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I tried to get my wife and kids to optimize a bit more, she just narrowed her eyes and asked (clearly irritated) "do you want us to play or not?" Needless to say the next time she made a witch and put that 10 in dexterity I kept my mouth shut:-)
You have learned much.
I have a couple of guys who used to play with me (their schedules rarely permit them to do so anymore) and they're extremely competitive. They both look at RPGs as something to win and do their best to shut out other players sometimes, particularly this one guy. I've talked to them about it in the past, and that may be another reason they don't play as much anymore.
I don't see anyway that making it a competition could possibly go wrong... for me!!
I really really really hate Mini Maxers, as in really! No, really really!
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As far as optimize or die goes, I think folks need to understand there are different proficiency levels out there and none of them are badwrongfun. Some folks are more casual and others are hardcore. Unfortunately, our hobby community is tiny so chances for overlap are great. This causes a lot of wrecked games for all involved. Being mindful of expectations is key to avoiding bad gaming no matter how you like it.
If I was greenteagamer my gaming ad post would say "We go at one speed, mine. If you cant keep up, dont step up, your character will only die!"
I feel this needs an addendum.
I once went bowling with a group of friends. There were two players who'd never bowled before, both young, and we tried to teach them proper form, etc.
The boy listened to what we said, attempted to pick up the correct form, and while he didn't do excellent, his ability for a newbie was easy to see because he listened. The girl just ignored everything we said and threw gutter ball after gutter ball, absolutely refusing to adjust her form or approach, and got mad at us for suggesting anything contrary to what she wanted to do. (Sound familiar?) Both came in dead last for scores, and the girl was visibly upset about it.
Do you think we'll ever voluntarily bowl with her again? No. It's not fun to play with a stubborn individual who thinks they know instinctually more than someone who's taken time to learn the game.
Especially if it's a team based game, which one would you want? ESPECIALLY if you're not in competition with them do you want them to actually learn instead of flailing about off instinct.
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I went bowling once, when i was six, my brother's wouldn't let me use the buffers, i never went back.
:-)
I don't use build points they way they are indicated in the CRB.
Everybody gets 85 ability score points to distribute as they like, before racial ability bonuses and penalties. Nobody gets a max ability score above 20 at 1st level.
Two things I should add to my bowling story analogy:
1. I would bowl with the boy again. He actually tried to improve his game, and he didn't complain that we were better than him. Both of those things matter significantly more than actual skill level.
2. The game is about having fun. I don't have fun when one player sucks and complains about it without even trying to get better. That is draining to my actual fun. My wife and I wanted to get up and leave because of this player, and only stayed because we already paid for multiple games ahead of time. Even then we actually ended up leaving early because we were so annoyed. It undid the fun of bowling.
I confess that when I play with new players, my goal is to see to it that they have fun, not teach them the "correct" way to play the game.
So is mine. 9/10 times I find players consider mediocrity to be boring. One leads to the next. Edit - also, there isn't a correct way to play RPGs and I didn't say there was (bowling merely was an analogy), but there are formulaic approaches that lead to easier victories. My comments are that a) using those formulas is not wrong, b) it absolutely is wrong to not use those formulas and then gripe about people who do out of jealousy. They are available, and it was your choice not to use them.
Please note I have repeatedly said not optimizing is okay - as long as you STFU about people who do.
The inverse also holds true. Optimizers have no place commenting on those who don't. Suggestions or advice are okay, ragging and disparaging comments are not.
THIS is why when I GM for a mixed group I always limit the power level. Oh the optimizers will loudly lament the horrors then they will take my limits and twist them into something that would have a pit fiend screaming in terror. BUT the important part is that they won't be SO FAR AHEAD of the non-optimizers that they look like liabilities instead. Everyone can contribute to the challenges and fun is had by all.
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Straw liabilities aside nobody I have ever met deliberately makes a useless character.
Re: Optimization - it's a bigger issue when someone's either trying to force a player-GM arms race, and/or when someone's trying to marginalize other players.
Or if the party IS optimized, and then there's a player who's trying to outright break the game.
Also, deliberately creating more work for the GM by forcing an arms race and then blaming the other players "for not keeping up" is uncool =P
Though I most certainly agree that having someone play a character that they're not happy with, and then just stick with the character as-is and endlessly complain about the character instead of making any attempt to fix the character or even replace the character for one the player would actually like to play is amazingly unpleasant. Like, sucks the energy out of the entire room unpleasant.
(Sadder issue: when someone DOES try to marginalize another player, but lacks the system mastery to actually do it. Like, I have a player who for a a while would take Leadership and then try to write up a cohort that was clearly intended to be a better version of someone else's PC, but his system mastery wasn't up to the task at all, and he'd make really terrible cohorts. But holy hell it was tacky. He doesn't take Leadership anymore, fortunately.)
I really really really hate Mini Maxers, as in really! No, really really!We don't hate you back.
[I'm assuming 'mini' in 'Mini Maxers' was a typo.]
I didn't read it as a typo. It looks like a clever way to say "mini" instead of "munchkin" both have the meaning "small". If so the man is a clever word smith... if not it is an amusing coincidence.
