Quote from: StormBringer;563247Both of these are concerned with the most optimal path, however. There are many other CharOp combinations that are not the absolute optimal, but still cause massive problems at the table. I don't think it requires solving either travelling problem to catch most of the worst abuses.

Don't mind me, I was I think taking the idea too literally here - the salesman problem is I guess just a good illustration of the principle of how a increase a few options gives an explosion of possible 'builds'. (And sometimes how a couple of individually harmless powers combine into something really nasty, in the right circumstances).
 
I agree it doesn't need 'solving' mathematically. I would be very curious as to how it would even be possible to do that - it seems hard to do beyond just calculating average damages or % likelihood to win combats, which end up being fairly simplistic, and build assumptions into the model.
 
I've seen a couple of places (e.g. the JAGS blog, and some guys at Pinnacle were doing it for Savage Worlds) where guys were doing thousands of computer-simulated battles between test characters to try to determine a good point-costs for individual powers, but that's as far as I've seen anyone go in looking for good/bad builds, I think. At least for tabletop; I have no idea what MMO testing normally consists of.

Character Optimisation can only be done in an 'unbalanced' game system.

Players will eventually discover what is most effective.

Could be overpowered spells in 1E dnd like sleep, hold person, etc...

Could be cheating to get that 18/00 strength in 1E.

Could be an area of effect stun transfer in Hero.

The real issue is that only Roleplay can counter this.

I personally get angry when a player makes a power gamed character and then tailors the background around that. I call shenanigans!

I prefer to make a characater concept that is not from the planet Krypton, and tailor the stats to that flawed concept.


I also really dislike characters that have max min stats, like a warrior with an 8 INT, 8 CHA, 18 STR, 18 DEX

That guy would just die in a real world. "Me attack City Guards Now!! ARRGHDURR!!"

Generating characters rather than building them fixes the problem generally. If stats are randomly rolled and abilities and mechanical fiddly bits are baked into the classes rather than spread across multiple a la carte lists then charaop dies.

The remaining issue then just becomes one of cheating during generation which is easily dealt with.

IMHO this not only helps with optimization issues but also broader problems that plague new school games such as world/adventure focus. When a character becomes something akin to a remodeling project that is perpetually under construction the focus often becomes all about the components and the whole context (that this is an individual that is part of a fictional world) gets lost in the shuffle.

Everything becomes about the new building blocks that become available at the next level. Character focus becomes almost entirely introverted and the world/adventures fade into a scrolling 2D background that just serves as a backdrop to these construction projects instead of being the focus of play.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;563280Generating characters rather than building them fixes the problem generally. If stats are randomly rolled and abilities and mechanical fiddly bits are baked into the classes rather than spread across multiple a la carte lists then charaop dies.

Bingo!!

I basically quit playing D&D around '82 after Gygax reorganized everything to hit the 12-13 year old market. Playing with kids 10 years or more younger than myself was just no fun.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;563280Generating characters rather than building them fixes the problem generally. If stats are randomly rolled and abilities and mechanical fiddly bits are baked into the classes rather than spread across multiple a la carte lists then charaop dies.

The remaining issue then just becomes one of cheating during generation which is easily dealt with.

IMHO this not only helps with optimization issues but also broader problems that plague new school games such as world/adventure focus. When a character becomes something akin to a remodeling project that is perpetually under construction the focus often becomes all about the components and the whole context (that this is an individual that is part of a fictional world) gets lost in the shuffle.

Everything becomes about the new building blocks that become available at the next level. Character focus becomes almost entirely introverted and the world/adventures fade into a scrolling 2D background that just serves as a backdrop to these construction projects instead of being the focus of play.

That is true but like I posted the munchkins then just look to class options or racial ones.
Early D&D threw up slews of broken classes and the Munckins always brought them to the table. Oh I want to be a half-ogre, an anti-paladin, and archer, a Black Priest, a .... etc

Even if you remove that they work towards a magic item combo.

D&D is just like that. A munchkin unable to charop his stats/skills/feats will play an Elven Fighter/Magic User.

I think its human nature, well munchkin nature.  A munchkin isn't going to create a Civilian in classic traveller, and as soon as you add the advanced chargen books they are all over them.

An interesting option woudl be for the DM to generate all PCs upto a decision point. After all you do not get to pick your race, strength, appearance, intelligence. Its like a random roll taken to the extreme, a bit like the Stormbringer Background table.

