Why hate optimization?

[Crake]

Thread asks why someone would hate optimization, someone who hates optimization responds, in less than one page the OP and more have dogpiled them about how they're wrong and need to change their mind.

Well done gents.

I especially like how right after I told Crake off for being antagonistic and how shouting about the stormwind fallacy didn't mean anything, his very next post continued shouting about the stormwind fallacy while accusing the very person who the thread should be welcoming of being argumentative (hey, did you know that accusing someone of trolling is itself trolling under the forum rules?). If you don't want to argue then stop arguing, let the man say his peace in the thread that directly asked for it without directly contradicting him. Though seeing the OP immediately go from reasonable to straight opposition is right up there too.

I'm pretty sure that's why martixy's saying this thread is the same as all the others (because it is).

(Not to say some of you aren't doing a fine job, you lot just keep being fine).

I actually never noticed your post, cause I noticed darth ultron's response and responded to that without looking at much else. To respond to it now: The main issue I had with what darth ultron was saying was that he was framing it as fact, not experience. And honestly, in my experience, there is actually little to no correlation between a player optimizing and a player lacking roleplay. If anything, I've noticed an opposite trend, as players gain more system mastery, they also gain more confidence in roleplaying, but I believe that to be correlation, not causation; as a player gets more experienced at the game in general, their competence in all aspects of the game increase.

[Pleh]

I don't hate optimizers. I play with too many of them I like very much for that to be possible.

I do find it grating at times when trying to prepare and run a more standard adventure for them, only to find out they should be considered several levels higher than their sheet would indicate due to game breaking optimization.

I then start looking for what few weaknesses they do have so my only method for challenging them isn't stuck with raising the CR (and making XP and treasure rewards all wonky).

When I'm a PC alongside them, I just try to be Char Op enough to tag along.

Optimization is just a tool, neither good nor bad. It's all about how you use it. Most bad uses for optimization are really just runaway competitive spirit that gets a little more aggressive than is helpful for an essentially cooperative game. It's defended as being necessary to overcome challenges, but that can't be true unless the DM is equally aggressive and competitive with their challenges. Sure, there can be mistakes in DMing leading to unintentionally steep challenges, but I've always felt it was more a thing for the DM to retcon unreasonable difficulty than players to be ready for every possible thing.

[RoboEmperor]

I think you are pretty close to the mark here... And I actually like your bluntness. However...

One of my best friends actually like the feeling of playing a low level simple game. For him, that hits the spirit/mood of stories like LoTR... and he enjoys kicking in the door as a level 1... where checks fail and stuff like that... and I agree with him most of the time. He is a very experienced player and a great DM, who himself have build some super complex powerful builds... So he can, he often chooses not to, but he very rarely misses his mark in terms of matching the overall optimization level of the party and setting... Both as a DM and as a player...

So even though I think that you are right in the majority of things... my friend seem to not fit your conclusions! :)

He fits under "likes simple games" in my conclusion, which is conclusion2. Skilled people who hate optimizers are people who like simple games. There's nothing wrong with this and I respect this and I respect people who prefer simple games.

[Yahzi]

Like what is actually the point in hating it?

The mechanics are there to let us tell a story. The mechanics should not be the story.

It's the difference between reading a novel and critiquing a novel's grammar. Yes, of course you have to have decent grammar in your novel; but the grammar isn't the point.

Also, over-optimizing just makes the DM's job harder. In a world with INT 30+ wizards, you are not the first person to think of that combo. Every time you invent a new trick, the DM has to explain why that neat trick hasn't already taken over the whole world.

[Melcar]

He fits under "likes simple games" in my conclusion, which is conclusion2. Skilled people who hate optimizers are people who like simple games. There's nothing wrong with this and I respect this and I respect people who prefer simple games.

Might be right... but he doesn't hate optimization, he just likes simple games more, but its really more of a everything in equal amounts and everything has its time and place for him... He DMs both a highly optimized game and a simple game, and has both optimized and simple characters... I think however, that if he had to choose one game for the rest of his life it would be the simple one...

EDIT: Or more precisely, he would choose a low level game... not necessarily a simple!

[gooddragon1]

After kind of thinking about it in this thread, I had an epiphany:[ U]Tier is an indication of how much you have to optimize to have an effective character[/U]
Read that again, just to really let it sink in.

New players don't understand that. They think that the higher the tier, the more complex and hard the character becomes to play, when the inverse is true. Tier one characters are inherently effective, so the amount of optimization you need is very little. It becomes cosmetic at that point. I CAN take toughness for all of my feats for a tier one class, and honestly? They will become better for it. They have a more effective chassis. Now at low level, you can still get TPK'd in a all tier 1 party like it was nothing, IF you don't know the little tricks for low level survival, but once you understand the best choices for survival low level, it's cake.

So really again, that maxim kind of rings. The fact is, optimization is NOT really something tier 1 classes have to necessarily concern themselves with with. If I spend all of my feats on shenanigans for a cleric, at the end of the day, at level 20, that is still a cleric. If I DON'T pick natural spell for a druid, and just pick more trap feats, it's completely fine, because in the end, he can still fall back on all of the class features that can carry them.

The explanation sounds good too. Though I still don't like having to prepare or think about all the possible spells involved in tier 2.

[quark12000]

Well, I just couldn't do that. I'll have to stick to the three core books that I have.

You're basically only using 3% of available options... why omg why? The later stuff printed is actually more balanced than the CORE. Also having direct classes and options makes "optimizations" less necessary!

I don't really understand the question. Why only use the books I have? Um, because they're the only books I have and can't afford to buy out of print stuff.

[AnimeTheCat]

I personally don't take issue with optimization/optimizers. I often feel at odds with them on this site, but I can attribute that to:

1) not clearly explaining exactly what it is I'm trying to do.

