I have something I'd like to bring up and was wondering whether I'm alone in this. does anyone ever want to play a mechanically bad character?
a super charismatic fighter, a really smart Barbarian, any guy whose primary weapon is a crossbow etc.
sometimes I feel like I really want to play an unoptimised character, not because I wanna suck on purpose as a joke or I wanna reck the game or everyone else or anything but because I feel it could lead to some cool and interesting characters. the only issue is that, If I have a 'bad build', and everyone else has a great build, then the game is gonna suck for me just because I'd get constantly over shadowed and not only that, though that seems to be the main issue for me cause i'm selfish that way lol, you also don't wanna create a character that can't help anyone else and burden the party.
has anyone just wanted to play a game where everyone involved agreed. lets not build optimal characters, lets just build ones which we think are cool and interesting and a bit weird and hopefully the GM will adjust the difficulty accordingly.
does anyone else ever want to build characters like this but don't cause they fear the arms race between either the GM or the other players.
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I love playing characters with questionable builds. That said, I often try to ameliorate the negatives - if I were playing a crossbow character, for example, I'd try to pick up Crossbow Mastery with some haste.
The PFS character I'm currently playing - my first - is a paladin of Arshea building towards Mystery Cultist, which is a primarily spellcasting prestige class.
My Reign of Winter character is an Ulfen winter witch (archetype and prestige class) with 14 Str and longsword proficiency.
So... that's where I am. ^_^
I love playing characters with questionable builds. That said, I often try to ameliorate the negatives - if I were playing a crossbow character, for example, I'd try to pick up Crossbow Mastery with some haste.
The PFS character I'm currently playing - my first - is a paladin of Arshea building towards Mystery Cultist, which is a primarily spellcasting prestige class.
My Reign of Winter character is an Ulfen winter witch (archetype and prestige class) with 14 Str and longsword proficiency.
So... that's where I am. ^_^
oh yeah, I mean, I'm not talking about denying yourself anything cause it'll make you too powerful, more, I wanna be the best big fish in a little pond. its like one of those really lame super villains. like Boomerang-Man or something. in the grand scheme he's not great but he is a boomerang master, can't take that away from him haha.
and awesome, I hope you get to play in interesting games and aren't punished for trying something out of the norm for the fun of it.
I've tried to get my fellow players to agree to not go balls to the walls with optimization, but usually the groan and complain about it. Most specifically one particularly individual I game with tries to make his character outshine everyone else at the table, usually using disingenuous interpretations of the rules to his advantage. It's frustrating because I would also like to try out things that are suboptimal, but it's no fun when he already hogs the spotlight when I'm optimizing, I can only imagine how much worse it will be if I don't.
I think what games need are niche protection, which would mandate smaller games (the number of players). Less players means in order to cover all the bases everyone does something different and we don't have a ton of overlap. Which means everyone gets to be good at something.
In the iconic party everyone is mostly valuable. The fighter is the big damage dealing beat stick and damage soaker. The cleric heals, provides divine support, and probably answer know(religion) questions. The rogue is skilled and provides support (though this gets stepped on by...). Next we have the wizard who provides the arcane spell casting ability, and by virtue of being int based also provides a lot of skill to the party. If you replace the wizard with a sorcerer everyone has a good niche to play in without too much overlap so that everyone has the role to excel at. This way there isn't competition with fellow players within a role, which is what leads to the feeling of being unsuccessful unless you optimize.
I've definitely gone for really out there builds (halfling strength based bard. Charismatic wizard). I typically work hard at identifying where their role is in the game (tank for the halfling bard, face for the wizard) and make sure I excel at that and that I'm contributing meaningfully to the table in a wide variety of situations.
Ways a GM can encourage players to not engage in the arms race:
* Use inherent bonuses (not letting players buy half their gear will decrease how much they can optimise).
* Don't be stingy with the ability score points but put in hard caps as to how high any single score can be at character creation.
* Don't throw lots of high level or highly optimised enemies at your players. Instead throw more numerous lower level enemies at your players. Throw enough lower level creatures at the players and they'll be just as challenging as the single CR+4 creature, however the players won't need as high of a bonus to hit the enemies.
* Make sure that the players face plenty of non-combat situations or plenty of situations where combat is less than ideal. Offer favours as treasure and influence that the players can use to pursue non-combat goals.
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In the iconic party everyone is mostly valuable. The fighter is the big damage dealing beat stick and damage soaker. The cleric heals, provides divine support, and probably answer know(religion) questions. The rogue is skilled and provides support (though this gets stepped on by...). Next we have the wizard who provides the arcane spell casting ability, and by virtue of being int based also provides a lot of skill to the party. If you replace the wizard with a sorcerer everyone has a good niche to play in without too much overlap so that everyone has the role to excel at. This way there isn't competition with fellow players within a role, which is what leads to the feeling of being unsuccessful unless you optimize.
Interesting note: in the very first AP, they had Seoni instead of Ezren.
