do Hard Tasks slightly less then have the time and only have a small chance of doing a Very Hard Task.

Optimizer: My character must always succeed at every task they do, otherwise I'm doing nothing and not playing the game at all.

See that huge disconnect?



I haven't been in any game yet nor ever heard of one where "you miss" results in "the world explodes". Could you please choose some more realistic examples? Or at least formulate them differently. Like "Missing only means that you can try again."?

Sure. Optimizer: ''My character must always succeed at every task they do, otherwise I'm doing nothing and not playing the game at all.''



So any character has to start at the bottom of the barrel, because that's the sole valid playstyle? I have played over the years a number of systems, and I noticed one thing: I don't like playing impotent and superfluous characters. I want to have some impact on the world (and even if it is nothing of note outside of those to whom it matters). I don't want to succeed automatically, I want to have a fighting chance. And a fighting chance against hordes of enemies implies via simple mathematics, that you are above average. That you need to be above average or you just die. And for the record, I don't need to be the one who can do everything, I need my niche where I excel. That is my reason to play the game. To do things I cannot do on my own. Not to play effectively a clone of me.

No? You can make a powerful character if you want to...that has nothing to do with optimizing.



That being said, even if you have optimized characters, you can still end up going against opponents where your strengths don't help. It just shouldn't be every encounter. Some encounters should be an easy victory.

I know this well....I ''break'' optimizers often. Even just one encounter where an optimized player can't be ''super great'' is often enough to have them leave the game.



Let's ignore the aboleth wizard part. The point is that CR 7 enemies can be hit with a chance of more than 50% by just having a fighter 7 with 16 Str. That means you are even at low point of optimizing a somewhat capable character in this aspect.

So this is saying that an un optimized fighter can hit some CR7 foes 50% of the time? OK?



Actually, what is the difference between failing to hit and doing nothing? Outside of fluff implications - which might be important in the game - there isn't one that I can see. The enemy has the same hit points, has the same conditions applied to him, is still as capable as a threat as before. That is a problem independent of optimization, although optimization and the direction of optimization influence the degree of how much that is a problem.

Well, if a character misses, they did not do nothing: they missed. Doing nothing would be ''my character goes home and does nothing''.


Uhm...

In 3.5, at least, a character who misses with a weapon attack absolutely, literally, and in every situation I can think of other than fighting defensively, does nothing but waste their action. A character who misses really is doing nothing.

See, this is the Optimization I hate: the idea that every single round a character must succeed at whatever they do. There is no ''try''.

[RoboEmperor]

I think it's very clear.

1. Players don't like to fail so they optimize their character to minimize the chances of failure.
2. Darth Ultron wants players to fail a lot.
3. Therefore Darth Ultron hates optimizers.

Instead of admitting this is just personal taste he is claiming that players failing is mandatory and the best way to play d&d and optimizers who don't like failing are game ruiners. I think the discussion is at an end. Nothing said in this forum is going to change his claim that his personal tastes are the best.

There is nothing wrong with a player succeeding 100% of the time as long as they work for it, but whatever, to each his own. I certainly won't play in a game ran by Darth Ultron.

[Jama7301]

As a DM, I don't always care for high-op sorts of players, because it makes my job harder.

If there are multiple players across optimization levels, it makes balancing encounters more difficult.
It increases the chances that I'll completely whiff on difficulty.
It starts to feel like a more competitive or adversarial game, in the form of GM vs PCs, which can lead to an escalation of optimization.
It can take time away from planning for the campaign as a whole to focus on correcting encounter(s)
May not apply to everyone, but I have friends thta would play "Give an inch, take a mile" sorts of things, and it's a headache I'd rather avoid.


This is all subjective of course. Personally, I take no delight in screwing over players, or running them through a gauntlet. If the dice say they die, they die, but I'd prefer it to not be caused by an arms race.

As a player, I've never been attracted to high op characters, since a lot of times, the character concepts I come up with aren't some super powerful things. In D&D, I'll pick up skills that fit my personality, even if they'll never come up (waves to ranks in Forgery, Appraise and Knowledge: Plains Culture. I try to build with a baseline competence and go from there.

I think I draw a distinction between little o and big O optimizers/optimization. FULLY SUBJECTIVE INTERPRETATIONS AHEAD Little o optimization feels like a building to basic and core competencies. A Rogue with Move Silent and Hide maxed, a Wizard dropping his highest stat and picking a race to boost INT, things like that. Big O Optimization goes beyond that, to the point of raising the power level of the game, beyond the normal or expected growth and power curve.

Long story short, high optimization games are too tiring for me to keep up with. That's why I'm not a huge fan of it.

[death390]

@darthultron you posted again while i was writing so here is for your new post. #'s correspond to your responses.

1: the idea that if your character misses you contributed nothing to that round is technically not true. you can act as a 5ft/5ft wall DC 25 tumble. but most people wouldn't much care to be a wall so it fells like you failed. people tend to not like to fail. this does not mean the world ends by failing though.

2: of course the rules don't cover everything there are too many things to be comprehensive. but the rules should cover the common cases. the rules SHOULD cover the most common adjudications, but even then you have to make allowances for differences (hence the circumstance bonus/penalty for skills as an example)

3: there are many kinds of people, too many to really categorize them all. not to mention people change based on circumstance. yes there are the "simulationists" as i call them who prefer the mechanical aspects of RPGs over the RP. there are also RPers who prefer fluff over crunch. both can be optimizers both can be fluffers (non-optimizers) it depends on the person themselves.

4: not all optimizers MUST be as powerful as possible. there are many optimizers who enjoy the "mini-game" if you will but tone it down to their groups play level. multiple people in this thread have stated they do so as do I.

5: 3.5 is an optimizers playground, and tends to attract more than its fair share as does pathfinder. that said the lowest forms of optimization are things like taking power attack on a two handed fighter with a lot of strength, taking spell focus on that specialized wizard, natural spell on a druid. these are basic things which people tend to do in order to be effective AND because of fluff reasons. have you ever played a wizard that dumps his INT? or a warrior who dumps Str stat? if so you are a %$* and are trolling your group if you are telling the truth and i would think you are lying to us if you say so. doing ANYTHING that benefits your character is optimization in some way.

6: refer to answer 4. we will take less powerful feats when we are toning things down.

7: i can role play the flashiest swashbuckler in the world who is supposedly the strongest warrior in the world but if im a wizard with all skill focus for feats and 8 int str and dex i won't be able to hit the broadside of the barn. the mechanics don't fit the concept. the fluff and mechanics are both part of the game for a reason. as for being a not-great swordsman, everyone must start somewhere. at lvl 1 a optimized swordsman can fight CR1 and lower enemies easily enough but don't expect him to take on CR 10 ones. that said the more levels an optimized swordsman has the higher CR enemies he can take by himself (which if you remember CR is exponential & designed for teams of 4).

8: he was replying to the fact that the MASTER SWORDSMAN argument you had stating that he should miss half the time. his numbers were right in that the fighter will more often than not hit even without optimization at 7th level. that said not all monsters are created equal, and an aboleth mage is a lower AC CR 17 monster. that said even a wizard (1/2 BAB of a fighter) with slightly above average Str can hit quite often with a weapon. hell a 8 Str fighter can still hit a Achairai most of the time, even if it were to negate the damage via incorporeality.

9: see answer 1. again missing means failure, people don't like failure.

[unseenmage]

I think it's very clear.

1. Players don't like to fail so they optimize their character to minimize the chances of failure.
2. Darth Ultron wants players to fail a lot.
3. Therefore Darth Ultron hates optimizers.

Instead of admitting this is just personal taste he is claiming that players failing is mandatory and the best way to play d&d and optimizers who don't like failing are game ruiners. I think the discussion is at an end. Nothing said in this forum is going to change his claim that his personal tastes are the best.

There is nothing wrong with a player succeeding 100% of the time as long as they work for it, but whatever, to each his own. I certainly won't play in a game ran by Darth Ultron.

I fear that I must agree.

Reminds me of one of my first GMs for whom trolling playgroups and fiat rulings were "just part of the game". He couldn't comprehend why no-save dominate effects, unkillable demons, and insta perma death cursed items were not fun.

His old playgroup, whom he insisted enjoyed the games he ran, had long since abandoned him. And the newer generation of players consistently played with him once and quit. He never understood.

Players should fail because he said so. Anything he didnt like was poor roleplay. As if the definition of roleplaying was solely under his perview with no room for consensus.

He's a cool enough guy and I eventually got him to understand roughly what player agency is. At least enough so he understood WHY I stopped playing with him.

This definitely reminds me of that. My way or the highway game concept definitions. Everyone else does it wrong ideology.
Compromise might not be a river in Egypt but an Egyption river certainly runs through certain posts in this thread.

[death390]

I think it's very clear.

1. Players don't like to fail so they optimize their character to minimize the chances of failure.
2. Darth Ultron wants players to fail a lot.
3. Therefore Darth Ultron hates optimizers.

Instead of admitting this is just personal taste he is claiming that players failing is mandatory and the best way to play d&d and optimizers who don't like failing are game ruiners. I think the discussion is at an end. Nothing said in this forum is going to change his claim that his personal tastes are the best.

There is nothing wrong with a player succeeding 100% of the time as long as they work for it, but whatever, to each his own. I certainly won't play in a game ran by Darth Ultron.

this ^ just this

[Crake]

@Darth Ultron:

Tell me, does a character who maxes out stealth, gets a +10 or 15 stealth magic item, gets a level of shadowdancer for hide in plain sight, along with 10 levels of rogue for skill mastery to take 10 on stealth checks, as well as something like darkstalker or dampen presence to literally be able to walk in front of people without being see against any enemy without at least +30 or so spot, does that count as optimization?

They're good at doing exactly one thing without fail, but everything else they do has a failure chance. You seem to decree that an optimizer must not fail at anything ever, so if you leave even one hole in your optimization, you're not an optimizer? So if... I say, suck at knowledge checks, does that prevent me from being an optimizer? Or is it anyone who is capable of avoiding failure chance at anything that's an optimizer?

[Deophaun]

Uhm...

In 3.5, at least, a character who misses with a weapon attack absolutely, literally, and in every situation I can think of other than fighting defensively, does nothing but waste their action. A character who misses really is doing nothing.
Only if they suck at chess.

Seriously. Just being in the right position, threatening the right enemy, providing flanking, holding a choke point, can be much more valuable than hitting.

Also, discussions about hitting half the time seem to have forgotten about iteratives. If my twf-er hits with half his attacks, whoever he's attacking is probably dead. I think that qualifies as a master swordsman at least.

[Darth Ultron]

There is nothing wrong with a player succeeding 100% of the time as long as they work for it, but whatever, to each his own. I certainly won't play in a game ran by Darth Ultron.

Except then your not even playing the game. If a character just succeeded 100% of the time, then why even play. Just to see ''how'' they succeed?

Like sitting down at the very first game session and saying ''well the characters and players have all ready done the goal and won the game...but lets see how they have automatiacly done so, " and then not play the game to find out if the characters took the rocky path or the forest path.

Failure is part of the game...it is why it is in the game.

And I'm not saying that is bad, if you want to have a game with all like people and you just want to all say ''we always win'' that is fine. But just stay in that sort of game.

To say to someone ''well I won the game, but lets play the game to see how I won'' is just silly.



1: the idea that if your character misses you contributed nothing to that round is technically not true. you can act as a 5ft/5ft wall DC 25 tumble. but most people wouldn't much care to be a wall so it fells like you failed. people tend to not like to fail. this does not mean the world ends by failing though.

But it is not like if a character fails once they fail forever. Not for most rolls. So a character missed and attack...oh, well, just try again next round.



2: of course the rules don't cover everything there are too many things to be comprehensive. but the rules should cover the common cases. the rules SHOULD cover the most common adjudications, but even then you have to make allowances for differences (hence the circumstance bonus/penalty for skills as an example)

Right.



3: there are many kinds of people, too many to really categorize them all. not to mention people change based on circumstance. yes there are the "simulationists" as i call them who prefer the mechanical aspects of RPGs over the RP. there are also RPers who prefer fluff over crunch. both can be optimizers both can be fluffers (non-optimizers) it depends on the person themselves.

Lots of people...ok



4: not all optimizers MUST be as powerful as possible. there are many optimizers who enjoy the "mini-game" if you will but tone it down to their groups play level. multiple people in this thread have stated they do so as do I.

True...there are a couple ''ok'' ones.



5: 3.5 is an optimizers playground, and tends to attract more than its fair share as does pathfinder. that said the lowest forms of optimization are things like taking power attack on a two handed fighter with a lot of strength, taking spell focus on that specialized wizard, natural spell on a druid. these are basic things which people tend to do in order to be effective AND because of fluff reasons. have you ever played a wizard that dumps his INT? or a warrior who dumps Str stat? if so you are a %$* and are trolling your group if you are telling the truth and i would think you are lying to us if you say so. doing ANYTHING that benefits your character is optimization in some way.

Both games do attract them like ants to sugar.

And have I, the anti-optimizer, had such characters? YES. Quite often. And it kind of gets back to my point.

Meep was a kobold fighter, 3.5E, with a STR of 6 and a DEX of 10. So he did not hit often or do much damage when he did. It like took him six rounds to kill a giant ant. Did it matter? Nope. I still role played his characters personality, was engaged in the game and did things in the game. But then I was not roll playing to always hit and do a ton of damage every round.




7: i can role play the flashiest swashbuckler in the world who is supposedly the strongest warrior in the world but if im a wizard with all skill focus for feats and 8 int str and dex i won't be able to hit the broadside of the barn. the mechanics don't fit the concept. the fluff and mechanics are both part of the game for a reason.

Well...you might be loosing me here: Why can't such a wizard hit a barn? The spell Shatter, or Fireball is an ''auto hit barn'' type spell. Or are you talking about the wizard hitting a foe, like say a goblin? And plenty of spells you don't need to roll to hit...





9: see answer 1. again missing means failure, people don't like failure.

It is fine to not like failure.

But it's a huge insane jump to say ''I must never ever fail ever!"

[Jormengand]

Only if they suck at chess.

Seriously. Just being in the right position, threatening the right enemy, providing flanking, holding a choke point, can be much more valuable than hitting.

Okay, to be obnoxiously clear, does nothing with that attack action. And if your plays aren't doing anything then you're not having fun, usually.

[unseenmage]

..

It is fine to not like failure.

But it's a huge insane jump to say ''I must never ever fail ever!"
Which is why you confused so many when you fisrt brought that up.

Which is why so many have defended their own optimisation against this erroneous assertion.

There's a difference between compromising in your position blaming your opposition for your own assertion.

[Deophaun]

Except then your not even playing the game. If a character just succeeded 100% of the time, then why even play. Just to see ''how'' they succeed?
I remember when I got 100% of the questions on a trivia pursuit game right. Cannot say it was like not playing.

You are confusing succeeding 100% of the time with having no opportunity to fail.

I try to take Sun Tsu to heart; win before fighting and make it look effortless so the DM calls you a dirty munchkin.

[Deophaun]

Okay, to be obnoxiously clear, does nothing with that attack action. And if your plays aren't doing anything then you're not having fun, usually.
I think you quoted the wrong part of my post, and instead quoted that part that says "even with your obnoxious clarity, here is why you are wrong about needing to hit with your attack action to do something productive that round."

[Darth Ultron]

@Darth Ultron:

Tell me, does a character who maxes out stealth, gets a +10 or 15 stealth magic item, gets a level of shadowdancer for hide in plain sight, along with 10 levels of rogue for skill mastery to take 10 on stealth checks, as well as something like darkstalker or dampen presence to literally be able to walk in front of people without being see against any enemy without at least +30 or so spot, does that count as optimization?

Well, it depends as your example is a bit to vague to tell.

To just take things that make your character better in ways you like is optimization...but, the good rare kind.

I'm talking about the more common bad optimizating where the player is obsessed with every plus.

And well....some of them silly rules are broken, but that is a whole other thread.



They're good at doing exactly one thing without fail, but everything else they do has a failure chance. You seem to decree that an optimizer must not fail at anything ever, so if you leave even one hole in your optimization, you're not an optimizer? So if... I say, suck at knowledge checks, does that prevent me from being an optimizer? Or is it anyone who is capable of avoiding failure chance at anything that's an optimizer?

An optimizer only cares about one thing or a couple things.....so they don't ''fail'' at anything else, as they don't even try to do anything else.

Like the Super Stealth character that the player only plays as a Supprise Murderhobo, just kills. If anything else comes up in the game, they just sit back and complain ''man this game is so boring, can't we fight something?"


Which is why you confused so many when you fisrt brought that up.

Which is why so many have defended their own optimisation against this erroneous assertion.

There's a difference between compromising in your position blaming your opposition for your own assertion.

It is true that I'm the hero that pulls away the curtain or picks up the rock to reveal the dirt and bugs underneath. But that does not mean they were not their before.

[Deophaun]

An optimizer only cares about one thing or a couple things.....so they don't ''fail'' at anything else, as they don't even try to do anything else.

Like the Super Stealth character that the player only plays as a Supprise Murderhobo, just kills. If anything else comes up in the game, they just sit back and complain ''man this game is so boring, can't we fight something?"
This is an interesting distinction, as that's basically saying that the Batman wizard is "good" optimization, because he's omni-competent, but a specialist rogue is "bad."

I don't necessarily disagree with that, it's just not where I thought you'd come down.

[Melcar]

Meep was a kobold fighter, 3.5E, with a STR of 6 and a DEX of 10. So he did not hit often or do much damage when he did. It like took him six rounds to kill a giant ant. Did it matter? Nope. I still role played his characters personality, was engaged in the game and did things in the game. But then I was not roll playing to always hit and do a ton of damage every round. "

What was the character concept? How did it survive for 6 rounds? What was it’s strong points?


I have never met an optimizer who had to succeed at everything all the time! Not even here! I have met people who will go to lengths to avoid failing!

Btw at level 2, my human fighter has +7 to attack! I’m optimizing, I’m taking the feats that best represent my character concept of good with a sword on melee combat!

At level 6 I have had a dwarf fighter with 31 AC! Again just taking options to be the best tank I could be!

Being better at your concept thus hitting the concept more often is a big part of playing any role! If your concept is wizard, but you dumped int, you have no spell casting, thus you are not a wizard thus not playing your concept!

[Melcar]

Well, it depends as your example is a bit to vague to tell.

To just take things that make your character better in ways you like is optimization...but, the good rare kind.

I'm talking about the more common bad optimizating where the player is obsessed with every plus.

And well....some of them silly rules are broken, but that is a whole other thread.



An optimizer only cares about one thing or a couple things.....so they don't ''fail'' at anything else, as they don't even try to do anything else.

Like the Super Stealth character that the player only plays as a Supprise Murderhobo, just kills. If anything else comes up in the game, they just sit back and complain ''man this game is so boring, can't we fight something?"



It is true that I'm the hero that pulls away the curtain or picks up the rock to reveal the dirt and bugs underneath. But that does not mean they were not their before.

It’s becoming exceedingly clear to me that you play a game for which I’m not familiar with, but more importantly, you have met some unfathomable douche bags! And it really just sounds like you hate these people! They sound terrible! Can’t have been fun!

[Crake]

Well, it depends as your example is a bit to vague to tell.

To just take things that make your character better in ways you like is optimization...but, the good rare kind.

I'm talking about the more common bad optimizating where the player is obsessed with every plus.

And well....some of them silly rules are broken, but that is a whole other thread.

An optimizer only cares about one thing or a couple things.....so they don't ''fail'' at anything else, as they don't even try to do anything else.

I honestly don't think I've ever met a person who was obsessed with not failing at anything ever. Pretty much every person I've ever encountered wanted to not fail at their thing, but was totally fine with, say, not being the most diplomatic person ever, or whatever. Their lack of ability to automatically succeed at something didn't stop them from trying that thing.

Take the master swordsman example, sure, maybe they never miss, but at the same time, maybe they're decidedly average at talking to people? Even if they're a knight, and have learned how to be diplomatic (as a knight should be), they still only have max ranks and no cha. You can optimize one thing, and simply be average, or above average at other things (because lets be honest, at mid to high levels, max ranks alone in diplomacy makes you PRETTY diplomatic, especially if you get sense motive and knowledge nobility synergies, which is something a knight should have picked up).


Like the Super Stealth character that the player only plays as a Supprise Murderhobo, just kills. If anything else comes up in the game, they just sit back and complain ''man this game is so boring, can't we fight something?"

I actually played that character, and in addition to being practically impossible to spot when she didn't want you to see her, she also started a guild, bringing together some of the greatest magical powers in the kingdom, subdued an increasingly larger tribe of giants to protect said kingdom from an invasion of fungal creatures who are being led by former team mates who fell and were converted by a fungus queen, all while dispensing her own justice on criminals, punisher style. There were many failed diplomacy checks, sense motive checks, bluff checks and intimidate checks along the way down that path, and many things didn't go her way, but that didn't stop her from trying.

