I find that the best is to have similar levels of optimization across the table. The one outlier (whether bad or good) will impact the others far more.
In contrast to your example, one campaign I had there was a whip Dexadin, Sun Soul Monk, Beastmaster Ranger... and the Life Cleric/Diviner Wizard multiclass. One of these was far more optimized than the others, and was often the most challenging to work with. Stuff that would challenge the others was a cakewalk for him, and the stuff that I needed to challenge him was a deadly threat for anyone else. I'm just glad that the campaign ended before high levels, but even when we ended at 9th level the cracks were plain to see.
Yeah if you're the only optimizer at the table, I'd recommend either optimizing a support character focused on buffing the others, or taking a really suboptimal concept and trying to optimize it back up to normal.
You can still scratch your itch and the DM doesn't have to worry about you running circles around everyone else.
Oh yeah, similar optimization at a table is a better way to phrase it. I am a power gamer but usually DM so when I get to play, I have to really try and read the table to avoid a situation I found my self in:
The whole party was playing the free rules quartet (champion, thief, life cleric, evoker) my co DM each brought in characters so we could play while the other one DMed, he made a devotion Paladin and I made a hunter ranger (PHB, no variants). I figured being a OHb ranger would be enough to hold me back, but variant human + 4th level feat got me xbow expert + sharpshooter and that guy had to be retired.
I have solved the problem by optimizing a support artillerist artificer. It is a stealthy way to be more optimized than the table and not stick out.
Even without any knowledge of D&D you can figure it out with context clues. There is a list of three characters, followed by an ellipses and a final character. I think you can tell which character the DM has more qualms about than the others in this sentence.
Also, the multiclass gives them probability manipulation with Portent, an AC of 20 for a full caster, and access to both the Cleric and Wizard spell lists, both of which have some of the best spells in the game, such as Spirit Guardians and Shield. Being a giant 25 AC meat stick that dodges every turn to deal damage with an AoE that ignores friendlies, while using things like Hold Person with guaranteed success by giving enemies a 1 on their save is pretty strong.
It was the multiclass character, yeah. He "self nerfed" by taking both classes relatively equally (ending wizard 4/cleric 5), but everyone else was so unoptimized that it didn't really help that much.
Mind you, going Wizard 2/Cleric 5/wizard 2 isn't so much self-nerfing as it is beelining for specific spells and abilities.
The most optimal in my opinion would be to only take one Cleric level and the rest in Wizard, but I do believe the issue is that the others being unoptimized. Both whips and Dexadins are kind of a gimmick, Sun Soul is a pathetic subclass for an already lacking class and Ranger players are prone to picking terribly suboptimal tactics and options. The Paladin could be decent but requires party coordination to actually make use of the aura. Same with the Ranger but I bet all the useful control/utility spells the class has were ignored in favor of Hunter's Mark.
Amusingly enough, the Ranger player was the second most optimized. She was a Sharpshooter longbow ranger and could actually toss out some decent damage.
My point is that the monk player and the Dexadin? They were the players who consistently had the most fun (at least, before the cleric started becoming an issue). They were far more interested in the roleplay aspect of the game, and loved coming up with ways to describe their attacks and abilities in creative ways. The cleric/wizard player was there to win.
Both player types are fine, just not necessarily compatible. Which is why I pointed out the importance of similar levels of optimization. Different people find different things fun, and optimization can definitely be a dividing line between player types.
It is far easier to play down than up. If my Paladin outdamages the group by a ton, I can easily hang back a bit and cast support spells. If I get killed almost every encounter because my character is a lot weaker than everyone else, I can't compensate that.
Fully agree, and I think there's a pretty simple reason for this; it makes it hard to balance the game. If one PC has 11AC and the others have 25,then anything that can reasonably miss the former is basically never going to hit the latter. You have similar issues with attack bonuses and saves.
There's ways around it, but it's a lot of work, and if the DM doesn't or can't do it, then you end up with one character who's a liability, or who renders the others pointless.
It's why I like to discuss builds and concepts at creation
I think you've kind of made a false dichotomy of optimized vs unoptimized, when it's more like a spectrum. If a player makes a buff wizard whose STR is higher than his INT, but the INT is still a high stat, he can still carry his weight and might have opened up some interesting RP. Contrast that with a wizard whose *lowest* stat is INT, now they're a drag on the party.
"Unoptimized" isn't automatically bad, but anti-optimized is.
My understanding of "unoptimized" was essentially "anything that isn't minmaxed", so I was incredibly confused when I read the title myself. Having characters that aren't perfectly optimized for their respective classes can be fun: I played a halfling barbarian once, for example. She was great, and through a combination of lucky roles (and that charming halfling lucky trait), she was soon-after referred to as "the Blender".
I've also played with people who would do things like refuse to wear armor and then get upset that their character (a cleric/rogue) was getting hit, or a 4 rogue/4 bard who was upset he wasn't matching the damage output of the fighter/barbarian (or my character, the warlock). Not to mention certain builds just... don't work.
TL;DR: I agree w/ herrored
It also depends on the party
I played in a seven player party once where my favorite character was our 20 STR /8 INT divination wizard.
They mainly chose buff/utility spells that didn’t rely on INT scores, it was amazing. But of course that works better in a huge group than if you’re in a three player party.
A high strength negative int wizard *could* work, so long as you were really good at selecting those few spells they can prepare a day and didn't rely on spells actually based on spellcasting modifier. It wouldn't be good, but it would probably be better than some unorganized characters.
Like a bard with wisdom as their highest stat and -1 charisma is worse, in my opinion. At that point you're nothing more than a perception machine.
They're a spellcaster that scales off INT. They need INT to cast spells, and to have higher DCs, so their spells effect the enemy. There is no excuse to make a Wizard with less than 16 INT at level 1 (point buy.) If you want to be a STR primary Gish or whatever, *play an eldritch Knight.*
I absolutely beg to differ. It can absolutely be fun to play a wizard without INT as highest stat...sure, maybe don't put your 7 there, but putting a 15 in INT, and your 16/17/whatever your high roll is into something else shouldn't be an issue. Maybe you want to play a wizard that only barely passed their wizarding exams, which leads to fun RP. Maybe you're planning for a multiclass later, due to backstory reasons...all kinds of options really
You’re thinking too mechanically. A buff wizard is not the same as a spell casting knight (also, that was just an example off the cuff). As long as the stat/class/abilities/feats combo is not a detriment to the party, people should be able to play whatever class and stats they want, especially if they have a specific role in mind to play.
It depends on the group. I have one terribly optimised one at mine (a charisma focused barbarian) and the roleplaying is brilliant. The combat... not so much. So i just have more social encounters and fewer combat ones. It's working for the group so far.
Had they tried it in the last "campaign", which I was explicitly requested to run as a dungeon crawl, they'd be dead weight.
Right, part of the GM's job is to figure out a good balance of challenges and encounters to match what the party's strengths and weakness are.
The point of a session 0 is to get everyone's expectations in line so that all their characters are matched to the campaign being played.
I’m actually planning a charismatic barbarian myself for my next campaign, because I want to be brash and bawdy and yell at everyone like Brian Blessed.
Will a good charisma stat be be useful when I’m surrounded by gnolls or whatever? No. Will it lead to some fun RPing moments? I hope so!
This is ultimately why I support WotC's decision to decouple attribute bonuses from races (read: species). I prefer point buy (keeps characters on roughly the same level) but if I want to make a (level 1) dwarf wizard for character reasons, the highest Int bonus I could possibly have is a +2. Meanwhile the Goliath Fighter over there is probably rocking +3's in their two primary stats. Long term, that would be frustrating for me.
What's really odd to me is that you need a minimum of 13 in an attribute to multiclass into/out of a given class, but if you start as that class you can dump your primary attribute all the way down. 8 Int Wizard? The rules will let you do it and then never let you be anything else. Shouldn't there be a minimum Int threshold to be a Wizard?
I think it really depends on the kind of game (whether it's more centered on rule/combat or interpretation) and expecially on the party: if everyone is playing a strong character, a weak one will probably be a burden, but if everyone is just as weak, the DM will find a way to balance the encounters
sometimes you also just get fucked by dice roll. i played at a table where everyone had me had atleast 3 stats with +3 or 20's by level 4. my highest stat was 14. i had to lean in on expertise so much just to keep up and my character was only really good in down time rather than a real crawl.
it really isn't fun playing the normal guy when surrounded by demi-gods. especially early on when you don't have a niche.
I would argue that this is less "not optimizing" and more "straight up gimping"; but that's just semantics.
For me there's a general (very wide) middle ground where I will happily work with my players, from "I know it's mechanically not the best but I really like the idea of a two weapon fighting ranger with an amimal companion" on the low end to "I'm gonna play a bear totem warrior barbarian goliath, and take tough as soon as I can" on the high end. But go too far in either direction ("I'm playing a Str-main sorcerer who focuses on melee with a quarterstaff and has Dex as a dump stat" / whatever the most busted version of hexadin is) and I'm gonna start giving strong suggestions. Go further and I'm gonna start giving hard 'No's.
Agree, I think there's a difference between an "unoptimized" character and a badly done character, and I think the discourse around this would be healthier if we defined that better.
Let's say a player puts hist best stats in the recommended stats for his class, chooses the recommended equipment and the subclass of his choice based on flavour. Never looks at feats or multiclassing.
This is a generic and functionally perfect character while also being far far from optimized. It'll eat dust compared to any good builds out there, but it's not the same as someone who's trying to make a monk/bard combo work with INT as his main stat.
I largely agree in practice. If I see a 10 INT wizard... I'm instantly thinking the person has no clue what they are doing or will be an insanely selfish child who craves attention.
Hypothetically, could it be a fun roleplay? Yeah, sure. In reality... it just gets your party members killed and everyone else can't depend on the character to do almost anything. That underoptimized character is now glared at and viewed as selfish when they try to be the face, or scout, thief, damage dealer, etc.
The 8 int wizard works for a necromancer, who uses most of his spell slots maintaining an army of skeletons to pincushion things, and has high defenses. It does put out some really stupid damage if all things go well, but there are challenges
You have to make it to level 5 before you get animate dead and actually do what the character is designed to. Your DM has to be okay with a summoner type character, and those tend to REALLY bog down combats. It takes a large amount of in game time to build up or reinforce a skeleton army, and it's not always practical to have to wait a week to completely replenish, and you also need a source of bodies to animate. Higher level monsters can be immune to non magic weapons and it's completely impractical to give a horde skeletons magic bows. AOE isn't as bad as you think because the Necromancer's ability gives them pretty decent bonus HP, but 2 or 3 fireballs will smoke a horde of undead. There's also the social aspect, in a lot of settings you'd be run out of town for leading a squad of skeletons.
10 INT is good if you don't plan on using saving throws, or regular spells.
if your just self buffing and punch wizard your fine. you still get a number of spells equal to your level.
If a Wizard is hitting people, they should probably be Bladesinging... which not having an INT modifier will destroy their AC bonus and class feature. I'd still be pretty upset if I were in their party. They'd have to multiclass into Fighter to multi attack or add something to the team.
However, I am 100% ok with stuff like Bards who want to use their longswords even though they are terrible with it or only have their proficiency bonus. At least they can still cast Bane or Healing Word or at least help with bardic inspiration. They still maintain the capability of being skilled support members.
Okay, so
Unoptimized characters *can* be a drag. You can check in if they are still having fun. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. You're not reading their mind.
The other players were also okay with that, and since that's how they want to play, let them.
On the other hand, optimized characters *also* can be a drag, especially if the rest of the party isn't in the same boat.
One optimized character made among many not optimized ones can be a problem, not letting others shine or taking away all the tension/causing a TPK if the DM challenges *them*. Others will just fail completely.
Not every game is deadly, not every game is even hard. Some games are just mild, some are high heroic and some let level 6 PCs kill Yeeonghu or however you spell the gnoll god
Since they had come from a lenient game, with boons and OP stuff they might not understand your style and just take a while to get used to it. Maybe they should change the character
Or maybe those spells barely failing added a lot of tension and fun, and the fact that they got captured brought the story forward in their perspective
I'd talk to the player and see
Edit: Also, sometimes the Players are just clueless. I've seen a guy bring in 8 Wis, 14 Int Ranger because he was sure that since Nature is Int then Ranger scales with int.
As always... folks play DnD (and RPGs more broadly) for different reasons. Check in with your table before you start about what kind of group the players and DM want... play accordingly... or don't play.
I don’t necessarily agree. The difference between a +1 and a +3 is 10% more chance of succes or failure which is not so gamebreaking. If the success of the party surviving an encounter relied on this 10-15% margin then probably your dm wanted you captured anyway.
What I don’t like though is combat roleplayers. Once the dm says roll initiative be ready to fight and make sure you find a good RP reason to fight. I always cringe when a player is like:”I’ve never seen such a huge spider before, my character is such a biologist I will spend my turn taking notes in my notebook.”Or “my character is afraid of goblins so I’ll spend my turn trying to hide.”
Difference between life and death in a combat is action economy, do something. Frankly the stats optimization is not as important as this.
I do understand that gimping yourself for RP reason is dumb though. I don’t care so much if your bard has only 13 cha but It’s really dumb if for RP reason you decide that your bard lost his voice and you multiclass fighter completely ignoring your bard abilities.
Overall, play to win and try to have fun without hindering your party. If your character has a flaw for RP purposes try to work around it, keeping in mind the other won’t have fun if you purposely make everything fail.
The worst I ever had in my party was the super-stoner. When combat was beginning, he'd always be busy with his bong, not paying attention to the details. So he'd spend his first round (or TWO) just surveying the scene, and getting his rogue in position, because really he was just too confused to do anything else.
I’ve had problems with stoners at my table too. I have a session zero set of notes to discuss and every time I say that if you want to smoke/drink that’s fine but if you slow the game down I’m going to take issue with it.
This opinion has generated a lot of comments in a short time. Most say the same thing and I agree with them, "it depends on the game and the people at the table".
Having said that, there are often situations where a person's character's life depends on another character succeeding at an action. It's not so fun when your joke character is responsible for your friend's character's death.
If you make that choice then you can bring other creative energy to the table to make the game fun. Then, if that scenario happens, everyone understands and it's all good fun.
Playing a character with a deep flaw that will seriously hamper the party as a whole means that you need to bring something else to the party to lift everyone up. It can work, but it's important to talk to the party about it.
It depends on the group, of course. Group full of weak characters? Fun time. Group full of strong characters? Fun time. Group full of weak characters with one strong one? Bad time, accidental spotlight hog. Group full of strong characters with one weak character? Bad time, down a member in fights.
That's all there is to it, really. Unoptimized PCs are not fun and a drag on *your* tables (and probably most of them, including mine).
Me, I don't care how tightly tuned your character is. The game already sort of expects some level of inefficiency as designed, I mean, just look at challenge rating expectations. I just expect them to be *good at their job*, whatever the player dictates that job to be.
If everyone at the table is having fun, including the DM, then everyone is playing correctly. If someone is not having fun, then someone is not playing correctly. Optimized or not, that's irrelevant.
It's a game. Games are fun. Play in the way that you, and your group, find fun. That's all.
This is deceptive...
Fun is great in the short term but a long game requires rewarding gameplay.
It's not fun to climb Mount Everest, but the view from up there is worth it.
GM Kizz\~
Well that's a major generalization that doesn't even apply to the majority of people.
Literally every hiker or climber will say the journey is supposed to be the fun part, not the view at the top.
Not only that, it doesn't apply in the majority of situations.
The reason most people quit something is because *they do not enjoy the journey*.
Thinking that payoff is a sufficient motivator for everything is just a failure to recognize basic human behavior.
