Power is Relative

dave2008 said:

Maybe, I'm betting what you assume and what is the reality are different. Police don't eat donuts to increase their physical abilities.

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From what I recall, the association between police and donuts is that police are often required to patrol overnight, and donuts (and coffee) were often available at such hours. Their abilities would diminish if they didn't have access to donuts (and coffee).

dave2008 said:

I don't disagree, but that is a far cry from optimizing. Decent armor and weapons are far from the best. Not to mention, Characters often don't know what the best is, while it is all to easy for Players to figure that out. Part of the issue is the game pretty much allows optimizing without any consequence. Reality isn't usual as kind.

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Choosing to wear armor, rather than not, is optimization. It's all just a matter of degree. The major difference between the real world and the game world is that the game world appears to run on simplified physical laws such that it's much easier to optimize. That, and the player gets to decide on random genetic factors and background elements for their character, which are well beyond what anyone in the real world can arrange for themself.

I'm not really concerned about that, though. I'm more concerned with the player making decisions as their character would - whoever that character may happen to be. I actually have somewhat of a preference for random character creation, specifically for that reason.

Optimisation isn't about making your PC more effective relative to the monsters, it's about becoming more effective relative to the other PCs.

Saelorn said:

In my games, I don't do that, because I am an impartial DM. If I was playing in a game, and the DM told me that none of my choices mattered because everything was scaled to provide the exact same level of challenge, then I would probably stop playing in that game (because none of my choices mattered).

If your games have not degenerated as such, my best guess is that the players don't fully trust the GMs to scale things based on their own capabilities. It is amazingly counter-intuitive to expect that the world will change around you based on decisions you make for yourself.

Have you actually had that conversation with your players, where you tell them that it doesn't matter where they put their stats or what equipment they use, because you'll scale the enemies to the same challenge level regardless? And if so, could you tell whether they actually believed that, or if they were just taking it as a caution against disruptive levels of optimization?

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So to be clear when you said "If I were to change the monsters to keep them in line with the PCs, then it would result in degenerate gameplay, such as a fighter who doesn't use armor or weapons because they know that there's no point." You were not describing what you have seen happen, but your idea of what might happen if say someone chose to not roleplay a character but rather to meta-game the style of play used at the table in some other game you imagine could exist?

gotcha.

based on the experiences i have had, when players are playing "their characters" in the context of the setting, they do not tend to do such things because while the player know the game is being scaled and even that their specific aspects are being factored in, they know their characters don't.

I get that some games or some GMs might not believe that can exist and see it as an absolute that things like you describe *would* occur... but frankly, more often than not when i hear comments like that it seems more theoretical than real which was why i asked about your own cases.

Thanks for the info.

In my game from Tuesday, the gang encountered an item that suits one character well... it was not surprising to the characters because of the nature of the conflict... yet i do not see anyone deciding to not buy gear thinking "it will just be dropped in my lap."

Just another example from actual play...

Saelorn said:

From what I recall, the association between police and donuts is that police are often required to patrol overnight, and donuts (and coffee) were often available at such hours. Their abilities would diminish if they didn't have access to donuts (and coffee).

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LOL. I love me some donuts - but they do not augment my abilities in anyway. That would be our fallible human perception getting in the way of logical optimization. To optimize a police officer would pack a healthy nutritious meal.

Saelorn said:

Choosing to wear armor, rather than not, is optimization. It's all just a matter of degree.

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I am not interested in discussing the semantics of optimization, and I think you know that.

Saelorn said:

The major difference between the real world and the game world is that the game world appears to run on simplified physical laws such that it's much easier to optimize.

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Social laws as well. It is society, customs, responsibilities, etc. that often prevent us from optimizing ourselves. We pretty much ignore these in the game world.

Saelorn said:

I'm not really concerned about that, though. I'm more concerned with the player making decisions as their character would - whoever that character may happen to be. I actually have somewhat of a preference for random character creation, specifically for that reason.

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Yes, that is clear. I just don't think most people make decisions to optimize that often. Now, a PC is not a typical person (at least generally speaking a D&D character is well above average), so that skews the math a bit. That is why I would love to do some research on mercs (historical and contemporary). I think they are the most like PCs in real world terms.

dave2008 said:

Well psychology, sociology, and economics have pretty much taught us that we humans are generally bad a doing what is logically best for us. We tend to base a lot of decisions on emotion and perception. We rarely ever optimize in real life. So if players make decisions as their characters would, they probably wouldn't optimize. However, maybe it makes sense in a fantasy world.

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No, we pretty much try to optimize all the time. We just don’t always succeed.

Going to school as a child? Someone was trying to optimize your education.
Getting a job? You better believe your office is trying to optimize your output.
Pretty much any trade skill, you are trying to optimize your skills and learn new tricks to do a better job or save time.

Few people optimize EVERYTHING, but it’s absolutely reasonable that adventurers would make an above average effort to optimize adventuring. Because death.

nswanson27 said:

Philosophical question: If you put on your armor, and it literally makes no difference in the outcome of the fight, did you really put it on?

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Cast Heat Metal on yourself. If it hurts....probably.

dave2008 said:

LOL. I love me some donuts - but they do not augment my abilities in anyway. That would be our fallible human perception getting in the way of logical optimization. To optimize a police officer would pack a healthy nutritious meal.

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That goes back to the real world being a complicated place with many factors involved. The efficiency with which someone performs their job is not the only thing that these people care about, even if they do have more reason than most to care about their performance. There are significant diminishing returns, where additional effort might give a better over-all balance when invested elsewhere.