She's also hideously over WBLed, because just before her party members were lost to the fungus queen she was in the process of crafting them gear, so she had all their stuf on hand, resulting in her getting 90% of the party's wealth upon their demise. Of course, all her efforts are in an attempt to save her party members and restore them from the fungus queen's influence, at which point she fully intends to give them back all their stuff, but it's been like 4-5 levels since all that happened now :smallfrown:

Now with all that laid out on the board. Am I still an optimizer? Or is an optimizer someone who never strays from their schtick for fear of failing a check?

[RoboEmperor]

Except then your not even playing the game. If a character just succeeded 100% of the time, then why even play. Just to see ''how'' they succeed?

Like sitting down at the very first game session and saying ''well the characters and players have all ready done the goal and won the game...but lets see how they have automatiacly done so, " and then not play the game to find out if the characters took the rocky path or the forest path.

Failure is part of the game...it is why it is in the game.

And I'm not saying that is bad, if you want to have a game with all like people and you just want to all say ''we always win'' that is fine. But just stay in that sort of game.

To say to someone ''well I won the game, but lets play the game to see how I won'' is just silly.

Goal: Build a home for the homeless.
Me: I want to succeed so I'm gonna read books about constructing homes, look up vast amount of online materials, talk to everyone experienced in this field for advice, and even hire an experienced person to take the lead in the project for a 100% success rate. I'm gonna be super careful and after everyone goes home I'm gonna inspect everyone's work to ensure there is no mistake.
Darth Ultron: You optimized. 100% success rate makes the game boring so I'm banning the internet, books, and your access to experts. I want you to have a 50:50 chance of failing your task. No matter how hard you try, you cannot exceed 50:50 chance because the game is boring if you can't fail.

In this scenario I can totally fail. If i'm lazy, corrupt, or incompetent I can fail building the home, but since I'm a hard working studious person I should succeed. You're saying this is boring so flip a coin to see whether a fist of god comes crashing down to destroy the home or not, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to prevent this because 100% success rate is boring.

Samething in d&d. A murderhobo attacking everything in sight has a very good chance of being killed in a city especially by guards but a careful adventurer who never acts violently and obeys all laws should have a 100% survival rate in a city. The careful adventurer optimized his chance of getting attacked by guards to an absolute minimum with his behavior.

edit: A DM who enjoys watching HOW players succeed is a great DM. A DM who enjoys watching players fail is a sadistic DM and a bad DM. Your enjoyment of the game seems to be on the sadistic side so our interests conflict which is why I will not be playing in your game. I'm all for DMs punishing careless, stupid, or violent players but forcing failure on smart careful players because the DM enjoys watching players fail is a red flag.

As someone mentioned above you seem to be confusing having a 0% chance of failure and having a way to succeed and watching if the players figure that out or not.

Most DMs watch how players interact with their world and their NPCs and villains. No one i played with cared whether the players succeeded all the time or not. They only cared if the players succeeded effortlessly. They all wanted the players to struggle and suffer but ultimately succeed, not fail.

[Jormengand]

I think you quoted the wrong part of my post, and instead quoted that part that says "even with your obnoxious clarity, here is why you are wrong about needing to hit with your attack action to do something productive that round."

I see I need to be more obnoxiously clear:

What is the difference between making an attack that hits, and making no attack at all? Yes, you can do something productive just by existing (though I would hasten to add that that's not doing something productive "With your round"), but if you're not making meaningful plays, you're probably not having fun. Unless you enjoy making exactly as much contribution as you would if you put your mini on the table and then played Call of Duty for a while.

[Deophaun]

but if you're not making meaningful plays
As I said, "if you suck at chess."

Your even greater obnoxious clarity only tells me not to look to you for tactical advice.

I've had times where I couldn't roll higher than a 5 to attack and did a total of zero damage, yet prevented our position from being overrun just by maneuver. But I'm now informed that keeping the party alive is not a meaningful play. Didn't know that at the time. Maybe that's why I forgot to not have fun.

[Recherché]

On a more concrete example, one of my favorite characters I'm playing right now is a pacifist cleric. Izzy will not hurt anything sentient as a matter of principle. This does not mean that she won't stop you if you're trying to do something evil. She'll just do so in a way that technically deals no damage.

It takes a fair amount of system knowledge, skill and even optimization to make her effective despite a refusal to deal hit point damage. If I were to decide to let her start hurting people and started using her whole skill list, she'd be far more powerful. If I didn't put in the work to make her effective despite her beliefs she'd become more of a burden to the party than an asset. (Especially given her tendency to try and negotiate with everyone instead of sneaking up on enemies and killing them in their sleep.)

I'm okay with failing sometime but I'd also like to be reasonably powerful despite this role playing constraint I've willing taken on. Balancing these requires that I play the system more than I would if I was willing to take up a mace and start swinging.

[Crake]

As I said, "if you suck at chess."

Your even greater obnoxious clarity only tells me not to look to you for tactical advice.

I've had times where I couldn't roll higher than a 5 to attack and did a total of zero damage, yet prevented our position from being overrun just by maneuver. But I'm now informed that keeping the party alive is not a meaningful play. Didn't know that at the time. Maybe that's why I forgot to not have fun.

Sometimes you might already be in the best position available, correct? You then say, use your whole action to attack one or more times, and miss every time? Your turn is now over with no additional impact on the game, and had you simply not acted that turn, it would have resulted in the same game state.

Is that not functionally the same as "wasting your turn"?

Sure, if you have less than 6 bab, and can only attack once, you could potentially do something with your move action to change the game state, but if you full attacked, your only options remaining are a 5ft step and other free actions. We've already determined your position is the best currently available to you, so..... what more can you do?

[Jormengand]

As I said, "if you suck at chess."

Your even greater obnoxious clarity only tells me not to look to you for tactical advice.

I've had times where I couldn't roll higher than a 5 to attack and did a total of zero damage, yet prevented our position from being overrun just by maneuver. But I'm now informed that keeping the party alive is not a meaningful play. Didn't know that at the time. Maybe that's why I forgot to not have fun.

Standing on the board may be meaningful, but it's not a play. Like I said, if you're not making any more contribution out of all your actual actions than if you'd just plonked your mini on the board and gone off to play CoD, then you're not really making any actual plays. And if there's no difference between standing at F3 and attacking and standing at F3, then your attacks aren't meaningful plays either.

Plus, if your enemies aren't just walking around the guy who can't hit them, then either you're in a teeny-tiny corridor or they're exceptionally stupid and need to learn to play che... uh, D&D.

[Darth Ultron]

Take the master swordsman example, sure, maybe they never miss, but at the same time, maybe they're decidedly average at talking to people?

But just look what your saying: The optimizer player wants to be a master swordsman and be good at one thing: Roll Playing Combat and is will to be ''average'' or not even do things like Role Play.


Goal: Build a home for the homeless.

Hummm...are you talking about Real Life or Just a Game?

Like I know this might be a shock: But Real Life is not a Game.



edit: A DM who enjoys watching HOW players succeed is a great DM. A DM who enjoys watching players fail is a sadistic DM and a bad DM. Your enjoyment of the game seems to be on the sadistic side so our interests conflict which is why I will not be playing in your game. I'm all for DMs punishing careless, stupid, or violent players but forcing failure on smart careful players because the DM enjoys watching players fail is a red flag.

The DM that just rolls over and lets the players succeed is not even a DM, let alone a great one. They are at best a 'spectator player'. After all when the Not-DM is saying ''well you have all ready succeed, lets just see how you do it'' , then how can they do the most basic functions of a real DM like make the game challenging?

My game: there is a chance of failure.

Your game: The players have already won the game and succeeded, even before the game starts.



Most DMs watch how players interact with their world and their NPCs and villains. No one i played with cared whether the players succeeded all the time or not. They only cared if the players succeeded effortlessly. They all wanted the players to struggle and suffer but ultimately succeed, not fail.

The DM does not want the players to fail, but they are not bowing down and saying ''the players must always sicced and win".

And this is about the player anyway:

Normal Player: I will play the game and see what happens and might succeed or fail based on what I do.

Optimized Player: I win. I must always win and succeed . I just not play the game to see how I do it.

[death390]

there is a difference between DM's who just line up the monsters to die and a DM who plays the monsters tactically. true if the wizard gets that grease spell off there is a no go zone for most monsters but after seeing 1 of thier friends fall down unless mindless they would skirt around it. i prefer to DM (only done it occasionally) as the tactical DM the more powerful the PC's the better i can play the monsters.

hell i had a chimera fight where the PC's were so un-op'd that i had to litterally use standard actions on the fighter or risk killing him Too quickly.

meanwhile in the arena campaign i am building there are oddball creatures that will be a challenge (space/time magic disabled for the campaign) my favorite is the fire elemental . . . KITTEN OF DOOM!!! TM. for most mundanes it will be a challenge due to heating thier weapons but if they properly research their fights before hand and bring a few waterskins i would let them use it like an oil to prevent 1 rounds heat damage to the weapon. it is an expansion of its burn ability but not one that is immediately destructive. mind you the arena has a fully stocked magic mart so oil of cold damage (can't remember exact name/ sourcebook) are technically availible too. mind you that this is a campaign set for lvl 1 start up to lvl 8.

on the other hand using ANY caster competently against a group of adventurers spells more trouble than the CR indicates.

welp have to go to work now see you guys in a few hours.

[Fizban]

Been a couple pages,


Now, with 2 games of distance away from the present, and also the more forgivable 5e existing, as well as the much more customizable PATHFINDER being a thing, You are going to have to accept some baggage.

That baggage is the whole kit and caboodle of optimization, and 3.5 is DEEP in that.
Except as always, your assumption isn't necessarily true either. I'm in it for the customization, and I generally hate Pathfinder: it's all the worst parts of the bloat that crept up on the game as it went on. I want 3.5 because its actually possible to pare it back down to core design principles and easily understood classes, rather than being a bunch of houserules by one group of people built on rules from a previous group of people and rocketed off in completely the wrong direction with an ever expanding list of feats and ACFs with just as much or more variance and stealth fixes than 3.5.


Firstly, I consider your post an extreme exaggeration to prove a point/ trolling, I will address it non the less.
Accusations of trolling remain against the forum rules.


I actually never noticed your post, cause I noticed darth ultron's response and responded to that without looking at much else. To respond to it now: The main issue I had with what darth ultron was saying was that he was framing it as fact, not experience.
Which is still an excellent example of the problem: see post, see red, immediately post contradicting it. (Everyone does it eventually, but I try to make a habit of resisting)

People will post their opinions and experience as fact, it's just something you have to learn to deal with in real life. I even remember it being recommended for persuasive writing in high school: if you think it's true, say it's true, or you won't convince anyone.


Uhm...

In 3.5, at least, a character who misses with a weapon attack absolutely, literally, and in every situation I can think of other than fighting defensively, does nothing but waste their action. A character who misses really is doing nothing.
When your job does not require hitting things, you don't need to hit all the time. Contrary to popular belief, the fighter's job is not killing, it's surviving. A standard fighter attack bonus progression hits often -but not all the time, as you are aware.

What you're missing is that a fighter with a positive strength bonus and full BAB isn't a mediocre fighter, they're an optimized fighter. A mediocre fighter would have 10 or even 8 str, and maybe a level of commoner or expert from before they became a fighter.

The game does expect you to have a 14 or higher in your main stat, but if you put your 14 in con for survival since surviving is your main job, and only have a 10 left for str because standard rolling has plenty of room for terrible stats, then you can absolutely have a mediocre fighter by the standard rules. At -2 or -3 attack those high odds of hitting start looking a lot closer to 50%.

Add in a side of human statistical blindness, and it could very well look like a standard un-optimized figher should in fact only hit "50%" of the time, regardless of their level. Even though DU has already explained that he bases mastery level on level.

Deophaun got the chess response already, tactical positioning, to which you've responded. As to weather it's fun, well that's on the person's understanding of their role. If someone expects the fighter to be the main DPS of the party, they're going to be disappointed. If they know that the fighter's main role is taking hits and gumming up the battlefield with tactical positioning (which can be optimized to hell and back if you want vis a vis trip builds), then maybe they would have fun figuring out positioning in a game with more variability than chess - a game where most of the moves are moves and not attacks.


1. Players don't like to fail so they optimize their character to minimize the chances of failure.
2. Darth Ultron wants players to fail a lot.
3. Therefore Darth Ultron hates optimizers.

Instead of admitting this is just personal taste he is claiming that players failing is mandatory and the best way to play d&d and optimizers who don't like failing are game ruiners. I think the discussion is at an end. Nothing said in this forum is going to change his claim that his personal tastes are the best.

There is nothing wrong with a player succeeding 100% of the time as long as they work for it, but whatever, to each his own. I certainly won't play in a game ran by Darth Ultron.
Actually no, this is provably wrong: players are not expected to succeed 100% of the time, no matter how much effort they put in. 5% of encounters are supposed to be difficult enough the characters should run or lose, while at most 80% are supposed to be "challenging" (one equal CR monster, x2 of -2, etc) or lower, and that's assuming that every single time "easy if handled properly" is handled properly (otherwise 60% are "challenging" or lower). (Which is another facet of optimization- expecting perfect counters every time).

Many people define success as defeating monsters of equal challenge rating single-handedly with little or no resource expenditure, while the DMG makes it quite clear that they are not supposed to succeed that easily (that encounter should expend 20% of the entire party's resources, including that giant pile of spell slots). It always comes back to this, that some people think they should be allowed to optimize their characters past that point. The DM can compensate for it, but if your character requires monsters of higher CR with reduced xp and treasure to match your level in order to be challenged, it's pretty obvious your character is overpowered.

We don't really have any examples of full characters from Darth Ultron's games that he finds acceptable, but we don't need them. There is a limit defined in the system if anyone cares to look for it. Or if they see it after I shove it in their face.

(Actually we do have an example now, though of a deliberately de-optimized character.)



I honestly don't think I've ever met a person who was obsessed with not failing at anything ever. Pretty much every person I've ever encountered wanted to not fail at their thing, but was totally fine with, say, not being the most diplomatic person ever, or whatever. Their lack of ability to automatically succeed at something didn't stop them from trying that thing.
I'm about to spin off into the blue here, but first: What is the primary interaction method of DnD? Combat. If your character's thing is "combat," and they never fail at combat, the rest should be obvious. Social and skill based encounters are encouraged, but not required.

People have called rogue the perfect tier 3 and the only well written class, a significant part of which is because they're the only class that is really build around something besides "combat," while also having combat bonuses that can be optimized up to their standards. And in order to do that, to compete with that, you need essentially all of the non-knowledge skills.

Which is why people say there's not enough skill points. They're counting non-combat encounters as part of their design for party balance, with multiple roles the game never seriously considered full roles, that now need to be distributed among the party. What skill roles even are there? Traps are still dungeoneering, still avoiding damage. Stealth is also a combat role. Knowledge is used to know monsters for combat. Town face is the only one that can actually be identified (and then optimized into combat anyway). So it's not an extra source of non-combat roles- its just one or maybe two non-combat roles that four people are expected to participate in under the non-combat role design theory (because if your character can't participate in an encounter, people will complain about being useless). Yes, I'm basically saying that because people are fine with being bad at things outside of combat, you've made combat the most important thing- that or decided that it's okay for encounters to only involve one person and keep a rigorous rotation.

The supported roles are meat-shield, trap guy, crowd-control, and heal/magic defense, which are all dungeon combat roles. A lot of people don't like the idea of being trap-guy or heal/defense, so they specialize in the more popular DPS, which often devalues the team with a goal of being overpowered (see above), or "lockdown," where they specialize in spells that leave the meatshield with no active foes to shield against, or "party face," which requires whole new non-combat encounters that the standard classes aren't built to participate in.

More popular roles are "combat", "skills," "magic," and. . . ? If you're re-defining the party roles then of course you're going to need to change the game. The cleric doesn't even have a role there, they're just slightly restricted magic with a side of combat, and hey look at the favorite complaints about the cleric. If you only have three roles then you're going to have problems when there's four players, two have the same role, and one is better than the other (whether its in absolute values, or in having a whole secondary suite for another role when the other guy is sitting out).

In order to avoid that you have to use more specific roles, but people love their wizards and DPS, so "combat" and "magic" are considered standard roles, which leaves only the skill based face/stealth/traps, all of which are done by the same class, while the cleric has no role of its own so it has to steal someone else's, and you have all the room for one person to be better than the other at the things they're supposed to be doing.

So to bring it back around again, yes, I'm saying that the problem with people stepping on each other's feet is a direct result of trying to invent new roles so people wont step on each other's feet. Because if you don't recognize and understand the beginning, you can't hope to re-design classes or build characters to reach the end. And since the root of all optimization arguments comes from not understanding the design. . .

Edit: edits are in.

[Deophaun]

Is that not functionally the same as "wasting your turn"?
No. Tactically speaking, your turn is best spent getting into the most tactically advantageous position. If you're already there, great. It's not a waste to stay there even if there is nothing else to do.

That many (And I will conceed, I am the minority) would rather be tactically stupid but active as opposed to tactically smart but passive does not change the fact that you do not need to hit things to be doing something. If you're between the squishy sorcerer and the giant minotaur, then you are preventing the minotaur from charging and killing your squishy sorcerer. If you're in the dragon's face, then you're providing flanking for the rogue.

And as the original statement was that you are literally doing nothing, I do not care what you think is fun or how many actions you may or may not have used, as such things are utterly irrelevant to the statement as it was made. Moving the goalposts is simply a concession of error on your part.

[DMVerdandi]

The problem here is the disconnect. A master swordsman is, by the rules even, a higher level character. So if your charater is say 2nd level, they are NOT the most super duper awesome master swordsman in the world (you know, unless your playing in a campaign setting like Eberron). But the optimzer thinks thier character must be a 'master' from birth.

No. An optimizer is someone who from a meta perspective, knows certain options are going to make you worse than the standard.
Skateboarding is cool, but If my job is financial analyst, don't you think I should put some more points in INT, and less in DEX? Adventurers are mercenaries. Every job in the phb and beyond is a killing class. Wizard is a war mage from the jump. Look at it's spell list. All of the spells have combat application. Now, if your job is killing, scouting, defending, supporting, beguiling, maiming, and capturing, you should be good at your job, yes?


Optimizing is the same thing as choosing the best route to be successful. Every time a stock market investor studies, or changes things to maximize his growth on ROI, he is OPTIMIZING his portfolio.

It's not a character flaw. It's the lack of character flaws in the face of logic. Character flaws are what cause people to deviate from optimizing.





This is a good spot to separate optimization from a normal player that just wants to have a good character.

Normal Player: A mid level specialist (so this would be 10 on D&D 1-20 scale) to a normal player should be able to do: Simple and Easy tasks with just about no chance of failure, do Average tasks more then half the time, Do Hard Tasks slightly less then have the time and only have a small chance of doing a Very Hard Task.

Optimizer: My character must always succeed at every task they do, otherwise I'm doing nothing and not playing the game at all.

See that huge disconnect?
The disconnect is with you. If you are in college and you are taking your final exam, 60% is a fail. 80% is damn near a fail.

Now if you are a fantasy warrior, and your friends all have the presence of mind to alleviate any chance of error, since... it's their lives on the lines, and a large amount of monsters, human and inhuman are after their very souls, you don't think they would try to hedge all of their resources on staying alive?



Sure. Optimizer: ''My character must always succeed at every task they do, otherwise I'm doing nothing and not playing the game at all.''

No? You can make a powerful character if you want to...that has nothing to do with optimizing.
It has everything to do with optimizing. Optimizing is picking the optimal choice to be successful at an avenue of influence. Like you can optimize for social, magical, or physical challenges. Now magical just in the degrees of influence does kind of dip it's toe in everybody's sauce, but it's magic.

But back to the main point, optimization is what makes someone powerful. If you are are 5'0 you might do poorly playing basketball, but you might be fantastic at gymnastics. Being "gymnast" over "basketballer" is essentially class choice. If you have an aptitude for natural studies over theology, you might make a better druid than cleric. That kind of stuff. Even children are taught to optimize.

Lets use harry potter for an example. Harry, Ron, and Hermoine are arguably NOT really griffindor types. Harry had he picked the optimal choice, would have been in slythrin , Hermoine in ravenclaw, and Ron probably in hufflepuff with his affinity for snacks [lel]. Now, we would not have gotten the story we did, which DID end up in triumph, but because of such choices could have equally ended up in failure.

But it took spirit into account rather than the best choice. Harry could have been the shining beacon for slythrin, showing them that pride, ambition, and power can be a tool of great good, rather than just prey for predators to take advantage of.
Hermoine could have been the gusto that shows ravenclaw that you can have brawn,brains, and beauty if you optimize [COUGH,COUGH] Study efficiently.
Ron is useless, and I hate his whole brood.





