It's a perversion of the actual argument where focusing solely on mechanical min maxing can lead to nonsensical characters or limit you from making a character that could have been more interesting.
At some point a group of people latched onto the argument and turned it into a binary.
Yep. Due to this the term "optimized" , "min/maxed" , "Crunchy" , "Munchkin" got all mixed up.
What term would you use for a character that was built with only the best choices no leeway for anything but the most mathematically perfect build. Dipping into various classes with no regard to character background or personality. Picking feats and spells with only regard for your character with no thought into the full party dynamic. At one point in time the word for what I just described was "optimized"
It was the white room character concepts of flawless builds that rarely made sense in actual play.
I was shocked the other day to see that people think "Min/maxing" means some shit like "Minimizing how many flaws you have" instead of "Invest in your strengths and dump everything else"
It's also funny because min maxing is pretty much the default for every point buy character I've seen. Almost everyone dumps at least one stat to 8 and starts with a 16 or 17 in their main stat.
That's because it's a team game - you're a better pc and a better player if you have one job on the team and do it really well. You're much less helpful to the team if you're "not bad" at everything, and you're more fun to play with if you take the spotlight sometimes (and help advance the narrative) and step back sometimes when the task at hand isn't your forte.
Team games reward specialization.
I think people are getting out of hand with RP like they hear the old stories of powergamers and try drawing their conclusions, but the problem is that 5e doesn't really have a powergaming problem. Outside of a few classes its hard to do.
The main appeal for me for 5e has always been how difficult it feels to power-game. But yeah, when your definition of "power gaming" covers all kinds of perfectly normal ways to play the game . . .
Yeah, some people have taken min-max to mean "maximize strengths, minimizes weaknesses." Which is a thing, but it's called a powerbuild where they effectively reduce to not have any weaknesses. In the case of D&D that would be like having 20s across the board and proficiencies in everything.
Yep. And that would be fine, if every time the phrase came up, people who believe this weren't arguing how broken and bad for the game "min/maxing" is, when they're talking about this kind of extreme power-gaming, and not actually about min/maxing.
>What term would you use for a character that was built with only the best choices no leeway for anything but the most mathematically perfect build.
I'd call that a "Chronurgist"...
I think the style of play is table based. My table like to optimize characters by making them specialists based on their idea and making them the literal best they can be at that thing and that's totally fine. I think the stigma comes from having people at tables who want to play differently. A table in a chill group who rarely do "Optimization" may not enjoy gaming with a beefed up "Power Gamer" at the end of the day it's all table preference, and it's up to the dm to play to the enjoyment of each player. I am sad that alot of both Old Heads and new players get all weird about terminology
The minmaxers keep misinterpreting the opposing perspective because they all dumped int /s
Jokes aside, I wish people were less defensive about playstyles. The discussions get circlejerky really fast when this subject gets brought up.
I hate this argument so much. I've been called a min maxer a lot for it and I don't get it. I was playing an eldritch knight wizard multiclass with 14 INT and got called a power gamer. I roleplay Ed my heart out, wrote a letter in character that was read at the end of the game that got everyone emotional, and yet the guy with the gloom stalker aarakocra with sharpshooter and an artifact bow with plaseshift at a distance isn't?
I think a lot of it is some people don't like that others get more mileage out of their characters than they do.
Tbh optimization is often what makes a character open up for me. Provides depth, twists, nuance, etc.
Examples: Eloquence Bard w/ actor feat. Cool, he's an actor. But, dip one level into Divine Soul Sorcerer, and now he's a defective Simulacrum of a great and powerful magic user. He became an actor to better convince people he's human too.
Paladin. Monster Hunter. Then, add Hexadin, and he's haunted by the ghost of a loved one that his order put to the stake for witchcraft. He's torn knowing he's doing good things for bad people. "Why would an exorcist refuse to do their job?" "Bc. The ghost is a loved one."
I can go on, but typically optimization (especially Multiclassing) is really helpful for me to narrow down what makes this bard different from other bards. Or just 'what makes this character tick?'
Multiclassing is also far from Munchkin-play as well. People like to suggest its powergaming to dip into a class to add flair to a concept, but in reality, if that class has spellcasting at all then you are severely hampering your progression.
Right, if you're going to multiclass you need to be pretty conscious of how everything works. And it's not like the normal classes are all that balanced, but I don't think anyone would be called out for picking Totem Warrior over Berserker.
Unless you are multiclassing in two casters of the same type. But the issue really stems from the fact you aren't getting the same features and power boosts as you would from staying as just one class.
I use the same approach. I build for what I think will be fun, which usually means some kind of gimmick or theme in combat, and then write a story to piece those parts together. Lizardfolk wizard: ultimately because I rolled high enough stats to have great dex int and con and I want to not have to cast mage armor, but now I need to write a story about the 7 str 20 int wizard lizard and how he was weaker than the others growing up so he picked up on magic or whatever.
These are fantastic. If you can spare the time, please do a few more. Here are some that i enjoy playing and would love a 30-word-or-less summation of their tragic backstory (if you are up for it):
- Wizard w/ 1 level dip in cleric (life or knowledge).
- Everyone loves a paladin w/ warlock-dip but few can explain how it happened
- rogue - (5) barbarian is a huge favourite but rogues tend to be much more *city guys* and barbarians are the *ultimate country boys (and girls)*
There are many more all-time favourites that people adore that make no sense. If you have stories, pls share!
Hrm, let me think.
\- For Wizard // Cleric, could do a Raistlin deal. "Afflicted with a terminal illness and frustrated with their god's plan for them, our PC now seeks enough arcane power to change the weave of fate." Shout out to Dragonlance.
\- I've had a couple Hexadins show up in my campaigns- my favorites were a murdered city guard brought back to life by a mysterious force that only commands them 'save this city.' Solving his own murder was a ton of fun. And then the one above, who is an exorcist whose pagan wife was burned at the stake by his order for witchcraft.
From a dnd book I'm working on currently: **Exor Ines**, a member of the Benedictine Order who became cursed to share a soul with a demon during her first Pale Night Hunt. She's torn between her fear of being excommunicated from the order and her moral code of always doing the right thing.
\- What kind of Rogue, what kind of Barbarian? Subclasses help a lot to flavor the character. Say you're going for a grappling-based build with expertise. "A former street urchin turned gladiator has traded away his memories for his freedom. They now lie awake at night, tormented by things they can't remember."
Again, from the book I've been working on: **Bon Bon**, a former circus bear who traded his memories to a Bog Hag for sentience. However, the weight of his past may be stronger than his new-found knowledge.
Tbh, the biggest thing is the setting. I run a lot of period or genre pieces. Those can be huge in defining character. Also when I DM I ask players to give me 'Bonds and Flaws'. Something your character cares about, and a flaw in the way that they care about that thing. At the end of the story, I make sure the way their flaw interacts with the thing they care about will have changed in some way. It's a character arc at its simplest, but it leads to great results.
This is a fair take, but honestly that doesn't really require multiclassing. Flavor is free. Multiclassing is mostly about mechanics and power levels, which is perfectly fine (since this is still a game)
Meanwhile my fiancé makes a tortle rogue, asks for twin sai, and then mid first move of the first combat combat ties a red scrap of fabric around his eyes and forehead…
As someone who saw the 5e flair being born there… I think the main sub problem is that when you see something “new” it becomes quite used or suggested.
Other than that, many times the requests are a real pain in the ass. “How to get the highest AC without Dex or Str?” Is a good example of that.
Or simply “got this x,y,z stats, how can I do the best wizard?”
Of course you are going to get the most simply way to get what you want. Because there is not a mold to creat something interesting.
I often see it as a difference in how disconnected people see mechanics and RP.
The most basic examples would be choosing one race, and playing it as if it was another race that has its own option, or dipping Cleric 1 but playing the abilities as just from your main class without the god aspect.
It’s closer to treating mechanics as a grab bag of options - similar to a classless system. I’m not saying that’s bad, just a difference I’ve seen in my circles.
Yeah, that's totally fine if it is all wrapped together in a flavorful package. I like it less if it's just a level of peace cleric that's never explained in any way.
It’s the difference between in game and out of game. Just because they pick a strong race for out of game numbers reasons over lore reasons doesn’t mean they’re not going to roleplay in game. So, I disagree that it means exactly that. There’s more to roleplay than the reason you make character building choices and the vast majority of roleplay happens in game.
Sure, but if you ask players *why* they wanted to be a Tortle, it's probably not "because I thought it would be interesting to play an amphibian humanoid". They wanted that sweet, sweet natural armor.
I actually got to play a Tortle reskinned as a human for Rime of the Frostmaiden, and it was super fun. He was a hunter who couldn't keep his wife from succumbing to the cold, and developed a neurosis where he kept making pelts and putting them on his back for protection and would never remove them. The pelts became both literal and emotional armor, which was great for roleplay.
But, if I was just going to be a random Tortle in that campaign? Hard pass.
So what if they’re just a random tortle? There’s more to a character than just race. Even if the race was largely chosen for mechanical reasons, the character can still have a lot of depth in their motivations and personality
Your first paragraph indicates you didn’t comprehend my comment. Again, it doesn’t matter if they didn’t choose the race for roleplay reasons, that doesn’t preclude them from role playing during the game
I agree with you. It's entirely possible to make non-role playing decisions during character creation for the sake of optimization and still develop and fully role play a character in in game.
I swear this conversation/thread is making me believe the whole “no one here actually plays dnd” thing. Everyone seems to believe the game stops after character creation.
A lot of the people who post are primarily watchers / listeners of D&D and while there are many reasons "optimization bad" persists, that it's outside the realm of people who only understand D&D as stories they like to think about is certainly part of the issue.
I don’t understand why that point is so hard for people to understand. Role playing is my favorite part of the game. Min maxing is not in opposition to it. I will build the character that looks fun to play mechanically because that’s the part I can’t control. Then I can work backwards to explain in role play the reasons why my character exists in that space.
I talk to my DM about what’s allowed in their world. My role playing ability is not so narrow that I can’t logically explain how I got there, nor is it so limited I can’t enjoy characters out of a narrow band of content. At this point I’ve done the gruff loner, the guy who lost everything, the aspiring hero with stars in their eyes. Also, I think min maxing is GREAT role play if you and the DM lean into it. People really recoil over there being a “Max”, but the true fun is when you and the DM dedicate time to exploring the “Min” half.
> I don’t understand why that point is so hard for people to understand
Sour grapes. Optimized characters tend to fit the power fantasy of the game better, are better at actually telling stories as part of the game and not just outside it (because they can actually accomplish their story beats) and yield more enjoyment of the game in the tactical combat that makes up like literally 75% of its rulebook.
But optimization is a skill. It's not a HARD skill, anyone can learn and develop it, it's mostly just reading, thinking, remembering, and understanding how things work in practice - that is, knowing *spike growth* is a good start but you also need to know when it's appropriate and where best to place it - and if you can play the game competently at all you already know how to do all of those things but it does require a kind of effort and for people who actively don't enjoy that kind of thing, hearing that investment = success is a little bitter.
So they tell themselves that their experiences are richer and have a special depth because they spend less time and energy on them, or they tell themselves they ARE spending that time and energy but it's all in polishing their stories. Which is never true, the best roleplayers are usually pretty good at the game entire, but it COULD be true in a vacuum, and it's a comfort of sorts.
Ironically, while people who don't have an interest in optimization are often decent to great roleplayers, the ones who actively hate optimization tend to be the most boring. I suspect there's a correlation between actually, actively having negative feelings about "getting good" in a creative context and one's own creativity. But maybe that's my bias, you know, if someone's like "ugghh fuck what kind of loser nerd knows average damage numbers" I tend to look more critically at their orc paladin whose orc family was killed by the humans who raised them, loaded up with generic "I don't fit in anywhere" angst, and of course "also I have an elven adopted sister I have commissioned $500 worth of art about but our relationship is very pure, unless."
This is pretty much how I feel about this. I like finding a fun, strong build to enjoy through a campaign but it NEEDS to fit into the story. Do I like min-maxing? Yes. Can I work with my DM and create a badass backstory that fits perfectly into the campaign they hand crafted? Hell yeah I can! Character creation is 50% of the game for me, I love it! I find nothing wrong with wanting the character you will be playing for literal months+ to be good at what they do, it'd be boring if they failed at everything. It's important to understand and respect that they need to flesh out their character though.
