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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alatar" data-source="post: 6964310" data-attributes="member: 38424">I'm a player, not a DM, and I like to optimize my character builds. So, whenever I see a thread like this, I think, hmm, yes, tell me about all those builds that the DM's fear. But I always come away disappointed.Let's take that GWM barbarian as an example, since it is such a straight forward build. I have two points to make about this guy, and they are closely related. Point number 1: he's a striker, to dip into the useful parlance of the previous edition. He hits things hard. He's really good at hitting things hard. The only thing he is good at is hitting things hard. And he's so good at hitting things hard  that he can hit things hard while naked. He's got resistance to everything, He doesn't have to give a thought to defense. All he has to do is run up and hit things. Cool. Have at it.There are other roles to play besides striker, like defender and controller (fighter and wizard). They can can hit things too, but not as hard. But they can do other things as well, things that the uber striker cannot do. I realize that I'm pointing out the obvious, but when we talk about how overpowered a build is, I think we tend to ignore this obvious point. Most of the other players in the group are not measuring their characters against their friend's GWM barbarian. It's apples and oranges.But maybe some of them are. There are two or three strikers in the party. There is a ranger and a rogue as well as the GWM barbarian. And they do less damage. But the ranger has hunter's mark, a particular fighting style, a favored enemy, hunting and tracking chops, stealth mojo. He's got more going on than our barbarian. There are more levers to pull, more ways for the player to play his character. More degrees of freedom. The same goes for the rogue. Both classes can do things better than the barbarian, and they can approach combat in a greater variety of ways. And on those occasions when the encounter does not lend itself to a melee scrum, the ranger and rogue will suck a whole lot less than big barb, the guy who hits hard while naked. The GWM barbarian is one dimensional in comparison to other striker types. If all the gameplay is of a type to favor his one dimensionality, is that because the build is broke or is it because the DM is not all that he might be?And the ranger and the rogue, and our wizard and fighter as well, they have to think about not getting dead. They are not resistant to everything. Their game has a basic component that the GWM barbarian's game lacks. Who's the loser on this deal?Which brings me to my second point. I don't want to play that GWM barbarian. Can you imagine doing exactly the same thing, over and over again, for 20 levels? You have absolutely nothing to think about. You have no choices to make, no trade-offs to consider, no repercussions to rue, no achievements to celebrate. A bot could play your character. Yuck.That's why my black heart always comes away from these discussions broken. I don't want to play that Sorlock, where if you do exactly this in round one and you do exactly that in round two, your DPR shoots so high above the curve OMG. Your boring builds are boring.Yes, you can be a harder hitter than everyone else, and you can hit harder while naked. The catch is, you have to play a GWM barbarian for the whooole campaign. Have fun with that.And if you have a player who will have fun with that, but he picked blade pact warlock by mistake, well, oops. You can't have the luxury of building cool characters without the peril of building uncool characters. And if you take away the latter, you've taken away the former.And some of your players, if they do measure their characters against the GWM barbarian, and find that they simply come up short, may be the type that says, hey, fair play. That guy picked the better build. That's on me. It's a game. And I'm a gamer.edit: And that was three points, not two.</blockquote>

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