I know this well....I ''break'' optimizers often. Even just one encounter where an optimized player can't be ''super great'' is often enough to have them leave the game.
So when they play within the rules, you break them just to break the spirits of your players?
Noice




Well, if a character misses, they did not do nothing: they missed. Doing nothing would be ''my character goes home and does nothing''.
"GG, You tried" as dark souls death comes up. Missing is not an option, its the lack of options. Why would a seasoned warrior be missing anything trivial/CR appropriate? It's because they suck.
That would be like you telling me to go to a dart tournament, and I completely miss the board 50% of the time. I am wasting time. Sure when you are making a fool of yourself, it can be fun to initially be bad at something, But anything that anyone considers important or worth investing time in, being inept is almost a cardinal sin.

No less this actually being these character's lives on the line. YOU are the one who is out of character. No one who was risking their lives would ever make fool hardy choices. Those are the ones who die quickly. Being in character would be a character not wasting their time on silliness because they know that death is a real thing, and that living on chance is something an idiot does.



See, this is the Optimization I hate: the idea that every single round a character must succeed at whatever they do. There is no ''try''.
As yoda said, there is no try, only do or will not do.
With things like attacks of opportunity, and multiple enemies, every enemy that you don't kill is an enemy that is still alive and can very well kill your friends and you. And that isn't to say that every enemy need be turned into red paste. sometimes the optimal choice is not to engage at all, but you don't want to fail at sneaking away, or fail at combat. The wounds are real , and every scar, even if it is healed away carries a memory of very real pain with it. All of those wounds are supposed to HURT.

If you aren't optimizing, you aren't taking the game seriously, and if you aren't taking the game seriously, as it should be in universe, how can you accurately roleplay, rather than acting like a clown who has mixed up priorities.

If you have seen [I]the walking dead. That is a fantastic example of party growth, and the risks of enemies. They get better, and make decisions to not ever lose. They come up with plans, tactics, and get better weapons to win at all times. Losing is death. Each of them has different skills, and each of them explores those skills while also practicing teamwork, and every now and then they happen upon a bunch of level 3 knuckleheads that are just barely surviving, and are so inefficient, and they visibly cringe.

[Dimers]

Which is why people say there's not enough skill points.

Me personally, I say there's not enough skill points because I know few adult-age people who have as little skill as a typical D&D monk, druid or barbarian, to say nothing of the 2+Int classes. Real people with normal Int scores have meaningful investment in social, physical, professional and knowledge skills all at the same time. It really strains my suspension of disbelief to see a hero who theoretically lives by her wits in a dangerous world but only gets two skill points per level.

[EldritchWeaver]

This is a good spot to separate optimization from a normal player that just wants to have a good character.

Normal Player: A mid level specialist (so this would be 10 on D&D 1-20 scale) to a normal player should be able to do: Simple and Easy tasks with just about no chance of failure, do Average tasks more then half the time, Do Hard Tasks slightly less then have the time and only have a small chance of doing a Very Hard Task.

Optimizer: My character must always succeed at every task they do, otherwise I'm doing nothing and not playing the game at all.

See that huge disconnect?

Let's see. A 10th level wizard with 24 Int (18 base, +2 race, +2 Headband, +2 through leveling = +7 mod) and 13 ranks has in a Knowledge skill already a +20 modifier. If you take 10, you achieve casually DC 30. What do the rules say about the DCs?


Answering a question within your field of study has a DC of 10 (for really easy questions), 15 (for basic questions), or 20 to 30 (for really tough questions).

I consider easy tasks then a DC 10, average tasks DC 15, hard tasks DC 20, really hard tasks DC 25. I add really really hard tasks with DC 30, which should be impossible according to your scaling.

So a 10th level character according to D&D rules succeeds even at really tough questions 100%. I suppose you are going to claim that this is far too optimized. Let's see:



Having a high Int for a wizard is expected, the same as a high Strength for a fighter. If you can get a 18 for a stat, then using it for Int is simply a good choice.
Taking a race which provides an Int bonus is then obviously a good choice, too.
Putting attribute increases into the main stat of your class is also obvious.
Getting a magic item which increases the main stat of your class follows as well.
Putting skill points into a class skill, because you buy ranks 1:1 is also a good choice. (In PF, because you get a +3 class skill bonus instead.)
Max ranking a skill makes simply sense, because a more skilled person (which the wizard archetype incorporates via being a scholar) has more ranks. Also it puts you on equal footing with an opponent, who max ranked an opposing skill.


How optimized is that character? I've employed two basic strategies. Max ranking a class skill and maximizing the main attribute of the class, which happens to be the associated attribute of the skill (so synergy). How obvious are the strategies? Most of it follows the meta-rule of optimization: Having higher numbers is better. Even a newbie can pick up most of the points I've used with ease.

But you still might complain about this being too much. I did aim for having a +20 mod, because taking 10 succeeds for a DC 30. Taking 10 - which is a core rule applicable to out of combat skill checks - eliminates low rolls. If we need to that in combat, we have a 50% chance to succeed DC 30 (the really really hard tasks), 100% for DC 20 (hard tasks). So how can we realistically reduce the skill mod? I would still expect a Int 16 at least, which reduces the mod by 4 - or 20%. Really really hard tasks are still succeedable at 30% of the time, which is higher than the 5% you accept for really hard tasks.

To actually get to the scaling you seem to want, the skill mod may be at most +5. So DC 25 can be achieved only with a nat 20. But then easy tasks with DC 10 - which shouldn't fail - fail 20% of the time and average tasks with DC 15 fail 45% of the time - probably a little too often to your preferences - if you can't take 10. If you can take 10, then average tasks succeed 100%.

All in all, I don't see how your preferences map to the game's math.

[Crake]

No. Tactically speaking, your turn is best spent getting into the most tactically advantageous position. If you're already there, great. It's not a waste to stay there even if there is nothing else to do.

That many (And I will conceed, I am the minority) would rather be tactically stupid but active as opposed to tactically smart but passive does not change the fact that you do not need to hit things to be doing something. If you're between the squishy sorcerer and the giant minotaur, then you are preventing the minotaur from charging and killing your squishy sorcerer. If you're in the dragon's face, then you're providing flanking for the rogue.

And as the original statement was that you are literally doing nothing, I do not care what you think is fun or how many actions you may or may not have used, as such things are utterly irrelevant to the statement as it was made. Moving the goalposts is simply a concession of error on your part.

You're not really adressing the point though. I agree with all your points about being in the right position and whatnot, and sure, standing there "does something", but if you read what I said, I didn't say you're "not doing anything" I said you "wasted your turn", because functionally, on your turn, had you attacked and missed, or done nothing at all, you achieved the same result. I'm sure that's not a hard concept to grasp?


Which is still an excellent example of the problem: see post, see red, immediately post contradicting it. (Everyone does it eventually, but I try to make a habit of resisting)

People will post their opinions and experience as fact, it's just something you have to learn to deal with in real life. I even remember it being recommended for persuasive writing in high school: if you think it's true, say it's true, or you won't convince anyone.

It's honestly less about seeing red, and more that I was limited in time at that moment, and was specifically looking for the reply I knew was coming. As for people framing opinions as fact, I see this more like a debate environment rather than a persuasive writing environment, and in debate, framing opinions as fact or the other way loses you points. I understand that people will still invariably do so, but at the same time, when I see it happening, I'm gonna point it out, just like I did. You then told me off about it, which is why I explained to you the reasons behind me saying what I did. My first reply to darth ultron was more for other people who would read his post and see his statements as factual, not anecdotal due to the way he framed his post.


I'm about to spin off into the blue here, but first: What is the primary interaction method of DnD? Combat. If your character's thing is "combat," and they never fail at combat, the rest should be obvious. Social and skill based encounters are encouraged, but not required.

I disagree, nobody's thing is "combat". That's too broad a category to be "a thing". Combat entails many different aspects, and sure, maybe focusing on an aspect, like swordsmanship, or tripping, or disarming, but then those things might not always be an option. You might not always have the option to hit an enemy with your sword, perhaps you'll occasionally be forced to shoot a bow, because the enemies are ranged and have a significant terrain advantage. Of course, you can just sit behind cover and do nothing, but I don't think I've ever seen a player do that.


People have called rogue the perfect tier 3 and the only well written class, a significant part of which is because they're the only class that is really build around something besides "combat," while also having combat bonuses that can be optimized up to their standards. And in order to do that, to compete with that, you need essentially all of the non-knowledge skills.

I've not qualm with this, I do so enjoy the rogue class, especially the pathfinder unchained rogue, which I use for my 3.5 games. In fact, the aforementioned character was primarily a rogue, a dip into spheres of power's incanter, and shadowdancer, but aside from that, yeah, just good ol' rogue.


Which is why people say there's not enough skill points. They're counting non-combat encounters as part of their design for party balance, with multiple roles the game never seriously considered full roles, that now need to be distributed among the party. What skill roles even are there? Traps are still dungeoneering, still avoiding damage. Stealth is also a combat role. Knowledge is used to know monsters for combat. Town face is the only one that can actually be identified (and then optimized into combat anyway). So it's not an extra source of non-combat roles- its just one or maybe two non-combat roles that four people are expected to participate in under the non-combat role design theory (because if your character can't participate in an encounter, people will complain about being useless). Yes, I'm basically saying that because people are fine with being bad at things outside of combat, you've made combat the most important thing- that or decided that it's okay for encounters to only involve one person and keep a rigorous rotation.

I also agree on this issue, which is why I quite like the background skills from pathfinder, it's not much but it's a bit of a start. For example, a character can suddenly become a polyglot by investing into linguistics, taking the social role of translator, which is something my table actually takes seriously, you can't simply say "I translate" you actually have to translate someone's words yourself, which can sometimes result in miscommunications.

I do kinda disagree that stealth and knowledge are combat roles. Sure they have combat utility, but they aren't exclusively combat abilities. In fact, in many circumstances stealth isn't really usable at all in combat, unless you basically have hide in plain sight. Knowledge can also help with decision making when it comes to social encounters, knowing the right people to talk to, the right places to visit, or simply knowing things about the situation to gain a new perspective.


The supported roles are meat-shield, trap guy, crowd-control, and heal/magic defense, which are all dungeon combat roles. A lot of people don't like the idea of being trap-guy or heal/defense, so they specialize in the more popular DPS, which often devalues the team with a goal of being overpowered (see above), or "lockdown," where they specialize in spells that leave the meatshield with no active foes to shield against, or "party face," which requires whole new non-combat encounters that the standard classes aren't built to participate in.

Saying that the party face removes other classes from participating is outright false. That's not quite what you said, but my point stands: sure, the party face will be the one rolling the actual check, but the other players can still participate, providing persective to the roleplay, and mechanically they can participate by assisting the party face with a simple DC10 check. They may not be built to specialize, but no class needs to be built to participate, because the participation DC is so damn low, anyone can participate without even investing ranks or having a high ability score.


More popular roles are "combat", "skills," "magic," and. . . ? If you're re-defining the party roles then of course you're going to need to change the game. The cleric doesn't even have a role there, they're just slightly restricted magic with a side of combat, and hey look at the favorite complaints about the cleric. If you only have three roles then you're going to have problems when there's four players, two have the same role, and one is better than the other (whether its in absolute values, or in having a whole secondary suite for another role when the other guy is sitting out).

In order to avoid that you have to use more specific roles, but people love their wizards and DPS, so "combat" and "magic" are considered standard roles, which leaves only the skill based face/stealth/traps, all of which are done by the same class, while the cleric has no role of its own so it has to steal someone else's, and you have all the room for one person to be better than the other at the things they're supposed to be doing.

So to bring it back around again, yes, I'm saying that the problem with people stepping on each other's feet is a direct result of trying to invent new roles so people wont step on each other's feet. Because if you don't recognize and understand the beginning, you can't hope to re-design classes or build characters to reach the end. And since the root of all optimization arguments comes from not understanding the design. . .

Edit: edits are in.

So you went on about party roles and everything, and I feel like you're having a different conversation. I'm not talking about redefining character roles, I'm saying that people should generally be good at the one thing they want to be good at. I'm not talking about a character role, I'm talking about a character concept. Many concepts can fill the same role after all. Sure, some concepts may be more effective than other concepts, but that's a different story altogether. What I'm saying is that you have a character who's whole thing is he's a pinpoint sniper. I don't expect this character to have necessarily the same impact as the master swordsman, after all, the master swordsman can keep people at bay, but the pinpoint sniper can hit people at range. He can ready attacks against the enemy spellcasters to ruin their day, or shoot the rope that's holding the counterweight on a gate, to shut it before enemies come pouring through, or whatever.

I'm talking about people being good at the thing that defines their character. I've honestly lost track of who's debating what at this point. All I can really say is that in all my years, I've only ever see people optimize the thing that defines their character. What I have not seen, which apparently darth ultron has, is that a player will optimise their schtick, and then literally refuse to participate in anything else.

I'm 99% sure everyone else is saying that failure should be avoidable for a character's defining features, not for literally everything a character does. Nobody expects a master swordsman to have a silver tongue, but in my experience that's never stopped a player from participating in a conversation, which does seem to be an experience that darth ultron has had.

What I see is this:

Optimizing yourself at one or a few things, being completely unbeatable and unable to fail at those things, and then refusing to participate in anything that doesn't involve those things: bad
Optimizing yourself at one or a few things, being completely unbeatable and unable to fail at those things, but still participating and accepting the consequences of failure in things that you're not necessarily optimized, or even skilled at: perfectly fine


The thing is, if you look at the above, in both circumstances the player has optimized, thus I must conclude that it's not the optimization that's the problem.

[Fizban]

Me personally, I say there's not enough skill points because I know few adult-age people who have as little skill as a typical D&D monk, druid or barbarian, to say nothing of the 2+Int classes. Real people with normal Int scores have meaningful investment in social, physical, professional and knowledge skills all at the same time. It really strains my suspension of disbelief to see a hero who theoretically lives by her wits in a dangerous world but only gets two skill points per level.
Well then, bluntly, I expect most of the people you know are pretty well off. Because I've seen plenty of people who don't have much in the way of skills, and I don't live somewhere bad by any standards. There's also the tendency for people to assume that any skill= a bunch of ranks, because in DnD people play high level characters. In real life, as in DnD, most people are 1st level, and at 1st level even having one rank+ high ability score is impressive. A 1st level expert can have a ton of trained skills (8 for a non-elite human), and has nothing to do with a monk or fighter. Modern day first world countries don't use the commoner class anymore thanks to modern farming. Someone who spends 14 hours a day subsistence farming will have a smaller skill set than you, as would someone who spent all their time working out and drilling with weapons instead of studying.


My first reply to darth ultron was more for other people who would read his post and see his statements as factual, not anecdotal due to the way he framed his post.
Which is kindof a straw man. Do you honestly expect anyone would believe that in anything except a vacuum? The post is in a thread, surrounded with the context of almost every other poster not saying the same thing. It does not require a direct contradiction when the purpose of the thread is soliciting that answer, and pointing out that it's a personal experience when that's a perfectly valid reason seems. . . petty? I'll assume that you don't have anything else to defend the stormwind fallacy fallacy with.

I disagree, nobody's thing is "combat". That's too broad a category to be "a thing". Combat entails many different aspects, and sure, maybe focusing on an aspect, like swordsmanship, or tripping, or disarming, but then those things might not always be an option. You might not always have the option to hit an enemy with your sword, perhaps you'll occasionally be forced to shoot a bow, because the enemies are ranged and have a significant terrain advantage. Of course, you can just sit behind cover and do nothing, but I don't think I've ever seen a player do that.
And yet the higher op the build, the more it aims to make their thing always matter, to the point where their one aspect applies in every combat and their thing is winning combat. Unless you've deliberately chosen to eschew it, everything dies to hp damage, and it doesn't matter how you deliver it. Tactical positioning, hiding, buffs and healing, none of it matters if your character can one round everything, they just win at combat and everyone else loses.

I do kinda disagree that stealth and knowledge are combat roles. Sure they have combat utility, but they aren't exclusively combat abilities. In fact, in many circumstances stealth isn't really usable at all in combat, unless you basically have hide in plain sight.
To borrow Deophaun's line, "only if you're bad at chess," or once again, positioning. If they can't find you they can't hit you, and if you're a sneak attacker you get bonus damage. Knowing how cover and concealment and hiding work and using the terrain, allied spellcasters, or carrying the right consumables (just a smoke bomb really) will let you sneak attack every round. Hide in plain sight is pretty borked, but is was never required- I'd put that on the list of things that people never learned to do because they expected it to be done for them.

Actually, I could make a case that hiding (and sneak attacking) abilities infringe a bit on the standard meat-shield+ hit stuff role, but they're mostly complimentary since the standard mead-shield can only block a small area and single shot SA's don't hugely outclass normal full attacks.

Knowledge can also help with decision making when it comes to social encounters, knowing the right people to talk to, the right places to visit, or simply knowing things about the situation to gain a new perspective.
Knowledge has no RAW uses outside of identifying monsters, and while I hate RAW with a passion, the fact remains that in the standard game it only gets you monster data and whatever hints the DM or module has already picked out for your skill check. The DM can make knowledge into a role, but it doesn't start as one.

Saying that the party face removes other classes from participating is outright false. That's not quite what you said, but my point stands: sure, the party face will be the one rolling the actual check, but the other players can still participate, providing persective to the roleplay, and mechanically they can participate by assisting the party face with a simple DC10 check. They may not be built to specialize, but no class needs to be built to participate, because the participation DC is so damn low, anyone can participate without even investing ranks or having a high ability score.
And indeed, I will also be the first to point out Aid Another being a thing, but by most people's definitions that's not participating. The type of people who demand you run up and hit something rather than tactically position are generally the same type of people who won't accept adding +2 to someone else's roll.



So you went on about party roles and everything,
I did warn you I was about to take off :smallcool:

I'm talking about people being good at the thing that defines their character. I've honestly lost track of who's debating what at this point. All I can really say is that in all my years, I've only ever see people optimize the thing that defines their character.
And what I'm saying is that the thing that defines your character isn't a role, unless it matches one of the roles the game is built on.

Why do people get mad about optimization? Because it hurts the game. In order to fix this, we must understand why it hurts the game, which means understanding why the classes are the way they are and why the encounter system is the way it is and how it all fits together.

If everyone has their own role, they can be fine with not being good at other things -as long as someone else doesn't infringe on their role and they aren't left out of an encounter. The classes of 3.5 were built for a certain type of game with certain roles, but people either don't know or ignore those roles and make up their own. These roles don't fit the game, so they make it exceedingly easy for certain classes infringe on these made up roles, and optimizing those characters makes a bad situation worse.

Yeah, optimization isn't the only problem, but it is what exposes the problems you get from not playing the same game it was designed for, and exposing those problems hurts the game. It's a lot easier to not care about being deficient in a role when being proficient in that role isn't actually so far above you, when no one else is infringing on your own proficiency, when you haven't made up a role for yourself that another class happens to do better.

It's also a lot easier to run a game when the characters aren't demonstrably overpowered compared to what the game is expecting, forcing you to compensate, but if you're only doing one "type" of encounter you can at least beef that up for everyone. As long as they're optimized such that beefing it up doesn't mess with their roles by making one role too much more important than the others (the "this monster will auto-kill everyone but one character problem, same as the "spellcasters only" and "trapfinding only" problems), then things should be fine.

What I have not seen, which apparently darth ultron has, is that a player will optimise their schtick, and then literally refuse to participate in anything else.
You must know some extremely well-engaged people then, 'cause I'm pretty sure just about everyone I've played with will check out at least some of the time when their character doesn't have any mechanical ability for the situation. That's the whole point of reminding people about Aid Another, but again, that's just a single die roll for a +2 for someone else, not very engaging if they're mechanically focused. And that's not counting challenges that actually do prohibit other characters from joining, like trapfinding, knowledge skills, stuff that requires magic or significant player knowledge of magic, etc.

I'm 99% sure everyone else is saying that failure should be avoidable for a character's defining features, not for literally everything a character does. Nobody expects a master swordsman to have a silver tongue, but in my experience that's never stopped a player from participating in a conversation, which does seem to be an experience that darth ultron has had.
Allow me to be obtuse for a moment: You keep using the phrase "defining features," but what if my defining feature is "taciturn swordsman?" Yes, that means I've chosen to opt out of these encounters, but for game that's built around combat with a bunch of optional-only skills, many of which I can't meaningfully participate in with a tacticiturn swordsman, making those into Encounters rather than minor bits is pretty bogus- "I" didn't know that was a role, while my taciturn swordsman does a great job at meat-shielding and hitting things with a stick.

And plenty of people want to play silent hero archetypes.

