D&D NEXT: Infinite Posts of the Abyss

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Waffles Inc.: Jan 20, 2005

escalator dropdown posted:

I get that this is a reaction to a particular type of problem player, but... as you acknowledge, there's no reason people can't do both things. You can simultaneously work on understanding how to be effective mechanically and develop a cool personality/roleplay for the character. Personally, I'd prefer to encourage people to engage both aspects of the game. Because IMO, it's only the combination of the two that makes D&D-type TTRPGs worth choosing in the first place rather than something else.

Yeah agreed with this. If you're not effective in combat, combat is going to be lovely and boring, and combat is like 85% of D&D's mechanics. Not to be the fun referee or anything, but how is it fun to either

- Swing sword, miss, sit out and do nothing for like 9 turns
- Swing sword, hit, hurt a thing and do nothing for like 9 turns

Most of min-maxing comes from finding ways to make your characters powerful so that they actually feel powerful to play

# ? Apr 15, 2018 18:45

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 10:25

Agent355: Jul 26, 2011

The Bee posted:

Why not just talk with players about what they want out of DnD

This is exactly what I do.

There isn't much overlap between roleplaying and power gaming from a practical stand point. There is no reason that you can't do both.

People don't tho. At least in my experience. And efforts to pull all the power out of a character can very quickly lead to the skills and combat prowess of that character being out of line with the roleplay intent. Combat should be an aspect of the character, and you definitely optimize within that zone. None of my players are walking around completely hobbled and worthless and balance between players is something I consider heavily since nobody has fun if their character sucks. But 'sucks' is not the same thing as 'not maximally optimized'.

I've played a long time and I've met power gamers and I've met roleplayers but very very rarely do I meet somebody who genuinely wants to do both and isn't just doing 'good enough' at one.

Waffles Inc. posted:

- Swing sword, miss, sit out and do nothing for like 9 turns
- Swing sword, hit, hurt a thing and do nothing for like 9 turns

Most of min-maxing comes from finding ways to make your characters powerful so that they actually feel powerful to play

Just because I don't like min maxing, doesn't mean I enforce/allow/want poo poo like this at my table.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 18:47

CaPensiPraxis: Feb 7, 2013; When in france...

"Min-max" implies dumpstering scores to maximise a combat character. In some games this leads to nonsense scores like a sorcerer who can't technically lift his own backpack or poo poo like that: characters that are hyper effective but totally one dimensional because to "max" their niche they had to "min" everything else. Usually the max is some kind of combat and the characters roleplaying is hampered by being one dimensional.

Calling anything you can do in 5e "min-maxing" is wrong. The ingrained assumptions about what it means for your character to be good at combat don't fit the reality.

You can't sacrifice rp for combat if you wanted to.

CaPensiPraxis fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Apr 15, 2018

# ? Apr 15, 2018 18:53

Waffles Inc.: Jan 20, 2005

I guess where I'm struggling a bit with this entire line of thinking is with the idea that most people are either one or the other, which just does not fit with my own experiences playing the game. Even the absolute best roleplayers I've DM'd for have understood that they need to know how the system works, and even a pretty standard non-grog understanding of D&D will lead to people making optimized choices, because why would you not?

# ? Apr 15, 2018 18:55

CaPensiPraxis: Feb 7, 2013; When in france...

Its a relic of old editions and other games, like thinking surprise rounds are a thing.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 18:58

Agent355: Jul 26, 2011

Waffles Inc. posted:

I guess where I'm struggling a bit with this entire line of thinking is with the idea that most people are either one or the other, which just does not fit with my own experiences playing the game. Even the absolute best roleplayers I've DM'd for have understood that they need to know how the system works, and even a pretty standard non-grog understanding of D&D will lead to people making optimized choices, because why would you not?

THe most important thing is players are on par with each other. If one player is going to minmax or even just very strongly optimize than the other players are going to need to match him or feel bad. Or the DM is going to need to step in and somehow bring everybody up to par.

