This only applies to RPGA games. It does not apply to home games; people may play home games however they like.
Roleplaying does not increase your chances of winning, it does not grant you bonuses to rolls, and will not save your character from death.
There are only three things that will keep you alive (a.k.a. determine encounter success): Rolls (uncontrollable) Character Build/Stats (controllable) Decisions (controllable)
Rolls: Completely random and uncontrollable, so this cannot be optimized. Things that let you change or modify your roll are part of your powers/abilities and thus fall into Character Build/Stats, not Rolls. And of course, players should not be cheating when they roll (cutting edges of their die so that the 20 appears more often, using rolling techniques, etc). If that is a problem, just use a random number generator program.
Character Build/Stats: Stats, abilities, equipment, feats, etc. These are all controllable and increase your chances of success. When you attack an enemy, it is your attack roll versus the enemy's defense. When you perform a skill check, it is your stats versus the opposing DC. So players should pick the race, class, stats, etc. that best optimizes their character. On a similar note, players are not supposed to know what the adventure is like ahead of time, so it is best to try to have an optimized, well balanced party in order to deal with all possible challenges.
Decisions: Controllable. Players should be optimizing their turns and actions. Failure to do so increases your chances of dying. So know your abilities, don't forget bonuses, target low defenses, and make the best tactical decisions possible.
In order to tailor to lots of players, RPGA games and what determines success must be very simple, structured, and mainstream. As a result, these adventures play out like a boardgame, where success is determined by numbers and not roleplaying. If you do not optimize your numbers, you increase your chances of failing encounters, which increases your chances of dying. I don't know about you, but I hate dying. When you die you lose potential experience, gold, items, and most importantly, time. It takes so many adventures and so much time to level your character, so increasing that amount of time is just frustrating.
In order to avoid this waste of time, always build an optimized character... or just don't play at all.
DarkFel, you're entitled to your opinion, and certainly welcome to avoid playing with other players who choose to play unoptimized characters, but the RPGA is a big tent, and you should recognize that "play my way, or don't bother to play at all" is asking for strong reactions.
Going to give this a chance for some productive discussion, but if it does go into flaming, I'll ask to have it locked.
Play nicely.
[/VCL HAT]
"Of course [Richard] has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183, and we're barbarians!" - Eleanor of Aquitaine, "The Lion in Winter"
ok, i will bite. Althought I probably should not....
"Roleplaying does not increase your chances of winning"
What is winning? You get a slip of paper with some story rewards? You get max XP and gold and a pick from a bundle? You get bragging rites that you made it through mod TROL1-1 with out anyone getting bloodied? That you can nova with an action point and kill 1/2 an encounter by your self if you roll lucky? That you can whip out that calculator and prove that you do more DPR with your build than mine?
For me and most of the people I have encounted through playing LFR, winning is about having fun. Fun is not quantitative. Fun is qualitiative and varies from person to person...surely you know this. If you have fun building optimized characters...more power to you. Me? I want to play at a table where one player can quote rules from the PHB, one player likes to quote Princess Bride A LOT, one player is min/maxed to the hilt, one player has never played at a con before, one player only speaks in funny voices, and one player whose character is so fluffed up that you can't tell what class they are. And all of them are eating pizza, rolling dice and laughing....and guess what they just TKP'd. That to me is a win.
Some of my best moments playing D&D were dying. I remember them all. Some random combat that we breezed through? I don't remember any of them. But that time I grabbed that gem and exploded....THAT I remember. We all had a blast. I won. That was over 15 years ago.....we still talk about it today.
And now playing RPGA and LFR. At a recent con I attended a player was playing an invoker that was so fluffed up that you could not tell what class he was. He was not optimized or min/maxed or whatever. I guarantee that if I ever see him again....I will remember guarding the mules with Verse the enforcer of Oghma. I could care less about the XP, gold, or paper slip. For me (and everyone at that table) it was about the fun and experiences we had together. If you feel different, I am not going to tell you how to play. But I will say that I think you might be playing the wrong game.
Ah, Verse...Yes, that character is awesome. I'd play with him any time.
Really, I think it's not so much optimization that everyone should have, so much as the awareness of the level of optimization their character has. Someone might naively build a character with a 14 in the primary stat and expect it to work well, resulting in unhappiness when it doesn't perform. However, purposefully putting a 12 in your primary stat, knowing what will happen and how to cope, is far superior.
What were the moment shwne I though I had 'won' the game?
- When a character finally, after five years of denial, admitted to be in love with another character, and had that love returned - When another character accepted a proposal of marriage. - When a character, after an epic battle, had a silver dragon raised from the dead - When we fought a dragon, and managed to down it in the last action we had before it would have killed all of us. This would not have been such a victory if we had had it easy. - When my character threw herself inf ront of a prisoner to take a hit from another character intend to kill him. the prisoner later turned on us, but I still think I 'won' at that point.
There are a lot of other examples I don't have time for to write down. 'Winning' is not [necessarily] about getting xp, gold, or killing monsters. It is [IMHO] about having cool dramatic moments that drive your character and the story, and that you still remember several years later [which may consist of the aforementioned if that drives you, but not necessarily]. Alle else is a lot of fun and excitement, but it has little to do with 'winning' [according to this definition].
