Have more fun with powergaming

[gizmo33]

* I like having effective characters. While the role of clumsy oaf brings a nice sense of comic relief to many media, it's not a character concept that makes for a fun D&D PC, IMO.

Seems reasonable to me that you should play a character that you enjoy. There are plenty of people on this board that have posted statements to the effect that "the guy playing the clumsy oaf is going to get us all killed". Some powergamers seem to be resentful when everyone else isn't playing like they are.

* I enjoy the mental challenge of finding the right elements to choose for an optimized character - it's kind of like hitting the right notes while playing a musical instrument.

But the music analogy here is sort of funny and ironic because I don't think a lot of musicians would necessarily see the relationship between building a powerful character and music. Just ask a jazz musician about "right notes". If you want to spend your time working on the technical aspects of music, nobody should criticize that, but you can't expect to join a band and find other people to be amazed by your Malmstein-like virtuosity - especially if you won't stop shredding long enough to listen to what other people are playing. I think when people criticize the opposing side of this issue they're usually thinking of the worst examples.

* It's fun when your PC can do impressive things in-game. Powergaming supports this.

What's impressive though? It's not all that impressive to lift a large rock when you have a +200 strength bonus? It's really takes extreme amounts of suspension of disbelief to look at a character sheet for a 20th level character and not think that killing 1,000 orcs is normal (even a little mundane). So then you have to run out and get the Epic Level handbook, and so on. At it's worst it's the anatomy of a Monty Haul game.

What's impressive to me is a 1st level commoner killing a red dragon - but that's never what power gamers mean. They always seem to mean "give me enough power so that the red dragon is like a kobold relative to me, then I'll fight it and that will be impressive".

(note for the many who decry powergaming: Please don't hijack this thread!)

Ok.

 

[questing gm]

I game with powergamers since to them it's one of the most fun aspect of the game.

We spend entire sessions to just generate characters and pour over books to search for feats, features and spells. (Even at 1st level)

Optimizers really leaves no weakness in a character so i feel that they really have a chance to shine in every combat encounter, which makes the game more fun if they are getting what they have invested on

But i think there is a fine line between powergaming (optimizers) and powergaming (munchkining)...

 

[Odhanan]

and this is important.

In my game CREATION SCHEMA, I have two players that powergame and two players that don't.

What has happened is I must use creatures that are 2-4 CR levels higher than group average to challenge the power gamers which means the non-power gamers either must sit back and watch or die.

As a DM I have a great deal of frustration dealing with this. SO power gaming has taken some fun away from me.

Why did it take some fun away from you ?

Looks to me like you had an issue with two players optimizing their characters, you then use higher-CRed creatures, and now they are challenged aren't they? So the problem is solved without much tinkering on your part. I'd think that you'd be fine by now. Why does it still bother you?

 

[pawsplay]

It's all-too-easy to stomp on an optimized character, as many of them are highly specialized and require certain pre-conditions to function.

If they're easy to stomp on, they're not optimized.

 

[Odhanan]

It's all-too-easy to stomp on an optimized character, as many of them are highly specialized and require certain pre-conditions to function.

If they're easy to stomp on, they're not optimized.

I don't think it's true. Much like there's always a way to optimize something, every optimized character has its flaws. A DM who has some experience with optimized characters is no longer surprised or taken "flat-footed" by them. No need to railroad, no need to forbid stuff, no need to take the players by the hand. You're the DM. You can kill any PC legally, if you want to. The players will know it and accept it if you stick to your guns with fairness and consistency.

 

[Umbran]

The good thing about powergaming is that playing with the rules (as in mucking about with numbers and choices and seeing what you can come up with and manage to do) can be a lot of fun for some folks. Pitting yourself against an objective standard like the rules set itself has a certain charm.

If they're easy to stomp on, they're not optimized.

A hammer is optimized to drive nails. It does a pretty poor job of printing MS Word Documents. Anything that is optimized is optimized to perform some specific function. Tasks outside that function will be difficult for the optimized character to deal with.

