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This is an exposé on Roleplay vs Rollplay. It is related to the Stormwind Fallacy.
When people talk about Roleplay vs Rollplay, they're generally trying make a distinction that RPGs should be about playing a role and that focusing on the numbers is therefore bad. The Stormwind Fallacy states that one cannot both roleplay and min/max at the same time. Here, I'd like to delve in to this idea a bit further.
But I want to change the dynamic of what we're discussing. Roleplay vs rollplay isn't just about a linear or axial scale from which we slide from one to the other, it's about two entirely different concepts that are getting conflated due to shared terminology. And in each of those concepts, the words "roleplay" and "rollplay" both exist, but they mean entirely different things. It is from these different definitions and concepts that we end up conflating ideas and sewing confusion, which leads us to the Stormwind Fallacy.
Now, on to the concepts:
Pathfinder and D&D have two primary concepts when we talk about Roleplaying and Rollplaying: In-Character Decisions (ICD) and Conflict Resolution (CR, not to be confused with challenge ratings).
When people complain about role players vs roll players, they typically use Roleplaying to talk about ICD and Rollplaying to talk about CR.
Saying the game is one over the other or that one is good/bad does not make sense in this view point, because conflict resolution and decision making are not opposing each other. They go hand in hand and work off of each other. We make a decisions about our characters until we reach a conflict, then we need to resolve that conflict somehow, after which we can make some new decisions. It's a continuous loop that feeds off of each other.
If we look at just ICD, roleplaying would be you deciding on an action based on your character's knowledge. This is what people tend to mean when they say that D&D/PF is a roleplaying game - you're assuming a role and making decisions for your character. There are two other primary ways to make decisions for your character: Meta-Game, where you make in-character decisions based on Player knowledge, and Rollplaying, where you decide on an action based on rolling a die, regardless of what you or your character knows. Every time I see someone complain about roleplayers vs rollplayers, they're not typically taking about strictly ICD, and I amusingly envision them complaining about players making non-sensical decisions based off the randomness of a die roll.
If we look at just CR, roleplaying would be acting out the conflict to determine how it is resolved. Rollplaying would be rolling a die to determine how it is resolved. Anyone who claims that D&D/PF is a roleplaying game using the acting definition and talking about Conflict Resolution has a fundamental misunderstanding of how these games are designed. Conflict Resolution throughout PF and all five editions of D&D use the die roll, whether it's an action in combat, a diplomacy check, a climb check, a saving throw, or what have you. Conflict is typically resolved by dice. Now, some people may also sometimes allow acting/roleplaying to resolve some conflicts, such as giving a good speech, and that's fine. However, this penalizes players who are personally unskilled in the oratory arts and reduces the number of characters they can enjoy (effectively removing all charisma based characters because the players themselves are unable to act). Essentially, the game is not designed to resolve conflicts through the personal acting skill of a player, it is designed to resolve conflicts through the dice.
Optimization is a subset of Conflict Resolution. Essentially, optimization is setting up a character's statistics to ensure they can resolve a certain type of conflict with minimal dice influence. Optimization has nothing to do with In-Character Decisions, and decisions in game can be made equally well or equally poorly regardless of how the character was made.
At its heart, the complaint of roleplayers vs rollplayers is a complaint that conflates In-Character Decisions and Conflict Resolution. This is what the Stormwind Fallacy is - someone does not like a type of approach to CR, and they mistakingly believe this somehow affects that same player's approach to ICD.
At its heart, D&D/PF is a game that fully embraces roleplaying for In-Character Decisions and rollplaying for Conflict Resolution. It does not really embrace Rollplaying for ICD, and poorly uses Roleplaying for CR.
I also chose to post this here on the Paizo boards because I generally have a higher opinion of the people here than on other forums.
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While the prompt for this is an interesting new take, I am not sure if I can add anything that is new and productive. While I do not blame people for bringing this up, especially if they are new to the boards, it is just very easy to get burned out by these discussions. I do wish you luck and that this thread lasts a long time before degenerating and getting locked. Have a good weekend.
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Everything that can be said about this has already been said, and numerous times at that. I recommend you do a search of the messageboards for this topic. You'll find enough information to do a doctoral dissertation on the subject if you wanted to.
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Everything that can be said about this has already been said, and numerous times at that. I recommend you do a search of the messageboards for this topic. You'll find enough information to do a doctoral dissertation on the subject if you wanted to.
I don't know about that. I haven't seen this particular take on rollplaying vs roleplaying before. It doesn't seem like a bad analysis either.
