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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tglassy" data-source="post: 7933526" data-attributes="member: 6855204">I don’t optimize. I use my resources. I chose a half Orc Druid, forgoing almost all Elemental Spells in favor of only Animal and self enhancement spells. I even put my highest stats in physical ones, rather than mental ones. I’m a Moon Druid my physical stats are irrelevant. Optimized would have put all my mental stats as high as possible, knowing my physical stats would just be replaced. There is literally nothing optimized about Keth. The fact that I rolled a second time was approved beforehand, and we have other characters who rolled just as high or higher, and weren’t asked to reduce they rolls. I play based on a concept, which often means nerfing myself in favor of focusing on something i perceive to be interesting. But I make those decisions based on what the rules say the spell and abilities can do. If, at any time, the spells and abilities can be negated, simply because I see a connection the DM didn’t, that’s crap. There’s no chance I’d walk away from every single fight having killed everything by myself. I’m in a campaign on this site where my character has literally fallen unconscious in every single fight. I made it part of his character and had him multiclassed into an Warlock with an Undying Patron, in order for him to deal with his fear of death. He’s great, but only at what he’s great at. He sucks at everything else. Like not falling unconscious. I took a water Genasi Rogue Thief, again nothing optimized about that, and double teamed The Tomb of Horrors. There were two of us, my Rogue and a Warlock, and the Shield Guardian the Rogue had managed to procure during a previous adventure. Herman the Shield Guardian was the only reason we got through it, but he was crushed in the last room. Poor Herman. The DM was very happy he was crushed to death. Later, the DM randomly rolled for treasure in another dungeon and Ryder got a Rod of Security. I had him put it on the outside of his pack. When the bad guy got the jump on us and stuck a sock in Ryder’s mouth (Ryder had used his silver tongue to turn some of the bad guys minions against him once before), and said “Give me the magic spear or you die!” I asked “Can I reach for my pack?” The DM said “Yes. Please. Try something.” With this look of “You are going to die you stupid Rogue.” So Ryder grabbed his Rod of Security and pressed the button. He and his Warlock friend, and all their stuff, were then transported to a beautiful oasis with gorgeous women serving us food and drinks for the next hundred days. Took a nice vacation. When the spell ended and we went back, the bad guy was long gone, having no idea where we’d gone. The DM gave me that item. I just used what he gave me. Ryder got out of nearly every situation he ever got in, and and he did it legit, simply by using what he was given. He’s the reason I stopped playing silver tongued characters with high persuasion. I’ve done it. It was awesome. Time to try something else. That’s not optimization. That’s just being creative. Ryder didn’t even have magic, other than a few items the DM gave him, and nothing i did was power gamey or optimized, unless you count using a Shield Guardian, but he only let us do that because we were three players short and really wanted to try the Tomb of Horrors. If you give me a knife and tell me to open a box, I’m more likely to try to use the knife to unscrew the screws holding the box together than try to pry the box open with brute strength. I’ve DMd many games, even more than one full campaign. If the players are winning everything easily, then that’s not the player’s fault. That’s the DM not playing the monsters the way they should be played. They’re not using grapples or having spell casters throw a spell then hide and run. They aren’t having the Vampires try to pick off the characters one by one. Instead, most DMs make all the monsters run in and attack the nearest person, until all of them are dead. That’s easy to counter. Even I have fallen into that trap. Strahd went down way too fast. But that’s not my player’s fault. That’s my fault for not preparing him better. And you know what happened? Everyone felt epic! They beat him! They had a great time, even though I really wanted it to be a harder fight. Players feel great when they do something creative that works and they defeat an enemy much stronger than them. And I’ve never once had a player complain that another player was taking the spotlight.It’s a myth that “one character will outshine the others”, because you can do things, as the DM, to mitigate that. Bring in backstory stuff that plays off another character’s backstory. Put them in situations that are uniquely not good for the star player. Keth is not going to do well in socialSituations. Period. But he will at least hold his own in combat. Or should, I don’t know, I haven’t had a chance to use him yet. My characters have by no means had an answer for every situation they’ve been in. But when it comes to using what I’m given to their max, yes, I’m good at that. I apologize if my tone was more harsh than I intended. I had a very bad morning and I likely let it slip over to here. But I wanted to address being called an “optimizer” or a “min-maxer”.</blockquote>

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