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So after reading a thread in which monkey grip was called cheese, it occurred to me that people seem to have lost the idea of what that word means. For those unfamiliar, monkey grip is a 3.x feat that allows you to use two handed weapons one handed, at a -2 penalty to accuracy. This reults in almost all cases in a dps loss, even before figuring in the feat opportunity cost, and is pretty much solely for flavor. Even in the face of that, it was called cheese.
It seems like any time there is an option that lets you do something you couldn't before, it's called cheesy. Guns, for example, hit touch ac, but a well built gunslinger is no match for a well built archer in terms of dpr, yet they're constantly banned and called cheese. Why is a new ability always cheese? Doesn't cheese mean game breaking, not game expanding?
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Mainly it has to do with power creep, real or imagined. There is the constant concern that the new stuff is just plain better than everything that has come before.
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No.... no Cheese discussion, the next time someone starts a thread referencing food, you better be g&%**~n ready to talk some food :-)
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I am fairly certain that people think feats like Monkey Grip are cheesy because the feat is too far removed from what they see as being realistic (as opposed to being cheddar flavored).
IMO, Monkey Grip is a good example of one such feat. Funny enough though, evidently the default Monkey Grip did not have enough cheese for some people. If you were to do a search on Google for "Monkey Grip, D&D", you would also find some homebrew variations that scale with BAB that would require an entire warehouse of cheese in order to represent it's cheesiness.
adjective: cheesy; comparative adjective: cheesier; superlative adjective: cheesiest
1. like cheese in taste, smell, or consistency.
"a pungent, cheesy sauce"
2. informal
cheap, unpleasant, or blatantly inauthentic.
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The kids have been into Muenster lately :-)
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I am fairly certain that people think feats like Monkey Grip are cheesy because the feat is too far removed from what they see as being realistic (as opposed to being cheddar flavored).
IMO, Monkey Grip is a good example of one such feat.
Honestly, I've never understood that standpoint. The heaviest of heavy swords doesn't weigh much more than 8 pounds. Sure you have leverage issues making it a little difficult to wield one, but the idea it is somehow impossible is ridiculous. And the idea that a person so far above the human average couldn't do this is even more ridiculous.
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Monkey Grip is not new. Your entire premise is flawed.
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I've always thought that cheese is good, but cheesy is lame (in the game).
So, I'm not sure why you are referring to something as both.
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The game has a basic set of rules. Some of the rules are less flexible than other rules. Other options (especially feats, spells, and class abilities) let you break or bend the rules.
The less flexible a rule is, the more likely an option that breaks it will be referred to as "cheese."
-Skeld
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All new things are not cheesy but the old Monkey Grip feat is. Unless you think dual wielding impact great swords is a thing.
I am curious.
Do you think it is cheesy because it seems silly, or do you think it is cheesy because it is powerful.
I can tell you right now that dual wielding impact great swords is up there with Sword and Board as combat styles that seem like an ok idea at first glance but are actually terrible without using certain tricks(such as twf with a shield). Impact is so much worse than a +2 to the weapon it isn't funny. Using greatswords instead of light weapons makes you take an extra -4 on top of your -2 from twf(-2 for twf with 1 handed weapons, -2 from monkey grip itself IIRC). You are even spending a feat to do this terrible idea instead of picking something that actually increases your damage. Monkey Grip is pretty much a bad feat (barring some tricks that I don't know about).
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Cheese is my favorite topping.
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I will now proceed to explain why Monkey Grip is 100% pure, unadulterated cheddar:
Monkey Grip allows you to wield BFS like an anime character.
Anime characters have big eyes.
Eyes fit inside holes.
Cheese has holes.
Ergo, Monkey Grip is made of cheese.
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"New" =/= "Cheesy".
The correct usage of "cheesy" (adjective) is when it describes finding and exploiting some error or loophole in the rules, or perhaps some unforeseen combination of rules, that lets the character do something game-breaking. Something that is outside the ordinary scope of the game and gives the character an unfair and/or unrealistic advantage.
