Why Optimize in a World of DM Fiat?

[CE2JRH]

Why Optimize in a System of DM Fiat?

(Note: This thread has nothing to do with relative merits of 3.5E or Pathfinder)

I've heard people bring this up before, sometimes in relation to JaronK's Tiers system of analysis for relative class power; “Why should I care if my wizard is vastly more powerful than the party's fighter? The DM is going to balance it for me; they can increase CR's, give out special magic items, and smite players who take too much power for their game.” Or, from a DNDOGer in a nearby thread, a similar sentiment; "A good GM can smite your character within the scope of the rules (no matter how much you optimize) on a moments notice without even breaking willing suspension of disbelief, so optimizing is kind of pointless if you really think about it."

(For Statistical Summary, the 20 most popular advertisement threads on DNDOG: About half are PVP or dungeon crawl based games (2 aren't 3.5E and are left out as a result). So lots of people are playing in Categories 1 and 2, even in the most popular games on the website. If anyone has interest in a larger sample, they're welcome to go through the next 20 entries and stats-merge.)

Here's why you should care.

1) Some games are Player versus Player, or group of player versus other group of player. If you want things to be fair, the DM doesn't get to provide special powers to one side, or smite the other side, regardless of how people built things. Instead, the DM should be clear about power-levels up front (one DM put a T3 limit on such a game). Arena games, or roleplaying games with the chance of PVP.
(6/18: 33% The Faces of Evil, Brotherhood of the Seeking Song (Guildwars), The Eternal Stalkers (Guildwars), Factions of Varyd, Tournament of Champions, Hate Runs Deep)

2) Some games are DM-versus-player dungeon crawls (and many of the published classic modules are; Tomb of Horrors, Rappan Athuk, World's Largest Dungeon, etcetera. For Homebrew, see Hvg3akaek's Heroes' Gauntlet, a cross between Diablo2 and The Amazing Race --- its in our Hall of Fame, in case you weren't aware. The point of the game is to run through the dungeon with rules-as-written, beating the encounters. If you've cleared out the first area of WLD, and your DM decides to put in a random death trap because he doesn't like that your builds are effective, it's going to be reasonably disappointing.
(2/18: 11% Worlds Largest Dungeon, The Temple of Time,)

But, some people are going to say “Well, I don't play those games. I just play good old fashioned Lord of the Rings' style Epic quests!” (See also: Sword of Shannara, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, Requiem of the Ages, etcetera, etcetera).

3) Epic Quest/Series of Scenarios Quest/ “Traditionalish” DND game
(10/18: 55%: Richard Nixon's Time Travelling Bar and Grill, An Omen of Change, Realms of Kataclysm, Gestalt Monster Game/The Crawling Dark, God's Among Men, Search for the Dragon King, Pieces of Peace, Twilight of Darkness, Hymns of the Unseen, Rogues Gallery, though I'll note gestalt seems particularly popular here)


Why would I bother optimizing, you ask? After all, the DM has his plot (it involves throwing fleeing a set of Ring Wraiths, and then fleeing some orcs, then killing a spider, then throwing a ring in a volcano after making a series of will/fortitude saves) --- if I optimize to beat the ring wraiths or the orcs, the DM is just going to be mad for going against the rails and destroying the cleverly set narrative.

Here's the thing: You don't, in advance, know which encounters you're supposed to win, and which you're supposed to lose. So you may as well build to win all of them right? But why bother optimizing? If you're all poorly designed 3rd fighters and soulknives and dragon shamans, you DM is just going to throw 6 orcs at you. If you're all well designed 3rd level clerics, druids, and wizards, your DM is just going to throw 12 orcs and 2 ogres at you. The plot stays the same, and hell, the first is probably a quicker battle (since it's all “attack versus AC” and you don't have to deal with remembering spell modifiers, touch AC, and how web works). It's still 6 of one, half a dozen of the other, right? Whatever floats your boat/blows your hair back.

Except here's the problem; iterative probability. If your probability of dying in any given encounter is trivially low (5%), by the time you hit level 5, you've died. Possibly with no chance of resurrection. So has the rest of the party. Which means that instead of Frodo, Gimili, Gandolf and Aragorn working their way to the Mountain, it's Brodo, Dimili, Gandorf and Aragrin. All certain they'll be keeping their brother/cousin's/uncle twice removed memory alive by finishing the quest of the ring!

