Why is it a bad thing to optimise?

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Kzach: (and anyone else who feels like chiming in) I have some examples I want your thoughts on, it may help with where the problem is.


example 1 (The tale of 2 strikers) we had a rouge and a ranger, the rouge was a shadar kai multi into cleric worshiper of the ravon queen, the ranger was an archer elf. around lev 13 or 14 there wa a LARGE diffrence int he character, the ranger had +4 or 5 to hit on the rouge, and was doing much more damage. This exploded the encounter that the rouge ran up, launched a daily, crit, then action pointed droped a second daily and did awsome damage... about 130 total... The player did a dance aroudnt he table, and write down on his sheet the details... the ranger player the next round used an encounter, and killed something giving him a free action point that he spent, then twin striked a diffrent target...then got pissed,he rolled low dmaage...I pointed out he did over 100 damage on 'low non crits' and look at kurt...
As bad as that was, it built to a head a few levels later when the ranger ended 3 encounters in a row on his own... I asked him to trade out his weapon expertise, his weapon focus, and take off his archery bracers... loseing him 2pts to hit and 4 to damage...was I in the wrong?

I'd say so. The rogue makes an intentionally weak combo, since cleric and rogue dont really share the same main stats. If he's actively spending feats to get powers (again, terrible feats), he's further behind. The character could probably be fluffed into an avenger or something if he really wanted the lightly armored dextrous religious guy angle, keeping the same fluff but increased mechanical effectiveness. That or homebrew him some feats/powers/theme or something to get him up to par. While twin strike could use a bit of a nerf, the rogue is a perfectly cromulent striker and shouldnt be too far behind. I have no idea how the hell the ranger has +4 to +5 to hit on the rogue. Our rogue one time hit on a 1. They have more accurate weapons, talents to boost accuracy, nearly constant combat advantage, and feats to boost accuracy. Again, if he's missing, its because he wanted to make a concept character with no mechanical support behind it. Ideally, the DM will help even that out.

If the rogue doesnt want better house rules support/gear/feats/powers or whatever to help him out, he should at least recognize what he's doing. The guy, who intentionally made aless combat oriented/optimized character, then gets upset because someone else is better at killing things? Thats like the dude who spends all his time at the buffet bitching because his buddy who works out is losing more weight. IMO, if you make the choice to ignore your own effectiveness, you really shouldnt complain about someone else's.

Particularly when it doesnt sound like the ranger is a grotesque abomination of min-maxing. He's not melee, so he doesnt get to abuse prime punisher. Expertise, focus and bracers are not some kind of crazy optimization, any mroe than a 1st edition fighter specializing in longsword. Its pretty routine... I think the character builder even suggests this sort of stuff. If the rogue doesnt have something similar, its through his own choice to take NON-optimized gear/feats.

The ranger popped 2 dailies and and 2 action points, rolled lucky and did a victory dance. Big deal. If your players arent throwing high fives or drinking a toast to crits or groaning over bad ones, that's a game I dont want to be in.

example 2 (the gladius and the kurkr) I am playing a rome style gladiator...the DM wanted his gladius to feel diffrent from short swords, so he made then kurkri. So I took my first level feat as prof in a +2 prof 1d6 brutal 1 weapon, my 2nd and 4th feats were two weap fight and def becuse during play the ranger and I traded styles...
Another player who does not play in this game, pointed out if I took a longsword, and light shield, and traded those 3 feats for weapon focus and expertise and fill in the blank with any feat I would be way better.

I personally wouldnt have accepted the mandated kukri thing, as its pretty much nothing but a DM mandated nerf for flavor purposes. Its a terribly designed weapon that loses 1 from accuracy for a middling upgrade in damage at the cost of a feat. I'm not even sure if its worth using as a standard weapon. You're definately flushed 3 feats down the drain from an effectiveness perspective. There's nothing preventing you from calling your longsword a gladius and your shield a scutum, or using 2 short swords if you are the tempest fighting style. At the end of it though, if you're fine with your character, who cares? The trouble arises when you have a self/dm made weak character, and then want to bring everyone else down to your level.

example 3 (the crit fisher) We were all sitting down to a game we all were going all out for...I played an avenger multi into ranger, paragon mult and half elf verstile... my 3 at wills where twin strike, the barbarian whirling one, and an avenger one I never used... I had 2 jagged kopeshes and deadly axe.
in 5 encounters each lasting less then 4 rounds I crit atleast twice in each.
one of the other players asked if he could play a similar character in my game, I informed him it would not be welcome at my ongoing game. When he asked why I tried to explain that there are less powerful characters there, and a regular avenger with a greatsword would be more on par.

