Why did the Paizo developers sabotage their own playtesting by disregarding mathematical analysis...

Why did the Paizo developers sabotage their own playtesting by disregarding mathematical analysis? It seems harmful to the functionality of Pathfinder.

Entirely to piss you off so you'd complain about it for years on end.

Because functionality isn't and was never the point. Pathfinder exists to appeal to fans of D&D 3.5, and fixing the math/improving the system would directly harm that appeal. Making a better game would actively hurt their efforts to market to their primary demographic, because a huge chunk of that demographic is so absolutely invested in the system that any significant divergence will automatically be seen as bad, regardless of the actual impact it has.

Your theorizing could be missing significant factors that a real-world test would not.

But mostly because Paizo is bad and dumb.

Basically this. They never set out to fix any of 3.5's problems, which is probably for the best, because they wouldn't be able to do that anyway. Fixing 3.5's problems would require ripping out the game's guts and rearranging them to the point that it would no longer even vaguely resemble the game on which it is based.

Plus, Jason Bulmahn is for-real incapable of ever admitting he was wrong about anything or has ever made any mistakes in his entire life. I'm pretty sure if he did, he would explode in a shower of gore. I hate Sean K. Reynolds a little less now that I see he was only required to toe the party line by the tyrannical overlord that is Bulmahn.

This. They're a bunch of sensitive babies who run their forums like a Soviet state and crush dissent with an iron fist.

>Pathfinder exists to appeal to fans of D&D 3.5, and fixing the math/improving the system would directly harm that appeal.
This. Paize see 4e as a failed experiment in innovation, and they aren't going to emulate it.

I saw an interesting comment a while back on Veeky Forums that really resonated with me, about innovation in the context of D&D.

4e was an attempt to take what lategame 3.5 became, character builds and combat optimisation, and make it actually work as a game, giving every character the interesting options that caster players had began to obsess over, making the combat guidelines actually function and trying to level the utility playing field. They only partially succeeded at most of these on launch, and the game never really lived up to its potential, but you can see the angle they were taking.

5e, meanwhile, takes what people remember/believe 3.5 to be, rather than what it actually was, and builds a game around that idea instead, going for a much looser, more mechanically vague and abstract approach instead of 4e's more regimented mechanics, effectively substituting the necessity of handwaving and houseruling in 3.5 by building the system around the idea that of course you'll be doing that, because it's a core part of D&D. It's still innovation, and in a way it's an entirely new kind of game design, albeit one that couldn't really exist, since it only functions on the common understanding of 'D&D' that only exists due to the systems lifespan and ubiquity.

I just like 5e because it's so easy to teach to new players, meaning I don't have to put up with misanthropic fatbeards who are afraid of women at my table anymore

>meaning I don't have to put up with misanthropic fatbeards
why would you have to put up with them anyways? just don't play with them

That's why I ended up playing only with close friends rather than randos. Pick-up groups are such a fucking gamble, and no game is always better than bad game.

Yeah, that's what I meant.

It's so bizarre to make a game system that presents bad choices to people just for "flavor". If its a team game and you all mean to beat the adventure or monsters, then some asshole taking a sub-par weapon or ability just because it "feels cool" is just being an asshole and not a team player.

Games like this should endeavor to make as many lateral shifts as possible for weapons or abilities. Make it so that as many as possible are ultimately viable, but have pros and cons associated with them. This allows people to pick and choose variations without ultimately just being assholes about it.

I honestly think it's unfair to describe people who pick subpar options as assholes. In a lot of cases they don't know any better, or otherwise have a different set of priorities. If they're in a group who shares those priorities, it's fine, the trouble is when a group has different expectations and desires when it comes to optimisation. This can be a trouble regardless of system, although a game like 3.PF just exacerbates it. I do agree that the goal of the designers should be making sure that every option presented is viable. Doing otherwise is just wasting page space.

They're not all "bad" choices, they're just "suboptimal" choices. This is why multiple classes exist. Not everyone wants to be a fucking wizard.

But that's nonsense, especially talking about PF. Some of them are just straight up bad choices and actively fuck you over rather than giving you an advantage, and the idea that you should have to be suboptimal if you don't want to play a wizard is just patently ludicrous.

Not everyone wants to be a wizard, but those people should still be allowed to play a useful class. The wizard can replace literally any class with just clever spell selection and a night's rest.

