Why Play?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


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Following what I hope is an enticing subject line, allow me to clarify...

I am a soon to be Pathfinder GM. Own most of the books in PDF form, and many in hardcover. Have never gotten the chance to play or run yet, though. I've been buying the books like crazy because I love the system, and the world that Paizo has created.

My question is, though, for many of the posters on the boards. I read thread after thread where all people talk about is DPS and DPR and how to build the most effective/damage causing/stat maxed whatever possible. "Don't play the monk cause they're underpowered", or "What build is best for a sorceror to cause the most amount of damage in the least amount of time?"

I'm really not trying to be a jerk or start a flame war (is that term even used anymore?), but I really am curious...what happened to players playing a character? Now, before anyone jumps all over me, I know there are a ton of role players who don't hang the success of their character on how how much damage they do. But there are obviously enough statisticians on the boards for this to be a legit query. Why is it SO important to so many people, apparently, to maximize a character's damage potential? If it's that much about numbers and combat effectiveness, why not just go play WoW?

I'm just curious, like I said. What is it about the numbers that drives so many people? When did the #s replace character?

Anyone? Bueller?


scrmwrtr42 wrote:
...why not just go play WoW?

WoW has nothing to do with anything, I really dislike it when people bring it up on this board like its something to compare to. WoW is not all about DPS, its a part of it sure, but the video games get so streamlined you usually just stack strength if your a warrior and intellect if your a mage anyway. At worst in WoW you decide if you need haste or crit. Different people play MMOs for different reasons, some of us just liked to have a social setting when we play our video games. Generalizing its values and players can be alienating too, and it really makes it hard to read the rest of a point.

That aside, many people don't actually use super builds and just play the game. Some people have fun figuring things out and getting all their numbers together. Sometimes its about making a concept viable and the best way to do it, which is why people say don't play monk becuase the monk is outdone by others and actually has a rough time doing its job. There are a lot of people who play monks, rogues, and fighters and have fun with that. Thats okay. Thats probably a good thing.

Also when you post on the advice board asking for optimization your bound to get numbers more than flavor. If you ask about flavor your probably going to get flavor and a dozen ways to get it.


Its my sincere hope that most of the "garbage" on the boards about DPR is much like the garbage about Pun-Pun. i.e. an interesting thought exercise but nothing anyone'd seriously consider playing.

I think if you read through the boards you'll find a good number of folks who prefer character and concept to DPR and interesting things for their character over the latest and greatest power bump.

I *think* and *hope* that most folks are actually decent gamers who don't talk over everyone else, don't mix-max to the extreme and actually care about their characters beyond a set of numbers on a page. Thats certainly been my personal experience in gaming, at least.

-S


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I can't make a general answer for you scrmwrtr42 (I can't for the life of me seem to extract an appropriate nickname out of that >.<) but I can give my own answer.

Speaking for myself, it's impossible to play a character who sucks at what they do. A Monk who sucks at being a mystical martial artist isn't really a monk, he's a failure.

A Fighter who can't do ANYTHING out of combat is a Fighter sure, but he fails to qualify as an adventurer (someone who ventures out into the unknown to survive by his skill, when the ONLY skill the Fighter has is his Fighting, which just doesn't cut it for dealing with the environment or people skills or anything like that.)

The reason it's important to obtain a character build with sufficient power is to succeed. I certainly don't want to play a loser who misses more often than he hits, or who is the clown of the party who doesn't accomplish anything and more likely wastes valuable resources getting patched up.

If I'm going to play a character, then the mechanics underneath that character have to line up to my vision of him. And I don't envision failures as characters I would want to play. Possibly ex-failures who are atoning for some failure in the past, or who are rising above their prior inadequacy, but not current failures, if you get what I'm saying.


My theory is that some people are just hard-wired that way. I actually kind of gave up on miniature wargaming because of that kind of power player mentality - even though I liked to build army lists and maximize units while at least trying to stick with a theme! However, I've grown to like both the characterful aspects of Pathfinder, and the robust rules - the complexity is still a challenge sometimes, and I've been GMing for several years now.

You just have to find players who approach the game the same way you do. There is no right way to play, but there is probably an ideal way to play. My ideal would be great character driven role-play, and good crunchy rules when it comes to combat. Best of both worlds.

