"Optimized" characters or parties?

[Cyborg Pirate]

Well, clearly you have to obtain the Legendary Sauce of Groth'narz, the only copy of the recipe of which is held by Sillaz the Goblin warlord, who homes in...

...what?

...I wouldn't object. This Is D&D afterall!

[Talya]

Well, clearly you have to obtain the Legendary Sauce of Groth'narz, the only copy of the recipe of which is held by Sillaz the Goblin warlord, who homes in...

...what?

You really don't want to know what's in that stuff.

[Leush]

This leads me to ask another, hopefully not too inflammatory question:

Is all optimization about combat?

Ah, this reminds me of one occasion that I personally found very amusing. Now for this you have to understand, that in my heart of hearts I am a min-maxer (and powergamer most of the time): I see nothing more fun in a character than to get a single number to the stratosphere, or/and get such a combination of numbers that I am as unbeatable as I can be, without using 'dishonorable (read:broken CODzilla Batman) tactics'.

When I make a character, the first thing I think of is class, then stats, race, skills and finally backstory. In tabletop I don't even bother with one half the time.

Now once, our DM announced a one off dungeon crawl and I thought, "great! battle! I'll make something that can fight!" Now since we had a relatively low level party, I went with a barbarian, rolled insanely high, took dwarf, took power attack, took cleave,. Had about twice as many hitpoints as everyone else, higher attack and damage, decent saves and a not-bad AC. What happened?

There wasn't a single monster in the dungeon. It was a great dungeon. Everyone had mounds of fun. I mean the traps were creative, the 'evil character only' players (Of the "oo a puppy, let's eat it!" variety) turned out very useful in creating just the right amount of conflict to keep people on their toes. That was possibly the best game I ever played- and ironically, all the combat orientated feats I took were useless. Was it bad DMing not to warn us? Heck no! I should be bold enough to say that people who suggest it should be summerily shot, because the mystery added to the suspense, keeping us on our toes. Everyone had fun, by the looks of it.

My combat feats were literally wasted (HP wasn't- in fact having the crappiest of feats- Toughness, would have been a help). I could have taken greater skill focus backer for all that mattered, or taken skill focus in (Use rope or Climb or balance) and gotten more use of it. That is to say two things: Combat orientated =/= optimised, as optimisation is circumstancial. Optimised, unpotimised, munchkin, good roleplayer, bad roleplayer, those terms are worth spit when everyone at the table is initiated into havefun-fu.

[Tor the Fallen]

Diplo-builds.

[Lolth]

What's more, if you roleplay your Dex 8 character as graceful, why does it matter? You're not gaining any mechanical advantage out of making your character look cooler, you're just getting pure enjoyment out of it.

Again--D&D is not a simulation. There's no need for a character sheet to be as perfectly representative of all of your fluff as you can make it.

Remember this the next time you tell me my Dervish isn't willowy, mister.

[Talya]

Remember this the next time you tell me my Dervish isn't willowy, mister.

Ooooh. Ouch. Touché.

Edit: BTW, I tend to agree with him on your "willowy" description. I just think it needs to be consistent that your ability scores bare some resemblance to the character. Just as a character with a strength of 14 is not willowy, a character with a dex of 8 is not graceful.

[WildBill]

What I'm seeing here is that the (in my experience) relatively small portion of munchkins to powergamers gives all of us who spend time trying to make the most effective character within our concept a bad name. I love the roleplaying aspects of DnD. If I didn't, I would stick to tactical and strategy games. However, I hate putting a ton of work into a character concept just to have them die because they are ineffective, or have to rely on DM mercy to keep said ineffective character alive.
Optimization doesn't mean playing Pun-Pun or any of the record breaking thought experiment builds on the CO boards, it means making sound mechanical choices that go along with the concept I am playing. Like choosing improved critical: falchion for my warrior rather than weapon focus: falchion, because he has specialized in using that weapon. The fluff and the crunch match well, a character who has trained long and hard at using a chosen weapon and has become highly effective at using it. Either improved crit or WF would match the fluff, but improved crit is a vastly superior feat to WF.

