Do you make characters for flavor or for min/maxing?

[Willie the Duck]

Why are you assuming I’d play him as a duck? I’m interested in the concept, not playing a mallard. When I suggested the Joan of Arc concept, did you immediately assume the concept was human?

Also, without trying to adjudicate blame on any of this, I will state that instead saying 'that's not the part of Scrooge McDuck I'm focusing on... {explanation}' right here would have done an end-run around this whole teapot tempest.

Besides, have you ever tried playing a mallard? It's fan-ta-stic!

 

[FrozenNorth]

He's not saying he wants to play Scrooge McDuck himself, though. Yes, if I was going to roleplay the actual Scrooge McDuck, it would be very reasonable to expect that I would be a duck. If, however, my concept was just inspired by Scrooge McDuck, it's expected that there would be departures from the character itself, which could very easily include race.

Thank you. Especially since the concept was Scrooge McDuck as a French fur trader.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Even if they had to rename it as part of the OGL PF2e Remaster, I'm asssuming PF2e barbarians also have some sort of "rage" mechanic? Is that when your character would go Hyde? Also, since I came to comics as a little kid and just took things for granted without knowing about tropes, adaptations, etc, I just realized that Banner/Hulk is Jekyll/Hyde.

Yup. My assumption is there's no real physical change; its entirely psychological (this is, in fact, the way a couple of well known film adaptations handled it. Spenser Tracy in his famous 1941 version had no special makeup, he did it wall with expression and demeanor. ). In fact, he can flip personalities without going into rage, though only the alternate personality can access it (Gregor will sometimes deal with what seems like a simple problem himself and not even pull Arik out, as both have the same skills (though he doesn't have access to all the feats Arik has) and Arik tends to be--overzealous.)

And there's kind of a common inner-monster trope in fiction; prior to Hyde and the Hulk you already had some kinds of werewolves, too.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The other week I saw a thread here on enworld where someone was complaining (D&D-specific) that the Feat given by some background didn't make sense, nor did the bonuses. They said it was messing with their ability to RP and also create their character. Around the same time I was listening to The Dark Times podcast (Starfinder 2e-specific) talk about the Luminary playtest (to be extremely reductive about it - imagine Social Media Influencer as a class) and how the Envoy can do most of what the Luminary can, but better; leaving someone who wants to pick it to RP as the Social Media member of the party with a suboptimal character.

This made me want to gather the pulse of the enworld crowd. If you're playing a game where the roleplay matters (for some of the more Dungeon Crawl-ly TTRPGs this might not make a difference) do you make up a character concept and then find the class, species, background, etc that fits that character? Or do you create the best stats-forward character and then make a story around that? Also, how long have you been playing TTRPGs? I have a sneaking suspicion that it's the folks who have been playing longer that focus more on stats while newer players are still awed by the roleplay of it all - but I could be completely wrong. Bonus question: do you play a system that is better at this than D&D/Pathfinder/Starfinder? When I ran Cosmere over the past 6 months, it seemed that its use of a skill tree and encouragement of / design for multi-classing supported creating characters that were flavor-heavy, but still useful in encounters.

For my answer - most of the time I'm the forever GM. I've only been able to play 2 games where I didn't have a pregen character (because of being at a con or the like). Both times I went for flavor/backstory for the species and class. Although I've GM'd a Paizo game, I've never been a player at one. I say this because PF2e and SF2e have you select your subclass at level 1. For the D&D and Tales of the Valiant games I've played, I've leaned slightly towards "what does this subclass give me?" vs roleplay, but at least in my head it's a bit of more of an understanding of what the campaign is going to be and how I can help out with the team. I also know Paizo has the archetype system which seems to be a more elegant version of multiclassing to allow for customizing your character a little more to fit your backstory. I've been playing/running games for about 5 years. I'll say that, so far, in the games I've run I haven't seen any broken parties that can't finish a campaign and all my players have been flavor over stats. (they've also been relatively new to TTRPGs - 5 years or less)

About 30 years in, I care mIch less about stats than i did when i was new to the hobby. Hell the reason i gain mastery of a system is to build a fun character that mechanically does what the narrative suggests they can do. The mechanics serve the narrative.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Well, that's part of the problem I referrenced: sometimes the character concept really does require some minmaxing (in the classic meaning) because the concept itself has few weaknesses and some visible strengths (there are people who would argue that such a concept itself shows a suspicious lean into power gaming, but that just strikes me as privlidging some concepts, probably more everyman ones, and then declaring others suspect). As I said, you can get into the issue of people who are pushing against the system they're in more, because the kind of characters they want to play are not as well supported by the system as could be, but I'd still argue that if they're starting with an idea and then picking mechanics to fit it, that's still selecting for flavor.

(This is for the moment ignoring the question of where "It looks interesting to explore this particular available mechanical framework goes" lands on this question. I bet that one could be argued both ways).

