I know I'm taking weak options and there are way better/cheaper ones...

Lots of systems.

>They can't rollplay AND roleplay at the same time
It doesn't matter which one you're doing if you're only doing one. So long as you refuse to acknowledge both sides of the coin, you're doomed to be a shit player.

Because people who do it play primary roleplay characters in systems that encourage optimization and mastery. Basically it's the case of player not being autistic enough for his game of choice.

another user, and forever dm by choice:
No, you have a party thats not interested in having fun together, and value rolls more than roleplay. You can have a character with insanely minmaxed fighting abilities and he'll maybe shine in combat, but a good dm will give every single party member their own ways of expressing themselves and challenge. I dont have powergamers in my group, but when one plays a combat heavy guy, I let him shine in battles, and just play out the story strengths of the others.

>Early into tabletops, get into a Gurps/Heroes game, forgot which exactly
>Make a fun character for it
>Couple other players minmax the fuck out of their characters, have zero fluff skills or anything despite it being said to have some
>Of course they're DEX skill monkeys that are invincible and 9/10 times crit everything
>DM just makes everything also DEX skill monkeys that do the same exact things in order for anything to be a challenge
Well that sucked. Dex is way too powerful of an attribute in those systems. Either you're a mage, or a dickass rogue. If you try going strength or generally be a bigger, tankier character it's fucking pointless since everything will dodge every blow you make and slice your neck off with their many crits

Play a system that isn't shit with players who care about things other than combat.

I agree that he's a fag, but
>It's totally possible to have one character who's way weaker at a certain job than another character, who has the same level/XP/whatever.

>THAT's what you have to worry about.
That's symmetric balance, which is possibly even worse than imbalance because it means there's no mechanical distinction between party members. What you should worry about is whether every character has an area they're good at that isn't completely outshone by another party member.

Bullshit. Yes, a GM can put in extra effort to make an unbalanced party work, but the very fact they have to work harder for it for little actual benefit shows why systemic imbalance sucks.

OP is still full of shit in general because in most well designed systems you can pick things that look cool and seem fluffy and end up with a perfectly functional character, but your counterpoint is just as wrong.

How does "lel play a different system" help when basically everyone wants to jack off to Pathfinder or whatever?

Even if you go for the most popular, 5e, you've still got people whining about how their "super cool" not-Avatar elemental monks are getting outshone by the guys who took Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter.

It can't be helped.

If this is a serious problem, drop the system. Play one that isn't about MUH BUILDS and MUH OPTIONS.

Find out if its the player or the system. If it's the system, change it.

If it's the player, get a new one.

Why are you so mad?

>work harder

Are you guys morons? The only time system imbalance even matters is if you keep trying to be rigid with it. It's only "extra effort" if you're not already loose and adapting the game like you should already be doing.

If this is too hard for you, you're a special kind of stupid, because even a moron can figure out how to make a game balanced when they literally control every single number.

There is a difference between adapting a game to the parties particular skills and competence and dealing with wildly imbalanced party members.

The former is standard practice, the latter is extra bullshit you don't want to deal with. The post at is a perfect example of a bullshit situation which a GM can probably deal with, but shouldn't fucking have to.

It is an utter ballache designing encounters for that kind of group, because either they're so ridiculously dangerous the weaker members of the group can't contribute at all to give a challenge to the stronger player, or they're so weak the strong character can just massacre them, making the weaker characters feel no less useless.

A GM has better things to be doing with their time, creating interesting and enjoyable scenarios, adding flavour and fun to the game. Any time wasted trying to deal with intra-party balance is a complete waste, and good systems let you avoid that.

If you're having headaches over game balance, you're doing it wrong. If you're even worrying about numbers you're doing it wrong.

One player's numbers are too low? Bump them up. Justify it if you need to, but you don't really need to justify it. At no point are you beholden to the rules, nor are you somehow doing the players who stuck to the rules a disservice, because the point of character creation shouldn't be to make the strongest character possible, but to create a balanced party of interesting characters.

