Optimizers, oh my!

[Ahnehnois]

I think "optimization" is really only a problem when it passes some arbitrary threashold into munchkinism. Your 3.0 "bag of rats" fighter is optimized by abusing the rules, and clearly Whirlwind Attack was poorly written and needed to be fixed. When your character is taking actions that the rules allow, but which make no sense within the game world, that is decidedly suboptimal.

People putting their character creation resources into places they think will be useful isn't a problem.

In a well designed system the difference between the power a character that someone comes up with with no knowledge of the game at all but picking what looks as if it fits a strong concept and a completely min/maxed character should be low. If the difference is too high, this is because the system is fundamentally broken somewhere.

I never understand this viewpoint. A well-intentioned amateur should be just as good at a game as a seasoned expert? I suppose that if I pick up a tennis racket, I should be able to beat Roger Federer 50% of the time as long as I'm, you know, trying to win. If not, tennis is broken. It's a shame I wasted all those hours reading D&D books and learning the game.

Where the game is actually broken is when it takes options that should be equally valid, and makes some of them better than others. For example, a fighter gains more benefit from Intelligence (skills) or Wisdom (saves) than Charisma, which defies the notion of what most of us think as a fighter; they should be able to be great leaders and confident heroes as well as seasoned tacticians, but the rules don't support it. So you see a bunch of uncharismatic fighters, because taking rational steps to optimize your character leads you down that path. Character optimization leads to the same (boring) results, where the game should be encouraging diversity and nuanced choices. That's the game being broken.

 

[delericho]

I also have a strong reason for disliking the constraints "don't optimise" puts on roleplaying. If I fundamentally care what I am doing at anything I am going to try to optimise.

Actually, while I'm on the subject...

I'm actually much the same, just on the other side of the screen. I want to be playing with an edition that's as close to 'perfect' as possible, so when I see that something is broken, my impulse is to try to fix it.

The problem is that 3e can't be fixed by any meaningful set of house rules. Once you drill right down to the roots of the issues, it becomes apparent that any genuine fix will effectively mean a complete rewrite of the system. And I don't have the time (or, honestly, the expertise) to do that.

So I'm in the position where I have to reluctantly live with the problems. Despite its flaws, 3e remains the "best fit" system for me.

That's part of why the highlighting of flaws by people like the CharOp group (and also Edition Warriors on the other side) is so problematic - it's not that I can deny that those flaws exist, it's that they do exist and there's nothing I can do about them.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

* To design a car in GURPS Vehicles start with the volume of the car in cubic feet. Then use that to work out the approximate surface area in square feet (the square of the cube root) - and base the weight of your structure on the number of square feet the structure takes and the material you use. The next step is to decide how many kilowatts you want your engine to run to. (I'm not making any of this up).

I freaking love those kinds of rules, I mean, not to play with in every game, but when they come up infrequently enough they're AWESOME. Spaceships in Traveller are another great example.

 

[CroBob]

I think he's mostly discussing that a newcomer to the hobby could be turned off if the experienced people at the table are more effective in every way than his character, simply because he didn't know what he was doing. Granted, you should work with the DM at least, and the other players optimally, in order to make your character, but that's not guaranteed. Making an effective character should be easy to granted, even if they're not as effective as the one the more experienced player made.

 

[Bluenose]

I never understand this viewpoint. A well-intentioned amateur should be just as good at a game as a seasoned expert? I suppose that if I pick up a tennis racket, I should be able to beat Roger Federer 50% of the time as long as I'm, you know, trying to win. If not, tennis is broken. It's a shame I wasted all those hours reading D&D books and learning the game.

That is clearly not what is being asked for. To use your analogy, the game of Tennis doesn't favour Roger Federer over Rafa Nadal when it comes to who wins. D&D should not be a game where someone who has a character concept like Beowulf can do the obvious things and be awesome, while someone who has the character concept Achilles has to jump through a huge number of hoops in optimising the character to get them up to the same level. It should not be desirable for someone to "Win" because they can spend lots of time searching out that last extra bonus. It should be desirable that someone sit down and play without having to do that, knowing that they won't be vastly far behind someone who has.

 

[GhostBear]

It should not be desirable for someone to "Win" because they can spend lots of time searching out that last extra bonus. It should be desirable that someone sit down and play without having to do that, knowing that they won't be vastly far behind someone who has.

This is the reason my guys are extremely judicious about content from splat books. Splat books (especially when combined with unrestricted multiclassing) are the two biggest enemies of game balance.

 

[Ahnehnois]

That is clearly not what is being asked for. To use your analogy, the game of Tennis doesn't favour Roger Federer over Rafa Nadal when it comes to who wins.

It favors something, doesn't it? It favors whoever has more talent or puts more work into winning, among other things. If it didn't favor anything, it would be like Chutes and Ladders, and the outcomes would be completely random.

What is being asked for is that D&D, despite being a game should not do that. In essence, that D&D should not reward skill. That someone who has more knowledge of the rules or puts more work into a character should not see any benefit for doing so in the game. I disagree.

It should not be desirable for someone to "Win" because they can spend lots of time searching out that last extra bonus. It should be desirable that someone sit down and play without having to do that, knowing that they won't be vastly far behind someone who has.

That sounds like a fun game, but it doesn't sound remotely recognizable as D&D, or any rpg that I've ever heard of. Even in simple one-book games, there's a lot of system mastery. That's part of the appeal of D&D: trying to make the most powerful character you can using every little advantage the rulebooks offer.

 

[Bluenose]

That sounds like a fun game, but it doesn't sound remotely recognizable as D&D, or any rpg that I've ever heard of. Even in simple one-book games, there's a lot of system mastery. That's part of the appeal of D&D: trying to make the most powerful character you can using every little advantage the rulebooks offer.

Try to make a more powerful character in Traveller by using every little advantage the rule books offer, because what you get out of a career is quite random.Try to make a more powerful character in Runequest because advancement gets harder as your skill increases. Try to make a Heroquest character more powerful through taking advantage of the system because the system works against you to limit a combination of power and versatility in the same ability. And those are just three RPG examples, two extremely well known.

 

[hamstertamer]

Well in my opinion, power-build optimizers tend to be poor role players and they tend to be bad at organic-tactics. They also tend to be frustrated if they don't get to dominate in combat encounters continually throughout the session. From their point of view, what's the point of a power build without lots of combat encounters to show off.

 

[CroBob]

Well in my opinion, power-build optimizers tend to be poor role players and they tend to be bad at organic-tactics. They also tend to be frustrated if they don't get to dominate in combat encounters continually throughout the session. From their point of view, what's the point of a power build without lots of combat encounters to show off.

Then you're hanging out with the wrong ones.

I do have some questions, though; What is "organic tactics? Exactly what do these players want to happen in combat such that they dominate? I mean, wanting your abilities to work isn't a whole lot to ask, but I've heard some people indirectly claim it is.