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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7406449" data-attributes="member: 996">We actually have very little in the line of optimization (or even customization) tools or rewards for system mastery, back in the day.  You rolled some stats, maybe fairly high ones depending on luck and the DM's permitted methods, maybe even shuffled them around a bit, and then picked a race and class, bought some fairly standard gear with your random store of gp, and off you went to die in the dungeon, if you didn't, by 5th level, maybe you gave the character a name.  ;PAnd that was the end of your 'build' input, the rest of it was what EGG had decided your class would get at each new level, and the magic items (and, if you were a magic-user or illusionists) spells, that the DM placed or randomly rolled for you to find.   It's all relative, of course.  I was able to a play a fighter effectively for years (through 12th before he started to feel irrelevant) in 3.x, because I was in a campaign where the casters were sub-optimally built and played.  You can play an optimized Tier 1 character without overshadowing everyone, if you're all competently-played Tier 1 casters, and maybe the occasionally wildly-optimized lower tier character.  Balance, within an individual party, is a moving target, and it just moves more the less robustly balanced the game is.With 5e, specifically, I've run a lot more than I've played, and my few characters have been far from sub-optimal.   When I DM, I mostly run introductory games some for AL, others at Conventions, and as much as I can get away with it, I use pregens - so, again, no one's going to be that sub-optimal.  In spite of that, what I have found, at low-level, when the game can turn suddenly quite deadly, is that having an optimized PC or two in an otherwise normal party can be something of a boon.  They end up 'carrying' the party when things go bad, but everyone else can be put in the spotlight other times, and everyone can have some fun roleplaying, regardless.  Once we're out of those low-levels and the new players have moved on or acclimated, the 'OP' guy is less of a boon...But, sub-optimal characters can have it kinda rough.  I've seen some great (or at least amusing) character ideas that just ended up sitting out portions of the game waiting for their 1d4 hours of unconsciousness (0 hps & party tapped out of healing resources) to be up, or just outright dying before they got to do much with the cool idea.  Of course, I've seen the odd optimized character hosed, too. ;P</blockquote>

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