3) Even if none of that was true, so what? Trying to do things you aren't particularly good at and then dealing with the consequences creates classic RP shenanigans ...
This note, in particular, indicates to me that you may be falling into a well-known but still rather insidious trap, i.e. the "Failure Is More Interesting Than Success" trap that produces a fresh generation of Bohemian Failure Monkeys.
Optimus is stating that in a game with no fighting, there's little reason to play a fighter. This should be an obvious and self-evident statement - why should someone seek to play a character whose primary focus is on martial prowess and force of arms in a game where both of those things are not only meaningless, but generally actively detrimental to your tale? But you seem to be driving at the idea that failing at things is what makes for Good RP.
This is patently untrue.
"Failure is More Interesting than Success" is the most toxic, poisonous, harmful, bass-ackwards piece of Terrible Pithy Internet Witticisms ever created. It is a horrible phrase and it should be struck from the Internet forever, especially as those who fall into its trap end up completely unsalvageable. People who subscribe to this horrendous and self-destructive piece of wisdon't end up optimizing, exactly the same way regular players do. They simply optimize for failure. They create characters with the active and deliberate intent of making them explicitly awful at doing what the game will ask them to do. These are the people who play the socially inept barbarian in a game of courtly intrigue, or the cowardly manipulator in a game of frontier exploration, and claim it's more interesting to play a fish out of water who hates the story they're stuck in and actively impedes the party whenever they can than to play into a game's themes and tone.
Furthermore, these are the people who actively sabotage their own character sheet, allocating stats as poorly and ineffectively as their DM will allow - and not for reasons of chasing a Lofty Character Goal, but specifically so they botch as many rolls as they possibly can. They crow in triumph at every nat 1, they curse the gods for every nat 20, and many of them will actively take actions they know cannot succeed, or will simply say to the DM "I try to do [X] and fail, here's how..." without bothering to roll. These are your Int 8 Wizards, your Dex 8 rogues, or alternatively your bards without one single useful proficiency or one single useful field spell who turn everything into An Emotional Study Of The Human Condition. BFMs take bad spells and use those bad spells deliberately poorly, they load up on three hundred pounds of nonsensical junk nobody even remembers was in the PHB but don't spend a single copper piece or a single ounce of weight on armor, weapons, or survival and adventuring gear, and when the party complains about them being such a disasterpiece boat anchor the BHM either delights in their dismay or turns their nose up at the party for not understanding True Art.
The Bohemian Failure Monkey is so enchanted with the poisonous notion of failure being "more interesting" than success that they will actively pursue a TPK. Their ideal game is one where the party scrambles from disaster to disaster, never achieving a single meaningful goal or scoring a single meaningful victory, constantly making everything worse in their wake as they flounder with their heads only ever so barely above water from catastrophic failure to catastrophic failure until either the lords of the land imprison them all as a danger to themselves and everyone else, or they all end up slain in some meaningless battle somewhere no one will ever discover or remember.
Needless to say, Bohemian Failure Monkeys are among the worst possible tablemates to anyone wanting to play an actual game of D&D, outside of actively caustic or abusive people. The Bohemian Failure Monkey is absolutely, fundamentally, unconquerably incompatible with every other form of D&D player, and all because of that stupid, stupid, stupid Internet Nitwitticism about "failure being more interesting than success"
Please, allow me to correct the Nitwitticism for you, and hopefully help you avoid the trap of becoming a Bohemian Failure Monkey. The actual phrase, with two critical words dumbass Internet pundits took out restored to it, is "overcoming failure is more interesting than effortless success". And even then, it's a largely pointless phrase of the "Effin' doy" sort. "Overcoming adversity is more interesting than effortless victory" is closer, and speaks to the true breakdown and to why Bohemian Failure Monkeys are so worthless and infuriating.
Primarily? BHMs do not overcome adversity. They wallow in it. They collect it. They cover themselves in it. They covet failure the way other people covet glory, or riches, or honor, and in the doing they never overcome anything. And thus, in a way? They're the least interesting characters imagineable.
Please. Not only Anton, but anyone who's been taken in by that venomous "failure is more interesting than success" malarky. Don't fall into the trap. Don't end up a Bohemian Failure Monkey. Your D&D games will never recover if you do, and the only way to staunch the bleeding is amputation. I.e. kicking you out of every last single game where the players would like to try and win instead of wallowing in their own suck.
If I were the DM and one player is clearly going above and beyond with their build, and everyone else isn't...
I'd give the other players the really powerful magic items. Give the fighter a special flame tongue homebrewed with a rarely resisted damage type instead of fire, now their damage hurts a lot even if they have GWM or not. Give the rogue a dancing sword rapier, now they can potentially sneak attack twice.
give the power gamer lesser items.
That's how I'd go about it.
