If it's an obvious choice then it's broken

[Kzach]

Not to mention, most 'CharOp' players who maximize damage don't know how to think outside of a very small box.

This is so far from the truth it's seriously not amusing. I don't know where you've developed such a negative attitude towards players who maximise their character's potential because IME, they tend towards being the most creative and invested in both the game and their character. I'd take one optimiser over five 'role' players any day.

People who class themselves as 'role' players, IME tend to be elitist snobs who look down on anyone who tries to make the most out of their character. If your character doesn't have some majorly annoying flaw, then somehow you're not a 'true' roleplayer. These types of people tend to focus on themselves and how they can dominate the attention of the DM in every circumstance and actively sabotage the tactics of other players in combat 'because it's what the character would do'.

I can roleplay with the best of them and consider myself to be a roleplaying min/maxer. But if I had to choose which camp I'd rather be associated with for pure enjoyment of a game that isn't ruined by overbearing personalities who insist on roleplaying every minute bit of gameplay, I'll happily sit with the charoppers.

 

[DracoSuave]

This is so far from the truth it's seriously not amusing. I don't know where you've developed such a negative attitude towards players who maximise their character's potential because IME, they tend towards being the most creative and invested in both the game and their character. I'd take one optimiser over five 'role' players any day.

I should have specified. I don't have a problem with players that try to create effective characters. None at all. I figure that's a part of roleplaying in a game of power fantasy.

What I take issue with is the idea that there's only one metric in doing so. Many CharOprs only care about damage. Nothing else. Just DPR. And as a result, they will denigrate builds that do not maximize damage. Even of those builds DO maximize other aspects of the game which are effective and fun for the player.

I also have a problem with MinMaxing for the sake of MinMaxing. If you're making a swashbuckler type character, and take options that evoke swashbucklingness, and minmax that way, hey, cool. But if you just take a hodgepodge of abilities, and don't have some sort of credible reason why this hodgepodge could exist... it's not as cool.

Take Linguist... a suboptimal feat according to most CharOp people cause it doesn't do DPR or nothing. In a game of political mechinations between cultures that do not share a language... it's the minmax choice. And that is okay.

There's a difference between maximising effectiveness within your role (which is good) and maximising damage for the same of maximising damage and calling anything else 'suboptimal.'

 

[Destil]

As far as feats, this is a serious problem. Feats have often been used to 'fix' thing like attack scaling (expertise) and strength paladins (mighty challenge). Instead of actually fixing the issue.

And since the fixes tend to be super-powerful compared to what a feat really should be doing (really, none of the PHB1 feats are overpowered at all on their own), yeah. This basically crowds out 30% of the other feats, and the other 60% are terrible because they're super narrow or just poorly thought out to fill pages in dragon.

For classes/builds/powers/magic items I think this is less of a problem (magic items approach feats in having useless chaff, but not so much from fixing mechanical issues and more from just a glut of badly designed magic items).

 

[tiornys]

What I take issue with is the idea that there's only one metric in doing so. Many CharOprs only care about damage. Nothing else. Just DPR. And as a result, they will denigrate builds that do not maximize damage. Even of those builds DO maximize other aspects of the game which are effective and fun for the player.

I absolutely agree with your stance against the form of "CharOp" that only cares about damage. However, I'd like to defend the most prominent group of CharOp'ers, namely the regular posters to the WotC Character Optimization forum. The only place on that forum where you'll find a sole focus on damage is in the DPR Kings thread and related theoretical optimization threads. Beyond that, the community is well aware that each role has different priorities, and that even Strikers care about more than just damage.

There's a difference between theoretical optimization and practical optimization, and any competent CharOp'er will take a negative view toward anyone's attempt to force the former onto the latter.

t~

 

[Mengu]

I also don't like the fact that once you choose a build option, your feats particularly tend to choose themselves through heroic, despite the thousands of feats in the game.

For instance, I decide to play a dragonborn fire dragon sorcerer, 5 out of my 6 heroic feats are auto-chosen, superior implement, expertise, focus, DIS, Unarmored Agility. These are all pretty much must haves for me to keep up with my striker duties and survival. Which leaves me 1 feat to play with in heroic tier. Feats on my wishlist for that last spot would be things like Arcane Familiar Dragonling, Bardic Dilettante, White Lotus Riposte, Superior Will, War Wizard's Staf, etc. And there is absolutely no room for other fun stuff like Daunting Breath, Champion of the Bloody Circle, Skill Power, and the like, not to mention retraining one of the heroic tiers for a paragon feat when I hit level 11.

I don't think any of the obvious choices are broken, I'm just expected to have them, because when I don't, my party members wonder why my attack and damage stinks, or why they have to constantly heal me, or why I run out of surges so fast. As such, they become non-options through pier pressure.

Brings us back to feat system overhaul, where the design space can be separated between "must have" feats (Call them combat feats) and "other" feats (maybe even have multiple categories of these like utility feats, skill feats, etc).

