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Jun 24, 2010 -- 7:55AM, Kurald_Galain wrote:

I don't agree with that advice. Asking players to deliberately make bad choices in order to get a challenge isn't really very challenging. Playing a ranger does not become more challenging if you use Careful Attack instead of Twin Strike; it's just a boring choice.

I think the Ranger who takes the feat True Arrow Style(free ranged basic attack against same target as free action on miss, grant CA when using Careful Attack) and Throw and Stab) would be a lot more fun than a Twin Striking Ranger. Lots of movement and tactical options.

Admittedly, you don't focus fire quite as well as a Twin Striking Ranger, but if Twin Strike didn't exist, people would be playing that combo quite happily, I think...people don't need to pick up two interrupt/minor action attack powers to work well in 4e, but a lot of players do that(and then wonder why LFR is too easy...)

Jun 24, 2010 -- 3:25PM, bluemoonadco wrote:

To the first quote....  And not giving your best effort is fun for you?

Your best effort... doing what?

The difficulty of LFR is mostly determined by the XP budget and design guidelines determined by the LFR heads -- the challenges scale based on the module tier and number of PCs, and not on the PCs' builds or items.

So, you can certainly put in the your "best effort" into tricking out your character with overpowered and/or exploitative items and power, with the goal of not having to put any effort at all into completing the module.

Or, you can put your "best effort" into making interesting and flavourful character choices that fit your character's background, and then put your "best effort" into working as a team and allowing the whole party to make meaningful tactical decisions.

I know which option appeals to me more.

Jun 24, 2010 -- 11:58AM, bluemoonadco wrote:

I dont agree with that statement, if a player is actually handicapping themselves like "tieing one hand behind their back" it is a statement of disrespect to their opponents and team mates.  It says I do not have to give my best effort for this task.  Which lends to the question, if you are not giving your best effort, why are you here?

But they will be facing players of more or less their own skill, and there are more individual sports were there is actually a handicap mechanic in place to give the less skilled players a chance (golf springs to mind).

Regardless, I find the whole comparison a bit odd. Like always, there is more to the world than black and white. Nobody is telling you to make bad characters. What they are telling you, is that if you are a strong player, just don't take the generally considered broken options, avoid the obvious choices and create new builds with the slightly less optimal builds. D&D is a social game, and the players are not playing against DM and adventure. They are playing with the DM and the adventure. Just because you play a fighter does not mean you absolutely have to take come and get it, or just because you can, does not mean you have to take that voidcrystal weapon. Weapon's gambit and lightning are perfectly viable other options

Jun 24, 2010 -- 3:25PM, bluemoonadco wrote:

To the first quote....  And not giving your best effort is fun for you?

To the second quote...  You can not make that determination, in both the books and in the movies each of those characters do amazing things which leads one to believe that they are more optimized than you think.

The first line is not worth discussing, but the second line; In D&D, your base powers, optimized or not are already "amazing" in the context of some of the cinematic action we see in movies. There's just no other way to think about it when you have monks jumping 30 feet and rangers shooting twice, 3x, 4x, 5x,6x times in a round. Those don't require optimization in the -least-. Once you start adding in things like assassins becoming insubstantial, eladrin fey stepping, and the like, the base D&D game is so far over the line into superheroic already that optimization is just the icing on the already proverbial cake.

The Stormwind fallacy is just a side point.  I think that there is general agreement that character optimization and character flavor are orthogonal.  A character can be optimized, flavorful, both, or neither.  In the context of this thread, I don't think the arguments against optimization are using the Stormwind fallacy and characterizing them as such is a little bit of strawmanning.

An LFR has a fixed XP budget.  If you build stronger, more optimized characters then you will have an easier combats.  The combats could be made more difficult by
  * DME adjustments
  * Some sort of Lex Talionis policy as advocated by the OP
  * Increased XP budget without increased XP reward
  * Players using sub-optimal tactics
  * Players playing equally interesting but not-as-optimal builds

The DME puts more burden on the DM.  It assumes the DM knows the group's capabilities and the group's desired challenge level.  It works better for experienced DMs than novice DMs.

The eye-for-an-eye approach suggested by the OP could work with some groups but I think it's the wrong approach.  It sets up Player/GM conflict because players will feel targeted for making valid build choices that the DM does not like.  In my view, anything that fosters person-to-person conflict rather than character-to-character/monster conflict should be avoided.

Increasing the XP budget for LFR will increase the pressure to optimize.  At present, a less-than-optimal character played with average tactics in an average group can succeed at most LFR modules.  Increasing the budget would increase the chance for failure for less-than-optimal characters and less-than-optimal tactics.  Since most groups do not want to fail, this would decrease the acceptance of less-than-optimal builds, increasing person-to-person conflict.

Deliberately using bad tactics can make combats more difficult.  In my experience, most players do not enjoy doing this themselves and find it annoying when it is done by others on a regular basis.  I think this should be avoided because it increases person-to-person conflict.

Deliberately using less-than-optimal builds can make combats more difficult.  At the current XP budget, I find general acceptance if the build is interesting and provides some sort of compensating benefit, like a INT-over-STR taclord or a fighter with a 16 STR and an 18 WIS.  Like deliberately bad tactics, I see deliberately bad builds as provocative and increasing person-to-person conflict.

Of the choices, I think the less-than-optimal build is the best choice for players that want more difficult combats.  It allows players to select their difficulty level without restricting the choices other players can make.