So you'd punish the person fully utilizing their character? I mean, if they aren't cheating and are within the rules, I see no reason to punish them. They're just doing it better. That's life. Maybe the others should talk with that player to get tips on what they can do to improve their character? The "power gamer" may have some decent ideas. I know I have learned a lot from your perspective on various classes and "power gaming" with them.
Btw, I don't think the rogue with a Dancing Sword works for a second Sneak Attack. It's not the rogue attacking, but the Dancing Sword. It would use the rogues attack roll and ability score for the damage modifier, but it makes no mention of using any class abilities with it.
I wouldn't necessarily punish the power gamer, per se. For example, in the campaign I alluded to earlier in the thread, I got a +1 sword at lvl 3 as a fighter. That's pretty darn good. Meanwhile, our arcane trickster got a homebrewed scarab of protection, which is already a legendary rarity item, and the homebrew made it even better. Now, you guys don't know the arcane trickster, but they were THE "timmy" player. the DM specifically tossed them a flying sword their way, and even said he was allowing them to sneak attack twice a round (bonus action attack, action ready attack once turn is over). Did they ever do it? No. I could go on and on about how they basically were an AT rogue in name alone, because in practice they never utilized a single meaningful feature, aside from occasionally tossing out ice knife (which was ok cause once again, the DM also tossed them an intellect headband). Out of game, the player was a peer and great friend who I could say had comparable reasoning skills-- it just never clicked for them in game. They weren't the only one, however, as everyone else was about the same way, save for a munchkin dude who played as a CN barbarian rogue fighter who looted everything as a greedy character would. I liked him a lot!
Basically, I got something that was appropriate for my level, meanwhile the timmy got stuff that God knows they needed. What I'm suggesting is to level the playing field in the best way you can as a DM. Punishing the player is to single them out and dish out consequences after consequences aimed specifically at them. I'm just advocating for equity based on my personal experience of being on the receiving end of that treatment. The result of my experience is we were able to regularly have deadly and challenging combats where everyone was engaged fully and everyone had an opportunity to take the spotlight and share it. I think that was well worth it, and for that reason I advocate it now.
If the optimized player is cool with it that’s fine. But receiving watered down items as compared to your counterparts IS a negative consequence, whether you call it punishment or something else. All the players begin with the same choices at character creation. If someone wants to make Con their dump stat for some story hook about being born with a chronic illness, that’s on them.
Not being equitable in items distribution is not something I would just do without talking to the optimized player first. and getting buy in from him or her.
Optimus is stating that in a game with no fighting, there's little reason to play a fighter. This should be an obvious and self-evident statement - why should someone seek to play a character whose primary focus is on martial prowess and force of arms in a game where both of those things are not only meaningless, but generally actively detrimental to your tale?
Why do people play full casters in settings where magic is outlawed, or super-low magic setting where it's barely present at all?
Why do people play clerics of gods whose worship is forbidden in their campaign world?
Why do people play rogues adventuring in a nation where the penalty for any crime is death?
I created an Eberron warlock once who -- at first level, mind you -- was so wigged out by his powers and was so worried about being discovered that he wouldn't use them when he thought anyone could see him do it, which meant he barely used them at all.
Either the question of "why would you create a character who can't do the things they should be good at" is a confusing one to you, or it isn't. It's got nothing to do with cute memes you picked up from some YouTube video or wherever.
Telling optimizers role-players they're godawful human beings who hate fun, their friends, their game, their DM, and the entire TTRPG hobby just because they don't actively go out of their way to be Bohemian Failure Monkeys fascist math junkies shows a shallow, heavily flawed understanding of how this whole thing works.
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Nobody's ever told roleplayers that, though. DMs bend over backwards to enable the weirdest, jankest, most out-there and obnoxious character concepts...and this thread is kinda living proof that many DMs will go just as far to drive anyone who enjoys playing competent characters that are well trained and accomplished at what they do away from the table. The Stormwind Fallacy was already linked several pages ago, but as usual people ignore it because...
Honestly? The only thing I can come up with is the idea that a handful of 'Role Players' on this board seem to suffer from that other people having better numbers and a better strategy than they do is somehow reductionistic and Against The Game, and anyone who doesn't strive to fail in everything they do is undercutting the soul of narrative itself. It's absolutely bizarre. Like, c'mon. C'mon. The dice will make absolutely sure you fail plenty, no matter how good your shit is. Why not enjoy the successes as they come too, instead of always cursing the missed opportunity to miss an opportunity?
DMs bend over backwards to enable the weirdest, jankest, most out-there and obnoxious character concepts...and this thread is kinda living proof that many DMs will go just as far to drive anyone who enjoys playing competent characters that are well trained and accomplished at what they do away from the table. The Stormwind Fallacy was already linked several pages ago, but as usual people ignore it because...
Wow...the number of broad, sweeping assumptions in this part of your post is staggering to me. I don't bend over backwards for anything. I ask the players to meet me halfway with their character ideas. If they present something that I think will be fun, I'll make an exception, but I don't consider this bending over backwards at all. It's called compromise.
