D&D 5E Dealing with optimizers at the table

[overgeeked]

Wow, players that are good at the game, are good at the game. Shocking...

It's simple, good players(or if you want to say, players with good system mastery

The game isn’t system mastery. The map isn’t the territory.

The game is make believe with some guidelines. You ”win” by playing. You don’t ”win” by using the letter of the rules to defeat the spirit of the rules.

“The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination. The players and the DM share in creating adventures in fantastic lands where heroes abound and magic really works. In a sense, the D&D game has no rules, only rule suggestions. No rule is inviolate, particularly if a new or altered rule will encourage creativity and imagination. The important thing is to enjoy the adventure.”

 

[jgsugden]

How do you aggressively optimize in 5e? I am asking for a friend...

Aggressively? That would be a barbarian build.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Second, any details given will inevitably devolve into utterly unhelpful nitpicking about those specific builds rather than the continuing general problem. Missing the forest for the trees.

This is not a reasonable position for you to hold re: 5E, which is why you aren't getting the feedback you want.

This is 5th edition. This is not 4th. This is very definitely not 3rd. The disparity between a sane character's performance (which you yourself outlined in the original post) and an extremely-optimized one, in most cases, is typically like 20% DPR or or 15% hit chance or 10-15% HP. Especially at lower levels. Most of the ridiculously optimized builds that people post about don't even "come online" until level 8 or 10 or even 15 or more. None of this is the game-breaking level of disruption that you're describing, nor does it even approach it.

In 5E, there are a handful of things which can cause genuine problems, almost all of them the result of multiclassing. You are wrong to complain about "missing the forest for the trees". It is you who is incorrectly seeing a "forest" when there is in fact a small stand of trees, and you are basically saying it's the Amazon Rain Forest because, one presumes, you're used to games like 3E were there absolutely was an Amazon Rain Forest of overpowered builds, thanks to PrCs, Monkey Grip, Chain whips, a bazillion feats, LAs and so on.

Players that go out of their way to break the game is the problem.

I get that you're saying you don't want your players to find out, but we need to know what it is that you think is "breaking the game".

Why?

Because different people have wildly different standards. You've given a standard for what you consider perfectly reasonable, for what you're not talking about, but this still leaves and absolutely vast arena within which we could be discussing the issues. For some people, mildly optimized characters like, say, a Warlock who actually understands how Warlock mechanics work is "breaking the game". I've literally seen the complaint that a Warlock who had Agonizing Blast and and used Hex correctly was "breaking the game". On the other hand, some people are dealing with pretty powerful Paladin/Sorcerer and Warlock/Paladin and similar combos, and saying they "break the game" - which is still not really true but a lot closer. On the gripping hand, some people are dealing with stuff that's actually entirely exploit-oriented, not really following the rules dodgy stuff enabled solely by dubious/creative interpretations (which actually require DM buy-in, note) of various abilities/spells/etc.

The odds are extremely high than 90% of the problems you're concerned about are solved by "ban multiclassing, it's optional anyway".

Really the only way this isn't true is if the characters are over level 10, and have been thus working on exotic builds for a lot of levels, and those builds are now "kicking in". But I'm guessing that isn't the case. Even then, there are a relatively small number of spells, Feats and class features, almost all of them optional, which can potentially cause genuinely serious problems.

It's also possible you're describing perfectly normal play that doesn't cause issues for most DMs to be "breaking the game". I don't even say that to judge you or be mean. I've played with DMs like that. One of my friends is like that. He is just completely unable to deal with efficiently built characters, like, psychologically, when he DMs (we thus don't have him DM D&D anymore). He himself is not a good optimizer (a great tactician but...) and continually and rather inexplicably underestimates PC abilities, and does stuff like make main villains be normal NPCs (not Legendary or even just high-HP or the like), then get really confused and upset when they get splattered just like, well, other normal NPCs. But I'm assuming it's worse than that.

Anyway we need examples. If your players are here, they're probably bored of this thread by now anyway. And again you are wrong to think specifics don't solve the problem, because in 5E, they can. Not in all systems, but in 5E, yes.

