Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lyxen" data-source="post: 8387010" data-attributes="member: 7032025">No. Simply no. What I'm saying is that sometimes you are not even aware of what you are doing. It happens to me all the time. I can't count the number of times when I was sort of dissatisfied with something in a game or another, without being able to point out what the problem was. In some cases, it was external, in others it was with me (for example for disengaging from remote games for one reason or another and then just feeling dissatisfied with it, which was very easily solved by making sure I was engaged, taking notes, writing summaries, etc.).My apologies if you took it this way, it was certainly not the intent, believe it or not. I am certainly not calling you a liar.Oh, stop that, everyone is dishonest with themselves more or less continuously.No, sorry, it's not the way it's presented. If it's a choice at a level that oyu just obtained, then just ask your DM what the ruling is, where is the difficulty in that ? Asking a DM, at the start of the campaign, what al lhis rulings will be so that you can build a progression over the next 20 levels is powergaming, undeniably.I would tell him for a local situation in general, but again this is not what we are discussing here, we were on the "the DM must divulge in advance of the campaign all the rules he is going to use", which is just ridiculousAlthough, thinking about the case above, I would probably give a rough idea as to whether it was easy, dangerous or suicidal, but I would not give precise numbers. And I would not wait for hours for the players to decide and minmax all options. And I would certainly not explore all hypothetical situations with players so that they can decide on a build or another.And if he asks at a specific point during his character development, it's fine. But if it's to create a 20-level build, no. It's not the point of the game as I see it.And it's a DM's right to keep some information hidden, and to leave his options open. Just as an example, it might be that, at some point in time, the campaign will shift to another plane with other physics. Maybe some spells will not function, or function differently. Should he inform the players in advance so that they can plan for this at build time ? No, it's just ridiculous.At level 1, when a character has never cast a fireball in his life and will not for several years, why would he know what happens if it turns to frost ? After that, maybe, during the adventures, he can research that. But until there is in character reason for having that knowledge, why would the player possess it ? The ONLY reason that a player might insist on that is because he is afraid for his precious power curve.And this is where the selfishness of the powergamer shows itself. He does not care about the campaign and what will happen there. He does not care about the circumstances, the NPCs encountered, the situations, and especially he does not care about the other players, what they will do, etc. He only cares about guaranteeing his own personal power curve throughout the levels.Seeing this, it almost makes we want to allow all powergaming options so that a powergamer imagines his best dream come true, and then create a cataclysm on the campaign world that completely changes simple basic rules of magic and screws up everything. Most players would adapt, change their tack, and consider it a challenge, make it part of their story, etc. But the powergamer would just be lost without his precious build and his early level options all chosen in preparation for a future that would never happen.Of course, I would never do this, as I respect my players too much for it, but honestly, it's all that this behaviour deserves. Just FYI, in our campaigns, were we all love Planescape, changes of context happen all the time, magic works or not, some school are dangerous or skewed, etc. The players adapt at the time, find solutions, live the story about these difficulties. The sorceress sent into Avernus finds a solution for her fire magic in the game, not only in a rulebook for optimising purposes.And also FYI, no, I don't know at the start of the campaign all the rulings I'll make (it's an absolutely ridiculous demand to make), and I don't even know all the circumstances of the campaign, because I run sandboxes where the players can go almost where they want in the multiverse to solve what they want to solve. For example, in Avernus, they've had the opportunity to go to other planes of Hell, a PC Bhaalspawn want to go to Gehenna and Hades, they had the opportunity to take the Infinite Staircase and took it, and now want to go to Sigil, they have a side intrigue with a rakshasa prince that might take them to a Domain of Dread, etc. In each of these cases, the circumstances will be different and the answers to "what happens to a cold fireball?" might be different in Caina and on Avernus. I don't want to gimp myself and our collective imagination just for the sake of the POWER of one powergaming PC.And what I certainly don't want is to have him whinge every step of the way because his masterful plan to be more powerful is gimped at every turn because of local rulings. Especially since, FYI, I almost never refuse a backtrack on a character's choice, even from 10 levels ago. There are two notable exceptions, one is if the choice was iconic for the character, is part of his history and is well known by the party and the adversary, i.e. a kind of signature move or spell. And the other one is obviously refusing backtracks made for pure powergaming purposes, like suddenly needing a choice that could have been made at a low level but was not taken because it ws not optimal at levels 1-10 but suddenly becomes really powerful because of a synergy at level 11.But for some reasons, my players never do this, they trust me to make sure that they have fun, whether their character is technically optimised or not. And if a character is lagging behind and a player is obviously not having as much fun, you can be sure that will be discussed and that steps will be taken.And just the same if a character is hogging the spotlight all the time (technically or not), there will be a discussion about it, maybe followed by some action, because it's not a normal situation around a table.And I can guarantee that if some rulings are made at that time to adjust the extremely complex dynamic of a party, individual characters and a varied environment, they will not have been obvious during session 0.And here we are, the simple proof, it's for combo. Guess what, I don't care about technical combos.Yes, especially for a value of 1 sp, I can see how important that is compared to a whole campaign.</blockquote>

Verification