Closet Optimizing

[LooseCannoneer]

Okay, I know you want someone to ask, so I'll do it.

What's the fifth rule?

[jedipotter]

{scrubbed}

[Greenish]

What's the fifth rule?

You're too obsessed with numbers, Real Roleplayers^TM don't go around counting things. Rocks fall, you die.

[Xerlith]

Am I the only one who saw the title of this thread and thought about how to optimize a closet? You could use magic to boost its hardness, line it with lead to block divinations, and maybe coat the interior with blue ice so that it doubles as a refrigerator.

Needs more haunt shifted undead Aleaxes.

[Flickerdart]

Am I the only one who saw the title of this thread and thought about how to optimize a closet? You could use magic to boost its hardness, line it with lead to block divinations, and maybe coat the interior with blue ice so that it doubles as a refrigerator.

Be an Urban Druid, which adds Small Animated Object to your list of animal companions. Select an ambulatory closet.

[LooseCannoneer]

{scrubbed}

Wait, what? What's this about air?

I roleplay. Anyone who's gamed with me knows that. I also approve of high strength for my fighters, high charisma for my bards, etc. I also will use a tiny bit of optimization-fu in groups that like high-optimization games. As I do both, I guess that I am a living example that you are WRONG!

Yes, I am alive. I'm not so much a cheating optimizer that I took the Necropolitan template in real life.

[Oneris]

{scrubbed}

I'm currently playing an Incantatrix in my game. Together with the Shadowcraft Mage, we can cast 9th level spells at only character level 9. I don't think I would be exaggerating if I said 80% of my time in the game is spent roleplaying in ways that do not take my class choice and abilities into account and that her character arc has so far been one of the most emotionally complex in the game.

[Aegis013]

Wait, what? What's this about air?

{scrubbed}

In regards to the OP, it's easy for people with good system mastery to have different expectations of characters than people with less. The new guy might think the "veteran warrior" with +4 to hit for 1d8+2 damage is pretty good, but the person with higher system mastery might expect a veteran warrior to at least be capable of fighting an Owlbear alone and winning, a measuring stick a newer player probably wouldn't even consider.

I agree with other posters, discuss what's too strong about your build with your DM, and tone it back. Also let him know countermeasures he can use, but in my experience, toning it back is going to be much more effective.

[LooseCannoneer]

Be an Urban Druid, which adds Small Animated Object to your list of animal companions. Select an ambulatory closet.

Closets aren't small, though. Maybe you should try to convince your GM to let you take it anyway, or maybe settle for a cupboard.

[IZ42]

I think that my answer got lost in the flood of conversation sparked.This isn't a "DM and I disagree, halp" problem, in fact I'm deliberately playing a Tier 4 (?) Character, a Goliath Brawler (Shield Champion)//Magitech Templar, which is still kinda strong the way I built it, and is at an okay level of power for the party. Nothing to do with disagreements between me and the DM. I appreciate you trying to give me advice, but it is unneeded for the discussion at hand.


Just so you are aware: My first character was a Human (reincarnated into an elf due to reasons and me making a poor decision) MoMS Hungry Ghost Monk using VoP ported over from 3.5. Stronger than you'd expect.

[Psyren]

{scrubbed}

I think that my answer got lost in the flood of conversation sparked.This isn't a "DM and I disagree, halp" problem, in fact I'm deliberately playing a Tier 4 (?) Character, a Goliath Brawler (Shield Champion)//Magitech Templar, which is still kinda strong the way I built it, and is at an okay level of power for the party. Nothing to do with disagreements between me and the DM. I appreciate you trying to give me advice, but it is unneeded for the discussion at hand.

So is the topic really just "have you ever made something that turned out stronger than you thought it would?"

That can easily happen with a new group; with a DM and party you've played alongside for awhile, you generally get a sense for what their optimization tolerance is.

I will admit that Pathfinder adds a new wrinkle, in that there are occasionally new classes, items, feats and spells that people misjudge at first blush and become a problem later. But a mature group takes this in stride.

[Seto]

Ok, I haven't read the whole thing, so I apologize if I'm touching something that was just debated. Important remark : my starting point here is that Optimization applies to the character concept as a whole, and saying that if a basic choice (such as class choice) is optimized and everything else is not, then the Character is optimized but just a little, has no meaning. If you disagree with that statement, we're not talking about the same thing and both our arguments can be valid without contradiction.

I just don't agree with statements such as

Unless you're picking feats and class levels at random, everyone is trying to build and play their character effectively (optimally). There's no such thing as "not optimizing".

(or the other ones that defended the same thesis).

