Have more fun with powergaming

[Flexor the Mighty!]

We powergame becuase its the best way for us to play an action/adventure based dice based game of D&D. But I also reject the idea that some have of power gaming be all of nothing.

 

[Odhanan]

Yeah, I explicitly deny the spectrum.

Pawsplay, let's take you as an example, since you describe yourself as an "aggressive power-gamer" (and thanks for that). You design characters to be purposely excellent at something for a precise purpose. Does that stop you from role-playing? Can you role-play a character you purposely optimized? Can you feel "immersed" in your character's persona?

What about you Flexor?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

We roleplay, give the PC personality etc. But the main thing done when creating a character is to figure out what role the pc will fill and then create him to be as good as can be at that role. We don't say "I want to explore the human condition" then make a PC to try and do that. The character actions are driven by the personality of that character though.

These conversations are so dodgy many times becuase as many have said, the definition of powergame varies wildly.

 

[pawsplay]

Pawsplay, let's take you as an example, since you describe yourself as an "aggressive power-gamer" (and thanks for that). You design characters to be purposely excellent at something for a precise purpose. Does that stop you from role-playing? Can you role-play a character you purposely optimized? Can you feel "immersed" in your character's persona?

What about you Flexor?

Every character I play has a distinct voice, a background, at least a few personality hooks. Immersion is one of my highest priorities in a roleplaying game.

 

[Odhanan]

Thanks a lot guys.

Exactly the point I'm trying to make: the "power-gaming" vs. "immersion" dichotomy is just bogus.

 

[Slife]

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".

That's easy enough to do. Heck, I'll even make it a kobold commoner.

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

Druid 20 is the optimized build for that. Or, if you want to get fancy, toss in some planar shepard levels.