Is there a reason we don't do 5e optimization contests like the 3.x community does?

[ftafp]

This is somewhat of a rhetorical question as I have a feeling I know what answers I'm going to get. I know full well the lack of content combined with mechanical nerfs, the loss of bonus/buff stacking and so forth have made it harder to create optimized theorybuilds capable of ludicrous feats of strength, speed, and ridiculousness, but what I don't understand is why the 5e player community has accepted that as an impenetrable obstacle and seemingly given up the culture entirely, especially when now we actually do have a decent amount of content built up.

5e still has the potential to be broken. Hell everyone's heard of the coffeelock and there are plenty of others like the Nuclear Druid, or the TSARs. maybe it's just because I've been obsessing, but I've found at least three different major exploits I've never heard of before in just the past week.

So i ask again: Is there a good reason we don't do 5e optimization contests like the 3.x community does?

[Segev]

This is somewhat of a rhetorical question as I have a feeling I know what answers I'm going to get. I know full well the lack of content combined with mechanical nerfs, the loss of bonus/buff stacking and so forth have made it harder to create optimized theorybuilds capable of ludicrous feats of strength, speed, and ridiculousness, but what I don't understand is why the 5e player community has accepted that as an impenetrable obstacle and seemingly given up the culture entirely, especially when now we actually do have a decent amount of content built up.

5e still has the potential to be broken. Hell everyone's heard of the coffeelock and there are plenty of others like the Nuclear Druid, or the TSARs. maybe it's just because I've been obsessing, but I've found at least three different major exploits I've never heard of before in just the past week.

So i ask again: Is there a good reason we don't do 5e optimization contests like the 3.x community does?

The only true answer is this: Nobody has tried to run one.

Well, maybe somebody has, and they didn't get enough response to keep it going, but I haven't seen any.

Therefore, if you want to see one... run it! :smallbiggrin::smallcool:

[Willie the Duck]

I don't think that it is an impenetrable obstacle, I just don't think there is as much lauding of optimization in general in 5e and the 5e community as there was in 3e. For the most part, when people bring up coffeelocks or nuclear wizards (or even sorcadins) there seems to be a lot more exasperated sighs than 'yay, good jobs.'

[Unavenger]

Most levels, you lack any sort of choices to be made without multiclassing, would be my guess. The barbarian is, IIRC, the worst for this outside of certain archetypes: only at first level, the ASI levels, and 3rd level do you actually get to make any choices at all - on the other end of the spectrum, Warlock chooses something every level except for 10th, 14th, and 20th, mind you. In 3.5, you can choose, at absolute minimum, new skills each level.

Also, there are literally orders of magnitude more feat options in 3.5, and multiclassing is generally more useful and more done. Those 5e feats that do exist are carefully worded not to synergise (for example, Mage Slayer and Sentinel do not cause enemies to provoke an opportunity attack from you, because otherwise you could benefit from abilities which apply to OAs). So there's very little that you can do which is neat in an unpredictable way via feats, either.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

I will be happy for a contest.
But I do think there will be little variety.

[Segev]

I will be happy for a contest.
But I do think there will be little variety.

Maybe if it's more about theme than optimization, with "also plays solidly" as a secondary point rather than primary?

[Chronos]

It's not just that the dials don't go up to 11 any more. It's that there are fewer dials. With a 3rd edition character, at every level, you choose from one of hundreds of classes, and you have at least seven or eight feats to choose from, from a much larger list, and you can have a different number of points in every skill, and so on. There are a combinatorically-large number of possible builds, enough that nobody could possibly explore all of them, and there's the possibility of stumbling upon something cool (whatever that means) that nobody has ever come up with before.

With 5th edition, there are only a dozen classes available, with at most one subclass per class, usually only five feats over your career, of which you're probably spending at least two on ability scores, skills are just either proficient or not, or maybe expertise. There's a much smaller number of possibilities, small enough that you can be confident that most of the good combinations are already known. It's like the old joke about the in-group who always tell the same jokes, so they've numbered them for convenience: It takes no cleverness or creativity to walk up and say "Joke number 23".

