For most games I definitely agree with you…not so with 4E. While it’s true that most (if not all) RPGs are team-based exercises, 4E takes that to a new level. No other game comes close to 4E’s insistence that every member in the group relies on each other.

So, while I do soooo hate the exploitation of abusive combos, as well as the message board min/maxing you mention(which is, to me, optimization taken to an unhealthy extreme), the “fighter with a low strength score” is going to make those long 4E tactical combats a bear…not just for you, but for your buddies as well.

3E and, to some extent, 2E, were the most fun when players were coming up with whatever hair-brained combinations they could dream up. Try that in 4E and your team may not be so thrilled that they wiped because they depended on you as a defender and you couldn’t hold your own. They also might not be crazy about the additional time combat will take as long as one group member isn’t pulling his or her own weight.

I think if the whole group is on board with wacky character creation, it shouldn’t be a problem in 4E. In those cases, the DM can simply scale the difficulty down as much as necessary. But a character with an extremely low score in a primary attack attribute would have such a negative impact on my game and my players’ fun that I probably wouldn’t even allow it.

Just my two cents. To each his own game, as always.

@ Anarkeith,

Sometimes I like to design encounters without any regard for the PC make-up. Hey, sometimes the spit is gonna hit the fan – each fight is not always going to be ideal.

It seems this problem of balance and defined roles applies to 4E more than other games. It’s too bad that a game with such a tenured history has been downgraded to “needing all four roles filled” in order to be played “correctly.”

Making a non-optimized 4E character is the same as not filling one of the four roles (opting instead to go for two of a kind, like two strikers – no defender). That situation is not optimized, yet it should still work fine.

“Go ahead and try to play a “quirky group” of 4 strikers. It’s possible, yes, but with A LOT of clipping and cutting of adventures by the DM.” Did you not stop playing a defender (getting rid of the defender in the group), and opt instead for taking the role of a second striker?

“4E is made for a balanced group, or a group where people choose characters and actually perform their roles.” I don’t think so. I think that IS the case for younger gamers who think a game should be played a “certain way”, but not for experienced gamers who’ve been playing for a few years.

“When you don’t you’re merely taking up space and penalizing the other players.” Wow, such a hardcore statement to assume that everyone thinks every character should be optimized, every group should be balanced, and every non-conformer should be kicked out. This optimiztion/balance direction was created to make it easier for a newer DM to run a game. It’s now simple-stupid to design encounters. Because players are directed to optimize their characters, the DM has much less work to do. Back in the day, DMs had to design encounters by scratch, based off of what the PC group could handle. Now the game says that encounters need to be a certain way, using this certain formula. 4E’s whole “balance/optimization doctrine” is simply for less experienced gaming groups.

“You gather with a group of people and when someone decides to be especially difficult, in any way, it really affects the whole experience negatively.” If my character is a weak fighter, you could say that he is only 50% of a player character. However, that should not mean that I only contribute 50% of fun. The fighter that lacks in fighting skills is only negative if you’re thinking in numbers. He is not bringing the group down one bit; he’s still adding to the groups effectiveness (though not as much as others could). Why should a player be limited in playing only super characters?

I remember back to AD&D and 2nd Edition. You rolled your stats and played what you could. There were many, many non-optimized characters, and it still worked. Now it’s just the opposite, the EXACT opposite. I wish this edition were that way.

If your idea of a good, fun game means having the most mathematically efficient fighting group, then story and plot would seem to take second place. I guess, in the end, 4E is more a game for you than me. There are just too many forces in 4E delegating how I should game. Too many for my taste. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still play 4E – it’s got too many good traits to dismiss.

I’d say that not optimizating your character works best for games other than 4E. There, the GM is forced to design encounters with the player group in mind. That is when it is totally fine to play a Sniper who is prone to dropping his rifle over the building’s ledge, or the Covert Ops Specialist who gets his butt kicked by an old security guard.

4E? Not so much.