Spoiler: Explaination

Show

I often feel like I'm being very clear on what I'm trying to do, but I've noticed something about that too. When I am incredibly clear as to what i'm intending, such as explaining a character concept, explicitly stating what I don't want, and including available resources, I get hardly any response. It's discouraging to say the least.

When I'm less clear, so that I at least get some response, the response tends to be "You should play [inster TOB class/Inster Full Casting class]" and then going further to explain how to warp spells and other schenanigans to morph something into a warped view of what I was intending.

I don't think it comes from a bad place, but I think many people that frequent this particular forum tend to have a similar train of thought and due to that some newcomers to the forum may see these things repeted in chorus and think it's the only possible way, or even the norm.

What I've realized is that the way I play is radically different from the way others play. For example, in this thread I listed my "build" for wild empathy and then ended the post with "Am i missing anything else to further bolster Wild Empathy at level 1 (I know about the +2 synergy bonus for 5 ranks in Handle Animal) or does that about cover it?" Clearly that was a post about optimizing wild empathy at level 1, but the thread divulged into a bunch of things that weren't that. In fact, none of the people who responded even made mention to anything further that I could do except the first post about traits and flaws. This is a case of both of my gripes where I thought I was being pretty specific, but the only things mentioned were unavailable or otherwise non-requested bits of information.

This is a gripe in general abou the forums, and less about optimization I suppose, but is incredibly relatable to many threads I see on optimization.

I suppose what I would see as a "fix" (if there is such a way to fix the internet... lol) would be to have the experienced individuals create something of a template for newcomers to use when requesting help on their character. Have it include a vision, must haves, must not haves, available content, etc. Something to be used as a resource so that people needing/wanting help aren't just bombarded with "Play X caster" "Do this build" "Lol noob" nonsense. If people are complaining about it in this thread, it must be happening to someone somehwere, so to shurk it off as something that doesn't exist or doesn't happen is rude to say the least.

2) Just... the internet... It's hard enough for me to articulate my point in person, let alone through text on a screen.

I think what would help everyone is this:
- If you are seeking assistance, be as complete as possible and be sure to include what you want and do not want
- If you are seeking to provide assistance, ensure you know what the individual seeking assistance is looking for before jumping to conclusions. Sure, this will take longer than just posting what you want to tell them to do, but it will help the individual learn and will help them to have better experiences with optimization as opposed to harsh or negative experiences. This also gives the individual requesting assistance the chance to catch something if they forgot about it in their original post or if concepts/themes/resources changed.

I know some people already do this, but if as a community we all do this, I feel like things could go a bit smoother and individuals like Darth Ultron can have better experiences with optimization and understand it as a process for making your roleplaying desires reflected in in-game mechanics. Ultimately, that is the purpose of optimization. Make your character mechanically do what you thematically want it to, not to break the game (unless that's the game you're playing in, but even then you thematically want your character to break the game so... circular reasoning).

[Darth Ultron]

The core dice mechanics are prone to be very "swingy" (*), so you're expected to find ways to even the odds in your favor to counter this. If a character is supposed to be consistently good or at least above average at some tasks, then you must start stacking the odds in your favor, mostly by enforcing the mechanical side of it.

Except you need to stop and step back. You say it is swingy and you are expected to find ways to even the odds. Like your being forced to do it, against your will. Like, what, the rule book is possessing you, or something.

And, again, why *must* a character always *have* to be good or above average? Is there some reason a character can not be anything else?

"Player Empowerment" overrides the "Mother May I?"-style of gm´ing by giving the players the tools to announce an action and possible resolve it on their own without needing any gm interference. Yes, that means that "Perform (Comedy)" can be resolved mechanically without the player having to be funny, but it´s also easy to weave it into the ongoing narrative.

Guess this is part of the whole Everyone Collective that bows down and follows the Almighty Rules. The beyond wacky idea that a player will say ''sorry DM, my character does X and page 77 says so and you can't do anything, hahahahaha!" And I do get there are wacky DM's that roll over and just say ''yes, player, all hail the rules''. Though, any even average DM can just say whatever they want to have happen in the game, and yes ignore the rule on page 77.

A character with 11 charisma will be midly funny at the best of times. 30 charisma is excessive to be sure, but a decent charisma score does help. If you're going to let players out play their ability scores then what's the point of having them to begin with?

I very much agree that a player should role play out their characters ability scores. Though I think a player should role play out all their ability scores, both high and low and everywhere in between. And this is where the optimizer problem comes in: they can only roll play high ability scores. They don't even have low ability scores, other then their official dump stat, but that will always be in a useless ability for the character(what a shock).

just trolling. That and the fact that your entire post basically is just stormwind fallacy after stormwind fallacy.

Sure is amazing how this 'hot air myth' not only means your right always, but you refuse to even talk about it.

Except no one is saying that they must have 30 charisma to roleplay a funny character.

No one except the optimizer. The optimizer can't role play, so they want to roll play to obscure that fact.

Optimization does not preclude role-playing. Role-playing is independent of game mechanics, and in some cases, a mechanical choice gives you an idea about how to role-play your character. (Also, I've never seen an optimizer try to claim they need 100 hp to be funny or anything remotely similar.)

This is true of any non optimizing player or ''normal player''. The problem is the optimizer not being able to accept ''my character might fail at something some of the time'' and ''I must win the game!"

Hearing Darth Ultron, I get the impression that anyone who can hit the broad side of a barn is a "demigod of swords". Someone who doesn't hit the broad side of a barn is then a "master swordsman".

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if something like max-ranking a skill goes against DU's views of a good character.

The problem is, for a level appropriate encounter:

Normal: the master swordsman should hit roughly half the time.

Optimizer: The Super Duper Master Swordman must hit EVERY time! pew pew!

