Balanced & Optimised or Not?

[Cadfan]

I agree with the general principle that there is a par, so to speak, which characters should roughly meet. It works both ways. You can also overrun par by too much, and ruin that game as well.

Where I have to disagree is with the underlying question. I know what thread spawned this, and what was being discussed, and, well, I'm not sure that you have that great an understanding of where 4e par is. I agree with the general premise that its important to find par and meet it, I just don't agree with you on the nature of par. Which... is a fancy way of saying that our Great Weapon Fighter holds up his end just fine, thank you very much. Par isn't so sensitive that two points of AC is a per se failure to achieve it.

 

[Hypersmurf]

People invest their time and energy and resources into playing a game that involves other people. To me, everyone at the table should consider everyone else's needs, and not just their own.

If someone in my group told me "You're using a pick? The CharOpt forum has conclusively proven that the pick is sub-optimal, and if you aren't using a longsword, you're betraying the party" - or whatever - I'd be a little annoyed.

-Hyp.

 

[Belphanior]

If someone in my group told me "You're using a pick? The CharOpt forum has conclusively proven that the pick is sub-optimal, and if you aren't using a longsword, you're betraying the party" - or whatever - I'd be a little annoyed.

Me too. I mean, obviously the bastard sword is the way to go.

No but seriously, I try to make people aware of the other's choices and what it means to have a party that lacks defenders (or whatever). So far I've never had a party that doesn't have the recommended spread but I wouldn't disallow such a thing. If they've got all the info they need to make a decision and are determined to play the characters they want, why not let them?

 

[Nifft]

I encourage them to work together, and be conscious of each other's decisions, so they're not thinking at cross purposes.

For example, in a kick-in-the-door style group, I'd encourage at least one Leader, possibly two.

As another example, if a couple of players wanted to make a pair of "special ops" style PCs, say a Rogue and a Ranger with an emphasis on Stealth, and someone else wanted to make a Heavy Shield + Fullplate Paladin, I'd ask them to discuss how these might work together -- or, at worst, to vote on a party theme & style.

Cheers, -- N

 

[chitzk0i]

And that's from where I get this attitude. Getting to an instance only to find your tank is specced MS and has DPS gear on, or finding your priest is shadow and has zero mana regen or spirit gear, or finding your rogue is lolstep maces, or your hunter has no idea how to trap, etc. is really annoying.

I don't actually play WoW, but I have two good friends who do. From what they've told me and from what I've seen, WoW is balanced so that if your team is not on the ball, you won't be able to complete higher-level team-based content. D&D isn't nearly as picky as that.

 

[zillah]

Actually when i started with a new group I almost got flack for constantly optimizing and trying to help them optimize. They op for RP stuff, i op to do the best I can, because optimized to me is fun. They have their own definition of fun. Which is fine. I play the defender, and I do my job they do theirs.
You can be optimized and still RP well. For example, my first encounter with my paladin of the Raven Queen was with undead. My character HATES undead! And the group was laughing that I was neutral but acting lawful good. My RP reason was the dogma of the Raven Queen. And of course, the natural death thing as well for my party members.
In certain situations, a non optimized party can hurt yes, but think about this because it will slap you in the face one day. No matter how optimized your character is, the dice can bone you. Hell, the players can bone you! 4.0 was made so that no matter how good you look on paper, the dice can hurt you and the party.
Ahh, WoW. My memories of it will never go away. Also, spending time optimizing there, and with my old group is what makes me see the optimization so easily. But, I realize that DND is a roleplaying game for people to have FUN with. Even if their character sucks, if they are having fun, thats what matters. As I am sure you know from WOW...you can suggest things to players if you feel the need.
In fact I would reccomend that because in WOW if your warlocks(this is what I was) weren't hit capped, you didn't raid, and if you weren't ready you didn't raid. It wasn't a joke. We didn't want to waste 4 hours.
It is very different in 4.0. You mentioned tanking gorehowl. Just remember that sometimes roles are different for classes even in WOW! I have tanked twin emps...I think I tanked ragnaros...I have tanked heroics in season 3 vengeful gear...and leotheras as well among others higher up. This is why different builds in 4.0 exist. Think about that.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

I've been watching the blog of a gamer who's party refuses to be "balanced" => they like ranged attacks, apparently.

They've been trying KotS....and they've been getting pasted.

I'm not surprised. My feeling is that there are basically two roles in 4e combat: melee and not-melee. You got to have melee, because ranges aren't great and monsters are fast. It can be a fighter or paladin, a strength cleric, a twf ranger, maybe even a properly designed staff wizard can do it - but someone has to be willing to front up.

At the moment I haven't seen too many fights where range was as important, but I've only played through Kobold Hall and most of KotS so far.

 

[brehobit]

I really think it would be hard to play without a leader-type. Not impossible, but darn hard. We played our first game without a striker, and that went fairly well (though fights were long). I also think defenders and controllers are fairly optional (though quite helpful). But not having a leader sucks hard.

Mark

 

[ogre]

Personally, this kind of optimized-party thinking really turns me off. It's a forerunner for thinking you can 'win' this game. yuk. The characters themselves can be optimized or not as the player desires. I'm happy 4e attempts to remove the metagame thinking 'we need a cleric' of the older editions. I say let people make the characters they want to play, let the DM figure out how to keep the campaign viable and fun.
I think Mouseferatu said it best in an above post.

For example, 10 years or so ago I DM'd 2nd edition for 3 players. A minotaur fighter/rogue, a human fighter and an elven archer. It was one of the funnest campaigns ever. As a matter of fact one of the players mentioned to me the other day he found a fellow gamer at work and was remenicing about that game and mentioned how cool it was they were all warriors, and yet the game still worked perfectly fine.

I'm hoping 4e doesn't fail in this regard. It's at least better than 3e, with the healing. Time will tell. Or perhaps, other will post and tell.

 

[Griogre]

I'm not surprised. My feeling is that there are basically two roles in 4e combat: melee and not-melee. You got to have melee, because ranges aren't great and monsters are fast.

I read somewhere there are really 3 ranks: Front (melee), mid (buffers, short range attacks) and back (long range attackers). Thus far that seems a really good insight to me. If you don't have a front to keep people off the range guys because the monsters are so mobile you can have real problems.

To the OP: I'm in the middle on optimized and balanced vs. anything the player(s) wants to do. I tell my guys they should get together and come up with a balanced party. However, because the game *is* suppose to be fun I tell them to play the character you want, and if that means the group is missing some type of characters you will need to compensate for it. I also tell them that whatever character they make, I expect it to be effective (doesn’t need to be optimized) and contribute to the group.

Now for my KotS game I told them I wanted everyone to take a different class from everyone else. I did this mostly so we would all get a chance to see as many classes as possible in action, since I looked as the game as a "Meet 4th Edition" game so our goal was learn 4th edition as well as the usual lets have some fun RPGing one.

However, from long experience running - I will tell you Mouseferatu is dead on. Badly unbalanced or ineffective parties are inherently self correcting and not necessarily just from TPKs or character deaths. In my experience if a party is way out of wack, I will often get some of the players coming to me asking to change or make new characters to solve the problem.