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Apr 5, 2012 -- 2:01PM, Litigation wrote:

Apr 5, 2012 -- 7:24AM, svendj wrote:

His very first point concerns opped defenders.

And flawed how?

EDIT: ninja'd by the OP xD

No, his very first point concerns players of opped defenders who forget that there's only one immediate action per round. Which is ... uh ... nobody I've ever heard of on CO.

There's a few people on other boards who forget there being only 1 immediate/round, but they're the type of people who have no optimization bone in their bodies. His first point was really preaching to the choir, as was the premise of this thread, really, come to think of it.

I make it a point, when at conventions, to play with people who aren't from my own group of known optimizers. What I've encountered is often astonishing. You are absolutely right that no one active on these boards (well, there's a couple exceptions) are going to ignore core rules like OAs, IAs, Reach, actions per turn, etc. However, there's a surprisingly (not really if you think about it) large number of players that simply copy builds and ideas from this Forum, without understanding what they've picked up at all. Because of LFR rules, they'll often be missing key components like a specific item (Bloodfury), or a restricted feat (Mark of Storm), and I've seen rules arguments start over Defender IAs because of "But Specific Beats General, and This says I can make the attack when X happens!" Or, if they know the rules well enough, they'll do things in the wrong order, or at the wrong time, and the "cool power everyone says is great" really just seems like crap.

Playing with a heavily optimized controller makes me feel like I'm playing 3.5 again, to be honest. "Welp, wizard's won the fight, time to mop up."

Yup.

Apr 5, 2012 -- 8:56AM, tobascodagama wrote:

More like Top Ten Ways to Ensure That Nobody (But You) Has Fun.

The opped players will be annoyed because you're neutering their tricks, the un-opped will feel like crap because they can't do jack against your ramped up encounters. Yeah, sounds great to me.

Nope, get over it. If you can't, I know a good MMO/FPS/CCG you'll enjoy.
And before anyone says it ...
"Telling people to go play a different game isn't a valid argument" isn't a valid argument. "Find a better set of players" is just as valid a response to campaign problems as "Find a better DM." It sucks for nearly everyone involved when it comes to that, but only hypocrites get upset enough to let it "ruin the game" when an enemy Wizard's Escapes from their Ultimate Confontation Blade Cascade, when they gloat about Dimensional Vortexing an enemies Hydra's Fury.

Apr 5, 2012 -- 5:30PM, Litigation wrote:

I think op-ed Strikers and Controllers upsetting everyone else has more to do with the fact that those roles are very much "me" roles. Selfish, or self-centered roles, if you will. Their focuses are to damage/kill/cripple the enemy, plain and simple. And while that certainly helps party success, it tends to do so with the other players at the table feeling like little more than accessories.

Whereas Defenders and Leaders are less selfish roles by nature. Most players of Strikers and Controllers instinctively recognize that a highly op-ed Defender is keeping the enemies off of them so they can do what they want. And Leaders, well, no one (other than the DM) is going to complain about another player at the table who is highly effective at giving them tons of extra attacks they wouldn't be able to make otherwise, or opportunities to move around the battlefield they wouldn't have otherwise, and so forth.

I can see where you're coming from, but I think it has a lot to do with the nature of the player. A typical not 'me-focused' player in any role won't come off that way in general. This leaves us a very different issue altogether. Of course it also means a DM building encounter to slow down these players may run afoul of people with poor interpersonal skills.

Now that is the time when DM-player conversation is the most important.

Apr 5, 2012 -- 5:30PM, Litigation wrote:

Apr 5, 2012 -- 5:10PM, Bohrdumb wrote:

I think the reason Strikers and Controllers stand out so much is because their effect on a fight is much more quantifiable. When a Striker drops 2-3x as much damage as everyone else in the group, people notice. It's the same when a Controller hits with massive action denial through whatever form they choose.

A good DM should have some tactical understanding of how best to respond to this. Not to void their builds entirely, but to challenge them. Hitting the squishier Striker/Controller gives the Defender and Leaders more opportunity to shine when they mark or heal respectively.

I think op-ed Strikers and Controllers upsetting everyone else has more to do with the fact that those roles are very much "me" roles. Selfish, or self-centered roles, if you will. Their focuses are to damage/kill/cripple the enemy, plain and simple. And while that certainly helps party success, it tends to do so with the other players at the table feeling like little more than accessories.

Whereas Defenders and Leaders are less selfish roles by nature. Most players of Strikers and Controllers instinctively recognize that a highly op-ed Defender is keeping the enemies off of them so they can do what they want. And Leaders, well, no one (other than the DM) is going to complain about another player at the table who is highly effective at giving them tons of extra attacks they wouldn't be able to make otherwise, or opportunities to move around the battlefield they wouldn't have otherwise, and so forth.

I know what you mean here, in the encounters my store runs on monday, we decided to scale everything up and start at 4th, so we could mess with higher level characters.  I brought my revenant executioner/warlock, had nearly the same defenses as the fighter against my curse targets, and was WLR as well.  Also had some confused folks looking at my array (How do you have an 18 and a 20... because I used a 17/15 starting, you mean you didn't?).  Never really noticed how big the disparity could get between a well built striker and le generic striker, since Im the defender guy in my home game (I am REALLY tempted to retire my warden and use MWAOs BM|fighter/bard). 

The escalation does tend to be a problem at home though, the more I make myself unkillable, the more the monsters get tweaked.  If they become dangerous to me, they get into 2 shotting the strikers territory : /

Apr 5, 2012 -- 5:28PM, Zathris wrote:

I make it a point, when at conventions, to play with people who aren't from my own group of known optimizers. What I've encountered is often astonishing. You are absolutely right that no one active on these boards (well, there's a couple exceptions) are going to ignore core rules like OAs, IAs, Reach, actions per turn, etc. However, there's a surprisingly (not really if you think about it) large number of players that simply copy builds and ideas from this Forum, without understanding what they've picked up at all.

+1 - that's exactly how I play conventions as well.

Some experiences:
A guy who was convinced he was optimizing a halfling rogue by going for a 17/14/14 array. Those stats are in Str/Dex/Con order...he also was 8th level with only a +1 weapon. His reasoning was that Nasty Backswing gets another helping of Str. At least he gets to use Nasty Backswing a lot...

Multiple Fighters who thought Combat Challenge stopped movement and/or had +Wis to attack.

Multiple people trying to take several immediate actions.

Many, many people trying to take immediate actions on their own turn.