ElyasRavenwood
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One man's "character build" is another man's "optimized cheese"
Im going to ask for people to give an example of what they would consider what to them would be a normal character build, I am thinking a small feat/ class combination, not an entire character, and an example of what they would consider what to them would be an optimized cheesy build, one that makes you groan, or you find irritating.
For me here is an example of a normal character build
Fighter Melee- weapon focus, weapon specialization, great sword, power attack, Cleave, great cleave.
fighter archer: weapon focus weapon specialization: Long bow, Point black shot, precise shot, rapid shot.
Rogues: Combat Expertise, Improved Feint,
Cleric: Selective Channel, Extra channel, Improved channel, Quicken channel
Wizard: Spell focus, Greater Spell focus, Spell penetraition, Greater Spell penetraition
For me, in my opinion, an example of optimized cheese would be:
Summoner Archtyp: Synthesist-(summoner/ sorcerer/paladin combination)
Two weapon fighting with two medium or large weapons
Monkey Grip and giant sized swords.
Zen archer monk
Hex crafting magus with prehensile hair.
Min max builds (PFS) where people dump their stats to 7 so they can pump others much higher.
Gunslingers
Ninjas and vows…..of poverty, of silence, of chastity.
Two characters with a combination of keen rapier with the Butterfly Sting feat, and another character with a high crit weapon like tetsubo
I could rant on and on…..
But I am curious, what are your opinions? There isn’t a right or wrong answer.
What do you think is for you a normal character build?
What do you think is for you optimized cheese?
Thanks.
| cranewings |
A Cheese Build, to me, is one where the player is begging the GM to play to his strengths because he has too many weaknesses. It is hard to be OP and cover your bases.
For example: sorcerer, 20 cha, fairy type, sleep spell, feats to improve sleep
Player says, "why do you keep attacking me with elves and skeletons. Can't you see my character can't SHINE?
Stupid.
Another cheese build:
Fighter, Power Attack, Furious Assault, Cleave, Two Handed Sword, Heavy Armor, Damage at first level: 2d6+9. Movement speed: 20, Ranged Damage, 1d6. Ranged Strike +2.
Player says, "how come all your bad guys always have position advantage and won't come down and trade blows like men. When my character uses a bow, he can't SHINE!"
Again, stupid.
Artanthos
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I agree with all of your normal builds.
I'm even ok with most single class builds and multiclassing done to fullfill a character concept. Kudo points if choices are made to fullfil the concept even at the expense of character power.
Pretty much anything with a one - two level dip starts to smell of cheese. Barbarian with one level of Oracle(lame), Wizard with one level of cross-blooded sorcerer, etc.
Any character that is distoring the rules for a purely mechanical advantage is definately smelling funny. Non-mechanical changes and re-skinning are usually roleplay choices; I will overlook these.
If you've got a 7 intelligence and charisma, look no further for the source of the odor.
Artanthos
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A Cheese Build, to me, is one where the player is begging the GM to play to his strengths because he has too many weaknesses. It is hard to be OP and cover your bases.
For example: sorcerer, 20 cha, fairy type, sleep spell, feats to improve sleep
Player says, "why do you keep attacking me with elves and skeletons. Can't you see my character can't SHINE?
Stupid.
Another cheese build:
Fighter, Power Attack, Furious Assault, Cleave, Two Handed Sword, Heavy Armor, Damage at first level: 2d6+9. Movement speed: 20, Ranged Damage, 1d6. Ranged Strike +2.
Player says, "how come all your bad guys always have position advantage and won't come down and trade blows like men. When my character uses a bow, he can't SHINE!"
Again, stupid.
Game Masters are equally capable of cheese. AKA, a game master that tailors most encounters to negate a players build choices.
ShadowcatX
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Personally for me a character becomes cheesy at one of two points:
1) When they try and bend (or break) the rules to gain a significant advantage.
2) When they try and take top power level classes and then min/max them. (You really do not need a casting stat of 30 at first level as a wizard when the rest of the party is rogue, monk, druid.)
I do not believe that a character who is simply well built is cheesy. I also agree with Artanthos, game masters can definitely be cheesy by throwing pcs into only situations where their characters are at disadvantages.
| Rasmus Wagner |
Dumpstats and multiclassing don't bother me, for two reasons.
