Why is it a bad thing to optimise?

[Saeviomagy]

I
The playtesters aren't necessarily CharOp experts. It'd be nice if they were, as they've got a lot of system mastery. In 3.x, anytime something broken came out, the CharOp experts immediately noted it, and people would wonder why they weren't consulted.

Yeah, I agree. What IS the system used to select playtesters? I've only ever been a playtester on a single shadowrun book, and the process for how we got selected was extremely opaque.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Yeah, I agree. What IS the system used to select playtesters? I've only ever been a playtester on a single shadowrun book, and the process for how we got selected was extremely opaque.

I critiqued a product after it came out. The author was impressed. In addition for writing for Malhavoc, he works for WotC, so...

I've got the sort of detail-oriented mind that makes me a good playtester (yes, I'm tooting my own horn - that let me write a long critique) but I'm well aware that I have limits. I'm a natural playtester, but not a particularly gifted one.

I'm not going to contribute to any CharOp articles anytime soon - clearly there are people out there who known 3.x and 4e rules and combos better than me - and I would have been happier if there were some such people specifically recruited into the playtesting process as well.

But I think my analysis of playtesting combos is correct. Short of buying and memorizing every WotC product (Dragon Magazine, Encounters, etc), and gaining several dozen points of IQ, there is no way I could playtest every combo for a new class, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to be able to do that. Even with the CB.

 

[Janx]

I'm definitely not a fan of those sorts of characters. I do think there's a line that is crossed in optimisation, I just don't feel that I cross it.

I think the line should be: a PC should not exist that is more powerful than what you can build from the players handbook.

That's the baseline. Because in just about every edition, the combos that could be built from the PH are usually balanced.

When you can go shopping through all the add-ons for parts, thats where you find testing was weak, and opportunity for imbalance.

I play 3x, so a lot of the stuff Kzach is talking about isn't available. But the concept still applies.

If you build a fighter and don't put your best stat in STR, and all your skills rely on your worst stat, that's goes against most common wisdom since the inception of the game. sure, there's the exception (like using DEX and feats that make it so your DEX bonus is used in melee). But the principle remains that you put your stats where your class needs it, and you generally buy skills that use your best stats.

Let's call that another baseline assumption.

Pre 3e. that was the only choices to make. Pretty hard to screw up OR to make a better fighter than the fighter I made.

Post 3e, feats, PrCs, and all the other stuff (4e has new stuff I'm not familiar with) put in so many extra variables that you need lots of time, or a program to make it easy to test and swap what your stats look like.

But I think it still comes down to with those, if you can build something extremely better than what the PH allows, then it violated the design specification. That is the design standard for balance because it is the first product that sets the scale for what is possible in the game.

Table cultural is the last leg of the problem. Most of the people I game with build their PC 30 minutes before the game (or the night before) on a piece of paper. When we level up, we flip open the PH and find what new feat/skills we want. We don't plan these things out, barring occasions where there's a higher level thing we want that has pre-requisites. But you won't see a 20 level build plan.

Hopefully, our PCs don't totally suck, but anybody who puts in more time on planning out, and using more books than the PH could probably find more powerful combinations. However, if it violates the first baseline, thats a sign of imbalance and exploiting that imbalance.

 

[Janx]

Now, I wasn't at the table when you approached them, but if you talk to them like you talk to us, I am completely unsurprised that they rejected your suggestions. Similarly, based on the example here, I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't nearly so good at covering your frustration with their lack of optimization as you claim, which wouldn't be helping matters.

Maybe this has less to do with the clash between optimizer and non-optimizer, and a bit more with interaction style.

Kzach, yes the first part where umbran copied your style was probably less than the normally polite umbran usually delivers.

However, the part I quoted has relevance. In just about all of your threads, I see a manner of speaking that isn't diplomatic.

At some point, the pattern becomes common enough that it is probably the way you always communicate. And since a number of your threads are about problems your having, I suspect that the way you comminicate, if its like on these threads, is part of the problem.

I say this, as somebody who also talks bluntly and is often times less polite than umbran on this forum (excluding the rare instance).

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I think the line should be: a PC should not exist that is more powerful than what you can build from the players handbook.

That's the baseline. Because in just about every edition, the combos that could be built from the PH are usually balanced.

And if they weren't (there's always something broken in a PH1) it's reasonable that the DM would be familiar enough with the PH1 to account for it, ban it, nerf it, or otherwise deal with it.

I don't think it's reasonable for a DM to be familiar with "every book", however, or the entire Character Builder.

So I'm supporting your point, just adding a little bit that the DM can easily fix balance problems with the PH1.

When you can go shopping through all the add-ons for parts, thats where you find testing was weak, and opportunity for imbalance.

On that note, unlesss WotC has updated their testing practices, core books get playtested a lot longer than "splats".

Dragon Magazine used to come out once a month. No surprise the material was often less balanced.

 

[TheUltramark]

I'd have to disagree. A quick weapon seems squarely aimed at strikers. Sure, everyone can benefit from getting an extra attack in a turn, but it's pretty obvious that a striker benefits most from it. When I was searching, it immediately popped out at me as a choice to review because "quick" is synonymous with thieves.

The same for the Mercenary theme. I mean, no-one can convince me that a casual read through of that screams, "I can do more damage and tack on a prone as a freebie? Awesome!"

