Anti Optimization

>complaining about your paranoid delusions which have no basis in real life

Classic Veeky Forums

I've run a few games with optimized characters that basically threw off the balance of the game to the point where the one character does literally everything for the party and the rest just dick around on their laptops because why bother? My fault for not looking at the character build, but oh well. Live and learn.

I don't have a problem with it until it ruins the game for the other players. It's just a matter of working out what everyone wants to do prior to the game though, shouldn't be that hard for people to get along.

>against even the slightest amount of optimization?

Because the world is full of shitty people, and they're just as bad as the players who optimize for a certain trait/feature.
>You know. Taking thug, rogue, that one class from the book of weeaboo magic, and some others to really crank it up.

Wow. Taking a broken class and "others to really crank it up". Oh, goodness me. What a slight amount of optimization you've taken. So slight. Hardly even anything to worry about. Much small.

Did you min-max this post to shove as much hyperbole as you could in there?

Listen, talk to your DM, for some groups, everyone is going to want to be on the same power level:

brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293

That can be high or low or whatever. An optimized rogue can play with an unoptimized wizard just fine... sometimes.

What exactly counts as optimization with these types of people? If I'm a fighty dude and I put a 20 in my fighty stat, is that optimization? If I want to be good with a broadsword and take perks for it, is that optimization? Where's the line?

If you have fun it means you have optimized and have to get the fuck out.

My GM was really chill and for him it meant no infinite combos.

As if two-weapon fighters aren't screwed enough.

>Think up a character
>Use the rules to build stats and abilities that represent that character

Anyone who cares beyond that either way is a fag.
If your character is a good fighter, make him good at fighting.

I know a group that's exactly like that.

The guy literally considered the most powerful build for 3E to be a fighter that took toughness for all of his feats.

Do you mean players who would do things like stat dump to be 18/18/18 ?

I'd make my players use the standard stat array.

Because your class is already optimized.

rogue - disarm traps, backstab, stealth
fighter - highest attack of all classes, highest hit points.
wizard - spells, knowledge skills,
ranger - track, area knowledge, flora and fauna knowledge
etc etc

When you decide to further put yourself into an already established niche and then bitch about when GM gives challenges you can't approach because you put everything in one branch... then it is your fault. It isn't my kind of fun when rogue does 10d6 up to 6 times in a round.

Also it is funny how I can kill higher level characters with simple stuff. No ranger... they die of starvation, get lost. Nobody invests into ability to escape ropes or chains, all feats put into one specific weapon. Disarm him and watch him being useless.

D&D isn't my kind of game. Especially higher level ones. You can enjoy it if you want but don't expect everyone to have same opinion as yours and thinking their opinion doesn't have foundations.

My DM does this whenever he plays a character. He makes his character obnoxious, weak and generally a detriment to the party.

I asked him to make a good character. He makes a black orc who casually discusses eating elf babies. He would hiss at elves. This wasnt canonical to the setting, it was just his character being retarded. His interpretation. He also did it despite my telling him that doesnt work within the setting.

Another time he made a cleric of love. Again, specifically a good campaign, he convinced the rogue to murder another adventurer for his rapier, and committed the coup de grace with a cause critical wounds. Why? "My character was specifically about the harmful sides of love, the destructive and manipulative side"

He considers assigning all of your creation points as min-maxing and being good at something is the sign of a bad character.

Its to the point I refuse to play with him if he isnt GM'ing. Because he is an awful player to play beside, and to DM for.

The strangest part is most of the anti-optimizers I've met or heard about are almost always set off by something that does nothing but give martials bigger numbers in 3.5 while they completely ignore the insane shenanigans that even semi-competently played spell casters can get up to.

There is a serious powergamer in our group, but not only is he an excellent roleplayer, but our GM constantly finds ways around his powergaming. He's really good with his gun? Enemies take note and begin trying to engage him in melee, bosses may attempt to disarm him in melee range.

He's really tanky with his armor? Good thing a sunder check exists.

His magic is off the charts? Null magic, magic resistance, blocking the flow of arcane.

A clever GM and a realistic opposing force (in-game) with any semblance of intelligence would find ways to counter your most effective strategies, forcing you to mix up your strats.

I'm fine with an optimized character, if anything it makes it more fun. However, the optimization should be for a reason, and not just 8 different multiclass dips for maximal powergame benefits that do nothing for your backstory.

I kind of know this feeling. I had a wizard in my party who focused entirely on spells for knocking people out, charming them, etc. And then he got mad the one time that we went up against a pair of golems, because he didn't have any useful way to fight against them aside from one very weak spell.