As for DMs 'driving players away from the table' your experience with others DMs is obviously much worse than mine.
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
"Failure is More Interesting than Success" is the most toxic, poisonous, harmful, bass-ackwards piece of Terrible Pithy Internet Witticisms ever created.
You cool, man? It's just a game, bro.
This whole rant reminds of one guy I play with a lot. Lawyer guy who graduated from a decent school, a real straight arrow. That personality seeps into his gameplay, where every choice must be the safest and most direct path to success-- where even the mere prospect of chance, risk, adversity, or deviation from "the plan" causes him near-physical pain. He would surely agree with you.
I've played a lot, and I've played with a lot of different people thanks to the accessibility of online AL-- well into the hundreds range. I've never met this supposed strawman of a failure monkey. I somehow believe I'll never meet this boogeyman either. He's not real, bro. He can't hurt you. Some people simply enjoy taking on risk. Some people enjoy the very idea of roleplaying and having fun, regardless of the result. It doesn't mean they actively want to sabotage their whole party, or that they want to fail. They just understand this is a game. Y'know, for kids!
There is nothing wrong with creating powerful builds. Heck, there's nothing wrong with min-maxing, and some people just like optimizing (Believe me, 100%ing videogames is a long and arduous task with no reward, but I still enjoy it. Why can't players enjoy optimizing their character builds?).
When people hate on min-maxing, they are usually referring to people who min-max in an attempt to be the most powerful player on the board. Players who abuse the game rules not for the benefit of the party, but for their own personal benefit. Player to player balance is far more important than player to DM balance, as the DM is free to alter anything and everything they throw at the players. It's the DM's role to balance encounters, but a party that is unbalanced within and to itself makes that task difficult.
Make sure your players understand that player-to-player balance is more important than being the strongest in the room.
Your rules lawyer and I would not get along, no. I take risks all the time. I'm the ten-Con rogue dashing past the frontline to get at high-value casters in the back counting on the DM rolling low with their AoOs, or the wizard looking to try and turn the tide of a battle with a single perfect, high-risk cast. I'm the artificer that cast Spider Climb to try and charge an entrenched sniper's nest forty feet up a cliff, hoping that luck and a Shield would let me get there. That didn't go great...but I tried it, rather than hunkering down and trading 3/4C shots with ten friggin' archers.
The difference is that when I do these things, I am doing them in the pursuit of success. Failure happens, and it's super dangerous. Often recklessly so...but the payoff when it works can be supreme. A single bold move, executed well and with the fortunes of Fate behind it, can sway entire campaigns. That's why I like to make sure my characters are competently trained - so they can take those insane risks and have any kind of chance of success at all, rather than the Bohemian Failure Monkey who has ensured his highest number is a 13, his class's core stat is his lowest number, and all his proficiencies are in skills he knows he'll never use because "LAAAWL rolling really awful and watching everybody else have to scramble to catch it when I screw up is so much fun! I've gotten three of my comrades killed so far, I'm hoping to get a fourth before Wintersday!"
A Bohemian Failure Monkey is taking those risks in the express and explicit hope that they fail, because to them nothing is more "fun" than watching the rest of their party scream in angry frustration as yet another total disaster unfolds in front of them - often for the third or fourth time that session.
Again, simply look at this thread. "How do I deal with That One Guy who's powergaming? How do I get people to stop powergaming and just play what's fun?" with the assumption being that the only stuff that can be "fun" is trashy lolmeme Simpleton Squad nonsense and anyone who builds a character that is at all good at what they do is deliberately trying to strangle the fun from their game. Look how often that question is asked. "How do I get people to stop caring about numbers and just play fun?" Answer: you don't. You can't. Because when I sit down to write out a new character, one of the first things I ask myself is "how did this person survive to become a fully-fledged adventurer, however low level?" If the answer is "by the grace of the gods and backstory plot armor thicker than Tiamat's thundering thighs", that character is discarded and replaced with a new seed that will actually produce someone worth playing.
There is nothing wrong with creating powerful builds. Heck, there's nothing wrong with min-maxing, and some people just like optimizing (Believe me, 100%ing videogames is a long and arduous task with no reward, but I still enjoy it. Why can't players enjoy optimizing their character builds?).
When people hate on min-maxing, they are usually referring to people who min-max in an attempt to be the most powerful player on the board. Players who abuse the game rules not for the benefit of the party, but for their own personal benefit. Player to player balance is far more important than player to DM balance, as the DM is free to alter anything and everything they throw at the players. It's the DM's role to balance encounters, but a party that is unbalanced within and to itself makes that task difficult.
Make sure your players understand that player-to-player balance is more important than being the strongest in the room.
