The "necessary optimization" argument

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm sure you can run it that way, but it's not necessarily true. Real life combat shows that civilians are not safe in a combat zone, not only from accidental fire, but because soldiers know that "that PC, discounted by all around, may be able to get into position to deliver a crucial blow".

True, true...but if you were in a combat situation, and in a split second you had to choose 1 target (because you have one weapon) from an assortment of "tanks" with heavy armor and weapons, and a guy who may or may not be packing a LAW, which would you target? Odds are, you'd prioritize the most obvious, dangerous targets- assuming you could affect them- and so would your fellow combatants.

Your mental calculus might change based on past experience; upon noticing threatening behavior from the supposed low-level threat; upon actually noticing a LAW on the target's person...but the guys with the BIIIIIIIG guns are going to be getting most of your attention, on average.

Once you start getting into area effects, there's no way and no reason for enemies to separate the weak out from the strong.

Also true, to an extent. If you're not worried about collateral damage or hitting allies, go ahead and drop those AoE attacks.

Of course, not everyone has AoE attacks...

 

[prosfilaes]

True, true...but if you were in a combat situation, and in a split second you had to choose 1 target (because you have one weapon) from an assortment of "tanks" with heavy armor and weapons, and a guy who may or may not be packing a LAW, which would you target? Odds are, you'd prioritize the most obvious, dangerous targets- assuming you could affect them- and so would your fellow combatants.

True, but in D&D how do you tell who's the dangerous targets? Heavy armor is almost an anti-indicator. Wizards and druids should be among your first targets, and neither wear heavy armor. There's nothing that really makes the difference between a low-level character and a high-level character obvious, either.

 

[billd91]

True, but in D&D how do you tell who's the dangerous targets? Heavy armor is almost an anti-indicator. Wizards and druids should be among your first targets, and neither wear heavy armor.

I'm not so sure about that. Get in the head of the NPC. Spellcasters may be able to take an NPC out with one action, or completely fail... but think about how that looks to the target and how people in the real world behave. The BBEG is probably thinking, "Oh, that'll never happen to me. I can resist the spell." Whereas the guy in the heavy armor may take a couple of rounds to kill the BBEGs, that's probably small consolation because, while it may not be an insta-kill, it will almost certainly hurt more.

Going after the wizards and druids makes a certain sense of you're focusing on the metagame, the point of view of the rules, more than the point of view of the character in question.

 

[jasper]

how about charging him a dollar every time he brings this up. Or do what my wife and I do with my cousin Guy.
"That nice Guy we not going to argue with you." And ignore him. In fact at one family reunion the whole family totally ignored him when he want to start an arguement.
Or to be mean give -2 circumstance penalty for being a goober every time he brings it up.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

True, but in D&D how do you tell who's the dangerous targets? Heavy armor is almost an anti-indicator. Wizards and druids should be among your first targets, and neither wear heavy armor. There's nothing that really makes the difference between a low-level character and a high-level character obvious, either.

IME, players behave the same way in D&D...except the big threat in a FRPG isn't a rail gun, it's wiggly fingers. They see anything resembling a caster and they will light him up like he had a red & white concentric circle birthmark. A guy in light to no armor who ISN'T wiggling fingers- Monks, Rogues, Rangers- will not receive concentrated fire.

 

[prosfilaes]

Going after the wizards and druids makes a certain sense of you're focusing on the metagame, the point of view of the rules, more than the point of view of the character in question.

Or they could just be a good tactician.

And it could go the other way; if I were faced with a fighter and a wizard in real life, I'd be much more scared of the wizard. A fighter can hit me with a sword, but I can dodge that and run away. A wizard can do what ... suck my soul out and use my torment to power his fiendish machine? Even if I were in a D&D world with points in spellcraft, a fighter can hit me with the weapon in his hand, whereas a wizard could throw poison gas at me, freeze me in place, burn me with fire or electricity, or suck my life out to fuel his own.

Realistically, yes, they could consider the fighter more of a threat, but it's at least equally realistic that they would consider the wizard a threat.

 

[Naoki00_]

Personally I do feel a bit of a need to optimize. I know that it's not ACTUALLY necessary, but I number crunch too much usually and put a lot of love in my characters...I tend to do something half-way between the designs, an extremely interesting and developed character that happens to be very close to or fully optimized to do something a bit off the records, weird item interaction, or class and feat combos that make for game breaking things....but those aren't the only things they do, just something to pull out in a bad scenario.

My fear is all the hours of writing and developing the character as a person in that world won't mean crap when they die, so I do my best to soften the blows of any accidents I might have in game.

I agree with several people on here though about the DM being a major aspect..I've played with some that were so kill happy the optimized characters were all that even COULD survive..to mine and some others styles of very little combat and mostly just role-playing, where how hard you can hit a man with your mace or how good your magic is a little moot compared to your characters well...characterization.

 

[Victim]

I'm not so sure about that. Get in the head of the NPC. Spellcasters may be able to take an NPC out with one action, or completely fail... but think about how that looks to the target and how people in the real world behave. The BBEG is probably thinking, "Oh, that'll never happen to me. I can resist the spell." Whereas the guy in the heavy armor may take a couple of rounds to kill the BBEGs, that's probably small consolation because, while it may not be an insta-kill, it will almost certainly hurt more.

Going after the wizards and druids makes a certain sense of you're focusing on the metagame, the point of view of the rules, more than the point of view of the character in question.

That assumes a lot about the PoV of the character in question, though, doesn't it?

I mean, the way Finger of Death works isn't exactly metaknowledge - spellcasters are supposed to all about that stuff. Even high level noncasters without Spellcraft or Arcana are likely to have a certain working knowledge from their experiences. Not to mention there are specific countermeasures against death magic that a powerful caster who actually wants to live should aware of. All the smucks that just assumed they'd make their save are the corpses your BBEG looted and then climbed over to become Big, because he got deathward or really buffed up his save with his magic.

No bad guy worthy of being high enough level to justify Finger of Death should be more worried about how much losing would hurt than about how they're going to win anyway. If they were that concerned about how much it's going to hurt, they'd have retired, died, or never started on that path in the first place.

Think about a high level PC. Think about all the times they get hurt as they level up. Think about all the times they heal it up, or ignore it because 5 points is nothing at level 10. They sometimes have first hand knowledge of the afterlife.

 

[S'mon]

Tell him he's right of course, but the Technocracy has ensured that no one will ever believe him.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

They sometimes have first hand knowledge of the afterlife.

Charon: "That'll be 2 coppers...thank you. 2...thanks. Thank you...HEY! You're not on the list!"

BBEG: "Eh...just in the neighborhood for a few minutes, thought I'd stop by."