Is the roleplay aspect of D&D gone, replaced by optimization?

[Tanarii]

Unless your table is in the habit of discussing 1-20 builds at session 0, the level of optimization that any given PC is likely to end up with may be unlikely to come up.

OTOH if someone asks how many levels the campaign is likely to go for, that's a pretty good sign they're already optimizing in their head ...

[Sol0botmate]

Session 0 is the moment where (hopefully) a table of incompatible players understand that they are incompatible, and cancel the campaign / change the group. In the best case scenario, they manage to find compromises for everybody to be able to have fun. Those compromises might even be quite easy to find, as it's possible to have minmaxed character that do not take the spotlight from the others. After all, D&D is a cooperative game, not a competitive one [e.g in 3.5 you could create OP characters that doesn't do anything by themself, just give ungodly buffs to the other players].

But if those compromises are not found, just because you're in the "right" doesn't mean you are entitled to a place at a table if your presence make the game less enjoyable for the others.

[I'm assuming here that you are playing D&D as a regular hobby with peoples that have no moral obligation to adapt to you and accept you at their table. If at the contrary you paid to be part of a campaign from a professional DM, or are playing as part of an official event of some sort, you are indeed entitled to be part of the game as long as you didn't do anything "wrong".]

I play RPGs for 16 years and never had a situation where DM was asking someone to nerf their character concept (on mechanical level, not fluff level) just because other players can't build their characters well. Yes, you can be asked "Please no Paladins this campaign as it doesn't fit my setting" or "please no half-elfs as my setting does not have half-races". But unless you break some rules of character creation - I can't imagine that I tell one of my players "hey, rest of the table characters are bottom floor useless becasue they didn't bother to read PHB and you have super strong character. Can you lower yourself to their level"? Instead I would ask that player to help others to build better characters if they want assistance. That always lead to better outcome for everyone at table.

Player should be judged by his roleplaying, his teamwork and his behaviour at table (That's what makes good player. Not his sheet). Not at his mechanical knowledge about game, which is - at it's base level - something everyone should have if you play any game after some time because games consist of rules players should know.

[OldTrees1]

I don't understand what session 0 has to do with anything. If I show up on session 0 with min-maxed optimized character who is 100% legit build within all rules how I can build him, DM will say "your character is too well build, too well thought, make him worse please"?

If the character is too strong, the DM might very well say "Make them better by powering them down."

So like I have well build character but I should not have it becasue other players couldn't/didn't want do it and DM don't even understand you can build something like that becasue his RAW knowledge ends up at "roll d20, I think of DC"? So is it my character or a common good under harsh judgment of collective mind that will critically deny it once they see it's better and realize they don't know rules at all?

Power for power's sake is not a beneficial goal to optimize towards. If you are optimizing a character and they get too strong, then you can make an even better character that is closer to the power level of the group.

Let me give an example:
In 3E I wanted to instantiate a certain character concept. Beyond their personality the character concept was a large draconic warrior that could do large sweeping attacks, send enemies flying, and have the impact hurt in more ways than mere damage. As a consequence of finding pieces to better (more accurately) mechanically instantiate this character concept, the character ended up being more powerful than I was aiming for. Specifically its saves, attack bonus, and damage output were inflated as a byproduct of adding those qualitative features I was looking for. So the next step in the optimization was to nerf those aspects to bring it back in line with the desired power level.

In the end I could have had a fighter that was balanced and failed to represent the character concept or I could have this draconic warrior that was nerfed to be balanced yet succeeded at representing the character concept.

Strong =/= well built, but the same skills that let you make overpowered character also lend themselves to making balanced but better built characters.



Why was there this shift in thought about the goal of optimization? Because D&D is a Roleplaying game and instantiating a character concept is one area optimization can harmoniously serve roleplaying rather than be an antagonist. Although as a forum it would be wise if we remember to focus on the character concept rather than strength.

[Sol0botmate]

If the character is too strong, the DM might very well say "Make them better by powering them down."



Power for power's sake is not a beneficial goal to optimize towards. If you are optimizing a character and they get too strong, then you can make an even better character that is closer to the power level of the group.

Let me give an example:
In 3E I wanted to instantiate a certain character concept. Beyond their personality the character concept was a large draconic warrior that could do large sweeping attacks, send enemies flying, and have the impact hurt in more ways than mere damage. As a consequence of finding pieces to better (more accurately) mechanically instantiate this character concept, the character ended up being more powerful than I was aiming for. Specifically its saves, attack bonus, and damage output were inflated as a byproduct of adding those qualitative features I was looking for. So the next step in the optimization was to nerf those aspects to bring it back in line with the desired power level.

