D&D 5E Stormwind Fallacy and Vonklaude's observation on limitations

[JackOfAllTirades]

I had a guy in my group who is a char-op player to the extreme. After playing a 5e campaign for a bit, he realized he had assigned his stats 'wrong' and therefore could not multi-class. So, of course, he had to create a new char-op character. Except, this time the optimization was around the magic items his first character had acquired. And his old character was going to hand this complete stranger new character all of his loot before walking off into the sunset.

This of course, raised the ire of the rest of the party...

That's a prime example of both poor optimization and poor role-playing, together in one package.

It doesn't really prove char-op and role-play are incompatible because he's accomplished neither.

Actually, IMHO all it proves is "Life's too short to waste time gaming with idiots."

 

[MG.0]

I had a guy in my group who is a char-op player to the extreme. After playing a 5e campaign for a bit, he realized he had assigned his stats 'wrong' and therefore could not multi-class. So, of course, he had to create a new char-op character. Except, this time the optimization was around the magic items his first character had acquired. And his old character was going to hand this complete stranger new character all of his loot before walking off into the sunset. This of course, raised the ire of the rest of the party...

I flat out tell players they can not treat multiple characters any differently than they treat every other person in the world, othewise they are taking advantage of meta-game information. That means no giving magic items away, unless the character regularly flings artifacts to random people. There's nothing wrong with the DM stepping in and simply saying that action is not possible.

My games tend to be theater of the mind and only rarely use miniatures. Combine that with a lot of unusual locations and situations that require out of the box thinking to solve and it brings out the best in both roleplayers and inventive tactical players. Anyone looking to just plow through based on stats alone is going to find my games pretty unsatisfying, and probably lethal. Anyone looking to abuse a game mechanic in a way I deem unrealistic is going to crash hard into a brick wall.

 

[pneumatik]

The thing that seems odd to me about not doing some amount of optimizing is that adventurers are killers. Their job is putting themselves into clearly dangerous situations over and over again. From an RP situation I can't see how surviving fights can't be a reasonable priority for a PC. I don't see what's unreasonable about a PC who makes every decision about personal improvement based on what will make them the best killer. And people who have a party role of getting into melee who don't optimize to survive melee would, in a realistic world, die sooner and more often.

I'm not trying to defend players who are jerks, or who optimize around questionable rules, but if there's straightforward and rule-compliant way to design a tank that makes the PC more effective in combat then the professional tank PC will rationally want to make those decisions. If that means that every tank plays the same class with the same build, then in-game either everyone who wants to be a professional tank will learn that build, or every adventuring party will try to recruit people with that build.

I think the idea extends to other party roles, too. If a PC is the party's sneaky thief then they should have a build optimized for being a sneaky thief. In-game sneaks who don't use that build will either get themselves or their party killed. I think the argument is even stronger for party faces or healers, who will get their entire party killed if they're not good.

 

[Greg K]

The thing that seems odd to me about not doing some amount of optimizing

The key word is *some* Optimizing by definition is "selecting a best element (with regards to some criteria) from a set of alternatives". So it is about how one places resources. There is a continuum and, therefore, degrees of optimization. Some decision making is necessary (so as long as things are not done blindly, completely randomly, or deliberately contrary to concept, there is going to some optimization), but it is not a requirement to go to the extreme of scouring from every point which can be squeezed out.

is that adventurers are killers. Their job is putting themselves into clearly dangerous situations over and over again. From an RP situation I can't see how surviving fights can't be a reasonable priority for a PC. I don't see what's unreasonable about a PC who makes every decision about personal improvement based on what will make them the best killer. And people who have a party role of getting into melee who don't optimize to survive melee would, in a realistic world, die sooner and more often.

No, not every adventurer is a killer and not everyone is a "professional" adventurer. That is an individual or group assumption. There is definitely no reason to some assume every character starts off trained to be a professional. Some characters fall into the role of adventurer by chance. They had other lives and then something happens pushing them into a new direction. These characters would not be optimized for combat/killing. A player would be justified to optimize the character as they are at start (ie spend resources on the criteria of best mechanically representing the character envisioned up to the point of the defining event). Should the character have some relevant skills/abilties? Sure. D&D is a class based game.

