I’ve had many just such experiences in various sorts of gaming (World of Warcraft, D&D), attempting to teach less-experienced players how to play effectively.
In the context of D&D this doesn’t make sense. “Optimal” likely depends very much on the DM and the rest of the role playing group.
Yes, and what do you think I meant? Meeting people on the street, striking up conversations about D&D in general, and then lecturing them about how they are Doing It Wrong?
Less sarcastic reply:
While individual DMs and gaming groups may, of course, deviate from common practice to such an extent that what is outright detrimental in most groups is actually a direct path to victory in that particular group, such large deviations are relatively rare, in my experience.
In any case, by “play effectively” I of course meant “play effectively, given the circumstances”. But some advice can be pretty general, such that “the circumstances” are so broad as to be almost any circumstances. For instance:
If you are a 10th level wizard, is it effective to take feats like Far Shot, Weapon Focus (crossbow), etc., and spend your actions in combat shooting at enemies with a crossbow?
No. It is not. Your performance will be sub-optimal in no less than three ways:
You will be much less effective, will contribute less in combat, than your other party members (assuming that they are not similarly crippling their effectiveness). This will make your party mates feel that you’re deadweight, and will make you feel useless.
You will be much less effective than a wizard who specialized in proper wizard things, like casting spells. You will even be much less effective than a wizard who specialized in shooting things with a crossbow… and then cast spells anyway.
You will be much worse at shooting things with a crossbow than a fighter who specialized in crossbows. You will even be much less effective than a fighter who didn’t specialize in crossbows, and then used crossbows anyway.
Is it possible to contrive some convoluted scenario, some bizarre set of “house rules”, DM-specific practices, and other quirks, that conspire to make the crossbow-wielding wizard optimal in any of the above ways? I suppose it might be. You’d have to work pretty hard at it.
The fact is, if someone says “being a wizard and shooting things with my crossbow is how I like to play; there’s nothing wrong with it, so don’t criticize me”, 99% of the time they are, in fact, making the manifestly and grossly sub-optimal choice. Unless their DM has imposed some hilariously twisted set of house rules by means of which that choice becomes optimal, the problem is almost certainly that they simply do not understand how D&D works — so basic a concept as some classes being more suited to some combat techniques than others, for instance.
P.S. Responses of the form “now I am tempted to build an effective crossbow-specced wizard”, while amusing, do not constitute a rebuttal of my points. ;)
Unless I’m mistaken, this is conflating playing optimally in the sense of doing the most damage/healing/being the best possible wizarding machine/whatever with playing optimally in the sense of having as much fun as possible.
I never said anything about what will cause you to have more or less fun.
This sort of response is a fully general counterpoint to any claims that there are more or less correct ways to play. “Ah, but what if instead of attacking the monster, I want to jump off the nearest bridge? What if that’s more fun for me???”
Well, I guess you should go and do that, then. What am I going to say to that? “Don’t have fun”? “You’re having fun wrong”?
This is fine until you play group games. (Like WoW or D&D.) In such games, the goals of the group are usually aligned with the goals that form the core of the game system.
In WoW, almost all challenging group activities involve killing monsters. If you’re bad at killing monsters (or tanking monsters, or healing people who are being hit by monsters), then you are bad at contributing to group success. If the group is not successful, the group members will not optimally have fun. This is true in at least 95% of cases.
D&D is similar, though with a broader focus. (We can have a whole discussion on what the core goals of D&D are, but the gist is the same: the game system focuses on certain goals; being good at contributing to the achievement of those goals is critical to group success.)
My advice on optimal play assumes that you want to be good at accomplishing the goals that the game places before you. If you don’t, then the advice obviously does not apply to you. (You wouldn’t object to a “How To Wash Your Car” guide by protesting that you like your car being dirty, would you?)
Finally, there’s a crucial difference between deliberately choosing this or that play style, and just being bad at the thing you are trying to do. Nornagest’s comment elaborates on this.
There are more and less correct ways to play—the correct way to play is the one that makes the player have the most fun. If the fun of one player is incompatible with that of the group, either the group should leave the player, the player should leave the group, or, if feasible, the game should be redesigned. I’ve never played WoW, but I’ve played other games (DotA 2) where a bad teammate can ruin the game for the entire team. That’s not fun, certainly, but that’s why reporting exists. Ideally, there would be an “alternative play” queue in additional to the normal ones, for those who want to have fun in a nonstandard way.
As far as D&D goes, a good DM is able to reconcile the desires of all players, assuming the group is small enough (and good D&D groups should be small for other reasons as well). Given that the DM and players decide what the goals are, it’s malleable and everyone should be able to have fun.
The point is, if someone says “This is how I like to play”, you should leave them alone.
I feel like the counterpoint to your comment is already entirely contained within the comment of mine that you responded to, but in case anyone feels otherwise...
Said by me:
My advice on optimal play assumes that you want to be good at accomplishing the goals that the game places before you. If you don’t, then the advice obviously does not apply to you.
If your fun depends on doing things other than accomplishing the goals presented to you by the game, then sure, go for it. My comments are not targeted at those people.
Said by you:
There are more and less correct ways to play—the correct way to play is the one that makes the player have the most fun.
Ok, so let’s say I’ve determined that I want to have fun. I conclude from this that I should play in such a way as to make me have the most fun. What now? How does this help me? Where do I go from there? How do I translate that profound wisdom into actionable advice? What buttons do I press to maximize my fun?
Honestly, I don’t know where anyone got the idea that I am arguing against fun. Here’s my point: if you do things “wrong” (like trying to be a crossbow-wielding wizard in D&D, or using the wrong rotation as a hunter in WoW), then you will be less effective at accomplishing the central goals of the game than someone who is doing it “right”.
You will note that it’s phrased as a conditional: if X, then Y. Of course, if you don’t care about the value of Y (i.e. you are not interested in accomplishing those central goals, or don’t care how good you are at doing so), then the value of X will likewise not interest you (i.e. you’ll have no reason to play “effectively”).
So clarify something for me, please: are you disputing that the conditional statement is true? If so, why? If not, what is your objection?
The point is, if someone says “This is how I like to play”, you should leave them alone.
If by “leave them alone” you mean “don’t play with them”, then I agree.
Ok, so let’s say I’ve determined that I want to have fun. I conclude from this that I should play in such a way as to make me have the most fun. What now? How does this help me?
This isn’t the situation we’re talking about, though, we’re talking about you advising someone how to better complete the game’s intended goals when they already know that they’d prefer to play less conventionally. In that case, it helps them because it tells them to not follow your advice because it would reduce the amount of fun they have.
clarify something for me, please: are you disputing that the conditional statement is true? If so, why? If not, what is your objection?
No, I’m not disputing that the conditional is true. My objection is that your top comment doesn’t clarify what “playing effectively” means, and it seems that you think that players placing a value on personalization is wrong because it makes them less effective. It sounds like a case of Lost Purposes. You find out that someone’s gameplay preferences are different from those of “optimal play”, and you consider that a problem instead of an equally valid taste.
we’re talking about you advising someone how to better complete the game’s intended goals when they already know that they’d prefer to play less conventionally
Where are you getting this? (The italicized part especially is something that is, as far as I can tell, untrue of the situations I am describing.)
and it seems that you think that players placing a value on personalization is wrong because it makes them less effective
This directly contradicts what I said here:
If your fun depends on doing things other than accomplishing the goals presented to you by the game, then sure, go for it. My comments are not targeted at those people.
Here:
Finally, there’s a crucial difference between deliberately choosing this or that play style, and just being bad at the thing you are trying to do.
Here:
My advice on optimal play assumes that you want to be good at accomplishing the goals that the game places before you. If you don’t, then the advice obviously does not apply to you.
And here:
Also, the question is not “does the personalization value outweigh the reduction in efficiency”; the question is whether the person recognizes the fact that there is a reduction. If you say “yes, I know this is strictly less efficient, but I choose to take the efficiency hit, because I value the roleplaying benefit more” — then fine. If you say “this isn’t any worse! and I like it better like this!” — that’s something else.
In short: I am not the straw man you are arguing against. I am a different person.
“at most this is doing no good, and it’s how I like to play”
Meaning that they’ve found a way that they like to play.
I appreciate the clarification of your position. It seems at odds with what you said originally, though. Personally, I often play games in unintended ways, and I’ve often been told that the way I’m playing is suboptimal or wrong. It annoys me (significantly, if they’re persistent), and I suspect that other unconventional players feel the same way. So, for future reference, I recommend that if someone tells you that they like to play the way they’re playing, you should leave them alone—don’t play with them (if your preferred method of playing is incompatible with theirs) and don’t advise them.
Ok, I see where you got that perception of my view. (I apologize for what, in retrospect, seems like a somewhat more confrontational tone than I intended.)
The thing about the comment “at most this is doing no good, and it’s how I like to play” is that the part of it that makes a factual claim about the world outside the speaker’s head… is, in fact, wrong. The approach in question may be how they like to play — fine and well — but it’s doing worse than no good. That’s the bias described in the OP: believing that something is worthless, when in fact it is worse than worthless (where “worth” means “contribution to effectiveness” or something similar, not taking into account enjoyment value, etc.).
So what the person is saying is “I prefer this play style, which is not any less effective than the one you advocate”. If that were actually true, then I wouldn’t have any issues with it. I also (in a different way) would not have any issues if the person instead said “I prefer this play style, which I acknowledge is less effective than the one you advocate”. But as it is, the person labors under a misapprehension, and it affects their decisions; and insofar as we are interacting in the context of D&D (or whatever game), it also affects me.
I describe in this comment what exactly “the problem” is with being less than optimally effective. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on that.
I think that we’re actually envisioning two different scenarios, and I think that difference is behind a lot of arguments similar to this one. You are thinking (yes?) of an experienced player, who has found a play style he enjoys; is aware of the tradeoffs, but judges them to be acceptable or inapplicable to his play context; and who plays with people who accept (and even possibly share) his play style.
In that case, if someone comes up to you and says “Hey, you’re doing it wrong! Your character could be doing better by selecting X, Y, and Z more powerful option!”, your reaction, quite naturally, is to say “I know what I want out of this game and I’m getting it, please go away”.
But that’s not the situation I’m thinking of. Instead, I’m thinking of an inexperienced player (or someone who’s less experienced/skilled than they think they are), who is not aware of the tradeoffs, possibly suffers from the sort of bias described in the OP, and, even more importantly, is playing with people in whose group the “alternative” (but actually just badly-thought-out) play style creates the sorts of problems I outline in my above-linked post.
My reaction to the former sort of player is to chat amiably about play style differences, and then not play with them. My reaction to the latter sort of player is to try to fix them.