What I see is this:

Optimizing yourself at one or a few things, being completely unbeatable and unable to fail at those things, and then refusing to participate in anything that doesn't involve those things: bad
Optimizing yourself at one or a few things, being completely unbeatable and unable to fail at those things, but still participating and accepting the consequences of failure in things that you're not necessarily optimized, or even skilled at: perfectly fine


The thing is, if you look at the above, in both circumstances the player has optimized, thus I must conclude that it's not the optimization that's the problem.
Optimization is the problem in the second, where the game absolutely expects you expend limited resources and have a chance of failure as part of an encounter.

The bigger problem that I worked my way over to, is that the game is only designed for one type of encounter: dungeoneering combat. Every class has a role in this, their secondary functions balanced so that they won't outshine the primaries of others, and their non-combat abilities considered a non-required convenience (or at least the main four do, results vary on the other attempts).

If you're redefining the the game to include non-combat encounters, those encounters still need to be designed to burn resources, have risks, and a chance of failure, and you'll need to rebuild the classes so that each class can participate meaningfully in both types of encounters. This really should include a whole new set of roles, none of which overlap with the combat roles, to avoid destructive overlaps.

3.5 kinda does have a tiny stab at that in the skills, there are in fact multiple social skills you could base social encounter roles on, but Rogue gets all of them, making it definitively overpowered. Sense Motive is fairly rare, and Intimidate is actually the rarest with only Fighter and Barbarian outside of Rogue, but Diplomacy was broken hard enough that with enough op nothing else matters anyway. Optimization rears its head again and combines with rogue so that rogue has perfect in all social roles, while perfect at one dungeon combat role (trapfinding) and potentially good at another (frontline/damage) So if you want social encounters, you need to fix the social skills to fix the social roles by spreading them through the classes (and then find some resources to work with). You'd also want to consider that many social "encounters" don't make sense for a full party- putting them together in a way that means they need to work together or face catastrophic risk going it alone, would be a thing.

And yes, I did just tell you the Rogue is overpowered and that's why you had fun with it. I need a smugface :smallamused:

[Crake]

~snip~

So I feel like the points have gotten a bit elongated and meandering that responding to each individual line is becoming counter-progressive, so I'm gonna try and be a bit more concise about it, just to make things hopefully a bit easier.

You believe optimization creates a problem when two people compete in the same role, resulting in an imbalance, and one player feeling less effective? While that's correct, unless they're built exactly the same, one will always be more effective than the other. Sure, optimization can exacerbate the issue, but it's not the root of the issue, but at the same time, optimization can also balance the issue, by helping the weaker character concept become more effective.

Sure, if you can one round enemies that does kinda remove the need for other roles, but not every encounter will be so easy. Perhaps there will be many foes, or the foes you fight may have some kind of defense that you cannot so simply overcome (ubercharger vs abrupt jaunt springs to mind). And typically uberchargers leave themselves wide open for counterattack, so unless you end the encounter in one attack, which isn't so easy when there are multiple enemies, or, you know, any kind of terrain that makes charging impossible, etc etc but even then, it's not always appliccable, see the scenario of the enemies with the terrain advantage forcing you to use ranged attacks. Sure, it's natural for people to want their thing to apply to as many circumstances as possible, but unless people are going into the deep end while everyone else is splashing about in the kiddie pool, it shouldn't be such an issue. I think most people would agree that overoptimization is very much so a bad thing as it ruins the game for many people.

I do feel the need to discuss the hiding issue though, how would you be getting sneak attacks every round without taking a massive -20 on your hide check to either a) hide while attacking, or b) snipe? Because once you've been spotted, the hiding game is practically over. If you're hiding in smoke/fog, then the enemy will have concealment relative to you, meaning you cannot sneak attack, or you're using a bluff check to hide behind cover at a penalty, involving all the enemies involved failing two checks, the bluff check to fool them, then the hide check to actually hide. At that point you're spending a lot of actions setting up a sneak attack, you may as well just get into flanking to sneak attack instead, and get full attacks off. Hide in plain sight on the other hand literally lets you hide as a free action with a 5ft step, since hiding is a part of any movement, so that alone lets you attack, hide at a -20 penalty, then if you fail to hide, you can 5ft step, hide again without a -20 penalty, then attack again, again hiding at a -20 penalty, or if you're ranged, you can greater manyshot, reveal yourself, then move away, hiding as part of the movement without any penalty. I guess as you said though, a single sneak attack hit per round isn't that big a deal.

All in all, I think people performing the same role, but differently, is enough to generally have people not feel like they're being trodden on. A warlock and a ranger both do ranged damage, but while a warlock doesn't have to deal with damage reduction, a ranger doesn't have to deal with spell resistance, plus they can carry around a quiver filled with neat arrows, like demonbane arrows (quite a favourite of mine, cold iron, holy, magebane, evil outsider bane, chaotic outsider bane arrows that deal +8d6 damage against demons and overcome practically all of their DR/regeneration, albeit in a limited capacity, in that they can only have so many speciality arrows laying about). Unless one character is vastly more effective than the other, I think generally both would be happy despite the other.

And that's what I think, at least for you Fizban, is where the issue arises. Not in optimization itself, but in overoptimization, which is honestly something I think everyone could agree on. Darth Ultron seems to have a different issue which I'm still trying to understand.

Also, regarding social skills. Pathfinder fixed that quite nicely by having traits that granted class skills, sometimes even multiple social skills at once, and by having class skills be a binary, rather than per level thing. Anyone can get practically any one or two skills as class skills by simply picking the right traits.

[Darth Ultron]

No. An optimizer is someone who from a meta perspective, knows certain options are going to make you worse than the standard.
Skateboarding is cool, but If my job is financial analyst, don't you think I should put some more points in INT, and less in DEX? Adventurers are mercenaries. Every job in the phb and beyond is a killing class. Wizard is a war mage from the jump. Look at it's spell list. All of the spells have combat application. Now, if your job is killing, scouting, defending, supporting, beguiling, maiming, and capturing, you should be good at your job, yes?

See this is what separates Optimizers from the Other Players: Optimizers see things only One Way. You say Adventurers are mercenaries, always and forever and can never be anything else. But this is silly, as any normal player can tell you that an adventurer can be many things. Every class is a killing class? A wizard is a war mage?




The disconnect is with you. If you are in college and you are taking your final exam, 60% is a fail. 80% is damn near a fail.

People really need to separate real life from the game. Real Life is not a Game.





How optimized is that character? I've employed two basic strategies. Max ranking a class skill and maximizing the main attribute of the class, which happens to be the associated attribute of the skill (so synergy). How obvious are the strategies? Most of it follows the meta-rule of optimization: Having higher numbers is better. Even a newbie can pick up most of the points I've used with ease.


This is an example of a normal character that has optimized a skill, not a crazy optimizing player. This character can answer any question from easy to really tough, and that is fine. Of course ''30'' does not max out the scale, the rules never say that. DC's can go up forever. DC's still keep going up as the game level increases....just like the DC of everything else does. Questions beyond ''really tough''. And, the rules are clear that the DM gets to set the DC for things.



All in all, I don't see how your preferences map to the game's math.

A high level character can do a lot of things 100% of the time...but that is because they are a high level character. And, as said, a high level character does not need to optimize to do easy things. A 10th level character can do things of DC 30 with little or no problem. But ''30'' is not the end of the scale, as the DC scale has no end. The 10th level character would still have a problem with a DC of say 45 or 50. Plus a character might not always be able to ''take 10'' , might lose their items/stuff or be under something like a spell or curse that effects skill rolls.

But the optimizer wants to be the Super Duper Expert even at first level, to get that +20 at first level. They MUST be a race that has AT LEAST a +4 to intelligence AND will demand no LA; they MUST start with a ''masterwork knowledge book'' for that extra plus, even if they don't have the money for it. And they MUST take that feat/ability/whatever that gives a plus, no matter what the ''rules'' say.

And the optimizer will never be happy....even with a +20 and the ability to know all common, hard and ''really tough'' things...they will still not be able to know ''beyond really tough things'', so they will still be obsessing and going crazy to get more pluses.

[unseenmage]

Could build quite the mountainous molehill out of all the chips on all the shoulders in this thread.

And that's for both sides of the discussion, clearly.


It has become more than clear that some folk emphasize the RP while others emphasize the G of RPG.

This isn't wrong. Though from where I sit arguing without clearly delineated definitions certainly could be.

For my part there's little point to engaging such a rich and delightfully flawed set of game rules just to throw them out whenever it suits, especially if the reason for throwing them out is bullying or some sort of player agency hamstringing power trip.

To me, if one wishes to RP and not have to fight through such a dense ruleset there are better game systems.

On the other hand, if one remains too fascinated by the 3.x/PF ruleset to simply discard it then one has but two options, learn to use said rules (read as optimize) or be VERY clear and up front about one's intention to throw them to the wayside at the first opportunity.

[EldritchWeaver]

This is an example of a normal character that has optimized a skill, not a crazy optimizing player. This character can answer any question from easy to really tough, and that is fine. Of course ''30'' does not max out the scale, the rules never say that. DC's can go up forever. DC's still keep going up as the game level increases....just like the DC of everything else does. Questions beyond ''really tough''. And, the rules are clear that the DM gets to set the DC for things.

The game also defines, what DCs in general mean. If you redefine that you are not playing D&D, but houseruling.


A high level character can do a lot of things 100% of the time...but that is because they are a high level character. And, as said, a high level character does not need to optimize to do easy things. A 10th level character can do things of DC 30 with little or no problem. But ''30'' is not the end of the scale, as the DC scale has no end. The 10th level character would still have a problem with a DC of say 45 or 50. Plus a character might not always be able to ''take 10'' , might lose their items/stuff or be under something like a spell or curse that effects skill rolls.

But the optimizer wants to be the Super Duper Expert even at first level, to get that +20 at first level. They MUST be a race that has AT LEAST a +4 to intelligence AND will demand no LA; they MUST start with a ''masterwork knowledge book'' for that extra plus, even if they don't have the money for it. And they MUST take that feat/ability/whatever that gives a plus, no matter what the ''rules'' say.

And the optimizer will never be happy....even with a +20 and the ability to know all common, hard and ''really tough'' things...they will still not be able to know ''beyond really tough things'', so they will still be obsessing and going crazy to get more pluses.

So you are saying that really tough things are unknowable, even if you play Pun-Pun. You want to know why people leave your games? Because you use your DM fiat to break core rule assumptions. It's one thing to say "My game is hard-mode, all DCs are +5 higher", it's another to invalidate builds out-right, which should work by RAW. Do you tell this your players in advance? Or do they discover that after a number of sessions that you deviate from what is written in the CRB?

[Darth Ultron]

It has become more than clear that some folk emphasize the RP while others emphasize the G of RPG.

Well, except optimizers are NOT doing that G, as they are not playing the game.

As many optimiozers have said: they want to always 100% succeed at whatever they want their character to do. So the Roll Playing Optimizers want to Hit and Do Damage every single round of combat.

THAT is not playing the game. That is just running through a one sided fantasy to see how the character wins.

The rules even say ''roll a d20 to see if your character succeeds or fails at an action'', they don't say ''your so special your character always succeeds, so don't bother even rolling: you win!"




On the other hand, if one remains too fascinated by the 3.x/PF ruleset to simply discard it then one has but two options, learn to use said rules (read as optimize) or be VERY clear and up front about one's intention to throw them to the wayside at the first opportunity.

I do a bit of both, and I'm VERY clear.....not that most new players care to listen.

As I've said I ''break'' lots of optimizers...even more the ones with little system mastery or my favorites: the one trick ponies.



The game also defines, what DCs in general mean. If you redefine that you are not playing D&D, but houseruling.

DC's, as well as everything else in D&D increase with levels...this is pretty basic. Sure you can say that ''page 11'' does not list anything beyond ''really tough'', but it also does not say ''30 is the absolute maximum ever for a skill check''. And just doing the ''monster knowledge'' use of the skill, you can get over 30 with a monster with a lot of HD (that again, have no in game limit too)



So you are saying that really tough things are unknowable, even if you play Pun-Pun. You want to know why people leave your games? Because you use your DM fiat to break core rule assumptions. It's one thing to say "My game is hard-mode, all DCs are +5 higher", it's another to invalidate builds out-right, which should work by RAW. Do you tell this your players in advance? Or do they discover that after a number of sessions that you deviate from what is written in the CRB?

Well, nothing is ''unknowable''. Should a 10th level character automatically know everything in the multiverse...nope.

Not sure where you see ''breaking core rule assumptions'', maybe your ''assumptions'' are wrong? There is no limit on DCs or ACs, but you put a cap on them and say ''only this high as you say so''. That is homebrewing.

And yes, I'm very clear and open about how I play the game....not that it matters much as most players don't ''get'' it.

[Deophaun]

You're not really adressing the point though. I agree with all your points about being in the right position and whatnot, and sure, standing there "does something", but if you read what I said, I didn't say you're "not doing anything" I said you "wasted your turn"
Let's go back to what I quoted:

Uhm...

In 3.5, at least, a character who misses with a weapon attack absolutely, literally, and in every situation I can think of other than fighting defensively, does nothing but waste their action. A character who misses really is doing nothing.
That's the argument. In responding to me, you have taken up that argument.

But, even as you attempt to confuse the issue, I have attacked your stronger position. It is not a waste to stay where you are and not attack if staying where you are is vital to the party's success. You must still be there to assess the situation to know that is the best that you can do. You are still making choices. That the choice you made did not result in your mini moving or an enemy being removed does not mean it was wasted. Your turn is only wasted if you go off and play CoD, because then no choice was made.

[unseenmage]

...

As I've said I ''break'' lots of optimizers...even more the ones with little system mastery or my favorites: the one trick ponies.
If anyone agrees to play with you and you manage to trick them long enough to "break" them then you certainly did not make your gaming expectations clear.

[Fizban]

You believe optimization creates a problem when two people compete in the same role, resulting in an imbalance, and one player feeling less effective? While that's correct, unless they're built exactly the same, one will always be more effective than the other. Sure, optimization can exacerbate the issue, but it's not the root of the issue, but at the same time, optimization can also balance the issue, by helping the weaker character concept become more effective.
You can have a game with multiple people filling the same role at equal power levels, sure. DM will have to account for it by altering encounter construction, and depending on the role it could still go good or bad. But when you have one guy who wants to be a monk and another who wants to be cleric who fights alongside their summoned monsters, with both competing over the meat-shield role, you have an exaggerated example of when its not going to work.

Sure, if you can one round enemies that does kinda remove the need for other roles, but not every encounter will be so easy. . . I think most people would agree that overoptimization is very much so a bad thing as it ruins the game for many people.
Sure, but again that requires more careful encounter building by the DM to compensate for the individual, as well as an agreement on how much optimization is okay for what class and all the understanding and self-awareness required to do those things.


how to hide?
Hiding is part of movement, requiring no action. Shooting while hiding reveals your position unless you use the sniping rules with the -20, but that only applies to sniping while remaining stationary. If you're standing at a corner, doorway, or pillar, you're only 5' away from breaking line of sight, no bluff check needed. With a single move action you can pull back from the corner behind the wall or put the pillar between you and your foe, turn around and made a hide check to peek out, and then fire your shot with a standard action. It doesn't matter that they see you now and know you'll do it again if you can beat their spot check and retain full concealment at the corner. Boom, sneak attack every round.

I've always seen fog run as concealing things from outside observers, such that standing at the edge you can see out just fine (as no one outside the fog is concealed by it), but I can see the other interpretation. The tactic can still work if you use the Hiding While Moving rules from Rules Compendium to take a -5 to move 5' out, with a slightly favorable ruling to use it for delivering an attack rather than only moving between cover. If neither ruling is allowed then you'll have to stick with terrain only, but I see absolutely nothing wrong with letting a rogue ninja use smokebombs to good effect as an extension of something they can already do with cover.


And that's what I think, at least for you Fizban, is where the issue arises. Not in optimization itself, but in overoptimization, which is honestly something I think everyone could agree on. Darth Ultron seems to have a different issue which I'm still trying to understand.
Well yeah, I said on the first page that I don't hate optimization. I only figured out you could ranged sneak attack every round when I was trying to beat out the actual Ninja's Ghost Step, though I'd bet some people were effectively running it that way on instinct already. As for DU, well I'm just digging into where problems come from and why they bug people. The only "issue" I'd say he has is being stubborn, passionate/angry, and not seeing a need to dig into why, which is hardly rare at all. Most people don't bother thinking about why real things annoy them, let alone games. That's why I'm folding out some new answers.

Also, regarding social skills. Pathfinder fixed that quite nicely by having traits that granted class skills, sometimes even multiple social skills at once, and by having class skills be a binary, rather than per level thing. Anyone can get practically any one or two skills as class skills by simply picking the right traits.
Still based on the same skills though (yes I know they made some tweaks), and still requires the players to build their characters for separate social roles, and requires the DM to communicate that doing so will be necessary for required social encounters. I still won't agree that having one person good at every role, in this case every social skill, doesn't harm people who are good at only one role- it just means everyone has to take all of them. You also still need to design encounters with resources and risk, which I don't think they have built in, and find a way to either cross those resources with combat without actually making them boost combat or accept that the party now has two resource pools and can double xp gain.

It can totally be done, but I'd rather not. The existing system of social "encounters" as basically just participation and roleplay xp where the PCs skills or lack thereof are already mostly accounted for is much easier.

Edit: ooh, I like this one-

The disconnect is with you. If you are in college and you are taking your final exam, 60% is a fail. 80% is damn near a fail.
Good analogy, but again, DnD 3.5 only expects 60% success, and no more than 95%. Losing every encounter above your level is pretty fail, but within parameters.


And yeah, I do find it a little amusing. Accuse DU of being terrible, but if you strip out the attitude he's not really making any different arguments than those of myself or other people. And yeah, I'll jump all over people for their attitude, but as he's the minority I'm more than willing to give enough benefit of the doubt to see it, particularly in a thread asking for those of his persuasion.

[Darth Ultron]

If anyone agrees to play with you and you manage to trick them long enough to "break" them then you certainly did not make your gaming expectations clear.

It's more they don't understand.

I lot of modern players play under the silly ''agreement'' where the DM bows down to the players and lets them do whatever they want. I don't play that way.

For example, in my game you will find foes that use things like disarm and sunder.....and they will use them against the PCs. A lot of modern DMs won't do that......after all if you break/destroy the special characters one trick item....then that character is ''useless''.

The same way if your a 15th level character and you charge a lich...he will cast a high level attack spell, lets say Deathbolt...and not attack with like Buring Hands.

[RoboEmperor]

Well, except optimizers are NOT doing that G, as they are not playing the game.

As many optimiozers have said: they want to always 100% succeed at whatever they want their character to do. So the Roll Playing Optimizers want to Hit and Do Damage every single round of combat.

THAT is not playing the game. That is just running through a one sided fantasy to see how the character wins.

Enough, just enough.

Everyone here enjoys the game very differently than you and you are the odd one out. So accept that this is your unique personal taste, your preference, and stop arguing that what we are doing is wrong, incorrect, not rpg, inferior to your way of playing, and that we should all conform to your tastes.

Everyone here is enjoying their games very much with heavy optimization and no amount of "You're wrong, you're ruining your own games with optimization, and you should all play without optimization because that's the wrong way to play the game" is going to change that.

If you hate optimization then don't optimize, but don't go around saying your way of playing is the best, because it's not by a longshot.

Same with your opinion on success/failure. Some people like to play games where failure is the result of mistakes not bad dice rolls and claiming these types of people are playing the game wrong is definitely retarded. If you like it when players fail because they missed their attacks 3 times in a row and hate it when players optimize so that never happens again then that is your personal taste because I can confidently say that every experienced DM I played with didn't care about whether players optimized their attack or AC into the stratosphere.

[Fizban]

Like, seriously guys, stop and read the actual words he is saying.

When Darth Ultron "breaks" an optimizer, it's by actually adjusting the adventure to compensate for their build. The assumption is that he breaks the rules to screw with people, but the examples are always the exact same sort of thing optimizers say DMs need to do in order to reign in their overpowered characters.

It's freaking hilarious once you realize it.

[unseenmage]

It's more they don't understand.

...

And if they don't understand then how exactly have you made yourself clear?

If you aren't clear about your game expectations then you should be.

Though it is becoming more and more clear that your goal is to trick "optimizers" and not to facilitate shared fun between yourself and anyone else you might be caught playing with.

[Florian]

@Fizban:

Yeah, its funny that it seems hard to grasp that the core rules provide a combat engine for some lighthearted dungeon crawling in a very restricted environment and with a system-based balancing point. Nothing more, nothing less. The number of rules that are necessary for it is actually quite slim, which can be seen in skills and spells necessary....

[Fizban]

@Fizban:

Yeah, its funny that it seems hard to grasp that the core rules provide a combat engine for some lighthearted dungeon crawling in a very restricted environment and with a system-based balancing point. Nothing more, nothing less. The number of rules that are necessary for it is actually quite slim, which can be seen in skills and spells necessary....
It sounds like you're agreeing with my general point of people losing sight of the core game, but you lost me on the last line. Which "it" has a slim amount of rules as evident in the skills and spells neccesary to do "it?" I would guess "it" is things other than the combat engine, because they aren't the focus?

