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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8379477" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I agree with almost everything you say in your post, but I wanted to pop out this paragraph in particular. Because it highlights a crux issue that bothers me about this whole conversation every time it happens. Making a halfling thief isn't powergaming. Nor is making a Dwarf Fighter. Not to my understanding of powergaming. You might be able to argue that a Bugbear Echo Knight Polearm master with Sentinel is powergaming, that certainly is a very powerful build. But doing the bare minimum of making a race/class combo that is expected isn't powergaming. I'd add that is especially true when a dwarf fighter with a 17 strength and 16 Constitution is the example build given on page 13 when discussing how to build a character with the standard array and apply racial ASIs. And so, it bothers me when people say that those of us wanting to open that 16/16 1st level build up to more races are "just powergamers" because we aren't. Nobody read the PHB and say them make a Dwarven Fighter with a 17/16 in their two primary stats and decry that 5e was showing an example of powergaming. A coffee-lock is probably powergaming. A Hexblade Paladin with Polearm Master is probably powergaming. Wanting your tiefling cleric to have a 16 wisdom at level 1 isn't powergaming. It's just wanting them to be in the same place as is expected of a 1st level cleric. I can list hundreds of characters that start 1st level with a 16 in their prime stat and no one would call it powergaming. Not a single build. But the moment I want a non-standard build that achieves the same starting point I'm powergaming? Why? Is Fire Resistance more useful to a cleric than it is a bard? Is the ability to cast minor illusion suddenly broken on a sorcerer but wasn't on a wizard? Poison resistance is just too powerful to allow a warlock to have? Even the gold standard of these claims, the terrible dwarven wizard who gets medium armor... is the exact same as the Githyanki who get +1 Intelligence (therefor a 16) and can get medium armor as a wizard. Medium armored wizards with a 16 intelligence as level 1 have existed in the game since 2018, three years. Have we all been inundated with Githyanki armored wizards? Or did no one really even notice. There is no powergaming here. None. It is a red herring.</blockquote>

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