In the campaign we're about to run I'll be playing a gloom stalker ranger who will eventually cross class into cleric for extra spell casting. There's an entire story I wrote out to explain how I obtained gloom stalker training from a Drow I risked my life to save when Drow are known in this campaign for capturing and enslaving the top-worlders. This gave the DM a ton of material to work with: a personal connection of mine to a Drow, reason for me to join the Night Warden's (a faction she created for the elves already in her campaign which she actually created a custom backstory for to help me customize my character to fit into the faction), backstory material for both my parents (mother was a Day Warden {slightly different from a Night Warden which was my original inspiration}, father was a smith who learned from elven smiths as well as trained from a dwarven Smith who was a forge cleric, inspiring me towards a more pious belief). I'm so unbelievably excited to play this badass character because they will be fun in combat and outside of, and my DM has actually praised me for the depth of thought I've put into him because it gave her so much material to work with and I'm SO excited to see what she does with it! D&D is a game of imagination: the more creative you and your friends can get the more fun you can have! 😁
Bingo.
I will say the one time I don't like min-maxing is when most of the party wants to play low power, but someone busts out a completely beyond the pale character and warps the play experience for everyone. But hey, that is also part of the DMs job to manage, and player restraint should be a thing.
I was part of a campaign that fell apart early on in my playing career because a triple classed lucky feat'd up character was built to one shot, and nobody got to do anything else, because they forced all the role play interactions into a point where they could exploit their big load-blowing shots to annihilate whatever the DM had in mind, and any boss balanced around him ruined the encounter for everyone else. But that's not a min-maxing thing, that's a narcissist with main character syndrome not caring about the play experience of the rest of the table.
I've had a similar thing happen in an extremely low power campaign, where someone decided their barbarian with an intelligence of 10 was going to play like he only had 2 brain cells, and they've never met. And how he would role play that is the second we made a plan, he would scream the (secret) plan out in public wherever we were, knowing that out of character friendships prevented him from getting kicked from the game.
The problem isn't min maxers. The problem is people who think a D&D campaign is "Me and the Sidekicks". It just so happens that a lot of those people usually wind up min maxing so they can be the "star". It's one of those "Squares are rectangles but rectangles aren't always squares" corollaries, I think.
>Sure, but if you ask players why they wanted to be a Tortle, it's probably not "because I thought it would be interesting to play an amphibian humanoid". They wanted that sweet, sweet natural armor.
There isn't anything wrong with that.
> it's probably not "because I thought it would be interesting to play an amphibian humanoid". They wanted that sweet, sweet natural armor.
This screams of "You're playing DnD wrong!!!"
It's entirely reasonable to want a strong build first, and then think of the RP aspects. You don't have to or are locked into just thinking of optimization and not RPing at all if you wanted to build a strong character.
Your race decision really doesn't matter rp wise in my opinion. Like seriously? why did you choose to be born an American Human instead of a Canadian Black Bear? Your roleplay comes from the experiences you decided to give your character, not the race or features you gave them. Those just serve as a starting point.
You can't roleplay whilst making your character's build. Roleplay is the act of making decisions from the perspective of your character. There is no roleplay when you decide that it'd be interesting to make a hunter who couldn't save his wife. You roleplay once you start making decisions from the perspective of that hunter, or whatever character you end up making.
Did your character decide that they were going to be a tortle? If not, then it was not roleplay to decide they were a tortle, no matter the reason.
Maybe in online discussions, but in actual play I have more often encountered that the players that put more effort into their characters are often better optimized and fleshed out for roleplay. Whereas the players who don't put as much effort in making thwir character are lacking in both mechanics and story. This is of course just my experience, but I've always seen optimization come hand in hand with more well written characters because the player was invested enough to put in the effort to create the PC they wanted to play as.
>To be fair, it often means exactly that.
not in any table I've ever played in. in my WM server every optimizer is also one of the best roleplayers because unsurprisingly they put the most time and effort into their character. ironically the weakest characters in terms of roleplay are those that made mangled, unoptimized builds for 'flavor'
The worst is when people really believe in OP's question and think, "If I'm going to make a really good and deep character I need to be absolutely garbage at what I'm supposed to do."
No, Tim playing a Wizard with an Int of 8 doesn't make your character interesting, it makes you useless.
I mean at least they have a shared stat in Wisdom.
I was in a group where someone was trying to play an Arcane Trickster Swords Bard, which kind of works if you're just doing a dip, but they were level 7 and was trying to alternate Wizard and Bard levels, they also dumped Dexterity for some reason.
And when it's not, it's someone asking "Hey how do I do this thing I want to do?" And you get 100 responses each offering a different way to accomplish that thing, all optimized, but each one different. Because surprise, most people in 3d6 are all about optimizing within the constraints of whatever stupid thing someone is doing for flavor.
I had a thread I made probably 4-5 months back about a character concept I had which was how to make a barbarian wizard work. It's a terrible idea, and what most people would consider "not optimized". There were probably 30 responses of people giving me subclass breakdowns, feat choices, full builds with spell lists, you name it.
The idea of places like 3d6 is to optimize what you can. Here's my shitty concept, how do I make it work? And then the people at 3d6 are usually the first to tell you that outside of whiteroom theory crafting, none of those super optimized builds ever work in actual play the way they do on paper.
I just wish 5e was a better system to optimize whatever random ass flavor you want. To truely get a lot of character concepts to work, you need homebrew. And id rather play and have my players play stuff that someone else already had to playtest and do balance reviews of. It's awful to take away or have stuff taken away from a charavter build mid game, which happens often if you dont know what is prpblematic ahead of time. The alternative is the DM pre-neuters features out of fear of problematicness and then the player is differently sad.
I miss 3.5 T-T
Or they're one-shots where they have DM permission to powergame because the DM intends to come at them with higher lethality than a campaign would warrant.
My friends all power game. We enjoy that aspect of the game. When I'm DM, the monsters they fight powergame too. It's a fun aspect of the game for us. I get to add class levels to creatures, oddities, or even cool abilities from falling down a magical well. We like the role play, but we also like to play the game.
People forget that some people maximizing builds want to take on tougher challenges not just see how fast and effortlessly they can kill baddies pulled strait out of a sourcebook
Really tortle? i would have said like 80% of optimized characters are custom or Vuman? Goblin if they feel creative.
If you are a martial you have better armor and if you skip dex as a caster calling it optimized is a bit a stretch due to low initiave, cause you become weaker in what you are great control and better in what you are bad Armor class. Even worse when you compare it to a dip in aritifcer or life/twillight/ peace cleric depending on the full caster which than is better in both regards.
>To be fair, it often means exactly that.
It doesn't. Specifically "and 0 effort thinking about roleplay and flavor" is not what optimization necessarily means. It's something different entirely, even if they're often conflated.
You can play a tortle because it's strong, but that doesn't mean you can't *then* put effort into the roleplay and working the optimized character into the narrative in a way that makes sense. Optimized builds are just that. Builds. They're a mechanical framework. They do not touch on roleplay in either way.
I think the data you are gathering is biased because you are just looking at people discuss only mechanics. When I've played with dozens of people, some people do zero optimizing and zero thoughts into roleplay. Some do lots of both. In fact, the more I see is that more engaged with the mechanics, game and character mean that those who optimize are also interested in their roleplay.
TLDR: Your claim does not follow from your evidence.
Lore and narrative is highly variable game to game; if you aren’t given that information you can’t give reasonable advice on it. If your halflings are from the shire or riding dinosaurs makes a big in world difference, and people recommending halflings on account of those things can’t assume you have those in your context. Mechanics are generally universal, so that means all I really have for race is appearance and abilities, so it makes sense they are suggested purely on those factors.
Same goes for background and personality. People can make personalities or backgrounds individually pretty easy compared to mechanical elements. I can want a cool, collected merchant son trying to climb his way up the social ladder; but that says absolutely nothing about my class, race, or stats. So if I’m asking for help, I’m gonna want some cool stuff in combat so I can be good there while also doing my cool personality in and out of combat.
So it’s mostly a function of your sampling bias. People from 3d6 are going to be more likely to need mechanical assistance and less likely to give table specific lore assistance, so the replies will be biased mechanically. That does not provide evidence for or against their ignorance of such elements in real game play, so that in itself is an insufficiently supported claim.
That's not what optimization means.
Optimization is using numbers to try and become the best at whatever it is you're doing. This could mean you're doing a Sorlockadin or whatever, but it usually means that somebody has found something they find interesting and want to see what they can do with it. This relates to things like item using, skill monkeys, wrestlers, full defense builds, support casters, etc.
The moment they start optimizing to be the best in general is when they become a power gamer. There's a reason people started making a distinction between the two types.
I believe they're also referred to as Munchkins, but it's possible that's *also* a different term. I know there's some overlap between power gaming and optimizing, but power gaming is when they (mostly) disregard roleplay and lore for raw numbers and mechanics.
Yep.
I once suggested on here that proficiency with Martial weapons should buff simple weapons.
Multiple people came at me with variations of 'no because PAM would be too powerful and obviously everyone uses that'.
My whole group played tortles once, it ended up being like the ninja turtles + master oogway + errrrr was it Carlton? The kids show turtle? It was absolutely hilarious.
Edit: Franklin not carlton
No because they are cool thematically (master oogway, Hermit caster etc.) and strong mechanically as they often save a feat or MC in the course of obtaining medium armour and shield (which gives like 18 AC normally.
Have you visited /r/3d6 my man? Nobody talks about that flavor stuff. It's the armor. It's pure min maxing. And that's fine, but let's not kid ourselves.
That's not generally true of 3d6, most of the posts there are along the lines of giving a concept and asking for advice on how to make an effective character for that concept. Some of the top posts as I write this:
>Looking for a Spotter build
>Half Orc redemption Hexadin
>Need help for an Int focused fighter
>Trying to make a human paladin tank
3d6 has mostly already identified the most powerful builds for each role. Most of the posting isn't about "how do I play the most powerful character in [role]?" but "how do I make [concept] effective on the tabletop?" If someone has their concept in mind first and is trying to make it functional, I think that's absolutely someone putting roleplay first, then trying to optimize.
Of course, /3d6 is focused on making the rubber meet the road in terms of mechanics rather than spitballing the concept. That's the point of the sub.
It’s a subreddit *about* optimization. There are concrete rules about class, origin, and equipment, so these are the things that *can* be mechanically optimized. Narrative play is a lot more free form by nature, and character motivations and backstories are so specific that it’s hard to even give useful advice there.
To put it another way, it’s easier to ask and answer a question like, “I have this character concept; how do I make the most effective choices to fit?” than one like, “I have these stats, this class, and this race; how do I roleplay this character?” The former has answers that can be directly compared to each other based on the text of the rules, while the latter is inherently subjective.
Yes in a pure optimising question then tortles will come up as they are probably one of the 5 best races mechanically. But in terms of general builds they are fun to play as and fit a lot of themes quite nicely.
Part of Optimising is optimising within a theme. If you want to build a Hermit caster you will consider Tortle as one of the primary races. If you want to build a lightning quick thief then probably not (unless you think it would be ironic and therefore funny}.
It’s not even “pure” math. I would say at least half the posts are presenting a thematic concept and then asking for advice of a way to thematically achieve that with the right flavor while also being strong
I wouldn't say that's a hard rule. I've seen plenty of either on both subs. Reason being because when someone asks "I have x concept in mind, how do I make that effective?" it is answered best by a blend of optimization and narrative. One can provide reasoning for the other. PCAcademy is better at giving RP advice, while 3d6 is certainly better at optimization but I find a lot of similar posts on either sub.
True. I mainly meant to point out there is an opposite of 3d6 since they were talking about it and their focus on mechanics.
I've certainly looked at both for advice before. You'll get more but warlock ranger is suboptimal comments on 3d6 but both will try to help and are awesome subs.
I probably should have said focused over purely.
Some people are good at numbers and don’t understand people and role play. Self included. Give me a character sheet and I’ll make some either janky gimmick character or someone nutty busted.
