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DPR!
On these boards I see a lot of people judge the effectiveness of a class by it's DPR and I want to know why that magical number matters so much?
My group and I don't build PC's to reach those numbers, we come up with concepts and then we choose a class or classes that enable us to play those concepts mechanically. Sometimes the there may be two or more classes that do not have good synergy but that's okay because the synergy isn't what we were going for.
The same goes with feat, races, items, and when these things don't meet the certain expectations of some people then they feel like the class or specific build option is useless. It's like these build options all have to be worth taking strictly by the numbers and I just don't agree with that.
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Well try and play a DPR build in a RP heavy environment, where there is alot less sword swinging,
DPR is based on PC Gaming MMORPG, more damage go splat, someone who makes one of those builds is going to complain , be bored and eventually quit in a game your group is comfortable with.
However, DPR fanboys and girls are usually more vocal (and less mature) about their opinions about what is "fun" and what is "good" even though they are incredibly 'late' to the gaming genre.
I recall a day when it was all about the dungeoneering aspect, solving riddles and traps and every player had a 10 foot pole and 50 feet of rope or you were all doomed!
Different style of game play.
All depends on the DM, in some games, the DPR build would be utterly useless.
like "war singer" there's a feat that just says 'flavor' to me with out any real reason to take it.
For some reason, I just want to make a half orc bard just to have it tho....
What would you like to hear now.... That your way is the right way to play the game...
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Hah...so shall it be
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If it bothers you, just skip past it.
Being mechanically capable of reaching this number you don't like is a valid requirement for some people. They are very much allowed to talk about things like that, and nothing stops you from ignoring it.
Actually it becomes a problem when you are told that your build sucks because it didn't have DPR in mind when it was built and that does go on in the boards.
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Actually it becomes a problem when you are told that your build sucks because it didn't have DPR in mind when it was built and that does go on in the boards.Only if you let some random person on the internets opinion mean something to you.
150% this. Why should you care?
I tend to post my character concepts on the advice board when looking for advice on how to make them mechanically better, but when people are like "you shouldn't do that, you should do this" and it's against the concept, I say "thanks for the advice, but that's not what I'm looking for."
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A lot of what comes off the boards moves into RL when different groups game together at saw a store or event, really pushing out role players for the betterment of the MMORPG types, which by nature are pushier know it all types.... true RPers are more the timid geeky type.
This is pretty much why the table top war craft types didn't get along with the PnP DnD types... its a personality clash. Now the warcraft types have become a majority in Table top RPGs... so it pushes on the guys with the ten foot poles and the bards built to be an awesome painter and tuba polisher.
There is also a good amount of internet bullying by the DPR masses as to people who don't agree with them and how cool they are.
But as Tri and Seranov point out, there isn't a "right way" and it just comes down to selective reading, and horse blinders.
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Not sure where you game, but down here in the Sunshine State, I've had to deal with my fair share of pushy roleplayers. Many of them have issues sharing any kind of limelight with anyone and will fuss, pout, and even resort to in game PvP if they don't feel like they are getting any attention. I think I've had more campaigns implode because of roleplayers than powergamers to be completely honest.
But hey, don't generalize a group of people. All groups have their a**+&@$s, whether your a beardy old school guy or the much over-maligned MMO players. I've played with WoW players that had a legitimate interest in having fun and roleplaying. And I've played with people who've been around since ADnD that are worse powergamers than anything you'd see in a video game. Don't blame video games for what's really the issue; douchebags.
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DPR!
On these boards I see a lot of people judge the effectiveness of a class by it's DPR and I want to know why that magical number matters so much?
My group and I don't build PC's to reach those numbers, we come up with concepts and then we choose a class or classes that enable us to play those concepts mechanically. Sometimes the there may be two or more classes that do not have good synergy but that's okay because the synergy isn't what we were going for.
The same goes with feat, races, items, and when these things don't meet the certain expectations of some people then they feel like the class or specific build option is useless. It's like these build options all have to be worth taking strictly by the numbers and I just don't agree with that.
Well I cannot imagine anybody rates a caster on DPR. With a caster it's all about spells, do they have effective spells within the context of a party of adventurers? If so that class is desirable.
If you are looking at a class to fulfil a specific skill-based role, for example scouting, then the question is, do you have enough skill points to cover all the bases for the tasks you want to perform?
