D&D 5E Where are the options?

[AaronOfBarbaria]

That hasn't been my experience.

Not surprising, as our experiences have a clear and significant point of difference: I've never been in the character build forum.

 

[TwoSix]

Not surprising, as our experiences have a clear and significant point of difference: I've never been in the character build forum.

But....but....your DPR!

 

[Tony Vargas]

I honestly can't tell if you're serious. Well played.

:bows:

Well then play PHB only. It will be official. Oh wait.

Being official has jack to do with what a DM wants or doesn't want to include. ANY material regardless of source should be agreed on by the table. Being official doesn't change that.

Technically true, in a hypothetical sense. OTOH, have you ever seen a DM review whether they were going to include fighters or wizards or humans in their game? Players come to the table expecting that the character they built using default PH1 choices will be just fine, and most should at least realize that Feats and Variant Humans and other technically optional, but pretty common, rules might not be used by every DM. But if you want to play something out of DMsGuild, you've got to realize you're going to ask, and probably have to be pretty darn persuasive.

AL is its own beast. You give up a lot of creative control in exchange for the organized structure.

Yep. And a lot of people play it, some of them exclusively.

If the player base interested primarily in building better mechanical mousetraps and scouring splatbooks for the most abusive combinations lose interest in 5E I really can still sleep like a baby.

That's really at odds with the spirit and goals of 5e. 5e's supposed to be supporting more styles, not excluding decidedly common ones (I mean, seriously, as derisively as you paint it, system mastery and splat-appreciation have been darn near the norm since 2e). It's supposed to be for fans of all prior eds, 3.5 optimizers not excepted.

This is also the place to discuss all the unofficial material we use in our games. Our ideas for new monsters, classes, spells, & rule variants.

Yep. There's even a separate sub-forum for that.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

But....but....your DPR!

That XP was meant to be a laugh, oops... oh well, you get the point.

Yeah, I'm not an optimizer by any definition of the word other than that I do what I can to make myself think my character is as cool as I possibly can (with "cool" meaning something which DPR is rarely if ever a significant part of).

As a bit of an info point regarding discussion of unofficial material: Looking at the post counts, the House Rules, Homebrews & Conversion Library forum has 143,325 posts (at the time I checked), while the Character Builds & Optimization forum has 24,414 posts (at the same time).

That seems like it should have some correlation to how much people are discussing unofficial material on EnWorld, since posts are how anything gets discussed.

 

[TwoSix]

Fair enough. Although historically, ENWorld has never really been known for its optimizer community. (The WotC forums were traditionally stronger there.) It's a little better now thanks to the WotC forums diaspora.

There's just not a lot of energy in 5e character building without official material, sadly. I miss the good old 3e and 4e days for that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I generally don't mind players who try to optimize their characters. I do think that there's a certain point where it becomes a bit pointless, though.

I also think there is a bit of irony in that, in my experience, optimizers tend to want tons of options, and then slowly whittle away every option but one. One option becomes "optimal" (YAY) and the other options are labeled as "suboptimal" (BOOOOO!). Thereafter, any use of any option deemed suboptimal is looked at as a mistake on the part of the person choosing that option.

It's kind of odd.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I also think there is a bit of irony in that, in my experience, optimizers tend to want tons of options, and then slowly whittle away every option but one. One option becomes "optimal" (YAY) and the other options are labeled as "suboptimal" (BOOOOO!). Thereafter, any use of any option deemed suboptimal is looked at as a mistake on the part of the person choosing that option.

They're like torture-testers for game balance, that way.

Like an unholy alliance between Erathis and Torog.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

It's a little better now thanks to the WotC forums diaspora.

I am such a displaced poster, and have now learned that "diaspora" has a broader definition than I previously was aware thanks to your usage and my sense to check facts before taking offense.

There's just not a lot of energy in 5e character building without official material, sadly. I miss the good old 3e and 4e days for that.

An interesting, in my opinion, anecdote that is likely an artifact caused by my group's play style: when it came to 3e and 4e, my group almost never talked to each other about their character builds in a positive light, and even involved frequent statements in what discussions we did have of things such as "I hate feats... do I really have to take them? Ugh, fine. Can you just pick them for me then?" and "This is my last one in this campaign, if it dies like the others I'm just going to sit out until next campaign. Building a character this high of level all at once is too much work."

And with 5th edition we've spent more than 3 hours in just the last week talking about what we are going to do with our characters in an upcoming campaign. Of course, the real difference here is that we've always been interested in discussing the personality, history, and role of our characters, which 5th edition provides slightly greater incentive to do than prior editions have, and not particularly interested in the mechanical minutiae - which 5th edition doesn't emphasize to the degree that some prior editions have (including that "I hate feats" is not only less true of the player that siad it now than it was at the time it was said, but there is a more favorable answer to the question of "do I really have to taken them?")

 

[ExploderWizard]

There's just not a lot of energy in 5e character building without official material, sadly. I miss the good old 3e and 4e days for that.

5E provides backgrounds which expands the unique character combinations to build with significantly as long as we are talking about character building and not just combat power ups.

I would rather have fewer mechanical options knowing that almost all of them were pretty good rather than having to pick through the box of chocolates to find the handful that aren't crap. It has an added bonus of making what you actually DO in the game more important than what bits of glitter you pick from a list to stick to your character. That is a good thing for the game as a whole.

 

[TwoSix]

5E provides backgrounds which expands the unique character combinations to build with significantly as long as we are talking about character building and not just combat power ups.

I would rather have fewer mechanical options knowing that almost all of them were pretty good rather than having to pick through the box of chocolates to find the handful that aren't crap. It has an added bonus of making what you actually DO in the game more important than what bits of glitter you pick from a list to stick to your character. That is a good thing for the game as a whole.

I find both approaches fun, to the extent that my next planned campaign is barely going to have class abilities at all, and most of them will be randomly generated. The bulk of the character's abilities will only be earned by adventuring and actually finding the abilities.

That being said, I do love sitting down and planning out a complicated character build in Pathfinder.