zachol's page

I like having a firm sense of the character's personality and behavior and an idea of what she used to do and where she comes from. I used to construct really involved backstories (if only for my own enjoyment), but more and more I've found that leaving the past open can be a lot more valuable. It allows you to insert stuff that would be appropriate to the situation at hand, like "oh I've been here, I've got a contact," or for the GM to ask "could your character have a brother or cousin for this plot point?" and to instantly develop connections that fit the larger story.

The problem there is how to define effectiveness.

If I purposely focus my character on non-combat abilities (in order to match their concept), that's going to make a character that's effective in the kind of games I play, but not for those who play a more combat-focused game.

I feel like even if you accept this, there's still sometimes hostility against optimizing within a certain domain.

For example, say I'm making a magus. I could choose to use Dervish Dance and Magical Lineage on shocking grasp, or I could take, say, Power Attack on a Str-focused build along with Armor Expert. Maybe my image in the first place is of a heavily (well, moderately) armored gish who can cast spells and use brute force at the same time. The high Dex Dervish Dance build is inappropriate (I want to use a longsword anyway, not a scimitar). Noncombat stats are roughly comparable between the two, so we're just looking at combat.
Here, it seems like I'm losing out. Str magus has less Dex, so less AC and Ref. Power Attack doesn't give the same kind of returns to a magus compared to, say, fighter, considering the lower BAB. The magus gets their damage a different way (damaging touch spells). I can do the Magical Lineage trick with my second trait and the meta feat, but that's really pigeonholing my attack routine.

I honestly would rather be able to just say "I want to make a Str magus" and feel like I was as effective as the Dex magus, instead of possibly being more or less effective. It's not like I particularly like having to comb through all the options while focusing on which is "better."
I know that a good group and a sensible GM can make most concepts and executions work by smoothing things over and adjusting encounters, but I wish I could more confidently make a character in isolation and know that it was both sufficiently good at its job without overshadowing other characters. The easiest way to do this is just assume a relatively high level of optimization and build to that. If anything, building optimized characters is a matter of being polite. I can always wind them back a few notches if its clear they're inappropriate for the group, but it's difficult to rebuild an unoptimized character to fit in a high powered group.