[Florian]

@Darth Ultron:

Because were talking about a game system that doesn't do gradients but can only generate a "pass" or "fail" binary result, starting with a d20 vs DC 10 (so 50% chance) and going upwards from there. IMHO its perfectly fine to suck or outright fail at things, but it´s pretty bad to suck and fail at things that your character is supposedly good at, which should be reflected by the results of your rolls. (No, I don't expect my Wizard to be good at hitting things, that'd be absurd, but I expect my Wizard to be good at knowing things, being a gentleman and a scholar....)

And nah, its really more about reducing the need for gm judgment calls and shifting a lot of them over to the general rules. The goal is to provide for an overall smoother gameplay, as not everything has to be judged on the fly or discussed. But yeah, RAW fetishism can lead to very.. odd... results and people, especially on this board, are overdoing it with the whole empowerment thing.

Edit: Look at game systems that work differently and you get different player reactions.

[Jormengand]

Guess this is part of the whole Everyone Collective that bows down and follows the Almighty Rules. The beyond wacky idea that a player will say ''sorry DM, my character does X and page 77 says so and you can't do anything, hahahahaha!" And I do get there are wacky DM's that roll over and just say ''yes, player, all hail the rules''. Though, any even average DM can just say whatever they want to have happen in the game, and yes ignore the rule on page 77.

Have you tried free-form? What's the point of playing a game with rules if you're going to ignore them?

The problem is, for a level appropriate encounter:

Normal: the master swordsman should hit roughly half the time.

Optimizer: The Super Duper Master Swordman must hit EVERY time! pew pew!

Now this is how I know you haven't read any of the rulebooks.

Let's go down the monsters on the SRD. Aboleth, CR 7, 16 AC. Fighter with 18 STR and 7 BAB, with no relevant feats (and really, what fighter has no relevant feats) hits on a 5, 80% of the time. Aboleth mage, AC 18, CR 17. Wizard with STR 12 ("Not even a real swordsman") hits on a 9, 60% of the time. Fighter with STR 8 ("Pretty rubbish swordsman") hits on a 2. Achairai, mediocre swordsman hits 50% of the time, allip, if the fighter could actually hit it at all with its incorporeality, he'd hit on an 8 (65%). If you give the fighter a decent sword he should be hitting all the angels more than half the time (the solar he can hit more than half the time anyway), he can barely miss most of the higher-level animated objects, and so forth. With no more optimisation than "Hmm, if I want to be good with a sword maybe some strength would be good", he's hitting more than half the time on most enemies. This isn't even accounting for weapon focus or anything.

Even a mediocre swordsman is hitting more than half the time. And, well, no duh, because every miss is a round where the player is doing nothing. A swordsman who puts in even a modicum of effort will indeed be hitting almost all the time. He will have a nearly 100% success rate at his own job, heaven forbid!

Meanwhile the wizard is casting magic missiles which never miss since level 1.

[tadkins]

I have a mixed relationship with optimizing.

On one hand, I like to build as an effective character as possible. I don't like feeling powerless and so I try to get some optimization in there.

On the other hand, from what I've learned on these boards over the years, if I'm not playing something like a god wizard or a CoDzilla, there's always that slightly nagging feeling that I'm doing it wrong. If I want to deviate from that in the least; playing a wizard/archer gish, a beguiler, or heaven forbid a pure martial class, then I am already not optimized and am doing it wrong.

[Arbane]

After kind of thinking about it in this thread, I had an epiphany:[ U]Tier is an indication of how much you have to optimize to have an effective character[/U]
Read that again, just to really let it sink in.

Yep.
The joke I heard is that the tier number is the number of different sourcebooks it takes to make a passable character of that class.

And, again, why *must* a character always *have* to be good or above average? Is there some reason a character can not be anything else?

Because outside of Paranoia or Kobolds Ate My Baby, I suspect most RPers like playing competent characters. I personally think it's good roleplaying to not want to die, which is what a steady regimen of failure often gets you in a violent setting. It's also often good roleplaying, in a high-risk situation, to not want to have to drag along Gilligan.

If we really crave failure, humiliation, and suffering, that's what we have the dice for.

[Scots Dragon]

*snip*

I think this gets at a kernel of my problem with most optimisation advice. It's not so much that people talk about building characters that are powerful in their advice, it's that people talk about building characters that have almost no resemblance at all to answering the question being asked and which more or less just hijack the entire thing to talk about their favourite feat chain or prestige class combination that might only be tangentially related to what's being talked about.

If at all. I think we're going to need a new phrase to go alongside the Stormwind and Oberoni fallacies.

I'm not going to name it after myself, especially since I've been wanting to change this username for ages, but the vague definition is 'whenever the advice being given on a requested optimisation topic is completely and utterly irrelevant to the question being asked'.

[Malimar]

After kind of thinking about it in this thread, I had an epiphany: Tier is an indication of how much you have to optimize to have an effective character
Read that again, just to really let it sink in.

New players don't understand that. They think that the higher the tier, the more complex and hard the character becomes to play, when the inverse is true. Tier one characters are inherently effective, so the amount of optimization you need is very little. It becomes cosmetic at that point. I CAN take toughness for all of my feats for a tier one class, and honestly? They will become better for it. They have a more effective chassis. Now at low level, you can still get TPK'd in a all tier 1 party like it was nothing, IF you don't know the little tricks for low level survival, but once you understand the best choices for survival low level, it's cake.

So really again, that maxim kind of rings. The fact is, optimization is NOT really something tier 1 classes have to necessarily concern themselves with with. If I spend all of my feats on shenanigans for a cleric, at the end of the day, at level 20, that is still a cleric. If I DON'T pick natural spell for a druid, and just pick more trap feats, it's completely fine, because in the end, he can still fall back on all of the class features that can carry them.