[Lolth]

Ooooh. Ouch. Touché.

Edit: BTW, I tend to agree with him on your "willowy" description. I just think it needs to be consistent that your ability scores bare some resemblance to the character. Just as a character with a strength of 14 is not willowy, a character with a dex of 8 is not graceful.

I actually agree too, I was writing it (the description up) independently of the stats, which changed when I decided to go two-handed and all. I've since changed it for the actual PC (as well as a few other tweaks) but, well... I couldn't resist here.

I'm in the camp that says if your Dexterity is 8, you ain't graceful as a rule, and if you don't have some skill points in cooking, your untrained bonus had better be comparable to someone who does before you go claiming to be a good cook.

[Lemur]

This leads me to ask another, hopefully not too inflammatory question:

Is all optimization about combat? I didn't think or assume so when I started this thread. I mean, what about optimizing your Bard to be the suavest, swingin'est performer/seducer around, or your Wizard to be the ablest of diviners, learning the mysteriest of the universe, or your Rogue to be the most daring of trapsmushers?

Not to imply that being combat-capable makes one a poor RPer, though some seem to think the two go hand in hand, but what about these other bits?

I guess I think of "optimization" as "working the rules to be the best, mechanically, at what you do" as opposed to "working the rules to be the best killer of stuff you can be."

That's an interesting question. The answer is no, not all optimization is about combat. However, it gets a little bit more complex than that.

Combat typically plays a significant role in D&D- the largest part of the rules revolves around the combat system, and D&D originally developed out of war games. A general guideline that works for D&D most of the time is "it never hurts to have a little extra kick in combat."

However, there's definitely more to optimization, and when your designing a character, your main focus certainly doesn't have to revolve around combat. Sometimes it's fun to focus on certain concepts, such as being the fastest, sneakiest, or jumpiest bastard around.

Also, keep in mind that power is relative. Anything you can do, the DM can do better, if he so desires. And sometimes, as Leush illustrated, some abilities that are good for certain campaigns isn't always good for others. So in one respect, you have to keep in mind what sort of DM you're playing with and the setting you're in when designing a character.

Finally, the ultimate point of D&D is to have fun, so optimization should focus on whatever you'd have fun doing. Ideally, a good character is one that not only you have fun playing, but the other people in your group enjoy playing with. A general rule of thumb is to play at the level of the other players in your group, so you're not outshining everyone else, or dragging them down with you.

[asqwasqw]

I see three schools here:

1) Fluff matches crunch

2) Fluff is independant of crunch

3) Lets all have fun!

I agree with 1 and 3. It doesn't make sense in your background if you spent your entire life as a sailor and have no skills in profession: sailor. But if your group allows it, and you can find people like you, then the most important thing is to have fun.

[JaronK]

What happens when you, the group's handwaved gourmand, get coerced to enter the town's annual cook off?
Roll off or more handwaving?

You take a 10 on the check, because cooking a basic meal is easier than making leather armour, which is only DC 12 to make. With masterwork tools (perhaps a decent set of cookware?) you don't even need an int bonus or any ranks in the skill.

JaronK

[asqwasqw]

You take a 10 on the check, because cooking a basic meal is easier than making leather armour, which is only DC 12 to make. With masterwork tools (perhaps a decent set of cookware?) you don't even need an int bonus or any ranks in the skill.

JaronK

Na, this is the town's annual cook-off, not a common meal. Roll for the NPC's who spent their entire life cooking, then roll for your untrained stats. Pray you get high and they get low. Then cry.

[JaronK]

Too bad those NPC are probably level one, with a max of four ranks in the skill eh?

But that's besides the point. Honestly, I wasn't really talking about leaving off skills relevant to RP. The point was that a character with cooking is not necessarily a better roleplayed character than one without cooking. Saying you want a character that's a good cook is basically chosing to RP a character that isn't well represented within the more combat oriented D&D system. There are no PrCs that I know of that make cooking useful for anything other than a background thing.