I agree that D&D 4E doesn’t leave a lot of room for non-optimized characters. As a GM, it isn’t a lot of fun for me watching the PCs take a lot of unnecessary damage (and time) muddling through a combat encounter because they didn’t know how to design a character. However, I also view D&D, in all of its incarnations, as a “starter RPG”; optimization isn’t an idea, it’s pretty much required as the emphasis is on medieval tactics, questing and handling problems in a specific order rather than more free-form, post-modern play. I’m also not saying free form is impossible in D&D, it just isn’t what the game was designed around… which is mini-based combat (see “Chainmail”).

More advanced and abstract games, like Shadowrun, definitely allow for more flexibility in terms of playing non-twinked-out characters as they’re not necessarily designed with “combat” as the heart of the game. Nor do SR characters “level up” in the traditional sense. A SR character can be terrible with guns and still be an effective character to play. Character flaws are deliberately built into the system.

Corbu, you win! Your funny story takes the cake so far.

@ EGO:
“I also appreciate everyone arguing my point for me. All the DM’s who perfectly explained how they “don’t mind tweaking modules” or changing encounters to involve more of x archetype or more minions. This is precisely my point…..yes you can do make it work but personally it’s no different than anything in life, if you’re going to do it why be mediocre…having a non-optimal group means that you will CONSTANTLY be fighting weaker opponents and/or be grinding through “easy encounters”.”

Seriously? First, If an encounter is set up properly from the group, then encounters will run the same gamut regardless of the group–i.e. some will be easy, some difficult, some extremely hard. The fact that some groups will find it harder to take some encounters than others does not amke the experience “mediocre,” and it’s idiotic to think it would.

Second, I consider DMs running games straight out of modules to be “mediocre” because the modules rarely provide enough flexibility, often force inappropriate encounters, and if run without modifications for the group, tend to devolve into straight hack n’ slash. While some may consider that a fun experience, I do not.

You accuse us of believing that everyone enjoys playing the way they do, yet every post of yours I have read shows smug superiority, as people who claim differently than you are either hypocrites, or idiots.

As for the issue of being able to defeat the toughest monsters, a non-optimized character may never be able to take Orcus on directly, for example, given his defenses. However, not every game is about just killing monsters. in most campaigns, it’s as good or better to merely stop his plans and expose his cults. After all, If you kill Orcus, then he’s dead, and can’t contribute to futre campaigns set in the same world without a ridiculously circumspect series of events which involve him rising as an undead, etc. etc. (Orcus chosen due to being the biggest bad in the MM1)

The point is, unless the game is solely about killing things, it shouldn’t matter that you are facing the biggest bads directly. Not only that, but it doesn’t account for things done in role playing, which could effect the fight(well planned tactics, setting up an ambush, etc.)

WHile I would agree that the books encourage Min-maxing, optimisation, and party roles, they not only go out of their way to make sure that isn’t the only way to play(rules In the DMG for encounters with non-optimal parties, the exp budget method, feats allowing one stat to be substituted for the regular stat in combat, explicitly allowing both point buy and rolling for character generation) but they also acknowledge that different people play games in different ways.

If the game was meant to be played only with optimized characters, they would have just created a stat block for each class. And many of people who do play 4e would still be playing 3.x.

@ Ego,

Ego, you can say anything you want, you can backtrack all you want, but all I hear you saying is, “My (Ego) style of play is correct; yours is not. If your opinion does not agree with me, you are wrong.”

If a player in your group said, “I’d like to play a thief.” And you said, “Great, that’s a Rogue.” And they said, “No, I don’t want to play a combat character at all, I just want to play a guy that’s good at sneaking around and stealing things. Actually, he is terrible in combat because his god forbids it.”

Would you, as the DM, still say, “No, you can’t do that – you’d simply be taking up space at my table and ruining the fun for everyone.”? Would you still say that?

I think that if your players are OK with your style, then that’s great. But I do not think it’s OK to tell others HERE that we are wrong. This is a site and comment thread where ideas are shared and respected. – You are not doing that.

