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

[The Crimson Binome]

Of course you're ignoring the possibility that the guy with the mace is badass enough to not need a bigger weapon.

No matter how awesome he is - level 20, straight twenties across the board, max roll for every hit die - he would always be better if he was using a more effective weapon. That he doesn't do everything in his power to minimize our chance of death (barring unreasonable resource expenditure) means that he's not taking this seriously, and can't be trusted.

It's not the actual in-game effect of using the objectively inferior weapon, as much as it is the thought process which would cause someone to make that decision. There are plenty of reasons to use a mace instead of a warhammer - proficiency, magical enhancement, availability - and this person just needs to give one good reason to justify making this decision.

Wanting to look cool is not a good enough reason to justify the increased risk of death. Neither is superstition, or heritage, or anything like that. Those are all meaningless in the face of an uncaring world.

 

[Celtavian]

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.

Wow. You take min-maxing to a whole new level. Viewing someone as incompetent for choosing a d6 weapon over a d8 weapon is what I consider a min-max zealotry. Our whole group is pretty min-max focused. I even had one player use a longsword until he was able to obtain the feats to get Scimitar damage with dex, but I had to nix that BS because I don't want that level of mechanical focus in the game. I don't feel the difference in 1 point of damage is meaningful enough to be noticeable. I certainly wouldn't lose my mind over it.

I like it when a player plays a different personality type that may be less competent. There are all kinds of people of varying levels of competence in all types of professions that manage to succeed enough to prosper. True incompetence would be a higher bar than the damage die of a weapon or choosing a less optimal spell that is still pretty good at getting the job done. Even the most min-max player in my group often makes selfish choices aimed at his survival, which often ends up hurting the group's survival. This game would be pretty boring if everyone was making perfectly optimal decisions given it is set up for the players to win even when they don't play perfectly.

 

[S'mon]

There's a reason why "modern" RPGs have built a reputation as silly games for hippies. Really, the division goes back to the old GNS theory, with modern games skewing far over toward Narrativism and traditional games being somewhere between Gamist and Simulation.

In any proper Simulationist game, such as every version of D&D prior to 4E, the rules of the game are a reflection of the in-game reality. It might vary, how accurate that reflection is, but there's no possible way that the outcome of an action could depend on whether it takes place on-screen or off-screen. This is straying from the topic at hand, though, and I would refrain from pursuing this matter for now.

*sigh* I meant games set in the modern day. Rules-as-Physics for some reason seems common in FRPGs, but few or no people think that the rules of a modern-day-set game actually are the physics of that world. Eg in a James Bond 007 game there may be no rules for broken bones and lingering
injuries, but that does not mean that people in-world act as if broken bones and lingering injuries don't exist. In the rules a Walther PPK may be as effective as an AK47, but people in-world don't act as if that's the case and it would be silly if they did.

 

[S'mon]

If I had to guess? About 0.1% chance that I'll be in an accident of some sort, and then probably a one-in-three chance that the accident would be fatal.

Wow. Sucks to be you.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Wow. You take min-maxing to a whole new level. Viewing someone as incompetent for choosing a d6 weapon over a d8 weapon is what I consider a min-max zealotry.

I'm sorry for actually thinking about this sort of stuff in-character. It's only my life at stake here. We can't all be so blasé when it comes to whether we live or die.

Snark aside, I'm only exaggerating my stance slightly, for the sake of contrast. It's just so disappointing to constantly see threads such as this one, which suggest that min-maxers only care about numbers and role-players only care about fluff (even with sufficient weasel words as to not offend either side). A real role-player, looking at everything the character knows about the world, really should care a lot more about how effective one weapon is compared to another.

Seriously, just try to put yourself in the mind of the character, faced with a life of constant danger where you need every advantage you can muster if you hope to stay alive. The character can't afford to be wrong about this sort of thing. You can't afford to be superstitious, or sentimental, or to sacrifice any amount of efficiency for the sake of aesthetics.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

But in reality, not everyone is optimized either. There will always be that one character that isn't very talented and just got caught into the adventure somehow. If you die, I wouldn't say it's his fault, because you'd probably have died without him too. Would you have lived if he was a super talented master of combat? Probably, but since you knew that wasn't the case, might as well say it's your own fault for overestimating what you can do.