I will admit that I'm not familiar with PF, I'm just saying that meta-gaming to the extreme basically defeats the point of a role-playing game.
If there are actually bad choices that actively fuck over the party, then yes, those should probably be changed. But picking a weapon that does 1d6 damage instead of 1d8 doesn't make you an asshole.

>Make it so that as many as possible are ultimately viable
You mean like having an unarmed class that doesn't completely rely on "totally not magic" ki?

I'm not really sure I follow?

I mean for variety, sure, having a more mundane brawler on top of a supernatural martial artist (setting aside that those sorts of martial arts, from their origin in Wuxia fiction, are seen as something entirely separate to magic) would be good, but what does that have to do with the idea that all options you print should be viable?

Right I am excluding people who are like new and stuff or just don't know much about how to minmax. If you can show those people a better build and they adapt then they aren't assholes.
See but this is kind of an asshole move. If you are using a 1d6 weapon vs a 1d8 weapon there should be a good reason. Typically with that it comes down to one being useful for different kinds of abilities ( like rogues having weaker weapons that allow backstabs or whatever ) but if its a flat 1d6 vs 1d8, and you insist on the 1d6, you're being a bit of an asshole. What would be the purpose for picking the objectively worse weapon? Is it because it correlates to a weapon picture you prefer in the handbook?

>image
To be fair, in a world with magic there's going to be a lot of shit that non-magicians simply can't do. You can't just punch a demiplane into existence.

sez you

It's not being an asshole though, it's just having a different set of priorities.

If I'm building a character, I'll look for the mechanics that best support the character I'm trying to build. If there are two options, on that is mechanically superior, and one that is more appropriate to my intended fluff, I'll pick the fluffy option every time. This works fine because I'm in groups of people who operate in the same way. It's not 'being an asshole', it's having a different playstyle.

Of course, in well designed systems the gap usually isn't as catastrophically huge as it can be in 3.PF.

Why not? The only thing saying so is the rules of the setting itself, and there's plenty of mythic precedent for people achieving impossible deeds like that without using the constructs referred to as 'magic'.

5e is still a garbage game built around boring combat and with bloated, pointless crunch. I don't think it's innovative, it's just 'streamlined' from an even more bloated, pointlessly crunchy system.

t. boring, shallow gamist asshole

Man, I don't like the system myself, but you can't deny that their design ideas and marketing was on fucking point. I don't think it's a good game by most standards, but it is a perfectly designed game to appeal to the core D&D demographic, even moreso than Pathfinder, and that's all that really matters.

>Not everyone wants to be a fucking wizard.
Then it shouldn't keep punishing you for not being the wizard

>See but this is kind of an asshole move.
No, it really isn't. Just like playing a Fighter instead of a Wizard isn't an asshole move. You're a fucking min-maxer to the extreme that you care about some chance to do 2 extra damage.
An asshole move is to make a Fighter and then assign your highest stats as to gimp them (low STR, DEX, CON). Picking a weapon that better suits your character (hey, my pirate probably uses a shortsword instead of a longsword because that's what they're familiar with!) isn't an asshole move, especially one with such a tiny impact on the actual game.
If the fluff causes gameplay problems, then yeah, probably change your shit, but something as small as 1d6 vs 1d8? Not worth caring about.
DND isn't a competition. Not every character needs to become a god.

It is better, though, if the system has options to ensure that no matter what you choose, you can achieve a solid level of competence. There will always be stronger and weaker options, but making it hard to make an actively bad character, while also curtailing what excessive optimisation can achieve, is a pretty good move IMO.

Because fighting is, by it's nature, a destructive act. The closest thing you could get to creating a demiplane would be punching so hard you rip a hole in reality into another realm, which at best is just manipulating magical energies without even realizing it.

But that's basically just a tautology and stating your assumptions without supporting them. It's one way for things to work, sure, but it's not at all intuitive or obvious. Acting as though 'Magic' can only work one way is always silly.

I completely agree that the system should have better balance.
I disagree that simply picking a less optimal option makes you an asshole.

I'm also disagreeing with the person who was saying that.

Those priorities aren't well served by a game that has concrete math in it though. I suppose its fine if you play with a group that is on board with subpar options, and the DM is willing to make concessions on the monsters to make them subpar as well. I wouldn't really consider that playing 3.5 so much as just roleplaying freeform over a game of yahtzee or something.

Fighters have a role to protect spellcasters and stuff like that. They are basically muscle/bodyguards to the VIP, which in 3.5 is invariably the strongest spellcaster in the group. That's just one of the side effects of being able to cause monumental changes to the world by wiggling your fingers around I guess.