Quote from: jibbajibba;563284That is true but like I posted the munchkins then just look to class options or racial ones.
Early D&D threw up slews of broken classes and the Munckins always brought them to the table. Oh I want to be a half-ogre, an anti-paladin, and archer, a Black Priest, a .... etc

Even if you remove that they work towards a magic item combo.

D&D is just like that. A munchkin unable to charop his stats/skills/feats will play an Elven Fighter/Magic User.

I think its human nature, well munchkin nature.  A munchkin isn't going to create a Civilian in classic traveller, and as soon as you add the advanced chargen books they are all over them.

An interesting option woudl be for the DM to generate all PCs upto a decision point. After all you do not get to pick your race, strength, appearance, intelligence. Its like a random roll taken to the extreme, a bit like the Stormbringer Background table.

The DM determines what races and classes are available in the campaign.

There is nothing wrong with the elven ftr/mu. Such a character is limited in levels in both classes and will advance much slower than his single classsed counterparts.

Likewise with magic items. Certain items may never appear in the campaign so planning on X items being there AND that they will be aquired is not charop. Optimization requires hard coded building blocks that eschews common sense for rules-first play.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;563287The DM determines what races and classes are available in the campaign.

There is nothing wrong with the elven ftr/mu. Such a character is limited in levels in both classes and will advance much slower than his single classsed counterparts.

Likewise with magic items. Certain items may never appear in the campaign so planning on X items being there AND that they will be aquired is not charop. Optimization requires hard coded building blocks that eschews common sense for rules-first play.

Well first off level limits are usually high enough not to matter in most games and much slower isn't true due to D&D xp progression if you are a 5th level figther I am a 4/4 F/MU because you basically double XP each level.
Most people don't play elves because they to try and experience the chance to play and alien race of nigh immortal nature kin, they play them for the +1 Dex, the immunity to sleep and Charm, the extra languages the +1 with Bows and Longswords, the beter perception etc etc .... That is just CharOp, sure its crude CharOp but meh....

Sure the DM decides what classes and races are available but most just take the default from the book without much thought.

You are mostly right on Magic Items. But of course the Munchkin player will work out how he knows about certain items and try and seek them out or try to cherry pick the items that do come up to play into their chosen CharOp 'build'.

If the demi-human races had genuine disabilites then they woudl be played less and in 3e they wouldn't have had to give the human an addtional feat.

Personally I like to see the working on races. You show be the 'pont buy toolkit ' the Designer used to build Elves, Dwarves, Humans and Hobbits and demonstrate how they are all equivalent and I'll buy it but if you think dwarves always have to have beards and Kender are kleptomaniacs are suitable modes of balance I will call you on it.

In Drohem's current 2e Red Steel campaign I selected Rakasta as my race because I thought it would be cool to play a cat guy. Having built my character I nearly changed my mind and made him Human because the race is far too tough and gains too many benefits for very little drawback. It's like a CharOp munchkin's dream race (Obviously no negative comentry on the game itself at all. )

Quote from: BillDowns;563283Bingo!!

I basically quit playing D&D around '82 after Gygax reorganized everything to hit the 12-13 year old market. Playing with kids 10 years or more younger than myself was just no fun.

Any 22 year old that enjoys playing with 12 year olds probably needs a restraining order

Only kidding.

But the default method for Stat generation in 79 was already Method 1 (4d6 drop one arrange) and that was the case until the end of 2e in 95 (or whenever).

I tend to be torn between favoring random pc generation and total customization.

Random nukes powergamers out of the water, but total customization gives you what you want.

I want my cake and eat it too!

QuoteGenerating characters rather than building them fixes the problem generally. If stats are randomly rolled and abilities and mechanical fiddly bits are baked into the classes rather than spread across multiple a la carte lists then charaop dies.

This is the crux of the issue.

The dominance of CharOp in D&D coincided with the game moving towards a hardcore gamer audience. Back in the day of its mass popularity, few D&D players owned books and took them home - and these few were known as "DMs". The notion that every player would go out and buy stacks of books in order to plan out a character to 20th level would have struck me and my friends as bizarre.