Niche protection. ^_^
i'm actually pretty sure they I don't know how to make a non-optimized character, i'm just drawn to making good descisions, so it's be more like how many of my feats do i put in sub-optimally 50% 25%? do i only use 60% of my point buy on useful stats?
i wouldn't know where to begin or end my optimization. I also, don't particularly have feats or point buy affect my character's personality or story, so this wouldn't affect the kind of person i was playing, i'd simply be doing this make sure other people were having fun with their stuff.
of course i mean, my favorite race is kobolds, so take this was a grain of salt, it's just i still often push disadvantages into advantages.
does anyone else ever want to build characters like this but don't cause they fear the arms race between either the GM or the other players.
Yes.
Later I found out that the gm did not think D&D worthy of roleplaying and it was the total opposite of what I had expected: Pure roll-playing.
I asked to reroll and it was declined. I tried to get my PC killed and it was prevented without considering the rules.
As everyone else seemed to enjoy it and we were playing at my place (my flat mate was playing, too) I was hesitant to just quit the game.
I would like to try it again. In some way I AM playing something akin to it in one game (a kobold barbarian) but I'm the strongest combatant we have. Which doesn't say anything about MY pc.
I don't know how to make a non-optimized character, i'm just drawn to making good descisions, so it's be more like how many of my feats do i put in sub-optimally 50% 25%? do i only use 60% of my point buy on useful stats?
It's not about being suboptimal. It's about being good at a wide number of things (including out of combat things) instead of great at one or two things and awful at everything else.
I've tried to get my fellow players to agree to not go balls to the walls with optimization, but usually the groan and complain about it. Most specifically one particularly individual I game with tries to make his character outshine everyone else at the table, usually using disingenuous interpretations of the rules to his advantage. It's frustrating because I would also like to try out things that are suboptimal, but it's no fun when he already hogs the spotlight when I'm optimizing, I can only imagine how much worse it will be if I don't.
I think what games need are niche protection, which would mandate smaller games (the number of players). Less players means in order to cover all the bases everyone does something different and we don't have a ton of overlap. Which means everyone gets to be good at something.
In the iconic party everyone is mostly valuable. The fighter is the big damage dealing beat stick and damage soaker. The cleric heals, provides divine support, and probably answer know(religion) questions. The rogue is skilled and provides support (though this gets stepped on by...). Next we have the wizard who provides the arcane spell casting ability, and by virtue of being int based also provides a lot of skill to the party. If you replace the wizard with a sorcerer everyone has a good niche to play in without too much overlap so that everyone has the role to excel at. This way there isn't competition with fellow players within a role, which is what leads to the feeling of being unsuccessful unless you optimize.
that would be great, although I also think DM's should make sure that the niche comes up frequently, weirdly in my experience its always the skill guy who gets overlooked and I think the reason for it, nobody wants to separate the party, especially the dm (unless its combat) and a lot of the skills lend themselves to dividing the party.
I can swim but nobody else can thus we can't swim across the lake, climb the mountain, walk the tightrope, stealth and listen in etc. also I think knowledge skills need to be applied way more often. knowledge local and arcana are the only ones that seem to appear semi-regually. how often foes knowledge Geography really come up haha.
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I don't know how to make a non-optimized character, i'm just drawn to making good descisions, so it's be more like how many of my feats do i put in sub-optimally 50% 25%? do i only use 60% of my point buy on useful stats?It's not about being suboptimal. It's about being good at a wide number of things (including out of combat things) instead of great at one or two things and awful at everything else.
It can also mean being good at something "suboptimal".
Blaster magic-users are "suboptimal", but you can still play one well (even if you weren't descended from half-dragon orc warlords).
Crossbows are "suboptimal", but if you want to go all in on crossbows, you can.
Witches with the Strength patron are "suboptimal", but you can still cast divine favor and righteous might on your 1/2-BAB character and rock into melee like a boss.
So on, so forth. ^_^
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I'd have to agree. I prefer to use optimization as a tool to make a character viable rather than as a form of power play. If I optimize well enough with an already very viable concept for example than I can use it to compensate for any options that while may not be incredibly useful in practice, just sound cool. And if it's a not-so-viable character, then I can use optimization to make sure my character doesn't become crippled in the face of combat.
Basically Rule of Cool always wins for me and I tend to get bored with One-trick-ponies on steroids anyway.
It's actually one of the reasons that I love Mythic Characters so much. You have so many powerful options that even if your character would be terrible under normal circumstances, it's very hard to be bad at combat when Mythic power comes into play.
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but you CAN play all of those optimally. he was throwing out stuff like an intelligent barbarian and a charismatic fighter. none of his stuff synergies'.
basically there's a difference between making a fighting style work, and picking stuff that straight up doesn't benefit your character.
