Do you fear weakness?

[Corsair]

This is primarily directed at those of you who love to spend lots of time getting the most out of your characters mechanically.

I recently am in need of creating a new character for a mid level (10th/11th) campaign after my paladin had a few too many raise deads (he's now 4 levels behind most of the group, and at the point where he will just continue to get his butt kicked if he stays up front as a meaty, so he's being retired.)

In talking to the DM about possible new characters it occured to me:

I'm scared to death of playing something weak.

I wanted to try a sorcerer elemental savant for fun. Thought it'd be cool. But all I could think about were missing caster levels, wasted feats...

I considered a pyrokineticist. But all I could think about were the hordes of demons and devils (both relatively common in this campaign) who'd ignore my flames.

This kept going for concept after concept. I feel like I'm too worried about making a "good" character that I'm missing out on the fun of trying an interesting new concept at the expense of a little bit of power.

Anyone else have this problem? Do any of the other regular optimizers sometimes worry that you spend too much effort of making powerful characters and are somehow missing out on the fun that you had before you began crunching numbers?

 

[Ambrus]

A chronic problem of mine. I agonize over every single aspect of my character for a week or more before I start playing (and sometimes after I start). I do online research and compare alternate builds with different base and Prestige classes to see if I can meet the same character concept from a different direction. In one way it's fun and in another way it is silly and tortuous. :\

 

[Pinotage]

Yip. A common problem. I tend to design my characters towards versatility, though, not power, but it's still a case of trying to get the most out of what you're given. Still, I find that fun, as much fun as playing the character. Having said that, characters develop over time, and once you've got an established character, you enjoy that much more than ever creating it. Besides, while you can create an uber character from scratch, it's very difficult to do the same over the timeframe of a campaign where you don't have the option on equipment that you have when creating from scratch.

Pinotage

 

[The Souljourner]

Yeah, I am scared of weakness. It's hard to have fun if your contribution to the party is insignificant compared to everyone else's. It's always like "ok, I guess I go sit at the back and try not to die". Whoopteedoo. Maybe in the right campaign with really significant roleplaying situations and minimal combat, it could be fun, but most people don't play that way.

-The Souljourner

 

[WD40]

I suppose I am in the same way as Souljourner puts it, being afraid of not having as big, or as useful an input into the game as other characters.

But on the other side of the coin, I love playing weaker characters. I grin when I roll low, because I get to think of reasons why my character has such a poor stat, then I get to think up ways to help my character overcome his weakensses.

One experience I had which really opened my eyes to this sort of thing was a time I was invited to join a friends game. This friend was a powergaming DM, and had a bunch of powergaming (Read: Interpret the rules as I like them-type players.) I wanted to get back at them by following the rules and making a monster.

I came up with a human rogue/fighter, with 'Nymphs Kiss', theres a feat in ExPHB which allows you to reroll 1's on sneak attack damage, another in CompDev making my character roll D8's against evil foes... allsorts of bumps to his bluff skill, with a mind to feinting in combat (My friend had made it clear that our characters were to be the ultimate 'good guys' fending off deamons from hell) . He was quite a monster.

Although it was fun creating and playing him. I actually disliked the adventure, and found my self shuffling for attention, constantly going for the 'my character can do this better than yours' type discussions... All in all, it was a rather banal game.

After all that... I dont 'fear' weakness in my characters. I exploit and enjoy it!

 

[Bat]

I don't know what kind of spells you are wanting to take (ie-do you want lots of spells like invisibility and telekinesis, or do you want to focus primarily on offensive spells?), but, if you are going to focus on offensive spells, I would advise looking into the Warmage class. It is a core class (20 levels of progression) in Complete Arcane. You get the same spells per day as a sorcerer, but you have a limited spell list. You mainly can only learn offensive spells. However, you know every single spell in your list. As soon as you can cast a 6th level spell, you know every 6th level spell in the Warmage's spell list - you do not have to worry about spells known like a sorcerer. A warmage is a spontaneous caster and uses Charisma to determine DC of spells, just like a sorcerer. One of the cool things about the Warmage is that you can wear armor w/out arcane spell failure chance. You get to wear up to medium armor w/no arcane spell failure, and there is a feat in Complete Arcane called Battle Caster that lets you bump that up to heavy armor.

However, if you do not want to play the warmage class, I want to ask: How important is spell progression? I know you mentioned in your post that you were worried about missing caster level. I don't know what kind of powerful you are going for here. Do you mean powerful as in "I can cast all sorts of nasty spells at relitivly early levels" powerful, or do you mean "I can cast all sorts of nasty spells at a slightly later level than mentioned in the previous example, but I have uber-high AC to compensate for getting no spells for one level"? If it is the previous, ignore what I am about to say. If it is the second, I suggest you take a level of monk at first level and then proceed as a sorcerer. A monk gets good saves (which is a plus), and he gets to add his wisdom bonus to AC. To make this even better, there is a feat in Complete Adventurer called Aestic Mage. The preqs are: Improved Unarmed Strike, ability to spontaneously cast 2nd level arcane spells. It does 3 things: You can sacrifice a spell to add a number equal to the spell level to unarmed attack and damage rolls. Also, if you are a sorcerer, you get to add your sorcerer levels to your monk levels to determine when you get a boost in AC. Thirdly (and this one you might like), if you are able to add your wisdom bonus to AC (like an unarmored, unencumbered monk), you can instead add your Charisma bonus to AC. Since you are playing a character whose most important ability is Charisma, I assume this will be fairly high.

Anyway, I don't know if I've helped or not, I just thought I'd throw a few ideas I had out there. I am one of those people that agonizes over my character and tries to make him as beefy as possible.

 

[Patlin]

I usually try to make my character as powerfull as possible, but I've recently created a living EN World character to fight against this tendency. His name is Banion Lorish, and he's a halfling soulknife. Having fun with him, even if I think the soulknife class is a bit underwhelming.

 

[Bad Paper]

My most munchkin-y PC (wizard/rogue) is also the one that has died three times. What can I say? Sometimes trying to be efficient and slick is disastrous.

Out of my four recent PCs (wiz/rog, bard, cleric, and ran/mon/wiz), the gnomish bard has surprised me as being the most hardy and most fun to play. I don't think he's ever been dropped in combat. And wow is CG turning out to be a fun alignment! The rest of my PCs are ultra-boring true neutral.

Since this game is about having fun and embracing death and all that, forget about trying to build an unkillable character: you will be too worried to have fun. Make up something that you regard as a stupid throwaway (as I had previously felt about gnomish bards), and then you will find yourself happily surprised when he kicks ass, not in the powergame sense, but in the lots-of-fun sense.

Incidentally, how the heck can you have a PC four levels behind the rest of the group? The XP system is designed to pull laggers up very quickly.

 

[runtime]

Play whatever character appeals to you and fits the story. This is role-playing, not chess. Don't play the game; let the game "play you." Just think of playing a non-min/maxed character as a personal challenge. Some games let you take Flaws to gain some offset bonus. For example, HackMaster allows you to play a double-amputee character who has some other special gift.

 

[Corsair]

Incidentally, how the heck can you have a PC four levels behind the rest of the group? The XP system is designed to pull laggers up very quickly.

4 levels behind the leader (who hasn't died). The rest of us have had enough raises and whatnot to fall behind for the time being.