But the thing is if you have one or a couple players optimizing, and others making weak builds… why should the optimizers be looked at as the problem? How about the weaker ones step up their game? Personally I don’t think it needs to come to that. Mentor them if they want it, because often newer players want to be strong but don’t know how yet. If they don’t and they just want to run with a particular build concept, cool! Seriously, I want them to have that autonomy. BUT…. *IF* you’re going to say the power imbalance is a problem, why should the guy who knows and uses the most effective feats and spells be considered the culprit by default?
The mechanics of 5E make a true “min-max” impossible. If you roll for stats you get whatever the dice give you. Point buy and standard array are very restrictive in both directions (meaning up and down). You can’t sacrifice skills for combat power.
So basically you just have players who distribute their ability scores wisely (and almost all experienced players do at least that much), and who make effective choices for races, subclasses, feats, and/or spells.
Again, simply look at this thread. "How do I deal with That One Guy who's powergaming? How do I get people to stop powergaming and just play what's fun?" with the assumption being that the only stuff that can be "fun" is trashy lolmeme Simpleton Squad nonsense and anyone who builds a character that is at all good at what they do is deliberately trying to strangle the fun from their game. Look how often that question is asked. "How do I get people to stop caring about numbers and just play fun?"
Literally the only people in this thread who have made this assumption are the people like you calling it the ultimate scourge of D&D
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Again, simply look at this thread. "How do I deal with That One Guy who's powergaming? How do I get people to stop powergaming and just play what's fun?" with the assumption being that the only stuff that can be "fun" is trashy lolmeme Simpleton Squad nonsense and anyone who builds a character that is at all good at what they do is deliberately trying to strangle the fun from their game. Look how often that question is asked. "How do I get people to stop caring about numbers and just play fun?"
Literally the only people in this thread who have made this assumption are the people like you calling it the ultimate scourge of D&D
I just did a word search on every page. The word "scourge" only appears once, on what you just posted here. Now twice now that I've also typed it.
Again, simply look at this thread. "How do I deal with That One Guy who's powergaming? How do I get people to stop powergaming and just play what's fun?" with the assumption being that the only stuff that can be "fun" is trashy lolmeme Simpleton Squad nonsense and anyone who builds a character that is at all good at what they do is deliberately trying to strangle the fun from their game. Look how often that question is asked. "How do I get people to stop caring about numbers and just play fun?"
Literally the only people in this thread who have made this assumption are the people like you calling it the ultimate scourge of D&D
I just did a word search on every page. The word "scourge" only appears once, on what you just posted here. Now twice now that I've also typed it.
The original post was a hypothetical about a "Min/Max" person sucking the fun from the party....its literally in the premise of the thread that having one min/max player is going to ruin the fun for others....or at least ask why people want to min/max in the first place.
It poses a hypothetical situation in which a person has "gone nuts" and decided to "fully optimize" their character and this causes a disruption in play for others.
It starts with a false premise that one person optimizing will cause issues for others and askes how to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.
Again, simply look at this thread. "How do I deal with That One Guy who's powergaming? How do I get people to stop powergaming and just play what's fun?" with the assumption being that the only stuff that can be "fun" is trashy lolmeme Simpleton Squad nonsense and anyone who builds a character that is at all good at what they do is deliberately trying to strangle the fun from their game. Look how often that question is asked. "How do I get people to stop caring about numbers and just play fun?"
Literally the only people in this thread who have made this assumption are the people like you calling it the ultimate scourge of D&D
I just did a word search on every page. The word "scourge" only appears once, on what you just posted here. Now twice now that I've also typed it.
Funny! I'd tried that search with ultimate! :D
Yeah, the rant was too long to copy so I paraphrased it. My bad, I guess?
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The original post was a hypothetical about a "Min/Max" person sucking the fun from the party....its literally in the premise of the thread that having one min/max player is going to ruin the fun for others....or at least ask why people want to min/max in the first place.
It poses a hypothetical situation in which a person has "gone nuts" and decided to "fully optimize" their character and this causes a disruption in play for others.
It starts with a false premise that one person optimizing will cause issues for others and askes how to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.
You can disagree with the proposed scenario -- many people have in this thread -- but that's then not an assumption.
The assumption is the one you just made again -- extrapolating it to mean all "optimizers" or "min-maxers" are disruptive to play.
And again, the only people making that assumption are the ones who feel the need to prop it up as a straw man to take thwacks at.
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Anton, you've spent the whole thread taking potshots at anyone who decides playing a disorganized mess of a character with no redeeming qualities isn't for them. Pardon a few of us if we ended up shooting back after taking harassing fire for several pages.
Like I said. DMs will bend over backwards to accommodate people who want to play some janked-out, Truly Artistic(TM) thing with the sort of torturously Byzantine backstory one might expect from an eighteenth-century penny dreadful. The kind of thing where even oft-maligned anime fans would look at it and say "Bruh. Bruh." But the moment someone says "my character is a human former soldier, scarred but unbroken by war. He retired after his tours due to differences with the Lord's Council, but he remembers his skills and he values his comrades highly. He'll protect this new band, just like he protected his old unit mates", we get threads entitled "SentiPAM-To-Be is Going to Break My Game, How Do I Stop Him?"
