Suddenly I have a burning desire to play an optimized merchant.
I have a player running a mid-level character with the Mythic Adventures rules. He's Mythic Rank is 1. He choose the ability that allows a character to take 20's on any one skill of choice. Yep, you guessed it. Diplomacy. Everyone is his pawn. Best haggler in Golarion.
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See: Stormwind fallacy.Actually, most of the time, it’s NOT a fallacy at all. Sure, it’s possible to roleplay with a combat optimized min/maxed PC, but there’s two things:
Since you often have few skills, and little RPing abilities, the PC doesn’t have much character to Roleplay.
And next, while it’s possible, most of us mere mortals have just so much brain power. If you’re spending all your time calculating DPR and the best chess-like move for your character, it’s just human to spend less time on role-playing.
So, the “Stormwind Fallacy” is more of a fallacy itself.
MOST OF THE TIME, more combat focused optimization means less Roleplaying.
At least in my experience, anyway.
I've seen a few very combat effective characters that are also good for talking bits. My hellknight, for example, is a beast on the battlefield. It is optimized for combat to the point that it could probably solo CR 14 encounters at level 10 just on brute force, assuming full HP and zero resource expenditure prior to that point. That being said, it's also got all of its social skills and they are EXTREMELY high. It's even got some knowledge buffed out the wazoo. Some of the other people I play with (see also: almost all of them) have their characters min-maxed to a point that they aren't just good for the role-playing aspect or at combat, but excel at every aspect of the game to a point that our most frequent GM probably suffers nosebleeds after every game he runs for us. To note, they're all products of a 20 point buy so no lucky rolls for multiple giant stats, no 25 point buy to allow greater ease of giant stats, etc.
Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that one should not simply assume a min-maxed character is going to fail at things outside what might appear at first to be its purview. You could make a barbarian with a charisma of 5 and still have ridiculous amounts of intimidate or diplomacy, for example. There are numerous workarounds that will completely negate a character's weaknesses without costing it any of its strengths.
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2.) Combat focused characters who provide NOTHING out of combat are NOT optimized characters.
Many, MANY, posters seem to think otherwise.
I'd say they are not "balanced' but they can be "optimized".
The more I play, the more I hate the feeling as if I have to optimize my characters. If I don't, I question whether or not I'm really contributing to the group. If I force myself not to, I get questions like "that's all?" when I mention a save DC or get frustrated because I can't land attacks or my spells get saved against often. It's infuriating and deflating, honestly. When I do it, and I can do it well, my characters are capable but often shallow in build.
Does anyone else feel the same? Is there a balance between the worlds?
Pathfinder might not be the right game for you. One thing it inherits from 3.5 is a wide range of character effectiveness. Two characters built for the same general theme can vary wildly in effectiveness. A character optimized for the role might be capable of overcoming any challenge with ease while the unoptimized character might be as effective as throwing water balloons at people. There's pros and cons to this approach to game approach. You've managed to stumble, however, over one of the biggest downsides to this approach: unoptimized characters can quickly get useless.
One solution is for the DM to tone down encounters and intentionally use underpowered enemies. The problem with this is that it's a lot of work for the DM. It can be quite easy to misjudge your party's capabilities and accidentally throw a too difficult encounter at them. It doesn't help that some monsters can completely shut down a character. If you are playing an unoptimized blaster sorcerer who throws fireballs, for example, monsters with a moderate amount of fire resistance can make your character useless. As the party gets higher level and CR-appropriate monsters get more and more such defenses, it gets to be more and more work for the DM to balance encounters for unoptimized characters.
Another solution is to convince your group to give another game a try. Other game systems have a higher floor for the power level of characters. I would suggest maybe giving D&D 4e a try. There are a lot of things I think it could do much better, but one thing it does well is make it so that unoptimized characters have an easier time contributing. Sure, an optimized character will still be more effective than an unoptimized character. But you avoid the D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder issue of unoptimized characters feeling completely useless.
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And next, while it’s possible, most of us mere mortals have just so much brain power. If you’re spending all your time calculating DPR and the best chess-like move for your character, it’s just human to spend less time on role-playing.