If you are playing a combat class, then what matters? Either performing maneuvers to disable foes, or hitting and damaging them. DPR is just the mathematical measure of the latter. You may not specifically make a fighter with a figure in mind, but I'm willing to bet that you do make them to hit things and hurt them if only as a fall-back option. So would you seriously tell me you don't make fighting-types without an eye to them (a) hitting their foes and (b) damaging their foes?
I don't think anyone does this, at least not for very long. We all try and make characters that are (to us) interesting, fun to play and effective at what they are meant to do. Doing the latter doesn't make you immature, or a munchkin, or a rule-player, power-gamer or whatever. It's just the way you make characters for an adventuring party.
If I am looking to make a character concept, I may well look at DPR if that forms part of the concept. For example, a while back I wanted to make a combat class that was not muscle-bound, but could dish out lethal damage. My concept was of someone righteous but swift, not necessarily superb in all combat but capable of really hammering foes. I focussed around a finesse build with an elven curveblade, because that felt right to me. However, I knew that without high strength damage output would be lacking in some circumstances and I wanted to make sure this didn't happen, so I went paladin for the boost that smite evil gave - I was already leaning that way from the character concept anyway, and the need for smite clinched it for me.
The art of character creation is to combine the concept of the character with the necessary mechanics to make it function within the game. DPR is a mathematical expression of one of those mechanics that make it useful to judge different options against one another, but it's not the be-all and end-all of character creation.
Going on to your latter point about certain classes being declared useless, it depends what you want to use the class for. I can build a swashbuckler-type in several different ways - I could go a rogue base, for a sneakey, underhand cad; I could go a bard-base for a flashy, witty repartee type fighter; I could go for a fighter-base for a cool, determined professional. If my goal is a combat character, then if any of these fail to deliver an effective combat character they are 'useless' for that purpose. If a class cannot do anything you would conceive of it doing usefully within the party dynamic, if that class cannot contribute at what you are trying to achieve with it (and there is nothing you can do with it that will make it achieve in any conceivable role), then I suppose you have useless class.
i have a few concepts i would love to play. the problem is, they wouldn't live long in Weekly William's Hack and Slash Group of kicking down the door and tracking kill count. so i need groups specifically for these characters, but a few of them are complete noncombatants the city guard wouldn't let out of the gates without some form of extreme protection.
DPR!
On these boards I see a lot of people judge the effectiveness of a class by it's DPR and I want to know why that magical number matters so much?
My group and I don't build PC's to reach those numbers, we come up with concepts and then we choose a class or classes that enable us to play those concepts mechanically. Sometimes the there may be two or more classes that do not have good synergy but that's okay because the synergy isn't what we were going for.
The same goes with feat, races, items, and when these things don't meet the certain expectations of some people then they feel like the class or specific build option is useless. It's like these build options all have to be worth taking strictly by the numbers and I just don't agree with that.
It is not just about DPR, but if you that is your job you should be decent at it.
1. Decent varies by group.
2. If the ability in question involves another number that number(such as perception check) should be good enough to work most of the time. It is not a DPR issue. It is an issue of making sure you have the number(DPR or otherwise) needed to make sure the party does not suffer.
Useless or "could be better"? Which one is actually said depends on the situation.
We also can't account for everyone's table, but we can look at the book and say how well a character will perform against a stock monster without the GM's help.
How much a GM decide to improve a monster, or weaken a monster varies the baseline too much for the purpose of a discussion, especially when so many different people play their own way. By having good chances of making sure you can survive under a GM that won't help you out it helps to remove bias.
Actually it becomes a problem when you are told that your build sucks because it didn't have DPR in mind when it was built and that does go on in the boards.If it bothers you, just skip past it.
Being mechanically capable of reaching this number you don't like is a valid requirement for some people. They are very much allowed to talk about things like that, and nothing stops you from ignoring it.
If it was meant to be a combat class, and it transpired that it couldn't fight as effectively as some other classes and/or builds, then that was basically fair criticism. If you are building a class to fight there isn't much wriggle room, you need either awesome tricks or DPR. Pulling off the awesome tricks effectively at high level and against all comers is very, very hard if not impossible. So that just leaves DPR...
