| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hi all in my experience I've found the players that are big on optimizing are often ( not always) some of the worse metagamers
Have others found this
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well it makes sense in a way. They want the best tactical advantage and OOC knowledge helps a lot.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
They must be pretty bad at optimizing (and thus undeserving of the label imo) if they need a cheat sheet. If your good at optimizing, your character should be able to handle pretty much any CR appropriate encounter (or at least be able to get around it). An "optimized" character that has no plan for say Incorporeal Creatures is no optimized character at all.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
That is a player issue, not an optimizing issue. I have seen it(metagaming) on both sides.
You can say what Aranna, but it can also be said for people who call themselves RP'ers. They might spend a long time working on a background story, and want to protect the investment.
Those that RP and work towards good mechanics would be doubly affected, but some people just hate to lose, and they see dying as losing.
Cheat sheets ?
I've just found that players who optimize tend to allow themselves to act on knowledge that there character would have no way of knowing
Which is bad form in my books
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
That's odd, since my characters tend to know more than I do, considering their INT is almost certain to be higher then mine and they undoubtedly have more ranks in most knowledges then I do.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Cheat sheets ?
I've just found that players who optimize tend to allow themselves to act on knowledge that there character would have no way of knowing
Which is bad form in my books
I agree. Until they make the knowledge check they don't know it. That is why you start changing things around. Change the DR Silver to DR Cold Iron. Give the monster a fear aura or poison.. Change his saves around so one of the weak saves becomes the strong save. :)
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
In the vanishingly small probability chance that we get people to agree what "metagaming" and "optimizing" mean, I might feel like this thread has a point.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, when playing with experienced players you should change some monster stuff around and let them know you're doing that.
If you've looked through the Bestiary before, you've seen the monster stats. If you face one you recognize, it's kind of hard to play dumb (at least for me). I'm not trying to metagame, it's just what naturally happens.
Yeah, when playing with experienced players you should change some monster stuff around and let them know you're doing that.
If you've looked through the Bestiary before, you've seen the monster stats. If you face one you recognize, it's kind of hard to play dumb (at least for me). I'm not trying to metagame, it's just what naturally happens.
It doesn't have to "naturally happen." You can deliberately control your PC's actions based on what the character knows. Yes, that means sometimes making a less than optimal in game choice, but that's one of the fundamental distinctions between "role playing" and "roll playing."
Having said that, this is so common that I routinely re-skin monsters or create custom monsters just to keep my players from getting in the habit of meta-gaming. Also, I think one of the great enjoyments of the game as a player is those "what the hell is THAT?" moments where you have to figure out how to defeat something. In my games you can memorize every single bestiary entry like Sheldon from TBBT and you'll still be saying "what the hell is THAT?" on a regular basis.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It's totally natural to avoid doing what you know won't work.
It's fun to have those "what is it doing?!" moments as you describe. It's not very fun to pretend to have those moments when out of game you already saw it from a mile away.
I prefer genuine surprise in combat.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
You can and you can't. You can avoid acting on your metagame knowledge, but you can't act as if you didn't know it. For example, you can't guess based on character knowledge when you already know something out of character.
Really? I do it all the time. All the time. I consider the situation based on what the character knows, not what I know and make a choice based on that. Exactly the same as I consider a situation based on my character's personality and backstory, not on my own personality and backstory and make a choice based on that.
Is this something new to people? I've always considered it one of the most fundamental aspects of "role playing." In fact I would go so far as to say it is downright definitional.
If I knew nothing about the mechanics for skeletons, I could still guess that arrows wouldn't work well and feel justified in trying a club instead. But if I already know they have DR 5/bludgeoning am I metagaming to have my character make the same guess?
Yeah, if I'm playing a level 1 character and encounter skeletons for the first time ever, and my character is not martially trained (where I assume they cover this sort of thing in "fighting undead 101") I will make a decision based on my character's knowledge, history and abilities. If my character has an int of 16 I'm probably totally going to figure he/she is smart enough to go with a blunt weapon. But if he/she is int 8, not so much. I might give them a wisdom check to see if they think about it, but yeah, I might totally have my int 8 barbarian try to stick a sword in a skeleton and not realize for a few rounds that it's not working.
It all depends. And yes, I do consider that to be part of the fun of role playing.