When I GM, I handle the design of every npc/monster on a mechanical level and roleplay them all while simultaneously taking care of countless other tasks that are the GM's role.
I find it strange to consider the idea of a player ever running out of brain power just trying to handle a single character.
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And next, while it’s possible, most of us mere mortals have just so much brain power. If you’re spending all your time calculating DPR and the best chess-like move for your character, it’s just human to spend less time on role-playing.When I GM, I handle the design of every npc/monster on a mechanical level and roleplay them all while simultaneously taking care of countless other tasks that are the GM's role.
I find it strange to consider the idea of a player ever running out of brain power just trying to handle a single character.
Ditto the Nth power
The classes in the later 3.5 supplements also tended to have substantially higher optimization floors but lower optimization ceilings. That may have been the intent from the beginning, but of course when the system was brand new the designers didn't understand it nearly as well as they did seven years later (which is why 99.9% of the most broken stuff from 3.5/3.0 come from the core rules). The most impressive part is that they managed to create a reasonably balanced game (if you take out the crazy stuff from core) without making everyone mechanically the same the way 4e did. A binder, warblade, and dreadmage are all balanced with each other, and yet just those three classes have more variety between them than anything Paizo puts out...
Now, if you don't like the process of deciding mechanical aspects of your character...yea, 3.X may not be the game for you, it tends to be very mechanics-heavy.
That's a good point. Later 3.5 classes tended to be pretty good with regard to balance. This might just be me and the people I've played 3.5 with, but I remember there still being a fair amount of optimization necessary. There were enough trap feats and such that you could accidentally shoot yourself in the foot if you weren't careful. It required much less optimization, however, than what is needed for Pathfinder. The necessary optimization was mostly about avoiding bad options.
Man, now I'm wanting to roll up a beguiler...
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There are a handful of classes from 3.5e (dread necromancer, hexblade, pale master, master of many forms, etc.) that had unspeakably high power ceilings as well as optimization floors. A master of many forms could quite literally just decide, "I feel like being a great wyrm." Suddenly it's a great wyrm. Dread necromancer, correctly built, could command vast armies of minions through webs of powerful, sentient, yet controlled minions without ever having to even look at the leadership feat. The hexblade was just... wow. You made one of those right, the rest of the party is no longer required.
Probably one of the worst offenders was the swordsage. That class... just wow. It was a better monk than a monk, a better duelist than the duelist, better fighter/barbarian than either of those classes, all while simultaneously maintaining ridiculous amounts of AC. Its lack of full BAB progression was readily overcome with a specific stance, a stance that allowed you to use several other stances simultaneously on top of mimicking full BAB. THAT was a nightmare for GMs. It presented that rare moment where one of the martial classes made the spellcasters feel insignificant.
if i have enough points to spend, i try to go for that 14 intelligence because i like having skills on martial characters that don't pertain to combat, but are useful for an adventurer to have.
such as Craft (Carpentry) for looting stuff nailed to the ground
Profession (Feng Shui Master) For Reorganizing Extradimensional Bags to hold more than normal
Diplomacy; because it is literally the quintessential social skill for a lot of social encounters
Profession (Miner) because i like being able to loot that ore for profit
Craft (Bows) for making cheap arrows on the field for even cheaper
Craft (Alchemy) because making Wrinkle Cream, Moisturizers and other valuable skin treatments that preserve cosmetic youth make me popular with the ladies, and allow my loli to retain her loli appearance
Heal; first so i can diagnose any problems with the skin treatments, issues with the hair dyes, or problems with particular cumbersome assets, and second, to treat said problems, and third, heal is useful for torturing NPCs by using medical knowledge to inflict pain
Sleight of Hand; a good substitute for performance when you need card tricks to dazzle the attention of a few guards and the local children alike. also good for stealing sandwiches at the local bakery
i wouldn't neccessarily take all of these skills, but some of them are pretty nice to have when they come up.
See: Stormwind fallacy.Actually, most of the time, it’s NOT a fallacy at all. Sure, it’s possible to roleplay with a combat optimized min/maxed PC, but there’s two things:
Since you often have few skills, and little RPing abilities, the PC doesn’t have much character to Roleplay.