Not that being decent will stop the rest of this thread from turning into a god-forsaken cesspool that will end up locked for the sake of humanity.
Everything that can be said about this has already been said, and numerous times at that. I recommend you do a search of the messageboards for this topic. You'll find enough information to do a doctoral dissertation on the subject if you wanted to.I don't know about that. I haven't seen this particular take on rollplaying vs roleplaying before. It doesn't seem like a bad analysis either.
Not that being decent will stop the rest of this thread from turning into a god-forsaken cesspool that will end up locked for the sake of humanity.
Based on early responses, it'll devolve into people saying "Ugh! This again? Shut up!"
I know it's an old topic - one I've seen many times, but I also see that old fallacy brought up again and again and again - even by people who seem to know better.
And while discussing it yet again, a new thought occurred to me - the "why" behind the fallacy. And I describe that "why" as the difference between in-character decisions and conflict resolution.
My genuine hope is to have my post be something people can point to to explain why the concept of Roleplay vs Rollplay is wrong. It's not just calling it as a fallacy like Stormwind did, it's describing the underlying concepts behind the mistake.
Take that, you stupid horse!
Here you go
previous Stormwind Fallacy discussions on this board. All 2,320 of them.
Happy reading.
If we look at just CR, roleplaying would be acting out the conflict to determine how it is resolved.
I disagree with this. The correct way to resolve a conflict using the role-play method is to do whatever your character would do, based on their personality. It doesn't mean trying to resolve the conflict without engaging in the mechanical side of the game.
Example: Sir Bob is a direct kind of character, he doesn't put up with crap, doesn't want to negotiate with people that mean him harm, etc.
Sir Bob and his allies run into a strong enemy that demands that Sir Bob pay him money to escape. How does Sir Bob respond? Well, Sir Bob would probably attack the strong enemy.
If Sir Bob's player decides that the Sir Bob will suddenly try to negotiate with the strong enemy because Sir Bob's player knows that the strong enemy is too difficult to defeat, then its likely that Sir Bob's player is not playing his role. Which some people will describe as roll-playing.
The key of the role-playing versus roll-playing argument is the difference between what the character would do and what the player would do. In a perfect world, the player would always do what the character should do. And since the player creates the character, this is often the case.
In some situations, it becomes mechanically advantageous for the player to not do what the character should do. The role-player will pass up the mechanical advantage in order to stay true to his character. The roll-player will disregard his character concept in order to obtain the mechanical advantage.
And of course, staying true to one's character is often very subjective - the person that created the character may believe the character would do one thing, while the rest of the players and the GM may completely disagree based on past experiences with the PC. This is where most of the arguments come from, IME.
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This thread can only end in tragedy.
That sounds like something a roll player would say.
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If we look at just CR, roleplaying would be acting out the conflict to determine how it is resolved.I disagree with this. The correct way to resolve a conflict using the role-play method is to do whatever your character would do, based on their personality. It doesn't mean trying to resolve the conflict without engaging in the mechanical side of the game.
That's just playing in character. You can do that in any game with decision making where you assume the role of a character. Clue for example, choosing directions and suspects based on your character.
Or Battletech, by talking in character during the battle. But it's still a tactical miniature combat game.ICR is vital to RPGs, not just speaking in character but having the roleplaying affect the story and potentially having as much impact on the outcome as the dice.
There needs to be a balance between the two. Too much one way, and it's a board game. Too much the other, and it's just shared storytelling.
Here you go
previous Stormwind Fallacy discussions on this board. All 2,320 of them.Happy reading.
While I appreciate your helpfulness, your assertion for how many threads there are is incorrect. The Paizo search engine lists the number of posts with the search query, not the number of threads.
So there are not 2,320 discussions discussing the Stormwind Fallacy, there are 2,320 posts mentioning it (including quoting others).
I understand your message - "This has been talked about before, so shut up and don't talk about it again," but in your snarkiness you were factually incorrect. :)
Hopefully you've learned something from this discussion, if not from my opening post, at least a bit about how the Paizo search engine works. Happy gaming!
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A follow-up to the absolutely true statement "I can optimize and still legitimately role-play" would be the question "can you enjoy role-playing without being optimized?".
I know some great in every other way gamers who would never convince anyone that they could answer yes to that question. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But it can be an important distinction sometimes, and one that's easily lost when people immediately start invoking "Stormwind Fallacy!!!"
