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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7080147" data-attributes="member: 6785785">Well, in the example I gave, it was one player who was constructing PC after PC on HeroLab, using the Pathfinder rules, and creating crazy class/feat combinations to create a super character. He was scouring the Paizo message boards for optimal builds and character creation input. The PCs were 12th level, and he was creating his PC from scratch as opposed to the others who had been around since low levels. When I provided my example in the thread initially, I don't know if I included every relevant detail....but the example I gave is that his uber-optimized barbarian had to stop raging for a few rounds and had to pick up a bow...and he was a better archer than the arcane archer character. Now, in general, I agree with you about optimizing....I generally don't think it is an issue. I think in this instance, it was a combination of several factors (the extreme system bloat of Pathfinder and the crazy imbalance it causes, the creation of many PCs in HeroLab, the access to material through HeroLab that no one else had access to, and the utter lack of any weakness in this PC being the big factors). We had the Core Rulebook and maybe two or three other splatbooks. This player bought HeroLab access, and then had access to all of the Pathfinder splatbooks....so he was using feats and class options that we didn't even know about. And when any of these options were questioned in any way, he wasn't even able to provide answers (HeroLab has a few printing options for character sheets, and one of them provides minimal info for feats and so on). In this case, the one player in question was basically playing Superman to everyone else's Batman....so I think that was frustrating for other players, and for me as the DM. Now, sometimes an imbalance like that may not be an issue....but in this case it was. I as the DM found the character to be nothing but a collection of the most powerful feats and class options possible, with no thought at all about character or personality or anything of the sort. It annoyed me quite a bit, and I knew that the other players weren't really happy about it. But no one wants to tell someone how to play the game....we'd never really had this kind of issue before. So I think sometimes, this kind of play can indeed be an issue because it doesn't mesh with the rest of the table. I would say the same if I had a player who wanted to act out every single social interaction scene to the nth degree while the other players were ready to move on. It's been said that this is about table expectations, and I agree that is correct....but since we never had this problem before, we hadn't really set any expectations in this regard. I don't think this is even remotely an issue in 5E because the system is pretty tight and there are not a lot options beyond those in the core books. And I agree that acting like a jerk and min-maxing are not tied....you can do either or you can do both. But in the larger discussion, I don't think it's a bad idea to share examples such as this.</blockquote>

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