Again, a twin strike problem, more than anything else. This is more in line with approaching higher tier optimization, certainly mroeso than the ranger which took basic stuff like "hit more" and "hit harder".

Example 4 (Joe...oh joe) We have a player who does not have DDI, he often plays out of only 1 book. So his battlemind took almost all stuff from psionic power, his warden was almost all phb2...
he does not want to go through books looking for new options, and his wish lists as a PC always look like this: Cool axe with a nice extra damage daily, scale armor with restance property, boots to make me faster, something to give me more surges or surge value.
he never spends mony on magic items... he will buy a round at a bar, pay for info from a snich, buy land, donate to a church, or even loan to another PC, but in 10 years of 3 and 4e he has less times then you have fingers on one hand bought magic items.

Aside from a few potions of healing, your weapon, armor and neck slots cover most of what it takes to do the job. Not every copper needs to be spent on the next +1. Is he even worried about underperforming? If you're DM'ing, throw him an extra item or something if he needs it. If you're a player, have everyone pitch in and buy/commission something for his character. Or better yet, go on a quest for something for him.

In example 1 and 3 was I right for limiting power to keep the party more on par? in example 2 is my warlord not 'up to par' becuse I followed the story of the world, then how game went? and in example 4 how do you act when a player like joe is the norm in a group? can you play at joes level?

1 no, 3 maybe. 2. Ugh, you're playing a warlord? Yeah, he's probably not up to par and your DM hosed you. That's like saying "no one can wear armor, because we're running a pirate game. Enjoy your suck AC!" 4. See above.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'd say so. The rogue makes an intentionally weak combo, since cleric and rogue dont really share the same main stats. The character could probably be fluffed into an avenger or something if he really wanted the lightly armored dextrous religious guy angle, keeping the same fluff but increased mechanical effectiveness.

to be fair he made the character for H1 and phb2 was not out intil we were on to h3...so the multi class was like the only choice, and by the time phb 2 did come out he was pretty set on playing the cleric angle.

If the rogue doesnt want better gear/feats/powers or whatever to help him out, he should at least recognize what he's doing. The guy, who intentionally made a weaker character, then whines because someone else is better at killing things?

but he did not make a weak character, if the ranger was not there, he was the striker out single target dmaageing all others, al be it by about 10-15 pts per round...

Thats like the dude who spends all his time at the buffet bitching because his buddy who works out is losing more weight. IMO, if you make the choice to ignore your own effectiveness, you really shouldnt complain about someone else's.

what about when you and your 3 dorky friends play two on two, and you are pretty good, and win 60+% of the time, then one day mike jordan comes along and joins... I think that is just out classed

Expertise, focus and bracers are not some kind of crazy optimization, any mroe than a 1st edition fighter specializing in longsword. Its pretty routine. If the rogue doesnt have something similar, its through his own choice to take NON-optimized gear/feats.

again it was more then that...infact at the time he was the exact build fromt he opt board as best striker...those three I asked him to take away to lessen it. He had out of turn and high number of attack roll attacks, and a high to hit, and a high pluse to damage... and was at range so taking less hits

The ranger popped 2 dailies and and 2 action points, rolled lucky and did a victory dance. Big deal. If your players arent throwing high fives or drinking a toast to crits or groaning over bad ones, that's a game I dont want to be in.

I agree this has been how we played for 16 years now... but when one play celebrates X then a min later another player is pissed he only did X becuse X is crap... that gets to be boarder line insulting... but even that was not the last straw...

he ended multi encounters with his combo of attack with 3 or 4 attack ranged encounter power, drop a target, spend his action point use twin strike then use his power from his paragon path to spend a 2nd action point (goten from the killing of a non minnon) to gire 3 or 4 more shots...8-10 shots needing single digits to hit and dealing massive damage... dropping the whole fight.

he had a higher plus to hit then any player by multi points, he had more attacks in a round then any 2 players added togather, he had a better to damage bonus then anyone by 5 or 6 pts to the next highest... and he had a tie with the fighter for best AC, and a tie with the wizard for best ref and will... he had the second best fort.

he braged about being a one man party...

I personally wouldnt have accepted the mandated kukri thing, as its pretty much nothing but a DM mandated nerf for flavor purposes. Its a terribly designed weapon that loses 1 from accuracy for a middling upgrade in damage at the cost of a feat. I'm not even sure if its worth using as a standard weapon.

