Have you ever… run a build through a module?

[Quertus]

I'm curious about people's experiences with running published builds, like Jack B. Quick, BMX Bandit, Scruffy the Fuglimancer, or Machine Gun Kelly. Ideally, for ease of comparison, this would involve published modules, and, optimally, the whole party would all be different, recognizable builds. But this thread is for any stories of builds, not just whole parties thereof, or published modules.

So, what was it like? How did the character do? Did it differ from your expectations? If you usually run your own builds, did it differ from your usual experience?

One of the reasons I'm asking (aside from curiosity, which is my main reason) is that I'm considering using recognizable Playground builds (instead of my own builds) to use to test my content before subjecting it to actual players. So any information that would be useful from the PoV of saying, "I found 'Jack B. Quick' to be well balanced to this adventure"would be helpful.

[Blackhawk748]

I made an Assassin build quite awhile ago, doesn't have a fancy name or anything, but it's past what most modules expect you to be at.

It hit pretty damn hard and I went through chaff like it was going out of style. Bosses weren't terribly hard either.

So, I would say they'll probably hit a bit above their expected weight class

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Blackhawk748
It hit pretty damn hard and I went through chaff like it was going out of style. Bosses weren't terribly hard either.

I would expect this to be the case for almost any of the classic optimized builds. Modules are usually designed for a standard party without much optimization, so it wouldn’t be a surprise for a single fine-tuned build to cut through most encounters, to say nothing of a full party of them.

[Endarire]

A core-only Human Wizard/Red Wizard/Archmage with UMD and a staff of holy word trivialized the entirety of Bastion of Broken Souls, a module made for level 18+. (Leadership and Circle Magic were involved.) This was a very low power version of The Wish and The Word: They would have destroyed this even more!

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Optimized builds tend to be specialists, so I don't think they make good test subjects, simply because their experience will likely be totally different to that of the actual players.

For example, a while back I was reading a thread on monks that said there was no way a monk could solo a challenging module. So I flipped through the Demon Web Pits module (the example the poster gave) with my Raven's Shadow (http://bit.ly/2kfZ3rs) build on hand. None of the encounters I looked at could have touched him, because they weren't designed with his tricks in mind. The enemies didn't have daylight to negate his total concealment, none had enough perception skills to beat his stealth rolls without that, nor did they have enough AOE or strength of numbers to simply carpet the whole area and bring him down via statistics. I think you'd run into a similar problem with most recognizable optimized builds; they'll steamroll when their shtick works, and struggle when it doesn't. Jack B Quick is a tripping menace, but will struggle against ranged opponents and opponents with magical flight (who can't be tripped). The Fugglymancer's going to have a real bad time against undead and other creatures immune to ability damage, but against anything else is unstoppable (with favorable rules interpretations, at least). Pretty much by definition, most min-maxed builds are going to be unbalanced, swinging between overpowered and completely shut down with little middle ground.

All that said, it still might be a good idea. The classic builds will show points in the module where a certain strategy has the potential to steamroll, and points where the same strategy will suffer, letting you build in checks and balances. Also, more generalist builds would make better test subjects (unless you know what kinds of builds the players will actually be using), though at the moment I'm struggling to think of iconic generalist builds other than The Scarecrow (Dread Necromancer/Dread Witch for fear debuffing that penetrates immunity to fear, with minionmancy and the rest of the necromancy school to fill in the gaps).

[Kayblis]

A core-only Human Wizard/Red Wizard/Archmage with UMD and a staff of holy word trivialized the entirety of Bastion of Broken Souls, a module made for level 18+. (Leadership and Circle Magic were involved.) This was a very low power version of The Wish and The Word: They would have destroyed this even more!

Well, that's pretty much expected. Any build would beat a lv 18+ module with tons of support characters and CL 40. This is a testament to the brokenness of Red Wizard and Leadership by themselves, the rest is just gravy.

[Psyren]

Theoretical Optimization is just that, theoretical. Most of the named builds are not actually intended for use except in very high-power games, which published modules generally aren't. So to answer your question, no, I haven't used things like Jack B. Quick or King of Smack or The Wish and The Word or the Omniscifier in a published module.

