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There are ways to increase the performance of your car while staying "street legal".What does that have to do with anything? Wanting to push limits remains true regardless of whether the limits are legal or physical.
Do you understand why cars that drive in the streets have certain limits? If you drive a car built for drag racing in the street you could actually cause harm to other people and other drivers. They are more likely to get out of control than a normal car.
Having an obviously broken character can do the same thing in principle. It can cause problems for other characters and for the game itself.
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And people break those limits all the time, because they think they can handle it, because they don't care about hurting other people, or because they just don't know the limits.
If you can draw that comparison, why can't you answer your own question?
For example, people who make AoOs for every threatened square an enemy moves through are bending the rules via ignorance.
An example of is not a definition of in regards to subject.
What you define as cheese has been mandatory for survival in several campaigns I've played in. I don't overall enjoy that style of play although I can hold my own.
Invariably whether something is appropriate or inappropriate depends entirely upon group.
In order to answer why people in general try slip one past the dm you're going to need to limit some variables if you want a functional reason. To start with I'd suggest picking a person. The question you've asked is a frighteningly complex question that psychology has yet to give a working answer.
I personally will sit around when I'm bored and draw up obscenely overpowered characters that are perfectly legal that I will never play. I draw them up because I have a love of numbers and the mechanics behind them. I like seeing how far the system can be pushed according to its legal, see the rules, limits. I don't play them because I like a good challenge and I don't see the need to outshine my group or to make my dm work harder to accommodate me. That for me isn't fun and in the group in which I play currently it isn't necessary.
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I personally will sit around when I'm bored and draw up obscenely overpowered characters that are perfectly legal that I will never play. I draw them up because I have a love of numbers and the mechanics behind them. I like seeing how far the system can be pushed according to its legal, see the rules, limits. I don't play them because I like a good challenge and I don't see the need to outshine my group or to make my dm work harder to accommodate me. That for me isn't fun and in the group in which I play currently it isn't necessary.
I do the same thing. I like to play with the numbers on the side but that's the extent of it.
Shallowsoul cool but for many others that are a myriad number of reasons for wanting to play said characters. In some campaigns they are necessary. Some people feel pathfinder is a competitive sport. Some people have deep seeded psychological issues regarding their views of themselves and make up for it by roleplay. Some people don't care about the rules. The list can go on all day.
Very often you catch a great deal of flack because you seem to believe that your definitions are universal. I have absolutely no problems with your house rules. I don't think many people on the forums do. People take umbrage with how you convey yourself.
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I am still waiting for you to illustrate to any dgeree how cheezy characters affect roleplay or bend any of the social mores of your campaign.
This is an easy one to answer. When you are pulling options from multiple books and the theme of those options don't oo in your specific campaign then that can affect role play and social mores.
This is an easy one to answer. When you are pulling options from multiple books and the theme of those options don't oo in your specific campaign then that can affect role play and social mores.
And I'd agree that making a character outside the 'look and feel' of a campaign would be wrong, but that has little to do with optimisation or cheeze and a lot to do with character design and roleplay. I could drop a completely un-cheezed core-rulebook only character into your campaign and do the exact same thing by making unsympathetic choices as well. Or I could take on board what your campaign is trying to do, the look and feel of the setting, and then build a highly effective cheezemonkey that fits with the place.
The 'real life' Miyamoto Musashi was the biggest cheezemonkey I can think of, stealing the limelight and overshadowing everyone he came to be around with his raw Uber - yet he fit right into the setting.
Why can't my character be exceptionally good at somthing AND fit in to the world?
This is an easy one to answer. When you are pulling options from multiple books and the theme of those options don't oo in your specific campaign then that can affect role play and social mores.And I'd agree that making a character outside the 'look and feel' of a campaign would be wrong, but that has little to do with optimisation or cheeze and a lot to do with character design and roleplay. I could drop a completely un-cheezed core-rulebook only character into your campaign and do the exact same thing by making unsympathetic choices as well. Or I could take on board what your campaign is trying to do, the look and feel of the setting, and then build a highly effective cheezemonkey that fits with the place.
The 'real life' Miyamoto Musashi was the biggest cheezemonkey I can think of, stealing the limelight and overshadowing everyone he came to be around with his raw Uber - yet he fit right into the setting.
Why can't my character be exceptionally good at somthing AND fit in to the world?
This reminds me of the cheesiest i have ever been.
I made a character in a gestalt game for 3 people, who got nicknamed the Brigton Beast. He was a beastmorph vivsectionist alchemist 10
+ skirmisher rogue4/master chymist 6. Used feral mutagen to grow claws and a bite got wings from beastmorph and charged things for visiouse amounts of sneak attack damage while two handing a nodachi in his extra arms.