A follow-up to the absolutely true statement "I can optimize and still legitimately role-play" would be the question "can you enjoy role-playing without being optimized?".Well, yes. But probably not for long. Weak characters end up dead.
That's often true, yeah. Though in the right setting, running a Dark Horse can be pretty hilarious/fun/exciting/a memorable funeral/all of the above.
"Mickey Doyle. How the %#&* are you still alive?"
Here you go
previous Stormwind Fallacy discussions on this board. All 2,320 of them.Happy reading.
While I appreciate your helpfulness, your assertion for how many threads there are is incorrect. The Paizo search engine lists the number of posts with the search query, not the number of threads.
So there are not 2,320 discussions discussing the Stormwind Fallacy, there are 2,320 posts mentioning it (including quoting others).
I understand your message - "This has been talked about before, so shut up and don't talk about it again," but in your snarkiness you were factually incorrect. :)
Hopefully you've learned something from this discussion, if not from my opening post, at least a bit about how the Paizo search engine works. Happy gaming!
I think you may have misunderstood my post. But thanks for your concern.
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A follow-up to the absolutely true statement "I can optimize and still legitimately role-play" would be the question "can you enjoy role-playing without being optimized?".Well, yes. But probably not for long. Weak characters end up dead.
I think the campaign and the rest of the party need to support it if you want to have a good amount of fun with an unoptimized character. I remember Kirth mentioning a campaign he played where his party were a bunch of incompetents and the game was tailored to support that. IIRC it was one of the funnest campaigns he played in. I don't think it would of been fun in the slightest if he was playing Age of Worms with his bumbling party instead.
There's also the factor that most character concepts include competence. A player might be able to pretend they are a great swordsman and duelist, but if the numbers say that they are crap then they are stuck with either:
a)disregarding what actually happens in the game, which is bad role-playing because part of playing a role is reacting to the world around you. Ignoring everything that happens to your character and just repeating to yourself "I am a master swordsman-duelist" isn't reacting to the world. It's denial*.
or
b) Roleplaying an inept swordsman, which is actually good role-playing but probably isn't very fun for the player, since most players like feeling competent
That's not even getting into the whole "letting your teammates down", which is especially bad in Pathfinder since the PFRPG is very team orientated. It's also not getting into the dozen other reasons why a player might not enjoy their character being a failure.
I guess the whole point of this spiel is that the question "can you enjoy role-playing without being optimized?" is such a loaded question that it's not really a fair question to ask without a lot of further qualifications. "Would you play a game where your party are bumbling dummkopfs and it's all really light hearted" is a very different question to "would you like being a useless doofus in a party of ultra-competent magi-commandoes who would be doing them a favor by staying in town and downing ales while the professionals do their thing", but they are all different flavors of your question, and a reader could easily interpret your question to mean either.
*of course, Incompetent-in-denial is another way of roleplaying that character, but it's probably even less attractive than just acknowledging that the character is bad and roleplaying them that way.
A follow-up to the absolutely true statement "I can optimize and still legitimately role-play" would be the question "can you enjoy role-playing without being optimized?".Well, yes. But probably not for long. Weak characters end up dead.
And that I think could encapsulate the ENTIRE difference between the Roleplay vs. the Rollplay view.
A Roleplay view would say...absolutely, yes. Weak characters can survive even longer then optimized ones with the right players in roleplaying.
Rollplaying...the answer is always...no chance (or very unlikely). Much of the emphasis is on the number rather than the player.
However, in another view on the idea...
I think another way to look at it, is that it parallels the Old School vs. the Modern school ideas in regards to gaming.
I have a cousin/brother (close enough that we were considered siblings in many ways) that is a HUGE 5e fan at this point. Part of it is that they contend that 5e allows more for an Old School way of playing. Their idea of Old School is more freedom and less reliance on rules and numbers, and more reliance on player choices, words, and thoughts.
I, on the otherhand am currently a hardcore PFRPG supporter. Obviously the anathema to his style in his opinion most likely. In his mind I am totally a Modern or New School type gamer. Yes, I roll on Diplomacy and Intimidation. Yes, I roll skill checks. At least if I can find a PF game to play and GM.
But in reality, I don't think we are all that different in our gamestyles.
I DM'd 4e, and I GM PF, and in both I didn't do it as some expect, I ran my games in a more old school method and fashion (as some would put it). We didn't have a 4e game focus on combat, and in fact much of the game had nothing to do with combat, or using your wits far more than your combat abilities to figure out your way through a situation.
