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Like the title says, when creating a character how do you balance the two. I am having a little trouble with this concept. After years of Gamemastering my level of system mastery is pretty high, as such I make pretty solid judgments about my character choices as far as feats and such go. I do not have a problem with being a drain on party resources but frequently I take too much of the limelight. Often times I'll simply not speak if the party is in a social situation to allow others that opportunity to shine. The problem is that if I create characters with other heroes in the party in mind, I find that I am often completely unappreciated and have 0 opportunity to do something well. I mostly play PFS (Though frequently I simply GM it and I have played AP's and currently am GMing one) so the party dynamic is frequently changing. Am I crazy for wanting to A.) provide myself some opportunities to shine and B.) also allow others their camera time? Is this something others even consider? just throwing the topic out there for discussion.
Also if I do B. I worry about being a drain on party resources.
Play a support character who buffs others. Everyone likes being powered up.
Ex: Be a cleric, buff the fighter, debuff the foes so the buffed fighter can whack it good, battlefield control so the fighter can attack the flying foe, etc.
Think of yourself as Gandalf, your job is to lead Aragorn to his destiny and keep the hobbits alive, you only really go to max power when a Balrog shows up.
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If you dont want to be a buffer, there are options:
Play a SCALABLE class. This means classes like bard, inquisitor, magus & battle-cleric.
Under "normal" (IE unbuffed) circumstances you're average; not as good a spellcaster as the full ones, not as good a basher as the martials. But your abilities (performance, judgments, arcane pool/spell combat, spell buffs) allow you to unleash a can of whoop-ass when you want to. And NONE of those classes are (normally) a drain on party ressources.
In the end, I think you might be having more of a social dynamics problem though. Maybe it's time to find a new group to play with?
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According to the boards, you might as well ask for the moon. You're either minmaxing and loopholing so hard, you break the table, or you might as well be playing a Monk with Vow of Poverty whose best stat is Charisma.
Really, all I can say is don't try to optimize or break the game and you should be able to make a decent character. Maybe you can sneak in a trick that's a bit nuts, but don't try to make something that will ruin other peoples' fun.
Also, remember synergy is the key. You don't want to show up the guy who's been taking Skill Focus and investments with a cheap gimmick. At the same time, if you've got a guy going full stealthy, toss him Invisibility for his moments to shine.
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Yes, I consider this every time I make a PC. I often wait for everybody else to choose their class before I proceed to fill in the gap, or to at least avoid too much role overlap.
I don't play PFS, so I don't really have any experience with the whole "not being a drain on party resources" thing. My group is old friends, and it's about having fun with the group while staying true to the character. Having said that, I think most players are cognizant of the need to contribute, and I certainly am.
In the end, my approach is usually to find a niche that hasn't been filled, and then fill it in a way that is fun, effective, and challenges my system mastery (both at character creation and tactically throughout the game). Sometimes that means creating background elements that essentially "prohibit" me from using certain obviously advantageous options. An example would be a wizard choosing two of the best schools as opposition schools, and not taking "opposition research" later on to mitigate it (and having a solid, believable background reason for that choice).
To directly address the issue of "spotlight," maybe you show up with a versatile PC who can shine pretty well in three facets of the game. Then when you sit down with your presumably unfamiliar group of PFS players, you just ask them what they are most interested in getting from the session. You then choose to emphasize the facet of your PC that does the least amount of stepping on the other PCs' toes. A certain amount of your satisfaction with your PC will have to come from your "off-screen" imaginings of who the PC is and what s/he is capable of, as opposed to what s/he has actually accomplished in the on-screen moments. I find that more of my mental energy goes into between-game thoughts about my PCs than it does into actual gaming sessions. But then again, we only play every two weeks, and if my PC isn't interesting enough for me to daydream about, I'll lose steam over a two-week layoff.
Anyway, that's how I try to approach it. I do claim ignorance about the specifics of PFS play, however.
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It is something I feel I must consider in my home game. Some of those guys are less experienced at building characters. I don't really consider it much in PFS because we have such a huge range in capabilities in our local. We have some complete novice's who are perfectly content running the pregens (they just copied a pregen for the character and changed the name). We also have guys who are much better than me and just completely blow through the worst fights when they get together.
In social/non-combat situations:
I try to in-character involve the other characters. "Hey Planttastic man, is it reasonable to have aurochs in this area?" or "I will distract the captain, see if you can figure out why the barkeep looks scared."
In combat situations:
My builds are rarely spotlight hogs (see below) and if someone doesn't seem sure what to do, I will make in-character suggestions. "Quick, surround him so he can't escape!"