I personally found it fun, since it was the one time I got to go up against an enemy that wasn't unconcious for the first three turns I was hitting it, but the wizard was very unhappy and the bard didn't enjoy plinking with a crossbow.

It can be a real problem if some players start treating the game as if it was a competitive game, rather than a cooperative one. Ideally you want to have fluff first, instead of focusing on an arbitrary ruleset. Sums it up better than I ever could.

>I can arbitrarily screw my players for petty bullshit reasons.
>Because I'm a douchebag.

> I put all my skill points into 4 skills
> I put all feats into one skill tree
> We step outside the city and nobody has tracking skill
> We are on a boat and somebody fells over. He has no ranks in swim.
> Try to haggle. Has no skills and store owner rips him off
> Expects to ride the horse like a mongol when he has no skills
> Call a GM a douchebag

Here is your reply

Only had one gm like this, who thought "Muh numbers" was the be all, end all of Pathfinder. So he was incredibly pissy and paranoid about the martial characters of the party breaking his game(which was everyone else because he not so subtly told us we should play martial characters).

Meanwhile I'm a Wizard wizarding it up and he basically let me run rampant all over his game because he was so focused on making sure the martials couldn't do anything.

I got thrown out of the group by the DM when I dropped a Hold Person on the BBEG, who showed up at our camp in the middle of the night to kill a PC or two to "show his superiority to us." And yes, the DM was planning on killing a PC or two, as said by him before the fight even started. Said BBEG also had a bunch of bullshit magic items that made him basically invincible against straight damage.

He got thrown out of the store a few weeks later when another new guy broke an encounter using magic, and the DM responded by screaming throwing a rulebook at said player. He missed and almost hit the store owner, who took it about as well as you'd expect, and now the DM is basically blacklisted from every game store in the area.

>fighter - highest attack of all classes, highest hit points.
That's not even correct, you dolt. Barbarian and Paladon have the same base attack bonus, and Barbarian has a bigger hit die.

What Fighters actually have are a stupid amount of feats - in theory giving them lots of versatility in combat, but in practice not all that useful when a Wizard can just toss down Enervation and ruin an encounter (nevermind metamagic fuckery).

That's some shitty optimization; how can you call yourself optimized if you can't survive basic adventuring scenarios?

In my experience, that's a lot closer to what you see from those overly-dedicated roleplayer types (the other extreme of the Stormwind Fallacy). "My character is a sheltered type who really doesn't *do* adventures, time to drag down everyone else's fun by making a mechanically incompetent character centered on a character concept inappropriate for 95% of D&D campaigns."

I have no clue what causes people to think a fat merchant with gout and an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation has room in a game about going into dungeons to kill dragons and loot their hoard. Same for GMs that okay that stuff then get huffy when said fat merchant doesn't want to adventure.

>If your character is a good fighter, make him good at fighting.
But that specifically justifies optimizing

That's not optimization, that's specialization.

>Character optimization is the concept of making characters most efficient at a task or for the game as possible.

so it is other term for specialization

>Decide I want my character to be good at something
>GM kills him off because lawl fuck you for trying to be good at something

Come on now.

This only happens and has only ever happened in D&D, specifically 3.P. Never have I ever even heard of something like this happening in another game system.

As a dm, I can say that some of it is based off memory and control logistics, I've run into dozens of people whose greatest joy is "winning" d&d and wod, and they tend to multiclass to such a degree that they outshine everything else, or they'll exploit vague class rules to cheat their way to victory. Such a relationship is cancerous to the game, and it's easier to disallow such practices at character creation than to solve it mid session when they're looking to exploit the situation at everyone's frustration.

are you playing to be stupid? rpg classes are made with specific areas they should excel at. Fighter never has shit health, armor, weapon skills. Rogue always has rogue skills.

You trying to put every resource into one thing so you can punch thing even harder when system gives you ability to punch things hard and then bitching that it is GMs fault...

No. I can optimize a character so he is good at literally everything, or good at such a broad range of subjects that generally does not encounter things he can't solve.

Except if a fighter does not spend feats on hitting things then he is garbage at hitting things. The game's math assumes you invest in it.

>Why are there so many gamers out there who are against even the slightest amount of optimization?
A gimpy character can be a mascot or 'useful hobbit' type. Maybe just a specialised tool, or even fodder for an acceptable story death. It's much easier to buff a specific character than nerf them.
A character who throws more than a little shade on a teammate is universally hard to take seriously.

Thus, most players and DMs are warier of players ahead of the curve than those lagging behind.