[Damon_Tor]

This is somewhat of a rhetorical question as I have a feeling I know what answers I'm going to get. I know full well the lack of content combined with mechanical nerfs, the loss of bonus/buff stacking and so forth have made it harder to create optimized theorybuilds capable of ludicrous feats of strength, speed, and ridiculousness, but what I don't understand is why the 5e player community has accepted that as an impenetrable obstacle and seemingly given up the culture entirely, especially when now we actually do have a decent amount of content built up.

5e still has the potential to be broken. Hell everyone's heard of the coffeelock and there are plenty of others like the Nuclear Druid, or the TSARs. maybe it's just because I've been obsessing, but I've found at least three different major exploits I've never heard of before in just the past week.

So i ask again: Is there a good reason we don't do 5e optimization contests like the 3.x community does?

There are some discussions which border on what you're talking about. For example, a little while back someone posted a thread about whether or not a level 11 PC could solo Zariel and how much it would cost in terms of gear, effectively a contest to see who could deal 580 points of damage in one round while including at least a little radiant damage. It quickly turned into a discussion about whether or not it was reasonable to expect to be able to trick Zariel into walking over a specific Glyph of Warding, but those of us who enjoy charop had fun trying to put together a build that could do the job in a reasonable way.

[ftafp]

The only true answer is this: Nobody has tried to run one.

Well, maybe somebody has, and they didn't get enough response to keep it going, but I haven't seen any.

Therefore, if you want to see one... run it! :smallbiggrin::smallcool:

I suppose we'd need some kind of judging system though if it's an actual contest. Failing that we could just do a strawpoll


Maybe if it's more about theme than optimization, with "also plays solidly" as a secondary point rather than primary?

Depends on what you mean by theme. Assuming we stick to the Iron Chef pattern used on the 3.x forum, we'd want to replace Elegance with Flavor as a catchall term for how well a character's build matches their concept with minimal extraneous features. That said, originality, optimiztion and use of the secret ingredient would still hopefully make the builds lean more heavily towards rules manipulation.

[ZRN]

I don't think that it is an impenetrable obstacle, I just don't think there is as much lauding of optimization in general in 5e and the 5e community as there was in 3e. For the most part, when people bring up coffeelocks or nuclear wizards (or even sorcadins) there seems to be a lot more exasperated sighs than 'yay, good jobs.'

Yeah, I think not only the number of options in 3.x but the range of power levels that came with them made optimization a much bigger deal in that edition. Without being over-dramatic about it, there were lots of (fairly basic) character concepts that just wouldn't be useful in the same party as a straight wizard or druid without a lot of careful and creative optimization. (Like, in 3e a martial character literally couldn't move and do a full attack without a decent amount of charop.) This meant that charop was actually a pretty important skill to enjoying the game, so people got into it.

In 5e, you have fewer options but also less disparity in power levels, and most concepts that the game supports AT ALL aren't drastically worse than a baseline class played straight. (Like, a cleric/wizard isn't optimal, but it's not absolute trash compared to a pure cleric or wizard.) And those concepts that aren't really supported, like summoners - well, you're basically out of luck, and no amount of clever multiclass and feat selection will hack it. So as a result, nobody's really incentivized to get into the weeds on charop for 5e.

[BoringInfoGuy]

It's not just that the dials don't go up to 11 any more. It's that there are fewer dials. With a 3rd edition character, at every level, you choose from one of hundreds of classes, and you have at least seven or eight feats to choose from, from a much larger list, and you can have a different number of points in every skill, and so on. There are a combinatorically-large number of possible builds, enough that nobody could possibly explore all of them, and there's the possibility of stumbling upon something cool (whatever that means) that nobody has ever come up with before.