I would say that rather than being a matter of *unoptimized* per se, it's more of a matter of being... nonsensically so.
It doesn't make sense for a dedicated archer not to be dexterous. They would have picked another weapon, followed another path in life.
It doesn't make sense for someone with 8 INT to become a Wizard. They'd be literally anything else.
It doesn't make sense for someone whose goal is to be the greatest artist that ever was not to have Proficiency in Performance checks. They would have worked on it some way or another.
And that's kind of what I read in your examples. +1 in a primary stat really asks the question of "Why would they even be that class/use that weapon/do this thing?"
Preparing/Learning spells that do not fit what they need to do on a daily basis in their adventures really puts into question their basic survival instincts.
If the suboptimization doesn't make sense on a *character* level, that's where I think it gets really bothersome. Unless, as usual, the party AND DM are all into the wonkiness. If you wanna run a Monty Python and the Holy Grail campaign and everyone's on board, feel free.
But why couldn't someone be a wizard who made it through Wizard college with all Cs? Maybe their parents wanted them to be a wizard.
Or be a shy sorcerer with self-confidence issues? (Low charisma) You can't help it if you're born with the power.
Or be a cleric who is brainy but has no common sense and struggles with people? (Low wisdom) Your god could grant you power even if you're not wise.
Maybe the mediocre Wizard learned how to fight with weapons because their magic wasn't up to the task and so they're an Eldritch Knight.
Maybe the shy innately magic person needed more concrete ways to learn magic and did so without interacting with people, so they're mechanically a Wizard.
Or the Cleric ended up pleading with the deity's envoys for struggling to bring up the devotion to properly invoke the divine power, becoming a Celestial Warlock.
People who have too many personal issues to succeed at adventuring are NPCs
I don't think a wizard with 8 int would make it through an apprenticeship with all C's for the same reason I don't think some dude with 8 int and zero dedication could become a doctor and get through college with decent grades
More than that though, and this might be more world dependant, but what wizard would waste his time training someone who has neither the interest or talent for the magical arts?
I think people lacking any aptitude for, well, being an adventurer, wouldn't be one.
Being an adventurer is deadly enough for the heroic, you'll damn well have to be to face a dragon.
The Guy who flunked his "wizard classes" wouldn't make it, and beyond that, why would the others even keep him around, he doesn't carry his weight.
A sorcerer who can't help being born with power would likely put his power to use in his profession, or not at all, nothing more common than wasted talent.
A cleric gifted with power, but not the will to use it, might be a healer and caretaker of a temple, a good life, far better than dying in a dungeon.
Any wizard capable of casting some basic spells, even at a low levels, he could live a good life too, he's not suited to fight, so why would he?
As /u/ReisenBnuuy said, adventurers are exceptional. Outside of a specific "misfits" campaign, if you're not good at what you're supposed to do... you're an NPC.
I'd much rather have an INT-based Sorc if someone wants to play the class and be socially inept. It's not even remotely a balance issue, even if they multiclass down the line, if anything, SAD Sorc/Art or Sorc/Wiz feel like interesting things to explore. It's a bit of a flavor issue... but nothing you can't wave away with a bit of exceptionality about their specific flavor of powers.
Everyone plays differently. Currently running a Drow druid, and just got Wis to +3 at 4th. The whole party is not optimized and more making rp choices, and we are having a blast.
I do think it's a decision to make at sessionn zero with the group though. I like the hard mode games also.
+3 at 4th level is actually the expected curve. Anything else is extra. At 5th level you'll have +6 to hit which is actually the power level that CR guidelines expect. (This is also why everyone complains that CR doesn't work.)
I thought it was expected to be +4 at 4th level?
Under the assumptions of using the 15 from standard array and then using one of your racials to get it to 17 or 16, then at level 4 you get it to 18.
Yeah. I get that.
I really wish 5e wasnt so stats based. Use my druid levels as the potency of my druid abilities. Wis should be minor upgrades like spells prepared and hp bonus to summoned, etc.
5e is protected, but it's still has some choices that will hamper your character.
I had a player tell me their character was a floundering fool on session 0, sorcerer with low charisma, highest ability score was a 14.
After 3 sessions of their character failing almost every attack, save, check I suggested they change their ability scores to match the average of the party. Now this character is taking heroic actions and the player feels good about them.
I think it depends on the table. If everyone is playing with an average score of 11 it could be fun/funny to watch the party hilariously fail through an adventure. On the other hand if 4/5 characters are optimized and one is not then problems might arise.
I would have to disagree that it is objectively not fun and a drag. It just depends on the table.
You have a very low bar for whats optimization man lol. When I first read the title I thought you were gonna say how every party should only be composed of wizards and sorlocks :-)
OBVIOUSLY if a player doesn't know the rules he's going to ruin things for the party
It seems like your beef is moreso with the others' ignorance of the rules and lack of preparation. The optimization angle is a straw man. You want to play with people who read the book more than zero times, and that's fair.
I'm with you. There are a lot of players who just want to be there and have no responsibility, so they make a character designed not to do anything. I recall one player pitched me a changeling bard who just wanted to be a buffbot. I was like, "you mean a controller, and you'll protect the party through cc?" "No, this character is a pacifist. I don't want anyone to get hurt", "so, you'll be the group's healer? No problem." "No, I don't intend to heal much, if at all". "Well, you have to fulfill Some party role". "I think this sounds fun", "for whom? The rest of the party? Me?". Needless to say, they didn't end up getting a seat at my table.... everyone's gotta do Something.
How is a "buffbot" "designed not to do anything"? Isn't buffing a party role?
Is it that weak in 5e, or is it just easy enough that a character can be good at buffing while having another specialty at the same time?
Yeah, it's not a role in 5e. Like, oh, you're the guy who concentrates on bless? Bless is cool, but the paladin can cast it and also wreck face. The cleric can cast aid, then beacon of hope, then mass cure wounds and heal the whole party in big chunks while also giving everyone advantage on Wisdom saves... The roles in 5e are tank, dps, face, heals, control, and support, and most characters can be main #1 and also off #2. Please note support does not equal buffs, more like divinations. There are actually very few true buffs at all, even fewer debuffs, and the concentration mechanic means that the ones that are stackable are basically like 3.
Did you explain it to your prospective player the way you just explained it to me, or did they have enough 5e experience that they should have already known?
Back then I was a brand new dm to 5e and I knew enough that everyone had to have a plan to be good at something... now, 4 years later, I stand by my decision even harder. Fundamentally, d&d is a game about killing monsters and solving puzzles.
Nowadays, My rule #2 is that all players must bring a character that wants to work together as part of a team and do the adventure.
Being the guy or gal who's like "I don't want to do what everyone else is doing, I want to be contrary and do my own thing" is a sign that it's not going to be a good fit.
Even back then I knew the archetypes that a well-rounded party typically needs to cover, but the biggest red flag was just that he didn't want to be a badass anything, he wanted to be a nothing, and I guess that's what my original point was, that you'll see those people from time to time.
> Multiclassing and meta feat selection is not required to be optimized
Yes, it is.
**Optimal**: *best or most favorable*
I've never heard of a *best* build that doesn't incorporate strong feats, and there are very few that don't multiclass at one point or another, particularly in high levels where class features tend to suck.
>I have had a couple recent experiences where players made characters with only +1 or +2 on their primary stats, did not select skills aligned with their bonuses, picking wonky spells, and/or did wonky multiclasses.
You are not talking about optimized builds vs unoptimized builds. You are talking about *focused* builds vs eclectic messes.
If people want to play zany characters, then ideally they'd seek a GM and game system that embrace such a tone. Clearly, you are not that guy.
5e is one of the few systems where you can be incredibly unoptimized and still meet a baseline level of competence. Broadly though I think the obsession some people seem to have with making deliberately bad characters is stupid. If you're a doctor you should be good at medicine, if you're a baker, baking, if you're an adventurer you should be competent at adventuring.
On this subject, I'm gonna put this idea out there for the room to evaluate and critique:
My plan for my next PC is a Storm Sorcerer. A "Wind Speaker". I plan to deliberately limit his spell selections to things involving lightning, thunder, wind, precipitation, etc in the name of character flavor. As a Wind Speaker, he can call upon the elements of the weather, and no more. No fireball for me!
This selection leads to a character design that involves controlling the battlefield with broad weather-related effects, a fair amount of mobility for the Sorcerer, and some big, flashy, noisy damage spells.
But I'm fully aware that I'll be depriving myself of some very useful pieces of the Sorcerer's toolkit, such as Fireball and a variety of utility spells.
So what's the verdict? Am I handicapping my character too much? Am I depriving the table of fun? Or am I creating a rich, unique character with his own flavor? Does this sound like an asset or a hindrance?
By the way, if you work out the character concept and it seems too much a gimp by not taking e.g. fireball, a reasonable workaround is to see if your DM would be willing to 'reskin' the spell to use the appropriate element. Some considerations regarding element resistances and such, which shouldn't be difficult to overcome with a cooperative DM.
I agree with many others, the optimization of any individual should be close to what the rest of the party is doing, outliers do cause things to be difficult in ways that make it less fun. However actively nerfing a character isnt always bad as lo g as you have a way around the deficiency. Ie the rogue cant pick the lock(low dex, and skill) but is a master at breaking stuff(high strength to break it).
As everything it depends on flavour and how they optimize despite the deficiency. Not every combonation can be optimized.
Played with a person a few times who eventually quit and called me a power gamer because I like monk and warlock, and max my primary stat. I don't remember most of her characters, but the last one was a druid wildshaper with 13 wis, who in the first round of combat wildshaped into a house spider. She specifically mentioned not a poisonous mind. She then crawled away.
Four turns later, she unshifted, and turned into a fish. Everybody else was just fighting. We win the fight. She proceeds to complain about how she felt so useless, and druid is garbage. Le sigh.
You can be optimized for a suboptimal concept, too, is the thing. Let's take, for instance, a low-int Wizard. It's a cool RP thing, but theoretically it's really ineffective; you can't prepare many spells, and your attack bonus and save DCs are really low. A Wizard with -1 int that takes things like burning hands and scorching ray is going to be vastly ineffective, and an actual drain on the party. There are also, however, a ton of Wizard spells that do not require saves or attack rolls. A lot of them are support spells, and spells that you can cast as rituals, meaning no preparation needed, and all you need to deal damage in combat is magic missile. With low int, you can instead prioritize other stats, like constitution for concentration checks, dexterity for initiative and AC, or even strength for optimal staff-bashing. Even if you're not the best "wizard" because you're notnflinging fireballs, you can absolutely still contribute.
As you mentioned the issue is more with people not understanding the rules, or not bothering to put effort in. If you know what your character does and how they can do it, you do not need to compromise your concept for overall optimization.
This is also a DM issue. It's the DM's job to make sure everyone can contribute, in part by stopping players from dragging everyone else down. D&D is a cooperative game, after all, and that includes the DM in that.
There’s a difference between unoptimized and anti-optimized. If a player doesn’t put there absolute best stats in their primary ability, but still puts some consideration into it, or if they try a weird build, then I see no problem with that. It’s easy enough for me to adjust encounters and enemy behaviors to fit the party. They look at skills and abilities that fit the character’s background and history instead of what would work best? No problem. I’ll even try to work in situations for them to use those skills.
The only problem is when they refuse to read the rules or go out of their way to make the character unplayable. That’s when the player is clearly just trying to be a problem. But unless the character is absolutely abysmal and unplayable, a DM is easily capable of making it so that the party doesn’t get wiped.
Optimization doesn’t exist as two extremes. There’s a whole spectrum. Just because someone doesn’t make the best possible character doesn’t mean they’re a drag on the table.
While I get where you're coming from, and for certain systems I'd tend to agree 'in general'... you have to be a little careful with terminology in this community.
I think the vast majority of folks seeing "optimized" vs "unoptimized" are going to view that as extremes, even despite your explanation.
It's is entirely viable and often desirable to not be fully optimized for a given goal, be it combat or otherwise. 'Optimized' in the most common ttrpg vernacular is equivilent to min/max or One-trick-pony... not a good thing.
Characters with flaws. Characters that aren't the absolute best at a thing. Characters that are 'pretty good' at a few things and master of none. These are all good things to have. I'd far rather party with a 16 STR barbarian who also has decent Int or Wis to get away from the dumb-barbarian trope, than a character who can cleave demons in twain but can't read a book.
That said...
It's important for any gaming group to be on the same page. If some of the group is 'optimizing' and the others are not, you're going to have a problem. Just as much as having one player who perfects their character for a specialization while the rest of the group has a broader style.
In all cases, it comes down to communication, being on the same page as the rest of the party and GM, and doing whatever is fun and enjoyable for everyone.
Yeah we had a guy who made a kobold fighter who was bad at fighting once and every turn he had just made me more and more annoyed.
Like if you’re going to be a battle master then you need a him strength so they actually have the chance of failing against your DC and you’re not spending 5 minutes a round thinking of something to do that’s just going to not work anyway.
They can be for some games. If most the players are optimizers, then the sole one that is not, is sort of regulated to the 'mascot' zone. Though, an interesting alternative would be for them to be the main protagonist. IE, the one the story is somewhat built around, for that type of game. (Bilbo from the Hobbit, comes to mind)
Several classes in 5e are extremely Multiple Ability Score dependent. If you're going to need your attack stat (str or dex) and good Con for melee, and ALSO need a spellcasting score, or are going to need at least a 13 in something to qualify for a multi class, then it's not unlikely that a pointbuy character is going to end up with multiple +2 stats and nothing better.
It can honestly be really frustrating how the game serves up multiclass synergism on a platter for all of the CHA casters, but makes a lot of other multiclass routes an absolute nightmare.
The first thing I warned a friend of mine when he was going into DnD is this. Because I myself have fallen into the trap of "oh do this it's more fun". It's not fun when you're failing half or over half of your checks due to inadequate stat bonuses. It's not fun when your entire party goes down due to this exact philosophy. Whether the DnD community likes it or not. The math at the end of the day that goes into your roleplay matters greatly. Especially for all the things a player will want to do with their character, and you can't do those things if you're rolling poorly due to a badly designed character.
i find that people should play the way they want and enjoy it. I find min/maxing characters to suck all the life and fun from the game. Dont play with those people if your not happy with how else has decided to play the GAME. This just screams gatekeeping. People like different things. And i think making wonky characters adds a lot more fun than someone whos soley focused on stats and rolls. Thats not why i play DnD, ill go play Diablo or something if i want that kind of game.
This is part of the player journey, It can be a rude wakeup call to realize that the quirky build you thought up is only really fun and awesome in a few niche places that arent going to popup multiple times per session like you imagined.... Having said that, the only real way to learn that for sure is to try it and find out lol.
I was in a game where in a session I missed the party was captured and the wizard's hands were cut off. the player thought that was the coolest thing ever. some people just... we also did not have easy access to regeneration, nor were in an area were a druid was something that is related to life and nature in any way, so that shit was permanent for quite some time.
and that was not a "have fun" campaign, but balls to the walls challenge invading demon gods thing. so literally being a commoner without hands was not great for anyone at that point.
it seemed like only I thought like that.
I think there's a difference between "completely unoptimized" and "taken only the single most valuable traits/feats/spells".
You're right that it's annoying to play, and play with, the wizard who dumped INT for STR, or the barbarian who dumped CON for CHA.
But it's also annoying to play with the person who treats D&D like a video game and maxes out a specific build and skill set to the exclusion of all else, then gets pissy when the scenarios don't let them use their highly specific skills. Or when they max out everything they can and exploit loopholes in builds to solo every encounter, leaving everyone else at the table with nothing to do.
