D&D 5E Characters are not their statistics and abilities

[Sacrosanct]

Sure, just look at the sheer page count D&D has historically devoted to combat rules. The emphasis is obvious..

Come on Tony. You've been here way too long and have been involved in this conversations too many times to trot out this debunked reasoning. You have to know better. Every time this comes up, it has been explained how there are more pages to combat rules because that's what's needed to mitigate that portion of the game. You don't need as much page count when dealing with role playing aspect. This argument is like saying the game expects there to be 20x as many casters as fighters because spells take up most of the page count.

Seriously Tony, you know better.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Except, that's demonstrably not true in practice. The fighter with Strength 20 and Int 8, when paired up with a wizard who has Int 20 and Strength 8, is going to be a far more effective group than the fighter with Strength 16 and Int 12 who is paired up with a wizard that has Strength 12 and Int 16. The nature of the challenges which adventurers face in a D&D world rewards individual specialization over versatility; you make up for the lack of individual versatility by having 3-6 individuals in each group.
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I disagree, because of two reasons.

1. I don't think I've ever seen it happen when only the character with the highest ability score is the only one to make checks against that ability score. The game is more than just combat, and I have yet to see where only the PC with the highest INT makes all of the INT related checks,

and

2. That's not how people work, and nor should it be expected to be that way. Saying only the person with the highest score in an ability is like saying only the player with the highest FT% take all the free throws. For one, circumstances don't always allow that to happen. secondly, the person with the highest FG% isn't the only one taking all the shots or you'd have a lot of pissed off players on the team. The game is not about mix maxing in order to succeed. The great thing about D&D is that there are MANY ways to resolve a problem, and not all of them are through optimized combat.

 

[77IM]

The goal of everyone at the table should be: to entertain everyone else at the table. When all players (including DM) act selflessly in this respect, the game really sings; you have a whole table full of people trying to entertain you, instead of just keeping yourself happy.

Sometimes ineptitude is hilarious; but sometimes it's just frustrating. One_Shots clearly has fun "winning" and doesn't have much patience for ineptitude; bear that in mind if you game with him or her. But, One_Shots, listen: other people DO enjoy gaming with characters that are more interesting than effective. How is your hard-line insistence on optimization entertaining to them? Instead of getting indignant and considering those people "rude," maybe talk to them about game mechanics, and making sure that they know how to pull their weight during a combat encounter.

 

[Shasarak]

There's enough people being judgmental in real life, all day long. Last thing I want is during my down time playing a game that's supposed to be fun feeling like I'm being judged by other players for not being up to their arbitrary standard of what's acceptable.

Screw that noise.

I see what you are saying. For me I put up with too many dumb asses in RL to do it during game time as well.

 

[pemerton]

Nobody remembers that your fighter had teh 18 strngths.

Everyone remembers when they vaulted over the coffins to kick the magic macguffin out of the hands of the bad guy.

But at many tables, what your STR stat is makes a difference to the likelihood of success if you declare, as your action "I vault over the coffins to kick the magic MacGuffin out of the hands of the bad guy!"

If mechanical resolution matters to anything that is important, then the inputs into that resolution - eg PC stats - aren't of no relevance at all.

Back in the 4e RPGA heyday, my friend and I played a pair of dwarven brothers. I played a melee ranger, he a maul fighter. They were a lot of fun to play. We went out of our way to inject a lot of quirky personality and roleplaying interactions into the sessions. Often people would ask if we were going to play our dwarves because they enjoyed having them along. I don't think they really cared all that much about our particular classes or roles so much as wanting to participate in the memorable moments we'd strive to create in game.

Some people are fun to have along to a card night even if they're not very good game players, because they're fun people to hang out with.

RPGing puts a distinctive twist on that, because part of the game involves (or, at least, can involve) creating a fun person for others to hang out with.

