Quote Originally Posted by Elfstone View Post
I must say the replies here have been... Extremely amusing. To say the least.

I think the biggest thing is that some people think optimization is bad? Being the best you can be is no worse that making a class solely on a ridiculous concept(e.g a kobold farmer with NPC classes in a campaign with CoDzilla)

Thinking optimization is bad is just not being able to DM to higher standards.
Well, I'm so happy that I "amused" you, but I never said optimization is inherently bad. I said that no one I play with optimizes the way that would be required for this class to be balanced. There is a difference between believing there is something wrong with the concept of optimization, and simply having players that don't do it.

As far as it making me a "bad DM," I have better things to do with my time than learn how to optimize characters beyond the level needed to challenge my players. It does not make you a better DM to be able to optimize characters heavily. It makes you a person who has wasted a lot of time on a skill that is unnecessary.

I'm sure that in some play environments, this class is perfectly balanced with other characters that see play. It would not be in my game. That is not the fault of the creator, it is clearly what she intended. She intended a class that could, out-of-the-box, compete with an optimized version of another class. Since those optimized versions will never come up in my game, however, this class has no place in my game. Once I realized that, I acknowledged that my method of gaming is no better than hers and moved on.

But the stereotype that anyone who doesn't optimize to your level is only interested in playing a kobold farmer is a strawman and an insult. It's also the perfection fallacy; if I don't optimize as much as humanly possible, I must be completely uninterested in mechanical effectiveness. But that's not true; it is possible to have some interest in it, just not enough to learn all the tricks that the internet has come up with to break the system.

So I kindly ask you to avoid any more derailing of Jarian's thread with sideways attacks on my largely unrelated viewpoints.

(I also apologize to her for derailing myself, but I didn't appreciate coming back into a thread and seeing people laughing at me for holding opinions on play style that aren't the same as their own.)