And next, while it’s possible, most of us mere mortals have just so much brain power. If you’re spending all your time calculating DPR and the best chess-like move for your character, it’s just human to spend less time on role-playing.
So, the “Stormwind Fallacy” is more of a fallacy itself.
MOST OF THE TIME, more combat focused optimization means less Roleplaying.
At least in my experience, anyway.
You're right, the only way to role play is by spending character resources on specific role playing skills because all of my character's personality must be represented in dice rolls.
See: Stormwind fallacy.Actually, most of the time, it’s NOT a fallacy at all. Sure, it’s possible to roleplay with a combat optimized min/maxed PC, but there’s two things:
Since you often have few skills, and little RPing abilities, the PC doesn’t have much character to Roleplay.
And next, while it’s possible, most of us mere mortals have just so much brain power. If you’re spending all your time calculating DPR and the best chess-like move for your character, it’s just human to spend less time on role-playing.
So, the “Stormwind Fallacy” is more of a fallacy itself.
MOST OF THE TIME, more combat focused optimization means less Roleplaying.
At least in my experience, anyway.
You're right, the only way to role play is by spending character resources on specific role playing skills because all of my character's personality must be represented in dice rolls.
roleplayers don't select specific skills
they select skills that represent their characters personality or background
like Klaus, the Dwarven Druid whom had 1 rank in profession (Feng Shui master) to represent his background speaking to the earth to divine places for mining and construction in the dwarven settlements. he had a +7 to answer Feng Shui related questions
but things i RPed with him that didn't involve dice rolls
Ordering Goat's Milk instead of Alchohol, he couldn't get drunk off liquor, so he developed a taste for the strong and pungent flavor of Goat's Milk
Picking up Kobold Geishas at the Dragons den for a night of cross species adultery
Teaching his Jaguar Hans the dwarven language and how to speak and understand it
the fact he taught the party a communication code that involved colored cards so he could scout while wildshaped.
he challenged a Triceratops to a duel and survived being trampled by a herd of 30, at 8th level.
he kept jerky of every creature he slew, whether humanoid, animal, outside or whatever. including humans and other dwarves. just don't ask what his jerky of the day was, and you would be fine.
for Klaus, i even bought colored Cards IRL for the codes
This is how I look at optimization in Pathfinder/DnD.
How often do you make a choice at work knowing that it will cause you more work, has a greater chance of failure and is something other than what you know works best simply because it's a more interesting choice?
A succesful life is made up of us trying to optimize our choices. Getting the most success out of our efforts. If you want to create a rounded and real charcter in a game it seems reasonable that character's life choices will follow that same process; find what works best so that goals can be best achieved.
Bear in mind there are people that could technically get and hold down high-paid jobs but do lower-paid ones because they find them more fun or less stressful. The same is true of spending a bunch of points on skills that match character flavor while not being particularly effective in game terms.
It depends on what your (or your character's) goals are. Most people tend to have other goals outside of (or even instead of) being the best at a particular task.
I get the OP's point that they feel railroaded into making a character on paper that doesn't represent the one they really want to play. I don't see that hating optimization is necessarily the correct attitude, though. Some people want to play one way, some another - the best solution is to find a group that wants to play the same way you do, where possible.
See: Stormwind fallacy.Actually, most of the time, it’s NOT a fallacy at all. Sure, it’s possible to roleplay with a combat optimized min/maxed PC, but there’s two things:
Since you often have few skills, and little RPing abilities, the PC doesn’t have much character to Roleplay.
And next, while it’s possible, most of us mere mortals have just so much brain power. If you’re spending all your time calculating DPR and the best chess-like move for your character, it’s just human to spend less time on role-playing.
So, the “Stormwind Fallacy” is more of a fallacy itself.
MOST OF THE TIME, more combat focused optimization means less Roleplaying.
At least in my experience, anyway.
You're right, the only way to role play is by spending character resources on specific role playing skills because all of my character's personality must be represented in dice rolls.
roleplayers don't select specific skills...
like Klaus, the Dwarven Druid whom had 1 rank in profession (Feng Shui master) to represent his background speaking to the earth to divine places for mining and construction in the dwarven settlements. he had a +7 to answer Feng Shui related questions
Did that just happen?