One, it's a team game, and you should specialize. With very few exceptions, you either bring your A-game or go home. There's no functional difference between half-assing something and being truly terrible.
Second, ability scores don't inform roleplay. For me, it's about what the character can actually do. Charming? High Diplomacy check. Nimble? A good Acrobatics score. "I am a Ninja" means I rock at infiltration and alpha strikes.
| Lobolusk |
this may be off topic a little bit, But in the last few years I have become an Optimizer, If i am going to be a ninja I am going to be the best damn ninja in the whole of Golrian. I don't want to be the best mediocre ninja. so I take a series of feats to make me a killing machine, that is how I make characters he has a background and he has a cool story. i don't bend of break the rules If a feat is legal I take it. I cant wrap my head around some body making a less than stellar character. if you are a bard you don't have to be a one hit one kill character but you should be the most charming Charisma laden Neil Diamond cover man ever.
unless I am missing something and maybe somebody can fill me on on why a person would take less than optimal choices. because at the end of the day you have to earn your EXP
| doctor_wu |
One man's "character build" is another man's "optimized cheese"
Im going to ask for people to give an example of what they would consider what to them would be a normal character build, I am thinking a small feat/ class combination, not an entire character, and an example of what they would consider what to them would be an optimized cheesy build, one that makes you groan, or you find irritating.
For me here is an example of a normal character build
Fighter Melee- weapon focus, weapon specialization, great sword, power attack, Cleave, great cleave.
fighter archer: weapon focus weapon specialization: Long bow, Point black shot, precise shot, rapid shot.
Rogues: Combat Expertise, Improved Feint,
Cleric: Selective Channel, Extra channel, Improved channel, Quicken channel
Wizard: Spell focus, Greater Spell focus, Spell penetraition, Greater Spell penetraitionFor me, in my opinion, an example of optimized cheese would be:
Summoner Archtyp: Synthesist-(summoner/ sorcerer/paladin combination)
Two weapon fighting with two medium or large weapons
Monkey Grip and giant sized swords.
Zen archer monk
Hex crafting magus with prehensile hair.
Min max builds (PFS) where people dump their stats to 7 so they can pump others much higher.
Gunslingers
Ninjas and vows…..of poverty, of silence, of chastity.
Two characters with a combination of keen rapier with the Butterfly Sting feat, and another character with a high crit weapon like tetsuboI could rant on and on…..
But I am curious, what are your opinions? There isn’t a right or wrong answer.
What do you think is for you a normal character build?
What do you think is for you optimized cheese?Thanks.
I think selective chanel sort of sucks from my expirence with it depending on how many things you fight. If you are usually fighting 3 or more enemies it really isn't worth it.
| doctor_wu |
A Cheese Build, to me, is one where the player is begging the GM to play to his strengths because he has too many weaknesses. It is hard to be OP and cover your bases.
For example: sorcerer, 20 cha, fairy type, sleep spell, feats to improve sleep
Player says, "why do you keep attacking me with elves and skeletons. Can't you see my character can't SHINE?
Stupid.
Another cheese build:
Fighter, Power Attack, Furious Assault, Cleave, Two Handed Sword, Heavy Armor, Damage at first level: 2d6+9. Movement speed: 20, Ranged Damage, 1d6. Ranged Strike +2.
Player says, "how come all your bad guys always have position advantage and won't come down and trade blows like men. When my character uses a bow, he can't SHINE!"
Again, stupid.
With 18 strength that character would do more damage with a sling at first level until he can get a +strength composite longbow.
| darkwarriorkarg |
this may be off topic a little bit, But in the last few years I have become an Optimizer, If i am going to be a ninja I am going to be the best damn ninja in the whole of Golrian. I don't want to be the best mediocre ninja. so I take a series of feats to make me a killing machine, that is how I make characters he has a background and he has a cool story. i don't bend of break the rules If a feat is legal I take it. I cant wrap my head around some body making a less than stellar character. if you are a bard you don't have to be a one hit one kill character but you should be the most charming Charisma laden Neil Diamond cover man ever.
unless I am missing something and maybe somebody can fill me on on why a person would take less than optimal choices. because at the end of the day you have to earn your EXP
Roll-play vs Role-play, Round MCVDI ... Fight!