(As an aside, I am a hardened veteran of the 1990s "munchkin wars", and have played with people who genuinely like breaking the game and didn't even care if others had fun and so on, so it's not like I'm pretending these guys don't exist. But standards vary wildly for what "breaking the game" is, and different RPGs have entirely different solutions. With 3.XE, you really genuinely need players to just agree not to do it. But with 5E, that's not the case.)

 

[Horwath]

The game isn’t system mastery. The map isn’t the territory.

The game is make believe with some guidelines. You ”win” by playing. You don’t ”win” by using the letter of the rules to defeat the spirit of the rules.

“The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination. The players and the DM share in creating adventures in fantastic lands where heroes abound and magic really works. In a sense, the D&D game has no rules, only rule suggestions. No rule is inviolate, particularly if a new or altered rule will encourage creativity and imagination. The important thing is to enjoy the adventure.”

All of those is correct, but

Do you have problem with spotlight hoggers or with optimizers?

Or how is an optimized character for combat(if he is not a jerk towards other players or trying to talk in every scene) ruining fun for other players?

If you are having fun playing your character and dealing 1d8+4 damage per round, why do you care if GWM/PAM barbarian deal 1d10+18 and 1d4+18 per round?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Aggressively? That would be a barbarian build.

Meh.

Sounds exhausting.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, there’s a few reasons I’m not providing details. None of which are I’m making it up. But thanks for that. First, some of my players have accounts here. And despite my frustration I’m not quite ready to jettison the problem players. Second, any details given will inevitably devolve into utterly unhelpful nitpicking about those specific builds rather than the continuing general problem. Missing the forest for the trees. Third, despite the details I did give, more than a few people didn’t bother to read the initial post, so kinda don’t see the point of further engagement. Fourth, the thread quickly devolved into yet another defense of problematic behavior and deflection of blame...and frankly that’s maddening.

Players that go out of their way to break the game is the problem. Short of banning every broken combo as it comes up, the only solution is to ban the problem players from my table. Though it would be a refreshing change of pace to be able to actually talk about why players actively breaking the game is problematic rather than the inevitable deflection and defense of problematic behavior.

I think the general problem some posters have (myself included) is that you're saying that PCs with high differences in overall combat effectiveness is inherently game breaking. I don't think that's the case, and personally I think it isn't even very hard to DM around, especially in a 5e context. Dealing with martial/caster divide in 3.5/PF was much more difficult.

The real social contract problem you have is that you went to players, asked them not to do a particular behavior, they (assumedly) agreed, and then they kept doing it. That's a bad thing that breaks groups, and is the real concern I would have. Wanting PCs to be similarly efficacious no matter their build choices might be your preferred game aesthetic, but it isn't the obvious right choice for everyone. Enforcing that game aesthetic requires group buy-in.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Imagine (try, really) that there are a group of people that get together and play some recreational basketball every weekend. For them, it's a fun way of re-connecting. They get a little exercise, catch up, chat, have a few drinks afterwards. It's all good!

Now ... they invite someone else to the game. This person take it very seriously. Michael Jordan seriously. He is trash talking. He is going all out. He is trying to make sidebets. He is belittling other players. He is committing hard fouls ("if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'"). He is going all out to WIN.

This is a deeply and unhelpfully misleading simile, which, to be fair is like most similes and metaphors used on the internet.

A player who is trash-talking people and crapping on their abilities verbally, and engaging in gambling and fouling other players is obviously a violent and anti-social player. Obviously you'd throw them out. That's not remotely what is going on here.

What we're talking about here, based on everything that the OP has said (which I admit is insufficient for many conclusions), is that some proportion of the players are a great deal more skilled at character design than the others. They are not "cheating". They're not committing "hard fouls". They're not abusing others. They're not gambling. You literally cannot say that.

So a non-misleading simile would be that your group of ball-players had always included a number of players who were massively better than the others. And ball-players is misleading. This is more like target shooting or something. So it's more like you've got some buddies who go out and do some skeet shooting or something, and some of you are pretty casual and don't like the bruises a 12ga can leave so using 16ga and don't want to spend a lot and don't practice or whatever, whereas others are always using 12ga, are practicing heavily, maybe have carefully balanced and extremely well-made guns and so on. The others are drinking beer but these guys are slamming caffeine only as they don't want miss. But IRL, stuff like that often remains fun. I mean, when I go bowling, I'm naughty word terrible, and I have friends who are great. I don't get mad.