I'd distinguish between "effectiveness", or "strategic choices" that aim at making your character good at what he wants to do, and "optimization" that, as the word indicates, aims at making your character the best possible character, second to none at what he wants to do.
Now, you can argue that everyone would like their character to be the best possible, that may be defensible. But it's really not a given. Besides, what also counts is the effort one is ready to put forth. Choosing good options is, well, something you do just because you want to play a strong character. To me, optimization is more of a thought exercise : of course you'll do it to have an awesome character, but it's already its own reward to know that you've spent a lot of effort to find ze right combination.

Optimization is a scale in that :
1- you can be good or bad at it (you're optimizing to the extent of your abilities)
2 - you can have self-imposed or group-imposed restrictions (optimizing with a character concept such as "a mediocre warrior that will not outshine others" is still optimizing).

But to me, taking Weapon Focus because it's simple to remember and gives an easily seen bonus, or going through 10 manuals to find the right feat just can't be said to be both optimizing, but to a different extent. You either are willing to spend the effort required to make the best character you can do or you're not.

[Greenish]

I'd distinguish between "effectiveness", or "strategic choices" that aim at making your character good at what he wants to do, and "optimization" that, as the word indicates, aims at making your character the best possible character, second to none at what he wants to do.

How do you define "best" here?

[atemu1234]

Ok, Optimization =/= trying to play the perfect character. You can run an optimized fighter, but it just won't be as good as a wizard would be. It's that kind of thinking that makes the mess.

A character can be optimized without being full-OP.

Also, the Stormwind Fallacy still applies to other arguments against optimization. There's no reason to not optimize, if you roleplay it and everyone still enjoys the game.

Certain people seem convinced that DMs should be at war with the PCs, and as soon as PCs start to grow in power, the DM should smite them. This shouldn't happen. The DM is as much a piece of the game as the player, and should be largely impartial.

[NichG]

Ignoring the definitional debate here and rephrasing the original question to be more general...

Yes, its pretty often that I encounter players who claim they're doing on thing but really are doing another. Sometimes its intentional social manipulation, or sometimes its just that the player isn't used to thinking about how they appear from the outside point of view. For example, I encountered a player who believed that he needed to have the strongest character at the table in order to feel that he 'kept up'. His character had an attack that dealt something like 10x the damage of what anyone else could manage, and when the DM nerfed it to be only a little bit more powerful than what the other characters could do, he would complain that it was too weak to bother with and things like that.

Similarly, I've had players who didn't realize e.g. that their character had the highest AC in the party and actually felt their AC was 'too low' or things along those lines. What happened was, e.g., they went into melee with an enemy and got hit once out of a bunch of attacks, whereas the ranged character would hang back and not be a target - so in their mind, they said 'I am getting hit more often than this other guy, so my AC is too low'. Meanwhile the other player might be thinking 'if that were me in melee, all of those attacks would have hit and I'd be paste!'. This kind of thing can lead to an arms race between players, which isn't the end of the world but its a bit annoying since it means you rush through the game and often leave the sweet spot sooner than you'd like.

You also get this a lot with justifying actions vs alignment, e.g. 'I'm not evil, I'm just pragmatic'.

Much of the time, people reason based on how they feel during play rather than trying to be objective and doing a third-party analysis of the situation as a whole before drawing their conclusions. Someone who weights failures more strongly than successes in their memory will always feel as though their character is weak because no matter how often their character succeeds, they mostly remember when the character fails.

[eggynack]

{scrubbed}

You are mistaken, primarily because you are incorrectly defining optimization. Optimization is not, after all, defined as "A thing done only by optimizers." Let's say you build a commoner, and you want him to be really bad at hitting stuff but reasonable at farming. Then, you might give said commoner a low strength score, say 8, full ranks in profession (farming), skill focus in that selfsame skill, and maybe a 10 or 12 in wisdom. This character, despite being likely unable to contribute in a significant way to any problem not related to farming, and actually possibly unable to contribute to a number of problems directly related to farming, would still have optimization behind it.

In particular, this character would be one optimized to be good at farming and bad at fighting. Is this character crazy optimized, or even significantly optimized? Definitely not. It's a character about as far away from fully optimized as one can theoretically be, though I can imagine one less optimized. By the same token, I can say the same about just about any character you can name. You chose to have a +1 instead of a +10? Well, then you're only optimized up to a +1 in that area, as opposed to a character with a +0, or a -2. You built a character to be worse than everyone at everything to a ridiculous degree? Well, then you optimized a character for that exact purpose, and if you want your claims of badness to hold, it's probably going to take some decent understanding of mechanics. Thus, as long as you are making conscious decisions about the game, and not just blindly pointing at character options until you have a legal character, you are optimizing, whether you like it or not.