I guess I've been doing it wrong for decades. Oh well.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
We have a deaf oracle that continues to have conversation about tactics while in combat... it annoys the hell out of me. What's worse is that they consider themselves to be a good roleplayer.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I guess I've been doing it wrong for decades. Oh well.
Don't do that. You are better than that, and it was uncalled for. No one accused you of doing it wrong.
No. Those are two completely unrelated subjects.
It's a tough call. I came down on a new player who was looking up undead stats while we were gaming. He told me "But they allow it in PFS?!" and I shook my head.
I usually (tongue-in-cheek) threaten them with beholders if they insist on metagaming.
One of the most-often misused tactics is "How many hit points are you down by?" which I don't allow (if I'm in the room). I try to encourage the players to say something like "Do you need healing?" and "Yes, I'm badly hurt!", as it's more realistic.
The next "bad luck" incident that I need to throw at the players as a plot hook will probably happen to that player that metagamed. I let them know it with a smile, too. "The gods frown on you and your unnatural use of telepathy."
It's a tough call. I came down on a new player who was looking up undead stats while we were gaming. He told me "But they allow it in PFS?!" and I shook my head.
I usually (tongue-in-cheek) threaten them with beholders if they insist on metagaming.
One of the most-often misused tactics is "How many hit points are you down by?" which I don't allow (if I'm in the room). I try to encourage the players to say something like "Do you need healing?" and "Yes, I'm badly hurt!", as it's more realistic.
The next "bad luck" incident that I need to throw at the players as a plot hook will probably happen to that player that metagamed. I let them know it with a smile, too. "The gods frown on you and your unnatural use of telepathy."
Bad call. You should never punish a character for the actions of the player.
Bad call. You should never punish a character for the actions of the player.
It's all done in fun.
You guys realize that by having to reskin monsters you are in effect saying the very same thing the OP is saying right? That optimizer's can't help but use metagaming in a fight with a monster they recognize.
It's all done in fun.
Bad call. You should never punish a character for the actions of the player.
The thing is, once you start making it personal things can stop being fun very quickly.
You guys realize that by having to reskin monsters you are in effect saying the very same thing the OP is saying right? That optimizer's can't help but use metagaming in a fight with a monster they recognize.
I don't accept this as a given. It's probably true more often than not, but I do believe that some players, even horrid optimizers can actually avoid metagaming in the fight with a monster they recognize. I've done it more times than I can count. Sure people can assert that I'm still metagaming, but I can just as strongly assert that I am not. And I do assert that.
I reskin monsters for lots of reasons. Avoiding metagaming is just one reason. Another reason is just to make the game more visually interesting, especially when I'm using one of my custom miniatures.
Yeah, you heard me. Sometimes my entire reason for reskinning a monster is so I can stroke my ego by showing off one of my custom miniatures. I totally do that sometimes.
You guys realize that by having to reskin monsters you are in effect saying the very same thing the OP is saying right? That optimizer's can't help but use metagaming in a fight with a monster they recognize.I don't accept this as a given. It's probably true more often than not, but I do believe that some players, even horrid optimizers can actually avoid metagaming in the fight with a monster they recognize. I've done it more times than I can count. Sure people can assert that I'm still metagaming, but I can just as strongly assert that I am not. And I do assert that.
I reskin monsters for lots of reasons. Avoiding metagaming is just one reason. Another reason is just to make the game more visually interesting, especially when I'm using one of my custom miniatures.
Yeah, you heard me. Sometimes my entire reason for reskinning a monster is so I can stroke my ego by showing off one of my custom miniatures. I totally do that sometimes.
Again... since the OP used (not always) in his post you are still saying the same thing just in different words. I bolded a part of your post to highlight this. ;)
What you lose is the ability to figure stuff out. It's not so bad in the obvious cases like that, but is really frustrating when you know something more serious OOC and have some clues to it in character. I can certainly firewall and pretend not to know something, but when there's a chance of the character figuring it out, I much prefer to be able to figure it out myself from the clues my character knows.
Sure, I prefer to be surprised and figure stuff out cold myself. But that isn't always an option. Some of the GMs I play with don't want to go to the effort to reskin and so I frequently have to role play situations where I totally know the monster we're fighting but my character is trying to figure it out.
I consider it a challenge to work through that situation and figure out how my character figures it out. I actually enjoy it sometimes.
