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I have a pretty regular gaming group of friends, most are not optimizers despite high system mastery. I on the other hand love to put all the pieces of the puzzle together in such a way to make an efficient machine. I never struggle to RP my characters and am one of our better roleplayers however it comes up almost every campaign that my characters are too powerful.
Does anyone else expeience this and if so what do you do?
I hate the idea of not making strong the stronger of two choices when it fits the character...
Example: I am considering a skinwalker Beastmorph/Vivisectionist alchemist who is trying to come up with a way to rid his genes from the lycanthrope taint. Now I could take Scaleheart which have beautiful racial modifiers for the build but would only have 3 natural attacks with feral mutagen... or Rageborn and have 6 NAs... at level 2.
Both are solid options but I think the Rageborn would wind up with someone throwing a book at my head.
In your experience, how much is too much for a game with friends?
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Whatever makes your friends feel like they're being useless.
How much of your enjoyment of the game comes from fitting those puzzle pieces together with perfect synchronicity and how much of it comes from rping with friends?
I'm kind of in the same boat with my current group, and I've had to deliberately take sub-optimal choices to make sure everyone's having fun. The group fun of 100%, in my opinion, is worth lowering one's own personal level of fun to 80%.
Here's a secret I've learned, EVERYBODY likes to feel powerful, NOBODY likes to feel like they are being carried.
So when you create characters for your next game, help others make optimal choices and powerful characters. Then when you play one, you're just one of the guys/gals.
This is how I've sneaked my most optimal builds into play, really.
prototype00
Have you considered trying to optimise a supporting PC, who helps others being better at what they do? You might end up killing two birds with one stone that way.
If you're playing a goon, and a friend is playing a strictly worse goon, then there's no way of avoiding overshadowing the friends character. So try to optimise something other than combat efficiency.
Combat maneuver specialists are situationally useful & can't really overshadow others all the time. Or play a support character as suggested; buffs or debuffs either would work, in any of their many shades. Or play the sneaky character who keeps needing to be bailed out by his tougher comrades. Something other than the best cuisinart.
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I am a non-optimizer. I just take whatever feels right for my character, whatever that happens to be. I'm currently playing an elf cleric who's a little bit rangery, and a little bit roguey. The fact that the other characters are a little more powerful than mine bothers me not a jot. Having a powerful character doesn't add to the experience for me, it's the roleplaying that counts. I still contribute in all sorts of ways - I'm just not quite as powerful as the others.
A couple of the other guys in my group most definitely are optimizers. It doesn't bother me in the slightest except insofar as it holds up gameplay. We had one criminally boring session in which they took the entire 2h30m trying to work out how to get the very best out of levelling up from level 2 to level 3.
Players who really want to squeeze every last ounce out of their character really ought to do some between session reading so they don't hold others up.
It's worth noting that those who do optimize in my group do roleplay as much and as well as any of the rest of us, including having their character do non-optimal things when appropriate from time to time.
I think that if you optimize for damage, books will be thrown for maximum impact velocities. No one likes a kill-stealer.
However, there are other ways to optimize to make effective characters without instant killing everything in sight. As VRMH, a support PC is one option. Another path is to optimize so that you can make enemies less effective.
For example, I have an optimized PFS fighter/bard with the feats Flagbearer, WF (unarmed strike) and Antagonize. At level 2, in the first two rounds of combat, I was able to inspire courage allies for +2 and antagonize (diplomacy) for -2 enemy AC. That's a net +4 to hit and +2 damage for all my allies. That's huge at level 2. On the third round I would lay down a grease or some other "oh no" spell, as needed. Furthermore, WF (unarmed strike) let me hold my banner and cast spells without needing to switch weapons. The character was Taldan too...so there were some great RP opportunities with a bad French accent.
I knew that I had done my job when one players said "Wow...my monk is awesome when he can actually hit something" and "This is the best group I have played with in a long time."
I am a non-optimizer. I just take whatever feels right for my character, whatever that happens to be. I'm currently playing an elf cleric who's a little bit rangery, and a little bit roguey. The fact that the other characters are a little more powerful than mine bothers me not a jot. Having a powerful character doesn't add to the experience for me, it's the roleplaying that counts. I still contribute in all sorts of ways - I'm just not quite as powerful as the others.
A couple of the other guys in my group most definitely are optimizers. It doesn't bother me in the slightest except insofar as it holds up gameplay.
Spot on! Even if you are not as gnarly in combat, you've got other options for good gameplay, like the rangery-roguey stuff.