We were imagining different scenarios, and I recognize that an inexperienced player who’s playing suboptimally can be detrimental to the team. It’s good to be aware that the tradeoffs exist, though I personally don’t like being lectured much about them. Even new players may not want to be fixed, either because they prefer to learn by themselves, or have already found a way to play that seems fun to them. Again to only speak for myself, when I’m learning a game and I’m not asking for help, I don’t want any, and advice would be detrimental to my enjoyment. But you are correct in saying that it’s good to correct misapprehensions. I guess this hits a bit close to home for me.
I have not yet become so advanced a gamer that I can min/max people. ;)
I didn’t mean I try to fix their characters (although I do help them do that as well, if they ask for my help/advice). I mean I try to fix them; that is, explain how the game works, dispel misconceptions, etc.
This is fine until you play group games. (Like WoW or D&D.) In such games, the goals of the group are usually aligned with the goals that form the core of the game system.
I don’t know what kind of groups you play with, but in my groups, the closest thing to a common goal people can agree on is, “let’s eat barbecue for dinner”, and even that is sometimes iffy.
Your posts on this topic sound perilously close to saying, “everyone who doesn’t enjoy playing exactly in the same way I do is wrong”, which is a mistake, because your optimization strategy does not apply to an agent with different goals.
Your posts on this topic sound perilously close to saying, “everyone who doesn’t enjoy playing exactly in the same way I do is wrong”, which is a mistake, because your optimization strategy does not apply to an agent with different goals.
As I (andothers) have repeatedly said, if your goals do not include being effective at solving the usual game-mechanical goals, then my comments do not apply to you.
There are a couple of reasons why it might be “bad” or “wrong” to be less than optimally effective at handling various game-mechanical challenges[1] in a group such as D&D. Let’s explore them:
1. You have a vision for your character, but the stats on your character sheet do not support that vision. Frustration ensues.
Example: You envision your character as being a skilled, veteran demon hunter. In your character’s backstory, he faces off against the fiends of the Abyss and wins; he is reknowned for his demon-hunting prowess. The game’s plot and action also incorporates this assumption of competence.
However, you have built your character in such a way that he is not actually effective in battle against demons (or against anything else). Not because you’ve deliberately made him ineffective; you’ve just failed to make him good. So during the actual game, you fight demons and the demons win. Or, in any case, you just fail to do anything very useful in those combats.
So you get frustrated, quite naturally. You expected to be good at fighting demons, and roleplaying-wise that’s what your character is built around, but the stats just don’t support that. Disappointing.
If the problem is then compounded by your not realizing that the issue is your lack of character-building knowledge and skill, then addition problems may ensue. You might cast about for an explanation of your ineffectual combat performance; depending on your temperament, you might blame the DM (that encounter was unfair!), the other players (they were hogging the spotlight!), D&D in general (this game is stupid and sucks!), etc. Interpersonal conflict results; no one is happy.
Clearly, it would be better if you could just build a character that’s as effective as you want him to be.
2. You’re less effective than the other player characters. Resentment and jealousy ensues.
An example is hardly necessary here. If the rest of the party is contributing meaningfully to solving game-mechanical challenges — whether these be combat, social interaction, assorted noncombat challenges (“we need to cross this chasm”; “we need to infiltrate this castle”; “we need to figure out whodunit”), or anything else that is handled by game mechanics in any way (which in D&D is quite a large chunk of the things that make up the game) — and you, meanwhile, are not contributing anywhere near as much, because your character is built badly...
… then bad feelings are almost sure to result, and understandably so. No one likes to be deadweight. Even if your friends are very nice people, and no one is scolding you for being useless, or anything, most people who play D&D like for their characters to usefully contribute to the party’s efforts. Again, this is quite natural.
Now, there do exist approaches that serve to mitigate certain aspects of this sort of problem. (The tier system for classes is a well-known one; it acknowledges that different gamers differ in the amount of effort they are willing to invest in optimizing their character’s effectiveness, and empowers a DM to arrange things such that the overall effectiveness of all player characters ends up roughly on par.) However, such approaches do little to help those cases where someone thinks their character is built effectively, but is wrong; or where someone thinks they know what they’re doing, but is wrong.
3. You’re less effective than is necessary for the successful achievement of in-game goals. Failure and frustration ensues.
Example: Your party goes up against a Bad Guy. You’re bad at combat, and as a result of your ineffectiveness, the Bad Guy ends up killing your party. Frustration ensues.
Or does it? Well, some people are of a temperament that can handle such failures, laugh it off, and find fun in defeat as well as victory. If your gaming group is entirely composed of such people, then your ineffectiveness is not actually a “problem” for anyone. Even so, while getting wiped out in a one-shot adventure may be cool, and may even make for a cool story (I’ve seen it a few of times), enduring defeat after defeat in a longer-running campaign is less fun. Even worse if it prevents you from progressing through the story/campaign/adventure path/etc.
If you intentionally make ineffective characters — or if you’re just aware that you don’t have the skill to make effective characters — and your fellow players are OK with this, then the onus is generally on the DM to provide challenges appropriate to the party’s capabilities. But what if the DM, and the other players, expect you to bring effectiveness to the table… and you don’t? Then, imo, it may rightly be said that you’re “doing it wrong”. Your lack of awareness of your own ineffectiveness is costing other people their fun. Not cool.
[1] This is not necessarily combat. It could also involve various non-combat skills, among other things.
Example: You envision your character as being a skilled, veteran demon hunter. In your character’s backstory, he faces off against the fiends of the Abyss and wins; he is reknowned for his demon-hunting prowess. The game’s plot and action also incorporates this assumption of competence.
Ok, so what if you envision your character as a consummate diplomat, secretive yet suave… and all you have on your character sheet are stats like “stabbing people” and “being really strong, in order to stab people better” ? Would you say that such a character sheet “does not support the vision” of the player ? Note that the player’s diplomatic skills would be absolutely useless in combat; and that, depending on the plot, it may be highly unlikely that diplomacy will play any significant role during the course of the game. In fact, in D&D specifically, combat is overwhelmingly more likely to occur than negotiations.
Are you saying that the player should never choose to play a suave diplomat with lots of points in diplomatic-type stats, because “bad feelings would result” ? I have anecdotal evidence to the contrary; though, to be fair, as a GM I do acknowledge that incorporating such characters into the overall campaign can be challenging.
...enduring defeat after defeat in a longer-running campaign is less fun.
Are you saying that the player should never choose to play a suave diplomat with lots of points in diplomatic-type stats, because “bad feelings would result” ?
Upon rereading your comment, I think I understand you here to be asking whether I think people should play suave diplomats with points in diplomatic-type stats but no competence in combat. Is that correct?
If that’s your question, then I do indeed antirecommend such an approach. For one thing, as you say, it’s difficult to incorporate such characters into the campaign (if the campaign features a good deal of combat, and the other player characters are built to be good at combat). In such a scenario, where the suave diplomat is ineffective in combat, bad feelings may indeed result. (Although they don’t necessarily have to. It depends on the balance between combat and non-combat encounters; and on just how effective, or ineffective, the character in question is in combat encounters.)
For another thing, it’s not actually necessary. One of the players in my long-term campaign plays a suave diplomat (he’s the one who recently surprised me by (successfully) taking the diplomatic route out of what I expected to be a combat encounter). However, he is very effective in combat. There isn’t actually any tradeoff here. I have indeed met people who’ve convinced themselves that there is such a tradeoff, and use this as an excuse for their combat ineffectiveness; but it’s just that — an excuse; the tradeoff is not real.
Upon rereading your comment, I think I understand you here to be asking whether I think people should play suave diplomats with points in diplomatic-type stats but no competence in combat. Is that correct? … …but it’s just that — an excuse; the tradeoff is not real.
I don’t know which system specifically you are employing, but in most games, D&D included, there’s indeed a tradeoff between diplomacy and combat (indeed, between most things). For example, if you want to kill the most things with a sword, then Str is your main stat, and Cha is your dump stat. If you choose to put points into Cha, you can still be effective in combat, but you will never be as effective as someone who put all his points into Str.
Even if you roll a Sorcerer or something, who is a Cha-based class, you still have a limited selection of Skills and Feats. Every point that you put into Diplomacy means one less point that you could’ve put into UMD, Spellcraft, or Knowledge: Arcana. And every point you put into Cha still means one less point toward Int or Wis, both of which are useful for a spy. Every time you memorize “Detect Thoughts”, you are losing another spell slot that you could’ve used for “Summon Monster II”.
If your gaming system allows you to be effective at everything at the same time, then I withdraw my objection, but IMO such a system removes too much challenge from the game, thus making it boring. Of course, that’s just my opinion, it’s not my place to tell you what to play or how to play it.
I don’t know which system specifically you are employing
D&D. (3.5 for the games I usually run, Pathfinder as a secondary diversion, which I also refer to as “D&D”; it’s close enough for the moniker to be accurate.)
[stuff about tradeoffs]
Sure, that’s all true. What I meant was not that there are no tradeoffs to make if you want your character to be effective at both combat and things that aren’t combat. Rather, as I said, there is no tradeoff, in the sense that you do not have make a single choice between being effective in combat and being effective at other things. You can do both. You can do both very effectively, in fact, more than effectively enough to succeed at nearly every challenge you face, and negligibly different in overall effectiveness in either domain from your party mates. You might be a little less effective at combat than the purely-combat-focused character, and a little less effective at (that sort of) non-combat stuff than the purely-non-combat-focused character, but just a little.
Of course, the more you try to do, the less effective you get. But the fact is, there is so much low-hanging fruit in both domains (especially the non-combat domain) that you can sacrifice very little combat effectiveness for large gains in other domains. In fact, you might sacrifice nothing in practice; a lot of what you lose is potential combat effectiveness, which may or may not ever translate into actual combat effectiveness.
Anyway, that’s getting a little far afield. The point is, if someone builds a character who is just really bad at combat, and justifies this by saying “but I’m a suave diplomat!”, my question will be: how hard did you try to make this character combat-effective? Did you even try? Most of the time, it will be the case that a skilled player will be able to build a character that is at least as diplomatically effective, and still good in combat!
Because the even larger question (the one that started this subthread, three posts up) is whether someone should deliberately build a suave, diplomatic character who is bad at combat. My answer is no, they should not, unless being bad at combat is a specific goal. Otherwise, it’s grossly unnecessary. Even if you’re suave, diplomatic, and… acceptably competent in combat, that’s still better. And it’s so easy to make that improvement. So, so easy. There’s no reason not to — again, unless you are specifically and deliberately make a combat-ineffective character. (In which case, as I said before, by all means go forth and play how you like.)
What I meant was not that there are no tradeoffs to make if you want your character to be effective at both combat and things that aren’t combat. Rather, as I said, there is no tradeoff, in the sense that you do not have make a single choice between being effective in combat and being effective at other things.
I don’t understand how this can be true. Clearly, you’ve got to make a choice at some point. You could move that “effectiveness” slider toward combat, or toward non-combat, but you can’t have it both ways, given that you have a limited number of points. I would understand if you said something like, “a 10% loss in combat efficiency is acceptable, given a 50% gain in non-combat efficiency”; is that what you’re saying ?