Not sure where you game, but down here in the Sunshine State, I've had to deal with my fair share of pushy roleplayers. Many of them have issues sharing any kind of limelight with anyone and will fuss, pout, and even resort to in game PvP if they don't feel like they are getting any attention. I think I've had more campaigns implode because of roleplayers than powergamers to be completely honest.
But hey, don't generalize a group of people. All groups have their a!*~*+!s, whether your a beardy old school guy or the much over-maligned MMO players. I've played with WoW players that had a legitimate interest in having fun and roleplaying. And I've played with people who've been around since ADnD that are worse powergamers than anything you'd see in a video game. Don't blame video games for what's really the issue; douchebags.
It's not necessarily WoW per se. What was the name of that game....oh wait I'm sorry it was warHAMMER not war craft. whatever. the MMORPG crowd thats usually a DPR/DPS pain in the arse are usually not the WoW types as much as the speed freaks from game that have nothing to do with rpg at all (like a diablo type game) nothing moves fast enough for them, they have to splay everything and if they have to do anything other than roll dice and get treasure they complain.... they used to be rare, seems like the table top world is rife with them now, I think it's because the video game people are taking longer to come out with new games now, development time has slowed.
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If it was meant to be a combat class, and it transpired that it couldn't fight as effectively as some other classes and/or builds, then that was basically fair criticism. If you are building a class to fight there isn't much wriggle room, you need either awesome tricks or DPR. Pulling off the awesome tricks effectively at high level and against all comers is very, very hard if not impossible. So that just leaves DPR...Actually it becomes a problem when you are told that your build sucks because it didn't have DPR in mind when it was built and that does go on in the boards.If it bothers you, just skip past it.
Being mechanically capable of reaching this number you don't like is a valid requirement for some people. They are very much allowed to talk about things like that, and nothing stops you from ignoring it.
If you have the option of doing good DPR plus something extra then you were slagged for taking that something extra instead of focusing more on DPR. Why does your DPR matter if you are doing enough of it to hurt monsters? Okay so you don't drop that big bad in one blow, not the end of the world.
IF one build were "it" you'd see EVERYONE make that one build (Dervish dance magus anyone?)
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If you have the option of doing good DPR plus something extra then you were slagged for taking that something extra instead of focusing more on DPR. Why does your DPR matter if you are doing enough of it to hurt monsters? Okay so you don't drop that big bad in one blow, not the end of the world.
You're right, it's not the end of the world. But "okay for me and my group" is not "okay for everyone, everywhere."
If you decide to drop DPR(fill in other ability as needed) instead of option X then option X should be something that can be used consistently and be effective, otherwise you have to be able to defend the lack of DPR or whatever else you exchanged for option X.
It is not about winning the fight alone, but being able to pull your own weight to a large extent. An expert can hurt a monster, but he is not a real threat, and unless the monster is dumb or the expert gets lucky with high rolls the monster will know that.
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What the OP is "really" talking about isn't necessarily DPR.
It's the onus on these boards that if you don't agree with mainstream how much you are ridiculed for it.
15 year old snot nosed punks to 45 year old pencil necked geeks who wouldnt talk to their 80 pound grandmother that way IRL jump down your neck in a condescending in your face manner because you aren't a fanboy of the acceptable "cool guy" paradigm.
Case in point: Several years ago, I posted my dissatisfaction with the Serpent's Skull AP, and by extension how APs were dwindling in good content in general, only to be dog piled by masses of fan boys and girls with their zombie like opinions on how their hive mind could only accept how 'great' the authors at paizo are, and no other point of view had any validity.
Now, years later, after this has happened to come to fruition I find it almost amusing to read how so many people are now saying the same thing and citing the Serpent's Skull AP as the example to what they are talking about. Because the popular opinion has shifted enough to allow them to say it.
That's what his real POV is really, DPR is the symptom, not the disease.
If you have the option of doing good DPR plus something extra then you were slagged for taking that something extra instead of focusing more on DPR. Why does your DPR matter if you are doing enough of it to hurt monsters? Okay so you don't drop that big bad in one blow, not the end of the world.If it was meant to be a combat class, and it transpired that it couldn't fight as effectively as some other classes and/or builds, then that was basically fair criticism. If you are building a class to fight there isn't much wriggle room, you need either awesome tricks or DPR. Pulling off the awesome tricks effectively at high level and against all comers is very, very hard if not impossible. So that just leaves DPR...Actually it becomes a problem when you are told that your build sucks because it didn't have DPR in mind when it was built and that does go on in the boards.If it bothers you, just skip past it.