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D&D Next was on track to set up a way to have the cake and eat it too. They had these background choices separated from class that allowed more flexibility in char gen. You could be a cleric with soldier background to be more of a combatant knight type cleric. You could choose an urban background instead to be more of a city dweller and all the skills that come with that lifestyle. Your class focused on your combat abilities so the two didn't butt heads constantly.
*Note: They may have ditched this approach though I have not been able to keep up. They hilariously blocked the site at work as non-essential but left paizo available. :)
Did that just happen?See: Stormwind fallacy.Actually, most of the time, it’s NOT a fallacy at all. Sure, it’s possible to roleplay with a combat optimized min/maxed PC, but there’s two things:
Since you often have few skills, and little RPing abilities, the PC doesn’t have much character to Roleplay.
And next, while it’s possible, most of us mere mortals have just so much brain power. If you’re spending all your time calculating DPR and the best chess-like move for your character, it’s just human to spend less time on role-playing.
So, the “Stormwind Fallacy” is more of a fallacy itself.
MOST OF THE TIME, more combat focused optimization means less Roleplaying.
At least in my experience, anyway.
You're right, the only way to role play is by spending character resources on specific role playing skills because all of my character's personality must be represented in dice rolls.
roleplayers don't select specific skills...
like Klaus, the Dwarven Druid whom had 1 rank in profession (Feng Shui master) to represent his background speaking to the earth to divine places for mining and construction in the dwarven settlements. he had a +7 to answer Feng Shui related questions
what?
me playing an adult?
me playing a male?
me playing a dwarf?
me playing a druid?
or all of them in one character?
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Did that just happen?See: Stormwind fallacy.Actually, most of the time, it’s NOT a fallacy at all. Sure, it’s possible to roleplay with a combat optimized min/maxed PC, but there’s two things:
Since you often have few skills, and little RPing abilities, the PC doesn’t have much character to Roleplay.
And next, while it’s possible, most of us mere mortals have just so much brain power. If you’re spending all your time calculating DPR and the best chess-like move for your character, it’s just human to spend less time on role-playing.
So, the “Stormwind Fallacy” is more of a fallacy itself.
MOST OF THE TIME, more combat focused optimization means less Roleplaying.
At least in my experience, anyway.
You're right, the only way to role play is by spending character resources on specific role playing skills because all of my character's personality must be represented in dice rolls.
roleplayers don't select specific skills...
like Klaus, the Dwarven Druid whom had 1 rank in profession (Feng Shui master) to represent his background speaking to the earth to divine places for mining and construction in the dwarven settlements. he had a +7 to answer Feng Shui related questionswhat?
me playing an adult?
me playing a male?
me playing a dwarf?
me playing a druid?
or all of them in one character?
I'm genuinely not sure if you are trolling.
The fact that you had a character waste a skill rank in Feng Sui master is exactly what I'm talking about when it comes to how ridiculous people get about the Stormwind.
Why can your character not just be interested in Fen Sui? Why can't you just role play that? Why must you waste character resources for your flavor?
You did exactly what I posted about and then claimed you didn't. I am baffled.
I will put it as simply as I can: If you must represent aspects of your PC's personality with dice rolls, rather than by actually role playing, then that makes you the roll player, not the other guy.
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*blink*
Why must you waste character resources for your flavor?
That sums up the Stormwind fallacy.
Personally, when I opt a character, I tend to stay in the CRB or the book the class was published in + the CRB. I find a lot of "opt builds" to be limiting and create less well rounded characters.
None of that has anything to do with role-playing. Role playing is something YOU-DO not your stats.