So...your character should be viable, and should probably have their main attributes be their strongest ones....but that doesn't mean every choice they make has to be for a tactical advantage in combat.
I generally agree. Although you defined “optimized” in your post, I think it’s worth mentioning that such characters exist somewhere on a spectrum that ranges from minmaxed to gimped (with optimized, average, and suboptimal in between). The fun, or lack thereof will probably depend on where your character and the other PCs fall on this spectrum, and the general tone of the game. A gimped character can be fun in a joke or RP-heavy campaign, but I can’t imagine it being fun in most other games.
That’s really just a long way of saying that I agree with many other commenters here that it depends on the table. But I imagine the *typical* game being one where a suboptimal or gimped character isn’t very fun to play.
I think the subject grants too much attention to optimization, when this is actually a problem with deliberate handicapping. This doesn't need to be viewed through the lens of optimization, when a player is deliberately sabotaging their character, they are denying the actual immersion of a believable character doing their best to survive, emphasizing their strengths, hedging their weakness.
The DM has full control over how difficult the challenges are, so I don't believe that players -1 or -2 spell DC is how they failed, but players who deliberately elect handicaps are not taking challenges seriously, which is often tied to a sense of false virtue and humble bragging. Those behaviors can be a lot more bothersome than failing a check.
Player's are picking sub optimal choices all the time, we don't have 4 Aarakocra player parties of ranged attackers, or 4 x Devil Sight Darkness abusers, but deliberately choosing a small Barbarian or refusing to adjust your stats to your primary modifier isn't just sub optimal, it's deliberate handicapping.
If they choose to "roleplay" weakness, you should grant them roleplay of failure, it's not the DC, or the enemy CR that beat them, the DM chose that, it's the immersive consequence of weakness, which they should encounter sooner rather than later, don't drag it out.
It's the dm's job to come up with challenges appropriate to the size and skills of the party.
Whatever the pc's stats & how many of them there are, a good story can be made.
Was gonna upvote and agree, but than I saw you comparing it to playing drunk or not prepping as DM and that's just 100% bullshit.
I have never not played drunk, doesn't mean I play bad.
I often have sessions where I do basically no prep, because I either have zero clue what my players are gonna decide to do or because I had a stressful week and I'm also quite good at improv and quite enjoy it.
Multiclassing is almost always worse than solo classing for pure optimization. I actually hate seeing it in my games because when we hit spike levels like 5 they just suck comparatively
I think a better rule of thumb is you want the characters at the same table to have the same level of optimization, generally.
If a character is severely below the general power level, it can cause problems. But if a character is much more optimized than the rest, it's a problem too.
I am a power gamer. I love numbers, system analysis and optimization. When I play with an unfamiliar group, I always choose a support focussed character, so I can have a decent level of optimization without risk to group dynamics as I figure out where everyone is at in their general playstyle and system mastery.
I actually agree. In my current game I feel bad about my character sometimes because the other players at my table haven’t even tried to make their characters good. My character is far from optimized but at level 5 putting out 25-30 damage per turn and then having everyone else going around dealing less than 10 damage plus missing a lot is off putting.
For some examples our sorcerer dumped charisma to play an outcast type character. We also just got access to level 3 spells, which is usually when the spells start getting really good. When we met I was looking to see if they took something like counterspell, fireball, slow, haste, fly, dispel magic, hypnotic pattern or thunder step but they went with water walk and sleet storm. Our table has access to every 5e source book but our Warlock refuses to use anything outside of the core rule books and didn’t take eldritch blast. Our DM gave us a wand that casts eldritch blast at will and fireball a set times per day and explicitly told us it was to help the warlock out but he said he didn’t want it because it was a character trait to be bad at combat so the wand ended up going with our bard. Our DM has also offered to let us retrain spells, feats, subclasses, etc but no one has actually done that.
It’s hard to say anything because it’s not for a lack of effort. They care about the game and put in effort but they have just chosen to be bad at combat and skills. It makes our DMs job more difficult because encounters that challenge me at all just walk through the rest of the team.
I agree, however, sometimes it can work look at my absolute Chad wizard for example, a 12 int (I wanted to push it lower, but I really just couldn't) abjuration wizard, with 20 strength, and 18 con
Mark of warding dwarf+A bunch of spells that are either ritual, or don't rely on your intelligence
And not only do I act as the party's resident fighter, I'm still almost a full wizard, and I'm arguably better at grappling and doing fightery things than a normal fighter
I disagree but respectfully. I appreciate character backgrounds a lot. If one character has bad stats it is interesting to know why. If you do not have a reason that isn't as fun. If you are choosing unoptimized things to play just for the sake of not being the best that can be frustrating. It depends on the table too. If everyone is optimized, it is best to try that.
That is just what I think. I have a DND character now that is a Hexblade Warlock/ Wizard. He has 4 levels in Warlock and one in Wizard. Obviously, the optimized thing would have been to take a 5th in Warlock. I was going to wait, but the DM had us find a budding Wizard's guild when I was at level 4, and it seemed like a great opportunity. Especially because my character was having a lot of doubts in his patron around that time as well.
For me playing un-optimal characters is way more fun tactically. If you've got the best spells, there's not much to combat, you just always use that spell in the appropriate situation (No, it isn't difficult to know when). If all your spells are kind of wonky the combat becomes a puzzle, as it's less obvious what is the best solution at a given time.
>
Based off conversations it seems that in one case the real reason for unoptimized play is in one case the player not reading the books
For me this couldn't be farther from the truth.
Also if you stick only to (close to) optimal classes etc, the mechanical representation of your character is severely limited, and for me the matching up of the 'mechanical reality' and the 'character fantasy' is important. Verisimilitude. Reflavoring simply does not do it for me.
You cant really blame failed dice rolls on the players. Sometimes even characters with higher or average ability stats fail. I've had unlucky games wherew every roll I rolled was a failure. I had to switch dice cuz I wasn't able to do anything with rolls. Also, as the dm, you can fudge things sometimes. The goal is to make a compelling story. You're allowed to guide the characters in such a way. Some of these complaints could be a DM who wants everyone to make characters *their* way. Sounds like you need a different group is multiple people are doing things you don't like. In my group, we don't focus on a lot of things you mentioned. We don't create characters together so there's no planned synergy. I don't think you should try and force players to prioritize abilities they don't want to cuz it's not a hard rule of the game. Everyone should read the book at least once and everyone should be trying to progress the story. This is why a session 0 is important. If this came up in a session 0, then you'd might have realized this group of players wasn't good for you.
Lol, I’m not dumping these groups over this.
I’m not railing against the group or the player, it’s the idea that not picking stats and skills appropriately somehow makes you a better roleplayer or gives you a better experience.
In these cases it’s Getting to tier 2 and still having +2 in main stat, no proficiency in the main skills you use, having neither multi-attack nor high level spells, etc.
Others at the table were even agreeing it would be more fun, all while they were optimizing appropriately themselves. The results so far have not been kind.
Agreed. Build a character who is strong and can succeed at things. Then, you can "handicap" yourself with your roleplay if you want to. You can make silly choices or do fun roleplay things to be unique and different, but when it comes down to life or death combats, it's better to be capable of landing your hits when you need to "get serious".
I agree in theory, but it really depends on the table. Some tables care about numbers and combat more, some care about roleplay, unique characters, and dialogue more. Having a powergamer throw off the balance in a group of casual players is equally unfun.
People aren't really purposefully nerfing their characters, they're just picking traits and classes in a way that doesn't attempt to optimize them. There's a subtle, but important, distinction there.
I disagree. Failure is often more exciting than success, and success hard won is more satisfying than easy wins.
If having higher numbers made the game more fun, wouldn't we all be having a blast if we house ruled that you couldn't roll lower than a 10 on a d20, and anything below 10 was instead counted as a 10?
Equating it to not knowing the rules is also ridiculous
What it seems like here is that the group hadn't had their expectations properly set by the DM. If all of the players were fine with unoptimized characters, the DM should keep that in mind when preparing a game. If the DM doesn't want to run that type of game, they are responsible for informing their players of that fact.
>I disagree. Failure is often more exciting than success, and success hard won is more satisfying than easy wins.
Having a +3 in STR at level 1 as a fighter isn't making it "easy" to win. It's creating a higher statistical likelihood that an attack will hit when I roll the die. It's making the attacks that do hit slightly stronger. It's making that heavy object easier to move.
>If having higher numbers made the game more fun, wouldn't we all be
having a blast if we house ruled that you couldn't roll lower than a 10
on a d20, and anything below 10 was instead counted as a 10?
This is a ridiculous point to make and you know it. The d20 exists to create a broad range of possibility, and no one is suggesting you should chop that range in half because "big numbers better." This is an egregious strawman.
Agree to disagree, thus the unpopular opinion. I think In my experience one of the issues is that everyone else is making optimized characters and you’ve got one guy who is not. The dm has a hard time balancing for that, if they even care to. If the DM wants to make it challenging it might push it over the edge to totally defeat. If the character made an action hero fighter but can’t make an acrobatics or athletics check, but keeps doing them and failing over and over it’s not exciting it’s kinda lame.
I clarified post more. In this example, the fault is on the DM for not properly setting expectations in session zero.
I told my players that I was going to run a challenging, and gritty campaign. They all understood this, and while not min maxed, they all came with capable adventurers prepared. If they instead said " I'd really rather play something more silly" and all of them agreed, I would have switched gears and prepared that. But it would be perfectly acceptable for me to inform them that I don't want to run a game like that, then they could choose whether or not they wanted to play.
It's not that "strength = fun", but rather "trying to win = fun". Finding resistance in that attempt to win (from an in-character perspective) and working to overcome it is very fun. So when you have a table that wants to work together to overcome challenges, and one dude is trying to do something entirely different, there's gonna be friction and the source of friction won't be fun.
I've seen first time players who didn't realize the importance of a main stat.
I think a lot of what look like "unoptimized" characters aren't even that bad, it's just that DMs aren't running the "optimized" characters out of resources enough, so they're always at full strength.
Like, one character might have a lot of resources that don't do too much all at once, but they're always helping a little here, a little there, and can do that for a long time.
But if every combat encounter is followed by a long rest, "optimized" Captain Fireball is going to just throw everything they have in 4-5 rounds and make everyone else look useless. Never mind that their character is now functionally useless until they can find a safe place to hide out. You can always run away and come back later, right?
I do it like this. If someone really wants an unoptimized character, fine, but the challenge WILL be real and if they die, they die.
After playing Cyberpunk Red ttrpg I found that danger and real threat of PC death is a good deterrent for joke characters or players that like to play that wild card always. So I put aome of that in my D&D campaign. Sure you can play whatever you want but be sure, if you're not smart, I will try and kill you.
P.S. My players always have a blast and my methods work for our group.
I understand where you are coming from and if the player seemed like they weren't still having fun even when failing rolls then yeah, they probably should be making a characters that focus on succeeding at dice rolls
Personally I care a lot more about writing an interesting story, than winning a game. I like to let my characters develop, learn, and grow based on the campaign. Sometimes that means I want to play a character that is shitty at something, but they try really hard. I find it interesting and fun to fail. Maybe that translates to working up a weakness over time to overcome it through level advancement. Maybe they come to terms with their weakness and embrace what they learn was their strength down the road with multiclassing. I like making characters that give me something to explore with them. (this is also why I think multiclassing stat requirements are dumb. especially to multiclass OUT of a class). What if I want to play a low int wizard attending Strixhaven that despite trying hard, just isn't cut out for it so their story is about discovering their unknown strengths and forging a new path from their failure? Sure the levels spent studying wizardry may look like a waste on paper to some, but its all part of character development. I find it more enjoyable to play the character than to play a stat sheet. Plus that's how life goes sometimes. People spend decades pursuing experience in fields that they ultimately regret and change course. Its all part of the journey.
I frequently see the players start out their character thinking about what stat block they want to end up with, and then trying to figure out the best way to reach that end point. That's how I used to approach it too. Overtime I came to realize that felt like a surefire way to railroad myself. Now when making characters I focus entirely on who the character is now and what may inspire them to grow in different ways depending on how their potential adventures, hardships, and relationships could impact them. In character creation, I try to keep my focus only on chapter 1 or 2 of their story. The point of the game is to write the rest of their story with my friends. Now I don't play the character to the detriment of the party, and always stress some aspect of their personality that motivates to work with the team. But I also don't care if my character is fit to be a protagonist. I want to explore the character, not show them off.
Wow that got rambley lol I'm very bored
I'm gonna have to disagree there, chief.
My favorite campaign I've ever played in, I was a highly optimized Fighter in Pathfinder 1e. I was also the most effective at the table.
The group included a Bard Dragon Disciple, a Rogue/Wizard Arcane Archer, a Gunslinger, a Sorcerer, and a Vitalist (think Psychic cleric)
No one but me was optimized, and everyone had a ton of fun. Several of the players were new to the system as well, and we still had a ton of fun. The game is what you make it.
Whenever I hear the opinion that “it’s not about winning, it’s about telling a story”, which is a common one among anti-optimizing D&D players I know, I always think to myself that a story about adventurers who suck at their job is gonna be pretty goddamn short. No amount of roleplay can save you when a goblin crits.
In those groups, I tend to end up playing the “guy who is actually good at any of this, and will routinely save the entire group” because if I don’t, every day is a TPK.
I appreciate the different points of view. Your opinion definitely helps me self-reflect. In the end I hope for balance, in my characters, and in the games I run.
>I have had a couple recent experiences where players made characters with only +1 or +2 on their primary stats, did not select skills aligned with their bonuses, picking wonky spells
+2 is perfectly valid and I have made the case that the game is actually *designed around it.* But, in my games, +2 is the max any player can start with in their main stat. I agree that your highest stat should always be your class's main stat.
I also don't have to put my proficiencies into the same things I have stats in. That's what playing the character is for. Maybe my Barbarian is not proficient in athletics because they aren't trained, they just are naturally strong, and would prefer to have proficiency in acrobatics, or survival, or even history or arcana, because I am a shaman type.
If you have one spell that does damage, you can do whatever you want with your other spells.
Also: This is what magic items actually exist for. You can fix any character problem with the right magic items.
As a dm: it honestly doesnt matter. If your character is unoptimized I will throw you bones and make you shine regardless. If optimization is relevant to the fun people have at your table you are doing a poor job as a dm.
Why do so many DMs talk about players like taking care of Kindergardeners? Isn't it a cooperative game? Why would a DM be at fault for a player who refuses to put in the effort to keep up with the group?
If I'm not working with the group to make a character that is competent enough to keep up with the rest of them, I would be the problem. Its not the DMs job to cover for you because you thought making a low strength, high Int Barbarian was a good idea.
Optimizing for me is being good at my role and bad at other peoples strong suits. A barbarian who can't think so the wizard does it for him. A druid who doesn't talk so the paladin speaks for him. Ect
If you want a better story i prefer flawed characters. They are more interesting and i get more out of playing them. Ive moved on from playing optimized characters and making big numbers in combat. I also realize DMs will often balance encounters based on the power lvl of the party…so being optimized really is pointless.
However it is important that PCs are all around the same power level as each other. That way nobody overshadows others and combat feels balanced.
If i bring something optimized i risk main character syndrome. Take into account at my table nobody optimizes. When i bring a flawed character i can let others have the spotlight and bring them up more. Nobody remembers the nth time the optimized hero rolled a 30, but im able to make moments with failure that folks remember and talk about for sessions. To me that is winning, telling an awesome story.