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i'm actually pretty sure they I don't know how to make a non-optimized character, i'm just drawn to making good descisions, so it's be more like how many of my feats do i put in sub-optimally 50% 25%? do i only use 60% of my point buy on useful stats?
i wouldn't know where to begin or end my optimization. I also, don't particularly have feats or point buy affect my character's personality or story, so this wouldn't affect the kind of person i was playing, i'd simply be doing this make sure other people were having fun with their stuff.
of course i mean, my favorite race is kobolds, so take this was a grain of salt, it's just i still often push disadvantages into advantages.
its not about purposefully denying yourself things. and its not even about being good at a wide variety of things like John Lynch was saying. its more like...
I think it would be really cool to play a one armed fighter. think about what kind of character that would make, a warrior who lost his arm but is still unafraid to fight. hell, maybe he wants to slay the dragon that ate his arm.
then you think about it mechanically, that means no two handed weapons, no power attack, no shield. maybe give yourself a +1 to dodge cause theres less of you to hit or something but then your stuck asking yourself. is the benefit of getting to play this cool character outweighed by how much he will suck in the game mechanically, and unfortunately the answer is yes. but what if all of the other players felt the same way, the all created a character they wanted from a character stand point and not a mechanical standpoint. what if you want to play a 10 year old barbarian whose weapon of choice was a sling? or a cursed character who, turned into a rabbit at in the dark, meaning at night, in dungeons and caves. if he drifted to far from the torch or the light spell he turned into a rabbit.
these ideas could make awesome fun characters, but the moment somebody in the group decides to play a super awesome their one build that can deal 50 damage with every swing and not a single weakness whilst everyone else is averaging 10...
I'm kinda just rambling now but do you see my points.
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but you CAN play all of those optimally. he was throwing out stuff like an intelligent barbarian and a charismatic fighter. none of his stuff synergies'.
basically there's a difference between making a fighting style work, and picking stuff that straight up doesn't benefit your character.
It depends how much emphasis you put on those concepts to be honest. Are we talking about a barbarian with an Intelligence of 14 (maybe even 16 after Racial Adjustments) rather than dumping the stat or a barbarian who pumped most of his point buy into Intelligence? The former is naturally very viable while the latter isn't really.
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I think there's a balance here. It makes sense in some settings to make a character that may not be optimal as compared to other character ideas, but is optimal _given that character idea_. You first pick an idea that sounds like fun, and then you build that idea as well as you can mechanically. You don't sacrifice the idea at all for mechanics, but you only sacrifice mechanics for idea as much as you have to.
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but you CAN play all of those optimally. he was throwing out stuff like an intelligent barbarian and a charismatic fighter. none of his stuff synergies'.
basically there's a difference between making a fighting style work, and picking stuff that straight up doesn't benefit your character.
Well... my winter witch has a 14 Str and a penchant for melee combat (and doesn't even have the Strength patron). Is that more in line with what you're talking about?
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i'm actually pretty sure they I don't know how to make a non-optimized character, i'm just drawn to making good descisions, so it's be more like how many of my feats do i put in sub-optimally 50% 25%? do i only use 60% of my point buy on useful stats?
i wouldn't know where to begin or end my optimization. I also, don't particularly have feats or point buy affect my character's personality or story, so this wouldn't affect the kind of person i was playing, i'd simply be doing this make sure other people were having fun with their stuff.
of course i mean, my favorite race is kobolds, so take this was a grain of salt, it's just i still often push disadvantages into advantages.
its not about purposefully denying yourself things. and its not even about being good at a wide variety of things like John Lynch was saying. its more like...
I think it would be really cool to play a one armed fighter. think about what kind of character that would make, a warrior who lost his arm but is still unafraid to fight. hell, maybe he wants to slay the dragon that ate his arm.
then you think about it mechanically, that means no two handed weapons, no power attack, no shield. maybe give yourself a +1 to dodge cause theres less of you to hit or something but then your stuck asking yourself. is the benefit of getting to play this cool character outweighed by how much he will suck in the game mechanically, and unfortunately the answer is yes. but what if all of the other players felt the same way, the all created a character they wanted from a character stand point and not a mechanical standpoint. what if you want to play a 10 year old barbarian whose weapon of choice was a sling? or a cursed character who, turned into a rabbit at in the dark, meaning at night, in dungeons and caves. if he drifted to far from the torch or the light spell he turned into a rabbit.
I'm doing this now...
While I agree with Redelia, what she wrote can lead to further problems. Imagine you have a group who agrees to it and half builds "a nice idea but as strong as possible" and the other half builds "a fun character".
