D&D General Optimistic Thoughts on Optimizing

[Thomas Shey]

I’m doing quite the opposite. Like Seth advising folks sesh 0 never really ends. It’s not a cure all for perfect games.

You also need to watch out for people who are prone to not pushing back on things they may be dubious about, or worse, people who genuinely think they're good with things that in play, they find out they don't like.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

You know who the worst sort of optimizers are? The ones that aren't actually good at optimization themselves, but find OP builds on the internet and try to play them.

 

[Desdichado]

I wouldn't agree with this at all. I've always been an optimizer, generally always played mostly with casual players who don't attempt to optimize anything, and in my experience I've never seen any problems.

You've always been an optimizer and you don't think optimization is the problem. Well, of course not.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Why play the game? There is a wargame potential. We want to be challenged in solving a problem….or we want to roleplay and pretend to be something else…

All of this is on a continuum I think.

I do not like playing, dm ing or being in anprty with characters that are in the tails. Weak and a total liability to all combat encounters? Or super stacked in silly ways that break immersion?

Either way it’s not so fun for me. Optimizing to the point that it’s immersion breaking or challenge obviating misses the point for me.

I want my choices to matter! Yes. I want “reasonable chances” of success when I make a reasonable choice.

the most fun sapping up thing in the modern game’s zeitgeist (for me!) is the restrictive thinking and avoidance of cool choices because another choice gets you a +2 somehow.

Even playing wargames, we used to argue over and want to play underdogs for the challenge and thrill.

5e at its baseline is easy survival for experienced players (statistically anyway). Why make it degrees easier? How long until the novelty wears off?

If you see people griping about boring characters they often are falling prey to a he recommended “efficient” course.

Play a warlock or sorlock with eldritch blast a while. Then do something else when it feels “meh.” Don’t box yourself into a little advantage that becomes boring…what is the point?

 

[tetrasodium]

So? It isn't like the point of Session Zero is,, "so you can never discuss this at any other time."

The point of Session Zero is to at least talk about these things once before you ever actually play. It establishes that the group can and will talk about these things like mature adults. It sets up base expectations and a useful social dynamic before any problem can start. Nothing about it precludes talking later.



By all means, if you want to establish silence before play, for your table, by all means, do so. Nobody here is going to stop you.

The rest of us can talk about establishing useful norms for our groups before a crisis develops, instead of when folks are already upset about stuff and unsure how to approach it.

I want poke at that "establish silence" comment before I get to the rest of the post. That seems like you are suggesting that you interpreted my post as suggesting session zero should be a do now for all things or else the gm just needs to silently accept it when it was a post saying that session zero is pushed too hard to the point where it has unrealistic expectations placed on the gm and an unreasonably low bar granted to players. Those unrealistic expectations happen in both directions because the community so often so quickly throws session zero out as some kind of divinely blessed solution for all issues unless the gm failed by not being enough of a diviner to predict a specific thing.

I think that bold bit is where the disconnect starts forming. Session zero has evolved into this unholy abomination where the players can bring up anything they want to bring up while the gm needs to should or is supposed to bring up an ever expanding list of ground rules. Saying use session zero is why we have stuff like the eleven page six thousand word session zero checklist mentioned in Seth's video.

I'm not even going to check if the optimization level expectations is on there but it shows how unreasonable it is for "use session zero for this" sentiments pushing GM's into an expected role that needs to function as diviners while players are allowed the option of being passive spectators and duplicitous participants in session zero. Ultiyit just enshrines 'well you should have/never bought that up in session zero -> yea he's right" stonewall should the GM bring up issues that develop or get demonstrated later. If optimization levtis an any time discussion then it's impossible for that discussion to also be a good example of why session zero exists. Reflexively checking issues out from a thing reasonable for ongoing discussion as the game develops through the glass∆ onto session zero along with the other Divination Master responsibilities just adds one more item to the above 11 page six thousand word session zero checklist mentioned in Seth's video and strengthens the case for a player being called out when they get grumpy about it not being covered in session zero.