Because some people want the challenge of playing mr everyday and not an effective smiter of posteriors.
| Umbranus |
For me, in my opinion, an example of optimized cheese would be:
Two characters with a combination of keen rapier with the Butterfly Sting feat, and another character with a high crit weapon like tetsubo
This would be cool and a welcome sight of a tag team. No cheese at all.
A cheese build imo is:
- crossblooded sorc 1/ wizard x
- Dhampirs in nearly any combination. Not because they are too strong but because people always (ab)use them for cheese builds
- Combinations of oversized weapon + enlarge + lead blade
- Builds who abuse RAW/RAI confusion like clerics trying to get access to sorc spells via improved eldrich heritage (arcane)
Artanthos
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
unless I am missing something and maybe somebody can fill me on on why a person would take less than optimal choices. because at the end of the day you have to earn your EXP
A well built ninja would be fine.
Dipping that ninja 1 level into barbian, 1 level in manuever master monk and 1 level into synthesist so you can have four arms and toe claws.....that would be cheese (not necessarily optimal, but cheese).
| Lobolusk |
Lobolusk wrote:this may be off topic a little bit, But in the last few years I have become an Optimizer, If i am going to be a ninja I am going to be the best damn ninja in the whole of Golrian. I don't want to be the best mediocre ninja. so I take a series of feats to make me a killing machine, that is how I make characters he has a background and he has a cool story. i don't bend of break the rules If a feat is legal I take it. I cant wrap my head around some body making a less than stellar character. if you are a bard you don't have to be a one hit one kill character but you should be the most charming Charisma laden Neil Diamond cover man ever.
unless I am missing something and maybe somebody can fill me on on why a person would take less than optimal choices. because at the end of the day you have to earn your EXP
Roll-play vs Role-play, Round MCVDI ... Fight!
Because some people want the challenge of playing mr everyday and not an effective smiter of posteriors.
you can do both just because you are a ninja of doom doesn't mean you don't have a good back story, and a personality? I love to roleplay and every one of my characters tend to be quirky masked fighter with a heart of gold, southern gentlemen rough and tough cowboy. what I don't understand and with out trying to be argumentative is why you would choose skill focus cooking instead of weapon focus. or be a bard with some other stat other than Charisma his main stat? my opinion only but chances are you will be fighting some sort of monster at some point so why wouldnt you want to be able to survive it?
| Adamantine Dragon |
In my mind there is a threshold that a character crosses where they become "viable", and once they are across that threshold, everything else is just gravy.
To me the character concept is what matters. If I take the concept of "be the best ninja in the whole of Golarion" then that's going to end up as a bulid that most people would probably consider to be highly optimized, or perhaps even cheesy. But that's because the concept more or less dictates that sort of build.
For that reason I tend not to base my concepts on things like "be the best archer in the land" or "be the baddest 2WF ever". Those concepts are fairly bland and uninteresting to me. Anyone can build one, all you have to do is peruse these boards and your character will pretty much build itself.
Here are some of my current character concepts:
Balanced melee/ranged dragon hunting ranger.
Druid with dryad lineage, protector of nature's balance.
Cajun vodoo witch with an addictive personality and a flair for theatrics.
Insane wizard with a compulsion to create the most powerful magic items.
Divorced ex-military fighter with a drinking problem and a daughter to marry off.
etc. etc...
These concepts tend to drive skill and feat selection more than just "doing damage" does. Of course I do try to make selections that are both conceptually appropriate and mechanically advantageous, but conceptually appropriate usually wins.
I find that these sorts of characters are more interesting to play than just building the most awesome badass combatant would be. For me anyway.
| Lobolusk |
My recent builds were
1. a masked monster Fighter urban barbarian/ unarmed fighter named the Mysterious Masked Mwangi Mauler
2. the same masked fighter as a trogloydyte pure unarmed fighter
3. a monster hunter Extraordinaire Mwangi Jack a lore warden/Musket Master
4. my current build is a Paladin/Mysterious Stranger.
as for being the best ninja in all the land character concept isnt what I go with usually but If I play a ninja I want to embody all that "Is ninja"
I will use my MWangi Mauler build as an example his back story is
ere.
he was great at punching things and grappling things. So why wouldn't i put all my time and info into the main part of my characters back ground face punching monster wrestling? you can do both in my opinion have a great backstory and viable Roleplay options and also great ROll-play
| Mort the Cleverly Named |
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Two weapon fighting with two medium or large weapons
Monkey Grip and giant sized swords.