>didn't communicate at all with your players during character creation

Then don't complain about any game issues that stem from character creation.

Overall, I don't really care too much about how "balanced" a game is as long as I like its mechanics, because balancing is easily done and far less of an issue than most rule-slaves believe it to be.

This is coming from someone who started his roleplaying career with narrative games, so I can understand if you have a "BUT THE RULE ARE GOD" mentality, but that's you just being stupid.

If you have to actively tweak the rules of a system to make them function the way they're intended, the rules of the system are bad.

Yes, the GM can fix it and tweak it, but once again- That's extra effort the GM shouldn't have to be making if the system was better designed.

I'm all for tweaking rules, but I'd rather focus my efforts on creating things which are interesting, exciting and engaging rather than having to fuck with the system just to make it function as intended.

>If you're even worrying about numbers you're doing it wrong.
Fuck off. This is how you get paranoia combat and caster supremacy.

>play an unbalanced game
>spend 15 minutes getting everyone to the necessary level of competence

>play a balanced game
>spend 15 minutes making maps, statlines, interesting abilities for the dudes, and generally improving quality of life
I know which one I'd rather run.

>didn't communicate at all with your players during character creation

Nobody said this

>"BUT THE RULE ARE GOD"

Or this

Please reply to actual points next time, not strawmen.

If you're not tweaking the rules, you're not doing your job. Tweaking the numbers for a better experience is something you should be doing anyway, not as a final resort.

>play a game you think is balanced
>slavishly stick to the rules, when you could be providing a superior experience with no real additional effort since adjusting numbers should be second nature and what you should be doing anyway

>play a game you don't particularly think is balanced
>not worry about sticking with the numbers provided, roll with what comes your way, be super cool and everyone loves you

A really easy choice right there.

If you've got crazy imbalances before you start the game, you didn't communicate with your players properly, or worse, are slavishly following the rules while ignoring that even the designers weren't stupid enough to believe their ruleset should be played as is.

You guys need to learn how to actually play roleplaying games, instead of playing rollplaying games.

Ahh, right, you're a troll. Good work up until now, I honestly thought you were sincere, but the complete lack of actual argument/repeating buzzwords and assertions really showed your hand.

You're probably the rollplaying OP who doesn't understand just how meaningless trying to build "strong" characters in a cooperative roleplaying game is.

Tell us more about how the Stormwind Fallacy is real, and how you're actually a really good roleplayer even though you're really just a powergaming fag who doesn't care about having a balanced party.

Most min-maxing/powergaming builds are just highly specific bullshit that gives a big pile of dice for powergamerfags to jack off over but relies on perfect conditions and equipment and a scenario that's suited to the abilities. A single roadblock and the whole thing can fall apart like that super-mounted charger build that falls apart if you make them tired or don't hand them a clear straight line red carpet to charge in.
Of course if you don't let powergamerfags have all the specific equipment and minmaxing for their perfect build and don't only throw out encounters that are easily defeated by their highly specific capabilities then they'll just screech and whine that you're cheating to pander to the evil dummy sjws who didn't specialise themselves into a corner. Just look at this very thread.

>I have never run a game before: the post
If the game has one guy who hits things with sticks and another guy who can end encounters in one move, there's going to be some guys who are stronger than others.

>Why is there a point of pride in making overpowered characters?
Because then you're useful, the fuck kinda question is that?

Who the fuck would go into a cooperative tabletop game and decide "y'know what, I want to suck dick and be a huge liability to my party in every way, shape, and form."

Sounds pretty selfish desu.

Well, what if I want to roleplay a very capable and competent character, user?
Gee, you're totally ruining my experience.

>If I repeat what he said, I'll look legit and make him look silly, aren't I teh smartest ever?

For the record, people would rather play characters who are useful than characters who are dead weight. This is true for any game where the focus is on the player's cooperating together to achieve a goal.

That's only if your idea of playing a "powergaming build" is some dumbass fighter and not an ultra-flexible god-wizard.

