Limiting options is one way to prevent min maxing - it also places burdens on your players, basically telling them “I am too scared of a hypothetical problem to let you play the character you want to play.” It is a good tool for mediocre DMs who cannot balance encounters and okay-ish DMs who lack the social skills to solve some of the player-problems which come from optimization.
I think that's a bit insulting and intimidating language to use for those GMs that are just starting. You shouldn't make them feel inadequate just because they are not well versed with all the rules. Players forcing a new GM to accept things they are not familiar with is bad play, not "mediocre DM".
The irony is that new GM's are the ones that fall prey to the bullying players. The experienced ones know what signs to look for as red flags in players. The easiest answer to create a level playing field I have already detailed. It is also the fairest. And as I have said, when some player tells me that "You are no fun", "You are boring", or "You hate players", well, those people self-select out from my games, and many other games, real fast.
Limiting options is one way to prevent min maxing - it also places burdens on your players, basically telling them “I am too scared of a hypothetical problem to let you play the character you want to play.” It is a good tool for mediocre DMs who cannot balance encounters and okay-ish DMs who lack the social skills to solve some of the player-problems which come from optimization.
I think that's a bit insulting and intimidating language to use for those GMs that are just starting. You shouldn't make them feel inadequate just because they are not well versed with all the rules. Players forcing a new GM to accept things they are not familiar with is bad play, not "mediocre DM".
You are correct, I probably should have used language qualifying that I was only discussing "experienced" DMs who hide behind limitations as a crutch. In my experience, the vast majority of DMs who aggressively push limitations (emphasis on the aggressively) are not doing so because they are new--but because they are bullies who lack the skill to DM when there are more options. That was the kind of DM I was responding to, and I should not have used blanket language which would cover new, non-bullying DMs who just need a bit more help.
So, let me be clear--for a new DM, my general advice would be to try playing the game without limitations; it is not as hard to run as certain folks would like players to think. That said, if the new DM is intimidated by the potential plethora of options, they should feel comfortable placing whatever limits they want--and players should be accepting of that.
The fact that the idea of what optimization is to each group is so different, combined with the needless stigma around having anyone coming even close to 'minmaxing' makes it annoyingly stressful to find new groups(Especially without a session 0), as sometimes simply putting your highest score in a primary stat for your class is completely unacceptable to groups.
That's a thing? How can that be a thing?!
I've also dealt with similar things. That is a thing. I don't know how it can be a thing. Some people come into DnD with deeply flawed assumptions of how roleplaying games work, and get unhappy when the roleplaying game includes game aspects and isn't almost all RP.
The fact that the idea of what optimization is to each group is so different, combined with the needless stigma around having anyone coming even close to 'minmaxing' makes it annoyingly stressful to find new groups(Especially without a session 0), as sometimes simply putting your highest score in a primary stat for your class is completely unacceptable to groups.
That's a thing? How can that be a thing?!
I've also dealt with similar things. That is a thing. I don't know how it can be a thing. Some people come into DnD with deeply flawed assumptions of how roleplaying games work, and get unhappy when the roleplaying game includes game aspects and isn't almost all RP.
I would revise what you are saying, slightly. D&D was designed as war game. It still is at its roots. Thousands of pages of source material are dedicated to RULES on how to play the game. Only very recently, has the "RP is everything" noise level been so escalated, by a small, but very vocal, minority. The sad truth of the situation is this: On one extreme we have the "D&D is only RP, game mechanics are irrelevant" position, and the other extreme is "I must use every bit of material, whether it is canon or not, and ram it down the throats of the DM and other players to create my OP killing machine, who cares about game balance."
I can't count how many times I have run across the players speaking in funny voices who wants to have the entire session be a shopping expedition buying food and rope, or players pulling up obscure UA material and swear to the me or another DM it is canon and not at all OP, while triple-classing their PC's to "fulfill a backstory".
The fact that the idea of what optimization is to each group is so different, combined with the needless stigma around having anyone coming even close to 'minmaxing' makes it annoyingly stressful to find new groups(Especially without a session 0), as sometimes simply putting your highest score in a primary stat for your class is completely unacceptable to groups.
That's a thing? How can that be a thing?!
I've also dealt with similar things. That is a thing. I don't know how it can be a thing. Some people come into DnD with deeply flawed assumptions of how roleplaying games work, and get unhappy when the roleplaying game includes game aspects and isn't almost all RP.
I would revise what you are saying, slightly. D&D was designed as war game. It still is at its roots. Thousands of pages of source material are dedicated to RULES on how to play the game. Only very recently, has the "RP is everything" noise level been so escalated, by a small, but very vocal, minority. The sad truth of the situation is this: On one extreme we have the "D&D is only RP, game mechanics are irrelevant" position, and the other extreme is "I must use every bit of material, whether it is canon or not, and ram it down the throats of the DM and other players to create my OP killing machine, who cares about game balance."
I can't count how many times I have run across the players speaking in funny voices who wants to have the entire session be a shopping expedition buying food and rope, or players pulling up obscure UA material and swear to the me or another DM it is canon and not at all OP, while triple-classing their PC's to "fulfill a backstory".
D&D has had roleplaying since its very beginning. The very first session of proto-D&D was a roleplay heavy session about escaping from a puzzle, talking with some elves, then going and killing some monsters. It was this roleplay that convinced Gygax they were on to something - war games were a dime a dozen; combining war games with roleplaying was something new and potentially profitable.
