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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Is the "Heavy Hitter" archetype power-gaming?
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8606203" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>Yeah, this.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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 <em>need</em> is one or two uses. That's powergaming.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8606203, member: 6790260"] 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 [I]need[/I] 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. [/QUOTE]
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Is the "Heavy Hitter" archetype power-gaming?
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