Quote from: Abyssal Maw;368499Saying people should more or less understand and work within the party dynamic in D&D (and not be dicks) is absolutely nothing like what you are saying here.

I'm actually with you here AM. I have no problem with characters that in-game might have issues with each other, that can be fun. What I have issues with are players that play their characters in such a way that they put the rest of their friends in jeopardy (and not always of death, it could just be in jeopardy of failing to achieve their goals) all in the name of being "in-character". Obviously, this actually has nothing to do with 4e or any other edition or game. Obviously there are always exceptions. If this internal party conflict is part of the challenge of the adventure and is meant to be overcome in-game then of course that would be just fine. This would be the case when the group is composed of prisoners all chained together. Still, once that adventure is done, and the pursuers have been left in the dust, what's to keep the group together after that, especially if they don't get along? Fine for one-shots, but not for extended campaigns, IMO. As in everything though YMMV, I'm only posting my own perspective and there's no one right way. If some of ya'all like having internal conflict in every campaign then rock on. My favorite dynamic is like in Shadowrun, where individual characters might have quirks and eccentricities, but still everyone basically gets along and are good at their jobs. Also, just to reiterate, this does not extend to include engaging in mathematical optimization for every character.

Along those lines, I'm curious about something. Forgive me if I'm wrong, I haven't played as much 4e as some of ya'all, and I have only played a wizard so far, not a fighter, but are fighters not "defenders"? As such, wouldn't constitution not be just as if not more important for a fighter? I thought "strikers" were the ones meant to do the major damage. Seems to me that, independent of their ability to deal damage, the dwarven racial abilities are ideal for both absorbing damage and at the same time not as susceptible to being moved out of the way so enemies can get at the more vulnerable members of the group.

I can't find the old ca 1999 Gaming Outpost article titled "I Pocket the Room", (which was where one guy was talking about how cool it was when his thief PC got to the dragons chamber first while everyone else was fighting in another part of the dungeon.. and "took everything in it") but it was the seed of a lot of discussions about this kind of gaming.

As now, opinions varied on whether that was cool or not, but mine hasn't changed -- "first of all, how is that even possible, and second.. why would anyone even game with this kind of guy?"

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;368501I'll just put it in a single sentence for Jibba and Randall:

Being part of a team doesn't preclude roleplaying. Not in any way. And it doesn't actually have anything to do with combat optimization, either.

And to expand on that, I mean, this is the case even in the less harmonius sort of roleplaying that comes from intra-party rivalries and minor conflicts. These happen all the time. To go back to my armor stripping old testament-ish invoker for a second, there's another party member in that group that plays a primal shaman. We have a conflict of religious ideals (complicated by the fact that my invoker was "originally" a primal spirit worshipping wild elf, and was 'saved' to become the divine style invoker that she is now).

For the course of four levels we've sort of been at each others throats, from petty disagreements all the way to a hair-pulling catfight (hot!) and we've just now become friends (sort of...) after metaphysically "dying" together during a sort of dream-battle that took place on this quest we're on.

There is no doubting your ability to roleplay, in and out of combat.  I always like your examples.

I guess this falls under the differentiation of 'you can shoehorn any behavior into a ruleset' and 'what does this ruleset do best'.

Af couse being part of a team, or a good teammate does not preclude roleplaying.  But I'll say with equal certitude that being nudged or forced into being part of a team precludes many roleplaying options.  
So I agree that being part of a team does not preclude roleplaying; but being forced/nudged into a team means less roleplaying options.

Quote from: LordVreeg;368505Af couse being part of a team, or a good teammate does not preclude roleplaying.  But I'll say with equal certitude that being nudged or forced into being part of a team precludes many roleplaying options.  
So I agree that being part of a team does not preclude roleplaying; but being forced/nudged into a team means less roleplaying options.

I agree to an extent, with the caveat that while for short-term games, or just a single adventure, this is absolutely true. However, for an extended campaign, why would characters that don't get along at all, or that have screwed each other over in some way keep working together if they have any choice at all? To me, their continued association is what would have to be "shoe-horned" and come across as forced. For professionals who's skills compliment each other, and who get along moderately well, working with each other seems natural to me.

Quote from: Sigmund;368506I agree to an extent, with the caveat that while for short-term games, or just a single adventure, this is absolutely true. However, for an extended campaign, why would characters that don't get along at all, or that have screwed each other over in some way keep working together if they have any choice at all? To me, their continued association is what would have to be "shoe-horned" and come across as forced. For professionals who's skills compliment each other, and who get along moderately well, working with each other seems natural to me.