Gary Gygax, however, only had a war gaming background - so, when he betrayed his friends and forcibly took over the game from other cofounders, he focused more on that element. That, combined with his complete lack of business sense, almost killed the game in its entirety,
The one non-mechanical thing Gygax was really successful at (other than casually slipping his own racism into the game, of course) was rewriting history. The original D&D gatekeeper, he wanted people to think that his way of play was the only way to play and had always been the only way to play. This was a myth born of his own selfishness - but it is a pervasive myth still repeated by those gatekeeping type of players who follow in Gygax’s footsteps.
If you've got 10 minutes, here's a story about a hyper-optimized character that I think is really illustrative (I'll summarize it below, but I recommend watching the video to get the full effect): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dxNGLUDGj-4
So, I think this is a great story. We've got a ranger who's extremely optimized for long-ranged combat, and he's doing some really incredible things. The player hasn't neglected the RP side, either; he's got a simple but effective backstory, and a clear characterization he's going for. What could possibly be wrong with this?
Imagine for a second what it would be like to be any other player in this campaign. Seemingly at random, your ranger player calls for the group to stop. He starts rolling dice. The DM rolls some other dice. You have no idea what's going on. Neither of them explain. This goes on for potentially minutes at a time. Much later, the battered remnants of an enemy battlegroup stagger out of the treeline, and you finally get to play the game. You mop up the survivors and move on. A while later, the scene repeats. Gradually it dawns on you. Every encounter on open ground is going to be like this. You sigh to yourself and start looking over options for a long-ranged support build, because that's what you and everyone else in your party is now.
This is what's called "sucking all the air out of the room", and it's the main reason DMs don't like hyper-optimized characters. It's not that the character or even the player is a problem on their own, it's the way they warp the campaign around them and force everyone else to adapt. It makes for great YouTube videos and absolutely miserable games.
This sounds less like a problem with optimization and more like a problem with a GM who has no clue how to actually run a game. The number one job a GM has is to communicate with the players and that's not happening in this story. Instead, they're giving all their focus to one player and not letting anyone else have a chance to do anything. That's what's actually sucking the air out of the room.
Yeah the GM messed up letting that build through, but also I don't know that it's completely fair to let the player who actually built it off the hook. TTRPGs necessarily build up a certain reverence for The Rules because if they didn't, they'd have nothing to sell you. Plenty of GMs aren't comfortable saying no to things that are technically conformant to The Rules. Players know this, and they exploit it all the time. So between the player who knows they're putting together something game breaking and the GM who fails to stop them, who bears ultimate responsibility? I don't think it's an especially valuable question to answer. The bottom line is: everyone at the table, including but not exclusively the GM, is responsible for making sure everyone at the table having fun.
I think the YouTube video provided is spot on for this thread and hits on the topic at hand. Some things one can pull from the video::
1) The narrator's story and tone makes it clear that his character is the primary and, to an extent, the only one that matters. It is all about his ego, even going so far as talking about how he took the other players out onto the archery range to validate his arguments and educate the other players on the an archer's capabilities. The narrator goes on to talk only about his character: the backstory, the greatness of his skills, his humility in using only the mundane weapons unless if the situation cannot be resolved without the use of magic. The other characters? They do not matter to this player. If he remembers anything about their design, he only expresses a vague representation of them. They have been relegated to supporting the narrator's performance and quest to greatness. Even when he discusses how they casts spell to boost and buff his performances, he mentioned it in dismissive way as if to imply that maybe he would still be successful without this aid. This wasn't a player creating a character for a campaign. It was someone writing a sword and sorcery fantasy novella. This wold have been good short read for my middle school days; I can see the appeal of the old veteran warrior pulled away from retirement and demonstrating to a young group the power and destruction that comes with on mastering the way of war, and presenting a metaphor for how fighting does not lead to glory but emptiness. It could be a good book but this isn't a novel. This was a game. And there are other players in the game that the narrator clearly showed disdain for.
2) Building off that, the channel presents the narrator and his character in a positive way. As a viewer, the conclusion one should draw is that this is the bar or objective that a player should strive for. Make a character so dominate that the game revolves solely around you. Generate a character that literally "can't miss" and that single handily ends every encounter. The other players? They should be so impressed with your build that they jump at the chance to be your supporting characters and all actions they take are to only help you achieve the greatness you are destine for. There was no critique form the channel if this is the proper way to approach a game and if the character's creation and design was best suited for the table. No discussion on why the GM didn't adjust the campaign so that the narrator's character would be placed at disadvantage and would truly need to rely on the other players to succeed in challenges. Instead, the implication is that the is character was "really cool". This channel is fueling the issues of player optimizing and over powering, and doesn't seem to acknowledge that a game consists of multiple players and isn't a contest to show which player is the coolest and most awesome.
3) I agree with the observations that the GM should have done more. I can see how the GM might consider the build of this one character being the only one who can take part in the encounter. Similar to how the GM can exclude other players from encounters at times. For examples, the scouting Rouge finds themselves running from the guards, or a wizard is reviewing a grimoire when the doors to the chamber shut and a demon arises from the text to challenge the spellcaster. Though these are isolated examples and won't persist throughout every session. In the case of the video, it does become clear to the other party members something else is going on. They should have had the opportunity to roll initiative and to take actions. And GM should modify the game so that this "lead protagonist" isn't able to monopolize the game play. But then again, maybe this particular GM was also an admirer of enhanced optimization and over powering; and that generates another hypothesis we should discuss. If a GM is a fan of these builds then do they proceed to structure a game for this one player to see how they can continue to grow and modify? Furthermore, do they do this intentionally at the expense of the other players at the table. If this type of GM believes it is the players' responsibility to establish their roles and not game designed to incorporate all the players, then what you have is a true arms race among the players. TTRPG like Dungeons and Dragons is not designed to be competitive between the players at the table. The contest at the table is between the players and the challenge of the module (or session's story and encounters) with the GM working to facilitate the game and serve as referee for the game's rules. Players should not be looking to out perform or dictate the role of the players; and a GM should not be cultivating an environment that results in such behavior.