Ultimately, when someone is EXPLOITING a bad or broken or misinterpreted rule or combination of rules to get an advantage.
That's "cheesy" (adjective) or "cheese" (noun).
And yes, it gets misused, just like the OP misused it in his example.
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Because we can't have nice things? ... honestly my answer to all the cheese people is if you don't like it go find a new freaking game and stop bothering the people simply trying to have fun
I ask you, why can't soccer players use their hands? Why can't a player simply pick up the ball and run into the opponent's goal?
Answer: because soccer is a game and has rules. Those rules are there to make the game balanced and interesting.
Followup question: If FIFA made a rule that brown-haired, green-eyed, players with missing teeth were allowed to pick up the ball and run into the opponents' goals to score, what would happen?
Answer: Teams would recruit as many brown-haired, green-eyed players as they can and coaches would knock out some of their teeth, just to make the eligible for the new rule. Pretty soon everyone would just be picking up the ball and running into the goal. Every player would look the same and do the same things. Soccer would become boring. Nobody would want to play or watch. The game would die.
That's no different than Pathfinder. The rules exist for a reason, to keep the game balanced and interesting. You may think it's "fun" for your brown-haired, green-eyed, toothless character to slay dragons with a mere sneeze, but "cheesy" rules like that would ruin the game.
Paizo devs work very hard to create balanced and interesting rules. They understand that chaotic rules with no balance and no structure will ruin the game and Pathfinder would die.
You may disagree and think exploiting chaotic rules "cheese" is "fun", but ultimately, that kind of thing is unhealthy for the longevity and success of the game.
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And yes, it gets misused, just like the OP misused it in his example.
The OP didn't not say that new things were cheese. The OP objected to new things automatically being called cheese.
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Because we can't have nice things? ... honestly my answer to all the cheese people is if you don't like it go find a new freaking game and stop bothering the people simply trying to have funI ask you, why can't soccer players use their hands? Why can't a player simply pick up the ball and run into the opponent's goal?
Answer: because soccer is a game and has rules. Those rules are there to make the game balanced and interesting.
Followup question: If FIFA made a rule that brown-haired, green-eyed, players with missing teeth were allowed to pick up the ball and run into the opponents' goals to score, what would happen?
Answer: Teams would recruit as many brown-haired, green-eyed players as they can and coaches would knock out some of their teeth, just to make the eligible for the new rule. Pretty soon everyone would just be picking up the ball and running into the goal. Every player would look the same and do the same things. Soccer would become boring. Nobody would want to play or watch. The game would die.
That's no different than Pathfinder. The rules exist for a reason, to keep the game balanced and interesting. You may think it's "fun" for your brown-haired, green-eyed, toothless character to slay dragons with a mere sneeze, but "cheesy" rules like that would ruin the game.
Paizo devs work very hard to create balanced and interesting rules. They understand that chaotic rules with no balance and no structure will ruin the game and Pathfinder would die.
You may disagree and think exploiting chaotic rules "cheese" is "fun", but ultimately, that kind of thing is unhealthy for the longevity and success of the game.
You cut out the very important middle section of his post, which if you'd read it would show that your whole rant was completely off-base and generally strawmanning. Deceptive quote editing is bad.
If you actually go back and read the post instead of being so blatantly dishonest, you'd notice that he was complaining about people who label anything that isn't completely compliant with real-world physics "cheese." Because gods forbid we have anything fantastic in our fantasy roleplaying game.
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That's no different than Pathfinder. The rules exist for a reason, to keep the game balanced and interesting. You may think it's "fun" for your brown-haired, green-eyed, toothless character to slay dragons with a mere sneeze, but "cheesy" rules like that would ruin the game.
Your analogy is invalid, as monkey grip isn't anything close to dragon-killing sneezes nor even manual ball-handling in soccer.