I once had a shadowrun 3 GM who wanted to play street level but did not give any rules, limits or ranges. Just the word street level. After some discussions he told us to only raise stats and skills to 4 and set a limit for item availability. But mages still had magic 6 and spells were still as strong as before. So one guy build a shaman specialized on casting stun spells (the combat spells with the highest bang for the buck). This PC filled the rules but was strong enough to play in normal shadowrun, not only street level. If I remember right we never played a single session. The game still-born because the players and builds did not match.
but you CAN play all of those optimally. he was throwing out stuff like an intelligent barbarian and a charismatic fighter. none of his stuff synergies'.
basically there's a difference between making a fighting style work, and picking stuff that straight up doesn't benefit your character.
thats like saying, this Boxer would be a better boxer if instead of reading so much, he trained instead. well that maybe true, he may be a better boxer if instead of spending an hour a night reading he spent it training. but so what. that doesn't make the person any better. and likewise, a fighter with high cha over con, might not be as good a fighter as one with con over cha. but that doesn't mean its a better character. infact, i'd argue that the charismatic fighter would most likely be a more interesting character than the standardised min maxed fighter.
i'm actually pretty sure they I don't know how to make a non-optimized character, i'm just drawn to making good descisions, so it's be more like how many of my feats do i put in sub-optimally 50% 25%? do i only use 60% of my point buy on useful stats?
i wouldn't know where to begin or end my optimization. I also, don't particularly have feats or point buy affect my character's personality or story, so this wouldn't affect the kind of person i was playing, i'd simply be doing this make sure other people were having fun with their stuff.
of course i mean, my favorite race is kobolds, so take this was a grain of salt, it's just i still often push disadvantages into advantages.
its not about purposefully denying yourself things. and its not even about being good at a wide variety of things like John Lynch was saying. its more like...
I think it would be really cool to play a one armed fighter. think about what kind of character that would make, a warrior who lost his arm but is still unafraid to fight. hell, maybe he wants to slay the dragon that ate his arm.
then you think about it mechanically, that means no two handed weapons, no power attack, no shield. maybe give yourself a +1 to dodge cause theres less of you to hit or something but then your stuck asking yourself. is the benefit of getting to play this cool character outweighed by how much he will suck in the game mechanically, and unfortunately the answer is yes. but what if all of the other players felt the same way, the all created a character they wanted from a character stand point and not a mechanical standpoint. what if you want to play a 10 year old barbarian whose weapon of choice was a sling? or a cursed character who, turned into a rabbit at in the dark, meaning at night, in dungeons and caves. if he drifted to far from the torch or the light spell he turned into a rabbit.
these ideas could make awesome fun characters, but the moment somebody in the group decides to play a super awesome their one build...
daring champion, pump dex use a rapier with rapier grace, go dragon order and then watch the enemies die to a one-handed fighter.
edit: see? i can't stop.
In before Stormwind Fallacy.
i've seen this multiple times but I only know about the 4e fallacy.
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i've seen this multiple times but I only know about the 4e fallacy.
In before Stormwind Fallacy.
The Stormwind Fallacy refers to the idea that optimization and roleplaying are a zero-sum game; that as one increases, the other must decrease. So, the idea that an optimized character is inherently less interesting or developed than a poorly optimized one.
Does that make sense?
basically there's a difference between making a fighting style work, and picking stuff that straight up doesn't benefit your character.
Being a fighter that's good looking is certainly beneficial. As is playing one that can rouse other warriors or speak persuasively. It just isn't necessarily beneficial in combat (although if you take certain feats and train in intimidate you can debuff enemies which is beneficial).
A human fighter with STR 15+2, DEX 12, CON 14, INT 14, WIS 7, CHA 14 that then takes Intimidate, Diplomacy (class skill through trait), Handle Animal, Ride, Sense Motive, Knowledge (dungeoneering) and then takes the feats Skill Focus (intimidate)*, Bludgeoner, Enforcer.
This isn't suboptimal if you're trying to make a fighter that's a leader of men who inspires fears in their enemy. It is, of course, suboptimal if you're focused on nothing but damage.
* This will have Skill Focus (Dipomacy) at level 8 and Skill Focus (Sense Motive) at level 16 added to their feat list.
The way you're approaching this conversation seems to be from the perspective who finds the suggestion of being suboptimal either offensive or silly. But plenty of people do want to play characters of types that would be deemed suboptimal.
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I'm not sure why there's an assumption that characters have to be so well balanced for everyone to have fun. Sometimes, there's an idea that's so cool, you're willing to do a bit less damage or whatever because the fun comes _from playing that fun idea_.
I've found that it's most important for the party to be balanced against each other.
I can make up for an overly- or poorly-optimized party, although it gets exhausting after a while (especially with so many campaigns). But it's very difficult to properly challenge a group of mixed optimization.
i'm actually pretty sure they I don't know how to make a non-optimized character, i'm just drawn to making good descisions, so it's be more like how many of my feats do i put in sub-optimally 50% 25%? do i only use 60% of my point buy on useful stats?
i wouldn't know where to begin or end my optimization. I also, don't particularly have feats or point buy affect my character's personality or story, so this wouldn't affect the kind of person i was playing, i'd simply be doing this make sure other people were having fun with their stuff.
of course i mean, my favorite race is kobolds, so take this was a grain of salt, it's just i still often push disadvantages into advantages.
its not about purposefully denying yourself things. and its not even about being good at a wide variety of things like John Lynch was saying. its more like...
