D&D 5E Dealing with optimizers at the table

[TheSword]

No one is saying optimizing is compulsory, or that you're a bad player if you don't optimize your character. But, you're also not a bad player if you DO take Sharpshooter, or if you follow a build guide or pick the best spells.

The only thing that makes a bad player is one who

a) Has a different play style than others at the table
b) Causes an issue for other players/the DM because of that play style difference
c) Does nothing to fix the issue despite being aware of it.

I don’t believe anyone did say picking Sharpshooter makes you a bad player.

Picking sharpshooter for an optimized character when the rest of the group doesn’t optimise and the DM has asked you not to optimise does.

 

[TwoSix]

I don’t believe anyone did say picking Sharpshooter makes you a bad player.

Picking sharpshooter for an optimized character when the rest of the group doesn’t optimise and the DM has asked you not to optimise does.

Then we're both on the same page.

 

[Marc_C]

I 'liked' your post, and other similar posts where horrible players got their deserved comeuppance, but I must point out that the problem players here are not problems because their PCs were optimised, they were problems because they had their PCs behave badly!

In your example (and I've been present in similar situations), the player starting a fight with those cavemen would've been exactly as problematic if their PC was poorly designed!

Optimizers are often overconfident in the ability of their characters to win every encounter with combat. In this case the player assumed that with his super-combo and the help of the other PC's best spells they could defeat the cavemen. He was not wrong mathematically speaking. They could have won.

In this instance the other players got fed up with his "one-encounter work day" style of play which forced them to rest far too often to their liking in the dungeon.

 

[Non-Proficient]

I don’t believe anyone did say picking Sharpshooter makes you a bad player.

Picking sharpshooter for an optimized character when the rest of the group doesn’t optimise and the DM has asked you not to optimise does.

Yeah well, that's just, ya know, like, your opinion, man...

While Walter is an #######, it doesn't make him a bad player, unless by 'a bad player' you meant to assert he's an #######. So what is to be done about it? The individuals giving advice to either suck it up and continue to deal with it, or up the combat capabilities of the casuals, or boot the optimizers flat-out --have a handle on the outcomes available. The rest comes off as Dude prattling that Smokey has emotional problems, naive to the human nature of player mentalities not willing to change their optimization habits. What difference does it make what is considered optimization and what a table of 50-somethings whose dad worked at TSR thinks of bringing optimization to the table? What is your remedy? Forget that Walter is an ####### for playing within the letter of the rules to a fault if not the spirit of the game (by your table's standards- and others' opinions). Does he get to bring the Pomeranian to the game or not?

WALTER: I'm saying, Cynthia's Pomeranian. I'm looking after it while Cynthia and Marty Ackerman are in Hawaii.
DUDE: You brought a ####### Pomeranian bowling?
WALTER: What do you mean "brought it bowling"? I didn't rent it shoes. I'm not buying it a ####### beer. He's not gonna take your ####### turn, Dude.
DUDE: Hey, man, if my ####### ex-wife asked me to take care of her ####### dog while she and her boyfriend went to Honolulu, I'd tell her to go #### herself. Why can't she board it?
WALTER: First of all, Dude, you don't have an ex, secondly, it's a ####### show dog with ####### papers. You can't board it. It gets upset, its hair falls out.
DUDE: Hey man--
WALTER: ####### dog has papers, Dude.--Over the line!
SMOKEY: Huh?
WALTER: Over the line, Smokey! I'm sorry. That's a foul.

Edit: "casuals" isn't the best word there, they could have been playing for a long time for all I know. "Unoptimisers".

Why are you hitched to D&D OP? If combat and feats and beholder stat blocks aren't the focal points of your campaign world, what specifically between the covers of Hasbro's flagship keeps your players foisting its banner? It baffles me why groups that aren't that into action economies and such cling to this particular combat-centric system. Do you play in a published game world? Can you port that world over to a more role-play-centric suite of rules that would negate the ability and or need to optimize or even cause the offending players to bow out on their own discretion in search of crunchier gridded pastures? Boom. Done. Solved all your problems. One page. If your group legit wouldn't give that a chance, they are no different than the dudes that can't tone down. That does everything you'd really need for a combat light system. Seriously.

For anyone that would ask another to change, ask yourself first what you are willing to change. If your rebuttal is along the lines of "why should we have to change, we are in the majority, and they are causing the problems" I would suggest that you are the ones distressed by the problems, and as such, you are the ones with the duty to amend your situation to your liking -without- expecting to change their behavior since they have shown you their willingness to defy your imposed requested table etiquette.

 

[Mort]

First, let me start by saying that I think optimizers are great at finding breaks in the rules. Though I do think their dark powers should be used for good. When new material is being designed, optimizers should be set loose on the stuff so they can find all the breaks...so the designers can remove them. Theorycrafting is fine. It's a fun thought experiment and I don't have issues with white-room theorycrafting at all. My problem is when optimal builds are actually brought into a game. And that's what the thread is about. How to handle optimizers at the table.

To be crystal clear and define my terms, I'm not talking about low-hanging fruit like synergizing race/lineage bonuses with your chosen class, or a rogue taking expertise in stealth or sleight of hand. What I'm talking about are the game breaking combos that...well, break the game.