Here's the thing, Anton. You want to play that Truly Artistic thing with godawful numbers and half a dozen crippling issues and phobias that render him effectively little more than a Commoner with a thiccer HP reserve? Sure. Go ahead. I won't tell you what to play. But you don't then get to yell at me because I choose NOT to follow you down the path of True Art and play a barely-functional basket case. I have more fun when I'm playing a character that could realistically aspire to be the kind of hero the story is looking for, and I'm going to react realistically and appropriately to someone playing a character that is constantly, actively, deliberately screwing everything up for everyone else.
Anton, you've spent the whole thread taking potshots at anyone who decides playing a disorganized mess of a character with no redeeming qualities isn't for them.
Then you should be able to quote those posts and potshots, right?
Otherwise, you're doing exactly what I've said you're doing.
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I'm talking about someone who has gone for the most broken possible build. Isn't that likely to make the rest of the players have less fun? If one player is pretty much carrying the rest, how is that a good experience for the folk being carried? [...] DMs, what do you do?
There's no premise that anyone will have an issue, because OP is asking if PCs will have an issue, and if so, what DMs should do about it. One possible answer is "this doesn't cause an issue for my PCs, so I don't do anything about it." Another possible answer is "this causes an issue for my PCs, and I solve it by doing X" - for example, someone recently posted that, stating that their X was giving better magic items to PCs with worse combat builds, to even up internal party balance. Someone else just posted something similar, suggesting that X be "coach the PCs with worse combat builds at making better combat builds". All of this is on topic and answering OP's question. It seems much less helpful to answer "how dare you ask this question!" or the like.
OP, my answer is that in-game actions should have in-game consequences. Throw challenges at the party and have them face them, as is appropriate for your campaign. That can mean a combat challenge where people who are bad at surviving combat may die. That can mean a social challenge where people who are bad at espionage may be arrested. It can mean an exploration challenge where anyone who can't stay hidden is spotted and the mission fails. It's the responsibility of your PCs to make their characters to occupy different niches in the party's ecology, and your responsibility to throw challenges at them where different niches get opportunities to shine. If you have one PC whose niche is combat, make sure combat happens (so that PC can shine) and make sure whatever the other PCs are good at also happens. If your PCs aren't building themselves to fill any niche, any boredom they experience from never getting to shine is their own fault.
I'm talking about someone who has gone for the most broken possible build. Isn't that likely to make the rest of the players have less fun? If one player is pretty much carrying the rest, how is that a good experience for the folk being carried? [...] DMs, what do you do?
There's no premise that anyone will have an issue, because OP is asking if PCs will have an issue, and if so, what DMs should do about it. One possible answer is "this doesn't cause an issue for my PCs, so I don't do anything about it." Another possible answer is "this causes an issue for my PCs, and I solve it by doing X" - for example, someone recently posted that, stating that their X was giving better magic items to PCs with worse combat builds, to even up internal party balance. Someone else just posted something similar, suggesting that X be "coach the PCs with worse combat builds at making better combat builds". All of this is on topic and answering OP's question. It seems much less helpful to answer "how dare you ask this question!" or the like.
OP, my answer is that in-game actions should have in-game consequences. Throw challenges at the party and have them face them, as is appropriate for your campaign. That can mean a combat challenge where people who are bad at surviving combat may die. That can mean a social challenge where people who are bad at espionage may be arrested. It can mean an exploration challenge where anyone who can't stay hidden is spotted and the mission fails. It's the responsibility of your PCs to make their characters to occupy different niches in the party's ecology, and your responsibility to throw challenges at them where different niches get opportunities to shine. If you have one PC whose niche is combat, make sure combat happens (so that PC can shine) and make sure whatever the other PCs are good at also happens. If your PCs aren't building themselves to fill any niche, any boredom they experience from never getting to shine is their own fault.
Yes the premise is "If one person min/maxes will there be problems?" the fact that they talk about ways to mitigate this "problem" kind of answers the question IMO.
It assumes that the answer will be "yes" at least IMO.
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Anton.
Are you familiar with the concept of a Bohemian Failure Monkey?
This note, in particular, indicates to me that you may be falling into a well-known but still rather insidious trap, i.e. the "Failure Is More Interesting Than Success" trap that produces a fresh generation of Bohemian Failure Monkeys.
Optimus is stating that in a game with no fighting, there's little reason to play a fighter. This should be an obvious and self-evident statement - why should someone seek to play a character whose primary focus is on martial prowess and force of arms in a game where both of those things are not only meaningless, but generally actively detrimental to your tale? But you seem to be driving at the idea that failing at things is what makes for Good RP.
This is patently untrue.