What were the moment shwne I though I had 'won' the game?
- When a character finally, after five years of denial, admitted to be in love with another character, and had that love returned - When another character accepted a proposal of marriage. - When a character, after an epic battle, had a silver dragon raised from the dead - When we fought a dragon, and managed to down it in the last action we had before it would have killed all of us. This would not have been such a victory if we had had it easy. - When my character threw herself inf ront of a prisoner to take a hit from another character intend to kill him. the prisoner later turned on us, but I still think I 'won' at that point.
There are a lot of other examples I don't have time for to write down. 'Winning'is not about getting xp, gold, or killing monsters. It is about having cool dramatic moments that drive your character and the story, and that you still remember several years later. Alle else is a lot of fun and excitement, but it has little to do with 'winning'.
To be fair, we're asking him to not define how to play the game, lets not turn it around and tell him what winning means (even though I agree with you gomez), to the OP maybe winning IS being the guy who can kill the room in one turn without using an action point, who are we to tell him that's the wrong way to play, if that's what he finds fun. I suggest we just let the guy say his thing as he did, ignore it and hope he'll just go away since he obviously feels differently about it than most of us or is just trying to provoke responses.
Do I understand why someone would make a dwarven swordmage? No. But its that persons perogative to build one.
Someone building a dwarven swordmage is just absolutely full of win.
I don't see any problem in the OP ideas-it reminds me of the kind of arguments you would make in Physics etc. It has some potential for being an interesting post, but I am not sure what the end gain would be.
Dark... err... whatever your overly generic bad guy name is,
You are forgetting one x-factor. In every game, there is a DM. And, the DM, not the adventure makes the final decision on what rewards you get.
As a DM, I can decide how much experience you get, how much gold you get, what items from the adventure you get access to, and what story awards you earn. Per the guidelines written into the first page of the adventure, I can use my own judgment for all of those things, I can be reasonably arbitrary in my judgment, and I can give different rewards to different characters.
If player A roleplays with the village chieftan and player B simply stares at his I-Pod waiting for the next fight, I can choose to give the 40 minor quest XP, 10 gold paid by the chieftan, and access to +2 Frost Weapon to player A and not to player B. Similarly, if player A roleplays with the big bad guy before the fight and player B simply attacks without a word, I can have the monsters focus damage on player B. Heck, if both characters fall, I can have the monsters coup de grace player B and stabilize player A.
Choose not to roleplay, if that is your will. It will hurt you in obtaining your win conditions in any game I run. And, I will not warn you of this before you sit at my table. If all you do is not roleplay or roleplay counter to your character in order to get the prize, it will be only a slight loss. If you make the game less fun for other players at the table due to your attitude, I will strip rewards much more aggressively.
No, I am not cheating or being vindictive. I am applying a set of guidelines that is actually written into the adventures. Creativity and roleplay are encouraged and many rewards in the adventure require these things. DME allows a DM to make slight modifications, like moving where treasure or other rewards appear in the adventure or adjusting how they are earned.
Dark... err... whatever your overly generic bad guy name is,
You are forgetting one x-factor. In every game, there is a DM. And, the DM, not the adventure makes the final decision on what rewards you get.
As a DM, I can decide how much experience you get, how much gold you get, what items from the adventure you get access to, and what story awards you earn. Per the guidelines written into the first page of the adventure, I can use my own judgment for all of those things, I can be reasonably arbitrary in my judgment, and I can give different rewards to different characters.
If player A roleplays with the village chieftan and player B simply stares at his I-Pod waiting for the next fight, I can choose to give the 40 minor quest XP, 10 gold paid by the chieftan, and access to +2 Frost Weapon to player A and not to player B. Similarly, if player A roleplays with the big bad guy before the fight and player B simply attacks without a word, I can have the monsters focus damage on player B. Heck, if both characters fall, I can have the monsters coup de grace player B and stabilize player A.
Choose not to roleplay, if that is your will. It will hurt you in obtaining your win conditions in any game I run. And, I will not warn you of this before you sit at my table. If all you do is not roleplay or roleplay counter to your character in order to get the prize, it will be only a slight loss. If you make the game less fun for other players at the table due to your attitude, I will strip rewards much more aggressively.
No, I am not cheating or being vindictive. I am applying a set of guidelines that is actually written into the adventures. Creativity and roleplay are encouraged and many rewards in the adventure require these things. DME allows a DM to make slight modifications, like moving where treasure or other rewards appear in the adventure or adjusting how they are earned.
Be well.
-SYB
Ah the horrors DME. Please remind me to never play at your table.
As for the subject at hand, while I do not agree with the OP I do believe that every player has a certain responsibility to be at least minimally effective. The game may be all about fun but you owe it to the other players to be capable and willing to fulfill whatever role your character is supposed to fill. It's fairly safe to assume that your party members don't have fun failing the objective because they have to carry you.
In LG you could get away with having two contributing party members and four others along for the ride. In LFR this doesn't work nearly as well. Everyone needs to do their part. So while I disagree that we all need to be 18 Str/18 Con warforged fighters please leave your 14 dex/14 cha tiefling rogues at home too.