In the end I could have had a fighter that was balanced and failed to represent the character concept or I could have this draconic warrior that was nerfed to be balanced yet succeeded at representing the character concept.

Strong =/= well built, but the same skills that let you make overpowered character also lend themselves to making balanced but better built characters.

As I said above, players should be judged by their roleplaying and behaviour at table. Not by their character sheets, which is only a statistics that ensure higher chance of better outcome within rules of the game. This doesn't by any means represent how well player will roleplay his character concept. Many of best roleplayers I have and play with are powergamers, because their characters always match their concepts 100% in game on both roleplay and mechanical level.

Sheet =/=bad/good player

[OldTrees1]

As I said above, players should be judged by their roleplaying and behaviour at table. Not by their character sheets, which is only a statistics that ensure higher chance of better outcome within rules of the game. Sheet =/=bad/good player

You might want to review my post because I did not contradict that. I said that the DM might ask a player to improve their overpowered character by powering down the overpowered character. You can even review my 3E Draconic warrior example.

The balanced draconic warrior was a better instantiation of my character concept than either the vanilla fighter or the overpowered draconic warrior.

[Unoriginal]

I play RPGs for 16 years and never had a situation where DM was asking someone to nerf their character concept (on mechanical level, not fluff level) just because other players can't build their characters well. Yes, you can be asked "Please no Paladins this campaign as it doesn't fit my setting" or "please no half-elfs as my setting does not have half-races". But unless you break some rules of character creation - I can't imagine that I tell one of my players "hey, rest of the table characters are bottom floor useless becasue they didn't bother to read PHB and you have super strong character. Can you lower yourself to their level"? Instead I would ask that player to help others to build better characters if they want assistance. That always lead to better outcome for everyone at table.

Player should be judged by his roleplaying, his teamwork and his behaviour at table (That's what makes good player. Not his sheet). Not at his mechanical knowledge about game, which is - at it's base level - something everyone should have if you play any game after some time because games consist of rules players should know.

Even the best optimized character is unlikely to be that great compared to an unoptimized one, in 5e. Unless someone isn't actually optimizing and is instead trying to exact-word their way into power.

[Sol0botmate]

You might want to review my post because I did not contradict that. I said that the DM might ask a player to improve their overpowered character by powering down the overpowered character. You can even review my 3E Draconic warrior example.

Why not just powering up the rest? Or why not work harder on encounters. I DMed groups of powergamers and never had issue with encounters becasue it's tactics, not statistics that makes encounters hard. Sadly most DMs have no tactical sense at all and they blame "OP" characters instead of trying harder to use mechanics in system to challange those who understand those mechanics better. One of the good things about optimized characters is that you can totally ignore CR levels and just use your own judgement to plan encounter. CR only works on casual characters with basic knowledge about game mechanics.

Powering down character in my opinion should be last resort. It is an option, yes. But not first one.

[Naanomi]

In 3.X there were classes and options that were so much worse than others that I’ve seen tables deciding collectively to all choose ‘lower tier’ options to keep things roughy even. I don’t think 5e has that problem; the level of disparity just isn’t that threatening

[DevilMcam]

I don't understand what session 0 has to do with anything. If I show up on session 0 with min-maxed optimized character who is 100% legit build within all rules how I can build him, DM will say "your character is too well build, too well thought, make him worse please"?

So like I have well build character but I should not have it becasue other players couldn't/didn't want do it and DM don't even understand you can build something like that becasue his RAW knowledge ends up at "roll d20, I think of DC"? So is it my character or a common good under harsh judgment of collective mind that will critically deny it once they see it's better and realize they don't know rules at all?

Thats the wholepoint of session 0.

you don't show up at session 0 with a character build.
you show up with your friends and set expectations for the games. then based on that you makes your characters.
if everyone wants to play a serious dark and hardocre game, you don't show up with a beastmaster ranger with the pirate background whos pet is a silly parot. That's a great character, just not for this game (i kinda want to play that now, but none of my sane friend would let me do it,... they know)

You wouldn't show up to a DnD game with a Shadowrun character because you talked about that before hand. well same goes for the theme, atmosphere and optimisation level of the game

[OldTrees1]

Why not just powering up the rest? Or why not work harder on encounters. I DMed groups of powergamers and never had issue with encounters becasue it's tactics, not statistics that makes encounters hard. Sadly most DMs have no tactical sense at all and they blame "OP" characters instead of trying harder to use mechanics in system to challange those who understand those mechanics better. One of the good things about optimized characters is that you can totally ignore CR levels and just use your own judgement to plan encounter. CR only works on casual characters with basic knowledge about game mechanics.

