Minimizing and Maximizing

[cupkeyk]

And there are plot hogs too.

You don't have to gimp yourself to be a plot hog but ts a good starting point. Basically you derail your DM's campaign and push your own personal plot. f that cleric decided he was on a quest to find his faith again, okay? that will be something in the backburners. I hope you survive the way. But if the DM will have to rewrite his campaign to accommodate you, it's better off to kill you.

Honestly, plot hogs derail the campaign. Weak FLUFFY characters are the worst plot hogs.

[Roog]

It's true, though; I really never have seen anyone deliberately handicap his character in order to roleplay better.

Players in my group do this every so often, but in a non-disruptive way.

We generally play characters with reasonable levels of power/competence but sometimes a player will take a break by playing a weak character. This character is usually only played for a week or two; to add something extra to the story, as a comedy break, or to simply give the player a chance to have fun being useless for a while.

For example, if a player had a 8th level character die and would normally start a new 7th level character, they may ask the GM if they can play a low level Expert (say a guide) for a while before starting to play their new 7th level character.

[kamikasei]

For example, I was a LE palladin who traveled to Celestia to convince a celestial paragon to give me some of his blood (for ritual purposes). He of course refused, and asked me to leave. So, I gave sly hints about a plot to destroy the heavens (which was true), but still no. Later, I was redeemed, and gave the paragon his blood back. As a NG "risen" palladin, I was near worthless, and had to often run or seek aid during battles. It was only after helping the paragon that I became a NG palladin (I used Fax's variant which is awesome). During my "risen" stage, I was weak, and largely useless, but the party didn't abandon my character and the DM didn't kill me graciously. That was part of the reason I was truly redeemed actually.

SO why do people see deliberatly gimping thyself as a bad thing?

Well, that's not really a player gimping his character; that's a (presumably) decent character who suffered misfortune during the game and was weakened temporarily. It's no different really to a character getting cursed and the party sticking with him to help get it lifted. It's quite different to a player coming to the table at the start of a game with a character that just plain can't pull its weight in any regard (and being a nigh-useless combatant who has extremely useful out-of-combat abilities that will actually see the light of day during the campaign is pulling your weight, just to clarify), or having his wizard with 8 strength take Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword and Monkey Grip halfway through the campaign.

I've seen many players building, for example, "perfect killing machines" fighters, but they had mostly 2 types.

The Perfect Killing Machine with personality and MinMax (see Goblins when you have the chance). What makes them diferent? Well the first one is build over the personality and story developed by the player in order to roleplay a good character, the second one is created with the "DM - You see the Barman, what you do? MinMax Player - EXPERIENCE!!! *hack n' slash*" idea in mind. Can you tell the diference?

What always gets to me is the idea of playing one of those ridiculously focused charge-on-gryphon-back-for-MASSIVE-DAMAGE types, the (presumably) theoretical exercises who don't actually have near-infinite power, just an extraordinarily limited build that does precisely one thing well. Roleplaying a Batman wizard isn't that hard because it jibes with how you'd see a highly-intelligent, learned magic-user operating, but what realistic fighter would rely so much on one single tactic? I do wonder whether anyone actually tries to use those builds, misled by the fact that none of their stats read "high as you like".

[slexlollar89]

kamikasei, you are probably going to laugh a lot, but I have played a sorcerer with a monkey gripped sword (fullblade!) halfway through a campaign because the goliath fighter used one and slew a dragon (a weak one, but still, it was awesome) in a single hit. My character was impressed and decided to focus on his "elegant swordsmanship". He stayed a sorcerer, (I though about Eldritch Knight) for the remainder of the campaign, and refused to use his magic unless it was to boost his stats and swing his sword. I even had Tenser's Transformation cast on the sword so He could use his Cha modifier instead of Str for damage, but he was never able to hit anything exept a dire wolf and a bandit's horse. He was a great character, but nigh worthles in terms of power.

Also, the character in my sig (he's a homebrew warlock class I use) is a great RP character, but he can't do much unless it i for himself, and he is very weak even at low levels because of his vows.

[Bosh]

And there are plot hogs too.

You don't have to gimp yourself to be a plot hog but ts a good starting point. Basically you derail your DM's campaign and push your own personal plot. f that cleric decided he was on a quest to find his faith again, okay? that will be something in the backburners. I hope you survive the way. But if the DM will have to rewrite his campaign to accommodate you, it's better off to kill you.

Honestly, plot hogs derail the campaign. Weak FLUFFY characters are the worst plot hogs.

You obviously haven't seen the horror that is the munchkin plot hog, especially those with insanely high bluff and/or stealth skills.

[Arbitrarity]

You obviously haven't seen the horror that is the munchkin plot hog, especially those with insanely high bluff and/or stealth skills.

Munchkins: Whatever you can do, we can do better. It's a science!