Character optimization is a whole game-within-a-game for some folks. That's OK, but so is having relationships develop between characters and maybe an entire session of nothing but skill checks, story, and dialog.


scrmwrtr42 wrote:


I'm just curious, like I said. What is it about the numbers that drives so many people? When did the #s replace character?

Anyone? Bueller?

Numbers were always more important that character to me. I've only been playing 5 or so years now but I have no love for WOW. I despise a game where the numbers and top builds have already been calculated. I despise games that lack versatility and variety.

I like the fact that I can do almost anything I want in pathfinder (I once made a halfling who ran around shooting squids at people while riding in the pouch of a kangaroo). I don't care so much about the personality but maximizing DPR/ mobility/ utility, i.e. attempting to create the perfect build is interesting to me.

Its an exercise in complex system management and manipulation.


FuriousPhil wrote:

You just have to find players who approach the game the same way you do. There is no right way to play, but there is probably an ideal way to play. My ideal would be great character driven role-play, and good crunchy rules when it comes to combat. Best of both worlds.

Character optimization is a whole game-within-a-game for some folks. That's OK, but so is having relationships develop between characters and maybe an entire session of nothing but skill checks, story, and dialog.

This


Well it honestly depends. Iv played in groups where if you dont optimize heavily you will fall behind the power curve. At the same time those two groups DMs expected their players to do that and created challenges accordingly (they also found any weaknesses of the PCs and exploited those without hesitation, but then we expected that also). In those games DPR and such was just as important as the story and the RP of the characters.

Iv played in groups where no one optimizes, where people would build a massivly sub optimal build because they wanted it that way.

Iv played in a group where if you could only smash things you would end up doing nothing about 80% of the time since politics and RP made up most of the game and combat was a very small part of it.

BUT at the end of the day is this. When it comes down to it most Pathfinder games involve a lot of combat. most games involve a lot of combat where winning is how you complete the quest, save the kingdom, or move on to the next part. At the end of the day HOW you RP your character is very fluid and not governed by mechanics, HOWEVER your ability to participate in combat and other activities is dictated by numbers and mechanics.

So drunken dwarf fighter and stoic guardian of the temple can have the exact same build, its the RP that will make them different, flesh them out, and make them different.

You can RP whatever you want, but when its time for dice to roll you either have a build that can mechanically handle it or not. So make sure your build can do what it needs to do so you are not a burden to the team. After that you can create your RP and do however you wish.


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Playing a role is not an excuse to neglect balance.

When you want to play a character you look at 3 things: What's my concept? Will it be fun to play? How do I best accomplish it?

The thing with class balance and crunch is that if the answer to one and two is yes, but the answer to number 3 is NEVER (or rarely) "Class X", that's an issue with the design of the game itself which should be rectified.

Even worse is when the you have your concept and "Class X" is the best way to accomplish it...but the class sucks so much it wouldn't be fun to play since it's ineffective.

Which is why people talk about it so much. They enjoy the game and they enjoy the character, but they don't want to feel like they're gimping themselves for a concept, or that a class is never the right fit for any given concept.

Character and story can be fluffed every which way but loose. But the crunch has to go with that, or you'll continually be thinking to yourself "Yeah I'm having fun playing the role...but I can't DO anything so half the game is just a bore".


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scrmwrtr42 wrote:

Following what I hope is an enticing subject line, allow me to clarify...

I am a soon to be Pathfinder GM. Own most of the books in PDF form, and many in hardcover. Have never gotten the chance to play or run yet, though. I've been buying the books like crazy because I love the system, and the world that Paizo has created.

My question is, though, for many of the posters on the boards. I read thread after thread where all people talk about is DPS and DPR and how to build the most effective/damage causing/stat maxed whatever possible. "Don't play the monk cause they're underpowered", or "What build is best for a sorceror to cause the most amount of damage in the least amount of time?"

I'm really not trying to be a jerk or start a flame war (is that term even used anymore?), but I really am curious...what happened to players playing a character? Now, before anyone jumps all over me, I know there are a ton of role players who don't hang the success of their character on how how much damage they do. But there are obviously enough statisticians on the boards for this to be a legit query. Why is it SO important to so many people, apparently, to maximize a character's damage potential? If it's that much about numbers and combat effectiveness, why not just go play WoW?