Powering down character in my opinion should be last resort. It is an option, yes. But not first one.

3 Reasons:
1) It is easier to adjust outliers towards the average than to move the majority towards the outliers. If the outlier was an underpowered character, then powering them up is easier than powering everyone else down. Vice versa is also true. Notice you said you DMed groups of powergamers, what if one player brought Pun Pun to the table? Would it make sense to have them scale down or for everyone to scale up? What if one player brought Nup Nup to the table? Would it make sense to have them scale up or for everyone to scale down? In general it makes more sense for the outliers to scale. Especially since the more skilled the optimizer, the easier it is for them to scale power level in a way that does not hurt mechanical implementation of their character concept.
2) From my experience, it is common for an overpowered character to be stronger than conceptualized in some area. Nerfing that area actually improves the characterization. For example: If I wanted to send enemies flying, I don't want my damage output to render them into a corpse before they are knocked back. The quantitative aspects, especially damage, are usually the ones unfortunately over inflated when trying to instantiate a character concept. However this is context based.
3) Powering up encounters to match a single outlier tends to be trickery than it first sounds. Consider if the outlier was overpowered due to an excessive resilience, to challenge them in that area would be to overpower the resilience of the rest of the party. So you would need to assign targets to avoid that. Soon enough you are running 2 encounters at the same time. It is easier if the outlier was adjusted to be comparable to the party.
4) Optimizers are better skilled at adjusting power level with minimal loss, or even gain in the fidelity of the mechanical instantiation of the character concept.

Basically, why should the outlier dictate everyone else has to change? No, when I optimize, I am skilled enough to be able have a character with a power level comparable to the party.

[Sol0botmate]

Thats the wholepoint of session 0.

you don't show up at session 0 with a character build.
you show up with your friends and set expectations for the games. then based on that you makes your characters.
if everyone wants to play a serious dark and hardocre game, you don't show up with a beastmaster ranger with the pirate background whos pet is a silly parot. That's a great character, just not for this game (i kinda want to play that now, but none of my sane friend would let me do it,... they know)

You wouldn't show up to a DnD game with a Shadowrun character because you talked about that before hand. well same goes for the theme, atmosphere and optimisation level of the game

I see. For me session 0 was always a meeting when we talk about our character (which are already built or in progress) and just talk backstory and how characters met and what are their "allignments" etc.

But I never check if their character concepts are "too strong" as long as they make sense from roleplay level.

[Sol0botmate]

3 Reasons:
Notice you said you DMed groups of powergamers, what if one player brought Pun Pun to the table? Would it make sense to have them scale down or for everyone to scale up? What if one player brought Nup Nup to the table? Would it make sense to have them scale up or for everyone to scale down?

I would scale him up but not because it's 1v4 but becasue getting better at game and better at character building is imo the better end of the stick. If I have 4 players that can't build character well and 1 that can build them very well, then I will ask the 1 to teach others how to do it better, while still following their RP concept of character.

The goal should be to become better at game, not worse. Building character is part of the game. If in the end more people will do it more effectively and utilize more things game have to offer - it's better scenario for me.

[OldTrees1]

I see. For me session 0 was always a meeting when we talk about our character (which are already built or in progress) and just talk backstory and how characters met and what are their "allignments" etc.

But I never check if their character concepts are "too strong" as long as they make sense from roleplay level.

There is a very long list of topics that could be covered during session 0. That list takes 24h+ to go through. However groups don't have to go over most of those topics because groups have (unspoken) common understandings that cover most of them. For example none of your players brought Pun Pun or Nup Nup, and your powergamer group was probably of comparable power level.

[Sol0botmate]

There is a very long list of topics that could be covered during session 0. That list takes 24h+ to go through. However groups don't have to go over most of those topics because groups have (unspoken) common understandings that cover most of them. For example none of your players brought Pun Pun or Nup Nup, and your powergamer group was probably of comparable power level.

Actually there were Pun Puns many times, but I just asked better players to help him fix his Pun Pun.

[Naanomi]

Actually there were Pun Puns many times, but I just asked better players to help him fix his Pun Pun.

Pun Pun takes over the multiverse about 6 rounds after character creation; so I doubt this is literal

[OldTrees1]

The goal should be to become better at game, not worse. Building character is part of the game. If in the end more people will do it more effectively and utilize more things game have to offer - it's better scenario for me.

Building characters is part of the game. Notice that the goal of that subgame is instantiating the character concept, not mere power.

Yes, helping others instantiate their character concepts with higher fidelity is a good idea for the long term. It does not contradict a DM asking the better skilled player to use their skill to rebalance their character in the short term. After all a balanced high fidelity instantiated character is harder to build than an overpowered high fidelity instantiated character. Everyone can get better at the character building subgame.