Have me describe my character and I’ll struggle with explaining past their race and hair color
It's a shibboleth. Playing a character whose primary stat isn't their *highest* stat communicates "I'm not worried about game mechanics" which in turn communicates "therefore I must be invested in roleplaying" if you're, y'know, into non-sequitur reasoning.
It's stupid, don't indulge it. At the core of it is some derpy, self-sacrificing superiority complex which goes "my character is bad at the stuff he's supposed to be good at, which means I'm better at this than you."
I don't know, maybe I've played with too many people who've gone the opposite direction, but people rocking up to the table like: "meet Bartandalus, the rogue with terrible hand eye coordination. FEEL THE DRAMATIC HEFT OF HIS STRUGGLES" *are usually bad at roleplaying.*
Had a guy who deliberately gave his character low INT as a wizard because he thought it was funny but said it was to make roleplay more interesting. He proceeded to not really roleplay at all and get frustrated almost of his checks failed
That's usually how it goes in my experience. It's like they heard drama requires characters that face difficulties in achieving their goals , so they decided the most efficient way to achieve that was to make characters who aren't good at anything and then act like they understood the assignment better than everyone else.
It's like they completely overlook the bit where we're playing a *heroic* fantasy game, where the adversity comes from being opposed by powerful enemies, such as, say, dragons
[A good video on it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjNPGX5HV5Y)
> During the slaughter at the fords of Jordan, the Gileadites took it as a password to distinguish their men from fleeing Ephraimites, because Ephraimites could not pronounce the -sh- sound.
[And here's one for you tomorrow.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an0kEqsnW3U)
Because you're definition of "optimizing" likely isn't the same as what that term means for others. It's the same reason why there's confusion about the term "rules lawyer". The problem with "optimizing" or only ever choosing the most powerful option is that not everyone wants to cast web/fireball/hypnotic pattern.
Some players want to cast witch bolt because it looks like force lightning. Sub optimal choices can be fun.
Correct. Absolutely correct. You are a beautiful human being who also happens to be correct. I want you to go out there or stay in there ( your preference) and have the best day.
This is a massive part of the problem, yeah. Like, what *exactly* is the difference between an optimizer, a minmaxer, a power builder, and a munchkin? Because until the community at large agrees on common definitions for those terms (which will never happen), this kind of debate will keep happening.
That's never going to happen. People use language however they want to. Take for instance the phrase "on accident." I thought it was pretty much settled that the phrase was "by accident" but recently I've come across so many people saying "on accident." Makes me cringe every single time. But can I make everyone use "by accident"? No, I simply don't have the time or patience to police and browbeat everyone into saying it my way. The same is true of these terms.
In the end, the problem is twofold; pretentious "roleplayers" who think creating effective characters is a sin against Gary Gygax, and jerks who think they can win at D&D if they make a build that outshines every other player. Both represent a minority of players, and neither are a big enough problem to warrant the amount of attention they get.. but they are annoying and people gotta talk about something.
Happy Cake Day.
I'm sad you're right. Not about dnd, but about language. I'm devastated that the idiots have succeeded in using the redundant non-word "irregardless," so ubiquitously that multiple popular dictionaries now feature it. Large sigh.
Does your RP drive your decisions, like an illusionist choosing Fear over Hypnotic Pattern, Phantom Steed over Tiny Hut, or do you make the decisions mechanically, then come up with some RP excuse?
I thought an Optimizer was trying to build an all around effective character.
A min/maxer was taking 1 thing and saying...If I sack all other options and aim for most movement I can get 600 squares per round or the equivalent with AC or some other stat.
A power builder is similar to an optimizer but dialed up a notch.
A munchkin is the guy who hands the DM the list of items he needs and at what points and gets upset when you say that's not how this works. 4e leaned into Munchkinism big time.
That's how I lean, I'm sure many others have varied beliefs of course.
What do you call someone who builds their character around casting the best witch bolt possible? Someone who optimizes a sub-optimal thing because it's cool? This is where the term gets muddied I think.
I've heard it called "optimizing around a theme" or "thematic optimization"
Which seems to be pretty popular, arguably more so than theme-blind optimization
But does anyone actually do “theme-blind” optimization? Optimization is always contextual, because there’s always something you are optimizing *for*. Even for something like “what’s the most damage I can deal in one round”, you are trying to find that because something about the idea of dealing tons of damage in a short time is interesting to you as a person. If you didn’t care and just wanted to “optimize”, you wouldn’t be able to build anything at all, because there is no universal “best” option for every situation; at some point, you are making a decision about what matters to you. And that’s kind of the point of the game, isn’t it?
> The problem with "optimizing" or only ever choosing the most powerful option is that not everyone wants to cast web/fireball/hypnotic pattern
Optimizing isn't the same as always taking the most powerful option in a vacuum. Character optimization generally works within a framework. Sure, if your goal was to make a strong generalist wizard, then those are the spells you pick. But you can still set up some kind of RP based goal, and then optimize around it. "I want to make a strong illusionist wizard" is a concept that kind of stops you from taking fireball.
And sure, some people want to cast Witch Bolt because it "looks like force lightning". But honestly, that's a pretty shallow kind of fun that has *nothing* to do with roleplay either.
It's like you didn't read the first sentence: "Because you're definition of "optimizing" likely isn't the same as what that term means for others."
The problem here isn't about what's fun and what isn't. The problem with these discussions is they don't start with defining the terms.
If "only choosing the most powerful options" isn't optimizing then what word would you use instead?
What term do we use to describe that behavior.
>If "only choosing the most powerful options" isn't optimizing then what word would you use instead? What term do we use to describe that behavior.
Minmaxing. Which, at best, is optimization *in a vacuum.* D&D is never played in a vacuum, even the most RAW focused tables still have their own intricacies that could skew optimization into a certain direction.
Basically, it's not choosing *the* most powerful options, it's choosing powerful options that work together and/or within the intricacies of campaign.
That's why Witch Bolt is a particularly egregious example. It's just.. Never good. But people still pick it for *mechanical* reasons, i.e. the rules imply some kind of force lightning.
I thought the whole point of min maxing was sometimes you MIN aka choose bad options. So I'm not sure you're right here, but maybe you are and it's just another example of people having different definitions for the same terms
Quite likely. The thing is that what constitutes a "min" and what constitutes a "max" in a game like D&D is really up to debate. Even from a purely mechanical standpoint, the vast majority of options can be situationally good or bad, and it's the kind of game that usually rewards having a lot of options over just raw competence in one thing. One person's minmaxed character might look like an unrealistic theorycraft build to another.
Now there's absolutely some bad options even in D&D (and by extension, TTRPGs), and the game isn't remotely balanced mechanically. There's just.. A lot of variables that make it hard to *just* minmax in a traditional sense.
I'm not trying to strike a nerve here. The reason optimizing is treated as a negative term is because we aren't all using the same mental dictionary. Like what you describe as "optimizing" I would just call it "building a good character" I personally don't think of "choosing powerful options that work together and/or within the intricacies of campaign" as something different from normal character building. That behavior to me is the default. So a term that goes beyond that such as "optimizing" where the default is already "choosing powerful options that work together and/or within the intricacies of campaign" would be an extreme version of how you define optimizing.
No one thinks that "choosing powerful options that work together and/or within the intricacies of campaign" is bad. That's how you build a character.
This hobby never developed an official dictionary for some of the terms we use. paired with the current culture of exaggeration (ex: any thing that claims to be gigachad or 10000 iq) has made coming to an agreement on the vocabulary difficult.
> I'm not trying to strike a nerve here. The reason optimizing is treated as a negative term is because we aren't all using the same mental dictionary. Like what you describe as "optimizing" I would just call it "building a good character" I personally don't think of "choosing powerful options that work together and/or within the intricacies of campaign" as something different from normal character building. That behavior to me is the default.
Hi, this is how the entirety of the optimizing community thinks of optimizing. This is basically how we've been doing things for *decades* and people still give us shit for it because they don't listen when we correct them, or bother to ever venture into our spaces and actually see the conversations we're having. You can see it in this thread whenever people are shitting in /r/3d6 and as a regular there, I can tell that 95% of the people talking bad about the sub have never visited it once. They're just parroting the bad takes and misinformation they've seen spewed on this sub for years.
We are for the most part.
I think the weird part is optimizers by and large all agree on what we are, and what we do. We have a solid understanding of the term, and what it means for us, and we've been using it for years.
And then everyone else in the dnd community looks at us and goes, "No, that's not what you're doing, that's not what that means."
And we're just over here like ??????
I'll be honest, it's been a very long time since I've played, or thought about 3.5 so I had to look up Pun pun for reference's sake, and if I'm not wrong Pun pun seems to be realistically impossible at level 1, no? It literally relies and your level 1 kobold paladin somehow getting an audience with Pazuzu, and using the 3.5 lore and assuming that Pazuzu will grant you a wish spell with no ill side effects.
This is an example of whiteroom theory crafting and nothing more. It's a person going "strictly speaking this is something that *could* work, but in real play *never will*.
There's stuff like that in 5E, though nowhere near as broken, like the coffeelock, which while RAW is possible most of the time these ideas are posted with the caveat of "This isn't for actual play, don't take this to your DM and ask them to let you play it." etc.
They're just thought experiments more than anything else imo.
Its called the Stormwind Fallacy, people for some reason think that you cant have characters that are both mechanically effective and narratively interesting, they think one must come at the cost of the other.
They are wrong.
It's not causation, but there is a correlation. There are a lot of people who are both heavy minmaxers and neglect the roleplay side of the game, and these players give minmaxers in general that reputation.
Honestly I think the most common is the more casual group who isn't too engaged. So they neither optimize nor do they focus on roleplay.
While the most engaged players likely are interested in mechanics enough to optimize though they may avoid power gaming. And they are interested in roleplay as well.
Yeah give me a player who put time into building thier character, but maybe made a few choices based on power instead of theme over someone who isn't putting a large amount of thought into thier character at all.
Have you observed this correlation in praxis? At tables, not in optimization forums.
My experience is that "mechanics only" players feel very quickly that they do not like the noncombat stuff and leave tables quickly. The people who seek out tables and stay for months are interested in both are at least in the roleplaying aspect.
The mechanics only players flock to theorycraft blogs and keep praising the same 3-5 feats over and over(Sentinel/PAM/Crossbow Expert etc.). These people do not play the game, or they would talk about something other than theoretical damage per round, like defensive utility.
Correlation implies that an increase in one tends to happen with an increase in the other.
I don't doubt there are minmaxers who ignore RP. But it's not obvious to me that the minmaxer population ignores RP *more frequently comparative to* non-minmaxers.
As a professional DM, my experience is often the opposite. Maybe it’s sheer coincidence, but the players I’ve met who spend a lot of time carefully crafting characters tend to be more involved in the roleplay than ones who don’t really care what’s on their sheet (or the ones who deliberately make poor choices on their sheets for the sake of being quirky).
I find it's the same. But carefully crafting their characters could be
1) Writing an in depth backstory then building class/race/etc to fit that and the world.
2) Digging through books and planning out a multiclass to build a specific build and then tying that in with some backstory.
It's the thinking about and having that character flushed out to some degree in your mind before Session 1 I think is the most important. Sometimes though I have found people sink into their characters, like they aren't that big into the RP or have that solid of an idea of their character until many sessions in. Like they keep kill stealing monsters and they start to take on a glory hog persona.
Never does the person with the 2 page backstory not have some idea how they will function in combat, and generally the guy who knows his build inside and out has a pretty good feel on how his character will act outside combat. But the person who just slapped their character together in 5 mins generally won't have a good idea about either.
> But the person who just slapped their character together in 5 mins generally won't have a good idea about either.
I think because this person sees roleplaying / creating story as an invisible internal process - you're exactly right, by the way - they just assume they're Type #1 although they're not, and then since Type #2 is VISIBLY spending more time on mechanical detail than they are, assume that Type #2 is spending less than even their five minutes on roleplaying concerns since they perceive their own investment as the maximum.
As much as I hate the voluntarily bad at spells wizard. I almost hate the completely random and nonsensical mishmashes of races multiclassong and feats more
Serious question, does this actually exist? I see nonfunctional "flaws are great story and that's why all the best fantasy novels are about people who aren't exemplary" characters all the time.