[EldritchWeaver]

DC's, as well as everything else in D&D increase with levels...this is pretty basic. Sure you can say that ''page 11'' does not list anything beyond ''really tough'', but it also does not say ''30 is the absolute maximum ever for a skill check''. And just doing the ''monster knowledge'' use of the skill, you can get over 30 with a monster with a lot of HD (that again, have no in game limit too)

I didn't claim that DCs can never be higher than 30. But according to RAW, anything higher isn't just really tough, it is extremely, super super hard tough. That is the kind of tough, which normal PCs don't manage automatically, they really need to optimize. And then they should get those answers.


Well, nothing is ''unknowable''. Should a 10th level character automatically know everything in the multiverse...nope.

Not sure where you see ''breaking core rule assumptions'', maybe your ''assumptions'' are wrong? There is no limit on DCs or ACs, but you put a cap on them and say ''only this high as you say so''. That is homebrewing.

And yes, I'm very clear and open about how I play the game....not that it matters much as most players don't ''get'' it.

I suppose that your phrasing threw me off. So I'm going to state several possibilities. Which one are you using?



An easy DC for 1st level PC stays at that DC for 10th level PC. Same goes for tough DCs, but due to buying skill ranks etc. tough DCs are effectively guaranteed to succeed.
Easy DCs stay at that level, but you increase tough DCs, if you feel that the PC shouldn't succeed automatically.
DCs automatically increase, so relatively PCs have the same success rates regardless of level.
Anything else. Please explain.

[johnbragg]

I think this gets at a kernel of my problem with most optimisation advice. It's not so much that people talk about building characters that are powerful in their advice, it's that people talk about building characters that have almost no resemblance at all to answering the question being asked and which more or less just hijack the entire thing to talk about their favourite feat chain or prestige class combination that might only be tangentially related to what's being talked about.

If at all. I think we're going to need a new phrase to go alongside the Stormwind and Oberoni fallacies.

I'm not going to name it after myself, especially since I've been wanting to change this username for ages, but the vague definition is 'whenever the advice being given on a requested optimisation topic is completely and utterly irrelevant to the question being asked'.

This is very true. It's also cousin to another genre of hate-able optimizers threads, where a noob asks a fairly simple question ("I'm about to play 3.5 for the first time and what should I do to make a guy good at fighting with a big axe? Oh, and what's a saving throw, how many of those should I have? It sounds like I should save them for the big fight?") and is given a 20-level n-sourcebook 5-class combo. (I say n-sourcebooks because the posters have long ago left the mundane realm of remembering what illegal pdf any given highly useful feat/race/ACF started in.)

Instead of telling him simple things like "Power Attack is always good as a feat. Toughness and the save boosters are okay at low levels, but if you keep playing they don't keep up and you'll wish you took something else instead."

[Florian]

Which "it" has a slim amount of rules as evident in the skills and spells neccesary to do "it?"

The core game itself. Once you start separating things between "necessary" and "player controlled/instigated", the amount of general rules and discreet rules element on the "necessary" side is very slim indeed. Now expanding beyond the basic dungeon crawl and into unsupported game-play, its funny to see how things (what you call roles) get extrapolated from there and how the apparent stuff that is necessary seems to grow with each expansion. What is funny in this context, especially when looking at Pathfinder, is the vast difference between what seemed to be necessary based on extrapolation and how reduced the needed rules still are in the official expansions. I think its fair to say that D&D/PF is vastly over bloated with discreet rules elements that are given as options, but are never really supported as part of the core game anyways.

Edit: A funny example is the whole thing about flight, when the system doesn't even provide a functional 3D combat system.

[johnbragg]

I think it's called "the internet." That said...

This is the sort of thing I was suggesting on page 1: we should try to have a semi-standard set of questions for people asking for help, to try to identify their comfort level with optimization stuff.

This is very good. I would add a question or two about how much TTRPG experience and how much 3.5 experience a player has.

[Fizban]

The core game itself. Once you start separating things between "necessary" and "player controlled/instigated", the amount of general rules and discreet rules element on the "necessary" side is very slim indeed. Now expanding beyond the basic dungeon crawl and into unsupported game-play, its funny to see how things (what you call roles) get extrapolated from there and how the apparent stuff that is necessary seems to grow with each expansion. What is funny in this context, especially when looking at Pathfinder, is the vast difference between what seemed to be necessary based on extrapolation and how reduced the needed rules still are in the official expansions. I think its fair to say that D&D/PF is vastly over bloated with discreet rules elements that are given as options, but are never really supported as part of the core game anyways.

Edit: A funny example is the whole thing about flight, when the system doesn't even provide a functional 3D combat system.
Yes, 100% agree, you've summed it up nicely. The bottom-up explanation to match the top-down digging. Or middle-out digging? Maybe not the right phrase.

[PersonMan]

People really need to separate real life from the game. Real Life is not a Game.

Can you see how someone might want to do things in a similar way, though? For a game example, let's say you've got a low-level party preparing to storm a kobold den. They have a good amount of spare cash, and really want to make sure things go well, so they spend a few days buying special gear and learning about the kobolds from the locals before they attack. This means that they know that one of the kobolds can breathe fire, and that some of the kobolds don't die unless you attack them with acid.

So now, when this party goes into the kobold den, things are a lot easier for them. When they notice some of the kobolds aren't going down, they use acid flasks they bought in town, and the wizard uses a spell he normally wouldn't prepare to do acid damage. When they meet the kobold chief who breathes fire, the fighter drinks a potion to resist flame and fights him up close.

It's not 100%, but it's a lot closer to 100% than it would've been if they just ran in unprepared. Can you see why this could be fun, in its own way?

[johnbragg]

What game are you talking about? Not 3.5E D&D, right?

Because lets take 3.5E D&D. Say on round one you roll and your character misses....does the whole game world explode? Well, no, not in a normal game. In a normal game the player can try again the next round or do something else. So every round, every couple minutes of real time, the player can roll an attack again...or try to do something else.

Except that a non-optimized mundane doesn't have a lot of mechanical options. He could attack again--or he could try "something else", with no mechanics to support it--he's supposed to be this big badass hero, but his chances of accomplishing "something else" are the same as any random peasant, or as the NPC the party taking on the escort mission. So in real games, you attack again. Hopefully you hit this time, or your character's relevance in this story is really suspect.


I agree most optimizers are absurd. They will demand things like having maximum hit points, no matter what. It is an easy tell of an optimizer.

Wut? If that were true, optimizers wouldn't be advising you to play Tier One casters, because they have puny d4 or d8 hit dice.


I agree, but note that does not say anything about optimization. And this is another perfect tell for an optimizer. A normal player will take a feat that fits a character concept/goal even if that feat is not ''the super duper best most awesome mechanical roll playing feat ever''. An optimizer won't.

A normal player will do this at first. But a normal player will also eventually figure out that taking this feat makes him, in game, basically a chump. That is--bad.

Let's say you want to role play a sword-and-shield fighter. That is a reasonable thing to expect to do in a sword-and-sorcery game--slaying monsters, protecting allies, etc. Except the mechanics don't support that--your damage output quickly falls behind a two-handed weapon fighter, you can't do much mechanically to "tank" for your squishy allies.

To do these things effectively--to engage CR-appropriate monsters in melee combat with a sword and shield, to use game mechanics to cause enemies to target you (with your heavy armor and shield and d10-d12 hit points compared to their no or light armor and d4-d6 hit points)--you have to look through other sources--other books, guidebooks on forums like this one, PDFs legal and otherwise.

(You could also roleplay that your guy wises up to the world around him, and decides that the idea you had for him is a sucker's game--your guy doesn't want to be a "sword-and-shield-wielding hero", he wants to be a live, ideally rich hero, so he switches to a two-handed weapon, maybe starts taking levels in Tier One casting classes--because casting shield before combat and being able to use cheap scrolls makes him a better hero than another +1 BAB, bonus feat and d10 vs d4 hit points would.)


And note we are not talking about becoming a great swordsman, as that does imply that the character has to be a ''not great'' swordman to start...and the optimizer won't accept that. They must have the highest everything for their character ''now''.

But without optimizing, a Fighter is not going to EVER be a "great" swordsman relative to CR appropriate enemies, or relative to his party members. His cleric buddy who notices the spell "Divine Power" is going to be just as good with a sword as he is.

As with most things in life, there is such a thing as "too much" (optimizing Tier 1 classes, TO/PO shenanigans, one-shot uberchargers). But the DNA of 3.5 is such that a sizable number of role-playing concepts need serious optimizing support or they're not going to do what they're supposed to do, role-playing-wise.

[johnbragg]

This is a good spot to separate optimization from a normal player that just wants to have a good character.

Normal Player: A mid level specialist (so this would be 10 on D&D 1-20 scale) to a normal player should be able to do: Simple and Easy tasks with just about no chance of failure, do Average tasks more then half the time, Do Hard Tasks slightly less then have the time and only have a small chance of doing a Very Hard Task.

Optimizer: My character must always succeed at every task they do, otherwise I'm doing nothing and not playing the game at all.

See that huge disconnect?

HAve you considered that your definition of "optimizer" is--idiosyncratic?

I submit for consideration the idea that optimizing is a continuum. There can be none of it--build characters purely for fluff, and either let them sink or swim or expect that the DM will arrange the story so that their choices turn out to be helpful or at least meaningful. There can be some of it--Dodge and Toughness look good at first glance, and actually are pretty good for surviving the first level or two. There can be too much of it--ending up with spontaneous casting access to the entire Spell Compendium.

[Fizban]

It's not 100%, but it's a lot closer to 100% than it would've been if they just ran in unprepared. Can you see why this could be fun, in its own way?
I don't know what DU will say, but I will point out that "easy if handled properly" is meant to be 20% of encounters. If your PCs are capable of "properly handling" every encounter, something is off (compared to "standard" anyway). The other 80% aren't supposed to be any easier or more difficult for the PCs usual methods.

DnD has lots of monsters that are inherently "easy if handled properly"- everything that requires an immunity or resistance buff to fight safely, including dragons, to the point where I'd actually agree that it's hard to have only 20% of things that can be squashed with easy prep-work.

But as I said above, characters who are optimized in such a way that they have no "usual" methods but instead beat everything easily with prep even against normal monsters, (or even fail every time without prep against normal monsters), throw off the expected difficulty.

[Florian]

It's not 100%, but it's a lot closer to 100% than it would've been if they just ran in unprepared. Can you see why this could be fun, in its own way?

Applied Combat as War, in contrast to Combat as Sports, which Fizban points out as an important and integral part of d20.

[Pleh]

I don't know what DU will say, but I will point out that "easy if handled properly" is meant to be 20% of encounters. If your PCs are capable of "properly handling" every encounter, something is off (compared to "standard" anyway). The other 80% aren't supposed to be any easier or more difficult for the PCs usual methods.

DnD has lots of monsters that are inherently "easy if handled properly"- everything that requires an immunity or resistance buff to fight safely, including dragons, to the point where I'd actually agree that it's hard to have only 20% of things that can be squashed with easy prep-work.

But as I said above, characters who are optimized in such a way that they have no "usual" methods but instead beat everything easily with prep even against normal monsters, (or even fail every time without prep against normal monsters), throw off the expected difficulty.

Just keep in mind that for every optimizer that trivializes an encounter that was meant to be harrowing, somewhere else the quirky CR system TPKs with an encounter intended to be trivial without the players making any bad rolls or tactical errors.

Half the reason optimization became such a subject in 3.5 was the sudden application of PC rules to NPC monsters, which made a few CR designations rather difficult to predict.

[Rynjin]

For example, in my game you will find foes that use things like disarm and sunder.....and they will use them against the PCs. A lot of modern DMs won't do that......after all if you break/destroy the special characters one trick item....then that character is ''useless''.

It's more the issue that Sunder is kind of lopsided/broken when used against PCs as taken in context with the rest of 3.PF rules. In a game system where magic items are actually NECESSARY to succeed past a point, since the game math is all built on the assumption that you'll have +X weapons, Y Armor Class value, Z save bonuses, etc. to determine the ability DCs, armor class, and special abilities of monsters, Sunder is an insanely overvalued tactic for monsters. You put a monster with six attacks up against a PC and they can easily cripple the PC permanently by just sundering their Cloak of Resistance, Ring of Protection, Amulet of Natural Armor, Belt of +X stat, Headband of +Y stat, and taking a solid stab at their weapon.

I find the tactic plenty fair game in systems like Savage Worlds or 5e where gear is easily replenishable given a bit of time and money or mostly optional respectively, but Sunder falls into a similar category of throwing an encounter at PCs where you have multiple enemies that spam save or die spells every round; it's an adversarial tactic that should be used sparingly if at all.

Either case regardless leads to the exact arms race you claim to abhor. If you overuse Sunder as a PC **** you tactic, PCs will optimize CMD, or saves with the SoD/S example.

In my experience players tend to over-optimize PCs when they have experience with "DM optimizers" that have "Kill the PCs" as their primary goal in combat. It's not a healthy table dynamic for anyone involved, and gets stale quickly, particularly for the players who have not the time or aptitude to figure out how to "fix" their character builds to handle DM tactics designed to keep hammering them until they break.


HAve you considered that your definition of "optimizer" is--idiosyncratic?

I submit for consideration the idea that optimizing is a continuum. There can be none of it--build characters purely for fluff, and either let them sink or swim or expect that the DM will arrange the story so that their choices turn out to be helpful or at least meaningful. There can be some of it--Dodge and Toughness look good at first glance, and actually are pretty good for surviving the first level or two. There can be too much of it--ending up with spontaneous casting access to the entire Spell Compendium.

I would argue that "0% optimizing" is actually impossible. The average player is going to attempt to make a decent character, even if they fail at it. They may pick suboptimal options but they're attempting to play to some kind of concept. If your concept is punchy warrior, a new player will likely pick Monk, which may not be optimized compared to a punchy Fighter or Brawler but is optimized compared to, say, a Commoner lacking Improved Unarmed Strike. When you get to the opposite end where someone is attempting to build the worst character possible...they're still optimizing, just in reverse. Optimizing for suck is still just picking the "best" options to accomplish your character goal, it's just that in this case the goal is "Be the worst at everything".

Optimizing is something everyone that plays the game does, consciously or not. It is simply in human nature to attempt to be good at something and improve. Some people get overly into it, while others do so more casually, but every player does it.

[Arbane]

Modern day first world countries don't use the commoner class anymore thanks to modern farming. Someone who spends 14 hours a day subsistence farming will have a smaller skill set than you, as would someone who spent all their time working out and drilling with weapons instead of studying.

"LOL, Fightars r dum."

You don't think being able to feed yourself off of the land is a skill?


The classes of 3.5 were built for a certain type of game with certain roles, but people either don't know or ignore those roles and make up their own. These roles don't fit the game, so they make it exceedingly easy for certain classes infringe on these made up roles, and optimizing those characters makes a bad situation worse.


Unfortunately, the roles they were made for aren't the roles the rules actually support. The designers WANTED frontliner Fighter, backstabbing Rogue, healbot Cleric and blastomancer Wizard. Instead they got speedbump Fighter, frontliner Cleric, and god-Wizard.

[Fizban]

Just keep in mind that for every optimizer that trivializes an encounter that was meant to be harrowing, somewhere else the quirky CR system TPKs with an encounter intended to be trivial without the players making any bad rolls or tactical errors.
Does it though? That's my point, those "trival" encounters were actually "easy if handled properly," where the party lacked the ability to handle it properly (standard disclaimer about truly broken monsters applies). The standard party vs standard MM1 monsters has an answer to every EIHP monster as long as they're allowed to flee- Shadows and Allips are the worst offenders, but even at 3rd level Turn Undead has a chance of holding them off, with Allips being basically the worst I've seen. Encounters where the party is at a disadvantage, forced to fight, lacking expected abilities, or fighting more powerful later MM monsters, all have extenuating circumstances.

The actual number of optimizers who trivialize encounters is probably about equal to the number of truly borked monsters- quite small, but where the DM can just choose not to use the monster, it's harder to get a player to play differently or compensate.


Half the reason optimization became such a subject in 3.5 was the sudden application of PC rules to NPC monsters, which made a few CR designations rather difficult to predict.
The NPC CR designation is one of the worst things in 3.5, specifically because people take it as the primary definition of CR, and oh how I've argued about it. Re-organization in the switch to 3.5 actually made it far more prominent: originally it was in the rewards chapter, three chapters after the main encounter definitions, but in 3.5 rewards were moved to the end of the chapter right before the encounter definitions. This would not stop rules lawyers from making the equivalence anyway, but it still bugs the heck out of me. Regardless, the encounter building section never once mentions NPCs or PCs as having CR or EL: only monsters. It's just so easy to take that one poorly written rule, originally meant for assigning xp, and pretend it invalidates everything else about the CR system because now you have a "balanced equation" to apply transformations to. The equation is not balanced, encounters only happen between PCs and monsters or NPCs acting as monsters, PCs never have CR or EL, and if they did they would obviously require modifiers for having 3x as many magic items so it still wouldn't be balanced :smallfurious:

[unseenmage]

Does it though? That's my point, those "trival" encounters were actually "easy if handled properly," where the party lacked the ability to handle it properly (standard disclaimer about truly broken monsters applies). The standard party vs standard MM1 monsters has an answer to every EIHP monster as long as they're allowed to flee- Shadows and Allips are the worst offenders, but even at 3rd level Turn Undead has a chance of holding them off, with Allips being basically the worst I've seen. Encounters where the party is at a disadvantage, forced to fight, lacking expected abilities, or fighting more powerful later MM monsters, all have extenuating circumstances.

The actual number of optimizers who trivialize encounters is probably about equal to the number of truly borked monsters- quite small, but where the DM can just choose not to use the monster, it's harder to get a player to play differently or compensate.


The NPC CR designation is one of the worst things in 3.5, specifically because people take it as the primary definition of CR, and oh how I've argued about it. Re-organization in the switch to 3.5 actually made it far more prominent: originally it was in the rewards chapter, three chapters after the main encounter definitions, but in 3.5 rewards were moved to the end of the chapter right before the encounter definitions. This would not stop rules lawyers from making the equivalence anyway, but it still bugs the heck out of me. Regardless, the encounter building section never once mentions NPCs or PCs as having CR or EL: only monsters. It's just so easy to take that one poorly written rule, originally meant for assigning xp, and pretend it invalidates everything else about the CR system because now you have a "balanced equation" to apply transformations to. The equation is not balanced, encounters only happen between PCs and monsters or NPCs acting as monsters, PCs never have CR or EL, and if they did they would obviously require modifiers for having 3x as many magic items so it still wouldn't be balanced :smallfurious:
So is it optimization to play a Cleric who can turn undead just in case there are Allips or are players allowed to be an all Rogue party if thats whats fun for them?

If they are all rogues is one of them allowed to spec themselves against Allips? Or would that be optimizing?

I ask because it sounds like you want players to treat these intended party roles as an immutable rule. That if they play any other way well then too bad, so sad, wasnt the designers or the systems fault they all died to random poorly designed game element. It was clearly theirs.

And if the above is the case then even playing a combination of classes that doesnt adhere to these intended party roles is an optimization tactic.

[Florian]

Unfortunately, the roles they were made for aren't the roles the rules actually support. The designers WANTED frontliner Fighter, backstabbing Rogue, healbot Cleric and blastomancer Wizard. Instead they got speedbump Fighter, frontliner Cleric, and god-Wizard.

Actually, It´s good to keep in mind that the designers wanted a more streamlined AD&D 3rd with less need for gm judgement calls and rulings.
That's why we get the whole slew of "legacy" classes and spells, that´re still more fitting to a tabletop war-game and why the risks formerly associated with spells and items have been removed from the core, but get mentioned in (3E) the world building and customizing the game section of the DMG.

It´s also good to keep in mind that a lot of the norms and behaviors that we now see in the optimizing community come from the old RPGA rules, like how to handle RAW and all that.

[Fizban]

"LOL, Fightars r dum."

You don't think being able to feed yourself off of the land is a skill?
Its one skill: Profession (Farmer). Two if you want to count hunting and gathering without a farm with Survival. It is not a whole bunch of skills (in DnD terms), nor is it the real world example I expect was behind the post I was responding to- people who've taken all sorts of college classes, potentially multiple degrees, multiple languages, as well as picking up random other skills around the place and generally being sociable. A substance farming commoner can't do all that, nor can a fighter, because they literally don't have access to or time to learn those extra skills, but a 1st level expert can. (Incidentally, Fighter is also just about the only class that doesn't get Profession- they can craft things but not run a business.)