[Seto]

How do you define "best" here?

Basically, as "given the character I want to play and the goal I'm trying to achieve by building them, I definitely couldn't have picked better mechanical options (although maybe I could have gone a slightly different route with an equivalent result)".

Ok, Optimization =/= trying to play the perfect character. You can run an optimized fighter, but it just won't be as good as a wizard would be. It's that kind of thinking that makes the mess.

A character can be optimized without being full-OP.

Optimization applies to the character concept as a whole
[...]
2 - you can have self-imposed or group-imposed restrictions (optimizing with a character concept such as "a mediocre warrior that will not outshine others" is still optimizing).

(emphasis added)

Also, the Stormwind Fallacy still applies to other arguments against optimization. There's no reason to not optimize, if you roleplay it and everyone still enjoys the game.

Certain people seem convinced that DMs should be at war with the PCs, and as soon as PCs start to grow in power, the DM should smite them. This shouldn't happen. The DM is as much a piece of the game as the player, and should be largely impartial.

That's true. There's no contradiction between optimizing and roleplaying. It's just that when someone basically says "everyone always optimizes", I get the impression that they're defending against a (real or perceived) accusation by saying "being an optimizer can't be a bad thing because it's intrinsic to building a character", when I'd say "although some optimizers let that concern be detrimental to roleplay, being an optimizer in itself isn't a bad thing, and can make up an interesting part of the game that not everyone experiences". To me, optimizing characters is interesting precisely because you don't necessarily do it everytime you build a character.

[Necroticplague]

I actually ended up with an issue like this in a game I tried out for. Didn't realize how much damage my character could push out until a rule argument (not even related to may character) came up and one person argued 'If you rule this* true, than that character has a damage in the mid-500's". Then, I ran the numbers, and realized that , if everything I had hit, my damage was in the low thousand range (something like "if all my damage rolls turn up ones, I do 1064 damage"). The DM actually complimented me on how well everything in my build synergized with each other. Still didn't get in to that game, though (though judging from reading the IC of those who did, the problem appears to be more related to "Dungeon crawling is hard when you're Huge and need to squeeze to fit in through doors wide enough to accommodate a horse").

*the rule in question was if each hand counted as a separate unarmed strike for Multiweapon Fighting. Rules pointed solidly to "No".

[Segev]

jedipotter, reread the block you quoted and then commented, "It's called 'just playing.'"

I do not think it says what you think it said.

It said that, if you choose your feats, class, etc. with any deliberation at all (say, "I'm playing a swashbuckler with a glib tongue; I'm putting ranks into Bluff,"), you're optimizing.

The implication of your reply to the quoted block is that the only way to "just play" is to literally randomly choose all of your feats, skills, class levels, and even your race. Further, by engaging in the Stormwind fallacy in the same breath, you state that anybody who does not randomly choose every aspect of their character, with no thought as to whether the mechanics reflect any aspect of the character, is not roleplaying.

So...is that what you meant to say? That the only way to roleplay is to "just play," and that this means you cannot choose your abilities based on your concept, but instead must choose them entirely at random?

[IZ42]

If at the end of your discussion with the DM you feel that your natural experience & intent toward the game is always going to be too strong, I recommend making optimised support characters. No DM can complain when all your ability is going toward everyone else wooping the opposition.

In the front line, see how far you can tweak warblades/crusaders with White Raven maneuvers for group bonuses & healing, Marshals, Tactical Soldiers etc.

or behind the line maxing out buffers like Halfling War Weaver mages, War Chanter bards, dual casters etc - or nauseating/stunning opponents so your allies can tear them apart.




You're still mentally stimulated - and balancing the party brilliantly.

Arghablarghl. This thread has nothing to do with DM/Player disagreement, staaaaaahp(and it's pathfinder with 3.5 okay, but I prefer using pathfinder classes, except maybe Magitech Templar, which is 3.5 homebrew). This thread is discussing thoughts and opinions on players who unintentionally end up at (much) higher levels of optimization than their party, and how the Playground feels about such things, as well as optimizing your closet.

[Nightraiderx]

I'd say probably not, I usually play a strong melee chargers for the most part
so it's very straight forward to what damage I needed. I have however, unintentionally misread spells
and thought they did more than I realized. I had a sorcerer one time that used Flaming Sphere incorrectly
and didn't realize it had stopped after it met the first target and cleared out a tunnel of goblins using it.

[Aegis013]

This thread is discussing thoughts and opinions on players who unintentionally end up at (much) higher levels of optimization than their party, and how the Playground feels about such things, as well as optimizing your closet.

