SnowleopardVK
First Post
I really need to stop having this conversation with an ex player of mine...
I and the majority of my group tend to just create characters based on concepts that seem interesting, or because we've never tried some specific archetype before. There's little planning involved and I don't deny that the characters are nowhere near good examples of how to optimize, but the game still works.
He on the other hand insists that Pathfinder and all versions of D&D "force" players to build the most optimized characters as possible or else they'll certainly die.
It's not my style, but I don't mind that he likes building his characters by the numbers. If that's what he finds fun who am I to stop it after all. What does annoy me however is when he uses any turn for the bad in my style of play as examples of why he's right.
The most recent case has involved my current PF game, in which half the party (me included) has recently died. Now my death alone was simply bad luck; it required an enemy to hit me critically, which it did (rolling a 20, and then a 16) AND it required that same enemy to roll high for damage (getting a total roll of 20 on 4d6) in order to knock my health straight past the survivable negatives to instant death, preventing the nearby cleric from healing me.
Unfortunately following my death, our rogue also died, once again a situation that statistically shouldn't have been able to happen. He accidentally set off a trap that he was unlikely to set off, and failed a reflex save that he was unlikely to fail. If not for that trap's damage he would have been knocked to 1 HP in the encounter that killed him, and likely would have killed the monster that did it (which was also at 1 HP) in the next round. Because of the trap however, the monster knocked him to -1 with the only attack of its that managed to beat his high AC, and it coup de graced him the next round, an action itself which wouldn't have happened if I hadn't died earlier, as the cleric would have finished the fight that killed me a lot faster had I not died, she and I would have been able to meet up with the rogue just before his fight began, and he would have both healing and backup, not to mention his enemy wouldn't have likely gotten the chance to coup de grace him.
Now I think the main point of the above is that although it did indeed all happen, it's statistically EXTREMELY unlikely. If any single element in those two-paragraphs hadn't gone very bad for us then the rogue would almost certainly be alive, and I might be too.
My other player however insists that Pathfinder and the various D&Ds make such situations extremely likely. It's all part of his overall argument of how WoD is better, and I almost get the feeling that his argument is a thinly veiled "any RPG that you can lose is bad" but I've been unable to argue successfully because he refuses to agree with any accusations that WoD is less than perfection (note; this includes the idea that it's possible to roll badly in WoD. d20s are guaranteed to roll badly but d10s are supposedly incapable of it) and his refusal to hear statistics such as how horribly unlikely this whole incident was (his general stance is that all math is wrong and was invented to disprove the paranormal, and inserting math into any argument automatically means you're wrong as well).
...And as I condense this all into one post I'm starting to see how insane his logic really is. I suppose it'd be futile to argue with him. Perhaps it'd be better to just respond with something along the lines of "whatever you say" (only less sarcastic than it sounds in my head right now) whenever he tries to argue that D&D is broken or forces players to optimize perfectly or die, or when he goes on about how "WoD is better than all other RPGs, end of discussion". I'd like to add; nothing against WoD players. He personally has made me dislike that game, but I understand that others can still like it.
What I find worst about this all is he's actually a decent friend. His attitudes towards RPGs constantly drive me insane, but I generally get along with him when it comes to other things.
Ah well... What do you think of the whole necessary optimization thing? I personally think it's a flawed argument as explained above and since I never bother to optimize my characters, yet out of several dozen I've made over the course of my history as a player, this is the first one that's actually died on me.
(Ranting makes me feel better but also makes me create walls of text. I'm well aware of that fact.)
I and the majority of my group tend to just create characters based on concepts that seem interesting, or because we've never tried some specific archetype before. There's little planning involved and I don't deny that the characters are nowhere near good examples of how to optimize, but the game still works.
He on the other hand insists that Pathfinder and all versions of D&D "force" players to build the most optimized characters as possible or else they'll certainly die.
It's not my style, but I don't mind that he likes building his characters by the numbers. If that's what he finds fun who am I to stop it after all. What does annoy me however is when he uses any turn for the bad in my style of play as examples of why he's right.
The most recent case has involved my current PF game, in which half the party (me included) has recently died. Now my death alone was simply bad luck; it required an enemy to hit me critically, which it did (rolling a 20, and then a 16) AND it required that same enemy to roll high for damage (getting a total roll of 20 on 4d6) in order to knock my health straight past the survivable negatives to instant death, preventing the nearby cleric from healing me.
Unfortunately following my death, our rogue also died, once again a situation that statistically shouldn't have been able to happen. He accidentally set off a trap that he was unlikely to set off, and failed a reflex save that he was unlikely to fail. If not for that trap's damage he would have been knocked to 1 HP in the encounter that killed him, and likely would have killed the monster that did it (which was also at 1 HP) in the next round. Because of the trap however, the monster knocked him to -1 with the only attack of its that managed to beat his high AC, and it coup de graced him the next round, an action itself which wouldn't have happened if I hadn't died earlier, as the cleric would have finished the fight that killed me a lot faster had I not died, she and I would have been able to meet up with the rogue just before his fight began, and he would have both healing and backup, not to mention his enemy wouldn't have likely gotten the chance to coup de grace him.
Now I think the main point of the above is that although it did indeed all happen, it's statistically EXTREMELY unlikely. If any single element in those two-paragraphs hadn't gone very bad for us then the rogue would almost certainly be alive, and I might be too.
My other player however insists that Pathfinder and the various D&Ds make such situations extremely likely. It's all part of his overall argument of how WoD is better, and I almost get the feeling that his argument is a thinly veiled "any RPG that you can lose is bad" but I've been unable to argue successfully because he refuses to agree with any accusations that WoD is less than perfection (note; this includes the idea that it's possible to roll badly in WoD. d20s are guaranteed to roll badly but d10s are supposedly incapable of it) and his refusal to hear statistics such as how horribly unlikely this whole incident was (his general stance is that all math is wrong and was invented to disprove the paranormal, and inserting math into any argument automatically means you're wrong as well).
...And as I condense this all into one post I'm starting to see how insane his logic really is. I suppose it'd be futile to argue with him. Perhaps it'd be better to just respond with something along the lines of "whatever you say" (only less sarcastic than it sounds in my head right now) whenever he tries to argue that D&D is broken or forces players to optimize perfectly or die, or when he goes on about how "WoD is better than all other RPGs, end of discussion". I'd like to add; nothing against WoD players. He personally has made me dislike that game, but I understand that others can still like it.
What I find worst about this all is he's actually a decent friend. His attitudes towards RPGs constantly drive me insane, but I generally get along with him when it comes to other things.
Ah well... What do you think of the whole necessary optimization thing? I personally think it's a flawed argument as explained above and since I never bother to optimize my characters, yet out of several dozen I've made over the course of my history as a player, this is the first one that's actually died on me.
(Ranting makes me feel better but also makes me create walls of text. I'm well aware of that fact.)