Builds:
1) When I build for a role/task, I usually don't have everything it takes to do it all myself (at least not well). Examples:
My melee guy is a pretty good tank. Pretty high AC, HP, and saves. But he is only middling good at dealing damage. So if someone else is good at DPR he will probably get the kill.
My social guy has a really high charisma, diplomacy, and bluff. But no sense motive or knowledge checks. So I can make friends and convince people. But I need someone along to tell if I'm being lied to or if the info makes any sense.
2) I don't build fight enders. I rarely make high DPR builds or SoD casters. I make PC's that need others to help them succeed. I have a magus that uses a whip to trip and disarm nearly anything. I have casters that are making wonderful use of glitter dust, grease, create pit, summon lantern archon, chill touch, ear piercing scream, etc... well into the mid levels. They debuff, delay, daze, slow, disarm, and aggravate the opposition.
3) Not too specialized. I always try to make it so I can take on more than one role both in and out of combat. My inquisitor is primarily a tank and intimidator (he is better at most builds for those 2). Be he also has a secondary of DPR, shoot, debuff, diplomacy, monster knowledge, etc... Someone who has build for it is better at all those secondaries. But if we don't have someone at the table who can do it better, I can usually get by.
If you think you might still be too powerful in comparison to those around you, pick 3 primary roles and pick ones that don't normally go together. "I will be tank, scout, and elemental blaster."
That's some ideas anyway.
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I started a similar (but more rules oriented) thread a few weeks ago. power level for pfs. Balancing your characters in pfs is a lot harder to me the a home game. On the one hand pfs scenarios follow the same structure so you know exactly what CR encounters you will be, on the other hand you have no idea how capable your teammates will be. If you're interested in rules stuff, there's a bunch of good benchmarks suggested in that thread.
I like williamoak's suggestion of playing a scalable class. I'd add alchemist to that list, even a barbarian can be. I'm playing with a group where I realised my first character was way more optimized than everyone else. So for the next character I rolled an alchemist. I poke people with my spear most of the time, with adequate damage and OK defenses with no worries of overshadowing anyone. And when sh** gets real I can pop a mutagen, shield, extract, etc. Builds like that let you be adequate without leaving you feeling underpowered when you run in to those extra tough fights.
Like the title says, when creating a character how do you balance the two.
Mostly, by surrounding myself with players that enjoy the same style of play that I do.
If you enjoy one playstyle while someone else enjoys another, there's inevitably going to be some friction there. My advice to people in an existing game would be to tailor their character balance to match the rest of the group. There's no right or wrong way, just the way that'll cause the least issues in your particular game.
In PFS, it's another sort of problem, because you probably have no idea who your players are going to be from one game to the next. Taking into account that an underpowered character can only be played underpowered, I'd build the most effective character you can, and then adjust your tactics at game-time in order to ensure the rest of the group has fun too. If you've wiped out half the goblins single-handedly, let someone else get that next killing blow. Run across the battlefield to help someone - incidentally missing a shot or two at the opposition yourself, while still appearing to be doing something vital to the battle. Of course, you may just find yourself with a table of competitive players with insane system mastery, and get to unleash your full might ;)
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A creative player I had the opportunity to play PFS with had a neat solution to that problem, which was to pick a sub-par character focus and optimize it as much as possible. A master at using a whip, a crossbow ranged character, etc. He did quite well, but it was very balanced by him having to account for the inherent drawback of his character focus.
The thing is - and this is going to sound simpler to do than it actually is - to balance to the group.
If your entire group likes high-optimization play, being a powerful and effective character is not a problem. If your whole group likes low-op play, or doesn't even understand what the concept of optimization is, then screwin' around with your mechanical build to do whatever is also fine. What's not fine is screwin' around in the high-op game, or deciding that you wanna be the Mother Flippin' Batman in the low-op one.
Ideally you can just start an open dialogue with your group about this, but...not all groups are like that, sadly.
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Make a powerful character, but don't play it at full power unless things go south badly. Hold back until your full force is actually needed.
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The thing is - and this is going to sound simpler to do than it actually is - to balance to the group.
If your entire group likes high-optimization play, being a powerful and effective character is not a problem. If your whole group likes low-op play, or doesn't even understand what the concept of optimization is, then screwin' around with your mechanical build to do whatever is also fine. What's not fine is screwin' around in the high-op game, or deciding that you wanna be the Mother Flippin' Batman in the low-op one.
Ideally you can just start an open dialogue with your group about this, but...not all groups are like that, sadly.
The problem I run into is that most people don't seem to realize where they are in that spectrum. I have recently played in a group for a short while that thought they were all super optimizers, power gamers, super tactical, rules experts, and just all around masters of all they might chose to survey.