If nobody does it because nobody is interested in it then it doesn't matter. It's not really how powerful you are vs the monsters, as much as it's how powerful you are vs the other players. You're probably going to win the fights no matter what because the DM isn't going to give you unassailable challenges as a general rule (other than THOSE ones). It's more about feeling like everybody in the party makes a valuable impact and can feel good about themselves. None of that is actually about the actual numbers unless the players make it about the numbers.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:00

Waffles Inc.: Jan 20, 2005

Agent355 posted:

THe most important thing is players are on par with each other. If one player is going to minmax or even just very strongly optimize than the other players are going to need to match him or feel bad. Or the DM is going to need to step in and somehow bring everybody up to par.

If nobody does it because nobody is interested in it then it doesn't matter. It's not really how powerful you are vs the monsters, as much as it's how powerful you are vs the other players. You're probably going to win the fights no matter what because the DM isn't going to give you unassailable challenges as a general rule (other than THOSE ones). It's more about feeling like everybody in the party makes a valuable impact and can feel good about themselves. None of that is actually about the actual numbers unless the players make it about the numbers.

I totally agree.

I'm curious how you go about enforcing a "no power gaming" rule, though. Like how can some of these folks you're running into not go "oh man I was gonna play a human anyway but Variant Human seems so obviously better?" which leads to "ooh this lets me take Sharpshooter right away" which is one step away from "oh snap this would be so good with a Rogue"

I only ask because in my experience, the only people who don't examine the mechanics have tended to be folks who want to play a TTRPG but only know D&D because it's the de-facto standard, but essentially their favorite parts are the free-form RP parts--and they ended up bouncing because D&D always ends up being different from what people expect after a while. See the deluge of stories that tend to be, "oh my god that session was so great! We didn't roll any dice and it was so fun!"

Waffles Inc. fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Apr 15, 2018

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:08

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Agent355 posted:

I think it's more just the attitude. Like you can be the world's best roleplayer and also a power gamer, but I don't see that very often. I think people tend to lean one way or another even if they aren't by definition mutually exclusive. This sort of stuff would make me question the motives of the people at my table, but then I run a tight ship and vet my players, have open conversations about the sort of game I'll be running and the expectations of the players, and I"m not afraid to boot people from the group if they seem to be going against the grain. So largely my groups consist of people like minded to me, so even if I'm incorrect or being unreasonable about it, I think curating the most homogenous group of player-types is the best outcome anyway.

Also min maxed for out of combat skills does not good roleplaying make. I know you probably weren't trying to imply that directly, so I'm not trying to call you out or anything, but still. You don't 'win' roleplaying just by having high skills.

All RPGs are bad. Some are very bad, some are only mostly bad. Some are bad because they're a labour of love by someone who's not very good at making games. Some are bad because they're a labour of love by someone who is good at making games, but is stymied by the horrible state of the art that exists. Some are bad because the designers realised marketing trumps functionality. But they're all bad.

At some point in every gamers life they realise a game they like is bad. This is a crossroads. They can go down one of three ways.

They can acknowledge the game is bad, and do their best to work around the badness.
They can acknowledge the game is bad, and try another game, hoping it is less bad.
Or they can declare the game Not Bad, and it is the players that are wrong.

The last of these is where the powergamer vs RPG player false narrative comes from.

If you want a game where people just play their characters you need a system where it's easy to build the character you want. D&D (all editions post, like, basic) and most other crunchy games have overly complex character creation filled with false choices and trap options, and frequently you find extremely straightforward archetypes require complicated rules exploits just to get to the table. In D&D you can write "Marigold Greensleeves is fair of face and loved by all who meet her" all you like, but that rings kind of hollow when you fail all your charisma checks. And if, god forbid, you actually put meaningful points into charisma, then unless you're a charisma based caster or you've hosed around with multiclassing then you're going to eat poo poo when it comes to actually performing your class functions.

This is bad.

If D&D were not bad I could say "I'm playing a Fighter who is also Charming" and not suck at one or both of these things. Or "I am the best at stabbing", and have this not only be true, but also not destroy encounters. But D&D is bad, so if you want to be good at stabbing you have to munchkin the poo poo out of stabbing, and if you want to be a charming fighter it's time to dip some Warlock.

So if you're playing D&D, you're playing with one of three kinds of people.
People who don't know that D&D is bad yet.
People who recognise that D&D is bad, and happily break the game over their knee to get it to do what they want, because the game is too bad to do it for them.
And people who have seen that D&D is bad but insist the problem is those mean old powergamers who are clearly out to break things because they're jerks who just don't get roleplaying.