That 2pts of damage can be and is important, especially considering this overall attitude tends to be systematic. It isn't usually contained to a shortsword vs longsword. ( and I am pretty sure cutlasses are included as longswords, or given special abilities ) Typically these kinds of players make all kinds of subpar decisions that invariably bog their character down.

High optimisation is not the only valid playstyle, and you're kind of an asshole if you actually believe that.

Although that being said I'd never play 3.PF these days. I've moved on to a lot of different games, most of which work just fine without minmaxing or overly focusing on optimisation. It's fun, and it's just as much using and enjoying the mechanics as the alternatives.

>Typically these kinds of players make all kinds of subpar decisions that invariably bog their character down.
Maybe you should tone down the power level of the campaign then?
DND is for fun. Have you ever tried making a suboptimal character?
Generally your goal with character creation shouldn't be to produce the highest possible damage or damage mitigation.

Fighting doesn't have to be the only thing you can do that isn't spellcasting. In a mythical setting I could maybe see some sort of impossibly skilled craftsman who builds a house that is dramatically bigger on the inside.

Arguably, you're actually using more of the mechanics than in high optimisation games. In a high op game you're restricted in terms of options to a very narrow set of optimal builds, but in a mid to low optimisation game you're free to explore all the mechanics the system has available rather than being so limited.

Rules as written, most monsters are balanced against notably subpar party compositions and builds. A fully optimized party would require the DM to introduce more difficult variations on encounters to challenge them.

That said, balancing the encounters to the party makeup is something the DM should be doing anyways.

This is honestly the root double standard that, weirdly, only seems to exist in D&D. That only things that are explicitly stated to be magical are allowed to be supernatural, and everything else has to be 100% realistic. It isn't how must pulp fantasy novels or basically any mythology actually works.

Listen if you get merced in a low level fight because you decided "my character thinks armor looks bad and only wears a leather vest" you're an asshole. If you make a fighter and give him 8 STR 8 CON, you're an asshole. In principle, there's no real difference between saying "my character prefers shortswords to longswords" and saying "my character was born meek and sickly but has always dreamed of being a knight in shining armor". There are different degrees, and this might come off as a bit of a strawman, but in reality they occupy the same space.

Right between two buttcheeks.

So why not make every class a caster of some kind, so they all get magical abilities to use?

You're literally making a badwrongfun argument. The only asshole here is you.

Because that's boring and arbitrarily restrictive? Instead, why not abandon the stupid double standard and allow things to exceed the limits of reality without having to make it all be 'magic'? It's a fantastical world. Fantastical things could be perfectly possible as a matter of course.

You do realise you aren't playing a video game, right?

Why not jack off and create a river of semen to fertilize the desert and create an agricultural paradise?

IDEA: Wizards, clerics, druids and the like all use conscious magic (high magic) to shape the world, while non casters become attuned over time to unconscious magic (low magic). This low magic turns them from regular humans into mythic demigods over time, able to first sprint all day, then climb a mountain 7 miles high over three days and nights without rest, and then finally into wacky stuff like diverting a river with their bare hands, creating a canyon with an axe blow and other mythological or tall tale deeds.

That just seems coming from the wrong direction to me, honestly.

A fantasy world is a fantasy world. It runs on metaphysical laws that are different to the ones we know. 'Magic' is the act of learning to understand and manipulate those laws. But a Dragon being able to fly isn't magic, it's just the way the world works. A monk training their Kung fu becoming able to punch fire into you isn't magic, it's how the world works. Magic is a product of a fantastical world. A fantastical world is not a product of magic.

Of course he doesn't. He's a fucking minmaxing faggot. He sees numbers and he spergs out without realizing it.

I would say that a dragon being able to fly IS magic, but not the same kind of magic as a wizard. Sky islands float because of magic, undead rise from evil crypts sometimes because of magic, a monk punching fire and living 12 lifetimes is magic. All of this is magic, but not necessarily are they all the same kinds of magic

'Everything supernatural is magic' just feels weird to me. It's not how mythology works, and I honestly don't see how it's beneficial. Magic being a product of fantasy, as opposed to fantasy being a product of magic, makes a lot more sense to me and leaves you a lot more interesting space to explore from a setting building perspective. But I guess it might just be a preference thing.

>500 feats and only 5 are worth taking
>"it's a feature!"
bankruptcy when

How would you define the difference between things that are "magical" and things that are "supernatural," in general?

