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PbP is more optimization focused than face to face games

   
A lot has been said here already but I have to say that it really comes down the to game, the DM, and the players.

I see plenty of games around here that are heavy roleplay or with campaign restictions that many would think discourage optimization. Things like, you can only be and expert or warrior class.

Even without that limited framework this is going to be some level of optimization and perhaps even moreso that other games depending on the feel/style of the game.

Good article, but not entirely complete, in my opinion. You do, of course, know what the power level be in the normal game, so you don't have to aim past that.

However, saying that you're entirely unaware of what other players will be doing in PbP is inaccurate. Unless the DM specifically states something like World of L_Tiene does, those most likely to be accepted are those with the most RP experience, and typically DnD RP experience goes hand in hand with building experience. Therefore, you know that you're quite liable going to be playing with veteran players.
Secondly, you know everyone else is likely to think exactly as Roy described. Add two and two and notice that you're looking at a game where veteran players are building with the power level to drag their entire party through a Gygaxian adventure on their own.
The DM will be aiming at that power level. Therefore, the last reason to optimize in PbP is, everyone else will be doing it and you don't want to be a Monk among Gods.

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Originally Posted by Wippit Guud View Post
From a DM's view... I actually think the limiting factor is time.

When you're running a tabletop game, everyone gets together to make their characters, probably in a couple of hours at most. That done, the DM begins the adventure, and since everyone only took an hour or so to figure things out, there's no sudden, "oh crap, how do I counter was this cleric just pulled out of his divine ass?" popping up.
Not necessarily. In our tabletop games, typically, the DMs sends around an e-mail with the basic premise, and then everyone has a week or two to prepare their characters. Monks and TWF Rangers (without the implied Lion Totem Barbarian level) are still common.

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Originally Posted by snakeman830 View Post
My experience has been that the mechanics actually help the roleplaying. It's one thing to say that your character is a legendary swordsman, but when the average wolf can kill him with ease, the roleplaying falls flat (and usually ends, since the character is dead).
So, what when you play a character without 'legendary', 'undefeated', 'perfect', or 'child phenomenon' in their core description? Do you also build to reflect low power levels when your character story requires that?

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Originally Posted by Roy View Post
You get to play AwesomeMan the Awesome adventures, instead of AverageMan the Average adventures, and most certainly are not stuck on rat farming duty. Because see, the better you are, the better your opponents are, which means the more impressive and epic it is when you beat them. Conversely, the punishment for making terrible characters is going on terrible adventures, because it's all they can handle.
Experimental data points to the opposite. Is slaying the avatar of a deity after defeating its demonic hordes an epic achievement? You betcha.
We did this with a party in the bottom mid-levels, with not a single bit of magic between all of the characters, not even so much as magic items, and builds that a Fighter built by a second-time player with a limited book collection would have a fair chance against.

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Originally Posted by Ikul View Post
So, what when you play a character without 'legendary', 'undefeated', 'perfect', or 'child phenomenon' in their core description? Do you also build to reflect low power levels when your character story requires that?
I said mechanics enhance the roleplaying. If I really wanted to play a bumbling pyromancer with terrible aim, I would probably build such a character. However, why anyone would want to play such a terrible character (one who is as much or more of a threat to the party than to the enemies) is beyond me.


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Experimental data points to the opposite. Is slaying the avatar of a deity after defeating its demonic hordes an epic achievement? You betcha.
We did this with a party in the bottom mid-levels, with not a single bit of magic between all of the characters, not even so much as magic items, and builds that a Fighter built by a second-time player with a limited book collection would have a fair chance against.
Let me guess, the DM waved his hand and said you guys did it, because mechanically, you stood no chance. Without magic, you wouldn't even have had a shot against the demons (unless we're talking dozens of dretches, even then you would need Cold Iron weapons), let alone an avatar of a god. Those things make high level wizards do a double-take.

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Originally Posted by snakeman830 View Post
I said mechanics enhance the roleplaying. If I really wanted to play a bumbling pyromancer with terrible aim, I would probably build such a character. However, why anyone would want to play such a terrible character (one who is as much or more of a threat to the party than to the enemies) is beyond me.
The problem here is you assume a character is 'terrible' because they are not effective in combat. IE, because they are not effective mechanically. No matter what you said before, you made your judgement purely based on the character's mechanical abilities and completely ignored RP possibilities.
Behold, why people believe optimizing and good RP are irreconcilable.