And the DM then scales the encounters down. You get fewer orcs. No big deal, right?

Except DND is swingy --- there are critical hits, save or dies, and accidentally overpowered encounters. And if you don't design well (optimize), by the time you get to the actually Mountain, half of you are totally disconnected from the ring. (This recently happened in a RL campaign of mine, where we were the last 8 remaining members of a tribe of Barbarians, but by the time we finished the quest to avenge our destroyed civilization, only 3 of the party were actually still members of that tribe of Barbarians. I was a grey elven wizard, and my reasons for tagging along were at this point, incredibly strained in terms of good narrative).

It's easier for the narrative if the 6 people saving the princess from her tower are at least 4+ people asked by the king to do so. If it's 6 people who have not met the king, and not been asked to complete the quest, but still are on their way to the tower? That's...stretching narrative plausibility.

So optimization is good for your narrative plausibility in terms of survival. I'm going to suggest that an optimized character probably has more abilities to avoid death than an un-optimized character. And more so for the entire optimized party. A 3rd level Warblade, seeing a disintegrate coming their way, can break out a wall of blades. A 3rd level fighter...dies.

Okay, but why doesn't the DM just pull their punches? (Some do, as a matter of fact.) “Oh, that disitingegrate rolled minimum damage on 20 dice miraculously, 20 damage!” or “That gem you found is actually a 3rd eye dampening! You only take 20 damage! YAY, you survive!” A campaign where too much of that occurs starts to break the immersion, and you probably can't take the cognitive dissonance of pretending to be scared of encounters when your DM is going to save you regardless of what happens, encouraging more reckless play. And the other problem; does the DM pull every punch? Does the DM save Joes' character, but not yours? Pulling punches can lead to some rough in group politics, to say the least.

So you don't pull punches, you tell the party to optimize.

But what about when the party goes too far, and beats encounters it's not supposed to? You're travelling along, and you're supposed to be caught by the Emissary of Hextor, to get imprisoned, find someone important in the prison, and break out. Clever DMing, right? But oh noes, someone in your party optimized more than they expected, and they are beating your emissary of Hextor! Oh noes!

So in the “Smite optimizer” version of events, the Emissary of Hextor whips out his raybans of quickened, twinned, maximized disintegrates! Hah, take that. Except if you're running a campaign where defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory too often (or...more than once) players are going to start to get discouraged. The worst RL DM I've ever had made it extremely clear that we'd never succeed, because he didn't like how our characters were built. After 4 sessions, we just told him he wasn't DMing any more. He left our group shortly after.

Because the real way you play the Hextor event is “Oh, give me 10 minutes to generate some exp and treasure. Everyone grab a snack/take a piss/chat.” (or, if online, you've got plenty of time to think) and if you're RL group is anything like mine, they'll not notice talking for 15-20 minutes. Pizzas in the oven, all that jazz.

Which gives you time (to, if you're a slow improviser) figure out how you get the players to the prison. Because when they come back, what you want to say is “Good job, that was clever use of Horizon Walker chronocharms for full attack skrimish pouncing.” not “SMITE EVIL OPTIMIZER.” Because the latter is far more alienating then the former. And then on the Emissary of Hextor's corpse, you find a letter between A and B talking about how C is imprisoned, and how C is being tortured for some essential knowledge, and how it should become very obvious to the party that they have to get C out of the prison AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. And you add a couple CR to all your encounters down the road.

Because you're the DM --- it doesn't matter if people optimize; you can always increase encounter strength. But if someone is optimizing; that's good for your campaign, because it makes it easier to construct a coherent narrative. In one of my RL groups games, I ran a 6th level DMM Persist Cleric, all the stops pulled out. After our 2nd session he's driving me home, and he says something like “Okay, I'm running a quick game scene. In the night, you're visited by [homebrew trickster god]. He's impressed by your power, and he's making things a little more challenging by helping all your future enemies. Also, you're cursed so that they'll pay more attention to you. If you can keep your friends alive, their deities will reward you greatly. If they die, they'll forever work against you.” My cleric became this hilarious warder figure in the campaign, but also didn't tell the party (they found out about the curse at level 11 or 12, the campaign ended at 13, perhaps?) And at the end of the campaign, everyone else optimized a little more...and I was told to optimize a little less :P

But here's the other thing; if you spend 3 hours writing a backstory for a character, you care about that character about 3 hours worth. If you spend ~10 hours playing that character, you care about that character about 10 hours worth. If you spend 3 hours writing a back story, 5 hours pouring through books and thinking about how to make your A-Game Paladin really shine, and playing it 10 hours, you care about that character proportionately more.

