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

[Sunseeker]

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

Sounds like the general setting for Deadlands, which I quite enjoyed myself.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Count my vote for: low-magic steampunk western horror can be a blast.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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.

Oh, I dunno. I'm a natural powergamer* (as a player, which I don't get to do regularly but dream of often) and I mention it occasionally on these forums. I don't remember getting any serious pushback for it. Certainly nothing "raucous" has registered in my memory. Every once in a long while you'll run across someone who gets defensive because they think you're criticizing them for not powergaming, but that tends to be more "querulous" than "raucous", and it's rare anyway.

* My proof: when you hate, hate, hate clerics from a RP perspective with a burning passion, but you really want to someday make a Life Cleric 1/Enchanter X party tank because the synergies are so cool and interesting, and then find a way to rationalize away the "cleric" part as somehow "not really a real cleric like those stupid ones I hate"... face it man, you're a powergamer.

 

[Sunseeker]

Oh, I dunno. I'm a natural powergamer* (as a player, which I don't get to do regularly but dream of often) and I mention it occasionally on these forums. I don't remember getting any serious pushback for it. Certainly nothing "raucous" has registered in my memory. Every once in a long while you'll run across someone who gets defensive because they think you're criticizing them for not powergaming, but that tends to be more "querulous" than "raucous", and it's rare anyway.

* My proof: when you hate, hate, hate clerics from a RP perspective with a burning passion, but you really want to someday make a Life Cleric 1/Enchanter X party tank because the synergies are so cool and interesting, and then find a way to rationalize away the "cleric" part as somehow "not really a real cleric like those stupid ones I hate"... face it man, you're a powergamer.

The bolded part seems to be where I see the most contention, not very surprising though, I tend to get defensive when I get criticized for "not playing in a manner some random person on the internet deems superior".

I'm going to preface the following by saying my DM is insane.

My DM said at the start of this campaign we can be any core 3.5 race (it's a 3.5 game). No biggie right? He then added that we could also be half-dragons or natural lycanthropes (of any standard variety). Being a power-gamer I naturally said "lolwot" and he said "Serisly". So I did. I made a weretiger rogue. I rolled well to begin with so it's statistcally absurd. I pounce from about 110ft for multiattack (claw, claw bite; trigger two free grapple checks on claw hits for two extra claw hits, and sneak attack damage on every single hit at level 10 I do +/-30d6 per turn) to absolutely murder everything. Now, he throws some seriously custom stuff at us, so it balances but still. After a bit of a character crisis of faith (which I role-played out) my character has switched to druid, now there's not much out there that is stronger than I am (I have a higher STR than the Huge Elemental form!) so I found the lovely little gem that is the Shapeshifter Druid variant, by Druid standards, not very impressive...because normally Druids have suck physical scores so they want to steal stat blocks, I don't. So these Shapeshift things just give me straight up buffs on top of my existing stats and I keep everything I already have from my class. At level 11 it means I will have a 40 Str. By level 20 I'll have something in the realm of a 50 Str, it's intended to be an Epic campaign, so I can take this up to level 26 which will net me around a 70 Str, and Gargantuan size, no duration.

Sure, I can rationalize why my selfish, money-grubbing basically-a-merc-for-hire rogue had an existential crisis of faith (i've got a 5 page story written on why!) but it's in character for her to basically power-game herself.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Sure, I can rationalize why my selfish, money-grubbing basically-a-merc-for-hire rogue had an existential crisis of faith (i've got a 5 page story written on why!) but it's in character for her to basically power-game herself.

Self-optimization should be in-character for most adventurers. The ones who don't are just more likely to die.

If your weretiger rogue/druid was experiencing a significant challenge against the threats at-hand, then a halfelf noble/bard would have had no chance!

 

[Sunseeker]

Self-optimization should be in-character for most adventurers. The ones who don't are just more likely to die.

If your weretiger rogue/druid was experiencing a significant challenge against the threats at-hand, then a halfelf noble/bard would have had no chance!

Maybe, but so far smart play has kept "normal" PCs alive far longer than power-building. Sure I'm grossly overpowered, but I'd still get whooped if I didn't play smart.

 

[Lehrbuch]

Furthermore, I think we have to set aside Combat As War techniques, thinking outside the box, winning through roleplay/negotiation/making alliances/etc., and talk purely about combat challenges.

In other words by the players not attempting to play D&D at all?

So, in summary, mechanically sub-optimal characters are only a problem if the DM is ignoring the capability of the PCs when designing / running encounters, and the players are also ignoring the capabilities of the PCs when they decide what to do.

 

[BoldItalic]

Self-optimization should be in-character for most adventurers. The ones who don't are just more likely to die.

If your weretiger rogue/druid was experiencing a significant challenge against the threats at-hand, then a halfelf noble/bard would have had no chance!

Just a whimsical thought - should a low-Wis character be less good at self-optimisation?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In other words by the players not attempting to play D&D at all?

So, in summary, mechanically sub-optimal characters are only a problem if the DM is ignoring the capability of the PCs when designing / running encounters, and the players are also ignoring the capabilities of the PCs when they decide what to do.

(rubs eyebrow) I love Combat As War, but I can't help feeling somehow as if you are overstating the case. I think it's because my decision to exclude CAW from an answer to pemerton's question about floors on combat doesn't prove anything either way about CAW techniques. It doesn't prove that they would work, and it doesn't prove that they wouldn't. It just leaves them out of the question because CAW is really difficult to generalize about in a cross-table way: every DM runs CAW differently.

So, no. I don't think you've proven that at all.

Edit: also, it hasn't been proven that there's a link between combat floors and "mechanically sub-optimal characters [not being] a problem." Really that's a normative question for a specific table; it doesn't really have anything to do with pemerton's question that I was answering, which was strictly a tactical question.

On reflection, that's the primary reason your question makes me uncomfortable. Tactics aren't norms. For some people, if their fellow PCs "can't beat 51% of Easy encounters" it might not even bother them. For other people, if even a single fellow PC fights like a buffoon it might ruin the sense of camaraderie and awesomeness that they expect from their game. You cannot use tactical analysis to predict what will cause problems with fun.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Just a whimsical thought - should a low-Wis character be less good at self-optimisation?

Depends on how the character views "self-optimization".

I recently played a low-Wis arcane caster character in a 3.5Ed game who was absolutely nuts about electricity. As a "blaster" he probably should have broadened his array of energy types, since lightning probably lagged only behind fire in terms of the number of foes with defenses against it. That would have been optimal in the meta/objective sense.

Instead, he concentrated on accumulating all kinds of electrical attacks. All of his spells, all of his items, all of his feats. Because LIGHTING!!!

So, to HIS mind, he was optimizing his mastery of that energy type. In the game sense, he would be increasingly frustrated by opponents who could survive his favored attacks with few if any ill effects. But if you needed something hit with a bolt of electrical energy? He was your guy.