I see you've made your choice. My sympathies.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:13

Waffles Inc.: Jan 20, 2005

Splicer posted:

All RPGs are bad. Some are very bad, some are only mostly bad. Some are bad because they're a labour of love by someone who's not very good at making games. Some are bad because they're a labour of love by someone who is good at making games, but is stymied by the horrible state of the art that exists. Some are bad because the designers realised marketing trumps functionality. But they're all bad.

At some point in every gamers life they realise a game they like is bad. This is a crossroads. They can go down one of three ways.

They can acknowledge the game is bad, and do their best to work around the badness.
They can acknowledge the game is bad, and try another game, hoping it is less bad.
Or they can declare the game Not Bad, and it is the players that are wrong.

The last of these is where the powergamer vs RPG player false narrative comes from.

If you want a game where people just play their characters you need a system where it's easy to build the character you want. D&D (all editions post, like, basic) and most other crunchy games have overly complex character creation filled with false choices and trap options, and frequently you find extremely straightforward archetypes require complicated rules exploits just to get to the table. In D&D you can write "Marigold Greensleeves is fair of face and loved by all who meet her" all you like, but that rings kind of hollow when you fail all your charisma checks. And if, god forbid, you actually put meaningful points into charisma, then unless you're a charisma based caster or you've hosed around with multiclassing then you're going to eat poo poo when it comes to actually performing your class functions.

This is bad.

If D&D were not bad I could say "I'm playing a Fighter who is also Charming" and not suck at one or both of these things. Or "I am the best at stabbing", and have this not only be true, but also not destroy encounters. But D&D is bad, so if you want to be good at stabbing you have to munchkin the poo poo out of stabbing, and if you want to be a charming fighter it's time to dip some Warlock.

So if you're playing D&D, you're playing with one of three kinds of people.
People who don't know that D&D is bad yet.
People who recognise that D&D is bad, and happily break the game over their knee to get it to do what they want, because the game is too bad to do it for them.
And people who have seen that D&D is bad but insist the problem is those mean old powergamers who are clearly out to break things because they're jerks who just don't get roleplaying.

I see you've made your choice. My sympathies.

not emptyquoting

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:17

Agent355: Jul 26, 2011

It's pretty fudgey. Mostly it just comes down to vetting players and explaining the expectations. I will tell people that an effort to go too far in the hunt for optimization will just be summarily disallowed, that line is normally where power starts to overcome personality. Where a character who should be doing X is doing Y just because it's more damage per round.

Some general rules like no multilclassing helps a ton (exceptions for people who want to multiclass for lore reasons on rare occasion), I explain to people who want to pick martials that I'm aware of the power imbalance between them and casters and that as the DM I'll help them stay at parity. Vice versa I explain to casters that while they totally can wrap the narrative around their little finger, doing so severely limits other people's fun if they can't match the same scale of control and I'd appreciate it if they just kept the other players in mind.

I just have a game starting up this Thursday and everybody has already made their characters, I haven't had anybody do a slide down the power scale where they make a bunch of short decisions because they want to be stronger. I just had 4 people who came up with a character concept than made a character that fit it. I have no idea if the party power parity is going to be correct out of the gate but it's not hard to subtly fix with magic items or w/e. I'm not interested in micromanaging people's characters to make sure they aren't going beyond the pale or anything. The example earlier of rogue sneak attacks would get shut down for being blatantly too 'gamey', but mostly it's just watching out for red flags, having polite conversations away from the table, and solving innate balance issues with talk and loot designed to only benefit the weak players.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:17

Agent355: Jul 26, 2011

Splicer posted:

All RPGs are bad. Some are very bad, some are only mostly bad. Some are bad because they're a labour of love by someone who's not very good at making games. Some are bad because they're a labour of love by someone who is good at making games, but is stymied by the horrible state of the art that exists. Some are bad because the designers realised marketing trumps functionality. But they're all bad.

At some point in every gamers life they realise a game they like is bad. This is a crossroads. They can go down one of three ways.

They can acknowledge the game is bad, and do their best to work around the badness.
They can acknowledge the game is bad, and try another game, hoping it is less bad.
Or they can declare the game Not Bad, and it is the players that are wrong.