And people being invested in their characters is precisely what leads to fun and entertaining gameplay.

Plus, optimization can be fun.

[CE2JRH]

And related (covering some similar material), that I wrote about a year back, though I'm not sure if I ever posted it:

Practial Optimization, or, Resolving the Optimizer/Roleplayer false dichotomy

Synopsis:
Basis of Topic
Frequently there is a perceived conflict between roleplaying and optimization. We hear phrases like "roleplaying not rollplaying" as well as demonizations such as "munchkin", "powergamer" and "rules-lawyer."

This perceived conflict is patently false, but don't believe me yet, the rest of this "lecture" will go into explaining how and why these conflicts seem to arise, how to resolve them, and how to prevent them.

Why bother?

Lots of optimizers will probably ask this; "Why should I care about what the weeaboo's think?" ... and the roleplayers will ask "Who cares what that min-maxer says?" There are two important reasons;

First: Sometimes you will deliberately or accidentally get into the same game, and have to work together. You don't want to drop out of a game

Second: Sometimes there are limited numbers of people interested in playing (say, Shadowrun on DNDOG, or a RL group), which means that differences need to be resolved in a mature and positive way; especially if the group starts as friends and wishes to remain as it.

The Other Routes; Why bother part 2

There are other options. I've played games that have been optimization versus roleplayer battlegrounds. I've watched and read the intense impassioned debates. Certainly, you can choose to try to play only with those that conform to your playing style (if you can correctly identify it) and if there are enough people in the region (offline) or on the site with the same style (online). There are lots of people that will advocate this approach; optimizers that wouldn't condemn themselves to lower their level of play to a group of less knowledgeable players, and roleplayers that can't stand to have someone trying to eke power out of every cranny; and subcommuities develop for each of these people.

But here's why you shouldn't take that route; even if there are lots of gamers in your city, even if there are lots of message boards. And the reason is because the best characters consider mechanics and roleplaying aspects..

Bold claim, but stick with me, I'll back this one up, too.

The Practical Rules for Optimization
(Disclaimer: These are different from Caelic's famous 10 Commandments of Practical Optimization)

First Rule: Conceptualize then actualize, for reason is tool of the will, and you need a will! [Background precedes Optimization]

 

This is, tragically, a reference to Hume's metaethical theory that reason cannot direct you to what you should value. You value things, then reason tells you how to get them. Reason, thus, is a tool of the will. Without knowing what you value, you do not know what to use the tool of reason to get at.

Optimization is the same as reason.

Think about it. If you start with optimization (the tool) all the time, you simply end up with "most powerful build"; which probably is pun-pun or something theoretical and not meant to be played. That obviously leads to boredom and conflict, which you don't want (hopefully).

So instead, start with the background. Figure out the character. You may know going in you want to play an optimal fighter, or optimal wizard, or optimal cleric. That's fine. Start with the background anyways. Build a person. If it's a fighter, talk about the fighting style; the people he trained with. The wizard, think about the school, the other wizards. If you're a DMM Persist cleric, for example, think about the way you portray this (I frequently use glowing runes on armor; a trope of magic that fails to appear often in DND except with a few dwarven wizard prestige classes). R.A. Salvatore's Cleric Quintet series had a character singing magic. It was the main character; a cleric. Think about the character first, that way you have a goal to optimize towards, be it epic spiked chain tripper, incantatrix ray wizard, or DMM persist cleric.

If you go the opposite way, you're not only directionless, but the background often will look tacked on afterwards, or worse, written to justify the character choices. I'll confess to having had character concepts and builds I've wanted to play (such as my fochlucan jack of all trades builds, with divine casting, arcane casting, bardic music, and martial maneuvers) that where writing the backstory was literally checking off the classes and abilities and justifying them. It's obvious to everyone, and it doesn't read as cleanly as if the background was more general blade-mage with some healing and buffing capabilities.