I do the same with PF, it's not about fighting your way through, but figuring out how to get your goals and developing as a team and a party. You play a character that isn't confined simply by the numbers on some piece of paper, you as a player, need to fully flesh out the PC that you are playing as an actual character with feeling, emotion, thought, and wit.
However, I think there are viewpoints which have the same type of categorization, but in their view it isn't so much Roleplay vs. Rollplay, but Old School vs. Modern gaming.
Edit: Referring back to the quoted statement, I'd say that my bro, would say that this is an exact example of why those who emphasize rollplaying cannot roleplay, because if they roleplayed they would recognize the ability to survive is NOT about the numbers, but about the player and the character.
Does it mean that they CANNOT roleplay, absolutely not, it just means they've lost focus on the roleplay portion of the game and focused so much on the rollplay portion of the game that they cannot imagine how someone could be effective simply by roleplaying...rather than rollplaying.
It's similar to the idea, can you go really fast and not break the law?
That doesn't mean it applies to everyone, at all...but that there are many that it DOES apply to...in their mind.
Obviously you can drive really fast and keep the speed limit and/or drive areas where there is none. However, many people who drive really fast break the law by speeding.
Of course, and here's how it's ironic, I would consider myself more old school in how I play the game, but I probably would fall under the "rollplayer who doesn't remember how to roleplay" type of idea in my cousin's mind.
That's an interesting way to explain it. Although I do have to agree with those who suggest that conflict resolution is not necessarily always mechanical. Not only is the decision of how to resolve a conflict a great opportunity for character driven thinking, in a roleplay heavy group sometimes ideas and performance overrule the need for a die roll.
For example, if the player is confronted by a minor noble on the way to deliver an important massage to the queen, and the player uses information gathered about the noble's illicit dealings with the thieves guild to get the noble to back off, there's no need for a roll there. You could force it as a diplomacy or intimidate, even a bluff, but it's really not; it's just using what you know. There might have been dice rolls involved in gathering the information though.
Additionally, in the (sometimes maligned) "acting at the table" groups, many problems are solved without rolls based on player ideas and speech. Such groups often attempt an almost entirely roleplay based game.
A follow-up to the absolutely true statement "I can optimize and still legitimately role-play" would be the question "can you enjoy role-playing without being optimized?".
I have a question, what do you mean by not optimized?
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A follow-up to the absolutely true statement "I can optimize and still legitimately role-play" would be the question "can you enjoy role-playing without being optimized?".
Probably. It depends a lot on the game.
In an Exalted game where the focus is drama rather than throwing buckets of dice, playing the Sokka of a party would be a lot of fun. In a more adversarial system (such as D&D) and especially with published content... not so much, as the knowledge that I'm not pulling my weight would bother me.
Make no mistake, when you go into an encounter with a predefined difficulty level, characters who are deliberately gimped are making things harder on the rest of the party. That said, there is such a thing as going to far and trying to overshadow the entire party. In my experience, the ideal is the middle ground: Be good enough to feel that you can hold your own and contribute to the group, but don't try to go for anything so broken as to trivialize the other party members.
Well, yes. But probably not for long. Weak characters end up dead.
Extending this to "weak characters end up with party deaths" and you come closer to my experience, as I find that it is usually not the incompetent characters that die first, but their teammates.
Which is part of the reason I started optimizing: I find that frequent PC death (of my characters or others in the party) wears on my ability to get invested in the character and roleplay with the others at the table, and breaks the narrative flow of the game. Similarly, starting a campaign with a strong story focus (which I prefer) and then canning it part way through is irritating. Like missing the latter half a movie because of a power outage.
So since I wanted to get into my characters head and have more depth to the roleplay going on at the table, I needed to put more attention on optimizing their mechanics to survive the challenges being thrown at us.
a)disregarding what actually happens in the game, which is bad role-playing because part of playing a role is reacting to the world around you. Ignoring everything that happens to your character and just repeating to yourself "I am a master swordsman-duelist" isn't reacting to the world. It's denial*.
I've seen this done at the table. It was painful, and not in a good way.
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For example, if the player is confronted by a minor noble on the way to deliver an important massage to the queen...
This is my favorite typo of the day :)
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For example, if the player is confronted by a minor noble on the way to deliver an important massage to the queen...This is my favorite typo of the day :)
Heh. A typo that needs sax music. :P
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A follow-up to the absolutely true statement "I can optimize and still legitimately role-play" would be the question "can you enjoy role-playing without being optimized?".I have a question, what do you mean by not optimized?
