Has anyone got any flak for buildung a character that wasnt optimized?

[billd91]

There are some caveats to playing the character you want to in a campaign.
1. Read the room - don’t play something grossly incompatible with the rest of the table. If you do, you’re the disruptive player.
2. Don’t mislead the other players, set false expectations, or pull a bait and switch. If you do, your fellow players have the right to be upset when your character turns out to be incompetent.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Thing is, not one of those PCs failed to make a positive contribution to the game. I guess the critics keep expecting my PCs to fail, and keep getting disappointed.

Smart play > character sheet. In 5e anyway/especially.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Smart play > character sheet. In 5e anyway/especially.

It seems to me that smart play requires paying attention to the character sheet and so can't really be said to be mo0re important than it. That would be like saying a house is more important than it's foundation -- how do you even separate these concepts? Smart play that's not based on the sheet seems largely like unsmart play -- a great plan, well described and timed, that ends up facing down a -1 check because you forgot in your impassioned speech to the King that Bob the Barbarian has a -1 CHA? Not super smart. Although, perhaps very much in character!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Smart play > character sheet. In 5e anyway/especially.

I’m not sure how that applies to me & my whackadoodle PCs.

I mean, I don’t play my characters stupidly- at least not from my perspective- but to be fair to my fellow players, it’s hard to look at some of my designs from the outside and fathom how they’re supposed to work. What they’re supposed to do.

…until they’re doing something surprising.

Take the aforementioned whip-wielding specialist diviner, based on Indiana Jones. The character was multiclassed into qualifying for the spell sword PrCl. But whips don’t do much damage, and disarming takes feats & strength (ehich. What could he possibly do?

Well, the OBVIOUS thing he did was provide the party with all kinds of information.

But his intelligence also got him a bunch of skill points, which, coupled with his class choices, made him the 2nd most skilled PC at a variety of tasks. There were several times when the solo classed mage or the rogue would botch their rolls only to have my PC save the day with a success. Hell, he was the ONLY PC with levels in Swimming, which let him save the rogue from drowning when he got paralyzed and knocked into a deep pond.

He was also the 3rd highest BAB in the party, and one of the only PCs in the group who could use a particular magic item of significance to the plot…and the only one who WANTED to use it.

Ultimately, it wasn’t my smart play that got him respect, but that he regularly contributed in ways nobody considered.

 

[aramis erak]

I watch new players closely; if they show signs of being a min-max'er, I book them. Luckily, it doesn't seem to be as prevalent outside of D&D.

Book them? Man, that's Harsh! What does the watch commander think?

 

[Jd Smith1]

Book them? Man, that's Harsh! What does the watch commander think?

Damn auto-correct.

 

[CleverNickName]

Oh yeah. I rolled up a Champion Fighter and didn't optimize it for melee combat. You would have thought I had broken the law or something, judging by the reactions of a couple of my fellow players.

I despise Table Captains: players who think they are in command of the group. You know the folks I am talking about, always barking orders to everyone else at the table and tell them how they should play, what their characters will do, even dictating where their tokens will be placed. I won't put up with that, no matter which side of the screen I'm sitting on.

 

[CleverNickName]

I used to optimize back in the past (heck I played a Drow Incantatrix with Greater Spell Focus in 3.0) but I gradually learned that it wasn't that fun for me to succeed almost always with too little effort. When I get to be the player, I sometimes roll my PC stats and features just to see what comes up, and play whatever I get. It's NEVER unplayable. Sure it's best for a whole group to be on the same page, but still I wouldn't let anyone at my table patronize another on how they should design their PC.

This is the way.

 

[Morrus]

Yeah, that post being quoted is pretty toxic.

 

[Ixal]

I agree that players should make characters that are competent, but not need to be optimized. The game itself is designed for average PCs and falls when the whole group is optimized. I like my group with nobody taking some of the big feats that seem a problem and they are still quite powerful.

Interesting that you use the word competent.

In the racial ASI discussions several people, many times, said that competent means a 16 ability score...
So based on the definition, competent already means optimized to some degree to some players.