I'm just curious, like I said. What is it about the numbers that drives so many people? When did the #s replace character?

Anyone? Bueller?

In my opinion, I really like the Monk class, and do not think it's underpowered, especaially at mid to high levels.


You're basically repeating a form of the stormwind fallacy. Now a lot of people who claim to emphasize story claim that being optimized somehow stops you from creating an interesting character. Here's the big shocker: it doesn't. To tell you the truth while number influence what your character is capable of they in no way show you what your character's personality will be or what actions he will take. A character with a 8-9 in a mental attribute isn't handicapped he's actually the norm for most races. Plus(and I used to include myself in this category) most of the old school players think that low numbers do something besides lower a die roll that there's some built in defect with a low att. There's not anymore. Not sure that's been true since 1st. I had a similar discussion with Ashiel about dropping numbers below 10 and he pointed out that simple truth. YMMV


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It often comes down to escalation. If Player A really shines in combat, Players B, C, and D feel like they're diminished. Eventually, they start working their way towards parity. Player A loses his spotlight, and begins working to regain it. And so on, and so forth.


After doing what you've done, scouring the forums here, here's what I see. Pathfinder is a system that tried to fix the power disparity between linear mundanes and quadratic casters. Successful or not, the idea is basically that if you give full combat classes 4 attacks per round instead of the old 5/2, and then you up their damage output using combat feats, then their damage output can be not just a multiple but multliples of times better than it could have been in 2e adnd. Every encounter would be a pushover if we didnt change hit points to match that rapidly scaling sweep of damage capability, which is why theres plenty of things in the game that have 400 hit points, and tarrasques that roll well might even wind up in the 500s... Thats the important distinction. (It also happens to be why we have damage resistance, since, with a properly optimized adversary, 500 hit points might not even be 'enough' to keep you around for 12 whole seconds.)

Where it used to be that casters were the only quadratic component of the system so they just got ludicrous powers while the rest of the world was more linear, now everything is closer to being quadratic. Every opportunity to improve your character is a chance not to 'add damage' but to 'add a multiple of damage', and in order to keep all encounters from becoming a cakewalk, the enemy has to be 'multiples of times more deadly/powerful' to compensate. (in 2nd edition your opportunities to add damage as a combat class were for example, d6+1+2+3+4+5.... so in effect an extra d6 of damage came with every 3rd or 6th step... while wizards were going up by d6 per level in most of their forms of damage output... Extra swings were where it was at, and a haste spell aged your character so such boosts were very costly) (in pathfinder the combat class bonuses/feats give you not just a +1 or a +2, but +1d6 or +2d6... and haste not only no longer carries the aging penalty but now works on your whole party with 1 casting. So combat classes can now easily outscale even the most powerful die of an 'outright damage spell' with every swing).

On the one hand that means that high level fights are over in a few short rounds because robustly optimized characters will have no difficulty putting out 100 damage per round, and 4 of those in a party means even having 400 hit points wont guarantee you last more than 6 seconds in a fight with 4 well built party members...

On the other hand it means if you're not taking every opportunity to exploit your ability to increase the 'multiple' of your power in the most combat effective way possible, then you're not just showing up to the table with a disparity of being a 15 in a world of 16s...

You're showing up to the fight full of 16s and you're bringing a 12.

This is written in the forums as 'doing a disservice to your party' or 'being a failure'... Each 'choice to stay on the power curve' that is not taken is a choice to 'get behind on the power curve', and 'one step behind on the power curve' is now a much bigger step than it ever used to be.


scrmwrtr42 wrote:


I'm really not trying to be a jerk or start a flame war (is that term even used anymore?), but I really am curious...what happened to players playing a character?

Some people focus on the numbers. Perhaps there truly are a large number of RPGers out there who focus on DPS/DPR but my guy tells me that they are just vocal.

Same goes for the class-criticism threads. While I'm not suggesting all classes are equal, some folks interpretations of broken/weak are 180 degrees out of whack with others viewpoints. In my own experience, the claims of fighter and rogue weakness are VERY overblown. My groups nor I have experienced it and they remain the two most popular classes in the games that I run.

I also think that threads about mechanics lend themselves to greater forum discussion because there is a view, rightly or wrongly, that looking at the numbers is more "objective". However, class effectiveness is rarely captured fully by looking at DPS/DPR.