Being mechanically capable of reaching this number you don't like is a valid requirement for some people. They are very much allowed to talk about things like that, and nothing stops you from ignoring it.
Two main points here:
1) the something extra has to be reliable and effective. What I mean by this is that it has to be usable in a wide variety of situations, and it has to work frequently enough when you can use it to save your bacon. For example, being a trip-master is great against humanoids, but it can't be relied on against flying creatures, legless creatures, or creatures of far greater size than yourself. That's a lot of creatures, so tripping is great but cannot be relied upon. Something like the monk's stunning fist is great in theory, but you have to work out the odds of hitting with it, then inflicting damage, then the odds of the target failing a save. If those come out to be very small, you basically have a trick that's great when it works, but doesn't work often enough to make up the difference if you can't drop the enemy just through damage unless you are very, very lucky.
2) How do you judge what 'enough' damage is? You can only state that categorically if you do enough damage to drop the enemy before they drop you. If you are trying to fight something and it is doing more damage to you than you are to it, and it has more hit points, you are going to lose. If your odds to hit are so small that you will rarely land a blow, then it really doesn't matter what your damage output is. The calculation of this is called DPR, and it's a reliable measure of how much average damage you will dish a round.
If your 'something extra' is working reliably and consistently, or your DPR is sufficient to contribute to a party's success, then you have a solid combat build. If it isn't, well then it isn't and people will say so.
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Dead characters can't role-play? That's my best guess.
In order to cut back the focus on numbers for players, the game you play has to be less focused on numbers in general. With the CR system built into pathfinder, it's pretty hard to avoid playing "the numbers game". Additionally, if one player does a character about numbers, then the numbers the GM puts in the game have to be higher to challenge that character. That makes all the other characters less effective (up to and including perma-dead) and so they now have to get their numbers higher to be effective in the game.
Basically, focusing on the numbers is the "dominate gene". If one person in a gaming group does it, that's how the game will trend. One person in the game playing a concept-heavy character that doesn't have high numbers doesn't shift the way the game is played to the same extent.
Everyone involved in the game has to have the same expectations. If the game is started with the understanding that concept is king, then it can work. Inevitably, though, at least one concept will (purposely or by accident) end up being better with its numbers than the others. At that point either the players work with the GM to bring the more powerful character back to the level of the others, or the rest of the group starts optimizing and the game starts getting more numerically difficult.
I guess the moral of the story is that it takes more work to have a game that works with concept-heavy characters than one that works for optimizers.
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This is going to sound rude of me, and I apologize in advance:
Deal with it. Get over it. Not everyone is going to agree with you, and you sound like you're mature enough to not care about people getting adversarial at you over a simple opinion.
If you can't handle people being douches from behind the safety of internet anonymity, the internet is not a good place for you.
I think both shallowsoul and you, Pendagast, are nice guys who are probably just frustrated with how people react to you, but making frustrated posts about how you want everyone to act the way you want them to is not even pissing into the ocean. It's trying to irrigate Mars with a kid's plastic watering can.
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What the OP is "really" talking about isn't necessarily DPR.
It's the onus on these boards that if you don't agree with mainstream how much you are ridiculed for it.
15 year old snot nosed punks to 45 year old pencil necked geeks who wouldnt talk to their 80 pound grandmother that way IRL jump down your neck in a condescending in your face manner because you aren't a fanboy of the acceptable "cool guy" paradigm.
Case in point: Several years ago, I posted my dissatisfaction with the Serpent's Skull AP, and by extension how APs were dwindling in good content in general, only to be dog piled by masses of fan boys and girls with their zombie like opinions on how their hive mind could only accept how 'great' the authors at paizo are, and no other point of view had any validity.
Now, years later, after this has happened to come to fruition I find it almost amusing to read how so many people are now saying the same thing and citing the Serpent's Skull AP as the example to what they are talking about. Because the popular opinion has shifted enough to allow them to say it.
That's what his real POV is really, DPR is the symptom, not the disease.
Most of the time people are not ridiculed. I have seen more "power gamer" insults than anything. I am not saying that all of the people that agree with the popular concensus are civil, but most of us are.
I thought the popular consensus was that SK was not all that great, but with that aside people should be civil when disagreeing.