The last of these is where the powergamer vs RPG player false narrative comes from.

If you want a game where people just play their characters you need a system where it's easy to build the character you want. D&D (all editions post, like, basic) and most other crunchy games have overly complex character creation filled with false choices and trap options, and frequently you find extremely straightforward archetypes require complicated rules exploits just to get to the table. In D&D you can write "Marigold Greensleeves is fair of face and loved by all who meet her" all you like, but that rings kind of hollow when you fail all your charisma checks. And if, god forbid, you actually put meaningful points into charisma, then unless you're a charisma based caster or you've hosed around with multiclassing then you're going to eat poo poo when it comes to actually performing your class functions.

This is bad.

If D&D were not bad I could say "I'm playing a Fighter who is also Charming" and not suck at one or both of these things. Or "I am the best at stabbing", and have this not only be true, but also not destroy encounters. But D&D is bad, so if you want to be good at stabbing you have to munchkin the poo poo out of stabbing, and if you want to be a charming fighter it's time to dip some Warlock.

So if you're playing D&D, you're playing with one of three kinds of people.
People who don't know that D&D is bad yet.
People who recognise that D&D is bad, and happily break the game over their knee to get it to do what they want, because the game is too bad to do it for them.
And people who have seen that D&D is bad but insist the problem is those mean old powergamers who are clearly out to break things because they're jerks who just don't get roleplaying.

I see you've made your choice. My sympathies.

Sorry bout your broke brain. This is a really weird take.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:19

Novum: May 26, 2012; That's how we roll

Listen dudes, D&D exists so all your friends can eat salsa and gamble while making fart jokes and fantasizing about poaching endangered species.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:23

Xae: Jan 19, 2005

Novum posted:

Listen dudes, D&D exists so all your friends can eat salsa and gamble while making fart jokes and fantasizing about poaching endangered species.

drat, sounds like you're having fun wrong.

Have you considered writing thousand word diatribes on dead dumb comedy forums about how not-mad you are at people who are having fun wrong?

Agent355 posted:

Sorry bout your broke brain. This is a really weird take.

His take appears to be "I insist on min/maxing to the point where it detriments how I want to play. Therefore the system is wrong."

Because putting a couple points in Charisma and grabbing persuasion means he would do 5% less damage per round AND THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE.

Xae fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Apr 15, 2018

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:25

Waffles Inc.: Jan 20, 2005

Agent355 posted:

Sorry bout your broke brain. This is a really weird take.

I mean, not really. It's explicitly true that you cannot make any choice you'd like to make about your character, since your character is defined by the mechanics

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:25

Splicer: Oct 16, 2006; from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Agent355 posted:

The example earlier of rogue sneak attacks would get shut down for being blatantly too 'gamey'

Weird 'cos I'd just say "Dude you just got magicced into The Flash just attack twice on your turn and you can have sneak attack twice I don't care".

Which, to me, would seem to be the more roleplayey response than shutting something down because you didn't like how the player went about it mechanically.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:27

Agent355: Jul 26, 2011

Waffles Inc. posted:

I mean, not really. It's explicitly true that you cannot make any choice you'd like to make about your character, since your character is defined by the mechanics

It's got a faulty basis though. YOu can't say 'I want to be a great fighter who is wise, intelligent, and charismatic' and then blame the system because it won't let you do that.

A 'good' character is often defined by their flaws, I'm here to cooperatively create a compelling narrative with 4 other people and that is going to involve failures as well as successes. It's going to involve one character making up for another characters faults. They will learn to rely on each other and become friends (or enemies!) on their journey. The mechanics are supporting all of this just fine. We have multiple classes so that people can pick and choose where their strengths and weaknesses lie and then we all roleplay to find out how we overcome various obstacles given those strengths AND weaknesses. YOu can't just eliminate the weaknesses and complain the system is bad.

To me that reads 'I want to make an unreasonable bad character, and the system won't let me', because you CAN be a charismatic fighter, but you can't be the most charismatic person in the room and also the best fighter in the room because that is not a good or interesting character to be.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:31

Waffles Inc.: Jan 20, 2005

Xae posted:

His take appears to be "I insist on min/maxing to the point where it detriments how I want to play. Therefore the system is wrong."

Because putting a couple points in Charisma and grabbing persuasion means he would do 5% less damage per round AND THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE.

