The character dies in my head

[Particle_Man]

I had a curious experience recently. I am planning out a character with a particular concept and realized that it was sub-optimal. I asked for and received advice on how to optimize the character and then found that when I tried to make those changes the character lost something. It effectively died in my head, in the sense that I lost interest in playing it until I "reset" it to the original sub-optimal state.

I don't know if I am even making sense, but do things like this happen to other people?

 

[Dog Moon]

I had a curious experience recently. I am planning out a character with a particular concept and realized that it was sub-optimal. I asked for and received advice on how to optimize the character and then found that when I tried to make those changes the character lost something. It effectively died in my head, in the sense that I lost interest in playing it until I "reset" it to the original sub-optimal state.

I don't know if I am even making sense, but do things like this happen to other people?

It might have happened to me in the past, but I have definitely seen it happen to other players in my group. You have this cool character concept and one of two things happens:

1. You play it and realize that while the idea is cool, you can't do anything. You're just like 'wow, i suck' and not even in a powergaming way, but just that you made your character horribly. In these cases, the character either redesigns their character - if possible - or makes a new one.

2. You character is either made or almost made but then the DM realizes that you have made the character using a broken combo and when the DM either says 'no' or 'nerfed' you're like, well, I don't like this idea anymore. Sadly, I've seen this WAY too many times.

So no, I don't think you're the only one.

 

[Gold Roger]

I have a friend this exact thing happens to all the time. It's frustrating for me when I DM for him, as he then often becomes dissatisfied and I can't really do annything about it. Though I offer building advice, homebrewed stuff or mechanics from books he doesn't know to make it work, I rarely strike what he's looking for.

If I have a concept that doesn't completely work I either accept that I'll be somewhat suboptimal or adjust the concept. After all I know that in actual play few characters ever emerge the way they where intended, even if the mechanics do.

Sorry if that's not much of a help.

 

[Rhun]

It has happened to me both ways. As Dog Moon mentioned, I've designed sub-optimal characters based on a cool concept, only to find that they completely suck. I've also had optimal character designs that I just didn't like the flavor of, and so switched them back to their original sub-par concept.

 

[Cameron]

I have seen it from both sides of the screen.

As a player, I just suck it up and take it because it is my choices that led me to make the character I have. I have no one else to blame.

As a DM, I don't give much latitude to players for the same reasons as above (ie., their choices). I will help them with prc and feat suggestions, but that is as far as it goes. If they don't like it too much, they always have the option of starting a new character at a lower level. If they whine too much, they get booted.

 

[Zephrin the Lost]

I know what you mean. I've spent hours putting together a couple of concepts a few different ways to try and get all the effectiveness from them I can without losing too much of the flavor i want. I once tried to make a brawler that wasn't a monk because I wanted a chaotic guy but it just didn't gel. Then I tried multi-classing a hexblade with nearly every other charisma-based class before settling on a hexblade-favored soul. (we're starting at 2nd level and I wanted some casting right off of the bat). I thought a hexblade bard would be a no-brainer but I could never quite get it to where I wanted, which was a guy who robbed his opponents of their ability to fight effectively. The jester class from Dragon Compendium was a little better fit for my concept but mixed with hexblade he didn't seem quite bad-ass enough.

I also have a druid/bard idea and a warlock/spellthief and a warlock/bard concepts that may or may not ever see play depending on if I can get to where I want to go with those combinations.

--Z

 

[MarkB]

It can certainly happen. I don't think I'd put it quite so baldly as the character 'dying', but I've certainly had character concepts which I gave up on because they were too awkward to realise as effective PCs within the game rules.

On the other hand, I had an epic-level Sorcerer in a 3.0 game which used all the worst excesses of that ruleset (i.e. Haste) that I abandoned because I realised he wasn't a character so much as a walking artillery piece.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The game would be pretty boring if every character was 100% perfectly optimised. Not to mention highly limited as only a few character concepts would be viable.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Yeah, this has happened to me too!

 

[Cameron]

The game would be pretty boring if every character was 100% perfectly optimised. Not to mention highly limited as only a few character concepts would be viable.

I strongly disagree with this statement. Any character is what you make of it. His motivations, personality, ethics and moral compass are independent on class, feat selection, stats or race.

Unless you are only playing numbers (x damage/turn, Diplomacy check of y, stats of z), then yes, I would agree that it would be boring.