Why D&D is like pr0n

[Doug McCrae]

I'm not sure... is anti-minmaxing (building a character that often needs to be revived and saved by the others, or a healer that cannot heal, so the other characters die) enhancing a roleplaying game?

Not it's not, and that's a good point. I see roleplaying games as very much a team game. The problem there is that the characters, the useful, and less useful, jar. They don't work in the same game, imo. It would be fine if all the PCs were of low effectiveness as the GM can lower the level of the challenges.

Some game systems allow for a much wider range of PC effectiveness than others. I've experienced some severe imbalance problems with the 'wide open' systems such as Champions and Mutants & Masterminds, to a lesser degree with 3e D&D.

Many groups are fine with that, they don't want balanced PCs. I do, so I think with the 'wide open' systems there needs to be clear direction from the GM at char gen time as to the expected levels of effectiveness.

And is it selfish to build a character that enables the other characters to hit better or makes the enemy weaker, so that the other characters are more likely to survive?

Good question. I believe that each PC should contribute more or less equally to the success of the mission. The support role is often wrongly overlooked as contributing less than the damage dealer. If we accept that it is just as much of a contribution then I think one does have to place limits on it. It's possible for support and debuff powers to be too good. The player probably isn't selfish, he just wants to help. But he might be helping too much.

I can give an example from a superhero game I played in, using Silver Age Sentinels d20. The BBEG in a oneoff was a Galactus type, with something like 7 attacks a round. One PC, in round 1, used a potent debuff power to reduce his attacks to 1 a round. That pretty much ended the fight right there. Too good, imo, way too good. One player's character shouldn't be winning the fight basically single-handed like that, imho. We later discovered we had the rule wrong, and the debuff power shouldn't have worked like that, but imo the GM should've nerfed it right there, perhaps ruling it reduced 'Galactus's' attacks to 6 with one application of the power, 5 with the second and so forth, which would've kept the challenge interesting.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I can see how there can be a conflict between roleplaying and min-maxing. One only has a finite amount of time to create one's character, to think about one's character. There's only a finite amount of time at the table.

If min-maxing takes up more of your time, more of your thought, then necessarily there will be less time left for thinking about your PC's personality,

And this is where I start wanting to drown "ROLE-players". My PC lives in a dangerous world and regularly fights for his life. He thinks about how he fights, what he fights, and what equipment he carries. To do anything else is a short way to a Darwin Award. (That doesn't mean that he makes the "right" decisions mechanically - he might want that big sword because it looks cool and he therefore thinks it's good). To not at least try to min-max your in character choices is to reject the premise of the game and as such is bad role-playing.

One could say that there's a basic minimum amount of time needed for both min-maxing and character stuff in order to meet acceptable standards. So long as you meet that minimum for both there's no problem.

Seconded.

And an anti-minmaxed character is one of two things that tempts me to PVP (the second being rogues who steal from the party and other griefing characters). I have on one occasion come very close to saying in character "I have risked my neck to save your incompetent ass for the last time. If you insist on endangering the rest of us by joining us hunting this dragon, I'm going to make sure you, for the first time in your miserable life, do something useful. I'm going to cast sleep on you, paint you in barbeque sauce, and then use you as bait. You'll need no more rescuing than you would normally, and we'll at least know when and be able to prepare for it. If you don't want that then stay at home and leave the job to the professionals."

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The thing is, building a character mechanically doesn't take that much time. Indeed there is a hypothetical limited amount of time that can be put to creating a character, but both mechanically creating and mentally creating a character should never take so much time as to reach that limit.

Beyond that, there ideally isn't a gap between the two. When you create the character mechanically, you are creating how you'd roleplay him at the same time. It's 3.5 and you make one of the big time charger builds - mechanically this means constantly sacrificing your AC to charge into battle has hard and as fast as you can to take out as many enemies as you can in one attack. This effects how you roleplay your character.

The mechanics and the character - the "roll" and the "role" - have never truly been separate. People simple declare that "those other guys" focus on the wrong one to create a false them vs us dichotomy. If you make a 4e bravara warlord who uses a big fullblade and rewards his allies for taking risks mechanically, you are also creating a character who lives in the front lines of battle and encourages those around him to act risky - fortune favors the bold! If you make a 3.x bard who focuses on casting spells and goes into sublime chord, you are giving up your combat abilities - changing how the character acts in game. If you can't see the potential difference in character between a bard who dances across the battle lines to harry foes, and one who stays in the back to sing spells at the enemy, then the problem is not with "rollplaying."

The idea that the two are separate does nothing but feed the worst - and weirdest - style of metagaming. It's the idea that some actions you do in game are in character, and others are not. Typically because it involves combat expertise, this person is telling you that combat in D&D may as well be a separate minigame because it doesn't effect how your character is. In other words? Pure "rollplaying."

 

[howandwhy99]

Awesome Topic!

1. Both are a social faux pas to admit to liking in public. "My favorite hobbies include..."

2. Being a big fan of either is a bad idea to bring up on a first date. "What do I do in my free time?"

3. There is a good chance you'll find both stashed in a military footlocker. "Hands off! Meatface!"

4. Both primarily cater to a male audience. "I'm more hardcore than you!"

5. A certain segment of customers are well known to have beards. "The two of us have been together a long time."

6. Everyone remembers the first time they purchased. "I wrapped it in plastic and keep it in my closet. It was falling apart due to overuse."