This video does demonstrate how a player can be caught up in their own performance and that their focus is feeding their ego, even at the expense of the other players, and it shows that there is a community that is impressed and accepting of such behavior. So to go back to the OP's question, players who express concerns with optimizing are worried about something like this. That a player in building their character to focus solely on maximizing their enhancements and they also attempt to eliminate any deficiency. There are players that find this to be against the design of the game (see the PHB section on "Bonds" and "Flaws"). The fun in the game comes from the challenges that the party must overcome. Limiting the game to repetitive roles with near 100% chance of success makes the game boring and dull for a subset of this community. Even if they are the ones who can't fail on any roll. The entertainment comes from first finding ways to overcome the detriments and set the tone for your character to use their attributes that yield high success.
I've also dealt with similar things. That is a thing. I don't know how it can be a thing. Some people come into DnD with deeply flawed assumptions of how roleplaying games work, and get unhappy when the roleplaying game includes game aspects and isn't almost all RP.
I would revise what you are saying, slightly. D&D was designed as war game. It still is at its roots. Thousands of pages of source material are dedicated to RULES on how to play the game. Only very recently, has the "RP is everything" noise level been so escalated, by a small, but very vocal, minority. The sad truth of the situation is this: On one extreme we have the "D&D is only RP, game mechanics are irrelevant" position, and the other extreme is "I must use every bit of material, whether it is canon or not, and ram it down the throats of the DM and other players to create my OP killing machine, who cares about game balance."
Even if what you are claiming were true (and you keep trying on this argument and losing it), what the game was designed as is about as relevant as the idea that Magic players would buy a starter deck and a few boosters from each expansion. The game is fifty years and about eight revisions old. 5e wasn't designed as a wargame. Even 4e wasn't. The original design intent of OD&D does not matter. The game is what the players do with it, they've been making it not a wargame since day one, and the game design has long since chosen to support that.
Indeed, if it were supposed to be a wargame, then optimizing characters for maximum effectiveness, using all the extant official rules, would be the expected way to play. And it isn't. Even you argue against it, in your own way.
I can't count how many times I have run across the players speaking in funny voices who wants to have the entire session be a shopping expedition buying food and rope, or players pulling up obscure UA material and swear to the me or another DM it is canon and not at all OP, while triple-classing their PC's to "fulfill a backstory".
Yeah, the session-long shopping trips have been happening since forever. Once you introduce the idea that players are controlling characters, and not just units, which is the new thing that D&D brought to the table, you're going to have players who enjoy having their characters interact with other characters. And those "RP is everything" people you deride have been here forever (inasmuch as they're not straw men). The "Real Men/Real Roleplayers/Loonies/Munchkins" lists were not brand-new when I first saw them on Usenet, back in the early days of 2e.
D&D has had roleplaying since its very beginning. The very first session of proto-D&D was a roleplay heavy session about escaping from a puzzle, talking with some elves, then going and killing some monsters. It was this roleplay that convinced Gygax they were on to something - war games were a dime a dozen; combining war games with roleplaying was something new and potentially profitable.
Gary Gygax, however, only had a war gaming background - so, when he betrayed his friends and forcibly took over the game from other cofounders, he focused more on that element. That, combined with his complete lack of business sense, almost killed the game in its entirety,
The one non-mechanical thing Gygax was really successful at (other than casually slipping his own racism into the game, of course) was rewriting history. The original D&D gatekeeper, he wanted people to think that his way of play was the only way to play and had always been the only way to play. This was a myth born of his own selfishness - but it is a pervasive myth still repeated by those gatekeeping type of players who follow in Gygax’s footsteps.
What does Gygax have to do with this discussion?
He hasn't been a part of D&D since the mid 1980's almost 40 years and ~3 editions ago, and he has been dead for 16 years. Any of the negative aspects he introduced to the game are only there because his predecessors continued to allow it. Instead of focusing on the negative, we should let it go and if we can't do that just don't bring it up. He was only involved for the first ~12 years of the 50 years the game has been around, and has had nothing to do with 5e personally.
SHEESH talk about beating a dead horse.
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
D&D has had roleplaying since its very beginning. The very first session of proto-D&D was a roleplay heavy session about escaping from a puzzle, talking with some elves, then going and killing some monsters. It was this roleplay that convinced Gygax they were on to something - war games were a dime a dozen; combining war games with roleplaying was something new and potentially profitable.
Gary Gygax, however, only had a war gaming background - so, when he betrayed his friends and forcibly took over the game from other cofounders, he focused more on that element. That, combined with his complete lack of business sense, almost killed the game in its entirety,
The one non-mechanical thing Gygax was really successful at (other than casually slipping his own racism into the game, of course) was rewriting history. The original D&D gatekeeper, he wanted people to think that his way of play was the only way to play and had always been the only way to play. This was a myth born of his own selfishness - but it is a pervasive myth still repeated by those gatekeeping type of players who follow in Gygax’s footsteps.
What does Gygax have to do with this discussion?
He hasn't been a part of D&D since the mid 1980's almost 40 years and ~3 editions ago, and he has been dead for 16 years. Any of the negative aspects he introduced to the game are only there because his predecessors continued to allow it. Instead of focusing on the negative, we should let it go and if we can't do that just don't bring it up. He was only involved for the first ~12 years of the 50 years the game has been around, and has had nothing to do with 5e personally.