Ordering Goat's Milk instead of Alchohol, he couldn't get drunk off liquor, so he developed a taste for the strong and pungent flavor of Goat's Milk
Picking up Kobold Geishas at the Dragons den for a night of cross species adultery
Teaching his Jaguar Hans the dwarven language and how to speak and understand it
the fact he taught the party a communication code that involved colored cards so he could scout while wildshaped.
he kept jerky of every creature he slew, whether humanoid, animal, outside or whatever. including humans and other dwarves. just don't ask what his jerky of the day was, and you would be fine.
yes, i spent a skill point in profession (Feng Shui Master) but there were mechanical reasons, the DM gave every new PC a bonus freebie skill point that had to be spent on a craft, perform or profession skill, so i spent it on a profession
i wanted to be able to answer feng shui related questions using game mechanics, and feng shui proved a valuable skill when i could organize handy haversacks and bags of holding to hold 10% more weight than normal without interfering with the magical properties
the feng shui rank was a freebie with tangible mechanical benefits
i'm sure using a freebie for it's only valid purpose shouldn't count as wasting a character resource
i don't differentiate between role play and roll play
i take mechanical choices that fit the character to blend the two
and you can even roleplay your dice rolls too
i'm both a role player and a roll player
i blend the two
but yes, i waste a skill point at character creation on a craft or profession, but i usually waste just that one, and i try to pick one that i can find an adventuring related use for.
i still roleplayed the oddness of the character, i merely had a justification.
You're right, the only way to role play is by spending character resources on specific role playing skills because all of my character's personality must be represented in dice rolls.
Funny how that works out, isn't it, that the "role play, not roll play" people often seem to be these character-sheet reductionists who think the character has to have some mechanical representation of every little facet of their personality?
Hmm.
A lot of it sounds like this to me: "I'm not willing to expend the time and effort in optimizing that other people are, and my characters are not as effective! The grapes are so sour anyway, who would want them?"
You're right, the only way to role play is by spending character resources on specific role playing skills because all of my character's personality must be represented in dice rolls.
Funny how that works out, isn't it, that the "role play, not roll play" people often seem to be these character-sheet reductionists who think the character has to have some mechanical representation of every little facet of their personality?
Hmm.
A lot of it sounds like this to me: "I'm not willing to expend the time and effort in optimizing that other people are, and my characters are not as effective! The grapes are so sour anyway, who would want them?"
a lot of the "Role Players" as they call themselves deliberately optimize in the opposite direction and are worse "Roll Players" than the people they deem to be "Roll Players."
it's just. instead of optimizing a character to be effective, they build their characters to be as ineffective at their disliked role as possible.
in fact, a lot of them spend skill points in diplomacy and attribute bumps in charisma on a fighter with dumped physical attributes and call it "role playing"
sorry, but what kind of fool with 7 in each physical stat and a minmaxed intelligence and charisma? is honestly going to study the martial combat routines of the fighter? especially when their body is ill suited to it?
why didn't this highly intelligent and highly persuasive individual follow the path of a bard, an illusionist, a sorcerer, a lore oracle, a telepath or an arcanist?
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Valid points and counterpoints for both sides include:
1. Roleplaying is the player's job purpose at the table, not just the numbers on the sheet. Roleplaying is acting, like it or not. You wanna roleplay, you gotta play your role.
-BUT-
ACCURATE roleplaying, however, is something that it really helps to have backed up by your character's data. Otherwise, Pally McSavior over there gets away with murder because it's mechanically optimal. Not that a paladin's alignment is a diverse set of choices in the general sense, but when your play kinda matches up your recorded character, you get this thing called immersion; kinda the reason a lot of people are drawn to the concept of the genre.
2. Being a well-rounded character doesn't mean ignoring all functions that help you survive and be a meaningful member of the group.
-BUT-
Being forced to ignore all functions that DON'T help you survive, however, is a grueling demand for any character that's trying to be more than a greedy misanthropic sociopath (read: high DPR adventurer who just wants that next +1 to damage.)
3. The game is 100% defined by the players, and should not be allowed to be the reverse. If you do not mesh with your group or the game you're playing, it is important to take action, either by speaking up, or switching groups/games.
-BUUUUUUUUUT-
Anyone who's not lucky enough to be surrounded by a cornucopia of varied, interesting, friendly, and imaginative roleplayers is going to have a harder time finding "the right group," to say nothing of getting that group to play "the right game for them." Can't exactly play the right game if you're solo, aye? Downplaying this fact can come across as rather callous, since it is a reality that doesn't always have as many answers as one might think. I should know.