One of the things I'd probably agree is broken and seriously needs to be addressed in the system is items like Bracers of Mighty Striking. Flat bonuses to damage are the real problem with big damage characters. It's the primary reason why Twin Strike is so powerful. The two attacks are pretty meaningless without all the static, stackable bonuses.

Take my thief as an example. 6d8+1d6 is impressive, no doubt, but it only amounts to an average of 30.5 points of damage. This is most definitely NOT outside the realm of most strikers who use an action point and a daily item power and rely on three successful hits. When you put it into that perspective, it's actually pretty reasonable when compared to even an average-built striker.

Where the REAL problem comes in, is all the stackable bonus damage. Takedown Strike = 5 (from a Dexterity of 20), Acrobat's Trick = 2, Weapon Finesse (thief core ability) = 2, Bracers of Mighty Striking = 2, Dexterity (Weapon Finesse) = 5. Across three attacks that's 33 damage plus another 5 for Takedown Strike. So just through stacked damage on the three attacks, I've doubled the damage output, putting it into the realm of overpowered.

And yet again I argue that this isn't powergaming. Again, I didn't know about Bracers of Mighty Striking. It took me a minute or two to find them and think, "Gee, they're good for me, I'll take those!" The same for the Quick Weapon. If I'm a powergamer simply because I looked at the options and thought, "Hey, that's good and suits my character, I'll use that," then... I guess I'm a powergamer. But then if I can do all that in ten minutes, what's stopping everyone else?

When I spend hours creating a character, it's always for a very particular concept that requires that I search high and low to suit it. The irony here is that I'm looking for things that suit the CHARACTER CONCEPT. So I spend less time optimising than I do focusing on the character's character. Hell, I wrote up a character history for that thief above and it took about half an hour. That's three times the amount of time I devoted to creating him in the first place.

again, this is not an indictment on you or your style of play, but when you say "this item seems good for me" what you really mean is "this item does killer damage." You took the "quick item" because to paraphrase you : quick = thief ... you took the mighty item because.............mighty = more damage.

my next question for you - and this is 100% off topic - after doing 60+ damage in round 1, what do you do in round 2?

 

[DEFCON 1]

It's pretty obvious I'm joking around and being light-hearted and yet you come back with a flame. You need to start moderating yourself, dude.

Guess what, Kzach? It ISN'T obvious. At least, not to the level you seem to think. And it's basically the same thing where you think there are obvious choices in character creation to create what you think to be middle-of-the-road, good-but-not-powergamed characters (but which many other people here consider to be 'optimized'... and optimized enough that you could be considered powergaming.)

The problem you're having is that what you're seeing is not what other people are (both in your attitude and in what the game itself is presenting). So long as you keep believing and acting as though what is 'common sense' to you is 'common sense' to everybody... the more you're going to continue to have these problems dealing with your situation.

 

[Janx]

But I think my analysis of playtesting combos is correct. Short of buying and memorizing every WotC product (Dragon Magazine, Encounters, etc), and gaining several dozen points of IQ, there is no way I could playtest every combo for a new class, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to be able to do that. Even with the CB.

If play testing ran through the QA process that hardware/software goes through in a big company, they'd have made huge matrices to list out all the build combinations, and testets would be working through those combinations (or at least random points).

They also probably would have been automated. it is pretty simple to say that a 1st level PC should be able to do 1d8+6 damage, and then have the computer build all the classes in the CharBuilder and flag out which combinations yield higher values as possible problems.

I'm using damage as an example, but generally, that's what gets attention as imbalance is To-Hit#s and damage output greater than the standard expectation.

 

[Oryan77]

Guess what, Kzach? It ISN'T obvious.

I understood Kzach was joking and was not trying to be snotty at all. I would say that I was surprised that someone else took offense to it, but it isn't surprising to me.

 

[catsclaw227]

I think averaging 69.5 damage in a turn for a 2nd level character is broken. It's just my opinion, of course.

Normally, I agree with most of your posts Kzach, but I believe that spending 4 hours tweaking a single 1st level character over two weeks is much more than casual.

In my 4e table, I have two powergamer types, two "normal", knowledgeable players and two casual gamers. It is very hard to manage, build and/or convert encounters for them because the characters are of such a wide range of effectiveness. And they are all legally using the CB to build their characters.

The powergamers both have DDI accounts and like to spend their off time making characters for fun. One even build all his characters at level 30 and then makes his 1st level character from that build.*

The casual gamers don't have DDI accounts and when it comes time to level their PCs, they simply use my laptop and spend 5 minutes leveling them up. They don't look at then next level or two for build optimizations, but they will retrain out of sub-optimal choices.

The guys in the middle, well, they are in the middle.

* It makes me crazy. How does he even KNOW what he is going to be at 25th level when his PC hasn't experienced anything in the game world? This is one of the things about powergaming that really bugs me the most.

When I am building my character, I might have some ideas about what I might want a couple of levels ahead, to help support a concept, but when I level up, I make sure that (for the most part) the feats or powers or retraining I do reflects what my PC experienced in play. I don't retrain out of heal for arcana if I DIDN'T do any arcane study. I don't choose a particular paragon path if my PC didn't experience any of the things reflective in the path. Yet I see this kind of behavior a lot among powergamers.