I was initially compelled by this point, but then I realized, no, it is often (but not always) not true. The most effective out-of-the-box no-optimization-needed characters are the three Tome of Battle classes (which are all t3 IIRC), whereas wizards are crap on a stick without a bit of effort put into optimizing them.

I'm a half-competent optimizer, though I often deliberately eschew the most obviously powerful options, and the one wizard I've played is extremely weaksauce -- though part of that is she's still level 2, and wizards don't start being even potentially boss until at level 5 or 7 or so. Even druids, which on paper you'd think are strong without any thought, are easy to play extremely poorly (see the legendarily unoptimized playtest druid, or literally every druid I've ever seen in actual play except one -- druid is just too complicated, has too many moving parts, for a newbie to use one to even minimal effectiveness). Low-to-mid-tier rogues, warlocks, and dragonfire adepts can do decent fistsful of dice of damage right out of the box (people scoff at their "subpar" damage, but I scoff at those scoffers) and, as much as we like to pretend otherwise, damage is a huge part of the game and most parties don't contain uberchargers with DPR in the thousands. I'm playing a sorcerer whose most effective contribution to the party is casting Mythic Enlarge Person on the fighters (aside from once in a long while one-shotting a squad of salamanders with a Mythic Coldball). I'm playing a low-level psion with desperately limited PP/day that makes him the least effective party member in a group of can-fight-all-day-without-a-rest ostensibly "low-tier" (aside from the highly optimized cleric) characters. I'm playing a cleric who didn't bother taking DMM and is contributing the least out of all the highly-optimized party who are mostly t2-3.

Yes, much of this is anecdata, but it's very consistent across my experience that optimization floor (how little you have to optimize to have an effective character) is divorced from tier. If tier represents anything relevant to this point, it represents optimization ceiling.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I think this gets at a kernel of my problem with most optimisation advice. It's not so much that people talk about building characters that are powerful in their advice, it's that people talk about building characters that have almost no resemblance at all to answering the question being asked and which more or less just hijack the entire thing to talk about their favourite feat chain or prestige class combination that might only be tangentially related to what's being talked about.

If at all. I think we're going to need a new phrase to go alongside the Stormwind and Oberoni fallacies.

I'm not going to name it after myself, especially since I've been wanting to change this username for ages, but the vague definition is 'whenever the advice being given on a requested optimisation topic is completely and utterly irrelevant to the question being asked'.

I think it's called "the internet." That said...

I think what would help everyone is this:
- If you are seeking assistance, be as complete as possible and be sure to include what you want and do not want
- If you are seeking to provide assistance, ensure you know what the individual seeking assistance is looking for before jumping to conclusions. Sure, this will take longer than just posting what you want to tell them to do, but it will help the individual learn and will help them to have better experiences with optimization as opposed to harsh or negative experiences. This also gives the individual requesting assistance the chance to catch something if they forgot about it in their original post or if concepts/themes/resources changed.

This is the sort of thing I was suggesting on page 1: we should try to have a semi-standard set of questions for people asking for help, to try to identify their comfort level with optimization stuff.

I wonder if it would be possible to develop (and have a mod sticky) a standard-issue "character help request" form, to help fine-tune responses in ways that people might not know to ask about. Something like:

• What sources are available?
• How many different sources are you willing to use in one build?
• How willing are you to re-flavor material, bend role-playing requirements, and so on?
• How mechanically complicated a character are you looking for?
• How powerful a character are you looking for-- one who struggles with similar-level/CR monsters, one on equal footing with them, one who can handle monsters several levels higher than expected, or one who can handle monsters many levels higher than expected?
• What's your tolerance for "technically legal" stuff-- do you want to avoid anything weird-looking, stick to things where the end result is logical/not too strong, or does anything go?

[Venger]

beautifully said, someonenoone11, all that is correct.

The mechanics are there to let us tell a story. The mechanics should not be the story.

It's the difference between reading a novel and critiquing a novel's grammar. Yes, of course you have to have decent grammar in your novel; but the grammar isn't the point.

Also, over-optimizing just makes the DM's job harder. In a world with INT 30+ wizards, you are not the first person to think of that combo. Every time you invent a new trick, the DM has to explain why that neat trick hasn't already taken over the whole world.

you should play with darth ultron

[Darth Ultron]

Because were talking about a game system that doesn't do gradients but can only generate a "pass" or "fail" binary result, starting with a d20 vs DC 10 (so 50% chance) and going upwards from there.

What game are you talking about? Not 3.5E D&D, right?

Because lets take 3.5E D&D. Say on round one you roll and your character misses....does the whole game world explode? Well, no, not in a normal game. In a normal game the player can try again the next round or do something else. So every round, every couple minutes of real time, the player can roll an attack again...or try to do something else.

And nah, its really more about reducing the need for gm judgment calls and shifting a lot of them over to the general rules. The goal is to provide for an overall smoother gameplay, as not everything has to be judged on the fly or discussed. But yeah, RAW fetishism can lead to very.. odd... results and people, especially on this board, are overdoing it with the whole empowerment thing.

Except in a normal game a DM will have to make dozens of judgment calls. It is nice to think that somehow ''the rules'' cover everything...but that is just silly.

Just to make certain I'm not reading this wrong: you are saying that someone who practices theoretical and/or practical optimization cannot be interested in the ROLE aspects of the game, but only the mechanical aspects, right?

No, i'm saying most: not all. It is more like you already have plenty of players that hate or dislike role playing and the players that love roll playing. And the rules lawyer players and the aggressive ''it is me vs the DM'' type player. All those types of players are the types that became optimizers. So the vast majority of optimizers are all ready from the hate or don't want to role play types of players.

What does "a funny personality" have to do with hp? This sounds absolutely absurd, making me suspect that you've completely misunderstood what someone has said. And exactly what makes you believe this is how "optimizers" think?

I agree most optimizers are absurd. They will demand things like having maximum hit points, no matter what. It is an easy tell of an optimizer.

