D&D 5E Characters are not their statistics and abilities

[Sunseeker]

Tailoring a game to the players' interests as stated at campaign creation time is quite different from tailoring a game to the PCs. For one thing, PCs don't predate the campaign world under normal circumstances.

I won't disagree there, but tailoring a world to player desires is certainly going to bring you closer to their PCs than not doing so. If the party's key words are "Fun, adventure, a good romp, slapstick and "Miguel and Tullio'." I suspect you're going to have much less powerful PCs than if their key words were "weath, power, adventure, seeing the lamentations of their women and fun". This is assuming of course that noone decides to be Captain SelfishPants and bring something completely out-of-line with what was discussed between DM and party in Session 0.

 

[OB1]

Heh.

Now I have to propose a new standard: is there any PC build so bad that three of them in the same party with a normal PC will render the party unable to beat Easy encounters 51% of the time? After all, even the Str 3 Dex 3 Gnomish Barbarians are bad mainly because they can't do damage. If you have even one guy in the party who can Eldritch Blast the enemy Shadow Demon to death while the gnomes keep him grappled, the PCs will still win.

In other words, is there any PC who can actually ruin another PC's fun (from a challenge perspective)? Or is Rufus-ing always a self-inflicted wound?

Well, an easy encounter for a party of four becomes a deadly one for a party of 1, so as long as the other PCs aren't actively trying to make it harder for the average PC (i.e. basically becoming enemies by fighting, blasting or blinding her and thereby becoming part of the encounter difficulty level) you could completely discount any positive effect the low stat players might have and they should still be able to beat the encounter 75% of the time. Maybe more if the average PC doesn't care about ensuring the survival of her companions.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, an easy encounter for a party of four becomes a deadly one for a party of 1, so as long as the other PCs aren't actively trying to make it harder for the average PC (i.e. basically becoming enemies by fighting, blasting or blinding her and thereby becoming part of the encounter difficulty level) you could completely discount any positive effect the low stat players might have and they should still be able to beat the encounter 75% of the time. Maybe more if the average PC doesn't care about ensuring the survival of her companions.

I don't think the analysis is quite that simple though.

They don't just multiply the difficulty of a single encounter. They also multiply the length of the adventuring day by x4, or at least the budget for it. You might wind up fighting eight of those Easy (pseudo-Deadly) encounters per day.

Can the deadweight be dead enough weight that you lose or have to quit early at least half the time?

 

[OB1]

I don't think the analysis is quite that simple though.

They don't just multiply the difficulty of a single encounter. They also multiply the length of the adventuring day by x4, or at least the budget for it. You might wind up fighting eight of those Easy (pseudo-Deadly) encounters per day.

Can the deadweight be dead enough weight that you lose or have to quit early at least half the time?

Very good point. That does make the calculation much more difficult. I think that the floor would be under flipping the standard array so that your 8 is in your primary and 10 in your secondary ability with no racial bonus to those scores, but I'm not sure how far under. Gonna have to math the s*** out of this.

 

[Shiroiken]

I can see that though. A min/max'd character will often excel at what it's min/max'd for, and in a low-optimisation party that risks overshadowing the rest of the party in those situations (which is more likely to be remembered than when the character didn't do well in a different area).

And I know "not min/maxing" is a valid counter-argument, but speaking personally, it's haaard. I want my character to be the best at what (s)he does, and to make decisions that don't further that hurts. That said, I've recently dragged myself away from combat optimization. Now I'm running a much more challenging Tiefling Charlatan Actor who's trying to play shadow politics.

Although from how you word it, I doubt it was for such sympathetic reasons.

Yea, the way the poster put it, it was basically: if you don't min/max you're a bad player and I don't want to play with you, and I'll justify it by saying my character considers you too ineffective to pull his own weight. I felt that a bit extreme, but I've known players IRL who feel that way too.

Overshadowing people who don't min/max usually don't bother them much IME. They play to have fun, and unless your actions directly step on that fun they just don't care. 5E helps a lot with this, with Sub-classes and other ways to specialize in certain things, so you generally won't completely step all over someone unless you do it deliberately.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Translated into miniatures-combat-oriented-playstyle-language: "Great story - we wiped cuz Mikes character sucks - thanks Mike for contributing massively to that story!"

Translated: "No guys - I know it would be cool to fight that dragon, but we can't cuz Mikes character sucks!"
Translated: "Hey guys - Mikes fighter goes down in combat like a glass pea-shooter, so we're gonna have to buy 20 healing pots instead of that cool new weapon for Al's GWM PM killing machine! Now I know you guys are p___ed, but consider how the theme of Mike sucking really contributes to the story.."