And the guy who is getting mad here is not even among the shooters, AFAICT. It's the guy who is running the clay-pigeon-throwing-machine (I dunno the right words for this). Or the guy running the bowling alley is mad because half of the people in a group are doing really crap half are going gangbusters.

 

[iserith]

Overgeeked hasnt given examples but I’ll give an example myself of something in my game that I consider optimized to an unhealthy degree. I’ve seen this around levels 3-5

AC 22+. With a shield spell ready to tack on just in case a hit gets through.

This can be done with very little difficulty. Plate, a shield, and divine shield and the shield spell which requires little or no sacrifice. Either in action economy, ability points or feats and needs no magic items. The sorcadin can do it without blinking at level 3.

My personal feeling on this is that it cheapens the combat because regular attacks no longer threaten that character meaningfully... and no they aren’t weaker than normal against other attacks. The above mentioned sorcadin can have very respectable saves even better as a level 6 Paladin.

It is painful to DM with. Combined with a sorcerer who optimized in fire magic to a obscene degree it spelled the end of a campaign at around level 8 that could have gone on and on. My feeling is that players that want a campaign to have longevity and for them to reach high levels should consider not optimizing.

I have a tier 3 character whose AC sits at 24 and I'm frequently hasted to bring that up to 26. I can bump that to 31 with a shield spell or sometimes effectively higher with d8 cutting words against a single attack. All this has really meant in play is that, given the choice, the DM will just attack someone else since I have no means to force him to attack me. I'm also weak on Dex saves and took quite a lot of AOE to the face. When I do take a hit from an attack, it's usually a crit for big damage.

While I don't have to worry about being hit in many fights, there are still plenty of fights where I'm worried about how to avoid breath weapons (for example). My damage also isn't as great as others except on crits. So ultimately, the DM can still threaten me meaningfully and I had to take some tradeoffs for my high defense. I've seen this same thing play out with several similar character builds in various campaigns. It's really been no issue at the table.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

This is a deeply and unhelpfully misleading simile, which, to be fair is like most similes and metaphors used on the internet.

Given that you started by calling the OP, without evidence, a liar, I do not think you are attempting to understand the ANALOGY in good faith.

That is all.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't think that's the case, and personally I think it isn't even very hard to DM around, especially in a 5e context. Dealing with martial/caster divide in 3.5/PF was much more difficult.

Yes exactly. I feel like the OP actually doesn't want to list the "game-breaking" specifics because we'd all laugh at the idea it's "game-breaking" and offer him actually-useful advice on how to manage rather than commiserating about this or telling him how to "discipline" the players or whatever.

The real social contract problem you have is that you went to players, asked them not to do a particular behavior, they (assumedly) agreed, and then they kept doing it. That's a bad thing that breaks groups, and is the real concern I would have. Wanting PCs to be similarly efficacious no matter their build choices might be your preferred game aesthetic, but it isn't the obvious right choice for everyone. Enforcing that game aesthetic requires group buy-in.

Again yep. But here's the problem for me. I'm kind of wondering what he actually told the players. Like, it's increasingly sounding like "game-breaking" is "some characters do 20% more DPR than others!", but what has the OP actually said to them? "Please don't make hyper-optimized characters!" - they may well feel like they aren't.

Again I've seen DMs who just can't handle characters who are even mildly optimized, or even ones who aren't optimized, but consistently played well (i.e. using the best spells they have, not just a random selection of their spells, for example, and holding them for encounters where they make a difference). I don't understand why they can't handle it, but they do exist. I've seen more than one IRL, and far more discussing stuff online.

Given that you started by calling the OP, without evidence, a liar, I do not think you are attempting to understand the ANALOGY in good faith.

I understand it just fine. It's a terrible analogy on multiple levels. First off, these aren't new people so no-one is just arriving. Second off, no-one is hurting or abusing anyone else. That's really bad stuff to suggest is going on. It's not remotely comparable. You are out of line to suggest it.

The OP is concealing information and making statements that ring extremely false to any kind of reasonable understanding of 5E's rules and levels of achievable optimization (like the idea that there's a problematic "forest" of optimization out there). It is completely fair to question that, even in somewhat harsh terms.