In my experience, optimizers relish the thrill of the hunt away-from-the-table and want to show off their finds at the table. The trouble is being a DM at a table with optimizers. There seems to be one of four possible approaches to dealing with an optimized character and an optimizing player. First, you outright ban optimization. Second, you ramp up the combat challenges to such a degree that the optimized character is properly challenged...which will almost guarantee the non-optimized characters die regularly. Third, just never feature combat. Fourth, do nothing and let the optimized characters constantly walk all over any and all combat challenges.

None of these solutions are particularly great. Banning optimization cuts out a chunk of fun for an apparently significant segment of the gaming population. Ramping up combat challenges grinds through the non-optimized characters and basically forces them to optimize or die. This is an especially bad solution given that a not insignificant segment of the gaming population does not care to optimize, so essentially forcing them to is bad. Never having combat kinda defeats a major part of the fun of D&D...having tense combats. And letting the optimized characters always trivially defeat any combat challenges also defeats a major part of the fun of D&D...having tense combats.

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.

TL;DR: optimizers ruin the fun for everyone but themselves at my table. Help.

It's a long thread, so apologies if this has been answered.

How old are these two players? That makes a big difference in any approach.

 

[Non-Proficient]

Here's yet another solution OP that I'm developing to solve my issues. We play every other Sunday, the DM has another group on the alternating weeks, so we are planning to run Sidequest Sundays: a combat-heavy parallel campaign where we run our characters through all the time-consuming tactical madness that we grid-trolls thirst for. Raiding important NPC's homes in disguise to romance their women -but the guards block the escape! The secret crime syndicate mini-dungeon just outside of camp- stocked with thugs -whoa! How convenient! The BBEG's B-Team is deployed (that just happens to be considerably more competent than the A-Team!). How does this rub you OP? Would it wilt any feelings of importance for your storyline if you were aware that on the off-weeks your players were putting the smackdown on sub-plot antagonists? Would that still be stealing your player's thunder if they were doing it behind the scenes?

Maybe you can play it that these escapades always end with one of the combat characters waking up in a cold sweat... fever dreams of their paranoid overthinking of battleplans.

None of this involves any leveling or treasure, unfortunately, I mean it could, you just have to play it that you carouse it all away before the next 'official' adventure picks back up. We're bringing in NPC dummies for party characters that decline to be a part of the fun as meat shields -dying in the most horrible ways, but inexplicably fine come the next game day. Your caddy optimizers can run dual builds for the same characters: toned down for the game, and all-out for the sidequest one-shots -or they can pull their punches, but I'd side with an actual alternate toned-down sheet in case they don't have the discipline to behave. Use the excuse that they just can't bring it fully the next day because of all of the rowdy action they took part in the night before! --A sort of meta exhaustion. You can run these if you have time, it doesn't even have to be every off week, or your two players can if they aren't too lazy. Everybody seemingly gets what they want, and possibly more. What's not to love? Your Feeble Five are happy, your Ostentatious Optimizers are sated (as long as they aren't really more interested in ruining your game), and you can all live in harmony.

This is the outlet I've devised to nourish my combat cravings. We're gonna have alter-ego adventuring days getting into every gonzo shenanigan the DM would never let slide at the table (rightfully so) and for us, because we're carefully curating the implications to the main story- it's all canon! We're the Sleepin'-in-our-heavy-armor-every-day!-OG's --modeling our whole ******* lives around Morris Day and Jerome!

 

[NotAYakk]

Yeah... the concept of being “outshone” is really weird to me. It’s very.... computer game.

So, imagine if you have an image of a character to play.

One of the features is that the character you want to play is competent at somethings, maybe even heroic. Escapist power fantasies are fun, even for adults.

Then you go play D&D, and what you imagined as a bad-ass archer ranger character is incompetent in the actual fights compared to the other heroes. In fact, they might as well not be involved in any kind of combat, they are so much less competent than the other heros.

That is being "outshone".

 

[Arial Black]

Anyone can optimise by reading a guide/watching a video and copying it. That isn’t skill @Arial Black thats cookie cutter character.

Anyone can read a spell tier guide and and select the most effective spells.

Hah! You actually made me laugh out loud! : )

What made me laugh-in disbelief more than amusement-is your apparent conviction is that the process of optimisation necessarily involves reading a guide or watching a video!

How old are you? I'm 55. I've been playing D&D since AD&D wasn't even called 'first edition' because 'second edition' hadn't been thought of!

That fact alone doesn't tell us how skilled I am, but it does show that I learned to optimise my PC's decades before the Internet existed.

Do you think that the only path to optimisation is to copy someone else? That I, or any other optimiser, cannot do it without help?

Perhaps we mean different things by 'optimisation'. For me, making sure my PC is good at the things my PC is supposed to be good at is what I mean. If I want to concentrate on, say, archery, my PC will pick things that make them a good archer. Like, y'know, the Sharpshooter feat. Yet you react as if choosing Sharpshooter is basically cheating! As if I need to consult the forums to come up with that!

