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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 6859319" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I'm not saying environment should always be a major factor. I think it is always a factor, but many times it can be minimal, other times it can be a huge factor. It varies. Unless it's a game of kick in the door dungeon crawl, I don't think any group of players would expect to come across monsters in a vacuum, just waiting to fight the PCs. I think environment.....where and under what conditions an encounter occurs....is a vital part of the encounter. I can't imagine looking at it any other way. As for the benefits of optimizing as it establishes where the game needs to be improved, I won't disagree with that. I can understand what you're saying, and I think it is certainly true. I just think that there are other ways to go about things simply than seeing where the PCs excel or where there are weak spots for their foes, and then countering that. Usually, I find it better to let the PCs be good at what they're good at, or let them recognize a monster's weakness and then exploit it. Instead of trying to fix that, I find other ways to challenge them. I find their weak spots....or I add elements that make things harder for them. I think that this is such a default part of the DM's job, that I don't think most folks expected it to be removed from the challenge.As for the impact on monsters and them seeming "weaker than they should" I would say that if your group always optimizes so much, and does so by second nature without even realizing they're doing it which is what I imagine from your descriptions, then you should certainly have the monsters optimized as well. I think this is assumed in the rules as written. I think that the monsters and indeed the whole game are designed more on a style or genre rather than on the math. The math supports the fiction, in that sense. So if a DM finds that the math isn't supporting the fiction, then the math can and should be adjusted. To look at it another way...your group's PCs spring into existence as if designed for battle. This is less often the case with fictional characters, which I think is the kind of default approach the game assumes. I say this based on the changes from the immediate prior editions, and the incorporation of traits and flaws and such, and rewarding those choices with inspiration, as well as on comments made by the designers and so on. So if the game is designed with story first, and your PCs are designed with game first, yeah, you will likely notice an impact on the game. The closer those two aspects are to synching up, the better off things would be. You either have to build PCs more for story first, or adjust the monsters to be optimized, or meet somewhere in the middle.And I imagine that this will seem like I am proving your point....that the game can't be run as intended without modifications made for optimized parties, and I would say that I disagree because I don't think it was ever intended to do that. I think any DM would take into consideration the capabilities of the party and then design encounters with that in mind, with the intent of challenging the players. I think it's just a fundamentally different view....for me, running the game "out of the box" would in no way inhibit the DM from modifying things to present a challenge for his players the same way that it does not inhibit players from picking race, class, abilities, and spells with nothing but combat effectiveness in mind. I think both of those are ongoing processes that begin the moment play begins.</blockquote>

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