Yeah. This.
My current Investigator (Empiricist) in Mummy's Mask (we're playing the second session tomorrow) is a Half Orc with Sacred Tattoo and Fate's Favored. His highest stat is Str, his second highest Int, and he uses Int for all social stuff with Student of Philosophy, as well as a bunch of other stuff (including Perception, Sense Motive, UMD, and Disable device) via Empiricist (he took the Hedonistic Drawback for a third Trait, his Campaign Trait is Wati Native).
His stats are Str 17 Dex 14 Con 12 Int 16 Wis 10 Cha 7.
I think by most standards he's probably pretty optimized. But he's not perfectly optimized by any means. Certainly not as optimized a character as I can create. I mean, just to start with, he isn't a Wizard. Or any kind of full caster.
An Int 20 wizard would indisputably be a stronger character, and can even have almost as many skills. I could grab a level of Unchained Rogue (Snoop) and then go Arcane Trickster (via Accomplished Sneak Attacker) and do most of the skill stuff, too. And take my Campaign Trait as Trapfinding for those traps. This is especially true since literally the only spellcaster in the PC group aside from my character is an Oracle (well, there's also a Paladin, I suppose). The other PCs are a Geokineticist and a Dwarf Brawler. So...yeah, Wizard would be super optimal.
Or, sticking with the class I've got, I could drop Int to 14 and Wis to 9 and get Str 18 and Con 14. That'd be better mechanically, indisputably (giving him better combat stats at minimal costs). Much more survivable (especially ifI moved his FCB from skills to HP), and 14 starting Int is plenty for an Investigator mechanically. Oh, and obviously switch to Ressurrected as my Campaign Trait, since I don't need Class Skills, and it's thus strongest. Oh, and I'd obviously drop the Skilled racial trait I took to get Darkvision back.
I knew all that when I made the character and didn't do any of it. Because I hate playing full casters for the most part (I like my character doing stuff personally, with their hands rather than magic, and like them to be good at skills, especially the social ones), and because as I envision the character, he's a huge nerd whose intellect is his primary focus in life. A 16 was as low as I could go and stay in-theme. I also wanted at least average Wis for both Will Save and roleplaying reasons. And took Skilled both because I love skills and because it fit into the 'mother was human, father was a Half-Orc' backstory I have for him (he's got City-Raised, too). I took Wati Native, because my concept for the character definitely involved the phrase 'native guide'. And so on.
That character is pretty survivable. And I can certainly roleplay him and very much enjoy doing so...he's playing the straight-man (and union treasurer/secretary) to another player's Half-Orc Paladin of Khepri whose concept is basically 'union organizer'...they're cousins, and give each other a lot of crap. It's super fun.
So I can certainly roleplay and enjoy myself with a character who isn't completely optimized. On the other hand, I enjoy competent protagonists who actually succeed at things in all my fiction, RPGs included, and likely couldn't enjoy myself very much unless my character was pretty competent and thus capable of dealing with the threats that come up in an Adventure Path. If he was a legitimately poorly made character...even if I didn't know the system, I'd notice it, get frustrated, and not have a lot of fun until the problem was corrected.
So...how optimized are we talking? Where's the line?
For me, in Pathfinder specifically, and barring a particular game designed to be unusually high or low powered, the line is right about here. If a character is viable by that guide, I can probably have fun with them. If not...probably not, since they aren't gonna meet my 'need to be competent to be fun' criteria.
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If your GM is ramping up the encounters to match highly optimized characters and you build a less optimized one, your chances of death go up. If the rest of the party is highly optimized and you are less so, you'll likely feel like a drag on the group. If encounters are challenging for them, you're likely to die.
Everybody needs to be on the same page. It's also a problem if one character is highly optimized and the rest of the party isn't. Groups with all highly optimized characters tend to be bored and complain about lack of challenge if the GM doesn't ramp up the encounters to match them.
Nor does "not optimized" mean "deliberately gimped". You don't have to be a bumbling idiot to be unoptimized, at least as the term is usually used. There's a broad spectrum and generally what matters is where you are on it relative to other players in your group and your GM's expectations.
For the record, I agree with this for the most part.
It doesn't answer the definitional question of 'What's optimized mean?' and I do believe that a certain minimal level of optimization (as linked in my above posts) is probably somewhere between useful and necessary in most published adventures, but when you get right down to it the most important thing is that the PCs are all around equally optimized.
