Why is it a bad thing to optimise?

[Kzach]

Firstly I'd like to state that there are all sorts of optimisations. I am not talking about the gamebreaking builds that you see on charop boards, I'm simply talking about making intelligent decisions about your character's choices.

I don't actually spend much time at CO boards or even in CO discussions. 99% of the characters I build, I do so myself, sitting at the Character Builder for hours, scouring through options and finding fun combinations. This is my hobby. I like making characters and I like making them effective and fun. I find fun to be synergies in character abilities. Simple things like having the background "Adventurer's Scion" which allows you to reroll monster knowledge checks, and synergising that with a mage that has all the monster knowledge skills trained.

And yet I constantly find that I'm penalised and punished for this behaviour. Not only this, but I also constantly encounter the Stormwind Fallacy, whereby people believe that just because I bring a well-made character into the game, that I can't roleplay or that I won't have an interesting character history.

I'm the type of person who can write a twenty page essay on my characters histories. And not only that, but I am a damn good roleplayer. I know this because I get told it everytime I DM and people comment on how cool my NPC's are because I roleplayed them so well.

But as a player, people can't seem to see past the stats. It's bizarre. Why should I be penalised for making intelligent choices in character creation? Why should someone who makes dumb or illogical decisions in character creation be elevated on some imaginary pedestal of roleplaying brilliance?

Roleplaying and optimising are not enemies. I consider a person to have both abilities to be two of the five hallmarks of a good player.

 

[Hussar]

If you aren't a one legged, one eyed peasant with a spork, you aren't a "real" roleplayer.

Yeah, it bugs the crap out of me too. As if somehow the ability to, oh, I don't know, READ THE MANUAL was somehow too bourgeois for roleplayers. Grr.

 

[OnlineDM]

My take: Balanced power parties are ideal.

If you have a party that's all similarly optimized, there's no problem at all. I imagine if you're playing in a competitive game like a convention delve or the upcoming Lair Assault program for 4e, no one will complain about any level of optimization because the goal is to be as optimized as possible for the task at hand.

But if you're playing with a party of PCs that are more "average" in power level, put together by players who DON'T spend hours with the Character Builder and find all of the cool combinations, your character is going to outshine theirs. That leads to a less-fun game where either the challenges are trivially easy thanks to the optimized characters, or the challenges are reasonable for the optimized characters while the non-optimized characters either die or flee or take cover.

A party with an imbalanced power level (at least in 4e, which is the game I know best by far) is going to be less fun than one where the PCs all have a reasonably similar ability to contribute to the party's success.

Edit: To be clear, nowhere did I say anything about the ability of optimizers versus non-optimizers to roleplay. I was trying to answer the question in the thread title. I don't assume that optimizers can't roleplay any more than I assume that non-optimizers can.

 

[Herschel]

It's because D&D isn't about combat. ;-)

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Firstly I'd like to state that there are all sorts of optimisations. I am not talking about the gamebreaking builds that you see on charop boards, I'm simply talking about making intelligent decisions about your character's choices.

Leave out RP for the moment. That's nothing to do with stats.

A DM's job is hard. Balancing is hard. The classes are mostly balanced, but not completely. Player skill is not balanced with each other, neither tactical nor build. (In my own campaign, all the players use the Character Builder, which I hate as DM because it makes it nearly impossible to keep out material. I'm not even talking about unbalanced material, but unfamiliar material. You don't need to buy the book; the powers are there already, so the old DM tactic of not using book they don't have doesn't really work.)

So it sounds like your PC is not balanced with the other characters. It isn't fair to get your character nerfed, but you need to see it from the DM's point of view - if you're stronger than the other PCs, then the campaign has a balance issue.

I would suggest helping the other players optimize, and tell the DM to use more vicious monsters/tactics.

TLDR: What Online DM said.

 

[Hussar]

My take: Balanced power parties are ideal.

If you have a party that's all similarly optimized, there's no problem at all. I imagine if you're playing in a competitive game like a convention delve or the upcoming Lair Assault program for 4e, no one will complain about any level of optimization because the goal is to be as optimized as possible for the task at hand.