I agree infact I said I might train back to reg short sword...but then the game was just soo much fun

You're definately flushed 3 feats down the drain from an effectiveness perspective. There's nothing preventing you from calling your longsword a gladius and your shield a scutum, or using 2 short swords if you are the tempest fighting style. At the end of it though, if you're fine with your character, who cares? The trouble arises when you have a self/dm made weak character, and then want to bring everyone else down to your level.

well too be honnest I was still kick but, The slayer and ranger were as much weapons as anything in my hands... I was probly the most opt in the game

Aside from a few potions of healing, your weapon, armor and neck slots cover most of what it takes to do the job. Not every copper needs to be spent on the next +1. Is he even worried about underperforming? If you're DM'ing, throw him an extra item or something if he needs it. If you're a player, have everyone pitch in and buy/commission something for his character. Or better yet, go on a quest for something for him.

even if he is a little down, he is fun and always laughing... even if he is missing. We rarely notice until the DM asks "What are you useing for your sword? or What is your neck slot item?" MY fav answer was at high paragon getting ready to pic our epic destinies... he still had a +1 axe, + 2 yadd yadd leather armor, and no neck slot item...

That's like saying "no one can wear armor, because we're running a pirate game Enjoy your suck AC!"

see I have no problem with that idea... except that it woudl go like this:

DM Pirate game, so make characters accordingly
Player 1: Ok I will be a theif
Player 2: I want to be a fighter
Player 3: Wizard
then we wuld get to game and have player 2 describe his scale armor, and excution axe...

 

[Gryph]

It's actually weaker that way than with multiattacks. If he just had three consecutive attacks, it'd be stronger, because he could use the rest of the combo even if the first attack failed.

A bit. Since Backstab has to have CA before you can elect to use it and grants an additional +3 to hit, it's going to hit 95% of the time against a same level npc.

The free attack trigger is at normal CA to hit levels that's true, but it's a very accurate build so it doesn't lose much expected damage from the extra roles. And has higher expected damage than a PHB build using Encounter/AP/Daily for a nova, both raw and adjusted for hit percentage.


All that aside, the ability to nova every non-at-will attack/damage boost into 1 round is the real issue I have. It feels like it takes the typical action economy of 4e combat and bends it over a barrel. <shrug> YMMV and all that, though.

 

[Andor]

This means that you're going to make your rolls the majority of the time, and by doing so, you avoid any opportunity for the DM/GM to spur a side venture where assistance from an NPC will be required, unless he has already planned out such directions for the game to take.

You're also providing the GM the opportunity to have an NPC coming to you for your expertise, since you are clearly a world-renowned expert.

The GM giveth and the GM taketh away. Opportunities for roleplaying do not only come from suckage.

 

[Andor]

ok maybe I did not type it clear, or maybe you miss read it... he could with out fail out damage the other 4 players (one being a rouge, and one being a fighter) added togather.

Okay, I did not get that from your post. That degree of outshining does warrant steps. Although taking his level of kickassitude into account in your encounter design and simply doubleing the number of monsters would probably take care of it, since it doesn't sound like he can pull off that kind of cheese twice in one fight. They he can drop all the way down to 'normal' and the other players can get a chance to roll dice.

he braged about being a one man party...

That is prickish. Being effective is fine, asking the other PCs to hold your beer while you take care of buisiness is not.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

ok maybe I did not type it clear, or maybe you miss read it... he could with out fail out damage the other 4 players (one being a rouge, and one being a fighter) added togather. He ended multi encounters in a row on his own, by going first, and killing the entire encounter. He could do more in an encounters then others with dailys.

That seems really off somehow. I mean, rangers are pretty much top dog for damage, but they shoudlnt be THAT much higher without some kind of schenanigans. Is he just using all off action/minor action attacks, with frost cheese or something weird? Are the other guys just that under par (in which case, even level fights would be kind of hard). Granted, I dont have the whole numbers, but it seems like something is being factored incorrectly. If not, then yeah, I gotta side with you.

my solustion was to ask the guy way far a head to come back to were the others were... I don't want one person so far ahead that everyone else says "Why should we be here"

This is why it seems off somehow. If 4 damage (focus and bracers) are the difference between outdamaging the entire party combined at paragon, it seems weird to me.

ok, when Kurt was happy and danced around becuse for the first time in levels he felt good about his character I loved it, and so did the other players (minus 1 guess who) we all gave him high fives too.

Oh, I misread that. It was the rogue victory danging and the ranger being pissy? Yeah, that does suck.

