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3 years ago ::
Apr 15, 2010 - 8:17PM
#21
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Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2007
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I find the fact that my Ranger/Pit Fighter is touted as the stereotypical "cookie-cutter, all CharOp, no CharDev" Ranger build extremely amusing because if you actually take a look at him, the first thing that is displayed on the thread after the title is a sketch for it that I drew myself. It's not cookie-cutter if you're the first to develop it, folks.  That said, if a player consciously chooses to deviate from optimizing for a particular thing, reasonable accommodations to give him a fair share of shine time aren't out of the question. Emphasis on reasonable, though: Str 10 on a Fighter is dumb, regardless of how in line it is with your character concept. In that case, I recommend refluffing another class to fit the concept instead.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 15, 2010 - 8:53PM
#22
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Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2007
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LDB: You did a great job creating the build. It certainly wasn't cookie cutter when you did it. But you must realize that it's one of the first things that a ranger player looks at when they visit this site. When I was invited to play with the group I am now playing with, they specifically requested a ranger, and the description they gave of a ranger was quite obviously based on your build.
I chose to go in a different direction, but I check out your build as a way of comparing whether my ranger is at least in the ballpark for his role.
For people to refer to your creation now as "cookie cutter" may be an indication that they'd like to see something different, but that's still quite a compliment on what you've done since it clearly has become a standard for the class.
I certainly am impressed not only by the end result, but by how carefully you've thought out each and every level. I learned a lot about how to build my own ranger from seeing what you did, even if I only have a few powers and feats in common with yours. Many of the concepts are suitable for different flavor.
Certainly I salute your efforts.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 16, 2010 - 7:04AM
#23
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Date Joined:
Nov 14, 2008
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I certainly never meant to imply that I would reward a player who intentionally misallocated his ability scores. That's just perverse. I mentioned seldom-used feats and powers taken to build an RP theme; that's all.
If a player showed me a fighter with 10 STR, I would send him back to the drawing board, do not pass GO, do not collect 200 gp.
If your position is that the official rules don't matter, or that house rules can fix everything, please don't bother posting in forums about the official rules. To do so is a waste of everyone's time.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 16, 2010 - 7:36AM
#24
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Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2007
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Yeah, I see your point. You mean making some room for situations to use Linguist, Jack of all Trades (though this one does show up in CharOp builds that buff untrained skills to the point that you don't need to train them), Light Step, and others like them. That is perfectly reasonable in my book.
@brassbaboon: Thanks, man. Appreciated. I just wanted to point out that the character is not just an optimized collection of numbers, though he is certainly as optimized as I could make him be; I actually took the time to define my vision of his appearance and put it on paper, and then share it. He is meant to be a complete character.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 16, 2010 - 9:22AM
#25
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As a player, I prefer the reward to be content-based. Situations that allow for a suboptimal character choice to be instrumental in the success of the party justify concept over crunch better than anything else as far as I'm concerned.
For instance, if you want to reward the guy who plays the ranger for neglecting to pay his feat tax in favor of a tracking feat because he fancies his character to be an expert tracker, put scenes into the campaign wherein the party has to find and follow tracks frequently enough that the player feels that he traded +1 to hit for something as extremely useful as +1 to hit. Ignore the defender's mark (and get punished for it) a little more often because she wanted to play a halfling fighter - people don't consider the little lass a threat until it's too late. Don't just toss them some item that will equalize their power with the optimized characters; make the suboptimal choice stop being suboptimal by shaping the story more closely around the character!
"When Friday comes, we'll all call rats fish."
D&D Outsider
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3 years ago ::
Apr 16, 2010 - 10:12AM
#26
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As a player, I prefer the reward to be content-based. Situations that allow for a suboptimal character choice to be instrumental in the success of the party justify concept over crunch better than anything else as far as I'm concerned.
For instance, if you want to reward the guy who plays the ranger for neglecting to pay his feat tax in favor of a tracking feat because he fancies his character to be an expert tracker, put scenes into the campaign wherein the party has to find and follow tracks frequently enough that the player feels that he traded +1 to hit for something as extremely useful as +1 to hit. Ignore the defender's mark (and get punished for it) a little more often because she wanted to play a halfling fighter - people don't consider the little lass a threat until it's too late. Don't just toss them some item that will equalize their power with the optimized characters; make the suboptimal choice stop being suboptimal by shaping the story more closely around the character!
