Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[prabe]

It is something of a vicious cycle, I think.
1. Optimize character somewhat.
2. Fight things with character (or do whatever that character wants to do, but when talking optimization that's usually fighting).
3. "Huh, that was easy. Make it harder."
4. Fight other things.
5. "Damn, that was hard. I need to up my game." Optimize some more.
6. GOTO 2.

And by the time someone has completed a cycle or two of that, anyone else who wants to play together with that character needs to go down the optimization route themselves. The only four solutions I can think of are:
A. The only winning move is not to play. Don't optimize, and make sure you don't play with people who do. This is a bit hard to do on the game design level, though.
B. Remove most choices from character creation/advancement and limit choices to specific points where each choice is supposedly balanced with other choices. In 5.0, you see this with the Totem Barbarian where (in theory) Bear, Eagle, Elk, Tiger, and Wolf are all balanced against one another, and choosing one doesn't change anything else downstream.
C. Make a super-balanced system where there are numerous optimization paths that all turn out to be balanced with one another. Good luck with that.
D. Balance in chunks. Instead of allowing many smaller choices that may or may not synergize with one another, have characters make fewer but more significant choices, and then it becomes easier to balance those against one another.

5e mostly goes for option D, with few choices to make once you've chosen a class and subclass.

The only PC I've perma-killed in my 5e games was the most-optimized one I've run for. My experience has been atypical.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

As a rabid Star Wars fan, I will say the worst part of Star Wars is the fans. Especially the rabid fans. Trying to objectively police my own interactions has taught me massive amounts of tolerance for other people's fandoms. Also, made me no longer a rabid fan.

Fine.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in! Also, because as terrible as discussing Star Wars is, we seem dangerously close to an actual RPG discussion.

(The following list of all Star Wars stuff was determined by Colosson the Numberwang Robot and as the product of Maths cannot be argued with.)

1. Empire Strikes Back.
2. A New Hope
3. Andor (S1).
4. 3/4" Star Wars Action Figures
5. The Last Jedi.
4. Rogue One.
6. The Mandalorian.
7. Star Wars Bed Sheets. Search your feelings. You know this to be true.
8. Various animated Star Wars shows, such as Clone Wars, Bad Batch, and Rebels.
9. The Kenner Millennium Falcon. Would be higher, but Derek totally bogarted playing with it. DEREK!!!!
10. The Force Awakens. Needz moar lenz flarez.
11. Going to any Star Wars movie with a friend who keeps asking you if Yoda is related to Hulk. Because Green?
12. Return of the Jedi. Ain't no party like an Ewok party 'cuz an Ewok party can't stop. Yub nub, eee chop yub nub.
13. Ahsoka.
14. That recurring nightmare that George Lucas has invented time travel and is going to use it to improve Cinema by re-writing the dialogue of Casablanca and Glengarry Glen Ross and adding wipes for transitions in all Kubrick movies. Also? Walkie talkies make good blasters, amirite?
15. Revenge of the Sith.
16. Obi Wan. Perfectly cromulent. Filler, filler, filler, filler, BEN AND ANAKIN FIGHT, filler.
17. Reading Simon Pegg's statement that Star Wars has the most toxic fanbase and thinking ... eh, he's not wrong, but still feeling the need to write a 25,000 word rebuttal because nu-Scotty doesn't get to criticize Star Wars.
18. The Phantom Menace. Meesa like the prequels?
19. Solo (except Lando ... Lando is cool, and not even this movie can make Lando uncool).
20. Going into your attic and finding that all of your Star Wars collectibles that you never played with because of their value have melted in the latest heatwave into a large Jabba-like mass on top of your vintage Kenner X-Wing, and recognizing that this a metaphor for the loss of your childhood.
21. Caravan of Courage.
22. Realizing that not only is Disney recycling all the Star Wars characters you grew up with, but that the actors that played those characters are dying too, and that AI Princess Leia is just the abyss staring back at you.
23. Book of Boba Fett. Really, the story of Star Wars is taking an iconic and awesome mysterious bounty hunter and making him desperately uncool.
24. Battle of Endor.
25. Holiday Special. Cocaine is a helluva drug.
26. George Lucas’s proposed sequels about the midi-chlorians. Because that's the one part of Star Wars I really wanted to know more about. For whatever wrongs Disney has done, they didn't do this. Although I would pay to hear Weird Al do a version of, "It's all about the midi-chlorians."
27. Finally recognizing that a space opera that you enjoyed for a few years in your youth and still appreciate to this day is not only nothing more than more corporate IP that Disney is using to take over the world and everyone’s brains through a streaming service, but is also the breeding ground for a peculiar and nasty strain of nerd-rage with a side-dose of toxic masculinity that frightens the hell out of you- and trying to come to an understanding that Star Wars has always been primarily about and for young people, not you.
28. Attack of the Clones.

 

[payn]

Fine.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in! Also, because as terrible as discussing Star Wars is, we seem dangerously close to an actual RPG discussion.

(The following list of all Star Wars stuff was determined by Colosson the Numberwang Robot and as the product of Maths cannot be argued with.)

