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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6057871" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree with this.I'm glad you mentioned these, as I was going to post the same three examples! And there are other games too.3E D&D is fairly distinctive, I think, in making PC build be a major site for expressing skill at the game. Moldvay Basic, for example, is very different in this respect, and so is 4e (for the sorts of reasons Neonchameleon has pointed out).These posts, to me, seem to exhibit the idea that PC building is part of playing the game with skill. Whereas I think that PC building should be about finding the way, within the system, to express the PC you want to play - and if a beginner is having trouble, it's the job of the other players, and the GM, to help out.Me too, though maybe for a slightly different reason.I like a game in which I, as GM, push the players hard and they, playing their PCs, push back. If the PC build rules don't deliver mechanically viable (and at least somewhat comparable, in terms of their impacts on play) PCs, this playstyle will break down.If I as GM, or the players in playing their PCs, regularly have to hold back, then the playstyle breaks down - because now we're not all pushing hard any more, but instead moving into some sort of fuzzy "cooperative storytelling" zone.If I, as GM, have to fiat things to make the game work, then the playstyle I prefer breaks down, as now its my decisions, not the players' decisions, that are determining resolution.Now if a few marginal mechanical subsystems don't meet my specifications, of course we can all just ignore them (eg banning individual broken items, or feats, is easy), or reach some gentlemen's agreements in respect of them. But if the game has problems in fundamental ways, it's a different story.This is why I very much liked [MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION]'s posts upthread, which characterised optimisation as poking the broken arm of bad rules. Although, because I think I'm coming from a different play preference to delericho's, my solution is different - rather than trying to moderate the optimisation, I prefer to change systems!</blockquote>

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