They were not.I brought a 'default' character I have ready for when I don't know what to expect. So he's pretty good at several things. I had to back off very quickly when I finally realized they really didn't know what they were doing mechanics/tactics wise. Don't get me wrong, they were having fun. They had all started up at the same time and never really played with anyone else. Didn't check out the boards. And yet were cranking through some old modules and having a high old time. Like you said, the group was balanced.
But if I had time to build a character based on what they said, I could have easily soloed the whole party and then beat their modules.
A couple years before that was a group up in Michigan that was exactly the opposite. They said they were RP heavy. Didn't like to game-the-system for power. It was all about the story. In reality it was very nearly an endless dungeon crawl, with no RP, and every effort to twist every possible broken rule they could slap together (and 3.x had a lot of them).
I think you really have to play with a group for a while to find what kind of balance is needed/useful/enjoyable.
I think you really have to play with a group for a while to find what kind of balance is needed/useful/enjoyable.
Often this, definitely. And to add to this, I should also say that you need to keep the DM's op level in mind too.
I spent years DMing for a group with an incredibly low optimization level and it was really frustrating for me. I had a whole slew of tactically interesting encounters with strange, striking, exotic enemies...that I couldn't use. Because they'd mash my PCs into bits and suck their blood out with a straw. Nothing was more saddening to me then having to remove the metalmaster encounter from Expedition to Undermountain and actually basically gut the module and replace it with lower-op encounters.
Later, I'd trained the group to a higher op level and ran the module again. It was night and day, y'know? And everyone involved, including me, got to have a lot more fun.
It can be equally frustrating the other way. If your DM can't optimize it can be very hard for them to handle your PC, not in terms of challenging them (though there's that) but in terms of narrative. Communicate with the DM too.
Make a powerful character, but don't play it at full power unless things go south badly. Hold back until your full force is actually needed.This is actually what I came into the thread to say.
Yeah same here. It takes a lot of discipline and knowledge to know when to hold back and when to let go but it's a lot of fun to laugh in the face of what appears to be a dire moment and say "NOW I UNLEASH MY TRUE POWER".
This is not for everyone though, so another thing you can do instead of or along side the power limiting is to make sure you shine in a way that's different from everyone else. Even being a healer could make someone else feel bad if they're also a healer and you out-do them at their niche. There are a lot of roles to fill, even in things like DPS it could be all day damage vs burst damage or better damage in different situations this can make sure everyone has limelight throughout the level progression.
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Being a munchkin isn't bad-wrong fun. :(
munchkining is fun if you do it with other munchkins. Just like a snowball fight is fun if everyone is down with it. But as soon as you throw that snowball into some poor kid's face who's just trying to walk home, it goes from fun to cruelty.
Play an Alchemist, Inquisitor, or Bard as they are the most balanced classes in the game.
I'm a much bigger fan of optimization than most of the group I play with... that said, I've discovered that I have the most fun when I pick a fun concept that seems like a mechanical train wreck in terms of power and then optimize the crap out of it.
C- character with A+ optimization ends up being a solid B character that fits right in with all the other B characters and has the advantage of being fairly unique.
Munchkin a class everyone agrees is terrible. Did this with a Fighter, loathed universally by the other players, then stayed a level below the average due to missing the first of lots of game (work). Many were the games where I pulled rear guard to cover the shredded party.
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Make a powerful character, but don't play it at full power unless things go south badly. Hold back until your full force is actually needed.This is actually what I came into the thread to say.Yeah same here. It takes a lot of discipline and knowledge to know when to hold back and when to let go but it's a lot of fun to laugh in the face of what appears to be a dire moment and say "NOW I UNLEASH MY TRUE POWER".
This is not for everyone though, so another thing you can do instead of or along side the power limiting is to make sure you shine in a way that's different from everyone else. Even being a healer could make someone else feel bad if they're also a healer and you out-do them at their niche. There are a lot of roles to fill, even in things like DPS it could be all day damage vs burst damage or better damage in different situations this can make sure everyone has limelight throughout the level progression.
I will say that in a largely low-optimization group, a highly optimized buffer can be a ton of fun. The last time I played with a low-op group they went very heavy on martials (Monk, Barbarian, Paladin, 2x Rangers), so I broke out a buffer bard that boosted them all to terrifying levels. I actually had to bring a small dry-erase board to games with me so I could keep track of all the buffs I was throwing out on everyone. Since the players wanted to do a bunch of face-punchers, they loved having someone at the table who made them all punch faces better.
Putting a combat-optimizer in a group of roleplayers is what's really cruel. "But... but... I have reach! And Dervish Dance! I do 30-40 damage per attack! What do you mean I'm useless? (cry)"
1.) What does this have to do with this thread?
2.) What does this have to do with anything?