7. The size of one's collection often brings out a perverse sense of pride. "I'm not saying its' big now, but I've dumped a lot of stuff in the past."

8. Several times a year purveyors often find themselves in crummy hotel rooms. "Shake, Rattle, and Roll!"

9. You can get a whole lot more of it online. "I just found my new favorite website. <hidden link>"

10. Both are vastly improved with other people. "I just snorted Mountain Dew through my nose!"

 

[Kerranin]

I have on one occasion come very close to saying in character "I have risked my neck to save your incompetent ass for the last time. If you insist on endangering the rest of us by joining us hunting this dragon, I'm going to make sure you, for the first time in your miserable life, do something useful. I'm going to cast sleep on you, paint you in barbeque sauce, and then use you as bait. You'll need no more rescuing than you would normally, and we'll at least know when and be able to prepare for it. If you don't want that then stay at home and leave the job to the professionals."

You must have been quite angry at someone to want to say all that.

 

[Desdichado]

This has been debated forever. The idea that "true" roleplaying only occurs from a position of weakness or disadvantage, is hardly a new one. People poo poo a mechanically strong character as being munchkin or powergaming and the player often gets tarred with that brush as well. While, otoh, if I come to the table with a "one armed peasant with a drinking problem", I'm suddenly a role player and not a "roll player".

There's a very wide spectrum between playing a deliberately crocked player because you're a smug "true roleplayer" and creating a character that might be somewhat suboptimized because you're tired of the cliche of the dwarf fighter or the half orc barbarian or whatever and want to do an unusual concept because you think that it's more interesting, though.

I'm not quite sure what this thread is about though; ranting about a very small subset of very bad gamers, or an attempt to broadly brush an entire playstyle with the badwrongfun stank. I'd have said quite clearly that it started off as the latter, but has gradually backpedaled into something more like the former, which is certainly a bit more acceptable.

And an anti-minmaxed character is one of two things that tempts me to PVP (the second being rogues who steal from the party and other griefing characters). I have on one occasion come very close to saying in character "I have risked my neck to save your incompetent ass for the last time. If you insist on endangering the rest of us by joining us hunting this dragon, I'm going to make sure you, for the first time in your miserable life, do something useful. I'm going to cast sleep on you, paint you in barbeque sauce, and then use you as bait. You'll need no more rescuing than you would normally, and we'll at least know when and be able to prepare for it. If you don't want that then stay at home and leave the job to the professionals."

Should I dredge up my "D&D. Serious business." macro again?

 

[Neonchameleon]

There's a very wide spectrum between playing a deliberately crocked player because you're a smug "true roleplayer" and creating a character that might be somewhat suboptimized because you're tired of the cliche of the dwarf fighter or the half orc barbarian or whatever and want to do an unusual concept because you think that it's more interesting, though.

Absolutely. I'm talking specifically about the crocked players.

Should I dredge up my "D&D. Serious business." macro again?

Only if you have nothing useful to add - the normal reason in my experience people bring out image macros. And seem to think that griefing the party is absolutely fine (as playing a deliberately utterly useless character who gets the party into messes is). Me, I consider griefing to be anti-social.

 

[Desdichado]

Only if you have nothing useful to add - the normal reason in my experience people bring out image macros. And seem to think that griefing the party is absolutely fine (as playing a deliberately utterly useless character who gets the party into messes is). Me, I consider griefing to be anti-social.

Not arguing that necessarily, but I also consider threatening another player's character because they prefer a different playstyle than you to be antisocial.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Not arguing that necessarily, but I also consider threatening another player's character because they prefer a different playstyle than you to be antisocial.

Oh, indeed. Which is why I only came close to saying that rather than actually said it. That said, his antics were threatening my character almost as directly if not as explicitely. What would your call have been?

 

[MarkB]

Awesome Topic!

1. Both are a social faux pas to admit to liking in public. "My favorite hobbies include..."

2. Being a big fan of either is a bad idea to bring up on a first date. "What do I do in my free time?"

3. There is a good chance you'll find both stashed in a military footlocker. "Hands off! Meatface!"

4. Both primarily cater to a male audience. "I'm more hardcore than you!"

5. A certain segment of customers are well known to have beards. "The two of us have been together a long time."

6. Everyone remembers the first time they purchased. "I wrapped it in plastic and keep it in my closet. It was falling apart due to overuse."

7. The size of one's collection often brings out a perverse sense of pride. "I'm not saying its' big now, but I've dumped a lot of stuff in the past."

8. Several times a year purveyors often find themselves in crummy hotel rooms. "Shake, Rattle, and Roll!"

9. You can get a whole lot more of it online. "I just found my new favorite website. <hidden link>"

10. Both are vastly improved with other people. "I just snorted Mountain Dew through my nose!"

11. All you really need to get started is an active imagination and plenty of lead in your pencil, but that doesn't stop people from splashing out on loads of gadgets and literature to enhance the experience.