Now thats not to say the disparity is always a bad thing, and not to say that the system doesn't work, but it always totally depends on your table.
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If the power spectrum can be broken down into

  • 1-noob.not very interesting. not very useful
  • 2-very interesting. not very useful
  • 3-pretty interesting/colorful. pretty useful
  • 4-not very interesting. here to kick a$$

Pun pun is a 4, most people go for a 3 or consider 4s 'interesting enough', some people really enjoy 2s, and theres not much you can do about a 1 but make his character for him and let him grow by becoming familiar with the system and show a little patience...

The number of permutations and platitudes of this are huge.

  • I happen to be a 2 at a table full of 3s. I'm frequently not very useful and only shine in specific moments that are few and far between, but when I do shine, its significant, but the most important part it happens often enough not to get on their nerves. The party is effective enough and nobody is 'pure stats'. Most tables are like this no matter how the forums read.
  • There are some folks who love playing 4's (but call them 3s), and get upset when the table has a 2 (because they consider it a 1).
  • There are some tables that run very smoothly with all 2s, because the gm scales the combat down to make it survivable.
  • There are some tables that run smoothly with all 2s but the gm doesnt scale back the combat and they die quickly and still call it a 'good fun game'
  • There are some tables where everyone is a 3 or a 4 and the gm tries upscaling combat to match but accidentally overreaches and its a TPK.
  • There are some tables where everyone is a 4 except theres a 1 or 2 at the table, but everyone's fine with it because they like protecting the 1 or 2, either as part of showing their 4iness, or to show the 1 the ropes.
  • There are some tables full of 2s and 3s, but one guy who just cant help playing a 4. The gm scales back combat for the 2s and 3s, so the 4 lays waste to every encounter, gets bored and quits
  • There are some tables full of 2s and 3s but one guy who just cant help playing a 4. The gm scales back combat for the 2s and 3s so the 4 lays waste to every encounter which bores the rest of the table who kicks him out.
  • There are some tables full of 2s and 3s but one guy who just cant help playing a 4. The gm scales back combat for the 2s and 3s so the 4 lays waste to every encounter which upsets the gm, so they quit.
  • There are some tables full of 2s and 3s but one guy who just cant help playing a 4. The gm scales back combat for the 2s and 3s so the 4 lays waste to every encounter and everybody thinks its awesome that they get to have easy fights and be interesting and the 4 never gets bored of kicking the sh[yamalan] out of everything in sight.
  • I've even been in a campaign where everyone was a 2 or a 3, but one guy who couldnt not play a 4. The gm spent all his time ignoring the party and just escalating against the 4 while we all stood back and watched in horror until the gm finally gave up and quit. The escalation involved made even the 4 powerless against the gm, which meant suddenly we were in a campaign where we were all just 1s with no hope of success, and the gm knew it and figured out we weren't enjoying it.
  • and on and on.

TL/DR: It works fine more often than it doesn't despite the forums tending to gravitate to extremes that would indicate otherwise.


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There are plenty, heck I'd even say a majority of, gamers that still just want to create the character they envision. However, the thing about "builds" is that they are fun to *discuss*. It is not much fun to discuss some person's random character - there's just no meat to the bones of that discussion. "Hey, here's my half-drow/half-dwarf named FoeSmacker!" is usually responded to with a couple of "that's cool" and maybe a pointer to something interesting in Golarion that could be useful.

But a discussion of "Which classes should I pick to fit my vision of FoeSmacker" will merit a decent discussion as people analyze the pros and cons of different approaches.

It's a big issue with RPGs. They are a lot of fun for the handful of hours you get to play every week or two, but outside of that it is difficult to do anything with them. I love RPGs, but it drives me crazy that I can't actually play them when I want. So I discuss them. And builds are something that is easy and fun to discuss. I don't care about the background of your character very much, but I like thinking about the rules that go into making it.

And so forums are filled with such talk because that is about the only talk that is fun to partake in on a forum.

tldr: builds are very discussable, hence why forums are filled with discussions about them.


Thanks for bringing this up!

I think a lot of folks have a win/lose orientation toward games and it carries over into RPGs where it's not particularly relevant (or needed). That can be unfortunate, since RPGs are about storytelling, not 'winning.'

