RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Here is my optimization,...
Deep down inside, I don't trust other gamers. I build my characters to be as self sufficient as possible. This means that I miss out on uber awesome "I win at dnd in a round" type builds. What I get is, the uber awesome " I win at surviving most encounters". From a role play aspect, surviving and contributing means more than roll playing and getting the most damage to my character.
I can't bring myself to "dump" stats... Just can't do it. I have found after years of playing, that ever über optimized build has a drawback, flaw, kryptonite if you will. Sconce we are using that analogy, batman is a survivor, not an optimizer... Batman dont have dump stats. And while he can't do all the cool stuff that superman can, batman will win any fight with supes... Bats will pick the setting, select his tools, and if he doesn't have the advantage then he doesn't fight... Batman wins, because he is optimized to survive.
Edit It helps when the site doesn't eat my reply.
I like JOAt characters myself. My current PFS characters will never win awards for "Most DPR" or "Most likely to talk their way out of a situation." However, they will win "Best Supporting Character in a Pathfinder Society Scenario." That's good enough for my entertainment.
You can pretty much say that about any member of the justice league DC heroes don't lose that often.Batman survives due to GM fiat.
GM: "The Joker hits you with a boxing glove gun. Take 14 damage."
Batman player: "That brings me down to -10HP."
GM: "Right... You wake up a few hours later, fully healed. You are locked in a cell dangling over a shark tank."
Batman player: "Did The Joker take my mask off?"
GM: "No... He's decided he doesn't care about your secret identity any more."
Batman player: "What about my utility belt?"
GM: "He didn't touch it in case it was booby trapped."
Robin player: "How come when my last character lost a fight with this guy he got beaten to death with a crowbar?"
GM: "Your last character sucked, that's why.""Why Batman always wins" in a nutshell.
No, it's not a good thing. It's why I don't like him.
No more hero = no more story.
People buy X comic for character X. Kill off that character, you lose most if not all of your readership.
Nature of the beast, man. If you don't like that, I'd be surprised if you liked ANY comics other than one-shot stories like Watchmen. (Which tend to be more visual novels than true comics.)
Well, that's not the best example of why I dislike Batman. The better ones are when other heroes (and super-powered villains) suddenly take a -100 to their IQ just because Batman is around, just so the whole status quo of "Batman is awesome" can be maintained, Suspension of Disbelief be damned. Best example is him reverse-engineering alien bombs owned by Darkseid in like a few minutes or something and then blackmailing the guy, as well as DODGING AN UNDODGEABLE ATTACK.
It's like Batman moved the Immovable Object. That's not something a normal human can do, so Batman is not a normal human.
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I have what I would describe as a balanced group. There are a couple of optimizers who are really focused on making the most combat powerful character they can. They dig through the books for every edge they can, and they make suggestions to others for feats that might help their characters.
And they always play characters that reflect this. They play characters that don't care about what Machiavellian plot going on, they just want to go crush things.
And then I have players who care about the Machiavellian plot, and they build characters that are designed to be ready for anything, if not ideal for any one thing. They make sure they have a solution for every problem and no glaring weakness, and then they look for the easiest way to resolve the plot. They are able to find ways to make sure when combat happens, it is as favorable to the party as possible.
You need both to be successful in a campaign rather than a series of combat encounters.
Where I get upset is when someone who is optimizing refuses to acknowledge where they minimized in exchange, and try to find loopholes to cover choices they made in building a character.
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Well, that's not the best example of why I dislike Batman. The better ones are when other heroes (and super-powered villains) suddenly take a -100 to their IQ just because Batman is around, just so the whole status quo of "Batman is awesome" can be maintained, Suspension of Disbelief be damned. Best example is him reverse-engineering alien bombs owned by Darkseid in like a few minutes or something and then blackmailing the guy, as well as DODGING AN UNDODGEABLE ATTACK.
It's like Batman moved the Immovable Object. That's not something a normal human can do, so Batman is not a normal human.
Now to that I can agree. Author favoritism sucks.
Batman beats superman because he is the underdog and in comics, the underdog wins.
"Nobody roots for Goliath". Wilt Chamberlain
Most of my players are hardcore optimizers, so the players became bored when the encounters as written in the adventure paths went down to easy and actually asked me to increase the difficulty of their encounters. Thus I had to optimize every encounter to give them a challenge, basically revamping all encounters in the AP.
