You could try one MC level for starters. If it goes over well, keep it up. If not, one level dip won't ruin your build - consider it a notch on your belt and have your Alchemist more or less overcome the alterego, only making appearances here and there, and take base class levels from there on.
In fact, you could juggle MC levels with Alchemist levels based on how you feel this whole process is going. If the MC's too much of a nerf, that would keep it in check somewhat. After all, a Paladin 1/Fighter 10, behaviorally, should be no less of a Paladin than a Paladin 10/Fighter 1, even if it is less so mechanically.
Ultimately it depends on the type of group you play with. Most problems surrounding optimization are because of incompatible play styles in the group. If most of the group would not appreciate or be annoyed your character in concept or in combat optimization, then it's the wrong character to play in that group.
You could try one MC level for starters. If it goes over well, keep it up. If not, one level dip won't ruin your build - consider it a notch on your belt and have your Alchemist more or less overcome the alterego, only making appearances here and there, and take base class levels from there on.
In fact, you could juggle MC levels with Alchemist levels based on how you feel this whole process is going. If the MC's too much of a nerf, that would keep it in check somewhat. After all, a Paladin 1/Fighter 10, behaviorally, should be no less of a Paladin than a Paladin 10/Fighter 1, even if it is less so mechanically.
YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is why I like level-based RPGs. You can dip your toe in the waters of a PrC or other base class, and if you like it, keep on doing it; if you don't, lesson learned, and at the very least, you have a trump card you can play once in a while.
It might be fun to role play for a while but intentionally making sub-optimal choices meens that you cant pull your wieght and are at best a burden on the rest of the party as they try to pick up your slack. When my groups in an encounter I dont want to worry about the monsters and the guy who made his guy bad on purpose.
So anyway , if you can pull it off with out hampering your party then go for it.
Edit - I didnt meen for my post to sound rude in anyway. This is just how i feel. Making sub-optimal guy meens the partyyour working with cant really count on you in situation that should be easier because your with them.
I maybe a little jaded on thus point though. I played in a game once that had a cleric that took a vow of silence ( wouldnt heal anyone ). So we looked to the bard who said " My character doesnt know any healing spells because in his youth blah blah blah." Then I looked at our gnome fighter and dwarf paladin and saided F this.
our party -
1. human cleric that couldnt cast spells except through silent spell
2. human bard who nerfed himself through back story
3. gnome fighter using a shortsword and buckler. Ya that d4+1 is awesome......
4. dwarf paladin with 10 cha
5. me playing an optimized ( probably border line munckin ) wizardI probably could have carried them through alot of the fights using broken things like color spray and orb spells but I really shouldnt have to. I should be able to count on them.
Oh. Mah. Gawd. That group wouldn't have made it to level 1.1 in one of my games, and the cleric would have probably broken is vow fifteen minutes into the game or lost somebody (and if it was a BoED VoS, then he'd have also lost it for letting someone die for his own selfish sense of purity). :P
That party sounds completely brilliant.
I maybe a little jaded on thus point though. I played in a game once that had a cleric that took a vow of silence ( wouldnt heal anyone ). So we looked to the bard who said " My character doesnt know any healing spells because in his youth blah blah blah." Then I looked at our gnome fighter and dwarf paladin and saided F this.
our party -
1. human cleric that couldnt cast spells except through silent spell
2. human bard who nerfed himself through back story
3. gnome fighter using a shortsword and buckler. Ya that d4+1 is awesome......
4. dwarf paladin with 10 cha
5. me playing an optimized ( probably border line munckin ) wizard
Except for that munchkin wizard. He could've shot for an epic melee wizard with 18 strength and 14 int with a story of an aging but sly warrior you likes to "cheat" to "even" the odds, using magic.
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Oh. Mah. Gawd. That group wouldn't have made it to level 1.1 in one of my games, and the cleric would have probably broken is vow fifteen minutes into the game or lost somebody (and if it was a BoED VoS, then he'd have also lost it for letting someone die for his own selfish sense of purity). :P
Combat focus much? I find this party hilarious. Sure, they are not great at what they should be doing, but hilarity ensues, and i am sure they are having loads of fun every session.
The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few. Live long and prosper, and yes I am trying to reach a new post count today.