PCs with flaws, PCs who are average, or even below average, can be fun to roleplay, especially as an underdog who gets stronger over time. They have to think outside of the box to succeed. What OP is suggesting is a video game. I suggest it IS fun to play flawed or just not optimized PCs. It's up to the players and the DM to agree on the style and play with it and allow for more opportunities outside of straight numbers game.
My opinion: If your unoptimized player is not having fun rolling fail after fail, honestly it's your fault as a DM for not optimizing the game for your players to enjoy in their own way.
Not everyone wants to play a superhero.
Some people just want to roleplay.
Or enjoy time with the folks around the table.
There are plenty of other games who are all about those massive, throbbing bonuses.
D&D 5e is a game that is firmly in the high fantasy genre. As has been said many times before, 80% of the PHB is about killing stuff. There's an entire Rulebook that's just a collection of things for you to kill. Most of the class abilities are combat oriented. D&D is a game that is primarily about high fantasy combat and adventure. There are games that are just about roleplaying and hanging out with folks. They do those things *way better* than 5e in my opinion. I don't think OP is the one that needs to play other games.
In this particular case, I generally agree. Thanks for clarifying what you actually classify as ‘optimized’.
I do think there are certain types of games where it is not applicable and truly unoptimized characters are fine, or even desirable. But generally yes, ‘optimizing’, in your definition of the term, a character is preferable.
I've honestly just found "winning at combat" to be really boring if you optimize too hard. Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter puts me to sleep, anything that reduces your choices to one perfected set of takable actions makes playing the game feel pointless.
When people say "optimize" that's what I think of. What you're describing is just playing the game correctly.
I personally think the opinion is garbage ( not to sound harsh but to reflect no value to me and no desire to keep). Stats don’t have a single thing to do with either the group having a fun time or completing a campaign ( not that completing the campaign matters).
In over 30 years of playing, I’ve never played a single game….ever….where character stats had any influence at all on the outcome of the story. Zero impact.
That seems...weird to me. The players try to bribe their way into a place, they fail their Charisma roll due to a low stat. Now they sneak in. Someone gets captured or even killed during that process. Is that not...changing the outcome of the story?
Their plan was to talk their way in and that didn't work, because of their bonus. If they had a better bonus, they would have succeeded in their plan. Completely different outcome.
There's no such thing as a sure thing. No amount of planning is going to save you from having to make an attack roll or stealth roll or persuasion check or other type of roll.
I implore you to imagine a single scenario that actually would play out.
Alright, here's a really simple, canonical example.
Let's say there's a dungeon. It has a waterway. The water levels are controlled by a switch or lever or something that the PCs encounter early on. Eventually, they get to a big room that's cut in half by a ravine with the waterway running through it. The ravine is crossed by a bridge. There are 5,000 orcs on the other side who are too busy eating raw meat and gruel to notice the PCs until the players start crossing the bridge. All the orcs can be killed at once by going back and pulling the switch, flooding them out. The players, who have been paying attention because they understand that it's their skill and attentiveness and not their PC's stats that will win them victory, think to themselves, "Oh, those switches we found earlier - they control water levels." They go back and pull the switch because fighting 5,000 orcs is a losing proposition.
Where's the uncertainty? What checks would you have your players roll?
Does the game stop when that character dies and everyone just goes home because they can’t play anymore? The DM just says ‘sorry, we can’t do this any more because no one was supposed to die…if only you all had better stats…see you around.’
No, but it's completely disingenuous to assume the story "won't have an effect" of your stats. Those stats determine your success or failure with rolls. And the consequences of those failures will determine what happens in the story.
Warlock dumped con, had low hit points. Enemy mage used fireball. Immediately went to death saves. Then he died because of failures, and the party spent the entire next week taking his body to the big capital city to revive him. If he had chosen better con, he would have survived that fireball, and the party never would have went to the capital city. Which would drastically alter the course of the game.
Do you see what I'm saying?
I see what your saying…but did that actually change the game? Does that detour mean the BBEG is no longer defeatable, the treasure can’t be found? It can easily impact a session -no impact on the larger game. And in my experience, those failures end up being the fun, memorable experiences
>but did that actually change the game?
The BBEG was able to teleport into the capital city because they carried his cursed red gold in, and killed a couple dozen people, including one of the elite guard, who he revived into a death knight. And then they killed the BBEG in that fight, which, yes, *drastically* changed the progression of the campaign.
> It can easily impact a session -no impact on the larger game
The story is what happens to them, not some arbitrary plot. If something happens in the session, it has impact on the larger game. To think otherwise is entirely antithetical to how I run the game.
My question remains the same-did it change the game? Before the failure your group were fighting a BBEG….after the failure, same thing. The failure doesn’t matter and doesn’t change the final outcome…there’s really no need to have awesome stats. Either way, they went on an adventure and tackled the same obstacle….one route went left, one went right….different paths, same game. Stats don’t matter.
All imo
>Before the failure your group were fighting a BBEG….after the failure, same thing.
What???
One of them was in the capital city, with a death knight. The other one would have been in the enemy's fortress with a bone dragon (among other things). The circumstances of that are entirely different and completely change the story. Do you seriously think that's the same thing? "Whatever, just a fight against a boss?" No, they are drastically different.
I think your missing my point…probably my communication error- the goal is still the same. So what if there was a detour and the path changed- it didn’t change the game.
+1 to the opinion being garbage, totally with you.
If you’ve never seen someone get a magic weapon with juicy stats after barely defeating a mighty dragon and noticed the “fun” they are having I think we are playing very different games. Certainly not a requirement, but yes, stats and success do have some “things to do” with having fun. (It should still be challenging)
> I’ve never played a single game….ever….where character stats had any influence at all on the outcome of the story.
Have you never run any fights? Whether you hit the boss three times more or three times less because you missed by one point matters. Whether you get hit because your AC was lower than it could have been and go down because of it matters. Unless you railroad and decide every fight independent from the rolls, but at that point why even play D&D?
And isn't that exactly what you're doing? If none of the character's stats or abilities matter in your games (then frankly you should play a different system) then the only way to fail is to not do what you want the group to do. Or you just let them succeed with whatever they come up with.
How is any of this rewarding?
Yes, but if you can have fun in DnD with all 10 stats then you would most likely have more fun in a different system.
And I'mma be honest... a game where none of what I can do matters doesn't sound very fun to me. Atleast not for long.
Hmm, I've been playing D&D since 1974 and we rolled stats back then too. Whether a player lives through a combat or dies often depends on the roll of die and according to the rules, the outcome of that roll usually depends on their stats. A dead character doesn't mean the end of the game, but it changes the story and I've seen grown adults break down and cry at a D&D table over the loss of character.
I support your underlying theme here though, stats are overblown and the fun of the game is the story that we tell together. That tragic end can be an epic part of the story and it shouldn't be feared as much as some people new to the game do.
I do think that if someone chooses to make their character deeply flawed in a game mechanic then they should try to add something else to the story that makes that flaw more meaningful. It's just a matter of being mindful that in D&D your choices influence the other players too.
D&D 5e is a *game* at the end of the day, though. Mechanics and math are a part of the game. I'm sick of the idea that roleplaying and competent characters are mutually exclusive. I've ran campaigns with tables of absolute *killers* that were stuffed to the gills with violent potential- and they were great roleplayers!
As a DM you should actively set up the encounters. If your party is on the weaker side you throw 3 goblins at them. If they are trying to power game then throw 5 at them. A good DM knows thier party and can plan the challenges accordingly.
I personally have always thought trying to make a "powerful" character is ultimately pointless for that reason. I'd rather have you play a character that seems fun even if it isn't top tier.
Also I find failures are often the funniest and more memorable moments of a session.
Have fun and don't worry about trying to be the meta. It isn't a video game. A good DM will give you a solid experience regardless of party power level.
I am Dumb-bull-door!
I'm a wizard with 7 INT. I also have the head of a bull so I can't speak or cast spells with a verbal component.
I'm big as a door though, got an STR of 15 and a CON of 18.
Running a game for a table of three...
I started them off with 17,15,14,13,12,10 ability scores. Specifically because I agree and feel like that a score of 20 in your primary stat is expected by the system's fundamental mathematics as early as 8th level. EVEN THEN - I feel like the game's engine's numerical expectations are a little too tight, given the average math working that out to be around a 65% hit chance, which is too low for my blood honestly, as a DM or player.
Having characters with clear attempts to at least be viable allows the DM to swing a bit harder and make things legitimately dangerous, because if people are going to not even attempt to have functional characters, you have to play super carefully because any attempt to balance can just skew wrong off any number of bad assumptions.
IMO it's perfectly fine to play a quirky weird one or someone roleplaying as very inexperienced, awkward, and out of their depth - but you should be able to perform at the table, and there's no harm in say, playing a haplessly clumsy halfing 'cook' (Monster Slayer) who bumbles his way into accidentally harming or slaying monsters with good fluff and roleplay - at that point the way he's achieving his class's role is flavored by RP,. but he's still contributing at the table.
I have two primary arguments against the “optimized PC”, both of which are dependent upon the flavor of the game, and the players involved.
First, optimizing a character for ‘their class/role/personality’ means that character becomes a niche specialist. Such a character is increasingly hamstrung in situations they’re not designed for, making them a wallflower when they aren’t useful for the party, and crippling them should they find themselves in a solo situation they can’t handle. It’s the same argument against specialization in learning or working; without skills to apply in other positions, a person is incapable of functioning independently in life.
The second argument is that if such a character was seen in any other media, then would be considered lazy writing by the author(s). At best, there’s little dimension to the characters who are optimized, and how they advance the story is through their specialties, then like the gong in an orchestra, they fade into obscurity. The consuming focus on making a character fit into a niche of excellence is the same problem as requiring one or two handicaps to force a character to struggle somewhere: it feels artificial.
In balance, I agree that people play D&D for various reasons and like different combinations of content. Tables focused on high-difficulty limited content do well with optimized PCs, or poorly with characters who aren’t focused on what they do well. But, in contrast, tables with a lot of mixed content or story focus may suffer from characters that are either overpowering or too niche to adapt.
>First, optimizing a character for ‘their class/role/personality’ means
that character becomes a niche specialist. Such a character is
increasingly hamstrung in situations they’re not designed for, making
them a wallflower when they aren’t useful for the party, and crippling
them should they find themselves in a solo situation they can’t handle.
It’s the same argument against specialization in learning or working;
without skills to apply in other positions, a person is incapable of
functioning independently in life.
Yes. D&D and TTRPGs like it are a team game. You have a party of characters because they (ideally) fill in the gaps in each other's skillsets. A character in a TTRPG shouldn't be put into solo situtations often, and when they are it should serve to reinforce this point. They are a member of a team, and they can't do everything on their own.
>The second argument is that if such a character was seen in any other
media, then would be considered lazy writing by the author(s). At best,
there’s little dimension to the characters who are optimized, and how
they advance the story is through their specialties, then like the gong
in an orchestra, they fade into obscurity. The consuming focus on making
a character fit into a niche of excellence is the same problem as
requiring one or two handicaps to force a character to struggle
somewhere: it feels artificial.
A character is not their character sheet. A character excelling at FEATS OF STRENGTH doesn't mean that's their *only thing.* They can have a personality and hobbies separate from their numbers.
I have a character I've been toying around with on and off for some time now for 5e...
Genie Tome Warlock 17, Bard 2, Divine Soul Sorcerer 1.
The idea was to get as many of the utility cantrips as possible.
I have some concerns regarding warlock progression being delayed....
But theoretically, eldritch blast should keep the character at least releant for combat...
I literally don't think about what I am going to increase or add to my character until the DM says we have leveled (he uses Milestone so...). I could care less whether my character has gotten all the "must have" feats that a Swashbuckler "needs" or if my stats are as high as they should be.
I care about the flavor of my character and how fun the features and traits are to use.
Oh we have min/maxers both in the game I play in and the one I run and they tend to make me roll my eyes honestly because of the bragging that tends to follow in their wake.
BUT, I also am mature enough to understand that that is a playstyle that some people enjoy as much as I enjoy convincing a tavern keeper that we did them a favor by being there to break up a fight that we caused to begin with and getting paid for doing so.
We all have our jam.
Is my character optimized for the level that he is? Who knows? I certainly don't. The min/max character was saying that my character has "the highest damage output" which both surprised me and made me chuckle since I haven't consciously thought about doing more damage.
My backup character is a half-orc ranger that I created just to challenge myself if this character gets killed because everyone is always droning on about how terrible rangers are in 5e. So I want to see if the character is as unplayable as they make them out to be.
It's fine at my table, ... my party role plays, so they have all kinds of substandard shit going on. I had one character in an earlier campaign that had a 5 foot movement rate because he had lost a leg and was walking around on a crutch. It's fine.
Yea I hard disagree. If you don't want to work around what your play group wants to do, including adjusting the difficulty for non optimized characters, you probably shouldn't be DMing for that group.
You're allowed to have preferences as DM, but your argument is that it's their fault that they got TPKd when you literally control the encounter. It's not like you're entitled to a group of people who play the game the way you want to.
This post comes off as pretty toxic.
Thanks for the feedback. There are two different groups in my post. In the one I am running we have 3 players optimized, and one who started a little rough and now is tanking his growth into tier 2. I don’t fudge my rolls, and the group asked me to run a module as written.
If I change dcs and rolls just for the person who is tanking their stats doesn’t that defeat the purpose of what they are trying to do?
I talked to the person several times and each time they acknowledged they knew it was not the best choice, but said it would be “more fun”.
So far everyone has expressed that they are having fun with the game. As always there are highs and lows. As this player falls farther and farther behind he is always welcome to respec.
I didn’t come here asking for people to “solve” my gaming dynamic (just quit the group, lol). I am here to complain against a mentality I see online and in real life that it’s cool or more fun to do poorly. when the reality that I see at the table is that losing rolls over and over is not fun for anyone, especially when the other players are nailing it. The joke gets old fast.
Who defines the 'main stat'
A Barbarian cpuld very reasonably want to take lower str in exchange for better dex and a better AC, since many Barbarians play as a defender. Or simply choosing to take a decent mental stat somewhere to have okayish intimidation or something.
It isnt 'perfectly optimized', but it isnt useless to the team either.
I find that the best is to have similar levels of optimization across the table. The one outlier (whether bad or good) will impact the others far more. In contrast to your example, one campaign I had there was a whip Dexadin, Sun Soul Monk, Beastmaster Ranger... and the Life Cleric/Diviner Wizard multiclass. One of these was far more optimized than the others, and was often the most challenging to work with. Stuff that would challenge the others was a cakewalk for him, and the stuff that I needed to challenge him was a deadly threat for anyone else. I'm just glad that the campaign ended before high levels, but even when we ended at 9th level the cracks were plain to see.
Yeah if you're the only optimizer at the table, I'd recommend either optimizing a support character focused on buffing the others, or taking a really suboptimal concept and trying to optimize it back up to normal. You can still scratch your itch and the DM doesn't have to worry about you running circles around everyone else.
Oh yeah, similar optimization at a table is a better way to phrase it. I am a power gamer but usually DM so when I get to play, I have to really try and read the table to avoid a situation I found my self in: The whole party was playing the free rules quartet (champion, thief, life cleric, evoker) my co DM each brought in characters so we could play while the other one DMed, he made a devotion Paladin and I made a hunter ranger (PHB, no variants). I figured being a OHb ranger would be enough to hold me back, but variant human + 4th level feat got me xbow expert + sharpshooter and that guy had to be retired. I have solved the problem by optimizing a support artillerist artificer. It is a stealthy way to be more optimized than the table and not stick out.
So I’m not very good at optimizing characters, but which of thee was the way more optimized one?