It's not really that though, is it? In D&D you can't be a very good fighter if you also want to be, for instance, mechanically smart or charismatic. You could be a fighter, that is true, but if you decide that your fighter is both strong, smart and charismatic, it's not going to be very fun to play a fighter who can't hit anything (maybe like +2 STR?) or hurt anything

How is that fun?

Agent355 posted:

you can't be the most charismatic person in the room and also the best fighter in the room because that is not a good or interesting character to be.

I mean...says who? Like, "strong and charismatic warrior" is an archtype that is fun and cool and a type that someone would absolutely love to play. King Arthur, Thor, Achilles, Goku, etc etc etc

Sorry I jus have to edit this again because I'm still totally :psyduck:

about "being charismatic and a fighter is bad"

Waffles Inc. fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Apr 15, 2018

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:33

Agent355: Jul 26, 2011

A story with 4 King Arthurs in it would be a bad story. Alot of the time these great and epic people still do have faults and the story can focus on those. I mean hell one of your examples was Achilles.

Those sort of characters demand a certain narrative be wrapped around them completely, if you have 4 protagonists in the story you can't have 1 (or all 4) of them be completely unassailable perfect heroes, and also keep the narrative interesting.

DnD is power fantasy and thats great, but power fantasy doesn't mean 'I literally have no faults', and in DnD we define this power by letting characters create dudes with a stat line like 16,15,14,12,10,8 or something for a reason.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:39

Waffles Inc.: Jan 20, 2005

Agent355 posted:

A story with 4 King Arthurs in it would be a bad story.

This isn't necessarily true, OP! The story could be about hubris, or infighting, or any situation(s) where brawn and charm can't overcome a thing

Also D&D is not a system set up to have the ability scores be "flaws" of a character. Flaws would be entirely RP centric.

Achilles, for instance, rendered as a D&D character would have near perfect stats, but an RP weakness.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:40

MonsterEnvy: Feb 4, 2012; Shocked I tell you

You can be a super wise, charismatic and intelligent fighter. You just can't start off that way unless you got lucky rolling, You can however make the journey there. There are several ways to do it. (It won't be the most useful stat seeking way for the Fighter, but you can do it.)

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:42

Xae: Jan 19, 2005

Agent355 posted:

A story with 4 King Arthurs in it would be a bad story. Alot of the time these great and epic people still do have faults and the story can focus on those. I mean hell one of your examples was Achilles.

Those sort of characters demand a certain narrative be wrapped around them completely, if you have 4 protagonists in the story you can't have 1 (or all 4) of them be completely unassailable perfect heroes, and also keep the narrative interesting.

DnD is power fantasy and thats great, but power fantasy doesn't mean 'I literally have no faults', and in DnD we define this power by letting characters create dudes with a stat line like 16,15,14,12,10,8 or something for a reason.

DnD's core is a group power fantasy of being fantastic people with fantastic abilities.

The objections appears to be that they can't create flawless demigod characters in a group game.

You can't be the best in every situation because that isn't fun for the other 3-5 players in the group. Everyone needs roles to fill and time to shine. Creating flawless demigods doesn't work.

They're asking for a single player game.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:45

Agent355: Jul 26, 2011

By design you are going to have a hard time getting 20 in more than one stat before the ultra late levels where you do start to become these ultra epic unassailable heroes. If you wanted to be a 20 str fight and a 20 cha fighter at the same time then you could do it with magic items like a belt of giant strength or something, and become the sort of hero like Samson where your power is mostly tied to an object and the impending loss of it is your weakness. You can't be the best at everything, thats not a fault.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:46

Agent355: Jul 26, 2011

Xae posted:

DnD's core is a group power fantasy of being fantastic people with fantastic abilities.

The objections appears to be that they can't create flawless demigod characters in a group game.

You can't be the best in every situation because that isn't fun for the other 3-5 players in the group. Everyone needs roles to fill and time to shine. Creating flawless demigods doesn't work.

They're asking for a single player game.

Not an emptyquote.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:46

lofi: Apr 2, 2018

Xae posted:

DnD's core is a group power fantasy of being fantastic people with fantastic abilities.

