Power is Relative

AaronOfBarbaria · Apr 20, 2018

I don't tailor adventure content to try and push the limits of what an optimized character is capable of, so if someone sits down to one of my campaigns with a character optimized for something they are going to stomp all over that something (and hopefully enjoy doing so, as that's about the only reason I can imagine as to why someone would bother optimizing in the first place; because they want their character to not be challenged in their chosen area of optimization)

As such, my players don't optimize much - or, more accurately, they realize that the sort of character that is most optimal for one of my campaigns is one with a well-rounded set of capabilities with no pronounced short-comings.

Satyrn · Apr 20, 2018

Saelorn 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.

Oh there'd definitely be a point to me doing that. I'll go on merrily adventuring unarmed and unarmored whike fighting the monsters you've lowered down to my level, but then - just before facing the No Longer Big Bad Evil Guy - I'll put on my plate, hoist my maul, and let loose with all the power I've been holding back on, pulping the villain you've wimpified because I played possum.

All the benefits of Power Gaming with none of the optimization!

(This is actually partly why I'm not using the wand of lightning bolts my character has)

dave2008 · Apr 20, 2018

Saelorn said:
I would rather that the players make decisions as their characters would, which means they should optimize themselves to the best of their abilities, because they know that the world isn't going to go easy on them just because they're incompetent.

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.

The Grassy Gnoll · Apr 20, 2018

Luckily my table(s) are all filled with actors. So while they will try to be as optimal as possible for the wargaming side of things, they’re also invested in RP, so more likely to get sucked into the backstory development and character interactions - one player decided his gnome ranger was smitten with Sister Garaele from Phandalin. After one deliberate shove off a cliff of four bound-together and helpless bugbears left her singularly unimpressed, his character’s every waking move was to try and win her favour. Though he was optimised like a madman for archery, he’d often get up in melee to be near her and ‘protect’ her. He loooooved making those death saves.

The Crimson Binome · Apr 20, 2018

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.

I would care a lot more about optimizing my physical capabilities if I had to fight hobgoblins for a living, and I knew for a fact that there was a good chance of dying whenever I went to work. That situation is not really comparable to anything in modern society, though. The closest you see is things like military and the police having certain physical requirements in order to serve, because they know that the physical challenges you might face are not going to scale down to meet your competence deficiency.

If you look at ancient societies, people who had to fight for a living almost always cared about having decent armor and a weapon, and the ones who didn't care were much more likely to die. (Plenty of the ones who did care, and were as optimized as they could reasonably have been, also died.) Which, if you want to play a character who doesn't care that much, and have an increased chance of dying, then that is certainly an option you can take when playing under an impartial DM.

The Crimson Binome · Apr 20, 2018

Satyrn said:
Oh there'd definitely be a point to me doing that. I'll go on merrily adventuring unarmed and unarmored whike fighting the monsters you've lowered down to my level, but then - just before facing the No Longer Big Bad Evil Guy - I'll put on my plate, hoist my maul, and let loose with all the power I've been holding back on, pulping the villain you've wimpified because I played possum.

All the benefits of Power Gaming with none of the optimization!

If your DM is going so far as to scale everything to your capabilities, then the villain becomes un-wimpified as soon as you re-equip yourself. No matter what your stats or equipment, you have a 70% chance of hitting and it takes 3 hits for an enemy to drop (or 3 hits per party member if it's a solo boss).

nswanson27 · Apr 20, 2018

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?

5ekyu · Apr 20, 2018

Saelorn said:
I never look at the PCs before determining which monsters live in an area, or how those monsters are organized. At most, I'll keep in mind the concept of level advancement when I design a world, such that characters might progress through successively stronger areas as they move further away from civilization.

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. I would rather that the players make decisions as their characters would, which means they should optimize themselves to the best of their abilities, because they know that the world isn't going to go easy on them just because they're incompetent.

"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."

I have seen, ran, ran in many games where gms did take pc capabilitues into account when balancing encounters and have never seen fighters dropping armour.

So, when you say that *would* occur if *you* did it are you speaking from personal experience in your games?

dave2008 · Apr 20, 2018

Saelorn said:
I would care a lot more about optimizing my physical capabilities if I had to fight hobgoblins for a living, and I knew for a fact that there was a good chance of dying whenever I went to work. That situation is not really comparable to anything in modern society, though. The closest you see is things like military and the police having certain physical requirements in order to serve, because they know that the physical challenges you might face are not going to scale down to meet your competence deficiency.

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

The fact is people didn't or perhaps weren't able to optimize their physicality historically. Now, what would be interesting to find out is what did historical mercenaries do? That is closest historical equivalent to fantasy adventurers I can think of.

Saelorn said:
If you look at ancient societies, people who had to fight for a living almost always cared about having decent armor and a weapon, .

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.

The Crimson Binome · Apr 20, 2018

5ekyu said:
I have seen, ran, ran in many games where gms did take pc capabilitues into account when balancing encounters and have never seen fighters dropping armour.

So, when you say that *would* occur if *you* did it are you speaking from personal experience in your games?

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?

Power is Relative

AaronOfBarbaria

Adventurer

Satyrn

First Post

dave2008

Legend

The Grassy Gnoll

Explorer

The Crimson Binome

Hero

The Crimson Binome

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nswanson27

First Post

5ekyu

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dave2008

Legend

The Crimson Binome

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