With 5th edition, there are only a dozen classes available, with at most one subclass per class, usually only five feats over your career, of which you're probably spending at least two on ability scores, skills are just either proficient or not, or maybe expertise. There's a much smaller number of possibilities, small enough that you can be confident that most of the good combinations are already known. It's like the old joke about the in-group who always tell the same jokes, so they've numbered them for convenience: It takes no cleverness or creativity to walk up and say "Joke number 23".

You told it wrong.

[firelistener]

I don't think that it is an impenetrable obstacle, I just don't think there is as much lauding of optimization in general in 5e and the 5e community as there was in 3e. For the most part, when people bring up coffeelocks or nuclear wizards (or even sorcadins) there seems to be a lot more exasperated sighs than 'yay, good jobs.'

lol I'd say this sums it up well. If people want to optimize tons of small features and bonuses, 3.5 still exists and the community playing it is alive and well. Personally, I find that degree of optimization tiresome (although some is cool) and I prefer 5e as a result. I am guessing many here share the sentiment.

[JNAProductions]

There's not as many options.

In 3.5, there are hundreds of feats, thousands of spells, dozens of classes, and Pathfinder adds more! Even if only 10% or so are any good, that's still a magnitude more than 5E has.

Additionally, 5E has a general level of power. It's roughly balanced-sure ain't perfect, but a Monk 10 and a Druid 10 are playing the same game. Whereas in 3.P, optimization can let a Monk 10 wipe the floor with dozen Druid 10s, whereas normally they'd get torn to shreds by one.

[ZRN]

There's not as many options.

In 3.5, there are hundreds of feats, thousands of spells, dozens of classes, and Pathfinder adds more! Even if only 10% or so are any good, that's still a magnitude more than 5E has.

Additionally, 5E has a general level of power. It's roughly balanced-sure ain't perfect, but a Monk 10 and a Druid 10 are playing the same game. Whereas in 3.P, optimization can let a Monk 10 wipe the floor with dozen Druid 10s, whereas normally they'd get torn to shreds by one.

Agreed, and balance is good, but now I want to play a monk that can wipe the floor with a dozen same-level druids!

[ftafp]

Assuming we do start a contest, are there forum members who would be willing to judge, manage and participate?


Agreed, and balance is good, but now I want to play a monk that can wipe the floor with a dozen same-level druids!

That's the attitude we want.

[Azuresun]

{Scrubbed}


I don't think that it is an impenetrable obstacle, I just don't think there is as much lauding of optimization in general in 5e and the 5e community as there was in 3e. For the most part, when people bring up coffeelocks or nuclear wizards (or even sorcadins) there seems to be a lot more exasperated sighs than 'yay, good jobs.'

Maybe it's because the question is pretty much solved in 5e. Hexblade, then put glue on it and roll it around in the other CHA-based classes, and you win. The 3.x optimisation game did have a lot of crazy creativity that always made it fun to at least watch (ie, that guy who would jump a mile vertically, then turn every observer into his devoted ally when he landed).

[Man_Over_Game]

Maybe if it's more about theme than optimization, with "also plays solidly" as a secondary point rather than primary?

Could just do what we do for our homebrew contests.

Each person with a submission gets to vote. You give 3 votes for what you think is best, from 1st favorite to 3rd.

There's no need to come up with different criteria for voting, as they're already considered for whoever decides to vote (just in different degrees for each participant). Those who make the contest (by submitting) are also the ones who naturally decide what criteria is the most important by how they place their votes.

[ftafp]

Maybe it's because the question is pretty much solved in 5e. Hexblade, then put glue on it and roll it around in the other CHA-based classes, and you win. The 3.x optimisation game did have a lot of crazy creativity that always made it fun to at least watch (ie, that guy who would jump a mile vertically, then turn every observer into his devoted ally when he landed).