I really thought he was asking why do people think DPR is all that matters. If that was not his point then it would be nice for him to rephrase it.
This is going to sound rude of me, and I apologize in advance:
Deal with it. Get over it. Not everyone is going to agree with you, and you sound like you're mature enough to not care about people getting adversarial at you over a simple opinion.
If you can't handle people being douches from behind the safety of internet anonymity, the internet is not a good place for you.
I think both shallowsoul and you, Pendagast, are nice guys who are probably just frustrated with how people react to you, but making frustrated posts about how you want everyone to act the way you want them to is not even pissing into the ocean. It's trying to irrigate Mars with a kid's plastic watering can.
Seranov, I agree with you, I was merely putting to light what I believe the actual post is about, (which isnt actually DPR)
There's also a tendency to fall back on facts and figures when discussing strong and weak balance points in the game. The reason for this is that the mechanics can be quantified and dissected, while the flavour and theme cannot. The latter is opinion, the former can be proved with figures and design work, so the latter gets discussed in great depth.
So when somebody says "X class is mechanically weak" a mass of facts and figures will follow, with people with varying opinions seeking to prove their point. Nothing wrong with this, as it does at least lead to a quantifiable answer. You can say that, for example: "fighters are usually better at fighting general creatures than rangers, but rangers are better against their favoured enemies" and can prove it.
If you get involved in such a debate, be prepared for DPR, odds of success and such things to be discussed at length, and make sure you can fight your corner.
Actually it becomes a problem when you are told that your build sucks because it didn't have DPR in mind when it was built and that does go on in the boards.If it bothers you, just skip past it.
Being mechanically capable of reaching this number you don't like is a valid requirement for some people. They are very much allowed to talk about things like that, and nothing stops you from ignoring it.
What else is someone supposed to judge about your character, other than mechanical effectiveness?
Are we supposed to critique how well your character is being roleplayed?
Or are you annoyed at quality of etiquette on the boards that people are critiquing your character in a rude way?
I'm not sure what the problem is exactly.
What the OP is "really" talking about isn't necessarily DPR.
It's the onus on these boards that if you don't agree with mainstream how much you are ridiculed for it.
15 year old snot nosed punks to 45 year old pencil necked geeks who wouldnt talk to their 80 pound grandmother that way IRL jump down your neck in a condescending in your face manner because you aren't a fanboy of the acceptable "cool guy" paradigm.
Case in point: Several years ago, I posted my dissatisfaction with the Serpent's Skull AP, and by extension how APs were dwindling in good content in general, only to be dog piled by masses of fan boys and girls with their zombie like opinions on how their hive mind could only accept how 'great' the authors at paizo are, and no other point of view had any validity.
Now, years later, after this has happened to come to fruition I find it almost amusing to read how so many people are now saying the same thing and citing the Serpent's Skull AP as the example to what they are talking about. Because the popular opinion has shifted enough to allow them to say it.
That's what his real POV is really, DPR is the symptom, not the disease.
Most of the time people are not ridiculed. I have seen more "power gamer" insults than anything. I am not saying that all of the people that agree with the popular concensus are civil, but most of us are.
I thought the popular consensus was that SK was not all that great, but with that aside people should be civil when disagreeing.
I really thought he was asking why do people think DPR is all that matters. If that was not his point then it would be nice for him to rephrase it.
DPR is a popular "jump down your throat" subject.
I believe the essence is missed in how different people from different walks of life interpret the english language....
his post from an hour ago: "Actually it becomes a problem when you are told that your build sucks because it didn't have DPR in mind when it was built and that does go on in the boards"
is pretty much the underlying reason he posted in the first place IMO... so the real issue is
"why do people think DPR is important enough to bash me"
or rather that is my interpretation....
So my post in reference to that was, that most people that bash you over something like DPR is petty people who do not speak to others in those ways IRL.
Generally just the realization of that above statement is usually enough to get most people to get over the fact that what they are witnessing is "internet tough guy syndrome"...
So get over it and move on.
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the problem i see with DPR is that it becomes expected not only of martial classes, but of classes originally not intended to be primary frontline combatants. such as rogues, bards, and monks. monks have no real contribution due to how crappy their class abilities are, but they were intended as support melee, whilst bards and rogues were intended to be skill monkeys.
although there are tons of rogue builds that are dpr happy and make a "regular fighter" look stupid.