[Uncle Pine]

It wasn't a famous build, but one time with a friend we decided to try out a 6th-level module (can't remember the name, but it was about a spellcaster gone mad with mirrors, demons, etc.) with another person DMing it for us. Notably, the module was for a party of four-five 6th-level players, but since there was only two of us we decided we'd need to "optimize" a little, so our builds were as thus:
- Dragonfire Adept 6 with Entangling Exhalation.
- Woodling silverbrow human Fighter 1/Artificer 2, who was purposely built wrong as a joke by selecting Dragon Tail, Two-Weapon Fighting and Prehensile Tail as feats to be able to use a +1 greatclub grafted to his tail as his main weapon but had 30 AC thanks to full plate, heavy shield, and the woodling template.

To make a long story short, despite the "tank" (the artificer) only having effectively 24 hp, the ability to spam breath weapon attacks from behind a tiny wooden dude with DR 5/slashing alone pretty much allowed us to breeze through the module. Spell Storing Item also proved remarkably useful.

EDIT: As an example, one of the most challenging encounters proved to be a chuul of all things, due to its high grapple modifier and constrict ability. We had to switch places for that one (I was playing the Artificer), letting the 66 hp DFA soak damage instead.

[upho]

I'm curious about people's experiences with running published builds, like Jack B. Quick, BMX Bandit, Scruffy the Fuglimancer, or Machine Gun Kelly. Ideally, for ease of comparison, this would involve published modules, and, optimally, the whole party would all be different, recognizable builds. But this thread is for any stories of builds, not just whole parties thereof, or published modules.I haven't tried testing modules using any of the more famous 3.5 builds, as most of them are of the problematic TO kind (too much of one-trick pony concept builds and/or simply far too powerful to be useful representatives of PCs in a vast majority of real games). But especially in PF I've done quite a bit of the "near vice versa"; testing builds by running them through (parts of) more famous published adventures, solo as well as in a party by adding one to three more generic "archetypical" suitable builds at roughly equal op-level.

However I haven't done so in several years now, as it stopped being worthwhile once I had enough familiarity with the challenges to be expected in at least Paizo APs. So in order to assess a build's mechanical strengths and weaknesses in various types of challenges, I nowadays simply compare relevant stats with averages when needed, using for example this compilation (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E2-s8weiulPoBQjdI05LBzOUToyoZIdSsLKxHAvf8F8/edit#gid=3) of more than 3,000 published PF creature/NPC stats. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, this not only makes the assessments far quicker than the old playtesting, but it has so far also made them significantly closer to the general real game performance/power of the many builds which have later seen actual play. The same goes for adventures/modules/encounters/challenges I tweak or design from scratch, except I then naturally compare the stats of my challenges to those of the PC's in the game instead.


One of the reasons I'm asking (aside from curiosity, which is my main reason) is that I'm considering using recognizable Playground builds (instead of my own builds) to use to test my content before subjecting it to actual players. So any information that would be useful from the PoV of saying, "I found 'Jack B. Quick' to be well balanced to this adventure"would be helpful.Similarly to my old build playtesting, I doubt this method would be particularly helpful when the material is only intended to be used in one or a few specific games run by you. I can't see how it could lessen the total amount of work you (as the DM) need put in adapting your material to the specific abilities and preferences of the PCs and players who actually end up playing those games, but I can definitely see how it ends up being a lot of work of little use (unless perhaps if the playtesting can be made into more of a fun "side-game" with other players).

Likewise, I can't see why this playtesting would be needed in order for you assess the overall challenge variety and level of your content accurately enough to deduce which PC power range and types of builds and parties it suits. Nor can I see why it would make it easier for you to properly communicate those suitable mechanical qualities to your players before they start creating their PCs, not to mention I find it hard to believe you actually find this to be particularly difficult to begin with. (At least AFAICT you certainly have enough relevant communication skills to explain these quite complex matters and definitions - such as suitable build power ranges - in a way which also inexperienced players should be able to understand.)

Am I missing something important here?

On the other hand, I definitely believe this specific kind of playtesting could be a great if your goal is to also offer your content to other groups, especially if you're planning to do so through the online community (where knowledge of the builds in question is common).