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The game doesn't have to go at his speed. The game could easily go at the speed of the other characters and his would just excel [rather than put theirs in danger by powering the game up on account of his character.]As far as optimize or die goes, I think folks need to understand there are different proficiency levels out there and none of them are badwrongfun. Some folks are more casual and others are hardcore. Unfortunately, our hobby community is tiny so chances for overlap are great. This causes a lot of wrecked games for all involved. Being mindful of expectations is key to avoiding bad gaming no matter how you like it.
If I was greenteagamer my gaming ad post would say "We go at one speed, mine. If you cant keep up, dont step up, your character will only die!"
True there are all kinds of speeds and playstyles. My point was that greenteagamer dont want to mess around with a casual player. At least not those who are vocal about finding a happy medium for the group that requires greenteagamer to use bumpers or a tee. I believe his very next post attest to that. He wants a proficient group looking to excel, not just coast by. By using the ad I mentioned, he can try to screen out undesirable players. That way he doesn't ruin their fun nor they his.
@greenteagamer sorry about using you in my example bud not trying to pick on ya or anything.
I have never seen a PC character that was "an obvious liability". So what if my PC isn't DPR maximized?I've seen a few. A caster Druid with 13 Wis, for one. For 7 levels he accomplished jack and all, and provided little of value to the party. Then he quit playing.
For seven levels no one talked to him, OOC or IC? Then that's their fault. Or if they did talk to him, and he blew them off, then they should have booted him.
I mean, sure, I currently have a PF Soc Investigator- with Perception maxed out and scads of skills. More or less useless in Combat. Of course I tell them that, but he's really useful out of combat. There was one scenario, a Library challenge that was mostly skill challenges, and we whupped that one due to his super skills.
I also have known a couple of builds that were not fully useful for level one or something, but that happens.
To me, "Forcing an arms race" usually means that the PC is causing encounters to simply break down in some way (i.e., the PC routinely renders encounters pointless), and so the GM has to start significantly ramping up if he wants an encounter to be challenging without adjusting the problem PC.
Though I run an optimized game to begin with, so it also raises a enormous red flag to me if someone's actually outperforming the other PCs by a huge margin.
If the entire party is bad-asses, but someone's strong enough that the rest of the party doesn't even matter - the party could just sit out the fight and let the super-PC handle it - something's really wrong.
For a really simple example - if the other martials routinely do enough damage to kill an ECL+2 enemy in one round, and one particular PC routinely does enough damage to kill an ECL+6 enemy in one round, something's probably gone wrong somewhere. (By routinely, I mean that's a level of killing power the PC can normally maintain from round to round.)
I usually try to narrow down what's going wrong, and I WILL alter a power or ability if it's causing problems for my game. (I vastly prefer adjusting things over banning them.)
(Of course, I've also had a player tell me that if a PC has an overpowered ability, it's the GM's responsibility do something about it, which has probably influenced my attitude towards the matter =P)
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If you optimize to the point where you are essentially a higher challenge rating then I will design encounters around that higher challenge rating.
The problem comes when not everybody in the group optimizes to that level. If you have a group where one person optimizes to that level, two people is about in the middle, and another person builds a character that hits far below their weight-class, then it become a big problem.
If you set the challenge to the weak character, then the two in the middle don't get any real challenge, and the strong one steamrolls over everything.
If you set the challenge in the middle, then the strong character has no real challenge, and the weak character barely scrapes through.
If you set the challenge to the strong character, then the ones in the middle barely scrape through, and the weak character dies.
Proper balance is difficult.
Or even worse, you set the challenge to the strong character and the ones in the middle die too.
Though again, if the gap gets that big it means something's gone wrong, and the GM should isolating the problem and fixing it, rather than participating in escalation.
We've been playing together going on four years, never once have we even so much as memorize a spell that boosts ability scores :-)
In fact the only reason at all that we've had stat boosting items is because they're written in the adventure and my party are notorious hoarders:-)
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If you optimize to the point where you are essentially a higher challenge rating then I will design encounters around that higher challenge rating.You do that.
Meanwhile, I will not.
Just wondering...why would you not?
It's not like CR is an exact science, anyway.
I don't really get the point of playing D&D in cheat mode.
I have never seen a PC character that was "an obvious liability". So what if my PC isn't DPR maximized?I've seen a few. A caster Druid with 13 Wis, for one. For 7 levels he accomplished jack and all, and provided little of value to the party. Then he quit playing.For seven levels no one talked to him, OOC or IC? Then that's their fault. Or if they did talk to him, and he blew them off, then they should have booted him.
I mean, sure, I currently have a PF Soc Investigator- with Perception maxed out and scads of skills. More or less useless in Combat. Of course I tell them that, but he's really useful out of combat. There was one scenario, a Library challenge that was mostly skill challenges, and we whupped that one due to his super skills.
I also have known a couple of builds that were not fully useful for level one or something, but that happens.
We talked to him, but he seemed fine with it. It was a big party (7 characters) so we still had 6 people that worked.
I helped him gear more towards a Wild Shape beatdown focus once I knew HOW (it was my first PF game as well as his, and I was having a hard enough time with my Monk) which he enjoyed for a while, but then he decided RPGs weren't his thing.