DPR is just a bonus for a bard. It is not expected to be high since they are only secondary combatants, much like rogues, and most clerics.
Monks got the shaft because of the reasons you just mentioned Shuriken.
Bear in mind, that if this is the case I'm thinking of, he posted that build in the middle of one of the discussions of whether the monk is mechanically viable.
If you post "here look at my cool character" and someone rips it apart on DPR or other mechanical grounds, that's uncool.
If you post "There's nothing mechanically wrong with class X and here's my build to prove it", it's cool to rip the mechanics of the build apart to disprove the claim you're making.Context is everything.
I know of the case you refer to, I was in that debate. As it was a debate all about the mechanics, and Shallowsoul was defending the monk class as 'not broken', that was how the post was treated. Probably some posters could have been more polite about it, I will agree, but Shallowsoul didn't seem to pull any punches either.
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Dead characters can't role-play? That's my best guess.
In order to cut back the focus on numbers for players, the game you play has to be less focused on numbers in general. With the CR system built into pathfinder, it's pretty hard to avoid playing "the numbers game". Additionally, if one player does a character about numbers, then the numbers the GM puts in the game have to be higher to challenge that character. That makes all the other characters less effective (up to and including perma-dead) and so they now have to get their numbers higher to be effective in the game.
The problem is it's turned into overkill. The standard numbers for monsters in the books is not hard to reach so I don't see the problem.
although there are tons of rogue builds that are dpr happy and make a "regular fighter" look stupid.
their poor accuracy takes a lot out of their DPR. plus there is the fact that sneak attack doesn't multiply on a crit. they can improve their DPR drastically by mitigating their poor accuracy.
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Actually it becomes a problem when you are told that your build sucks because it didn't have DPR in mind when it was built and that does go on in the boards.If it bothers you, just skip past it.
Being mechanically capable of reaching this number you don't like is a valid requirement for some people. They are very much allowed to talk about things like that, and nothing stops you from ignoring it.
What else is someone supposed to judge about your character, other than mechanical effectiveness?
Are we supposed to critique how well your character is being roleplayed?
Or are you annoyed at quality of etiquette on the boards that people are critiquing your character in a rude way?
I'm not sure what the problem is exactly.
The problem is when someone posts a build, let's say fighter since he's talking about DPS, and says that his fighter can do X, Y, and Z well someone jumps in and says that he can't do 350 DPR. He says, yeah, but he can do 250 plus those other things and he only needs 250 because our group also has a barbarian doing 300 DPR. He still gets people saying the 250 isn't good enough.
The complaint isn't about critiquing mechanics. It's about critiquing a single mechanic while ignoring all the rest.
the problem i see with DPR is that it becomes expected not only of martial classes, but of classes originally not intended to be primary frontline combatants. such as rogues, bards, and monks. monks have no real contribution due to how crappy their class abilities are, but they were intended as support melee, whilst bards and rogues were intended to be skill monkeys.
Maxing out a skill isn't that hard though. I put max ranks in it, one of my highest stats and maybe a supporting archetype or feat. There's nothing to really discuss, other than maybe finding obscure sources of a +1 or +2.
DPR is something that can be debated and analyzed, there very different methods of reaching high DPRs.
We can't analyze roleplaying on these boards. If you just post some stats, I can't say "wow, awesome roleplaying story.". I can just look at stats and make comments based on those. A lot of trends that people complain about on the boards aren't normally trends at a lot of tables.
Could there be more civility on the boards? Yes, most definitely.
The problem is it's turned into overkill. The standard numbers for monsters in the books is not hard to reach so I don't see the problem.Dead characters can't role-play? That's my best guess.
In order to cut back the focus on numbers for players, the game you play has to be less focused on numbers in general. With the CR system built into pathfinder, it's pretty hard to avoid playing "the numbers game". Additionally, if one player does a character about numbers, then the numbers the GM puts in the game have to be higher to challenge that character. That makes all the other characters less effective (up to and including perma-dead) and so they now have to get their numbers higher to be effective in the game.