You realize you can still do that right? There are dozens of builds that compete for jump optimization by combining movement boosts, Jump, Breath of the Wind, and boots of striding and springing. Any one of them can include a few of levels of glamor bard without losing too much. Hell, go with a Grung and you wont even need to invest in STR, that's just a bonus for when you want to do 20d6 worth of falling damage

[Warwick]

The 3.x optimisation game did have a lot of crazy creativity that always made it fun to at least watch (ie, that guy who would jump a mile vertically, then turn every observer into his devoted ally when he landed).

I wouldn't discount the extent to which character optimization being interesting plays a role. My experience has been that most 5e character optimization boils down to squeezing a few extra DPR or points of nova out of a build - decent, perhaps, in a system where you're not supposed to get big numbers, but not very exciting. Meanwhile hyper-optimized 3.x characters did ridiculous nonsense that was conceptually interesting even if very few people would ever actually want to play in a game like that.

[Nifft]

So i ask again: Is there a good reason we don't do 5e optimization contests like the 3.x community does?

Maybe character-building is a thing people do when they can't play, or when the game allows building characters which are inappropriate to play.

5e seems to be easier to play, provide more fun during play than during character building, and have a much smaller population of cheese-wrought unplayable character builds.

Might be less demand, in one of those cases.

[ftafp]

I wouldn't discount the extent to which character optimization being interesting plays a role. My experience has been that most 5e character optimization boils down to squeezing a few extra DPR or points of nova out of a build - decent, perhaps, in a system where you're not supposed to get big numbers, but not very exciting. Meanwhile hyper-optimized 3.x characters did ridiculous nonsense that was conceptually interesting even if very few people would ever actually want to play in a game like that.

Changeling druids can wild shape into a bathtub. a life cleric 1, artillerist 11 with a mark of hospitality can choose every morning whether he wants to heal 400 points of damage without using a spell slot, or cast scorching ray 10 times in a single round without using his action

[Contrast]

I think part of the problem as well is that for 5E purposes the answer to the question of 'what is the optimal solution' is often to just single class or multiclass with a minor dip.

Optimising in 5E just isn't the challenge you can sink your teeth into and get excited about like it is in 3.5.

[daremetoidareyo]

Im starting up a 5e character for an upcoming game, and it's definitely not as involved as 3.5. Less fun too, because of the fewer fiddly parts. For 3.5, each class has a bunch of wierd things that can be combined with 30 skills, 3500 Feats, and like 2,000 spells with over 120 splat books. 100s of races with 100s of templates expand your options even wider. It's ridiculous. You put it together with spreadsheets. SPREADSHEETS!

In 5e, level 1 optimization is class/race/background. Then nothing until level 3.

That said, there's a few neat little rules eddies that I found.

Artificer can make prosthetic limbs at level 2. That's way cool. With the bounded accuracy and larger pool of allowed options, sleight of hand is superior in 5e compared to its 3.5 counterpart.

[ftafp]

I think part of the problem as well is that for 5E purposes the answer to the question of 'what is the optimal solution' is often to just single class or multiclass with a minor dip.

Optimising in 5E just isn't the challenge you can sink your teeth into and get excited about like it is in 3.5.

the aforementioned jumper can multiply his jump distance by a factor of 24 just by taking levels of monk, thief, totem barbarian and graviturgist.

[Misterwhisper]

Because 3.5 has 1000s of combinations that play off each other, 5e doesn’t.

[XmonkTad]

A few things come to mind, but the biggest one is the lack of splatbooks and options in general mean that you're not really showing off interesting mastery of the system. In 3e there were certain places to hunt for obscure, buried treasure (like looking in Incarnum to build the chaingun echidna). Now it feels less like an adventure and more of a paint-by-numbers. The 3e Iron Chef in particular was fun to watch, even if I never participated. 5e would just be a bunch of nodding and "yes, you picked the one obviously correct option".

Also, I will never build anything as powerful as the chaingun echidna in 5e. And that build wasn't even stupidly powerful, just good and powerful. Coffelock was the best I could come up with and it's not even all that.