>mfw I optimize support characters
>mfw anti-optimizationfags blame everyone else for min maxing

I love DMs that punish min-maxing, they're usually too stupid to tell when I am trolling them.

There is no inherent problem in trying to make a PC mechanically more effective at what he does. A warrior wants to be a better warrior, a mage wants to be a better mage, etc.
>The problem is when optimization and mechanics take priority over the story and the character.
When the player only thinks in terms of rules and numbers, and fluff becomes almost irrelevant to him. He is not trying to make stats for a character, he is just trying to find the best combination of stats.
The powergaming problem is not a problem about what the player does or doesn't, we can all roleplay and optimize our PCs a bit. THe problem is how priorities are ordered.

*hard to accept
Bloody autocorrect.

>My character is a warrior who strives to achieve perfection in battle prowess, especially *thing*
>So he does everything to excel at *thing*, to the point of being obnoxious about it
Here's fluff for powergamer

Ugh, this shit's so obnoxious. I know some douche at our game store who gets pissy if you're playing any race that gives you a boost to that class's needed stats.

"Of course the half-orc player picks barbarian."

"Playing an elf? I bet you're playing a ranger or rogue too aren't you?"

"You minmaxers are gonna break the game! Why can't you guys play (insert unoptimized shitty build here) like me?! You're so unoriginal!"

>Later down the line...

"God damn it. Everyone elses character is so much stronger/better at something than my character. You minmaxers ruin everything!"

Then, you can roleplay a deconstruction of a though guy.

He has no social skill, no empathy, people fear him. He has no knowledge about religion, history, politics or even basic general culture, people think he is stupid, he can easly be decieved. He has no wisdom, no mental strenght of any kind. If you take his sword from him, he is helpless and his enemies soon realize this.

>He has no wisdom
A highly skilled fighter should have very sharp senses though

>Think up a character
>Use the rules to build stats and abilities that represent that character
>Fight breaks out
>Character dies

Good work.

Because it's easier for a DM who doesn't know too much about optimization and can't or won't put in the time to learn. It's playing to the lowest common denominator.

The alternative is often just as bad. Having just one player being optimized usually means he's hogging the spotlight - the other players get bored, fiddle around on their mobile/laptop and stop showing up to gaming night.
He's also breaking all of the DMs encounters, removing any challenge. If the DM makes the encounters harder all the unoptimized players die.

There are exceptions of course. Someone mentioned optimizing for support, and there are optimizers who will tune their build to the level of the party instead of going all out every time.

But given that DMs are people too and Veeky Forums people are often not the most socially competent you get misunderstandings, overdoing it, exaggarations and stuff like that.

>Getting the right feats and class abilities requires you to dump literally every stat and not spend your skill points.

I think an issue in this thread is that people are using a bunch of words interchangably i.e. optimizer, minmaxer, and powergamer. I've always taken those words to be degrees on the same scale: you've got the optimizers that want their character to be good at the things their character is supposed to be good at -- fighters fight, rogues rogue, etc.; then you have the minmaxer, who is really really good at a chosen aspect of their class at the expense of other aspects, such as fighters that can fight really really well with a spiked chain, but is less than impressive without it, or rogues that focus on the silver-tongued aspect and ignore stealth, traps, or rifling through pockets; and lastly you have the powergamers that exploit a VERY SPECIFIC build to have ultimate power usually but not always at the expense of story and logic, such as a fighter that is cross-trained in Elven Jiujitsu and Orcish Polefighting and just happened to hail from the distant land of not!Japan because that's the only way they can have a character that deals +800 damage on a charge.

Whether you agree where I've put the lines in the sand or what the cutoff point is or which name goes to which class of player, it's important to recognize middle grounds between Godking Punpun and Urist McMudfarmer: Incomptent Adventurer and Local Dissapointment.

Every fighter I've played has had decent wisdom/willpower/whatever and had no problems mixing it up with either archery or hand to hand fighting as well as his sword. Get on my level, scrub.

I think the big thing is that a lot of times, optimization is mixed up with people who want to play obscure, exotic fantasy races or a confusing mixture of different classes that are contradictory thematically or story wise for the purposes of getting some weird power or effect. Playing the race or class as a character is often irrelevant to these people, as long as they have the cool power.

Personally, I'm fine with people optimizing to be good at their role, playing more weird classes or races, whatever, as long as they play their character to the best of their ability and try to make some sense in the world. The only people I have issues with are those that treat their characters entirely as a sack of stats or who build specifically for the purpose of invalidating other characters or trying to be the protagonist of the whole story.

>Why are there so many gamers out there who are against even the slightest amount of optimization?

