People don't optimize

[Quartz]

A common statement made y peoe who make optimized characters is "why don't you take the best X, people always would try there best" but that isn't true

Characters develop organically over years, and thing is to have a character that's fun to play.

 

[VariSami]

My take is that some options open more interesting implications than others. Often enough these options also happen to involve a higher level of power.

For example, I played a Dread Necromancer/Anima Mage only recently. I put a lot of effort into making him, and especially his choice of feats was no easy task.

Obviously Tomb-Tainted Soul and Improved Binding due to allowing powerful effects. Those were more or less me power-gaming. But they had implications for the character in-game: he had a connection to death that was reflected in his dialogue and made the living uneasy around him. Also, he was playing with powers that were barely within control (since Improved Binding allows more powerful vestiges but doesn't make contracting them any easier).

Then I had the choice of trying out Mother Cyst which added to his spell list some interesting options. Or I could go with something more generic (though not necessarily mechanically worse). I went with the Cyst since it literally plants a necrotic tumor within the character and allows him to afflict others with them. The implications of this were that my character had the power to afflict others with a condition similar to an exploding collar: you betray me, you die. Or maybe I'll assume direct control. Or use you as a spy drone. He tried abusing this since he was evil - but more or less always asking for the consent of his equals since he was lawful. It lead to some roleplaying though the feat was capable of greatly incresing the versatility of the character.

Tl;dr anecdotes? Most of the options given (such as skill boosting feats) are generic garbage and actually interesting options are often the stronger ones which leads to "optimized" characters in my case.

 

[Evenglare]

i agree with OP 100%. Another thing that goes along with this is when I say, " it helps to have bad stats, it helps roleplaying opportunity",people inevitably come back with the argument of ... " WHY DO I NEED A CRAPPY CHARACTER TO ROLEPLAY" or some variation. What these people don't understand is if you have a min maxed character, and little to no drawbacks who succeeds at everything you are going to be playing a REALLY crappy 1 dimensional character. A person requires flaws to be an interesting charater, this is a fact. I dont know about the rest of you , but I play RPGs to experience a very deep story used to flesh out my character's persona . I know some people like to just hack and slash and dungeon crawl and loot but I can do that with video games, I play RPGs to have this unique story/character escapism experience.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Even Cindy Crawford has a mole.

 

[gamerprinter]

I guess I'm a collage grad who is healthy and fit, rather persuasive and run 3 different businesses (perhaps not wealthy, but gainfully self employed).

My characters are seldom suboptimal, but I hate power gaming, so I actively avoid 'broken' character builds. I'm far more interesting in shooting for a character concept, rather than the perfect build - to be able to handle a variety of situations, and not to great at only one thing.

We only have one true optimizer in our group, and even then he tends not to build broken characters either, though he'd be the closest one to achieve such a state for a character build. Most of us are considered with creating the characters for a good story, not creating gods to rule the fantasy worlds we play in...

 

[Starbuck_II]

I wonder how many perfect designed characters are played by collage grads with great jobs athletic healthy bodies and a gift for perssiasion..

But this is because
A. not all of us have good enough endurance to be a navy seal.
I got one don't sweat. I overheat instead (I usually grab a water bottle and pour a little on skin to fake sweat and it does cool me down).

b. Brain surgeons require money. If you aren't rich enough, you can't become one.

 

[prosfilaes]

So what's wrong with wanting to play Batman, Superman, Conan or Indiana Jones? None of them have serious dump stats, and as far as we can tell, none of them have noticeably disoptimized builds.

 

[Derren]

Have you watched the Olympics?
Those athletes certainly didn't get there by "not optimizing".

 

[ComradeGnull]

So what's wrong with wanting to play Batman, Superman, Conan or Indiana Jones? None of them have serious dump stats, and as far as we can tell, none of them have noticeably disoptimized builds.

As long as your decision to play Superman doesn't render my decision to play Jimmy Olsen pointless (because I will never be able to contribute effectively in a game that ostensibly supports both character types), I'm fine with that.

Mechanical superiority is fine with me, in other words, as long as the possible range of effectiveness in fairly narrow.

 

[Morrus]

The part that's about the story of a person? I mean, I'd like to do at least a hand-waving attempt at making a character who is believable as a person. If you were writing my character as a novel, I'd want people to think him believable, and that means having some real-person foibles, imperfections, motivations and decisions that aren't about mechanical perfection.

YMMV, of course.

That's a different subject to what I was commenting on. The thread's about optimization, not personality. There's no mention whatsoever of it being a bad idea because flaws promote personality; the question is "why do this, because real world characters don't have optmized ability scores?"

I'm not an advocate of ultra-optimized munchkins for characters. But my reasons for not being a fan of that playstyle have nothing to do with "realism" or any attempt to mimick the real world.