I just got done bitching at Yugioh players about how idiotic they are. (Pot of Greed is too powerful but apparently Maxx C isn't.) Meanwhile I see the same exact shit when it comes to rpgs. Guess it's just a virgin thing in general.

>Tome of Battle? Get that weeb shit outta here! How dare you be able to hit things really well?
>Oh... save or dies every round? T...that's okay. Wizards are meant to be powerful cause they study magic!

Why do you think the choices you make while building a character have any influence on that?

Oh, you wanted to be able to put all your enemies to sleep every single encounter? Too bad undead don't sleep. Should have talked with the GM before you decided to make a single-minded zero-fun character that is also now going to be useless in 4/5 battles.

I don't roleplay, I swoleplay.

Why do you think they don't?

Okay, I guess I'll use one of the OTHER SoL/SoD spells I have in my arsenal.

Color Spray

i guess we're just going to have to tire you out. Thank god there's plenty of cheap healing potions lying around to keep the rest of the party fresh and active and a time limit to keep you from resting too often.

Gotta conserve those spells a little now, don't ya?

I still find it hard to understand the logic of people trying to say systems don't matter.

Where's the benefit to that? What do you gain from excusing lazy design work and making more work for GMs and players in having to bodge bad systems into functioning?

It doesn't make the fun you have with them bad, or the effort you put in meaningless, it's just acknowledging facts and that there are better and worse ways of doing things from a system design perspective.

Rope Trick
Mage's Magnificent Mansion
Secure Shelter
Tiny Hut

Not to mention staffs, wands, scrolls, and other magic items that would allow me to cast spells without using anything from my spell list.

But, y'know, thanks for the potions, I guess.

The absolute worst are the rollplayers that copy a CharOp build that requires multiclassing four times with three prestige classes and doesn't actually function until a certain level.

Every time I've seen this tried in game the character looks like an ADD faggot that can't decide what he wants to do with his life and is completely worthless until he gets that one ability that ties the build together.

Is that Caster? Can I touch the fluffy tail?

System BALANCE doesn't really matter all that much. That's something ultimately up to the group and the GM.

If you like a game's main style or theme or its core mechanic or even just the art, that's far more important than the question of whether or not you can fiddle with the numbers, because the answer to that question is "Are you retarded? Of course you can."

Remember, most popular games are hilariously unbalanced, even the ones people here act like a power gamer would never be able to unravel. Back in the day, while balance was an interesting idea, it was hardly the most important one, and the general understanding was that regardless of how well-balanced the game is out of the box, the end users are ultimately responsible for how it ends up in actual play. In fact, there's plenty of examples of games that don't even pretend to care about balance between characters, like Gamma World or any other system with random character creation.

>System BALANCE doesn't really matter all that much.
t. retard

Try playing a game like BESM with a GM who doesn't know the system inside and out. Completely innocuous abilities can break the game in half.

You didn't even answer my question. What is the benefit to defending and excusing imbalance? It doesn't actually do anything positive for you. Even if imbalance isn't that bad, balance is implicitly better.

What about that time limit? I don't see you addressing that.

Also, what magic items? Who said you could buy them, or had the time or resources to craft them?

Please. You're trying to argue with the Omnipotent creator of the universe. If you actually want to start having fun, you'd best learn how to work with the group.

I remember playing besm for the first time. My guy had an accurate melee attack, an accurate ranged attack and fuck all else. He was so useless.

Spending points on skills was a mistake

That would honestly hold more water if we weren't talking about D&D 3.PF, where a mage could theoretically do everything at no cost while a martial has to do everything right in character building just to end up at the bottom of the barrel, doing one thing well until after level 5 where that strategy no longer works.

Imbalanced gameplay is a mark against the system's quality because the time the GM is spending looking over his player's shoulder is time that the GM is not spending on the campaign.

Ever wonder why all games are not just perfectly balanced?
Because there's often costs to things being balanced, sacrifices made in one way or another.

The most basic one is variety. If you have everything be the same, everything is balanced, but everything is dull and boring.