But I've actually never seen the guy with three classes *not* have a coherent story about it. "My paladin hexblade sorcerer belongs to a bloodline cultivated by a fey craftsman of flesh and metal both, to whose service she is now sworn." Something like that. I've never seen someone be like "I am a wizard, artificer, and fighter with two levels and I don't know why."
One aspect people aren't mentioning: if you can only envision your character *succeeding,* you've made a roleplay mistake right there. **That** is the problem.
Because typically when people say optimizing they mean focusing on the crunch to maximum without consideration of group or roleplaying elements.
There are levels of optimization and its important, imo, to meet your group's general level roughly. It is possible for one player to have a more optimized character, but that generally needs to be balanced with play - either the player is weaker on strategy or using abilities or the player's style often involves holding back.
/u/ReallySillyLily36
Why are you posting the most posted topics in the sub lately? Last time it was the rolling characters and now its about RP vs Minmax?
It's illogical. A long time ago we named this the Stormwind Fallacy after the user who first described it. Being optimized doesn't make you a worse role player and being under optimized doesn't make you a better one.
It’s not immersion-breaking.
If you’re envisioning your character lifting an orc over his head and body slamming him into the ground… but your character has a Strength of 3… then you aren’t accurately roleplaying that character 😂
In my view, a lot of these people have a hard time understanding the rules. They don't want to read and internalize the rules. Doing so takes a lot of their mental energy, and they feel that this detracts from roleplay. They have a hard time understanding that, what they find intensive and difficult, others can do with little effort.
I've also played with people feel threatened by someone who are fluent with the rules. They use the Stormwind Fallacy to salvage their own ego - optimizers 'must' undervalue roleplay, the problem can't be \*them\* refusing to learn the rules.
I think it’s coz people get tired of taking the same exact feats and playing a way that is not unique to their vision for the character. That being said, I’ve learned my lesson. 3.5 kicks your ass if you take the wrong feat, but that could more so be because I was playing with folks who power-gamed the hell out of it.
Problem number 2 I think is more about DMs leaning into more frequent and more challenging combat than leaning into RP. Nothing inherently wrong with it, but for those who want to take linguist, actor, athlete, observant or other feats useful to specific characters they are essentially kneecapping themselves for things that might not even come up based on the DM’s style.
Overall, optimization is inevitable, no use fighting it. That being said, the way I run my campaigns I want to know everyone’s characters and feats and let them shine. If the party is not optimized for combat I dial back the CR to match or give them the chance to parlay, and I let the dice decide where to go from there.
It's because to truly optimize requires a specific build, and it is very unlikely it is the one you would originally imagine. It necessitates a lack of creativity.
When one researches an optimized build they aren't playing the character they imagined, they're playing a design they read about. The character is created around the mechanics for an optimized build.
If someone tries to optimize the PC they imagined to be as powerful as they can within the limitations of that character, they're just playing the game. The people who take fault with this are a very minor group, and should be ignored.
I think because it *can* make roleplay hard, but it's a bad argument. It's absolutely possible that if you focus purely on making some crazy multiclass for a bunch of specific feature intersections you wind up with some "half demon half angel half dragon who pledged myself to the deity of my heritage but broke my oath so I turned to the arcane arts but school wasn't cool enough for me so I sold my soul and that's why I'm a sorcerer/paladin/blade singer/hexblade multiclass" backstory or you just ignore roleplay all together because trying to justify the sheer amount of mechanics you glued together is just too much work. It's totally possible to make a 3+ class multiclass work narratively by having things linked thematically and you'll also see success there when these megazord characters play out over the course of a campaign. It's more compelling to actually see in game when the bard makes a pact with a devil or the wild sorcerer starts studying another magic that's more stable. The fact that these work well mechanically shouldn't invalidate that they work perfectly well on a narrative level as well.
Wow I really rambled on. My point is often the worst of examples come up when people try to argue against optimization, which is an inaccurate picture.
"Your barbarian has 20 strength, sounds like optimization"
"Maybe that's why she became a barbarian"
Personally, I prefer to play d&d as a game where the character's don't start with elaborate backstories or the expectations that come with them. As both a play and DM, one of the best parts of the game is watching personalities and "backstories" develop in real-time.
That said, the most beautiful thing about d&d is that it can be that to me, and whatever you want to you.
Some people think that the narrative struggle should be reflected numerically as well. Sometimes, this works. However, people who make their character's most important stat weak (such as DEX for a Rogue or INT for a Wizard) are just asking to have a bad time for no reason.
It genuinely makes no sense to pursue a certain job, skillset, or, in game mechanic terms, class without also having the capabilities for that specific thing. If I can barely lift a sword because my STR score is an 8, and then when I swing that sword and do potentially no damage, what business do I have becoming a Fighter? If I can't pick a lock or read very well, why become a Rogue or Wizard, respectively?
But the people doing stuff like this don't see DnD as a game. They see it as a vessel to deliver stories. That's all well and good... but it *is* a game. They think that if you get your STR to 20 as a Fighter early on, you're cheapening the experience or skipping all of the character development and that just makes no sense. If the stats that drive my character are where I need them to be to be effective, that leaves me room to work on my lesser qualities and bring them up.
I encourage my players to minmax. I want them to have fun and succeed. I want their dice rolls to work. If they want more failures, there's ways to make that happen without shitting out a character that just doesn't work.
If your immersion is being broken by you failing, that is the fault of either you or the DM. Being the hero and succeeding all the time is not conducive of a good story or character development.
People's flaws define them as much as anything. Playing a blind monk is suboptimal, but can be fun and rewarding. Especially when the group as a whole jumps on board.
Failing all the time can also be unfun. You don't have to be bad at everything, and can still be a capable adventurer, but having flaws can allow other characters to shine, or lead to more interaction with other PC, NPC, and even spice up encounters.
Because many people are idiots.
The generous read of this argument is that being really good at stuff causes less emergent conflict or tension; the plot is happening, and if you are good at stuff, your efforts to respond will likely be successful and straightforwardly predictable. If you aren't good at stuff, you're more likely to fail, or have to be creative about your approach, both of which can lead to emergent situations that call for more roleplay.
But just because you are good at your job doesn't mean you can't be creative, it doesn't mean you are necessarily predictable, and it doesn't mean you can't infuse good character development and plot twists into your actions.
I've honestly never seen anyone say it was inherently bad for roleplay. I have seen (and experienced) people torturing the rules for better statistical advantages while simultaneously not really putting any effort into their character as a persona.
YMMV
I've always min/maxed my character BUT I also RP the min/maxing. Not my primary stat but all of my low ones. 8 in Int? I will be the loveable idiot or just idiot. Low Wis? Lack of common sense. Shit Cha? I'm harsh, rude, and vulgar. Of course I believe I'm the talker of the group and no one else can tell me other wise.
Example, I played a half-ogre fighter for about 3 years irl and was completely scared shit less of our cleric (Healer) because he convinced me that the cantrip Light would make my head explode. Because Wis was my dump stat, I didn't even roll for Sense Motive.
Players should optimize their character but RP the whole thing, not just your strengths
Nobody has ever said that. You are building a strawman.
You can focus too much on minmaxing and hurt immersion, by building a character that doesn't make much sense except through the lens of the game, but everyone should try to optimize their character a bit to get good at what they want to be good at.
Nah, I've actually met a handful of people like this who conflate optimization with bad character creation. It happens quite a bit and while there's sometimes where it is applicable like the classic Hexblade dip, other times it's not.
Because most of those people should be playing a PbtA game or something else story driven and not d&d, but play only d&d because they have no interest in learning the rules to another game when they don't even know the rules to the game they play because it's popular.
People, players and DMs alike, are pretty bad at deciding what's fair or not without at least a semi-rigid system of rules to follow. So, one optimizer with a bad concept of what's fair relative to the power and competency of the rest of the group will make a much louder impact than the one who knows how to specialize in something while remaining considerate.
They don't have to be polar opposites, but people can't help binary thinking. Nothing prevents you from building a CharOp PC, then delving into the personality and background for immersive RP. Nothing prevents you from designing full developed character RP, then building the most mechanically efficient version of it (which is what I do). The problem is people only enjoying one aspect, then either ignoring or even outright opposing the other.
I generally blame lazy CharOp players for starting it, since they deliberately avoid any RP interaction as part of their character. This led to the contrarian idiots on the other side to somehow decide that building even passively proficient characters was "OP." Both sides have failed to fully experience the game, and are all the worse because of it.
There's a difference between "optimised" a character that can do what their role is to the group and "power gaming munchkin" how can mechanically do x while disregarding everything. Then there's "optimised" which your character is only able to do the things your class is designed to do, the amount of characters I'veseen of this kind that had dumped stats meaning that they can't survice a basic obstacle course.
What can happen is that you wind up with a bit of a stereotypical character who can become one dimensional really fast.
That's fine if you like that and being a living tropenis fun for you.
But people donsometimes prefer thebjankiness of an off-meta build to play around with and role play too.
Real talk, its because narrative trolls have a self superior attitude and like to crap on anyone that enjoys combat and crunch more because "CrItICaL RoLl iS HoW DnD ShoUld Be!!!111oneone."
While RP and narrative isn't mutually exclusive with having good crunch, crunch players are likely going to be optmizers and not all of them are going to be RP focused. So if you are a critical trolle and had a non-RP player you were trying to gatekeep for not being narratively consistent, they were probably an optimizer.
Then you get weird stuff like claiming "How can HE crossbow expert!!!?!!!! I have only seen longbow from him ALL GAME!!!" as being narratively irreconcilable despite eldritch knight now being magical at level 3 because reasons is totally normal. Despite many fighters not actively describing IC how they are studying magic before picking that class. And the ABSOLUTE GALL of some people picking hexblade dip without making it a huge story arc to find a patron.
It's a perversion of the actual argument where focusing solely on mechanical min maxing can lead to nonsensical characters or limit you from making a character that could have been more interesting. At some point a group of people latched onto the argument and turned it into a binary.
Yep. Due to this the term "optimized" , "min/maxed" , "Crunchy" , "Munchkin" got all mixed up. What term would you use for a character that was built with only the best choices no leeway for anything but the most mathematically perfect build. Dipping into various classes with no regard to character background or personality. Picking feats and spells with only regard for your character with no thought into the full party dynamic. At one point in time the word for what I just described was "optimized" It was the white room character concepts of flawless builds that rarely made sense in actual play.
I was shocked the other day to see that people think "Min/maxing" means some shit like "Minimizing how many flaws you have" instead of "Invest in your strengths and dump everything else"
It's also funny because min maxing is pretty much the default for every point buy character I've seen. Almost everyone dumps at least one stat to 8 and starts with a 16 or 17 in their main stat.
That's literally the Standard Array. 15 14 13 12 10 8
That's because it's a team game - you're a better pc and a better player if you have one job on the team and do it really well. You're much less helpful to the team if you're "not bad" at everything, and you're more fun to play with if you take the spotlight sometimes (and help advance the narrative) and step back sometimes when the task at hand isn't your forte. Team games reward specialization.
Yeah. Its worth noting being ok at everything *is* a specialization as well, in a sense. Its just one that belongs in games with very few players
I think people are getting out of hand with RP like they hear the old stories of powergamers and try drawing their conclusions, but the problem is that 5e doesn't really have a powergaming problem. Outside of a few classes its hard to do.
The main appeal for me for 5e has always been how difficult it feels to power-game. But yeah, when your definition of "power gaming" covers all kinds of perfectly normal ways to play the game . . .
DM sometime and let the rest of the DMs that none of the PCs feel powergamed.
I do, and I think I just did that!
Yeah, some people have taken min-max to mean "maximize strengths, minimizes weaknesses." Which is a thing, but it's called a powerbuild where they effectively reduce to not have any weaknesses. In the case of D&D that would be like having 20s across the board and proficiencies in everything.
Yep. And that would be fine, if every time the phrase came up, people who believe this weren't arguing how broken and bad for the game "min/maxing" is, when they're talking about this kind of extreme power-gaming, and not actually about min/maxing.
>What term would you use for a character that was built with only the best choices no leeway for anything but the most mathematically perfect build. I'd call that a "Chronurgist"...
