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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OnlineDM" data-source="post: 5590881" data-attributes="member: 90804">Thanks for the follow-up posts, all. I've definitely been thinking about this issue a lot lately, and I feel like I'm making progress.To be clear, it's definitely about the power gamer play style for me and not about the individual player. The main power gamer I interact with is an awesome guy and I really enjoy hanging out with him, even gaming with him. I've just found myself rolling my eyes (privately) at his tweaked-out-for-maximum-combat-effectiveness characters. There's no real character to them, just a combination of powers and stat choices and feats that result in ultimate destruction to bad guys.Yes, I get that this makes sense in-character; if the character were a real person whose job was going into dangerous dungeons and fighting horrible monsters, of COURSE he would want to make sure he was as effective as possible at killing those monsters without getting killed himself! It's just boring to me.[MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] hit two points that I think are dead-on. I disapprove of characters making choices that require metagame knowledge, and I disapprove of characters making choices of mechanics that are clearly weird corner cases of the rules that technically work in a powerful way but that weren't "intended" to work together in that way. If the player has to say, "Technically, this works..." then it's probably a choice I'm going to sigh about. The third point about optimizers being overly aggressive about "their play style is the only way" hasn't been a problem for me, but I can see how it could come up depending on the player.Ultimately, I think I've come to understand the power gamer mindset a little better, and I've come to understand where my own negative feelings toward the power gamer come from. So, mission mostly accomplished! I do still feel (rightly so, I think) that <a href="http://onlinedm.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/balanced-power-parties-are-ideal/" target="_blank">balanced-power parties are ideal</a>. Power gamers should play with other power gamers, and mixing power gamers with players who have different focuses but who still care about being effective in combat is not going to work well. But I can at least respect power gamers a little more now, even if I think they should mostly play amongst themselves rather than at the same table as non-power gamers.</blockquote>

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