Now if you're the person at the card night who is really serious about the game, then you might get irritated by the nice guy who keeps missing tricks when you're partnered with him. If you're the person at the D&D session who is really serious about beating the dungeon, then you might get irritated by the player whose PC is fun and memorable, but who keeps triggering all the traps.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being that serious person - though you might want to tone it down in more light-hearted company. But it's certainly not the only way to approach playing a game - and in D&D it's complicated by the fact that for some players the fun personality is a higher priority for the game than beating the dungeon. (Some people seem to go so far as to say that aiming to beat the dungeon is actually a wrong way to approach D&D. I don't agree with that either.)

EDIT: I saw this reply:

It seems like the proper correlation with your analogy is if I were to fail to bring my character sheet, dice and a pencil. But that's not what you are implying, is it?

How about this to turn your analogy around: Let's say I show up to play that team sport with you. And I *do* bring my shorts and runners. But I'm not quite as good at the sport as you--yet we are having fun playing--I guess you'd still be upset? Even if I bring my "A game" and roleplay the heck out of a really interesting and fun character, that happens to be less optimized than yours--yet we all had fun playing--we still have a problem?

I think I've already answered this above, but will say a bit more.

If I joined your soccer game, having told you that I can play soccer, I can almost guarantee that you would be irritated by me - because my soccer is terrible. (I can do the running bit, but not any of the ball control bits.) The fact that I told funny jokes all through the game might somewhat mitigate the irritation, but - at least for many sports players - actually playing the game is part of the point.

In D&D it's more complicated because not everyone agrees on what the point is. Not everyone agrees that "beating the dungeon" is the point. But clearly for some players it is, and they're not obviously wrong.

And as I posted in post 77 a little bit further along in the thread, a further factor in D&D is that overcoming challenges is a definite thing. Whereas there are other FRPGs (eg BW) which are superficially similar to D&D, but in which confronting challenges rather than necessarily overcoming them is the core of play.

As I say in that post, I think it tells us something about D&D that someone who is criticising optimisation nevertheless identifies Rufus the 6 STR fighter with no armour, who wields a club one-handed, and who hates fighting, as a non-viable character.

 

[pemerton]

I may be unusual in this, but I'd let you make a "bloodthirsty" or "reckless" or "energetic" attack. -5 to hit, +5 to damage if you do hit.

I think this way of adjudicating the fiction raises other issues, like the rather complex interaction of D&D's attack and damage maths. Being "reckless" becomes a mathematical puzzle, rather than a straightforward contributor to my character's efforts in the fiction.

Contrast the knowing wink - if the GM gives a +2 to my CHA check, but also determines that, if it succeeds, the NPC thinks my PC is a rather sly fellow, I've traded a bonus for a consequence that has nothing like the mechanical structure or the gameplay dynamics of "-5 to hit, +5 to damage".

 

[pemerton]

Other than the obvious examples (Rufus, the 6 Str. Champion who doesn't wear armor, doesn't carry a shield, and wields a club one-handed ... and also doesn't like fighting) of deliberately trying to sabotage the party ... people need to cut each other slack for what they find fun.

What's wrong with Rufus? In Burning Wheel I think Rufus would be a viable character.

Or to put it another way - what counts as bad play is very relative to the game being played. It tells us something about D&D (compared to, say, BW) that Rufus counts as an obvious example of deliberate sabotage.

That "something" is the platform on which the OP has then been constructed.

I think it just boils down to some folks sticking more to the wargaming roots of the game, and others focusing more on the storytelling aspect.

I don't agree with this.

As far as I can tell, from posting on these boards, I am more inclined to "indie-style"/narrativist RPGing than the typical ENworld poster. As far as I know, I am the only regular poster who is also GMing a fairly regular BW game.

But in these sorts of threads, I generally find myself more sympathetic to the "optimisers". Because, like "indie" RPGers, optimisers recognise that action resolution, and hence the mechanics of PC building, are pretty central to RPGing. (Without mechanics it's either negotiation between players and GM over the content of the shared fiction, or GM fiat. I guess player fiat is a third alternative, but many ENworlders seem to be against that.)

I know I'm not a very good wargamer (I have friends who are, and they utterly clean my clock in those sorts of games). But I appreciate the wargamer's or optimiser's eye for the difference that mechanics make.