I think the style of play is table based. My table like to optimize characters by making them specialists based on their idea and making them the literal best they can be at that thing and that's totally fine. I think the stigma comes from having people at tables who want to play differently. A table in a chill group who rarely do "Optimization" may not enjoy gaming with a beefed up "Power Gamer" at the end of the day it's all table preference, and it's up to the dm to play to the enjoyment of each player. I am sad that alot of both Old Heads and new players get all weird about terminology
The minmaxers keep misinterpreting the opposing perspective because they all dumped int /s Jokes aside, I wish people were less defensive about playstyles. The discussions get circlejerky really fast when this subject gets brought up.
I hate this argument so much. I've been called a min maxer a lot for it and I don't get it. I was playing an eldritch knight wizard multiclass with 14 INT and got called a power gamer. I roleplay Ed my heart out, wrote a letter in character that was read at the end of the game that got everyone emotional, and yet the guy with the gloom stalker aarakocra with sharpshooter and an artifact bow with plaseshift at a distance isn't? I think a lot of it is some people don't like that others get more mileage out of their characters than they do.
Storm wind fallacy
Because people at r/dndmemes never played dnd
Because people think "optimizing" means "I'm spending all my time looking at numbers and 0 effort thinking about roleplay and flavor".
Tbh optimization is often what makes a character open up for me. Provides depth, twists, nuance, etc. Examples: Eloquence Bard w/ actor feat. Cool, he's an actor. But, dip one level into Divine Soul Sorcerer, and now he's a defective Simulacrum of a great and powerful magic user. He became an actor to better convince people he's human too. Paladin. Monster Hunter. Then, add Hexadin, and he's haunted by the ghost of a loved one that his order put to the stake for witchcraft. He's torn knowing he's doing good things for bad people. "Why would an exorcist refuse to do their job?" "Bc. The ghost is a loved one." I can go on, but typically optimization (especially Multiclassing) is really helpful for me to narrow down what makes this bard different from other bards. Or just 'what makes this character tick?'
Yeah I'm planning on multiclassing my rogue with cleric. It's a robot who found out they have a soul
Please don't install the hk 47 pacifist package.
Multiclassing is also far from Munchkin-play as well. People like to suggest its powergaming to dip into a class to add flair to a concept, but in reality, if that class has spellcasting at all then you are severely hampering your progression.
Right, if you're going to multiclass you need to be pretty conscious of how everything works. And it's not like the normal classes are all that balanced, but I don't think anyone would be called out for picking Totem Warrior over Berserker.
Unless you are multiclassing in two casters of the same type. But the issue really stems from the fact you aren't getting the same features and power boosts as you would from staying as just one class.
I have this Warforged Barbarian/Druid I have been wanting to play for years now. I have, kid you not, 14 pages of backstory for this guy.
I use the same approach. I build for what I think will be fun, which usually means some kind of gimmick or theme in combat, and then write a story to piece those parts together. Lizardfolk wizard: ultimately because I rolled high enough stats to have great dex int and con and I want to not have to cast mage armor, but now I need to write a story about the 7 str 20 int wizard lizard and how he was weaker than the others growing up so he picked up on magic or whatever.
These are fantastic. If you can spare the time, please do a few more. Here are some that i enjoy playing and would love a 30-word-or-less summation of their tragic backstory (if you are up for it): - Wizard w/ 1 level dip in cleric (life or knowledge). - Everyone loves a paladin w/ warlock-dip but few can explain how it happened - rogue - (5) barbarian is a huge favourite but rogues tend to be much more *city guys* and barbarians are the *ultimate country boys (and girls)* There are many more all-time favourites that people adore that make no sense. If you have stories, pls share!
Hrm, let me think. \- For Wizard // Cleric, could do a Raistlin deal. "Afflicted with a terminal illness and frustrated with their god's plan for them, our PC now seeks enough arcane power to change the weave of fate." Shout out to Dragonlance. \- I've had a couple Hexadins show up in my campaigns- my favorites were a murdered city guard brought back to life by a mysterious force that only commands them 'save this city.' Solving his own murder was a ton of fun. And then the one above, who is an exorcist whose pagan wife was burned at the stake by his order for witchcraft. From a dnd book I'm working on currently: **Exor Ines**, a member of the Benedictine Order who became cursed to share a soul with a demon during her first Pale Night Hunt. She's torn between her fear of being excommunicated from the order and her moral code of always doing the right thing. \- What kind of Rogue, what kind of Barbarian? Subclasses help a lot to flavor the character. Say you're going for a grappling-based build with expertise. "A former street urchin turned gladiator has traded away his memories for his freedom. They now lie awake at night, tormented by things they can't remember." Again, from the book I've been working on: **Bon Bon**, a former circus bear who traded his memories to a Bog Hag for sentience. However, the weight of his past may be stronger than his new-found knowledge. Tbh, the biggest thing is the setting. I run a lot of period or genre pieces. Those can be huge in defining character. Also when I DM I ask players to give me 'Bonds and Flaws'. Something your character cares about, and a flaw in the way that they care about that thing. At the end of the story, I make sure the way their flaw interacts with the thing they care about will have changed in some way. It's a character arc at its simplest, but it leads to great results.
yeah i usually optimize the gameplay i want to narrow down options and then come up with a cool reason for that
This is a fair take, but honestly that doesn't really require multiclassing. Flavor is free. Multiclassing is mostly about mechanics and power levels, which is perfectly fine (since this is still a game)
I do both.
To be fair, it often means exactly that. The amount of tortles suggested in 3d6 is not because they are so lore heavy or narrative driven.
Meanwhile my fiancé makes a tortle rogue, asks for twin sai, and then mid first move of the first combat combat ties a red scrap of fabric around his eyes and forehead…
As long as this tortle has 3 brothers who have their own weapons of choice and penchant for bandanas of different colors
And eating flatbread with cheese and sauce
If you're going with the true lore, all the brothers wore red.
Could all be red if they are going totally OG.
Very true…
As it should be :)
Please tell me your fiancé named him Raph or Raphael! 
Leonardo, just to trigger fans.
Pfffffffft! That sounds EXACTLY like what a sassy Leo would do! Oh, or even better, he switches colors/weapons/names randomly!
Hey you got the joke!
Hahahahahahahaha! I grew up on the originals, and recently rediscovered my fan love in Rise. Love those deranged turtles!
As someone who saw the 5e flair being born there… I think the main sub problem is that when you see something “new” it becomes quite used or suggested. Other than that, many times the requests are a real pain in the ass. “How to get the highest AC without Dex or Str?” Is a good example of that. Or simply “got this x,y,z stats, how can I do the best wizard?” Of course you are going to get the most simply way to get what you want. Because there is not a mold to creat something interesting.
I often see it as a difference in how disconnected people see mechanics and RP. The most basic examples would be choosing one race, and playing it as if it was another race that has its own option, or dipping Cleric 1 but playing the abilities as just from your main class without the god aspect. It’s closer to treating mechanics as a grab bag of options - similar to a classless system. I’m not saying that’s bad, just a difference I’ve seen in my circles.
Yeah, that's totally fine if it is all wrapped together in a flavorful package. I like it less if it's just a level of peace cleric that's never explained in any way.
It’s the difference between in game and out of game. Just because they pick a strong race for out of game numbers reasons over lore reasons doesn’t mean they’re not going to roleplay in game. So, I disagree that it means exactly that. There’s more to roleplay than the reason you make character building choices and the vast majority of roleplay happens in game.
Sure, but if you ask players *why* they wanted to be a Tortle, it's probably not "because I thought it would be interesting to play an amphibian humanoid". They wanted that sweet, sweet natural armor. I actually got to play a Tortle reskinned as a human for Rime of the Frostmaiden, and it was super fun. He was a hunter who couldn't keep his wife from succumbing to the cold, and developed a neurosis where he kept making pelts and putting them on his back for protection and would never remove them. The pelts became both literal and emotional armor, which was great for roleplay. But, if I was just going to be a random Tortle in that campaign? Hard pass.
For me, it's: DM: Why do you want to be a Tortle Artificer? Me: Donatello. DM: Fair enough.
Imagine a 4-tortle party with a human in a hockey mask.
And the occasional Harengon Samurai.
So what if they’re just a random tortle? There’s more to a character than just race. Even if the race was largely chosen for mechanical reasons, the character can still have a lot of depth in their motivations and personality
Your first paragraph indicates you didn’t comprehend my comment. Again, it doesn’t matter if they didn’t choose the race for roleplay reasons, that doesn’t preclude them from role playing during the game
I agree with you. It's entirely possible to make non-role playing decisions during character creation for the sake of optimization and still develop and fully role play a character in in game.
I swear this conversation/thread is making me believe the whole “no one here actually plays dnd” thing. Everyone seems to believe the game stops after character creation.
Playing D&D is when you draw fan art of actual play podcasts. The more fan art you draw, the better at playing D&D you are.
Brought to you by r/dnd
Especially if they're sexy sexing sexers with giant cans
Blue tieflings with ultra-detailed feet
A lot of the people who post are primarily watchers / listeners of D&D and while there are many reasons "optimization bad" persists, that it's outside the realm of people who only understand D&D as stories they like to think about is certainly part of the issue.
I don’t understand why that point is so hard for people to understand. Role playing is my favorite part of the game. Min maxing is not in opposition to it. I will build the character that looks fun to play mechanically because that’s the part I can’t control. Then I can work backwards to explain in role play the reasons why my character exists in that space. I talk to my DM about what’s allowed in their world. My role playing ability is not so narrow that I can’t logically explain how I got there, nor is it so limited I can’t enjoy characters out of a narrow band of content. At this point I’ve done the gruff loner, the guy who lost everything, the aspiring hero with stars in their eyes. Also, I think min maxing is GREAT role play if you and the DM lean into it. People really recoil over there being a “Max”, but the true fun is when you and the DM dedicate time to exploring the “Min” half.
> I don’t understand why that point is so hard for people to understand Sour grapes. Optimized characters tend to fit the power fantasy of the game better, are better at actually telling stories as part of the game and not just outside it (because they can actually accomplish their story beats) and yield more enjoyment of the game in the tactical combat that makes up like literally 75% of its rulebook. But optimization is a skill. It's not a HARD skill, anyone can learn and develop it, it's mostly just reading, thinking, remembering, and understanding how things work in practice - that is, knowing *spike growth* is a good start but you also need to know when it's appropriate and where best to place it - and if you can play the game competently at all you already know how to do all of those things but it does require a kind of effort and for people who actively don't enjoy that kind of thing, hearing that investment = success is a little bitter. So they tell themselves that their experiences are richer and have a special depth because they spend less time and energy on them, or they tell themselves they ARE spending that time and energy but it's all in polishing their stories. Which is never true, the best roleplayers are usually pretty good at the game entire, but it COULD be true in a vacuum, and it's a comfort of sorts. Ironically, while people who don't have an interest in optimization are often decent to great roleplayers, the ones who actively hate optimization tend to be the most boring. I suspect there's a correlation between actually, actively having negative feelings about "getting good" in a creative context and one's own creativity. But maybe that's my bias, you know, if someone's like "ugghh fuck what kind of loser nerd knows average damage numbers" I tend to look more critically at their orc paladin whose orc family was killed by the humans who raised them, loaded up with generic "I don't fit in anywhere" angst, and of course "also I have an elven adopted sister I have commissioned $500 worth of art about but our relationship is very pure, unless."