TTRPGs are board games which are precursors to video games. You might as well be trying to say that suboptimal chess play is good and that the behaviors of chess pieces should be dictated by how they look or how you feel about them. If you want to RP without playing the game there are lots of systems or books to do that with.

Its entirely just a preferential thing. I come at this from the perspective of "Players that get to high level should be comprable in power. High level wizards do fantastic things because of their magic. High level non-casters should also be able to do fantastic things. The easiest way to explain how a farm boy became able to wrestle giants or kill 1000 men with the jaw of a donkey is that they are somehow magic too."

If I'm understanding you right, you come from the position of "This fantastic world has underlying rules of power. These rules, when properly understood, can be manipulated to produce the magic of wizards." And that's perfectly fine to me, but those underlying rules should also permeate many things within the world

You aren't playing a fucking chess game.

>You're a fucking min-maxer to the extreme that you care about some chance to do 2 extra damage.
Oh boy the retards who don't know what min-maxing means actually exist?

But that's exactly my point. By having those underlying rules be something distinct from spellcaster style 'magic', you can open up more space to explore fantastical and metaphysical concepts without it devolving into 'The wizards roll Arcana to understand everything'.

The definition relies a lot on context. In the TTRPG sense, 'magic' basically always refers to a reliable, systematized method of interacting with supernatural forces that focuses on the mental over the physical and has various other implications depending on the style of game and setting. I prefer that to just be one manifestation of the world being fantastical, as opposed to that sort of deconstructive 'magic' being able to turn everything else supernatural in the world into just another spell formula.

You could also not indulge in idiotic false dichotomies. Just a thought. Using a combat system as an awesome fight scene generator is just as legitimate a use of the mechanics as using it as a super challenging high optimisation minigame.

Simple. Arcana and wizards are experts at High magic, of tapping into elemental planes and innate land magic, and have difficulty twisting or countering the low magic of a trolls regeneration, a dragon's flight and fire breath, or a hero's strength

I don't have a problem with that, although I still prefer having things be more abstract and metaphysical than so clearly categorized into distinct kinds. But that's where it becomes a matter of personal preference I suppose. I like to keep the vast majority of supernatural/fantastical stuff abstract, metaphorical and metaphysical, since it also gives more definition to a more structured 'magic' within that more abstract framework.

I'm just curious how you would explain how noncasters would be comparable to casters at high levels, and that would be explained in system?

That's just the way the world works. Hard work, talent and training are fully capable of achieving supernatural results when taken far enough. A leaders inspiring words can draw men back from the edge of death and give them the strength of will and fervor to fight with a force and fury beyond what would be possible. A warrior's shield can hold back an army, their sword can shatter a phalanx and their battlecry can instill fear into the hearts of any who oppose them. A rangers arrows are swift as the wind and accurate as a diving hawk, unerring in their accuracy, perfectly placed to always find a targets weakness. Supreme skill and impossible perfection beyond what ordinary men might believe are attainable by those who walk the long, hard path to get there.

well honestly if they want to keep pumping up material its much easier to make shit stuff rather than trying to balance it.

>it's having a different playstyle.

And that's a shit playstyle. You just care about your own fluff than the experience of everybody else at the table.

>another player picks a monk
>WOOOOOW YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE CUNT NOW YOU FUCKING DID IT YOU BETTER PICK ANOTHER CLASS OR THIS CAMPAIGN IS OVER
this is you ^

...No?

I mean, that's just based on the arbitrary assumption that everyone at the table will always share your perspective. In a group of people who were more on my length, you'd be the disruptive asshole That Guy making the experience of everyone in the group worse.

Neither playstyle is superior or inferior. It's just a matter of managing expectations, communicating properly and, if necessary, finding a group who is more on the same wavelength if you just don't click. Blaming other people for having different opinions just makes you a cunt.

>OR THIS CAMPAIGN IS OVER

That's untrue. When someone makes a suboptimal character, the rest of the part just kills the character until the new character is more optimal.

It worked for us for years playing at the Shadowrun event tables. No party which realistically cared about survival would willingly put up with someone who was so irredeemably gimed as a monk or fighter is compared to a wizard. They'd kill that group member first.

>the minmaxers all play evil campaigns
checks out

That's not evil. That's pragmatic. The Marines don't take 500lb landwhales, and an adventuring party wouldn't take a commoner. A monk is less useful than a commoner, so what makes you think they'd accept them being in the party?