Again... since the OP used (not always) in his post you are still saying the same thing just in different words. I bolded a part of your post to highlight this. ;)
No Aranna. I am NOT saying what the OP said in "different words". The OP has accused "power gamers" of being "usually" the worst metagamers. That is not even close to saying that optimizers frequently "can't help but use metagaming."
I'm saying that metagaming might happen in those situations but that it can be avoided.
The OP is ACCUSING power gamers of being badwrongfun big-time metagamers who ruin fun for other people.
Not even close to the same thing Aranna.
It really depends upon the person.
The biggest optimizer in my group likes optimization because they're a very rules oriented person who likes the game world to act consistently and to feel that they're making rational choices.
This player doesn't metagame because it would decrease the consistency of the world for them. They would also feel cheated if people knew the weaknesses of monsters without making the appropriate knowledge checks because that's how the rules work.
Yeah, I'll admit it's tempting to use OOC knowledge... last night our GM pitted us against a bunch of witchwirds (he never told us the name, but his description was pretty convincing). None of the others knew what they were (I did because I've been enjoying the beastiaries recently) and it took a lot of effort to keep my mouth shut when somebody decided to shoot a few magic missiles...
In the end, the group is super non-optimal (it's very much of a "messing around" game, the GM encourages us to do weird stuff) but OOC knowledge is hard to ignore.
I do my best to avoid metagaming, but I should probably stick to high-int characters in the foreseeable future, until my self-control in that respect is better.
To be honest I think this is something all gamers have to face when their experience grows to that point where they suddenly recognize the troll before they have to fight it. Role players are just naturally better at looking through the lens of their character's knowledge than optimizers are. Obviously not in all cases, but as a general trend it seems to hold. As we grow past this meta-moment experienced players of both types learn to suppress this knowledge or embrace metagaming. Their choice.
Again... since the OP used (not always) in his post you are still saying the same thing just in different words. I bolded a part of your post to highlight this. ;)No Aranna. I am NOT saying what the OP said in "different words". The OP has accused "power gamers" of being "usually" the worst metagamers. That is not even close to saying that optimizers frequently "can't help but use metagaming."
I'm saying that metagaming might happen in those situations but that it can be avoided.
The OP is ACCUSING power gamers of being badwrongfun big-time metagamers who ruin fun for other people.
Not even close to the same thing Aranna.
I am puzzled why you can't see this...
Maybe the key is in the words you bolded? I take "worst metagamers" to mean they do it more frequently than the other group, nothing more. You seem to ascribe some deep level of insult to the same words. Is this it?
Not optimizers. Experienced players. You can pick your feats with a dart board and spend six hours a day on the Internet calling people who don't rollplayers. If you've been playing for a while and you see a red dragon you're going to expect fire breath and -- unless it's young looking -- sorcerer casting. You're not going to lead with lightning bolt against shambling mounds. You're going to try fire or acid against trolls.
I'm aware of these facts, my characters are not unless I've encountered them before, been told by someone or posses high ranks in the appropriate knowledge skills.
You guys realize that by having to reskin monsters you are in effect saying the very same thing the OP is saying right? That optimizer's can't help but use metagaming in a fight with a monster they recognize.Not optimizers. Experienced players. You can pick your feats with a dart board and spend six hours a day on the Internet calling people who don't rollplayers. If you've been playing for a while and you see a red dragon you're going to expect fire breath and -- unless it's young looking -- sorcerer casting. You're not going to lead with lightning bolt against shambling mounds. You're going to try fire or acid against trolls.
Exactly this. Once you know a monster's abilities/weaknesses out of character, you have to consciously remind yourself that your character might not know that. Even when you try to avoid metagaming, it can be very easy to slip up or find yourself trying to justify how your character could know of find out what you know out of character.
the main thing to me is vs something like skeletons if the character normally uses clubs or blunt weapons its fine but if they use something like a sword and switch to a club when they see them failing a knowledge check or have never seen and fought skeletons before that would be using player knowledge and just not cool. you cant punish a character for doing something they normally do but you can stop them from using player knowledge to gain a unearned advantage.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
If you've been playing for a while and you see a red dragon you're going to expect fire breath and -- unless it's young looking -- sorcerer casting. You're not going to lead with lightning bolt against shambling mounds. You're going to try fire or acid against trolls.
My rule of thumb for these examples is... "If the creature is so famous that even people who don't play D&D would know what to expect (e.g.: a Red Dragon breathing fire, a Vampire being vulnerable to sunlight, etc), then your character knows it as well. I also include trolls and fire/acid damage because that's just too classic to "forget", IMHO.