And a fighter. :smugwizard:

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:47

Waffles Inc.: Jan 20, 2005

edit: eh nm we're all just going around in circles

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:49

Xae: Jan 19, 2005

lofi posted:

And a fighter.

I still say they should have called Action Surge "Mini Time Stop"

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:53

Slab Squatthrust: Jun 3, 2008; This is mutiny!

What's weird to me is this straw man argument "I don't want people to be the strongest, most charismatic, wisest, AND smartest", which is in no way what 95% of character building is in DnD. Like, sure you can do that, but that character would be mediocre at fighting, there's really no way to have all those stats high unless you roll and get lucky. Most min-maxing for DnD is about getting abilities one class doesn't have or starting with different saving throws, and that's about it. Which you would think would be very useful to a roleplay heavy game since it's not like a PC is walking around with a flashing sign over his head listing class levels, and they wouldn't refer to themselves as their class necessarily. Classes are just bags of mechanics, and you should be free to grab the bits of those bags that fit how you want to play the character. So like, maybe you want to be an archer monk, so you might take a level of fighter for Archery style, because it's one of two ways to actually have that ability, but OH NO that's min-maxing! Can't have someone who wants to fight take a level of....Fighter.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:54

Agent355: Jul 26, 2011

lofi posted:

And a fighter.

Yeah

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:54

Conspiratiorist: Nov 12, 2015; 17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the ~~fifth~~ ~~sixth~~ some day

Waffles Inc. posted:

I only ask because in my experience, the only people who don't examine the mechanics have tended to be folks who want to play a TTRPG but only know D&D because it's the de-facto standard, but essentially their favorite parts are the free-form RP parts--and they ended up bouncing because D&D always ends up being different from what people expect after a while. See the deluge of stories that tend to be, "oh my god that session was so great! We didn't roll any dice and it was so fun!"

Dungeons and Dragons: The Fifth One is a crunchy game where combat is anchored into an overwhelming portion of the ruleset, so utilizing my system mastery I make characters that are good at that, with some attention paid to the most common out-of-combat challenges in so far as how they intersect with mechanics.

I find this works best because you can't rely on the DM or the other players being good. Sometimes the DM will gently caress up encounter balance, sometimes the other players will try to play concepts that just don't work all that well at the table and throw off the DM's expectations of the party's competence (I recently had a game where neither the Bard nor the Cleric took Healing Word "because it didn't fit their concept"), or sometimes everyone will gently caress up and get into fights they shouldn't or make fights harder than they should be (cue the aforementioned low WIS melee cleric spending 4 out of his 6 turns casting Cure Wounds on the downed sorcerer to keep him from dying, instead of hitting things at least), or sometimes :xcom:

moments will just happen. I like being able to handle these situations.

I also prefer if my combat playtime isn't absolutely mindless, which is why I avoid ranged martials even if they work well at their jobs when optimized.

Does this limit my roleplaying? Well, it puts some boundaries on the range of characters I can reasonably play, but in the first place D&D is a game that puts you under some fairly strict limits on what you can do when you choose to interact with the mechanics, so it's like whatever. When we're just freeform RPing I can do that just as well as anyone else, and it's honestly better to do the RP freeform than try to utilize D&Ds social interaction or exploration rules. "The three pillars" is such a loving joke when 70% of the book is combat.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:56

Novum: May 26, 2012; That's how we roll

I'm still in the honeymoon phase with my fighter. We're all around level 6.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:57

Xae: Jan 19, 2005

Novum posted:

I'm still in the honeymoon phase with my fighter. We're all around level 6.

Battlemaster and EK fighters are pretty drat good in 5e. They're limited out of combat, but really drat solid in combat.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:57

Waffles Inc.: Jan 20, 2005

The Gate posted:

What's weird to me is this straw man argument "I don't want people to be the strongest, most charismatic, wisest, AND smartest", which is in no way what 95% of character building is in DnD. Like, sure you can do that, but that character would be mediocre at fighting, there's really no way to have all those stats high unless you roll and get lucky. Most min-maxing for DnD is about getting abilities one class doesn't have or starting with different saving throws, and that's about it. Which you would think would be very useful to a roleplay heavy game since it's not like a PC is walking around with a flashing sign over his head listing class levels, and they wouldn't refer to themselves as their class necessarily. Classes are just bags of mechanics, and you should be free to grab the bits of those bags that fit how you want to play the character. So like, maybe you want to be an archer monk, so you might take a level of fighter for Archery style, because it's one of two ways to actually have that ability, but OH NO that's min-maxing! Can't have someone who wants to fight take a level of....Fighter.