The point is, if someone builds a character who is just really bad at combat, and justifies this by saying “but I’m a suave diplomat!”, my question will be: how hard did you try to make this character combat-effective? Did you even try? … There’s no reason not to — again, unless you are specifically and deliberately make a combat-ineffective character.
That depends entirely on how you perceive the tradeoffs. Is a 10% drop in diplomatic efficiency worth a 50% gain in combat efficiency to you ?
I don’t understand how this can be true. Clearly, you’ve got to make a choice at some point. You could move that “effectiveness” slider toward combat, or toward non-combat, but you can’t have it both ways, given that you have a limited number of points.
Well, one way it can be true is if there isn’t just a single slider. There could be multiple sliders. (In D&D, for instance, there’s the Skills “slider”, and the Feats “slider”, and the class “slider”, and the spell selection “slider”, and a number of others.) Not every slider trades off between combat and something else. Of those that do, not every one of those trades off at the same exchange rate.
For another thing, “non-combat” is not a monolithic thing (I somewhat regret using the term myself). Neither is combat, of course, but it’s closer to being monolithic; non-combat is just literally “everything that isn’t combat”. Social interactions are non-combat. Travel is non-combat. Information-gathering is non-combat. Exploration is non-combat. Trap detection/disabling is non-combat. And so forth.
I would understand if you said something like, “a 10% loss in combat efficiency is acceptable, given a 50% gain in non-combat efficiency”; is that what you’re saying ?
I don’t think that’s exactly what I was saying, but I would assent to a statement like that one (if not necessarily that specific statement).
That depends entirely on how you perceive the tradeoffs. Is a 10% drop in diplomatic efficiency worth a 50% gain in combat efficiency to you ?
Ok, let me try to concretize.
Consider some hypothetical D&D player, call him Bob, who is quite competent at character-building and knows the game system very well. Bob sets out to build a character who is well-nigh godlike in the diplomatic sphere; this character is to be so good at social skills that he could solve the Arab-Israeli conflict forever with naught but smile and a wink.
In pursuit of this goal, Bob pulls out all the stops, making use of every class feature, skill, feat, spell, in short, every last character-building resource he has, to make the character good at Diplomacy and such things. And he succeeds. Unfortunately...
He has nothing left with which to build in any combat effectiveness. Understandable. And any attempt to add combat effectiveness would subtract some diplomatic effectiveness, because every last ounce of character-building stuff has been used up in the social-prowess optimization.
My contention is that in almost all cases, the player who builds the suave diplomat, but turns out to be useless in combat, is not like Bob. He hasn’t scoured the game system for every ounce of optimization power. He hasn’t used up all available character-building resources in the most efficient possible way. Rather, he’s just gone ahead and picked some social-interaction-boosting skills/feats/whatever, not given much consideration to combat ability (or tried, but poorly and incompetently), and called it a day.
Unlike Bob, who would have to sacrifice some power in his character’s chosen domain for combat effectiveness, the average “I’m going to play a suave diplomat” player could sacrifice nothing, and be much more effective in combat, by just being better at building characters. He just has to recognize which of the options he’s picked are “worse than worthless” — and usually, there are quite a few.
Even in those cases where a tradeoff legitimately needs to be made, it’s generally small. It’s not as large as 10%; it’s often smaller. And the gains are often larger than 50%. If you’re making a 5% sacrifice in one domain for a 100% gain in another, calling this a tradeoff may be technically correct (which we all know is the best kind of correct), but it’s misleading. If both domains in question are useful, then for the purposes of maximizing your overall effectiveness, such a “trade-off” is a no-brainer.
Ok, so what if you envision your character as a consummate diplomat, secretive yet suave… and all you have on your character sheet are stats like “stabbing people” and “being really strong, in order to stab people better” ? Would you say that such a character sheet “does not support the vision” of the player ?
Obviously I would say exactly that.
Said by me:
game-mechanical challenges — whether these be combat, social interaction, assorted noncombat challenges (“we need to cross this chasm”; “we need to infiltrate this castle”; “we need to figure out whodunit”), or anything else that is handled by game mechanics in any way
Also said by me:
[Game-mechanical challenges] is not necessarily combat. It could also involve various non-combat skills, among other things.
So, I’m not really sure what you’re objecting to. Are you under the impression that I was advocating just being good at combat, and being bad at everything else? Regardless, even, of how much of the game consists of combat? I’m not sure what I said that gave you that impression.
Some minor notes, don’t take these as anything but tangents:
Note that the player’s diplomatic skills would be absolutely useless in combat
You’d be surprised… there are some builds out there that do crazy things with “non-combat” skills.
depending on the plot, it may be highly unlikely that diplomacy will play any significant role during the course of the game. In fact, in D&D specifically, combat is overwhelmingly more likely to occur than negotiations.
Depends on the players and the DM. For example, just recently, in my aforementioned campaign, I was all set to run a combat encounter, but one of the PCs instead negotiated his way out of it. It happens.
I don’t know what kind of groups you play with, but in my groups, the closest thing to a common goal people can agree on is, “let’s eat barbecue for dinner”, and even that is sometimes iffy.
Out of curiosity, what does this even look like? I suspect you are exaggerating a bit… If not, I am envisioning something like this:
DM: You find yourselves before a dungeon. You have heard that there is treasure inside, but also monsters. Player 1: Ooh, treasure! Let’s go in! Player 2: No! Let’s travel to the sea and embark on a life of piracy! Player 3: I want to go back to town and open a bar! Look, I have ten ranks in the Profession (small business owner) skill! DM:
Fortunately, our GMs (self shamelessly included) are usually too canny to say anything like “you find yourselves before a dungeon”. That’s a really boring introduction to a campaign, anyway. Instead, it’s usually something along the lines of, “Your smuggling days are over, as the law finally catches up with you, bringing overwhelming force… Ok, you want to fight them… Ok, now that you’ve lost, you find yourself in a securely locked dungeon. The next night, the chief of secret police comes to your cell. He has an offer for you...”
Instead, it’s usually something along the lines of …
That Also Sounds Terrible. (Holy railroading, Batman!)
In all seriousness, though, that does indeed sound like a very different play style than anything at all I’ve ever seen (though I’ve certainly heard of people with similar styles). And that’s fine. There’s nothing actually wrong with it, if you and the people you play with enjoy that, which I assume you and they do.
However, I don’t think anything you’re describing contradicts my point. Ok, so you’re put into a situation where you have to fight whoever. Presumably, the goal of the party is now to fight and beat these people. Ok, the chief of secret police comes to your cell and makes you an offer. Presumably, you all accept his offer (or else are not participating in the rest of the plot), and now have some series of shared goals.
By “goals” I don’t mean that one guy wants to take over the world, one gal wants to save the princess and defeat the dragon, while the third person wants to go back to town and open a high-end boutique for the discerning adventurer. I just mean “we all want to defeat this encounter / solve this challenge before us / get out of this situation alive”. I’d be pretty surprised if it was regularly the case that the PCs did not share such immediate in-game goals.
Indeed, “at least one” is correct, because here’s another:
Determine what would be an interesting character to roleplay as, given the game setting.
Anticipate upcoming challenges.
Create statistics for this character that reflect the fictional character’s fictional background and goals, as well as result in the highest possible* expected probability of beating these challenges.
Play, and win**, while having fun.
(1 and 2 can be reversed, as well.)
*Or as high as you like; perhaps you wish the character to be less than optimally effective at beating some or all expected challenges. If so, build the character to whatever specification (i.e. expected probability of beating challenges) you like.
**Or possibly lose. See previous footnote.
P.S. In general, the idea that roleplaying and game-mechanical effectiveness trade off against each other is well known as the Stormwind Fallacy.
Create statistics for this character that reflect the fictional character’s fictional background and goals, as well as result in the highest possible* expected probability of beating these challenges… … the Stormwind Fallacy.
You have not adequately addressed the issue of tradeoffs, as I described them in my previous post. Strictly speaking, in most gaming systems (including D&D/Pathfinder) you can be a maximally effective combatant while still ropleplaying to the fullest… But only as long as your character concept is along the lines of, “maximally-effective combatant”.
As I said above, however, each time you spend a single point on a non-combat ability, you are sacrificing a point that could’ve made you a more effective combatant—assuming, that is, that you are actively employing the game’s built-in non-combat mechanics. You don’t have to do that, depending on what your GM will or will not allow. For example, in Pathfinder, if you are roleplaying as a diplomat who is trying to charm his way into the Grand Vizier’s good graces; but your character is a Fighter with 20 Str, 7 Cha, and 0 ranks in Diplomacy or Bluff; then your GM may still allow you to succeed based on roleplaying alone.
While there’s nothing wrong with this playstyle, it does require the GM to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the rules (which, again, is always his prerogative). A GM who followed the rules would make you roll a Bluff or Diplomacy check, with a high DC, which you would make at a fairly high penalty. You might succeed, but you will be far more likely to fail.
Furthermore, if your character sheet is indeed supposed to represent your character’s upbringing in some way, then one might question how he graduated from the Diplomacy Corps with 0 ranks in any non-combat abilities.
Thus, I still maintain that, due to the tradeoffs, a character built for roleplay will always perform worse in combat (on average, that is) than a purely combat-oriented character, unless one of the following is true:
Your gaming system provides few, if any, non-combat mechanics; these are supposed to be taken care of through free-form roleplaying,
Your GM chooses to disregard the rules (as is his right), thus reducing your system to (1), or
The character concept that you are roleplaying is explicitly centered around nothing but combat.
Note that I said that your character will “perform worse”, and not “fail utterly”. This is an important distinction.
Thus, I still maintain that, due to the tradeoffs, a character built for roleplay will always perform worse in combat (on average, that is) than a purely combat-oriented character, unless one of the following is true:
You seem to be equating “roleplay” with non-combat capabilities (social interaction skills, specifically, it seems; I note that there are other sorts of non-combat capabilities...). That’s unwarranted. Roleplaying is not the same as, nor directly tied to, nor dependent on, being strongly effective at social-interaction mechanics. They are, in fact, largely orthogonal, except insofar as any particular character concept should* be mechanically supported. (This orthogonality is indeed the subject of the Stormwind Fallacy.)
*”Should” in the sense you outline, i.e. your character sheet representing, ideally, your character.
Strictly speaking, in most gaming systems (including D&D/Pathfinder) you can be a maximally effective combatant while still ropleplaying to the fullest… But only as long as your character concept is along the lines of, “maximally-effective combatant”.
This is just false.
Finally...
a character built for roleplay
is a fairly nonsensical concept. Perhaps you meant “a character built for prowess in social interaction”, but that’s not the same thing.
is a fairly nonsensical concept. Perhaps you meant “a character built for prowess in social interaction”, but that’s not the same thing.
Social interaction is just one example; I picked it because it is the most common. That said, I would argue that making a character with zero social skills (in order to put those points into more combat) would restrict you to a fairly narrow subset of roleplaying opportunities.