But if a given group wants to crunch numbers and optimize, and they're having fun that way, it's their business. The conflict comes when roleplayers start encountering arguments about realism and effectiveness. You have to keep in mind that for tactical gamers, that kind of stuff really IS fun for them.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

I'm a heavy roleplayer but I'm also the most inclined to optimize in my gaming group. I would hate to play in a game that's all min-max hack and slash but I do enjoy the mental challenge of making a character as effective as possible.

Different gamers take away different things from the game.


scrmwrtr42 wrote:
I'm just curious, like I said. What is it about the numbers that drives so many people? When did the #s replace character?

Numbers do not replace the character, but you cannot play a character without the numbers.

I'm all for playing for fun, but sometimes the numbers can, will, and do get in the way. If player A and player B both have serious warrior concepts, and both build them with equal ability, both should be equally effective in the long-run. But if player B's character is consistently overwhelming foes that player A's character cannot scratch across the board, there's a problem with the mechanics. Player A could well start feeling like the game is all about Player B, and that's not fun for many people. Hence the numbers or lack thereof can add or detract from the fun of gaming and or playing the role.

Fun is subjective, but game mechanics are absolute and can be discussed objectively, so it is game mechanics that are discussed. It's not that mechanics like DPR are the be-all and end-all of the game, they are merely the part that can be discussed objectively.

No-one (or almost no-one) has said: "Monks are terrible and no-one could have fun playing a monk." It has been interpreted this way, but it isn't what's meant.

What I and many others have said is: "Monks are mechanically weak and it would improve the fun for monk players if they were improved." I think you will agree these are two very different statements.


This is dancing perilously close to the Stormwind Fallacy. Creating interesting, complex, engaging and immersive role-playable characters has virtually nothing whatsoever to do with the numbers. You can have crappy numbers or awesome numbers and still do all the role playing stuff you want to do either way.

Having said that, numbers are a key part of the game. From a mechanics perspective they ARE the game. Role playing is almost by definition that part of the game that transcends the numbers.

Players who like the numbers part of the game are going to work to get the best numbers. "Best numbers" means different things to different people, depending on what particular mechanics they focus on. Offensive minded characters will generally be optimized for damage output.

As for me I optimize my characters for both mechanical and role playing purposes. That means I value versatility in the mechanics which means my characters rarely are overpowered in any one area, but are generally very good in multiple areas. There are exceptions, I built a melee/ranged ranger in 4e that more than doubled the damage output of any other party member without breaking a sweat. But that's because the game group that invited me to play specifically asked me to build a martial powerhouse. So I did.

In most cases how effective my characters are in different specific game mechanics is part of the concept I am trying to create and as such I will optimize to achieve that concept. Right now I am playing a druid who routinely accounts for half or more of damage done to enemies in combat. I'm also playing a witch that is optimized for social situations and his combat contributions are sometimes negligible. I enjoy both of them.

Keep in mind also that people who actively participate in online forums such as this are a pre-selected group of motivated participants and are not remotely representative of the gaming population as a whole.


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I play to have something to do while drinking.


For the purposes of discussion (i.e. this isn't how I actually feel about the game, merely playing devil's advocate), what about the reverse? As in, why bother playing a tabletop rpg if you DON'T want to focus on numbers? If you want to take the numbers out of it, why not just use a freeform rpg style, and just get rid of numbers and dice rolling?

The point that I'm trying to make is, Both the roll-playing and the role-playing are a core part of the game, and have been since the beginning.

Also, if you just read the forums, it might appear that a lot of people only care about optimization...because it's highly likely they have a character concept, and are coming onto the forums to get help making it work, so that they can contribute meaningfully to the party.

Silver Crusade

I'm going to give you the best advice out there for free.

Be careful what you believe on these boards. Everyone that posts here is an expert and knows everything about the game because hey, it's the internet.

Just try the game out for yourself and then make your own conclusions. There is no magical number that each class must reach before they are considered useful.


A partial short answer is that "numbers" are something easier to talk about, that can be discussed on an objective basis.

Subjective stuff such as role-playing can't be fairly debated due to the tremendous variation in individuals' feelings about what makes something "good" or "bad".... the only thing that matters there is if everyone at the table is having fun or not.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
scrmwrtr42 wrote:
I'm just curious, like I said. What is it about the numbers that drives so many people?

Because numbers are the only thing that isn't 'Mother May I?' about the game.


