D&D 5E Dealing with optimizers at the table

[TwoSix]

For Twilight and Peace combo, how does one multiclass into the same class? That doesn't sounds right to me.

It's two separate clerics, one Twilight, one Peace. You keep the party members in the Twilight Sanctuary bubble to give out temp HP to the whole party, and then you use the Peace ability to teleport and absorb damage so that the character that can best handle big chunks of damage is the one that takes it.

It's a good combo, but I think its overall utility is overstated. Having to stay in a 30' bubble would wipe a party in my encounters.

 

[iserith]

It's two separate clerics, one Twilight, one Peace. You keep the party members in the Twilight Sanctuary bubble to give out temp HP to the whole party, and then you use the Peace ability to teleport and absorb damage so that the character that can best handle big chunks of damage is the one that takes it.

It's a good combo, but I think its overall utility is overstated. Having to stay in a 30' bubble would wipe a party in my encounters.

Two PCs working together - let's burn them at the stake!

 

[overgeeked]

To my knowledge things like the coffeelock require a very bizarre understanding of how the game works.

It's an edge case, but it's RAW, and it only requires a focus on the rules rather than common sense.

Nothing requires you take a long rest, except common sense. As a lock you regain spell slots from a short rest. As a sorcerer you can convert spell slots into sorcery points and create spell slots from sorcery points. Your sorcery points and sorcerer spell slots reset after a long rest. So you convert your spell points into sorcerer spell slots, convert your warlock spell slots into sorcery points, convert your sorcery points into sorcerer spell slots, take a short rest regaining your warlock spell slots...lather, rinse, repeat...until you have infinite spell slots.

It works because there's no RAW requirement to take a long rest and there's no RAW limit on the number of short rests you can take in a day, besides the time limit of 24 hours in a day and short rests taking 1 hour.

The flaws are: your sorcery points are limited by level. The exchange rate is not good. And you never regain hit dice as you never take a long rest, so you're a spell-sink for healing. This is typically mitigated by going Divine Soul sorcerer which gives you access to healing spells...and with infinite spell slots...well, no problem.

As low as 3rd level (sor2/lock1) you can generate 16 1st-level spell slots in a day (3 sorc, base 2 spell points = one 1st-level slot, 24 short rests generating 1 spell point each = 12 1st-level slots). As you level your spell point cap goes up as do the spell slots you get from both sorc and lock. It's dumb as hell, but it's RAW.

For Twilight and Peace combo, how does one multiclass into the same class? That doesn't sounds right to me.

It's a tag-team between two characters for an essentially unkillable party, not a single character multiclassing into two different subclasses of the same class. To tune combat to this combo you basically end up making it so that either the party perfectly executes this one plan every single combat or you wipe them out if they ever flub it.

Overshadowing other PCs in combat isn't really a big deal in my view. Some characters are better in certain pillars of the game than others. My ranger isn't as good in combat as another player's barbarian, but that barbarian pales in comparison to my exploration options.

Right. Now have the players who have PCs who are good at combat relentlessly focus on combat and push away from anything that's not combat. So your ranger may be great at exploration, but you have two players forcing combats all the time so you never get a chance to shine.

I don't really know what you mean by "breaks the game" though. All of my players are big on optimization and the game doesn't break. You'd have to tell us a lot more about how you structure and run your game to be able to get any useful advice. I suspect you might not be running an expected amount of combat challenges per adventuring day and also suffer from too many players. That can make things wobbly for sure. The optimization of two out of seven players not so much.

I try to run a rough balance between combat, roleplaying, and exploration. Two of my players don't care about the roleplaying or exploration, only the combat.

The "story" is whatever the PCs do over the course of the game. You may be referring to your "plot," "metaplot," or your quirky, cagey NPCs. If they're engaged in the combats, but less engaged in other scenes, and you have five other players there, what's really the issue, provided they're not disrupting these moments? Maybe try to add a little more combat to your game and put some actual stakes in your "heavy roleplay" and exploration scenes. My optimizers are fully engaged in all pillars simply by virtue of there being something on the line that they want. You're not just bs'ing with the quirky, cagey NPC - you're trying to get information that is critical to finding the lost treasure (for example) and you might not get it if you don't do this well.

No. I hate frustrated novelist DMs. I generally run sandbox games with hooks and seeds for the PCs to follow at their choice. Five of my players want to engage with the world and roleplay and explore. The two optimizers only care about combat. Unless there's initiative and monsters to bash, they don't care. It's still weird to me that a good chunk of the advice presented here is basic "here's how you DM a game of D&D" advice. Yeah, I got it. Been doing it a good long while.

