Player Obligations

[Dausuul]

While visiting these forums (fora?) I have frequently come across the statement that all players should be somewhat optimized, or else they are letting their group down, and breaking realism of the setting by providing a feeble character that would never be accepted by the group as a whole "in real life." Personally I am amazed by this. I have always viewed roleplaying and fun as the point of gaming, and if playing a samurai or a swashbuckler 20 would fulfill these, than more power to you.
So what do you think: do players have a responsibility to optimize their characters (not powergame, optimize) for the benefit of the group as a whole?

I think players have a responsibility to fit their characters to the rest of the group, both in terms of power level and persona. D&D is a group activity; if one player keeps clashing with the rest of the group, it's generally a problem. That can take the form of a character who is far less effective than everyone else and becomes a drag on the party; it can be a character who is far more effective and hogs the spotlight; or it can be a character whose personality leads to conflict within the party.

Of those problems, though, I find that the poorly built character is by far the easiest to deal with. Such characters don't take away from anyone else's glory and they don't start intra-party fights, they just suck up some resources; which is a mechanical issue easily addressed by the DM. As long as the player of that character recognizes that his failure to perform on the level of the other characters is a result of his own decisions and not someone else's responsibility to rectify, it's usually not a big deal.

And the important thing is relative power levels (that is, compared to the other PCs), not absolute. If you want to play a samurai, and the rest of the party consists of a ninja, a warlock, and a monk? Go for it, you'll fit right in. If you want to play a samurai in a party with a Ruby Knight Vindicator, a CoDzilla cleric, and a Batman wizard, you might want to reconsider your build... although that's not nearly as much of a problem as somebody who wants to play a Batman wizard in the ninja/warlock/monk party.