Good points.
Always depends on the makeup of the group, and the level of decption involved.  I've had and actually still do have groups that some of the major party leaders are deceiving some of the members as to what they are actually doing.
In one group, most of the party believes the group is following clues and a trail of knowledge in discovering the origin of a plague of undeath.  They have no idea the party leaders actually part of a group that actually unleashed a vampyre behind the plague, and the 2 leaders are trying to cover up their own complicity.  The Leaders have 'culled' 2 party members who learned the truth.  This particular party is about to go into yr 10 (real time).

Quote from: LordVreeg;368497I think this nicely ties the knot in the original OP.  

I'm reading Doom's post about optimizing...and remembering some of the most fun we had was dealing with the misfit earlier D&D characters that had mediocre stats, that chose an armor type based on what his character would wear, or later, took a mediocre weapon because it fit his idea of the character, or the mage who always memorized 'comp languages' because it fit the Players idea of his MU being a scholar...Optimized?  Rarely.  
I get less optimized now, honestly, when I play skill-based.  Idiosyncratic, role-play friendly?  THAT I get in spades.

Thing is, you could DO that in D&D. Encounters weren't level balanced, treasures weren't level balanced...you explored dungeons and stuff, and even walking city streets you could meet anything from a beggar to a Type I demon. It was up to the DM to make things fun and interesting.


But DnD4.0 you really can't. Walk through the woods at level 1, and you'll meet goblins. Same woods at level 12, and you'll meet Yuan-Ti.

Much as AM says, everything is level balanced for the level of 'optimized' characters in a party. The game assumes your characters are 'optimized'. Don't believe me? See for yourself how easy it is to make a party of un-optimized level 10 characters (as per RAW) that have no chance of winning a 'balanced' level 10 fight. The game doesn't allow for such characters to fight much below level 9 encounters. Even semi-optimal characters can have extreme difficulty once you start to hit level 20.

If one player plays a misfit, then the GM has to rewrite the game to make it work. But, for DnD4.0, it just makes sense not to give yourself a permanent 2 level penalty, is all I'm saying.

(of course someone's going to say "it only makes sense FOR YOU", and I acknowledge that some folks have other opinions).

Quote from: Sigmund;368506I agree to an extent, with the caveat that while for short-term games, or just a single adventure, this is absolutely true. However, for an extended campaign, why would characters that don't get along at all, or that have screwed each other over in some way keep working together if they have any choice at all? To me, their continued association is what would have to be "shoe-horned" and come across as forced. For professionals who's skills compliment each other, and who get along moderately well, working with each other seems natural to me.

The campaign goals are the campaign goals. Even if all the party are professional adventures whose skills complement each other and who work well as a team you still need to provide them with a reason why they would take the fat, bald, holy kid all the way to India to collect those scrolls, or why saving Princess Ophelia is a better propostion of just heading back to the that old dungeon complex again.

As  DM each player will have a roleplay hook that means that completing the campaign is in their interest. I have even taken the evil assasin that a PC built and gvien them the mission of killing all the PCs and stealing the once the party have obtained it which is at the end of the campaign.

But getting back to the roleplay bit. Just cos my fighter is a coward and runs away from stuff doesn't mean he is a bad guy he's still the guy that makes great jokes round the campfire and would go out of his way for you and he is really good at solving those puzzles and stuff. Its just he's a cowardly little shit. So just like you have mates in real life, or people you work with that get on your nerves but you stay with so its the same in a game with a party.

I mean this isn't rocket science. This is roleplaying. It really is basic 101 stuff. Create a believeable character with realistic motivations and personality.

Quote from: DOOM

Quote from: Originally Posted by LordVreegI think this nicely ties the knot in the original OP.

I'm reading Doom's post about optimizing...and remembering some of the most fun we had was dealing with the misfit earlier D&D characters that had mediocre stats, that chose an armor type based on what his character would wear, or later, took a mediocre weapon because it fit his idea of the character, or the mage who always memorized 'comp languages' because it fit the Players idea of his MU being a scholar...Optimized? Rarely.
I get less optimized now, honestly, when I play skill-based. Idiosyncratic, role-play friendly? THAT I get in spades.

Thing is, you could DO that in D&D. Encounters weren't level balanced, treasures weren't level balanced...you explored dungeons and stuff, and even walking city streets you could meet anything from a beggar to a Type I demon. It was up to the DM to make things fun and interesting.


But DnD4.0 you really can't. Walk through the woods at level 1, and you'll meet goblins. Same woods at level 12, and you'll meet Yuan-Ti.

Much as AM says, everything is level balanced for the level of 'optimized' characters in a party. The game assumes your characters are 'optimized'. Don't believe me? See for yourself how easy it is to make a party of un-optimized level 10 characters (as per RAW) that have no chance of winning a 'balanced' level 10 fight. The game doesn't allow for such characters to fight much below level 9 encounters. Even semi-optimal characters can have extreme difficulty once you start to hit level 20.