You don't get an optimizer to "stop." You channel their knowledge and energy by altering your game to include their strengths and interests. And perhaps even change your expectations and attitude about how they enjoy the game. Since you have control over your own game design and how you perceive something, this is the only guaranteed way to change things. You have no control over other people, and in this case apparently, can't even stop playing with them. So control yourself and your game design.

So to accommodate two egregious optimizers I should stop enjoying playing the game the way I do and start enjoying playing the game the way they do. That's amazing. Like literally everyone and everything is the problem except the optimizers themselves. This is just silly.

 

[TwoSix]

So to accommodate two egregious optimizers I should stop enjoying playing the game the way I do and start enjoying playing the game the way they do. That's amazing. Like literally everyone and everything is the problem except the optimizers themselves. This is just silly.

You realize virtually every post on this thread has blamed the players and told you that you shouldn't play with them, right? What more of an indictment do you want?

You can't make people change. You don't want to change (which is totally fine). What other options do you have beyond either not playing with them, or playing with them and being unhappy?

The total number of solutions where they stop playing they want and start playing the way the rest of the table wants is zero.

 

[overgeeked]

It's two separate clerics, one Twilight, one Peace. You keep the party members in the Twilight Sanctuary bubble to give out temp HP to the whole party, and then you use the Peace ability to teleport and absorb damage so that the character that can best handle big chunks of damage is the one that takes it.

It's a good combo, but I think its overall utility is overstated. Having to stay in a 30' bubble would wipe a party in my encounters.

Not if they're playing this combo. The point of it is the bucket of temporary HP and teleporting around to best mitigate all incoming damage. At 10th-level you'd be dishing out 11-16 temp HP a round to everyone. A party of four that's 44-64 a round...with members being able to teleport freely to best soak incoming damage, so any raging barbarians or damage resistances will be a problem. Unless you're the type of DM to go out of your way to design encounters that specifically counter what the PCs do, they're basically unkillable.

 

[overgeeked]

You realize virtually every post on this thread has blamed the players and told you that you shouldn't play with them, right? What more of an indictment do you want?

Other than one or two posts in this now huge thread, no one has said that optimizing itself is the problem. It's always they're bad players for refusing to stop. But optimizing itself is fine. No, the optimizing itself is the problem. Yeah, if they'd stop the problem would be solved. What's the problem: optimizing.

You can't make people change. You don't want to change (which is totally fine). What other options do you have beyond either not playing with them, or playing with them and being unhappy?

I don't want to make anyone do anything. I want to have a fun time running games for my friends. I can't do that because two of my friends are causing five more of my friends to have a bad time. Optimization is disruptive. All attempts to stop the behavior out-of-game have failed. Any attempt to mitigate the behavior in-game by tuning encounter to suit the optimizers will cause further loss of fun for the other five players. Any attempt to mitigate the behavior in-game by dropping combat entirely will cause everyone to have less fun.

The total number of solutions where they stop playing they want and start playing the way the rest of the table wants is zero.

I'm fully aware. Thanks.

 

[NotAYakk]

It's an edge case, but it's RAW, and it only requires a focus on the rules rather than common sense.

Nothing requires you take a long rest, except common sense. As a lock you regain spell slots from a short rest. As a sorcerer you can convert spell slots into sorcery points and create spell slots from sorcery points. Your sorcery points and sorcerer spell slots reset after a long rest. So you convert your spell points into sorcerer spell slots, convert your warlock spell slots into sorcery points, convert your sorcery points into sorcerer spell slots, take a short rest regaining your warlock spell slots...lather, rinse, repeat...until you have infinite spell slots.

It works because there's no RAW requirement to take a long rest and there's no RAW limit on the number of short rests you can take in a day, besides the time limit of 24 hours in a day and short rests taking 1 hour.

The flaws are: your sorcery points are limited by level. The exchange rate is not good. And you never regain hit dice as you never take a long rest, so you're a spell-sink for healing. This is typically mitigated by going Divine Soul sorcerer which gives you access to healing spells...and with infinite spell slots...well, no problem.

As low as 3rd level (sor2/lock1) you can generate 16 1st-level spell slots in a day (3 sorc, base 2 spell points = one 1st-level slot, 24 short rests generating 1 spell point each = 12 1st-level slots). As you level your spell point cap goes up as do the spell slots you get from both sorc and lock. It's dumb as hell, but it's RAW.