∆ it's a hockey thing.
edit: fixed link

 

[James Gasik]

I've seen the opposite problem as well- the player that refuses to optimize. They have their character and backstory perfectly in mind, and it doesn't matter to them if they can't contribute in normal ways. They will continue to play their character, their way, to the bitter end.

This can be fun. It can be engaging. It can create great moments in the game. But it can also make the player an anchor around the party's neck. There's a video on YouTube I saw once that made my eyes bleed. It was something like "Why it's rude to be bad at World of Warcraft".

The gist of it is, WoW is a team game, and if you are bad at the game, you're making the game harder for your teammates, less fun, and possibly wasting their time when they could be doing anything else. I didn't care for the insinuation, but there is a point to it.

But D&D is only partly a team game. It's also a social event. So I really can't see demanding everyone play the best possible character or always make the correct decisions. But what to do with someone who seems insistent on playing the worst possible character (and making, if not always the worst, a good number of bad decisions).

It's like the "but I'm playing my character" argument- to which my usual reply is "yes, you are playing your character with Wis 7 as a complete and utter pain in my haldz. However, the problem with that is that you decided to make your character this way."

A year or two ago (maybe longer, time is meaningless and space is bendable) I made a post about my friend Guy (yes, really). Guy considers himself an old school role-player who hates "WotC D&D" with a passion (I keep telling him it's been 25 years, he really should let it go). He tried (and failed) to get us to play 2e (I was on board but the other players quickly developed Jackie Chan confused faces). We managed to get him to consider playing 5e, but he then instantly went against any sort of conventional wisdom when creating his character, an orphan former cutpurse who stowed away on a ship, got stranded on a desert island, and was rescued by the PC's. You may wonder what his actual chosen Background was.

Fisher, from Ghosts of Saltmarsh. See he had to fish to stay alive...

Also, he was a Ranger. Who had fairly middle of the road Strength and Dexterity, but good Con and Wisdom. And low Charisma due to a horrible scar he received on the high seas (from a guy who should know his Charisma from his Comeliness).

To try and shorten this anecdote a bit, the essential problem was everyone liked Guy. They thought his antics were entertaining. What they did not care for was how he almost got their characters TPK'd.

His response was mostly that, when dealing with a mixed group, it's up to the DM to figure out how to balance things. That's what he's done for many years as a DM.

The DM (not me) was flummoxed. "How do I do that? Do I budget encounters as if he's not there? He still gets a share of the xp for everyone else's work!"

Meanwhile, in private, Guy was complaining about how he didn't understand younger gamers, always having to min/max. Now I'm not one to care too much if someone doesn't always put their aces in their places- I have a Kobold Wizard who has higher Dex than Int, for example. But he was griping that the party's priestess had a 15 Strength despite not even owning a melee weapon, just so she could get the best AC from her half-plate.

"So what are you saying, that she should just dump strength and wear light armor?"

"She's a priestess, she should be wearing robes or something."

"On an adventure!?"

"Doesn't matter. Her faith should be her armor."

In everything, there should be balance. Snarf's OP is basically saying that. Try to match what the other players are doing. If everyone is playing Ace Rimmer "What a guy!", then things are fine. If everyone is playing Arnold Rimmer, well, second verse, same as the first.*

*even if, in both cases, you basically have to ignore CR completely. But doesn't everyone?

But if your campaign is starting to look like Gilligan meets the A-Team, it's time to have a nice chat with your players about expectations vs. reality.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Just wanted to note that I thought @James Gasik had an excellent post above there. Including the end part which added up to the player in discussion essentially going "Why isn't everyone else playing the way I expect?!"