I am assuming, of course, that "do everything" is not one of the functions the rules allow a character to optimize for

I like my character to be competent at the things that fall under his "shtick." He shouldn't be good at everything, but I like to find a niche and fill it as best I can.

It should be noted that "effective" must be measured against something - like the NPCs in the world, or the challenges the GM throws at the character. So, "effective" has a major dependency on how the GM operates.

 

[chobin foot]

A hammer is optimized to drive nails. It does a pretty poor job of printing MS Word Documents. Anything that is optimized is optimized to perform some specific function. Tasks outside that function will be difficult for the optimized character to deal with.

...

It should be noted that "effective" must be measured against something - like the NPCs in the world, or the challenges the GM throws at the character. So, "effective" has a major dependency on how the GM operates.

Of course, as a GM, you then either have to play into or against a strength... either highly "optimizing" your encounters, or just assuming that the player wants no challenge to his optimization strategy & going forward.

When you optimize against a certain character, are you cheating him out of his fun? Are you railroading and cheap-shotting your player for trying to be clever? If a player has a hammer, and all you feed him are MS Word documents in key situations, is it really fair?

When you don't optimize, are you boring your player? Are you boring all of your players because the 100% optimized guy for your encounter decides to steal the show?

Not every GM is going to like walking that line... which is where the "fun" might have disappeared for one of the previous posters. It becomes more of a mechanical balancing act, and certain GMs might be more into the storytelling at certain points in the game.

Of course, player-GM communication is vital... but not always effective at resolving something like unwanted optimization. The player and the GM might have reasons for optimizing a certain way that they can't vocalize, and that metagame of -for-tat optimization then becomes a full-scale Cold War...

 

[Brother MacLaren]

As a player, I enjoy finding neat combinations of abilities or spells. There's something appealing about the tactical thinking involved. My druid once summoned thoqqua to burn a doorway through solid stone (was all out of Stone Shapes). An innovative use of the spell in my mind. He once was stuck in a Forbiddance area, so wildshaped into a dire badger and burrowed underground, hoping the spell didn't exist there, so he could summon some earth elementals. I enjoy being creative and slightly clever. And yes, it's powergaming.

The "page through 20 books" style of powergaming seems more about looking for mistakes than about innovation. Every time I come across an outstandingly powerful combination in the splatbooks, I think, "How did this one slip through? It goes against what seem to be the design principles in the SRD materials." It feels cheap and unworthy to use such sub-par poorly-designed material. Wraithstrike, Orb spells, war troll, hulking hurler, and a host of other things where the designers did not account for synergies.

 

[Umbran]

Of course, as a GM, you then either have to play into or against a strength... either highly "optimizing" your encounters, or just assuming that the player wants no challenge to his optimization strategy & going forward.

I think this is a false dichotomy, to the point where neither of the choices you give represent the best of adventure or campaign design. It isn't like a DM must choose to always target the weaknesses, or never do so. A good DM provides a wide variety of encounters - some will be made to play to the character's strengths, some to weaknesses, and some will probably be designed without much regard for either in particular.

When you optimize against a certain character, are you cheating him out of his fun? Are you railroading and cheap-shotting your player for trying to be clever? If a player has a hammer, and all you feed him are MS Word documents in key situations, is it really fair?

The "all you fed him" is again part of the false dichotomy. The game is usually about multiple characters - the DM will generally have to occasionally play to one character's weakness to play to another's strength, because everyone should have a chance to shine. Failing to play to a weakness probably means you're cheating some other player out of some fun.

And, honestly, every once in a while Superman runs into kryptonite. It is part of a good story for a character to have to deal with a weakness from time to time.

 

[Odhanan]

Of course, as a GM, you then either have to play into or against a strength... either highly "optimizing" your encounters, or just assuming that the player wants no challenge to his optimization strategy & going forward.

I too think of it as a false dichotomy. As a DM, you can use the character's strength as a tool, an advantage to exploit for adventures that specifically challenge said-character. I'm not talking about going "against" or "play-into/yield" here. I'm talking of playing WITH the player.