On a more controversial note 3e was huge and unruly and the authors of different books didnt have a mastery of the entire system prior. This is not just untrue of 5e, it's the antithesis of their modern design philosophy. That part of the fun of the game has been designed away in favor of something more complete, digestible, and streamlined.

But if you want to try a 5e optimization competition I'll throw in. My suggestion is
1) make a standardized format so we can all read them
That's it really.

[BoringInfoGuy]

5e also adopted the PHB + 1 rule for Adventure League play, which further limits optimization options. None AL DMs who remember Pun Pun may decide to use this rule.

[XmonkTad]

5e also adopted the PHB + 1 rule for Adventure League play, which further limits optimization options. None AL DMs who remember Pun Pun may decide to use this rule.

I loath the PHB+1 rule in 5e. It accomplishes none of the original goals of the rule because 5e just doesn't have the same issues. There aren't heaps of unintended interactions between different non-core books that cause game breaking problems. Is there any problem so disruptive to group play that it's worth me not having a Kobold Scout?

[Nifft]

I loath the PHB+1 rule in 5e. It accomplishes none of the original goals of the rule because 5e just doesn't have the same issues. There aren't heaps of unintended interactions between different non-core books that cause game breaking problems. Is there any problem so disruptive to group play that it's worth me not having a Kobold Scout? Yeah.

Core+(n books) was a poor solution to the original problem, and it remains a poor solution in 5e.

[LudicSavant]

So i ask again: Is there a good reason we don't do 5e optimization contests like the 3.x community does?


The only true answer is this: Nobody has tried to run one.

Well, maybe somebody has, and they didn't get enough response to keep it going, but I haven't seen any.

Therefore, if you want to see one... run it! :smallbiggrin::smallcool:

Pretty much.

Hell, I just compiled a small handful of builds and then a bunch of people just kinda jumped in posting their own builds, completely unprompted, like there was a silent dam waiting to burst, and people have been bumping that thread for months of me being on hiatus. I'm sure if you got a decent showrunner/judges you'd be able to drum up some interest.

As for some of the naysayer comments above, there are games with narrower power gaps and fewer options and obscure ricks than 5e that still have avid followings for this kind of thing. So I don't think having less of that stuff than 3.5e really counts as a good reason.

[Dork_Forge]

I love the idea of this, for anyone interested I kicked things off with a thread here. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611871-5e-Throwdowns-1-The-Gish&p=24495577#post24495577)

[Lord Haart]

I believe the "core+1" rule absolutely has to go, and due to relative lack of material it wouldn't hurt to allow Unearthed Arcana build material. Then we can talk "obscure knowledge" and "fun unintended interactions" (and, well, probably have more fun).

Edit: saw the thread. Might you consider adopting the 3.5 contests' practice of PMing builds to the chairman instead of posting them in the thread? This helps prevent accusations of plagiarism, bandwagoning, fan clubs forming etc. among the participants and the voters.

Also, you need to spell out as many rules as you can pertaining to the character creation (like: which and how many magic items can a character count on having? What about mundane starting gold/items? Are multiclassing and feats free-for-all, or limited? Are characters expected to pick their summons on spells like "conjure woodland beings", to get random ones, or "GM doesn't want you to get OP" ones?).

And "a gish" is a very broad and (in 5e) easy to achieve concept, possibly to the point of being bland. (Hexblade being mentioned just a few post ago as a reason people don't talk optimization much, and being clearly in-theme for this contest by itself, is also very problematic.) It would be nice to start with something more thought-provoking, though that ship has already sailed, i guess.

P. S. I also wholeheartedly agree with the post below.

[LudicSavant]

I love the idea of this, for anyone interested I kicked things off with a thread here. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611871-5e-Throwdowns-1-The-Gish&p=24495577#post24495577)

I support the idea of a contest thread but I am worried about your format.

