Optimization and optimizers...

[prabe]

Yeah I think the balance point of that spectrum is not halfway between good and bad decisions, it's "generally making reasonably effective decisions." So to compare disruptive behaviors, on the one hand I'd use the guy who tells other players what to do on their turns, and on the other the guy who griefs the party with the "it's what my character would do" b.s.

I don't want to play with either.

Maybe. I can see an argument that either you're thinking about it or you aren't, though it might not be your top priority and/or you might not be all that good at it. I certainly wouldn't want to play with someone who can't/won't stop quarterbacking, or with someone who can't/won't stop griefing--but those are both jerk behaviors more than anything else, IMO.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The only quibble I'd have, here--and it's a minor quibble, I'm not looking for an argument--is that I think the distinction is the extent/frequency to which "optimal tactical decision" is a criterion: Someone who intentionally never makes the optimal tactical decision is probably optimizing for something, I think, whereas someone who never thinks about that A) isn't optimizing for anything that way and B) will probably stumble on a good tactical choice now and then. Obviously, either can work, though the player who's intentionally never making good tactical choices might have some 'splainin' to do at some tables.

Well, to some extent it turns on what you expect characters to do in a game. Most games expect them to be interesting and well characterized (other than hyper token-play oriented ones), but that's just the minimum bar; most expect them to be good at doing something that supports the thrust of the game in other ways. What those other ways are depends to some extent on the thrust of the game.

As a contrast, most D&D derivatives are, like it or not, at least moderately focused on combat; the design of the classes makes that abundantly clear in that most of them are about direct combat, battlefield control, or support. As such, whether its by careful tactical choice or just having the numbers on the sheet to be able to get through a combat usefully without doing anything not-straightforward, people tend to expect other people's characters to hold up their end there, even if their primary focus is some out-of-combat process.

Other games, while they rarely avoid combat completely, are more prone to have it not be as big a focus as things within the D&D sphere; in them, it may be most of the lifting in combat is done by a specialist or two, and others only contribute in minor ways.

Both these can work as long as the GM understands what they're dealing with (and a D&D GM who is both clear that he has players who really aren't going to be much good in a fight, but it requires extra lifting on his part to make sure that the characters who are good in one can still handle the problem, and especially with the prevalence of pre-designed modules and adventures in that sphere, that may not be trivial).

As such, the things characters are expected to be up for in a Pathfinder 2e game (which follows the general tendencies in the D&D sphere, maybe a bit moreso) and what they're expected to be up for in Eclipse Phase 2e (which expects there will usually be at least one combat in an adventure, but usually assumes the specialists in other areas can just do some limited back up of the combat monkey(s) and have it work out) are different, but both are going to expect people to, from lack of a better term, be good at their jobs; someone who deliberately or accidentally avoids doing the things to do that is going to probably be a problem in either, just in different ways.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You only ever respond with 'well ackshually' and pedantry. Please stop responding to me at all.

Noted.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The rule changes is a big one. So many tables do things like "max hp for all PCS!", and worse have the "no PCs will randomly die or be killed ever". Optimizer Jerks can thrive in such a game

I mean, non-optimizers benefit massively more from both of those changes than optimizers lol.

Optimzers will usually have PCs with higher HP and ones which are less likely to die anyway. If a DM does something like that, if optimizers make say, a 30% gain because they can maybe consider having a lower CON if that benefits them, non-optimizers make like a 100% gain, because they can just do whatever the heck they like and know the DM won't kill them. They don't even have to worry about it.

But it gets much worse when you have the DM that just sort of has foes sort of attack for a fun combat romp where the PCs will always win with zero chance of PC death ever.

"PCs always 'win' combats" describes easily 80-90% of campaigns in traditional RPGs (PtbA/BitD and other narrative stuff is a bit different, so we'll exclude it) run by pretty much everyone outside of the horror and OSR/NSR genres because in most RPGs, particularly D&D-derived ones, the only possible results of a combat are:

A) PCs 'win' (whether at great cost or little)

or

B) TPK (which the DM may mitigate by saying "actually you were all captured" or the like, but is still a TPK).