That's an interesting way to explain it. Although I do have to agree with those who suggest that conflict resolution is not necessarily always mechanical. Not only is the decision of how to resolve a conflict a great opportunity for character driven thinking, in a roleplay heavy group sometimes ideas and performance overrule the need for a die roll.
For example, if the player is confronted by a minor noble on the way to deliver an important massage to the queen, and the player uses information gathered about the noble's illicit dealings with the thieves guild to get the noble to back off, there's no need for a roll there. You could force it as a diplomacy or intimidate, even a bluff, but it's really not; it's just using what you know. There might have been dice rolls involved in gathering the information though.
Additionally, in the (sometimes maligned) "acting at the table" groups, many problems are solved without rolls based on player ideas and speech. Such groups often attempt an almost entirely roleplay based game.
I think you have a fair assessment.
Indo believe that there are conflicts which could be resolved by roleplaying or even the persona acting skill of the player - however, these are not the majority of the conflicts one will face in a typical game. By far, the vast majority of conflicts will be determined by the die - this includes all combats, all saving throws, and all skill checks (and more if there are other types of conflict resolution that are solved by the die).
Even in combat, individual actions of conflict resolution is determined by the die - for example, you could have an in-character decision to attack opponent A. Now you have a conflict: what kind of attack will hit and how much damage is done? This conflict is determined by the dice. Once this micro-conflict is resolved, you (and your character) have more information to decide on the next action/decision.
In your own example, I've had times when my players simply cannot think of a way to bypass the noble (or remember previous information gained). So while one player may be on the ball and come up with a good idea (personal skill of the player), another player may request an intelligence check for a hint or use one of their characters' skills.
So I don't disagree with you; instead, I agree with caveats and minor quibbles. :)
Hopefully this follow up also sheds better light for what I mean by "Conflict Resolution" and I apologize for not being as clear earlier.
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>When people talk about Roleplay vs Rollplay
You know, when people say "Rollplay" I always imagine them playing some weird game where they wrap themselves into a carpet roll, then roll on the floor trying to unroll faster than their opponent. And then I can't read any further because the screen shakes too hard from my giggling.
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I think the campaign and the rest of the party need to support it if you want to have a good amount of fun with an unoptimized character. I remember Kirth mentioning a campaign he played where his party were a bunch of incompetents and the game was tailored to support that. IIRC it was one of the funnest campaigns he played in.
I was actually in both those games. I didn't really notice much of a difference between my monk and my ranger. Maybe that's a testament to his skill as a GM.
So here's my stance, as long as my character is able to contribute to combat and the plot on some level I can have fun with an unoptimized character. If the other characters are making me obsolete however I start to lose interest.
A recent example of this would be a fight against two blue dragons. I was hyped for an epic, beefed up dragon fight...and then the wizard used feeblemind on one of them and the sorceress possessed the other leading us to curbstomp them. This lead me to lying on e bed catching 40 winks and getting up every now and then to throw a fireball at them (we play online so I can do that without anyone noticing. Plus we have a German player there so we have to play REALLY early and I was low on sleep.)
From an ICD viewpoint it makes sense to optimize. This is because most characters understand the world they live in. A Fighter, for example, is going to attempt to be the best Fighter (s)he can because they know they're walking into situations where life and death literally can hang in the balance. So because combat is so perilous, preparing for it in the most optimized way possible gives someone a better chance of survival.
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If I can make an effective character and roleplay just as well as I'd an inertective one... Why wouldn't choose to be effective?
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Now building a generic "effective" character can be done, but usually when players talk about optimized characters they are talking about optimizing for the adventure path the character is going to be used in, or to be effective against the monsters/challenges the DM may have had to tell them about just to get them interested in playing.
Wait, what? That's...not actually something I've seen people do that much. I mean, beyond people picking Favored Enemies on that basis or a few other very specific things (which come up occasionally). Most optimization I see is 'generic'.
And as for non-generic opposition...that actually usually makes IC sense, too. Not in the sense of a particular character planning their life to make them good vs. X, but in the sense of 'Hey, let's get a group of people to go fight goblins! Who here knows a lot about goblins? You do? Then you're one of the people coming.'
I mean, let's look at my aforementioned Mummy's Mask character again. He's clearly optimized for the AP, with Trapfinding as one of his things and a rank in Linguistics to speak Ancient Osirion. But that AP literally starts with you being a group of people who got together specifically to go tomb-raiding in Osirion. Under those circumstances, not recruiting a guy who has those skills would be the thing that's metagaming, since it's ridiculous and dumb.