The key to my point, though, is something you said: your character sheet should, ideally, represent your character. This is less apparent in D&D, where most of the mechanics are combat-oriented; and much more apparent in other games, e.g. the old White Wolf system where you have explicit ratings in things like “Bureaucracy”, “Law”, “Resources”, “Contacts”, “Allies”, and even “Performance”, IIRC—alongside the more combat-worthy stats such as “Firearms” or “Dodge”.
However, even in D&D, there are ways to represent your character’s non-combat abilities which, unfortunately, compete for points with the combat ones. Here are some examples:
Story Feats
Feats and class/racial features whose parameters can be chosen suboptimally (in terms of pure combat). For example, consider the Ranger’s “Favored Enemy” ability, or a caster’s “Spell Focus” Feat.
Spells with little to no utility in combat, such as “Memory Lapse” or “Continual Flame”.
Skills such as “Profession” or “Perform”.
Stats besides those that directly influence your class abilities, such as Charisma for a Fighter.
Is your character a self-appointed prophet ? Well, then you should probably take “Spell Focus: Divination”, as opposed to something more battle-worthy. Is your character a skilled craftsman ? Then you should take a bunch of item creation Feats instead of going deeper into the “Power Attack” tree. Were his parents abducted by crab-people ? Then the crab-people are probably your racial enemy, despite being incredibly rare.
Are any of these tradeoffs crippling ? No, but they do add up, and while you are now better at crafting arms and armor and making money doing so, you are no longer as good at cleaving things or (e.g.) swimming as you could’ve been.
Of course, you could reply with something like, “only a fool would make crab-people a part of his backstory; just make your parents be abducted by humanoids, instead”. If you do, see my objection #3 in the previous comment.
Social interaction is just one example; I picked it because it is the most common. That said, I would argue that making a character with zero social skills (in order to put those points into more combat) would restrict you to a fairly narrow subset of roleplaying opportunities.
I disagree. (As a side note, it’s actually not very easy to put skill points, specifically, into “more combat”, with a couple of exceptions.)
Is your character a self-appointed prophet ? Well, then you should probably take “Spell Focus: Divination”, as opposed to something more battle-worthy.
No, I don’t agree with this at all, even granting the premise that you have decided to pick feats/etc. based on story. Unless, of course, you look only at the barest surface features of the options you’re selecting, without delving even a bit deeper.
Spell Focus: Divination is a feat that sounds like it generally “makes you better at divination” or some such. What it actually does (as you know) is make those of your divination spells that have saving throws harder to resist. Now, since most divination spells have no saving throws (certainly those spells most appropriate to prophecy, which are presumably most central to your character concept, do not), picking SF:Divination doesn’t make any sense mechanically. Would your character “select this feat” (i.e. work toward developing this capability)? I don’t see why. It’s not like the “feat” has this name “in-game-world”… and your character presumably knows the “feat” by what it actually does. Why would he work toward an ability that has nothing actually to do with his chosen vocation (prophecy)?
So in this case, selecting Spell Focus: Divination would only make sense if you were trying to build a character that, on casual inspection, sounds like he would be a good prophet. It would not make sense if you were trying to build a character who was actually good at prophecy, game-mechanically; nor, on the other hand, would it make sense if you were trying to “organically” build a character who, in-character, tried to be a good prophet.
Is your character a skilled craftsman ? Then you should take a bunch of item creation Feats instead of going deeper into the “Power Attack” tree.
This likewise makes very little sense, not least because it’s a rare character indeed who both would normally select Power Attack and its descendants (a selection usually made by martial characters), and would even qualify for item creation feats (which require one to be a spellcaster). Furthermore, item creation feats give you the ability to create magic items, i.e. imbue items with magic power; they have little actually to do with being a skilled craftsman, as such (that’s better handled by the Craft skill). Once again, you would only make this connection if you were going by shallow surface associations. (You may, of course, interpret a feat such as Craft Magic Arms & Armor as representing your skill at crafting the arms and armor in question, even in the absence of ranks in the relevant Craft skills. In such a case, my first objection applies. If, in fact, you are a martial (or semi-martial) character who does nonetheless qualify for item creation feats, then that means that they are probably not actually bad choices for you. That’s how the game is structured. Craft Magic Arms & Armor, by the way, is in most cases a more effective feat than Great Cleave is.)
Were his parents abducted by crab-people ? Then the crab-people are probably your racial enemy, despite being incredibly rare.
This doesn’t really follow; it may make sense, but then again it may not. The reasons why it doesn’t make sense have more, I think, to do with how story and world building is shared between the DM and the players, and so I think I will eschew this particular tangent unless you ask me to elaborate.
Thus far, I take your comments to be evidence against the claim that there are meaningful tradeoffs between roleplaying and effectiveness, not for it.
That Also Sounds Terrible. (Holy railroading, Batman!)
I didn’t mean to represent the technique as 100% railroading; my example was rather an extreme case. Instead, we attempt to engage the characters in a plot on a personal basis. Saying, “ok, you are in front of the dungeon now” makes sense for a purely tactical dungeon crawl, but it’s a terrible way to start a story.
Instead, we usually offer each character something that he really wants. Sure, sometimes this can be as simple as “the city is under attack, you’ve got to help or you might die”; and sometimes, the hook can be as simple as, “do this or rot in jail, you sociopathic smuggler”, or “go into the dungeon and get rich”. But every character has a backstory, and usually that comes into play as well, which makes for a more interesting plot. I do acknowledge that this style of play is not for everyone, and I’m not claiming that it’s the best style in the world or anything of the sort.
Ok, so you’re put into a situation where you have to fight whoever. Presumably, the goal of the party is now to fight and beat these people.
At that point, it’s kind of too late to re-roll your suave diplomat into a grizzled killer.
By “goals” I don’t mean that one guy wants to take over the world, one gal wants to save the princess and defeat the dragon, while the third person wants to go back to town and open a high-end boutique for the discerning adventurer.
Why not ? Taking over the world is a long-term goal. Players can work together until that is accomplished. The would-be tyrant would need a strong economic base, after all; so why shouldn’t he get in on the ground floor of that nascent boutique business ? And meanwhile, political bribes and retail space rental prices don’t pay themselves, so if there’s work to be done, the tyrant and the merchant better go and do it… And of course, if the evil Necromancer destroys the kingdom, there would be nothing left to rule and no customers left to sell amulets to. That sounds like a sub-optimal outcome for all concerned...
I’ve never played WoW, but game design assumptions, and common practice among gaming groups, both vary quite a bit. Sometimes this simply won’t be an issue; it’s hard to imagine what an optimized Toon character would look like, for example. But a lot of games and scenarios are designed mainly around tactical challenges, including many of the most popular ones; and when a group finds itself in such a scenario, problems tend to arise if it includes both highly optimized and highly suboptimal characters.
It’s one thing if we’re talking about a deliberately nerfed character built for comedy or storytelling potential; most groups handle that well, as long as they’re not populated entirely by munchkins. But a character that’s meant to be effective and just happens to have taken some really weak choices… that causes real problems. The player running such a character usually gets frustrated because they aren’t doing as well as they think they should; players running more optimized characters tend to be resentful because they have to pull more of the weight. In the worst-case scenario it can even break the balance assumptions that encounter generation is built on, endangering the entire group.
A competent GM can adjust for this by creating house rules or modifying encounter difficulty or tailoring challenges to their group’s skills and preferences. But these are all workarounds, not fixes, and they only go so far.
While D&D evolved from a strategy boardgame, it is still a role-playing game. As such, it includes storytelling elements, which, depending on your GM and the players’ desires, may weigh far more heavily than monster-slaying.
Some GMs prefer to run their games as a straightforward dungeon crawl: encounter enemies, kill them, repeat. In this case, the optimal character would be the one who is maximally effective at slaying monsters, or supporting fellow party members who do so.
Other GMs introduce logical puzzles into the mix. In this case, while your character may be perfectly balanced for combat, it is still possible to lose due to failing to figure out the puzzle.
Still other GMs prefer to tell a story. In this case, the game is less about killing things, and more about pretending to be a person living in a magical fantasy world… A person who, on occasion, kills things. In this case, the optimal character is the one you enjoy playing. You could make a crossbow-Wizard (perhaps he flunked out of Wizard school, and spends his days fuming at the injustice, shooting other Wizards with crossbows to prove his superiority), a fat lazy Fighter (he used to be a Gladiator, but now he just sits around drinking ale all day, reminiscing about his trophies), an honest Rogue (the prison changed him, for the better), etc. The GM is not, of course, obligated to keep you alive; but at least your game will be interesting.
All of these styles of play are valid. Yes, your crossbow-Wizard won’t be effective in combat—but what if the game is not primarily about combat ?
There’s a difference between saying “my character is less effective at combat, but I think that’s a good tradeoff for something else” and saying “my character is not less effective at combat”.
This is about the latter case. When someone doesn’t even believe that their character is less effective in combat, even though the math shows otherwise. They’re not making a tradeoff between effectiveness in combat and greater ability to roleplay—they’re just refusing to recognize that there is any reduced effectiveness that has to be traded off at all.
There’s a difference between saying “my character is less effective at combat, but I think that’s a good tradeoff for something else” and saying “my character is not less effective at combat”.
This is about the latter case.
Exactly. I’m not sure why I am having to state this distinction again and again, but yes, that’s precisely it.
Exactly. I’m not sure why I am having to state this distinction again and again...
I think this is because you keep leading with, “here is the best strategy to be effective in combat, and anyone who doesn’t follow it is worse than worthless”, and only later do you follow that up with, ”...oh, but if you’re not going for combat efficiency, then it’s cool”.
I think you could communicate your point more clearly by stating up front, “There are many ways to play that do not prioritize combat. However, if your primary goal is to be maximally effective in combat, consider the following: etc.”.
Noted. I led with that because of its direct relevance to the OP, but it does seem to be getting me pattern-matched to people who disdain play styles other than “kill everything as efficiently as possible” (although I think that most people who allegedly hold such views are, in fact, straw men).
I don’t, however, think that I ever said or implied that the people involved are worse than worthless… in the OP, “worth” in that phrase refers to effectiveness value of actions, not… people.
Jiro has already responded on the central question (with a point that I had already made, but it bears repetition, and apparently keeps being missed when I say it, so my thanks to Jiro). The following is re: other issues mentioned in your comment.
Other GMs introduce logical puzzles into the mix. In this case, while your character may be perfectly balanced for combat, it is still possible to lose due to failing to figure out the puzzle.
Yes, but how does being ineffective in combat help you figure out the logic puzzle? Answer: it does not. Therefore: a character who is effective in combat, played by a player who is good at logic puzzles, is strictly superior to a character who is bad at combat, played by the same logic-savvy player. In other words: in this scenario, being more effective in combat makes you more effective at D&D. (Unless there is literally no combat. Ever. In which case, why are you playing D&D? Other systems are far better suited to your needs.)