Firstly, a blanket statement like “it ruins the game” is clearly untrue.

Well, the answer is why I hate otimization.

If your roleplaying a powerhungry wizard, you are going to take the things that make you better at surviving and killing your enemies so you have less competition. And that’s in itself is a totally valid goal or character concept.

I agree, but note that does not say anything about optimization. And this is another perfect tell for an optimizer. A normal player will take a feat that fits a character concept/goal even if that feat is not ''the super duper best most awesome mechanical roll playing feat ever''. An optimizer won't.

I have never heard this argument before, but see my above point. If becoming a great swordsman or wrestler is what your fighter’s life, HP is probably a good thing. It seems to me you are equating being good at something mechanically as being bad at roleplaying… again not true at all!

Again a normal gamer can role play no matter the character, character mechanics or rules. It is just the optimizer that has the problem.

And note we are not talking about becoming a great swordsman, as that does imply that the character has to be a ''not great'' swordman to start...and the optimizer won't accept that. They must have the highest everything for their character ''now''.

Now this is how I know you haven't read any of the rulebooks.

Let's go down the monsters on the SRD. Aboleth, CR 7, 16 AC. Fighter with 18 STR and 7 BAB, with no relevant feats (and really, what fighter has no relevant feats) hits on a 5, 80% of the time. Aboleth mage, AC 18, CR 17. Wizard with STR 12 ("Not even a real swordsman") hits on a 9, 60% of the time. Fighter with STR 8 ("Pretty rubbish swordsman") hits on a 2. Achairai, mediocre swordsman hits 50% of the time, allip, if the fighter could actually hit it at all with its incorporeality, he'd hit on an 8 (65%). If you give the fighter a decent sword he should be hitting all the angels more than half the time (the solar he can hit more than half the time anyway), he can barely miss most of the higher-level animated objects, and so forth. With no more optimisation than "Hmm, if I want to be good with a sword maybe some strength would be good", he's hitting more than half the time on most enemies. This isn't even accounting for weapon focus or anything.

So wait your saying a 7th level fighter, right? With a melee attack of +11, will hit an Aboleth 80% of the time? And your saying, what, that is good or bad? But, ok, the 7th level fighter does not stand much of a chance vs an Aboleth Mage....but that is a CR17, so that is way above a 7th level fighter.
So then you toss in the 7th level wizard? What attacking with a staff or a spell? Hits 60% of the time?

So, your numbers are all over the place....so not sure what your point even was.

Even a mediocre swordsman is hitting more than half the time. And, well, no duh, because every miss is a round where the player is doing nothing. A swordsman who puts in even a modicum of effort will indeed be hitting almost all the time. He will have a nearly 100% success rate at his own job, heaven forbid!

Meanwhile the wizard is casting magic missiles which never miss since level 1.

Woah, just note this optimizier delusion: If a character misses, then they are doing nothing. So, this is just the other side of ''my character must always hit'' and ''I must win the game''.

And if your complaint is about the spell magic missile, then 4E is for you say you can have a fighter with an encounter power of ''allays hit pew pew''.

[unseenmage]

...big snip...

If the goal is to RP without the G then why are you here? D&D 3.x/PF is a LOT of the G. So much so by its very nature it can get in the way of the RP, as evidenced by all these similar threads.

If you 'hate' it here so much then why not find one of the many games out there where you can RP without any optimization or optimizers at all?

I'm not telling you to go away. To be clear I am genuinely curious as to why you are persisting in an environment that you clearly dislike.
To me, it is this disconnect that casts your posts in the light of trolling.

But just in case that perception is false, and hey this IS all being conveyed via pure text and without in person social cues, please educate me as to what about this game and community you DO enjoy?

[Arbane]

Woah, just note this optimizier delusion: If a character misses, then they are doing nothing. So, this is just the other side of ''my character must always hit'' and ''I must win the game''.

And if your complaint is about the spell magic missile, then 4E is for you say you can have a fighter with an encounter power of ''allays hit pew pew''.

Yeah, everyone knows only wizards are allowed to have always-hit powers.

[death390]

I think you are pretty close to the mark here... And I actually like your bluntness. However...

One of my best friends actually like the feeling of playing a low level simple game. For him, that hits the spirit/mood of stories like LoTR... and he enjoys kicking in the door as a level 1... where checks fail and stuff like that... and I agree with him most of the time. He is a very experienced player and a great DM, who himself have build some super complex powerful builds... So he can, he often chooses not to, but he very rarely misses his mark in terms of matching the overall optimization level of the party and setting... Both as a DM and as a player...

So even though I think that you are right in the majority of things... my friend seem to not fit your conclusions! :)

i think your friend is the exception that proves the rule (there is always at least 1).

Except you need to stop and step back. You say it is swingy and you are expected to find ways to even the odds. Like your being forced to do it, against your will. Like, what, the rule book is possessing you, or something.

And, again, why *must* a character always *have* to be good or above average? Is there some reason a character can not be anything else?



Guess this is part of the whole Everyone Collective that bows down and follows the Almighty Rules. The beyond wacky idea that a player will say ''sorry DM, my character does X and page 77 says so and you can't do anything, hahahahaha!" And I do get there are wacky DM's that roll over and just say ''yes, player, all hail the rules''. Though, any even average DM can just say whatever they want to have happen in the game, and yes ignore the rule on page 77.



I very much agree that a player should role play out their characters ability scores. Though I think a player should role play out all their ability scores, both high and low and everywhere in between. And this is where the optimizer problem comes in: they can only roll play high ability scores. They don't even have low ability scores, other then their official dump stat, but that will always be in a useless ability for the character(what a shock).



~snip~

No one except the optimizer. The optimizer can't role play, so they want to roll play to obscure that fact.