I think it would be really cool to play a one armed fighter. think about what kind of character that would make, a warrior who lost his arm but is still unafraid to fight. hell, maybe he wants to slay the dragon that ate his arm.
then you think about it mechanically, that means no two handed weapons, no power attack, no shield. maybe give yourself a +1 to dodge cause theres less of you to hit or something but then your stuck asking yourself. is the benefit of getting to play this cool character outweighed by how much he will suck in the game mechanically, and unfortunately the answer is yes. but what if all of the other players felt the same way, the all created a character they wanted from a character stand point and not a mechanical standpoint. what if you want to play a 10 year old barbarian whose weapon of choice was a sling? or a cursed character who, turned into a rabbit at in the dark, meaning at night, in dungeons and caves. if he drifted to far from the torch or the light spell he turned into a rabbit.
these ideas could make awesome fun characters, but the moment somebody in the group decides to
daring champion, pump dex use a rapier with rapier grace, go dragon order and then watch the enemies die to a one-handed fighter.
edit: see? i can't stop.
great, you've built an effective on armed fighter. but your effective one armed fighter is still not as effective mechanically as a two armed fighter. which is my point. I would love to play a one armed fighter and play a one armed fighter as best I could but if someone else played a fighter with two arms, the advantage is clearly theres.
I want to play an intelligent barbarian, now I'm going to make this intelligent barbarian as great as I can. thats the mentality of the players I want to see in my games. not, I want to build the best DPS sorcerer I can.
see what I'm getting at now
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great, you've built an effective on armed fighter. but your effective one armed fighter is still not as effective mechanically as a two armed fighter. which is my point. I would love to play a one armed fighter and play a one armed fighter as best I could but if someone else played a fighter with two arms, the advantage is clearly theres.
I want to play an intelligent barbarian, now I'm going to make this intelligent barbarian as great as I can. thats the mentality of the players I want to see in my games. not, I want to build the best DPS sorcerer I can.
see what I'm getting at now
I'd look up daring champion before you make too many assumptions. Twice your level to damage is pretty vigorous. ^_^
Other than that, agreed.
i've seen this multiple times but I only know about the 4e fallacy.
In before Stormwind Fallacy.
The Stormwind Fallacy refers to the idea that optimization and roleplaying are a zero-sum game; that as one increases, the other must decrease. So, the idea that an optimized character is inherently less interesting or developed than a poorly optimized one.
Does that make sense?
it makes sense how someone could think that way, but it's ultimately flawed.
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Wow guys, stop being so agreeable. This thread was supposed to be a flamewar by post #3.
Seriously though, if nothing else, this thread inspired me to make a barbarian who got kicked out of university due to his ill-temper and getting too physical in spell duels.
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it makes sense how someone could think that way, but it's ultimately flawed.i've seen this multiple times but I only know about the 4e fallacy.
In before Stormwind Fallacy.
The Stormwind Fallacy refers to the idea that optimization and roleplaying are a zero-sum game; that as one increases, the other must decrease. So, the idea that an optimized character is inherently less interesting or developed than a poorly optimized one.
Does that make sense?
Well... it is called a fallacy. I think that's the idea. ^_^
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Wow guys, stop being so agreeable. This thread was supposed to be a flamewar by post #3.
Seriously though, if nothing else, this thread inspired me to make a barbarian who got kicked out of university due to his ill-temper and getting too physical in spell duels.
Be a half-elf... they have a trait for something very similar to that.
i wouldn't know where to begin or end my optimization. I also, don't particularly have feats or point buy affect my character's personality or story, so this wouldn't affect the kind of person i was playing, i'd simply be doing this make sure other people were having fun with their stuff.
If you'd like a suggestion for how to achieve something such as what the OP is talking about, allow me to provide these ideas:
- Think of a character first, without thinking of mechanics at all. What does this character look like, act like, what does the character do? Try to make a well-rounded character by determining what the character did as he grew up, how his environment affected him, his parents, his friends, his jobs, etc.
- If you can't come up with a character based on the above guidelines, try to pick a character from a book or movie that you have experienced that delves into that character to a fair degree. Try to pick out the most important aspects of that character and the various components of the character. In other words, what makes that character unique or distinguishes them from generic character x.
- Now that you have a character in mind, with various things that this character should have/be able to do, look at the mechanical options available to you and start making decisions.
Here's an example:
As a young man, and while in training to become a soldier, the character fell in love with a young woman who was also training to be a soldier. In an effort to impress her, the young man spent his precious few unassigned hours working on his dancing skills.
After confident enough in his dancing skills, the young man waited for an opportune moment to confront the young woman, which happened at their graduation celebration. He waltzed up to the young woman, presented her with a bouquet of flowers, and asked her for a dance.
The two had a blast dancing through the night and eventually went on to marry and later, adventure with one another.
From this small amount of info provided, I could make this character as a human fighter, Lawful Good, with strong family ties. I could take Perform (Dance) as a skill to reflect his time spent honing the skill.
I imagine him being more dexterous than brute strength, so I put one of my higher scores into dexterity. I also imagine him being somewhat persuasive so I put an above average score in Charisma. I assign the rest of the scores as best fit the character concept.
