Lightly-armored, greatsword-wielding human fighter

[gizmo33]

Bullgrit,
Your original post is going to give me nightmares for the rest of the week. You raise some interesting points about things that DM should be careful of, but your whole tone is extremely antagonistic. I'm not surprised that there are huge discrepencies in charisma between you and your bard characters - although I think it's a matter of choice with you and not natural ability. Here are some points I think you should ponder in between min-maxing your characters:

THE CAMPAIGN WORLD IS THE DM'S CHARACTER
I suggest that you get out of the habit of thinking of certain parts of the PHB as an entitlement. Think about this - spells, for example, are customizable by nature, and are campaign specific. The NPCs in the campaign world are actually the ones that are creating the spells. If a fireball in the campaign does d8 instead of d6, I really don't see this as the business of the PCs. Fireball was presumably created by an NPC, and it does what the DM rules it does. The PHB descriptions are there as a time-saver.

You would probably prefer if the DM didn't play your character. Since the world is the DMs character, telling him the kind/nature of spells his NPCs have created is impolite.

CAMPAIGN-CHARACTERS VS. VANILLA FIGHTERS
Demi-humans, clerics, paladins, etc. are all characters that must interact in some way for the campaign to be meaningful. A vanilla fighter, of course, allows you to basically divorce yourself from the campaign setting. Now, I think it's important that players have a say in interpreting things, like alignment.

But I wouldn't expect Charles Manson and I to have the same definition of Lawful Good. And believe me, I've met players whose interpretation of things like "Good", IMO, are bizarre and self-serving. I ask you to consider the possibility that a sense of competition in the game has biased your opinion in some of those disputes you've had with the DM over alignment issues.

Alignment disputes also come back to the issue of the world being the DM's character. The gods decide what is Lawful Good, the gods are NPCs.

PLAYER CHARISMA VS CHARACTER CHARISMA
A wizard with 18 intelligence would make better decisions about what spells to cast than a player. A high level fighter would never make mistakes with regards to AoO and their every maneuver would be completely optimzed. However, players are supposed to play the game! I don't think it's reasonable that the entire game become abstracted and that player choice have no effect on success or failure.

"Well, my character would really know which passage of the dungeon to choose, so let me know what he decides. In fact, I'm going to go watch TV, have my character make the optimum choices for getting magic and treasure (after all, I don't have Gather Information, but he does). Get back to me when it's time for me to level up."

It always helps, when dealing with NPCs, to make the best choices about what to say and how to deal with them, rather than relying on dice rolling. Think of it as watching out for verbal AoOs. Of course it involves immersing yourself in the setting, or at least paying attention to the NPCs long enough to have a clue. True, that's a social skill that the PLAYER must cultivate, but I don't think it's a good idea to wait for a rule to save you in this area. Given your apparent lack of respect for the world as the DM's character, I'm not surprised that you have no interest in this aspect of the game.

ALL CHARACTERS HAVE WEAKNESSES
I can't figure out why you don't say "light armor melee fighters are nerfed when facing flying creatures with missle weapons, are nerfed when facing traps, needing healing, detecting magic, etc. etc."

Plus, characters aren't useless when they're not in their ideal environment. Druids, for example, have a long list of things that they can do equally well in an urban environment - wild shape and healing are two that come to mind. I'm not saying that I would make up a druid if the campaign were a city campaign, but somehow I can't imagine that the entire campaign world is a tower of undead and golems within a city.

I find your statements to be extremist - everything is either ok or nerfed. The other players in your game should never have gotten angry with you for having a heavy character in platemail that makes noise. The spirit of the game used to be that the PCs need to cover for each other's weaknesses. Did the clerics in the party refuse to heal you too?

FUNNY THING IS
I think 50% of the people on this board would call me a power-gamer. I don't like the thespian style of game at all, and yet I find the OP to be so far to the extreme on the power-gamer scale that I really think you'll have trouble enjoying DnD with other human beings unless you tone-down some of the Chaotic Neutral.

 

[ElvishBard]

You mentioned being a wizard and having no downtime to do all your magic voodoo, so did you try a sorcerer? They don't need time to study new spells, and the magic items feats you have to manually select after finding out if you will be able to use them or not.

I just hope your DM doesn't decide that sunder should effect armor as well, as your light armor would get choped to pieces .