Games with more variety tend to be more unbalanced, but they also are more interesting.

contrary to other people's responses to this post, as a seasoned DM, he's completely correct about balance being up to the DM.

the only reason a DM couldn't balance out characters if he wanted to is because he's not creative enough to figure out encounters/challenges/events that draw out strengths of weaker players or punish stronger players while being subtle enough to make it look like that's not what's happening.

A GM doesn't need to know the system so much as they just need to know how to play the game, something that is often at odds with the system itself.

Ok fuckface.

Let's see how you balance out a monk, druid, cleric, and wizard party without being hilariously contrived.

You're completely missing the point. 'Can' does not mean 'Should have to'.

gets it in one

>Imbalanced gameplay is a mark against the system's quality because the time the GM is spending looking over his player's shoulder is time that the GM is not spending on the campaign.

not enough information at all. there are a million ways to build each of those characters, any of them could end up being the strongest/weakest build. sounds like a fun party, though.

Combat maneuver Monk, 2 CoDzillas, and a Batman Wizard. Good fucking luck.

>You're completely missing the point. 'Can' does not mean 'Should have to'.
the way I see it, if encounters are usually solved in the same way by the same characters, you aren't making interesting enough encounters. I do believe you 'should' shake up your encounters and present problems to different PCs at different times as the DM.

OK, faggot.

*Snap*
They're balanced now. Just like that.
Just had to talk to the players a little, give the monk a boost in a few areas, adjust/remove a few spells from the spell lists, and bam, everyone has fun.

Wow. So hard. And I don't even need to know what edition or even game you're asking about.

Yeah, because you can't. The monk won't ever be anything but worse then the druid's CLASS FEATURE.

>rewriting huge swaths of the system
>not spending the same time on the campaign

Okay.

I agree, but that seems completely unrelated to my point.

Building interesting encounters that force people to engage with them in different ways is an entirely separate thing to wrangling core system balance into cooperating.

Yeah, I have no idea why people get their heads so far up their asses about this sort of thing.

That's not even close to enough. "A few areas" for one of the worst classes in the game. Fuck's sake.

This is especially hilarious given that most GMs aren't, you know, game designers, and that half arsed thrown together houserules are just as likely to break things worse instead of fix t hem.

easy, magic nullifying/reversing beast of some sort would do it, having them encounter a group of things with similar/superior intelligence that ambush casters in the middle of an encounter, presenting them with a sudden quickly moving horde, this is just off the top of my head if I had to figure out for a session and put time into it I could come up with dozens more.

git gud at DMing.

None of that makes the Monk any less useless

Any of that shit fucks the monk way worse then anyone else.

I've seen monks that basically operate like a proto-goku at higher levels, with movement speeds and focus unrivaled by other characters in a party. if you can't think of a situation where such skills are useful, you are uncreative as a DM.

Again, I have magic items that would allow me to cast spells without depleting my spell list.

Also, creating magic items in D&D take a day for every 1000gp of the base price and I would have however much money would be required for my WBL.

I mean, unless you're going for 24/7 never-ending combat, we're going to have downtime and if we're constantly fighting monsters day-in and day-out then I'm going to get the money to produce my own magic items sooner or later.

Unless you're going to GM fiat that I'm not able to use my class's abilities just because you're butthurt that I chose a mage.

>You're trying to argue with the Omnipotent creator of the universe.
Wew lad

>magic nullifying/reversing beast of some sort would do it
Instant conjurations ignore this entirely, among other things.
>having them encounter a group of things with similar/superior intelligence that ambush casters in the middle of an encounter
You mean the characters with way higher durability and defense than the Monk, plus features that make it exceptionally difficult to ambush them?

If you want to talk about gitting gud you should actually know what you're talking about in the first place.

Adjusting a game isn't as hard as you are pretending it is. "Should have to" isn't some huge chore, adjusting the game anyway is just a small part of the GM's job anyway.

