I see the term "overpowered" (and "OP") get tossed around quite a bit on this forum, but I'm curious as to where people draw the line. Has anyone put together anything that shows average DPR by level?
I'm sure my question begets many more questions (like how to factor in rising ACs), and I expect the subjective nature of the topic to give rise to a wide range of opinions, but I really am interested in seeing if there's any kind of consensus out there.
In my own campaign, I can only tell that a PC is overpowered when he seems way more effective than the other PCs. Or maybe it's just the others are underpowered? And I gave up on trusting APL vs. CR long ago.
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Does it marginalize the contributions of the rest of the party, assuming an average party?
If so, it is overpowered.
Does it marginalize the contributions of the rest of the party, assuming an average party?
If so, it is overpowered.
True. I think at the heart of what I'm looking for, though, is how to determine if a character is overpowered compared to how powerful he is supposed to be.
For example, say a character in my group marginalizes the contributions of the rest of the party, as you say. But then the player takes that same PC and plays with another group, and fits in without dominating. Maybe the party at my table is below average.
That's what I'm trying to figure out.
Does it marginalize the contributions of the rest of the party, assuming an average party?
If so, it is overpowered.
True. I think at the heart of what I'm looking for, though, is how to determine if a character is overpowered compared to how powerful he is supposed to be.
For example, say a character in my group marginalizes the contributions of the rest of the party, as you say. But then the player takes that same PC and plays with another group, and fits in without dominating. Maybe the party at my table is below average.
That's what I'm trying to figure out.
You could also have people who use sub-par tactics in combat, or who just don't understand the game as well.
Overpowered is a highly subjective term that can really only apply to abilities when compared to other options that achieve a 'similar' result. Barring Cheapy's definition (which isn't wrong per se, but not quite narrow enough), you won't be able to set a single threshold, because you're quantifying countless amounts of information and putting oranges next to apples next to a side of beef...
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I see the term "overpowered" (and "OP") get tossed around quite a bit on this forum, but I'm curious as to where people draw the line.
Please note that 90% of the time you see the term "get tossed around" on the forums, it's not actually going to mean any of the thoughtful definitions people present in answer to your question. To help you distinguish, here are some of the meanings used on the forums:
1. "Outside my local group's traditions/habits" - Long-time gamers often develop a fondness for certain classic characters (The Classic Fighter, The Classic Rogue, and so on) and react negatively when shown an alternate execution of the class. If the execution appears to be at least as powerful as the Classic, then this negative reaction is likely to take the form of "that's overpowered".
2. "I don't know how the rules work" - There are lots of nitpicky little rules in this game, many of which only come into play in some of the more obscure or creative situations. As such, they can sometimes be glossed over by a player who mostly uses more straightforward characters. As a result, such a player might look at a more unorthodox build and, being unaware of the rules which keep it in check, think that it's a lot more powerful than it actually is. This one can also apply to the player's assessment of a new feat, item, and so forth.
3. "I didn't think of it myself" - Sometimes it's plain old jealousy. Someone thinks they're pretty good at building strong characters, and when they see themselves outdone, they declare that the build must be overpowered.
4. "I want to feel superior" - There are plenty of people who still haven't outgrown the thought that there is an inverse relationship between a character's power and its player's ability to roleplay. Unwilling to believe* that someone can do both (roleplay and build effective characters), these players will look at anything stronger than their own characters with disdain, and throw around words like "overpowered", "cheese", "munchkin", "rollplayer", "minmaxer", "powergamer", and so forth. To throw someone into such a category allows the speaker to feel superior to everyone in that category.
Note that when someone uses the term "overpowered" to mean any of the above, they will vehemently deny any claims to that effect. However, once you learn to weed these out, you'll be left with a far smaller number of claims of "overpowered"-ness and be better able to ascertain a working definition.
Hope that helps. :)
The term is overused.
Many people use it to mean "I don't like this" as a knee-jerk reaction without seeing where it fits into the greater system.
Objectively, a party is overpowered when they have vastly more wealth and power than is appropriate to the CR calculations for their level. In practice, this is very hard to determine, and the majority of campaigns are compensating for an over- or under-powered party through GM challenge selection. This kind of overpower only really creates problems for GMs who have trouble adjusting the challenge.
In a design context, overpowered means that some game element is clearly so good that no one would ever not have it given the option. This is usually considered bad because it undermines the challenge rating system (further) and (as an above poster put it) marginalizes the players in the group who did not choose that option.
In all cases, it's far better to articulate why something is overpowered than to simply label it as such.
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In a design context, overpowered means that some game element is clearly so good that no one would ever not have it given the option.
This. Anything else is relative - if you're outshining your party, it could be because everyone else has built weak characters (either on purpose or due to inexperience/lack of skill), it could be because the challenges are catering to that one character's specialty (conversely, something could look overpowered and then never come up in-game; like a strong Channel Energy effect in a campaign where there are almost no undead).