This came about as a thought exercise at first that i broke out to try. The character was a traveling cook by day with a fully stocked wagon and a Tibbet helper (another PC). During an early adventure we had to assassanite 3 political figures who were using magic to rig the elections in a farily large town. One was lured into a brothel while using a extract of disguise self. When i went into my budour to "freshen up" I came tearing out in a demonic fury killing the guy and flying off with a cat in one hand(tibbet had snuck my weapons in for me).
To my DM this event which helped showcase everyones talents was great and led to rumors of this terrifying creature that showed up several more times (Cat in hand) to destroy the corrupt.
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When you are pulling options from multiple books and the theme of those options don't oo in your specific campaign then that can affect role play and social mores.
Specifics? As in, your setting is a Romanesque empire, and the player(s) in question have rail-cannons? Or employ frequent necromancy spells in city that frowns on such?
Splitting the atom to release tremendous amounts of energy is a total abuse of a corner-case of physics and should be banned. The atom bomb was pure cheese. Come to think of it, machine guns allow too many attacks per round and should be banned from existence as well. In fact, guns in general are no fair -- they let grunts out-compete professional soldiers. That's TOTAL CHEESE! We should have slugged it out with the Japanese for another 20 years using sticks and rocks!
But not if any of the rocks were too heavy or too pointy.
Splitting the atom to release tremendous amounts of energy is a total abuse of a corner-case of physics and should be banned. The atom bomb was pure cheese. Come to think of it, machine guns allow too many attacks per round and should be banned from existence as well. In fact, guns in general are no fair -- they let grunts out-compete professional soldiers. That's TOTAL CHEESE! We should have slugged it out with the Japanese for another 20 years using sticks and rocks!
But not if any of the rocks were too heavy or too pointy.
Smelting rocks into refined metal, that's cheese. Totally upsets both the game balance of heaviness and pointiness.
Prehensile hands. Extra cheesy.
Cheese is subjective.
-->If the real question is why do people make overpowered characters with relation to what the rest of the group enjoys, then there are a few reasons.
1.They see it as a competition.
2.They are being jerks.
3.They may not realize what they are doing, and how it annoys others
4...other reason that I am sure other posters can come up with.
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Boils down to what the group considers 'fun'. If cheese is fun for your group, and the main goal of any group is to have 'said fun', then there's your answer. I dont min/max, Monty Haul, or play cheesy characters whatsoever, but I can see how its fun for a lot of people. Nothing wrong with that. If its imbalancing and crashing the game in general, then thats where the DM should have 'eyes on' to mediate. To use some of my SNCO brainwashing, if the cheesey character is breaking the game, thats my fault (the dm) for allowing it and not setting boundaries. The guy/gal in questions just having fun the way they know how.
I removed some posts and the replies to them. Don't be jerks. It isn't as hard as it might seem.
I removed some posts and the replies to them. Don't be jerks. It isn't as hard as it might seem.
but they were so much fun to read.....
I don't think I have ever dropped an 18 into anything unless I did dice rolls. They are over rated IMHO. I rather use the points to boost myself somewhere else, and just take the 16.
Why would a smart BEEG not use cheese?
To be honest, the focus on high stats isn't anything new. The 1E PHB mentions that a character really isn't viable unless he has at least two 15s.
True but It also had a section titled "hopeless characters" if I remember correctly; It seems like the game systems keep raising the lower margin. The standard stat array has one 8, one 10 and all others above average. If you rolled that set on 3d6 back in 1E you'd be remarkably solid if not godlike.
You have to remember, however, that for most stats, an 8 was pretty much in the average range. You had to be below that to have any penalties. 3E raised the average to 10.
Taking that into account, the standard array is probably close to "normal", since normal has shifted upward.
The biggest change as far as stats are concerned is the progression. It's easier to get bonuses than it used to be, since they generally started at 15 in the day.
But I don't remember ever running a character generated on 3d6. By the time 1E came out (1978-79), 4d6best3 was pretty much standard.
OMG, no wonder you like 1E so much; was that college-level play? :P
Suresure, we've talked about this before.
I myself was in the D&D = algebra crowd. "Yes, the advanced rule books; I don't know if i've mentioned it but I'm eleven, thank you very much."
The actual gameplay was an ugly mess, but what can I say, we had fun.
So what year did you start?
Somewhere between 80-82 I think? I got the Erol Otus red box basic set for a christmas present, and immediately moved into Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Cause, y'know, when you're eleven, "advanced" means "better", right?