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

[Ovinomancer]

I've never caught any flak myself for it, but a good friend moved to a new city and the first gaming group he tried to join gave him flak about this. He's not a min-max kinda guy, and they thought that was dumb and treated him dismissively for not optimizing. Put that in your "Looking For Players" ad, guys: "Min-Maxers Only" or somesuch.

Yup. If high optimization is important to your table, you should let prospective new players be aware of what kind of play your table expects. This isn't a bad thing, it should be obvious!

My table's general expectation is "don't be stupid intentionally." That doesn't requite putting a 16 in your prime stat, but it generally does require not putting a 12 there without good compensation. Which is hard to find in 5e, honestly. 3e allowed for more off-axis building than 5e does, and 4e just made sure you couldn't suck. 1e and 2e just largely devalued build (until skills and powers at least).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, there's more than one way to measure "effective" in combat, right? Sure, a high Strength score will give you a bonus to hit. But that bonus won't come into play if you can't get into range, or see your target, or etc. etc. That's where skills, feats, movement rate, etc., all come into play...and this is why versatility will always win out over optimization in my opinion.

Though usually that's more likely to be an issue in point-distribution games; most modern D&D-likes have resources binned and capped separately, so what you do with your Strength is going to have little or nothing to do with the other things.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ahem... My reply to the bolden sentence.
Old grognards do not optimize as character attrition is very high in their games.

I suspect the context was "Its a wargame once combat starts".

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ahem... My reply to the bolden sentence.
Old grognards do not optimize as character attrition is very high in their games. And I mean very high. A players is expected to make about 2 to 3 characters (on average) before one survive past level 5. So optimization and careful building of a character is not something to link to grognards but to people that started to play around 3.xed.

As for your experience a "guy". If he did not adapt to your group, good riddance. If you never told him what was your group and group philosophy then you did not do your part. Optimizers are a real thing and they are not all jerks. I have encountered quite few that were decent and understanding of what a gaming group wanted. It is the rare one that will not go with the feeling of the group they are playing with.

My experience was different. There wasn't much to optimize, really, in old editions, so it was quick to do the few things you could. And a character that had a great set of stats was much more likely to survive that one that had average stats. So, while most optimization was not a thing you could do, it made huge sense to do what you could because of the lethality. Of course, with 3d6 (or the more lenient 4d6dl) in order the extent of optimization was picking a character class that 1) fit the stats, and 2) fit the party. That and specializing as a fighter (most especially if there was a magic weapon to inherit!)

 

[Helldritch]

My experience was different. There wasn't much to optimize, really, in old editions, so it was quick to do the few things you could. And a character that had a great set of stats was much more likely to survive that one that had average stats. So, while most optimization was not a thing you could do, it made huge sense to do what you could because of the lethality. Of course, with 3d6 (or the more lenient 4d6dl) in order the extent of optimization was picking a character class that 1) fit the stats, and 2) fit the party. That and specializing as a fighter (most especially if there was a magic weapon to inherit!)

Yep, that is why I said it was more a 3.xed than any other editions. Optimizers fully came to life during that era. I broke so many plans as the attrition rate in my games was still high (but less than early 5ed) that optimizing was not something that players would immediately jump on. When you do not know if your character will survive, you tend to play as things come along.

 

[Maxperson]

I've never gotten flak or even mention for not being optimized. That's not surprising, though, as I've never played with people whose focus was optimization or power gaming.

 

[Mezuka]

Ahem... My reply to the bolden sentence.
Old grognards do not optimize as character attrition is very high in their games. And I mean very high. A players is expected to make about 2 to 3 characters (on average) before one survive past level 5. So optimization and careful building of a character is not something to link to grognards but to people that started to play around 3.xed.

As for your experience a "guy". If he did not adapt to your group, good riddance. If you never told him what was your group and group philosophy then you did not do your part. Optimizers are a real thing and they are not all jerks. I have encountered quite few that were decent and understanding of what a gaming group wanted. It is the rare one that will not go with the feeling of the group they are playing with.

1) I was there in 1980 and players wanted to roll 4d6 drop lowest or even 5d6. If a character didn't have at least two 15s they didn't want to play it. They constantly cried for better magic items, etc. It was a different form of optimizing. But they want to do it. It got worst with 2e class kits.

2) I did my job. The guy was a jerk.

 

[MGibster]

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.

To an extent, it does to me. I expect a PC to be good at something. They're part of the group because they bring something, usually a skill or ability, that they organization accomplish their goals. In Cyberpunk, a Solo should be a better than average combatant, a Fixer better be able to use their connections for the betterment of the group, and a Media better be able to influence the masses in some way. I don't expect any PC to squeeze every last point during character generation as effective as possible, but I do expect them to make competent characters and that requires some optimization at least.

 

[Helldritch]

1) I was there in 1980 and players wanted to roll 4d6 drop lowest or even 5d6. If a character didn't have at least two 15s they didn't want to play it. They constantly cried for better magic items, etc. It was a different form of optimizing. But they want to do it. It got worst with 2e class kits.

Mmm... Hundreds of players and that behavior was easy to "correct" and "manage". Not happy? Bye bye! It was a rare bird that would "force" me to go for the expulsion way for that players. Most would immediately apologize and amend for their bad behavior.
And yes, kits in 2nd could lead to these optimizations but not to the extent of 3.xed could lead to. In OD&D or 1ed? It was more of a "capricious" tendency than true optimizations.

2) I did my job. The guy was a jerk.

Then good for you and even more for your other players. A good player always adapt to group, not the reverse.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Well, there's more than one way to measure "effective" in combat, right? Sure, a high Strength score will give you a bonus to hit. But that bonus won't come into play if you can't get into range, or see your target, or etc. etc. That's where skills, feats, movement rate, etc., all come into play...and this is why versatility will always win out over optimization in my opinion.

Generally speaking, that tends to depend directly on the engine of encounter design-- the more extreme the situations that appear on average, the more important that kind of versatility is, but while I think we all agree that kind of encounter design is great and more interesting, its also a lot more work for whoever is writing up the encounters which can be a big factor in why Versatility is so limited in practice, and it can rely on the need to design explicit set pieces for encounters to take place in.

I'm sure they exist, but sometimes I feel like a book that was essentially a folio of story-neutral-but-super-diverse encounters would be nice.