SHEESH talk about beating a dead horse.
If you bothered to read the post, you would know the answer to that question - I literally spell out the relevance. But, let me put it more simply for you. Some players like to dismiss the roleplaying element by citing to the game’s history as a war game. That history is a myth created by Gygax as he wanted to downplay the aspects of the game others were responsible for creating. Dismissing the myth requires knowledge of how that myth arose—and that was 100% Gygax.
D&D has had roleplaying since its very beginning. The very first session of proto-D&D was a roleplay heavy session about escaping from a puzzle, talking with some elves, then going and killing some monsters. It was this roleplay that convinced Gygax they were on to something - war games were a dime a dozen; combining war games with roleplaying was something new and potentially profitable.
Gary Gygax, however, only had a war gaming background - so, when he betrayed his friends and forcibly took over the game from other cofounders, he focused more on that element. That, combined with his complete lack of business sense, almost killed the game in its entirety,
The one non-mechanical thing Gygax was really successful at (other than casually slipping his own racism into the game, of course) was rewriting history. The original D&D gatekeeper, he wanted people to think that his way of play was the only way to play and had always been the only way to play. This was a myth born of his own selfishness - but it is a pervasive myth still repeated by those gatekeeping type of players who follow in Gygax’s footsteps.
What does Gygax have to do with this discussion?
He hasn't been a part of D&D since the mid 1980's almost 40 years and ~3 editions ago, and he has been dead for 16 years. Any of the negative aspects he introduced to the game are only there because his predecessors continued to allow it. Instead of focusing on the negative, we should let it go and if we can't do that just don't bring it up. He was only involved for the first ~12 years of the 50 years the game has been around, and has had nothing to do with 5e personally.
SHEESH talk about beating a dead horse.
If you bothered to read the post, you would know the answer to that question - I literally spell out the relevance. But, let me put it more simply for you. Some players like to dismiss the roleplaying element by citing to the game’s history as a war game. That history is a myth created by Gygax as he wanted to downplay the aspects of the game others were responsible. Dismissing the myth requires knowledge of how that myth arose—and that was 100% Gygax.
I just don't see the connection you are trying to make this is 5e, not 2e. 5e has been around longer than he was involved in the game and that was decades ago. It is a straw man at best, and definitely a reach to drag him into the conversation and lump players in with him because their play style is not yours.
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
basically telling them “I am too scared of a hypothetical problem to let you play the character you want to play.” play.
I feel that the existance of this thread (and many others on the topic) show that the problem is not hypothetical.
Until a situation is actualized, it remains a hypothetical. It might be a hypothetical with a decent degree of probability, but, until you know how your players intend to play, you can only make a hypothesis about what might happen. That is why it is important to learn a bit about your players and their expectations before you start playing - either through a session zero, one-on-one conversations, or existing knowledge of their personality. Once you have actual knowledge, you can make an informed decision based on the specific facts about your group, not generalizations based on might occur.
While it's true that D&D has wargaming roots, that hasn't been its identity for practically eons at this point, so Justafarmer pointing to them is a non sequitur at best. There's no need for us to go exhuming Gygax for a bashing session either; I disagree with a lot of his original design choices (and I like to think I would have disagreed with several even back then) but the vast majority of them are irrelevant to the modern game and to this topic.
Rather, the main idea behind this thread is how prevalent the Stormwind Fallacy, i.e. the belief that there is some kind of negative correlation between mechanical optimization and roleplay, continues to be in the modern game. The answer of course is that it's a fallacy for a reason - there is no reason that mechanical optimization needs to be associated with a disregard for roleplay or vice-versa, they are wholly separate axes of a character's identity. And while we'll never be rid of the fallacy entirely, especially in online D&D communities, I think the proportion of players recognizing it to be a fallacy are gradually improving over time. Even with 5e being the most 'rules-light' edition of D&D we've ever had, the designers still recognize that both crunch and fluff are critical components of D&D's secret sauce and always will be.
Making a compelling, talented character is not bad. Poring through the rules to squeeze every drop out of a character build often is because it punishes diversity and ensures that most every X type of character is, statistically, nearly identical. It's unfortunate that 5E is built to encourage min-maxing. DMs wishing to encourage creativity are often fighting against the system itself. With point buy campaigns, it also ensures that you'll rarely see the smart, wise fighter or barbarian or the strong wizard who moonlights as a violnist. Placing points in those stats or buying those feats in a min-maxed campaign is just going to mean that you underperform when compared to the cookie cutter characters.
if the campaign were investigation focused, we likely wouldn't call an INT-optimized character a bad word. same for CHA in an intrigue campaign. or some example with WIS that doesn't derail the point. most of the min/maxing being described is for combat optimization. as discussed, character and campaign mismatches are a communications issue. but is the game itself skewed to have more combat optimization issues? even overlooking game origins, some of the coolest things to earn in-game are combat oriented items and skills. would it help to include more support for generalist campaigns? what would that look like?
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
Making a compelling, talented character is not bad. Poring through the rules to squeeze every drop out of a character build often is because it punishes diversity and ensures that most every X type of character is, statistically, nearly identical. It's unfortunate that 5E is built to encourage min-maxing. DMs wishing to encourage creativity are often fighting against the system itself. With point buy campaigns, it also ensures that you'll rarely see the smart, wise fighter or barbarian or the strong wizard who moonlights as a violnist. Placing points in those stats or buying those feats in a min-maxed campaign is just going to mean that you underperform when compared to the cookie cutter characters.