So with the definition so concisely articulated by Evil Lincoln, then only thing that jumps to mind as possibly being overpowered is the human (and possibly half-elf) race, as LOTS of PFS players have human or half-elf characters. But even that's not absolute, as sometimes another race is the right pick for your concept.
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As near as I can tell, "overpowered" is a moving goalpost for folks.
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In my own campaign, I can only tell that a PC is overpowered when he seems way more effective than the other PCs.
That's the best way to tell!
I'd say that something is overpowered when it causes the player or their party members to have less fun than if that thing were weaker.
You're overpowered if you significantly overshadow the other competitors in your role. It's easy to be overpowered in many games simply by being of a higher optimization level than the other PCs. This is complicated quite a bit by the fact that some classes, especially wizards who aren't blasters or SOD/SOS builds and a lot of the newer classes, have a power level similar in combat to highly optimized traditional melee builds without need for any non-obvious optimization at all. Compare that to a fighter, for instance, where a non-focused build might have only 2/3 to 1/2 of the DPR without any significant (i.e., meaningful in terms of success or failure when such actually matters) gains in other areas. So if your party consists of low-optimization rogues and fighters, simply being a non-optimized summoner or wizard or alchemist is probably overpowered.
The problem is when do you consider someone a competator? Is the evoker wizard a competator for the fighter in combat damage? Is the inquisitor a competetor for the archer fighter if they are both shooting a bow? I think overpowered is a near meaningless term in a game with so many variables and such a wide variety of roles and function. Basically its like pornography, you cant define it but you know it when you see it.
If you are starting to feel that you are playing with the wii mote (Wizard) and the rest of the classes seem to be playing with an NES controller...
Kolokotroni,
An evoker will rarely be considered a competitor for a fighter. Now if the inquisitor, because he's built better than the fighter who considers archery his thing, performs far better in archery DPR than the fighter, the inquisitor IS overpowered in the scope of that party
(because the inquisitor brings tons of other stuff besides that, notably spells and skills and noncombat resources). The archetypical fighter with a 2handed weapon is bringing two things to the table---melee control and DPR. An archer is generally just bringing DPR. The sword and board is bringing (ideally) significantly more melee control and damage mitigation and less (usually about 1/3 less) DPR. The rule of thumb is this:You should never be better in a secondary function than someone in their primary function, if level is held constant. If you have the same primary function, you should have approximately equal capability.
Actually the inquisitor does not out DPR the archer fighter (archer fighters have the highest dpr in the game except for some of the more extreme eidolon builds). That example was actually meant to demonstrate the reverse. An optimized archer fighter will out damage the optimized for archery inquisitor, both will have archery as their primary function, but the fighter will outperform the inquisitor in that function. Does that make the fighter overpowered? I'd say now because the inquisitor has several side functions (skills, and utility magic).
To answer part of the OP's original question, there are no standard metrics for what constitutes "average" in terms of party composition, puzzle challenge or CR. While it's possible to boil everything down in terms of numbers and math, w/o proper data inputs, it's probably not going to happen.
On how your current campaign is shaping up, post builds and then we can give more specific advice. But ultimately, are all of your players (and you) having fun? That's the most important thing.
I see the term "overpowered" (and "OP") get tossed around quite a bit on this forum, but I'm curious as to where people draw the line. Has anyone put together anything that shows average DPR by level?
I'm sure my question begets many more questions (like how to factor in rising ACs), and I expect the subjective nature of the topic to give rise to a wide range of opinions, but I really am interested in seeing if there's any kind of consensus out there.
In my own campaign, I can only tell that a PC is overpowered when he seems way more effective than the other PCs. Or maybe it's just the others are underpowered? And I gave up on trusting APL vs. CR long ago.
1) Do the majority of players feel marginalized? If so, it's overpowered.
2) Does the DM have to do more work? If so, it's overpowered.
Overpowered is a term that, as has been explained, is different for different people and groups. So I will give my own definition of what I consider overpowered, or OP.
OP can be labeled at either a particular character, group of characters, an entire party, or a monster.
A character is OP to me if the monsters that they face are cut down with little to no effort by that character. Little-to-no effort to me is defined as hitting 75% or more reliably per swing regularly, and/or outputting damage that constitutes 75% or more of the monster's overall hit points regularly per attack regularly.
Another criteria of OP would be defense scores. Players that require standard monsters of their appropriate challenge rating to regularly roll 19s or 20s to hit them I would consider OP. Or whose saving throws were geared so high as to guarantee auto-success barring a "1".
HOWEVER this is not a hard number for me. A player could be hitting on 6s or higher but only doing 6-8 points of damage per strike, and I wouldn't consider that over powered. So that figure is a loose estimate. It is generally what I would at least define as the beginnings of an OP template.