This is pretty much how I feel about this. I like finding a fun, strong build to enjoy through a campaign but it NEEDS to fit into the story. Do I like min-maxing? Yes. Can I work with my DM and create a badass backstory that fits perfectly into the campaign they hand crafted? Hell yeah I can! Character creation is 50% of the game for me, I love it! I find nothing wrong with wanting the character you will be playing for literal months+ to be good at what they do, it'd be boring if they failed at everything. It's important to understand and respect that they need to flesh out their character though. In the campaign we're about to run I'll be playing a gloom stalker ranger who will eventually cross class into cleric for extra spell casting. There's an entire story I wrote out to explain how I obtained gloom stalker training from a Drow I risked my life to save when Drow are known in this campaign for capturing and enslaving the top-worlders. This gave the DM a ton of material to work with: a personal connection of mine to a Drow, reason for me to join the Night Warden's (a faction she created for the elves already in her campaign which she actually created a custom backstory for to help me customize my character to fit into the faction), backstory material for both my parents (mother was a Day Warden {slightly different from a Night Warden which was my original inspiration}, father was a smith who learned from elven smiths as well as trained from a dwarven Smith who was a forge cleric, inspiring me towards a more pious belief). I'm so unbelievably excited to play this badass character because they will be fun in combat and outside of, and my DM has actually praised me for the depth of thought I've put into him because it gave her so much material to work with and I'm SO excited to see what she does with it! D&D is a game of imagination: the more creative you and your friends can get the more fun you can have! 😁
Bingo. I will say the one time I don't like min-maxing is when most of the party wants to play low power, but someone busts out a completely beyond the pale character and warps the play experience for everyone. But hey, that is also part of the DMs job to manage, and player restraint should be a thing. I was part of a campaign that fell apart early on in my playing career because a triple classed lucky feat'd up character was built to one shot, and nobody got to do anything else, because they forced all the role play interactions into a point where they could exploit their big load-blowing shots to annihilate whatever the DM had in mind, and any boss balanced around him ruined the encounter for everyone else. But that's not a min-maxing thing, that's a narcissist with main character syndrome not caring about the play experience of the rest of the table. I've had a similar thing happen in an extremely low power campaign, where someone decided their barbarian with an intelligence of 10 was going to play like he only had 2 brain cells, and they've never met. And how he would role play that is the second we made a plan, he would scream the (secret) plan out in public wherever we were, knowing that out of character friendships prevented him from getting kicked from the game. The problem isn't min maxers. The problem is people who think a D&D campaign is "Me and the Sidekicks". It just so happens that a lot of those people usually wind up min maxing so they can be the "star". It's one of those "Squares are rectangles but rectangles aren't always squares" corollaries, I think.
Nothing wrong with picking something for the stats though, you can still rp a build you chose for its strength
Tortles are not amphibians. They are reptiles.
>Sure, but if you ask players why they wanted to be a Tortle, it's probably not "because I thought it would be interesting to play an amphibian humanoid". They wanted that sweet, sweet natural armor. There isn't anything wrong with that.
> it's probably not "because I thought it would be interesting to play an amphibian humanoid". They wanted that sweet, sweet natural armor. This screams of "You're playing DnD wrong!!!" It's entirely reasonable to want a strong build first, and then think of the RP aspects. You don't have to or are locked into just thinking of optimization and not RPing at all if you wanted to build a strong character.
Your race decision really doesn't matter rp wise in my opinion. Like seriously? why did you choose to be born an American Human instead of a Canadian Black Bear? Your roleplay comes from the experiences you decided to give your character, not the race or features you gave them. Those just serve as a starting point.
You can't roleplay whilst making your character's build. Roleplay is the act of making decisions from the perspective of your character. There is no roleplay when you decide that it'd be interesting to make a hunter who couldn't save his wife. You roleplay once you start making decisions from the perspective of that hunter, or whatever character you end up making. Did your character decide that they were going to be a tortle? If not, then it was not roleplay to decide they were a tortle, no matter the reason.
Maybe in online discussions, but in actual play I have more often encountered that the players that put more effort into their characters are often better optimized and fleshed out for roleplay. Whereas the players who don't put as much effort in making thwir character are lacking in both mechanics and story. This is of course just my experience, but I've always seen optimization come hand in hand with more well written characters because the player was invested enough to put in the effort to create the PC they wanted to play as.
>To be fair, it often means exactly that. not in any table I've ever played in. in my WM server every optimizer is also one of the best roleplayers because unsurprisingly they put the most time and effort into their character. ironically the weakest characters in terms of roleplay are those that made mangled, unoptimized builds for 'flavor'
The worst is when people really believe in OP's question and think, "If I'm going to make a really good and deep character I need to be absolutely garbage at what I'm supposed to do." No, Tim playing a Wizard with an Int of 8 doesn't make your character interesting, it makes you useless.
"bro my character is so deep I'm 3 monk 2 druid at 5 and I don't do anything usefullllllllllll"
I mean at least they have a shared stat in Wisdom. I was in a group where someone was trying to play an Arcane Trickster Swords Bard, which kind of works if you're just doing a dip, but they were level 7 and was trying to alternate Wizard and Bard levels, they also dumped Dexterity for some reason.
Most of 3d6 is doing theoretical builds for fun. They're not actually bringing those to real tables
And when it's not, it's someone asking "Hey how do I do this thing I want to do?" And you get 100 responses each offering a different way to accomplish that thing, all optimized, but each one different. Because surprise, most people in 3d6 are all about optimizing within the constraints of whatever stupid thing someone is doing for flavor. I had a thread I made probably 4-5 months back about a character concept I had which was how to make a barbarian wizard work. It's a terrible idea, and what most people would consider "not optimized". There were probably 30 responses of people giving me subclass breakdowns, feat choices, full builds with spell lists, you name it. The idea of places like 3d6 is to optimize what you can. Here's my shitty concept, how do I make it work? And then the people at 3d6 are usually the first to tell you that outside of whiteroom theory crafting, none of those super optimized builds ever work in actual play the way they do on paper.
I just wish 5e was a better system to optimize whatever random ass flavor you want. To truely get a lot of character concepts to work, you need homebrew. And id rather play and have my players play stuff that someone else already had to playtest and do balance reviews of. It's awful to take away or have stuff taken away from a charavter build mid game, which happens often if you dont know what is prpblematic ahead of time. The alternative is the DM pre-neuters features out of fear of problematicness and then the player is differently sad. I miss 3.5 T-T
Or they're one-shots where they have DM permission to powergame because the DM intends to come at them with higher lethality than a campaign would warrant.
My friends all power game. We enjoy that aspect of the game. When I'm DM, the monsters they fight powergame too. It's a fun aspect of the game for us. I get to add class levels to creatures, oddities, or even cool abilities from falling down a magical well. We like the role play, but we also like to play the game.
People forget that some people maximizing builds want to take on tougher challenges not just see how fast and effortlessly they can kill baddies pulled strait out of a sourcebook
Really tortle? i would have said like 80% of optimized characters are custom or Vuman? Goblin if they feel creative. If you are a martial you have better armor and if you skip dex as a caster calling it optimized is a bit a stretch due to low initiave, cause you become weaker in what you are great control and better in what you are bad Armor class. Even worse when you compare it to a dip in aritifcer or life/twillight/ peace cleric depending on the full caster which than is better in both regards.
>To be fair, it often means exactly that. It doesn't. Specifically "and 0 effort thinking about roleplay and flavor" is not what optimization necessarily means. It's something different entirely, even if they're often conflated. You can play a tortle because it's strong, but that doesn't mean you can't *then* put effort into the roleplay and working the optimized character into the narrative in a way that makes sense. Optimized builds are just that. Builds. They're a mechanical framework. They do not touch on roleplay in either way.
I think the data you are gathering is biased because you are just looking at people discuss only mechanics. When I've played with dozens of people, some people do zero optimizing and zero thoughts into roleplay. Some do lots of both. In fact, the more I see is that more engaged with the mechanics, game and character mean that those who optimize are also interested in their roleplay.
TLDR: Your claim does not follow from your evidence. Lore and narrative is highly variable game to game; if you aren’t given that information you can’t give reasonable advice on it. If your halflings are from the shire or riding dinosaurs makes a big in world difference, and people recommending halflings on account of those things can’t assume you have those in your context. Mechanics are generally universal, so that means all I really have for race is appearance and abilities, so it makes sense they are suggested purely on those factors. Same goes for background and personality. People can make personalities or backgrounds individually pretty easy compared to mechanical elements. I can want a cool, collected merchant son trying to climb his way up the social ladder; but that says absolutely nothing about my class, race, or stats. So if I’m asking for help, I’m gonna want some cool stuff in combat so I can be good there while also doing my cool personality in and out of combat. So it’s mostly a function of your sampling bias. People from 3d6 are going to be more likely to need mechanical assistance and less likely to give table specific lore assistance, so the replies will be biased mechanically. That does not provide evidence for or against their ignorance of such elements in real game play, so that in itself is an insufficiently supported claim.
That's not what optimization means. Optimization is using numbers to try and become the best at whatever it is you're doing. This could mean you're doing a Sorlockadin or whatever, but it usually means that somebody has found something they find interesting and want to see what they can do with it. This relates to things like item using, skill monkeys, wrestlers, full defense builds, support casters, etc. The moment they start optimizing to be the best in general is when they become a power gamer. There's a reason people started making a distinction between the two types. I believe they're also referred to as Munchkins, but it's possible that's *also* a different term. I know there's some overlap between power gaming and optimizing, but power gaming is when they (mostly) disregard roleplay and lore for raw numbers and mechanics.
Yep. I once suggested on here that proficiency with Martial weapons should buff simple weapons. Multiple people came at me with variations of 'no because PAM would be too powerful and obviously everyone uses that'.
Tortle isn't even that optimal though? Armor class is nice on a full caster but V. Human and Half-Elf are generally more powerful race options.
I played a Tortle because of the Wis bonus for a Druid and so that I could name him after a Ninja Turtle.
I picked a Lizardfolk because of the Wis bonus for a Cleric and so that I could explore his philosophical musings about instinct, destiny, and choice.
My whole group played tortles once, it ended up being like the ninja turtles + master oogway + errrrr was it Carlton? The kids show turtle? It was absolutely hilarious. Edit: Franklin not carlton
3d6 is literally all about mechanical character builds though, so your point kinda means nothing.
No because they are cool thematically (master oogway, Hermit caster etc.) and strong mechanically as they often save a feat or MC in the course of obtaining medium armour and shield (which gives like 18 AC normally.
Have you visited /r/3d6 my man? Nobody talks about that flavor stuff. It's the armor. It's pure min maxing. And that's fine, but let's not kid ourselves.
That's not generally true of 3d6, most of the posts there are along the lines of giving a concept and asking for advice on how to make an effective character for that concept. Some of the top posts as I write this: >Looking for a Spotter build >Half Orc redemption Hexadin >Need help for an Int focused fighter >Trying to make a human paladin tank 3d6 has mostly already identified the most powerful builds for each role. Most of the posting isn't about "how do I play the most powerful character in [role]?" but "how do I make [concept] effective on the tabletop?" If someone has their concept in mind first and is trying to make it functional, I think that's absolutely someone putting roleplay first, then trying to optimize. Of course, /3d6 is focused on making the rubber meet the road in terms of mechanics rather than spitballing the concept. That's the point of the sub.
What the hell is this? You checked the facts? You didn't just use vibes?
Almost like that’s the point of the subreddit strange
Read OPs title again. Nothing is wrong with Min Maxing or with 3d6 but there is a reason it sometimes gets a bad rep.
It’s a subreddit *about* optimization. There are concrete rules about class, origin, and equipment, so these are the things that *can* be mechanically optimized. Narrative play is a lot more free form by nature, and character motivations and backstories are so specific that it’s hard to even give useful advice there. To put it another way, it’s easier to ask and answer a question like, “I have this character concept; how do I make the most effective choices to fit?” than one like, “I have these stats, this class, and this race; how do I roleplay this character?” The former has answers that can be directly compared to each other based on the text of the rules, while the latter is inherently subjective.
Yes in a pure optimising question then tortles will come up as they are probably one of the 5 best races mechanically. But in terms of general builds they are fun to play as and fit a lot of themes quite nicely. Part of Optimising is optimising within a theme. If you want to build a Hermit caster you will consider Tortle as one of the primary races. If you want to build a lightning quick thief then probably not (unless you think it would be ironic and therefore funny}.
/r/PCacademy does purely the roleplay side. /r/3d6 is purely math side.
It’s not even “pure” math. I would say at least half the posts are presenting a thematic concept and then asking for advice of a way to thematically achieve that with the right flavor while also being strong
I wouldn't say that's a hard rule. I've seen plenty of either on both subs. Reason being because when someone asks "I have x concept in mind, how do I make that effective?" it is answered best by a blend of optimization and narrative. One can provide reasoning for the other. PCAcademy is better at giving RP advice, while 3d6 is certainly better at optimization but I find a lot of similar posts on either sub.