This is true of any non optimizing player or ''normal player''. The problem is the optimizer not being able to accept ''my character might fail at something some of the time'' and ''I must win the game!"



The problem is, for a level appropriate encounter:

Normal: the master swordsman should hit roughly half the time.

Optimizer: The Super Duper Master Swordsman must hit EVERY time! pew pew!

a apprentice or journeyman swordsman i could understand being average. but a MASTER SWORDSMAN? he SHOULD hit most of the time that is why he is a MASTER.

the rules are there for a reason. are they great and infallible? no! do they tend to work overall? YES! Rule 0 is there for a reason! it is the DM's prerogative to alter the rules to fit their concept. however most of the people i have played with prefer RAW except in cases that the rules don't work or make no sense.

i agree that the attributes are there as a good guideline for character style. that does not mean that the 8 Charisma warrior can't be funny. just that most of his funny-ness should be related to warrior humor. meanwhile the Bard with 22 charisma should be able to entertain almost everyone. i personally am an introvert so i tend to dump Charisma because it fits my style more. that doesn't mean that i can't have a funny moment, just that they should be more 'rare'. even as a optimizer i tend to use the feat lost tradition to redirect a charisma casting character to another stat because i would not be able to appropriately play a high charisma character.

i can roleplay quite well, even as a optimizer. the trick is to figure out a goal and find ways to do so in game. hell even if i have my build planned out that just means i have a reason (or need to make one) to go looking for specific things.

as for must succeed all the time bit, that is impossible even for the optimizer. there is no way to get everything beyond unlimited wishes.

now do i want to succeed 90% of the time at something that i specialize in? hell yes. but i pay for that by being bad at something else. my current character is bad at the charisma related skills. but as a stealthy character i am good (on par with non-op ranger), i am also good at being knowledgeable, and ok at physical/survival skills.

[Darth Ultron]

If the goal is to RP without the G then why are you here? D&D 3.x/PF is a LOT of the G. So much so by its very nature it can get in the way of the RP, as evidenced by all these similar threads.

That is not the goal. I want the mechanics and role playing to work together to make a well designed character.

I'm not telling you to go away. To be clear I am genuinely curious as to why you are persisting in an environment that you clearly dislike.
To me, it is this disconnect that casts your posts in the light of trolling.

This is a rant/hate thread. Why do I hate optimization: ok, here is my answer.

It is not like this is a ''lets talk about how super duper cool and awesome optimization is'' thread and I'm crashing the thread or anything.

And, over all, the hard core ''optimizing zealots'' are not Everyone...a lot of gamers are in the middle. And they are the ones I'm doing it for.

But just in case that perception is false, and hey this IS all being conveyed via pure text and without in person social cues, please educate me as to what about this game and community you DO enjoy?

The ''community'', well not so much of the people in the Everyone Collective that all ''think the same things'', but everyone else is fine.

And the game is great...loads of fun. You can hate optimzation and love the game.

Optimization is the idea that your character ''must'' be a demigod to have fun. I know that is false. A player can have fun with any character.

The optimzer is saying ''my fighter must be a weapon master, always, and always hit and always do a ton of damage every single round or I can't have fun.

I'm saying that is not the only way to play the game.

[EldritchWeaver]

I was initially compelled by this point, but then I realized, no, it is often (but not always) not true. The most effective out-of-the-box no-optimization-needed characters are the three Tome of Battle classes (which are all t3 IIRC), whereas wizards are crap on a stick without a bit of effort put into optimizing them.

...

Yes, much of this is anecdata, but it's very consistent across my experience that optimization floor (how little you have to optimize to have an effective character) is divorced from tier. If tier represents anything relevant to this point, it represents optimization ceiling.

My personal grieve with the tiers is, that they don't tell about the optimization floor. Which you rightly noticed, is the true measure of how easy it is to screw up a character. If you rank classes according to the floor, then wizard is right along with the monk.

What game are you talking about? Not 3.5E D&D, right?

Because lets take 3.5E D&D. Say on round one you roll and your character misses....does the whole game world explode? Well, no, not in a normal game. In a normal game the player can try again the next round or do something else. So every round, every couple minutes of real time, the player can roll an attack again...or try to do something else.

I haven't been in any game yet nor ever heard of one where "you miss" results in "the world explodes". Could you please choose some more realistic examples? Or at least formulate them differently. Like "Missing only means that you can try again."?

Except in a normal game a DM will have to make dozens of judgment calls. It is nice to think that somehow ''the rules'' cover everything...but that is just silly.

There is a difference between making a decision based on a rule framework like "player gets a +2 circumstance modifier" and ignoring any rules, deciding if a character hits just on a whim.

And note we are not talking about becoming a great swordsman, as that does imply that the character has to be a ''not great'' swordman to start...and the optimizer won't accept that. They must have the highest everything for their character ''now''.

So any character has to start at the bottom of the barrel, because that's the sole valid playstyle? I have played over the years a number of systems, and I noticed one thing: I don't like playing impotent and superfluous characters. I want to have some impact on the world (and even if it is nothing of note outside of those to whom it matters). I don't want to succeed automatically, I want to have a fighting chance. And a fighting chance against hordes of enemies implies via simple mathematics, that you are above average. That you need to be above average or you just die. And for the record, I don't need to be the one who can do everything, I need my niche where I excel. That is my reason to play the game. To do things I cannot do on my own. Not to play effectively a clone of me.

That being said, even if you have optimized characters, you can still end up going against opponents where your strengths don't help. It just shouldn't be every encounter. Some encounters should be an easy victory.

So wait your saying a 7th level fighter, right? With a melee attack of +11, will hit an Aboleth 80% of the time? And your saying, what, that is good or bad? But, ok, the 7th level fighter does not stand much of a chance vs an Aboleth Mage....but that is a CR17, so that is way above a 7th level fighter.
So then you toss in the 7th level wizard? What attacking with a staff or a spell? Hits 60% of the time?