He's coming up with custom abilities and custom enemies, adjusting weaker traps to fair better against stronger characters, making little changes throughout the game because at the end of the day he ultimately controls just how well the party fairs against everything anyway.

I hate to be bursting your bubble like this, but your character's mechanics are ultimately meaningless, and that's a good thing. You should be focusing on coming up with cool characters, interesting plans, and exciting maneuvers, instead of worrying about eking out a few points of power in order to try to one-up the other players or a guy who literally controls the entire universe.

not at all, the monk could be able to go for the magic nullifying/reversing beast's weak spots, be the last man unrestrained during an ambush, or be the one able to pull the party out of an oncoming horde.

you guys are uncreative, sorry. git gud.

So...take away the monk's magic items too, which fucks him even worse and doesn't stop the magics that ignore nullfying/reistance, ignore the monk to target the actual threats anyway, a moving horde which is perfect bait for an AoE or two.

Fan fucking tastic.

In my terrible experience with a group I never want to share a table with again, overcompensating was rarely an issue; I saw instead half-assed bandaids to the system's balance issue that Paizo would be proud of.

Oh cool I can swap weapons without wasting two actions (only one this time!) and my fighter gets 3+INT skill points rather than 2+INT? Wow I'm definitely on par with the Druid and Conjuration Wizard now, lemme suck that dick of yours as thanks!

>Instant conjurations
not nullifying. git gud. if there was a problem, modify the beast to counter it.

>You mean the characters with way higher durability and defense than the Monk
not DEX sav or movement. if you can't think of anything that draws out these strengths, git gud.

>be the last man unrestrained during an ambush
Wizards very rarely lose inish, because they have a high dex, free feats because they need very little, *and* fucking nerveskitter.

You only continue to prove you have jack and shit idea of how this actually works. And that's just the most obvious.

>>rewriting huge swaths of the system

A few boosts to a character and a few spell adjustments are hardly a big deal, especially since those are going to come up anyway when discussing your characters through creation.

The best part is, it can all be done later, even in the middle of a battle, without it being a big deal or any real effort.

You're really overestimating the difficulty of the task you put forward. Just because you personally are stupid does not mean everyone else has to be.

>but your character's mechanics are ultimately meaningless,
Fucking trash tier cancer GM detected. Get the fuck out with this shit.

Building interesting encounters is divorced from the relative strength of the party.

A party of martials encountering a Troll, when the party has no means of dealing fire damage, is something that's potentially a TPK unless you throw them a bone or something.

A party of mages encountering a Troll, when every mage class has a means of dealing fire damage, is going to turn it into a curb-stomp battle, especially when you have a Cleric and a Druid on hand to play front-line fighters.

>in the middle of a battle

Oh fuck you.

>Be blown out, has nothing other then screaming Get Gud

Well, thanks for proving you have literally nothing. And use proper capitalization, you little shit.

>I have never played a proper game before, ergo, all games are shitty when they're balanced.

if you make a beast that the monk can't kill that's meant to bring out his strengths, when that's your plan, you're uncreative as a DM. git gud. it is perfectly concievable a monk would be able to go for a certain kind of creature's weakpoint if they could figure it out that causes caster's to take damage when casting by AoE.

increase the hordes speed/amount.

git fucking gud, I'm starting to feel embarrassed for Veeky Forums.

>not DEX sav
Useless if you don't actually have anything to use with it.
>or movement.
Druid has by FAR the highest movement speed of any base class in the game between Wild Shape and Longstrider.

He's trolling, there's no possible he's literally this fucking stupid.

Okay then. If it's so easy, fix 3.5. Tell me, in a few easy, simple steps, how you solve caster supermacy, fix the CR system, allow Martials to be competitive... All of it. Now.

Also, in response to >your character's mechanics are ultimately meaningless

No, fuck you. This is a Roleplaying Game, and that last part still matters. If I want to play a game where mechanics are irrelevant, I'll play an ultra-light indie title.

