D&D 5E (2014) When making decisions for your character in 5E, which is your top priority? RP or G?

[lingual]

Optimize your concept. Eg. Picking a race and background just for better numbers is sort of lame.

 

[James Gasik]

Which is why you don't need to do that anymore, I imagine.

 

[Nod_Hero]

Best answer i can give is that if a game session ended with no dice ever being rolled, I wouldn't consider it a failure, but if a game session had zero story to it and was just rolling dice I would. It's the only metric I can think of to address such an absolutist question honestly.

If the roleplaying choices lead to good mechanics, I am pretty happy.

I am unhappy when I want to make a roleplaying choice and it leads to bad mechanics.

This pretty much sums up my pov. Thanks for saving me all the typing!

 

[Aldarc]

When running, what is more important, your left leg or your right?

There's a reason both of them are in the name. Both of them are integral to play.

The poll really biases answers because it forces a distinction.

This poll also accenuates a problem that one can sometimes find in our hobby: i.e., a desire to (a) denigrate the gaming aspects of roleplaying games and (b) elevate the roleplaying aspects as some sort of high art form.

 

[Vaalingrade]

As long as I am harshly judged for it, and the obvious happy medium is ignored, either is fine.

 

[Shiroiken]

They don't have to be in contention, and I imagine most people are pretty balanced in which they feel is more important, but if forced to choose I side slightly more on the side of RP over mechanics. When I come up with a character, I try to put RP as the driving force of the concept, but I don't neglect mechanics by any means.

 

[Cruentus]

I tend to not pay that much attention to mechanics when I make decisions about my character. I also don't spend very much, if any, time thinking through my character's "progression" at chargen. I'll let those things develop organically. Note, I am also playing Basic/OSE. Its not something as easily ignored in 5e, but I can't honestly be bothered to try to get into the inner workings of maximizing my (or any) character, its not in my nature.

Another player in our group is the complete opposite. Its all maximization and all planned out in advance, and RP is a tertiary or worse consideration, with no other considerations in between other that moar power and moar magic items. He also sees the game as "winnable" and is always out to beat the DM and the other players.

And before anyone says anything, I am not positing that these are the only two points - RP v maximizing. These happen to be two situations I find in my group, with different levels in between and further along the continuum. As usual, YMMV.

 

[Lanefan]

Do what the character would do. That's all there is to it.

 

[Fenris-77]

Do what the character would do. That's all there is to it.

Yup. The real trick is build characters that are actually good at the things you want to do with them. That's very different than RPing for mechanical advantage, which I find puerile. Once you have a character build that matches what you had in your head it shouldn't be complicated to just do the stuffs in play. You built them to be good at X and Y, and ignored Z, so stop trying to be a annoying fancy pants about being good at Z as well based on shifty play at the table.

 

[James Gasik]

Do what the character would do. That's all there is to it.

But you decide what the character would do? Like, I think you're saying "do what the personality of the character dictates", but since you created said personality, you're still on some level making the choices.

(Which as an aside, is my general speech to any player who wants to say "it's what my character would do" when doing something detrimental to the other players).