Or to put it another way: The PCs are the group of people who get together to go do a thing. The players are not. IC, those characters are gonna pick other characters who are actually good at the task at hand to do the job (regardless of their being PCs or not). It's thus reasonable that the people who get picked will be qualified for the initial task. If they weren't, they'd have picked someone else. Thus, in most adventures and APs, it would actually be more metagame-y to have a character who isn't well-suited to the task at hand, since then the only reason that guy was picked over other people to go along is that he's a PC. And that's an entirely metagame reason. You can think of it as each player having a host of 'virtual' character possibilities, and the one who's best suited to the AP getting picked because, well, they're best suited to the job at hand.
Now, there are some APs that are exceptions to this rule (RotRL and RoW are a little bit, Serpent's Skull is a lot), but they're very much the exceptions, not the rule. Even there, optimizing for the AP seems reasonable to me. Sure, it might not be hyper realistic that the survivors of a shipwreck all have jungle survival skills, but at the same time...is it hyper realistic if none of them do? What percentage is 'realistic'? And how much of people having fun and not feeling useless are you willing to sacrifice for realism?
It could be said that there are two sometimes-complimentary drives at work with something like Pathfinder: there's a communal act of storytelling, and there's a goal-oriented win-or-lose game. A compelling story can have all kinds of different heroes and anti-heroes and not-quite-heroes, it can have wins and losses, it can have all kinds of protagonists. A game has players that want to win, want to contribute to the win, and often wish to be MVP. Leaving aside any kind of judgement about what's "right" - because that's just a question of what, on balance, brings the most entertainment or fun or power-trip-fantasy catharsis - it's worthwhile to consider where the balance lies between these two drives.
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It could be said that there are two sometimes-complimentary drives at work with something like Pathfinder: there's a communal act of storytelling, and there's a goal-oriented win-or-lose game. A compelling story can have all kinds of different heroes and anti-heroes and not-quite-heroes, it can have wins and losses, it can have all kinds of protagonists. A game has players that want to win, want to contribute to the win, and often wish to be MVP. Leaving aside any kind of judgement about what's "right" - because that's just a question of what, on balance, brings the most entertainment or fun or power-trip-fantasy catharsis - it's worthwhile to consider where the balance lies between these two drives.
Sure. Those aren't mutually contradictory, though. You don't even have a finite pool of points to distribute between them. Some people care little for either, and some people care a huge amount about both, and some care about one only because of the other.
For example, I care about optimization and success almost purely because of what kind of stories I like. I basically require my fictional protagonists to be extremely competent people who usually succeed at things they're supposedly good at, and are actually good at a variety of plot relevant things. That's as true of characters I like and identify with in TV shows, movies, or books as it is in RPGs.
This preference results in me dropping the book or TV show and not liking the movie if it isn't true, and in an RPG, where I have the power to make it true? I do so.
Additionally, I get really invested in my characters. I think about their childhoods, their families, their sexual preferences, loves, hates, what kind of food they like, how often they get drunk. I think about all that, and I usually make a character I like as a person. That being the case, I generally want them to succeed. I like happy endings in all my fiction, and getting a happy ending for a character I've put that much thought and work into is thus pretty important to me.
So I tend to make them as difficult to kill as I can arrange, and focus on making sure they can achieve their goals and get that happy ending.
These tendencies together lead me to optimize a fair bit...but it's not because I care about the rules or winning challenges for their own sake (or not primarily, anyway), it's because I want my character to be a competent person who succeeds at the things they attempt and eventually triumphs and retires to a happy life as a semi-retired epic hero. It's an entirely story-based motivation.
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Torture metaphor incoming
But this reminds me of MTG player archetypes somewhat, Timmy Spike and Johnny. Applied to roleplaying, they resonate in roleplaying and conflict in similar fashions. People who expect conflicts to be solved by intuitive plans will be dissatisfied if the person who does it the most practical way.
Consider invisible opponent in a room. Spike wants to use Glitterdust, it is very good tool to get the job done. Johnny would probably use his whole inventory and environment to get the guy, maybe cut the tapestry until it traps and invisible opponent under it, flour, water, anything he comes up. Timmy, who knows, might want to run his arm stretched out and wish he hits the right tile, clotheslining the villain in spectacular lucky fashion.
And it is hard to please all player motivations at the same time. People who find easy and practical solutions will always be at odds with people who care more for how creative the solutions are or how big and explosive.
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There's creativity and then there's needlessly overcomplicated solutions.
