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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8854646" data-attributes="member: 6877472">So, I can weigh in on this, because I saw it happen quite a few times when I played in AL. New players would come in, get handed a precon, or be walked through the character creation process, and feel pretty good about their characters.Then play alongside the experienced players, with their strange, optimized builds that spat out better numbers, and seemed not only stronger, but way more fun, because they were doing more.&nbsp; And the next time you saw those new players, they would have completely new characters, and they treated their original ones like &quot;old shames&quot;.&nbsp; D&amp;D has always had choices that are better than others, that's just how the game was made.&nbsp; The game creates the illusion that you can create whatever kind of character you desire, but some characters just work better than others in some games.The guy who plays a Human Champion Fighter with 14 in all stats can be crazy fun to play with, and in a game where roleplaying and having fun is more important, you'd never notice anything wrong with him.But he'd be woefully out of place in other games, where the challenge is high, the rules are set to &quot;maximum grit&quot;, and you better be optimized as heck or you're going to be overwhelmed.Public play has this interesting problem in that, unlike a home game, where you can express to everyone what the style of game and what an appropriate power level is at your Session Zero, basically anyone can belly up to a table with whatever character they want to play, and bring their own expectations.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 8854646, member: 6877472"] So, I can weigh in on this, because I saw it happen quite a few times when I played in AL. New players would come in, get handed a precon, or be walked through the character creation process, and feel pretty good about their characters. Then play alongside the experienced players, with their strange, optimized builds that spat out better numbers, and seemed not only stronger, but way more [B]fun[/B], because they were doing more. And the next time you saw those new players, they would have completely new characters, and they treated their original ones like "old shames". D&D has always had choices that are better than others, that's just how the game was made. The game creates the illusion that you can create whatever kind of character you desire, but some characters just work better than others in some games. The guy who plays a Human Champion Fighter with 14 in all stats can be crazy fun to play with, and in a game where roleplaying and having fun is more important, you'd never notice anything wrong with him. But he'd be woefully out of place in other games, where the challenge is high, the rules are set to "maximum grit", and you better be optimized as heck or you're going to be overwhelmed. Public play has this interesting problem in that, unlike a home game, where you can express to everyone what the style of game and what an appropriate power level is at your Session Zero, basically anyone can belly up to a table with whatever character they want to play, and bring their own expectations. [/QUOTE]

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