How important is it to you or your players for characters to feel "overpowered"?

[KYRON45]

I think that's a false dichotomy. You can try to act as heroic as you want, but if you're too far off what's needed to make that work, its going to look bad and just as likely make you look like an idiot as a hero.

Well if you think so, it must be true. Since what i thought was automatically wrong.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Good idea because just the players can mess this up. A few minmaxers can make that roleplayer feel useless every time the dice come out.

Though usually that's a consequence of a combination of things including lack of self-discipline on the GM's part (reacting to the minimaxer by turning the dial up on the difficulty, especially if doing so unselectively) and unwillingness to intervene by talking to the minimaxer, the roleplayer, or both about their character choices (there are game systems that kind of force characters toward the desired middle, but not all do).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Who hurt you?

Who told you that would be an appropriate response here?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well if you think so, it must be true. Since what i thought was automatically wrong.

"Automatically"? No. "Frequently"? Absolutely. If you disagree, you do.

 

[Wolfpack48]

If you read my other posts. . I said variability is important. Even in say a call of Cthulhu game. Not every goup of cultists should be a death threat. But appropriate level threats should come within that variability. I find even the players that want to be the A-team are usually ok with being that awesome sometimes and crawling through the mud when necessary.

I wasn’t referring to you specifically. I was asking the general question “where is the line for different people?” It’s fairly obvious that different people have different thresholds for the definition of character weakness. I'm pretty sure we all agree that different genres are tailored to different power levels. I'm asking what different players can tolerate in whatever genre that's been chosen.

 

[Wolfpack48]

Good idea because just the players can mess this up. A few minmaxers can make that roleplayer feel useless every time the dice come out.

Which begs the question, is it the minmaxer who cares the most about not feeling powerful enough? Guessing there's a good case for it.

 

[KYRON45]

I wasn’t referring to you specifically. I was asking the general question “where is the line for different people?” It’s fairly obvious that different people have different thresholds for the definition of character weakness. I'm pretty sure we all agree that different genres are tailored to different power levels. I'm asking what different players can tolerate in whatever genre that's been chosen.

You're alright my friend. Might just be my mood.

 

[Wolfpack48]

You're alright my friend. Might just be my mood.

Yeah, sorry I got two quotes in there but you know what I meant. I was responding to nevin.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Which begs the question, is it the minmaxer who cares the most about not feeling powerful enough? Guessing there's a good case for it.

Often. But sometimes they're just the person who doesn't really trust the GM to set the power ratio properly; someone else can care as much but have more faith.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The Oxford Dictionary, Miriam Webster, : a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. Or more simply put....good guys doing good things. Why does it need to be more complicated than that? Other than people on the internet making argument's to argue about.
Oh...it's also a sandwich.

I don't see any of those traits as important qualities all or even most PCs must possess, and every one of them is culturally relative anyway.