We have literally just had multiple recent threads where the entirety of them was wasted by people arguing the semantics of what "counts" as a gish (as if there were even any single right answer). Choosing "make a gish" as your theme without clarifying what that actually means is basically hamstringing your contest from the start. You say "can't just cast like a normal Wizard" but this presupposes a bias of what "normal" is. You say "must be a melee fighting spellcaster" but what counts as melee fighting? Does casting a touch spell count as melee, or do I need to use a weapon?

Also, is this allowing people to vote before all the submissions are in? That seems like it would reward people for making submissions faster, rather than better. In fact if I'm reading this right it says you're actually preventing people from deciding their vote after submissions are closed for some reason.

It's important to get this sort of thing off on the right foot.

[Dork_Forge]

I believe the "core+1" rule absolutely has to go, and due to relative lack of material it wouldn't hurt to allow Unearthed Arcana build material. Then we can talk "obscure knowledge" and "fun unintended interactions".

Edit: saw the thread. Might you consider adopting the 3.5 contests' practice of PMing builds to the chairman instead of posting them in the thread? This helps prevent accusations of plagiarism, bandwagoning, fan clubs forming etc. among the participants and the voters.

Also, you need to spell out as many rules as you can pertaining to the character creation (like: which and how many magic items can a character count on having? What about mundane starting gold/items? Are multiclassing and feats free-for-all, or limited? Are characters expected to pick their summons on spells like "conjure woodland beings", to get random ones, or "GM doesn't want you to get OP" ones?).

And "a gish" is a very broad and (in 5e) easy to achieve concept, almost to the point of being bland. It would be nice to start with something more thought-provoking, though that ship has already sailed, i guess.

I'm unfamiliar with this, so people would PM and the 'chairman' would then add their builds to the thread? I'll add more rules clarifications.


I support the idea of a contest thread but I am worried about your format.

We have literally just had multiple recent threads where the entirety of them was wasted by people arguing the semantics of what "counts" as a gish (as if there were even any single right answer). Choosing "make a gish" as your theme without clarifying what that actually means is basically hamstringing your contest from the start. You say "can't just cast like a normal Wizard" but this presupposes a bias of what "normal" is. You say "must be a melee fighting spellcaster" but what counts as melee fighting? Does casting a touch spell count as melee, or do I need to use a weapon?

Also, is this allowing people to vote before all the submissions are in? That seems like it would reward people for making submissions faster, rather than better.

It's important to get this sort of thing off on the right foot.

I agree and it definitely needs refinement, I'll add more clarification on what the Gish should be for that particular thread. For voting I know that voting after the deadline would be best in a lot of ways but it brings the cons of needing the best part of two weeks to resolve a single contest (a week to allow people to build what they want around their schedules, then multiple days for people to get their votes in). I allowed for changing your vote later on if you see a different build you prefer and will be bumping the thread towards the end of the deadline to try and ensure those interested see all the submitted builds.

Edit: added more build rules, concept clarification and post formatting

[BoringInfoGuy]

I loath the PHB+1 rule in 5e. It accomplishes none of the original goals of the rule because 5e just doesn't have the same issues. There aren't heaps of unintended interactions between different non-core books that cause game breaking problems. Is there any problem so disruptive to group play that it's worth me not having a Kobold Scout?
But now they can sell you another book later that has both Kobold and Scout together!

Only half joking there.

While AL rules do not need to be followed at any home table, they DO exist.

While I was a big fan of 3.5, I was mostly a fan of the core books. Beyond that, they produced a few supplements and a ton of splat. A lot of optimization came from exploiting splat.

More care seems to have gone into the 5e books, so I agree that 5e does not currently have the same issues as 3.5. Even so, the rule still exists.

For those interested in this challenge, I’d suggest noting if the build is AL legal or not. Add it to the notes on the build, along with any specific rulings that need to be applied to make the build work.

The less you need to fight with a DM to get your CharOp monstrosity approved, the better.

Maybe Rank Builds on Three Criteria

1). Specialist effectiveness. How exceptional is it at doing the thing it was built to do?

2). General effectiveness. If the build is a one trick pony, what can they do when the pony can’t perform?