According to another thread I was in the monk is struggling to reach those numbers unless he focuses on offense and sacrifices defense. If he goes for defense he struggles on offense. Monk's were built by Ciretose and Dabbler. Ciretose was actually arguing your position at the time, IIRC. So far the monk is still struggling barring archetypes such as the zen archer. If there is an "overkill" monk we have not seen it. The monks also did not excel in the scout role either. Well a defensive monk might since they will most likely be pushing dex and wisdom anyway, but other classes can scout, and fight well. They can also use their fist to fight. Even if the flavor is unarmed attacks they can go with a cestus or actual unarmed strikes. Yeah they will have DR issues, but they will still do decent damage otherwise while scouting.
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It's a problem of attention. You made an orc chieftan who's the best fighter in his clan and he's on a quest to prove to the other orc clans that he's the best? Well, he's a leader, so you gave him a decent charisma. His tribe worships Desna and so he uses a starknife. He has a level in bard to give him some skills you wanted and that inspire courage ability that seemed to fit so well. Maybe you made some other choices about how you built him to reflect your concept. The problem is when the other melee combatant in the party is min/maxed. Your concept of proving you're the best falls flat on it's face. Your character doesn't contribute half of what the other character does. It's when your concept hits the unyielding surface of comparison that there's a problem. No, the numbers you're expected to have aren't hard to reach, but that other melee is making the fights too easy (as the GM sees it). Now the fights are getting harder to challenge that other character, and your character is now falling behind. You're becoming a liability, not an asset.
Yes, the problem is it's turned into overkill. As soon as one person at the table does it there's no going the other direction.
the optimized to the hilt DPR builds are definitely overkill. i played a few halfheartedly optimized secondary combatants who were still killing stuff in 2-3 rounds. only because the foes had that high of a comparative power level.
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It's a problem of attention. You made an orc chieftan who's the best fighter in his clan and he's on a quest to prove to the other orc clans that he's the best? Well, he's a leader, so you gave him a decent charisma. His tribe worships Desna and so he uses a starknife. He has a level in bard to give him some skills you wanted and that inspire courage ability that seemed to fit so well. Maybe you made some other choices about how you built him to reflect your concept. The problem is when the other melee combatant in the party is min/maxed. Your concept of proving you're the best falls flat on it's face. Your character doesn't contribute half of what the other character does. It's when your concept hits the unyielding surface of comparison that there's a problem. No, the numbers you're expected to have aren't hard to reach, but that other melee is making the fights too easy (as the GM sees it). Now the fights are getting harder to challenge that other character, and your character is now falling behind. You're becoming a liability, not an asset.
Yes, the problem is it's turned into overkill. As soon as one person at the table does it there's no going the other direction.
Actually all of that would depend on the dice and how you use what you have at your disposal. Just because you may not be the biggest and the strongest doesn't mean you can't be the best. Intimidate is a Bard skill and you have some spells that you can use like "Cause Fear", "Grease", "Lesser Confusion", "Hypnotism" etc...
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Actually it becomes a problem when you are told that your build sucks because it didn't have DPR in mind when it was built and that does go on in the boards.If it bothers you, just skip past it.
Being mechanically capable of reaching this number you don't like is a valid requirement for some people. They are very much allowed to talk about things like that, and nothing stops you from ignoring it.
What else is someone supposed to judge about your character, other than mechanical effectiveness?
Are we supposed to critique how well your character is being roleplayed?
Or are you annoyed at quality of etiquette on the boards that people are critiquing your character in a rude way?
I'm not sure what the problem is exactly.
The problem is when someone posts a build, let's say fighter since he's talking about DPS, and says that his fighter can do X, Y, and Z well someone jumps in and says that he can't do 350 DPR. He says, yeah, but he can do 250 plus those other things and he only needs 250 because our group also has a barbarian doing 300 DPR. He still gets people saying the 250 isn't good enough.
The complaint isn't about critiquing mechanics. It's about critiquing a single mechanic while ignoring all the rest.
Well, really, the argument that you NEED that extra 100 DPR can be easily dismessed as "I don't feel that's really necessary."
Getting your panties in a twist over someone telling you you're bad for the above-suggested sacrifice is silly, at best.
The part about monks I won't get into, because that's a powderkeg I really don't want to deal with.
If the 250(insert other number as needed) is good damage that should not be an issue, but if the 250 is something the enemy does not care about then those other things should be something that is useful. Otherwise nothing the character is doing is working.
In other words you can choose to avoid option A, but if so option(s) B needs to be regularly useful.