The point is that you can make an optomized character, or a not optomized character, and you can roleplay either one. It's more likely that an optomized character will have a personality and background that matches his feel. For example, you could roleplay your cook well, though you probably chose the wrong system for playing a cook. You could also roleplay your student of the arcane arts well. The fact that your cook took a skill which is not well represented in D&D does not mean the character is more interesting to interact with.

JaronK

[asqwasqw]

Yes, but the skills make it more realistic. It just doesn't make sense when you can say: I spent my entire life farming and the past month working on my sword and then have him be entirely combat oriented. But DnD is a game of combat, and that is part of the trouble with modeling it realistically. I say we have background skill points and feats for free that are utterly useless but are revelant to your background.

[Grr]

To Everyone: You obviously don't know what min-maxxing means. Min-maxxing is maximizing capability while minimizing weakness, aka munchkinism, powergaming, and generally being a disruptive pain in the bum for the DM because now they have to specifically deal with your poopy character without killing the other PC's off.

No, you haven't. There's this thing called statistics. Until you've games with hundreds of people, your sample size is statistically insignificant.

I have gamed with hundreds of people. I ran RPGA events at a local con for years. I ran D&D games on AOL for years. I still run D&D games online over irc. Been doing so for years. I have a small core group that stays the same, but there's also hundreds of people that have passed through my games at one point or another, both online and offline.

Furthermore, correlation does not equal causation. If you know min-maxers who don't roleplay well, that doesn't mean min-maxing causes poor roleplay.

Get this through your addled skull... I have never said min-maxxing causes poor roleplay. Not once. You keep trying to say I have, but I haven't. What I have said, is that it is my experience that min-maxxing munchkins are usually poor roleplayers. I never said why they sucked at it. I never even speculated on that. I was only relating my personal experience as a DM and player for over fifteen years.

You're also conflating min-maxing (or optimizing) with "munchkins". The two are different.

Nope. They're the same thing.

How is it a tool? Does having that "4" instead of a "0" on your character sheet somehow make you able to roleplay better?

It's a tool because all the stats, all the skills, all the feats, the classes are part of the whole character. It also keeps it fair for everyone in the game.

The point is that for any given concept/piece of fluff, there are multiple ways to implement it mechanically. Some of those ways are better than others. You can pick the best way without giving up your character concept.

Again, you don't get it. You should be used to that by now. That and being wrong. If the player has a concept in their mind, that fits a specific campaign setting, there's only one way to play that concept. For example, let's say the player wants their character to be a knight in a famous order devoted to the main religion in the setting, a Paladin/Order of the Radiant Sword. The only way they're going to be a member of that order is to take levels in that PrC.

There's no multiple ways about it. Same thing with the Dragonlance PrC's for wizards based upon the moons. It's that way or no way. Duh.

As for "if you want to be a baker, you have to take profession: baker"... that's crap. You could just describe your character baking. If it has no mechanical effect, why would you need mechanics for it?
When you say "you can't be a baker without ranks in profession: baker", you are saying that the mechanics are more important to you than the flavor.
Incidentally, there is no mechanic for "baking". Profession: Baker is a check you can make to see how much money you make in a week when you are selling your baking services.

Mechanics are more important in that regard, because you have to be fair to each player. Your character is not a baker, unless they've taken skill ranks in the profession: baker skill. You can try to say you were a baker, but without the skill ranks, I'm going to rule that you suck as a baker, burning the bread, oversalting the stew, to the point that you can't earn a living as one.

Letting your party suffer an IC consequence because your character can't solve a riddle is lame, unless everyone in the group was low-intelligence. If you knew the answer, you, as a player, could easily have told it to the player of a high-INT character, since their character would know it.

Just because someone is intelligent, doesn't mean they have the wisdom or wit to puzzle out the answer to a riddle. Some people just aren't very good at riddles... even though they may be considered a genius.