I'll go back to the example of Rufus. That character would be viable in BW. That he is presented as an obvious example of deliberate sabotage tells us something about D&D, and it's focus as a game. For instance, in D&D overcoming challenges is taken to be quite important. In BW, the mechanics of the game make it much more important to confront challenges than to overcome them. That mechanical difference makes a big difference to the tone and content of the RPGing that results. It makes a difference to the ways in which players can shape the shared fiction.

Once you recognise that, in D&D, overcoming challenges is where it's at, you've already set a floor. Rufus is out. I'm happy to accept it as true that, in 5e, "merely competent" characters are good enough (or, to put it another way, that the marginal increase in success rates resulting from "optimisation" is not noticeable at the typical table running the typical 5e adventure); but look at the amount of design and development work that WotC had to put in to achieve this! Even with the learning of 40 years of D&D design, it still took them a two-year playtest.

If the OP sets the floor a bit higher, well, who are we other D&D players to judge?

 

[pemerton]

1e was around for a long time. And AD&D was about getting treasure. Killing things was not only not a requirement, but it was actively encourage to NOT kill things, but to simply overcome or avoid them, getting to the treasure. In fact, anyone with even just a brief familiarity of AD&D's rules knows that if you went combat only RAW, you're PCs were gonna die. A lot.

From Gygax's AD&D PHB (pp 7, 104) and DMG (p 61):

The Dungeon Master will act the parts of "everyone else", and will present to you a variety of new characters to talk with, drink with, gamble with, adventure with, and often fight with! . . .

Combat occurs when communication and negotiation are undesired or unsuccessful. The clever character does not attack first and ask questions (of self or monster) later, but every adventure will be likely to have combat for him or her at some point. . . .

Combat is a common pursuit in the vast majority of adventures . . .​

I don't think AD&D was presented as a game in which combat was to be avoided. And once the PCs reach 2nd or 3rd level and start to make their way out of single-digit hit points, the risks of death tend to drop somewhat.

 

[shoak1]

Rather than multi-quote, I'll just make my comments here about a few things.

1. Powergaming. It is flat out wrong to say that the majority of players are powergamers. We even had a poll about this about six months ago or so, and a whopping 90% of those answering did not identify as a powergamer or optimizer. Only 10% did. I know ENWorld doesn't represent the gaming community as a whole, but that big of difference makes me believe that powergaming is not as popular as the handful of people who are powergamers like to think it is. This seems backed up by Mearls' own research WoTC did.

2. D&D hasn't always been about killing things and taking their stuff. 1e was around for a long time. And AD&D was about getting treasure. Killing things was not only not a requirement, but it was actively encourage to NOT kill things, but to simply overcome or avoid them, getting to the treasure. In fact, anyone with even just a brief familiarity of AD&D's rules knows that if you went combat only RAW, you're PCs were gonna die. A lot. And 2e didn't change this much either, didn't modify the rules that much, and placed emphasis on the setting material and campaign world. So if you say that 5e's approach now is throwing out the history books? Then you don't know anything about D&D's history.

Go back to D and D's original 3 brown books. Read them and look at the sample dungeons therein (like Blackmoor's). It's a miniatures game turned into an individual combat game (in fact, ranges are indicated in inches), with the purpose of killing/circumventing stuff and getting treasure. Look at lost of the modules put out for first decade. The role-playing aspect generally consisted of some background....then you go in the dungeon, beat the guardians with a club over the head (or a garrote to the neck in the dark), get their loot, and eventually have enough to go buy a castle and retainers.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Go back to D and D's original 3 brown books. Read them and look at the sample dungeons therein (like Blackmoor's). It's a miniatures game turned into an individual combat game (in fact, ranges are indicated in inches), with the purpose of killing/circumventing stuff and getting treasure. Look at lost of the modules put out for first decade. The role-playing aspect generally consisted of some background....then you go in the dungeon, beat the guardians with a club over the head (or a garrote to the neck in the dark), get their loot, and eventually have enough to go buy a castle and retainers.

And why should it still be played that way when 2e happened in between.