3). Can you convince a DM to allow it? (Assuming a DM is going to reject builds based only on whether it follows conservative RAW interpretations or not).

[Chronos]

The "core +1" rule often showed up in 3.5, even if there wasn't any official encouragement of it, but it was an absolutely terrible rule there, because any caster would just choose the Spell Compendium as their +1, and get all of the bits and pieces they wanted in one place, while there was no similar compendium for all of the good options for any other class. It's not nearly so bad in 5e... though also not nearly so necessary, since aside from settings, there's, what, a grand total of four non-core books with player options, and two of those are only races, and a lot of the expanded options are subclasses, which you can only have one of per class anyway.

[ff7hero]

The "core +1" rule often showed up in 3.5, even if there wasn't any official encouragement of it, but it was an absolutely terrible rule there, because any caster would just choose the Spell Compendium as their +1, and get all of the bits and pieces they wanted in one place, while there was no similar compendium for all of the good options for any other class. It's not nearly so bad in 5e... though also not nearly so necessary, since aside from settings, there's, what, a grand total of four non-core books with player options, and two of those are only races, and a lot of the expanded options are subclasses, which you can only have one of per class anyway.

Potentially even worse, a spellcaster could also cherry pick one obscure option from one obscure source book and still have all the best spells in the game under Core+1.
What does the Fighter get from Core? Unsupported Power Attack? *shudder*

[Nifft]

Potentially even worse, a spellcaster could also cherry pick one obscure option from one obscure source book and still have all the best spells in the game under Core+1.
What does the Fighter get from Core? Unsupported Power Attack? *shudder*

For a top-tier spellcaster, the +1 might be a monster book for summon / binding / polymorph / etc.

They won't lose most of the best spells, but might lose many options.

In that regard it might be an actual limit.

[XmonkTad]

Potentially even worse, a spellcaster could also cherry pick one obscure option from one obscure source book and still have all the best spells in the game under Core+1.
What does the Fighter get from Core? Unsupported Power Attack? *shudder*

And let us not forget that in 5e, the core+1 doesn't apply to the wizard adding spells to his book that other people have taken. Yes, your Svifneblin Abjurer can still get Invulnerability out of Xanathars by copying it out of someone else's spellbook. Another small way to stick it to the martial classes. Better hope the power creep appears with a reprint of your favorite race and archetype!

And oh man I remember the old power attack. What terrible memories.

[Xenken]

I see it as less a options problem and more of an audience problem. Of the people who both have a mind for weird builds and also play 5e, how many of them wouldn't prefer to make them in 3.x? We probably could squeeze water from the system's stone, but creative attention seems to be a bigger limiter on our ability to do so than the bounds of the system itself.

[MeeposFire]

I think many of us are missing some of the big reasons why those contests and threads are fun and that making a 3e character becomes a puzzle to solve. It does not matter if something is weak, strong, or balanced so long as it gets you somewhere something interesting or hilarious.

As an example in 3e you are going to choose a bunch of PRCs, feats, and other things that require certain abilities and feats to take which those require feats and abilities to take and those have requirements and so on. It can be a giant puzzle to figure out.

Note that many of the characters made in those competitions are TERRIBLE to actually play. They often are a pain to utilize in an actual game and/or they are near useless until you hit that level where everything finally clicks. Often times it is more fun to make those characters than to play them.

Also while those threads can be fun I do not miss having to go through that kind of work just to make what should be simple characters or to have to jump though a bunch of hoops just so I can do something like "move 10 feet and make more than one attack".

To give an example of what I am talking about there was a classic sort of thread which was make a functional fochlucan lyrist. The prc gave you the ability to increase some druid abilities, divine spells, arcane spells,warrior BAB and more but it had crazy requirements that made the standard way of getting in difficult to play (especially starting from level 1) and pretty weak. It was not a power build but you could have a fun thread just on the various tricks of getting into that PRC. Now the fact you really kind of need that of thread is sort of damning from a game play perspective but it could be fun in theory crafting.