Nothing is forcing you to make your players use the 27 PB recommended by the PHB; if you want your players to make strong charismatic wizards and wise intelligent barbarians and that will bring your table joy, just give them more points to spend, or hand them a fixed array that features higher scores to assign out. 5e has a very "Pirate's Code" approach to DMing.
if the campaign were investigation focused, we likely wouldn't call an INT-optimized character a bad word. same for CHA in an intrigue campaign. or some example with WIS that doesn't derail the point. most of the min/maxing being described is for combat optimization. as discussed, character and campaign mismatches are a communications issue. but is the game itself skewed to have more combat optimization issues? even overlooking game origins, some of the coolest things to earn in-game are combat oriented items and skills. would it help to include more support for generalist campaigns? what would that look like?
Plenty of other games have compelling non-combat features available to characters; Exalted, for example, has an entire "class" based on manipulating the weave of fate for better social/story outcomes. They have just as many cool powers as any other "class", they're just not very good in a stand-up fight. (One of my favorite features from that game is Fortuitous Wandering; if you want to be in a scene, you can just show up. You do not have to explain how you got there.) There's plenty of examples of games that handle non-combat skills better than D&D. In fact, I'd struggle to name a game that does them worse. (GURPS, I guess.)
People say D&D is a wargame because that's what it has rules for. There's exceptions, of course, but by and large the game has developed to be more combat focused over time. the reason nobody complains about INT-optimized builds in an investigation-focused campaign is simple: there's only so much you can optimize investigation in a game that barely has any rules for it. If you play a campaign that never uses the Investigation skill, you're just not playing an Investigation-focused campaign. If you play a campaign without using combat features, you are, in a meaningful sense, not playing 5e. That's why people care more about the combat optimization. That's what the game is.
Making a compelling, talented character is not bad. Poring through the rules to squeeze every drop out of a character build often is because it punishes diversity and ensures that most every X type of character is, statistically, nearly identical. It's unfortunate that 5E is built to encourage min-maxing. DMs wishing to encourage creativity are often fighting against the system itself. With point buy campaigns, it also ensures that you'll rarely see the smart, wise fighter or barbarian or the strong wizard who moonlights as a violnist. Placing points in those stats or buying those feats in a min-maxed campaign is just going to mean that you underperform when compared to the cookie cutter characters.
I mean, the majority of classes aren’t so demanding in ability scores that you can’t afford to spread them out into secondary stats; in point of fact Fighters are one of the easiest ones to do it for; they’re SAD and get additional ASI.
Granted, it’s not set up to promote 3 high scores per character, but that is not detrimental to diversity of characterization, and I would argue is actually beneficial. If everyone can excel in half the spread, then there’s less room for individual specialization. Additionally, one can easily use proficiencies to reflect these secondary aspects you want; I actually made a Wizard with the Soldier background one time, which gives the Athletics prof, and it’s a rare DM that wouldn’t let you trade the gaming or vehicle prof of the background for instrument instead. And while I didn’t spec for STR or CHA since I had something else in mind, I easily could have put a few points in either or both, creating a fit Wizard who also plays an instrument well. Ability scores aren’t hard to distribute for an effective and flavorful character, nor are they the sole source of characterization in any case.
Plenty of other games have compelling non-combat features available to characters; Exalted, for example, has an entire "class" based on manipulating the weave of fate for better social/story outcomes. They have just as many cool powers as any other "class", they're just not very good in a stand-up fight. (One of my favorite features from that game is Fortuitous Wandering; if you want to be in a scene, you can just show up. You do not have to explain how you got there.) There's plenty of examples of games that handle non-combat skills better than D&D. In fact, I'd struggle to name a game that does them worse. (GURPS, I guess.)
Even if you don't like its skill system, GURPS cares way more about non-combat skills and what they mean and do than D&D does.
But it's not actually that D&D 5 doesn't care about non-combat skills. It's got the kind of broad skill categories that you find in games these days that don't aspire to realism. It's mostly weird in that the loose, simple, skill system is attached to much more complex combat mechanics. It's also aware of the sort of game that D&D is, and doesn't try to provide skills that aren't generally useful in D&D games. Is the system great? It is not. But it's adequate for its purpose. Could it have been done better without making things more complex? Almost certainly. (Tool proficiencies in particular create a weird grey area of skills that aren't skills, and should've been worked into the system better.)
People say D&D is a wargame because that's what it has rules for. There's exceptions, of course, but by and large the game has developed to be more combat focused over time. the reason nobody complains about INT-optimized builds in an investigation-focused campaign is simple: there's only so much you can optimize investigation in a game that barely has any rules for it. If you play a campaign that never uses the Investigation skill, you're just not playing an Investigation-focused campaign. If you post a campaign without using combat features, you are, in a meaningful sense, not playing 5e. That's why people care more about the combat optimization. That's what the game is.
D&D 5 is certainly a combat-focused RPG, but that's a way different beast than a wargame.
Even if you don't like its skill system, GURPS cares way more about non-combat skills and what they mean and do than D&D does.
But it's not actually that D&D 5 doesn't care about non-combat skills. It's got the kind of broad skill categories that you find in games these days that don't aspire to realism. It's mostly weird in that the loose, simple, skill system is attached to much more complex combat mechanics. It's also aware of the sort of game that D&D is, and doesn't try to provide skills that aren't generally useful in D&D games. Is the system great? It is not. But it's adequate for its purpose. Could it have been done better without making things more complex? Almost certainly. (Tool proficiencies in particular create a weird grey area of skills that aren't skills, and should've been worked into the system better.)
D&D 5 is certainly a combat-focused RPG, but that's a way different beast than a wargame.