If you're in a fight for your life you'll use whatever tools.you have to win. Trying to "clothesline the villain in an spectacularly lucky fashion" when you have glitterdust available is not only a poor tactical decision, but also poor roleplay. It's also selfish, since your character is most likely not the only one whose life is on the line.
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As a caster if you beat my initiative and charge in your going to get "unluckily" caught in the glitterdust along with said bbeg, whether you contact him or not.There's creativity and then there's needlessly overcomplicated solutions.
If you're in a fight for your life you'll use whatever tools.you have to win. Trying to "clothesline the villain in an spectacularly lucky fashion" when you have glitterdust available is not only a poor tactical decision, but also poor roleplay. It's also selfish, since your character is most likely not the only one whose life is on the line.
If the BBEG is invisible, being blinded for a round or two isn't a bad trade, anyway. The caster could also center the effect somewhere where it affects the enemy but not the charging martial.
Either answer is better than hoping to clothsline an invisible opponent.
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Something to consider is that the Pathfinder RPG does not have a mechanic that rewards sub-optimal play. If your backstory says you're scared of zombies, then the first encounter against zombies, you cower for a round as your action (by choice), there's nothing that rewards you for this, other than positive reinforcement from your GM or fellow players. The system itself though will punish you, by giving the zombies two turns. Instead, the system's reward would be for violating your backstory and just attacking the zombies.
Other games do reward "sub-optimal" choices though. They rely on a resource economy that is powered by "bad choices". The choice hurts you in the moment, but you gain a resource that can be spent later that will give you an advantage or be used to power special abilities.
You can widen the scope, from moment to moment choices, to character building. In Pathfinder, there isn't a reason to purposely make your character less powerful or add a specific weakness (that wouldn't be there anyways). In a party of 7th level characters, choosing to only be as powerful as a 6th level character doesn't bring you anything, other than making what should be CR appropriate encounters harder. Other games require you to take weaknesses if you want to be able to engage the resource economy.
If you want to play a game where characters can make "sub-optimal" choices that are interesting and are encouraged to do so, there are many, many better choices than Pathfinder.
Something to consider is that the Pathfinder RPG does not have a mechanic that rewards sub-optimal play. If your backstory says you're scared of zombies, then the first encounter against zombies, you cower for a round as your action (by choice), there's nothing that rewards you for this, other than positive reinforcement from your GM or fellow players. The system itself though will punish you, by giving the zombies two turns. Instead, the system's reward would be for violating your backstory and just attacking the zombies.
I would argue that if you're looking for a mechanical reward for all role-playing decisions that you make for your character, you're likely a roll-player.
If the negative stigma around the term roll-player can be reduced, then people who are roll-players won't feel the need to not claim the title.
Which will ultimately make it much easier to form cohesive groups and have successful campaigns.
There's creativity and then there's needlessly overcomplicated solutions.
If you're in a fight for your life you'll use whatever tools.you have to win. Trying to "clothesline the villain in an spectacularly lucky fashion" when you have glitterdust available is not only a poor tactical decision, but also poor roleplay. It's also selfish, since your character is most likely not the only one whose life is on the line.
Yeah, no, that is not how it works.
Spike mindset is the one that makes people go for full casters and handpick the best spells because they know what is needed to defeat all scenarios.But it does not become selfish and poor roleplaying NOT to take them. Because that implies everyone who knows what is the best and refuses to do it, are hurting others. Or that having other forms of power fantasy is false is also as silly.
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There's creativity and then there's needlessly overcomplicated solutions.
If you're in a fight for your life you'll use whatever tools.you have to win. Trying to "clothesline the villain in an spectacularly lucky fashion" when you have glitterdust available is not only a poor tactical decision, but also poor roleplay. It's also selfish, since your character is most likely not the only one whose life is on the line.
Yeah, no, that is not how it works.
Spike mindset is the one that makes people go for full casters and handpick the best spells because they know what is needed to defeat all scenarios.But it does not become selfish and poor roleplaying NOT to take them. Because that implies everyone who knows what is the best and refuses to do it, are hurting others. Or that having other forms of power fantasy is false is also as silly.
- Making a decision that goes against the character's personality, motivations and objectives (such as making an awful tactical decision in a life-or-death situations just because it's different) is poor role playing.
- Risking your friends' lives just because you want to try something new is selfish.
You don't have to be an impossibly prepared full caster to make tactically sound decision and try to actually be creative, instead of overcomplicating simple problems.