 

[Hussar]

Kzach: (and anyone else who feels like chiming in) I have some examples I want your thoughts on, it may help with where the problem is.


example 1 (The tale of 2 strikers) /snip:

First off, it sounds like there needs to be some math auditing going on here just to make sure that everyone is actually adding things up the way they're supposed to. IME, this is often the first culprit whenever there's a huge disparity in power in the group.

But, if it actually is accurate, then yeah, the ranger needs to be toned down. The rogue is competent (at least based on what you just said) so the Ranger is powergaming and exploiting loop-holes. That's not groovy.

example 2 (the gladius and the kurkr) /snip

Well, it's always annoying when someone tells you how to build your character, particularly when they're right. But, again, is your character competent? Have you noticed any particular deficiencies - he's missing all the time, the damage he's doing is piddly, that sort of thing.

Heck, I'm currently playing a PHB 1 only fighter with a war pick. This is not optimised. But, it's a vicious warpick and I use a lot of the fighter burst powers to gain more attacks, and thus more crits. Sure I'm not a power house, but, I'm holding my own.

example 3 (the crit fisher) /snip

Totally groovy. Setting the baseline is part and parcel to character generation. When I ran The World's Largest Dungeon, I said anything goes because I wasn't going to be pulling any punches. I wanted people to bring combat monstrosities to the game because that's the kind of game it was going to be. OTOH, when I ran Savage Tide AP, we reined it in, took fairly reasonable point builds and everyone was on board with the idea of it being a different baseline.

Example 4 (Joe...oh joe)

Again, a few questions. Is Joe's choice to not buy any magic items affecting the party negatively? Is he lagging so far behind the rest of the group that he's ineffective? Or, is he picking up enough goodies in game to keep him in the game? And as was mentioned, is he bitching about it? Is anyone else at the table bitching about it?

It's one thing to make these decisions for yourself, but, when Bob's character gets killed because Joe's character is virtually useless, Bob tends to get a bit antsy.

When I have a Joe in the group, as a DM, I tend to just make sure that there's some goodies in the treasure that I know he'll grab onto and will keep him up with the joneses. He's a fighter that never buys anything? Well, ok, there's some magic armor and there just happens to be his specialized weapon in the treasure of the next few encounters. That sort of thing. Usually not a big deal.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Hi all -

If a DM knows his players and it's a reasonably good group of friends who hang out together regardless of gaming (yes, I know, what a qualifier) then I suggest one remedy.

DM creates the level one characters after the players write up a short backstory clearly answering three questions:

1. What is cool (strengths) about being your character?
2. What is less than wonderful (weaknesses) about being your character.
3. What is your character's life goal (either professionally or personally).

The first level character is what life threw at the character.

Then when it's time to level a character - do it at the table with the group making suggestions. The optimizers will suggest the "best" build. Those less inclined will make some interesting suggestions and the DM can answer questions about legalities.

As stated earlier this doesn't work with occasional groups or (some) casual groups but it probably will for long-standing friendly types.

The problem at its core is not optimization, but interpretation and building characters in a vacuum.

2c.
KB

 

[Hussar]

The problem at its core is not optimization, but interpretation and building characters in a vacuum.

Now this is something I do agree with. There is a tendency in many groups for people to treat their characters in a vacuum and not pay any attention to the group or the larger campaign. Particularly at chargen.

This is not to say that chargen should be done as groupthink and you get no control over your character. That's obviously taking things too far. But, stepping back, just a little bit and trying to envision your character as part of the group generally helps ameliorate a lot of the more egregious behavior.

However, that being said, KB, are you saying that the DM should make everyone's character for them?

 

[Pilgrim]

You're also providing the GM the opportunity to have an NPC coming to you for your expertise, since you are clearly a world-renowned expert.

The GM giveth and the GM taketh away. Opportunities for roleplaying do not only come from suckage.

No, not quite. Sure, you "could" but that's really a far stretch, and probably an instance that would only take place from discussion in a thread such as this. At the table, unless the GM has already planned such an encounter, say for a plot hook, there would be little to no reason for a GM to declare that an NPC is seeking them out.

In the case of the PCs seeking an NPC, they're doing so because the characters have failed to resolve an issue based off of the group's collective skills, so they seek help from an outside source.

The first instance is the product of planning, the second is a product of spontaneity. There is a difference.

Besides, NPCs have been hitting up PCs for help since, well level one, so in the grand scheme of things, having an "optimized" character really means jack. If the GM needs to get the characters involved in something, they'll do so regardless of how optimized they are.