"Failure is More Interesting than Success" is the most toxic, poisonous, harmful, bass-ackwards piece of Terrible Pithy Internet Witticisms ever created. It is a horrible phrase and it should be struck from the Internet forever, especially as those who fall into its trap end up completely unsalvageable. People who subscribe to this horrendous and self-destructive piece of wisdon't end up optimizing, exactly the same way regular players do. They simply optimize for failure. They create characters with the active and deliberate intent of making them explicitly awful at doing what the game will ask them to do. These are the people who play the socially inept barbarian in a game of courtly intrigue, or the cowardly manipulator in a game of frontier exploration, and claim it's more interesting to play a fish out of water who hates the story they're stuck in and actively impedes the party whenever they can than to play into a game's themes and tone.
Furthermore, these are the people who actively sabotage their own character sheet, allocating stats as poorly and ineffectively as their DM will allow - and not for reasons of chasing a Lofty Character Goal, but specifically so they botch as many rolls as they possibly can. They crow in triumph at every nat 1, they curse the gods for every nat 20, and many of them will actively take actions they know cannot succeed, or will simply say to the DM "I try to do [X] and fail, here's how..." without bothering to roll. These are your Int 8 Wizards, your Dex 8 rogues, or alternatively your bards without one single useful proficiency or one single useful field spell who turn everything into An Emotional Study Of The Human Condition. BFMs take bad spells and use those bad spells deliberately poorly, they load up on three hundred pounds of nonsensical junk nobody even remembers was in the PHB but don't spend a single copper piece or a single ounce of weight on armor, weapons, or survival and adventuring gear, and when the party complains about them being such a disasterpiece boat anchor the BHM either delights in their dismay or turns their nose up at the party for not understanding True Art.
The Bohemian Failure Monkey is so enchanted with the poisonous notion of failure being "more interesting" than success that they will actively pursue a TPK. Their ideal game is one where the party scrambles from disaster to disaster, never achieving a single meaningful goal or scoring a single meaningful victory, constantly making everything worse in their wake as they flounder with their heads only ever so barely above water from catastrophic failure to catastrophic failure until either the lords of the land imprison them all as a danger to themselves and everyone else, or they all end up slain in some meaningless battle somewhere no one will ever discover or remember.
Needless to say, Bohemian Failure Monkeys are among the worst possible tablemates to anyone wanting to play an actual game of D&D, outside of actively caustic or abusive people. The Bohemian Failure Monkey is absolutely, fundamentally, unconquerably incompatible with every other form of D&D player, and all because of that stupid, stupid, stupid Internet Nitwitticism about "failure being more interesting than success"
Please, allow me to correct the Nitwitticism for you, and hopefully help you avoid the trap of becoming a Bohemian Failure Monkey. The actual phrase, with two critical words dumbass Internet pundits took out restored to it, is "overcoming failure is more interesting than effortless success". And even then, it's a largely pointless phrase of the "Effin' doy" sort. "Overcoming adversity is more interesting than effortless victory" is closer, and speaks to the true breakdown and to why Bohemian Failure Monkeys are so worthless and infuriating.
Primarily? BHMs do not overcome adversity. They wallow in it. They collect it. They cover themselves in it. They covet failure the way other people covet glory, or riches, or honor, and in the doing they never overcome anything. And thus, in a way? They're the least interesting characters imagineable.
Please. Not only Anton, but anyone who's been taken in by that venomous "failure is more interesting than success" malarky. Don't fall into the trap. Don't end up a Bohemian Failure Monkey. Your D&D games will never recover if you do, and the only way to staunch the bleeding is amputation. I.e. kicking you out of every last single game where the players would like to try and win instead of wallowing in their own suck.
Please do not contact or message me.
If the optimized player is cool with it that’s fine. But receiving watered down items as compared to your counterparts IS a negative consequence, whether you call it punishment or something else. All the players begin with the same choices at character creation. If someone wants to make Con their dump stat for some story hook about being born with a chronic illness, that’s on them.
Not being equitable in items distribution is not something I would just do without talking to the optimized player first. and getting buy in from him or her.
It feels like at least half this thread is people putting words in other people's mouths so they have something to argue against. It's amazing.
Why do people play full casters in settings where magic is outlawed, or super-low magic setting where it's barely present at all?
Why do people play clerics of gods whose worship is forbidden in their campaign world?
Why do people play rogues adventuring in a nation where the penalty for any crime is death?
I created an Eberron warlock once who -- at first level, mind you -- was so wigged out by his powers and was so worried about being discovered that he wouldn't use them when he thought anyone could see him do it, which meant he barely used them at all.
Either the question of "why would you create a character who can't do the things they should be good at" is a confusing one to you, or it isn't. It's got nothing to do with cute memes you picked up from some YouTube video or wherever.
Or maybe this will make more sense to you...