A better analogy would be: "brown-haired, green-eyed, toothless players may play barefooted (despite safety regulations which state otherwise)." I'm sure that there are some who'd love the idea of playing barefooted, either from the standpoint of aesthetics and/or comfort (at least without putting further thought into it). And in a very casual game, it will probably be okay, at least most of the time. However, in more serious, less forgiving circumstances, such players will only be a liability, more prone to injury and not as effective as any other kind of player overall. Certainly, no "competitive" team would be interested in fielding such a player.
Foolhardy and ill-advised? Most certainly. I could even see the other player's in said individual's team/party not wanting said individual to be a part of their efforts, as that person would only serve to handicap them. (And, from an aesthetics standpoint, I for one don't like the idea of one-handing greatswords, even with superhuman strength, even if physically plausible. I suppose I'd put it up there with knocking my teeth out, dying my hair, and wearing contacts just to play soccer barefooted - a fail idea all around, IMO.) But it's not overpowered in the slightest.
A being a new rule (or rehashing an old rule in this case) does not automatically make something equivalent to dragonslaying sneezes or playing soccer with your hands - it only makes it new. If you want to call something an exploit, evaluate it for its own merits before making such assumptions.
So after reading a thread in which monkey grip was called cheese, it occurred to me that people seem to have lost the idea of what that word means. For those unfamiliar, monkey grip is a 3.x feat that allows you to use two handed weapons one handed, at a -2 penalty to accuracy. This reults in almost all cases in a dps loss, even before figuring in the feat opportunity cost, and is pretty much solely for flavor. Even in the face of that, it was called cheese.
It seems like any time there is an option that lets you do something you couldn't before, it's called cheesy. Guns, for example, hit touch ac, but a well built gunslinger is no match for a well built archer in terms of dpr, yet they're constantly banned and called cheese. Why is a new ability always cheese? Doesn't cheese mean game breaking, not game expanding?
Well, you've a couple minor errors here.
One, dual wielding greatswords is looked as cheesy, not because it's impossible, but because its anime-ish, and not something even a hugely strong person would attempt in reality. The fact you could lift such a thing doesn't mean you could wield them well, as any weapons practitioner will tell you. You don't have leverage, you don't have range of movement, and you don't have momentum. To somehow do this effectively, you'd probably have to be standing at least three feet above the floor to get the full range of effective motion.
And lest you think it's cheesy much, there was an Epic feat that allowed you to wield weapons up to 3x above your size. The depiction was a Halfling wielding a Huge Greataxe.
Lastly, a well built gunfighter will trample the DPR of anything into the Dust, because they can target Touch AC. The resulting auto-hits will nicely trounce any archer in a DPR contest.
==Aelryinth
@Chengar Qordath: like making crossbows competitive with bows, or making the monk functional (or letting it keep Nice Things it accidentally gets).
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cheese people
that took this thread from being just pretty bad
to just basically being the worst example of thread people
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cheese people
that took this thread from being just pretty bad
to just basically being the worst example of thread people
I don't know. Cheese people sounds pretty tasty... hmmmmmmmm... Cheese...
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Because we can't have nice things? ... honestly my answer to all the cheese people is if you don't like it go find a new freaking game and stop bothering the people simply trying to have funI ask you, why can't soccer players use their hands? Why can't a player simply pick up the ball and run into the opponent's goal?
Answer: because soccer is a game and has rules. Those rules are there to make the game balanced and interesting.
Followup question: If FIFA made a rule that brown-haired, green-eyed, players with missing teeth were allowed to pick up the ball and run into the opponents' goals to score, what would happen?
Answer: Teams would recruit as many brown-haired, green-eyed players as they can and coaches would knock out some of their teeth, just to make the eligible for the new rule. Pretty soon everyone would just be picking up the ball and running into the goal. Every player would look the same and do the same things. Soccer would become boring. Nobody would want to play or watch. The game would die.