Unfortunately, the roles they were made for aren't the roles the rules actually support. The designers WANTED frontliner Fighter, backstabbing Rogue, healbot Cleric and blastomancer Wizard. Instead they got speedbump Fighter, frontliner Cleric, and god-Wizard.
I feel like you've completely missed the point. Your stated roles don't even match those that I have given as the intended design, as I understand it based on the rules (and suggestions, guidelines, history, etc) given. Your expectations do not match the game, which does not mean the game is wrong: it means you are playing the game differently from how it was intended.

[Florian]

Its one skill

Which is a good reminder that the blanket skills of Profession and Craft are pretty powerful and often overlooked in favor of the more specific, task related skills.

[Fizban]

So is it optimization to play a Cleric who can turn undead just in case there are Allips or are players allowed to be an all Rogue party if thats whats fun for them?
No? I'm pretty sure you got lost: I said that some people optimize so hard that even normal encounters are easy when prepared, even when they're not supposed to be EIHP, he said that for each of those optimizers there's a monster that screws the CR system, and I said those monsters were already EIHP (and thus potentially deadly if not). Playing a cleric isn't optimizing, it's literally the baseline, and refusing to have one in the party is actually something that can be defined as anti-optimization.

Bringing a cleric to an Allip fight doesn't mean you trivialize it- it means you have a somewhat better chance of escaping and coming back with Magic Weapon prepared where you didn't before (and/or Magic Missile if the wizard knows it). The proper expected counter for a whole room of them is Death Ward on the whole party- if you enter the dungeon without it, you Turn and run. If you have it, they're easy. EIHP.

If they are all rogues is one of them allowed to spec themselves against Allips? Or would that be optimizing?
If they're all rogues than the CR system has gone so far out the window the DM should know better than to treat them as the standard party. Warranty void if tampered with.


I ask because it sounds like you want players to treat these intended party roles as an immutable rule. That if they play any other way well then too bad, so sad, wasnt the designers or the systems fault they all died to random poorly designed game element. It was clearly theirs.

And if the above is the case then even playing a combination of classes that doesnt adhere to these intended party roles is an optimization tactic.
Yeah, pretty much. It's on the whole group, not just the players, but you can't expect something with this many variables to hold up when you start messing with the variables it was designed with. Like Florian said, almost all of 3.5 is "unnecessary" stuff added for funzies, which doesn't mean it's going to be balanced. That's what the DM is for. The more options you want, the more poorly designed game elements there are going to be, PC or monster.

Yes, playing different classes is an optimization tactic, obviously. Char-op says everyone should play casters, because optimized casters obviate all roles simply by existing. You bring more casters, you've optimized for casting. You bring more rogues, you've optimized for. . stealth? You bring more fighters, you've optimized for day-long mook slaying, not that anyone will accept the idea of that game existing. You've also de-optimzed for whatever roles you're lacking- casters have daily limits and aren't guaranteed a predictable number of daily encounters, even if people pretend otherwise, rogues and fighters lack the crowd control and buffs needed to fight many monsters, clerics lack crowd control, fighters lack trapfinding.

And the DMG acknowledges all this, though not in such stark terms, because writing a set of core books with 11 classes and then saying only 4 are "correct" would be extremely self-destructive. They waited until PHB2 to put it in a book where it's easily quotable, though there may have been acknowledgement in articles before that.

Edit 2: first bit for clarity, added final bit.

[Hyperversum]

Everything is based, imo, on a single question: "What is optimization?".

Well, to me, and not only me, optimization is the act of picking Law Devotion on a Paladin rather than Weapon Focus.
In general, it's the act of avoiding sub-optimal options in favor of good options with a single target: making my character work.

All of this is based on how I play RPGs.
I want to play a character, I want to have him being a badass at whatever he is doing, in order to be meaningful in the world he lives not only because he is a PC rather than a NPC.
Badass doesn't mean "winning everytime", it means being good at something and actively doing something in the plot.
We all know the definition of CR, and starting from it I want that my Level 20 Paladin COULD be able to win a 1vs1 against a Balor.

Therefore, he will have Law Devotion over Weapon Focus. He will have Dinamic Priest rather than trying some DMM tricks on him, which will be mostly wasted. See the pattern?

It's something completely different from going Munchkin.
Making an effective build/optimization is something done, imo, to make that character the badass he is supposed to be. How is that related to ask for a +2 LA race as a +0? It's absurd to me, and we play a pretty high-powered game!

Anyway, that's how I see Optimization. And why some people would hate it? I don't have a particular precise answer, if not that they are:
1) Players that won't spend time in optimizing their characters, even when picking the right thing is something entirely part of the game just as shouting "I charge at the troll"
2) DMs without a good system mastery that gets butt****ed by a wizard because he does something more that blasting. Which is a general way to speak about all those cases where a DM wants to keep giving challenges that are appropriate for PCs at level 1-4 to 11+ PCs, in a high magic setting.
3) Those that for some reason think that building kills the RP. Still gotta understand this.

[AnimeTheCat]

It's more the issue that Sunder is kind of lopsided/broken when used against PCs as taken in context with the rest of 3.PF rules. In a game system where magic items are actually NECESSARY to succeed past a point, since the game math is all built on the assumption that you'll have +X weapons, Y Armor Class value, Z save bonuses, etc. to determine the ability DCs, armor class, and special abilities of monsters, Sunder is an insanely overvalued tactic for monsters. You put a monster with six attacks up against a PC and they can easily cripple the PC permanently by just sundering their Cloak of Resistance, Ring of Protection, Amulet of Natural Armor, Belt of +X stat, Headband of +Y stat, and taking a solid stab at their weapon.

Bear in mind that your example is only one possible outcome, and it is one of a monster or creature that does not care about magic items or treasure themselves. A bandit on the other hand would almost certainly never sunder all that magic gear, they would be just like a PC sundering all of the potential loot. The sunder or disarm would be more likely to be used to sunder weapons or non-magical equipment with the intent to loot the magical equipment off of the corpse.

Additionally, if the party has been in an area for a prolonged period of time, such an intelligent foe would likely have heard of the efforts and seen how they fight and analyzed their tactics. If it is in the best interest of the villain to destroy the ubercharger's sword in the first round of combat to prevent ubercharging death, that should certainly be a priority.

Think of it as if you were the leader of a band of bandits that regularly prey upon a small surrounding area. You would probably have some people in each of the towns/villages that you are targeting so that you can get a feel for what is going to be transported, when it will move, and where it's going. You of course know you're wanted, so you know that the local towns/villages will likely post rewards for the removal of your group. The adventurers will probably go after you but that gives you a chance to see how they fight which will allow you the chance to counter them. It doesn't take much, maybe just one combat to see what you're dealing with. Have a lookout in the woods off to the side of the road/passageway you're targeting and prepare to take notes (a level 1 expert would be perfect for this). expert simply takes shorthand notes "the one with black hair casts spells" "the warrior charges and kills instantly" "The blonde one just sang..." and from there you formulate how you're going to defend yourself from an attack by these adventureres. If you get more chances to learn more, you could eventually see that the fighter only charges and never does anything else. You could see that the wizard prefers spells that change the battlefield as opposed to damage spells or is always just using a rod or wand to cast spells.

With all of that very basic information someone even with an int of 8 could collect, a villain can easily formulate plans on how it will target the party and will prepare accordingly. The villain should lay a trap (or series of traps) to coerce the party into fighting on the terms set by them, not set by the party. If the wizard likes casting battlefield control spells, have the opposition run as soon as the spell is cast to pull the battle away from the spell, prefferably into another chamber with traps in it. Be waiting in ambush so as to not allow the rogue to search for the traps you have set.

As much as the party can prepare, the enemy too can prepare. This, I think is how Darth Ultron would "break" the one-trick pony optimizers, or even the wizard optimizers. Nothing in any book ever says that all enemies must keep fighting after the wizard/cleric/druic/etc. casts a battlefield control spell.

[Fizban]

Incidentally, if you hate sundering then you oughtta check out the wording on those oozes with their acid: " the opponent’s armor and clothing dissolve and become useless immediately." That's not an AoE that could incidentally damage magic gear, that's something that specifically affects clothing which you already failed your save against. It gone.

(The expected counter for an ooze is to not fight it in melee you buffoon).

[quark12000]

And shouldn't the ideal optimized character be based on available source material? Speaking for myself, the books for 3.5 that are available are from the PHB, DMG and MM. Now, how to optimize a character with that material. Some of you would say it can't be done, I believe. But we work with what we've got!

[Deophaun]

(The expected counter for an ooze is to not fight it in melee you buffoon).
Is spending 500gp on the durable ability good optimization or bad?

[Rynjin]

Bear in mind that your example is only one possible outcome, and it is one of a monster or creature that does not care about magic items or treasure themselves. A bandit on the other hand would almost certainly never sunder all that magic gear, they would be just like a PC sundering all of the potential loot. The sunder or disarm would be more likely to be used to sunder weapons or non-magical equipment with the intent to loot the magical equipment off of the corpse.

Correct that it is the tactic of a creature that both has no need for loot and is intelligent enough to deliberately identify and smash small objects on someone's person, but that logic is generally suspended by someone that wishes to "break" their players anyway.


Additionally, if the party has been in an area for a prolonged period of time, such an intelligent foe would likely have heard of the efforts and seen how they fight and analyzed their tactics. If it is in the best interest of the villain to destroy the ubercharger's sword in the first round of combat to prevent ubercharging death, that should certainly be a priority.

Keep in mind I did not say the tactic should NEVER be used, only used in moderation and with clear understanding you know what you're doing and the long term effect it will have on the PC and your campaign.

Much like optimizing.

[AnimeTheCat]

Correct that it is the tactic of a creature that both has no need for loot and is intelligent enough to deliberately identify and smash small objects on someone's person, but that logic is generally suspended by someone that wishes to "break" their players anyway.

Keep in mind I did not say the tactic should NEVER be used, only used in moderation and with clear understanding you know what you're doing and the long term effect it will have on the PC and your campaign.

Much like optimizing.

I must have misunderstood your overall tone then. My bad.

It would appear we're on the same page then. I prefer using Improved Disarm on many of my bad guys, regularly making use of both that and subdual damage. It does a few things like making my bad guys never kill a PC (hostages are more valuable if they're alive) and creates a challenge for the party. Wands, rods, etc. can be disarmed when used against wizards. It can even be done without much resource expendature (like using a quarterstaff instead of an expensive two handed weapon).

I definitely don't always do this... more of a thing if the villain has time to prepare. If the party is quick and doesn't give the villain time to prepare, I adjust accordingly (such as fighting defensively to evaluate tactics prior to attacking).

[Galacktic]

Y'all are taking your Elf Games way too seriously.

[WesleyVos]

It's more they don't understand.

I lot of modern players play under the silly ''agreement'' where the DM bows down to the players and lets them do whatever they want. I don't play that way.

For example, in my game you will find foes that use things like disarm and sunder.....and they will use them against the PCs. A lot of modern DMs won't do that......after all if you break/destroy the special characters one trick item....then that character is ''useless''.

The same way if your a 15th level character and you charge a lich...he will cast a high level attack spell, lets say Deathbolt...and not attack with like Buring Hands.

DU, what this sounds like is that you optimize your encounters. So you are yourself an optimizer, by the common definition being used in this thread.

The problem, I think, is that you have a unique definition of what defines an optimizer, which most people in this particular discussion (and, in my experience, on this forum) do not share. You are equating someone who optimizes with a jerk player. Now, as I DM more than I play, I have met my share of jerk players. They are what you describe, though, to be honest, they are not as prevalent as you seem to think. My guess would be that you've had some bad luck in getting stuck with more than your fair share of such, again (I would guess) at the beginning of your DM career. That made you wary of such players, which created an adversarial relationship between you and your players, which in turn created more of such jerk players by the nature of the relationship.

However, I believe you are mistaking some limited correlation for causation - you are seeing optimization as the cause of the jerkish behavior rather than seeing the players' jerkish behavior as the cause of the jerkish "optimization" (which, in my opinion, is not actually optimization but is rather more akin to true munchkining or even cheating at the game). I am sorry that is the case, and I would love to figure out a way to show you that optimization (as it is intended by most of the posters in this thread, myself included) is not the cause of the behavior you have experienced. I am sorry that you have had such players; I know what a burden they can be.

[Nifft]

Y'all are taking your Elf Games way too seriously.

It's six hours of time each week, multiplied by five adults with jobs and families and other obligations, plus the DM's time out-of-game doing planning, plus the players' time out-of-game doing book-keeping and writing campaign journals and doing character or encounter art.

In terms of sheer man-hours, it's collectively more time & effort than a single adult job.

All that time spent by those people should be well spent.

It ain't about the elf, it's the people.

[unseenmage]

It's six hours of time each week, multiplied by five adults with jobs and families and other obligations, plus the DM's time out-of-game doing planning, plus the players' time out-of-game doing book-keeping and writing campaign journals and doing character or encounter art.

In terms of sheer man-hours, it's collectively more time & effort than a single adult job.

All that time spent by those people should be well spent.

It ain't about the elf, it's the people.
Well said and heartily agreed.

[Jormengand]

When your job does not require hitting things, you don't need to hit all the time. Contrary to popular belief, the fighter's job is not killing, it's surviving. A standard fighter attack bonus progression hits often -but not all the time, as you are aware.

What you're missing is that a fighter with a positive strength bonus and full BAB isn't a mediocre fighter, they're an optimized fighter. A mediocre fighter would have 10 or even 8 str, and maybe a level of commoner or expert from before they became a fighter.

If you really believe that having full bab on your fighter - achieved literally by being a fighter - is optimisation, and that the fighter's true job is a glorified roadblock (jeez man clue's in the name) I have literally no idea what to tell you.

Plus, if you are a standard fighter, then unless you are in a 5 foot corridor there's nowhere you can stand that will actually impede enemies unless you can hit, because all you get for things walking past you is attacks of opportunity which need to hit in order to be effective. So your fighter, even your roadblock with a cause, needs to be able to hit things.

[Galacktic]

It's six hours of time each week, multiplied by five adults with jobs and families and other obligations, plus the DM's time out-of-game doing planning, plus the players' time out-of-game doing book-keeping and writing campaign journals and doing character or encounter art.

In terms of sheer man-hours, it's collectively more time & effort than a single adult job.

All that time spent by those people should be well spent.

It ain't about the elf, it's the people.

I play twice a week, four hour sessions each, and it's my primary hobby! I still do it as a way to spend time with my friends who I don't get to do that much with otherwise.

Y'all are still taking this all way too seriously.

Each table does its own thing, and there's no sense in arguing about all this because this is really just four posters all repeating themselves over each other in giant blocks of text that most people wouldn't even read. Each one of us is well set in our style of play and DMing and there's little reason to get so worked up about all of this.

I'm not going to agree or disagree with any of you, mainly because at this point the argument has gone on for long enough that it doesn't matter. Nothing that any one of you can say will dissuade anyone else's viewpoints because let's face it: almost all of us are in our late twenties to thirties. We're all pretty set in our ways, and some stranger on the internet saying things that we violently disagree with about our own variation of Elf Games is going to change that.

So let's all just take a step back, because at this point this thread is just a bunch of echos.

[Malimar]

I play twice a week, four hour sessions each, and it's my primary hobby! I still do it as a way to spend time with my friends who I don't get to do that much with otherwise.

Y'all are still taking this all way too seriously.

Each table does its own thing, and there's no sense in arguing about all this because this is really just four posters all repeating themselves over each other in giant blocks of text that most people wouldn't even read. Each one of us is well set in our style of play and DMing and there's little reason to get so worked up about all of this.

I'm not going to agree or disagree with any of you, mainly because at this point the argument has gone on for long enough that it doesn't matter. Nothing that any one of you can say will dissuade anyone else's viewpoints because let's face it: almost all of us are in our late twenties to thirties. We're all pretty set in our ways, and some stranger on the internet saying things that we violently disagree with about our own variation of Elf Games is going to change that.

So let's all just take a step back, because at this point this thread is just a bunch of echos.
You're having fun wrong.

[Deophaun]

If you really believe that having full bab on your fighter - achieved literally by being a fighter - is optimisation, and that the fighter's true job is a glorified roadblock (jeez man clue's in the name) I have literally no idea what to tell you.
If the fighter's job was to kill things, then he would be called a killer instead. Fighting is the worst way to kill things. If there's a fight, then you've allowed your enemy the opportunity to win.

[Jormengand]

If the fighter's job was to kill things, then he would be called a killer instead. Fighting is the worst way to kill things. If there's a fight, then you've allowed your enemy the opportunity to win.

I am aware of the critical existence failure inherent in the fighter's base concept, yes, but the point that the fighter's job is "Fight things" not "Stand in stuff's way" remains true.

[Lord Raziere]

You're having fun wrong.

No he isn't, stop being a jerk, Galacktic is the only one speaking Truth here. you guys ARE taking your elf games too seriously.

[Jormengand]

No he isn't, stop being a jerk, Galacktic is the only one speaking Truth here. you guys ARE taking your elf games too seriously.

I'm like, 87.6% sure that despite lack of blue text that was actually sarcasm.

[Lord Raziere]

I'm like, 87.6% sure that despite lack of blue text that was actually sarcasm.

too bad, you be subtly sarcastic on the internet, you take that risk. obvious sarcasm is a different story.

also blue text is totally the only way to express sarcasm :smalltongue:

[Hyperversum]

So let's all just take a step back, because at this point this thread is just a bunch of echos.

Imo, the point is that the approach of many people to this part of RPG just kills the possibility to make more people enjoy it.

There isn't anything wrong in the "I PLAY HALFORC BARBARIAN. DRINK PISS KILL **** RAPE LOOT AHAHHA" playstyle, but if you force it on a table, you are probably annoying someone (if I play at that table those character don't last long anyway. I am speaking not as a GM, but as a player).

The same goes for "HOW DO YOU DARE PICKING GOOD FEATS" or "AHAHAHAH ****ING NOOB HOW CAN YOU PLAY CLASS X AND TAKE FEAT Y OVER FEAT Z". Just this.

[Malimar]

No he isn't, stop being a jerk, Galacktic is the only one speaking Truth here. you guys ARE taking your elf games too seriously.
This comment, which I can't tell if sarcastic or not, is a fitting and just punishment for my comment where it wasn't clear whether I was being sarcastic or not.

(I think I was being approximately 87.6% sarcastic. We enjoy taking our elf games this seriously, so telling us to stop is telling us we're having fun wrong, so I was calling that out by sarcastically saying that taking your elf games unseriously is having fun wrong.)

[Jama7301]

Since I'm curious, and shared an answer to the question in the thread title, let me turn the question back around.

Why optimization?

From what I can glean, it's about more power, including the ability to avoid trap options. More power = more fun, since, in most cases, failure is not fun. The places where the line as drawn seem to vary from person to person on how much is Too Much optimization, but the vibe I'm getting is more power = more fun.

Am I missing something?

I wanted to try to reset the tone of the thread and see if I could learn anything.

[Nifft]

I play twice a week, four hour sessions each, and it's my primary hobby! I still do it as a way to spend time with my friends who I don't get to do that much with otherwise.

Y'all are still taking this all way too seriously.

Each table does its own thing, and there's no sense in arguing about all this because this is really just four posters all repeating themselves over each other in giant blocks of text that most people wouldn't even read. Each one of us is well set in our style of play and DMing and there's little reason to get so worked up about all of this.

I'm not going to agree or disagree with any of you, mainly because at this point the argument has gone on for long enough that it doesn't matter. Nothing that any one of you can say will dissuade anyone else's viewpoints because let's face it: almost all of us are in our late twenties to thirties. We're all pretty set in our ways, and some stranger on the internet saying things that we violently disagree with about our own variation of Elf Games is going to change that.

So let's all just take a step back, because at this point this thread is just a bunch of echos. Let me see if I understand your argument:

You have fun, therefore nobody else has ever had a problem which merits discussion.

Is that your argument?

Because that would not be a good argument.

[Jormengand]

the vibe I'm getting is more power = more fun.

Am I missing something?

Sort of, to both your statement and your question. In general, if you're not making plays, you're not having fun, if your plays aren't doing anything, you're not really making plays, and if the thing that your play does isn't actually worth doing, then your plays aren't really doing anything.

That is, if you're standing in stuff's way, that's not a thing that's worth doing because they can walk around you at no cost to themselves, so it's not a play that's doing anything, so you're not really making plays so you're not having fun. If you're attacking and missing, you're not doing anything so you're not making real plays so you're not having fun. Unless you're one of a rare breed of players who enjoy doing nothing with their actions and claim that anyone who doesn't is bad at the game, I guess. But optimisation is the act of giving your character the chance to have meaningful interactions with the game world - and why would a DM want to dissuade people from having the chance to have meaningful interactions with the game world, unless they were railroading hard?

[WesleyVos]

Since I'm curious, and shared an answer to the question in the thread title, let me turn the question back around.

Why optimization?