So, your numbers are all over the place....so not sure what your point even was.

Let's ignore the aboleth wizard part. The point is that CR 7 enemies can be hit with a chance of more than 50% by just having a fighter 7 with 16 Str. That means you are even at low point of optimizing a somewhat capable character in this aspect.

Woah, just note this optimizier delusion: If a character misses, then they are doing nothing. So, this is just the other side of ''my character must always hit'' and ''I must win the game''.

Actually, what is the difference between failing to hit and doing nothing? Outside of fluff implications - which might be important in the game - there isn't one that I can see. The enemy has the same hit points, has the same conditions applied to him, is still as capable as a threat as before. That is a problem independent of optimization, although optimization and the direction of optimization influence the degree of how much that is a problem.

[Jormengand]

Woah, just note this optimizier delusion: If a character misses, then they are doing nothing. So, this is just the other side of ''my character must always hit'' and ''I must win the game''.

Uhm...

In 3.5, at least, a character who misses with a weapon attack absolutely, literally, and in every situation I can think of other than fighting defensively, does nothing but waste their action. A character who misses really is doing nothing.

[Darth Ultron]

a apprentice or journeyman swordsman i could understand being average. but a MASTER SWORDSMAN? he SHOULD hit most of the time that is why he is a MASTER.

The problem here is the disconnect. A master swordsman is, by the rules even, a higher level character. So if your charater is say 2nd level, they are NOT the most super duper awesome master swordsman in the world (you know, unless your playing in a campaign setting like Eberron). But the optimzer thinks thier character must be a 'master' from birth.

now do i want to succeed 90% of the time at something that i specialize in? hell yes. but i pay for that by being bad at something else. my current character is bad at the charisma related skills. but as a stealthy character i am good (on par with non-op ranger), i am also good at being knowledgeable, and ok at physical/survival skills.

This is a good spot to separate optimization from a normal player that just wants to have a good character.

Normal Player: A mid level specialist (so this would be 10 on D&D 1-20 scale) to a normal player should be able to do: Simple and Easy tasks with just about no chance of failure, do Average tasks more then half the time, Do Hard Tasks slightly less then have the time and only have a small chance of doing a Very Hard Task.

Optimizer: My character must always succeed at every task they do, otherwise I'm doing nothing and not playing the game at all.

See that huge disconnect?

I haven't been in any game yet nor ever heard of one where "you miss" results in "the world explodes". Could you please choose some more realistic examples? Or at least formulate them differently. Like "Missing only means that you can try again."?

Sure. Optimizer: ''My character must always succeed at every task they do, otherwise I'm doing nothing and not playing the game at all.''

So any character has to start at the bottom of the barrel, because that's the sole valid playstyle? I have played over the years a number of systems, and I noticed one thing: I don't like playing impotent and superfluous characters. I want to have some impact on the world (and even if it is nothing of note outside of those to whom it matters). I don't want to succeed automatically, I want to have a fighting chance. And a fighting chance against hordes of enemies implies via simple mathematics, that you are above average. That you need to be above average or you just die. And for the record, I don't need to be the one who can do everything, I need my niche where I excel. That is my reason to play the game. To do things I cannot do on my own. Not to play effectively a clone of me.

No? You can make a powerful character if you want to...that has nothing to do with optimizing.

That being said, even if you have optimized characters, you can still end up going against opponents where your strengths don't help. It just shouldn't be every encounter. Some encounters should be an easy victory.

I know this well....I ''break'' optimizers often. Even just one encounter where an optimized player can't be ''super great'' is often enough to have them leave the game.

Let's ignore the aboleth wizard part. The point is that CR 7 enemies can be hit with a chance of more than 50% by just having a fighter 7 with 16 Str. That means you are even at low point of optimizing a somewhat capable character in this aspect.

So this is saying that an un optimized fighter can hit some CR7 foes 50% of the time? OK?

Actually, what is the difference between failing to hit and doing nothing? Outside of fluff implications - which might be important in the game - there isn't one that I can see. The enemy has the same hit points, has the same conditions applied to him, is still as capable as a threat as before. That is a problem independent of optimization, although optimization and the direction of optimization influence the degree of how much that is a problem.

Well, if a character misses, they did not do nothing: they missed. Doing nothing would be ''my character goes home and does nothing''.

Uhm...

In 3.5, at least, a character who misses with a weapon attack absolutely, literally, and in every situation I can think of other than fighting defensively, does nothing but waste their action. A character who misses really is doing nothing.

See, this is the Optimization I hate: the idea that every single round a character must succeed at whatever they do. There is no ''try''.

[RoboEmperor]

I think it's very clear.

1. Players don't like to fail so they optimize their character to minimize the chances of failure.
2. Darth Ultron wants players to fail a lot.
3. Therefore Darth Ultron hates optimizers.

Instead of admitting this is just personal taste he is claiming that players failing is mandatory and the best way to play d&d and optimizers who don't like failing are game ruiners. I think the discussion is at an end. Nothing said in this forum is going to change his claim that his personal tastes are the best.

There is nothing wrong with a player succeeding 100% of the time as long as they work for it, but whatever, to each his own. I certainly won't play in a game ran by Darth Ultron.

[Jama7301]

As a DM, I don't always care for high-op sorts of players, because it makes my job harder.

• If there are multiple players across optimization levels, it makes balancing encounters more difficult.
• It increases the chances that I'll completely whiff on difficulty.
• It starts to feel like a more competitive or adversarial game, in the form of GM vs PCs, which can lead to an escalation of optimization.
• It can take time away from planning for the campaign as a whole to focus on correcting encounter(s)
• May not apply to everyone, but I have friends thta would play "Give an inch, take a mile" sorts of things, and it's a headache I'd rather avoid.