That's no different than Pathfinder. The rules exist for a reason, to keep the game balanced and interesting. You may think it's "fun" for your brown-haired, green-eyed, toothless character to slay dragons with a mere sneeze, but "cheesy" rules like that would ruin the game.
Paizo devs work very hard to create balanced and interesting rules. They understand that chaotic rules with no balance and no structure will ruin the game and Pathfinder would die.
You may disagree and think exploiting chaotic rules "cheese" is "fun", but ultimately, that kind of thing is unhealthy for the longevity and success of the game.
You cut out the very important middle section of his post, which if you'd read it would show that your whole rant was completely off-base and generally strawmanning. Deceptive quote editing is bad.
If you actually go back and read the post instead of being so blatantly dishonest, you'd notice that he was complaining about people who label anything that isn't completely compliant with real-world physics "cheese." Because gods forbid we have anything fantastic in our fantasy roleplaying game.
"Blatant Dishonesty"? "Strawmanning"? "Deceptive quote editing?"
Really?
Are you insane?
There is nothing dishonest about posting part of a quote. I used ellipses to show that part of it was cut out. Perfectly honest. His quote was directly above mine, anyone could see the ellipses and scroll up the page a tiny bit and read it for themselves. I hid nothing.
There is no "straw man" here. The middle part of his quote that I cut out was simply ranting about people lowering the power level of the game. Which is not quite the same thing as "have nice things" (many nice things are not high-powered) and definitely not the same thing as "go find another game" and definitely not the same as "people who want to have fun".
So he said a bunch of things, not all related, and I felt like addressing some of them but not all of them. I skipped over the parts that were not relevant to my own response and (not at all deceptively) marked the skipped parts with ellipses.
So please deescalate your unwarranted insults. They contribute nothing, especially when they're completely invalid.
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That's no different than Pathfinder. The rules exist for a reason, to keep the game balanced and interesting. You may think it's "fun" for your brown-haired, green-eyed, toothless character to slay dragons with a mere sneeze, but "cheesy" rules like that would ruin the game.Your analogy is invalid, as monkey grip isn't anything close to dragon-killing sneezes nor even manual ball-handling in soccer.
My response was not aimed at Monkey Grip.
It was aimed at actual cheese.
I actually agree with the OP that calling Monkey Grip "cheese" is probably misguided. It's silly, and even oddly named (I don't think monkeys are any better at bending physical laws of mass and inertia than humans are), but it's not exploiting a bad or broken rule, therefore not "cheese".
For things that really are cheese (exploiting a bad rule for an advantage), I think my analogy stands.
"New" =/= "Cheesy".
The correct usage of "cheesy" (adjective) is when it describes finding and exploiting some error or loophole in the rules, or perhaps some unforeseen combination of rules, that lets the character do something game-breaking. Something that is outside the ordinary scope of the game and gives the character an unfair and/or unrealistic advantage.
Ultimately, when someone is EXPLOITING a bad or broken or misinterpreted rule or combination of rules to get an advantage.
That's "cheesy" (adjective) or "cheese" (noun).
And yes, it gets misused, just like the OP misused it in his example.
Interesting... I wonder how the use of the word "cheese" came about being used to to describe finding and exploiting the rules.
exploits and cheese are not the same thing, although many exploits are indeed cheesy.
Cheesy is a 'gimme'. It's when you do something over the top and out of line that cuts the sense of immersion and breaks your view of something.
Dual wielding greatswords does that for a LOT of people. It's not an exploit, because there's no real mechanical advantage to it...unless you're so damn strong you're going to hit with them regardless.
It IS cheesy, because its so unrealistic and anime-ish.
==Aelryinth
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Answer: Teams would recruit as many brown-haired, green-eyed players as they can and coaches would knock out some of their teeth, just to make the eligible for the new rule. Pretty soon everyone would just be picking up the ball and running into the goal.
Isn't that rugby?
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Oh man, that fighter over there sure is ruining my verisimilitude by wielding a larger weapon than he normally could.
