Why is it a bad thing to optimise?

[Dice4Hire]

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

Good point. You could start your own forum and post exclusively yourself, too?

Or start a restaurant and be chef, waiter and customer.

Or a hotel,

Or ... the list goes on.

Give it a shot

 

[Zelda Themelin]

It's true balanced parties are nicer to dm. However, if I have to choose what is worse character, it's one that is underpowered. And if one or two players can't make effective characters and refuse help to make them, I let them play that way, and I don't listen if they whine that other players have "overpowered characters"=normal effective. I've actually met two people who like not only "one handed peasant stuff" and demand that other players would create equal losers, or it's unfair.

And nothing is worse than underpowered party, especially if you are running some adventure path. They just don't survive it as it is, and downgrading all encounters is much harder work, than adding something for challenge.

Mind you most people who prefer to play underpowered "roleplaying characters" also tend to hate playing as adventurers.

 

[Elf Witch]

Why isn't the onus on other people to bring more optimised characters instead? I find it far more annoying to struggle through skill challenges 'cause the guy with the high Charisma and low Strength chose all Strength-based skills. I find it frustrating when combats run overly long because one dude can't hit the side of a barn and so whether striker, defender, leader or controller, isn't fulfilling his role in the party.

Isn't it equally as selfish to not bother to create a decently made character? Why should I carry their weight?


I got the Stormwind Fallacy name from the Stormwind Fallacy thread on the CharOp forum on the WotC boards: Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible


But I get enjoyment out of making a character that can do cool stuff in the game. And when I do that cool stuff, this is somehow ruining other people's fun? How about they pick up THEIR game? I'm more than happy to offer advice or help in building characters. If they're not enjoying the game because their character sucks and fails at everything that I succeed it, how is that my fault?

I get irritated with lame ducks. I used to play with a guy who loved making them because he loved the idea of playing a fighter with an 8 strength or a wizard with an intelligence of 10 who would ever only throw cantrips.

It made the rest of the party have to carry his lame butt and made our jobs harder. I love role playing but we are still playing a game and while in fiction a lame butt wizard might be a good read because he has author immunity it does not translate to a game. So I consider lame ducks to be selfish only thinking of their own enjoyment.

On the other hand I have seen some powergamers make these incredible builds that just blow everyone else way at the table. Even other characters who are made really well.

What tends to happen in this situation is the DM ends up making the challenges harder to deal with the powergamer and the rest of the party gets their butts kicked all the time. Or things become a cake walk and the game becomes watching powergamer play blow through the encounters and the rest start to feel like henchmen.

My number one rule here about not being a dick comes to play. If your character build is so much more powerful then everyone else and they have not made lame ducks and have decently optimized characters then yes I think the powergamer may need to work with the DM to bring his power level done a little. It is kind of selfish not to.

There is not a one size fits all here to this solution.

 

[GSHamster]

In my experience (mostly from an MMO point of view) most people who are against optimizing aren't really against optimizing per se. Rather, they are against other people optimizing for them. If they were the ones to come up with the "optimal" build and reveal it to the world, then they would be happy.

But it just doesn't work that way. My rule of thumb is to assume that there are people who are ten times better at this game than I am. And there are people who are ten times worse. The better people are going to come up with optimizations faster than I will. The worse people will not see what I see, and just perform at a much lower level, making grouping with them destined to failure.

Here are a couple of posts I wrote on my blog on optimality (WoW perspective, so doesn't entirely match D&D, but you may find it interesting to look at a different game with similar problems):

Blessing of Kings: Optimality

Blessing of Kings: Optimizing and Fun

 

[Oryan77]

Strange that you brought this topic up at this time. I know I'm blabbering here, but I just recently dealt with this exact issue and I figured I'd give an explanation from my perspective.

I just started a new campaign with half of the group being new to the group. After the first session, I parted ways with a player for this exact thing.

I agree that just because a person knows how to build a good character doesn't mean he can't also roleplay it.

I find nothing wrong with min-maxing to make an optimized PC. If that is what interests you, and you aren't making some insanely unfair & godlike PC (aka powergaming), then it's the smart thing to do. The thing is, I'm just tired of dealing with players that do make optimized PCs. Powergamers are simply not allowed in my game. But after DMing for 12 years, I'm pretty exhausted when it comes to managing a game. I now don't even want to deal with an optimized PC in the game anymore.