Shallowsoul is quite correct.

There are no hidden magical minimum numbers.

All that really matters is for the entire group to be entertained.

With that in mind, try a few sessions and you will quickly form your own conclusions.

Best of Luck,
Weslocke of Phazdaliom


I'll at least be one voice of dissent in that I have practically no interest in any of the forums that talk about the numbers/optimizing and find the more subjective/artistic/gamestyle/gm style/nuance elements of gaming to be much more worthy of discussion... or at least much more worthy of my personal attention... IMHO... I'm far more interested in discovering and discussing the things about the game or gaming that people run into. Optimizaton only ever enters that conversation in the form of 'how do I cope with a party full of them'... For some people it is the game. For some people it is the most interesting part of the game. For some it is inextricably a part of the game whether they like it or not.

The why of it is simply the classic human struggle to be the best. Out in the real world that answer is both unimaginably rare and next to unobtainable and subjective. You can say 'I think i'm the best singer or best mechanic, or hardest worker, or 'best with the ladies'... But at best it's just that you're the best 'among your friends'...

The star high school football player goes to college and finds out that he's now playing with the stars of every other high school football team and he's not 'above everyone else' in capability anymore. Some of those will rise to the top of the food chain once again and go on to become professionals. The valedictorian at your school may go on to classes in college where everyone else is just as smart and driven and opinionated as they are... Some will thrive by meeting more of their peers. Some will become disappointed in the discovery that they were never 'king of the world' but only 'king of what was their own very small world'... You may be the best singer or dancer you've ever met and then you go on a reality show with 20 other people who think the same thing about themselves.

But in the numbers game of pathfinder theres a much greater likelihood of finding that special combination that is 'better than all others' at a certain niche. Whether its armor class or hit points or damage output... Within the legal constraits of the system there is a legitimate true winner or close to it.... There is a single way that is measurably better than others and some folks feel like struggling for it or achieving it is worth the effort. Its not a futile goal to find the 'measurable maximum' in a closed system. Some folks seem to enjoy this pursuit more than the playing of the actual game. Pathfinder happens to be a system where an analytical focus on a particular aspect can create significant capability and power disparity within the game. The diparity in power levels and capabilities between the character who 'cares about such things' and someone who 'doesnt care so much about such things' can be immense in pathfinder. Within the confines of the system, not only is this pursuit actually achievable, but it is measurable and significant. For some players this 'added power' precludes any other facet of their character. For others it defines their character. Your table will very likely have one of them eventually, and may even be full of them occasionally... So for me its more important to know how to deal with them than 'why should I have to' or 'why does it have to come up so often'.


I think I'll take the time to answer this and gives specifics (as I tend to get accused of being the optimizer/munchkin/power-gamer in most game I play).

What is it about the numbers that drives so many people?

Well that can be a long answer, but here is my bit on it. The game itself is a statistical model designed to represent the interactions of a heroic character in a fantasy world. In my mind, characters that are not able to meaningfully contribute to the parties accomplishments either in or out of combat (in my preference both) generally are not worth mentioning as heroic. Therefore, I will crunch the numbers to the best of my abilities to ensure that may character acting within this statistical model of a fantasy world is able to contribute his expertise (again both in and out of combat) with the best possible chances of success so as to meaningfully contribute to the goals of the party.

Why is it SO important to so many people, apparently, to maximize a character's damage potential?

Because the game directly rewards offense over defense, and the game itself has built in and even more direct rewards with regard to XP for killing monsters. Skills as well also have defined points of success built into the system so that I can again gauge what I need in order to succeed at a given task. Roleplaying on the other hand is a very subjective notion that I may or may not get any credit for at all depending on the DM and members of the party itself. So, I can deal with the "devil I know" in the form of effectively dealing with the numbers in terms of skills and monsters, or I can ponder and mule about the "devil i don't know" in terms of how any individual DM is going to reward roleplaying. And as the old saying goes, "Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don't".

Why do I not just play WoW?

Simple! I find WoW to be rather boring. Mainly, it's the grind of it all. (actually that would be true of many video game rpgs. they tend to have fallen into a lot of bad habits over the years that annoy me.)

When did numbers replace characters?