But if you're playing with a party of PCs that are more "average" in power level, put together by players who DON'T spend hours with the Character Builder and find all of the cool combinations, your character is going to outshine theirs. That leads to a less-fun game where either the challenges are trivially easy thanks to the optimized characters, or the challenges are reasonable for the optimized characters while the non-optimized characters either die or flee or take cover.

A party with an imbalanced power level (at least in 4e, which is the game I know best by far) is going to be less fun than one where the PCs all have a reasonably similar ability to contribute to the party's success.

Edit: To be clear, nowhere did I say anything about the ability of optimizers versus non-optimizers to roleplay. I was trying to answer the question in the thread title. I don't assume that optimizers can't roleplay any more than I assume that non-optimizers can.

But that's not the issue here though. He's not talking about making some insane monstrocity that breaks game balance. He's talking about making a mechanically competent character.

Why should a player who is mechanically competent be forced to play down to the level of players who cannot be bothered to spend even a minor amount of time making a character which is baseline?

In our current 4e campaign, we have a paladin whose character is barely competent. He's sunk all his resources into strength, barely any defense, no Con and absolutely no ranged or area capabilites whatsoever. Granted, it's a paladin, so, I'm not expecting miracles here. But, having had to play his character for the past couple of sessions, I've realized just how incredibly weak this character is.

Now, I'm also playing a defender, a fighter. I'm quite easily dealing almost twice as much damage per round as he is, simply because I've built a competent character. Note, not insane, I'm not that mechanically minded. Just competent.

But, you and (Psi)SeveredHead seem to advocating that I roll back my character, make him less effective, so that I don't overshadow his character.

Why?

 

[OnlineDM]

No, I'm advocating that parties be of a similar power level. If the one outlier is someone who's way underpowered, that PC should be brought UP to the level of the rest of the party.

If the outlier is on the high end, then yes, they should voluntarily move back onto the rest of the party's power curve.

If it's half and half, the DM needs to do some thinking and talking with the players to figure out how to get things more or less even.

 

[Kzach]

I would suggest helping the other players optimize, and tell the DM to use more vicious monsters/tactics.

I would be totally fine with this but IME even hinting at this gets other players all up in arms. The amount of times I've made innocuous suggestions like maybe upping a fighter's strength (in 4e) to 18 instead of 14 might help the player who is constantly missing with his attacks or that maybe using a +3 proficiency weapon instead of a +2 or maybe taking Expertise, and then been utterly mauled by player and DM alike for it, is one of the reasons I made this thread.

Heck, if I could build everyone's PC's and control their actions in the game, everything would be perfect!

 

[Hussar]

I can see that OnlineDM. My only beef is generally that I've seen far too much of the "well, I'm a real roleplayer, so I don't need to know the rules" attitude. It tends to get my back up in a hurry.

 

[Tuft]

And yet I constantly find that I'm penalised and punished for this behaviour. Not only this, but I also constantly encounter the Stormwind Fallacy, whereby people believe that just because I bring a well-made character into the game, that I can't roleplay or that I won't have an interesting character history.

IMHO, its not "Stormwind", but "Goldilock" and the "Red Queen".


Let's assume that the GM runs "Goldilock" encounters, i.e."Neither too hard, nor too easy, but just right", a k a "balanced encounters". After all, too easy encounters are boring, and too hard ones are disruptive, right?

In that case, if player capabilities rises, then monster capabilities will be raised by the DM to match, to keep the encounters at comfortable Goldilocks temperature. This brings in the Red Queen from "Alice through the Looking Glass", who had to run as hard as she could to stay in place; you expend a lot of resources,but the net effect is that the situation is unchanged.

It can be enough with one character to start a Red Queen race. Now, the others know that the race is meaningless, but they have to participate anyway, since it is the one falls behind in the race that is eaten by the wolves, not the one that started it.

Thus, bringing in a "too good" character is not altruistic, as it does not help the party, but selfish, as the consequence is that some other poor bastard will bite it. Thus, the resentment.

Now, assume that the "DM" does not Goldilock his encounters, but keeps at a pre-set difficulty level. No matter what, come hell and high water, he wont budge from it. Well, then too optimized characters will make those encounters too easy, and thus boring.


Edit: OnlineDM beat me to it.