I still voted that I personally would most likely fully optimize my character. That's because I will probably keep the character for YEARS and every unoptimized decision could be something I regret for a very long time afterwards.

Though I guess it depends on the DM. If he was like "I allow you to change your build any time if you aren't happy", I'd probably try around more rather than reading tons of guides before every level up.

On the other hand, sometimes I just want to roleplay a very specific character. I might even want to play a character that's completely unsuited for combat. It's great if the DM allows that too. Obviously he has to consider that with the encounters he creates. A DM that just TPKs you and then is like "Well it's your own fault if you don't play optimized characters" is probably not a very good DM.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

*sigh* I meant games set in the modern day. Rules-as-Physics for some reason seems common in FRPGs, but few or no people think that the rules of a modern-day-set game actually are the physics of that world.

That sounds like an unrelated issue. Very few systems attempt to Simulate the real world, probably because the real world is "too boring" or something. GURPS does a pretty decent job, but it can be difficult to have an exciting campaign in GURPS since the characters are so fragile.

It seems like most modern-day-set games try to mimic action movies, and use action movie logic. That's a difficult mindset for me to comprehend. I can't really understand what it would be like to live in a world powered by narrative causality, where the hero never breaks a bone even though quantifiably-identical mooks would suffer exactly that when put through the same circumstances. Like, do they just not notice the inconsistencies?

The divide isn't set along genre lines, though. There are plenty of games which try to inject cinematic logic into a fantasy setting. Savage Worlds can do that, I know. Eberron tried. It was kind of like what 4E felt like, at times. A lot of it comes down to presentation, really. You can usually tell by reading it, where the system fits along the GNS curve, and 5E simply doesn't include the language that you'd find in 4E or Savage Worlds to indicate that you're modeling a story rather than a reality.

 

[Shasarak]

I disagree with all of this, role-playing means not always making the perfect choice... in the real world I even know some choices I made were bad ones... I should eat healthy, and I know that if I combined that with exercise I would live longer... BUT I like five guys double bacon burgers, and play games instead of work out... by your logic I am not making the right choices...

Dont worry, you probably would not have enjoyed that extra life anyway! =;o)

 

[S'mon]

The difference between a d6 and a d8 is unlikely to make an overwhelming difference to the ultimate outcome of any given encounter, especially as you get to higher levels. The impact on the adventure or campaign as a whole is significantly greater. Every time you fail to defeat an enemy, and it gains an extra turn with which to oppose the party, that's also your fault. If the orc gets one more swing at the Wizard, who then needs to drink a potion to offset that, then that lost wealth is your fault. It's a consequence which only came about because your Fighter is too stupid to know any better, in a world where efficacy can be objectively measured.

And it only takes one TPK to end a campaign that might have been running for months or years. Even a small chance is likely to occur, given a sufficient sample size.

I think the issue is that you're cloaking metagame with in-world. A PC who does less than
optimal damage (smaller die rolled), increasing chance of TPK, to the chagrin of other
players, is a metagame issue, not an in-world issue. In-world shortswords may be objectively superior to longswords in close-quarters fighting for reasons that are not modelled by the ruleset; eg
the rules assign every combatant a simplistic 5' frontage whereas in-world spears & shortswords need much less frontage than battleaxes and greatswords.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

On the other hand, sometimes I just want to roleplay a very specific character. I might even want to play a character that's completely unsuited for combat. It's great if the DM allows that too. Obviously he has to consider that with the encounters he creates. A DM that just TPKs you and then is like "Well it's your own fault if you don't play optimized characters" is probably not a very good DM.

That's a playstyle thing, but one side is very much against the idea of the DM tailoring encounters based on the party. If you look at something like an AD&D Monster Manual, they'll tell you exactly how many lizard-people live in a swamp and how many you'll encounter in a wandering patrol group. That way, the DM isn't an adversary who is out to challenge the party, and is merely the neutral arbiter of the world who is trying to be fair to everyone.

The other side, of course, appreciates tailored encounters because it increases the chance of a dramatic fight (that isn't completely one-sided), and reduces the chance of a random TPK from wandering dragons. Both sides have their merits, depending on what you want out of the game, but the DM who wants you to try harder to increase your chance of surviving is far from an entirely negative thing.