In my defense I didn't say GURPS's skill system was less considered than D&D's. I just said it was worse. (Mostly because it's an easy target; I honestly have very little experience with GURPS)
I do broadly agree with your assessment of D&D's skill system, provided we agree that D&D is primarily a game about getting in fights. The skill system is a device to add color to non-combat interludes of an otherwise combat-focused system. (Or perform non-standard combat actions, but you'll notice the rules about that get much more precise than out-of-combat skill use.) That's why nobody generally cares if you optimize for skills; they're not what the game is about. That's really all I was trying to say.
I agree that D&D isn't a wargame in the sense of, say, a Warhammer 40k. But I don't think most people are using that kind of precise definition when they call D&D a wargame; it's a game about getting in fights, which generally values simulating those fights in detail over other priorities an RPG might have. Whatever someone wants to call that, that's D&D.
Really the issue with tools and skills is just a common misconception of the basic mechanics of ability checks, partly due to the books being unclear on the matter. Strictly speaking, for any ability check the relevant ability is first determined, and then it’s determined if any of the character’s proficiencies apply. However, since skill proficiencies have a designated primary ability, it causes people to think of the checks in terms of selecting the skill first and then deciding if the primary ability is appropriate or should be changed for a given roll, which makes tools an oddity given they have no designated ability. But the point of tool profs is either to cover gaps in instances not covered by a skill or to provide an alternative source of proficiency that can be applied to ability checks. The lack of a designated primary ability is meant to emphasize their open-endedness.
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The irony is that new GM's are the ones that fall prey to the bullying players. The experienced ones know what signs to look for as red flags in players. The easiest answer to create a level playing field I have already detailed. It is also the fairest. And as I have said, when some player tells me that "You are no fun", "You are boring", or "You hate players", well, those people self-select out from my games, and many other games, real fast.
You are correct, I probably should have used language qualifying that I was only discussing "experienced" DMs who hide behind limitations as a crutch. In my experience, the vast majority of DMs who aggressively push limitations (emphasis on the aggressively) are not doing so because they are new--but because they are bullies who lack the skill to DM when there are more options. That was the kind of DM I was responding to, and I should not have used blanket language which would cover new, non-bullying DMs who just need a bit more help.
So, let me be clear--for a new DM, my general advice would be to try playing the game without limitations; it is not as hard to run as certain folks would like players to think. That said, if the new DM is intimidated by the potential plethora of options, they should feel comfortable placing whatever limits they want--and players should be accepting of that.
I've also dealt with similar things. That is a thing. I don't know how it can be a thing. Some people come into DnD with deeply flawed assumptions of how roleplaying games work, and get unhappy when the roleplaying game includes game aspects and isn't almost all RP.
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I would revise what you are saying, slightly. D&D was designed as war game. It still is at its roots. Thousands of pages of source material are dedicated to RULES on how to play the game. Only very recently, has the "RP is everything" noise level been so escalated, by a small, but very vocal, minority. The sad truth of the situation is this: On one extreme we have the "D&D is only RP, game mechanics are irrelevant" position, and the other extreme is "I must use every bit of material, whether it is canon or not, and ram it down the throats of the DM and other players to create my OP killing machine, who cares about game balance."
I can't count how many times I have run across the players speaking in funny voices who wants to have the entire session be a shopping expedition buying food and rope, or players pulling up obscure UA material and swear to the me or another DM it is canon and not at all OP, while triple-classing their PC's to "fulfill a backstory".
D&D has had roleplaying since its very beginning. The very first session of proto-D&D was a roleplay heavy session about escaping from a puzzle, talking with some elves, then going and killing some monsters. It was this roleplay that convinced Gygax they were on to something - war games were a dime a dozen; combining war games with roleplaying was something new and potentially profitable.
Gary Gygax, however, only had a war gaming background - so, when he betrayed his friends and forcibly took over the game from other cofounders, he focused more on that element. That, combined with his complete lack of business sense, almost killed the game in its entirety,
The one non-mechanical thing Gygax was really successful at (other than casually slipping his own racism into the game, of course) was rewriting history. The original D&D gatekeeper, he wanted people to think that his way of play was the only way to play and had always been the only way to play. This was a myth born of his own selfishness - but it is a pervasive myth still repeated by those gatekeeping type of players who follow in Gygax’s footsteps.
I think the YouTube video provided is spot on for this thread and hits on the topic at hand. Some things one can pull from the video::
1) The narrator's story and tone makes it clear that his character is the primary and, to an extent, the only one that matters. It is all about his ego, even going so far as talking about how he took the other players out onto the archery range to validate his arguments and educate the other players on the an archer's capabilities. The narrator goes on to talk only about his character: the backstory, the greatness of his skills, his humility in using only the mundane weapons unless if the situation cannot be resolved without the use of magic. The other characters? They do not matter to this player. If he remembers anything about their design, he only expresses a vague representation of them. They have been relegated to supporting the narrator's performance and quest to greatness. Even when he discusses how they casts spell to boost and buff his performances, he mentioned it in dismissive way as if to imply that maybe he would still be successful without this aid. This wasn't a player creating a character for a campaign. It was someone writing a sword and sorcery fantasy novella. This wold have been good short read for my middle school days; I can see the appeal of the old veteran warrior pulled away from retirement and demonstrating to a young group the power and destruction that comes with on mastering the way of war, and presenting a metaphor for how fighting does not lead to glory but emptiness. It could be a good book but this isn't a novel. This was a game. And there are other players in the game that the narrator clearly showed disdain for.