Why this is bad
A character who is OP cannot be challenged by what challenges the rest of the party. The answer to this is to create encounters that contain creatures that can affect the OP character. This type of creature is also called "grudge monster" by certain players, and can create conflict with the OP player who feels you are cheating them of their power, or through the party itself if they have to face this monster and they are not capable of doing so because their power level is much less than the OP character.
The problem can compound if you have several OP characters in a party, for the above reasons only multiplied.
An OP party is an entire party that is optimized and cannot be challenged by normal encounters. The DM must put forth extra effort in upping the challenge ratings or putting forth monsters that occupy harder challenge ratings to effectively challenge the party.
Why this is bad
This is in my opinion easier to handle over one or two characters who are OP in a party of normal characters, because the DM doesn't have to worry about accidently overpowering the normal characters.
The downsides are the same as the above though... mainly with players who feel cheated of their power as the DM is defeating the purpose of them being more powerful in the first place by putting more powerful challenges in front of them (effectively keeping the difficulty level the same regardless of if the party is OP or not OP)
An OP monster is a monster that is like an OP character. Their defenses are so high that the party generally hits only 25% of the time or less, or whose damage is so high that they can drop a player in one or two shots (barring low level play which can happen with even kobolds) or whose abilities can insta-gib a player unless an outrageously high saving throw is made.
So basically I strive to keep players hitting the monsters around 40-60% of the time, I try to make sure monsters can make players sweat but not come off as so overpowered that the party gets gibbed everytime unless the encounter calls for that (in which case they should run), and that the damage output keeps the fight interesting.
However some encounters SHOULD be easy. It shouldn't always be a hard battle every time.
I would like to mention that any DM who has issues w/ hitting AC should just start rolling behind the screen and then say hit or miss depending on the die roll and not the modifiers.
If AM BARBARIAN makes whimpering sounds and wets his pants in your company . . . you might be overpowered.
If every single member of your adventuring party needs a Natural 20 to save versus your spells . . . then you might be overpowered.
If you routinely sunder an opponent’s sword, shield, and armor in a single blow, and have enough damage remaining to force a save for Massive Damage . . . you might be overpowered.
If the avatar of a god cowers in the corner and begs you to spare his life . . . you might be overpowered.
Master Arminas
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I would like to mention that any DM who has issues w/ hitting AC should just start rolling behind the screen and then say hit or miss depending on the die roll and not the modifiers.
Maybe "if the DM has to cheat to make it competitive, it's overpowered" should be the threshold. :P
Maybe "if the DM has to cheat to make it competitive, it's overpowered" should be the threshold. :P
The DM ain't got no humanity!
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It's all relative.
My old 3.5 group had a druid player not happy during combat because I was killing things too quickly against non-evil beings as a paladin.
Another player insisted a rogue 2, cleric 1, wizard 3, duskblade 1 was the way to go because of high saves, Evasion, healing spells, and high AC was the way to go.
They didn't understand the mechanics of the game very well. I didn't even build an optimized paladin. I never took Weapon Focus because the GM kept giving me different weapons to use. I didn't take Power Attack until level 9, but I was still dishing out the most damage. Etc, etc etc.
It's all relative.
Overpowered is when you have character or group that is not challenged by CR appropriate encounters on regular basis. If you find your group easily defeating epic battles at APL +3 that is over powered.
Player vs Player comparison aren't really valid as you aren't competing in the game but working as team. As long as the team is being challenged and is having fun it doesn't matter if Character A out damages Character B where both are the damage dealers of the party. Just it tends to be if you the overpowered character in the group the challenges are being defeated too easily. To compensate the GM is force to increase the difficulty of challenges and that puts those who are weak at severe disadvantage.
I see the term "overpowered" (and "OP") get tossed around quite a bit on this forum, but I'm curious as to where people draw the line. Has anyone put together anything that shows average DPR by level?
I'm sure my question begets many more questions (like how to factor in rising ACs), and I expect the subjective nature of the topic to give rise to a wide range of opinions, but I really am interested in seeing if there's any kind of consensus out there.
In my own campaign, I can only tell that a PC is overpowered when he seems way more effective than the other PCs. Or maybe it's just the others are underpowered? And I gave up on trusting APL vs. CR long ago.
There is no consensus as far as a general statement anyway. It all depends on specific things or combinations of things.
APL vs CR is ok until you get really good players at the table. They tend to be able to do more with the same resources as lesser players.
At my last table I had one really good player with two ok players, and one not so good player.
Does it marginalize the contributions of the rest of the party, assuming an average party?
If so, it is overpowered.
This. In a group full of Munchkins... a Munchkin isn't Over Powered.
Overpowered is relative to the other PCs. The DM can always make the game easier or harder to compensate for the players' skill level-- but it's a lot harder to balance the players against each other.