>You might as well be trying to say that suboptimal chess play is good and that the behaviors of chess pieces should be dictated by how they look or how you feel about them.
No, they're saying that you don't have to treat every chess game as some grand master throwdown. They're also saying that some people enjoy casual games of chess where sub-optimal play can happen.

Killing a presumably non-hostile PC because they are weak is evil.

>casual games of chess where sub-optimal play can happen.


Then those people are bad players. The only purpose of a game is to win. If you aren't trying your best to win, then you aren't playing the game right.

Stop feeding the troll user

Nope. Having fun is significantly more important than winning.

I prefer a hard fought loss to an easy victory, any day of the week. The experience of playing is vastly more important to me than the result.

They're only killed if they insist on staying in the group. That makes it their choice and their responsibility. They're free not to join the party, and no harm will come to them. Then the player can make a character who is optimal who we'll accept into the group.

You're still evil. And jerks really.

>not wanting to die because your 4th man is a useless class instead of something useful
>not wanting to die = evil
>keeping yourself alive = evil

Pull the other one.

Not him, and I agree he's being That Guy, but the basic premise stands.

In character, would you be willing to take with you someone who claims to be a warrior but can barely lift much less swing a sword with you into a dungeon? It makes no justifiable in-game logic to bring with you someone who is clearly unreliable or a huge liability into a potentially lethal situation, likewise unless you're cheap as fuck you wouldn't hire someone who wasn't a professional at their job since you would want to get your money's worth from a contract.

It's the reason why PMCs and Mercenary companies tend to have specific requirements and screening processes for allowing people to fight with them. If you take someone who is weak and worthless on the adventure, all they'll do is hinder the party, be a drain on resources, and inevitably get either themselves or someone else killed due to their incompetence.

Being an adventurer is like having a job, if your résumé and qualifications aren't up to snuff, then there should be no reason for a party to pick you up and waste their time, food, and pay on your useless ass

The problem with Pathfinder is that you don't know what difficulty setting you are choosing unless you spend years studying the system.

That's shitty design.

The reason it's stupid is that it relies on an absurd argument from the extreme. That anyone not hyper optimised is a total liability. It completely ignores the possibility of a group agreeing to a lower optimisation game, which a GM can plan for, to the point where a high optimisation character would be the disruptive figure instead.

The purpose of games is to have fun. Different people have fun in different ways. Many people have fun even though they play in a sub-optimal way. I know your type, and I know I'll never convince you of this. Good day.

Oh yeah, Pathfinder is absolute garbage. But that seemed so obvious as to not really need to be stated.

An argument I find amusing is that only having fun if you win is non-optimal.

I mean, think about it. You're never going to win 100% of the time, so if the only point of playing a game is winning, you're going to find the experience unsatisfying quite often, probably 50% of the time if you're playing against equally skilled opponents.

However, if you play the game to enjoy the experience, regardless of win or lose, then you'll enjoy yourself 100% of the time.

Therefore, playing for fun is more optimal than playing to win.

>It completely ignores the possibility of a group agreeing to a lower optimisation game

As long as anyone is taking a character who can become optimized post-character creation (ie, a wizard getting better spells), then a lower optimization game is impossible. The GM must run the game as though the wizard can go full Tippyverse at any time (or any of the other thousand optimization tricks are in play). If you don't want a high optimization game, then play something besides a d20 game.

>fun

"Fun" is a buzzword. It's not a valid goal because it cannot be quantified or defined.

...But that's just not true? See the above post. I don't like 3.PF at all, but the best way to run a decent game of it is to stick to their 3/4 classes- Effectively, a mid optimisation game.

Man, it must be no fun to believe that. I feel sorry for you.

>The easiest way to explain how a farm boy became able to wrestle giants or kill 1000 men with the jaw of a donkey is that they are somehow magic too."
>I would say that a dragon being able to fly IS magic, but not the same kind of magic as a wizard. Sky islands float because of magic, undead rise from evil crypts sometimes because of magic, a monk punching fire and living 12 lifetimes is magic. All of this is magic, but not necessarily are they all the same kinds of magic

Well of course it's magic. Anything that a person does in fantasy-land that would be impossible in the real world is magic by its very definition, in an in-universe perspective; ie, a supernatural effect resulting from intent. It's not the same as casting a spell, which may be where the confusion comes from.

You can't even really dodge the question by saying "it's not maaagic, it's just something wacky that happens because I say so", because that is what magic fundamentally is narratively, an asspull by the author/DM to make something happen that would otherwise not, and that may or may not carry any attempt to explain or rationalize it.