2) Building off that, the channel presents the narrator and his character in a positive way. As a viewer, the conclusion one should draw is that this is the bar or objective that a player should strive for. Make a character so dominate that the game revolves solely around you. Generate a character that literally "can't miss" and that single handily ends every encounter. The other players? They should be so impressed with your build that they jump at the chance to be your supporting characters and all actions they take are to only help you achieve the greatness you are destine for. There was no critique form the channel if this is the proper way to approach a game and if the character's creation and design was best suited for the table. No discussion on why the GM didn't adjust the campaign so that the narrator's character would be placed at disadvantage and would truly need to rely on the other players to succeed in challenges. Instead, the implication is that the is character was "really cool". This channel is fueling the issues of player optimizing and over powering, and doesn't seem to acknowledge that a game consists of multiple players and isn't a contest to show which player is the coolest and most awesome.
3) I agree with the observations that the GM should have done more. I can see how the GM might consider the build of this one character being the only one who can take part in the encounter. Similar to how the GM can exclude other players from encounters at times. For examples, the scouting Rouge finds themselves running from the guards, or a wizard is reviewing a grimoire when the doors to the chamber shut and a demon arises from the text to challenge the spellcaster. Though these are isolated examples and won't persist throughout every session. In the case of the video, it does become clear to the other party members something else is going on. They should have had the opportunity to roll initiative and to take actions. And GM should modify the game so that this "lead protagonist" isn't able to monopolize the game play. But then again, maybe this particular GM was also an admirer of enhanced optimization and over powering; and that generates another hypothesis we should discuss. If a GM is a fan of these builds then do they proceed to structure a game for this one player to see how they can continue to grow and modify? Furthermore, do they do this intentionally at the expense of the other players at the table. If this type of GM believes it is the players' responsibility to establish their roles and not game designed to incorporate all the players, then what you have is a true arms race among the players. TTRPG like Dungeons and Dragons is not designed to be competitive between the players at the table. The contest at the table is between the players and the challenge of the module (or session's story and encounters) with the GM working to facilitate the game and serve as referee for the game's rules. Players should not be looking to out perform or dictate the role of the players; and a GM should not be cultivating an environment that results in such behavior.
This video does demonstrate how a player can be caught up in their own performance and that their focus is feeding their ego, even at the expense of the other players, and it shows that there is a community that is impressed and accepting of such behavior. So to go back to the OP's question, players who express concerns with optimizing are worried about something like this. That a player in building their character to focus solely on maximizing their enhancements and they also attempt to eliminate any deficiency. There are players that find this to be against the design of the game (see the PHB section on "Bonds" and "Flaws"). The fun in the game comes from the challenges that the party must overcome. Limiting the game to repetitive roles with near 100% chance of success makes the game boring and dull for a subset of this community. Even if they are the ones who can't fail on any roll. The entertainment comes from first finding ways to overcome the detriments and set the tone for your character to use their attributes that yield high success.
Even if what you are claiming were true (and you keep trying on this argument and losing it), what the game was designed as is about as relevant as the idea that Magic players would buy a starter deck and a few boosters from each expansion. The game is fifty years and about eight revisions old. 5e wasn't designed as a wargame. Even 4e wasn't. The original design intent of OD&D does not matter. The game is what the players do with it, they've been making it not a wargame since day one, and the game design has long since chosen to support that.
Indeed, if it were supposed to be a wargame, then optimizing characters for maximum effectiveness, using all the extant official rules, would be the expected way to play. And it isn't. Even you argue against it, in your own way.
Yeah, the session-long shopping trips have been happening since forever. Once you introduce the idea that players are controlling characters, and not just units, which is the new thing that D&D brought to the table, you're going to have players who enjoy having their characters interact with other characters. And those "RP is everything" people you deride have been here forever (inasmuch as they're not straw men). The "Real Men/Real Roleplayers/Loonies/Munchkins" lists were not brand-new when I first saw them on Usenet, back in the early days of 2e.
What does Gygax have to do with this discussion?
He hasn't been a part of D&D since the mid 1980's almost 40 years and ~3 editions ago, and he has been dead for 16 years. Any of the negative aspects he introduced to the game are only there because his predecessors continued to allow it. Instead of focusing on the negative, we should let it go and if we can't do that just don't bring it up. He was only involved for the first ~12 years of the 50 years the game has been around, and has had nothing to do with 5e personally.
SHEESH talk about beating a dead horse.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
If you bothered to read the post, you would know the answer to that question - I literally spell out the relevance. But, let me put it more simply for you. Some players like to dismiss the roleplaying element by citing to the game’s history as a war game. That history is a myth created by Gygax as he wanted to downplay the aspects of the game others were responsible for creating. Dismissing the myth requires knowledge of how that myth arose—and that was 100% Gygax.
I just don't see the connection you are trying to make this is 5e, not 2e. 5e has been around longer than he was involved in the game and that was decades ago. It is a straw man at best, and definitely a reach to drag him into the conversation and lump players in with him because their play style is not yours.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I feel that the existance of this thread (and many others on the topic) show that the problem is not hypothetical.
Until a situation is actualized, it remains a hypothetical. It might be a hypothetical with a decent degree of probability, but, until you know how your players intend to play, you can only make a hypothesis about what might happen. That is why it is important to learn a bit about your players and their expectations before you start playing - either through a session zero, one-on-one conversations, or existing knowledge of their personality. Once you have actual knowledge, you can make an informed decision based on the specific facts about your group, not generalizations based on might occur.
While it's true that D&D has wargaming roots, that hasn't been its identity for practically eons at this point, so Justafarmer pointing to them is a non sequitur at best. There's no need for us to go exhuming Gygax for a bashing session either; I disagree with a lot of his original design choices (and I like to think I would have disagreed with several even back then) but the vast majority of them are irrelevant to the modern game and to this topic.
