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D&D General DM Says No Powergaming?

FitzTheRuke

Legend
I think it's fine. Seems to me that they would mean, "Go ahead and Multiclass or use whatever features you like that would make your character the way you want them. Just don't optimize to the point of that you trivialize encounters or make your fellow players or DM miss out on any fun."

...only in short hand.

While it's true that one person's "power gaming" can be different than another's, the idea usually stems from a desire for an even playing field (within reason) among the group. Nothing wrong with that.
 

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Vaalingrade

Legend
I think it's fine. Seems to me that they would mean, "Go ahead and Multiclass or use whatever features you like that would make your character the way you want them. Just don't optimize to the point of that you trivialize encounters or make your fellow players or DM miss out on any fun."
I have never seen 'power-gaming' used in any context approaching this reasonable.

It's usually just a hyperbolic insult for whatever thing the person thinks is 'overpowered', usually without analysis or examination.

Things that get called called 'powergaming' include:

Multiclassing (including non-advantageous examples)
Choosing synergistic species/class/background combos
Choosing spells or skills relevant to the campaign
Using Feats
Desiring Point Buy
Wearing the best armor you can
Having your character have relatives
 

I had a player who figured out the devil sight/darkness combo by himself.

He used it exactly once to great effect.
He also sacrificed a rat each morning to gain the effect of hex for the day (which I deemed stylish and which he did without the knowledge of the other characters and players).

His biggest contributions to the party however derived from his combination of mask of many faces and actor and the charlatan background. This allowed the party to just circumvent many combats or start them with big advantages.
And the healer feat allowed him to keep up his disguise as a healer towards the other players.

Funniest thing that happened was that when the other characters wanted to know how he changed his appearance, they checked him on a "disguise" with detect magic at the one moment his "disguise" was just his normal appearance (it was the brother of his former character).

So. All in all a character which checked many boxes for "powergaming". But the effect was just a very very helpful and charming character.
 


tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
Epic
How about they want them as the fiction in the text depicts, and not as people with irrevocable super powers and a "patron" that exists solely to define the theme of said super powers.
Ive had a lot of warlock players have their pc try to phonea friend or call upon their patron to act as a greater power they have ties with when dealing with things in a larger plot within the world over the years. They have pretty universally been forces duesexmachina in that context and the talk about their patron relationship makes me very much agree with this.

The patrons even tend to be forces with power over large sections of the monster manual. It would be nice to be able to use fey or fiends without bov the never done jack for the arch~whatever trying to pull rank immediately before simply ignoring that tie for the remainder of the campaign. Clerics & paladins may not have much narrative teeth either but they don't have fluff quite so obviously & explicitly one sided.
 


MNblockhead

A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Complaints about power gamers remind me of complaints about rules lawyers. People have very strong opinions about such players, but I've never had much of an issue with either type. I think both stereotypes describe a player type that really enjoys rules mastery. Playstyle preferences are rarely an issue in my experience as long as the player is decent person with a sense of etiquette and modicum of emotional intelligence. For any player type, you can make a negative stereotype based on your bad experiences. I role-play, story-focused player can become a "spotlight hog". If I can engage in conversations with someone without it becoming a fight, if I can play a board game with someone without them flipping the board, if I can travel with someone without a bunch of drama, then I can play a TTRPG with them, whatever their play style preference.

Based on stereotypes, my current group of players shouldn't work based on many of the stereotypes I see debated in TTRPG discussion boards.

One player always plays magic users, really optimizes them, and their characters are just insanely powerful at mid to high levels.

Another player also has a high level of system mastery and can get very crunchy with rules (he's been DMing Pathfinder 1e for many years), but is really into the downtime activity between games, his characters backstory and role playing. Its become a running joke at the table to ask him whenever the party is attacked if he wants to attempt to parlay. ("A purple work erupts for the ground swallowing on of your retainers and his mount." Wizard: "I hold my action in case the cleric wants to attempt to parlay.")

Another player generally plays rogues and is generally the ID of the party. Really doesn't care about optimizing his character or making the best tactical decisions. Is really into long dialog role playing with his character, but likes taking risks and enjoys how the story develops when things go sideways. Nearly any character he plays would have been voted "most likely to unwitedly sire children with a coven of hags" in his high school yearbook.

The fourth player likes to generally sit back and just tank on opponents on her turn in combat and enjoys the occasional spotlight in social and exploration situations.

Somehow it all works out very well for us, because we are all get along and nobody is a jerk.

Any limits I put on my campaigns are for thematic reasons. Whatever the limits I put into place, a systems-mastery focused player is going to find ways to optimize his or her character. And that's fine with me. There have been times where it has made running encounters more difficult for me as a DM, but I also think it has made me a better DM.
 

Dausuul

Legend
If you don't like the idea of your power going away, don't play a class where that's explicitly written into the fiction for that class.
Where in the PHB does it explicitly say your patron can withdraw your powers once granted?

(I'm not going to argue about what the text does or does not imply, because that argument never goes anywhere. But if we're going to talk about what is explicitly in the fiction... either there is a place where it says flat-out that your patron can take your powers away, or there isn't.)
 

Clint_L

Legend
Power gaming is one of those P-words that is a bit hard to define, but you know it when you see it. I would say that a good quarter of the kids in our D&D Club fall into this category to some degree, and so I encourage them to play together. Often, they seem to really like the math of the game, and a few of them will spend the whole lunch hour furiously debating the latest broken combination that they've heard of or thought of. Again, it's not for me, but if it works for you then that's awesome. Who am I to say that my personal preferences are better?

Except when it's my table and I'm the DM. 'Cause if I'm expected to do all the work, then I am entitled to enjoy the game. So no power gaming. Or meta-gaming in the middle of the combat ("hey, if you can hold your action to cast this spell, then I will do this thing and then..."). Or, especially, telling other players what they "should" do and getting pissy when they make a suboptimal choice.

In general, it isn't a problem. I find that a lot of power gamers mostly save it for outside of the game, when they can really crunch the numbers.
 

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