Ninjas and vows…..of poverty, of silence, of chastity.
I picked these out of the list because they point to a real problem with accusations of "cheese." People eyeball something for two seconds, don't bother to particularly think about it or (most importantly) run numbers, and then declare it "optimizer cheese." Here is the funny thing: these aren't only "not optimal," they are ridiculously weak choices.
The first two pile on attack penalties for slight increases in damage. Using two Greatswords instead of two Short Swords gives you +3.5 damage/hit for an additional -4 to attack, worse than using Power Attack with an off-hand weapon. Monkey Grip doesn't exist in Pathfinder, but even if it did you would need a very dedicated build to take advantage of it, and that build still wouldn't be as powerful as someone who used the feats somewhere else. Vow of Poverty is absolutely crippling at all but the lowest levels, to the point where there were giant angry arguments about its inclusion as an option. These can all be "optimized" choices, in that they can sometimes be the ideal choices to mechanically construct a desired concept (except maybe VoP), but "optimized cheese?" Far from it.
Look, "cheese" can exist. There are places where you can use "creative" interpretations to bend the rules out of all coherence for sake of character power ("broken"). There are options that are so much better than all others that it can disrupt game play ("overpowered"). There are also people who will never make a Wizard with less than 20 INT, or a Fighter with higher than 7 Cha (without interesting RP attached can be "repetitive"). However, all too often calling something "cheese" is not only utterly undeserved, but can shut down discussion. Instead of trying to define it, I would argue it would be better for people to try to be precise about what issues they see with certain things, think carefully before arguing that there is a problem, and avoid accusing characters or options of being "cheese" as much as possible.
cartmanbeck
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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ElyasRavenwood wrote:
For me, in my opinion, an example of optimized cheese would be:
Two characters with a combination of keen rapier with the Butterfly Sting feat, and another character with a high crit weapon like tetsubo
This would be cool and a welcome sight of a tag team. No cheese at all.
A cheese build imo is:
- crossblooded sorc 1/ wizard x
- Dhampirs in nearly any combination. Not because they are too strong but because people always (ab)use them for cheese builds
- Combinations of oversized weapon + enlarge + lead blade
- Builds who abuse RAW/RAI confusion like clerics trying to get access to sorc spells via improved eldrich heritage (arcane)
- crossblooded sorc 1/ wizard x <-- Even though I play one in a current game, I agree that it's cheesey
- Dhampirs in nearly any combination. Not because they are too strong but because people always (ab)use them for cheese builds <-- I'm not really understanding this one... the lack of being able to be healed by most party members is a huge disadvantage- Combinations of oversized weapon + enlarge + lead blade <-- Absolutely
- Builds who abuse RAW/RAI confusion like clerics trying to get access to sorc spells via improved eldrich heritage (arcane) <-- How does that one work?
| prototype00 |
Hmm, so here is what I have used recently:
Ninja (Scout) with sap adept and sap master for double SA.
Ranger with shield master wielding two shields for no penalty TWF (tacked on rogue and sap adept/sap master for extra SA via shatter defenses)
Monk/Ninja who builds towards coup de gracing with dastardly finish (crane wing -> crane riposte (stunning fist) -> coup de grace)
Da pimp is an old build which is a Rogue (Scout/Thug) that uses enforcer to make enemies that he hits frightened and run away.
Cheese? I rather think these are character builds which takes dross (monk,rogue) and turns them into, well, not gold, but a gold analogue better than dross.
prototype00
Volkspanzer
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If I'm making a 'cheesy' build where the character would take class combinations that normally don't make sense together, I tend to look at a character's level as his relative experiences during the time of his adventuring. For example:
When a 5th level wizard takes a level in ninja, it wasn't just a simple matter of slapping on a black mask and running up walls, it was a scholarly and experimental attempt at creatively applying his knowledge of illusion magic in a different way via a different medium.