Furthermore, you're fine with breaking the rules and making things up as you go. For some reason, however, you don't seem to give players that luxury. "No Craft: Woodcarving? Then no, you CAN'T whittle pretty figurines in your downtime!"

As the DM, it's my job to make sure everyone has fun, including myself. That means I enforce the rules as they pertain to character creation and leveling as fairly and strictly as needed. I only break the rules during gameplay when it would make sense to keep the game interesting and entertaining.

They can try to carve a figurine, but it's going to turn out like crap. The kind of stuff people would look at for five, ten minutes and still not know what it is. You know, the kind of crap that passes for modern art these days.

I'd never demand that someone took the Commoner or Expert class, or anything that would really gimp them, as part of a background, but a guy who's unwilling to pay even a few skill points? That's like someone who claims to be generous and open-handed, but won't leave a shop until he's gotten his 1 cent change from his $10 bill.

- Saph

One of my most memorable games comes from when I started all the players off as citizens in a very small town on the outskirts of the kingdom. We had four or five sessions of just roleplaying as those people. Up until the autumn harvest was to start. Some fire elementals tore through the fields, burning up wheat and corn... the townsfolk elected to send a group out to find food or help.

[Dausuul]

Nope. They're the same thing.

Nope. They're not.

[asqwasqw]

Nope. They're not.

Elaborate, please.

[Roethke]

I see three schools here:

1) Fluff matches crunch

2) Fluff is independant of crunch

3) Lets all have fun!

I agree with 1 and 3. It doesn't make sense in your background if you spent your entire life as a sailor and have no skills in profession: sailor. But if your group allows it, and you can find people like you, then the most important thing is to have fun.

Well, I think everyone agrees with 3), and of course, usual disclaimer, everyone's game/DM is different.

But lets say you're a sailor, but a none-too bright (11-INT) fighter. You know, average tough guy, deckhand/pirate type.

A nice, fluffy, sailor would have ranks in
Profession(Sailor), Climb, Balance(not a class skill), Swim (maybe), Use Rope (not a class skill), and maybe a Knowledge (Weather) or something.

So for 1st level human, you have 12-skill points to distribute. For a non-human, that's 8-points. All those ranks end up being spread pretty thin, before you even get to his pet Scruffy, the ship mascot, which would imply Handle Animal.

Mechanically, it's just very difficult for this character to make his crunch reflect his fluff.

Make this character a rogue, and all of a sudden it gets easier. It just doesn't make sense, and it's not really supposed to.

So for mundane tasks, I'd vote keeping the fluff and crunch separate. Not every ladder requires that climb check. You want your PC to wax eloquent about life at sea, no Profession sailor ranks necessary, just RP it. When crunch time comes (in both senses), though, such as climbing rigging in a storm, then you go to the character sheet.

In my mind this keeps the mechanics from being constricting, but also prevents player abuse (e.g. well, in my background it says I can survive anywhere, therefore give me the benefit of the survival skill).

[Dausuul]

Elaborate, please.

Hmm, well, mostly I was making a point about using "No, it's this way because I say so" as a debating tactic.

But very well, to elaborate: Optimizing, min-maxing, and munchkinism are three different things.

Optimization is the effort to make a character do whatever it is he/she does as well as it's possible to do it, given restrictions on level, wealth, etc. Just about any character build is optimized to some degree, unless you habitually play wizards with Intelligence 8.

Min-maxing is similar, but suggests a tendency to strain disbelief in terms of taking abysmal weaknesses in areas where you don't expect that weakness to come up. The standard example is taking a crap score in Charisma because it's so seldom useful, yet declaring your character to be handsome/beautiful/whatever.

Munchkinism is the effort to "win D&D" by making one's character invincible and unstoppable, using any and all tactics including the Kobold Who Must Not Be Named, and is generally associated with childish and obnoxious behavior.

These are the holy definitions of these terms, from which none shall deviate. Because I say so.

