D&D 5E How cognizant are you of the rules of the game?

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Daneric]

The thing about 5E is that it's still new enough that most of the players I DM are trying it for the first time. So we're all learning the ins-and-outs of the rules together, without stressing about them too much. As we move along I imagine both my players and I will think more in-depth about the rules, strategize more based on the game's subtleties, etc. For now though we're just having fun with a solid but hardly comprehensive understanding of the rules.

I imagine that this will change in a year or two, once players are more familiar with the rules and how the different classes play.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Now, I don't make terrible selections, but I will make interesting selections that aren't optimal.

I am where you are at, though my progression to get there was different. I didn't know beans about RPGs until my mid-late 20s. My adult brain went straight to optimization, and there it stayed for about two years. That got old. After I climbed down off that hill, I found I way, way, way prefer collaboration, story, and characters with flaws that are both fun and interesting to roleplay and that come with mechanical disability. It's all about fun for me. What juices me creatively, what's most fun, what flaw can I dream up and how will it interact with the other characters and with the adventure? That's what turns my crank in gaming these days. It's certainly what I seek in a gaming group. I think a lot of players appreciate that style, but have learned the hard way that not everyone does. Sometimes that makes me a skosh sad. Mostly, though, I put on my big girl panties and forge ahead with finding good groups of people with whom I can enjoy gaming.

For me, it's all about the group. Less so about the game system. Or even the character. I answered "A little. It's not like I'm making a low STR/DEX, high INT fighter." Though, now that I think about it a bit more, I have made a low Str/Dex, high Int fighter. So. Yeah.



EDIT: I re-read my words here and see there's a lot of judgment and bias in them. I'll leave them to stand, with the caveat that I'm speaking only from my point of view and my experience. Agree that the gaming universe is a happy place when it accommodates myriad styles.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

When I first started out, I played just for the fun. I picked a class/race (or the same thing, when BECMI!) just because it seemed cool. I didn't worry if it was the right thing to do, or if I had picked the weapon that did the most damage, I just picked the things that seemed awesome.

I'm not saying it was wrong, because you were just a kid, but what you are describing is not role-playing. You were making decisions based on your own, out-of-character opinion of what is cool. Role-playing is defined as making decisions from the character's perspective.

The in-character perspective would be to look at what the character knows, and determine what the character would do based on that information. The character can observe that a long sword causes more grievous wounds than a short sword does, increasing the chance of felling an opponent, without a meaningful depreciation of applicability. The character can see that muscle mass improves the ability to wield a long sword, in ways that nimbleness does not, and thus chooses to exercise in the appropriate fashion such as to gain Strength +2 upon hitting level 4.

The characters are aware of the in-game reality which the rules reflect, and given that I won't make a character who is suicidally incompetent, there is no conflict between Optimization and Role-Playing. A character who chooses a sub-optimal weapon, merely because it is "cool", is a fool and a liability that shall not be suffered by the other individuals in the group.

Seriously, building an incompetent character is a jerk move to everyone else at the table. Don't do that. If you fail to kill the dragon because your sword only does a d6 instead of a d8, and then the dragon breathes fire and kills the whole party, then that TPK is entirely your fault and you should feel bad. There are millions of ways to build and play a character that isn't incompetent; it is not a meaningful limit on your freedom of expression.

 

[GainVanquish]

I'm still fairly new and always try to base my characters on something I would find cool. That being said I do try to make things work nicely together but that's not my main focus. So for me it would be pick the race and class I think would be cool then as I level see what fits in with the party

 

[Rod Staffwand]

I'll optimize, mainly since I want to be able to pull my weight in the party, but I will absolutely refuse to pick character options or combinations that fall far outside general power expectations (4e frostcheese comes to mind).

I really hate playing Splatbooks & Spreadsheets, though. I'm not a fan of systems that confuse "builds" with "characters". 5e is a lot better than 3x/4e in that regard, but there's still too much room for optimization and I'm not satisfied with the overall balance of the classes.

 

[Uchawi]

I believe it comes down to two choices - you like the game for the challenge, or you like the game because of the social aspect. You may go back and forth with different RPGs, rule sets, etc. to get there. Some may be 50/50, others 10/90, but hopefully we all become aware of the sweet spot and the game that supports it.

 

[abirdcall]

I vote 'a little' but that isn't very accurate.

I end up with a character concept, and then I optimize that concept as much as I can. The concept itself is often a bad idea as far as the rules go.

 

[pdegan2814]

I'm a recent returnee to the game, having been away for 20+ years. So far I'm falling into the "mostly" category. I want to treat my character as an actual character, not a bag of stats & abilities. I'm not dipping into 4 different classes trying to cherry-pick the coolest abilities in the game and Frankenstein them together into a character that doesn't make any sense from a storytelling perspective. But at the same time, I definitely give a fair bit of thought to what skills, abilities, etc I choose for my character, for two reasons. 1) I don't want to hinder my party by making horrendously sub-optimal choices, especially since these are people I didn't know before joining their game. If I was playing with a group that I'd been with for a while, and wanted to create a character that was specifically sub-optimal in some way but would have strong storytelling potential, I'd likely run it past them first to make sure I don't end up causing a problem down the road. 2) To some degree, my character would be "optimizing" as well when it comes to learning new skills/abilities/etc. As he improves, he'll want to focus on things that will make him a more effective member of his group. That's why my Fighter started taking Rogue levels, because my party didn't really have anyone to fill that role. And if I was a Ranger, I'd be choosing favored terrain & enemies which make sense for both my backstory and the world around me. If I was a spellcaster, I'd be choosing spells most likely to be effective(less fire if going against stuff that resists it, less necrotic if going against lots of undead, etc).

 

[BoldItalic]

I've answered "A little". When I make a new character, which I don't have to do very often, I try not to make too many assumptions about what kind of adventures I'm likely to be playing in, or what other PCs will be in the party. I keep it general. The character will evolve and grow in play, but the fun is in seeing how that happens as stories unfold.

(edit - added)

I'm reading a sentiment in what others have posted here, along the lines of "you're letting the other players down if you don't optimize." Well, I can see that if you are playing at a table where heavy optimization is the norm, then that would be a valid reason for doing it too. But over the years I learnt to avoid such situations. I prefer a style of game where the story takes over and the mechanics fade into the background, so the difference between +2 and +3 on a dice roll is not terribly important. For people who think the opposite way, and seek out other like-minded people to play with, I can quite see that in their experience, optimization is an essential part if what D&D is about, and that's fine - their way of playing is just as valid as mine.