Combat focus much? I find this party hilarious. Sure, they are not great at what they should be doing, but hilarity ensues, and i am sure they are having loads of fun every session.Oh. Mah. Gawd. That group wouldn't have made it to level 1.1 in one of my games, and the cleric would have probably broken is vow fifteen minutes into the game or lost somebody (and if it was a BoED VoS, then he'd have also lost it for letting someone die for his own selfish sense of purity). :P
Actually, I'd say most of my games actually tend to be fairly combat-lite most of the time. A lot of it also tends to be very free (as in the players can control most of the direction, if desired). However, while combat isn't the focus, it can be quite dangerous/lethal.
This thread gives an example of a kobold encounter in a game I ran. Mind you, the post doesn't really mention anything other than the encounter, but it might give an idea as to how dangerous core-rules enemies are. And that was with several house rules that favored the party in terms of survivability.
It all depends on the GM and the other players.
One should be able to function as the class they pick, but other than that *shrug* I don't really optimize my characters all that much and try to find interesting personalities to play.
Since I tend to create very effective characters I have deliberately "nerfed" several of them, some of them multiple times, just to keep from totally overpowering the rest of the party. Currently my level 7 druid has taken a penance of not having an animal companion because her last animal companion died in a way that she considered to be her fault. Even without the animal companion she is still one of, if not the, most powerful characters in the party.
My 4e ranger has been nerfed so many times it's become a running joke for the rest of the party.
I have deliberately played sub-optimal characters in many, many campaigns, almost always for role playing purposes. I can only remember once when I felt the sub-optimal choice actually had a detrimental impact on the party, and that was a spellthief in 3.5. Which was a shame because I loved the concept, but simply could not make the character viable, and ended up being so underpowered compared to a couple of optimizers that I swapped out to play a gnome barbarian who more than held his own.
A "sub-optimal" character and "An awful character that can't do what they're meant to" are different things.
The problem, however, is that certain characters require different levels of "being vaguely optimized" in order to make a difference.
A wizard can create his character sheet by farting ink at it, but if he has high DC's and good spell choice, he's going to rock faces.
A fighter, on the other hand, who uses all his feats for various skill focus feats is going to be a waste of a character.
To use an example, let's look at the monk. The level of character building needed to make "Monk that does monk things" is not equal to the level of character building needed to make "Wizard that does wizard things." The wizard needs high intelligence and good spell choice - and the latter can be changed every 8 hours if he's unhappy with his decisions. The former not only needs precision attribute focus in a class that yells at him to do otherwise, he needs to choose his feats with equal care, and make sure he grabs one of two specific items - one of which is in a non-core book - to enchant his natural weapons.
Making a good wizard is very easy. Making a good monk is less easy.
The fighter is perhaps the biggest example of the problems with character building. The fighter was long designated "The newbie class." In 3e, this is anything but true. The fighter needs the most amount of character building. As levels go on, the less character building an optimization went into your fighter, the weaker and weaker he becomes. The "newbie" class is by far the most difficult to set up.
And before you whinge on how character building is evil, you're playing the wrong system if you think this. Character building was very much intentionally built into 3e - and it's built into 3e at a level that was not only not seen in editions before, but was intentionally cut down in 4e.
This method of "optimization" isn't a freak occurance. It's one that was intended to be a part of 3e. If you really, really hate it, then what you hate is a core part of 3e. The developers of 3e themselves have said no different - the need for system mastery was intentional.
*lots of truth*
ProfessorCirno is 100% correct as usual. However...
A wizard can create his character sheet by farting ink at it, but if he has high DC's and good spell choice, he's going to rock faces.
Caused me to nearly fall over laughing hysterically.
*lots of truth*ProfessorCirno is 100% correct as usual. However...
A wizard can create his character sheet by farting ink at it, but if he has high DC's and good spell choice, he's going to rock faces.Caused me to nearly fall over laughing hysterically.
Me too, but that's because the first time I read it I read that the wizard would "rock feces."
Me too, but that's because the first time I read it I read that the wizard would "rock feces."*lots of truth*ProfessorCirno is 100% correct as usual. However...
A wizard can create his character sheet by farting ink at it, but if he has high DC's and good spell choice, he's going to rock faces.Caused me to nearly fall over laughing hysterically.
