Quote from: TristramEvans;585207How to win at D&D:

Step 1: Play D&D.

Step 2: Do not allow this to affect your hygeine, fashion sense, or social skills. Date lots of girls, have lots of sex, and get a job you enjoy and pays well enough for you to live comfortably.

Step 3: Win!

Huh. Looks like I won.

RPGPundit

Quote from: deadDMwalking;585609Nobody believed anything Lord Mistborn said to begin with - why would they believe that?  

Winning doesn't have to be about making the rest of the party feel small.  But every player should try to make an effective character. .

I don't think anyone is against people making effective characters.  And as much as LM would like to turn this thread into his favorite troll thread, I'm not going to let that happen.

The point of my original rant is the people who insist that their characters are better than all the other players.  This isn't limited to wizard classes.  I gave a few other examples.

A person who happens to have memorized all the splat books and min/maxes their character with that knowledge to "win" as much as possible, and then say that people who made inferior classes (maybe they didn't memorize all the splat book loopholes, maybe they didn't want to play a wizard or psionist or paladin, whatever) is met with "Not my fault you're playing with a worthless character."

That player is a dick, and a blight to our hobby.  That was my point.  You don't win at D&D by being able to min/max your character better than the other players.

No.  You win at D&D by having fun and contributing to the fun of your friends at the table.  

Here's the thing - what makes the game fun varies from table to table.  For myself, I like the DM to play the opponents intelligently (but using only knowledge that they should have) - ie, intelligently and reasonably.  If this is done, the game can be hard.  In order to win, players must be smart, utilize their resources well, and coordinate effectively.  That's fun for me.  

If someone can't do any of those things, it's possible that the group can still succeed.  And I won't make fun of a player for being ineffective.  But if it's too much of a problem from a character perspective, we'll look to replace him with someone more capable.  If he's actually worse for the team, we'll just dump him.  That also goes for characters that steal from party members.  It isn't fun, and my character wouldn't put up with it, so I won't either.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;585622That player is a dick, and a blight to our hobby.  That was my point.  You don't win at D&D by being able to min/max your character better than the other players.

Yeah we've also had this thread before, and we're fairly efficient at this one as well.

Anyway you went to the mat to claim the fighter was fine as is. Why is it that now your panties are in a twist about Uberwizards. You might want to get that straight. I promised I wouldn't make this as class balance thread, but if GC want's to field this one he can.

So you where whining about optimizers pissing in your cheerios the longer, I've been on the internet the less credence I've given this sort of thing. First is that in some peoples eyes you're a dirty minmaxer even if your character isn't overpowered, since peoples munchkin alarms can apparently be set off over something as trivial as a non-core class. At the end of the day your party is going to have to meet a certain threshold of power and knowledge to meet the challenges the DM sets out and if you can't do that you die or worse. Whining because some player's greater knowledge of the game gave them a bigger slice of the awesome cake seems pretty kindergarten.

Mistborn, Sacrosanct's arguing more against bad sportsmanship than making powerful characters from my reading.

However: Sacrosanct, being able to min-max better than the other players does not immediately mean that the player's trying to be a dick.

Intentionally min-maxing to the extent that you take out the element of risk in D&D, gaming the system for infinite power loops and other forms of disruptive min-maxing?  Yes.

Being the sole optimizer in the group, but making a min-maxed build who can fill in for party weaknesses, increase overall survivability, or synergize with the team?  Not being a dick.

Quote from: Libertad;585628Mistborn, Sacrosanct's arguing more against bad sportsmanship than making powerful characters from my reading.

However: Sacrosanct, being able to min-max better than the other players does not immediately mean that the player's trying to be a dick.

Intentionally min-maxing to the extent that you take out the element of risk in D&D, gaming the system for infinite power loops and other forms of disruptive min-maxing?  Yes.

Being the sole optimizer in the group, but making a min-maxed build who can fill in for party weaknesses, increase overall survivability, or synergize with the team?  Not being a dick.

I agree with this, but to add:

Min maxing, acting smug and superior, and expecting the rest of the group to adhere to your whim*?  Otherwise known as making the game all about me.  Total dick


*A phrase I recently heard that comes to mind in response to "you ran out of spell, what now?" was "We rest.  Whenever I need to, we rest, regardless of what the party is doing or wants.  If I'm winning all encounters for them, then they should rest whenever I need it."

Quote from: Sacrosanct;585632*A phrase I recently heard that comes to mind in response to "you ran out of spell, what now?" was "We rest.  Whenever I need to, we rest, regardless of what the party is doing or wants.  If I'm winning all encounters for them, then they should rest whenever I need it."

I assume you don't want to walk into a battle without spells since that's the sort of thing that has a tendency to case TPKs in every edition. It's not like people are that fond of the 5 minute workday it's just a natural outgrowth of having per day resources. Now the more casters the party has the more encounters the party can face before they have to rest. even more so if this is an older edition and almost all of your healing is coming from a Cleric.

