If it's an obvious choice then it's broken

[Herschel]

There is a huge flaw in the game: it's called gamers. However, there is no way to eliminate gamers from the game so their differences will have to be accounted for somewhat and ignored somewhat for the best experience for most.

 

[Mengu]

That's technically a "flaw" with you.

But it was the voices that told me.

 

[Herschel]

The voices are jerks.

Unless they buy you tacos. Then they're righteous dudes.

 

[frankthedm]

If 6 out of 8 players minmax, and players 7 and 8 are falling behind... why are players 1 through 6 not helping them not fall behind, if that's the type of game it is?

Last two might be picking powers based on their tastes, rather than numeric effectiveness. Or might be the "Don't tell me how to play" type who change their choice away from what they are being pressured toward.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Last two might be picking powers based on their tastes, rather than numeric effectiveness. Or might be the "Don't tell me how to play" type who change their choice away from what they are being pressured toward.

I will freely admit I would most likly take expertise more often if I was not always told I 'had' too...but stull not every character

 

[DEFCON 1]

The voices are jerks.

Unless they buy you tacos. Then they're righteous dudes.

You're half-right, Herschel. If they buy you soft tacos they're righteous dudes. They buy you hard-shelled tacos, they're still dudes... just not as righteous. Hard shells fall apart and spill everything onto the plate. That's not righteous at all.

 

[billd91]

The character is only a burden if the other players and DM have agreed to overpower their aspects of the game in comparison to yours, and they don't give a rat's ass that you're behind. If you don't take Expertise but everyone else does... and the DM purposely makes encounters in Epic where even with Expertise the ubers still need 15s (and thus you need an 18 and feel as though you "never freaking hit anything")... that's a flaw of YOUR game. Your fellow players basically are saying that their personal character builds are more important than the group's as a whole... and your DM is saying that it's more important for him to challenge their characters only, and not the party as a whole. Your DM is being lazy if he's catering the encounters to the uber-characters. And yes, that's a flaw of the DM, not the game itself.

I wouldn't characterize the character as a burden, per se. But if most of the players are optimizers, it's the ones who aren't optimizing who should adjust their play styles for the harmony of the game. Same with the lone optimizer in a group that doesn't do that sort of thing. In such a case, if we're using the burden language, the optimizer is the burden on the game because now the DM has to plan for the divergent styles.

It's easy to call the DM lazy, but a better solution all around may lie with the players.

 

[aurance]

What I take issue with is the idea that there's only one metric in doing so. Many CharOprs only care about damage. Nothing else. Just DPR. And as a result, they will denigrate builds that do not maximize damage. Even of those builds DO maximize other aspects of the game which are effective and fun for the player.

I'm not sure where you're getting this, or if this is just an outdated impression, but this just isn't the case now. At least on the WotC CharOp forums. The metric is not only damage. CharOp'ers try to figure out how to make an effective character, whether it's to do damage, defend, lead, control, whatever. Just take a look at the handbooks that are floating around those forums. Yes, overall combat effectiveness is more frequently emphasized than other situational effectiveness, but 1) bulk of the rules is devoted to combat, and 2) noncombat effectiveness is often difficult to quantify.

 

[Kzach]

The character is only a burden if the other players and DM have agreed to overpower their aspects of the game in comparison to yours, and they don't give a rat's ass that you're behind.

Right, because there's no math in the game at all.

It has nothing to do with what other people in the group are doing or how the DM runs the game. The system itself has an internal mechanic that is fundamentally flawed and requires certain choices to be made in order for the balance to be restored.

This is, of course, assuming you use the basic rules for balancing combats by XP and level. If you balance an encounter using the method recommended for doing so, and you play a character without optimal choices, you end up playing a character that doesn't do enough damage, or doesn't hit often enough, or doesn't heal enough, or gets hit too often, or can't heal himself enough, or fails at every skill challenge, or whatever it is that your character is supposed to do due to their role and skill strengths.

As I said, we are not playing "Peasants & Peons". We're supposed to be playing a game where we are the heroes. That means we should be capable of actually succeeding at the challenges presented to us. The success shouldn't be guaranteed but neither should it be next to impossible. By not optimising a character, you're bringing it in under par and that creates a drag on everyone else. By bringing in an optimised character, you're simply adjusting for the flaws in the system and bringing everything back into balance.

There is an extreme beyond optimisation that goes into min/maxing, but that is another issue entirely.

The funny thing here that you don't seem to realise is that I'm on your side. I want a system where I DON'T have to choose these options in order to make a balanced character. I would love nothing more than to have a character be able to speak ten languages through feat choices. My argument is that I can't do that without becoming a burden to the rest of the group by not fulfilling my role successfully in encounters, whether they be combat or non-combat.

 

[DracoSuave]

It has nothing to do with what other people in the group are doing or how the DM runs the game. The system itself has an internal mechanic that is fundamentally flawed and requires certain choices to be made in order for the balance to be restored.

The game worked fine before PHB2, when those fundamental measures were introduced.

People based the idea of a flaw on the concept of a 50/50 attack roll, which is a fiction that never existed. The truth is, you start at 65. Without expertise, you'll settle down to 50, but have attack bonuses from external sources.

It was playable before. The flaws aren't fundamental.