It's definitely not the best example in the world, but for something a bit more optimized, here's a paladin 2/ Synthesist * build:
A champion of the forces of good is struck down in an act of sacrifice early in his servitude of Torag. As his soul is brought to Heaven, it meets another formless, yet goodly soul. In the relative time spent there, the souls intermingle and bond with one another forming a unique link. After some time, the paladin finds himself resurrected back on the material plane; however, his being is surrounded by the soul that he communed with during his departure. Finding a different calling in life, the paladin seeks to further his connection with this empyreal outsider.
| Naedre |
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Cheese is one of those things that is very difficult to define, but easy to recognize.
To quote U.S. Justice Potter Steward: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."
You can build an optimized character that is not cheese. You can build a horribly unoptimized character that is cheese. You can be a horrible roleplayer and not be cheese. You can be a great roleplayer, and still use cheese.
Instead of defining it, I would look at a series of warning signs. These questions, in my mind, would be red flags that a player or PC is using cheese:
1) Does the character design allow the PC to ignore certain aspects of the game with no negative consequences?
Examples:
Perma-invis in combat -> no need to worry about defensive abilities
Perma-true strike -> no need to worry about hitting in combat
Absurdly high persuasion -> no need to worry about social situtations
2) Does the PC design force the GM to create custom encounters to challenge them?
Example:
A GM has to redesign the "giant spider dungeon" into a "giant centaped dungeon," because of the party tripper.
3) Does the PC design take advantage of multiple obscure rules interacting in ways that were obviously not intended?
Example: Pun-Pun
4) Does the PC have feats/skills/spells/classes that do make sense with the character's RP, but are taken purely for the mechanics?
If you answered yes to any 1 of those 4 questions, you might not necessarly be using cheese, but have set up some red flags.
Also, if, after building your own character, you feel the need to post on a forum asking "is this cheesy?" Then the answer is usually "Yes."
| John Kerpan |
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There is a problem when discussing these terms, because of course everyone has a different opinion about what "optimization", "cheese", "minmaxer", and "broken" mean. However, there are a few basic truths that can be applied regardless of these terms.
1) The more you specialize, the less you can do. E.G. A ninja who has maxed out the ability to do damage will have had to lessen the ability to sneak around/decode documents/disguise himself/craft his own specialized weapons etc..
2) The more you specialize, the less likely there will be encounters that utilize you special skill. Any specialized fighter who dumped charisma will be a liability in a social scheme. Any druid who maxes out familiar strength and fighting prowess will do less well if a lot of magic is needed.
3) The GM should construct 3 kinds of challenges: party neutral. These would be stock encounters (bandit attacks, brawl fights, 'generic' dungeons. Your party itself is not taken into account. Sometimes these will be easy, and sometimes they will be hard, depending on how you party fits into the adventure. Next comes tailored to your party. It allows characters with special abilities to use them well: Barbarians plowing though many weak enemies, rogues picking locks/sneaking etc. Finally there are tailored against your party adventures. Enemies with resistance to backstab if you have a thief, or immune to sleep. Enemies will darkvision in the dark against a party without it. These will really challenge your party.
There should be mainly neutral. The more specialized you are, the less chance you will fit perfectly into any neutral challenge, but you will utterly wreck the ones you do. The more extreme your specialization is, the less likely you are to find a situation that fits is perfectly. If you specialized in protecting your spellbook from getting stolen (all the spells that get marked as terrible at best in the Op guides), how plausible is it that people will try to steal it very often? Credibility would be stretched if every inn and town had someone who had their eyes after it. So the GM will not put in many encounters tailored to your specialization. When they do, you will really shine.
Similarly, the more situation you decline to prepare for, the more likely they are to appear. If you are a super powerful wizard who takes no precautions to defend your spell-book/familiar, the few times an encounter is designed to have it threatened, you will take a huge loss.
What this boils down to is: specialization increases your skills on one aspect above all others, but weakens all the rest. In a solo adventure this would be terrible. But in a party, you can spread the skills. As long as the Wizard can trust the thief to hide/defend his spell book at night, there is almost no danger of it being stolen. The Wizard can then focus on casting a lot of spells. This frees up the Druid to make the companion as powerful as possible, etc. This synergy is what makes specialization possible in party-based games, and is what gives a party the highest chance of overcoming the largest number of scenarios. It is still a gamble, because you may still get the occasional tailored against you encounter to keep things precarious, but in the end it is worth the gamble.