Still other GMs prefer to tell a story. In this case, the game is less about killing things, and more about pretending to be a person living in a magical fantasy world… A person who, on occasion, kills things. … The GM is not, of course, obligated to keep you alive; but at least your game will be interesting.
The long-running campaign that I DM is heavy on roleplaying, plotting, and political machinations. I haven’t run a straightforward dungeon crawl in that campaign in a long time (I generally reserve that for one-shot adventures). We sometimes go a session or two without combat entirely; combat is certainly not the central focus.
However, all of the player characters are heavily optimized and frighteningly lethal in combat. If it comes to it, they dispatch enemies with ruthless efficiency.
Why?
Because roleplaying effectively, or having your character be interesting, in no way precludes being effective in combat. Being combat-effective loses you nothing as far as logic-puzzle-solving, story-telling, roleplaying, being interesting, etc., etc. And because even if combat is not the only challenge, or the most common challenge, it’s certainly a challenge; and being less effective at solving certain challenges… makes you less effective overall.
Again: if you do this knowingly and deliberately, and you and your party-mates are ok with that, fine and well.
Because roleplaying effectively, or having your character be interesting, in no way precludes being effective in combat.
This is not, strictly speaking, true. Most gaming systems—even D&D—encourage you to tie your roleplaying to your stats at some point. For example, our hypothetical crossbow-Wizard might take Point Blank instead of Spell Focus (or some similar Feat); this is a real tradeoff, since the number of Feats you can take is limited. A Rogue (or, indeed, any character) might spend his points on Diplomacy, Appraise, Knowledge and Profession instead of the usual Disable Device, etc. -- to reflect the fact that he settled down as an honest gem merchant after prison (presumably, only to be pulled into that One Last Job against his better judgement).
Of course, there’s no rule that says you can’t play a suave diplomat who has zero ranks in Diplomacy and Sense Motive and a Charisma score of 7. You can totally do that, if the GM allows it.
If we’re being strict, then you’re actually arguing against the converse of what I said — whether being effective in combat negatively impacts your roleplaying or interestingness. Which I also don’t think it does, but it’s a distinct point.
My actual point, in any case, is that there are many ways to roleplay. You can roleplay well and be interesting with a Charisma of 7 and zero ranks in social skills, and then again you can roleplay well and be interesting with a Charisma of 18 and maximum ranks in social skills. You’d be roleplaying different things in those two cases, presumably; but, you can have an effectively-built character in both of those cases as well. (The former might be a wizard, or a fighter, or a rogue, or something else; the latter might be a sorcerer, or a paladin, or a different kind of rogue etc. etc.)
It is an accepted truism among all the veteran D&D players I know, and have spoken to in various online gaming communities, that a good roleplayer can create an interesting character concept, and roleplay it well, to fit pretty much any set of game stats. My experience with many excellent gamers supports this. Given that fact, and D&D being a team game, it seems almost a no-brainer that you should pick game stats that make you game-mechanically effective, and build your interesting concept on top of that. (Or, conversely, make up a cool concept and then built it into an effective character — which is also eminently doable for the experienced gamer.)
In the context of D&D this doesn’t make sense. “Optimal” likely depends very much on the DM and the rest of the role playing group.
Yes, and what do you think I meant? Meeting people on the street, striking up conversations about D&D in general, and then lecturing them about how they are Doing It Wrong?
Less sarcastic reply:
While individual DMs and gaming groups may, of course, deviate from common practice to such an extent that what is outright detrimental in most groups is actually a direct path to victory in that particular group, such large deviations are relatively rare, in my experience.
In any case, by “play effectively” I of course meant “play effectively, given the circumstances”. But some advice can be pretty general, such that “the circumstances” are so broad as to be almost any circumstances. For instance:
If you are a 10th level wizard, is it effective to take feats like Far Shot, Weapon Focus (crossbow), etc., and spend your actions in combat shooting at enemies with a crossbow?
No. It is not. Your performance will be sub-optimal in no less than three ways:
You will be much less effective, will contribute less in combat, than your other party members (assuming that they are not similarly crippling their effectiveness). This will make your party mates feel that you’re deadweight, and will make you feel useless.
You will be much less effective than a wizard who specialized in proper wizard things, like casting spells. You will even be much less effective than a wizard who specialized in shooting things with a crossbow… and then cast spells anyway.
You will be much worse at shooting things with a crossbow than a fighter who specialized in crossbows. You will even be much less effective than a fighter who didn’t specialize in crossbows, and then used crossbows anyway.
Is it possible to contrive some convoluted scenario, some bizarre set of “house rules”, DM-specific practices, and other quirks, that conspire to make the crossbow-wielding wizard optimal in any of the above ways? I suppose it might be. You’d have to work pretty hard at it.
The fact is, if someone says “being a wizard and shooting things with my crossbow is how I like to play; there’s nothing wrong with it, so don’t criticize me”, 99% of the time they are, in fact, making the manifestly and grossly sub-optimal choice. Unless their DM has imposed some hilariously twisted set of house rules by means of which that choice becomes optimal, the problem is almost certainly that they simply do not understand how D&D works — so basic a concept as some classes being more suited to some combat techniques than others, for instance.
P.S. Responses of the form “now I am tempted to build an effective crossbow-specced wizard”, while amusing, do not constitute a rebuttal of my points. ;)
Unless I’m mistaken, this is conflating playing optimally in the sense of doing the most damage/healing/being the best possible wizarding machine/whatever with playing optimally in the sense of having as much fun as possible.
I never said anything about what will cause you to have more or less fun.
This sort of response is a fully general counterpoint to any claims that there are more or less correct ways to play. “Ah, but what if instead of attacking the monster, I want to jump off the nearest bridge? What if that’s more fun for me???”
Well, I guess you should go and do that, then. What am I going to say to that? “Don’t have fun”? “You’re having fun wrong”?
This is fine until you play group games. (Like WoW or D&D.) In such games, the goals of the group are usually aligned with the goals that form the core of the game system.
In WoW, almost all challenging group activities involve killing monsters. If you’re bad at killing monsters (or tanking monsters, or healing people who are being hit by monsters), then you are bad at contributing to group success. If the group is not successful, the group members will not optimally have fun. This is true in at least 95% of cases.
D&D is similar, though with a broader focus. (We can have a whole discussion on what the core goals of D&D are, but the gist is the same: the game system focuses on certain goals; being good at contributing to the achievement of those goals is critical to group success.)
My advice on optimal play assumes that you want to be good at accomplishing the goals that the game places before you. If you don’t, then the advice obviously does not apply to you. (You wouldn’t object to a “How To Wash Your Car” guide by protesting that you like your car being dirty, would you?)
Finally, there’s a crucial difference between deliberately choosing this or that play style, and just being bad at the thing you are trying to do. Nornagest’s comment elaborates on this.
There are more and less correct ways to play—the correct way to play is the one that makes the player have the most fun. If the fun of one player is incompatible with that of the group, either the group should leave the player, the player should leave the group, or, if feasible, the game should be redesigned. I’ve never played WoW, but I’ve played other games (DotA 2) where a bad teammate can ruin the game for the entire team. That’s not fun, certainly, but that’s why reporting exists. Ideally, there would be an “alternative play” queue in additional to the normal ones, for those who want to have fun in a nonstandard way.
As far as D&D goes, a good DM is able to reconcile the desires of all players, assuming the group is small enough (and good D&D groups should be small for other reasons as well). Given that the DM and players decide what the goals are, it’s malleable and everyone should be able to have fun.
The point is, if someone says “This is how I like to play”, you should leave them alone.
I feel like the counterpoint to your comment is already entirely contained within the comment of mine that you responded to, but in case anyone feels otherwise...
Said by me:
If your fun depends on doing things other than accomplishing the goals presented to you by the game, then sure, go for it. My comments are not targeted at those people.
Said by you:
Ok, so let’s say I’ve determined that I want to have fun. I conclude from this that I should play in such a way as to make me have the most fun. What now? How does this help me? Where do I go from there? How do I translate that profound wisdom into actionable advice? What buttons do I press to maximize my fun?
Honestly, I don’t know where anyone got the idea that I am arguing against fun. Here’s my point: if you do things “wrong” (like trying to be a crossbow-wielding wizard in D&D, or using the wrong rotation as a hunter in WoW), then you will be less effective at accomplishing the central goals of the game than someone who is doing it “right”.
You will note that it’s phrased as a conditional: if X, then Y. Of course, if you don’t care about the value of Y (i.e. you are not interested in accomplishing those central goals, or don’t care how good you are at doing so), then the value of X will likewise not interest you (i.e. you’ll have no reason to play “effectively”).
So clarify something for me, please: are you disputing that the conditional statement is true? If so, why? If not, what is your objection?
If by “leave them alone” you mean “don’t play with them”, then I agree.
This isn’t the situation we’re talking about, though, we’re talking about you advising someone how to better complete the game’s intended goals when they already know that they’d prefer to play less conventionally. In that case, it helps them because it tells them to not follow your advice because it would reduce the amount of fun they have.
No, I’m not disputing that the conditional is true. My objection is that your top comment doesn’t clarify what “playing effectively” means, and it seems that you think that players placing a value on personalization is wrong because it makes them less effective. It sounds like a case of Lost Purposes. You find out that someone’s gameplay preferences are different from those of “optimal play”, and you consider that a problem instead of an equally valid taste.
Where are you getting this? (The italicized part especially is something that is, as far as I can tell, untrue of the situations I am describing.)
This directly contradicts what I said here:
Here:
Here:
And here:
In short: I am not the straw man you are arguing against. I am a different person.
-
Meaning that they’ve found a way that they like to play.
I appreciate the clarification of your position. It seems at odds with what you said originally, though. Personally, I often play games in unintended ways, and I’ve often been told that the way I’m playing is suboptimal or wrong. It annoys me (significantly, if they’re persistent), and I suspect that other unconventional players feel the same way. So, for future reference, I recommend that if someone tells you that they like to play the way they’re playing, you should leave them alone—don’t play with them (if your preferred method of playing is incompatible with theirs) and don’t advise them.
Ok, I see where you got that perception of my view. (I apologize for what, in retrospect, seems like a somewhat more confrontational tone than I intended.)
The thing about the comment “at most this is doing no good, and it’s how I like to play” is that the part of it that makes a factual claim about the world outside the speaker’s head… is, in fact, wrong. The approach in question may be how they like to play — fine and well — but it’s doing worse than no good. That’s the bias described in the OP: believing that something is worthless, when in fact it is worse than worthless (where “worth” means “contribution to effectiveness” or something similar, not taking into account enjoyment value, etc.).
So what the person is saying is “I prefer this play style, which is not any less effective than the one you advocate”. If that were actually true, then I wouldn’t have any issues with it. I also (in a different way) would not have any issues if the person instead said “I prefer this play style, which I acknowledge is less effective than the one you advocate”. But as it is, the person labors under a misapprehension, and it affects their decisions; and insofar as we are interacting in the context of D&D (or whatever game), it also affects me.