I'm not trying to defend players who are jerks, or who optimize around questionable rules, but if there's straightforward and rule-compliant way to design a tank that makes the PC more effective in combat then the professional tank PC will rationally want to make those decisions. If that means that every tank plays the same class with the same build, then in-game either everyone who wants to be a professional tank will learn that build, or every adventuring party will try to recruit people with that build.

I think the idea extends to other party roles, too. If a PC is the party's sneaky thief then they should have a build optimized for being a sneaky thief. In-game sneaks who don't use that build will either get themselves or their party killed. I think the argument is even stronger for party faces or healers, who will get their entire party killed if they're not good.

Circumstances don't always provide the perfect opportunities to develop in a certain way or keep things maxed out to the extreme. Stuff happens. Many campaigns have settings with cultures. Not all cultures provide equal opportunity for certain roles/skills (if they provide the opportunity at all). Furthermore, as mentioned above, some characters get thrown into a role unexpectedly. To complicate matters, a character might be in the "wrong" part of the world/environment after the begins and have to pick up new skills for survival (of oneself and possibly the group) and lack opportunities to practice certain existing skills.

 

[mestewart3]

I still maintain that there will ALWAYS be decisions where you need to choose between roleplaying and optimizing. When those decisions come up and you can only choose one or the other, then the decision you make will determine the focus of your character.

For instance, if you get a choice of a rules item of some sort and you can either choose "+5 damage on all attacks" and "+5 to checks when dealing with dwarves", it's almost always a better optimized decision to choose the first one. You make way more attack rolls than you do "checks dealing with Dwarves". However, your character is a little more rounded in terms of personality if you choose the second one. Instead of just being the guy who does slightly more damage with weapons, you now have a special bond with Dwarves. This makes for a more interesting story. How did you get that bond? Did you live with Dwarves for a while? Is there something about your personality that appeals to Dwarves?

The other choice makes you more powerful in combat but it's likely either already explained as part of your character background "I practice a lot with weapons...of course I'm good." or the story it creates is pretty lame(I trained with a master last week. He taught me to properly twist the blade).

I believe there will always be choices like this.

I disagree, choosing +5 to attack can be every bit as much a role playing choice as +5 to chatting it up with Dwarves.

Your character trains obsessively, every moment of every day is dedicated to mastering their chosen weapon. The character throws themselves into fights with powerful opponents simply for the chance to grow and learn from the experience. Regular people don't have to be in the characters company for long before their abnormal intensity and thirst for combat begin to be off putting.

 

[clearstream]

See, that's the only important thing right there. (The rest was snipped for emphasis.)

There's nothing that makes optimization and role-playing inherently incompatible; it's just that some players are more interested in one or the other to some degree. And yes, many players are actually capable of both, which is why this whole "incompatibility" argument is a fallacy to begin with.

Just to clarify, the fallacy is to say that optimising and roleplaying are always or never incompatible. They're not necessarily incompatible, which includes that in some circumstances they may be incompatible. There can be specific circumstances - presumably not too common - where they are inherently incompatible: shown by creating a case where the union of all characters optimised according to some criterion doesn't intersect with all characters roleplayable according to some criterion. Stressing that it could be either criteria that is the more limiting.

It's also worth stressing that we have at least two definitions of optimising. WotC used a definition that was equivalent so far as I can tell to mini/maxing in that they expressly named mini/maxing as part of it. Quite a few posters on the WotC boards used a definition that was more around making mechanically best choices within the constraints of an RP concept. A subtle point to notice is of course that it is unstated whether player X's optimising is/is-not compatible with player X's roleplaying; or whether player X's optimising is/is-not compatible with player Y's roleplaying. The anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that the latter is where the friction more often occurs.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I guess my problem with saying that it's a fallacy to claim that RP and charop are never incompatible is that that implies that one's criteria for the two are absolutely inviolable--that we can in fact treat them like utterly rigorous, hard-edged "sets." This seems...rather un-like how I do my own attempts at them, and I expect that at least some others are the same. (It's tempting to argue that many or most are, but that could just be projection.)