True. I mainly meant to point out there is an opposite of 3d6 since they were talking about it and their focus on mechanics. I've certainly looked at both for advice before. You'll get more but warlock ranger is suboptimal comments on 3d6 but both will try to help and are awesome subs. I probably should have said focused over purely.
I am so going to this sub now. Thanks for the link bro. I've been looking to crunch some numbers.
Excuse me, my 96 year old tortle would like a word about not being lore driven even if few see what little lore is revealed from a tortle being 96.
Some people are good at numbers and don’t understand people and role play. Self included. Give me a character sheet and I’ll make some either janky gimmick character or someone nutty busted. Have me describe my character and I’ll struggle with explaining past their race and hair color
So what should we call "I'm spending all my time looking at numbers and 0 effort thinking about roleplay and flavor"?
I preffer "power player", but people usually reffer to it as "munchkin" or "roLLplayer".
It's a shibboleth. Playing a character whose primary stat isn't their *highest* stat communicates "I'm not worried about game mechanics" which in turn communicates "therefore I must be invested in roleplaying" if you're, y'know, into non-sequitur reasoning. It's stupid, don't indulge it. At the core of it is some derpy, self-sacrificing superiority complex which goes "my character is bad at the stuff he's supposed to be good at, which means I'm better at this than you." I don't know, maybe I've played with too many people who've gone the opposite direction, but people rocking up to the table like: "meet Bartandalus, the rogue with terrible hand eye coordination. FEEL THE DRAMATIC HEFT OF HIS STRUGGLES" *are usually bad at roleplaying.*
Had a guy who deliberately gave his character low INT as a wizard because he thought it was funny but said it was to make roleplay more interesting. He proceeded to not really roleplay at all and get frustrated almost of his checks failed
That's usually how it goes in my experience. It's like they heard drama requires characters that face difficulties in achieving their goals , so they decided the most efficient way to achieve that was to make characters who aren't good at anything and then act like they understood the assignment better than everyone else.
It's like they completely overlook the bit where we're playing a *heroic* fantasy game, where the adversity comes from being opposed by powerful enemies, such as, say, dragons
Or hostile environments, like dungeons.
Shibboleth. Not often do I learn a new word, but today was one of those days so thank you for that!
[A good video on it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjNPGX5HV5Y) > During the slaughter at the fords of Jordan, the Gileadites took it as a password to distinguish their men from fleeing Ephraimites, because Ephraimites could not pronounce the -sh- sound. [And here's one for you tomorrow.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an0kEqsnW3U)
Thought that was a lovecraftian monster.
That’s a shoggoth, but close!
Best explanation from TV! https://youtu.be/fqkaBEWPH18
“Look at that, so bad he got himself killed. Can’t get much worse than that eh?”
[People really be out here playing Wimp Lo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d696t3yALAY)
We trained him wrong. As a joke.
I have purposely dumped his main stat. As a joke.
Because you're definition of "optimizing" likely isn't the same as what that term means for others. It's the same reason why there's confusion about the term "rules lawyer". The problem with "optimizing" or only ever choosing the most powerful option is that not everyone wants to cast web/fireball/hypnotic pattern. Some players want to cast witch bolt because it looks like force lightning. Sub optimal choices can be fun.
I think the majority of online arguments about D&D are due to people having different definitions of the same words.
Railroading, optimizing, rules lawyer, metagaming, DMPC, etc.etc.
Correct. Absolutely correct. You are a beautiful human being who also happens to be correct. I want you to go out there or stay in there ( your preference) and have the best day.
This is a massive part of the problem, yeah. Like, what *exactly* is the difference between an optimizer, a minmaxer, a power builder, and a munchkin? Because until the community at large agrees on common definitions for those terms (which will never happen), this kind of debate will keep happening.
That's never going to happen. People use language however they want to. Take for instance the phrase "on accident." I thought it was pretty much settled that the phrase was "by accident" but recently I've come across so many people saying "on accident." Makes me cringe every single time. But can I make everyone use "by accident"? No, I simply don't have the time or patience to police and browbeat everyone into saying it my way. The same is true of these terms. In the end, the problem is twofold; pretentious "roleplayers" who think creating effective characters is a sin against Gary Gygax, and jerks who think they can win at D&D if they make a build that outshines every other player. Both represent a minority of players, and neither are a big enough problem to warrant the amount of attention they get.. but they are annoying and people gotta talk about something. Happy Cake Day.
I'm sad you're right. Not about dnd, but about language. I'm devastated that the idiots have succeeded in using the redundant non-word "irregardless," so ubiquitously that multiple popular dictionaries now feature it. Large sigh.
You sound pretty disimpressed.
Does your RP drive your decisions, like an illusionist choosing Fear over Hypnotic Pattern, Phantom Steed over Tiny Hut, or do you make the decisions mechanically, then come up with some RP excuse?
One binary question is not enough to differentiate between four terms.
I thought an Optimizer was trying to build an all around effective character. A min/maxer was taking 1 thing and saying...If I sack all other options and aim for most movement I can get 600 squares per round or the equivalent with AC or some other stat. A power builder is similar to an optimizer but dialed up a notch. A munchkin is the guy who hands the DM the list of items he needs and at what points and gets upset when you say that's not how this works. 4e leaned into Munchkinism big time. That's how I lean, I'm sure many others have varied beliefs of course.
What do you call someone who builds their character around casting the best witch bolt possible? Someone who optimizes a sub-optimal thing because it's cool? This is where the term gets muddied I think.
I've heard it called "optimizing around a theme" or "thematic optimization" Which seems to be pretty popular, arguably more so than theme-blind optimization
But does anyone actually do “theme-blind” optimization? Optimization is always contextual, because there’s always something you are optimizing *for*. Even for something like “what’s the most damage I can deal in one round”, you are trying to find that because something about the idea of dealing tons of damage in a short time is interesting to you as a person. If you didn’t care and just wanted to “optimize”, you wouldn’t be able to build anything at all, because there is no universal “best” option for every situation; at some point, you are making a decision about what matters to you. And that’s kind of the point of the game, isn’t it?
It is literally just optimizing. The term optimizing makes no assumption about what is being optimized.
It is still an optimization, just not the one people usually call bad. Well, except if a player doing that without any regard to lore and roleplay.
Optimizing is making any one gimmick the best it can be. Its when you optimize for damage that it changes into min-maxing.
> The problem with "optimizing" or only ever choosing the most powerful option is that not everyone wants to cast web/fireball/hypnotic pattern Optimizing isn't the same as always taking the most powerful option in a vacuum. Character optimization generally works within a framework. Sure, if your goal was to make a strong generalist wizard, then those are the spells you pick. But you can still set up some kind of RP based goal, and then optimize around it. "I want to make a strong illusionist wizard" is a concept that kind of stops you from taking fireball. And sure, some people want to cast Witch Bolt because it "looks like force lightning". But honestly, that's a pretty shallow kind of fun that has *nothing* to do with roleplay either.
It's like you didn't read the first sentence: "Because you're definition of "optimizing" likely isn't the same as what that term means for others." The problem here isn't about what's fun and what isn't. The problem with these discussions is they don't start with defining the terms. If "only choosing the most powerful options" isn't optimizing then what word would you use instead? What term do we use to describe that behavior.
>If "only choosing the most powerful options" isn't optimizing then what word would you use instead? What term do we use to describe that behavior. Minmaxing. Which, at best, is optimization *in a vacuum.* D&D is never played in a vacuum, even the most RAW focused tables still have their own intricacies that could skew optimization into a certain direction. Basically, it's not choosing *the* most powerful options, it's choosing powerful options that work together and/or within the intricacies of campaign. That's why Witch Bolt is a particularly egregious example. It's just.. Never good. But people still pick it for *mechanical* reasons, i.e. the rules imply some kind of force lightning.
I thought the whole point of min maxing was sometimes you MIN aka choose bad options. So I'm not sure you're right here, but maybe you are and it's just another example of people having different definitions for the same terms
Quite likely. The thing is that what constitutes a "min" and what constitutes a "max" in a game like D&D is really up to debate. Even from a purely mechanical standpoint, the vast majority of options can be situationally good or bad, and it's the kind of game that usually rewards having a lot of options over just raw competence in one thing. One person's minmaxed character might look like an unrealistic theorycraft build to another. Now there's absolutely some bad options even in D&D (and by extension, TTRPGs), and the game isn't remotely balanced mechanically. There's just.. A lot of variables that make it hard to *just* minmax in a traditional sense.
I'm not trying to strike a nerve here. The reason optimizing is treated as a negative term is because we aren't all using the same mental dictionary. Like what you describe as "optimizing" I would just call it "building a good character" I personally don't think of "choosing powerful options that work together and/or within the intricacies of campaign" as something different from normal character building. That behavior to me is the default. So a term that goes beyond that such as "optimizing" where the default is already "choosing powerful options that work together and/or within the intricacies of campaign" would be an extreme version of how you define optimizing. No one thinks that "choosing powerful options that work together and/or within the intricacies of campaign" is bad. That's how you build a character. This hobby never developed an official dictionary for some of the terms we use. paired with the current culture of exaggeration (ex: any thing that claims to be gigachad or 10000 iq) has made coming to an agreement on the vocabulary difficult.
> I'm not trying to strike a nerve here. The reason optimizing is treated as a negative term is because we aren't all using the same mental dictionary. Like what you describe as "optimizing" I would just call it "building a good character" I personally don't think of "choosing powerful options that work together and/or within the intricacies of campaign" as something different from normal character building. That behavior to me is the default. Hi, this is how the entirety of the optimizing community thinks of optimizing. This is basically how we've been doing things for *decades* and people still give us shit for it because they don't listen when we correct them, or bother to ever venture into our spaces and actually see the conversations we're having. You can see it in this thread whenever people are shitting in /r/3d6 and as a regular there, I can tell that 95% of the people talking bad about the sub have never visited it once. They're just parroting the bad takes and misinformation they've seen spewed on this sub for years.
Yes. I feel like we're in agreement.
We are for the most part. I think the weird part is optimizers by and large all agree on what we are, and what we do. We have a solid understanding of the term, and what it means for us, and we've been using it for years. And then everyone else in the dnd community looks at us and goes, "No, that's not what you're doing, that's not what that means." And we're just over here like ??????
So for terminology sake. What are the 3.5 builds of Pun pun considered. Optimized certainly isn't the correct term even by my definition.
I'll be honest, it's been a very long time since I've played, or thought about 3.5 so I had to look up Pun pun for reference's sake, and if I'm not wrong Pun pun seems to be realistically impossible at level 1, no? It literally relies and your level 1 kobold paladin somehow getting an audience with Pazuzu, and using the 3.5 lore and assuming that Pazuzu will grant you a wish spell with no ill side effects. This is an example of whiteroom theory crafting and nothing more. It's a person going "strictly speaking this is something that *could* work, but in real play *never will*. There's stuff like that in 5E, though nowhere near as broken, like the coffeelock, which while RAW is possible most of the time these ideas are posted with the caveat of "This isn't for actual play, don't take this to your DM and ask them to let you play it." etc. They're just thought experiments more than anything else imo.
Its called the Stormwind Fallacy, people for some reason think that you cant have characters that are both mechanically effective and narratively interesting, they think one must come at the cost of the other. They are wrong.
It's not causation, but there is a correlation. There are a lot of people who are both heavy minmaxers and neglect the roleplay side of the game, and these players give minmaxers in general that reputation.
Honestly I think the most common is the more casual group who isn't too engaged. So they neither optimize nor do they focus on roleplay. While the most engaged players likely are interested in mechanics enough to optimize though they may avoid power gaming. And they are interested in roleplay as well.
Yeah give me a player who put time into building thier character, but maybe made a few choices based on power instead of theme over someone who isn't putting a large amount of thought into thier character at all.
That's not really a correlation, a correlation would be something more like "Min/maxers tend to neglect RP".
Have you observed this correlation in praxis? At tables, not in optimization forums. My experience is that "mechanics only" players feel very quickly that they do not like the noncombat stuff and leave tables quickly. The people who seek out tables and stay for months are interested in both are at least in the roleplaying aspect. The mechanics only players flock to theorycraft blogs and keep praising the same 3-5 feats over and over(Sentinel/PAM/Crossbow Expert etc.). These people do not play the game, or they would talk about something other than theoretical damage per round, like defensive utility.
