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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7401340" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>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 <em>only</em> thing that these people care about, even if they do have <em>more</em> 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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>less</em> optimized than their compatriot; they've just shifted the work-life balance a little bit further away from work.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>I want the PC fighter to have a <em>reason</em> to wear the best armor they can wear, and to wield the best weapon they have access to, instead of <em>not caring</em> 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 <em>encouraged</em> to anti-optimize, because reducing lethality across-the-board favors the party in the long run.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7401340, member: 6775031"] 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 [I]only[/I] thing that these people care about, even if they do have [I]more[/I] 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 [I]less[/I] 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. 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 [I]reason[/I] to wear the best armor they can wear, and to wield the best weapon they have access to, instead of [I]not caring[/I] 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 [I]encouraged[/I] to anti-optimize, because reducing lethality across-the-board favors the party in the long run.) [/QUOTE]
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