Last session my group of five 8th level characters plus one low level npc healer took down a CR 16 encounter with multiple incorporeal foes and one bad-ass spellcaster with lots of dirty tricks up her sleeve. Granted this was a challenging encounter for them, but as written the spellcaster would have been alone and several levels lower. She would most likely have gone down before she could even act, even with her buffs up.
With a couple of rounds with buffs their AC's reach into the 30's, the front-liners constantly hit AC 30+, and with a bard, a magus, a sorcerer and a ninja, all with mirror image, they are almost impossible to hit with regular attacks. They are also really good at cooperating and take advantage of the battlefield.
Its a lot of work to make things challenging for my players, but they really seem to appreciate the extra effort and every once in a while I throw an easy encounter at them just to make them feel powerful.
Unfortunately all groups play differently and its the GM's job to adjust the adventures to fit his players gaming style. You can't get someone to stop optimizing when the system actively encourages it.
Optimizers will optimize no matter what limitations you put on them. The important part is to work with your players and find out what they want out of the game and how you best can achieve this without ruining the fun for anyone.
When I find an element of the game I think is unbalanced I tell my players to hear their input and we discuss wether we want to ban, adjust or keep playing with that element as written. I never ban or adjust content without input from my players first.
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Combat is the GM choosing a challenge the players are a) likely to win in front of the players and b) Are challenging to the players.
Min/Maxing only works in groups where the challenges are consistently against the max and never against the min.
Even the 3.x games suggested that roughly 5% of encounters should likely be overpowering in a "run you fools" sort of way (the opposite was true too, so roughly 1/20 fights should be like fighting a pair of blind goblins :P).
An interesting question though. What is the "max" and the "min" when it comes to challenges? As an example, I firmly believe that I keep things very deep in the area of reason when building scenarios (not only combat, but you aren't likely to find stupid stuff like inflated DCs either). Yet, I wonder, what would I have to do to make them "maxed" or avoid to make them "min".
I mean, Pathfinder isn't exactly an easy game when you're actually following the rules. It's very unforgiving. Heck, just taking a short stroll through the environment chapter is enough to see that you probably don't even have to get out of bed in the morning for something to kill you, and you may never live to see your first goblin if the gods hate you (figuratively speaking as in bad luck, not evil GM).
What constitutes as raising the bar? Should I be concerned if I don't feel a need to raise the bar even when PCs at my table are optimized? Does "maxing" encounters mean I have to modify creatures beyond their standard assumptions? Or does it mean just being ruthless in how those creatures function? I mean, do I have to replace all my 1st level kobolds with 3rd level PC-classed heroic versions of kobolds to be "maxing" the game to meet these fabled power gamers (something I'd likely never do)? How does deviousness rank on the min/max scale?
I mean, one of my parties was wandering through a kobold lair and when the kobolds realized they were coming, an ambush party consisting of a few sorcerers and some warriors (2 1st level kobold sorcerers plus a handful of kobold warriors) used silent image to make a false wall and then cast colorspray through it as their opening gambit to the surprise round when the party came by? Is that too "maxed" or too "min"? Did I need to mod the sorcerers to have an unusually high Charisma? Or perhaps they needed different feats? Do I need to add templates?
Mayhaps I'm doing something wrong, but I'm 99% certain that most of the people I play with are pretty capable of building efficient characters (or getting them built for them) and would probably be considered "min-maxers" or "optimizers" by many, and yet I don't find myself taking time to modify the NPCs in my games to any great degree (other than the usual stuff like picking spells / NPC gear by the standard rules/guidelines I might add). The last few times I've custom built an NPC, it was usually for a recurring or special role (like the manager of an illegal slave brothel with the nickname "dragon lady" who was a sorcress (dragon bloodline)/warrior that used touch spells + natural attacks) or the simulacrum assassins (a custom built recurring assassin and copies of her that were scattered about as re-occurring foes). Is claws and shocking grasp too maxed? Or is it too min?
Maybe I'm just crazy (I wouldn't be the first to think it, I'm sure!), or maybe I'm already "maxing" encounters. I'm a firm believer in an creatures of different shapes and sizes, perhaps due to my background of playing 3.x, where HD advancement was common (21 HD gargantuan wyverns baby), but even today with all the goodies PCs get, it's rare that I make particularly advanced NPCs (there might be one 21 HD wyvern on the mountainside named ol' Steeljaws, but most are the usual 7 HD varieties), and occasionally I'll drop a few class levels on certain special enemies (a level of warrior makes this guy a scary brute minion on the BBEG). Yet somehow, I just feel like I'm missing the heart of this outlook.
Exactly how far do I have to go - or the PCs have to go - before I'm optimizing against them?