Interesting thread. Frankly, having DMed for optimizers in every edition of D&D, 5e optimization isn't even a thing, IMO. Compared to DMing 3e for 10 years, including up into high levels, the notion of 5e optimization is laughable. In 3rd edition, I had to deal with literal demi-gods stalking the battlefield. I don't have this issue with 5e.
Frankly, there is no build I have seen yet in 5e that I would even consider a speed bump as a DM, and I pretty much allow everything WotC publishes and play by RAW. Perhaps there is some optimization board theorycrafting uber build I haven't encountered, if so, I'll maybe need to house rule something. But that day hasn't come yet. Though, we should make a distinction between optimizers and actual rules abuse. I have no issue with players who leverage the rules of the game to a make a hyper competent character, assuming that the game rules themselves are balanced and well designed. I do have a problem with players who exploit vaguely worded feats and spells to distort the intent of the design. That's easily handled with some house rules or errata, both official and unofficial. But in some cases, the game itself is just poorly designed and balanced. 3e had this problem in spades. It was frankly inevitable that casters would dominate non-casters. It was baked into the game design.
There are three builds/strategies that might qualify; coffeelock and nuclear wizard.
Coffeelock relies on (a) pact magic spell slots can be used for flexible casting, and (b) elves never need to take a long rest.
Nuclear Wizard basically relies on the rule that magic missile rolls for damage once.
Infinite Simulacrum relies on the fact that your simulacrum can cast simulacrum, generating a countably infinitely long chain of half-HP near-full-spell-slot duplicates of yourself.
But in 5e, the difference between a competent build and an 'optimized' build is at best 10-20%. 5e rules are pretty tight. But I certainly can see the case where optimization may appear to be a problem in 5e if either of two things are true:
- The DM is not themselves tactical or optimization minded. This frequently manifests as the DM feeling threatened or overwhelmed by optimized characters since they themselves don't employ efficient monster tactics, or design encounters suited to their group. Frankly, this is a DM problem, not a player problem, and not easily solved. Anyone can become a good DM, but it does take skill and experience. And it involves skills in program management, and people management, and yes, you do need to understand the underlying math of the game. You should be able to read a rulebook and be able to identify and analyze potential optimization tactics before your players ever ask you if they can play it. All good DM's do this, even if its subconscious. Not everyone feels comfortable with this. That's ok, but if you aren't, then you should consider that DMing may not be for you at least without some investment to grow your skills. I've never seen a good DM who couldn't do this.
So, this is silly. Even a game as relatively simple as 5e is going to have optimization tricks that a very mathematically literate and RPG literate DM isn't going to be able to pick up by just reading the rules.
You might spot some, especially ones based off other tricks you have seen in similar games, but the idea that you are going to be able to head off your PCs ability to find optimization tricks, let alone the entire internet's ability to find optimization tricks, is basically arrogance.
Anyone who thinks they have this ability is just arrogant and ignorant of their own limitations with a near 100% certainty. That could be what you mean; to be a DM you have to be so arrogant to think you can do that?
Or is this a no true scotsman joke?
(I read and play lots of games and RPGs. I'm easily in the top 1% of human ability at mathematics. I have no illusions about being able to find all optimization tactics in a 5e rulebook before the entire D&D community could find it. I may spot some, but I won't spot anywhere close to all of them.)
Hell, it was only a month ago that I saw someone do one punch man; and to exploit that, you end up trying to use the Lucky feat to force a miss to up your crit chance.
(And yes, one punch man in 5e isn't what you call crazy OP, but rather a silly optimization game.)
- Some players are deliberately designing sub-optimal characters. Again, if PC's are not being designed to a baseline level of competence for their level, that is the fault of those players, not those who are actually making competent or even optimized characters. Talk to them out of game and explain the issue. Give them an opportunity to tune up their builds. Perhaps asking advice from the players who are better at optimizing. Otherwise, they either accept that their PCs will be consistently outshone, or find a different game. Early on as a DM, I struggled with this dynamic when I tried to adopt the conventional message board wisdom that optimization = bad. Then I realized the optimizers weren't my problem, it was the ones who refused to engage with the mechanics of the game at a sufficient level that were causing all the disruption.
"Deliberately" is a weird word here.
I play D&D with people who don't optimize their PCs at all. They get a character concept, and they build the character using the D&D rules based off of that concept. They go beastmaster because they want a beast companion. They pick their beast companion based off of their character background, not the monster's statistics.
Their stats are based off what they think their PC should be good at, and they spend their ASIs on things they want their PC to be better at. Should the PC be stronger? Increase strength.
The fact that strength and dexterity have nearly no synergy in 5e is something that they aren't using to justify "if I am making a dex build, I should dump strength". Their character's strength is based off of "how strong do I imagine this PC to be?"
My position is: I want people who do this to have a viable PC. I don't want there to be a factor of 5 between how effective that PC is, and how effective the optimizer's PC is.
Now, I'm ok with a much smaller ratio of competence difference.
To explain it differently. If a competent build is an 8 out of 10, and an optimized build is a 9 or a 10. Then your game will be much smoother if you are designing for the 8-10 range. But if you have to deal with builds that can range anywhere from a 1-7 in competence and ability, then the game won't work. And the fault isn't with the 8-10 builds. Its with the 1-7 builds. And likewise as a DM, you should feel comfortable DMing for 8-10's. Of course, if the game itself is broken and an optimized build can be a 9-20, and totally break the scale, well then I would find a different game to play (I'm looking at you 3rd edition)... But 5e doesn't really have this problem.
The downside to this approach is it actually reduces the number of viable PCs builds and players.
There are a lot more PC builds in the 1-7 range than there are in the 8-10 range. And if you build a PC not based on the mechanical optimization outlook, you (a) get a PC in the 1-7 range, and (b) you probably get a PC that matches the idea you have in your head better. Story-first PC building, not mechanics-first.
Now, I personally enjoy taking game mechanics and using it to build a PC story from. That is fun. But I respect and want to play with people who start with a story and attach mechanics to it.
...
So my first rule is, when I modify a game like D&D, is to make the naive builds better.
I also want to give the optimizers something to play with. So that means feats and multiclassing.
So I attack optimization traps. The ones I have identified are:
1) The "back 10" problem. All non-full-caster 5e classes have weak features in the 10-20 level range compared to the 1-11 level range. Full caster features, except spells, are equaly weak; this leads to the 18-20 being "just multiclass it away", as the 1-3 features of other classes usually outdo the 18-20 features of your class.
2) The spellcaster multiclassing problem. The exception to the above is spellcasters, whose main feature is "how high level a spell do you have access to". Slot stacking helps, but not that much. The narrative difference between a Spellcaster 17 and a multiclass Spellcaster 8+9 is ridiculous. One has a wider selection of T1/T2 spells, the other has T3/T4 spells. This happens at every level.
3) Most feats actually suck, like 90%+ of them. They are worse than a +2 to your primary attribute. Feats are more interesting, build-wise, but are mechanically sub-par. When multiclassing, builds tend to avoid ASIs as near-dead levels, so they don't even match up with low level class feature's in power.
4) Dip bait. Front-loading of class features that synergize with each other makes going deep into many classes suboptimal. To attack this, inject the obvious synergy abilities in-class at higher levels; Barbarians eventualy get a 19-20 crit range when it reckless attacks, for example, without champion 3 or hex 1 dip.
5) The level 5 dead level. Taking two classes past 5 probably means you get a dead level from the 2nd at around 5; sometimes this is extra attack twice, other times it is some other feature that doesn't stack with your extra attack.
I will admit the above is work, but it is work I find fun.