1. Empire Strikes Back.
2. A New Hope
3. Andor (S1).
4. 3/4" Star Wars Action Figures
5. The Last Jedi.
4. Rogue One.
6. The Mandalorian.
7. Star Wars Bed Sheets. Search your feelings. You know this to be true.
8. Various animated Star Wars shows, such as Clone Wars, Bad Batch, and Rebels.
9. The Kenner Millennium Falcon. Would be higher, but Derek totally bogarted playing with it. DEREK!!!!
10. The Force Awakens. Needz moar lenz flarez.
11. Going to any Star Wars movie with a friend who keeps asking you if Yoda is related to Hulk. Because Green?
12. Return of the Jedi. Ain't no party like an Ewok party 'cuz an Ewok party can't stop. Yub nub, eee chop yub nub.
13. Ahsoka.
14. That recurring nightmare that George Lucas has invented time travel and is going to use it to improve Cinema by re-writing the dialogue of Casablanca and Glengarry Glen Ross and adding wipes for transitions in all Kubrick movies. Also? Walkie talkies make good blasters, amirite?
15. Revenge of the Sith.
16. Obi Wan. Perfectly cromulent. Filler, filler, filler, filler, BEN AND ANAKIN FIGHT, filler.
17. Reading Simon Pegg's statement that Star Wars has the most toxic fanbase and thinking ... eh, he's not wrong, but still feeling the need to write a 25,000 word rebuttal because nu-Scotty doesn't get to criticize Star Wars.
18. The Phantom Menace. Meesa like the prequels?
19. Solo (except Lando ... Lando is cool, and not even this movie can make Lando uncool).
20. Going into your attic and finding that all of your Star Wars collectibles that you never played with because of their value have melted in the latest heatwave into a large Jabba-like mass on top of your vintage Kenner X-Wing, and recognizing that this a metaphor for the loss of your childhood.
21. Caravan of Courage.
22. Realizing that not only is Disney recycling all the Star Wars characters you grew up with, but that the actors that played those characters are dying too, and that AI Princess Leia is just the abyss staring back at you.
23. Book of Boba Fett. Really, the story of Star Wars is taking an iconic and awesome mysterious bounty hunter and making him desperately uncool.
24. Battle of Endor.
25. Holiday Special. Cocaine is a helluva drug.
26. George Lucas’s proposed sequels about the midi-chlorians. Because that's the one part of Star Wars I really wanted to know more about. For whatever wrongs Disney has done, they didn't do this. Although I would pay to hear Weird Al do a version of, "It's all about the midi-chlorians."
27. Finally recognizing that a space opera that you enjoyed for a few years in your youth and still appreciate to this day is not only nothing more than more corporate IP that Disney is using to take over the world and everyone’s brains through a streaming service, but is also the breeding ground for a peculiar and nasty strain of nerd-rage with a side-dose of toxic masculinity that frightens the hell out of you- and trying to come to an understanding that Star Wars has always been primarily about and for young people, not you.
28. Attack of the Clones.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

 

[trappedslider]

If we all got paid each time we talked about star wars, we all could afford the professional help we need

 

[Ryujin]

Because most GMs simply increase the difficulty level to balance against min-maxers, rather than doing something like using their weaknesses against them. Also, min-maxers tend to be more combat based and will turn pretty much any encounter into a battle.

The one time that I managed to get around this issue, as a player, was by making a character that was specifically geared to frustrating opponents, while having a huge range of skills. The other players kept whining about how I wasn't keeping up with the needed damage per round, not seeing that they didn't have to fight some bruiser because I had him glued to the ceiling.

 

[payn]

If we all got paid each time we talked about star wars, we all could afford the professional help we need

 

[prabe]

View attachment 371495

 

[Bedrockgames]

I liked Return of the Jedi. I always enjoyed that and Empire more than a New Hope (though I liked all three)

What made the first star wars trilogy work in my opinion was how music driven it was. Obviously the effects were very important too, because you need to believe in the world being created, but it was the very simple human drama and adventure cast starkly through music that always won me over with it. Even when they got the same crew together for the prequels, there was quality music there by John Williams, but I think something was missing from the experience (and I think the newer films too don't quite capture this either for me). I think maybe there is just a difference when something come out, it is new, and forging new ground, and when it becomes more self referential and a brand. But I am old and have old tastes

 

[payn]

I liked Return of the Jedi. I always enjoyed that and Empire more than a New Hope (though I liked all three)

What made the first star wars trilogy work in my opinion was how music driven it was. Obviously the effects were very important too, because you need to believe in the world being created, but it was the very simple human drama and adventure cast starkly through music that always won me over with it. Even when they got the same crew together for the prequels, there was quality music there by John Williams, but I think something was missing from the experience (and I think the newer films too don't quite capture this either for me). I think maybe there is just a difference when something come out, it is new, and forging new ground, and when it becomes more self referential and a brand. But I am old and have old tastes

This should probably go in the confessional thread buuuut, I dont think Rogue One is all that good of a movie. I think its a good Star Wars movie becasue it looks and feels like a Star Wars movie presence that I hadnt felt since....