The numbers never replaced the characters. The numbers have ALWAYS been the characters. At the end of the day, regardless of all the method acting players get into, that's all a character has ever been. The connection between the numbers, characters, and the overall world is ingrained into the system itself. That's the point of having a heavy stimulation style game like pathfinder instead of other, far more rule sparse systems. If you want to play a more rule sparse system that has more openness and character statistics that are not so thoroughly ingrained into how they interact in the world then their are other systems that can handle that, but in my mind, that ins't pathfinder (or more specifically 3.5).

Edit: Also, if you want them to go play something else WOW probably isn't it (especially if you're looking for high octane kind of action/combat). Frontier (a free pen and paper rpg) is designed to recreate video game action rpgs such a borderlands. THIS, IMHO, would be a better suggestion to give these types of players.


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If the question is 'why not go play WoW' then the question is 'whats the difference between role playing and video games. Certainly not the numbercrunching ability to achieve a maximum within a closed system.

The easy answer to that is the near limitless options a player has compared to what they can do in a videogame. Depending on what you play your videogame might let you get married, buy property, have kids, take a crap, skydive, ride dragons, steal the pants off a person while they're awake in broad daylight... So its true that videogames have come a long way in the variety of things that they are programmed to allow you to do. What they don't allow you to do is...

Whatever they aren't programmed to allow you to do.

And thats a pretty big list. Hopefully big enough to warrant putting down the controller. Hopefully your campaign offers more choice and variety than even the most versatile pile of code ever written. Hopefully simply the fact that your gm has the ability to change how the story turns out is enough. A typical videogame has between 1 and maybe 30 endings tops (fighting games i'm looking at you)... but thats still what. One ending per character and its always the same ending. New story based games might have a good ending and a bad ending with maybe a few easter eggy funny endings here and there... With role playing games the number of possible endings should be unlimited. Even if you're character is still Cody from Final Fight... Punch punch punch punch grab knee knee throw!!!

I can have a game genie, action replay, and a konami code and still no matter how many quarters I put in the machine or how many levels I get in world of warcraft I'll never be able to rip off chun li's arms with my bare hands toss her into a vat of acid, give ryu wolverine claws and go and assassinate the president. Unless someone codes up the game to let that happen. A lot of videogames let you do a lot of things. No videogame gives you even close to as much choice as an rpg.

You want to know how limited videogames are compared to rpgs? Lets take something innocuously simple... How many videogames let your character... eat bacon!

Thats right, Starfighter! after having been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada, and after your 75th level warlock defeated superman and goku at the same time, you've punched a planet in half, saved the galaxy, got the girl, taken the trophy, and unlocked achievements... You know what you can't do? Eat bacon!

Oh you powergamer you... You found a game where you can eat bacon did you?... Well did you eat bacon... In a taco?!?! Underwater?! Upside down!?!?! Dressed in a tutu?!?!?!

I'm not saying you ever would... But the option to do so is the fundamental separation between videogames and rpgs.


Vincent Takeda wrote:

Now thats not to say the disparity is always a bad thing, and not to say that the system doesn't work, but it always totally depends on your table.

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If the power spectrum can be broken down into
  • 1-noob.not very interesting. not very useful
  • 2-very interesting. not very useful
  • 3-pretty interesting/colorful. pretty useful
  • 4-not very interesting. here to kick a$$

This isn't true in Pathfinder. It may have been true in 3.5 where the optimal builds usually involved lots of multiclassing and prestige classing, but in Pathfinder optimal builds are usually either single class or nearly single class.

It's no harder to fit a personality and backstory to a high power build than a low power build.


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Atarlost wrote:
Vincent Takeda wrote:

Now thats not to say the disparity is always a bad thing, and not to say that the system doesn't work, but it always totally depends on your table.

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If the power spectrum can be broken down into
  • 1-noob.not very interesting. not very useful
  • 2-very interesting. not very useful
  • 3-pretty interesting/colorful. pretty useful
  • 4-not very interesting. here to kick a$$

This isn't true in Pathfinder. It may have been true in 3.5 where the optimal builds usually involved lots of multiclassing and prestige classing, but in Pathfinder optimal builds are usually either single class or nearly single class.

It's no harder to fit a personality and backstory to a high power build than a low power build.

