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<blockquote data-quote="OnlineDM" data-source="post: 5647396" data-attributes="member: 90804">My take: <a href="http://onlinedm.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/balanced-power-parties-are-ideal/" target="_blank">Balanced power parties are ideal</a>.If you have a party that's all similarly optimized, there's no problem at all. I imagine if you're playing in a competitive game like a convention delve or the upcoming Lair Assault program for 4e, no one will complain about any level of optimization because the goal is to be as optimized as possible for the task at hand.But if you're playing with a party of PCs that are more &quot;average&quot; in power level, put together by players who DON'T spend hours with the Character Builder and find all of the cool combinations, your character is going to outshine theirs. That leads to a less-fun game where either the challenges are trivially easy thanks to the optimized characters, or the challenges are reasonable for the optimized characters while the non-optimized characters either die or flee or take cover.A party with an imbalanced power level (at least in 4e, which is the game I know best by far) is going to be less fun than one where the PCs all have a reasonably similar ability to contribute to the party's success.Edit: To be clear, nowhere did I say anything about the ability of optimizers versus non-optimizers to roleplay. I was trying to answer the question in the thread title. I don't assume that optimizers can't roleplay any more than I assume that non-optimizers can.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="OnlineDM, post: 5647396, member: 90804"] My take: [URL="http://onlinedm.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/balanced-power-parties-are-ideal/"]Balanced power parties are ideal[/URL]. If you have a party that's all similarly optimized, there's no problem at all. I imagine if you're playing in a competitive game like a convention delve or the upcoming Lair Assault program for 4e, no one will complain about any level of optimization because the goal is to be as optimized as possible for the task at hand. But if you're playing with a party of PCs that are more "average" in power level, put together by players who DON'T spend hours with the Character Builder and find all of the cool combinations, your character is going to outshine theirs. That leads to a less-fun game where either the challenges are trivially easy thanks to the optimized characters, or the challenges are reasonable for the optimized characters while the non-optimized characters either die or flee or take cover. A party with an imbalanced power level (at least in 4e, which is the game I know best by far) is going to be less fun than one where the PCs all have a reasonably similar ability to contribute to the party's success. Edit: To be clear, nowhere did I say anything about the ability of optimizers versus non-optimizers to roleplay. I was trying to answer the question in the thread title. I don't assume that optimizers can't roleplay any more than I assume that non-optimizers can. [/QUOTE]

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