In summary; start with a character concept; then make that concept as powerful as possible. If you start with power and try to build a human around it...well, you can try. And there are certainly some people out there that probably do it well. But I'll hypothesize that these people are rare, and that for the majority of practical optimizers, starting with a vague concept (blade-mage), then fleshing out the background before the sheet is an optimal way of making a good sounding character, making friends, and getting into games.

The Second Rule: Ask yourself "Are you playing a god in a game of peasants?" [The Gentlepersons's Agreement]

 

Simply put, the Gentleperson's Agreement is an unspoken rule that exists in all games that sometimes gets spoken. With correct knowledge and classes, you can make most DND games unplayable by 9th or 11th level, with things like teleport and powerful divinations. With more books, the ability to destroy the game comes at lower and lower levels.

However, you want to have fun and play DND, right? I hope that's why you're here. So look at the power level of the fellow party members, and match that. The Gentleperson's Agreement is an agreement to not go far more powerful, even if you could.

Also, there are two types of power that are important here;
Combat power is the straight forward ability to win encounters. Increasing this power is easily countered by DM's throwing waves of stronger enemies, or more enemies, at you. Things like the difference between a fighter and a warblade (the latter does far more damage), or a normal wizard versus an optimizer blaster wizard. Increasing this power is easy for the DM to counter, but can cause you to grossly outshine the fellow players, who may feel like you're stepping on their toes. If the group has a fighter, a ranger and rogue, for example, making a melee DMM persist cleric or melee druid may be uncalled for. The point is, if the fighter nearby is doing 30 damage per round, and you're doing 300 damage per round, eventually the fighter player is going to get annoyed.

The proper response is to either work with the fighter character to increase his power, or to look at contributing in ways that you enjoy but don't so directly step on your party members toes.

Avoidance power: This is things that let you avoid encounters and even parts of the plot; Flight, Teleport, Scrying spells, and similar abilities. Your fellow players may not even notice that you've optimized yourself in this way, but your DM certainly has, and this is very difficult for a DM to deal with. If your DM has planned out a clever encounter and then you teleport past it, your DM might be flexible enough to use it again (in a place that makes it seem more out of place), or your DM might be frustrated and have to wing more than he or she is comfortable with.
The best way to mitigate this issue is to simply discuss with your DM in advance how he or she feels about this sort of ability.

 

Another good thing to consider here is what the DM and other players want. Maybe you fancy being Gandalf and soloing a few Balrog's. But if the rest of the players are playing Hobbits (notice; they kill basically nothing and are inept at combat) bringing a mighty Wizard to the table will make you outshine them. And while this is fine in the Lord of the Rings series, where Gandalf is off doing mysterious things all the time, it's non-functional for a group of people that are supposed to be playing a game together.

If your players are playing a low-key survival horror game and you bring a weapons expert that has no trouble mowing through the entire zombie army, expect things to go poorly. If you have trouble identifying what level the game is actually being played at, ask. Communication is key.

The Third Rule: What to do when conceptual conflict arises?[Optimization versus Coherence]

 

There are times where you'd really, really, really like to choose a certain extremely powerful option; perhaps becoming a metamagic specialist incantatrix, or having a two level dip of crusader and a level adjustment of mineral warrior...but it doesn't quite fit with the character backstory.

There are several options, none of which are "do it, and pray no one notices."

Option One: Just refrain. Chances are, your character is sufficiently powerful anyways. Especially since you're reading this. Refraining makes things easier, and perhaps opens up other suboptimal, but interesting, options. A fire mage that opts to play as an Elemental Savant, rather than an Incantatrix, perhaps, despite the former being far worse than the latter.