The Wizard is forcing everyone to fall into that horrific pit that is full of acid? Nah, that's cool. He needs to use his compulsion spells to help me not worry about the fighter's weapon, though.
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So after reading a thread in which monkey grip was called cheese, it occurred to me that people seem to have lost the idea of what that word means. For those unfamiliar, monkey grip is a 3.x feat that allows you to use two handed weapons one handed, at a -2 penalty to accuracy. This reults in almost all cases in a dps loss, even before figuring in the feat opportunity cost, and is pretty much solely for flavor. Even in the face of that, it was called cheese.
It seems like any time there is an option that lets you do something you couldn't before, it's called cheesy. Guns, for example, hit touch ac, but a well built gunslinger is no match for a well built archer in terms of dpr, yet they're constantly banned and called cheese. Why is a new ability always cheese? Doesn't cheese mean game breaking, not game expanding?
Because people love to throw around pejoratives against that which they don't like till they lose meaning -- see also minimaxing, power gamer, optimizer, munchkin and so on. Ask 10 gamers and you will likely get 12 definitions for any of them. Best advice is to take anything said after those terms with a grain of salt and a large dose of your own experience.
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Oh man, that fighter over there sure is ruining my verisimilitude by wielding a larger weapon than he normally could.
The Wizard is forcing everyone to fall into that horrific pit that is full of acid? Nah, that's cool. He needs to use his compulsion spells to help me not worry about the fighter's weapon, though.
** spoiler omitted **
ah spellcaster double-standards, my old enemy.
honestly, all the folks crying for realism (not aimed at folks in this thread particularly) should have given up when the beard man in the party started farting lightning from his 500-foot invisible throne while flexing and laughing at the poor martials below, powerless to his will-save-targeting might.
(btw, I have literally had a player do this--all in good fun, and the party was having a laugh at it as well, so it was fine)
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Because people love to throw around pejoratives against that which they don't like till they lose meaning -- see also minimaxing, power gamer, optimizer, munchkin and so on. Ask 10 gamers and you will likely get 12 definitions for any of them. Best advice is to take anything said after those terms with a grain of salt and a large dose of your own experience.
+1
Because people love to throw around pejoratives against that which they don't like till they lose meaning -- see also minimaxing, power gamer, optimizer, munchkin and so on. Ask 10 gamers and you will likely get 12 definitions for any of them. Best advice is to take anything said after those terms with a grain of salt and a large dose of your own experience.
Not tequila and lime?
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Answering the topic title and disregarding the given example which derailed things: I think a lot of the time people look at new options and go "omg broken I'm banning that" within 5 minutes of seeing it is just because they are going with their initial knee-jerk reaction without really considering what they are seeing in context. Yes there are some things that I consider to be too powerful, but for the most part things stay pretty much on par except in new and exciting ways.
Ironically enough I tend to see the exact opposite of that mentality when playing in real life (barring one friend who was convinced that Rogues being able to sneak attack on every attack was totally too good too allow... he came around, but still has many moments like that). People look at something and think "oh wow that is OP, I wanna use it" and then I go "but you will never ever hit with it and when you do it is for less than -insert standard option-" and then they look at me funny until they experience for themselves how bad that option they picked was and wonder why it doesn't work.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Because people love to throw around pejoratives against that which they don't like till they lose meaning -- see also minimaxing, power gamer, optimizer, munchkin and so on. Ask 10 gamers and you will likely get 12 definitions for any of them. Best advice is to take anything said after those terms with a grain of salt and a large dose of your own experience.Not tequila and lime?
Depends: do tequila and lime constitute "your own experience"? ;)
Depends: do tequila and lime constitute "your own experience"? ;)Because people love to throw around pejoratives against that which they don't like till they lose meaning -- see also minimaxing, power gamer, optimizer, munchkin and so on. Ask 10 gamers and you will likely get 12 definitions for any of them. Best advice is to take anything said after those terms with a grain of salt and a large dose of your own experience.Not tequila and lime?