From what I can glean, it's about more power, including the ability to avoid trap options. More power = more fun, since, in most cases, failure is not fun. The places where the line as drawn seem to vary from person to person on how much is Too Much optimization, but the vibe I'm getting is more power = more fun.

Am I missing something?

I wanted to try to reset the tone of the thread and see if I could learn anything.

Yes. More power does not always mean more fun. What does mean more fun is optimizing to the level of the party and the campaign. It's not just about more power; it's about power in the right circumstances at a level that makes things fun for you and the rest of your gaming group.

That said, you are right in that the line varies from person to person, but I think everyone in this thread generally agrees on where the line is - we just all have different ways of expressing it. Everyone agrees that jerk players are bad, and jerk players who optimize in jerk ways are bad. Everyone agrees that theoretical optimization has little to no place in actual gaming. Everyone (except maybe Darth Ultron, and then only because he equates high-power optimization with jerk players) agrees that high-powered optimization only works if everyone involved is practicing high-power optimization.

[Jama7301]

Sort of, to both your statement and your question. In general, if you're not making plays, you're not having fun, if your plays aren't doing anything, you're not really making plays, and if the thing that your play does isn't actually worth doing, then your plays aren't really doing anything.


Maybe this is where the disconnect with me is happening. From this, it sounds like the End Result is the part that's most important, compared to everything leading up to that point. The hitting, damaging, moving, stunning, charming, jumping, whatever the task is out weights the opportunity to take that chance in terms of 'worth', in this context.

Sorry if I'm just stating the obvious or misrepresenting what you're saying. There's something that's not clicking quite right with me, and I'm trying to work my way to connect the dots in my head.

[unseenmage]

Sort of, to both your statement and your question. In general, if you're not making plays, you're not having fun, if your plays aren't doing anything, you're not really making plays, and if the thing that your play does isn't actually worth doing, then your plays aren't really doing anything.

That is, if you're standing in stuff's way, that's not a thing that's worth doing because they can walk around you at no cost to themselves, so it's not a play that's doing anything, so you're not really making plays so you're not having fun. If you're attacking and missing, you're not doing anything so you're not making real plays so you're not having fun. Unless you're one of a rare breed of players who enjoy doing nothing with their actions and claim that anyone who doesn't is bad at the game, I guess. But optimisation is the act of giving your character the chance to have meaningful interactions with the game world - and why would a DM want to dissuade people from having the chance to have meaningful interactions with the game world, unless they were railroading hard?

Wish I had the skills to put this post to music.

As it is I already read it in this cadence (https://youtu.be/Af1OxkFOK18).

[Jormengand]

Maybe this is where the disconnect with me is happening. From this, it sounds like the End Result is the part that's most important, compared to everything leading up to that point. The hitting, damaging, moving, stunning, charming, jumping, whatever the task is out weights the opportunity to take that chance in terms of 'worth', in this context.

Sorry if I'm just stating the obvious or misrepresenting what you're saying. There's something that's not clicking quite right with me, and I'm trying to work my way to connect the dots in my head.

One of my favourite examples of incapability disconnect comes from an example in the Inquisitor system, where someone - who is clearly heavily invested in their character's jumping skills, says that their character shouts "In the Emperor's name, on wings of fire I fly!", makes a dramatic jump, and...

Flunks it, dropping his power axe as he narrowly grabs the edge. Now, sure, that's sorta a success, and might even have been a play worth making, but it sucks when you were hyped for your character actually to do his job and he doesn't. The build up, the tension, and the anticlimax as you fail, not even because the villain did anything to stop you but just because you messed up.

Now, having variable degrees of possible success is fine - having tasks that you might not always be able to do is fine, so long as you're not totally wasting your turn on them (for example, you might not make as much progress disarming the bomb/deal as much damage with your longsword/whatecer as you would have liked - you might even accidentally hit your ally with that spell, so long as you did something with your turn). But it's awful to be sitting there at first level, with no strength and no BAB (because according to a real person in this thread, anyone who takes fighter levels instead of commoner levels or has a strength bonus is a dirty cheating optimiser) repeatedly missing AC 16 goblins honestly sucks. Oh, I missed. I cannot possibly tactically position myself to help my allies under these circumstances. Oh, I missed, oh I can't position myself anywhere useful, oh, I missed, oh, I dealt one damage with my dagger because using a morningstar is chea... rudisp... uh, optimising. To me, at least, that's no fun.

[Pleh]

RE: "Fighters are fine just threatening space"

I want to remind people that many other classes can summon creatures to fill this role.

It doesn't seem super great to have your whole class and role summed up in one of many features belonging to classes that have so much more power.

Why optimize the fighter? Well, the only way to play speed bump better than an animal companion or a summoned creature is optimizing a reach weapon and trip.

Optimization, for some low tier classes, may be the only way to not end up a sidekick to a higher tier (and even then only if the higher tier character isn't trying to optimize your competition).

Edit: plus, threatening space mostly only matters if you have the combat reflexes to make good on your threats... and the ability to hit with your extra attacks.

Past that, you really just give a flanking bonus.

[Jama7301]

But it's awful to be sitting there at first level, with no strength and no BAB (because according to a real person in this thread, anyone who takes fighter levels instead of commoner levels or has a strength bonus is a dirty cheating optimiser) repeatedly missing AC 16 goblins honestly sucks. Oh, I missed. I cannot possibly tactically position myself to help my allies under these circumstances. Oh, I missed, oh I can't position myself anywhere useful, oh, I missed, oh, I dealt one damage with my dagger because using a morningstar is chea... rudisp... uh, optimising. To me, at least, that's no fun.

I gotcha.

Don't think I fully agree that a miss is a completely wasted turn, but thank you for taking the time to explain this to me. I understand a bit more now about the mindset behind this.

[Jormengand]

Wish I had the skills to put this post to music.

Schmoyoho's songify app can do something like this, and there are probably similar programs if you don't feel like trying to do audio stuff with your phone or don't have the right kind of phone.


I gotcha.

Don't think I fully agree that a miss is a completely wasted turn, but thank you for taking the time to explain this to me. I understand a bit more now about the mindset behind this.

Well, a miss really is a wasted turn. Nothing has changed - your AC isn't any higher unless you're fighting defensively (it might even be lower if you charged), you didn't inflict any status conditions unless you got frightful presence from somewhere (you dirty cheating optimiser you), and you haven't done any damage - most rider effects are on-hit effects, not on-attack effects, and of course if you're trying to make a character who's good even when they miss, guess what you're doing? If you attack, and the attack doesn't do anything, that is by very definition a wasted turn, and maybe a wasted arrow too. Of course, if you're a caster using one of the few spells which actually require an attack roll, it's a wasted slot, too.

(This is, incidentally, why I love "X partial" and "X half" saves, because it's a chance to avoid being killed while making the caster feel like they didn't totally waste their high-level slots. There's also a spell which allows SR partial, because it burns people with sheer heat even if they resist the actual spell. This is A Good Thing, because it means you're still making plays and having fun even if you miss.)

[Jama7301]

Maybe saying it's not a waste was a mistake on my end. I just don't feel like it's that big of a deal.

Then again, the binary nature of the game is one of the gripes I have with D&D a lot of times. And hey, this has given me the idea to see if I can develop a "Drive them Back" mechanic for misses, to see if small movement can be used. Lots of things to consider.

[Jormengand]

Maybe saying it's not a waste was a mistake on my end. I just don't feel like it's that big of a deal.

Then again, the binary nature of the game is one of the gripes I have with D&D a lot of times. And hey, this has given me the idea to see if I can develop a "Drive them Back" mechanic for misses, to see if small movement can be used. Lots of things to consider.

The game I'm working on making has what's called "Glance damage" - you never really miss with an attack, so much as it bounces off your enemy's shield or armour, or you screw up your edge alignment or even just hit a little bit further away from the vital bits than you'd have liked. It still does some damage (and because it doesn't have D&D's "Only the last hit point matters" style of health, some damage can still mess people up pretty good) so you haven't done absolutely nothing. Because let's face it: people who are good with weapons don't tend to flat-out miss with them anything like half the time.

[Jama7301]

The game I'm working on making has what's called "Glance damage" - you never really miss with an attack, so much as it bounces off your enemy's shield or armour, or you screw up your edge alignment or even just hit a little bit further away from the vital bits than you'd have liked. It still does some damage (and because it doesn't have D&D's "Only the last hit point matters" style of health, some damage can still mess people up pretty good) so you haven't done absolutely nothing. Because let's face it: people who are good with weapons don't tend to flat-out miss with them anything like half the time.

Would that have something like a superficial damage track, where glancing blows, barely dodged spells, etc, start to accrue before inflicting the equivalent of a good hit? Or would that operate on the same scale as regular hits just at a lower number?

Regardless, seems like it might be something interesting. If you post anything about it here, I'll have to take a look.

[Deophaun]

Maybe saying it's not a waste was a mistake on my end.
No, that was right. The problem is the attack is seen as The Thing, and if they don't do The Thing, people often don't bother to look at everything else they're doing.

The sorcerer casts scary spell but target saves, negating the spell. Seems like sorcerer has done nothing. But sorcerer has actually announced he can cast scary spell and everyone is one step away from death as long as sorcerer is around. Intelligent opponents respond accordingly.

Or they should. The problem is that tactical ignorance affects both sides of the screen. Plus, the DM already knows the sorceror can cast the scary spell and has been metagaming against it because that's a spell bad optimizers use.

[quark12000]

"The greatest teacher, failure is."

[Pleh]

The sorcerer casts scary spell but target saves, negating the spell. Seems like sorcerer has done nothing. But sorcerer has actually announced he can cast scary spell and everyone is one step away from death as long as sorcerer is around. Intelligent opponents respond accordingly.

Miss me once, you seem scary and I feel lucky.

Miss me twice, and you seem incompetent and I feel safe.

[Remuko]

I cant help but wonder if were being played or its just a hilarious coincidence but I was thinking about DU's posts while drying dishes and how he keeps speaking as if everything he believes is a fact, which he has been asked to stop doing multiple times. Theres nothing wrong with him expressing his opinions about the game and how it should be played if hes not forcing people to play that way against their will and stuff like that. But, that's when it hit me. His name is Darth Ultron. Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

[Jormengand]

Would that have something like a superficial damage track, where glancing blows, barely dodged spells, etc, start to accrue before inflicting the equivalent of a good hit? Or would that operate on the same scale as regular hits just at a lower number?
Sorta both.

In Dishonour Before Death, people don't have hit points. They have injury, wound and harm boxes. If you have 6 of each (which is unlikely but just about possible), then an attack that does 8 damage will do 6 injuries (which do nothing), and 2 wounds (which do something and you should avoid them). If someone then comes in and glances for 2 damage, they'll still do 2 more wounds (but if they'd glanced an uninjured target, then they would have done nothing but make further attacks more likely to do real damage). It might be an idea to have some attacks immediately go to wound if able (if unable, they'd go back to injury before going to harm), whereas glances strictly injure first with most weapons.


Regardless, seems like it might be something interesting. If you post anything about it here, I'll have to take a look.

I probably will, especially when it's done. It'll probably be pay-what-you-want as well, because that's pretty much my style.


No, that was right. The problem is the attack is seen as The Thing, and if they don't do The Thing, people often don't bother to look at everything else they're doing.

The sorcerer casts scary spell but target saves, negating the spell. Seems like sorcerer has done nothing. But sorcerer has actually announced he can cast scary spell and everyone is one step away from death as long as sorcerer is around. Intelligent opponents respond accordingly.

So actually, he's done nothing but give the opponents useful information, which is even worse than doing nothing!

[Pleh]

So actually, he's done nothing but give the opponents useful information, which is even worse than doing nothing!

Not necessarily. Just because the information will likely change their strategy doesn't mean that change in strategy won't also be advantageous to the heroes.

"Mandalorians don't make threats; we make promises."

[Jormengand]

Not necessarily. Just because the information will likely change their strategy doesn't mean that change in strategy won't also be advantageous to the heroes.

"Mandalorians don't make threats; we make promises."

True, but displays of power are so rarely worth making (and they don't help the fighter, either, because the enemy can see that he's wielding a sword anyway) that it's generally not particularly great anyway.

[Velaryon]

I tried to read the thread before responding, but it's already blown up super long and I just don't have the time to spend catching up all the way. So I apologize if any of this is a repeat of somebody else.

I think a certain degree of optimization is healthy and expected. Players should want their characters to be good at their jobs as the norm (though there is undoubtedly fun to be had for some people in playing characters that are not good at what they do as well). When there's a problem, it's a problem of degree, and it's usually one of these two issues:

1. More optimized characters are making less optimized characters feel useless or inadequate.
2. The DM is having trouble keeping up with the optimized characters.

For the first problem. it might vary from situation to situation whether the best solution is to help out players with less system mastery to make more optimized choices, or for players with more system mastery to rein themselves in and make less optimized characters (or perhaps play an optimized version of a lower-tier class). Sometimes the guy playing a sorcerer for the first time could use a little help to make sure he isn't wasting spells known on passwall and incendiary cloud. On the other hand, sometimes the new player just isn't ready to learn about why their Monk should have Fist of the Forest levels and an item that casts greater mighty wallop on them, or doesn't want to be told that they should just play a Swordsage instead, when they just want to make a badass kung fu warrior. In cases like that, maybe the optimizers should think about tricking out another Tier 5 class or something to keep themselves entertained without making the Monk useless. It's all about figuring out how best to get that group of people to have fun together.

For the second problem, it's helpful to look at optimization as an arms race. If the DM's system mastery isn't too good, then bringing optimized Tier 2 characters is just going to frustrate them. Hopefully the DM will ask for help, but they might also get frustrated and start nerfing or banning things. Or maybe they do have some ability to do it, but just don't want to spend the extra time and effort tweaking monster stat blocks or figuring out the right three Prestige Classes for the BBEG of this adventure to have. I know in my own 3.5 campaign, I basically can't use any encounters that rely primarily on melee combat because the wizard/warlock will never be in range, the centaur charger will start and end outside of everyone's threat range while totally melting his target of choice, the necromancer will clog the corridor with so many minions that nobody can get to him, and the gorilla grappler will lock down any dangerous enemy that isn't protected by freedom of movement and hold it still while his teammates beat it to death. If I'm not using high-end spellcasters or multiple monsters with a CR about 6 or 7 higher than the party level, I might as well be using goblins wielding cheese graters. Not every DM has the time or inclination to optimize the enemies well enough to provide a challenge without giving the PCs enough loot to buy the entire continent by level 8.

Another issue is that there are a LOT of things in 3.5 that seem like really cool, fun character ideas that are actually poor optimization choices. For example, any caster prestige class that loses more than a level of two of spellcasting is generally considered not worth taking (Bladesinger), which is a real shame because some of them are really cool ideas. Others might be really neat, but suboptimal choices because they rely on abilities that many enemies can easily resist or have blanket immunity to (Assassin). Or some might suffer from both problems *cough*Mindbender*cough*. Playing with a low-op group might make some of these classes, feats, and such a bit more viable, but in a game where everyone is Tier 3 and above, they just won't be good enough.


I guess the takeaway from all this is that optimization is a thing that often should be done in moderation, or at least with proper consideration for the rest of the table, including the DM.

[Fizban]

Is spending 500gp on the durable ability good optimization or bad?
Optimization- as is almost any assignment of gear, but particularly stuff that isn't even part of the base rules, the only way for it not to be some sort of optimization is if you're deliberately hamstringing yourself or DM has moved the goalposts by telling that anyone without Durable armor will lose their armor.

And I shouldn't have to point out that bad optimization is almost never one specific thing, when even the most borked spells involve multiple pieces if not outright leniency.



As for Jor and the refusal to see anything but successful attacks as "plays," well he's kinda tipped his hand there by mentioning that he works on games. A game designer is going to hold the strongest possible views on game design, and if they decide something is bad there's little point in trying to convince them. Jor thinks players have to be actively succeeding every round, makes games with mechanics to ensure that's always happening, and doesn't consider tactical positioning capable of being a play all its own (which is funny, because in most sports there's only one ball and the entire rest of the team is just tactically positioning themselves).

I don't make games for a living, but I have been staring at 3.5 for years to the point that I realized I'm just as qualified to analyze it as any other homebrewer (thus began my brewing and tinkering), and I've torn it down until I found answers for why it is the way it is that made sense with the rules rather than complaining about them. Just because I'd rather do something actively doesn't mean I don't see the value if my active action fails (I have used both full defense and failed at actions and been okay). I have a passing enough knowledge of statistics to know that just because this roll failed doesn't mean that it was a waste, regardless of how my gut may feel, and enough distance to respect the wargaming roots where positioning one guy had to have been a crucial move at times even if they couldn't succeed at an attack. I am okay with there being a party role for "guy that might not be able to do anything but stand in the way" sometimes, the same way I'm okay with some monsters being immune to magic (not this pansy "immune to everthing but conjuration," but actual immunity).

That said, if people are going to complain about others stating thing as fact when they're not, he should probably stop doing that.

Much like the assumption that anyone trying to say some optimization is bad is saying all optimization is bad, this stance assumes that people who think it's okay to sometimes not actively succeed are saying it's okay to never do so. Both are ridiculous and untrue.



But it's awful to be sitting there at first level, with no strength and no BAB (because according to a real person in this thread, anyone who takes fighter levels instead of commoner levels or has a strength bonus is a dirty cheating optimiser)
You really oughta take that chip off your shoulder, because, let's walk it back. You said this:

If you really believe that having full bab on your fighter - achieved literally by being a fighter - is optimisation, and that the fighter's true job is a glorified roadblock (jeez man clue's in the name) I have literally no idea what to tell you.
in response to this:

The game does expect you to have a 14 or higher in your main stat, but if you put your 14 in con for survival since surviving is your main job, and only have a 10 left for str because standard rolling has plenty of room for terrible stats, then you can absolutely have a mediocre fighter by the standard rules. At -2 or -3 attack those high odds of hitting start looking a lot closer to 50%.
which was in response to this:
Even a mediocre swordsman is hitting more than half the time. And, well, no duh, because every miss is a round where the player is doing nothing. A swordsman who puts in even a modicum of effort will indeed be hitting almost all the time. He will have a nearly 100% success rate at his own job, heaven forbid!

You asked for a mediocre swordsman, I gave you one. Turns out its pretty hard to make a mediocre swordsman without losing some BAB, so I gave an example of how someone might make one. If you want to complain about how the PHB standard rolling method allows for garbage stats that make bad fighters, go right ahead. I'd be right there with you on how random stats are bogus. But for someone who claims to be right about everything you sure miss the point a lot.

The standard fighter has +3 or +4 at 1st level before racial choices -and while we're at it, standard goblins only have AC 15. So you've optimized your monsters on top of the rest.



But, that's when it hit me. His name is Darth Ultron. Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
Bwahahhaha, oh man that's great! I'm not Star Wars-y enough to have got there on my own but its great! Say all the things everyone else does, optimize on the DM's side, but sound evil about it and deal only in absolutes because you're a sith. Ha!

And some more-

True, but displays of power are so rarely worth making (and they don't help the fighter, either, because the enemy can see that he's wielding a sword anyway) that it's generally not particularly great anyway.
Spoken as a man who's never faced the opposite end of something that could ruin your character. I've stood next to things that could one-round me after surviving only by luck. I've faced spellcasters I thought could blow the party apart in a couple rounds. These affected my decisions and how I felt about them- if the DM isn't playing the monsters in a way that they respect the knowledge that they're only live due to luck, well that's some bad roleplaying I guess.

You have a very peculiar combination of "combat is war" mentality with an expectation that the mechanics will enforce "combat as sport." Which is the exact opposite of 3.5.

Edit: collapsed posts, didn't think I'd manage to double.

[Jormengand]

As for Jor and the refusal to see anything but successful attacks as "plays," well he's kinda tipped his hand there by mentioning that he works on games.

The internet, where the men are men, the women are men, and everyone else is men for good measure.


A game designer is going to hold the strongest possible views on game design, and if they decide something is bad there's little point in trying to convince them. Jor thinks players have to be actively succeeding every round, makes games with mechanics to ensure that's always happening, and doesn't consider tactical positioning capable of being a play all its own (which is funny, because in most sports there's only one ball and the entire rest of the team is just tactically positioning themselves).

To be clear, tactical positioning can and should be a play, but it isn't in 3.5 because all you get is attacks of opportunity, and if you can't hit with them...

EDIT: Also, nice stereotype that I'm inherently unreasonable about game design because I design games. Weirdly, scientists are more reasonable about science than most people, and game designers have to be reasonable about game design or they make more fantasy heartbreakers.


