Optimizers, oh my!

[Bluenose]

I actually wouldn't mind those, assuming they aren't the extremes I'm sure you intend to imply. A cowardly fighter would be fun, if their cowardice didn't prevent him from taking part in fights, but was, perhaps, specific to situations, and maybe caused him to simply avoid a kind of enemy, rather than not fighting at all.

The cleric could also be fun, so long as he wasn't a preachy SOB who told other people to do what he wants all the time.

The cowardice didn't stop him taking part in fights, and wasn't specific to one type on enemy - which I personally think makes a fun and interesting character quirk, like a barbarian who thinks nothing of throwing himself at a dragon but won't touch a spider. No, what made that annoying was the 5-15 minutes of arguing in-character we had to go through every time there was a possibility of a fight starting, since the player refused to have his character take part in the fight until they'd been persuaded in-character. Mind, the player was a bit of an attention whore in every game I played with him, and I think this particular way of making sure he get his spotlight time was not intended to be quite as annoying as it turned out.

As for the pacifist priest, the problem was simple. When he wasn't pusruing his particular quest, the character was going to retire to his grove (priest of Eldath in FR, for those who are familiar with the setting) to meditate and cleanse himself. And if the thing the other PCs were doing wasn't related to what he was reluctantly doing, then he wouldn't take part. So either the game session was about his character, or his character sat out the session. Which was unfair to other people if they had things they wanted their characters to do, since they didn't really want to exclude the player regularly but his character concept meant they had to. Or they could be sidekicks in his story, which also isn't exactly fair to them.

 

[CroBob]

The cowardice didn't stop him taking part in fights, and wasn't specific to one type on enemy - which I personally think makes a fun and interesting character quirk, like a barbarian who thinks nothing of throwing himself at a dragon but won't touch a spider. No, what made that annoying was the 5-15 minutes of arguing in-character we had to go through every time there was a possibility of a fight starting, since the player refused to have his character take part in the fight until they'd been persuaded in-character. Mind, the player was a bit of an attention whore in every game I played with him, and I think this particular way of making sure he get his spotlight time was not intended to be quite as annoying as it turned out.

As for the pacifist priest, the problem was simple. When he wasn't pusruing his particular quest, the character was going to retire to his grove (priest of Eldath in FR, for those who are familiar with the setting) to meditate and cleanse himself. And if the thing the other PCs were doing wasn't related to what he was reluctantly doing, then he wouldn't take part. So either the game session was about his character, or his character sat out the session. Which was unfair to other people if they had things they wanted their characters to do, since they didn't really want to exclude the player regularly but his character concept meant they had to. Or they could be sidekicks in his story, which also isn't exactly fair to them.

Those are much more specific and, yes, jerky PCs. Both problems are easy to solve, though. When a PC ignores the needs of the group, the group ignores the needs of the PC. Either the player will adapt, or they'll just be dead weight the whole time who doesn't matter anyway and who gets ignored, or they leave.

 

[Loonook]

As for the pacifist priest, the problem was simple. When he wasn't pusruing his particular quest, the character was going to retire to his grove (priest of Eldath in FR, for those who are familiar with the setting) to meditate and cleanse himself. And if the thing the other PCs were doing wasn't related to what he was reluctantly doing, then he wouldn't take part. So either the game session was about his character, or his character sat out the session. Which was unfair to other people if they had things they wanted their characters to do, since they didn't really want to exclude the player regularly but his character concept meant they had to. Or they could be sidekicks in his story, which also isn't exactly fair to them.

Yeah. That doesn't sound like a horrible concept for a character, and is completely within the purview of their deity. You could have always offered to have the player play an additional PC, run the game without them, or had them playing an NPC or other available character. Just blatantly saying that a player should be thrown out for such a character seems... odd.

Though your cowardly fighter does sound like a git.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[CroBob]

Also, the quest could tie in with the main plot of the campaign, drawing the PC into the primary plot. If he didn't help the PCs if they weren't helping him, that's selfish, but I don't see why not to put up with it and let the PCs handle it in game. A lot of problems aren't as big if you let them sort themselves out. Drama is irritating. Why be a jerk if you could just allow the consequences of the PC to occur?

 

[Bluenose]

Yeah. That doesn't sound like a horrible concept for a character, and is completely within the purview of their deity. You could have always offered to have the player play an additional PC, run the game without them, or had them playing an NPC or other available character. Just blatantly saying that a player should be thrown out for such a character seems... odd.

Though your cowardly fighter does sound like a git.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

I did think later that the solution that would have let them play that character some of the time was to have them make a "main" character who worked with the group most of the time, and then the pacifist cleric would come out every so often for particular sessions. One of the ideas I've tried to remember as a GM since it happened.

 

[Li Shenron]

Designing a character that is so poorly balanced against the game's mechanics that the DM has to put effort into making him not die is silly, unless you want to play someone who's going to die.

Why are you insisting on the fact that the DM has to save that PC? What if I design such character because I want the challenge of making her survive? Does it still sound silly?

 

[Loonook]

I did think later that the solution that would have let them play that character some of the time was to have them make a "main" character who worked with the group most of the time, and then the pacifist cleric would come out every so often for particular sessions. One of the ideas I've tried to remember as a GM since it happened.

