D&D General Playstyle Enjoyment: Build Optimization or Play Optimization?

[Umbran]

Because they provide a reasonable simulation of the world that my character lives in ? Once more, the devs' own words: "To play D&D, and to play it well, you don’t need to read all the rules, memorize every detail of the game, or master the fine art of rolling funny looking dice. None of those things have any bearing on what’s best about the game."

Gonna beat the same drum across threads, now?

Not at all, it's just called roleplaying, which is the actual intent of the game.

The game, being non-sentient, has no intent. The game is a tool, and has goals in the same way a hammer, a chunk of metal on a stick, has goals. The intent of the game is the intent of those sitting down to play.

You may argue that the players are, or are not, using a system that serves their intent well, but that's a separate argument.

 

[CleverNickName]

I lean toward play optimization...meaning that when I fill out my character sheet, I'm thinking about actually playing the character more than I'm thinking about bonuses and abilities. But that wasn't always the case, I used to go in HARD for optimization when I first started playing 5E.

I don't know if everyone has the same problem, but every time I put together a highly-optimized set of stats on a character sheet, the actual character itself ends up feeling really boring to play. The numbers sure look good, but everything else about the character feels forced or contrived ("Why did I choose the Criminal background? Well, I needed Stealth and Thieves Tools for my build. Let's just say I went to prison or whatever") and I usually end up doing the same three actions over and over (and over, and over) again.

Nowadays, I start with a character concept that I think would be fun to play, then write the backstory and do a character sketch. Once those things are done and my DM and I are happy with them, I'll go through the books and choose a race, class, and background to fit the concept. One of the last things I do is roll my stats.

 

[Lyxen]

The game, being non-sentient, has no intent.

The designers of said game had an intent when creating it. They have explained it, many times, and have even written quite a bit about it. Do you deny this as well ?

The game is a tool, and has goals in the same way a hammer, a chunk of metal on a stick, has goals. The intent of the game is the intent of those sitting down to play.
You may argue that the players are, or are not, using a system that serves their intent well, but that's a separate argument.

And how is it separate ? Identifying the intent also helps you choose the best tool to do do the job, in this case, having fun. I was having less fun with some editions of the game, because they had been designed with an intent that did not correspond to the way I like playing it. You will not get as good a result using an improvised tool as when you are using a tool designed to do what you need to do.

 

[Yaarel]

I think this is a good point. Optimization is almost universally considered a thing players do to squeeze every iota of power from the rules, but you can optimize for many other things as well. I've optimized to make one of my fighter characters balanced because he was into zen and balancing himself as a whole person. It meant his wisdom was higher than his strength, which stayed at a 14, while I worked toward getting other stats to a 14.

I used the rules and feats to build the image I had of my character. Knowledge of the ruleset let me create him to my satisfaction. He certainly wasn't "optimized" in the classical sense, but he had no glaring weaknesses either which was useful. I optimized my understanding of all the available options to get as close to the image of him as I could get.

Guess I'm an optimizer after all. Huh...

yeah. I call this optimizing to actualize the character concept, or flavor op, for short.

 

[Asisreo]

I may need to clarify:

Play Optimization isn't about building your character for roleplay or anything. It's actually not tied at all to how you build your character. You can even randomly generate every aspect of your character and still lean heavily on Play Optimization.

It's less about what your character has and more about how you use it. Perhaps a good measure would be how often you use non-conventional features/equipments. Like if you're using your background feature often to It's maximum benefit or if you're using you Artisan's Tools frequently to help the party in less direct ways.

 

[Ancalagon]

When I do make a character, I look for things my character is good at - because I want my character to be great or very good at one role, but also good at a second, and decent as a third. Yes it's good to specialize, but being a one-trick pony is not fun. People in the world are multi talented.

I also look for what makes my character interesting. My character isn't just a fighter - he's a sage, a historian and an alchemist. And then there is this interaction between the RP of the character and what they are good at - so my sage is an alchemist, so I will take the "chef" feat and reflavor it as an alchemist - I am giving temp hp via "tonics" and improving healing via poultices. So not only am I improving my character's main role a bit (a bit of con for a tank) I'm now a "secondary support" - it's not enough to be the party healer, but it does back up the healing a bit and that's nice.

The "nice" thing about the optimizers is that you can pick and choose a trick or two of theirs to ensure that your flavorful character is still good at their job.

 

[Umbran]

The designers of said game had an intent when creating it. They have explained it, many times, and have even written quite a bit about it. Do you deny this as well ?

No. But it isn't like they are the boss of me. I am not playing the game for them. The author's intent is neither magical, nor binding. Indeed, in some cases (especially older ones) I'd question whether the work actually meets the stated intent! Just because they are the author doesn't actually mean they are correct about its best uses - to assume so fits the logical fallacy of "argument from authority".

In contrast to this is the fact that, with most arts, what people can do with or get out of the piece is often far larger than the artist's stated intent.

There's far more powerful arguments than waving authorial intent around. But even then, those powerful arguments are best used in terms of identifiying a specific need someone has, and helping them fulfill it, not as Decree on How the Game Should Be Played.

And how is it separate ? Identifying the intent also helps you choose the best tool to do do the job, in this case, having fun.

On the other hand, advice from people who don't know you or your players is often of limited utility. Which is where you fall flat - however weak authorial intent is as an argument, you aren't even the authority yourself. You are rhetorically beating people over the head with someone else's authority.

You will not get as good a result using an improvised tool as when you are using a tool designed to do what you need to do.

Setting aside that such a generalization is not a universal truth, we have the fact that as a tool, D&D, like most RPGs, is not a focused tool, like a hammer. It is a pocket knife, a multi-tool, intended to be used for a wide variety of things, in a wide variety of situations. It is a highly flexible tool.

 

[MGibster]

I was running Deadlands: Hell on Earth a few years back and one of my players created a Toxic Shaman and gave him a d4 in the skill. For those unfamiliar with Savage Worlds, a d4 is the absolute lowest level you can assign to a skill in the game. She assigned this to the primary skill a Toxic Shaman used to access their powers. I was confused at first. Is this her passive aggressive way of telling me she didn't want to play? Nope. She had a particular vision for this character, she named Bug, and while he was a terrible Toxic Shaman, he turned out to be one of the most memorable and fun PCs I've seen in any game. We loved Bug so much that we resurrected him as a cyborg after his untimely demise. So I say you should optimize for play when making a character.

 

[Faolyn]

The designers of said game had an intent when creating it. They have explained it, many times, and have even written quite a bit about it. Do you deny this as well ?

Why should anyone care about that sort of gatekeeping?

 

[Arilyn]

I may need to clarify:

Play Optimization isn't about building your character for roleplay or anything. It's actually not tied at all to how you build your character. You can even randomly generate every aspect of your character and still lean heavily on Play Optimization.

It's less about what your character has and more about how you use it. Perhaps a good measure would be how often you use non-conventional features/equipments. Like if you're using your background feature often to It's maximum benefit or if you're using you Artisan's Tools frequently to help the party in less direct ways.

I try to do this because it can really strengthen the flavour of the character. I'm remembering my current character's carpenter's tools and using them to good effect for a change. It is so easy to forget tools and background features, especially background features as they are a little weak tea.