This is especially true if for "always" we mean "99% or more of the time" rather than a true 100%.

The trouble with so many RPGs is that due to their round, initiative, action, and movement structures, a "fighting retreat" or similar disengagement simply isn't possible RAW/RAI, and there's no possibility most enemies will ask for or accept quarter/surrender/disengagement. Best case tends to be an exceptionally fast PC or two might be able to do the old "you don't have to run faster than the bear..." to the rest of the party.

We can pretend that isn't the case, because all actual plays across the entire internet show it is (again, outside of horror and OSR/NSR) at least 80-90%.

So unless that's taking place in a horror or OSR/NSR context, that's not really a valid complaint at all. You're just going back to what I said earlier - you're complaining about your own bad choices - you participating in games you inherently dislike the tone of and/or wishing to change them so they play different genre.

You're essentially saying that, say, 25m of the estimated 30m D&D players are "doing it wrong" lol. Which is bold. It's nothing to do with the "weak DM" point either - that's separate. This is just a playstyle choice, which might have a strong or weak DM behind it.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The trouble with so many RPGs is that due to their round, initiative, action, and movement structures, a "fighting retreat" or similar disengagement simply isn't possible RAW/RAI, and there's no possibility most enemies will ask for or accept quarter/surrender/disengagement. Best case tends to be an exceptionally fast PC or two might be able to do the old "you don't have to run faster than the bear..." to the rest of the party.

That's why we always like to have at least one non-optimizer at the table.

 

[Gradine]

I've softened my stance on optimization from in the past, where I thought it was a pox on the hobby. Optimizers are not only perfectly fine but helpful in a lot of instances. It really helps to know the upper limits of your game, and nobody else does it better.

They only become problematic when they try to make non-optimizers feel bad about their character choices.

 

[Seramus]

Eclipse Phase 2e (which expects there will usually be at least one combat in an adventure, but usually assumes the specialists in other areas can just do some limited back up of the combat monkey(s) and have it work out) are different, but both are going to expect people to, from lack of a better term, be good at their jobs; someone who deliberately or accidentally avoids doing the things to do that is going to probably be a problem in either, just in different ways.

I was really pleased that Daggerheart's no initiative system allows specialists to shine if that's how everyone wants to play. The game encourages every player to share the spotlight as part of good faith play, but if the players themselves want a combat or social specialist to go over and over again, the system absolutely allows for it. Someone could absolutely build a plump merchant that sits out of fights while their warrior buddy goes ham.

"PCs always 'win' combats" describes easily 80-90% of campaigns in traditional RPGs (PtbA/BitD and other narrative stuff is a bit different, so we'll exclude it) run by pretty much everyone outside of the horror and OSR/NSR genres because in most RPGs, particularly D&D-derived ones, the only possible results of a combat are:

I've had this complaint for ages. Attrition systems like D&D mean that most fights are a foregone conclusion, with the only question being how many resources are expended. Things only come into question in the final 1-2 fights of a day, but that always means slogging through those initial attrition battles. A GM can always spice up those initial battles to make them more interesting, but they could do that with any fight, and I'd rather spend table time on fights that matter. Yet if you only have a few very deadly fights, you crash into class imbalances in a pretty major way like caster novas.

It's one of the reasons why I loved 4E. It had plenty of flaws, but every combat was so much more meaningful with it's mix of At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers. There was still some attrition, so the 99% win rate still existed, but each individual fight was far closer to being actually dangerous without crashing into major class imbalances.