Yes, if you use encounter guidelines as they are D and D is super easy and you can beat the game w/1 or more suck PCs, true. But my players would yawn at that. They like to be challenged, and I dial up the difficulty.

In the end, the answer to the OP question is just "it depends on your playstyle". If you are more role-play oriented, factors like what his aunt did to him at age 12 might be more relevant to "who he is" that his 8 STR. But not at my table At my table the conversation is more about "dude, you got sentinal last level right?" than about "my character is going thru a personal crisis due to blah blah blah or something [insert your own actual role-playing dialog here]"

I don't know if the best way to get folks to acknowledge your play style as being equally valid is to ridicule other play styles.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't think the analysis is quite that simple though.

They don't just multiply the difficulty of a single encounter. They also multiply the length of the adventuring day by x4, or at least the budget for it. You might wind up fighting eight of those Easy (pseudo-Deadly) encounters per day.

Can the deadweight be dead enough weight that you lose or have to quit early at least half the time?

Agreed, CR appears additive, but it isn't. There is clearly something different about a CR 8 encounter made up of 64 Kobolds and a CR 8 encounter with one Mind Flayer. Both are CR 8 encounters, but interestingly, the party is more likely to defeat a lone Illithid with ease than 64 kobolds because of nothing more than statistics. Against a lone Illithid, a single poorly performing or even non-performing party member is unlikely to substantially affect the encounter outcome. Against a more drawn-out fight against large numbers of enemies, a single poorly or non-performing ally is likely to make a substantial difference, even against much much weaker enemies due to his affect on the turn economy of the party. 4-against-1 is still nearly as good as 5-against-1. It only changes from a 20% ratio to a 25% ratio, however 12(.5)-against-5 changes to 16-against-4. Upping the number of foes each ally needs to deal with by 3(.5) or meaning that they will be taking 3(.5) more attacks per turn.

But it's well established that the CR math breaks down under the strain of large numbers due to the action-economy of each turn. The ability to do more things per turn is superior to simply being individually more powerful. Even Bob the Lame trying to do something each turn, if doing nothing more than absorbing a few hits is superior to having a party of 4 instead of 5.

To answer the question though: yes, Mr Deadweight can be that dead and weighty as to force the party to quit early but frankly, not substantially more than lacking reliable healing would do. Mr Deadweight is more likely to be a table problem than a mathematical one in the vast majority of situations. I've met plenty of people who want to be creative and flavorful, but they've all done so while still building fully operational battl...player characters. In 5e, it is easier than ever to not power-build and still make a highly flavorful and highly functional character. Which is why I reiterate my stance that non-functional characters are made by choice and that is a table and potential player problem. This isn't 3.5 and this isn't 4e. Building right out of the box will give you a 100% playable character, even the poor misbegotten Ranger is fully functional at the table. There are ways to function at 200% and ways to function at 50% but you have to knowingly choose those options.

I don't know if the best way to get folks to acknowledge your play style as being equally valid is to ridicule other play styles.

Quid-pro-quo.

I'm tempted to write up a more in-depth response, but I do believe your post really says it all. We (power gamers of which I do consider myself one) do not need your approval. We would however generally appreciate a reduction in the amount of vitriol we regularly receive when we make our preferences known. Of course, that's a two-way street, but you cannot predicate a reduction in vitriol on a change in the way they play, though you can certainly predicate it on the attitude with which they play, to which I agree @shoak1's response was inappropriate. And no, I'm not directing this at you, you just happened to make the comment that triggered this post, but one would have to be blind to say that power-gaming and people who do it do not receive a much more raucous response from the gaming community than many other styles of play.

If you do not want to play with people who power-game, as always, please say so. Reasonable people, even power-gamers, will understand that not all tables are okay with all playstyles. When you encounter a player whose method of gaming you do not appreciate, the best approach is to talk to them politely and explain the situation. Most power-gamers are 100% capable to play in non-power-gaming ways, they may choose not to as is their right, and in such cases it is equally your right to ask them to leave (or if you are at at their table, leave yourself).

I can't speak for everyone, but I would rather someone tell me that what I am doing in game is bothering them (whatever that may be) and ask me to tone it down than to bottle it up and potentially blow up, or go home having had no fun at the table. EX: I recently had a very bad week at work, and the session before that week had been really no fun at all because we have a couple of players who are easily "excited" and they get loud and lack good personal boundaries. So I told them up-front in the new session that I hoped to a much more "chill" day and they obliged. Sure the energy picked up by the end, but that was the end of the session. For 5/6 hours those people made an express effort to control themselves and I greatly appreciated it.