It's not unreasonable to expect people who live in a world where these creature actually exist to know a little about creatures that are particularly common, dangerous or famous.
Most commoners wouldn't know specific weaknesses of rare creatures, but they are likely to know fey are hurt by cold iron, undead hate "holy" magic and red dragons breathe fire.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Also saying a few words is a free action so if another player make a knowledge check on their turn they can totally tell the party and its a great opportunity for role play.
My rule of thumb for these examples is... "If the creature is so famous that even people who don't play D&D would know what to expect (e.g.: a Red Dragon breathing fire, a Vampire being vulnerable to sunlight, etc), then your character knows it as well. I also include trolls and fire/acid damage because that's just too classic to "forget", IMHO.
Re: Vampires. Up until the 19th century when English poets popularized vampire myths, I'm not sure whether the average person would be aware of obscure elements of Hungarian myths.
It's not unreasonable to expect people who live in a world where these creature actually exist to know a little about creatures that are particularly common, dangerous or famous.
This all comes down to the campaign setting in question. How much communication is there between the different cultures and regions? Without the internet and world-wide communication only highly educated people (such as those with ranks in the appropriate knowledge skills) would know about monsters that aren't frequently encountered by their contemporaries within the same region.
Most commoners wouldn't know specific weaknesses of rare creatures, but they are likely to know fey are hurt by cold iron, undead hate "holy" magic and red dragons breathe fire.
Agreed. I like to play that people know the traits of the different creature types since they seem universal. However sometimes the difficulty is in recognizing which type the creature is. Sometimes it can be hard to know whether that shadowy creature is a form of undead (shadows), fey (shaeling) or outsider (kyton).
If you've been playing for a while and you see a red dragon you're going to expect fire breath and -- unless it's young looking -- sorcerer casting. You're not going to lead with lightning bolt against shambling mounds. You're going to try fire or acid against trolls.My rule of thumb for these examples is... "If the creature is so famous that even people who don't play D&D would know what to expect (e.g.: a Red Dragon breathing fire, a Vampire being vulnerable to sunlight, etc), then your character knows it as well. I also include trolls and fire/acid damage because that's just too classic to "forget", IMHO.
It's not unreasonable to expect people who live in a world where these creature actually exist to know a little about creatures that are particularly common, dangerous or famous.
Most commoners wouldn't know specific weaknesses of rare creatures, but they are likely to know fey are hurt by cold iron, undead hate "holy" magic and red dragons breathe fire.
that is what the knowledge checks are for, what do i know about this creature. do remember that information inst as readily available as it would be to us and common knowledge would not be the same to them. Many commoners don't have a good education and if they haven't see a red dragon breath fire, i hear tell that red dragons breath acid and melt the flesh off your bones.
I did have a player who optimized even when I asked him not to, and he did indeed tend to metagame (and was very pouty about it when curbed by myself or another player). But he also tended to cheat whenever he got the chance, and had a slew of other bad habits, so I would not want to connect the optimizing and metagaming as if they were connected other than being two more bad habits of a player with a whole list of bad habits.
Long before him was another guy who optimized, rules lawyered, and definitely metagamed. He also did not like it when we tried to rein the metagaming in. Again, though, this was a guy with a lot of problems. So were these just two more of his problems, or was there a connection? I don't know.
We had a real rules lawyer for awhile, who tended to force his idea of the rules on us when it suited his character, but would argue the opposite interpretation when that would gain him an advantage. I wouldn't call his characters highly optimized, though. They were smartly-built, but not overpowered. He was very good about not metagaming, though. He was very anti-metagaming.
Take all that as you will.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
that is what the knowledge checks are for, what do i know about this creature. do remember that information inst as readily available as it would be to us and common knowledge would not be the same to them. Many commoners don't have a good education and if they haven't see a red dragon breath fire, i hear tell that red dragons breath acid and melt the flesh off your bones.
Luckily, most adventurers are not commoners.
Dragons breathing fire was common "knowledge" even before the internet, probably before the TV too, and dragons don't even exist in our world.
IMHO, while it may be RAW, asking for Knowledge checks for the PCs to know that red dragons do indeed breathe fire is as pointless as asking for a Diplomacy check to ask what time it is. YMMV.
I am puzzled why you can't see this...