This.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 16, 2010 - 4:25PM
#27
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Date Joined:
Aug 21, 2009
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these choices should tend to reward themselves to be perfectly honest. If you're building your own module, put a variety of NPCs and situations in it just like a prepacked adventure would have. Playing through the scales of war adventure path and you will find tons of opportunity to use things like your knowledge skills, languages and things of this nature. it really should be up to the player to find ways to use his own gifts. honestly if youve got a group of all combat oppers who have NO RP skills or features, you probably are gonna get stuck in quite a few places if you're playing WOTC modules. just make your adventures like that. don't think about whether youve got opper or RPer, build a workld, throw out your hooks and fill the world with colorful characters. I guarantee you the RPers are going to fin d ways to use those "sub-optimal" choices, otherwise they wouldn't have picked em. in a real game these will not be considered sub-optimal, because the story and the RP should be a good half of what you are doing. that language skill might save you an hour or two of rolling dice by avoiding a few good skirmishes.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 20, 2010 - 10:44AM
#28
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Date Joined:
Feb 18, 2010
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I've never really agreed with the thought of giving players who don't pick the optimal choices extra stuff just because. It's an example of opportunity costs. They want to pick a feat or power that they like for their character to have they can. They get a meaningful and flavorful option instead of a powerful one. If they choose for themselves that they'd rather have the option they picked instead that's a choice they willingly made and thought worth it. To just give them free stuff for no other reason than that seems to spit in the face of the players who chose to specialize. What's the point in specializing to the point where they're really good at something when other players are essentially just given it for free by the DM because said DM likes how they chose to make their character more.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 21, 2010 - 8:50AM
#29
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Date Joined:
Sep 29, 2008
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I feel that giving a mechanical benefit for mechanically sub-optimal flavour choices is somehow off. It's implying that the mechanical benefit is still what really matters. Being mechanically effective does mean that you have more impact on the game world during the fight scenes, and that does add to enjoyment. The solution is I think to adjust the gameworld slightly so that the suboptimal choices get their day in the sun.
I remember a Pendragon campaign a long time ago, in which we had the chance to specialise in two skills. One of us took sword as a speciality, and obviously dominated all the combat scenes. Since the campaign had a lot of combat scenes (we were young) they were much more effective in their impact and the rest of us wanted to redesign our characters. But the solution wouldn't have been to give the rest of us combat bonuses: the proper solution would have been to include scenes where other skills were important.
Reward flavour with flavour. If the characters are negotiating with someone important, roleplay their reaction to the characters that give them such a hook.
Hoard: may earn you gp; Horde: may earn you xp.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 21, 2010 - 1:18PM
#30
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Date Joined:
Nov 14, 2008
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I've never really agreed with the thought of giving players who don't pick the optimal choices extra stuff just because. It's an example of opportunity costs. They want to pick a feat or power that they like for their character to have they can. They get a meaningful and flavorful option instead of a powerful one. If they choose for themselves that they'd rather have the option they picked instead that's a choice they willingly made and thought worth it. To just give them free stuff for no other reason than that seems to spit in the face of the players who chose to specialize. What's the point in specializing to the point where they're really good at something when other players are essentially just given it for free by the DM because said DM likes how they chose to make their character more.
I'm not spitting in anyone's face. As I said before, optimization is its own reward. I will not run my campaign as a competition between players to see who can be the most uber. That is not the atmosphere I want to foster.
And it certainly is not "just because." There is a very good reason for it. An optimized character can easily hold his own in the RP portion of the game if he wants to. The non-optimized character doesn't have that ability when it comes to combat. It's a very minor flaw in the system that I will do my best to work around when I can.
In the end, if optimization is all you care about, you probably won't be happy in my campaign anyway, and I won't enjoy DMing for you, so I guess it all works out, doesn't it? I'll just state my intentions up front so no one is disappointed or bitter.
If your position is that the official rules don't matter, or that house rules can fix everything, please don't bother posting in forums about the official rules. To do so is a waste of everyone's time.
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