I describe in this comment what exactly “the problem” is with being less than optimally effective. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on that.
I think that we’re actually envisioning two different scenarios, and I think that difference is behind a lot of arguments similar to this one. You are thinking (yes?) of an experienced player, who has found a play style he enjoys; is aware of the tradeoffs, but judges them to be acceptable or inapplicable to his play context; and who plays with people who accept (and even possibly share) his play style.
In that case, if someone comes up to you and says “Hey, you’re doing it wrong! Your character could be doing better by selecting X, Y, and Z more powerful option!”, your reaction, quite naturally, is to say “I know what I want out of this game and I’m getting it, please go away”.
But that’s not the situation I’m thinking of. Instead, I’m thinking of an inexperienced player (or someone who’s less experienced/skilled than they think they are), who is not aware of the tradeoffs, possibly suffers from the sort of bias described in the OP, and, even more importantly, is playing with people in whose group the “alternative” (but actually just badly-thought-out) play style creates the sorts of problems I outline in my above-linked post.
My reaction to the former sort of player is to chat amiably about play style differences, and then not play with them. My reaction to the latter sort of player is to try to fix them.
We were imagining different scenarios, and I recognize that an inexperienced player who’s playing suboptimally can be detrimental to the team. It’s good to be aware that the tradeoffs exist, though I personally don’t like being lectured much about them. Even new players may not want to be fixed, either because they prefer to learn by themselves, or have already found a way to play that seems fun to them. Again to only speak for myself, when I’m learning a game and I’m not asking for help, I don’t want any, and advice would be detrimental to my enjoyment. But you are correct in saying that it’s good to correct misapprehensions. I guess this hits a bit close to home for me.
I am not at all sure that all inexperienced players need to be “fixed” by minmaxing them.
I have not yet become so advanced a gamer that I can min/max people. ;)
I didn’t mean I try to fix their characters (although I do help them do that as well, if they ask for my help/advice). I mean I try to fix them; that is, explain how the game works, dispel misconceptions, etc.
I don’t know what kind of groups you play with, but in my groups, the closest thing to a common goal people can agree on is, “let’s eat barbecue for dinner”, and even that is sometimes iffy.
Your posts on this topic sound perilously close to saying, “everyone who doesn’t enjoy playing exactly in the same way I do is wrong”, which is a mistake, because your optimization strategy does not apply to an agent with different goals.
As I (and others) have repeatedly said, if your goals do not include being effective at solving the usual game-mechanical goals, then my comments do not apply to you.
There are a couple of reasons why it might be “bad” or “wrong” to be less than optimally effective at handling various game-mechanical challenges[1] in a group such as D&D. Let’s explore them:
1. You have a vision for your character, but the stats on your character sheet do not support that vision. Frustration ensues.
Example: You envision your character as being a skilled, veteran demon hunter. In your character’s backstory, he faces off against the fiends of the Abyss and wins; he is reknowned for his demon-hunting prowess. The game’s plot and action also incorporates this assumption of competence.
However, you have built your character in such a way that he is not actually effective in battle against demons (or against anything else). Not because you’ve deliberately made him ineffective; you’ve just failed to make him good. So during the actual game, you fight demons and the demons win. Or, in any case, you just fail to do anything very useful in those combats.
So you get frustrated, quite naturally. You expected to be good at fighting demons, and roleplaying-wise that’s what your character is built around, but the stats just don’t support that. Disappointing.
If the problem is then compounded by your not realizing that the issue is your lack of character-building knowledge and skill, then addition problems may ensue. You might cast about for an explanation of your ineffectual combat performance; depending on your temperament, you might blame the DM (that encounter was unfair!), the other players (they were hogging the spotlight!), D&D in general (this game is stupid and sucks!), etc. Interpersonal conflict results; no one is happy.
Clearly, it would be better if you could just build a character that’s as effective as you want him to be.
2. You’re less effective than the other player characters. Resentment and jealousy ensues.
An example is hardly necessary here. If the rest of the party is contributing meaningfully to solving game-mechanical challenges — whether these be combat, social interaction, assorted noncombat challenges (“we need to cross this chasm”; “we need to infiltrate this castle”; “we need to figure out whodunit”), or anything else that is handled by game mechanics in any way (which in D&D is quite a large chunk of the things that make up the game) — and you, meanwhile, are not contributing anywhere near as much, because your character is built badly...
… then bad feelings are almost sure to result, and understandably so. No one likes to be deadweight. Even if your friends are very nice people, and no one is scolding you for being useless, or anything, most people who play D&D like for their characters to usefully contribute to the party’s efforts. Again, this is quite natural.
Now, there do exist approaches that serve to mitigate certain aspects of this sort of problem. (The tier system for classes is a well-known one; it acknowledges that different gamers differ in the amount of effort they are willing to invest in optimizing their character’s effectiveness, and empowers a DM to arrange things such that the overall effectiveness of all player characters ends up roughly on par.) However, such approaches do little to help those cases where someone thinks their character is built effectively, but is wrong; or where someone thinks they know what they’re doing, but is wrong.
3. You’re less effective than is necessary for the successful achievement of in-game goals. Failure and frustration ensues.
Example: Your party goes up against a Bad Guy. You’re bad at combat, and as a result of your ineffectiveness, the Bad Guy ends up killing your party. Frustration ensues.
Or does it? Well, some people are of a temperament that can handle such failures, laugh it off, and find fun in defeat as well as victory. If your gaming group is entirely composed of such people, then your ineffectiveness is not actually a “problem” for anyone. Even so, while getting wiped out in a one-shot adventure may be cool, and may even make for a cool story (I’ve seen it a few of times), enduring defeat after defeat in a longer-running campaign is less fun. Even worse if it prevents you from progressing through the story/campaign/adventure path/etc.
If you intentionally make ineffective characters — or if you’re just aware that you don’t have the skill to make effective characters — and your fellow players are OK with this, then the onus is generally on the DM to provide challenges appropriate to the party’s capabilities. But what if the DM, and the other players, expect you to bring effectiveness to the table… and you don’t? Then, imo, it may rightly be said that you’re “doing it wrong”. Your lack of awareness of your own ineffectiveness is costing other people their fun. Not cool.
[1] This is not necessarily combat. It could also involve various non-combat skills, among other things.
Ok, so what if you envision your character as a consummate diplomat, secretive yet suave… and all you have on your character sheet are stats like “stabbing people” and “being really strong, in order to stab people better” ? Would you say that such a character sheet “does not support the vision” of the player ? Note that the player’s diplomatic skills would be absolutely useless in combat; and that, depending on the plot, it may be highly unlikely that diplomacy will play any significant role during the course of the game. In fact, in D&D specifically, combat is overwhelmingly more likely to occur than negotiations.
Are you saying that the player should never choose to play a suave diplomat with lots of points in diplomatic-type stats, because “bad feelings would result” ? I have anecdotal evidence to the contrary; though, to be fair, as a GM I do acknowledge that incorporating such characters into the overall campaign can be challenging.
I sure hope you never play Call of Cthulhu…
Upon rereading your comment, I think I understand you here to be asking whether I think people should play suave diplomats with points in diplomatic-type stats but no competence in combat. Is that correct?
If that’s your question, then I do indeed antirecommend such an approach. For one thing, as you say, it’s difficult to incorporate such characters into the campaign (if the campaign features a good deal of combat, and the other player characters are built to be good at combat). In such a scenario, where the suave diplomat is ineffective in combat, bad feelings may indeed result. (Although they don’t necessarily have to. It depends on the balance between combat and non-combat encounters; and on just how effective, or ineffective, the character in question is in combat encounters.)
For another thing, it’s not actually necessary. One of the players in my long-term campaign plays a suave diplomat (he’s the one who recently surprised me by (successfully) taking the diplomatic route out of what I expected to be a combat encounter). However, he is very effective in combat. There isn’t actually any tradeoff here. I have indeed met people who’ve convinced themselves that there is such a tradeoff, and use this as an excuse for their combat ineffectiveness; but it’s just that — an excuse; the tradeoff is not real.
I don’t know which system specifically you are employing, but in most games, D&D included, there’s indeed a tradeoff between diplomacy and combat (indeed, between most things). For example, if you want to kill the most things with a sword, then Str is your main stat, and Cha is your dump stat. If you choose to put points into Cha, you can still be effective in combat, but you will never be as effective as someone who put all his points into Str.
Even if you roll a Sorcerer or something, who is a Cha-based class, you still have a limited selection of Skills and Feats. Every point that you put into Diplomacy means one less point that you could’ve put into UMD, Spellcraft, or Knowledge: Arcana. And every point you put into Cha still means one less point toward Int or Wis, both of which are useful for a spy. Every time you memorize “Detect Thoughts”, you are losing another spell slot that you could’ve used for “Summon Monster II”.
If your gaming system allows you to be effective at everything at the same time, then I withdraw my objection, but IMO such a system removes too much challenge from the game, thus making it boring. Of course, that’s just my opinion, it’s not my place to tell you what to play or how to play it.
D&D. (3.5 for the games I usually run, Pathfinder as a secondary diversion, which I also refer to as “D&D”; it’s close enough for the moniker to be accurate.)
Sure, that’s all true. What I meant was not that there are no tradeoffs to make if you want your character to be effective at both combat and things that aren’t combat. Rather, as I said, there is no tradeoff, in the sense that you do not have make a single choice between being effective in combat and being effective at other things. You can do both. You can do both very effectively, in fact, more than effectively enough to succeed at nearly every challenge you face, and negligibly different in overall effectiveness in either domain from your party mates. You might be a little less effective at combat than the purely-combat-focused character, and a little less effective at (that sort of) non-combat stuff than the purely-non-combat-focused character, but just a little.
Of course, the more you try to do, the less effective you get. But the fact is, there is so much low-hanging fruit in both domains (especially the non-combat domain) that you can sacrifice very little combat effectiveness for large gains in other domains. In fact, you might sacrifice nothing in practice; a lot of what you lose is potential combat effectiveness, which may or may not ever translate into actual combat effectiveness.
Anyway, that’s getting a little far afield. The point is, if someone builds a character who is just really bad at combat, and justifies this by saying “but I’m a suave diplomat!”, my question will be: how hard did you try to make this character combat-effective? Did you even try? Most of the time, it will be the case that a skilled player will be able to build a character that is at least as diplomatically effective, and still good in combat!
Because the even larger question (the one that started this subthread, three posts up) is whether someone should deliberately build a suave, diplomatic character who is bad at combat. My answer is no, they should not, unless being bad at combat is a specific goal. Otherwise, it’s grossly unnecessary. Even if you’re suave, diplomatic, and… acceptably competent in combat, that’s still better. And it’s so easy to make that improvement. So, so easy. There’s no reason not to — again, unless you are specifically and deliberately make a combat-ineffective character. (In which case, as I said before, by all means go forth and play how you like.)