Maybe the key is in the words you bolded? I take "worst metagamers" to mean they do it more frequently than the other group, nothing more. You seem to ascribe some deep level of insult to the same words. Is this it?
I'm puzzled why you insist on telling me what I am saying instead of listening to what I am actually saying.
I don't even AGREE with the OP's basic premise that "optimizers" are the "worst metagamers" no matter HOW you parse "worst". Role players are just as bad metagamers as optimizers in general and in the specific situation described here I have not even offered an opinion of which sub-category of gamers would be "worse" than others. I simply said that SOME metagaming is probably going to happen, that's all.
This whole thing smacks of some sort of variation of the Stormwind Fallacy anyway.
that is what the knowledge checks are for, what do i know about this creature. do remember that information inst as readily available as it would be to us and common knowledge would not be the same to them. Many commoners don't have a good education and if they haven't see a red dragon breath fire, i hear tell that red dragons breath acid and melt the flesh off your bones.Luckily, most adventurers are not commoners.
Dragons breathing fire was common "knowledge" even before the internet, probably before the TV too, and dragons don't even exist in our world.
IMHO, while it may be RAW, asking for Knowledge checks for the PCs to know that red dragons do indeed breathe fire is as pointless as asking for a Diplomacy check to ask what time it is. YMMV.
Right. There are definitely some areas of common knowledge that don't need checks. I would expect a check for some exotic thing from another dimension, but as dragons are a standard part of every kid's bedtime fairy tales, I cannot imagine a commoner (much less adventurer) who didn't expect them to breathe fire. Besides, dragons are always terrorizing towns. So some commoners would have seen them in action.
Giants and trolls, too, are something commoners would be aware-of, and probably have some knowledge of, sharing their hunting grounds.
Now, should somebody come up against a Shoggoth or a Xorn, or similar, I would expect them to be at something of a loss. (Unless of course their world has such exotic creatures in abundance.)
Adamantine Dragon, If I may attempt to clear up the miscommunication between you and Aranna.
* The OP said "players that are big on optimizing are often (not always) some of the worse metagamers".
* She is pointing out that this could be interpreted as saying "optimizing strongly correlates with metagaming with some significant outliers".
* This interpretation would agree with your statement "I don't accept this as a given. It's probably true more often than not".
* Both statements acknowledge the correlation between the two factors (yours mitigated somewhat by the addition of "probably") but also acknowledge the existence of outliers who do not fit this patterns.
Hopefully that clears up some of the syntax confusion?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
mkenner, the fact that the OP singled out "optimizers" is significant and in my opinion makes your and Aranna's interpretation a semantic exercise in inferring something different than what was strongly implied by the OP.
Anyway, done with it.
makes your and Aranna's interpretation
Oh, don't mistake that for my opinion. I was just trying to clear up the confusion since the argument between the two of you was dragging on without any clear resolution and was, as you say, just regarding semantics.
I think there is a big difference between what he said and the implications involved in creating a thread specifically about this point. It strikes me as definitely insulting towards "optimizers". As you can see if you scroll up through the thread, I've been disagreeing with him using an example from my group.
Seems metagaming knowledge on the weakness of monsters are often done by experienced players. It just happens that a great many of experienced players make good well rounded characters who can contribute to combat meaningfully. So I see absolutely no correlation between optimizers and roleplayers in reference to metagaming. Both should have the same investment in their characters.
Theres in interesting line of development as a player.
Rookie: Oh my god what the hell is that?
Intermediate: Hrm, that could be a blank or a blank. Lets see what happens.
Advanced: Okay. Thats a blank, its weak to blank. *aims for the weakness without thinking* Oh shoot. Woops I guess my character wouldn't know that.
Veteran: Thats a blank. I don't think my character might know. The only creature he has outside knowledge of is the ravener who destroyed his home.
In spite of the thread title, I'm probably the biggest optimizer in my group besides my GM. We're playing through Reign of Winter and it uses a lot of stuff from the Bestiary II. Stuff I've never even heard of or bothered to read about. We play online on Fridays. I've not looked up a single enemy even when I could literally do it real time between turns using the d20pfsrd.com or the online PRD. It's been amusing.
Meanwhile there's a couple of the other players (especially one) who does it constantly. Most of them aren't what you'd call optimizers, but they have fun so all is well. The GM has asked 'em to not look up monsters during encounters a few times though.