That's just one example - really, the more time you put into refining the character concept before you even look at the mechanics, the more likely a lot of the mechanical decisions will come easily to you as you're making them.
great, you've built an effective on armed fighter. but your effective one armed fighter is still not as effective mechanically as a two armed fighter. which is my point. I would love to play a one armed fighter and play a one armed fighter as best I could but if someone else played a fighter with two arms, the advantage is clearly theres.
I want to play an intelligent barbarian, now I'm going to make this intelligent barbarian as great as I can. thats the mentality of the players I want to see in my games. not, I want to build the best DPS sorcerer I can.
see what I'm getting at now
you apparently don't know how well daring champion does since it can dump str. (he'll also be tankier and faster than the fighter barring mithral fullplate and actually being the fighter class and keeping armor class feature.)
but this is like saying, instead of building a wizard you build a two-handed fighter, for shame.
intelligent barbarian, stamina unlocks with karin style and karin strike.
beyond that hmmmm, skills aren't that useful on a barbarian because rage powers negate a ton of stuff...
on charismatic fighter, why are you not a cavalier?
Wow guys, stop being so agreeable. This thread was supposed to be a flamewar by post #3.
Seriously though, if nothing else, this thread inspired me to make a barbarian who got kicked out of university due to his ill-temper and getting too physical in spell duels.
arcane bloodrager
i wouldn't know where to begin or end my optimization. I also, don't particularly have feats or point buy affect my character's personality or story, so this wouldn't affect the kind of person i was playing, i'd simply be doing this make sure other people were having fun with their stuff.If you'd like a suggestion for how to achieve something such as what the OP is talking about, allow me to provide these ideas:
- Think of a character first, without thinking of mechanics at all. What does this character look like, act like, what does the character do? Try to make a well-rounded character by determining what the character did as he grew up, how his environment affected him, his parents, his friends, his jobs, etc.
- If you can't come up with a character based on the above guidelines, try to pick a character from a book or movie that you have experienced that delves into that character to a fair degree. Try to pick out the most important aspects of that character and the various components of the character. In other words, what makes that character unique or distinguishes them from generic character x.
- Now that you have a character in mind, with various things that this character should have/be able to do, look at the mechanical options available to you and start making decisions.
Here's an example:
** spoiler omitted **...
For characters like this, I would also recommend using the "Background Skills" optional rule from Pathfinder Unchained. :)
i wouldn't know where to begin or end my optimization. I also, don't particularly have feats or point buy affect my character's personality or story, so this wouldn't affect the kind of person i was playing, i'd simply be doing this make sure other people were having fun with their stuff.If you'd like a suggestion for how to achieve something such as what the OP is talking about, allow me to provide these ideas:
- Think of a character first, without thinking of mechanics at all. What does this character look like, act like, what does the character do? Try to make a well-rounded character by determining what the character did as he grew up, how his environment affected him, his parents, his friends, his jobs, etc.
- If you can't come up with a character based on the above guidelines, try to pick a character from a book or movie that you have experienced that delves into that character to a fair degree. Try to pick out the most important aspects of that character and the various components of the character. In other words, what makes that character unique or distinguishes them from generic character x.
- Now that you have a character in mind, with various things that this character should have/be able to do, look at the mechanical options available to you and start making decisions.
k I think people misunderstand, to any character concept there is an optimal way to make the character, one that can keep up with just about everything if you specialize him enough. so, you CAN make optimal stuff for any character concept, i'm having trouble with seeing how or why someone would want to be purposefully unoptimized.
For characters like this, I would also recommend using the "Background Skills" optional rule from Pathfinder Unchained. :)i wouldn't know where to begin or end my optimization. I also, don't particularly have feats or point buy affect my character's personality or story, so this wouldn't affect the kind of person i was playing, i'd simply be doing this make sure other people were having fun with their stuff.If you'd like a suggestion for how to achieve something such as what the OP is talking about, allow me to provide these ideas:
- Think of a character first, without thinking of mechanics at all. What does this character look like, act like, what does the character do? Try to make a well-rounded character by determining what the character did as he grew up, how his environment affected him, his parents, his friends, his jobs, etc.
- If you can't come up with a character based on the above guidelines, try to pick a character from a book or movie that you have experienced that delves into that character to a fair degree. Try to pick out the most important aspects of that character and the various components of the character. In other words, what makes that character unique or distinguishes them from generic character x.
- Now that you have a character in mind, with various things that this character should have/be able to do, look at the mechanical options available to you and start making decisions.
Here's an example:
** spoiler omitted **...
my group uses background skills and something we created called thematic feats. at 2nd and every 4 levels there after you gain a thematic feat, which must be chosen from the racial, teamwork, campaign or general groups(baring any feat with the word spell in it's name).
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Ways in which underoptimizing can backfire:
You don't enjoy it when there are situations where you can't contribute.
The rest of the party resent you for being unable to contribute and blames you when they get them killed.
The GM wants to compensate for your weaknesses, but doesn't know how.