Yeah, I have no idea if 'mechanically interesting' counts as min-maxing (or how min-maxing differs from optimizing). Take that spore druid again - I came up with her as an interesting mechanical exercise, which I'd argue is a sort of flavor. I wanted a druid that was good in melee using a Staff of the Woodlands, which is not really a min-maxed concept (potent spellcasting and using cantrips from a distance is almost certainly better in white room) so I guess that's all flavor even though it's coming from a mechanical rather than story standpoint. Taking a level of ranger fit with the backstory and personality I came up with to make her someone that wants to melee, and made her better at fighting overall (whether that's 'min-maxing' or 'competence' comes up again), plus gave a few cool options a druid doesn't usually have (which is on the 'fun' side of things but not really 'story', so I'm not sure if it's flavor, and it is useful so might be min-maxing). Calling 'I'm doing force, thunder, lightning, and necrotic damage, do I need to split any out' is just fun but isn't that effective (occasionally it's useful for finding resists to save spell slots for other players, but definitely not min-maxed).

 

[The Sigil]

I am now to the point in my role-playing career, where I generally want the following:

1. A narratively interesting character.
2. A mechanically viable character.

I have been at tables where due to everyone else at the table (including the DM) being focused completely on optimization that "mechanically viable" means "perfectly optimized." I generally prefer to avoid these tables.

I will make a character that I find narratively interesting and I've been playing games long enough that I'm good at avoiding, a "useless" character, but I no longer have time for "fully optimized" - "viable/not completely useless" is enough for me.

 

[payn]

I am now to the point in my role-playing career, where I generally want the following:

1. A narratively interesting character.
2. A mechanically viable character.

I have been at tables where due to everyone else at the table (including the DM) being focused completely on optimization that "mechanically viable" means "perfectly optimized." I generally prefer to avoid these tables.

I will make a character that I find narratively interesting and I've been playing games long enough that I'm good at avoiding, a "useless" character, but I no longer have time for "fully optimized" - "viable/not completely useless" is enough for me.

Couldn’t agree more. It also raises the specter of who you are gaming with in relation to the question.

 

[Retros_x]

do you make up a character concept and then find the class, species, background, etc that fits that character? Or do you create the best stats-forward character and then make a story around that?

a mix of both. In D&D I often first have the desire to play a specific class. Than I find a flavor for the campaign/setting I like. Than I min/max inside that flavor. That means for example in one of the games I play currently:

I wanted to play a Paladin, because I never had to. In the setting there is a big thread of sort of an extraplanar entity corrupting and invading the world. So I thought Oath of the Watcher sounds perfectly fitting - even if its often not rated a super effective subclass. But I liked the flavor of it. Than I also knew I wanted her to be a bit of a Batman style of hero, so I also knew I wanted to choose the Investigation proficiency even if its completely against an optimal Palading Build. But inside this constraints I still tried to built an effective built that even if it has some suboptimal skill proficiencies and spell selections is still very capable. I hate to play incompetent PCs. I would never play a wizard with low INT and useless spell selection.

If I play a one-shot or shorter campaign, or something more oldschool I am much more inclined to built ineffective characters. If regular death and failure is on the menu, its a lot of fun to built or roll a low INT wizard for me. But I wont built an elaborate backstory for a multiple year long campaign for a character that is completely bad at what they are doing and in the worst case might die fast.

I guess I can break it down to:
More Modern style --> more optimized built
More oldschool style, emergent storytelling instead of premeditated storytelling --> less optimized built, go with the flow.

But overall I dont think its as binary as many of these discussions made it out to be. You can be a powergamer that also is good at roleplay. Internet often presents this as a false dichotomy.

 

[DragonLancer]

This made me want to gather the pulse of the enworld crowd. If you're playing a game where the roleplay matters (for some of the more Dungeon Crawl-ly TTRPGs this might not make a difference) do you make up a character concept and then find the class, species, background, etc that fits that character? Or do you create the best stats-forward character and then make a story around that? Also, how long have you been playing TTRPGs? I have a sneaking suspicion that it's the folks who have been playing longer that focus more on stats while newer players are still awed by the roleplay of it all - but I could be completely wrong. Bonus question: do you play a system that is better at this than D&D/Pathfinder/Starfinder? When I ran Cosmere over the past 6 months, it seemed that its use of a skill tree and encouragement of / design for multi-classing supported creating characters that were flavor-heavy, but still useful in encounters.

I've been playing TTRPG's since 1987. In all that time and especially as I've gotten older, I am character concept first always and mechanical aspects secondary.

As for the bonus question... I've played and GM'd a variety of games over the years. I come back to D&D because it was the first one I ever read about (when I was ten) and I like the system for fantasy based gaming.

 

[FailedFocus]

If you're playing a game where the roleplay matters (for some of the more Dungeon Crawl-ly TTRPGs this might not make a difference) do you make up a character concept and then find the class, species, background, etc that fits that character? Or do you create the best stats-forward character and then make a story around that? Also, how long have you been playing TTRPGs?

I started playing in 2011 with D&D 4e, which likely shaped how I approach character creation in TTRPGs as that is definitely that values some level of optimization and making a "Build" for your character.

I will create a character concept first and that concept may not be the most optimized starting position - a Dwarf Bard and Half-Orc Wizard being two examples - but I will think about how that character would tie their culture heritage and their class together, how they'd overcome certain limitations and I optimize within the concept itself.