Because I play role-playing games, not video games.

Ahh, elitism. That's actually a very good reason. You're so much more superior that anyone that pays more attention to numbers than you do.

Especially "solving every problem with a spell"
How is that not THE WORST kind of powergaming - making others worthless?

I mean it's a cooperative game.

Becasue classes aren't equal.

From what I can tell you're simply arguing the point that your players don't seem to understand the purpose of the various skills, and you need to educate them.

You could also have a hard-on for making players feel useless as opposed to challenged.

this desu

Me and my group are here to enjoy a story with our characters.

If we wanted to do a dungeon crawl then we would do that and we have.

...

To me the biggest problem is when people just pick what they think is better rather than what they want to play, I have a friend in my party who picked Cleric and now he's bitching about his decision all the time and trying to get his character killed, he should just have picked the rogue which he was obviously more interested to play as but no, he wanted to be MVP

> Gamers
What a fucking faggot term.

Also ttrpgs that allow builds, unbalanced archetypes, powergaming, metagaming are cancer and babby-tier.

Just do some proper pen and paper.

Did you really just say that Swordsage is broken?

If you're going to use this argument then please, don't use one of the most crunchiest games for your argument.

No seriously, the game assumes that your character is optimized and doesn't give you a lot of wiggle room to be anything else but optimized unless you're a mage.

I mean fuck, even if you wanted a character with proficiencies in swimming, haggling, tracking, etc. you only get like 3-4 + INT skill points and even then, you only get so good with certain skills if it's not on your class list.

It's a question of degree. The Stormwind Fallacy is a fallacy alright, but too much optimization /can/ hurt roleplaying. Such as mashing a hundred different obscure races, templates and prestige classes into a barely recognizable, retarded mess with no flavor just to get some broken powers (just look into any Giant in the Playground optimization threads). Or throwing a downright fit whenever the GM bans some third party material you wanted to use, or limits your character mechanically even for a good reason.

I guess some people just blow it out of proportion. Like how Veeky Forums does with most things, you know?

I hate it when people take options that are heavily associated with certain fluff points but don't actually try to play out the fluff. If a class or special ability is a secret held by a specific faction, then you better fucking be a member of that faction or have a really good explanation to learn it.

>Build a Diplomancer
>Refuse to ever leave the city
>Convince others to do the campaigning for me.
>Get rich, fuck hos

You want to not play a game? Sure, let's not play the game.

The 3.5 GitP forums are pretty fun in their insanity and usually mention that TO doesnt have a place in a real game

The 5E board is full of autistic retards that refuse to believe the Bladelock or Champion fighter are weaker than other options bitching about rules and whining about optimization like an old AD&D grognard even though they started with 4E

If 4meme taught me anything it is this;
The only way to play TTRPGs correctly is by not playing.

That's why I love one of my DM's. He always finds a way to counter me and keeps me on my toes.

I've only been able to play a caster class once with him and it was like a game of chess. The restrictions were so fun. Everything by the book, every special use of a spell requiring studying the spell.

By around level 16 I had managed to set up a large empire based around using undead as unskilled labor and selling the items. Eventually I started to crash the local market and economy, so I began to set up trade agreements with the local guilds.

To the Smiths I sold a variety of processed metals. To the traveling merchants I sold clean water, alcohol, and salt. With the Thieves guild, I acted as a fence, taking in stolen goods and giving them raw materials, semi finished goods, or gold. I also acted as a way to launder money, since I had the time to smelt the gold, restamp it for different kingdoms, and then handle it or turn it in a tumbler to wear it down.

>supporting ivory tower game design.
Literally the only way for "optimization" to exist in a system is trap options.

Yes, but it exists in 99% of systems because essentially every system with options has not all options equal.

FFS.

Have
You
Tried
Not
Playing
D&D?

Optimization is a thing in most systems. Not just D&D.

Have you tried playing TSR D&D?

Again things that don't even stem from D&D have this issue.

You can't play Variant Human. You can't multiclass without a story reason. You must roll your stats. Stop crying about it, you fucking faggot.

It's way, way easier to powergame oWoD than D&D.
Max willpower with FBP
Take generation 5
Max out your dex
Invest heavily in dodge and a combat skill
Now make the rest of your build; whatever you want.

This.
There is a difference between being good at the thing you want to be good at, and exploiting rules gaps and shady words to be BETTER than other people, or try to "win" at pnp games.