In addition to job performance, there is also sleep and downtime and stress management to worry about (which are factors that aren't well-represented within the game model). A police officer who always got enough sleep, and spent time and effort on eating healthily, might suffer in terms of stress from never being able to relax. The police officer who has a social life and plays video games, and eats a less-extreme diet, is not less optimized than their compatriot; they've just shifted the work-life balance a little bit further away from work.

It is better to have donuts and coffee than to have no donuts and no coffee, all else being equal, most of the time. You may occasionally have one exceptionally healthy and well-rested officer who gains no benefit from donuts and coffee at 4am, but that's the exception to the rule.

dave2008 said:

I am not interested in discussing the semantics of optimization, and I think you know that.

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I am genuinely uncertain about what you mean here. This isn't semantics. Wearing armor and wielding a weapon is literally the first, most basic step in combat optimization. The reason why someone would gear-up as such is because they want to optimize their combat performance - they want to increase the chance of hurting someone else, while decreasing the chance of themself getting hurt.

This thread is about the practice of some DMs to scale combat encounters to the level of combat optimization of the party. If the PC fighter has AC 20 and does ~10 damage on a hit, so the DM makes the monsters have AC 20 and deal ~10 damage on a hit; then that's no different from the fighter having AC 11 and doing ~4 damage on a hit, and it causing the DM to make the monsters have AC 11 and do ~4 damage on a hit.

I want the PC fighter to have a reason to wear the best armor they can wear, and to wield the best weapon they have access to, instead of not caring at all. If I scale the enemies to the capabilities of the party, then the players don't have any reason to care about that sort of thing, even if it would make sense for their character to do so. (They may even be encouraged to anti-optimize, because reducing lethality across-the-board favors the party in the long run.)

Definitely adapt power levels to abilities. For instance if there is a rogue that has put a hell of a lot of effort into lockpicking (expertise, max Dex, feat, magic item etc) then there is no point having all locks at DC 15-20 to open. By doing so you are not allowing the rogues choice to matter.

Instead you should keep most locks as normal and simply don’t ask for the roll as it only takes a 3+ to open them. Then you should build some extraordinary locks into the adventures - vaults, complicated dimensional prisons, and picking locks in exceptional circumstances (while fighting, while blindfolded, while falling). Sure this changing power levels for the rogue but it is also letting them do awesome things that they wouldn’t already be able to do.

Saelorn said:

That goes back to the real world being a complicated place with many factors involved. The efficiency with which someone performs their job is not the only thing that these people care about, even if they do have more reason than most to care about their performance. There are significant diminishing returns, where additional effort might give a better over-all balance when invested elsewhere.

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To was one of my points. We don't truly ask our Players to make decisions like their Characters would because we conveniently allow them to forget the real world things that would pull their Characters in different directions.

Saelorn said:

I am genuinely uncertain about what you mean here. This isn't semantics. Wearing armor and wielding a weapon is literally the first, most basic step in combat optimization. The reason why someone would gear-up as such is because they want to optimize their combat performance - they want to increase the chance of hurting someone else, while decreasing the chance of themself getting hurt.

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Ugh, I don't have the desire to explain - sorry. I understand what your saying (base line optimization), but that is not what I feel we are talking about

Saelorn said:

This thread is about the practice of some DMs to scale combat encounters to the level of combat optimization of the party. If the PC fighter has AC 20 and does ~10 damage on a hit, so the DM makes the monsters have AC 20 and deal ~10 damage on a hit; then that's no different from the fighter having AC 11 and doing ~4 damage on a hit, and it causing the DM to make the monsters have AC 11 and do ~4 damage on a hit.

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Agreed, but that is not what I was discussing

Saelorn said:

I want the PC fighter to have a reason to wear the best armor they can wear, and to wield the best weapon they have access to, instead of not caring at all. If I scale the enemies to the capabilities of the party, then the players don't have any reason to care about that sort of thing, even if it would make sense for their character to do so. (They may even be encouraged to anti-optimize, because reducing lethality across-the-board favors the party in the long run.)

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My comments were about your statement that you want your Players to make decisions that their Characters would. My only point was that their Characters would not always make the most optimal decision in reality. I'm not talking about wearing armor vs no armor, I'm talking about wearing armor vs. doing everything you can to get the best AC possible. In reality, very few can do everything they can do get the best "AC" for a variety of reasons. Of course, as I have stated before, Adventurers may be an exception.

EDIT: To be clear I generally agree in a game world that doesn't bend to the capabilities of the players. For example my players came upon and ancient black dragon when they were level 6, they had to run for their lives.

Iry said:

No, we pretty much try to optimize all the time. We just don’t always succeed.

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That is a fair way to look at it. If you read the rest of my post in this thread, that is the basic point I was making. We don't have the ability to optimize to the fullest. But that is not just execution on our part, their are psychological and social and environmental factors which play into - which are typically ignored in Game.

Iry said:

Few people optimize EVERYTHING, but it’s absolutely reasonable that adventurers would make an above average effort to optimize adventuring. Because death.

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I don't know if it is reasonable for adventures, but they could be an exception (as I have also noted in further posts in this thread). The closest contemporary and historical thing I can think of to adventurers would be mercenaries, and I don't know enough about them to speak about how much they really optimized themselves. I imagine even within that select group, their is a range of optimization, but I don't have the data.