NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wik" data-source="post: 6679837" data-attributes="member: 40177">I like civil disagreements like this.  Makes me glad we're not in the "good ol' days" where any sort of opinion difference lead to muskets at dawn.  That's kind of a flawed argument - reducing the argument to its most illogical extreme.  Just because monks don't exist, doesn't mean you can't punch.  Limiting a class from the game -even if it's just because you don't like the flavour or the mechanics - doesn't mean a thing.  If a GM doesn't like bards, he or she is allowed to eliminate them from their game.  Doesn't mean characters can no longer sing.  Sure.  But not sure how this is relevant.  [quote[I've found the 5E MC rules to be very good. What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts. My Pal2/War3 doesn't get two attacks like the Bar5,  nor does he get 3rd level spells like the Clr5. I get the impression that some people assume they are unbalanced, and ban MCing based on that pre-conception.</blockquote>They absolutely can be, when you start getting wishy-washy on the rules.  Look on any character optimization board - you'll find a good chunk of the builds make use of a multi-class combination that can be abused.  Trust me, it's really not.  The difference here is, to use your example, you're suggesting that optimization a character or using the game to make powerful characters IS the game.  I don't think it is.  A better example would be to say "Do you have mathematicians promise to make sure they try their hardest to be good at soccer?"In other words, I don't feel I SHOULD be teaching players how to better optimize their characters.  That's not the point of the game for me.  I should be teaching them how to have a good time, and not have them worrying about keeping up with the Joneses.  The point of the game is to play.  That's how we enjoy it.  No one should be able to tell us how to play it, except the people in the group that are playing it.  By barring some of the rulesier elements, we've found a good middle ground. Sure.  But what about the skilled optimizer who uses the rules to be flat out better than his companions?  In 3e days, I remember deciding to play a guy in a detective campaign who was all about perception.  He couldn't do anything else, really.  Unfortunately, everyone else was a power-gamer.  My awesome perception guy.... had the lowest perception in the party.  And two of his companions weren't even really trying!  In 5e, those situations are less likely to happen, but they CAN happen.  And having players look at combinations ("Warlock Fighter!  Warlock Ranger so I can stack hex and hunter's mark!  Warlock X so I can blah blah blah... why do all the good multiclass combos involve warlocks?") can really invalidate others in the group.  Exactly.  This is why you limit the options, so there's less to optimize.  Trust me, if you play BECMI, this behaviour goes away REALLY quickly.  And strangely, people continue having fun.  Who'd have thunk it?  First, I never said anything of the sort.  What I did say was that I wanted to limit the amounts of optimization in my game.  As the GM, I have the right to steer the game in a direction where I will be having the most fun.  I've done that.  No one else should be telling me I'm wrong for doing so.  I'm not telling other people they're wrong for playing the game their own way.  Second, my own optimizing players are proof against your "fallacy".  They can be wonderful gamers.  Last session, one of these players spent a good chunk of time arguing for possession of a pair of suede, rhinestone-covered boots.  They had no value, and barely fit.  But he wanted them.  It was a fun time, and no mechanics were involved.  HOWEVER, if they, say, had a very minor bit of mechanics on them that didn't jive with his character, he'd make sure that +0.5 to insight checks would  go to the guy who needed intuition.  So, by getting rid of the fiddlier bits of mechanics, it frees the player up to have a bit more fun with the game.  So, you're all against this Stormwind Fallacy bit, but then in the next paragraph you argue the exact same thing about the people in the other camp?  That's funny stuff, man.I've seen PLENTY of players who fill up entire journals about their characters... and don't know how attack rolls work.  And I've seen power-gamers who couldn't tell you how old their character was, how tall, or even where their character is from... but could tell you exactly what their modifiers were for an off-hand attack on a rainy day.  Sure.  Sounds like fun.  If it were my game, it'd be exactly the same, except the rogue wouldn't be able to tread on the fighter's toes at all.  The game would be functionally very similar, just one option would be barred from the players.  Not a big deal.  I spent two, three years playing 1e.  I can tell you right now that fighters, while they tended to do one thing in combat, were not at all "limited" in play.  Maybe in combat, but so what?  Sometimes having a clear goal in every fight is a good thing.  It definitely appeals to some players.  So... a player wanted to make a choice, and the other people coerced her into another option?  That's exactly the sort of thing I hate.  She now has options to think about.  Not every player wants that.  It's good she's having more fun, so that's a plus.  But I'd be concerned about players exerting their wills on someone else.  Right.  Our concepts are limited by the rules of the game.  So if the GM decides to not allow an OPTIONAL rule into his game, it's ultimately not going to affect things one iota.  It's an illusion, though.  If you have a concept that's not supported by the rules, you can ALWAYS go to the GM and say "can I play this?"  My 5e group has an awakened bear as a PC.  We found a way to make it work.  Having a lot of tools ultimately means you can only build what the tools allow.  Having few tools can mean that people push the envelope and do something interesting.  It's like the iphone.  It was only allowed to have one button - and it pushed the design forward as a result (not that I'm saying we like iphones, necessarily....)"do the work"?  What?  It's my job to let them have fun.  They do have fun, because I've set up the game to fit my group.  Forcing them to play a game with a bunch of rules so that one or two people in the group have more fun at the expense of everyone else is bad GMing, not good.  "My PC would be so much cooler if I had 100% control over who and what he becomes".  Well, that's not how I run a game.  You have a character background, but once he hits the campaign, things are going to happen.  He'll be in adventures you won't predict, he'll get ability boosts, curses, and weird diseases.  He'll gain strange abilities from that demon curse he got, and that deity he met will let him see in the future, but at great cost.  Ultimately, in my games, you DON'T have control over your character's path.  Just where he steps and which roads he walks down.  That's how we like to game.  And honestly, it's awesome.  Agreed.  And luckily, we think all of our characters are cool.  And none of them needed an optional rule to get there.  Why anyone would think they NEED that optional rule to be cool, I honestly don't understand.[/QUOTE]

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