We had one criminally boring session in which they took the entire 2h30m trying to work out how to get the very best out of levelling up from level 2 to level 3.
That *is* criminally boring. They cost you your session simply because they didn't do their homework. Your GM should have said: "15 minutes tops, or you wait til next time to level."
I had a recent session where we also lost the first 2 hours of gaming, for similar reasons. It's very frustrating, but group dynamics don't always permit diplomatic comments to the GM and other players.
That *is* criminally boring. They cost you your session simply because they didn't do their homework. Your GM should have said: "15 minutes tops, or you wait til next time to level."I had a recent session where we also lost the first 2 hours of gaming, for similar reasons. It's very frustrating, but group dynamics don't always permit diplomatic comments to the GM and other players.
Emphasis mine.
Maybe it was, but, this doesn't look like an optimization problem to me. It looks like this was a case of players 1) not knowing the rules and 2) not being prepared. I've been in groups like this and it is very frustrating.
I would "argue" that if you optimize "correctly" you have done your homework and are prepared, because, in order to build an optimized character, you have to think about strategy and know what your character can and cannot achieve. So, because you have to do little research during game, optimized players often have the quickest turns. And, this gives more game time to RP and Monty Python jokes.
I have a pretty regular gaming group of friends, most are not optimizers despite high system mastery. I on the other hand love to put all the pieces of the puzzle together in such a way to make an efficient machine. I never struggle to RP my characters and am one of our better roleplayers however it comes up almost every campaign that my characters are too powerful.
Does anyone else expeience this and if so what do you do?
I hate the idea of not making strong the stronger of two choices when it fits the character...
Example: I am considering a skinwalker Beastmorph/Vivisectionist alchemist who is trying to come up with a way to rid his genes from the lycanthrope taint. Now I could take Scaleheart which have beautiful racial modifiers for the build but would only have 3 natural attacks with feral mutagen... or Rageborn and have 6 NAs... at level 2.
Both are solid options but I think the Rageborn would wind up with someone throwing a book at my head.
In your experience, how much is too much for a game with friends?
Usually I'm with you. I usually like making the optimal choice for a character. In this case I would not.
Why? There is a reason non-standard races are not allowed at many tables and when you get variants of non-standard races it allows for some extremely powerful (overpowerful) combinations.
I would not try to make the Ragebred because if I were looking at it through the lens of a GM it would not be something I would allow a player to have. Remember the GM has the right (and often the responsibility) to say 'No' to certain concepts. Especially in a group where system mastery is lacking.
Good point. If character optimization speeds things up, then it's a good thing.
UNLESS... it means that player is also hogging the spotlight, and reducing or limiting the fun available to other players. It may be hard to quantify "fun value", but when you're in this situation, you know it.
I wouldn't be all that peeved by an optimized PC that was better than me. But if one class feature of another PC was better than me (read: mongo Eidelon or mongo animal companion) I would be severely miffed. I would slip the DM a note suggesting that class feature's untimely demise. <g>
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I would not try to make the Ragebred because if I were looking at it through the lens of a GM it would not be something I would allow a player to have. Remember the GM has the right (and often the responsibility) to say 'No' to certain concepts. Especially in a group where system mastery is lacking.
My example was merely a personal problem I had when mocking up the character concept but demonstrated the point behind the dilemma.
I like what you guys are saying about being more support, and I have certainly tried this...and succeeded but I didn't have much fun with the character and let him die heroically. However, I'm sure a middle ground could still be found and optimized: example a Tetori monk I've been dying to try out.
We don't optimize all that much at all. I guess our group is lucky to be of the same mind when it comes to this particular game.
I think there are three realistic options.
The first is to get everyone on the same page, whether that means helping them to optimize and enjoy it or them helping you to tone it down and enjoy that.
The second is to make sure that everyone agrees that you don't need to be on the same page to enjoy yourselves. Different people want different things and sometimes those things can coexist.
The third is to realize that options 1 and 2 are not actually options for you, which means you should find yourself a different group or set one up.
There's room for nuance in between these 3 options, of course.
You'll notice that all 3 of these require communicating with your group. This shouldn't have to be a big problem at all.
I am an accidental optimizer. i do not go hard for power but find interesting themes and make the easy smart choices. Sometimes that leads to too much power (like my late magus) and combined with some team mates that seem to almost try to sub optimize makes i feel overboard.
We have one member of our party set to powergame being a support character as far as he can. Sometimes optimizing is great, when it is good for the team. and everyone gets to have fun