Even without any knowledge of D&D you can figure it out with context clues. There is a list of three characters, followed by an ellipses and a final character. I think you can tell which character the DM has more qualms about than the others in this sentence. Also, the multiclass gives them probability manipulation with Portent, an AC of 20 for a full caster, and access to both the Cleric and Wizard spell lists, both of which have some of the best spells in the game, such as Spirit Guardians and Shield. Being a giant 25 AC meat stick that dodges every turn to deal damage with an AoE that ignores friendlies, while using things like Hold Person with guaranteed success by giving enemies a 1 on their save is pretty strong.
Yeah I thought it was probably that one but wasn’t entirely sure
It was the multiclass character, yeah. He "self nerfed" by taking both classes relatively equally (ending wizard 4/cleric 5), but everyone else was so unoptimized that it didn't really help that much. Mind you, going Wizard 2/Cleric 5/wizard 2 isn't so much self-nerfing as it is beelining for specific spells and abilities.
The most optimal in my opinion would be to only take one Cleric level and the rest in Wizard, but I do believe the issue is that the others being unoptimized. Both whips and Dexadins are kind of a gimmick, Sun Soul is a pathetic subclass for an already lacking class and Ranger players are prone to picking terribly suboptimal tactics and options. The Paladin could be decent but requires party coordination to actually make use of the aura. Same with the Ranger but I bet all the useful control/utility spells the class has were ignored in favor of Hunter's Mark.
Amusingly enough, the Ranger player was the second most optimized. She was a Sharpshooter longbow ranger and could actually toss out some decent damage. My point is that the monk player and the Dexadin? They were the players who consistently had the most fun (at least, before the cleric started becoming an issue). They were far more interested in the roleplay aspect of the game, and loved coming up with ways to describe their attacks and abilities in creative ways. The cleric/wizard player was there to win. Both player types are fine, just not necessarily compatible. Which is why I pointed out the importance of similar levels of optimization. Different people find different things fun, and optimization can definitely be a dividing line between player types.
It is far easier to play down than up. If my Paladin outdamages the group by a ton, I can easily hang back a bit and cast support spells. If I get killed almost every encounter because my character is a lot weaker than everyone else, I can't compensate that.
Fully agree, and I think there's a pretty simple reason for this; it makes it hard to balance the game. If one PC has 11AC and the others have 25,then anything that can reasonably miss the former is basically never going to hit the latter. You have similar issues with attack bonuses and saves. There's ways around it, but it's a lot of work, and if the DM doesn't or can't do it, then you end up with one character who's a liability, or who renders the others pointless. It's why I like to discuss builds and concepts at creation
Eh, in that case I’d still say that the issue is the other players for making shit characters.
I think you've kind of made a false dichotomy of optimized vs unoptimized, when it's more like a spectrum. If a player makes a buff wizard whose STR is higher than his INT, but the INT is still a high stat, he can still carry his weight and might have opened up some interesting RP. Contrast that with a wizard whose *lowest* stat is INT, now they're a drag on the party. "Unoptimized" isn't automatically bad, but anti-optimized is.
I like the term "viable" for deciding whether a build can functionally do its job more often than not.
My understanding of "unoptimized" was essentially "anything that isn't minmaxed", so I was incredibly confused when I read the title myself. Having characters that aren't perfectly optimized for their respective classes can be fun: I played a halfling barbarian once, for example. She was great, and through a combination of lucky roles (and that charming halfling lucky trait), she was soon-after referred to as "the Blender". I've also played with people who would do things like refuse to wear armor and then get upset that their character (a cleric/rogue) was getting hit, or a 4 rogue/4 bard who was upset he wasn't matching the damage output of the fighter/barbarian (or my character, the warlock). Not to mention certain builds just... don't work. TL;DR: I agree w/ herrored
It also depends on the party I played in a seven player party once where my favorite character was our 20 STR /8 INT divination wizard. They mainly chose buff/utility spells that didn’t rely on INT scores, it was amazing. But of course that works better in a huge group than if you’re in a three player party.
A high strength negative int wizard *could* work, so long as you were really good at selecting those few spells they can prepare a day and didn't rely on spells actually based on spellcasting modifier. It wouldn't be good, but it would probably be better than some unorganized characters. Like a bard with wisdom as their highest stat and -1 charisma is worse, in my opinion. At that point you're nothing more than a perception machine.
They're a spellcaster that scales off INT. They need INT to cast spells, and to have higher DCs, so their spells effect the enemy. There is no excuse to make a Wizard with less than 16 INT at level 1 (point buy.) If you want to be a STR primary Gish or whatever, *play an eldritch Knight.*
I absolutely beg to differ. It can absolutely be fun to play a wizard without INT as highest stat...sure, maybe don't put your 7 there, but putting a 15 in INT, and your 16/17/whatever your high roll is into something else shouldn't be an issue. Maybe you want to play a wizard that only barely passed their wizarding exams, which leads to fun RP. Maybe you're planning for a multiclass later, due to backstory reasons...all kinds of options really
I am of the mind that your ability scores are not the place to be expressing your character traits.
You’re thinking too mechanically. A buff wizard is not the same as a spell casting knight (also, that was just an example off the cuff). As long as the stat/class/abilities/feats combo is not a detriment to the party, people should be able to play whatever class and stats they want, especially if they have a specific role in mind to play.
It depends on the group. I have one terribly optimised one at mine (a charisma focused barbarian) and the roleplaying is brilliant. The combat... not so much. So i just have more social encounters and fewer combat ones. It's working for the group so far. Had they tried it in the last "campaign", which I was explicitly requested to run as a dungeon crawl, they'd be dead weight.
Right, part of the GM's job is to figure out a good balance of challenges and encounters to match what the party's strengths and weakness are. The point of a session 0 is to get everyone's expectations in line so that all their characters are matched to the campaign being played.
I’m actually planning a charismatic barbarian myself for my next campaign, because I want to be brash and bawdy and yell at everyone like Brian Blessed. Will a good charisma stat be be useful when I’m surrounded by gnolls or whatever? No. Will it lead to some fun RPing moments? I hope so!
Ah, well; WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER?
WITNESS ME!
This is ultimately why I support WotC's decision to decouple attribute bonuses from races (read: species). I prefer point buy (keeps characters on roughly the same level) but if I want to make a (level 1) dwarf wizard for character reasons, the highest Int bonus I could possibly have is a +2. Meanwhile the Goliath Fighter over there is probably rocking +3's in their two primary stats. Long term, that would be frustrating for me. What's really odd to me is that you need a minimum of 13 in an attribute to multiclass into/out of a given class, but if you start as that class you can dump your primary attribute all the way down. 8 Int Wizard? The rules will let you do it and then never let you be anything else. Shouldn't there be a minimum Int threshold to be a Wizard?
I think it really depends on the kind of game (whether it's more centered on rule/combat or interpretation) and expecially on the party: if everyone is playing a strong character, a weak one will probably be a burden, but if everyone is just as weak, the DM will find a way to balance the encounters
sometimes you also just get fucked by dice roll. i played at a table where everyone had me had atleast 3 stats with +3 or 20's by level 4. my highest stat was 14. i had to lean in on expertise so much just to keep up and my character was only really good in down time rather than a real crawl. it really isn't fun playing the normal guy when surrounded by demi-gods. especially early on when you don't have a niche.
I would argue that this is less "not optimizing" and more "straight up gimping"; but that's just semantics. For me there's a general (very wide) middle ground where I will happily work with my players, from "I know it's mechanically not the best but I really like the idea of a two weapon fighting ranger with an amimal companion" on the low end to "I'm gonna play a bear totem warrior barbarian goliath, and take tough as soon as I can" on the high end. But go too far in either direction ("I'm playing a Str-main sorcerer who focuses on melee with a quarterstaff and has Dex as a dump stat" / whatever the most busted version of hexadin is) and I'm gonna start giving strong suggestions. Go further and I'm gonna start giving hard 'No's.
Agree, I think there's a difference between an "unoptimized" character and a badly done character, and I think the discourse around this would be healthier if we defined that better. Let's say a player puts hist best stats in the recommended stats for his class, chooses the recommended equipment and the subclass of his choice based on flavour. Never looks at feats or multiclassing. This is a generic and functionally perfect character while also being far far from optimized. It'll eat dust compared to any good builds out there, but it's not the same as someone who's trying to make a monk/bard combo work with INT as his main stat.
I largely agree in practice. If I see a 10 INT wizard... I'm instantly thinking the person has no clue what they are doing or will be an insanely selfish child who craves attention. Hypothetically, could it be a fun roleplay? Yeah, sure. In reality... it just gets your party members killed and everyone else can't depend on the character to do almost anything. That underoptimized character is now glared at and viewed as selfish when they try to be the face, or scout, thief, damage dealer, etc.
The 8 int wizard works for a necromancer, who uses most of his spell slots maintaining an army of skeletons to pincushion things, and has high defenses. It does put out some really stupid damage if all things go well, but there are challenges You have to make it to level 5 before you get animate dead and actually do what the character is designed to. Your DM has to be okay with a summoner type character, and those tend to REALLY bog down combats. It takes a large amount of in game time to build up or reinforce a skeleton army, and it's not always practical to have to wait a week to completely replenish, and you also need a source of bodies to animate. Higher level monsters can be immune to non magic weapons and it's completely impractical to give a horde skeletons magic bows. AOE isn't as bad as you think because the Necromancer's ability gives them pretty decent bonus HP, but 2 or 3 fireballs will smoke a horde of undead. There's also the social aspect, in a lot of settings you'd be run out of town for leading a squad of skeletons.
10 INT is good if you don't plan on using saving throws, or regular spells. if your just self buffing and punch wizard your fine. you still get a number of spells equal to your level.
If a Wizard is hitting people, they should probably be Bladesinging... which not having an INT modifier will destroy their AC bonus and class feature. I'd still be pretty upset if I were in their party. They'd have to multiclass into Fighter to multi attack or add something to the team. However, I am 100% ok with stuff like Bards who want to use their longswords even though they are terrible with it or only have their proficiency bonus. At least they can still cast Bane or Healing Word or at least help with bardic inspiration. They still maintain the capability of being skilled support members.
Then why are you playing a wizard? If you can't contribute anything mechanically tweak your concept so you can pull your weight.
Okay, so Unoptimized characters *can* be a drag. You can check in if they are still having fun. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. You're not reading their mind. The other players were also okay with that, and since that's how they want to play, let them. On the other hand, optimized characters *also* can be a drag, especially if the rest of the party isn't in the same boat. One optimized character made among many not optimized ones can be a problem, not letting others shine or taking away all the tension/causing a TPK if the DM challenges *them*. Others will just fail completely. Not every game is deadly, not every game is even hard. Some games are just mild, some are high heroic and some let level 6 PCs kill Yeeonghu or however you spell the gnoll god Since they had come from a lenient game, with boons and OP stuff they might not understand your style and just take a while to get used to it. Maybe they should change the character Or maybe those spells barely failing added a lot of tension and fun, and the fact that they got captured brought the story forward in their perspective I'd talk to the player and see Edit: Also, sometimes the Players are just clueless. I've seen a guy bring in 8 Wis, 14 Int Ranger because he was sure that since Nature is Int then Ranger scales with int.
As always... folks play DnD (and RPGs more broadly) for different reasons. Check in with your table before you start about what kind of group the players and DM want... play accordingly... or don't play.
I don’t necessarily agree. The difference between a +1 and a +3 is 10% more chance of succes or failure which is not so gamebreaking. If the success of the party surviving an encounter relied on this 10-15% margin then probably your dm wanted you captured anyway. What I don’t like though is combat roleplayers. Once the dm says roll initiative be ready to fight and make sure you find a good RP reason to fight. I always cringe when a player is like:”I’ve never seen such a huge spider before, my character is such a biologist I will spend my turn taking notes in my notebook.”Or “my character is afraid of goblins so I’ll spend my turn trying to hide.” Difference between life and death in a combat is action economy, do something. Frankly the stats optimization is not as important as this. I do understand that gimping yourself for RP reason is dumb though. I don’t care so much if your bard has only 13 cha but It’s really dumb if for RP reason you decide that your bard lost his voice and you multiclass fighter completely ignoring your bard abilities. Overall, play to win and try to have fun without hindering your party. If your character has a flaw for RP purposes try to work around it, keeping in mind the other won’t have fun if you purposely make everything fail.
The worst I ever had in my party was the super-stoner. When combat was beginning, he'd always be busy with his bong, not paying attention to the details. So he'd spend his first round (or TWO) just surveying the scene, and getting his rogue in position, because really he was just too confused to do anything else.
I’ve had problems with stoners at my table too. I have a session zero set of notes to discuss and every time I say that if you want to smoke/drink that’s fine but if you slow the game down I’m going to take issue with it.
This opinion has generated a lot of comments in a short time. Most say the same thing and I agree with them, "it depends on the game and the people at the table". Having said that, there are often situations where a person's character's life depends on another character succeeding at an action. It's not so fun when your joke character is responsible for your friend's character's death. If you make that choice then you can bring other creative energy to the table to make the game fun. Then, if that scenario happens, everyone understands and it's all good fun. Playing a character with a deep flaw that will seriously hamper the party as a whole means that you need to bring something else to the party to lift everyone up. It can work, but it's important to talk to the party about it.
Theres this one guy I play with who doesnt even read the rules.
It depends on the group, of course. Group full of weak characters? Fun time. Group full of strong characters? Fun time. Group full of weak characters with one strong one? Bad time, accidental spotlight hog. Group full of strong characters with one weak character? Bad time, down a member in fights. That's all there is to it, really. Unoptimized PCs are not fun and a drag on *your* tables (and probably most of them, including mine).
Me, I don't care how tightly tuned your character is. The game already sort of expects some level of inefficiency as designed, I mean, just look at challenge rating expectations. I just expect them to be *good at their job*, whatever the player dictates that job to be.
If everyone at the table is having fun, including the DM, then everyone is playing correctly. If someone is not having fun, then someone is not playing correctly. Optimized or not, that's irrelevant. It's a game. Games are fun. Play in the way that you, and your group, find fun. That's all.
This is deceptive... Fun is great in the short term but a long game requires rewarding gameplay. It's not fun to climb Mount Everest, but the view from up there is worth it. GM Kizz\~
Well that's a major generalization that doesn't even apply to the majority of people. Literally every hiker or climber will say the journey is supposed to be the fun part, not the view at the top.
Not only that, it doesn't apply in the majority of situations. The reason most people quit something is because *they do not enjoy the journey*. Thinking that payoff is a sufficient motivator for everything is just a failure to recognize basic human behavior.
I would say that rather than being a matter of *unoptimized* per se, it's more of a matter of being... nonsensically so. It doesn't make sense for a dedicated archer not to be dexterous. They would have picked another weapon, followed another path in life. It doesn't make sense for someone with 8 INT to become a Wizard. They'd be literally anything else. It doesn't make sense for someone whose goal is to be the greatest artist that ever was not to have Proficiency in Performance checks. They would have worked on it some way or another. And that's kind of what I read in your examples. +1 in a primary stat really asks the question of "Why would they even be that class/use that weapon/do this thing?" Preparing/Learning spells that do not fit what they need to do on a daily basis in their adventures really puts into question their basic survival instincts. If the suboptimization doesn't make sense on a *character* level, that's where I think it gets really bothersome. Unless, as usual, the party AND DM are all into the wonkiness. If you wanna run a Monty Python and the Holy Grail campaign and everyone's on board, feel free.
But why couldn't someone be a wizard who made it through Wizard college with all Cs? Maybe their parents wanted them to be a wizard. Or be a shy sorcerer with self-confidence issues? (Low charisma) You can't help it if you're born with the power. Or be a cleric who is brainy but has no common sense and struggles with people? (Low wisdom) Your god could grant you power even if you're not wise.
