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<blockquote data-quote="Markh3rd" data-source="post: 8221482" data-attributes="member: 6782417">Optimization can be harmful in a published adventure that a DM is running without modifications. It can also be harmful in games where the DM has 6-7 players at the table and the game was designed for 4. Action economy alone is a huge power swing towards the players.So unless the DM is also &quot;optimizing&quot; the adventure you get an imbalance. Which is especially difficult to do when some players are&nbsp; playing something either optimal/suboptimal because they liked the character story, and the other players are demigod optimized.But you can optimize in a way that doesn't ruin a game. A mature gamer can tell if they are breaking the game and need to back off. It's the immature &quot;I want to be number 1/win the game&quot; mindset that ultimately is harmful to the health of a game. (Also, the passive aggressive player who builds a completely ineffective character to &quot;punish&quot; the DM/Players is equally harmful).Sometimes a DM brings this on themselves because they build their games antagonisticly, actively punishing players and seeking ways to kill them or spring &quot;gothcha!&quot; encounters. That leads to players seeking every advantage they can get. My guess is since the roots of the hobby come from war gaming, it inherited some competitiveness from those games.Today's games focus more on stories and cool moments being told and is based on the idea of being cooperative between the DM and their players instead of being antagonistic and trying to beat them. You can have a DM run an optimized game for optimized characters, or even a suboptimal game for suboptimal characters, or anything in between. Maturity and honest communication about the type of game you want to run/play on is the true key to success.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Markh3rd, post: 8221482, member: 6782417"] Optimization can be harmful in a published adventure that a DM is running without modifications. It can also be harmful in games where the DM has 6-7 players at the table and the game was designed for 4. Action economy alone is a huge power swing towards the players. So unless the DM is also "optimizing" the adventure you get an imbalance. Which is especially difficult to do when some players are playing something either optimal/suboptimal because they liked the character story, and the other players are demigod optimized. But you can optimize in a way that doesn't ruin a game. A mature gamer can tell if they are breaking the game and need to back off. It's the immature "I want to be number 1/win the game" mindset that ultimately is harmful to the health of a game. (Also, the passive aggressive player who builds a completely ineffective character to "punish" the DM/Players is equally harmful). Sometimes a DM brings this on themselves because they build their games antagonisticly, actively punishing players and seeking ways to kill them or spring "gothcha!" encounters. That leads to players seeking every advantage they can get. My guess is since the roots of the hobby come from war gaming, it inherited some competitiveness from those games. Today's games focus more on stories and cool moments being told and is based on the idea of being cooperative between the DM and their players instead of being antagonistic and trying to beat them. You can have a DM run an optimized game for optimized characters, or even a suboptimal game for suboptimal characters, or anything in between. Maturity and honest communication about the type of game you want to run/play on is the true key to success. [/QUOTE]

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