I suppose that depends on how much tequila and lime you use as a substitute for "your own experience".
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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So after reading a thread in which monkey grip was called cheese, it occurred to me that people seem to have lost the idea of what that word means. For those unfamiliar, monkey grip is a 3.x feat that allows you to use two handed weapons one handed, at a -2 penalty to accuracy. This reults in almost all cases in a dps loss, even before figuring in the feat opportunity cost, and is pretty much solely for flavor. Even in the face of that, it was called cheese.
It seems like any time there is an option that lets you do something you couldn't before, it's called cheesy. Guns, for example, hit touch ac, but a well built gunslinger is no match for a well built archer in terms of dpr, yet they're constantly banned and called cheese. Why is a new ability always cheese? Doesn't cheese mean game breaking, not game expanding?
Two answers, in my opinion:
1) For some, it's a matter of their (often unconscious) definition of "fantasy". To them, even if they don't realize it, a fantasy setting means "reality + magic". For this group, crying "cheese" doesn't mean that it harms gameplay, it means that it breaks their aesthetic mold by doing something nonmagically that can't be done in reality (like wielding massive weapons in one hand).
2) For those who do mean "cheese" as an assessment of gameplay mechanics/balance, the source of your observation is the simple fact that most people are TERRIBLE at game design/development, and don't realize it. Think about it: wouldn't it make sense that the proportion of game-players who have valid opinions about game design would be similar to the proportion of computer-users who have valid opinions about programming methodology, or to the proportion of car-drivers who have valid opinions about mechanical engineering? In any given field, there's a (proportionally) small number of people who have done enough of the homework to have any idea what they're talking about, and then there's the 99%. So whenever somebody claims that something is (or isn't) cheese/OP/broken/etc, there's a pretty small chance that the speaker's assessment has any validity whatsoever. And yet, they declare their belief with all the conviction as if they were reciting the fundamentals of whatever field they ARE proficient in.
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Depends: do tequila and lime constitute "your own experience"? ;)Because people love to throw around pejoratives against that which they don't like till they lose meaning -- see also minimaxing, power gamer, optimizer, munchkin and so on. Ask 10 gamers and you will likely get 12 definitions for any of them. Best advice is to take anything said after those terms with a grain of salt and a large dose of your own experience.Not tequila and lime?
I'm here to tell you, you can have an experience with tequila and lime. You may not remember it though.
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Depends: do tequila and lime constitute "your own experience"? ;)Because people love to throw around pejoratives against that which they don't like till they lose meaning -- see also minimaxing, power gamer, optimizer, munchkin and so on. Ask 10 gamers and you will likely get 12 definitions for any of them. Best advice is to take anything said after those terms with a grain of salt and a large dose of your own experience.Not tequila and lime?
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I understand the desire to keep cheese seperate for most games, but I do wish there was a resource for groups who did like them. I don't mean broken abilities, but stuff that might not be taken seriously in a standard game.
My groups love them, and Monkey Grip and the like are missed.
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It IS cheesy, because its so unrealistic and anime-ish.
You say "unrealistic and anime-ish" like it's a bad thing.
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I blame Tolkien for the constant claims of cheese at martial tools. Imagine if people's impression of what a non-caster should be able to do in a fantasy setting wasn't Boromir and instead was Beowulf.
I blame Tolkien for the constant claims of cheese at martial tools. Imagine if people's impression of what a non-caster should be able to do in a fantasy setting wasn't Boromir and instead was Beowulf.Everything's always Tolkien's fault.
Imagine if people's impression of what a caster should be able to do in a fantasy setting was based on Tolkien.
The caster in Lord of the Rings solo'd a Balor, and he was a freaking Magus. Not even a full Wizard. The elves had some high level clerics in tow too, IIRC.
It IS cheesy, because its so unrealistic and anime-ish.You say "unrealistic and anime-ish" like it's a bad thing.
You also say it like anime is the only place that s~+* happens. Comic books do it all the time too.