Ending up at a much higher level of optimization than the group tends to mean a couple things in my experience:
1. I didn't have access/the ability to see, or even conceptually know, what the other players were building, and my system mastery is much higher than others, so what I think is a competent character, they view as an overpowered character.

2. The DM ok'd things that in hindsight even I think he shouldn't have.

3. The group are all totally new and the Wizard happened to try casting Evard's Black Tentacles instead of Fireball (or similar).

I've done the last one the most, personally. I played Wizards from 3.5's release, and it was unusual due to my inexperience, but I still resolved a number of encounters with a single spell, often throwing the DM for a loop.

I've done the first one a couple times while applying to PbP games here, admittedly. One application I didn't think to look at other submissions and match their appropriate op-level and ended up quite a bit ahead. When it was pointed out I withdrew my application because I didn't want to disrupt the game by causing power disparity. The second time I matched the power of the only other applicant with a character submission, but the following submitters were, in my humble opinion, very-low-op.

In meat-space based games, since I've become more experienced with these games, 3 pretty much never happens. I'm very inquisitive in order to prevent 1, and I'm very clear about the capabilities and intentions for things I want, helping to mitigate 2, though it still happens, or I perceive it to happen because most people who DM only do so for 1 session after promising an extensive campaign.

[The Insanity]

My optimizing is always concious and intended. I'm too stupid to make a good character accidently without realizing. IF, by some chance, I would make a good character eccidently, I'm perceptive enough that I would realize it pretty fast. So this situation could never come up for me.

[ahenobarbi]

Ignoring the definitional debate here and rephrasing the original question to be more general...

Yes, its pretty often that I encounter players who claim they're doing on thing but really are doing another. Sometimes its intentional social manipulation, or sometimes its just that the player isn't used to thinking about how they appear from the outside point of view. For example, I encountered a player who believed that he needed to have the strongest character at the table in order to feel that he 'kept up'. His character had an attack that dealt something like 10x the damage of what anyone else could manage, and when the DM nerfed it to be only a little bit more powerful than what the other characters could do, he would complain that it was too weak to bother with and things like that.

Similarly, I've had players who didn't realize e.g. that their character had the highest AC in the party and actually felt their AC was 'too low' or things along those lines. What happened was, e.g., they went into melee with an enemy and got hit once out of a bunch of attacks, whereas the ranged character would hang back and not be a target - so in their mind, they said 'I am getting hit more often than this other guy, so my AC is too low'. Meanwhile the other player might be thinking 'if that were me in melee, all of those attacks would have hit and I'd be paste!'. This kind of thing can lead to an arms race between players, which isn't the end of the world but its a bit annoying since it means you rush through the game and often leave the sweet spot sooner than you'd like.

In both cases players may have been right. Melee characters typically need much morze AC than ramged characters. Because ranged characters can not get hit by staying away. Meleeer can't do that (if they want to be effective).

First one is less clear but if rest of the group focuses on battlefield control, buffs and debuffs leaving actuall killing to the charakter it's perfectly ok for the PC to deal much morze damage than others.

[emeraldstreak]

Players who armsrace are stoopid.

Players who synergize are smart.

[(Un)Inspired]

Players who armsrace are stoopid.

Players who synergize are smart.

The a pretty bold absolute declaration. How can you prove that all players that do the former are stupid while those who do the later are smart?

I'm willing to grant that it's possible that some players may be stupid and some may be smart. From where does you certainty that this is the correct way to divide them derive?

[Oneris]

Players who armsrace are stoopid.

Players who synergize are smart.

Correction:
Players who arms-race are smart.

Players who synergize are smart.

Players who sabotage are stupid and should be kicked.

[jedipotter]

{scrubbed}

[Psyren]

"Arms-racing" is ill-advised because it will just prompt the DM to escalate further when he/she perceives there is no challenge to that player. This generally ends in either some players being left behind as their own optimization talents or their class features cannot keep up, or they all do keep up and the campaign becomes exponentially more complex until it falls apart, or both.

[eggynack]

{scrubbed}

Again, you are mistaken. Optimizing is a thing done by everyone.

{scrubbed}

Making a normal character involves optimizing. Making any character involves optimizing,

{scrubbed}

Yes, it is optimizing. Every character is optimized to do something. Doesn't really matter what that thing is.

{scrubbed}

See, you're tossing out all of these definitions, but they're utterly baseless. Optimizing just means making something better, generally at a particular thing. If the thing you're optimizing for is being completely impossible to kill, or if they thing you're optimizing for is farming kinda well, it's all still along the same spectrum. It doesn't really help that your definitions don't even really define hardcore optimizers. It's mostly unrelated to what it really means to build a character to the best of your ability, and is rather pointlessly offensive.