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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9767476" data-attributes="member: 6877472">In 2e, the Great Spear in the Complete Fighter's Handbook was one of the better weapons around, and I made a Fighter who used one when I still had delusions that 2e was a game where you could create whatever character you desired and that there weren't strictly superior options.[ATTACH=full]418590[/ATTACH]  My new character then found themselves in the same party as a Sylvan Elf Fighter with 19 Str who dual wielded longswords (thanks to the Two-Weapon Style Specialization), and that's when the truth started to sink it.What sealed the deal was when, during the adventure, he quickly found two magic swords, and there were no magic spears to be found, rendering me completely useless when we later encountered a gargoyle during The Sentinel (where I found myself in the same situation as the NPC Monk).  In fairness, the DM did eventually let me acquire a magic greatspear, but he had to go out of his way to make that happen.  It wasn't until later, when I, taking my own turn as the DM, realized that the DMG limited most non-swords to no better than +3, with only swords being allowed to climb higher.  [ATTACH=full]418591[/ATTACH]People like to talk about how optimization wasn't a thing back then, or go on about 3e's "ivory tower design", but it was all there right along.  Some decisions would be rewarded by the system, and others would be punished.  And over the years, I've heard many DM's claim that it isn't their business to make the game suit the player, or to alter the game world for their benefit, as if it's somehow teaching players a lesson to not specialize in glaive-guisarmes or play Fighters with higher Intelligence than Strength.  Many of those same DM's then turn around and decry people who make "optimized" characters, without seeing the irony.Now I'm not saying that all choices need be equal- that would take a great deal of effort, and a game where a dagger Rogue performs just as well as one with a rapier doesn't seem very logical.  But at the same time, one has to wonder why have inferior options in the first place, and why some people scoff or deride people who then try to make better choices.  I've often heard DM's wax poetic about how characters built in a sub-standard way are somehow superior, as if the essence of roleplaying is to carry around a whip because your character was once an animal trainer for their entire career, or your wise, humble, peasant Fighter should continue to cling to his trusty pitchfork, while at the same time shrug and say "hey, just because your character uses a pike doesn't mean magical pikes are going to appear as treasure.  I'm not changing my carefully constructed campaign world for your benefit.  Better start using that +1 battle axe you found" with the same level of scorn as a 12 year old brat in League of Legends to tell you to "git gud".</blockquote>

Verification