The Red Mage
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Normal character build: Game mechanics, whether weak or strong, that support an initial or evolving character concept divorced from the game mechanics
Optimized cheese: A roleplaying persona and backstory shoehorned in to support broken or unusually strong mechanical synergy
The cheesiness of a build is something I can usually peg upon the genesis of a character's creation. It's the intention that matters more to me, not the result. If a player is gaming the system rather than playing a role, that annoys me. I have no problem at all with optimizing a character to suit that character's concept. We all do it to some extent. It's when the desire to optimize a sheet of mechanics outweighs the desire to mechanically represent an idea that the cheese factor comes in for me. Because at that point, players will start compromising or altering their initial creative concept to better suit game mechanics.
I can't stand shoehorning. That's also why I'm in favor of house ruling or reasonable reskinning of certain options. I prefer world mechanical consistency though, so it's a last resort.
Mergy
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I hate the term cheese. HATE.
However, some builds do seem off, and in my opinion it's just in the way that they use the rules to break gentleman's agreements.
A friend of mine played in PFS a gnome oracle of flame who carried a tower shield and wore full plate, despite being proficient in neither. It actually worked for PFS, mostly because there's a common gentleman's agreement to keep skill checks doable for the full platers. It's just never expected that someone will show up with a -16 AC penalty.
The same applies to a build that uses the horizon walker to achieve +20 favoured terrain bonus against anything that lives in an urban setting; it especially applies to a build that stacks natural attacks from barbarian, half-orc, and ranger combat style.
| Donovan Lynch |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
To me, nothing is cheesy unless it twists/perverts the way the game should function.
If you build a superfast horse archer who can kite anything in the Bestiary, you're being cheesy.
If you take abilities that are balanced by having drawbacks and then make yourself immune to the drawbacks (immunity to fatigue is a common one), you are being cheesy.
If you make an elf with Profession: Whatever and say that you spend the last 50 years making profession checks, so you should start with a ton of extra gold, you are being cheesy.
Gorbacz
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While I'm perfectly fine with optimization (Power Attack yes, Whirlwind Attack no) extensive dumpster-diving makes me cringe (so you dip 1 level of Magus, pick Arcane Heritage for Empyreal Bloodline power, then 2 levels of Aquatic Druid, mix it with one Elven trait and one that's for Chelaxian Gnomes but you can take that thanks to Adpoted feat, and you're set!).
| Melissa Litwin |
So is a nagaji paladin 2/ninja X cheese or not?
A righteous follower of Tsukiyo, the moon god, must learn the secrets of the night as well. She can use her training to thwart attacks against her rightful ruler and works well in a team to serve her lord/lady.
Mechanically, that's lots of good base saves, +Cha bonus to all those saves, full plate, katana, smite 1/day, and ki to use for nifty tricks. You negate a lot of a rogue's weaknesses by having full plate and being a Str build, but you can dish out the damage with ninja levels and the vanishing trick (especially once you hit 12 and can do greater invisibility).
| Mort the Cleverly Named |
So is a nagaji paladin 2/ninja X cheese or not?
Not cheese, not overpowered. You are improving your combat ability and saves at the cost of slowing down your Ninja progression and being bound by a strict code, while tying it together with a logical concept. If picking a race and class combination that plays to the same strengths is "cheese," the definition has become so broad as to be even more meaningless than I thought.
| Blue Star |
Cheese is in the eye of the beholder. You should punch out that eye so that you can have delicious cheese.
That said, what is/isn't cheese is still subjective. Personally, I don't worry about it much, as I can rollplay and roleplay, and most of the people who could challenge me on either aspect have been doing this since before I was born. Not that I haven't ran into odd scenarios wherein I had to seriously bend over backwards to avoid murdering a fellow PC.
Thorkull
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what I don't understand and with out trying to be argumentative is why you would choose skill focus cooking instead of weapon focus.
Maybe they want to be the best damn cook in Golarion? Or they want to be able to give advice to the dragon that is going to eat them on the best methods of preparation for human tartare?
Seriously, Lobolusk, I'm with you on this one, but I can see the other side of the argument, too. I just don't understand all the hate in what comes down to a personal preference.
Some people like chocolate, some like vanilla. Some like Blair Witch, some like Avengers.