I don't make games for a living, but I have been staring at 3.5 for years to the point that I realized I'm just as qualified to analyze it as any other homebrewer (thus began my brewing and tinkering), and I've torn it down until I found answers for why it is the way it is that made sense with the rules rather than complaining about them. Just because I'd rather do something actively doesn't mean I don't see the value if my active action fails (I have used both full defense and failed at actions and been okay). I have a passing enough knowledge of statistics to know that just because this roll failed doesn't mean that it was a waste, regardless of how my gut may feel, and enough distance to respect the wargaming roots where positioning one guy had to have been a crucial move at times even if they couldn't succeed at an attack. I am okay with there being a party role for "guy that might not be able to do anything but stand in the way" sometimes, the same way I'm okay with some monsters being immune to magic (not this pansy "immune to everthing but conjuration," but actual immunity).

See, IME, most players don't have fun when their action does nothing. Maybe you can enjoy doing nothing, but most players can't.



You asked for a mediocre swordsman, I gave you one. Turns out its pretty hard to make a mediocre swordsman without losing some BAB

Let me stop you right there. No, it isn't. A mediocre swordsman (with 18 STR, 1 BAB/level, and nothing else) is still hitting goblins about half the time (slightly more), even if I didn't remember their AC off the top of my head (for shame!), which is pretty clearly mediocre.


The standard fighter has +3 or +4 at 1st level before racial choices

Then the standard fighter is mediocre. If you can't do your job at least fairly reliably, then you're bad. To be quite honest.

It's one thing not to succeed at storming the courtyard, killing the king's knights, and taking the princess hostage because there are a lot of them and they know tactics and swords too. It's another thing to miss the king's knights because you're no good with a sword.

[Max Caysey]

And shouldn't the ideal optimized character be based on available source material? Speaking for myself, the books for 3.5 that are available are from the PHB, DMG and MM. Now, how to optimize a character with that material. Some of you would say it can't be done, I believe. But we work with what we've got!

There is about 100 official books published for D&D 3.x! Including two settings! They are all readily available online! There are 5 Monster Manuals! There are books for divine, rogues, melee, nature, arcane and mixes! I feel so sorry for you guys!!!

[Deophaun]

So actually, he's done nothing but give the opponents useful information, which is even worse than doing nothing!
The point is that every action has a consequence even if the dice go against you. You should always ask what your action will mean even if you roll a 1. Not asking that question is how you waste a turn by missing.

And this is very much a form of optimization. Let's term it zero-point optimization, because this is how effective your character is when sucking completely.

[Jormengand]

The point is that every action has a consequence even if the dice go against you. You should always ask what your action will mean even if you roll a 1. Not asking that question is how you waste a turn by missing.

And this is very much a form of optimization. Let's term it zero-point optimization, because this is how effective your character is when sucking completely.

I mean, yes, you should consider what you character will achieve even if they flunk it - but in the case of a fighter using a sword that the enemies know he has, the answer is "Nothing".

[Malimar]

I'd like to point out that only a total roll of 10 or lower (mechanically, the base of 10 AC) is "you missed". If you fail to hit with a roll higher than that, then it's because your opponent's armor or shield or force field got in the way, or they dodged or otherwise evaded your blow, or your weapon only hit too glancingly to penetrate their thick hide, or most likely a combination of those things.

Which is to say: the fault of not hitting is your own failure 50% of the time only if you have a -1 total attack modifier. If you have at least a +9, then every time you don't hit, it's because your enemy is competent (or you had a stroke of extremely poor luck, which is what a natural 1 represents).

[Fizban]

The internet, where the men are men, the women are men, and everyone else is men for good measure.
You don't have a gender specificed on your profile, and your avatar is at best ambiguous. If you're going to complain about a man defaulting to male pronouns, maybe specify something beforehand? Then I'd have reason to apologize.

To be clear, tactical positioning can and should be a play, but it isn't in 3.5 because all you get is attacks of opportunity, and if you can't hit with them...
And you block the charge specials from hitting anyone but yourself, and on an open field you should generally by an extra round by forcing them to go around you. The value varies depending on how tactically the DM is running the monster, but you seem to argue as if everything has maximum tactics.

EDIT: Also, nice stereotype that I'm inherently unreasonable about game design because I design games. Weirdly, scientists are more reasonable about science than most people, and game designers have to be reasonable about game design or they make more fantasy heartbreakers.
You clearly think you can do the job better and refuse to budge on your positions: that's not a stereotype, that's just what you're saying. From where comes such certainty? Gee, a game designer probably knows game design, has confidence in their analysis.

See, IME, most players don't have fun when their action does nothing. Maybe you can enjoy doing nothing, but most players can't.
Are we finally getting somewhere? Could it be that dnd is not designed to perfectly cater only to active players, but instead has its own goals?

Then the standard fighter is mediocre. If you can't do your job at least fairly reliably, then you're bad. To be quite honest.
Actually 1st level monsters have abnormally high AC. Later on both the normal and mediocre fighter will be rolling against AC 20 or less on many monsters while having +10 or more attack. At least when the monsters aren't being optimized.

It's one thing not to succeed at storming the courtyard, killing the king's knights, and taking the princess hostage because there are a lot of them and they know tactics and swords too. It's another thing to miss the king's knights because you're no good with a sword.
A 1st level character should not be able to hit a "knight" reliably, assuming that "knight" implies any amount of elite ability or equipment. If the "knights" are 1st level NPCs with no class features, non-elite stats, and bad armor, then sure- a 1st level hero can hit them just fine. I wouldn't advise fighting more than one at a time though, for safety, because much like real life a 1st level character loses 2v1.


I mean, yes, you should consider what you character will achieve even if they flunk it - but in the case of a fighter using a sword that the enemies know he has, the answer is "Nothing".
Rise, and be known as Darth Jormengand.

[Jormengand]

I'd like to point out that only a total roll of 10 or lower (mechanically, the base of 10 AC) is "you missed". If you fail to hit with a roll higher than that, then it's because your opponent's armor or shield or force field got in the way, or they dodged or otherwise evaded your blow, or your weapon only hit too glancingly to penetrate their thick hide, or most likely a combination of those things.

Which is to say: the fault of not hitting is your own failure 50% of the time only if you have a -1 total attack modifier. If you have at least a +9, then every time you don't hit, it's because your enemy is competent (or you had a stroke of extremely poor luck, which is what a natural 1 represents).

But it's also because you're bad at hitting people in armour; bad at hitting fast people, bad at hitting people with forcefields. It's not just that the enemy had good armour, it's that their good armour was enough to stop the masterful swordsman who isn't so masterful after all.


You don't have a gender specificed on your profile, and your avatar is at best ambiguous. If you're going to complain about a man defaulting to male pronouns, maybe specify something beforehand? Then I'd have reason to apologize.

And you block the charge specials from hitting anyone but yourself, and on an open field you should generally by an extra round by forcing them to go around you. The value varies depending on how tactically the DM is running the monster, but you seem to argue as if everything has maximum tactics.

You clearly think you can do the job better and refuse to budge on your positions: that's not a stereotype, that's just what you're saying. From where comes such certainty? Gee, a game designer probably knows game design, has confidence in their analysis.

Are we finally getting somewhere? Could it be that dnd is not designed to perfectly cater only to active players, but instead has its own goals?

Actually 1st level monsters have abnormally high AC. Later on both the normal and mediocre fighter will be rolling against AC 20 or less on many monsters while having +10 or more attack. At least when the monsters aren't being optimized.

A 1st level character should not be able to hit a "knight" reliably, assuming that "knight" implies any amount of elite ability or equipment. If the "knights" are 1st level NPCs with no class features, non-elite stats, and bad armor, then sure- a 1st level hero can hit them just fine. I wouldn't advise fighting more than one at a time though, for safety, because much like real life a 1st level character loses 2v1.

Assuming is bad anyway, you can't usually actually block a charge because they can still charge past you and end up adjacent, yes I do think I'm right about stuff or I wouldn't be saying it, D&D has pretty bad goals and doesn't even fulfil them properly, your mediocre fighter can't hit a pit fiend except by the natural 20 rule and an actual mediocre fighter can (if not reliably), and I'm not talking about level 1 characters in particular in that example. Now can we please quit with the textwalls?

[Fizban]

But it's also because you're bad at hitting people in armour; bad at hitting fast people, bad at hitting people with forcefields. It's not just that the enemy had good armour, it's that their good armour was enough to stop the masterful swordsman who isn't so masterful after all.
The difference between an object and a creature with no bonuses of the same size is 5, you demand a starting attack bonus of at least +5 -coincidence? Maybe what you hate is just the AC system that starts you out with a 25% chance of missing a practice dummy?

(Gotta go to work now, in case anyone misses me).

One more:

Assuming is bad anyway, you can't usually actually block a charge because they can still charge past you and end up adjacent, yes I do think I'm right about stuff or I wouldn't be saying it, D&D has pretty bad goals and doesn't even fulfil them properly, your mediocre fighter can't hit a pit fiend except by the natural 20 rule and an actual mediocre fighter can (if not reliably), and I'm not talking about level 1 characters in particular in that example. Now can we please quit with the textwalls?
Charging must go in a straight line, if you aren't standing directly in their way then you did it wrong.

The pit fiend claim is and has always been patently, demonstrably un-true, but I really don't have time to repost the basic freaking math that you're refusing to do.

Oh, and if you want to stop arguing then stop claiming everything you say is true instead of an opinion. At least I'm looking for answers that explain why the rules they are instead of whining about it.

Edit from the far future: huh, went back to check some of my old arguments and found I left out the un from untrue. Didn't really matter since my stance was so clear I guess.

[Jormengand]

The difference between an object and a creature with no bonuses of the same size is 5, you demand a starting attack bonus of at least +5 -coincidence? Maybe what you hate is just the AC system that starts you out with a 25% chance of missing a practice dummy?

(Gotta go to work now, in case anyone misses me).

Objects take an additional -2 penalty for being objects on top of the -5 dex penalty (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm#armorClass), as it happens, so anyone with any BAB should be hitting them on 2s anyway, and you can take a full action to line up an attack that never misses. You can, more understandably, miss a target at range (though conversely it's kinda odd that a commoner with a longbow can hit a human-sized 100 feet away on a 7 [attack -4 AC 3] - you'd think it would be harder than that).


Charging must go in a straight line, if you aren't standing directly in their way then you did it wrong.

The pit fiend claim is and has always been patently, demonstrably true, but I really don't have time to repost the basic freaking math that you're refusing to do.

Oh, and if you want to stop arguing then stop claiming everything you say is true instead of an opinion. At least I'm looking for answers that explain why the rules they are instead of whining about it.

You can end up diagonally adjacent to the wizard if you make a straight-line charge around the fighter - or did you think that you can only make a charge in any of the 8 compass directions? Due to the idiosyncracies of the way the grid system works, it's actually impossible to stand in a charger's way without a wall on at least one side of you.

Your not-full-bab no-STR-bonus "Mediocre fighter" cannot hit the pit fiend without the natural 20s rule (17+20<40) but the actual mediocre fighter with full-bab and max-STR can (20+6 or more+20>40), but not reliably (20+8, for example+10<40). What's to argue with?

I mean, the fact that "If your attack doesn't do anything it doesn't do anything" is kinda factual. As to why the rules are the way they are? Because Wizards of the Coast don't understand how their own game works.

[jedikiller]

A character needn't be optimized if its fun to play

[skunk3]

Jormengand, not to sound insulting or anything, but please stop. You're making some bad points and clearly most of the people here do not agree with you, myself included. I understand the points you are attempting to make but no amount of argumentation is going to change the fact that your opinions are not objective facts.

[Jormengand]

Jormengand, not to sound insulting or anything, but please stop. You're making some bad points and clearly most of the people here do not agree with you, myself included. I understand the points you are attempting to make but no amount of argumentation is going to change the fact that your opinions are not objective facts.

Ah yes, "You're wrong in some nonspecific way, your facts are only opinions, and people disagree so you're wrong." What a brilliant non-argument. Also "I don't mean to be insulting, but I'm going to insult you."

Come back when you've learnt what a real argument looks like. :smallannoyed:

[Arbane]

A character needn't be optimized if its fun to play

Yeah, the problem there is just what amount of Happy Fun Miserable Failure Hour people want to tolerate in their elfgames. According to Darth Ultron, his disgusting munchkin players can't stand losing at anything, ever. Most people have a slightly higher 'whiff tolerance' than that. And sometimes people want to play a character idea they know is suboptimal, for whatever reason. The problem then becomes, how much failure is still fun?

I played Exalted once with a guy who wanted play play a Heroic Mortal in a bunch of Solars. The GM had to jump through a few hoops to keep that character alive on a few occasions, but he seemed to be having fun. Tastes differ.

[Crake]

Welp, go to sleep for 8 hours, 3 pages later....

[skunk3]

Ah yes, "You're wrong in some nonspecific way, your facts are only opinions, and people disagree so you're wrong." What a brilliant non-argument. Also "I don't mean to be insulting, but I'm going to insult you."

Come back when you've learnt what a real argument looks like. :smallannoyed:

First of all, it wasn't an insult. If you take it as an insult (even though I clearly indicated that it was not), that's on you, not on me. Personally, I think that's an indication of lack of character. (No pun intended.) There is a little thing called the "principle of charity" which suggests that it is best to assume that people are being honest, and to interpret what they say in the best possible light and discern what they truly meant to say rather than SPECIFICALLY what they said. You assumed that I was insulting you when really all I was doing is agreeing with what others have already said.

You have stated many OPINIONS as facts, and even (above) said that we are wrongfully interpreting the 'facts' you are presenting as 'opinions.' There's no arguing against that. I don't feel like going through this whole thread and snipping out tons of quotes but it is all there for everyone to see. I'm not saying that you haven't made some valid points, but other things you've stated simply are not objectively true. Speaking of arguments, you are assuming from the onset that your opinions are facts, which is in and of itself fallacious. I am not making any arguments, and if I wanted to, I could. I do have a Philosophy degree (among others) and studied informal and formal logic quite a bit, so if I wanted to argue a point into the ground, I could WITHOUT committing logical fallacies.

[unseenmage]

...
I played Exalted once with a guy who wanted play play a Heroic Mortal in a bunch of Solars. The GM had to jump through a few hoops to keep that character alive on a few occasions, but he seemed to be having fun. Tastes differ.
Heh, that's exactly my plan when I ever get to play Exalted.

However, even I, with my high whiff tolerance, understand that failure does not equal fun.

Thinking back, if the failure is my choice, or at least my fault, I find it more palatable.

Failures borne solely from a half baked system that makes false promises of balance, failures borne of That Guy GMs and their desire to put players in their place, and failures borne from unexpected PvP have been the most distastefully memorable.

[Jormengand]

First of all, it wasn't an insult. If you take it as an insult (even though I clearly indicated that it was not), that's on you, not on me.

Oh come on. You can't just pull a Farage-style "I don't mean to be rude, but you have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk" on me. Just because you say "No offense" doesn't actually change whether or not what you're saying is offensive.


Personally, I think that's an indication of lack of character. (No pun intended.) There is a little thing called the "principle of charity" which suggests that it is best to assume that people are being honest, and to interpret what they say in the best possible light and discern what they truly meant to say rather than SPECIFICALLY what they said. You assumed that I was insulting you when really all I was doing is agreeing with what others have already said.

Just for fun, I checked with someone else first to make sure I wasn't the only one reading it that way before posting.


You have stated many OPINIONS as facts,

Examples please.


and even (above) said that we are wrongfully interpreting the 'facts' you are presenting as 'opinions.' There's no arguing against that.

Someone literally said that the fact that missed attack rolls have no mechanical effect in 3.5 was just my opinion. I think I have the right to say that.


I don't feel like going through this whole thread and snipping out tons of quotes but it is all there for everyone to see. I'm not saying that you haven't made some valid points, but other things you've stated simply are not objectively true. Speaking of arguments, you are assuming from the onset that your opinions are facts, which is in and of itself fallacious. I am not making any arguments, and if I wanted to, I could. I do have a Philosophy degree (among others) and studied informal and formal logic quite a bit, so if I wanted to argue a point into the ground, I could WITHOUT committing logical fallacies.

Oh? Then cut the freaking ad hominem, matey.

[skunk3]

Jor, if you take offense to something that isn't even offensive in the slightest - especially given the fact that I *specifically* said (just in case) that it was not intended to be offensive - that's on you, pal.

I'm not going to take the time to cut and paste a bunch of stuff to make a point. I don't feel like playing that game right now, so go ahead and continue feeling like you've 'won' this thread or whatever. I said what I felt like saying and I'm done until something interesting gets posted.

[quark12000]

There is about 100 official books published for D&D 3.x! Including two settings! They are all readily available online! There are 5 Monster Manuals! There are books for divine, rogues, melee, nature, arcane and mixes! I feel so sorry for you guys!!!

They're not free, friend.

[Jormengand]

Jor, if you take offense to something that isn't even offensive in the slightest - especially given the fact that I *specifically* said (just in case) that it was not intended to be offensive - that's on you, pal.

I'm not going to take the time to cut and paste a bunch of stuff to make a point. I don't feel like playing that game right now, so go ahead and continue feeling like you've 'won' this thread or whatever. I said what I felt like saying and I'm done until something interesting gets posted.

You can't just say something isn't offensive and it magically stops being.

What's the bloody point in making a point you can't and don't want to defend?

[Deophaun]

Jor, if you take offense to something that isn't even offensive in the slightest - especially given the fact that I *specifically* said (just in case) that it was not intended to be offensive - that's on you, pal.
Wait, if it wasn't offensive in the slightest, why the disclaimer?

"I mean no offense, but that was the most thoughtful post I ever read."

"No offense, but that meal was delicious."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but the cube root of 1601613 is 117."

[death390]

actually i think Jor makes several good points. my thing is that i had to work last night and have now only gotten though the wall of text (3 pages) that i had to read to make it back to where we currently are.

many of the mechanics in Dnd don't work that great. Jor is right that you can charge at a diagonal. hell i would rather do that 90% of the time as while i have to worry more about AoO's if i run near other people at least i can move around my blockage (not to mention there are ways to turn in a charge). Jor honestly one of the few people backing up what they are saying rather than the "your wrong, somehow, i can't say how though" people.



as i stated earlier the rules are not the end all be all for a game like this that is why there are DM's if the first place. but that said DM's need to know what they are doing and what they do has major effect of the game in how their players react. if you use sunder all the time then why invest in things that can be broken? i will end up as a sorc with eschew materials, a wizard with eidetic spellcasting, or worse just to avoid you breaking all my stuff.

if you continue to find ways to "break" my character that makes me want to beat you at your own game. and that is a problem. because if i am locked in an arms race with the DM neither of us is playing the game anymore it turns into a system mastery arms race or DM fiat problem.

[skunk3]

Wait, if it wasn't offensive in the slightest, why the disclaimer?

"I mean no offense, but that was the most thoughtful post I ever read."

"No offense, but that meal was delicious."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but the cube root of 1601613 is 117."

Because we are on the internet and it is 2017. People get bent out of shape over anything and everything. If you say anything that is contradictory or oppositional in the slightest, people feel like they are being personally attacked. I didn't say anything offensive, and even though it COULD BE construed as slightly offensive by the most thin-skinned, I added the disclaimer just to make it absolutely clear that was not the intent.

[Deophaun]

Because we are on the internet and it is 2017. People get bent out of shape over anything and everything. If you say anything that is contradictory or oppositional in the slightest, people feel like they are being personally attacked. I didn't say anything offensive, and even though it COULD BE construed as slightly offensive by the most thin-skinned, I added the disclaimer just to make it absolutely clear that was not the intent.
There had been 8 pages of contradictory and oppositional posts in this thread, and no one thought or felt the need to preface any of it until the slightly more politely worded "shut up" post. So I'm calling BS on that explanation.

[Jormengand]

Because we are on the internet and it is 2017. People get bent out of shape over anything and everything.

Oh, I see! You're one of those people who sits on 4chan posting "Triggered" memes while getting irrationally angry and telling people to stop posting just because they disagree with you!

Never mind, then.

[JNAProductions]

I enjoy optimization. Both theoretical (make a level 3 Artificer with Permanent Boots of Haste, for instance, and probably a LOT MORE besides) and practical (24 Con DFA, baby!).

I do think that 3.5 has some issues in that you need to work harder than you should to make sure everyone is playing on the same or on a similar level, but it's a fun game.

And I understand people who aren't fans of optimization. To those people, though, I would recommend probably playing another system. Half the fun of 3.5 is optimization, whereas something like Fate, for instance, the focus is more on the narrative.

[skunk3]

There had been 8 pages of contradictory and oppositional posts in this thread, and no one thought or felt the need to preface any of it until the slightly more politely worded "shut up" post. So I'm calling BS on that explanation.

If I had not said "no offense" what really would be different? Nothing I said was offensive and I invite anyone to argue that it was. Stating opinions as facts and arguing ad nauseum is far more offensive to my sensibilities. "Please stop" is a far cry from "shut up," so don't even take that there. Buy my story or not, that is fine, but I stand by what I said and apologize for nothing.