Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 6858465">This is one of those dangerous "equality of outcome" vs. "equality of opportunity" statements.  You've already told me you haven't read comics for at least a deacde, so I suspect there's quite a bit of rosy-glasses going on here.  Super-groups are anything but equality of outcome.  Batman is a completely non-special powered detective with kung-fu and a high Int score.  Superman has 30's in all his physical stats.  The Flash is the definitive glass cannon.  These characters are not mechanically equals, not even close.  The trick is, and a DM should be able to leverage this, is that each has their strengths and weaknesses.  Need to sneak in somewhere?  Talk to Batman.  Need to commune with the gods?  Talk to Wonder Woman.  Need an alien SWAT team?  Go ask Green Lantern.  Can't get the party Face to shut up?  Someone go smack Flash.  Need to punch a god after talking didn't help?  Ask Superman.They're "equals" in so much that as a party, their strengths and weaknesses balance out.  They're NOT equals in the sense that, during combat, they all have an equal share of the fight, in fact it is typically a running joke that Superman runs circles around the bad guy while waiting for Batman to get done beating up one mook.But it's not upstaging, because they're a team.  They work together so even though Superman is the powergamer who crushes everything in combat, that's fine by Batman, because he didn't powergame for combat.  He powergamed for being a sneaky detective who will find the hidden trap with the Kryptonite dart before the Flash does something stupid and triggers it.  In that regard, they are equals; but not because of equality of outcome.  But because of teamwork.  If 4/5 members of a group don't optimize for combat, but still wants to engage in it on a regular basis, don't berate the one guy who did.  Thank him.  He'll thank you back in a few moments when the things the other 4/5 party members are good at come up and save his butt!Ah but look at what you said.  His line was "bring good at optimizing" was "good at the game" you took that to mean combat.  You can optimize for any aspect of the game and really unless you are optimizing for a well-rounded character who is mostly good at most things or just throwing everything within arms reach into the pot and hoping it makes a edible meal, you need to be "good at the game" to do that.  IE: have a good understanding of which skills use which stats, know which feats will help you best achieve your goals, what class and race will be best, etc..It really just depends on your goal.But equality of outcome should NEVER be the DMs goal and I'd feel uncomfortable at a table, not because I power-game, but because that's an uncomfortable expectation to be under, to under-perform because Jimmy gets his jimmies in a jam when people shine in their niche.I do all my "cheating" between sessions.  If I make a beast that doesn't fair so well against my party (as I did last night), oh well, I eat it.  I can take the week in between to work up new challenges that take into account my failures and my successes from last week.Striking at where a player is weak is no fault of anyone.  It's smart play.  If you're not playing your bad guys smart, your encounters are going to be underwhelming.  Sometimes my players face foes who don't strike at their weaknesses, sometimes my foes ONLY strike at their weaknesses, retreating from battle when they find themselves unable to exploit their intended targets.  That's just good strategic play.  Anything less and you're not going to get to show off your cool BBEG moves.</blockquote>

Verification