[Roethke]

Grr Wrote:

Quote:
The point is that for any given concept/piece of fluff, there are multiple ways to implement it mechanically. Some of those ways are better than others. You can pick the best way without giving up your character concept.
Again, you don't get it. You should be used to that by now. That and being wrong. If the player has a concept in their mind, that fits a specific campaign setting, there's only one way to play that concept. For example, let's say the player wants their character to be a knight in a famous order devoted to the main religion in the setting, a Paladin/Order of the Radiant Sword. The only way they're going to be a member of that order is to take levels in that PrC.

There's no multiple ways about it. Same thing with the Dragonlance PrC's for wizards based upon the moons. It's that way or no way. Duh.

Come off the high-horse, man. Enough with the hostility.

I think this is patently wrong. You want to be a knight in a famous order devoted to the main religion of the setting?
You can:
A) Be a fighter, but play-up the religious aspect. The Order, has no idea what your class is.
B) Be a cleric. Heavily armored holy warrior? Looks like knight to me.
C) Be a paladin. A religious fighter with a strict moral code, and divine blessings. Ditto.
D) Ranger: This is less obvious, but every military organization needs its scouts. Play as fighter.
E) Monk: This may not fit the flavor of the campaign, but I could see several ways it could be worked in, if it does.


So you have 3 obvious choices, along with a couple of pretty good ways to go about being a holy warrior in a particular order.

Now, as in DragonLance, the setting may spec out a specific PrC to do this. But I'd venture that assuming that every 'Knight of Solamnia' is an NPC Knight of Solamnia PrC, is not necessarily a good assumption, if only for the levels involved. Of course you CAN, play it that way, but I don't see any reason why you'd have to.

[Grr]

A) Be a fighter, but play-up the religious aspect. The Order, has no idea what your class is.

Paladin / Cleric only order.

B) Be a cleric. Heavily armored holy warrior? Looks like knight to me.

Sure.

C) Be a paladin. A religious fighter with a strict moral code, and divine blessings. Ditto.

Duh, it was made for this.

D) Ranger: This is less obvious, but every military organization needs its scouts. Play as fighter.

Nope. Don't have the proper skills.

E) Monk: This may not fit the flavor of the campaign, but I could see several ways it could be worked in, if it does.

Never.

Now, as in DragonLance, the setting may spec out a specific PrC to do this. But I'd venture that assuming that every 'Knight of Solamnia' is an NPC Knight of Solamnia PrC, is not necessarily a good assumption, if only for the levels involved. Of course you CAN, play it that way, but I don't see any reason why you'd have to.

I don't know... maybe because it might be a crime to impersonate the station and honors accord of being a Knight of Solamnia? I know in my setting, anyone impersonating a Knight of the Radiant Order gets locked away by the church and tried for heresy.

[spotmarkedx]

Grr. It doesnt help when people use same words for different definitions.

Minmaxing =/= Munchkinism

Also, I'm glad you're not my DM, if you force class choices on characters based on their concept. Must you take the "archmage" PrC to have your character call themselves an archmage, or be granted the title by a council of wizards? I significantly prefer games that that is not the case, thank you very much.

[Dausuul]

I don't know... maybe because it might be a crime to impersonate the station and honors accord of being a Knight of Solamnia? I know in my setting, anyone impersonating a Knight of the Radiant Order gets locked away by the church and tried for heresy.

I'll accept the idea that you have to fulfill the fluff requirements (the Code and the Measure, knightly vows, et cetera) to gain the Knight of Solamnia PRC. But saying that you have to have the PRC to have the fluff is silly. What if I join the Knights, swear holy vows and everything, but I haven't gained enough XP to take a level in the PRC? Do the Knights check my XP total and say, "Sorry, Lord Nobleandmighty, you've done heroic deeds and we'd love to make you a Knight of the Rose, but you have to kill three more glabrezu first?"

And if I do swear the vows and everything, but then put my next level into fighter instead of Knight of Solamnia, how will they know I didn't take the PRC? Do all PRCs based on a particular organization get see character sheet as a spell-like ability?

