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Playstyle Enjoyment: Build Optimization or Play Optimization?
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<blockquote data-quote="Lyxen" data-source="post: 8498629" data-attributes="member: 7032025"><p>While I agree that it's one way of playing the game amongst many, if you compare not only the text from the books but also the way the rules are presented, for me (and compared to 3e and 4e which have very different intent statements), it's fairly obvious that this edition was written with at least that objective clearly in mind.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Don't get me wrong, they happen naturally, and I know how to deal with them in general, my problem is with some players creating them intentionally and then doing everything they can to (ab)use them during play.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Characters doing this are fine, as long as the players are not acting like wangrods, as this is exactly where I'm drawing the line. If the character create chaos and all the players are fine with it, I'm fine too, but if a player (ab)uses his freedom to create situations that are not fun for the other players (who are trying to construct something), then I have a problem with that attitude.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Exactly, and this is where we kicked out our optimiser/powergamer.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, it depends about what the players expect. If it's all what they are looking for, go for it, but if a majority just wants to enjoy/create the story together and one person is always derailing it to show their muscle, then again I have a problem. At our tables, most of the players are of the kind that want to create/enjoy a story together, and are happy to give each other turns in the spotlight. So people wanting just to flex their muscles for an imaginary competition are simply not fitting well.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>We have been using point buy for a long time now, in the name of fairness. We have now switched to rolling to avoid "builds" by our few remaining optimisers, and it works well, but as we don't want too much of a powergap due to bad luck, we have multiple rolls, which create characters which are a bit random (but not too much), but with higher stats, something that we can deal with as long as it's consistent. Some players love it, most are indifferent as long as it's relatively fair, so we don't have characters with really "under average" stats, they are mostly around average or slightly above.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lyxen, post: 8498629, member: 7032025"] While I agree that it's one way of playing the game amongst many, if you compare not only the text from the books but also the way the rules are presented, for me (and compared to 3e and 4e which have very different intent statements), it's fairly obvious that this edition was written with at least that objective clearly in mind. Don't get me wrong, they happen naturally, and I know how to deal with them in general, my problem is with some players creating them intentionally and then doing everything they can to (ab)use them during play. Characters doing this are fine, as long as the players are not acting like wangrods, as this is exactly where I'm drawing the line. If the character create chaos and all the players are fine with it, I'm fine too, but if a player (ab)uses his freedom to create situations that are not fun for the other players (who are trying to construct something), then I have a problem with that attitude. Exactly, and this is where we kicked out our optimiser/powergamer. Again, it depends about what the players expect. If it's all what they are looking for, go for it, but if a majority just wants to enjoy/create the story together and one person is always derailing it to show their muscle, then again I have a problem. At our tables, most of the players are of the kind that want to create/enjoy a story together, and are happy to give each other turns in the spotlight. So people wanting just to flex their muscles for an imaginary competition are simply not fitting well. We have been using point buy for a long time now, in the name of fairness. We have now switched to rolling to avoid "builds" by our few remaining optimisers, and it works well, but as we don't want too much of a powergap due to bad luck, we have multiple rolls, which create characters which are a bit random (but not too much), but with higher stats, something that we can deal with as long as it's consistent. Some players love it, most are indifferent as long as it's relatively fair, so we don't have characters with really "under average" stats, they are mostly around average or slightly above. [/QUOTE]
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