Why is it a bad thing to optimise?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm with Kzach on this one. When I play DnD I want to play a hero. Heroes do heroic things and honestly I end up screwing up mundane stuff often enough in RL that I don't want to have the same thing happen when I am playing my heroic fantasy emulator. My fighters should hit and hurt things, my wizards should sling spells and my rogues should sneaky and cunning.

If it takes hours of creating multiple characters, as Kzach said he did, just to be able to "hit and hurt things" with your character, your DM needs to back it down a notch or two.

 

[Pbartender]

If I may...

In the real world, professionals went to school to prepare for jobs that they are talented for... but often wind up working in completely different fields. Events occur in life, such that many, if not most, wind up places they didn't expect, doing things they didn't plan, and trying to make the best of it.

If that happens in the real world, why shouldn't it happen to a professional adventurer?

Sure... but he same applies. If you intend on staying in that completely new field, you begin to train and retrain (multi-classing and retraining!) so you can excel in that field instead of your old one. You may hang onto a few of your old skills that provide an unexpected benefit, but much of your previous education may fall away, unused and forgotten, to make room for fresh knowledge.

In the long run, you end up in pretty much the same place... A character statistically optimized to be a professional adventurer and hero, but with, perhaps just a little odd but still useful baggage on the side.

Think about it this way... The penalty for failing at heroic adventuring (whether voluntarily or reluctantly) is very often death. Why would any one caught up in adventuring for any length of time not strive to improve their odds of surviving by improving the skill and abilities that are best suited their particular adventuring role?

The reluctant hero, the hero who isn't really cut out for the job but has to manage and grow beyond their limitations, is among the more popular tropes in fiction. It is a position most people can identify with. Sitting next to a hero who is really designed and ready for the challenge makes the fiction rather difficult and awkward - if the real deal is here, why do you need the ill-prepared person?

The problem with that premise is that many RPGs, and certainly most modern main-stream RPGs, presume that the characters are heroes to start with, even at their weakest and lowest levels. They aren't designed to handle that trope.

It's truly difficult to build a character that represents the "the reluctant hero, the hero who isn't really cut out for the job but has to manage and grow beyond their limitations" in most games. It's a popular trope in fiction, because the author has sole and complete control over the outcome of the story. It's a less viable trope in RPGs, where the character has to deal with the other characters, NPCs, monsters and the campaign world in general, which are all outside the control of the reluctant hero's player.

Unless, a DM has geared his game toward handling reluctant, unprepared heroes, such characters will tend to die quick, painful and unlamented deaths.

That's why each ensuing edition of D&D has given players slightly more powerful characters at 1st level... It's because no one is clamoring to be less skillful and die more often at lower levels.

 

[Meatboy]

...The reluctant hero, the hero who isn't really cut out for the job but has to manage and grow beyond their limitations, is among the more popular tropes in fiction...

Though I agree with you that the reluctant hero trope is very wide spread I am not sure that DnD even nods it head in that direction. I feel DnD doesn't try recreate that particular experience but instead helps you to realize the more heroic type heroes like Conan, Aragorn, Vlad Taltos and the like. I would be hard pressed to describe these characters as reluctant or sub-optimal.

 

[billd91]

Again, like Elf Witch, I'm presuming no one at the table is being a jerk and no one is intentionally stepping on other people's toes. But being told that a perfectly reasonable character is "too good" and that I'm a "powergamer" because my character isn't some weak sauce collection of weaknesses is annoying as all get out.

If people can tell me to rein myself in, why can't I tell them to grow a pair?

It depends on who, if anybody, is the outlier. If it's you, then you don't get to tell them to grow a pair. You should harmonize to the group's standard either by build or by play (or both).

You're not going to get anywhere fighting a play style battle when you're a faction of 1.

 

[Meatboy]

If it takes hours of creating multiple characters, as Kzach said he did, just to be able to "hit and hurt things" with your character, your DM needs to back it down a notch or two.

True, but he also said that he makes multiple characters and spends hours with the Character Builder just for fun. I know I have whiled away an hour or two trying figure out how best to make a particular character do his thing. One character I had I wanted to dual wield katanas ( bastard swords) and there was little I could do to make him effective. -4 for each hit is a tough penalty to overcome

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Though I agree with you that the reluctant hero trope is very wide spread I am not sure that DnD even nods it head in that direction.

It depends on the edition. 4E explicitly does not, as part of their design goals; it's the equivalent of starting at fourth level or so in 3E.

But earlier versions, and derivatives, definitely do. I'd argue that 3E, for instance, with its additive multi-classing, is especially suited for this, as it represents the passage of time with stacking on new class levels, and not locking people into the class they began with (which was how multiclassing worked prior to 3E, with very rare exceptions).