I don’t understand how this can be true. Clearly, you’ve got to make a choice at some point. You could move that “effectiveness” slider toward combat, or toward non-combat, but you can’t have it both ways, given that you have a limited number of points. I would understand if you said something like, “a 10% loss in combat efficiency is acceptable, given a 50% gain in non-combat efficiency”; is that what you’re saying ?
That depends entirely on how you perceive the tradeoffs. Is a 10% drop in diplomatic efficiency worth a 50% gain in combat efficiency to you ?
Well, one way it can be true is if there isn’t just a single slider. There could be multiple sliders. (In D&D, for instance, there’s the Skills “slider”, and the Feats “slider”, and the class “slider”, and the spell selection “slider”, and a number of others.) Not every slider trades off between combat and something else. Of those that do, not every one of those trades off at the same exchange rate.
For another thing, “non-combat” is not a monolithic thing (I somewhat regret using the term myself). Neither is combat, of course, but it’s closer to being monolithic; non-combat is just literally “everything that isn’t combat”. Social interactions are non-combat. Travel is non-combat. Information-gathering is non-combat. Exploration is non-combat. Trap detection/disabling is non-combat. And so forth.
I don’t think that’s exactly what I was saying, but I would assent to a statement like that one (if not necessarily that specific statement).
Ok, let me try to concretize.
Consider some hypothetical D&D player, call him Bob, who is quite competent at character-building and knows the game system very well. Bob sets out to build a character who is well-nigh godlike in the diplomatic sphere; this character is to be so good at social skills that he could solve the Arab-Israeli conflict forever with naught but smile and a wink.
In pursuit of this goal, Bob pulls out all the stops, making use of every class feature, skill, feat, spell, in short, every last character-building resource he has, to make the character good at Diplomacy and such things. And he succeeds. Unfortunately...
He has nothing left with which to build in any combat effectiveness. Understandable. And any attempt to add combat effectiveness would subtract some diplomatic effectiveness, because every last ounce of character-building stuff has been used up in the social-prowess optimization.
My contention is that in almost all cases, the player who builds the suave diplomat, but turns out to be useless in combat, is not like Bob. He hasn’t scoured the game system for every ounce of optimization power. He hasn’t used up all available character-building resources in the most efficient possible way. Rather, he’s just gone ahead and picked some social-interaction-boosting skills/feats/whatever, not given much consideration to combat ability (or tried, but poorly and incompetently), and called it a day.
Unlike Bob, who would have to sacrifice some power in his character’s chosen domain for combat effectiveness, the average “I’m going to play a suave diplomat” player could sacrifice nothing, and be much more effective in combat, by just being better at building characters. He just has to recognize which of the options he’s picked are “worse than worthless” — and usually, there are quite a few.
Even in those cases where a tradeoff legitimately needs to be made, it’s generally small. It’s not as large as 10%; it’s often smaller. And the gains are often larger than 50%. If you’re making a 5% sacrifice in one domain for a 100% gain in another, calling this a tradeoff may be technically correct (which we all know is the best kind of correct), but it’s misleading. If both domains in question are useful, then for the purposes of maximizing your overall effectiveness, such a “trade-off” is a no-brainer.
Obviously I would say exactly that.
Said by me:
Also said by me:
So, I’m not really sure what you’re objecting to. Are you under the impression that I was advocating just being good at combat, and being bad at everything else? Regardless, even, of how much of the game consists of combat? I’m not sure what I said that gave you that impression.
Some minor notes, don’t take these as anything but tangents:
You’d be surprised… there are some builds out there that do crazy things with “non-combat” skills.
Depends on the players and the DM. For example, just recently, in my aforementioned campaign, I was all set to run a combat encounter, but one of the PCs instead negotiated his way out of it. It happens.
Out of curiosity, what does this even look like? I suspect you are exaggerating a bit… If not, I am envisioning something like this:
DM: You find yourselves before a dungeon. You have heard that there is treasure inside, but also monsters.
Player 1: Ooh, treasure! Let’s go in!
Player 2: No! Let’s travel to the sea and embark on a life of piracy!
Player 3: I want to go back to town and open a bar! Look, I have ten ranks in the Profession (small business owner) skill!
DM:
It’s almost exactly like that.
Fortunately, our GMs (self shamelessly included) are usually too canny to say anything like “you find yourselves before a dungeon”. That’s a really boring introduction to a campaign, anyway. Instead, it’s usually something along the lines of, “Your smuggling days are over, as the law finally catches up with you, bringing overwhelming force… Ok, you want to fight them… Ok, now that you’ve lost, you find yourself in a securely locked dungeon. The next night, the chief of secret police comes to your cell. He has an offer for you...”
Well, That Sounds Terrible.
That Also Sounds Terrible. (Holy railroading, Batman!)
In all seriousness, though, that does indeed sound like a very different play style than anything at all I’ve ever seen (though I’ve certainly heard of people with similar styles). And that’s fine. There’s nothing actually wrong with it, if you and the people you play with enjoy that, which I assume you and they do.
However, I don’t think anything you’re describing contradicts my point. Ok, so you’re put into a situation where you have to fight whoever. Presumably, the goal of the party is now to fight and beat these people. Ok, the chief of secret police comes to your cell and makes you an offer. Presumably, you all accept his offer (or else are not participating in the rest of the plot), and now have some series of shared goals.
By “goals” I don’t mean that one guy wants to take over the world, one gal wants to save the princess and defeat the dragon, while the third person wants to go back to town and open a high-end boutique for the discerning adventurer. I just mean “we all want to defeat this encounter / solve this challenge before us / get out of this situation alive”. I’d be pretty surprised if it was regularly the case that the PCs did not share such immediate in-game goals.
Actually, I should probably elaborate on this point. As far as I can tell, your planning goes something like this:
Anticipate upcoming challenges
Create a character with the highest possible expected probability of beating these challenges.
Win.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but there is at least one alternative:
Determine what would be an interesting character to roleplay as, given the game setting.
Create statistics for this character that reflect the fictional character’s fictional background and goals.
Play, and possibly lose while still having fun.
Indeed, “at least one” is correct, because here’s another:
Determine what would be an interesting character to roleplay as, given the game setting.
Anticipate upcoming challenges.
Create statistics for this character that reflect the fictional character’s fictional background and goals, as well as result in the highest possible* expected probability of beating these challenges.
Play, and win**, while having fun.
(1 and 2 can be reversed, as well.)
*Or as high as you like; perhaps you wish the character to be less than optimally effective at beating some or all expected challenges. If so, build the character to whatever specification (i.e. expected probability of beating challenges) you like.
**Or possibly lose. See previous footnote.
P.S. In general, the idea that roleplaying and game-mechanical effectiveness trade off against each other is well known as the Stormwind Fallacy.
You have not adequately addressed the issue of tradeoffs, as I described them in my previous post. Strictly speaking, in most gaming systems (including D&D/Pathfinder) you can be a maximally effective combatant while still ropleplaying to the fullest… But only as long as your character concept is along the lines of, “maximally-effective combatant”.
As I said above, however, each time you spend a single point on a non-combat ability, you are sacrificing a point that could’ve made you a more effective combatant—assuming, that is, that you are actively employing the game’s built-in non-combat mechanics. You don’t have to do that, depending on what your GM will or will not allow. For example, in Pathfinder, if you are roleplaying as a diplomat who is trying to charm his way into the Grand Vizier’s good graces; but your character is a Fighter with 20 Str, 7 Cha, and 0 ranks in Diplomacy or Bluff; then your GM may still allow you to succeed based on roleplaying alone.
While there’s nothing wrong with this playstyle, it does require the GM to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the rules (which, again, is always his prerogative). A GM who followed the rules would make you roll a Bluff or Diplomacy check, with a high DC, which you would make at a fairly high penalty. You might succeed, but you will be far more likely to fail.
Furthermore, if your character sheet is indeed supposed to represent your character’s upbringing in some way, then one might question how he graduated from the Diplomacy Corps with 0 ranks in any non-combat abilities.
Thus, I still maintain that, due to the tradeoffs, a character built for roleplay will always perform worse in combat (on average, that is) than a purely combat-oriented character, unless one of the following is true:
Your gaming system provides few, if any, non-combat mechanics; these are supposed to be taken care of through free-form roleplaying,
Your GM chooses to disregard the rules (as is his right), thus reducing your system to (1), or
The character concept that you are roleplaying is explicitly centered around nothing but combat.
Note that I said that your character will “perform worse”, and not “fail utterly”. This is an important distinction.
You seem to be equating “roleplay” with non-combat capabilities (social interaction skills, specifically, it seems; I note that there are other sorts of non-combat capabilities...). That’s unwarranted. Roleplaying is not the same as, nor directly tied to, nor dependent on, being strongly effective at social-interaction mechanics. They are, in fact, largely orthogonal, except insofar as any particular character concept should* be mechanically supported. (This orthogonality is indeed the subject of the Stormwind Fallacy.)
*”Should” in the sense you outline, i.e. your character sheet representing, ideally, your character.
This is just false.
Finally...
is a fairly nonsensical concept. Perhaps you meant “a character built for prowess in social interaction”, but that’s not the same thing.
Social interaction is just one example; I picked it because it is the most common. That said, I would argue that making a character with zero social skills (in order to put those points into more combat) would restrict you to a fairly narrow subset of roleplaying opportunities.
The key to my point, though, is something you said: your character sheet should, ideally, represent your character. This is less apparent in D&D, where most of the mechanics are combat-oriented; and much more apparent in other games, e.g. the old White Wolf system where you have explicit ratings in things like “Bureaucracy”, “Law”, “Resources”, “Contacts”, “Allies”, and even “Performance”, IIRC—alongside the more combat-worthy stats such as “Firearms” or “Dodge”.
However, even in D&D, there are ways to represent your character’s non-combat abilities which, unfortunately, compete for points with the combat ones. Here are some examples:
Story Feats
Feats and class/racial features whose parameters can be chosen suboptimally (in terms of pure combat). For example, consider the Ranger’s “Favored Enemy” ability, or a caster’s “Spell Focus” Feat.
Spells with little to no utility in combat, such as “Memory Lapse” or “Continual Flame”.
Skills such as “Profession” or “Perform”.
Stats besides those that directly influence your class abilities, such as Charisma for a Fighter.
Is your character a self-appointed prophet ? Well, then you should probably take “Spell Focus: Divination”, as opposed to something more battle-worthy. Is your character a skilled craftsman ? Then you should take a bunch of item creation Feats instead of going deeper into the “Power Attack” tree. Were his parents abducted by crab-people ? Then the crab-people are probably your racial enemy, despite being incredibly rare.
Are any of these tradeoffs crippling ? No, but they do add up, and while you are now better at crafting arms and armor and making money doing so, you are no longer as good at cleaving things or (e.g.) swimming as you could’ve been.