I like how my Rogue can't use a longbow, so if I wanted to play a Rogue who knew how to shoot a longbow my DM would either have to cheat and allow me the ability to use Martial weapons, which mechanically "steals" something from, say, the Fighter, or just say, "nope, I guess you, regardless of your background, don't know how to shoot a Longbow sorry"

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:59

MonsterEnvy: Feb 4, 2012; Shocked I tell you

Waffles Inc. posted:

I like how my Rogue can't use a longbow, so if I wanted to play a Rogue who knew how to shoot a longbow my DM would either have to cheat and allow me the ability to use Martial weapons, which mechanically "steals" something from, say, the Fighter, or just say, "nope, I guess you, regardless of your background, don't know how to shoot a Longbow sorry"

You can take a feat to use a longbow. Or be an Elf.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:59

Novum: May 26, 2012; That's how we roll

Xae posted:

Battlemaster and EK fighters are pretty drat good in 5e. They're limited out of combat, but really drat solid in combat.

Goliath battlemaster and I'll probably POWERGAME and take some levels of barbarian for maximum unkillability. Fingers crossed that the two casters decide to learn some dope spells to buff me with later on when they basically don't need me.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 20:00

Agent355: Jul 26, 2011

Waffles Inc. posted:

I like how my Rogue can't use a longbow, so if I wanted to play a Rogue who knew how to shoot a longbow my DM would either have to cheat and allow me the ability to use Martial weapons, which mechanically "steals" something from, say, the Fighter, or just say, "nope, I guess you, regardless of your background, don't know how to shoot a Longbow sorry"

Some classes do things others cant. This is part of making characters have interesting strengths and weaknesses and while the balance isn't perfect pointing out it exists as if that is a bad thing is foolish.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 20:03

Xae: Jan 19, 2005

Novum posted:

Goliath battlemaster and I'll probably POWERGAME and take some levels of barbarian for maximum unkillability. Fingers crossed that the two casters decide to learn some dope spells to buff me with later on when they basically don't need me.

Trip + Action Surge + Great Weapon Master is really drat grotesque when you start dropping 5 attacks with advantage and +10 damage onto something.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 20:03

Waffles Inc.: Jan 20, 2005

MonsterEnvy posted:

You can take a feat to use a longbow. Or be an Elf.

But I don't want to be an elf or waste my ASI

# ? Apr 15, 2018 20:03

Mendrian: Jan 6, 2013

I think part of the disconnect is where people's threshold for powergaming lives.

If a player shows up at your table with a level 4 (your game is level 4, lets say for argument) Half-Orc Fighter with a 17 strength and his lowest stat in charisma, and Great Weapon Master, is that guy a min-maxer? He's basically made all the 'correct' choices for his job (Fighter) and has very few optimization choices left to make.

Is that a bad character?

# ? Apr 15, 2018 20:05

Slab Squatthrust: Jun 3, 2008; This is mutiny!

Novum posted:

Goliath battlemaster and I'll probably POWERGAME and take some levels of barbarian for maximum unkillability. Fingers crossed that the two casters decide to learn some dope spells to buff me with later on when they basically don't need me.

Casters actually really do want martials around at high levels for combat. Martial classes, assuming you optimize some, can deal a lot more damage, more consistently, than a caster assuming you have enough encounters per day. Especially on bosses where legendary resistances and actions can ruin a caster's day, it helps immensely to be able to buff the guy who's dealing a bunch of damage a turn and can soak most mechanics.

Now if you end up just running 1-2 encounters per long rest, then yeah, the caster will just blow their load every fight and make everyone else look bad.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 20:05

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 10:25

MonsterEnvy: Feb 4, 2012; Shocked I tell you

Waffles Inc. posted:

But I don't want to be an elf or waste my ASI

Thems the breaks then. Rogues don't have the proper training otherwise.

But I think there was also a downtime option to learn how to do use a weapon along with a skill or something like that I can't remember the exact thing.

# ? Apr 15, 2018 20:06

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