NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6488457" data-attributes="member: 6677017">I'm kind of on both sides of this issue. I don't like player aesthetic choices to drop character effectiveness (in part because they are being relied on by their allies), yet I want people to be able to play the character they imagine without suffering for it.Really, I think the system itself should be designed to minimize the statistical effects of aesthetic choices. (With weapons and armors I broaden the options by allowing the same stats to apply to multiple types of weapons or armors. For instance, the Splint category of 5e includes banded, lamellar, plate and mail, and pretty much anything else that is more than a suit of chain mail but less than full plate.)Since the system does still have some problems in that regard, I do expect players not to totally gimp their characters. This isn't a solo game.I think the optimization sacrifice that I find acceptable for aesthetic reasons is probably along the lines of no more than a +1 weapon (or the equivalent) and/or +1 armor per character. So if someone with a 12 Str and a 14 Dex insisted on leather armor and a longsword I'd be okay with it. If they had a 16 Dex or they were insisting on hide armor instead of half-plate, that would be unacceptable to me as a DM looking out for the rest of the group, and it would bug me a bit as a player. This isn't something that generally comes up, because people usually figure things out and try to strike a balance once you explain to them that they are significantly underpowered that way.(I should also say that I'm not much of an optimizer--and I don't like my players to go overboard on it either--but I am "optimization aware," enough to know if something is really weak.)</blockquote>

Verification