Option Two: Fluff is mutable. Even if it says a certain thing on your character sheet, that doesn't mean that's the way you have to describe it. You can roleplay your cleric or crusader as a paladin. You can roleplay your Swordsage as a Monk. Keep in mind that there is flexibility in describing abilities. Even if it might seem really strange for a Barbarian to take a level of Cloistered Cleric (Knowledge Devotion, Travel Devotion, Luck Domain, and a few spells), describing it as "improving my ability to hit enemies in the right spot using weapons knowledge", "bursts of speed" and "incredible will, reflexes, and fortitude" plus "combat techniques" (shield of faith, divine favour, blade of blood) makes perfect sense --- even if the thing on the character sheet itself looks a little strange.

Option Three: Do it anyways, but be certain to explain it well. Maybe in the above example your DM isn't comfortable with you fluffing a level of cleric as merely an improvement in special combat techniques. See if he'd be willing to explain a story of how your Barbarian had a brief run-in with religion sometime in his life. But always remember option one; just don't do it (though if you're playing a Barbarian, you can probably use all the help you could get).

The Fourth Rule: Is there a right way to play D&D? [No]

 

One of the things that spurred this "lecture" was, even years after the release of 3.5E, still seeing this issue of "optimizers versus roleplayers" coming up. Aside from this being a false dichotomy (above), both camps seem to have an idea of a "right" way to play D&D.

So here's the question: What method can you use to generate a "correct" way of playing D&D? [Hint; no generation method works; you can skip to the end]

Option 1: Relying on the written law; the books themselves. Material from the books is the correct way to play D&D; using their written campaign settings, deities, and ideas. There are a couple problems with this generation of a "correct" D&D; first and foremost, that the books themselves are inconsistent and error ridden. Some books seem to try to promote a "roleplayer" conception of the game, others an "optimizer" perspective, and others try to include both. Ultimately, the written word isn't enough to figure out the "right" way to play D&D.

Option 2: Relying on designer intention; what the desingers wanted when they were making D&D. There is are a couple problems with this method. The first, is that there are a lot of writers; and some of them probably had different conceptions of the "right" way to play D&D. Second, it's really hard for us to know what the writers wanted when writing this. Third, in literature, this is called the intentional fallacy; the important thing not being what the writer was trying to express or convey, but what the reader receives from reading the material.

Option 3 What you and your group finds fun. Perhaps you like to run high-roleplaying games where character sheets are referred to once every three sessions. Perhaps you like to run arena games where dialogue is sparse. Perhaps you like a healthy mix, a high-roleplaying game where everyone makes grandoise speeches during constant combat (see Bleach for an example), or an arena-game where everyone makes lengthy polemic during their fights (see recent OOTS battle involving Roy and Thog starting here). None of the options are mutually exclusive.

The other problem is none of them are objectively right either. Saying "my preference is right" in relation to style of D&D play is equally silly to saying "my preference is right" when saying that I like pie more than cake and this is objectively right. And if I was trying to say to a friend, acquaintance, or stranger that they were doing food wrong if they preferred cake, it would be pretty clear that I was being incredibly silly --- especially given the deliciously legitimate option eating both cake and pie!

Except if cake is roleplaying and pie is optimizing, you hear people say this all the time. "You're doing it wrong." Nothing (aside from your preferences) in these statements are truth functional. It's totally fair to express your preferences to one or the other (pie or optimization (yes, I am mixing metaphors)), but it isn't fair to say that a preference is right or wrong.

The Fifth Rule: Moderation versus Militancy; playing D&D to have fun, not to teach.

 

Frequently, I've seen conflict arise not when a DM is utterly hostile to the concept of optimization, but when a DM is indifferent to it, and a player continues to push them on that point over and over and over again. On Play By Post forums, such as DNDOG, this can get particularly bad, when playerse with no interest in playing a game might comment on applicants, or the DM's, awareness of optimization and game rules. This isn't a problem inherently, but can be a problem when a player is far to militant about optimization. There comes a time when a person should recognize that some discussions aren't worth having; and that sometimes convincing people is best done by backing off.

Unfortunately, it seems a majority of people that have the roleplay versus optimization debate on both sides miss this point. So this is just a caution for moderation. If you are going to try to convince someone of your perspective, it will likely best be done by taking it easy, not being too determined, and by not drawing the argument out. Make a single quick point. Walk away. Let them think about it for several days. Or weeks. Then come back to it.