Actually there were Pun Puns many times, but I just asked better players to help him fix his Pun Pun.

Clarification, you know Pun Pun is shorthand for the literally omnipotent character? I was literally using the D&D terms for the extremes. I did that, not for the hyperbole, but because I was too lazy to ask you what power level your group plays at.

[Sol0botmate]

Building characters is part of the game. Notice that the goal of that subgame is instantiating the character concept, not mere power.

Yes, helping others instantiate their character concepts with higher fidelity is a good idea for the long term. It does not contradict a DM asking the better skilled player to use their skill to rebalance their character in the short term. After all a balanced high fidelity instantiated character is harder to build than an overpowered high fidelity instantiated character. Everyone can get better at the character building subgame.



Clarification, you know Pun Pun is shorthand for the literally omnipotent character? I was literally using the D&D terms for the extremes. I did that, not for the hyperbole, but because I was too lazy to ask you what power level your group plays at.

My apologizes. In my country there is not such thing as Pun Pun so I thought Pun Pun means poorly built character that is so bad it's sad to watch. Considering rather "comedic" sound of it- that's how I thought it was :)

[OldTrees1]

My apologizes. In my country there is not such thing as Pun Pun so I thought Pun Pun means poorly built character that is so bad it's sad to watch. Considering rather "comedic" sound of it- that's how I thought it was :)

No apologies needed. It is a funny name and not universally known. Basically 3E had enough content that eventually a character could hack the edition to give themselves whatever they wanted or write new content. So Pun Pun was a character that was literally omniponent. The 3E forums discussed it as a joke because we all knew it was too powerful for even Emperor Tippy's group (which was one of groups that was known to play at an extremely high power level). There was even a thought exercise race to see how to reduce what level it came online. However it was just that, a joke about the rules rather than an attempt to create a character to actually play. So if a player came with Pun Pun, even high power optimizer groups would ask them to power it down.


Part of what I learned from that story was that I cared more about my character being able to do what I conceptualized them as being able to do rather than merely be powerful. For many of my character concepts, it was a bit tricky to do that in 3E. So I studied the rules well enough that I could create difficult to create characters while also rebalancing them to match the power level of the party.

[da newt]

It seems most of the "issues" being discussed in this thread are not game issues - they are people issues.

When one player takes issue with another player 'doing it wrong' or 'doing it too well' or 'not taking it seriously enough' - it's NOT the GAME, it's the PEOPLE.

[Amechra]

Unless your table is in the habit of discussing 1-20 builds at session 0, the level of optimization that any given PC is likely to end up with may be unlikely to come up.

OTOH if someone asks how many levels the campaign is likely to go for, that's a pretty good sign they're already optimizing in their head ...

1-20 builds at actual tables always confuse me, because that assumes that you will have regular games for months, if not years. I think one of the things that should be covered in a session 0 is the intended level range for the campaign, so that you can know that (for example) a build that fully comes online at 13th level isn't going to work out well, because the DM thinks that the game is going to go from 3rd to 11th.

[Tanarii]

1-20 builds at actual tables always confuse me, because that assumes that you will have regular games for months, if not years. I think one of the things that should be covered in a session 0 is the intended level range for the campaign, so that you can know that (for example) a build that fully comes online at 13th level isn't going to work out well, because the DM thinks that the game is going to go from 3rd to 11th.

It's not even necessary to know that if you just make a 1st level character without planning a "build".

[Amechra]

It's not even necessary to know that if you just make a 1st level character without planning a "build".

I'd say that "builds" really only show up if you're starting in Tier 2. Otherwise... come on. Just make the guy.

[Pex]

Unless your table is in the habit of discussing 1-20 builds at session 0, the level of optimization that any given PC is likely to end up with may be unlikely to come up.

OTOH if someone asks how many levels the campaign is likely to go for, that's a pretty good sign they're already optimizing in their head ...

Possibly. It could also mean they're deciding if they want to play or not. They may be looking for a level a 1 to 20 (or close enough) campaign that lasts for at least a real world year or two because they want an epic story including non-Campaign Plot downtime experiences. A campaign that will only last 5 months that only goes to 5th level is a glorified boardgame to them. Nothing wrong with boardgames, but that's not what they want to play joining this game.

[sockmonkey]

Do you have a reference for this? Seems counter-intuitive as pirates would have boatloads of time to practice fencing, grappling, dirty tactics, and come up with tactics like wearing eye patches so they can blind their enemy.

Oh, they loved their knives, cutlasses and boarding axes too. I should have clarified that they were more into guns than they're often portrayed. They were into anything that worked well.