And some derivatives, like the forthcoming Dungeon Crawl Classics (which isn't a form of D&D, but wouldn't exist in a world without it) explicitly start characters off as level 0 peasantry. (Over the years, I've tried to think of ways to start off a 3E campaign with all the characters taking one level as an NPC class, but the system's just not designed to handle that elegantly, unfortunately.)

More importantly, even if you don't think the game is well-suited to it -- whichever edition you're playing -- it's worth remembering that a lot of tables are going to play it that way anyway.

Again, it's all about everyone's expectations matching up. You're not going to convince everyone at the table that they're playing it wrong, and they should switch to your way. If the situation is that intractable, find another group.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It depends on who, if anybody, is the outlier. If it's you, then you don't get to tell them to grow a pair. You should harmonize to the group's standard either by build or by play (or both).

You're not going to get anywhere fighting a play style battle when you're a faction of 1.

I am unable to give you more XP right now, but you deserve it for this post.

True, but he also said that he makes multiple characters and spends hours with the Character Builder just for fun. I know I have whiled away an hour or two trying figure out how best to make a particular character do his thing.

And again, this is why you guys may not be the best fit for the table described by the OP. Matching playstyles and expectations is crucial.

I've got a four year old, a demanding job (at a company that's just been sold and in a department where my boss is moving onto another company) and I wouldn't have time to spend hours optimizing a character if you paid me to do so. If I ended up at a table where everyone else had put in six or more hours to build a character, I'd either ask someone to help me, or I'd play with a different, more casual group.

 

[Agamon]

It's threads like this one that make me long even more for games like HMA or DCC. No optimzation problems there!

I'm making a PC for a PF game right now, and while it looks like there's a lot of options, in reality, not so much. Conform or die, amiright?

 

[Meatboy]

[MENTION=11760]Whizbang Dustyboots[/MENTION]
I concede your point. Mismatched play styles are definitely something that I have seen tear apart more gaming groups than anything. (except maybe real world commitments... spouses can be so demanding sometimes...)

But as you say if you sat down at a table like that you might ask someone for help. Kzach seemed to say that if he even hinted at helping others with their builds they jumped all over him.

 

[Kzach]

So...I posit that this may be the problem. Of course, if you don't get annoyed with their non-op'ed characters and are quite happy to play with them and their characters...uh...I give up. I don't know.

Sorry, you'll have to give up.

My reaction is to other people complaining about my characters being too well-made. Although I will offer suggestions and advice if I see major flaws in a character, I never push it past the point of the offer. And if I see that the first offer isn't taken very well (which it normally isn't, which is another reason why I'm posting), then I don't offer any more suggestions. I don't roll my eyes at people or make comments about their characters and if they're happy to play their characters next to mine, I'm just as happy to play mine next to theirs.

But that doesn't mean internally I'm not frustrated when the 20 int mage with 8 strength chooses all strength-based skills and we fail at skill challenges constantly because of him, or when the 12 strength fighter never hits anything so our strikers, leaders and controllers are always dying and fights take twice as long as they have to, or our controllers specialise in single-target attacks and their rider bonuses are from their dump stat, or any other trillion situations which make the game run slower and be more frustrating for everyone at the table.

Kzach, you have said you spend hours making up characters, that you "trawl" the character builder looking for options. You use the word "casual", but your words say that it somewhat more than that.

Hell yeah it's casual. I'm sure there are people out there who don't have a couple of hours to spare once a week to make up a character, but then if they can't spare that much time, how they are playing D&D in the first place? In addition, I offer my time and experience freely and almost universally it's rejected because of this attitude that optimising is badwrongfun, or that I'm stepping on precious toes by even making the offer.

Besides which, 90% of the choices I make are exceedingly obvious. 18 minimum in a primary stat, choose skills with a good ability bonus on them and with racial synergies, choose a background that offers a synergy on a skill you want to excel at, make sure your power choices have riders associated with an ability bonus, choose feats that enhance your role or compensate for weaknesses. That really isn't hard to do and nor does it take boat-loads of time with the Character Builder and Compendium. And truly, if you can't entwine your imagination with the mechanics, then I have to ask why are you playing a game of the imagination?

Again, it's really just about making logical and intelligent decisions in character creation. If you can't invest the time in doing so, then again, why are you playing a game that REQUIRES a pretty hefty investment of time?

One of the ironies of the reactions I experience is that a lot of it comes from groups who don't even roleplay. I was in a group over a month ago in a gaming store and every time I tried to roleplay anything, it was shut-down almost immediately by the actions and demands of other players. And so the end result was that we only really played a miniatures skirmish game. Yet even here I did a couple of things and people went, "How did you do that? Can I have a look at your character sheet? OMG! It's so min-maxed!"

What's even more ironic is that I don't generally min-max that much. I tend to specialise in one area, usually leaving one or even two glaring holes in the character, which is the exact opposite of min/maxing.