People who do not respond well to reason about what they're doing as players and characters are people who are best not played it, regardless of their playstyle.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Quid-pro-quo.

I'm tempted to write up a more in-depth response, but I do believe your post really says it all. We (power gamers of which I do consider myself one) do not need your approval. We would however generally appreciate a reduction in the amount of vitriol we regularly receive when we make our preferences known. Of course, that's a two-way street, but you cannot predicate a reduction in vitriol on a change in the way they play, though you can certainly predicate it on the attitude with which they play, to which I agree @shoak1's response was inappropriate. And no, I'm not directing this at you, you just happened to make the comment that triggered this post, but one would have to be blind to say that power-gaming and people who do it do not receive a much more raucous response from the gaming community than many other styles of play.

If you do not want to play with people who power-game, as always, please say so. Reasonable people, even power-gamers, will understand that not all tables are okay with all playstyles. When you encounter a player whose method of gaming you do not appreciate, the best approach is to talk to them politely and explain the situation. Most power-gamers are 100% capable to play in non-power-gaming ways, they may choose not to as is their right, and in such cases it is equally your right to ask them to leave (or if you are at at their table, leave yourself).

I can't speak for everyone, but I would rather someone tell me that what I am doing in game is bothering them (whatever that may be) and ask me to tone it down than to bottle it up and potentially blow up, or go home having had no fun at the table. EX: I recently had a very bad week at work, and the session before that week had been really no fun at all because we have a couple of players who are easily "excited" and they get loud and lack good personal boundaries. So I told them up-front in the new session that I hoped to a much more "chill" day and they obliged. Sure the energy picked up by the end, but that was the end of the session. For 5/6 hours those people made an express effort to control themselves and I greatly appreciated it.

People who do not respond well to reason about what they're doing as players and characters are people who are best not played it, regardless of their playstyle.

I defended [MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION]'s playstyle earlier in the thread. And while I understand no one needs anyone's approval to play the game the way they want to, what I was commenting on was more about discussing the game than playing the game.

I do agree with you that any play style is valid and that when it comes to harmony at the table, the best way maintain that is to talk to each other and provide feedback. If everyone's on the same page, that's great. When they're not, they need to work on things until they are.

However, when discussing things online, if you want people to view your opinion as valid, I don't think the smart approach is to describe their opinion in a dismissive manner. I have seen power gamers be targeted in many threads, as you say. But I think what usually causes it is the way in which their points are made.

As I said, I am perfectly fine with [MENTION=54380]shoak1[/MENTION]'s approach to the game because it is what he and his friends enjoy. All I called into question is his need to describe other playstyles in a dismissive tone. Being rude to folks seems an odd way to convince folks not to be rude to you.

 

[Sunseeker]

I defended @shoak1's playstyle earlier in the thread. And while I understand no one needs anyone's approval to play the game the way they want to, what I was commenting on was more about discussing the game than playing the game.

I do agree with you that any play style is valid and that when it comes to harmony at the table, the best way maintain that is to talk to each other and provide feedback. If everyone's on the same page, that's great. When they're not, they need to work on things until they are.

However, when discussing things online, if you want people to view your opinion as valid, I don't think the smart approach is to describe their opinion in a dismissive manner. I have seen power gamers be targeted in many threads, as you say. But I think what usually causes it is the way in which their points are made.

As I said, I am perfectly fine with @shoak1's approach to the game because it is what he and his friends enjoy. All I called into question is his need to describe other playstyles in a dismissive tone. Being rude to folks seems an odd way to convince folks not to be rude to you.

Fair enough, and I agree with you that it seemed out of line and unnecessarily aggressive.

 

[Hathorym]

A world designed for your players is certainly an approach that some people enjoy. Some folks enjoy the thinks they like a lot more than things they are unfamiliar with or dislike. I mention this now and then but I'll take a moment again to talk about "The Box". Inside the Box is everything we know, everything we enjoy, everything we understand. We are comfortable with these things. But not everyone is. Some of those things may be outside the Box, some of them may be in high-orbit away from their Box, some of them may have been purposefully shot into the nearest black hole. Playing what is known, understandable, relatable and certain can be what a lot of players are looking for. On top of that, some people look for a much lower level of challenge and even roll-play from a game.

I wouldn't want to run every game this way. But for certain tables, the fact that everything is contrived and designed for your specific enjoyment can be a source of great fun.

Thank's for the quote. For what it's worth, that game ended up being Wild West Clockpunk Horror.