Its one thing to expect people not to demand you play the same way they do; on the other hand there's a certain degree of having to look around and ask whether the way you're playing makes it difficult or impossible for them to play the way they want to (in a group play hobby like most RPGs, we don't exist in separate bubbles), and at that point it at least behooves someone to think about who's the real problem there (and of course, the answer can be "Both of you.")

 

[DrJawaPhD]

You've always been an optimizer and you don't think optimization is the problem. Well, of course not.

You've never played at the same table as me, yet you think you magically know what is and is not a problem at our tables? Sorry but yes, I am 100% certain that I have a better idea than you, random person on the internet.

You know who the worst sort of optimizers are? The ones that aren't actually good at optimization themselves, but find OP builds on the internet and try to play them.

Yeah I've seen this and it can be annoying, particularly since it's almost always a Baldur's Gate 3 build which isn't quite the same rules

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

One big thought I've had that informs my view of the debate (I'm an optimizer, except I'm actually mainly the GM) is the Legolas problem.

The Legolas problem is that in a situation without deliberate optimization, two players sit down to DND and both come up with nornal good faith concepts-- player A wants to play against type and be an orc wizard, while player B decides to be an expy of Legolas.

Player B will end up in a situation where they're playing an elf ranger or fighter, with a bow, and say "oh, Legolas would totally have these Sharpshooter and Elven Accuracy things because duh, he's super cool with his bow, oh and he's really sneaky, so lets do high dexterity"

Player A is in a situation where depending on what book they're using, they have an intelligence penalty and no actual benefits, nor even a bonus to dex to help their clothy AC.

What the Legolas problem illustrates is that differences in power follow thematic lines in RPGs (until a sufficiently high level of optimization) and so you need system mastery to avert optimization to some degree.

A stoner player, stoned during play and character building, yeeting fireballs is incredibley potent, because fireball is overtuned.

I sort of detest that the game makes that whole to do necessary.

Totally Unrelated, but I sure do love Pathfinder 2e ; )

 

[James Gasik]

One big thought I've had that informs my view of the debate (I'm an optimizer, except I'm actually mainly the GM) is the Legolas problem.

The Legolas problem is that in a situation without deliberate optimization, two players sit down to DND and both come up with nornal good faith concepts-- player A wants to play against type and be an orc wizard, while player B decides to be an expy of Legolas.

Player B will end up in a situation where they're playing an elf ranger or fighter, with a bow, and say "oh, Legolas would totally have these Sharpshooter and Elven Accuracy things because duh, he's super cool with his bow, oh and he's really sneaky, so lets do high dexterity"

Player A is in a situation where depending on what book they're using, they have an intelligence penalty and no actual benefits, nor even a bonus to dex to help their clothy AC.

What the Legolas problem illustrates is that differences in power follow thematic lines in RPGs (until a sufficiently high level of optimization) and so you need system mastery to avert optimization to some degree.

A stoner player, stoned during play and character building, yeeting fireballs is incredibley potent, because fireball is overtuned.

I sort of detest that the game makes that whole to do necessary.

Totally Unrelated, but I sure do love Pathfinder 2e ; )

I call this the Druid problem, because of my experiences with 3.5 Druids. I watched as a new player looked over the classes and thought "Druids sound neat!" and she proceeded to make a high Charisma, Disney Princess type character. She fooled around a little with wild shape, but she really liked casting spells, and it annoyed her that she couldn't do that as an animal. Flash forward to level 6, where, without any outside influence, she notices "oh, there's a Druid only feat that lets me cast spells in Wild Shape! I'll take that!".

And to be fair, it took her a bit to really grok what this actually meant, but inevitably, she became a Druidzilla. Not because she was going out of her way to optimize (remember that high score she put in Charisma), but because the system itself was lighting the way down that path. I was only a player in this game, and it wasn't long before the DM came to me and said "I don't understand. Why doesn't anyone think the Druid is OP?". I had to laugh, because unlike myself, I've found most players in the wild don't go on forums and learn what people are saying about the game (infamously, I played a Rogue in Pathfinder 1e, and the GM started grumbling about how powerful I was- when the Rogue had often been labeled one of the weaker classes online for years!).