 

[Herschel]

I think the solution is to realize and accept that we are only probably about 5% of the gaming audience, and that the other 95% doesn't know or care about supposed "better" builds, or "better" feats, or "better" anything. Optimizing, or really putting in the time to analyze certain parts of the game compared to other parts of the game, are things that only a select few of us more "hardcore" rpg players bother with or care enough to actually find out.

So yeah... every RPG will have their CharOps militants who will assign the gold, blue, black and red ratings to every facet of the game... but it's nothing that the designers need to be overly concerned with. Most players just don't give a damn about that sort of thing.

Must spread XP.

 

[DEFCON 1]

For instance, I decide to play a dragonborn fire dragon sorcerer, 5 out of my 6 heroic feats are auto-chosen, superior implement, expertise, focus, DIS, Unarmored Agility.

See, I wouldn't call this a flaw with *the* game... I'd call it a flaw with *your* game. If your DM runs a game such that you feel you are forced into these five choices because otherwise you're just screwed when it comes to surviving... then in my opinion your DM needs to take a long, hard look into what he's doing and what he's throwing at you. You in no way should have to take any of these feats, if your DM is running a game meant for everyone at the table to have fun.

Now yes... I know the standard response to this is that other players at your table have characters built in such a way that in order for the DM to "challenge" those characters he has to amp everything up... otherwise these other characters just run roughshod over everything he throws at them. But like DracoSuave said... that's a problem of your group (players and DM included) who are not working together to produce a result that everyone is happy with. They don't need to min/max as heavily as they are if that's truly what is throwing everything off. And the DM doesn't need to just add stronger monsters in order to raise the level of challenge. Everyone needs to work together to create a game that everyone is happy with.

WotC can't and shouldn't be concerned with their game when your game chooses to play the way it does. They just can't. Because how your group plays the game does not match everyone elses.

 

[Locutus Zero]

See, I wouldn't call this a flaw with *the* game... I'd call it a flaw with *your* game. If your DM runs a game such that you feel you are forced into these five choices because otherwise you're just screwed when it comes to surviving... then in my opinion your DM needs to take a long, hard look into what he's doing and what he's throwing at you. You in no way should have to take any of these feats, if your DM is running a game meant for everyone at the table to have fun.

Now yes... I know the standard response to this is that other players at your table have characters built in such a way that in order for the DM to "challenge" those characters he has to amp everything up... otherwise these other characters just run roughshod over everything he throws at them. But like DracoSuave said... that's a problem of your group (players and DM included) who are not working together to produce a result that everyone is happy with. They don't need to min/max as heavily as they are if that's truly what is throwing everything off. And the DM doesn't need to just add stronger monsters in order to raise the level of challenge. Everyone needs to work together to create a game that everyone is happy with.

WotC can't and shouldn't be concerned with their game when your game chooses to play the way it does. They just can't. Because how your group plays the game does not match everyone elses.

I disagree. I think it's a flaw with the game for one to have to choose between feats that make them better at combat and feats that make their character more interesting (either through cool special case combat feats or through more RP feats). Interesting feats are fighting for the same space as boring feats that are just mechanically better. Making fights easier is not a satisfactory fix, the choice still remains.

 

[Herschel]

If 6 out of 8 players minmax, and players 7 and 8 are falling behind... why are players 1 through 6 not helping them not fall behind, if that's the type of game it is?

And what is the DM doing through all this.

The problem is corrected through helpful players working together.

Not to mention, most 'CharOp' players who maximize damage don't know how to think outside of a very small box. If a player enjoys moving enemies into position, then a high damage build isn't for them. But an Enchanter certainly is. But that's a subpar build... unless you find forced movement valuable.

It's not as simple as 'MAX OUT THE DAMAGE WOOOOOO.' Many groups would find their encounters easier if they looked at other aspects of game play.

Must still spread XP but there's a home run in to the parking lot.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I disagree. I think it's a flaw with the game for one to have to choose between feats that make them better at combat and feats that make their character more interesting (either through cool special case combat feats or through more RP feats). Interesting feats are fighting for the same space as boring feats that are just mechanically better. Making fights easier is not a satisfactory fix, the choice still remains.

I'm not going to get into this argument again because I went over it time after time in another thread... but I find the idea that a combat feat that applies to a smaller fraction of the game is somehow more "interesting" than one that applies to a larger fraction of the game to be absolutely absurd. Both feats are just adding numbers to your character sheet. That's all. And numbers do not make your character "interesting" or "boring". It's how you play your character in spite of the numbers that makes your character interesting or boring.

EDIT - Now that being said... I've also always been a proponent of splitting combat-related feats and skill-related feats into two separate categories that you earn at different times, just because you could then in some ways have your cake and eat it too... but I don't feel as though it's enough of a problem to categorize it as a "flaw" of the game. Would I think splitting them would be better? Sure. But does my opinion hold any real weight? Not at all. Especially considering that if it really mattered to me that much, I could easily just do it myself for my players as they leveled up.