The Radiant Order might be a different matter, since they could require you to demonstrate the ability to use divine magic before accepting you. Of course, then they wouldn't take paladins with Wis 10 or less.

[Bouldering Jove]

A fair number of people here are basing their arguments on what I consider to be a misunderstanding of the relationship between flavor and mechanics.

The mechanics of D&D constitute a highly abstract representational system. That is the entirety of what they constitute. The SRD provides the rules framework for resolving all actions meaningful to that representational system, and nothing more. Every tabletop RPG's system represents things differently, whether by different rules, differently weighted factors, or different aspects included (D&D's levels of experience, Storyteller's willpower, etc.).

Flavor is the names, storytelling, description, and all other "roleplaying" elements that surround those mechanics. Whether a character is named Bob or Baughb, has blue eyes or brown eyes, or has an outgoing or indrawn personality, is absolutely meaningless in mechanical terms because none of those things have an impact on the representational system. If Bob had been named Baughb, that wouldn't make any difference to his BAB. Abstract mechanics can also be described in different ways: a critical hit could be presented as skillfull or lucky, as focused and precise or sweeping and devastating. The choice is really yours, as long as it doesn't change the system one whit. What color is your magic missile? It's flavor, because the mechanical properties of it (spell level, casting time, spell effects, damage) aren't affected by your choice.

Where people start getting lost is that even the SRD includes a superficial level of flavor. For example, the class names: what is a "barbarian" character? Mechanically, they're a set of abilities and stats. The vast majority of the time, though, people attach flavorful "barbarian" qualities to these mechanics, making them primitive warriors from the frozen north or what have you. But that really isn't necessary! You could just as easily describe a character with the "barbarian" mechanics as a gladiator, or a character with the "fighter" mechanics as a primitive warrior. For that matter, a "fighter" could in fact have his fighting prowess granted by the gods. The absence of actual divine magic in the "fighter" class rules doesn't matter, because your description of what grants those bonus feats doesn't affect what they mechanically do. Heck, maybe a "divine" spellcaster is tapping into natural magical power and the "arcane" spellcaster is channeling the power of the gods. It's flavor. It just doesn't matter as long as the functions of the abstract game system are all working the same way.

So now we come to things like the hypothetical baker who has no ranks in a cooking-related skill. Why shouldn't the man be able to bake? If he can create a pastry, so what? Danishes aren't mechanically modified. Mechanically, Profession generates gold pieces, while Craft can also generate some particular items. As long as our hypothetical baker can't create the effects of the Profession skill, giving him the flavor to allow him to whip up pastries doesn't affect anything except other flavor elements. So why disallow it?

[Roethke]

Bouldering Jove,

Why am I hungry after your explanation? Mmm. Flavor.

[Grr]

So why disallow it?

It's not fair to the other players.

[Ulzgoroth]

So now we come to things like the hypothetical baker who has no ranks in a cooking-related skill. Why shouldn't the man be able to bake? If he can create a pastry, so what? Danishes aren't mechanically modified. Mechanically, Profession generates gold pieces, while Craft can also generate some particular items. As long as our hypothetical baker can't create the effects of the Profession skill, giving him the flavor to allow him to whip up pastries doesn't affect anything except other flavor elements. So why disallow it?

Well, now we've got a character who can create this pastry which, while not detailed in the RAW explicitly, presumably does have some value by virtue of its edibility and tastiness. However, he has no ranks in an applicable profession, and thus there's no way he could ever earn more than one silver piece/day by applying this ability. Unless we decide that any sort of logical consistency falls second to allowing this strange pastry savant, there has to be some reason that the ability to produce this pastry is no more marketable than the ability to carry crates around.

Does it take so much in ingredients that no one is willing to pay above cost? That's got to be pretty costly stuff. Better charge for it, and be sure to stock up.
Is it just not good? I just assumed that we were talking about something people would actually be happy to eat, I suppose.
Does it take a really huge amount of time to make? Considering the one silver a day in profits, it's going to have to take a sizable chunk out of your day to make.