We've already been around that topic. And let's just say many of us, with our actual play experience, completely disagree. I know the temptation to rehash arguments is there, but really there can be only one true 4000+ epic topic.

Quote from: Opaopajr;585700We've already been around that topic. And let's just say many of us, with our actual play experience, completely disagree. I know the temptation to rehash arguments is there, but really there can be only one true 4000+ epic topic.

Have you actually played in caster heavy games because I'm not sure you have. I have plenty of experience with caster parties and non-caster parties. My experience is that the more non-casters you have the faster spells run out.

Putting aside weather or not the fighter and rogue are actually contributing their presence is going to but a greater strain on the party casters spell load-out than another caster. Hopefully the Fighter is doing something pretty awesome because otherwise his contribution is that the Cleric gets to summon fewer angels and see less of the future.

To quote:

Now the more casters the party has the more encounters the party can face before they have to rest. even more so if this is an older edition and almost all of your healing is coming from a Cleric.

I disagree with this on its face. You presume too much about encounters and the necessity of spells. And I resent the healbot assertion about Priests.

Have you actually played in caster heavy games because I'm not sure you have. I have plenty of experience with caster parties and non-caster parties. My experience is that the more non-casters you have the faster spells run out.

Putting aside weather or not the fighter and rogue are actually contributing their presence is going to but a greater strain on the party casters spell load-out than another caster. Hopefully the Fighter is doing something pretty awesome because otherwise his contribution is that the Cleric gets to summon fewer angles and see less of the future.

Yes, I have. In games beyond 3e no less.

And no -- outside of the completely obvious "the more spell slots you have, the more spell slots you have!" non-assertion -- I don't agree with your argument as it relates to the first quote above. My scope of play extends beyond the boundaries of 3e. Spamming spells at each encounter is not how every single game of D&D I've played works.

Now, can we roll this dead-horse tangent away and get back to the topic?

Quote from: Opaopajr;585727And I resent the healbot assertion about Priests.

I resent it too but if this ain't 3e then unless the DM is making it rain potions then those CLWs have to come from somewhere.

So lets recap. When people rest it's usually because spells ran out. The more spellcasters you have the more spells the party has access to. Having a party composition heavy on non-casters will cause the casters you do have to run out of spells faster. Thus a party of say Priest/Priest/Mage/Mage can deal with more encounters before they need to rest then a party of Fighter/Thief/Priest/Mage not the other way around.

Are you saying this is true of 3E or all editions of D&D lordmistborn? If all editions, are you saying it is true at every level of play? (even level one) If not all editions, which editions specifically do you have in mind? At the majority of tables?

You really can tell 3.x players just by how they post. I wasn't expecting that, but there it is. Of course, the 1st ed players here likely look at my recently refound love for 2nd ed with similar amounts of scorn and amusement that I'm looking at 3rd ed players with.

There's lots of ways to be dicks.  

Here's one:

The Fighter type is pretty good on hit points, but everyone else is low on spells and other resources.  The party fights one more encounter, which they survive, but at the end, they're all low on hit points.  

They rest, but with a single night of rest, they haven't healed up the damage from the last fight.  The cleric/priest then uses his entire allotment of healing before the adventuring day even starts to get everyone to full.  

It's hard to contribute to the success of the party directly when you're using your resources to 'fix' other PCs mistakes.  

Resting when the wizard demands it might not make sense, but insisting on taking on fights that you don't need to is also pointless.  

For example, once I was playing a game in Forgotten Realms.  I stopped playing this particular game because they decided to play 3x/week, which was more than I could devote to it, but I kept playing with these same people in another game that I restricted to 1/week.  In any case, I was playing a wizard (rare for me) when we encountered an Otyugh in a dead-end.  We were curious about what it might be doing there, but it wasn't important to our mission.  Without engaging it, we discovered that there was a piece of magical treasure it was guarding.  Using mage hand we recovered the magical item from a safe distance, and we could have continued on.  However, some of the players just couldn't leave a fat sack of XP on the hoof, so they attacked it anyway.  While they eventually defeated it, they had their asses handed to them for the most part.  Suddenly, they needed to rest and call it a day, while my Wizard was still nearly full.  Since I didn't agree with the fight, I didn't participate.  

It wasn't the Wizard requiring a 5-minute workday on that occassion.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;585742Are you saying this is true of 3E or all editions of D&D lordmistborn? If all editions, are you saying it is true at every level of play? (even level one) If not all editions, which editions specifically do you have in mind? At the majority of tables?

Actually I was specifically arguing 2e here. Limited healing is not an issue in 3e.

Level 1-4 is a luck based mission anyway if you have combat at those levels people drop like flies and there isn't much you can do about it.