I'm to the point where I realize that in order for me to enjoy DMing, I want it to be pretty laid back. I don't want to have to tweak encounters to deal with a PCs "trick" or the fact that he is tweaked out enough that he can thwart most any threat that I throw his way. I also don't want to hear other players going, "Dang man, how are you able to do all of that?" when they are only level 1.

In this recent case, this player was a min-maxer, but I thought he was also a good roleplayer. He didn't seem like a problem player at all. In fact, he had a moment where he began to metagame and when I pointed it out, he handled the situation just fine.

He picked a class known to be considered more powerful than core classes. I was fine with that since I didn't think the power increase was much different. But in the first session, at level 1, I'm already hearing other players balking at all the "crazy" things he is already doing at level 1. Then I realize that the power level is made a bit more strong by the player choosing a good mix of options. Basically, at level 1, being able to heal himself, gain DR, gain additional weapon damage, gain reroll chances, etc etc and being limited to doing this only per encounter rather than per day. Nothing wrong with that, but it does stand out more compared to players that stuck mostly to standard PHB options or options that were more roleplaying choices than optimization choices.

It didn't really bother me until I'm told after the game that he admits that this class is more powerful at early levels, but it gets weaker at higher levels. So to compensate at higher levels, he'll be dipping into other classes to keep up with his power level. To top it off, he also wants to use a certain weapon known to give quite an advantage (and bogs down combat) and he will get to use it by dipping into these other classes.

I understand there is nothing wrong with this. He wasn't powergaming at all. But he was definitely making choices that go far and beyond what the other players will be doing. These choices are going to cause me more work as a DM both during the game and outside of the game if I want encounters that will be challenging to him & his "tricks". I've DMed long enough and dealt with enough of this sort of thing to recognize what I will be up against. A basic encounter from a published adventure (even a lot of BBEG encounters) is not going to hold its own against an optimized PC. Like it or not, an optimized PC changes the groups CR even if the PC is of the same level as the other PCs. I no longer want to gauge what the parties actual CR is because of a single PC.

After stating my displeasure of hearing about this future build, I'm pretty sure he was annoyed with me. I don't think he understood where I was coming from though. I think he felt more like I was saying his optimized build was a powergamey build (which isn't what I was saying). Going our separate ways was for the best. I'm sorry I couldn't have catered to his gaming preference, but I'm just not interested in dealing with that type of PC anymore.

This preference was enforced even more after I played as a player in a new group the following week with a DM that was extremely easy going and low-key, along with several players that were just as easy going and low key. None of them were hardcore anything. No optimizers, no powergamers, no extreme roleplayers, no rules lawyers, no tacticians, and no whiners. I want what that DM has, a low maintenance group.

 

[Kzach]

I want what that DM has, a low maintenance group.

There's no such thing. What you experienced was a fever-dream brought on by high-expectations and the stress and pressure of your completely normal group not only not meeting those expectations, but by failing them dismally, like all groups do

 

[Kzach]

I'm noticing a few people saying "powergaming" and "min-maxing" as if they're different from optimising. I wonder where I fall in that mix. As I said, I don't spend much time on CO forums but I do go there just to check out what's what and see if there's anything interesting going on. What I find is that they have come to many of the same conclusions I have on my own. I still end up learning a trick or two, some of which I then use, but I balk at the cheesy builds that end up being some weird hybrid with bizarre mix of abilities that combine into a super-hulk.

Then again, the CharOppers don't like those builds either. That kind of thing isn't generally used in games other than to test them and see how badly they can break a game. They're not meant for regular consumption.

But on the other hand, if I build a thief, say, then I get Gritty Sergeant 'cause it just makes sense. I get Backstabber, 'cause it's a good combo. And I get the Mercenary theme, 'cause why not? And then I make a cool character backstory out of it and enjoy kicking arse with it.

Is that powergaming or optimising or min/maxing? I think it's just making good choices that suit the character's role and make it effective in combat and skill challenges. Now... the fact that by level 2, with the right magical items, I can do a 6d8+39+1d6 damage attack in one turn doesn't mean I broke the game, does it?