That is: How can you be sure that, when a conflict is discovered, people absolutely *can't* relax one or both requirements such that the "rigorous set" analogy fails? If you can't be sure of that, then it seems like it's a fallacy to say "RP and charop are never incompatible" if, and only if, you add to it "and your priorities are not flexible."

Sometimes, I'll make a compromise that sacrifices some small amount of roleplay, if the charop benefit is substantial and meaningful. For instance, I generally like to spread my stats around more, rather than hyperfocusing on one or two of them. But let's say we have a hypothetical game where HP are an incredibly precious resource--difficult to acquire, difficult to restore, easy to lose--and I have a choice between a boon that would double my HP, or one that would teach me a new unusual (e.g. not typically seen in the campaign) language and provide an extra academic skill (e.g. Nature, Arcana, History, etc.) The HP is clearly the more powerful of the two choices, but the amount of long-run roleplay that can be had from the latter is relatively minimal. The HP will also give me a substantially greater assurance that I will survive to roleplay more with the character I already have. Since it's difficult for me to rapidly switch gears between characters (I find PC death, my own or others', rather demoralizing), the former choice seems like a substantially better choice--without much of a roleplay sacrifice.

On the flipside, as stated above, I really prefer my stats to be spread around--and while I love playing Paladins, I hate the idea of playing a "Paladunce." So I generally avoid dumping Int if at all possible--and, given the Paladin's stat requirements, that usually means scavenging from Dexterity instead. That's a clear charop sacrifice--every guide I've ever read, ever, puts a premium on Initiative, putting it only just behind "do you successfully hurt things" stats. But I'm okay with that sacrifice. If anything, it fits the character--someone who is very deliberative, who thinks before acting.

More or less, I'm getting the idea that people are viewing Charop and Roleplay as though they were like "virutes" in ethics--and then arguing that you obviously have to value one categorically over the other, and thus cannot say that both are equally (part of) "the good." I reject both of those lines of thought: the two are not totally incommensurable, and I don't believe it's true that at least one of them has to be rigid and inflexible. Both can--and should!--bend, adapt, and reconsider, at least *some* of the time...especially when the two appear to be at odds.

 

[shoak1]

lol - so labels and categories shouldn't be used, because in "some" cases they don't apply? rubbish. imo keep the labels (they provide good directional benefit in most cases) and tell the people that whine about how they are really in two categories to post in both forums if they like

e.g.: OMG! The law is divided into criminal and civil, but I intend to specialize in both. What am I gonna do?
uhhhh, take classes in both maybe?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

lol - so labels and categories shouldn't be used, because in "some" cases they don't apply? rubbish. imo keep the labels (they provide good directional benefit in most cases) and tell the people that whine about how they are really in two categories to post in both forums if they like

e.g.: OMG! The law is divided into criminal and civil, but I intend to specialize in both. What am I gonna do?
uhhhh, take classes in both maybe?

Is...this in reply to what I said? Or someone else?

 

[shoak1]

Its a reply to the whole thread. The vast majority of role player focused players are not optimizers and vice-verca - 39 years of gaming (since I was 9) in 4 states has taught me that quite clearly (as well as perusal of rpg forums lol). OF COURSE the categories of "role-player" and "optimizer" are not mutually exclusive - but they are predominant enough that the labels are extremely useful.

In other words, I see this thread as saying "Some people say you have to be red or blue - but its not true! You can be purple!" That's a point I believe is quite true (though somewhat obvious). What I disagree with is the subsequent inference that "therefore I resent categorizations such as red and blue." Categorizing and labeling are important and necessary tools to help us process information. No label will ever be 100% inclusive or exclusive, but what's the alternative? Imagine searching anything without these imperfect labels and categories to help guide us.