This is all subjective of course. Personally, I take no delight in screwing over players, or running them through a gauntlet. If the dice say they die, they die, but I'd prefer it to not be caused by an arms race.

As a player, I've never been attracted to high op characters, since a lot of times, the character concepts I come up with aren't some super powerful things. In D&D, I'll pick up skills that fit my personality, even if they'll never come up (waves to ranks in Forgery, Appraise and Knowledge: Plains Culture. I try to build with a baseline competence and go from there.

I think I draw a distinction between little o and big O optimizers/optimization. FULLY SUBJECTIVE INTERPRETATIONS AHEAD Little o optimization feels like a building to basic and core competencies. A Rogue with Move Silent and Hide maxed, a Wizard dropping his highest stat and picking a race to boost INT, things like that. Big O Optimization goes beyond that, to the point of raising the power level of the game, beyond the normal or expected growth and power curve.

Long story short, high optimization games are too tiring for me to keep up with. That's why I'm not a huge fan of it.

[death390]

@darthultron you posted again while i was writing so here is for your new post. #'s correspond to your responses.

1: the idea that if your character misses you contributed nothing to that round is technically not true. you can act as a 5ft/5ft wall DC 25 tumble. but most people wouldn't much care to be a wall so it fells like you failed. people tend to not like to fail. this does not mean the world ends by failing though.

2: of course the rules don't cover everything there are too many things to be comprehensive. but the rules should cover the common cases. the rules SHOULD cover the most common adjudications, but even then you have to make allowances for differences (hence the circumstance bonus/penalty for skills as an example)

3: there are many kinds of people, too many to really categorize them all. not to mention people change based on circumstance. yes there are the "simulationists" as i call them who prefer the mechanical aspects of RPGs over the RP. there are also RPers who prefer fluff over crunch. both can be optimizers both can be fluffers (non-optimizers) it depends on the person themselves.

4: not all optimizers MUST be as powerful as possible. there are many optimizers who enjoy the "mini-game" if you will but tone it down to their groups play level. multiple people in this thread have stated they do so as do I.

5: 3.5 is an optimizers playground, and tends to attract more than its fair share as does pathfinder. that said the lowest forms of optimization are things like taking power attack on a two handed fighter with a lot of strength, taking spell focus on that specialized wizard, natural spell on a druid. these are basic things which people tend to do in order to be effective AND because of fluff reasons. have you ever played a wizard that dumps his INT? or a warrior who dumps Str stat? if so you are a %$* and are trolling your group if you are telling the truth and i would think you are lying to us if you say so. doing ANYTHING that benefits your character is optimization in some way.

6: refer to answer 4. we will take less powerful feats when we are toning things down.

7: i can role play the flashiest swashbuckler in the world who is supposedly the strongest warrior in the world but if im a wizard with all skill focus for feats and 8 int str and dex i won't be able to hit the broadside of the barn. the mechanics don't fit the concept. the fluff and mechanics are both part of the game for a reason. as for being a not-great swordsman, everyone must start somewhere. at lvl 1 a optimized swordsman can fight CR1 and lower enemies easily enough but don't expect him to take on CR 10 ones. that said the more levels an optimized swordsman has the higher CR enemies he can take by himself (which if you remember CR is exponential & designed for teams of 4).

8: he was replying to the fact that the MASTER SWORDSMAN argument you had stating that he should miss half the time. his numbers were right in that the fighter will more often than not hit even without optimization at 7th level. that said not all monsters are created equal, and an aboleth mage is a lower AC CR 17 monster. that said even a wizard (1/2 BAB of a fighter) with slightly above average Str can hit quite often with a weapon. hell a 8 Str fighter can still hit a Achairai most of the time, even if it were to negate the damage via incorporeality.

9: see answer 1. again missing means failure, people don't like failure.

[unseenmage]

I think it's very clear.

1. Players don't like to fail so they optimize their character to minimize the chances of failure.
2. Darth Ultron wants players to fail a lot.
3. Therefore Darth Ultron hates optimizers.

Instead of admitting this is just personal taste he is claiming that players failing is mandatory and the best way to play d&d and optimizers who don't like failing are game ruiners. I think the discussion is at an end. Nothing said in this forum is going to change his claim that his personal tastes are the best.

There is nothing wrong with a player succeeding 100% of the time as long as they work for it, but whatever, to each his own. I certainly won't play in a game ran by Darth Ultron.

I fear that I must agree.

Reminds me of one of my first GMs for whom trolling playgroups and fiat rulings were "just part of the game". He couldn't comprehend why no-save dominate effects, unkillable demons, and insta perma death cursed items were not fun.

His old playgroup, whom he insisted enjoyed the games he ran, had long since abandoned him. And the newer generation of players consistently played with him once and quit. He never understood.

Players should fail because he said so. Anything he didnt like was poor roleplay. As if the definition of roleplaying was solely under his perview with no room for consensus.

He's a cool enough guy and I eventually got him to understand roughly what player agency is. At least enough so he understood WHY I stopped playing with him.

This definitely reminds me of that. My way or the highway game concept definitions. Everyone else does it wrong ideology.
Compromise might not be a river in Egypt but an Egyption river certainly runs through certain posts in this thread.

[death390]

I think it's very clear.

1. Players don't like to fail so they optimize their character to minimize the chances of failure.
2. Darth Ultron wants players to fail a lot.
3. Therefore Darth Ultron hates optimizers.

Instead of admitting this is just personal taste he is claiming that players failing is mandatory and the best way to play d&d and optimizers who don't like failing are game ruiners. I think the discussion is at an end. Nothing said in this forum is going to change his claim that his personal tastes are the best.

There is nothing wrong with a player succeeding 100% of the time as long as they work for it, but whatever, to each his own. I certainly won't play in a game ran by Darth Ultron.

this ^ just this