D&D General Is the "Heavy Hitter" archetype power-gaming?

[DrunkonDuty]

Power gaming is in the eye of the beholder.

I run a game of Pathfinder 1e for my wife. (It's our little home game for when we want to game with just the two of us.)

She runs 3 PCs. Every battle starts with: the bard drops a Haste spell and a Bardic Song, (at their level bard song is just a move equivalent action) the cleric casts Prayer, and then the barbarian Rages. EVERY battle. And it's fine. As others have said, there's ways to mitigate the barbarian's damage output. And then there's the times the bugger rolls a crit and does 230-ish damage to my BBEG and I cry "Dammit!" Such is life and gaming, there's ups and downs. It's all good.

BTW. @Greenfield, I think you've miscalculated the damage in your example in the OP. I'm pretty sure (haven't looked at 3.5 in a loooonnnnnggg time) that the power attack bonus for a 2-h weapon is 3x the attack penalty. I only mention because I hate for your player to miss out on some good damage.

 

[Charlaquin]

You’re playing 3.5 and getting complaints that a 2h fighter is power gaming?

No. Not even close. You can do some truly overpowered things in that edition, a fighter with a Greatsword or Greataxe and Power Attack doesn’t even begin to touch what 3.5e power gaming looks like.

 

[James Gasik]

Yeah, nothing like a DMM Persist Cleric deciding to give themselves Divine Power and/or Righteous Might for the day for the lulz.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You’re playing 3.5 and getting complaints that a 2h fighter is power gaming?

No. Not even close. You can do some truly overpowered things in that edition, a fighter with a Greatsword or Greataxe and Power Attack doesn’t even begin to touch what 3.5e power gaming looks like.

Yeah, this.

Powergaming is not "playing a character with a powerful action." If it were, then literally every spellcaster (yes, including the weak ones) would be powergaming even without a single feat spent.

Powergaming is when you turn optimization into an effort to produce perfect solutions...and then find ways to ensure that those perfect solutions are always applicable to whatever situation you face. For example, in 4e, it is not powergaming to focus on developing your skill with Arcana, because that is a valid, focused thing to study. However, for reasons that escape me even to this day, Arcana got...a LOT of support. A ridiculous amount of it, in fact. Including stuff like the Arcane Mutterings power, which lets you replace any Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check with an Arcana check once per encounter. With enough investment, a character can turn Arcana into a mega-skill for short periods in any encounter...and then work to ensure that all they need is one or two uses. That's powergaming.

From there, min-maxing would be ensuring that you pay the absolute minimum effective cost (e.g. giving up stuff you don't care about) in order to get the maximum possible benefit in your chosen area of focus. A hyper-specialist Wizard focused on Transmutation or Conjuration in 3.5e is a good example here, where the extra spell slots are almost always worth giving up the very very small handful of good spells in other schools simply because of how versatile and potent conjuration and transmutation are.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, nothing like a DMM Persist Cleric deciding to give themselves Divine Power and/or Righteous Might for the day for the lulz.

I mean, that is less "powergaming" and more "openly exploiting stinky cheese." But yes.

 

[James Gasik]

I mean, that is less "powergaming" and more "openly exploiting stinky cheese." But yes.

Well to be honest, the idea behind DMM was fine on the face of it, in my opinion. Turn attempts weren't doing much, and many Clerics were best served initially by ignoring Charisma due to how wonky the mechanic was.

Divine Feats gave Turn Attempts something to do. I played one DMM Cleric (my last, in fact), and I focused on buffs that could affect the entire party. Such as Mass Conviction (+3 morale to saves for all allies in 20 ft.) and Recitation (The spell affects all allies within the spell's area at the moment you cast it. Your allies gain a +2 luck bonus to AC, on attack rolls, and on saving throws, or a +3 luck bonus if they worship the same deity as you- I tried to convert my allies to the worship of Lathander, but to no avail).

This worked out very well for the group, I certainly wasn't overpowered (my main action most turns was to use a Reserve Feat, Fiery Burst), and it gave everyone involved more latitude when it came to magic items (the DM didn't have to worry about making sure "the big six" were in play, and just used whatever treasure dropped from the adventures, and the players didn't have to pore over the books to try and find the right items to purchase, when the opportunity arose).

So IMO, DMM is a tool, like any other, and while it can be abused, it could be used responsibly.

 

[Flamestrike]

A low AC/ high damage output is beneficial to a Fighter, because it serves as encouragement to him being attacked.

He has the HD to soak it, and the low HP PCs then get to do things like cast spells freely.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So IMO, DMM is a tool, like any other, and while it can be abused, it could be used responsibly.

Ah, you were using it as intended, rather than the incredibly stinky cheese that the feat usually implies. I feel that. Did something similar once, some time ago, as a gestalt Druid/Wizard (that, by using a feat, was purely SAD, using Int alone), by taking the dreaded breaker-of-campaigns PrC...Planar Shepherd. But I used it primarily for flavor and to buff my allies. It made sense (effectively, I was a planar scholar-druid, with a healthy side of "actually also a priest for Totally Not Bahamut, We Swear.")

Most of the time though, both Planar Shepherd and DMM are not used that way, and invoke some absolutely stinky cheese, as noted. I assume you weren't using Nightsticks to get extra turning attempts?

 

[James Gasik]

Ah, you were using it as intended, rather than the incredibly stinky cheese that the feat usually implies. I feel that. Did something similar once, some time ago, as a gestalt Druid/Wizard (that, by using a feat, was purely SAD, using Int alone), by taking the dreaded breaker-of-campaigns PrC...Planar Shepherd. But I used it primarily for flavor and to buff my allies. It made sense (effectively, I was a planar scholar-druid, with a healthy side of "actually also a priest for Totally Not Bahamut, We Swear.")

Most of the time though, both Planar Shepherd and DMM are not used that way, and invoke some absolutely stinky cheese, as noted. I assume you weren't using Nightsticks to get extra turning attempts?

Sadly, all I have left are my notes, I can't seem to find the sheet, so I don't know if I had gotten any Nightsticks or not. Not having access to someone able to make them and needing other magic items made them a little costly, so I was trying to acquire other sources of bonus Turn Attempts, since I could only Persist 2 spells by the time we stopped playing (at around 9th level). I know there was a magic holy symbol that granted two bonus turn attempts, and of course I had a high Charisma and Extra Turning. According to my notes, the party was saving up funds to get me a Staff of Healing, since we were going through Wands of Cure Light Wounds at a fairly insane rate. It was funny that even with my buffs, the published adventures the DM was using were really hard- the last one I recall involved us taking on a Yuan-Ti cult to rescue slaves, and of course, they were trying to revive some dead King or whatever, in a fight that tore us to shreds.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To join in the chorus, LOL, no, a greatweapon fighter isn't power gaming and especially not in 3.5. The greatweapon fighter is pretty good at one thing - killing enemies that get within five feet of them. The challenge is getting that close.

Indeed I'd go so far as to say that the heavy hitter is one of the archetypes the game is based around - and one of the simplest to benchmark. And what you've described is using only using PHB material; if he were complaining about a War Hulk/Hulking Hurler combo he might (but only might) have a point. You've done a good job of explaining the weaknesses of the build.

So what I suggest you do is sit down with the player complaining about powergaming and ask what they mean. Because the problem is either that that player isn't communicating properly (such as they don't enjoy having to heal up the heavy hitter with their own resources) or it's something else with that player.