Earlier, I said that the best characters consider both mechanical and roleplaying aspects; and promised to back that statement up. Simply put, there are two reasons for this: attention and story cohesiveness. Both are relatively simple. The latter; story cohesiveness, simply put, is the question of what makes telling a cohesive, coherent story easiest? Is it having a bunch of poorly thought out weaklings, where you may have to have the villain capture them rather than be defeated (forcing you, the DM, to think on the spot to explain why the villain did this) or is it better for the story to have the players narrowly squeeze out a victory, with the villain...and the heroes...barely making it out alive.

And perhaps, you, good DM, have had the experience trying to keep a story together with a roving cast of constantly dying characters, where exactly none of the people originally tasked with saving the princess are now located in the princesses chambers...several of them so far removed from the quest that they're uncertain why they're there.

Obviously, you can pull some punches and fake some material; but then your players will notice that, as well, and with death not an option, the sense of risk starts to die. Or, you won't do it enough, and you'll kill an entire party by accident. A story is most easily told and cohesively held together when an entire party optimizers to more or less the same level; where player death is rare, and where the group stays the same throughout your legendary tale. Think about it; how much sense would Lord of the Rings have made if by the end of the 3rd book, it was Frodo's 4th Cousin Twice removed that had found the ring and thrown it into Mount Doom...the last in a line of forty hobbits to take up the legendary quest?

The second reason that optimization helps roleplaying is attention. A player that is thinking carefully about the mechanics of their character is also one that is thinking carefully about the capability of their character. We've all gone to sessions where Bob is swiftly writing a characters abilities and personalities during the tavern meet-up, and ends up being a quiet iconoclast as a result. A character that is planning carefully is putting in more effort; and chances are that this effort won't simply be directed only at the mechanical side; but will also result in a more interesting, better fleshed out character.

From this, you should have a basic idea of how to avoid this counter-productive "us versus them" mentality (regardless of what side you consider yourself to be on), as well as how to avoid coming into conflict with those that still hold this mindset.

[RedRab]

Originally Posted by CE2JRH

Plus, optimization can be fun.

This.

I don't always like to optimize or play with optimizers . . . but when I do, I play D20.



When I'm not in the mood to "optimize", I generally play something not at all D20.

[WoLT]

While I am glad to see that my comment generated so much thought and effort, I think you missed the core point I was making with my statement.

The point I was making wasn't "don't optimize" but instead "optimize to make the character you would like to play" putting content before numbers, and that this is easier in PF than 3.5 Essentially I was saying the same thing you were in Rule 1 of optimization. I think the confusion comes in in that my remark was made more about people who min max without concern for background or story. This does happen, as a matter of fact it happens more frequently than not in my experience and it's how the whole stromwind fallacy came to be. if anything as a GM I'll beat up the biggest targets the most, why... because that's what people do (everyone hit the big ugly!), plus I get a bit of schadenfreude from slapping around munchkins with my GM fiat stick.

As a GM of 20 years+ I know a little about numbers crunching. The thing is, taking anything to an extreme is silly. Sure maybe I take feats X, Y and Z to make my character powerful enough to fill the role I've designed him for, but I'll also consider feats A, B, and C because they are more in line with the character I'm trying to portray. To me the story told is the most important thing, not XP and equipment lists. I recognize that this is not the only way to play, nor is it objectively better, but I contend that I simply am not on DnDOG to play Diablo 3, if I want to crawl a dungeon I'll do that in a video game with flashy animations. It does the job better IMHO. The advantage of PBP, to me, is that it is more conducive to story telling than even table top due to the permanent record and written form of communication as primary. I've been able to run several incredibly complex plots in PBP that would never work with a group that meets ever 2 weeks (if lucky) that is also distracted by calls from wives, what football game is on, when the pizza is arriving, etc.

Here everyone can take their time to dump maximum story telling into the game without outside distractions because they are on the internet which means they've already set this time aside and if distracted they can simply walk away and return at a time to post when there is less distraction.

