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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7328400" data-attributes="member: 37579">It's more than that. The above tends to come up in cities, when there's a fear of consequences and retribution. Yes, removing that fear of losing to guards (or a posse) does make combat more of an option, but it's still not ideal: picking a fight with the State is only not a problem in murderhobo games, campaigns where the party doesn't have anything to lose but their lives and the gold on their person.Cities with a local authority are also only one play RPing happens. You can often negotiate outside of cities, partnering with humanoids to turn them against other enemies or talking through a random encounter. There's lots of times in the game where there's a consequence free option to talk or fight. Sure, you can kill the guy taking a toll on the bridge and no one will know. Or you can pay and steal back the money. Or you can talk him down through diplomacy or threats. Someone who optimised their character for one action is of course going to opt for a path that lets them take that action. It's not just combat: the thief who is built for maximum for stealth and thievery will happily pay for everyone to cross the bridge and then take back their money, the toll takers money, and the toll taker's pants. But combat does tend to be the most common focus. This can be disruptive. I've seen many instances where the first sign of something in the underbrush is met with a warcry and sudden strike from the combat monkey character. "Omigod, I just hit fifth level and can now attack twice. And if I Action Surge I can get four attacks. I can't wait to nova the eff out of something. Did that bush just move?" Or the player who decides that a negotiation isn't going well and just attacks, ending the roleplaying/ diplomatic scene of another character. Or the player gets impatient and annoyed because they can't participate in a diplomatic scene, as they laser focused their character on kicking ass and can't do anything else. That's the problem with power gaming/ optimising.  It labours under the false impressions that:a) You can "win" D&Db) The best way to "win" D&D is by winning fightsIt focused on just one of the three aspects of the game, and thus makes the other two less fun. This discouraging the DM from using them for fear of boring one player, while also ironically making it harder to balance combat encounters.</blockquote>

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