I am not insulting you. I am telling you that we have differing opinions here, and that you seem to be perched on a high-horse.

Share ideas and opinions – respect others for theirs. Maybe you try to do that, but you simply come off as arrogant, and it’s hard to be arrogant and have opinions at the same time.

Ego, I agree with you, to a point. If you’re going to make a 4E character, don’t dump his primary stats. However, with that, you don’t have to maximize his primary ones, either. There are a lot of variations in the game with regard to powers, so to say that the XP system is based on someone always taking the best powers to balance the award/challenge system is wrong. The XP system is based on you attempting to make a DECENT character, since there are so many variations.

“Go ahead and try to play a “quirky group” of 4 strikers. It’s possible, yes, but with A LOT of clipping and cutting of adventures by the DM.” Did you not stop playing a defender (getting rid of the defender in the group), and opt instead for taking the role of a second striker?

Seems like you guys had one…

But seriously, I do agree with the more moderate aspect of what Ego’s saying:

In our group we started with a controller, 2 strikers, a defender and a leader. The controller stopped playing leaving a gap in our roles. This did not stop us from playing – far from it. But it did leave a hole in our defenses that the DM was all too happy to exploit. Without a controller and effective ranged combat, our DM was able to constantly stymie us with minion archers – right, Chris?

Later on, due to plot development, we lost both our strikers and in their place got a controller and a defender who wanted to be a striker. We gained a 6th player who opted to be a cleric, giving us a 2nd leader. Without a true striker to drop high HP brutes, we had another weakness for our DM to exploit (which he did). With players not filling all roles, or attempting to fill a role other than that of their class, our non-optimized group faced defeat almost as often as success (bad guys getting away, having to tuck tail and run, etc).

However, neither situation bothered our particular group because of several factors:

1. GM who values plot, character-driven story and player goals (when they are known) over numbers.

2. A mixture of complimentary play styles and personalities (although that caused other issues…)

3. Players (most of us anyway) that could handle defeat.

I don’t believe that anyone should be told what to play or how to play their character. That being said, if everyone in your group is playing in a certain manner or with a set of expectations that everyone is going to contribute in a certain fashion, and you want to break the mold and do your own thing, be wary that others in your group might not appreciate your contribution as much as you feel they should. Also, be willing to accept responsibility for your contribution to party (and player) tension.

One of my fondest memories regarding dnd ever, was my Lord Korald. The thing about this lord, was that he was a poorly optimized 2 Bard/1 Sorcerer in DnD 3.5 ….
He felt like he had 2 hitpoints and his most useful spell was mage hand..

Now Korald the puny had followed Ragnar, a lvl 5 Fighter Captain of the guard home, and while Shinobi (the Monk) guarded the door, Korald snuck inside Ragnars home. After sneaking around, almost getting detected, i used mage hand to break some dinner plates in the kitchen (as a distraction) and hid in Ragnar’s bedroom.

I found his fullplate armour there. And a tortured victim. i was about to release her when Ragnar came back into the bedroom. With a greatsord. In his underpants.

I could use my last mage hand to tickle him and dart away, but nay. I grabbed his fullplate and flung myself out of his 2nd floor bedroom window, effectively knocking myself out (ending at -3hp) AND breaking his armour! (removing his +4 to AC, letting my friends, the cavalery, taking down the guy who actually was a bit too strong for us).

Yes, i’ve made blastermages who can kick ass, but saving the day by throwing myself out a window and landing on a fullplate? priceless

Ego:
“Yes you’re right you don’t have to always be fighting the highest level encounters that a group can fight…..but I tell you what…it’s a LOT more fun to have that challenge.”

It’s a lot more fun for YOU.

Let me sell this to you: You want the highest level encounter for the most fun? Cut off your arm, as you said. There, the encounter just got even harder. It’s now an even higher level encounter. Cut off your arm / make a non-optimized character, it’s all the same. That will make it an even harder challenge.

Thank you for your time.