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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 5487245" data-attributes="member: 704">You arrive at the same conclusion I do, but you seem to have taken a scenic route and used a dogsled being pulled by a team of chihuahuas.  I will choose to elaborate on some specific points though. - Magic shops lead to players over optimizing their characters.  When a PC creates a character, they typically have a very specific idea in their head of what they want that character to do.  If allowed to choose magic items, they will almost always choose the magic items that allow them to do that specific thing better. - Most players will generally optimize towards durability (max HP / AC), or to damage output (increased bonuses to damage), or towards attack rolls (bonuses to attack rolls, lower crit threshold), and maybe once in a while towards taking extra actions.  Almost no one optimizes towards support roles (extra healing) or non combat encounters (skill proficiency or skill bonuses).For my game specifically, I have a pool of 5 players, but I will run if I can get 3 to show up.  My group is all adult gamers, weekly game, better to keep the game active then wait for all to be available at the same time.  A player that hyper optimizes his character tends to cause situations where I feel the need to account for that characters power set.  But if I set up an encounter that way and that player cannot make it, the non optimized players who do show up get stomped to hell.  Just think of the last time you set up an encounter with a bunch of powerful undead but the Cleric player could not make it.I personally have a very strong aversion to planning a game around the presence of a specific player.  I also prefer to have players equipped with magic items that open up more possible courses of action as opposed to allowing the players to hyper optimize towards always succeeding if they chose one particular course of action.  To that end, I am more likely to throw in something like a pair of Gloves that aid a skill check then I am to throw in a pair of gloves that do something for attack / damage.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

Verification