D&D 5E Dealing with optimizers at the table

[Cap'n Kobold]

I think the general problem some posters have (myself included) is that you're saying that PCs with high differences in overall combat effectiveness is inherently game breaking. I don't think that's the case, and personally I think it isn't even very hard to DM around, especially in a 5e context. Dealing with martial/caster divide in 3.5/PF was much more difficult.

I think the general problem is that the OP did not actually say this; in fact they specifically stated that in a group of other optimisers, the game works fine.

This leads to the situation of people misrepresenting the OP by accusing them of views that they have not stated, in order to defend behaviour that is leading to an active loss of enjoyment to the DM and some of the players of a D&D group.

(Note that your post wasn't the worst of the personal attacks people appear to be making on someone asking for help. It was just the point at which I hit my personal "They can't all be misreading; they're doing it deliberately." point of disbelief. Don't take the face that I replied to you as an indictment that your post was any worse than some of the other ones in this thread.)

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

The point was not to mock, although I knew it might come across that way. That's why I mentioned my motive, which was to demonstrate that exactly the same points could be made to cast the actor-types as the villains and the optimiser types as the innocents, showing that neither version would be valid because it's not really optimisers versus actors that is at the heart of his problem.

The problem is that some players are playing selfishly.

Sure, you can be an optimiser who plays selfishly, but you can also play an optimised support PC, or any variety of optimised PC who cares about the experience of all the players.

You can also be an actor-type, who only cares about the talky stuff and gets bored by the game play aspects, fighting and so on, and still be a total jerk who monopolises the game for their own enjoyment at the expense of the other players.

You could put up a scenario and tell us that your group is divided between optimisers and role-players, and also tell us that one group is spoiling the game for the other group, and we simply could not know which group was selfish and which was not.

So, making optimising harder is irrelevant! That's not the problem! The problem is selfishness, and that behaviour could come from either group!

I'm sure that that very situation does indeed occur. However, the OP has told us their situation, and we know which group is causing the issue. Moreover the OP has told us that the usual methods of dealing with selfishness (asking the player to stop/kicking from the group) are specifically not actions that they have access to.

If someone comes asking for help, saying that they have situation X, and that they would like advice about solution Y, because solution Z is something they are not in a position to do. - Do you really think that telling them "Just do solution Z. lol" is helpful.
Do you personally think that mocking them, accusing them of lying, or declaring that "they're not saying XYZ, they're actually saying ABC" is going to give them the help that they're asking for?

The way to solve his problem would have been to ask us how to solve the problem of some players being selfish, and the advice he would get would apply equally whether the problem players were optimisers OR role-players, or both.

OK. So what would your advice actually be?
Most of the suggestions I've seen so far, even the ones that seemed to honestly trying to be constructive, seem to be ignoring what the OP was actually saying:

And yes, I've tried the standard "why don't you try talking to your players" routine. Doesn't help. The optimizers just keep doing it. They literally refuse to stop. This makes the non-optimizers have no fun because they either stop playing the way that's fun for them or stop playing entirely. So I basically have to choose. Which group of players will I run the game for. I don't have time for both. I don't want to exclude either group from my table, but they simply do not mesh.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

…you're saying that PCs with high differences in overall combat effectiveness is inherently game breaking. I don't think that's the case, and personally I think it isn't even very hard to DM around, especially in a 5e context.

I agree. It depends on the players, of course, but some groups are happy to have Stanley Tweedle and Zev in the same party.

 

[iserith]

The problem isn't if the PCs overall are doing this, it's if one particular PC is doing it and that to effectively challenge said one PC means annihilating the rest of 'em.

That's just not really an issue in D&D 5e though. The power gap between PCs isn't that big.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

That's just not really an issue in D&D 5e though. The power gap between PCs isn't that big.

That depends on just how unoptimized the unoptimized PCs are. But yeah, provided the "non-optimizer" PCs aren't completely weird, idiosyncratic "I want my wizard's stat focus in charisma and only use witch bolt" builds I don't know how you really get one character completely on a different level than the others in 5e.