Play the game the way you want to, and stop hating on other people for doing the same.
| cranewings |
Lobolusk wrote:what I don't understand and with out trying to be argumentative is why you would choose skill focus cooking instead of weapon focus.Maybe they want to be the best damn cook in Golarion? Or they want to be able to give advice to the dragon that is going to eat them on the best methods of preparation for human tartare?
Seriously, Lobolusk, I'm with you on this one, but I can see the other side of the argument, too. I just don't understand all the hate in what comes down to a personal preference.
Some people like chocolate, some like vanilla. Some like Blair Witch, some like Avengers.
Play the game the way you want to, and stop hating on other people for doing the same.
Skill Focus Cooking is a good feat for a special kind of game. As a spy, SF cooking could get you into the palace. You don't need Weapon Focus if you don't have to fight the guards.
| Umbranus |
- Builds who abuse RAW/RAI confusion like clerics trying to get access to sorc spells via improved eldrich heritage (arcane) <-- How does that one work?
With improved eldritch heritage (arcane) you take the 9th level power and insist that as your cleric gets the sorc spells as spells known he can cast them.RAW or not doesn't matter, for me thats cheese.
Was recently discussed in another thread here in this message board.
ElyasRavenwood
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Cheese is one of those things that is very difficult to define, but easy to recognize.
To quote U.S. Justice Potter Steward: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."
You can build an optimized character that is not cheese. You can build a horribly unoptimized character that is cheese. You can be a horrible roleplayer and not be cheese. You can be a great roleplayer, and still use cheese.
Instead of defining it, I would look at a series of warning signs. These questions, in my mind, would be red flags that a player or PC is using cheese:
1) Does the character design allow the PC to ignore certain aspects of the game with no negative consequences?
Examples:
Perma-invis in combat -> no need to worry about defensive abilities
Perma-true strike -> no need to worry about hitting in combat
Absurdly high persuasion -> no need to worry about social situtations2) Does the PC design force the GM to create custom encounters to challenge them?
Example:
A GM has to redesign the "giant spider dungeon" into a "giant centaped dungeon," because of the party tripper.3) Does the PC design take advantage of multiple obscure rules interacting in ways that were obviously not intended?
Example: Pun-Pun
4) Does the PC have feats/skills/spells/classes that do make sense with the character's RP, but are taken purely for the mechanics?
If you answered yes to any 1 of those 4 questions, you might not necessarly be using cheese, but have set up some red flags.
Also, if, after building your own character, you feel the need to post on a forum asking "is this cheesy?" Then the answer is usually "Yes."
Thank you all for your posts. As for what was cheese, perhaps i should have been more specific..what i found annoying, didn't like, and things I thought were cheesy
To quote U.S. Justice Potter Steward: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."
I suppose gaming "cheese" is a bit like porn. I'm not sure how to define it, but I know it when i see it. Anyways i was curious if a pattern was going to emerge as people posted their opinions.
Thanks
| Irontruth |
The cheesiest level one character ever. Rich parents trait and spend all your starting gold on 2 and a quarter tons of cheese. Oh take skill focus craft cheese as well.
Why not take Skill Focus Cheesemaker and spend all your money on appropriate materials instead?
And the rogue archetype that gives you rumormonger at level 3, so you can start a gorilla marketing campaign.
Tirq
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doctor_wu wrote:The cheesiest level one character ever. Rich parents trait and spend all your starting gold on 2 and a quarter tons of cheese. Oh take skill focus craft cheese as well.Why not take Skill Focus Cheesemaker and spend all your money on appropriate materials instead?
And the rogue archetype that gives you rumormonger at level 3, so you can start a gorilla marketing campaign.
Or be an Inquisiter. They have the option to serve either a deity or an ideal. In our case: Cheese.
| cranewings |
Irontruth wrote:Or be an Inquisiter. They have the option to serve either a deity or an ideal. In our case: Cheese.doctor_wu wrote:The cheesiest level one character ever. Rich parents trait and spend all your starting gold on 2 and a quarter tons of cheese. Oh take skill focus craft cheese as well.Why not take Skill Focus Cheesemaker and spend all your money on appropriate materials instead?
And the rogue archetype that gives you rumormonger at level 3, so you can start a gorilla marketing campaign.
Diana the Moon Cheese God!