Rather, the main idea behind this thread is how prevalent the Stormwind Fallacy, i.e. the belief that there is some kind of negative correlation between mechanical optimization and roleplay, continues to be in the modern game. The answer of course is that it's a fallacy for a reason - there is no reason that mechanical optimization needs to be associated with a disregard for roleplay or vice-versa, they are wholly separate axes of a character's identity. And while we'll never be rid of the fallacy entirely, especially in online D&D communities, I think the proportion of players recognizing it to be a fallacy are gradually improving over time. Even with 5e being the most 'rules-light' edition of D&D we've ever had, the designers still recognize that both crunch and fluff are critical components of D&D's secret sauce and always will be.
if the campaign were investigation focused, we likely wouldn't call an INT-optimized character a bad word. same for CHA in an intrigue campaign. or some example with WIS that doesn't derail the point. most of the min/maxing being described is for combat optimization. as discussed, character and campaign mismatches are a communications issue. but is the game itself skewed to have more combat optimization issues? even overlooking game origins, some of the coolest things to earn in-game are combat oriented items and skills. would it help to include more support for generalist campaigns? what would that look like?
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Nothing is forcing you to make your players use the 27 PB recommended by the PHB; if you want your players to make strong charismatic wizards and wise intelligent barbarians and that will bring your table joy, just give them more points to spend, or hand them a fixed array that features higher scores to assign out. 5e has a very "Pirate's Code" approach to DMing.
Plenty of other games have compelling non-combat features available to characters; Exalted, for example, has an entire "class" based on manipulating the weave of fate for better social/story outcomes. They have just as many cool powers as any other "class", they're just not very good in a stand-up fight. (One of my favorite features from that game is Fortuitous Wandering; if you want to be in a scene, you can just show up. You do not have to explain how you got there.) There's plenty of examples of games that handle non-combat skills better than D&D. In fact, I'd struggle to name a game that does them worse. (GURPS, I guess.)
People say D&D is a wargame because that's what it has rules for. There's exceptions, of course, but by and large the game has developed to be more combat focused over time. the reason nobody complains about INT-optimized builds in an investigation-focused campaign is simple: there's only so much you can optimize investigation in a game that barely has any rules for it. If you play a campaign that never uses the Investigation skill, you're just not playing an Investigation-focused campaign. If you play a campaign without using combat features, you are, in a meaningful sense, not playing 5e. That's why people care more about the combat optimization. That's what the game is.
I mean, the majority of classes aren’t so demanding in ability scores that you can’t afford to spread them out into secondary stats; in point of fact Fighters are one of the easiest ones to do it for; they’re SAD and get additional ASI.
Granted, it’s not set up to promote 3 high scores per character, but that is not detrimental to diversity of characterization, and I would argue is actually beneficial. If everyone can excel in half the spread, then there’s less room for individual specialization. Additionally, one can easily use proficiencies to reflect these secondary aspects you want; I actually made a Wizard with the Soldier background one time, which gives the Athletics prof, and it’s a rare DM that wouldn’t let you trade the gaming or vehicle prof of the background for instrument instead. And while I didn’t spec for STR or CHA since I had something else in mind, I easily could have put a few points in either or both, creating a fit Wizard who also plays an instrument well. Ability scores aren’t hard to distribute for an effective and flavorful character, nor are they the sole source of characterization in any case.
Even if you don't like its skill system, GURPS cares way more about non-combat skills and what they mean and do than D&D does.
But it's not actually that D&D 5 doesn't care about non-combat skills. It's got the kind of broad skill categories that you find in games these days that don't aspire to realism. It's mostly weird in that the loose, simple, skill system is attached to much more complex combat mechanics. It's also aware of the sort of game that D&D is, and doesn't try to provide skills that aren't generally useful in D&D games. Is the system great? It is not. But it's adequate for its purpose. Could it have been done better without making things more complex? Almost certainly. (Tool proficiencies in particular create a weird grey area of skills that aren't skills, and should've been worked into the system better.)
D&D 5 is certainly a combat-focused RPG, but that's a way different beast than a wargame.
In my defense I didn't say GURPS's skill system was less considered than D&D's. I just said it was worse. (Mostly because it's an easy target; I honestly have very little experience with GURPS)
I do broadly agree with your assessment of D&D's skill system, provided we agree that D&D is primarily a game about getting in fights. The skill system is a device to add color to non-combat interludes of an otherwise combat-focused system. (Or perform non-standard combat actions, but you'll notice the rules about that get much more precise than out-of-combat skill use.) That's why nobody generally cares if you optimize for skills; they're not what the game is about. That's really all I was trying to say.
I agree that D&D isn't a wargame in the sense of, say, a Warhammer 40k. But I don't think most people are using that kind of precise definition when they call D&D a wargame; it's a game about getting in fights, which generally values simulating those fights in detail over other priorities an RPG might have. Whatever someone wants to call that, that's D&D.
Really the issue with tools and skills is just a common misconception of the basic mechanics of ability checks, partly due to the books being unclear on the matter. Strictly speaking, for any ability check the relevant ability is first determined, and then it’s determined if any of the character’s proficiencies apply. However, since skill proficiencies have a designated primary ability, it causes people to think of the checks in terms of selecting the skill first and then deciding if the primary ability is appropriate or should be changed for a given roll, which makes tools an oddity given they have no designated ability. But the point of tool profs is either to cover gaps in instances not covered by a skill or to provide an alternative source of proficiency that can be applied to ability checks. The lack of a designated primary ability is meant to emphasize their open-endedness.