Furthermore, CharOp was the source of most of the worst aspects of 3.x D&D: PC invulnerability, rules mastery, CLs/ELs, and the pre-eminence of the rules as written over DM discretion.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;563270Don't mind me, I was I think taking the idea too literally here - the salesman problem is I guess just a good illustration of the principle of how a increase a few options gives an explosion of possible 'builds'. (And sometimes how a couple of individually harmless powers combine into something really nasty, in the right circumstances).

Before you go taking all the blame, I may have been focussing on the technical aspects rather than the general concept myself.  That said, it's true that adding an option or two can increase the number of combinations dramatically, but most of them are harmless.  Occasionally, there will be a collision of minor options that break the game or some portion of it, as you mention.  Aside from the variable levels of emergent complexity, I think there is a more fundamental problem...
 

QuoteI agree it doesn't need 'solving' mathematically. I would be very curious as to how it would even be possible to do that - it seems hard to do beyond just calculating average damages or % likelihood to win combats, which end up being fairly simplistic, and build assumptions into the model.
 
I've seen a couple of places (e.g. the JAGS blog, and some guys at Pinnacle were doing it for Savage Worlds) where guys were doing thousands of computer-simulated battles between test characters to try to determine a good point-costs for individual powers, but that's as far as I've seen anyone go in looking for good/bad builds, I think. At least for tabletop; I have no idea what MMO testing normally consists of.

... namely, 'how does one weigh the various options?'

For example, is the ability to cast spells a good catch-all?  Classes with limited spell use, like the Paladin and Ranger, might have some fractional weight added on. Perhaps each spell should be weighted separately.  Now we have increased the 'nodes' dramatically, but it is spread out over 20-odd or 30 levels, so optimizing a 1st level spell caster is very much less computationally intensive than a 20th level caster; however, the decisions made at 1st level have an influence on the decisions available at 20th level.  Further, are we strictly optimizing the character individually, or as part of a team?  Obviously, certain early choices will constrain later choices, notably whether or not spells are even a concern.

Setting up the problem appears far more complicated than running the analysis on it, to me.  Finding the path for 100,000 nodes is almost trivial, it seems, to the point mathematicians are playing games with it.  Setting the 'correct' distance between feather fall and a long sword seems like the near impossible part, to me.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;563280Generating characters rather than building them fixes the problem generally. If stats are randomly rolled and abilities and mechanical fiddly bits are baked into the classes rather than spread across multiple a la carte lists then charaop dies.

+1

This would require a fairly limited number of classes, or a much improved method of multi-classing.  Prestige Classes are a fascinating idea and something of an improvement over kits, but they introduced at least as many problems as they solved.

Quote from: StormBringer;563324+1

This would require a fairly limited number of classes, or a much improved method of multi-classing.  Prestige Classes are a fascinating idea and something of an improvement over kits, but they introduced at least as many problems as they solved.

From a CharOp perspective Prestigue classes are much worse than Kits.

Kits , well the first slew at least, were basically roleplay guff with some reaction modifiers and a free NWP. Their primary focus is to contextualise the character in the game world.

Prestige classes, whilst in theory are about an in game 'elite' group, in reality are just about giving the PC a bunch of additional mechanical bonuses and effects.

Quote from: jibbajibba;563329From a CharOp perspective Prestigue classes are much worse than Kits.

Kits , well the first slew at least, were basically roleplay guff with some reaction modifiers and a free NWP. Their primary focus is to contextualise the character in the game world.

Prestige classes, whilst in theory are about an in game 'elite' group, in reality are just about giving the PC a bunch of additional mechanical bonuses and effects.

Yup. Prestige classes are crap. Kits started out innocent enough but power creep is what sells supplements. Thats really the driving force of charop-the game company wanting to sell you the tools to be better than the guy sitting next to you even though its a cooperative effort.

Quote from: StormBringer;563320Before you go taking all the blame, I may have been focussing on the technical aspects rather than the general concept myself. [...] Finding the path for 100,000 nodes is almost trivial, it seems, to the point mathematicians are playing games with it.

You're pretty badly failing to understand the nature of the TSP and all the "solutions" you've linked to.

Finding a path is trivial.  Finding a pretty good path is fairly easy.  Finding the best path, and proving it's the best, is NP-hard.

None of which has much to do with gaming beyond the fact that, as I've said, balancing any kind of point buy system is so difficult that it's probably not worth trying. (cf. Feng Shui).