EDIT: I do agree about the classes. Some classes have highly integral fluff, but most of them don't. While there's certainly good reason that at least those in the know will recognize 'Wizard' and 'Sorcerer' as different things, there's no reason a Barbarian (class) has to be from a primitive background, or a Fighter (class) to have come from some sort of regimented training.

[Zincorium]

Grr, I believe right now that I have a superior ability to have fun over a wide range of games than you, based on your posts, appear to.

Here's why:

You hate being in a game with people who only want combat and numbers and dungeon crawls. I don't really mind. I will thus have more fun in a game like that.

You're manifestly unwilling to be flexible as far as character concepts, such as not allowing a ranger to serve in a particular order simply because they lack a particular skillset. I'm flexible (as a DM) when it would be more fun, so I enjoy games that would work better when used flexibly than you.

Essentially, I think you're sabotaging your own experience by holding the views that you do. It also might be advisable to relax a bit, but that's strictly optional.

[Grr]

If my fun "quota" is 100%, then you can't have more fun than me. =p

You're manifestly unwilling to be flexible as far as character concepts, such as not allowing a ranger to serve in a particular order simply because they lack a particular skillset.

And how is a ranger supposed to demonstrate their devotion by passing a test wherein they have to channel positive energy?

[Bouldering Jove]

It's not fair to the other players.

Nonsense. It's no more unfair than getting a free choice in your eye color, because it doesn't affect anything mechanical. It's purely a matter of flavor.

Well, now we've got a character who can create this pastry which, while not detailed in the RAW explicitly, presumably does have some value by virtue of its edibility and tastiness. However, he has no ranks in an applicable profession, and thus there's no way he could ever earn more than one silver piece/day by applying this ability. Unless we decide that any sort of logical consistency falls second to allowing this strange pastry savant, there has to be some reason that the ability to produce this pastry is no more marketable than the ability to carry crates around.

Does it take so much in ingredients that no one is willing to pay above cost? That's got to be pretty costly stuff. Better charge for it, and be sure to stock up.
Is it just not good? I just assumed that we were talking about something people would actually be happy to eat, I suppose.
Does it take a really huge amount of time to make? Considering the one silver a day in profits, it's going to have to take a sizable chunk out of your day to make.

Two things. First, keep in mind, you're talking about an economic system where the daily wage for an unskilled laborer is only half as much as a single poor quality meal costs. I understand what you're saying, but the problem isn't this instance of flavor, it's the fact that D&D's system as a whole is an abominably poor economic model. As long as the problem is the mechanic itself, why restrict a player from having a charming bit of fluff? By definition, as pure flavor, it's not exploitable.

Second, I have very, VERY little experience with baking, but I don't see anything inherently unreasonable about an amateur baker not being able to make more money with it than they would hauling crates. There's a combination of factors at work: they're probably good at baking only a limited range of things, they're not going to be as quick or efficient as someone trained in making a profession out of it, and they're paying for the ingredients themselves rather than selling their skill to a bakery. Even if that doesn't satisfy you, I'm not the one who matters; ask the player who wants to bake for flavor reasons to justify it. Maybe they'll come up with something interesting (perhaps what they make looks like a sloppy hideous mess, even though it tastes great).

As a sidenote, if you're worried about logical consistency in general, I think there are much bigger fish to fry with D&D.

EDIT: I do agree about the classes. Some classes have highly integral fluff, but most of them don't. While there's certainly good reason that at least those in the know will recognize 'Wizard' and 'Sorcerer' as different things, there's no reason a Barbarian (class) has to be from a primitive background, or a Fighter (class) to have come from some sort of regimented training.

Alignment restrictions are definitely the big culprit here (and also part of how flavor and mechanics get confused in the first place). Alignment is a mechanical issue with mechanical effects, but because of the way it's tied to character personality and actions, it makes alternate flavor for something like the paladin almost impossible without making at least minor mechanical changes (and thus stepping beyond mere fluff).