If one player plays a misfit, then the GM has to rewrite the game to make it work. But, for DnD4.0, it just makes sense not to give yourself a permanent 2 level penalty, is all I'm saying.

(of course someone's going to say "it only makes sense FOR YOU", and I acknowledge that some folks have other opinions).

OH, no, I am agreeing with you.  The OP is about the comparison betweet he rules and the games they create.  Your very correct comment about the woods speaks volumes.  In many games, the PCs will fight what the GM placed in the woods in the first place or what the GM rolls on the random encounter tables (optimized or not, by the way); in 4E, as you say, it is dependent upon the PC's level.  
Both can be a great game and a lot of fun.  But this is a big difference.

Quote from: Doom;368509Thing is, you could DO that in D&D. Encounters weren't level balanced, treasures weren't level balanced...you explored dungeons and stuff, and even walking city streets you could meet anything from a beggar to a Type I demon. It was up to the DM to make things fun and interesting.


But DnD4.0 you really can't. Walk through the woods at level 1, and you'll meet goblins. Same woods at level 12, and you'll meet Yuan-Ti.

Much as AM says, everything is level balanced for the level of 'optimized' characters in a party. The game assumes your characters are 'optimized'. Don't believe me? See for yourself how easy it is to make a party of un-optimized level 10 characters (as per RAW) that have no chance of winning a 'balanced' level 10 fight. The game doesn't allow for such characters to fight much below level 9 encounters. Even semi-optimal characters can have extreme difficulty once you start to hit level 20.

If one player plays a misfit, then the GM has to rewrite the game to make it work. But, for DnD4.0, it just makes sense not to give yourself a permanent 2 level penalty, is all I'm saying.

(of course someone's going to say "it only makes sense FOR YOU", and I acknowledge that some folks have other opinions).

In that case 4e is simply broken. If the game allows you to create characters that can't actually survive against the encounters the game tells you you have to provide then the game is broken. You may as well remove the whole chargen process and just have 100 different "PCs" you can choose from.

Quote from: Doom;368509But DnD4.0 you really can't. Walk through the woods at level 1, and you'll meet goblins. Same woods at level 12, and you'll meet Yuan-Ti.

I guess this would be true if the GM is a slave to the RAW.  I know some players expect the GM to be such a slave, but I suspect most of those players would always built the most optimized combat monster they can so the issue would probably never come up.

QuoteMuch as AM says, everything is level balanced for the level of 'optimized' characters in a party. The game assumes your characters are 'optimized'. Don't believe me? See for yourself how easy it is to make a party of un-optimized level 10 characters (as per RAW) that have no chance of winning a 'balanced' level 10 fight. The game doesn't allow for such characters to fight much below level 9 encounters. Even semi-optimal characters can have extreme difficulty once you start to hit level 20.

I'm sure even a semi-competent GM could look at the party and decide for him or herself what a level-appropriate encounter would be for the party in front of him/her instead of the party the RAW assume is in front of him. GMs in every other edition have been able to -- or is 4e really so different a game that the GM can't do this anymore?

QuoteIf one player plays a misfit, then the GM has to rewrite the game to make it work.

Rewrite the game? Admittedly, I haven't picked up any 4e books beyond the original three as that's all it took to determine the game was not for me, but I could certainly handle a misfit character without rewriting the game presented in those three books. But then, I treat rules as guidelines for the GM that the GM needs to ignore when they get in the way of fun at the table. Ignoring a few encounter design rules would be players could play characters who were not all combat-optimized or always put them team first.
Heck, simply setting up the encounter so their were weaker and stronger opponents and having the weaker ones go after the less combat-optimized characters while the strong ones go after the optimized PCs would probably handle it.

Quote from: Doom;368509But DnD4.0 you really can't. Walk through the woods at level 1, and you'll meet goblins. Same woods at level 12, and you'll meet Yuan-Ti.

I've got no idea what game you're talking about. Perhaps Shadows over Mystara, but D&D 4th this ain't, especially in a thread whose OP contains a bunch of Random Encounter Tables.

Quote from: Doom;368509Much as AM says, everything is level balanced for the level of 'optimized' characters in a party. The game assumes your characters are 'optimized'. Don't believe me? See for yourself how easy it is to make a party of un-optimized level 10 characters (as per RAW) that have no chance of winning a 'balanced' level 10 fight.

Whoooah, wait a minute. We aren't talking about taking the most badly under-optimized build possible in 4E (say, a tank-controller hybrid combined with a race whose stats suit neither), we are talking about a bunch of people who'll pick their powers with some regard to what they think plays out well at the table, but may not take that racial +1 at level 1. You're saying that a level balanced encounter will wipe out a party solely containing characters of the second variety?