Don't bother. He is either baiting and you're playing into it, or he is literally unable to understand and you're wasting your time.

>fight scene generator
So you aren't using the same system for your skill checks, DCs, etc? If you're just using it for fights I don't really get the point of using 3.5 at all. Minmaxers do just as much with the rest of their sheet as they do for combat. It's all fine and dandy, where people aren't breaking/exploiting the game. That's the balance that's appropriate - being the best you can be within the confines of an unbroken system.

You can play chess casually, I've already conceded that. I don't think chess is a good game to play casually though because it engages the minds of competitive players more than it does casuals. It takes a certain kind of personality to want to stick to chess. Casuals are free to try it and play whatever they want, but they are doing both themselves and comp players a disservice if they stick to a game designed to serve a different interest.

At the end of the day no one is trying to say, you should never have a 1d6 weapon, if you drop your 1d8 weapon just flip the table and roll a new character. For my part I'm just saying if you have a 1d8 weapon as your primary and a 1d4 or 1d6 as a backup or fluffy detail, that's great - just don't be an asshole and keep pushing aside better options cuz my fluff. Don't be a level 10 fighter with a plain 1d6 shortsword pushing aside +3 longswords or whatever because "my dad gave me this shortsword and I like it". That's being an asshole.

Typical bathrobe faggot fallacy

But that doesn't always hold true. Take the exasmple of Wuxia fiction. The supernaturally powerful martial arts, as it exists in the setting, is metaphysically considered mundane. And that's part of the point. There is nothing outside of normal reality about it, it's simply a natural product of hard work. And the cultivation of chi through diligent effort, the literal meaning of Kung fu, coexists with Daoist sorcery and other forms of actual magic. But attempting to call Kung fu magic, in a Wuxia setting, is explicitly wrong by the metaphysics of the setting itself.

How does that make any sense? Of course we're using the same system. But we're using the mechanics to support the roleplay, rather than treating mechanical optimisation as an end in itself.

>which a GM can plan for
That is something that is highly dependent on the skill and capabilities of a GM, and applies equally to all systems, thus when discussing characters of a particular system in general it's best to assume balance and composition in a vacuum outside of GM interference, as that is something that cannot be accounted for at all times

Also, the degree of "optimization" that can be considered either acceptable or "hyper-optimized" is not a singular structure but is heavily dependent on the class in particular. Martials tend to be screwed for options and build viability, somoften they need heavier amounts of optimization to function in their roles properly and not be rendered completely superfluous by other characters, whereas classes like Bards, Clerics, and the like tend to have a lower level of optimization needed to function, as their class features generally allow them to be useful in their roles most of the time so long as they didn't dump their main stat.

Wizards oddly enough are on the other end of that horseshoe, as their selection of spells and schools can swing them around from being either completely useless or game-breaking.

What is fun? Fun is a subjective value as people are able to derive fun from different activities and concepts than another person might. For example, say my idea of fun was entering habanero eating competitions. Just because how.I have fun is different than yours, does that make it automatically not fun? You're trying to ascribe a universal definitive value to a completely subjective concept while also being just as obstinately incapable of accepting alternative definitions as autist you're arguing with. You're no better than that fag who advocated killing other PCs, as your being just as shortsighted and closeness as him

All you faggots arguing about this fail to realise that the true answer to whether optimization and such is a good thing or not is: it depends.

You don't have to be some kind of perfect AI that optimizes for maximum fun. All you have to do is do something you think you'll enjoy.

>Casuals are free to try it and play whatever they want, but they are doing both themselves and comp players a disservice if they stick to a game designed to serve a different interest.

Casual chess play does a disservice to no one if the players are enjoying themselves.

>Anything that a person does in fantasy-land that would be impossible in the real world is magic by its very definition, in an in-universe perspective
You lost me at "in an in-universe perspective." If something impossible in the real world is normal in fantasy-land, I'd think it would be entirely conceivable that the inhabitants of said fantasy land would describe that effect as natural and not supernatural.

I said I found the argument amusing. I never said I actually believe it. It's just a cuite quirk of 'logic'. If you only have fun when you win, unless you win every time there will be times you play you don't have fun. If you play for the experience of playing, you'll have fun every time. The latter is, from a rigid optimisation standpoint, superior. This is as meaningless as most aspiration to optimisation is. Which is kind of the point.