3.) Why do you choose to be one of those people who believes roleplaying and combat are separated by an insurmountable wall?
4.) How/why do you have Reach AND Dervish Dance?
5.) Just...why?
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Or, you could just play your character the way you want.
It is the DM's job to ensure people get their moment in the limelight, not yours as a player. Kudos for you to think of your fellow homies and give them opportunities to shine but that right proper is the DM's job.
I am the DM in our group. It is your job to play your character effectively and to the best of your ability and get along with the other characters. It is my job to ensure that characters get their moment to shine, each to their particular strengths and talents.
Of course I have no idea what your DM is like and what the group dynamics are around your table but at my table, I would tell you to do your job and let me do mine.
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In response to the snowball-fight analogy. There are still too many people thinking that combat optimization is 'hard mode' and that roleplayers are 'carebears who can't handle a challenge,' so I stamp that out at every opportunity. Rendering munchkins useless is one of my greatest joys as a GM.
First of all; optimization and roleplaying are not mutually exclusive...you can have both.
Second; if you have a player who is weak at roleplay and strong at optimization and you punish them for being that way you're ignoring rule #1* and that is not a good way to be. You should not enjoy making a players strength useless.
*Rule #1 Make sure everyone has fun
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Your first statement is a player ruining other people's fun.
Being effective in your role is not inherently evil. Optimizing does not stop you from being part of the group. It does not stop your ability to roleplay. You shouldn't feel the need to crush the player as long as he's not spoiling the game for your other players.
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So Here is the build for my next Society Character.
I recently leveled my Wizard out of play (Well lvl 12 so out of Regular play).
Our Venue (normally 20-30 people) Is pretty light on wizards, I know of only one other player who plays one regularly, and only two other people who play them intermittently.
I recently Earned a Boon to play a Sin-School Specialist (Thassalonian Specialist) And I thought I'd do a Transmuter or Greed Specialist.
I plan on focusing on physical damage via the Polymorph Sub-school, but will also be looking at some teleportation magic and Dimensional Dervish Feat tree.
So: Human/Half Orc
17 Str
13 Dex
14 Con
14 Int
10 Wis
10 Cha
I'm leaning towards Half Orc for a couple of reasons, but mostly because my other wizards have both been human. At low levels, I'll be looking at Enlarge Person/Alter Self for merely augmenting my strength, fighting with a long sword. Once he hits lvl 4 (All lvl STATs go into STR) I'll flip the Enhance granted by school over into Dex. and purchase a belt of Giant strength. The end result of this should be someone who is a melee combatant who takes a lot of punishment for it.
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A creative player I had the opportunity to play PFS with had a neat solution to that problem, which was to pick a sub-par character focus and optimize it as much as possible. A master at using a whip, a crossbow ranged character, etc. He did quite well, but it was very balanced by him having to account for the inherent drawback of his character focus.
This is what I like to do, too. The optimizer in me has way more fun taking something weak and making it average, than taking something average and making it overpowering.
Design Manager
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If you dont want to be a buffer, there are options:
Play a SCALABLE class. This means classes like bard, inquisitor, magus & battle-cleric.
Under "normal" (IE unbuffed) circumstances you're average; not as good a spellcaster as the full ones, not as good a basher as the martials. But your abilities (performance, judgments, arcane pool/spell combat, spell buffs) allow you to unleash a can of whoop-ass when you want to. And NONE of those classes are (normally) a drain on party ressources.
In the end, I think you might be having more of a social dynamics problem though. Maybe it's time to find a new group to play with?
This is what I do. My system mastery is pretty high above what the other players in my group are usually at, so I tend to focus on characters who either scale up easily but are solid without a lot of buffing (Bard, Inquisitor, Achemist), or I pick a class whose schtick is making everyone else better at what they do.
When I was playtesting Dreamscarred Press' Path of War classes, I took a real shine to the Warlord. I picked a build that kind of ignored some of the powers that were considered to be particularly strong and focused on really being a battlefield leader, using Teamwork feats and buffs and saving my big hits for a few key moments. It's actually a pretty similar strategy to what I do with the cavalier, and the entire design philosophy I put into the Iron Lord class I wrote for Amora Games new Libris Influxis Kickstarter. A character who's awesome is fun; a character who makes everyone even more awesome is a blast. It also helps a lot in mitigating the rough spots you can bump into when everyone isn't playing at the same level. People tend to be less resentful of your character out-shining theirs from time to time if a big part of what you do is arranging opportunities for them to do what they do even better, or have a chance to succeed at something they normally wouldn't be able to attempt.
I was going to say that playing a class that can easily manage its own power from situation to situation seems like a possibly good way to go. But I see that some other posters have beat me to the "scalable class" idea.
Um... I guess I just did that anyway :p