Ehh, you just learn after awhile. I like to have plenty of PCs, NPCs, and others available for the party to pick up if they're missing a slot or want a change of pace. In my old campaign I let players maintain ~ 2 extra 'on call' PCs spread across the regions we covered, and then have 4 other minor characters that were a level or two behind/capped at a specific level for side quests, big moments, or storytelling purposes. Having a portfolio of 30ish characters let us run a gamut. If there was a specific NPC who wasn't plot sensitive or I could trust the player not to severely abuse them? I may let them grab them for awhile.

One of the PCs fell in adoration with a paymaster who was crippled in battle for the Emperor. Took him over flaws and all, gave him an awesome storyline involving the REAL reason for his crippling, and ended up turning him into their main PC. But that game ran from woods witches to slavers to an awakened tin soldier.

It was fun.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[CroBob]

Why are you insisting on the fact that the DM has to save that PC? What if I design such character because I want the challenge of making her survive? Does it still sound silly?

How would you go about this challenge? By making decisions based on your limitations and strengths used to overcome difficulties, ie "optimizing", or through caring so much about role-playing over optimizing that you throw sound decision making to the wind is favor of personality such that you make bad decisions not only in mechanical character growth, but in character behavior too? Playing a character with flaws is strictly not what I'm talking about, but rather the opposite of optimization, for the sake of role playing. Consider my example rogue, constantly toying with trapped locks he's simply not good enough to deal with, due entirely to his build and actions (a build without use is just numbers on paper).

Here's our hypothetical all laid out;
DM; This is a campaign where adventuring has deadly traps just as well as monsters and political intrigue!
Rogue's player; I'm making a rogue that sucks at dealing with traps but tries anyway! He smokes cigars!
DM; ... No, seriously, the traps are deadly.
Rogue's player; Woooo, I'm putting this six I just rolled in Dex! He's a unique butterfly... who crashes into stuff.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I see the opposition to optimisation as a consequence of something else. People internalising fundamentally broken rules, and working round those rules.

In a well designed system the difference between the power a character that someone comes up with with no knowledge of the game at all but picking what looks as if it fits a strong concept and a completely min/maxed character should be low. If the difference is too high, this is because the system is fundamentally broken somewhere.

I also have a strong reason for disliking the constraints "don't optimise" puts on roleplaying. If I fundamentally care what I am doing at anything I am going to try to optimise. Out of character this can be done by taking an offbeat concept and making it work. But in character you're telling me to play someone crazier than the average fishmalk if you're telling me not to optimise my in character choices like spells. You're telling me to play someone who doesn't care about the stakes of the game - whether it's a matter of life or death, or the fate of the world.
[MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION] above compares playing 3.X to playing with a broken arm. I find the person prodding the arm to be far less aggravating than the sensation of having a broken arm (which is perhaps a little extreme for an unbalanced system) but the broken arm and cast is a good illustration of why I find seriously unbalanced systems to be objectively worse design than anything short of being forced to use the GURPS Vehicles rules as written*.

* To design a car in GURPS Vehicles start with the volume of the car in cubic feet. Then use that to work out the approximate surface area in square feet (the square of the cube root) - and base the weight of your structure on the number of square feet the structure takes and the material you use. The next step is to decide how many kilowatts you want your engine to run to. (I'm not making any of this up).

 

[delericho]

In a well designed system the difference between the power a character that someone comes up with with no knowledge of the game at all but picking what looks as if it fits a strong concept and a completely min/maxed character should be low. If the difference is too high, this is because the system is fundamentally broken somewhere.

I'm not sure it's actually possible. WotC need to sell books, and they hit on "system mastery" as the way to do it - put out lots of options that interact in a myriad of ways, and people will buy into them in numbers in order to make the best characters possible.

The problem is that merely putting out large numbers of options guarantees that you'll screw up somewhere and end up with broken options. The 4e solution to that was the ongoing stream of errata, but that didn't stop the broken options from existing, it merely made them time-limited (and not incidentally meant that people now had incentive to buy the next book, with the next set of potentially-broken options).

I'm sure it would be possible to build a version of 3e (admittedly, heavily revised) in which the major discrepancies were eliminated. But the problem is that if I can slap together a character at random using just my PHB, and have it be close to as good as the best possible option, where's my motivation to spend another $1,500 on all the rest of the books to get that best possible option?

[MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION] above compares playing 3.X to playing with a broken arm. I find the person prodding the arm to be far less aggravating than the sensation of having a broken arm (which is perhaps a little extreme for an unbalanced system) but the broken arm and cast is a good illustration of why I find seriously unbalanced systems to be objectively worse design than anything short of being forced to use the GURPS Vehicles rules as written.

I don't disagree, but the problem is that if you have a broken arm, there's nothing much you can do about it - all you can do is avoid the lesser problem of it being prodded.

The same applies to 3e: yes, in an ideal world I would simply switch to a far better edition of the game that doesn't have the underlying issues, in which case it wouldn't matter if people shone a bright light on quadratic wizards, the item creation rules, high-level play, and so on. Sadly, there is no such edition. If the choices are "play on with a broken edition" or "don't play on at all" - given that there is no prospect of the edition ever being fixed - what do you choose?