Anyway, I digress. I don't contend that optimizing is fundamentally useless, that's kind of taking the quote out of context. What I contend is that forcing yourself into a very specific niche where you are really straining on a choice between something that gives you a +1 to AC or something that is a better character choice, I'll go with the latter, because once you're powerful enough to be on par with the game and win some and lose some, then the rest of your character is fluff, and to me the fluff is the best part. Colorful characters are what make a world immersive, not equipment lists and stat bonuses. I agree that underoptimizing is also really bad form on the part of the player and GM, since the GM should step in if a player doesn't know how to craft a character on par with the rest of the party. Further, optimizing to the utmost extent usually creates a boring and stale character, not always, but it's usually a Mary Sue/Marty Stu which is flat and tastes of cardboard and generally has no place in my games, and the sub point I was making, is that if the character should get too big for their britches, I delight as a GM, in my ability to take such players/characters down a peg and remind them that there is a party and they need to stop trying to hog the spotlight every second of every minute of every...

Since I optimize for the character, not for winning, it changes the game significantly. I am not here to "Win" the RPG, I kind of find the very notion awful and missing the point entirely. I recognize some people are here to do exactly that, and good on them, I am glad that they like it, I just won't be sending them personal invites to my private games And you are right, I still play with them too, they are still here, and to be honest I am quite amazed by the popularity of PVP and crawls based on your numbers, it's shocking to me honestly... Anyway... at EE I run and play with all kinds of players. Some are borderline terrible, some are among the best players and GMs I've had the privilege to run with on both sides of the table, and the beauty of that is that I'm always learning something.

I do however consider tactics and thoughtfulness of character build to be important, and I will gladly accept that a character I have should die if that time comes, but I don't consider "winning" to be the point at all. The communal story told is what is important to me, even if that means my character of a long investment should die in a seeming random act of violence. It happens, and worlds can be cold, harsh and unforgiving, and as you said, sometimes the dice can beat up the most optimized of characters, even if the GM isn't beating you with their fiat stick.

I do agree though, that there is a massive problem if you have optimized and non-optimized characters mixed... that's how the whole character tier thing came about, identifying which classes simply where objectively the most powerful and which were the least. Anyone who has ever played a mixed party in Rifts knows all about power imbalance and how it can utterly ruin the possibility of good story telling in a game by letting superman come to gotham. That is bad form on the part of the GM for sure, and something I try to instill in GMs at the Academy.

After reading your extended explanations I think we're not that far off on agreeing on most everything, just stating it very differently and disagreeing about if PF is better than 3.5 or not for our purposes, which is, in my understanding of your concerns, a play style difference, which I can respect, I just don't agree with or appreciate, nor would I pass it on as advice.

[CE2JRH]

I've been thinking about this quite a lot either way; you can probably find posts between jj_wolven (or was it Loki? and I from 2 years ago about JaronK's Tier's system. The second post was written ~1 year ago, the former was half written 6 months ago, but you did inspire me to finish it...so...thank you.

I think our gaming experiences are vastly different, both IRL and on DNDOG. Aside from a few arena games where the point specifically was to avoid story, people in my gaming circles "optimize to make the character you would like to play" --- both these pieces were written with the "no optimization, never" crowd in mind (of which I have encountered quite a few). Whereas the "making stale characters because of too heavy an optimization focus" thing, I've not really encountered much at all, so I guess I haven't experienced it as a problem in the same way you have...*shrug*. I was pretty lucky with my RL group for the last 5 years, and DNDOG is a pretty awesome community.

Yeah, those were interesting numbers for the most popular games on DNDOG based on a small sample based on number of posts in the advertising thread, which obviously has some statistical error --- I didn't come up with something better in the quick/easy category. As for the idea of winning, I think it's entirely appropriate for some games, and entirely inappropriate for others --- Arena games, or Hvg3akaek's Hall of Fame Game, Heroes' Gauntlet, for example, I think, are better played with a "winning" mindset, being mechanics based games. (Heroes Gauntlet, hilariously in relation to your post about not being interested in a Diablo 3 DND campaign, is literally an attempt at a PBP version of Diablo 2. The combat system in 3.X [Pathfinder] is robust enough that people find that fun --- indeed, I recall the original incarnation being quite popular, though it didn't make it to 20 most discussed ad threads of all time).

It is amazing what this world produces, eh?

[WoLT]

I must say I think that may be the difference.