And before you call me a rollplayer, no, fuck you. I enjoy playing characters as fully fleshed out people, which is why the character sheet is important. A character sheet isn't separate to your character, it's part of them- A representation of their capabilities and competences, a frame of reference for how they interact with the world.

My characters sheet is what lets them interact with the world differently to other characters beyond pure RP, and having unique or interesting capabilities that are mechanically meaningful is part of the fun.

There's room for systems which go the other way, as I said, but if you're playing a crunchy system then your entire attitude completely ignores one of the strengths of that type of system, meaningful character distinction beyond pure RP.

ANYTHING THE MONK CAN DO THE DRUID OR CLERIC CAN DO BETTER YOU INGORNAT LITTLE SHIT

I rarely see wizard builds with higher dex saves than monks. if you designed an ambush to let the monk stand out and you FAILED, git gud. obviously you didn't present a proper kind of challenge for the wizard.

then why are you throwing trolls at mages all the time? git gud.

not at all. it is completely true that if you can't design an interesting encounter that can draw out a weaker character, you are uncreative and you need to 'git gud'. quit being bitter about it and git gud instead.

>Useless if you don't actually have anything to use with it.
then make something they can do with it. dururururrrrrrrp.

assuming they aren't fighting something that causes them damage when they try to cast.

except move/dodge/focus.

>it is perfectly concievable a monk would be able to go for a certain kind of creature's weakpoint
Actually, no they couldn't, there are not only no rules for this, but the skills that would determine this if it existed vastly favor CoDzillas over Monks due to their much higher Spot checks and the possibility of having much higher Knowledge checks, to say nothing of how much higher a Cleric's attack bonus is going to be.

Wow, you're a special kind of fag.

Those magic items? I'm glad you're using up XP and gold on those, but those are hardly limitless, and monsters are. You'd be surprised how quickly wands run out, especially when hard pressed.

And still, we're talking in the hypothetical, you retard. Yes, I could even flat out say "You don't have the time to make the items, you're in the middle of a warzone, and where are you even going to buy the materials you need to craft those items? You're not building them out of gold coins, you idiot."

>Unless you're going to GM fiat that I'm not able to use my class's abilities just because you're butthurt that I chose a mage.

You mean using GM fiat to balance things, or more importantly to teach you a lesson about how you trying to have an advantage is absolutely meaningless.

Seriously, omipotent creator of the universe. If you want to play a interesting mage, great. If you want to be a dumb cunt, expect complications.

>your character's mechanics are ultimately meaningless, and that's a good thing
it's a good thing insofar as it enables us to ignore the rotting carcass of a system that hangs over all interplayer interactions, digging its stench in deeper and deeper
but the fact that the carcass is there in the first place is a fucking problem. Maybe not for the people who've gone noseblind to it, but to people with sensitive senses of smell or who only moonlight in RPGs, it's fucking repulsive. Can't we for ONCE have a system that isn't broken out the box and an encouragement to the worst tendencies of humans/gamers, that we don't have to handwave as often as possible in order for people to go about the business of character development and cinematics?

Nothing the Monk can do is impossible for a Cleric or Druid to do.

Hell, they'd probably have an easier time of doing unarmed attacks since they can buff themselves, and the Druid is also going to have an animal companion that can potentially do shit like make a free trip attack on a successful bite or make a free grapple whenever they hit with their claws.

You've failed to actually show how to 'get gud' other then throwing a tantrum as I've pulled apart your plans with standard wizard toolbox.

This is not specialized stuff, this is things a wizard would carry around on the regular.

Look up nerveskitter, you ignorant motherfucker. Actually learn how overwhelmingly good casters are, and how dogshit monks are.

Get gud you little shit.

>3.PF
this is your specific problem.

regardless, this is why I said I needed to know more about the builds. find the monk's strength, he will have one, and utilize it to create an interesting encounter. it's that simple. git gud.

present them with a creature that causes casting damage by AoE to shut them down, I've already said this many times and I've done this before in campaigns.

not at all, refer to my many posts with explanations and examples. live in a fairytale land where I haven't presented arguments all you want, idc.