Just thought I'd kind of summarize the current discussion and throw my position in to boot. Enjoy.
Valid points and counterpoints for both sides include:
1. Roleplaying is the player's
jobpurpose at the table, not just the numbers on the sheet. Roleplaying is acting, like it or not. You wanna roleplay, you gotta play your role.. . .
Being forced to ignore all functions that DON'T help you survive, however, is a grueling demand for any character that's trying to be more than a greedy misanthropic sociopath (read: high DPR adventurer who just wants that next +1 to damage.)
. . .
Just thought I'd kind of summarize the current discussion and throw my position in to boot. Enjoy.
Well I take exception to a couple points in your summary. Roleplaying in the context of a tabletop RPG is less like acting, per se, and more like improv. In that a person's character is not fixed but has to be able to adapt and fill a role that is compatible with what other people are trying to accomplish, and also be entertaining.
Also I'm not getting where this supposed pressure to ignore non-survival aspects of the character is coming from. Except in very very specific circumstances, there's no objective standard that a PC is up against. Only if a person is running in PFS or an AP is there anything close to an objective bar of challenge they need to overcome, and even then (1) the DM has considerable leeway and (2) as some of the hardcore optimizers would, I'm sure, be quick to point out, most APs and PFS scenarios are not -that- challenging so as to require heavy optimization by a level-appropriate group.
In case the OP is still around and not scared away by people using Stormwind and Rollplaying (srsly?) for internet arguments, I think this post of yours from the first page says quite a lot about your problem:
I don't mind the game's definition of balance. I quite like the average statistics of a given CR across all its members. I don't like when PCs throw off this curve and treat DC 22 saves at level 10 as nothing.
Are you sure you like the game's balance? Because a DC 22 save at level 10 is nothing - at least nothing outside the boundaries of what the game considers level-appropriate challenges for characters this advanced. Speaking of which, are you talking about characters using overpowered effects, or characters being able to withstand such effects very well? Because that is not quite the same.
Everytime I see someone complain about "Optimizers" it always seems to boil down to:
"I suck at the and cannot build a competent character on my own so everyone that is good at the game is horrible and making wrongbadfun characters and taking away my fun!"
Seriously?
Roleplaying does not mean HAVING to take all the terribad feats and the most rediculous things... that just means you suck. So no, a Kobold fighter wielding a Great Club is not a better "role playing character" than the Human fighter with a strength buff wielding a greatsword with power attack....
Everytime I see someone complain about "Optimizers" it always seems to boil down to:
"I suck at the and cannot build a competent character on my own so everyone that is good at the game is horrible and making wrongbadfun characters and taking away my fun!"
Seriously?
Roleplaying does not mean HAVING to take all the terribad feats and the most rediculous things... that just means you suck. So no, a Kobold fighter wielding a Great Club is not a better "role playing character" than the Human fighter with a strength buff wielding a greatsword with power attack....
Less diplomatic phrasing than I would prefer but I still LOL'd.
"But the role I'm playing is the Special Snowflake who's terrible at all the things they're supposed to be good at!"
Everytime I see someone complain about "Optimizers" it always seems to boil down to:
"I suck at the and cannot build a competent character on my own so everyone that is good at the game is horrible and making wrongbadfun characters and taking away my fun!"
Seriously?
Roleplaying does not mean HAVING to take all the terribad feats and the most rediculous things... that just means you suck. So no, a Kobold fighter wielding a Great Club is not a better "role playing character" than the Human fighter with a strength buff wielding a greatsword with power attack....
i can build a reasonably viable but not excessively powerful character. thing is, i can't keep up with the builds upon these forums, even with a 25-32 point buy, custom items, homebrew material, and unrestricted 3.5 material access.
most of it is because i cannot stand missing out on skill points and try too hard to make the dump stats fit the character
Min/maxing is just the most extreme form of optimization. Dumping metal stats to 7 on your warrior to max out the physical is munchkin and cheesy. This doesn't mean people in real life couldn't have similar stats. Just that it's entirely abusing the system.
Please explain how it is "abusing" the system. It's an option that the system explicitly allows. I just don't see it - is driving 55mph in the 55mph zone "abusing the system"?