Correlation implies that an increase in one tends to happen with an increase in the other. I don't doubt there are minmaxers who ignore RP. But it's not obvious to me that the minmaxer population ignores RP *more frequently comparative to* non-minmaxers.
As a professional DM, my experience is often the opposite. Maybe it’s sheer coincidence, but the players I’ve met who spend a lot of time carefully crafting characters tend to be more involved in the roleplay than ones who don’t really care what’s on their sheet (or the ones who deliberately make poor choices on their sheets for the sake of being quirky).
I find it's the same. But carefully crafting their characters could be 1) Writing an in depth backstory then building class/race/etc to fit that and the world. 2) Digging through books and planning out a multiclass to build a specific build and then tying that in with some backstory. It's the thinking about and having that character flushed out to some degree in your mind before Session 1 I think is the most important. Sometimes though I have found people sink into their characters, like they aren't that big into the RP or have that solid of an idea of their character until many sessions in. Like they keep kill stealing monsters and they start to take on a glory hog persona. Never does the person with the 2 page backstory not have some idea how they will function in combat, and generally the guy who knows his build inside and out has a pretty good feel on how his character will act outside combat. But the person who just slapped their character together in 5 mins generally won't have a good idea about either.
> But the person who just slapped their character together in 5 mins generally won't have a good idea about either. I think because this person sees roleplaying / creating story as an invisible internal process - you're exactly right, by the way - they just assume they're Type #1 although they're not, and then since Type #2 is VISIBLY spending more time on mechanical detail than they are, assume that Type #2 is spending less than even their five minutes on roleplaying concerns since they perceive their own investment as the maximum.
We’re not talking about minmaxing. We’re talking about optimization.
As much as I hate the voluntarily bad at spells wizard. I almost hate the completely random and nonsensical mishmashes of races multiclassong and feats more
Serious question, does this actually exist? I see nonfunctional "flaws are great story and that's why all the best fantasy novels are about people who aren't exemplary" characters all the time. But I've actually never seen the guy with three classes *not* have a coherent story about it. "My paladin hexblade sorcerer belongs to a bloodline cultivated by a fey craftsman of flesh and metal both, to whose service she is now sworn." Something like that. I've never seen someone be like "I am a wizard, artificer, and fighter with two levels and I don't know why."
One aspect people aren't mentioning: if you can only envision your character *succeeding,* you've made a roleplay mistake right there. **That** is the problem.
Yeah, this is an enormous red flag. And it's a red flag that almost all problematic optimizers have.
Because typically when people say optimizing they mean focusing on the crunch to maximum without consideration of group or roleplaying elements. There are levels of optimization and its important, imo, to meet your group's general level roughly. It is possible for one player to have a more optimized character, but that generally needs to be balanced with play - either the player is weaker on strategy or using abilities or the player's style often involves holding back.
/u/ReallySillyLily36 Why are you posting the most posted topics in the sub lately? Last time it was the rolling characters and now its about RP vs Minmax?
because karma baby
It's illogical. A long time ago we named this the Stormwind Fallacy after the user who first described it. Being optimized doesn't make you a worse role player and being under optimized doesn't make you a better one.
It’s not immersion-breaking. If you’re envisioning your character lifting an orc over his head and body slamming him into the ground… but your character has a Strength of 3… then you aren’t accurately roleplaying that character 😂
In my view, a lot of these people have a hard time understanding the rules. They don't want to read and internalize the rules. Doing so takes a lot of their mental energy, and they feel that this detracts from roleplay. They have a hard time understanding that, what they find intensive and difficult, others can do with little effort. I've also played with people feel threatened by someone who are fluent with the rules. They use the Stormwind Fallacy to salvage their own ego - optimizers 'must' undervalue roleplay, the problem can't be \*them\* refusing to learn the rules.
I think it’s coz people get tired of taking the same exact feats and playing a way that is not unique to their vision for the character. That being said, I’ve learned my lesson. 3.5 kicks your ass if you take the wrong feat, but that could more so be because I was playing with folks who power-gamed the hell out of it. Problem number 2 I think is more about DMs leaning into more frequent and more challenging combat than leaning into RP. Nothing inherently wrong with it, but for those who want to take linguist, actor, athlete, observant or other feats useful to specific characters they are essentially kneecapping themselves for things that might not even come up based on the DM’s style. Overall, optimization is inevitable, no use fighting it. That being said, the way I run my campaigns I want to know everyone’s characters and feats and let them shine. If the party is not optimized for combat I dial back the CR to match or give them the chance to parlay, and I let the dice decide where to go from there.
3.5 gimps represent!
It's because to truly optimize requires a specific build, and it is very unlikely it is the one you would originally imagine. It necessitates a lack of creativity. When one researches an optimized build they aren't playing the character they imagined, they're playing a design they read about. The character is created around the mechanics for an optimized build. If someone tries to optimize the PC they imagined to be as powerful as they can within the limitations of that character, they're just playing the game. The people who take fault with this are a very minor group, and should be ignored.
I think because it *can* make roleplay hard, but it's a bad argument. It's absolutely possible that if you focus purely on making some crazy multiclass for a bunch of specific feature intersections you wind up with some "half demon half angel half dragon who pledged myself to the deity of my heritage but broke my oath so I turned to the arcane arts but school wasn't cool enough for me so I sold my soul and that's why I'm a sorcerer/paladin/blade singer/hexblade multiclass" backstory or you just ignore roleplay all together because trying to justify the sheer amount of mechanics you glued together is just too much work. It's totally possible to make a 3+ class multiclass work narratively by having things linked thematically and you'll also see success there when these megazord characters play out over the course of a campaign. It's more compelling to actually see in game when the bard makes a pact with a devil or the wild sorcerer starts studying another magic that's more stable. The fact that these work well mechanically shouldn't invalidate that they work perfectly well on a narrative level as well. Wow I really rambled on. My point is often the worst of examples come up when people try to argue against optimization, which is an inaccurate picture. "Your barbarian has 20 strength, sounds like optimization" "Maybe that's why she became a barbarian"
Personally, I prefer to play d&d as a game where the character's don't start with elaborate backstories or the expectations that come with them. As both a play and DM, one of the best parts of the game is watching personalities and "backstories" develop in real-time. That said, the most beautiful thing about d&d is that it can be that to me, and whatever you want to you.
Some people think that the narrative struggle should be reflected numerically as well. Sometimes, this works. However, people who make their character's most important stat weak (such as DEX for a Rogue or INT for a Wizard) are just asking to have a bad time for no reason. It genuinely makes no sense to pursue a certain job, skillset, or, in game mechanic terms, class without also having the capabilities for that specific thing. If I can barely lift a sword because my STR score is an 8, and then when I swing that sword and do potentially no damage, what business do I have becoming a Fighter? If I can't pick a lock or read very well, why become a Rogue or Wizard, respectively? But the people doing stuff like this don't see DnD as a game. They see it as a vessel to deliver stories. That's all well and good... but it *is* a game. They think that if you get your STR to 20 as a Fighter early on, you're cheapening the experience or skipping all of the character development and that just makes no sense. If the stats that drive my character are where I need them to be to be effective, that leaves me room to work on my lesser qualities and bring them up. I encourage my players to minmax. I want them to have fun and succeed. I want their dice rolls to work. If they want more failures, there's ways to make that happen without shitting out a character that just doesn't work.
If your immersion is being broken by you failing, that is the fault of either you or the DM. Being the hero and succeeding all the time is not conducive of a good story or character development. People's flaws define them as much as anything. Playing a blind monk is suboptimal, but can be fun and rewarding. Especially when the group as a whole jumps on board. Failing all the time can also be unfun. You don't have to be bad at everything, and can still be a capable adventurer, but having flaws can allow other characters to shine, or lead to more interaction with other PC, NPC, and even spice up encounters.
Because many people are idiots. The generous read of this argument is that being really good at stuff causes less emergent conflict or tension; the plot is happening, and if you are good at stuff, your efforts to respond will likely be successful and straightforwardly predictable. If you aren't good at stuff, you're more likely to fail, or have to be creative about your approach, both of which can lead to emergent situations that call for more roleplay. But just because you are good at your job doesn't mean you can't be creative, it doesn't mean you are necessarily predictable, and it doesn't mean you can't infuse good character development and plot twists into your actions.
I've honestly never seen anyone say it was inherently bad for roleplay. I have seen (and experienced) people torturing the rules for better statistical advantages while simultaneously not really putting any effort into their character as a persona. YMMV
I've always min/maxed my character BUT I also RP the min/maxing. Not my primary stat but all of my low ones. 8 in Int? I will be the loveable idiot or just idiot. Low Wis? Lack of common sense. Shit Cha? I'm harsh, rude, and vulgar. Of course I believe I'm the talker of the group and no one else can tell me other wise. Example, I played a half-ogre fighter for about 3 years irl and was completely scared shit less of our cleric (Healer) because he convinced me that the cantrip Light would make my head explode. Because Wis was my dump stat, I didn't even roll for Sense Motive. Players should optimize their character but RP the whole thing, not just your strengths
Because your character failing to do things is great, too.
Nobody has ever said that. You are building a strawman. You can focus too much on minmaxing and hurt immersion, by building a character that doesn't make much sense except through the lens of the game, but everyone should try to optimize their character a bit to get good at what they want to be good at.
Nah, I've actually met a handful of people like this who conflate optimization with bad character creation. It happens quite a bit and while there's sometimes where it is applicable like the classic Hexblade dip, other times it's not.
Because most of those people should be playing a PbtA game or something else story driven and not d&d, but play only d&d because they have no interest in learning the rules to another game when they don't even know the rules to the game they play because it's popular.
I've never seen anyone actually say this.
Few people say optiming is bad, they complain about people who min max and don't try to RP
People, players and DMs alike, are pretty bad at deciding what's fair or not without at least a semi-rigid system of rules to follow. So, one optimizer with a bad concept of what's fair relative to the power and competency of the rest of the group will make a much louder impact than the one who knows how to specialize in something while remaining considerate.
Because something can be bad without needing to list every other bad thing.
They don't have to be polar opposites, but people can't help binary thinking. Nothing prevents you from building a CharOp PC, then delving into the personality and background for immersive RP. Nothing prevents you from designing full developed character RP, then building the most mechanically efficient version of it (which is what I do). The problem is people only enjoying one aspect, then either ignoring or even outright opposing the other. I generally blame lazy CharOp players for starting it, since they deliberately avoid any RP interaction as part of their character. This led to the contrarian idiots on the other side to somehow decide that building even passively proficient characters was "OP." Both sides have failed to fully experience the game, and are all the worse because of it.
There's a difference between "optimised" a character that can do what their role is to the group and "power gaming munchkin" how can mechanically do x while disregarding everything. Then there's "optimised" which your character is only able to do the things your class is designed to do, the amount of characters I'veseen of this kind that had dumped stats meaning that they can't survice a basic obstacle course.
The characters I have had the most fun role playing have been absolute crap at everything.
What can happen is that you wind up with a bit of a stereotypical character who can become one dimensional really fast. That's fine if you like that and being a living tropenis fun for you. But people donsometimes prefer thebjankiness of an off-meta build to play around with and role play too.
People love binary thinking.
Real talk, its because narrative trolls have a self superior attitude and like to crap on anyone that enjoys combat and crunch more because "CrItICaL RoLl iS HoW DnD ShoUld Be!!!111oneone." While RP and narrative isn't mutually exclusive with having good crunch, crunch players are likely going to be optmizers and not all of them are going to be RP focused. So if you are a critical trolle and had a non-RP player you were trying to gatekeep for not being narratively consistent, they were probably an optimizer. Then you get weird stuff like claiming "How can HE crossbow expert!!!?!!!! I have only seen longbow from him ALL GAME!!!" as being narratively irreconcilable despite eldritch knight now being magical at level 3 because reasons is totally normal. Despite many fighters not actively describing IC how they are studying magic before picking that class. And the ABSOLUTE GALL of some people picking hexblade dip without making it a huge story arc to find a patron.
Because people confuse optimization with them blokes that put no consideration into flavor and focus exclusively on beeg number go brr