It also made you dumpster dive to find the smallest possibly even dumb details in some obscure book to make it work for example using Magic of Incarnum to pick up the shape soul meld feat for I think it was impulse boots and a second feat for chakra bind on the feat so you can get the evasion ability to fullfill the requirement for the PRC so you did nto have to "waste" 2 levels on rogue for the fochlucan lyrist.

[Amechra]

You realize you can still do that right? There are dozens of builds that compete for jump optimization by combining movement boosts, Jump, Breath of the Wind, and boots of striding and springing. Any one of them can include a few of levels of glamor bard without losing too much. Hell, go with a Grung and you wont even need to invest in STR, that's just a bonus for when you want to do 20d6 worth of falling damage

That's not the same thing at all. You're describing a character who is good at jumping and good at charming/fascinating people. The Jumplomancer was good at charming people because they were good at jumping, which is much goofier.

5e just plain isn't as buggy as 3.P was, so there are much fewer silly exploits. A 5e CharOp contest would almost certainly just showcase a bunch of blandly competent builds, and would be dull as rocks to watch.

EDIT: Just to clarify, the fact that we don't have CharOp contests is a good sign.

[AvatarVecna]

On the one hand, I'd very much like to see 5e char-op contests, particularly since the edition's gathered quite a lot of material at this point. On the other hand, I know the edition doesn't really have the depth of material to keep it running very long. Part of the reason the 3.5 contests have persisted is because there's just soooooo much to work with, even if you try really hard to limit sources, and there's soooooo many choices to make that you can fine-tune basically everything to accomplish your goals, and unless you're playing a weird contest where core material is banned, infinite everything is easily affordable for anybody. Anything that could theoretically be accomplished can somehow be done in 3.5, it's just a question of how much effort you're willing to put into it.

3.5 has 50 base races with a total of 173 subraces - and that's not even touching on racial hit dice or level adjustment races. It has 1000 classes/PrCs, 30 of which have just tons and tons of Alternate Class Features. It has 3600 feats. It has 4900 spells, 2400 of which are on the wizard list...and I would hazard a guess that they could take a decent stab at getting access to the rest - certainly there's a particular PrC that would add all cleric spells to the wizard list, which should be a significant expansion even if there's lot of overlap between the two. There are 68 explicit skills, with three generic skills that have at least dozens and theoretically infinite subskills (Craft/Perform/Profession). None of this is even touching on how much items can change up the game. A scroll and wand and staff and rod for every spell in the game. Metamagic built into rods. Feats and skills and spells built into anything your heart desires, as frequently or infrequently as you can afford.

I would hazard a guess that 5e wouldn't have as many options, or as much of a drastic power/versatility curve, even if WotC came out and declared that all homebrew is now official 5e material.

But it's exhausting pouring over everything. It's an edition that needs guides, needs somebody who likes to suffer to look over all the options for you to find the ones even worth bothering with, compared with the two dozen spells spread across a dozen spells that do the same thing. 4e has a similar problem, where building a character that isn't falling behind is a ****ing homework assignment involving a pile of textbooks. 5e isn't like that, and tbh it's probably good that it isn't.

I love 3.5, but it's definitely not for everybody, and has problems. Serious problems. Integral problems. It's good that 5e is different. I love 5e because it's different. Not being as viable for long-running charop competitions because there's not a trillion bajillion prestige class/feat/skill/spell/maneuver/invocation/item combos to research trying to find the perfect one for what you're doing? Yeah, that's a consequence of being a system that's not as complex. That's not a bad thing at all.

[Witty Username]

In 5e, can a build even reach escape velocity?

[jaappleton]

I don’t know how these work but I am willing to contribute 100%.

[Dork_Forge]

I don’t know how these work but I am willing to contribute 100%.

The first one is up and on the main page I think, look for 5e throwdown, the closing date for submissions and votes is tomorrow