That said, you make a very good point that a game's expectations of what level n characters ought to be able to handle can be gathered from looking at the challenges the game likes to throw at them at that level, i.e. the MM. I'm just wondering if all level 10 encounter groups in the MM1 are overwhelming to a group of moderately optimized PCs - or if we're looking at a small non-representative sample of hilariously misadjusted
level 10 encounters in the MM1 you and others had a bad experience with.

Because, I could easily mount an argument wholly parallel to yours that D&D 3.5 basically expected all players to super-optmize their PCs because look at what mojo a dragon for their EL would throw at them.... and totally miss the point that the dev's simply slapped craptastically low CR numbers onto those dragons.

And going from that example of dragon CRs in 3.5 - as well as picking up on Randall's post above mine - the one thing I certainly wouldn't do here is to say "let's rebuild the game and the PC classes from scratch". It'd simply say "dragon CRs are bullshit... or simply don't work in my game... so I simply leave dragon stat blocks as are and nodge up their CRs by 2 or 3". There, done. Took me what.... 5 seconds?

All I'm getting from this is that people make a hell of a lot of assumptions about how other people are roleplaying. This is just 2010's version of the "ROLLplaying vs ROLEplaying" idiocy.

And I think Doom is wrong about whether an average level 10 group can handle level 10 encounters. In my experience, an average level 10 group can routinely handle level 12-14 encounters. It's when you start in the level +6 or +7 realm  that you leave the unoptimized characters behind.

Quote from: LordVreeg;368505I agree that being part of a team does not preclude roleplaying; but being forced/nudged into a team means less roleplaying options.

This.

Quote from: Doom;368509Thing is, you could DO that in D&D. Encounters weren't level balanced, treasures weren't level balanced...you explored dungeons and stuff, and even walking city streets you could meet anything from a beggar to a Type I demon. It was up to the DM to make things fun and interesting.

But DnD4.0 you really can't. Walk through the woods at level 1, and you'll meet goblins. Same woods at level 12, and you'll meet Yuan-Ti.

Much as AM says, everything is level balanced for the level of 'optimized' characters in a party. The game assumes your characters are 'optimized'. Don't believe me? See for yourself how easy it is to make a party of un-optimized level 10 characters (as per RAW) that have no chance of winning a 'balanced' level 10 fight. The game doesn't allow for such characters to fight much below level 9 encounters. Even semi-optimal characters can have extreme difficulty once you start to hit level 20.

If one player plays a misfit, then the GM has to rewrite the game to make it work. But, for DnD4.0, it just makes sense not to give yourself a permanent 2 level penalty, is all I'm saying.

(of course someone's going to say "it only makes sense FOR YOU", and I acknowledge that some folks have other opinions).

I actually see where you're coming from there.

I'd hate to be in a situation like this because the game is such a tightly designed machine that any misfit creativity would be stumped on as "unfit" and "broken". That would suck, honestly. I remember, like Vreeg, playing misfit characters, like a Kobold Shaman that was, by all human accounts, mentally retarded, and it was just SO much fun to play the guy with a strong lisp, obsessing about getting offerings for the Gods, and such. The guy had to mechanically SUCK, because it was SO much more fun when he failed after raving like a maniac about how he was going to say, scalp this guy or just rip them apart. That was comedic relief.

So yeah, if the game strongly supports the idea of me playing a completely balanced character, these are that many unbalanced role playing options/choices I will not have, or won't be allowed to even consider, and it sucks.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;368520And I think Doom is wrong about whether an average level 10 group can handle level 10 encounters. In my experience, an average level 10 group can routinely handle level 12-14 encounters. It's when you start in the level +6 or +7 realm  that you leave the unoptimized characters behind.

I never said anything about an average group not being able to handle encounters. An average group is optimized, and can absolutely handle same-level encounters easily. Either you buy this, or you don't, you seem to be going both ways ("yes, they can be suboptimal and useful, but not totally suboptimal"). How much of a penalty is 'acceptible' for a player to give himself?

And, again, you have a choice a chargen...give yourself a penalty that can never be fixed throughout the rest of the campaign, or not. Mathematics and common sense says 'not', but I realize some folks see otherwise.

The proposed fix to deal with the one sub-optimal character above, have weaker monsters go after the sub-par character while stronger monsters go after the normal characters, doesn't work as well as it might.

DnD4.0 is a very fluid game, and combat is primarily about focus fire in any event. The weaker monsters either get snuffed first (leaving the weaker character mostly out of the rest of the combat), or the stronger monster gets snuffed first (leaving the weaker character again, out of the combat). Softening up all the monsters equally is just a bad idea.

And, again, we seem to focusing on a broken part of the game that's easily fixed.

Are there truly no suggestions for fixing all the other broken parts?