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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arcane Runes Press" data-source="post: 333229" data-attributes="member: 402">Which I think is the way it should be.Mostly. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I suspect that most groups are made up of "sub-optimal" characters, with players taking feats, spells, skills and items that are cool, rather than ultra-math-streamlined. I think most do this for two reasons:1) They are attracted to "neat" stuff.2) They don't want to pore over and cross reference every single WotC supplement. The problem for me is, as a player, DM and writer, that there's always that 1 guy who grabs up every bit of optimized power that he can.  That guy can skew the whole balance of things. Writing stuff to be "neat" means that a small, but very vocal group of people says that your stuff is "weak", or "useless", or whatever variation of sucks you want to insert here. Writing stuff to be super-effective means that another group will cry "overpowered", or "broken", or whatever variation of munchkin you want to insert here. Personally, I'd like to see 2 versions of the iconics. One, the standard, should be as they are now. The second set should be optimized to maximum power, so that DMs get an idea of the difference between the baseline level 10 character (for example) and an optimized level 10 character. All that, of course, is sideline to the original issue. I agree with Sean K. I dislike the default insto-lethality of high level play and worse, I dislike the lengths DMs (and writers and players) must go to to defend against it. I simply don't like the convoluted chains of defensive combos and jumbles of special defenses that the DM must plan for. The "power up suites" described in the Bastion of Broken Souls leave a bad taste in my mouth.  Want the party to fight a great dragon? Better make sure the dragon has a half dozen different defensive spells already cast, or he dies in one, maybe two rounds. Worse, said dragon is likely to either die without having done ANYTHING, or die after having killed 1/2 the party.  I really dislike seeing monsters that are written up to have every defense in the book, but I don't see another option in default D&D. Extra HP doesn't cut it. If you have a cleric with Harm prepared, it doesn't matter if the beastie has 10,000 HP. So you have to give him SR. But an optimized mage with access to all the WotC books can blow through SR like a bullet through tissue paper, so you need spell immunities and elemental resistances. Well, then you have a fighter with a +4 keen sword, so you need etherealness, or crit immunity and high DR. Skimp on any of these things, and your cool monster dies before it uses any of its good powers.  Which leads to this: Monsters aren't expected to live long, so firebreath that does 4d6 every round isn't good enough. Instead, you need plasma/acid breath that does 10d6 with an extraordinarily high save DC. A weakness ray can't do 1d2 ability damage, it must do 2d6 or the characters won't even feel it 2 rounds after the fight is over.  In other words, its a vicious cycle of escalation. Patrick Y.</blockquote>

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