If everyone optimises equally, you'll actually be able to contribute in more situations than a specialised character could. People won't resent you, they'll see you as someone who can be counted upon. The game has so much room for optimisation that even a suboptimal character will be able to handle the published adventures without too much trouble.
Optimisation is often code for specialisation. Pathfinder rewards specialisation by allowing the numbers to be so stacked that they completely break any bounds of what the designers thought would be initially possible. I've had players who stacked their AC so high that in order to have a bestiary monster actually hit them the damage would be so high that they would get one-shotted because the CR of the monster would be so much higher than the player.
It's often much more difficult for GMs to handle hyper-optimised characters than it is for them to handle suboptimal characters.
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k I think people misunderstand, to any character concept there is an optimal way to make the character, one that can keep up with just about everything if you specialize him enough. so, you CAN make optimal stuff for any character concept, i'm having trouble with seeing how or why someone would want to be purposefully unoptimized.i wouldn't know where to begin or end my optimization. I also, don't particularly have feats or point buy affect my character's personality or story, so this wouldn't affect the kind of person i was playing, i'd simply be doing this make sure other people were having fun with their stuff.If you'd like a suggestion for how to achieve something such as what the OP is talking about, allow me to provide these ideas:
- Think of a character first, without thinking of mechanics at all. What does this character look like, act like, what does the character do? Try to make a well-rounded character by determining what the character did as he grew up, how his environment affected him, his parents, his friends, his jobs, etc.
- If you can't come up with a character based on the above guidelines, try to pick a character from a book or movie that you have experienced that delves into that character to a fair degree. Try to pick out the most important aspects of that character and the various components of the character. In other words, what makes that character unique or distinguishes them from generic character x.
- Now that you have a character in mind, with various things that this character should have/be able to do, look at the mechanical options available to you and start making decisions.
I can see the humour in being purposefully terrible at your role for say, a one-shot session. But I don't think anyone is saying they want to be entirely unoptimized at their role. The one handed character for example, while a character with two hands would definitely better by virtue of being able to hold two objects and not most likely taking a penalty to climb but with optimization, the one handed character can still be good. Not the best, but good. A player might choose a one handed character purely for the plot hook and overcoming the difficulties of only having one hand.
What's important is to make sure your difficulties don't impact the other players and if they do, make sure they're okay with it beforehand.
my group uses background skills and something we created called thematic feats. at 2nd and every 4 levels there after you gain a thematic feat, which must be chosen from the racial, teamwork, campaign or general groups(baring any feat with the word spell in it's name).
Some people would be quite happy to take those thematic feats without getting them for free. It isn't about taking as many booby choices as possible, but about valuing the benefit those feats provide higher than the benefit provided by combat focused feats.
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k I think people misunderstand, to any character concept there is an optimal way to make the character, one that can keep up with just about everything if you specialize him enough.
Well, I would actually argue there are multiple optimal ways to make a character, not just one.
so, you CAN make optimal stuff for any character concept, i'm having trouble with seeing how or why someone would want to be purposefully unoptimized.
You of course can make any character concept optimized. The very idea behind optimization means maximizing within certain limitations.
As far as choosing to not optimize, this all comes down to player preference. If you start the process of creating a character with the idea of optimization in mind, or if you select the mechanics of the character before you create the concept or background of the character, then choosing not to optimize would be an odd choice indeed.
However, a lot of people like to create characters to fit certain ideas or concepts in their mind. Its not that they start off with the goal of making a non-optimized character, they simply want their character to be like x, regardless if x is optimal, not optimal, etc.
k I think people misunderstand, to any character concept there is an optimal way to make the character, one that can keep up with just about everything if you specialize him enough.Well, I would actually argue there are multiple optimal ways to make a character, not just one.
so, you CAN make optimal stuff for any character concept, i'm having trouble with seeing how or why someone would want to be purposefully unoptimized.You of course can make any character concept optimized. The very idea behind optimization means maximizing within certain limitations.
As far as choosing to not optimize, this all comes down to player preference. If you start the process of creating a character with the idea of optimization in mind, or if you select the mechanics of the character before you create the concept or background of the character, then choosing not to optimize would be an odd choice indeed.
However, a lot of people like to create characters to fit certain ideas or concepts in their mind. Its not that they start off with the goal of making a non-optimized character, they simply want their character to be like x, regardless if x is optimal, not optimal, etc.
to be clear you basically agreed to my posts intent.
but i mean i showed how you could make a powerful intelligent barbarian. there are ways to make things work, the biggest problem i see with it is that you probably can;t use your intelligence for anything while raging. :/
my group uses background skills and something we created called thematic feats. at 2nd and every 4 levels there after you gain a thematic feat, which must be chosen from the racial, teamwork, campaign or general groups(baring any feat with the word spell in it's name).Some people would be quite happy to take those thematic feats without getting them for free. It isn't about taking as many booby choices as possible, but about valuing the benefit those feats provide higher than the benefit provided by combat focused feats.
the idea is A LOT of fighting styles are feat starved, meaning if you want feats to fill out your character, you have to delay making your character even work mechanically, so we decided to just give some out every even level you don't gain an ability score.
k I think people misunderstand, to any character concept there is an optimal way to make the character, one that can keep up with just about everything if you specialize him enough.Well, I would actually argue there are multiple optimal ways to make a character, not just one.
so, you CAN make optimal stuff for any character concept, i'm having trouble with seeing how or why someone would want to be purposefully unoptimized.You of course can make any character concept optimized. The very idea behind optimization means maximizing within certain limitations.