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Nobody's ever told roleplayers that, though. DMs bend over backwards to enable the weirdest, jankest, most out-there and obnoxious character concepts...and this thread is kinda living proof that many DMs will go just as far to drive anyone who enjoys playing competent characters that are well trained and accomplished at what they do away from the table. The Stormwind Fallacy was already linked several pages ago, but as usual people ignore it because...
Honestly? The only thing I can come up with is the idea that a handful of 'Role Players' on this board seem to suffer from that other people having better numbers and a better strategy than they do is somehow reductionistic and Against The Game, and anyone who doesn't strive to fail in everything they do is undercutting the soul of narrative itself. It's absolutely bizarre. Like, c'mon. C'mon. The dice will make absolutely sure you fail plenty, no matter how good your shit is. Why not enjoy the successes as they come too, instead of always cursing the missed opportunity to miss an opportunity?
Please do not contact or message me.
Wow...the number of broad, sweeping assumptions in this part of your post is staggering to me. I don't bend over backwards for anything. I ask the players to meet me halfway with their character ideas. If they present something that I think will be fun, I'll make an exception, but I don't consider this bending over backwards at all. It's called compromise.
As for DMs 'driving players away from the table' your experience with others DMs is obviously much worse than mine.
I mean, you just did
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
You cool, man? It's just a game, bro.
This whole rant reminds of one guy I play with a lot. Lawyer guy who graduated from a decent school, a real straight arrow. That personality seeps into his gameplay, where every choice must be the safest and most direct path to success-- where even the mere prospect of chance, risk, adversity, or deviation from "the plan" causes him near-physical pain. He would surely agree with you.
I've played a lot, and I've played with a lot of different people thanks to the accessibility of online AL-- well into the hundreds range. I've never met this supposed strawman of a failure monkey. I somehow believe I'll never meet this boogeyman either. He's not real, bro. He can't hurt you. Some people simply enjoy taking on risk. Some people enjoy the very idea of roleplaying and having fun, regardless of the result. It doesn't mean they actively want to sabotage their whole party, or that they want to fail. They just understand this is a game. Y'know, for kids!
There is nothing wrong with creating powerful builds. Heck, there's nothing wrong with min-maxing, and some people just like optimizing (Believe me, 100%ing videogames is a long and arduous task with no reward, but I still enjoy it. Why can't players enjoy optimizing their character builds?).
When people hate on min-maxing, they are usually referring to people who min-max in an attempt to be the most powerful player on the board. Players who abuse the game rules not for the benefit of the party, but for their own personal benefit. Player to player balance is far more important than player to DM balance, as the DM is free to alter anything and everything they throw at the players. It's the DM's role to balance encounters, but a party that is unbalanced within and to itself makes that task difficult.
Make sure your players understand that player-to-player balance is more important than being the strongest in the room.
Your rules lawyer and I would not get along, no. I take risks all the time. I'm the ten-Con rogue dashing past the frontline to get at high-value casters in the back counting on the DM rolling low with their AoOs, or the wizard looking to try and turn the tide of a battle with a single perfect, high-risk cast. I'm the artificer that cast Spider Climb to try and charge an entrenched sniper's nest forty feet up a cliff, hoping that luck and a Shield would let me get there. That didn't go great...but I tried it, rather than hunkering down and trading 3/4C shots with ten friggin' archers.
The difference is that when I do these things, I am doing them in the pursuit of success. Failure happens, and it's super dangerous. Often recklessly so...but the payoff when it works can be supreme. A single bold move, executed well and with the fortunes of Fate behind it, can sway entire campaigns. That's why I like to make sure my characters are competently trained - so they can take those insane risks and have any kind of chance of success at all, rather than the Bohemian Failure Monkey who has ensured his highest number is a 13, his class's core stat is his lowest number, and all his proficiencies are in skills he knows he'll never use because "LAAAWL rolling really awful and watching everybody else have to scramble to catch it when I screw up is so much fun! I've gotten three of my comrades killed so far, I'm hoping to get a fourth before Wintersday!"
A Bohemian Failure Monkey is taking those risks in the express and explicit hope that they fail, because to them nothing is more "fun" than watching the rest of their party scream in angry frustration as yet another total disaster unfolds in front of them - often for the third or fourth time that session.
Again, simply look at this thread. "How do I deal with That One Guy who's powergaming? How do I get people to stop powergaming and just play what's fun?" with the assumption being that the only stuff that can be "fun" is trashy lolmeme Simpleton Squad nonsense and anyone who builds a character that is at all good at what they do is deliberately trying to strangle the fun from their game. Look how often that question is asked. "How do I get people to stop caring about numbers and just play fun?"
Answer: you don't. You can't. Because when I sit down to write out a new character, one of the first things I ask myself is "how did this person survive to become a fully-fledged adventurer, however low level?" If the answer is "by the grace of the gods and backstory plot armor thicker than Tiamat's thundering thighs", that character is discarded and replaced with a new seed that will actually produce someone worth playing.
Please do not contact or message me.