I suspect if one character is always appearing much more powerful than the others it is because someone is only looking at whatever narrow aspect of play they are optimized for, and possibly focusing too much on that aspect at their table.

I have had two of my own characters, and one of my players' character contract various forms of lycanthropy and thus become permanently immune to normal weapon damage, which is about the most unbalancing thing I've seen at the table, and while in each case it helped make them occasional breakaway MVPs, and required DMs to plan accordingly to avoid having important combats uninteresting for that character, in no case did it really result in the particular PC being in a whole different league than the rest of the team outside of certain narrow circumstances.

 

[iserith]

That depends on just how unoptimized the unoptimized PCs are. But yeah, provided the "non-optimizer" PCs aren't completely weird, idiosyncratic "I want my wizard's stat focus in charisma and only use witch bolt" builds I don't know how you really get one character completely on a different level than the others in 5e.

I suspect if one character is always appearing much more powerful than the others it is because someone is only looking at whatever narrow aspect of play they are optimized for, and possibly focusing too much on that aspect at their table.

I have had two of my own characters, and one of my players' character contract various forms of lycanthropy and thus become permanently immune to normal weapon damage, which is about the most unbalancing thing I've seen at the table, and while in each case it helped make them occasional breakaway MVPs, and required DMs to plan accordingly to avoid having important combats uninteresting for that character, in no case did it really result in the particular PC being in a whole different league than the rest of the team outside of certain narrow circumstances.

Pure speculation based on scant details, but I imagine it could also be that a "storyteller DM" with up to 7 players per session is likely dealing with an issue of characters almost always at full strength which is going to make many combat challenges fairly easy or, if one does try to create a challenge with a suitable difficult for that adventure/campaign structure, very drawn out. And in such a scenario, the optimizers will really stand out since they're likely creating characters tailored to that kind of game.

If this is what is going on, then that's an easy enough fix on the DM's side of the screen.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In philosophy classes, we would sometimes try to make an argument we didn‘t necessarily agree with and felt was weak stronger, so we could examine the best version of it.

How about we try that here? People are zeroing in on the quite reasonable claim of the OP that bringing up specifics might have the socially undesireable effect of players in his group figuring out that that this is about them, and is therefore reluctant to do so. At the same time they have referenced the highest types of types of super-optimization used in another post, and even given us a DPR example.

Why don’t we take them at their word and create the most brokenly optimized gonzo builds that we can imagine by RAW, and assume that is what the OP is dealing with? I‘ve been on these forums a long time. There are a few ways to get fairly ridiculous results if you have access to all the content, have a brain that’s good at it, and are actively trying.

Let‘s help a fellow gamer out here.

 

[Horwath]

Isn't it simply less effort to nerf the 10% than to power up the 90%?

No it's not.

As with these 5 feats, you are just about the same in power level of taking +2 to primary stat.

If a feat cannot compete with +2 to primary stat(not just combat, but overall value) then it is not designed properly.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Why don’t we take them at their word and create the most brokenly optimized gonzo builds that we can imagine by RAW, and assume that is what the OP is dealing with? I‘ve been on these forums a long time.

Well I don't know how useful that would be in and of itself, but if the OP could then point out comparable levels of broken out of a line-up that would certainly make it easier to give relevant advice. I know they don't want name specifics for a variety of reasons including that we will "miss the forest for the trees", but just talking about "optimization" at the current level of abstraction is like talking about a forest without knowing what the principal species of trees in it are.

 

[Lanefan]

No it's not.

As with these 5 feats, you are just about the same in power level of taking +2 to primary stat.

If a feat cannot compete with +2 to primary stat(not just combat, but overall value) then it is not designed properly.

If +2 to prime stat is so good that only five feats can match it, then it's that +2 benchmark that's too high.

Make it +1 instead, rein in those five feats, and you're good to rock.