As far as choosing to not optimize, this all comes down to player preference. If you start the process of creating a character with the idea of optimization in mind, or if you select the mechanics of the character before you create the concept or background of the character, then choosing not to optimize would be an odd choice indeed.
However, a lot of people like to create characters to fit certain ideas or concepts in their mind. Its not that they start off with the goal of making a non-optimized character, they simply want their character to be like x, regardless if x is optimal, not optimal, etc.
to be clear you basically agreed to my posts intent.
but i mean i showed how you could make a powerful intelligent barbarian. there are ways to make things work, the biggest problem i see with it is that you probably can;t use your intelligence for anything while raging. :/
True, I don't think any of us are disagreeing with each other here. You can make a suboptimal character and make it usable. And that's the point. In that example, while it's true that intelligence doesn't provide much synergy with a barbarian, the character concept will be the most important thing to the player in question and won't care about synergy provided the character is at least viable.
They may even build around it with feats like artful dodge if only for thematic reasons.
the idea is A LOT of fighting styles are feat starved, meaning if you want feats to fill out your character, you have to delay making your character even work mechanically, so we decided to just give some out every even level you don't gain an ability score.
That's cool? This thread is about whether people are willing to sacrifice that combat power to realise characters that require more resources than is available if you're optimising for combat/realising those fighting styles. Your group doesn't want to have to decide so you've instituted houserules. That's neat, but I'm not really seeing the relevance to the intiial post unless you're saying "no. Our characters will be optimised for combat. We'll hand out free resources to make sure this happens while letting us play slightly more interesting characters as well."? Maybe if you tried to explain your point a bit differently? Unless you're not trying to relate to the OP of course and are simply posing your musings unrelated to the initial topic (albeit inspired by it).
great, you've built an effective on armed fighter. but your effective one armed fighter is still not as effective mechanically as a two armed fighter. which is my point. I would love to play a one armed fighter and play a one armed fighter as best I could but if someone else played a fighter with two arms, the advantage is clearly theres.
I want to play an intelligent barbarian, now I'm going to make this intelligent barbarian as great as I can. thats the mentality of the players I want to see in my games. not, I want to build the best DPS sorcerer I can.
see what I'm getting at now
you apparently don't know how well daring champion does since it can dump str. (he'll also be tankier and faster than the fighter barring mithral fullplate and actually being the fighter class and keeping armor class feature.)
but this is like saying, instead of building a wizard you build a two-handed fighter, for shame.
intelligent barbarian, stamina unlocks with karin style and karin strike.
beyond that hmmmm, skills aren't that useful on a barbarian because rage powers negate a ton of stuff...
on charismatic fighter, why are you not a cavalier?
he's not a cavalier because he doesn't know what to do with his life, let alone devote his life to a core set of principles. all he knows is that he wants to kill the dragon that took his arm but he's starting to lose heart in that idea, it won't bring his arm back and he's not even sure if it'll make him get better. thats why he's not a cavalier. also he's afraid of horses.
k I think people misunderstand, to any character concept there is an optimal way to make the character, one that can keep up with just about everything if you specialize him enough.Well, I would actually argue there are multiple optimal ways to make a character, not just one.
so, you CAN make optimal stuff for any character concept, i'm having trouble with seeing how or why someone would want to be purposefully unoptimized.You of course can make any character concept optimized. The very idea behind optimization means maximizing within certain limitations.
As far as choosing to not optimize, this all comes down to player preference. If you start the process of creating a character with the idea of optimization in mind, or if you select the mechanics of the character before you create the concept or background of the character, then choosing not to optimize would be an odd choice indeed.
However, a lot of people like to create characters to fit certain ideas or concepts in their mind. Its not that they start off with the goal of making a non-optimized character, they simply want their character to be like x, regardless if x is optimal, not optimal, etc.
to be clear you basically agreed to my posts intent.
but i mean i showed how you could make a powerful intelligent barbarian. there are ways to make things work, the biggest problem i see with it is that you probably can;t use your intelligence for anything while raging. :/
True, I don't think any of us are disagreeing with each other here. You can make a suboptimal character and make it usable. And that's the point. In that example, while it's true that intelligence doesn't provide much synergy with a barbarian, the character concept will be the most important thing to the player in question and won't care about synergy provided the character is at least viable.
They may even build around it with feats like artful dodge if only...
hmm armored hulk, with intelligence instead of dex, then artful dodge to get TWF, then try to use unchained barbarian, accurate stance and beast totem. for feats get pirranha strike and stamina combat with kirin style and kirin strike...