But the thing is if you have one or a couple players optimizing, and others making weak builds… why should the optimizers be looked at as the problem? How about the weaker ones step up their game? Personally I don’t think it needs to come to that. Mentor them if they want it, because often newer players want to be strong but don’t know how yet. If they don’t and they just want to run with a particular build concept, cool! Seriously, I want them to have that autonomy. BUT…. *IF* you’re going to say the power imbalance is a problem, why should the guy who knows and uses the most effective feats and spells be considered the culprit by default?
The mechanics of 5E make a true “min-max” impossible. If you roll for stats you get whatever the dice give you. Point buy and standard array are very restrictive in both directions (meaning up and down). You can’t sacrifice skills for combat power.
So basically you just have players who distribute their ability scores wisely (and almost all experienced players do at least that much), and who make effective choices for races, subclasses, feats, and/or spells.
Literally the only people in this thread who have made this assumption are the people like you calling it the ultimate scourge of D&D
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I just did a word search on every page. The word "scourge" only appears once, on what you just posted here. Now twice now that I've also typed it.
Funny! I'd tried that search with ultimate! :D
The original post was a hypothetical about a "Min/Max" person sucking the fun from the party....its literally in the premise of the thread that having one min/max player is going to ruin the fun for others....or at least ask why people want to min/max in the first place.
It poses a hypothetical situation in which a person has "gone nuts" and decided to "fully optimize" their character and this causes a disruption in play for others.
It starts with a false premise that one person optimizing will cause issues for others and askes how to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist.
Yeah, the rant was too long to copy so I paraphrased it. My bad, I guess?
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
You can disagree with the proposed scenario -- many people have in this thread -- but that's then not an assumption.
The assumption is the one you just made again -- extrapolating it to mean all "optimizers" or "min-maxers" are disruptive to play.
And again, the only people making that assumption are the ones who feel the need to prop it up as a straw man to take thwacks at.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Anton, you've spent the whole thread taking potshots at anyone who decides playing a disorganized mess of a character with no redeeming qualities isn't for them. Pardon a few of us if we ended up shooting back after taking harassing fire for several pages.
Like I said. DMs will bend over backwards to accommodate people who want to play some janked-out, Truly Artistic(TM) thing with the sort of torturously Byzantine backstory one might expect from an eighteenth-century penny dreadful. The kind of thing where even oft-maligned anime fans would look at it and say "Bruh. Bruh." But the moment someone says "my character is a human former soldier, scarred but unbroken by war. He retired after his tours due to differences with the Lord's Council, but he remembers his skills and he values his comrades highly. He'll protect this new band, just like he protected his old unit mates", we get threads entitled "SentiPAM-To-Be is Going to Break My Game, How Do I Stop Him?"
Here's the thing, Anton. You want to play that Truly Artistic thing with godawful numbers and half a dozen crippling issues and phobias that render him effectively little more than a Commoner with a thiccer HP reserve? Sure. Go ahead. I won't tell you what to play. But you don't then get to yell at me because I choose NOT to follow you down the path of True Art and play a barely-functional basket case. I have more fun when I'm playing a character that could realistically aspire to be the kind of hero the story is looking for, and I'm going to react realistically and appropriately to someone playing a character that is constantly, actively, deliberately screwing everything up for everyone else.
Please do not contact or message me.
Then you should be able to quote those posts and potshots, right?
Otherwise, you're doing exactly what I've said you're doing.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
As a reminder, OP's fundamental question is this:
There's no premise that anyone will have an issue, because OP is asking if PCs will have an issue, and if so, what DMs should do about it. One possible answer is "this doesn't cause an issue for my PCs, so I don't do anything about it." Another possible answer is "this causes an issue for my PCs, and I solve it by doing X" - for example, someone recently posted that, stating that their X was giving better magic items to PCs with worse combat builds, to even up internal party balance. Someone else just posted something similar, suggesting that X be "coach the PCs with worse combat builds at making better combat builds". All of this is on topic and answering OP's question. It seems much less helpful to answer "how dare you ask this question!" or the like.
OP, my answer is that in-game actions should have in-game consequences. Throw challenges at the party and have them face them, as is appropriate for your campaign. That can mean a combat challenge where people who are bad at surviving combat may die. That can mean a social challenge where people who are bad at espionage may be arrested. It can mean an exploration challenge where anyone who can't stay hidden is spotted and the mission fails. It's the responsibility of your PCs to make their characters to occupy different niches in the party's ecology, and your responsibility to throw challenges at them where different niches get opportunities to shine. If you have one PC whose niche is combat, make sure combat happens (so that PC can shine) and make sure whatever the other PCs are good at also happens. If your PCs aren't building themselves to fill any niche, any boredom they experience from never getting to shine is their own fault.
Yes the premise is "If one person min/maxes will there be problems?" the fact that they talk about ways to mitigate this "problem" kind of answers the question IMO.
It assumes that the answer will be "yes" at least IMO.