 

[nightwyrm]

I wonder why "Stormwind" got attached to it. The name makes me think it's a World of Warcraft reference, but I'm not sure how optimization vs. roleplay has anything to do with the city of Stormwind in WoW.

Stormwind was the name of a poster at the WotC boards who pointed out that a player's ability to roleplay has no effect on his ability to make a powerful character.

The Stormwind Fallacy is basically saying that "if your character is powerful, you're not a real roleplayer" is a false dilemma.

 

[Mailanka]

I'm relatively new to the EN World forums (Hello!), and it's interesting how different the culture of the boards here are. When the OP discusses an optimized character, people immediately launch into a discussion of how mechanical balance is important. Given the amount of D&D I see around here, I suppose that's not surprising: D&D is often about a team of heroes working together, with careful balance required for the pre-fabbed encounters to work properly (it is possible to balance an encounter for wildly different power levels, but it requires careful customization rather than grabbing one of those intricately designed monsters from the monster's manual. No surprise then that you see more people, for example, advocating wildly different power levels on the SJGames boards than here).

But I think this discussion has missed something vital in the OP's post:

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.

*snip*

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.

The problem here isn't that his character is "too powerful" for the group. The problem is that he has people looking down on him, essentially, for "roll-playing rather than role-playing" or some such nonsense.

Here's why I personally think this happens: Early RPGs (and many RPGs today) had... problems. The mechanics of the game often didn't match up to the fluff of the description. A great example of this is Conscience from Vampire: the Masquerade. Vampire is all about waxing angsty whenever you accidentally killed someone and seeking redemption, and according to the fluff, a character with lots of Conscience really values his Humanity. However, mechanically, Conscience prevents Humanity loss whenever, say, murdering little old grannies, and sufficient loss of Humanity results in loss of character, therefore, logically, if we wanted to play a character who murdered lots of little old grannies, we'd need a high Conscience (and likewise, if we played a character who really clung to his Humanity and never violated its tenets, then you can get away with a very low Conscience).

You have, broadly speaking, two sorts of people that'll play a game like that. The first sort will see that, according to the fluff, his angsty vampire who values Humanity should have a high Conscience, or that a jerk vampire would have a low Conscience, and stats his character accordingly. He's using his stats to describe his character. Another player, someone like the OP, would look at the logical consequences of what the stats actually do, how the rules actually work, irregardless of what they say they do, and will stat his character according to that logic: A humane vampire with low Conscience and a vicious vampire with high Conscience.

I can list a litany of games that have these problems, from 7th Sea that actively punished you for taking anything that gave you character or let you buy into the setting, or Scion, which punished you for buying anything other than Legend.

The problem with the latter player, the smart player, in the eyes of the former, the descriptive player, is that he's carefully outlining just how broken and screwed up their system of choice is, which is a pretty unforgivable sin. When you show the Vampire ST just how messed up Conscience really is, especially if he hasn't figured this out on his own, he may react by shooting the messenger. If he already knows, this might result in a second sin: The players might realize that this game is totally broken, but have a sort of unspoken agreement not to push the system. They'll build their characters according to the fluff, nobody will build them in such a way that they exploit the huge, gaping flaws in the system, and everyone gets a long great, right up until someone bulls in and tears up the delicate, tissue-paper thin bandaging they've placed over the system.

There's a lot of games where this isn't a problem (and those tend to be my systems of choice), games that reward you for emulating the genre the game is trying to create, and veterans of those games might not realize that there's an entire swathe of players out there that enjoy evocative-yet-broken systems (like Scion, 7th Sea or Vampire: the Masquerade) despite their dysfunction, and accidentally cross lines they didn't know existed. And even if you're not playing a game like that, there's a strong chance that you're playing with a group that has come to resent characters who are built with mechanical competence in mind simply as a knee-jerk reaction from their days of playing such messy systems.

Or so has been my experience.

 

[Asmo]

My solution to players that just want to have fun and doesn´t care about optimizing and reading books are pre-made characters.
When we level we check together what the player wants and roll with that.
Been running Crypt of the Everflame with the pregens and all are lvl 4 and having a blast.

Asmo