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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6057025" data-attributes="member: 17106">I think "optimization" is really only a problem when it passes some arbitrary threashold into munchkinism. Your 3.0 "bag of rats" fighter is optimized by abusing the rules, and clearly Whirlwind Attack was poorly written and needed to be fixed. When your character is taking actions that the rules allow, but which make no sense within the game world, that is decidedly suboptimal.People putting their character creation resources into places they think will be useful isn't a problem.I never understand this viewpoint. A well-intentioned amateur should be just as good at a game as a seasoned expert? I suppose that if I pick up a tennis racket, I should be able to beat Roger Federer 50% of the time as long as I'm, you know, trying to win. If not, tennis is broken. It's a shame I wasted all those hours reading D&D books and learning the game.Where the game is actually broken is when it takes options that should be equally valid, and makes some of them better than others. For example, a fighter gains more benefit from Intelligence (skills) or Wisdom (saves) than Charisma, which defies the notion of what most of us think as a fighter; they should be able to be great leaders and confident heroes as well as seasoned tacticians, but the rules don't support it. So you see a bunch of uncharismatic fighters, because taking rational steps to optimize your character leads you down that path. Character optimization leads to the same (boring) results, where the game should be encouraging diversity and nuanced choices. That's the game being broken.</blockquote>

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