How would you respond to someone like this?

[jaerdaph]

Why respond at all and dignify him with a response?

That's why they do it you know - to troll responses.

 

[Crothian]

Name ten.

Might not be too hard if you count some OGL stuff like Castles and Crusades, Iron Heroes or other deviants, but I doubt you'd find ten D&D positive threads.

Joe, you changed my statement. I never said positive threads, I said good threads. A thread does not have to be pro D&D to be a good thread. Just like there are pro D&D threads that are bad threads.

 

[Quickbeam]

I tend not to watse my time bashing and belittling things I'm not fond of. The person making the "here's why I hate 3.0/3.5 post" would be better served simply enjoying the type of gaming they prefer, than they will ever be attacking styles of gaming they dislike. What possible mileage can they hope to gain?

How would I respond? I wouldn't. If forced into a reply, I'd simply say that I'm sorry they feel the need to attack things that run contrary to their own personal preferences. As noted above, munchkins (and the concept of min/maxing existed) waayyyy before 3e, and it should be expected that many players will seek to maximize every possible advantage inherent in a specific character type. Big deal.

 

[birdchili]

Just a point of note:

That build would have been useless during almost every combat in the last adventure my players were in: closed quarters, untrippable enemies (lots of oozes, centipedes and a gibbering mouther), fighting enemies in water, etc...

It's fun to create focused characters, but too much focus is going to bite you in the end. A good dm is going to *deliberately* put you in awkward spots if you insist on doing this.

My players (some of whom have been playing off and on through four or five versions of dnd (depending on how you count)) seem to have found a happy medium between maximizing numbers and creating compelling characters that makes sense. Too much min/maxing is going to grate in any game, and early editions of dnd are hardly exempt.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Joe, you changed my statement. I never said positive threads, I said good threads. A thread does not have to be pro D&D to be a good thread. Just like there are pro D&D threads that are bad threads.

Well, I'd say it's the net confusing thing but it initially sounded like good as in "pro" D&D, especially coming in after someone's talking bad or negative about D&D.

 

[Aaron L]

I've met too many big dumb bruisers and too many scrawny and smart geeks to think otherwise. In a game or real life, when you have a strength or advantage, people play to that and try to improve it as much as possible rather than opt for well rounded skill set.
.

Thank you. Ive been saying that for a long time.

 

[babomb]

http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=216

 

[IcyCool]

Good Lord. It's not an RPG. It's friggin' Magic: the Gathering. It's a friggin' video-game. It's Halo. It's Street Fighter II (some of you old-timers remember *that* craze in the arcades ).

I hate it.[/COLOR]

Well, my response would be:

"If you think Street Fighter II is old-time, you ain't nothin' but a whipper snapper!"

 

[fiddlerjones]

I would personally LOVE to have a spiked chain fighter in one of my campaigns. He'd get to have his fun tripping the orcs and junk, but whenever he gets too high and mighty just let him meet a chain devil or maybe a wu jen (metal) with magnetism type spells. The more twinked out a character is, the more fun it is to (quite sadistically) bring him down a notch on occasion. It's possible, also, to have a very powerful character build and still a well-developed character. The ability to specialize and play precisely the character you want with precisely the skills you want does not take away from the roleplaying aspect of this game.

 

[Storm Raven]

There have been optimized builds in every edition of D&D. For example, in previous editions there was almost never a really good mechanical reason not to play a dwarf or elf. And few good mechanical reasons not to play a multiclassed character (the geometric experience point tables made it a highly attractive option). My experience with 1e was that the vast majority of charatcers who showed up at the table were elven fighter/magic-users wielding longswords, because that was the "best" combination.