Magic the Gathering, in their set design, include "signpost cards", usually in the uncommon rarity, that are some sort of payoff for adopting a particular strategy so that, when drafting the set, you can quickly realize "oh, so Red/White in this set wants to make Treasures and sacrifice them for things other than mana!"*. Thus the player starts looking for cards that support that strategy, and lo and behold, they exist in abundance.

*Whether or not this has actually happened isn't relevant to the example.

There's both good and bad here, obviously- on the one hand, it helps newer players create things that will work well in the game. On the other hand, it takes away a little of the discovery and squashes creativity- you end up with a lot of players doing the same things.

This is why, for example, I've heard many a DM over the years gripe about "guides" found online, as if they are some sort of Game Genie designed to break their game, when in reality, they mostly just exist to tell you "these options good, these options not so good" or "you want to do X in the game? This is the best way to do it".

The poster I quoted, for example, used Fireball as an example of something they feel is overtuned for the game. After all, everyone knows the DMG thinks a spell like it should do 6d6 damage instead of 8d6! Busted! But really, if you examine the spell in detail, and compare it to the things you're most likely going to be using it against, it's actually not that great. It's upcast is pretty sad, so it's probably always going to do that same 28-ish damage, save for half. And when you look at the hit points of monsters, you find there are CR 1's that can survive a Fireball, and CR 2's that won't even be brought to half hit points by it. If anything, the spell is probably weaker than it was in 3.x (where a CR 2 Ogre has the hit points of a 5e CR 1), and far weaker than it was in AD&D- it still does it's job, but outside of lucky rolls or damage bonuses, it's actually more like a C+ spell in reality.**

**I know this isn't universally agreed upon, as there was a thread about it on this forum a few months ago. And it's probably campaign-dependent to some degree- if you run old school hordes of weaker monsters and dungeons with smaller rooms that provide a target-rich environment, ie, what the spell was originally made for- it probably performs very well. But if you, like me, are tired of rolling the attacks for 10 enemies every turn just to whiff again and again because +4 to hit is a joke, the spell will have a very different impact.

But once again, despite the actual impact of the spell, it's obvious that Wizards deliberately made it a signpost for those classes that can use it "wow, 8d6 damage! It's so much!" along with internet memes make it an obvious choice. In the game I play in, my party still wants me to cast Fireball in just about every fight, believing in their heart of hearts it will end the fight so much faster than my control spells. And I can see the DM's eyes light up, hoping I'll do just that instead of debuffing his enemies into oblivion (I think he may have cried a little when I cast Synaptic Static for the first time).

And this signposting can go horribly wrong or right, depending on how good or bad the things you're being steered towards are. In the case of the 3.5 Druid, it went horribly right, making an already potentially powerful class that much stronger. But it can backfire as well, like the 3.5 Fighter, who was signposted into choosing from a list of "combat" Feats, many of which are difficult to qualify for and very situational. Some even obsolete themselves- once you have Spring Attack and can move around without provoking, how useful is that Mobility? Or worse, once you've got your Improved (insert combat maneuver here), are you really going to reduce the chances of success by invoking your Combat Expertise?

5e, by narrowing it's range of options, actually makes the impact of signposting worse (or better, depending on your point of view), because there's a lot less paths a character can viably take. It's inevitable that a Cleric is going to find their way towards Spirit Guardians- because the spell isn't just signposted, it's a lush oasis in a parched wasteland! With no other equivalent option in sight (or even one close to it), steering around it is a huge downgrade for your character. So of 99%*** of all Clerics are going to end up using the spell, to the annoyance of DM's everywhere (myself included!) because what else are they going to do? Upcast a healing spell?

***totally made up number, of course. I'd be surprised if I wasn't in the ballpark though.