Optimized builds tend to be specialists, so I don't think make good test subjects, simply because their experience will likely be totally different to that of the actual players.

...

I think you'd run into a similar problem with most recognizable optimized builds; they'll steamroll when their shtick works, and struggle when it doesn't. Jack B Quick is a tripping menace, but will struggle against ranged opponents and opponents with magical flight (who can't be tripped). The Fugglymancer's going to have a real bad time against undead and other creatures immune to ability damage, but against anything else is unstoppable (with favorable rules interpretations, at least). Pretty much by definition, most min-maxed builds are going to be unbalanced, swinging between overpowered and completely shut down with little middle ground.Yeah, I agree this is often the case, at least when it comes to perhaps the most famous 3.5 martial builds.

That said, I think there are also plenty of example builds - some of them very highly optimized - on this forum alone which are neither specialists or poorly optimized for real game challenges. (FWIW, at least all the more detailed high-op PF example builds I've personally posted have the goal of being highly capable combatants in a very wide range of encounter types and competent adventurers in general in real games, not one-trick ponies or builds otherwise dependent on mechanics which can't be trusted to work in a very large majority of the related types of challenges.)


For example, a while back I was reading a thread on monks that said there was no way a monk could solo a challenging module.Since I happen to be the poster who first made the statement in that thread (which wasn't about monks btw, but about optimization level definitions (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?593928-Optimisation-level-definitions)), I have to say I find what you're saying here to be misleading. In detail, this is what I actually claimed:
If you doubt any of this, I suggest you for example look through some of the combat encounters above CR 10 and other challenges found [in Expedition to the Demonweb Pits] (or in whichever higher level adventures you prefer) and ask yourself how much of a chance a lone 10th level fighter or monk would have to successfully overcome all of them. (Hint: virtually none.)
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So I flipped through the Demon Web Pits module (the example the poster gave) with my Raven's Shadow (http://bit.ly/2kfZ3rs) build on hand. None of the encounters I looked at could have touched him, because they weren't designed with his tricks in mind. The enemies didn't have daylight to negate his total concealment, none had enough perception skills to beat his stealth rolls without that, nor did they have enough AOE or strength of numbers to simply carpet the whole area and bring him down via statistics.First, it seems you didn't look closely enough at the challenges then, because there are several which AFAICT would be nigh impossible for your Raven Shadow at 10th level. For example, there are opponents in the CR 11+ encounters which do have daylight (I think I remember one caster enemy even wielding a wand of it), and IIRC the most demanding encounter is highly likely to happen when you'll be affected by glitterdust (which if my memory serves negates any miss chances due to not being visible for any reason other than successfully using Hide despite the massive penalty or simply not being within line of sight).

Second, my original less well defined claim was about higher levels, so my kinda random choice of using the later parts of Expedition to the Demonweb Pits as an example was probably not very good. For a more meaningful (and demanding) solo challenge, you could try running your Raven Shadow through say Rappan Athuk instead, as it's designed to allow for PCs starting as early as 1st and to take them into at least the late teens. (Your chance of making it even to 10th level is virtually zero if played as written, but if you actually do make it through the entire adventure, I'd definitely say you've proved my claim to be utter BS even if the Raven Shadow happens to end up being more of a rogue than a monk.)

Third, a nitpick perhaps, but strictly speaking your Raven Shadow at 10th level doesn't meet the "10th level fighter or monk" criteria in my claim. (I really like the build though, so kudos for that.)


Also, more generalist builds would make better test subjects (unless you know what kinds of builds the players will actually be using), though at the moment I'm struggling to think of iconic generalist builds other than The Scarecrow (Dread Necromancer/Dread Witch for fear debuffing that penetrates immunity to fear, with minionmancy and the rest of the necromancy school to fill in the gaps).This.


Theoretical Optimization is just that, theoretical. Most of the named builds are not actually intended for use except in very high-power games, which published modules generally aren't. So to answer your question, no, I haven't used things like Jack B. Quick or King of Smack or The Wish and The Word or the Omniscifier in a published module.And this.