It's also why I think a lot of 5E DPR discussions are mostly fruitless. If you love the act of analysis like many do, that's absolutely fine. But from the perspective of how much actual impact you will have on a game, a couple extra points of damage a round is almost never going to make a difference. You're already going to win almost every time. The few times those points DO matter, and someone ends up dead because the baddie didn't die a round sooner or you have to retreat, are just fodder for good drama at the table. Optimizing for DPR just crashes into staggering levels of diminishing returns very rapidly.

But I doth protest too much!

 

[Bill Zebub]

I've had this complaint for ages. Attrition systems like D&D mean that most fights are a foregone conclusion, with the only question being how many resources are expended. Things only come into question in the final 1-2 fights of a day, but that always means slogging through those initial attrition battles. A GM can always spice up those initial battles to make them more interesting, but they could do that with any fight, and I'd rather spend table time on fights that matter. Yet if you only have a few very deadly fights, you crash into class imbalances in a pretty major way like caster novas.

That's one of the reasons I'm drawn to OSR & Shadowdark: you're not meant to win every fight. Nor is it obvious which ones are winnable and which aren't.

 

[Mannahnin]

That's one of the reasons I'm drawn to OSR & Shadowdark: you're not meant to win every fight. Nor is it obvious which ones are winnable and which aren't.

TBF if you're going to have a long ongoing campaign you're still going to have to win the large majority of fights you get into.

The percentage gets cut down a bit by morale checks, rules which actually support fleeing as a viable option, and players being encouraged to negotiate or avoid fights where possible (including evasion rules). And by the incentive structure and being informed ahead of time that some foes encountered will be too tough for them, so they should watch out and USE those evasion and flee rules.

But if an average fight has an 80% chance of victory, you have about a 3.5% chance of winning 15 of them. So even with the odds stacked as LITTLE as 4-1, a TPK is inevitable in relatively short order if you play a game with regular combat. If the odds are close to 50/50, TPKs are more likely than not in any session with multiple fights.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

So, I do a lot of optimization for my day job, and a couple of concepts there I think are useful in the context of this discussion.

The first is GOAL. Although you could say a character optimizer's goal is to make the most effective character possible, I think that in practice I've seen a couple of goals. One is to make an effective character. Not "the most effective", just "effective". I do that all the time, others in this thread have stated they love it when their players do that and that not doing it can cause problem. Overall, I'd argue this is laudable and should be an expected way to design characters.

Another goal is to make a character that outshines other characters. One that make the other player feel their character is useless. The wizard who takes spells to optimize their ability to be a thief and makes the thief pointless. The striker who uses specific combos to make all other striker's damage output look pathetic. This is the form of optimization that is not fun and I think engenders people's ire.

A symptom of the latter is the use of rule-lawyering. In a well-designed game, you have to be a little "creative" really to break the system. The person who just wants an effective character does not need that hassle, so they don't do it. But the player who wants their character to be the star at the expense of others will do this. They are the ones saying "the gloves add +1 ice damage to each attack, so by rule that makes it a cold attack and so it triggers the helmet of ice criticals and I took the freeze everything feat so that will do max damage x2 and penetrate any resistance. I kill it."

This is why @Ruin Explorer is right in stating:

The rule changes is a big one. So many tables do things like "max hp for all PCS!", and worse have the "no PCs will randomly die or be killed ever". Optimizer Jerks can thrive in such a game

I mean, non-optimizers benefit massively more from both of those changes than optimizers lol.

Because the "bad" optimizer doesn't simply want to win big -- he wants the others to fail. They will be the ones who also point out to the GM that the other striker should actually do half damage because blah blah blah.

A final point on this thread -- if everyone in a group is committed to optimizing, "bad" optimizing is not a concern, because people aren't going to outshine each other!

This has a practical application: Running convention games. In any combat heavy system, I make a point of asking how optimized peoples characters are. If some are and some are not, I tell the optimized players I will be playing tough on them. If all are optimized, I ask if they want me to run the game as written and see how fast they can squish the encounters, or if they want me to play mean and really challenge their builds. That way we can all have fun.