You forgot the spellcasting multiclassing rules.

Pact Magic. If you have both the Spellcasting class feature and the Pact Magic class feature from the warlock class, you can use the spell slots you gain from the Pact Magic feature to cast spells you know or have prepared from classes with the Spellcasting class feature, and you can use the spell slots you gain from the Spellcasting class feature to cast warlock spells you know.

It explicitly lets you use Pact Magic slots to cast non-Warlock spells, but nothing states you can use Pact Magic slots to fuel other non-Warlock class features.

Outside of Coffeelock, using Warlock slots to fuel non-Warlock class features doesn't cause a problem. With Coffeelock, it does.

So you read the rules strictly, and state "there is no rule stating that Warlock slots can be used to fuel non-Warlock class features", and the Coffeelock dies. All RAW.

Now, the common sense version of 5e multiclassing is "slots are slots are slots", but that isn't what the rules actually say.

Right. Now have the players who have PCs who are good at combat relentlessly focus on combat and push away from anything that's not combat. So your ranger may be great at exploration, but you have two players forcing combats all the time so you never get a chance to shine.

Note that this a problem of characters obsessed with combat, not optimization.

Your problem players may be both obsessed with combat and optimization. But the optimization isn't the problem here. If their PC where incompetent at combat and they still Leroy Jenkinsed every single situation, the problem remains basically the same.

So to accommodate two egregious optimizers I should stop enjoying playing the game the way I do and start enjoying playing the game the way they do. That's amazing. Like literally everyone and everything is the problem except the optimizers themselves. This is just silly.

The option of "don't play with them" was presented.

The option of "use mechanical levers to fix optimization issue" was presented.

The option of "modify the game so they have fun as well" was presented.

Every option was shot down as something you don't want to do.

What more, you are using "optimizer" to include "a player who refuses to do anything but combat and is disruptive at the table when things don't go their way".

You appear to have 4 problems.

1. 2 players uninteresting in anything except combat.

2. Those players are disruptive when they don't get the combat they want.

3. Those players optimize their PCs to be good at combat.

4. You don't feel any responsibility to do anything about any of the above.

The obvious fix is "don't play with people you don't want to play with". Assuming you do want to play with them, and the status quo isn't quo, you actually need to change your behavior. You are in control of your own behavior, and the situation isn't what you want, so your behavior is the lever you have.

If you don't want to just bitch about the problem, you have to abandon #4.

1. There are entire genres of action movie where plot and stuff happens in combat.

Look up the flirty flight stuff of Bearup --
Or the myriad of running battles you get in superhero films or pulp inspired stuff.

Consider moving combat from a grid to theatre of the mind. Add in dialog and plot and even exploration during the fight.

Being harried by dire wolves as you cross the moors, occassionally having some of them charge in and attack. The dire wolves goal is to make the players slow down and get overrun by the incoming horde; so combat mechanics are there, but so is exploration. "Stop and fight" is a loosing strategy.

Infiltration with combat and interrogation. Make it feel safer to do crazy naughty word like infiltrate an enemy base and engage in a limited amount of combat while getting your face character in to interrogate the Vizer and not a suicide plan; meanwhile, a frontal assault is a suicide plan.

This doesn't have to be all of the time, but making non-combat pillars include some combat mechanics may make the players less dismissive of that content. And in time they might even enjoy it, and it might make the non-combat obsessed players have more fun as well.

This doesn't solve everything. It isn't intended to.

2. This is an interpersonal skills problem. But convolving this with the other problems does not make it easier to solve. "You are being disruptive" is different than "you are making a strong PC". If you split those two up, you might have more progress with your problem players.

Talk about disruptive behavior as disruptive behavior.

3. There is lots of advice in this thread about this, which you discarded. Look for it and use it.

Nerf when you have to, but only when you have to (pun pun, coffeelock, etc). Leave lesser optimization alone, and use the DM's levers to reduce the problem.

If 1/3 of the game is actually combat, and the optimizers optimize for combat, and they aren't disruptive, and the other players relative competence is sufficiently similar (because you used your levers), then combat optimization becomes not a problem.