Thats pretty much why I started the list with the word 'if'. Some people believe interesting and powerful are mutually exclusive. By suggesting that optimizing munchkins ought to go play Wow, the OP gives me the impression that they may be leaning toward this view. He's not outright stating that he has never met an optimized character he found interesting or compelling but the implication is that optimizers are a campaign trashing event at his table and he's entitled to his opinion on this. I won't bother discussing if I share that opinion because it's not relevant. What's relevant is that even if you do believe it to be true, the combination of tables that combine optimizers and non optimizers can go down in limitless combinations in limitless ways. Most combinations of those ways work out fine. Way more work out fine than don't. The ones that dont self-destruct pretty quickly. Pursuit of a legal numerical advantage through carefully developed and executed build combinations is not only a legitimate legal playstyle, but produces significant measurable differences in the power curve. So running in to these players should be not rare. Quite the contrary it should be expected. Avoiding them completely would be a difficult proposition at best and arguing that playing wow is a rich enough alternative is highlighting the similarity but misunderstanding or underplaying the difference between the two.

It follows then that the better questions to ask then would be 'I know there are campaigns out there that don't fail simply because they have optimizers in them. How is this happening? How do such campaigns stay interesting/challenging? Does 'challenging go the way of the dodobird and now the campaign is simply about being interesting? Is it just a bunch of montyhaul munchkins kicking your worlds ahole into its esophagus? The OP's question, as the buddhist would say, becomes a question wrongly asked.

If you agree that 'optimizers can be interesting' and that 'optimizers dont break campaigns' and that 'it works more often that it doesnt'... then it appears that optimizers are bumming the OP out, so the question is what techniques are people using to make sure that the campaign still rocks even with optimizers at the table... And the answer needs to be better than just 'get used to it, danno'... or 'go play something else'


Vincent Takeda wrote:

If the question is 'why not go play WoW' then the question is 'whats the difference between role playing and video games. Certainly not the numbercrunching ability to achieve a maximum within a closed system.

The easy answer to that is the near limitless options a player has compared to what they can do in a videogame.

Your whole post was very well stated--I think that pretty much explains it.


I think the numbers part of the game that players focus on is an illusion. The GM has full ability to modify anything the players face on the fly. GURPS GMs do it all the time -- hell GURPS discourages GMS from bothering to develop NPCs beyond only what is needed at the time.

I can say that just by messing with GURPS for a few months certainly made me a much better GM of D&D/Pathfinder. I think Pathfinder players get too focused on the numbers. Build a super powerful character. Or build a weakling. The GM can adjust the game on the fly. Hence, the numbers are an illusion. Although the illusion is much harder to hold together when you have powergames are purposely non-powergamers at the same table.


You can't adjust when some characters are weaklings and some are super powerful, that's the issue with a party based game.

You end up with one of 3 situations:

Tailor encounters to the "superheroes", which will hammer the weaklings HARD.

Tailor encounters to the weaklings, which means the superheroes will just stomp through them.

Give everyone a separate "mini-encounter" tailored to their skills. This is workable, but makes it less of a party-coop game and more of a "Separate individuals working towards the same goal in different places" thing, which rules out a fair chunk of campaign types.


I don't need help in coming up with a character so there's no need to ask about that. I need all the help I can get in making him good at his "thing" though.

Lots of people on the forums know the rules well and are kind enough to share that knowledge.


Mentioning WoW is the PF Boards equivalent of Godwin's Law.


Some players focus on numbers--the least valuable part of the game--because it's all they're good at.

Compassionate GMs shouldn't take that away from them.


Not sure if anyone has bothered to mention the idea that the average person who posts on the forums does not necessarily represent the average player. Lots of folks who want to play a character don't need to ask for advice or post builds.

Sidenote:

"There are some tables full of 2s and 3s but one guy who just cant help playing a 4. The gm scales back combat for the 2s and 3s so the 4 lays waste to every encounter which bores the rest of the table who kicks him out."

I'm rather worried this is going to be where my current game (as a player) is going to end up.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
scrmwrtr42 wrote:

I'm just curious, like I said. What is it about the numbers that drives so many people? When did the #s replace character?

Its the lowest common denominator effect. The message board users know virtually nothing about the original posters game. They don't know how long your game session is, they don't know how much time each of your combats take, they don't know the intricate details of the world your GM created for you.

What users do know are the baseline rules and numbers. The rules and numbers don't change between gaming tables (much) thus they generally more useful information to pass along.

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