 

[blargney the second]

While building a character without weaknesses is the holy grail to some players, the DM's job is to provide challenges to those same PCs. If a given nut is too hard to crack, he can just use a bigger nutcracker.

-blarg

 

[Nac_Mac_Feegle]

Even a sorceror needs to rest for his spells ot come back, thats why there are daily limits, and a requirement to rest up.

I also think gizmo that you are tkaing his words to harshly. What I saw was that somehow, theres always a deviation in a campaign that screws you over, not necessarily ruining it, but its usually to a degree that if your character lives in the world, you owuld know about.

If mages are outlawed, then you hsould know this BEFORE making a mage for a campaign.

Yes the DM's world is his character, but your characters in his world are not newborn babies, they are 15+ years old, they live and breathe the world, so its not inconcievable that they might actually know something about the world.

The tower of undead and golems was my character by the way, and I ended up re-rolling, because there was absolutely nothing I could, is thta my fault I was sent on a job wiht no idea what I was up against? I dont tihnk so, so if I am on the wrong job, I quit it, and get a character more suitable to the task.

Remember your not just a generic adventuring party. If your going to play a city based campaign, you are entitled to know before rolling a character, then your background can reflect why your there. Likewise pure wilderness campaign. High levle rangers/druids and barbarians are in these settings for a reason, which is why for wilderness campaigns you let your players know before hand, as these classes are more likely ot answer the calls for help, so are more likely ot be PC's

If your world deviates from the norm, as a GM you should tell them how and why. If I am a full plate kind of warrior, I am not goign to accept a job sailing the seven seas hunting down pirates, I will step aside for the faster more lightly amred adventurers, or ask for a crap load of cash to re-buy my gear that more appropriate.

Although you as a player will be taking on all the challenges the Dm throws at you, its not necassarily always going ot be the same character dealing with it, some just plainly are not suited to the task.

Feegle Out

 

[Bullgrit]

Bullgrit,
Your original post is going to give me nightmares for the rest of the week. <snip>

Whoa. And your post reintroduces me to why I should never post more than a paragraph, should never give examples or anecdotes, and should never gripe, even generally.

This was just a concept that has built up over a quarter-century of gaming, and I was curious if a similar idea/conclusion had been considered by anyone else in the hobby. It is not prompted particularly by my current game/group (though some of the minor issues exist in it too).

All I can say is that what you've said has no real relation to my style, feelings, experiences, etc. But I have a feeling that my saying anything more will just result in one of those futile and silly, "am not", "are too" exchanges.

Bullgrit

 

[Jdvn1]

While building a character without weaknesses is the holy grail to some players, the DM's job is to provide challenges to those same PCs. If a given nut is too hard to crack, he can just use a bigger nutcracker.

-blarg

Bullgrit isn't trying to play a character without weaknesses. Are you referring to someone else?

 

[Henry]

Bullgrit, I'm not sure I get your point. Are you saying that in your experience, the light-armored big-weapon wielding fighter is the only type that doesn't get screwed with by DM's with house rules?


It's pretty much like it comes down to the DMs you play with. Our group has different experiences; ofter my initial period of "screwing around with 3E", I generally leave the base classes alone these days for a standard D&D game, unless the whole setting is a different premise. It's all in the DM understanding what are the strengths of the various classes, and how to cater to them. For a wizard, at least, the good thing is that you don't have to have spell research or item making be a core part of the class. You can tailor the character around it and just avoid item-making altogether.

 

[swrushing]

So, I've decided that when creating a new character for a new game, I'll stick to lightly-armored human fighters. I haven't seen a game where a straight lightly-armored human fighter couldn't fit in perfectly fine with no problems.
Bullgrit

IMX the sorcerer will also tend o fit your bill. he gets what he gets and is fine and pretty much a lot of the campaign traits wont affect him all that much.

the issue you bring up is linked to one of the reason i DISLIKE the wizard class. There are a ton of "campaign traits" that are not by any means, and should not be, hardcoded in the rules which will play merry havoc with the wizard balance issues. Things like the availability and predictability of safe downtime, the availability of magical resources like scrolls for purchase, and the general nature of the campaign from "know ahead of time" vs "react on the fly" seriously impacts the wizard capability. See most debates on whether the sor is too weak and see they tend to diverge on "what we expect of the wiz" and find "bulging spellbooks campaigns" where lots of downtime is assured and availability of scrolls and such is easy tend to be the assumption on the pro-wiz side.