Some players - like a group ive been playing with for a year now just select things they think are cool, wouldn’t dream of researching and trust the game to be balanced.

That group has a 6th level sorcadin that only rarely smites - he chose sorcerer levels because enjoys casting spells as well as fighting. It’s the best campaign I’ve ever run. Utterly refreshing as a DM and an absolute pleasure.

Sounds good!

The advice I would give to everyone is to make a PC that YOU think is cool. Sure, it's nice if other people also think it's cool, but that's nowhere near as important.

This is because the way every player interacts with the game is through their PC. If you don't enjoy your PC, it's very unlikely that you will enjoy the game.

What you think is cool may differ considerably from the other players. But one thing we all have in common is that we not only want to play games or sports that we enjoy, we also want to play well. This is normal. We don't want to let our teammates down, we want to increase our skill and feel good when we do.

In D&D, different PCs are good at different things, and we have great latitude in choosing exactly what we want our PC to be good at. Archery? Battlefield control? Talking to NPCs? The world is your oyster.

But how much fun would it be to have a character concept that you want to be, say, a con-man who is also a good archer, and then because you don't know much about the rules, or can't be bothered with them, your PC isn't actually good at either? I imagine it would be pretty frustrating to play an allegedly skilled con-man/archer who can't hit a barn door or talk their way out of a paper bag? Wouldn't they enjoy the game more if their allegedly skilled con-man/archer is actually a skilled con-man/archer?

And what do the other players think? Are they really thinking "I'm glad Fred's PC is rubbish, that means my PC is still the best!"? No, they want Fred to have a PC whose game mechanics more effectively realise Fred's concept. Nothing wrong with Fred's concept, they don't want Fred to change his concept, they want Fred's PC to better realise Fred's concept, so that Fred will enjoy playing more because his performance matches his concept better and he will succeed more often.

And that is 'optimisation'.

 

[TheSword]

Hah! You actually made me laugh out loud! : )

What made me laugh-in disbelief more than amusement-is your apparent conviction is that the process of optimisation necessarily involves reading a guide or watching a video!

How old are you? I'm 55. I've been playing D&D since AD&D wasn't even called 'first edition' because 'second edition' hadn't been thought of!

That fact alone doesn't tell us how skilled I am, but it does show that I learned to optimise my PC's decades before the Internet existed.

Do you think that the only path to optimisation is to copy someone else? That I, or any other optimiser, cannot do it without help?

Perhaps we mean different things by 'optimisation'. For me, making sure my PC is good at the things my PC is supposed to be good at is what I mean. If I want to concentrate on, say, archery, my PC will pick things that make them a good archer. Like, y'know, the Sharpshooter feat. Yet you react as if choosing Sharpshooter is basically cheating! As if I need to consult the forums to come up with that!

Sounds good!

The advice I would give to everyone is to make a PC that YOU think is cool. Sure, it's nice if other people also think it's cool, but that's nowhere near as important.

This is because the way every player interacts with the game is through their PC. If you don't enjoy your PC, it's very unlikely that you will enjoy the game.

What you think is cool may differ considerably from the other players. But one thing we all have in common is that we not only want to play games or sports that we enjoy, we also want to play well. This is normal. We don't want to let our teammates down, we want to increase our skill and feel good when we do.

In D&D, different PCs are good at different things, and we have great latitude in choosing exactly what we want our PC to be good at. Archery? Battlefield control? Talking to NPCs? The world is your oyster.

But how much fun would it be to have a character concept that you want to be, say, a con-man who is also a good archer, and then because you don't know much about the rules, or can't be bothered with them, your PC isn't actually good at either? I imagine it would be pretty frustrating to play an allegedly skilled con-man/archer who can't hit a barn door or talk their way out of a paper bag? Wouldn't they enjoy the game more if their allegedly skilled con-man/archer is actually a skilled con-man/archer?

And what do the other players think? Are they really thinking "I'm glad Fred's PC is rubbish, that means my PC is still the best!"? No, they want Fred to have a PC whose game mechanics more effectively realise Fred's concept. Nothing wrong with Fred's concept, they don't want Fred to change his concept, they want Fred's PC to better realise Fred's concept, so that Fred will enjoy playing more because his performance matches his concept better and he will succeed more often.

And that is 'optimisation'.

Yes, in the past you needed skill and experience to create optimized builds. Now you just need the internet. Sorry to break that to you. 40 years of gaming experience equalized by Reddit.

Your justification for optimizing because it makes your character concept better assumes two things. Firstly, that the player isn’t already happy with the characters abilities as they are. Secondly that there is a binary state between optimized and rubbish.

Is an elf archer who doesn’t pick Sharpshooter rubbish?

 

[cmad1977]

So, imagine if you have an image of a character to play.

One of the features is that the character you want to play is competent at somethings, maybe even heroic. Escapist power fantasies are fun, even for adults.

Then you go play D&D, and what you imagined as a bad-ass archer ranger character is incompetent in the actual fights compared to the other heroes. In fact, they might as well not be involved in any kind of combat, they are so much less competent than the other heros.

That is being "outshone".

That’s an amazing imaginary scenario.
I’m a team guy i guess and always find a way to “carry my weight”.