Oh yeah, why would you ever make your mighty warrior mighty? I mean Conan, Aragon, Seigfried, Beowulf, the Gray Mouser, Sinbad and other heroes of the fantasy literature and myths that most games are supposedly emulateing were all such weaklings and had no great skill compared to the nameless mooks they fought afterall

shh... don't confuse them with facts, without their strawman to guide the way they'll get lost on the yellow brick road

>still playing 3.PF

Isn't that, like, the opposite of optimization?

The problem is that some people have paranoid delusions about optimization, too. Like, you design a character to be really good at something and nothing else, and that something is really critical for the group and no one else can or wants to do it, but the GM has a hissy fit anyways.

Cry more.

I've got nothing to cry about. I don't play shitty games where you must optimize to make a suitable character.

Most games are like this, with the exception of combat. I do try to make sure everyone is useful in combat and that no one outshines the rest, but other than that, In my experience, only 1 person specializes in each party role anyways. Only the party face specializes in talking to people. Only the party tank specializes in taking damage for other people. Only the party healer specializes in healing. Etc etc. Because of this, optimization just means they're good at these roles and strengthen the party instead of dragging it down.

I rarely see jacks of all trades, and I usually actively discourage them because I always see the player regret their decision later. Being slightly above mediocre in a lot of areas is very rarely satisfying to play.

OP, I think you have confused "Optimized", "Min/Maxed" and "Munchkin" in your skull meat there. The difference is narrow, but important.

An Optimized character is one who exists not only to do something well, but also to support their team and cover for the weaknesses of the other players. Any role in a party can be optimised. An Optimized character is one who, under normal circumstances, can be reliably expected to "do the thing" that their character has been built to do, and, under abnormal circumstances, still function as a party member.

A Min/Maxed character is one who has attempted to transcend mere optimization and become "the thing" that a normal character would merely do. A Min/Maxed character is one who has chosen to minimize their weaknesses, often by piling them all into one area, and maximize their output in another, by stacking as many bonuses as they are able into that one thing. This character is rarely able to cope if they are in a situation where they cannot do "their thing", and equally unable to provide any coverage for other party members if they need an extra hand doing something unrelated to "the thing".

Finally, the munchkins, blight that they are... they build their characters to do everything better than anyone else. If a game system includes an exploitable option, they will use it to such a degree that it is no longer recognizable. Munchkins either claim to have no weaknesses, or actually are invincible because of the very specific wording that is in an obscure bit of the rules. They are a blight on the gaming table who are only interested in themselves.

>3.5 is the only game where people minmax

guess I'll try WoD then since playing any other game will sove the problem

oh look, you're a retard.

Fuck that whole book. It's essentially half-a-food into 4th edition and I just don't like the flavor. The power issues are beside the point.

Sometimes, you wanna play a commoner.

But the thing is, to actually PLAY a commoner/other Sub-T3 build/class in a way that you don't suck eggs, you need to practically pull off a perfect play, at which point you're optimising yourself towards a specific playstyle.

I won't go into great detail, but the only "anti-optimization" I've encountered is from players so deadset on making novel character concepts that it hamstrings their ability to play well in a team. Not That Guy material or anything, but it could be a little exasperating.

The current example I'm playing with is a "support" Sorceror. Cute concept, but playing a Bard would get most of the same mileage and requires similar enough attributes. He didn't want to compromise his vision with bard songs, wizard spellbooks, etc.

Ironically, I think if he took more creative liberties with how his character concept worked with class abilities, he'd have a more useful, focused character with minimal changes to his RP.

Specialization is picking a task to be good at. Optimization is choosing the best stats/gear/class/whatever that gives you the optimal performance for that task. In good system, the difference between most optimal and the next most optimal is small enough that people can use both builds without sacrificing much if the like the fluff of the second build more.

Being good at everything (or a wide array of things that are not closely related to each other) is not optimization, that's powergaming/munchkinism.

I am as well, I just happen happen to enjoy stories better when playing from the viewpoint of a character that's good at his supposed profession.

The basic human in 5e is the blandest shit ever

but underpowered characters is my fetish. i also always choose hardest mode when presented with a hoice

The game is as hard as the DM wants it to be regardless of your choices. Choosing "hard mode" is thinking like it's a videogame

Yes, I am an elitist and you are beneath me. Nice argument.

Because I'm not a child who needs the biggest stick? My character's strength is entirely derived from MY narrative, not "muh 20 str on muh character sheet".

well i play 5e and I feel like crazy 3.x optimization isn't necessary at all, and as a player and a DM i get annoyed by the guy who does a dozen stupid things in combat just to maximize muh deeps because??

optimization and shit is a videogame/3.x mindest. It really doesn't have a place in 5e.