IMG for instance, time is a limited and precious resource, just like gold and materials.
When there is downtime, its not just for the wiz, and other character can use their abilities during downtime as well. They might gain gold or other loot, they might make contacts and allies, or they might even earn XP during "downtime." So the wizard's "investment in time" is not "while everyone else remains in stasis."


tho i have seen such games.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Giz,

Personally, I think you're a little out there.

I can make a nod to how the OP feels ... I, as a GM, have done some of that stuff in my own game a long time ago, and after it alienated a few people that didn't know I was going to do it, I started talking about house campaign oddities up front.

The guy playing a TWF sneak-attacking rogue might feel a little put out if he didn't realize the campaign was going to be facing huge numbers of undead as the major foe. Sneak Attack is a class ability. You can't really trade it out for something else. The designers balanced it with an eye toward Undead and Constructs being a FACET of a game, but not the focus. I don't really think it's power-gaming to be disappointed with a campaign aspect that means a particular class ability is totally useless.

Fundamentally it's about communication. I think players have a right to know what is going on in the game. If the GM is deviating from the rules or the basic premises of the game, players should be able to make informed choices about their characters.

I recently played in a home-brew campaign where Drow had created a surface empire, enslaved all humans, and most demi-humans were willing participants in the subjugation of humanity. Everybody knew that before the game started. As good adventurers, we were also expected to join the underground resistance movement. One guy decided to play a human, and had to face persecution from NPCs and masqueraded as another PC's slave.

Which worked out really well, and was very interesting.

Had we shown up to the first session entirely uninformed about the campaign background, with a party of human PCs, and we were all constantly attacked and captured/enslaved etc etc, I think we'd have had a right to be upset. If I came to a game with a gnome and was informed at the table that my gnome bard had to travel in disguise and never use his Bardic Music ability because gnomes are killed on sight in all civilized lands and music is an illegal activity punishable by death ... that's the sort of thing that I'd walk on.

The game should be about fun for everybody. I don't see the world as the GM's "Character" that should be inviolate and never questioned. It's a game. The game should be fun for everybody, not just the GM.

--fje

 

[gizmo33]

I also think gizmo that you are tkaing his words to harshly. What I saw was that somehow, theres always a deviation in a campaign that screws you over, not necessarily ruining it, but its usually to a degree that if your character lives in the world, you owuld know about.

Yes, this was one of the points that I agreed with Bullgrit about. And I agree with you, to some extent - but it's more complicated than you say. DMs might not know the direction of the campaign at the outset. Also:

Yes the DM's world is his character, but your characters in his world are not newborn babies, they are 15+ years old, they live and breathe the world, so its not inconcievable that they might actually know something about the world.

Know something, yes. But what would a gnome really know about human society, or a barbarian about court society? It's conceivable that such a character would wander into those situations and not know. Again - Bullgrit's info here should serve as a caveat to DMs to consider that a player might not want to play a pariah for the entire campaign - but I'm not sure you can base all of this on character knowledge. If it were all about character knowledge, then players shouldn't even be allowed to look at the game descriptions for any of the feats. You don't know anything about what +1 means as a character.

Also, a DM should really consider cutting the gnome and barbarian some slack over time. If barbarians are given some sort of inherent penalty, the DM should relax that to simulate the fact that the barbarian learns etiquette. A gnome adventurer could earn the respect of the society around him due to good deeds.

If your world deviates from the norm, as a GM you should tell them how and why. If I am a full plate kind of warrior, I am not goign to accept a job sailing the seven seas hunting down pirates, I will step aside for the faster more lightly amred adventurers, or ask for a crap load of cash to re-buy my gear that more appropriate.

A "full plate kind of warrior"? Is that a type? Did I just cross into some weird universe where I'm some role-playing hippie-thespian? I'm sure it wasn't your intent, but I think it's noteworthy that your decision to undertake an adventure is apparently based on your roster of feats and equipment. A "full plate fighter" might have reasons (ex. personality!?, background!?) to go on ship-based adventures.

That being said, a "full plate kind of warrior" player should probably petition the DM for some house rules to allow him to adjust his character over time to become a pirate. It could be considered one of the challenges of the game to survive and adapt in the meantime.

If it's not fun to play a knight who finds himself on the high seas and has to adapt, then I get the feeling like you are in some sort of extreme competition among the players for who has the baddest character.