Of course, you could reply with something like, “only a fool would make crab-people a part of his backstory; just make your parents be abducted by humanoids, instead”. If you do, see my objection #3 in the previous comment.
I disagree. (As a side note, it’s actually not very easy to put skill points, specifically, into “more combat”, with a couple of exceptions.)
No, I don’t agree with this at all, even granting the premise that you have decided to pick feats/etc. based on story. Unless, of course, you look only at the barest surface features of the options you’re selecting, without delving even a bit deeper.
Spell Focus: Divination is a feat that sounds like it generally “makes you better at divination” or some such. What it actually does (as you know) is make those of your divination spells that have saving throws harder to resist. Now, since most divination spells have no saving throws (certainly those spells most appropriate to prophecy, which are presumably most central to your character concept, do not), picking SF:Divination doesn’t make any sense mechanically. Would your character “select this feat” (i.e. work toward developing this capability)? I don’t see why. It’s not like the “feat” has this name “in-game-world”… and your character presumably knows the “feat” by what it actually does. Why would he work toward an ability that has nothing actually to do with his chosen vocation (prophecy)?
So in this case, selecting Spell Focus: Divination would only make sense if you were trying to build a character that, on casual inspection, sounds like he would be a good prophet. It would not make sense if you were trying to build a character who was actually good at prophecy, game-mechanically; nor, on the other hand, would it make sense if you were trying to “organically” build a character who, in-character, tried to be a good prophet.
This likewise makes very little sense, not least because it’s a rare character indeed who both would normally select Power Attack and its descendants (a selection usually made by martial characters), and would even qualify for item creation feats (which require one to be a spellcaster). Furthermore, item creation feats give you the ability to create magic items, i.e. imbue items with magic power; they have little actually to do with being a skilled craftsman, as such (that’s better handled by the Craft skill). Once again, you would only make this connection if you were going by shallow surface associations. (You may, of course, interpret a feat such as Craft Magic Arms & Armor as representing your skill at crafting the arms and armor in question, even in the absence of ranks in the relevant Craft skills. In such a case, my first objection applies. If, in fact, you are a martial (or semi-martial) character who does nonetheless qualify for item creation feats, then that means that they are probably not actually bad choices for you. That’s how the game is structured. Craft Magic Arms & Armor, by the way, is in most cases a more effective feat than Great Cleave is.)
This doesn’t really follow; it may make sense, but then again it may not. The reasons why it doesn’t make sense have more, I think, to do with how story and world building is shared between the DM and the players, and so I think I will eschew this particular tangent unless you ask me to elaborate.
Thus far, I take your comments to be evidence against the claim that there are meaningful tradeoffs between roleplaying and effectiveness, not for it.
I didn’t mean to represent the technique as 100% railroading; my example was rather an extreme case. Instead, we attempt to engage the characters in a plot on a personal basis. Saying, “ok, you are in front of the dungeon now” makes sense for a purely tactical dungeon crawl, but it’s a terrible way to start a story.
Instead, we usually offer each character something that he really wants. Sure, sometimes this can be as simple as “the city is under attack, you’ve got to help or you might die”; and sometimes, the hook can be as simple as, “do this or rot in jail, you sociopathic smuggler”, or “go into the dungeon and get rich”. But every character has a backstory, and usually that comes into play as well, which makes for a more interesting plot. I do acknowledge that this style of play is not for everyone, and I’m not claiming that it’s the best style in the world or anything of the sort.
At that point, it’s kind of too late to re-roll your suave diplomat into a grizzled killer.
Why not ? Taking over the world is a long-term goal. Players can work together until that is accomplished. The would-be tyrant would need a strong economic base, after all; so why shouldn’t he get in on the ground floor of that nascent boutique business ? And meanwhile, political bribes and retail space rental prices don’t pay themselves, so if there’s work to be done, the tyrant and the merchant better go and do it… And of course, if the evil Necromancer destroys the kingdom, there would be nothing left to rule and no customers left to sell amulets to. That sounds like a sub-optimal outcome for all concerned...
I’ve never played WoW, but game design assumptions, and common practice among gaming groups, both vary quite a bit. Sometimes this simply won’t be an issue; it’s hard to imagine what an optimized Toon character would look like, for example. But a lot of games and scenarios are designed mainly around tactical challenges, including many of the most popular ones; and when a group finds itself in such a scenario, problems tend to arise if it includes both highly optimized and highly suboptimal characters.
It’s one thing if we’re talking about a deliberately nerfed character built for comedy or storytelling potential; most groups handle that well, as long as they’re not populated entirely by munchkins. But a character that’s meant to be effective and just happens to have taken some really weak choices… that causes real problems. The player running such a character usually gets frustrated because they aren’t doing as well as they think they should; players running more optimized characters tend to be resentful because they have to pull more of the weight. In the worst-case scenario it can even break the balance assumptions that encounter generation is built on, endangering the entire group.
A competent GM can adjust for this by creating house rules or modifying encounter difficulty or tailoring challenges to their group’s skills and preferences. But these are all workarounds, not fixes, and they only go so far.
While D&D evolved from a strategy boardgame, it is still a role-playing game. As such, it includes storytelling elements, which, depending on your GM and the players’ desires, may weigh far more heavily than monster-slaying.
Some GMs prefer to run their games as a straightforward dungeon crawl: encounter enemies, kill them, repeat. In this case, the optimal character would be the one who is maximally effective at slaying monsters, or supporting fellow party members who do so.
Other GMs introduce logical puzzles into the mix. In this case, while your character may be perfectly balanced for combat, it is still possible to lose due to failing to figure out the puzzle.
Still other GMs prefer to tell a story. In this case, the game is less about killing things, and more about pretending to be a person living in a magical fantasy world… A person who, on occasion, kills things. In this case, the optimal character is the one you enjoy playing. You could make a crossbow-Wizard (perhaps he flunked out of Wizard school, and spends his days fuming at the injustice, shooting other Wizards with crossbows to prove his superiority), a fat lazy Fighter (he used to be a Gladiator, but now he just sits around drinking ale all day, reminiscing about his trophies), an honest Rogue (the prison changed him, for the better), etc. The GM is not, of course, obligated to keep you alive; but at least your game will be interesting.
All of these styles of play are valid. Yes, your crossbow-Wizard won’t be effective in combat—but what if the game is not primarily about combat ?
There’s a difference between saying “my character is less effective at combat, but I think that’s a good tradeoff for something else” and saying “my character is not less effective at combat”.
This is about the latter case. When someone doesn’t even believe that their character is less effective in combat, even though the math shows otherwise. They’re not making a tradeoff between effectiveness in combat and greater ability to roleplay—they’re just refusing to recognize that there is any reduced effectiveness that has to be traded off at all.
Exactly. I’m not sure why I am having to state this distinction again and again, but yes, that’s precisely it.
I think this is because you keep leading with, “here is the best strategy to be effective in combat, and anyone who doesn’t follow it is worse than worthless”, and only later do you follow that up with, ”...oh, but if you’re not going for combat efficiency, then it’s cool”.
I think you could communicate your point more clearly by stating up front, “There are many ways to play that do not prioritize combat. However, if your primary goal is to be maximally effective in combat, consider the following: etc.”.
Noted. I led with that because of its direct relevance to the OP, but it does seem to be getting me pattern-matched to people who disdain play styles other than “kill everything as efficiently as possible” (although I think that most people who allegedly hold such views are, in fact, straw men).
I don’t, however, think that I ever said or implied that the people involved are worse than worthless… in the OP, “worth” in that phrase refers to effectiveness value of actions, not… people.
Agreed, that is a clear example of mental bias.
Jiro has already responded on the central question (with a point that I had already made, but it bears repetition, and apparently keeps being missed when I say it, so my thanks to Jiro). The following is re: other issues mentioned in your comment.
Yes, but how does being ineffective in combat help you figure out the logic puzzle? Answer: it does not. Therefore: a character who is effective in combat, played by a player who is good at logic puzzles, is strictly superior to a character who is bad at combat, played by the same logic-savvy player. In other words: in this scenario, being more effective in combat makes you more effective at D&D. (Unless there is literally no combat. Ever. In which case, why are you playing D&D? Other systems are far better suited to your needs.)
The long-running campaign that I DM is heavy on roleplaying, plotting, and political machinations. I haven’t run a straightforward dungeon crawl in that campaign in a long time (I generally reserve that for one-shot adventures). We sometimes go a session or two without combat entirely; combat is certainly not the central focus.
However, all of the player characters are heavily optimized and frighteningly lethal in combat. If it comes to it, they dispatch enemies with ruthless efficiency.
Why?
Because roleplaying effectively, or having your character be interesting, in no way precludes being effective in combat. Being combat-effective loses you nothing as far as logic-puzzle-solving, story-telling, roleplaying, being interesting, etc., etc. And because even if combat is not the only challenge, or the most common challenge, it’s certainly a challenge; and being less effective at solving certain challenges… makes you less effective overall.
Again: if you do this knowingly and deliberately, and you and your party-mates are ok with that, fine and well.
This is not, strictly speaking, true. Most gaming systems—even D&D—encourage you to tie your roleplaying to your stats at some point. For example, our hypothetical crossbow-Wizard might take Point Blank instead of Spell Focus (or some similar Feat); this is a real tradeoff, since the number of Feats you can take is limited. A Rogue (or, indeed, any character) might spend his points on Diplomacy, Appraise, Knowledge and Profession instead of the usual Disable Device, etc. -- to reflect the fact that he settled down as an honest gem merchant after prison (presumably, only to be pulled into that One Last Job against his better judgement).
Of course, there’s no rule that says you can’t play a suave diplomat who has zero ranks in Diplomacy and Sense Motive and a Charisma score of 7. You can totally do that, if the GM allows it.
If we’re being strict, then you’re actually arguing against the converse of what I said — whether being effective in combat negatively impacts your roleplaying or interestingness. Which I also don’t think it does, but it’s a distinct point.
My actual point, in any case, is that there are many ways to roleplay. You can roleplay well and be interesting with a Charisma of 7 and zero ranks in social skills, and then again you can roleplay well and be interesting with a Charisma of 18 and maximum ranks in social skills. You’d be roleplaying different things in those two cases, presumably; but, you can have an effectively-built character in both of those cases as well. (The former might be a wizard, or a fighter, or a rogue, or something else; the latter might be a sorcerer, or a paladin, or a different kind of rogue etc. etc.)
It is an accepted truism among all the veteran D&D players I know, and have spoken to in various online gaming communities, that a good roleplayer can create an interesting character concept, and roleplay it well, to fit pretty much any set of game stats. My experience with many excellent gamers supports this. Given that fact, and D&D being a team game, it seems almost a no-brainer that you should pick game stats that make you game-mechanically effective, and build your interesting concept on top of that. (Or, conversely, make up a cool concept and then built it into an effective character — which is also eminently doable for the experienced gamer.)