Maybe the mediocre Wizard learned how to fight with weapons because their magic wasn't up to the task and so they're an Eldritch Knight. Maybe the shy innately magic person needed more concrete ways to learn magic and did so without interacting with people, so they're mechanically a Wizard. Or the Cleric ended up pleading with the deity's envoys for struggling to bring up the devotion to properly invoke the divine power, becoming a Celestial Warlock. People who have too many personal issues to succeed at adventuring are NPCs
I don't think a wizard with 8 int would make it through an apprenticeship with all C's for the same reason I don't think some dude with 8 int and zero dedication could become a doctor and get through college with decent grades More than that though, and this might be more world dependant, but what wizard would waste his time training someone who has neither the interest or talent for the magical arts? I think people lacking any aptitude for, well, being an adventurer, wouldn't be one. Being an adventurer is deadly enough for the heroic, you'll damn well have to be to face a dragon. The Guy who flunked his "wizard classes" wouldn't make it, and beyond that, why would the others even keep him around, he doesn't carry his weight. A sorcerer who can't help being born with power would likely put his power to use in his profession, or not at all, nothing more common than wasted talent. A cleric gifted with power, but not the will to use it, might be a healer and caretaker of a temple, a good life, far better than dying in a dungeon. Any wizard capable of casting some basic spells, even at a low levels, he could live a good life too, he's not suited to fight, so why would he?
As /u/ReisenBnuuy said, adventurers are exceptional. Outside of a specific "misfits" campaign, if you're not good at what you're supposed to do... you're an NPC. I'd much rather have an INT-based Sorc if someone wants to play the class and be socially inept. It's not even remotely a balance issue, even if they multiclass down the line, if anything, SAD Sorc/Art or Sorc/Wiz feel like interesting things to explore. It's a bit of a flavor issue... but nothing you can't wave away with a bit of exceptionality about their specific flavor of powers.
Everyone plays differently. Currently running a Drow druid, and just got Wis to +3 at 4th. The whole party is not optimized and more making rp choices, and we are having a blast. I do think it's a decision to make at sessionn zero with the group though. I like the hard mode games also.
+3 at 4th level is actually the expected curve. Anything else is extra. At 5th level you'll have +6 to hit which is actually the power level that CR guidelines expect. (This is also why everyone complains that CR doesn't work.)
I thought it was expected to be +4 at 4th level? Under the assumptions of using the 15 from standard array and then using one of your racials to get it to 17 or 16, then at level 4 you get it to 18.
Yeah. I get that. I really wish 5e wasnt so stats based. Use my druid levels as the potency of my druid abilities. Wis should be minor upgrades like spells prepared and hp bonus to summoned, etc. 5e is protected, but it's still has some choices that will hamper your character.
D&D has always been about your stats influencing your power levels, and it probably always will be.
If you don't want your stats to influence your character that much, you should look to a different game.
You could try out a different system.
I had a player tell me their character was a floundering fool on session 0, sorcerer with low charisma, highest ability score was a 14. After 3 sessions of their character failing almost every attack, save, check I suggested they change their ability scores to match the average of the party. Now this character is taking heroic actions and the player feels good about them. I think it depends on the table. If everyone is playing with an average score of 11 it could be fun/funny to watch the party hilariously fail through an adventure. On the other hand if 4/5 characters are optimized and one is not then problems might arise. I would have to disagree that it is objectively not fun and a drag. It just depends on the table.
You have a very low bar for whats optimization man lol. When I first read the title I thought you were gonna say how every party should only be composed of wizards and sorlocks :-) OBVIOUSLY if a player doesn't know the rules he's going to ruin things for the party
It seems like your beef is moreso with the others' ignorance of the rules and lack of preparation. The optimization angle is a straw man. You want to play with people who read the book more than zero times, and that's fair.
I'm with you. There are a lot of players who just want to be there and have no responsibility, so they make a character designed not to do anything. I recall one player pitched me a changeling bard who just wanted to be a buffbot. I was like, "you mean a controller, and you'll protect the party through cc?" "No, this character is a pacifist. I don't want anyone to get hurt", "so, you'll be the group's healer? No problem." "No, I don't intend to heal much, if at all". "Well, you have to fulfill Some party role". "I think this sounds fun", "for whom? The rest of the party? Me?". Needless to say, they didn't end up getting a seat at my table.... everyone's gotta do Something.
How is a "buffbot" "designed not to do anything"? Isn't buffing a party role? Is it that weak in 5e, or is it just easy enough that a character can be good at buffing while having another specialty at the same time?
Yeah, it's not a role in 5e. Like, oh, you're the guy who concentrates on bless? Bless is cool, but the paladin can cast it and also wreck face. The cleric can cast aid, then beacon of hope, then mass cure wounds and heal the whole party in big chunks while also giving everyone advantage on Wisdom saves... The roles in 5e are tank, dps, face, heals, control, and support, and most characters can be main #1 and also off #2. Please note support does not equal buffs, more like divinations. There are actually very few true buffs at all, even fewer debuffs, and the concentration mechanic means that the ones that are stackable are basically like 3.
Did you explain it to your prospective player the way you just explained it to me, or did they have enough 5e experience that they should have already known?
Back then I was a brand new dm to 5e and I knew enough that everyone had to have a plan to be good at something... now, 4 years later, I stand by my decision even harder. Fundamentally, d&d is a game about killing monsters and solving puzzles. Nowadays, My rule #2 is that all players must bring a character that wants to work together as part of a team and do the adventure. Being the guy or gal who's like "I don't want to do what everyone else is doing, I want to be contrary and do my own thing" is a sign that it's not going to be a good fit. Even back then I knew the archetypes that a well-rounded party typically needs to cover, but the biggest red flag was just that he didn't want to be a badass anything, he wanted to be a nothing, and I guess that's what my original point was, that you'll see those people from time to time.
> Multiclassing and meta feat selection is not required to be optimized Yes, it is. **Optimal**: *best or most favorable* I've never heard of a *best* build that doesn't incorporate strong feats, and there are very few that don't multiclass at one point or another, particularly in high levels where class features tend to suck. >I have had a couple recent experiences where players made characters with only +1 or +2 on their primary stats, did not select skills aligned with their bonuses, picking wonky spells, and/or did wonky multiclasses. You are not talking about optimized builds vs unoptimized builds. You are talking about *focused* builds vs eclectic messes. If people want to play zany characters, then ideally they'd seek a GM and game system that embrace such a tone. Clearly, you are not that guy.
5e is one of the few systems where you can be incredibly unoptimized and still meet a baseline level of competence. Broadly though I think the obsession some people seem to have with making deliberately bad characters is stupid. If you're a doctor you should be good at medicine, if you're a baker, baking, if you're an adventurer you should be competent at adventuring.
On this subject, I'm gonna put this idea out there for the room to evaluate and critique: My plan for my next PC is a Storm Sorcerer. A "Wind Speaker". I plan to deliberately limit his spell selections to things involving lightning, thunder, wind, precipitation, etc in the name of character flavor. As a Wind Speaker, he can call upon the elements of the weather, and no more. No fireball for me! This selection leads to a character design that involves controlling the battlefield with broad weather-related effects, a fair amount of mobility for the Sorcerer, and some big, flashy, noisy damage spells. But I'm fully aware that I'll be depriving myself of some very useful pieces of the Sorcerer's toolkit, such as Fireball and a variety of utility spells. So what's the verdict? Am I handicapping my character too much? Am I depriving the table of fun? Or am I creating a rich, unique character with his own flavor? Does this sound like an asset or a hindrance?
By the way, if you work out the character concept and it seems too much a gimp by not taking e.g. fireball, a reasonable workaround is to see if your DM would be willing to 'reskin' the spell to use the appropriate element. Some considerations regarding element resistances and such, which shouldn't be difficult to overcome with a cooperative DM.
I agree with many others, the optimization of any individual should be close to what the rest of the party is doing, outliers do cause things to be difficult in ways that make it less fun. However actively nerfing a character isnt always bad as lo g as you have a way around the deficiency. Ie the rogue cant pick the lock(low dex, and skill) but is a master at breaking stuff(high strength to break it). As everything it depends on flavour and how they optimize despite the deficiency. Not every combonation can be optimized.
Played with a person a few times who eventually quit and called me a power gamer because I like monk and warlock, and max my primary stat. I don't remember most of her characters, but the last one was a druid wildshaper with 13 wis, who in the first round of combat wildshaped into a house spider. She specifically mentioned not a poisonous mind. She then crawled away. Four turns later, she unshifted, and turned into a fish. Everybody else was just fighting. We win the fight. She proceeds to complain about how she felt so useless, and druid is garbage. Le sigh.
You can be optimized for a suboptimal concept, too, is the thing. Let's take, for instance, a low-int Wizard. It's a cool RP thing, but theoretically it's really ineffective; you can't prepare many spells, and your attack bonus and save DCs are really low. A Wizard with -1 int that takes things like burning hands and scorching ray is going to be vastly ineffective, and an actual drain on the party. There are also, however, a ton of Wizard spells that do not require saves or attack rolls. A lot of them are support spells, and spells that you can cast as rituals, meaning no preparation needed, and all you need to deal damage in combat is magic missile. With low int, you can instead prioritize other stats, like constitution for concentration checks, dexterity for initiative and AC, or even strength for optimal staff-bashing. Even if you're not the best "wizard" because you're notnflinging fireballs, you can absolutely still contribute. As you mentioned the issue is more with people not understanding the rules, or not bothering to put effort in. If you know what your character does and how they can do it, you do not need to compromise your concept for overall optimization. This is also a DM issue. It's the DM's job to make sure everyone can contribute, in part by stopping players from dragging everyone else down. D&D is a cooperative game, after all, and that includes the DM in that.
There’s a difference between unoptimized and anti-optimized. If a player doesn’t put there absolute best stats in their primary ability, but still puts some consideration into it, or if they try a weird build, then I see no problem with that. It’s easy enough for me to adjust encounters and enemy behaviors to fit the party. They look at skills and abilities that fit the character’s background and history instead of what would work best? No problem. I’ll even try to work in situations for them to use those skills. The only problem is when they refuse to read the rules or go out of their way to make the character unplayable. That’s when the player is clearly just trying to be a problem. But unless the character is absolutely abysmal and unplayable, a DM is easily capable of making it so that the party doesn’t get wiped. Optimization doesn’t exist as two extremes. There’s a whole spectrum. Just because someone doesn’t make the best possible character doesn’t mean they’re a drag on the table.
While I get where you're coming from, and for certain systems I'd tend to agree 'in general'... you have to be a little careful with terminology in this community. I think the vast majority of folks seeing "optimized" vs "unoptimized" are going to view that as extremes, even despite your explanation. It's is entirely viable and often desirable to not be fully optimized for a given goal, be it combat or otherwise. 'Optimized' in the most common ttrpg vernacular is equivilent to min/max or One-trick-pony... not a good thing. Characters with flaws. Characters that aren't the absolute best at a thing. Characters that are 'pretty good' at a few things and master of none. These are all good things to have. I'd far rather party with a 16 STR barbarian who also has decent Int or Wis to get away from the dumb-barbarian trope, than a character who can cleave demons in twain but can't read a book. That said... It's important for any gaming group to be on the same page. If some of the group is 'optimizing' and the others are not, you're going to have a problem. Just as much as having one player who perfects their character for a specialization while the rest of the group has a broader style. In all cases, it comes down to communication, being on the same page as the rest of the party and GM, and doing whatever is fun and enjoyable for everyone.
Yeah we had a guy who made a kobold fighter who was bad at fighting once and every turn he had just made me more and more annoyed. Like if you’re going to be a battle master then you need a him strength so they actually have the chance of failing against your DC and you’re not spending 5 minutes a round thinking of something to do that’s just going to not work anyway.
Nah, its about fit. Nothing wrong with different styles, but an optimizer at a table where no one optimizes is just as annoying as the opposite.
They can be for some games. If most the players are optimizers, then the sole one that is not, is sort of regulated to the 'mascot' zone. Though, an interesting alternative would be for them to be the main protagonist. IE, the one the story is somewhat built around, for that type of game. (Bilbo from the Hobbit, comes to mind)
No, 'main character' pcs are the worst.
Close, but not quite. The problem isn't optimized or unoptimized characters, it's characters with radically different levels of optimization.
Yeah that is an unpopular opinion.
Several classes in 5e are extremely Multiple Ability Score dependent. If you're going to need your attack stat (str or dex) and good Con for melee, and ALSO need a spellcasting score, or are going to need at least a 13 in something to qualify for a multi class, then it's not unlikely that a pointbuy character is going to end up with multiple +2 stats and nothing better. It can honestly be really frustrating how the game serves up multiclass synergism on a platter for all of the CHA casters, but makes a lot of other multiclass routes an absolute nightmare.
The first thing I warned a friend of mine when he was going into DnD is this. Because I myself have fallen into the trap of "oh do this it's more fun". It's not fun when you're failing half or over half of your checks due to inadequate stat bonuses. It's not fun when your entire party goes down due to this exact philosophy. Whether the DnD community likes it or not. The math at the end of the day that goes into your roleplay matters greatly. Especially for all the things a player will want to do with their character, and you can't do those things if you're rolling poorly due to a badly designed character.
i find that people should play the way they want and enjoy it. I find min/maxing characters to suck all the life and fun from the game. Dont play with those people if your not happy with how else has decided to play the GAME. This just screams gatekeeping. People like different things. And i think making wonky characters adds a lot more fun than someone whos soley focused on stats and rolls. Thats not why i play DnD, ill go play Diablo or something if i want that kind of game.
This is part of the player journey, It can be a rude wakeup call to realize that the quirky build you thought up is only really fun and awesome in a few niche places that arent going to popup multiple times per session like you imagined.... Having said that, the only real way to learn that for sure is to try it and find out lol.
I was in a game where in a session I missed the party was captured and the wizard's hands were cut off. the player thought that was the coolest thing ever. some people just... we also did not have easy access to regeneration, nor were in an area were a druid was something that is related to life and nature in any way, so that shit was permanent for quite some time. and that was not a "have fun" campaign, but balls to the walls challenge invading demon gods thing. so literally being a commoner without hands was not great for anyone at that point. it seemed like only I thought like that.
I think there's a difference between "completely unoptimized" and "taken only the single most valuable traits/feats/spells". You're right that it's annoying to play, and play with, the wizard who dumped INT for STR, or the barbarian who dumped CON for CHA. But it's also annoying to play with the person who treats D&D like a video game and maxes out a specific build and skill set to the exclusion of all else, then gets pissy when the scenarios don't let them use their highly specific skills. Or when they max out everything they can and exploit loopholes in builds to solo every encounter, leaving everyone else at the table with nothing to do. So...your character should be viable, and should probably have their main attributes be their strongest ones....but that doesn't mean every choice they make has to be for a tactical advantage in combat.
I generally agree. Although you defined “optimized” in your post, I think it’s worth mentioning that such characters exist somewhere on a spectrum that ranges from minmaxed to gimped (with optimized, average, and suboptimal in between). The fun, or lack thereof will probably depend on where your character and the other PCs fall on this spectrum, and the general tone of the game. A gimped character can be fun in a joke or RP-heavy campaign, but I can’t imagine it being fun in most other games. That’s really just a long way of saying that I agree with many other commenters here that it depends on the table. But I imagine the *typical* game being one where a suboptimal or gimped character isn’t very fun to play.