 

[billd91]

Munchkinning out has definitely been there a long time - and it often had to do with gear rather than just stats and choices made when leveling up (because there were relatively few of those). But there are plenty of times when you encountered a player who would brag about the stats their PC had that were probably based on questionable Monty Haulesque campaign choices run by their home DMs. When it comes to optimizing with gear, you didn't even have to encounter a Monty Haul DM as long as you found one willing enough to let you buy the magic you wanted - because Bracers of AC 2 (or 0 once you had Unearthed Arcana), a good Dex, and a ring or cloak of protection gets you into the negative ACs without hampering your mobility with armor. Add a girdle of giant strength and a magic sword and you can be a melee brute even if the rest of your stats and proficiencies aren't particularly tricked out.

 

[iserith]

It's an edge case, but it's RAW, and it only requires a focus on the rules rather than common sense.

Nothing requires you take a long rest, except common sense. As a lock you regain spell slots from a short rest. As a sorcerer you can convert spell slots into sorcery points and create spell slots from sorcery points. Your sorcery points and sorcerer spell slots reset after a long rest. So you convert your spell points into sorcerer spell slots, convert your warlock spell slots into sorcery points, convert your sorcery points into sorcerer spell slots, take a short rest regaining your warlock spell slots...lather, rinse, repeat...until you have infinite spell slots.

It works because there's no RAW requirement to take a long rest and there's no RAW limit on the number of short rests you can take in a day, besides the time limit of 24 hours in a day and short rests taking 1 hour.

The flaws are: your sorcery points are limited by level. The exchange rate is not good. And you never regain hit dice as you never take a long rest, so you're a spell-sink for healing. This is typically mitigated by going Divine Soul sorcerer which gives you access to healing spells...and with infinite spell slots...well, no problem.

As low as 3rd level (sor2/lock1) you can generate 16 1st-level spell slots in a day (3 sorc, base 2 spell points = one 1st-level slot, 24 short rests generating 1 spell point each = 12 1st-level slots). As you level your spell point cap goes up as do the spell slots you get from both sorc and lock. It's dumb as hell, but it's RAW.

RAW is irrelevant though. The rules serve the DM, not the other way around.

It's a tag-team between two characters for an essentially unkillable party, not a single character multiclassing into two different subclasses of the same class. To tune combat to this combo you basically end up making it so that either the party perfectly executes this one plan every single combat or you wipe them out if they ever flub it.

If the PCs are dead, they can't immerse themselves in heavy RP. Why isn't this seen as doing you a favor?

Right. Now have the players who have PCs who are good at combat relentlessly focus on combat and push away from anything that's not combat. So your ranger may be great at exploration, but you have two players forcing combats all the time so you never get a chance to shine.

They need my exploration skills to even get to where the combats are. So I'm not sure what you're on about here. How many combats do you plan there to be per session or adventuring day?

I try to run a rough balance between combat, roleplaying, and exploration. Two of my players don't care about the roleplaying or exploration, only the combat.

No. I hate frustrated novelist DMs. I generally run sandbox games with hooks and seeds for the PCs to follow at their choice. Five of my players want to engage with the world and roleplay and explore. The two optimizers only care about combat. Unless there's initiative and monsters to bash, they don't care. It's still weird to me that a good chunk of the advice presented here is basic "here's how you DM a game of D&D" advice. Yeah, I got it. Been doing it a good long while.

So to accommodate two egregious optimizers I should stop enjoying playing the game the way I do and start enjoying playing the game the way they do. That's amazing. Like literally everyone and everything is the problem except the optimizers themselves. This is just silly.

The reason you may be getting stale advice is because you're stingy with details as to your game and the player character builds.

Nobody is saying these players aren't a problem, by the way. It's just that optimization isn't the real issue; rather it's their steadfast refusal to compromise. But short of kicking them out, which you won't do, you're going to have to make some changes to accommodate them or there is going to be no resolution to your misery. And besides, isn't including a diversity of player preferences a good thing when it comes to a game? You really can please everyone if you just design your game that way. The DMG offers ways on how to do this.

 

[TwoSix]

Other than one or two posts in this now huge thread, no one has said that optimizing itself is the problem. It's always they're bad players for refusing to stop. But optimizing itself is fine. No, the optimizing itself is the problem. Yeah, if they'd stop the problem would be solved. What's the problem: optimizing.

People aren't saying that because you're wrong. Optimizing IS fine. It's just not a good fit for your table.

One of the big agreed upon principles of this forum (earned through years of acrimony) is that no one's play style is inherently wrong; sometimes players, DMs, and systems simply don't mesh with each other. Your players aren't wrong for optimizing, they're wrong for not listening when you asked them to stop.

But if you're going to continue to insist that optimization is bad, prepare to continue to get a lot of pushback.