When I started gaming... back in those days rules systems weren't as well written. Creative yes, but rules weren't always worded as nicely to spec, plus we were kids so we only half paid attention to them. This led to lots of silly rules lawyering, silly GM fiat and other nonsense. By the time I graduated to PBP I went first to a competitor site and while their user interface is cleaner, their member base, not only in my experience, but also from reports of other that have been on both or still use both... well reportedly the members here are a bit more knowledgeable and mature, usually of course, there's always one

I can say for certain there are plenty of gamers that are of the munchkin variety and go out of their way to "win the RPG" which is a concept as a story teller, that I kind of find appalling. I can see how it would make sense in a PVP setting, but as I've said, if that's what I was looking for I'd hit up a video game.

To me the major advantage to PBP is the story telling aspect. The permanent record (never forget what happened last session), routine, and written form all give way to story telling, which is notably absent in the video game world which, even when choices are afforded, is still remarkably linear and on rails by comparison. Some games have pushed the boundaries of this, like Skyrim, but even then there is still an invisible wall and a definitive path to the game that can't be avoided, though to its credit gives players the option of how they want to complete the game.

In PBP though, the excitement of a story taking drastic and unexpected turns is precisely what makes it exciting and superior to me. In PVP games that exists but to a much lesser extent. It's usually the dice and stat blocks that determine and game fiat, rather than the imagination of the players and GM working together to tell a communal story.

I find as a GM one of the greatest thrills I get is when the players completely undo everything I've spent months preparing for with some brilliant idea that takes the story in a totally new direction, forcing me to rethink what I'm doing and reframe the whole story. As a GM that's the best kind of challenge I can get since I have total control of the universe... to see it unwound like that is brilliant and I love my players for it.

That said, I prefer story heavy games that use the stat blocks and equipment lists to facilitate story telling rather than replace it, which has been by and large the vast experience I have had with players both on and offline which may be why we were talking past each other as you said, due to having drastically different experiences.

For the record though, while the member base here and the guides I hand out to all new members help facilitate good RP skills in players and GMs, I do still encounter some people that... for lack of better words... don't know how to RP. While there is no "one right way" to RP, I tend to think there is definitely some people who don't possess good RP skills innately while others do.

For example, some players will hack anything in their path expecting zero repercussions and that they can just merilly chop their way to higher levels. In some games that works, in many it doesn't. A clever GM will use their murder sprees to good use in creating further story.

Currently in one of the EE games I'm playing in I'm currently playing a character that doesn't even necessarily want to fight with the designated BBEG because of various story factors. It's interesting

[Justice Delayed]

Jumping in here, I've always been a believer that optimization is in no way equivalent to poor roleplay. You can roleplay well with an optimized character or with a peasant. You can roleplay badly with either just as easily.

In my mind, one of the things to consider is that there is a different between something that is strong, powerful, specialized, or optimized and something that is broken. My current tabletop playgroup is mostly made up of players without a lot of background in optimization. But I run pretty high-level D&D and didn't really want to try to pull punches to the point where a Pal3/Clr4 would be something okay to have mechanically.

So the first two sessions weren't games. They were building exercises, surrounded by I think every WotC 3.5 book ever printed and a bunch of summary lists. The players had concepts, because even in high-powered gaming, I'm story-first. Then we went through the material and I showed them places where the mechanics support the characterization. Before anyone fought their first monster, we did one last round-up chat to make sure that everyone was comfortable with what they'd created, and knew how the tricky stuff worked.

So I've got a game with an incantatrix. I've got a game with a cleric who can spontaneously convert his spells to any of a laundry list of options (I want to say something like 40 or 50 spells from levels 1-9). I've got a volley archer. And so on. They are all strong builds. And they enjoy playing them. It's a Forgotten Realms game, and it's exciting to play the heroes in a land of heroism and magic. Because strong isn't broken and optimized isn't "rollplay over roleplay".

Broken does exist, though. There are thought bottles and cheaters of mystra and dark chaos shuffles. But not at my games. It's not supporting a character to say, "I want to have all the feats in the game, permanently." It's not supporting a character to say "I want to chain-cast XP-free miracles while being immune to all magic." It's not supporting a character to say, "I want to ignore the way classes actually work and just write some arbitrary numbers on the sheet and kill everything!" I've only once had a player who didn't understand the difference, and he's no longer someone I, or the rest of my group, chooses to game with.