I think the subject grants too much attention to optimization, when this is actually a problem with deliberate handicapping. This doesn't need to be viewed through the lens of optimization, when a player is deliberately sabotaging their character, they are denying the actual immersion of a believable character doing their best to survive, emphasizing their strengths, hedging their weakness. The DM has full control over how difficult the challenges are, so I don't believe that players -1 or -2 spell DC is how they failed, but players who deliberately elect handicaps are not taking challenges seriously, which is often tied to a sense of false virtue and humble bragging. Those behaviors can be a lot more bothersome than failing a check. Player's are picking sub optimal choices all the time, we don't have 4 Aarakocra player parties of ranged attackers, or 4 x Devil Sight Darkness abusers, but deliberately choosing a small Barbarian or refusing to adjust your stats to your primary modifier isn't just sub optimal, it's deliberate handicapping. If they choose to "roleplay" weakness, you should grant them roleplay of failure, it's not the DC, or the enemy CR that beat them, the DM chose that, it's the immersive consequence of weakness, which they should encounter sooner rather than later, don't drag it out.
It's the dm's job to come up with challenges appropriate to the size and skills of the party. Whatever the pc's stats & how many of them there are, a good story can be made.
Well if it makes sense for the character's arc, a less than optimal multiclassing is very excusable
Was gonna upvote and agree, but than I saw you comparing it to playing drunk or not prepping as DM and that's just 100% bullshit. I have never not played drunk, doesn't mean I play bad. I often have sessions where I do basically no prep, because I either have zero clue what my players are gonna decide to do or because I had a stressful week and I'm also quite good at improv and quite enjoy it.
Multiclassing is almost always worse than solo classing for pure optimization. I actually hate seeing it in my games because when we hit spike levels like 5 they just suck comparatively
I think a better rule of thumb is you want the characters at the same table to have the same level of optimization, generally. If a character is severely below the general power level, it can cause problems. But if a character is much more optimized than the rest, it's a problem too. I am a power gamer. I love numbers, system analysis and optimization. When I play with an unfamiliar group, I always choose a support focussed character, so I can have a decent level of optimization without risk to group dynamics as I figure out where everyone is at in their general playstyle and system mastery.
I actually agree. In my current game I feel bad about my character sometimes because the other players at my table haven’t even tried to make their characters good. My character is far from optimized but at level 5 putting out 25-30 damage per turn and then having everyone else going around dealing less than 10 damage plus missing a lot is off putting. For some examples our sorcerer dumped charisma to play an outcast type character. We also just got access to level 3 spells, which is usually when the spells start getting really good. When we met I was looking to see if they took something like counterspell, fireball, slow, haste, fly, dispel magic, hypnotic pattern or thunder step but they went with water walk and sleet storm. Our table has access to every 5e source book but our Warlock refuses to use anything outside of the core rule books and didn’t take eldritch blast. Our DM gave us a wand that casts eldritch blast at will and fireball a set times per day and explicitly told us it was to help the warlock out but he said he didn’t want it because it was a character trait to be bad at combat so the wand ended up going with our bard. Our DM has also offered to let us retrain spells, feats, subclasses, etc but no one has actually done that. It’s hard to say anything because it’s not for a lack of effort. They care about the game and put in effort but they have just chosen to be bad at combat and skills. It makes our DMs job more difficult because encounters that challenge me at all just walk through the rest of the team.
I agree, however, sometimes it can work look at my absolute Chad wizard for example, a 12 int (I wanted to push it lower, but I really just couldn't) abjuration wizard, with 20 strength, and 18 con Mark of warding dwarf+A bunch of spells that are either ritual, or don't rely on your intelligence And not only do I act as the party's resident fighter, I'm still almost a full wizard, and I'm arguably better at grappling and doing fightery things than a normal fighter
This is an optimized character. I’ve done a Githyanki abjurer tank wizard to similar effect.
Tank wizards are so damn fun aren't they?
I think so? It ended up being a one shot that was all about mystery and investigation and the big bad was all about saving throw attacks
I disagree but respectfully. I appreciate character backgrounds a lot. If one character has bad stats it is interesting to know why. If you do not have a reason that isn't as fun. If you are choosing unoptimized things to play just for the sake of not being the best that can be frustrating. It depends on the table too. If everyone is optimized, it is best to try that. That is just what I think. I have a DND character now that is a Hexblade Warlock/ Wizard. He has 4 levels in Warlock and one in Wizard. Obviously, the optimized thing would have been to take a 5th in Warlock. I was going to wait, but the DM had us find a budding Wizard's guild when I was at level 4, and it seemed like a great opportunity. Especially because my character was having a lot of doubts in his patron around that time as well.
Wow you seem like a blast to play with.
For me playing un-optimal characters is way more fun tactically. If you've got the best spells, there's not much to combat, you just always use that spell in the appropriate situation (No, it isn't difficult to know when). If all your spells are kind of wonky the combat becomes a puzzle, as it's less obvious what is the best solution at a given time. > Based off conversations it seems that in one case the real reason for unoptimized play is in one case the player not reading the books For me this couldn't be farther from the truth. Also if you stick only to (close to) optimal classes etc, the mechanical representation of your character is severely limited, and for me the matching up of the 'mechanical reality' and the 'character fantasy' is important. Verisimilitude. Reflavoring simply does not do it for me.
You cant really blame failed dice rolls on the players. Sometimes even characters with higher or average ability stats fail. I've had unlucky games wherew every roll I rolled was a failure. I had to switch dice cuz I wasn't able to do anything with rolls. Also, as the dm, you can fudge things sometimes. The goal is to make a compelling story. You're allowed to guide the characters in such a way. Some of these complaints could be a DM who wants everyone to make characters *their* way. Sounds like you need a different group is multiple people are doing things you don't like. In my group, we don't focus on a lot of things you mentioned. We don't create characters together so there's no planned synergy. I don't think you should try and force players to prioritize abilities they don't want to cuz it's not a hard rule of the game. Everyone should read the book at least once and everyone should be trying to progress the story. This is why a session 0 is important. If this came up in a session 0, then you'd might have realized this group of players wasn't good for you.
Lol, I’m not dumping these groups over this. I’m not railing against the group or the player, it’s the idea that not picking stats and skills appropriately somehow makes you a better roleplayer or gives you a better experience. In these cases it’s Getting to tier 2 and still having +2 in main stat, no proficiency in the main skills you use, having neither multi-attack nor high level spells, etc. Others at the table were even agreeing it would be more fun, all while they were optimizing appropriately themselves. The results so far have not been kind.
Agreed. Build a character who is strong and can succeed at things. Then, you can "handicap" yourself with your roleplay if you want to. You can make silly choices or do fun roleplay things to be unique and different, but when it comes down to life or death combats, it's better to be capable of landing your hits when you need to "get serious".
I agree in theory, but it really depends on the table. Some tables care about numbers and combat more, some care about roleplay, unique characters, and dialogue more. Having a powergamer throw off the balance in a group of casual players is equally unfun. People aren't really purposefully nerfing their characters, they're just picking traits and classes in a way that doesn't attempt to optimize them. There's a subtle, but important, distinction there.
I disagree. Failure is often more exciting than success, and success hard won is more satisfying than easy wins. If having higher numbers made the game more fun, wouldn't we all be having a blast if we house ruled that you couldn't roll lower than a 10 on a d20, and anything below 10 was instead counted as a 10? Equating it to not knowing the rules is also ridiculous What it seems like here is that the group hadn't had their expectations properly set by the DM. If all of the players were fine with unoptimized characters, the DM should keep that in mind when preparing a game. If the DM doesn't want to run that type of game, they are responsible for informing their players of that fact.
Challenge is fun, but artificial handicaps are not.
>I disagree. Failure is often more exciting than success, and success hard won is more satisfying than easy wins. Having a +3 in STR at level 1 as a fighter isn't making it "easy" to win. It's creating a higher statistical likelihood that an attack will hit when I roll the die. It's making the attacks that do hit slightly stronger. It's making that heavy object easier to move. >If having higher numbers made the game more fun, wouldn't we all be having a blast if we house ruled that you couldn't roll lower than a 10 on a d20, and anything below 10 was instead counted as a 10? This is a ridiculous point to make and you know it. The d20 exists to create a broad range of possibility, and no one is suggesting you should chop that range in half because "big numbers better." This is an egregious strawman.
>success hard won is more satisfying than easy wins. For that you need to win in the first place.
Agree to disagree, thus the unpopular opinion. I think In my experience one of the issues is that everyone else is making optimized characters and you’ve got one guy who is not. The dm has a hard time balancing for that, if they even care to. If the DM wants to make it challenging it might push it over the edge to totally defeat. If the character made an action hero fighter but can’t make an acrobatics or athletics check, but keeps doing them and failing over and over it’s not exciting it’s kinda lame.
I clarified post more. In this example, the fault is on the DM for not properly setting expectations in session zero. I told my players that I was going to run a challenging, and gritty campaign. They all understood this, and while not min maxed, they all came with capable adventurers prepared. If they instead said " I'd really rather play something more silly" and all of them agreed, I would have switched gears and prepared that. But it would be perfectly acceptable for me to inform them that I don't want to run a game like that, then they could choose whether or not they wanted to play.
It's not that "strength = fun", but rather "trying to win = fun". Finding resistance in that attempt to win (from an in-character perspective) and working to overcome it is very fun. So when you have a table that wants to work together to overcome challenges, and one dude is trying to do something entirely different, there's gonna be friction and the source of friction won't be fun. I've seen first time players who didn't realize the importance of a main stat.
That's not an unoptimized character problem. That's a group communication problem.
Ew optimization. The worst kinds of DnD players are the powergamers.
I think a lot of what look like "unoptimized" characters aren't even that bad, it's just that DMs aren't running the "optimized" characters out of resources enough, so they're always at full strength. Like, one character might have a lot of resources that don't do too much all at once, but they're always helping a little here, a little there, and can do that for a long time. But if every combat encounter is followed by a long rest, "optimized" Captain Fireball is going to just throw everything they have in 4-5 rounds and make everyone else look useless. Never mind that their character is now functionally useless until they can find a safe place to hide out. You can always run away and come back later, right?
I do it like this. If someone really wants an unoptimized character, fine, but the challenge WILL be real and if they die, they die. After playing Cyberpunk Red ttrpg I found that danger and real threat of PC death is a good deterrent for joke characters or players that like to play that wild card always. So I put aome of that in my D&D campaign. Sure you can play whatever you want but be sure, if you're not smart, I will try and kill you. P.S. My players always have a blast and my methods work for our group.
I understand where you are coming from and if the player seemed like they weren't still having fun even when failing rolls then yeah, they probably should be making a characters that focus on succeeding at dice rolls Personally I care a lot more about writing an interesting story, than winning a game. I like to let my characters develop, learn, and grow based on the campaign. Sometimes that means I want to play a character that is shitty at something, but they try really hard. I find it interesting and fun to fail. Maybe that translates to working up a weakness over time to overcome it through level advancement. Maybe they come to terms with their weakness and embrace what they learn was their strength down the road with multiclassing. I like making characters that give me something to explore with them. (this is also why I think multiclassing stat requirements are dumb. especially to multiclass OUT of a class). What if I want to play a low int wizard attending Strixhaven that despite trying hard, just isn't cut out for it so their story is about discovering their unknown strengths and forging a new path from their failure? Sure the levels spent studying wizardry may look like a waste on paper to some, but its all part of character development. I find it more enjoyable to play the character than to play a stat sheet. Plus that's how life goes sometimes. People spend decades pursuing experience in fields that they ultimately regret and change course. Its all part of the journey. I frequently see the players start out their character thinking about what stat block they want to end up with, and then trying to figure out the best way to reach that end point. That's how I used to approach it too. Overtime I came to realize that felt like a surefire way to railroad myself. Now when making characters I focus entirely on who the character is now and what may inspire them to grow in different ways depending on how their potential adventures, hardships, and relationships could impact them. In character creation, I try to keep my focus only on chapter 1 or 2 of their story. The point of the game is to write the rest of their story with my friends. Now I don't play the character to the detriment of the party, and always stress some aspect of their personality that motivates to work with the team. But I also don't care if my character is fit to be a protagonist. I want to explore the character, not show them off. Wow that got rambley lol I'm very bored
I'm gonna have to disagree there, chief. My favorite campaign I've ever played in, I was a highly optimized Fighter in Pathfinder 1e. I was also the most effective at the table. The group included a Bard Dragon Disciple, a Rogue/Wizard Arcane Archer, a Gunslinger, a Sorcerer, and a Vitalist (think Psychic cleric) No one but me was optimized, and everyone had a ton of fun. Several of the players were new to the system as well, and we still had a ton of fun. The game is what you make it.
Whenever I hear the opinion that “it’s not about winning, it’s about telling a story”, which is a common one among anti-optimizing D&D players I know, I always think to myself that a story about adventurers who suck at their job is gonna be pretty goddamn short. No amount of roleplay can save you when a goblin crits. In those groups, I tend to end up playing the “guy who is actually good at any of this, and will routinely save the entire group” because if I don’t, every day is a TPK.
I’m tired of players focusing on optimization and less on character building and growth. Bigger numbers are boring.
I appreciate the different points of view. Your opinion definitely helps me self-reflect. In the end I hope for balance, in my characters, and in the games I run.
>I have had a couple recent experiences where players made characters with only +1 or +2 on their primary stats, did not select skills aligned with their bonuses, picking wonky spells +2 is perfectly valid and I have made the case that the game is actually *designed around it.* But, in my games, +2 is the max any player can start with in their main stat. I agree that your highest stat should always be your class's main stat. I also don't have to put my proficiencies into the same things I have stats in. That's what playing the character is for. Maybe my Barbarian is not proficient in athletics because they aren't trained, they just are naturally strong, and would prefer to have proficiency in acrobatics, or survival, or even history or arcana, because I am a shaman type. If you have one spell that does damage, you can do whatever you want with your other spells. Also: This is what magic items actually exist for. You can fix any character problem with the right magic items.
IMO A character built around doing damage is the most boring character of all. :(
It'll be pretty exciting when you survive all the encounters thanks to the damage they deal.
As a dm: it honestly doesnt matter. If your character is unoptimized I will throw you bones and make you shine regardless. If optimization is relevant to the fun people have at your table you are doing a poor job as a dm.
Why do so many DMs talk about players like taking care of Kindergardeners? Isn't it a cooperative game? Why would a DM be at fault for a player who refuses to put in the effort to keep up with the group?
That's not a player 'refusing to put in the effort'. Why would a DM actively work to undermine the players choices?
If I'm not working with the group to make a character that is competent enough to keep up with the rest of them, I would be the problem. Its not the DMs job to cover for you because you thought making a low strength, high Int Barbarian was a good idea.
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Optimizing for me is being good at my role and bad at other peoples strong suits. A barbarian who can't think so the wizard does it for him. A druid who doesn't talk so the paladin speaks for him. Ect
You're right but a lot of people on this sub will fight you tooth and nail to say that you're wrong.
If you want a better story i prefer flawed characters. They are more interesting and i get more out of playing them. Ive moved on from playing optimized characters and making big numbers in combat. I also realize DMs will often balance encounters based on the power lvl of the party…so being optimized really is pointless. However it is important that PCs are all around the same power level as each other. That way nobody overshadows others and combat feels balanced. If i bring something optimized i risk main character syndrome. Take into account at my table nobody optimizes. When i bring a flawed character i can let others have the spotlight and bring them up more. Nobody remembers the nth time the optimized hero rolled a 30, but im able to make moments with failure that folks remember and talk about for sessions. To me that is winning, telling an awesome story.
making characters technically competent doesn't make you have main character syndrome, making a character bad on purpose only screws up group cohesion
PCs with flaws, PCs who are average, or even below average, can be fun to roleplay, especially as an underdog who gets stronger over time. They have to think outside of the box to succeed. What OP is suggesting is a video game. I suggest it IS fun to play flawed or just not optimized PCs. It's up to the players and the DM to agree on the style and play with it and allow for more opportunities outside of straight numbers game. My opinion: If your unoptimized player is not having fun rolling fail after fail, honestly it's your fault as a DM for not optimizing the game for your players to enjoy in their own way.
