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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9695019" data-attributes="member: 75787">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 [USER=18]@Ruin Explorer[/USER] is right in stating: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.</blockquote>

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