*falls over laughing again*
I wouldn't say that optimisation is built into the game so much as customisation. The have a mass of options available in Pathfinder/3.5 is enormous, but it's there so far as I can see to make your character unique, not to make them uber-optimised. Others may disagree, of course.
Oh, and Prof, how exactly do you fart ink at the character sheet? And does it work if you use a software package by farting ink at the PC screen?
I wouldn't say that optimisation is built into the game so much as customisation. The have a mass of options available in Pathfinder/3.5 is enormous, but it's there so far as I can see to make your character unique, not to make them uber-optimised. Others may disagree, of course.
Oh, and Prof, how exactly do you fart ink at the character sheet? And does it work if you use a software package by farting ink at the PC screen?
Sorry, I'm an optimizer, I dunno how those non-optimizers make their sheets BD
As for optimization vs customization, it's both I think? When 3e was being made, they borrowed concepts from MtG: including "deck building," or in this case, character building. The example that Monte Cook gave was in Toughness. Toughness isn't a good feat. That's fairly well known. It has a few uses, but overall it's really not a good idea. This was intentional - it's so players can learn "Hey this feat isn't good" and not take it and feel smart about themselves.
Note: Yes, that means when "power gamers" get really smug about their elfgames, they're technically doing what was expected. Just, well, taking it a bit far.
Monte Cook later went on to call it Ivory Tower game design. Set up good and bad choices and let the player learn on their own which is which.
You can read about it here
{some good history}
Oh, I know about that - they took a great concept and broke it, basically. Customisation is GOOD. Having good and bad choices, with traps and optimal options? Less good. WotC missed the point of role-playing in that it is not about who rolls the biggest d20, the players are not in competition with one another in an RPG (or rather, they do not have to be, I know some people like that kind of game). The brought in the good side of their gaming expertise, but then added the bad side too. Then in 4e they threw the baby out with the bathwater by getting rid of it all, IMHO.
What Pathfinder got right was levelling the playing field with these options: some are still less good than others, but there are now many more ways to make a viable character and many less traps. Toughness is now a decent feat for any character to take, for example.
I've done it. I had an Inquisitor of Mask and and taking several levels of Shadow Dance made sense in the way I was role playing the Character but doing so definitely handicapped my character. Still it was fun to play and the GM was into the story going that direction so it worked out just fine.
I do have two problems over this particular issue.
1) People who make useless characters in the name of roleplay
and
2) People who insist that because a character isn't completely optimized it automatically falls into category 1.
Late to the party as usual, but...
I nerf my own characters in the rare instances that I am a player rather than GM, for two reasons.
The first is that having decades of GMing under my belt puts me in a better mind strategically, tactically and rules-wise than it does the other players. I would dominate and I don't like dominating. I think one guy ruling the roost ruins the fun of it for everybody else.
Second is that a more moderate character means heightened challenge for the player (in this case, me) and less ad hocking and less trouble for the GMing in providing that challenge.
Now, I should caveat by defining what I mean by nerfing myself in these cases. Basically, I take what I get for stats without much complaint, and tend to multiclass. I am very good at fine-tuning what I get, so I don't need to be uberpowerful stat-wise. I also believe that a smart player, and a smart, wily, or personable character can get any situation to work for him, so I tend to put high stats in Int, Wis and/or Cha, even if the character does not call for it, or even if it gimps him slightly in some way.
This way, I can use that wealth of GM knowledge and experience to think or act myself out of situations and do it realistically, without it seeming out of place.
I do have two problems over this particular issue.
1) People who make useless characters in the name of roleplay
and
2) People who insist that because a character isn't completely optimized it automatically falls into category 1.
Y'know, I'm with you there. Honestly, extremes are often never beneficial.
On a side note, I have once meta-nerfed a character I was playing. I had basically been given a blank check for creating a character of mine, and was told I could use the Blood Sorcerer prestige class for my wizard, which while would be great and dandy for my character, is an amazingly overpowered class.
So I ended up reigning myself in, to avoid going overboard with the character. It was actually pretty hard. I told the GM that the class was amazingly OP, and that I would try very hard to avoid popping the pringles lid on the cheese-box.
I do have two problems over this particular issue.
1) People who make useless characters in the name of roleplay
and
2) People who insist that because a character isn't completely optimized it automatically falls into category 1.
Can't argue with that, I'm with you there.