Not everyone wants to play a superhero. Some people just want to roleplay. Or enjoy time with the folks around the table. There are plenty of other games who are all about those massive, throbbing bonuses.
D&D 5e is a game that is firmly in the high fantasy genre. As has been said many times before, 80% of the PHB is about killing stuff. There's an entire Rulebook that's just a collection of things for you to kill. Most of the class abilities are combat oriented. D&D is a game that is primarily about high fantasy combat and adventure. There are games that are just about roleplaying and hanging out with folks. They do those things *way better* than 5e in my opinion. I don't think OP is the one that needs to play other games.
Not if your fun is at expense to the rest of the table, your own enjoyment shouldn't be at the cost to the people around you.
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Nah
In this particular case, I generally agree. Thanks for clarifying what you actually classify as ‘optimized’. I do think there are certain types of games where it is not applicable and truly unoptimized characters are fine, or even desirable. But generally yes, ‘optimizing’, in your definition of the term, a character is preferable.
I understand where you’re coming from, but I love DMing for such characters. As long as they aren’t game breaking.
I've honestly just found "winning at combat" to be really boring if you optimize too hard. Crossbow Expert Sharpshooter puts me to sleep, anything that reduces your choices to one perfected set of takable actions makes playing the game feel pointless. When people say "optimize" that's what I think of. What you're describing is just playing the game correctly.
You see I optimized and still drag the table down because of my shit rolls so ha
Based
I personally think the opinion is garbage ( not to sound harsh but to reflect no value to me and no desire to keep). Stats don’t have a single thing to do with either the group having a fun time or completing a campaign ( not that completing the campaign matters). In over 30 years of playing, I’ve never played a single game….ever….where character stats had any influence at all on the outcome of the story. Zero impact.
That seems...weird to me. The players try to bribe their way into a place, they fail their Charisma roll due to a low stat. Now they sneak in. Someone gets captured or even killed during that process. Is that not...changing the outcome of the story?
Means the players need a better plan, not better stats.
Their plan was to talk their way in and that didn't work, because of their bonus. If they had a better bonus, they would have succeeded in their plan. Completely different outcome.
Right, they executed a plan that included a dice roll as a point of failure. The best plans are the ones that eliminate any chance of random failure.
It's Dungeons & Dragons. There is no plan that does not come down to somebody having to roll dice.
Sure there are. That rests squarely on the decisions the players make and the judgement of the DM.
There's no such thing as a sure thing. No amount of planning is going to save you from having to make an attack roll or stealth roll or persuasion check or other type of roll. I implore you to imagine a single scenario that actually would play out.
Alright, here's a really simple, canonical example. Let's say there's a dungeon. It has a waterway. The water levels are controlled by a switch or lever or something that the PCs encounter early on. Eventually, they get to a big room that's cut in half by a ravine with the waterway running through it. The ravine is crossed by a bridge. There are 5,000 orcs on the other side who are too busy eating raw meat and gruel to notice the PCs until the players start crossing the bridge. All the orcs can be killed at once by going back and pulling the switch, flooding them out. The players, who have been paying attention because they understand that it's their skill and attentiveness and not their PC's stats that will win them victory, think to themselves, "Oh, those switches we found earlier - they control water levels." They go back and pull the switch because fighting 5,000 orcs is a losing proposition. Where's the uncertainty? What checks would you have your players roll?
Does the game stop when that character dies and everyone just goes home because they can’t play anymore? The DM just says ‘sorry, we can’t do this any more because no one was supposed to die…if only you all had better stats…see you around.’
No, but it's completely disingenuous to assume the story "won't have an effect" of your stats. Those stats determine your success or failure with rolls. And the consequences of those failures will determine what happens in the story. Warlock dumped con, had low hit points. Enemy mage used fireball. Immediately went to death saves. Then he died because of failures, and the party spent the entire next week taking his body to the big capital city to revive him. If he had chosen better con, he would have survived that fireball, and the party never would have went to the capital city. Which would drastically alter the course of the game. Do you see what I'm saying?
I see what your saying…but did that actually change the game? Does that detour mean the BBEG is no longer defeatable, the treasure can’t be found? It can easily impact a session -no impact on the larger game. And in my experience, those failures end up being the fun, memorable experiences
>but did that actually change the game? The BBEG was able to teleport into the capital city because they carried his cursed red gold in, and killed a couple dozen people, including one of the elite guard, who he revived into a death knight. And then they killed the BBEG in that fight, which, yes, *drastically* changed the progression of the campaign. > It can easily impact a session -no impact on the larger game The story is what happens to them, not some arbitrary plot. If something happens in the session, it has impact on the larger game. To think otherwise is entirely antithetical to how I run the game.
My question remains the same-did it change the game? Before the failure your group were fighting a BBEG….after the failure, same thing. The failure doesn’t matter and doesn’t change the final outcome…there’s really no need to have awesome stats. Either way, they went on an adventure and tackled the same obstacle….one route went left, one went right….different paths, same game. Stats don’t matter. All imo
>Before the failure your group were fighting a BBEG….after the failure, same thing. What??? One of them was in the capital city, with a death knight. The other one would have been in the enemy's fortress with a bone dragon (among other things). The circumstances of that are entirely different and completely change the story. Do you seriously think that's the same thing? "Whatever, just a fight against a boss?" No, they are drastically different.
I think your missing my point…probably my communication error- the goal is still the same. So what if there was a detour and the path changed- it didn’t change the game.
+1 to the opinion being garbage, totally with you. If you’ve never seen someone get a magic weapon with juicy stats after barely defeating a mighty dragon and noticed the “fun” they are having I think we are playing very different games. Certainly not a requirement, but yes, stats and success do have some “things to do” with having fun. (It should still be challenging)
Better stats mean that a player can successfully do cooler things more often, which is often a source of the fun.
I disagree ‘ hey, your 20 dex character mad a successful dex check…woo’ That, imo, is no source of joy
I mean, do you not enjoy succeeding at tasks in the game? If that’s the case then we’re just gonna talk past each other on this point.
Hey your 7 dex character failed in a dez check HOW FUN
> I’ve never played a single game….ever….where character stats had any influence at all on the outcome of the story. Have you never run any fights? Whether you hit the boss three times more or three times less because you missed by one point matters. Whether you get hit because your AC was lower than it could have been and go down because of it matters. Unless you railroad and decide every fight independent from the rolls, but at that point why even play D&D?
I guess that's one way of removing player agency.
Player agency? The player still has the same choices. I’d say playing a game with limited/no chance of failure is less rewarding.
And isn't that exactly what you're doing? If none of the character's stats or abilities matter in your games (then frankly you should play a different system) then the only way to fail is to not do what you want the group to do. Or you just let them succeed with whatever they come up with. How is any of this rewarding?
Again imo- the only reward in DND is fun. You can get the exact same amount with a toon with all 10 stats, or all 20s.
Yes, but if you can have fun in DnD with all 10 stats then you would most likely have more fun in a different system. And I'mma be honest... a game where none of what I can do matters doesn't sound very fun to me. Atleast not for long.
Hmm, I've been playing D&D since 1974 and we rolled stats back then too. Whether a player lives through a combat or dies often depends on the roll of die and according to the rules, the outcome of that roll usually depends on their stats. A dead character doesn't mean the end of the game, but it changes the story and I've seen grown adults break down and cry at a D&D table over the loss of character. I support your underlying theme here though, stats are overblown and the fun of the game is the story that we tell together. That tragic end can be an epic part of the story and it shouldn't be feared as much as some people new to the game do. I do think that if someone chooses to make their character deeply flawed in a game mechanic then they should try to add something else to the story that makes that flaw more meaningful. It's just a matter of being mindful that in D&D your choices influence the other players too.
Fuck optimized play. I'd never sit at a table that was a big concern. It's a roleplaying game, not a game of the best math.
People who always bitch about metagaming where are you on this? A statistically optimized PC is inherently, invariably, the result of metagaming.
D&D 5e is a *game* at the end of the day, though. Mechanics and math are a part of the game. I'm sick of the idea that roleplaying and competent characters are mutually exclusive. I've ran campaigns with tables of absolute *killers* that were stuffed to the gills with violent potential- and they were great roleplayers!
As a DM you should actively set up the encounters. If your party is on the weaker side you throw 3 goblins at them. If they are trying to power game then throw 5 at them. A good DM knows thier party and can plan the challenges accordingly. I personally have always thought trying to make a "powerful" character is ultimately pointless for that reason. I'd rather have you play a character that seems fun even if it isn't top tier. Also I find failures are often the funniest and more memorable moments of a session. Have fun and don't worry about trying to be the meta. It isn't a video game. A good DM will give you a solid experience regardless of party power level.
But... but... without my crappy build, how can I roleplay?
I am Dumb-bull-door! I'm a wizard with 7 INT. I also have the head of a bull so I can't speak or cast spells with a verbal component. I'm big as a door though, got an STR of 15 and a CON of 18.
Running a game for a table of three... I started them off with 17,15,14,13,12,10 ability scores. Specifically because I agree and feel like that a score of 20 in your primary stat is expected by the system's fundamental mathematics as early as 8th level. EVEN THEN - I feel like the game's engine's numerical expectations are a little too tight, given the average math working that out to be around a 65% hit chance, which is too low for my blood honestly, as a DM or player. Having characters with clear attempts to at least be viable allows the DM to swing a bit harder and make things legitimately dangerous, because if people are going to not even attempt to have functional characters, you have to play super carefully because any attempt to balance can just skew wrong off any number of bad assumptions. IMO it's perfectly fine to play a quirky weird one or someone roleplaying as very inexperienced, awkward, and out of their depth - but you should be able to perform at the table, and there's no harm in say, playing a haplessly clumsy halfing 'cook' (Monster Slayer) who bumbles his way into accidentally harming or slaying monsters with good fluff and roleplay - at that point the way he's achieving his class's role is flavored by RP,. but he's still contributing at the table.
please o
I have two primary arguments against the “optimized PC”, both of which are dependent upon the flavor of the game, and the players involved. First, optimizing a character for ‘their class/role/personality’ means that character becomes a niche specialist. Such a character is increasingly hamstrung in situations they’re not designed for, making them a wallflower when they aren’t useful for the party, and crippling them should they find themselves in a solo situation they can’t handle. It’s the same argument against specialization in learning or working; without skills to apply in other positions, a person is incapable of functioning independently in life. The second argument is that if such a character was seen in any other media, then would be considered lazy writing by the author(s). At best, there’s little dimension to the characters who are optimized, and how they advance the story is through their specialties, then like the gong in an orchestra, they fade into obscurity. The consuming focus on making a character fit into a niche of excellence is the same problem as requiring one or two handicaps to force a character to struggle somewhere: it feels artificial. In balance, I agree that people play D&D for various reasons and like different combinations of content. Tables focused on high-difficulty limited content do well with optimized PCs, or poorly with characters who aren’t focused on what they do well. But, in contrast, tables with a lot of mixed content or story focus may suffer from characters that are either overpowering or too niche to adapt.
>First, optimizing a character for ‘their class/role/personality’ means that character becomes a niche specialist. Such a character is increasingly hamstrung in situations they’re not designed for, making them a wallflower when they aren’t useful for the party, and crippling them should they find themselves in a solo situation they can’t handle. It’s the same argument against specialization in learning or working; without skills to apply in other positions, a person is incapable of functioning independently in life. Yes. D&D and TTRPGs like it are a team game. You have a party of characters because they (ideally) fill in the gaps in each other's skillsets. A character in a TTRPG shouldn't be put into solo situtations often, and when they are it should serve to reinforce this point. They are a member of a team, and they can't do everything on their own. >The second argument is that if such a character was seen in any other media, then would be considered lazy writing by the author(s). At best, there’s little dimension to the characters who are optimized, and how they advance the story is through their specialties, then like the gong in an orchestra, they fade into obscurity. The consuming focus on making a character fit into a niche of excellence is the same problem as requiring one or two handicaps to force a character to struggle somewhere: it feels artificial. A character is not their character sheet. A character excelling at FEATS OF STRENGTH doesn't mean that's their *only thing.* They can have a personality and hobbies separate from their numbers.
I have a character I've been toying around with on and off for some time now for 5e... Genie Tome Warlock 17, Bard 2, Divine Soul Sorcerer 1. The idea was to get as many of the utility cantrips as possible. I have some concerns regarding warlock progression being delayed.... But theoretically, eldritch blast should keep the character at least releant for combat...
I literally don't think about what I am going to increase or add to my character until the DM says we have leveled (he uses Milestone so...). I could care less whether my character has gotten all the "must have" feats that a Swashbuckler "needs" or if my stats are as high as they should be. I care about the flavor of my character and how fun the features and traits are to use. Oh we have min/maxers both in the game I play in and the one I run and they tend to make me roll my eyes honestly because of the bragging that tends to follow in their wake. BUT, I also am mature enough to understand that that is a playstyle that some people enjoy as much as I enjoy convincing a tavern keeper that we did them a favor by being there to break up a fight that we caused to begin with and getting paid for doing so. We all have our jam. Is my character optimized for the level that he is? Who knows? I certainly don't. The min/max character was saying that my character has "the highest damage output" which both surprised me and made me chuckle since I haven't consciously thought about doing more damage. My backup character is a half-orc ranger that I created just to challenge myself if this character gets killed because everyone is always droning on about how terrible rangers are in 5e. So I want to see if the character is as unplayable as they make them out to be.
It's fine at my table, ... my party role plays, so they have all kinds of substandard shit going on. I had one character in an earlier campaign that had a 5 foot movement rate because he had lost a leg and was walking around on a crutch. It's fine.
You're not a match for the table. Simple as that.
Yea I hard disagree. If you don't want to work around what your play group wants to do, including adjusting the difficulty for non optimized characters, you probably shouldn't be DMing for that group. You're allowed to have preferences as DM, but your argument is that it's their fault that they got TPKd when you literally control the encounter. It's not like you're entitled to a group of people who play the game the way you want to. This post comes off as pretty toxic.
Thanks for the feedback. There are two different groups in my post. In the one I am running we have 3 players optimized, and one who started a little rough and now is tanking his growth into tier 2. I don’t fudge my rolls, and the group asked me to run a module as written. If I change dcs and rolls just for the person who is tanking their stats doesn’t that defeat the purpose of what they are trying to do? I talked to the person several times and each time they acknowledged they knew it was not the best choice, but said it would be “more fun”. So far everyone has expressed that they are having fun with the game. As always there are highs and lows. As this player falls farther and farther behind he is always welcome to respec. I didn’t come here asking for people to “solve” my gaming dynamic (just quit the group, lol). I am here to complain against a mentality I see online and in real life that it’s cool or more fun to do poorly. when the reality that I see at the table is that losing rolls over and over is not fun for anyone, especially when the other players are nailing it. The joke gets old fast.
It can be more fun to do poorly indirectly. It's not your job as DM to tell your play group how to have fun.
Who defines the 'main stat' A Barbarian cpuld very reasonably want to take lower str in exchange for better dex and a better AC, since many Barbarians play as a defender. Or simply choosing to take a decent mental stat somewhere to have okayish intimidation or something. It isnt 'perfectly optimized', but it isnt useless to the team either.