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Originally Posted by snakeman830 View Post
Let me guess, the DM waved his hand and said you guys did it, because mechanically, you stood no chance. Without magic, you wouldn't even have had a shot against the demons (unless we're talking dozens of dretches, even then you would need Cold Iron weapons), let alone an avatar of a god. Those things make high level wizards do a double-take.
Not at all. In fact, the DM was shocked we defeated it. We were never supposed to.
The simple difference is the DM did not just look up the Nth monster that's supposedly CR-appropriate and throw it at us. He made a monster which was an appropriate -he expected, even, narrowly impossible-, described it as fit the story, and allowed the monster's mechanics to enhance the roleplay.
As mentioned before, the DMs have the power to make an encounter more or less difficult, depending on power level. Mine did exactly that: he made a party-appropriate encounter.

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Originally Posted by Ikul View Post
Good article, but not entirely complete, in my opinion. You do, of course, know what the power level be in the normal game, so you don't have to aim past that.

However, saying that you're entirely unaware of what other players will be doing in PbP is inaccurate. Unless the DM specifically states something like World of L_Tiene does, those most likely to be accepted are those with the most RP experience, and typically DnD RP experience goes hand in hand with building experience. Therefore, you know that you're quite liable going to be playing with veteran players.
The term basket weaver comes to mind. There are plenty of people with very high post counts that would get swept in an instant by any decent encounter, much less any good one. And that's if they were given a level advantage on it. Conversely, there are plenty with low post counts that know their way around D&D incredibly well. Because that's how such "experience" is measured. By time on this site. Not time in D&D (or any other system). Not in terms of what was learned from that time. But activity on this site. If I were to make a new alt account now and attempt to join a game I would most likely be denied instantly as they'd see a low post count, assume I'm either new or going to ditch their game and not bother with me. Now I'm not going to do that, both because I see no need to make that point and because it's against the forum rules but any other clearly experienced player with a new name would have the same problem be it an alt, someone coming here from another forum...

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Secondly, you know everyone else is likely to think exactly as Roy described. Add two and two and notice that you're looking at a game where veteran players are building with the power level to drag their entire party through a Gygaxian adventure on their own.
The DM will be aiming at that power level. Therefore, the last reason to optimize in PbP is, everyone else will be doing it and you don't want to be a Monk among Gods.
Actual experience does not reflect this at all. Look at any game, you'll see people trying to build things like Fighters, Monks, and CW Samurai. You'll also see the Clerics, Druids, Wizards... People are all over the place, and very few of them realize that PbP is more optimization focused so they go in with the same builds, or weaker builds than they would use elsewhere.

If the DM doesn't specifically say what he's aiming for, and sometimes even if he does that's what you'll get. And since Tier discussion is also against forum rules, he can't say what he's aiming for.

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Experimental data points to the opposite. Is slaying the avatar of a deity after defeating its demonic hordes an epic achievement? You betcha.
We did this with a party in the bottom mid-levels, with not a single bit of magic between all of the characters, not even so much as magic items, and builds that a Fighter built by a second-time player with a limited book collection would have a fair chance against.
If by avatar of a deity you mean a random mid level cleric and demonic hordes to be a dozen dretches... I suppose that could happen. If it was anything more than that though, what you got was a freeform game and not a D&D game.

You also cannot roleplay if you are dead. In addition to that, despite what you claim fluff does not conflict with mechanics. Mechanics, however are required to get anywhere.

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Originally Posted by Roy View Post
Stuff.
Okay, you're probably right about most of that is, but despite all of that, I for one build my character to be able to keep up with the other players, because I trust a good DM to make his encounters appropriate to the party he has. As long as the whole party is on the same power level, problems shouldn't arise.
And I highly doubt I'm a special unique little snowflake.

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Originally Posted by Roy View Post
If by avatar of a deity you mean a random mid level cleric and demonic hordes to be a dozen dretches... I suppose that could happen. If it was anything more than that though, what you got was a freeform game and not a D&D game.

You also cannot roleplay if you are dead. In addition to that, despite what you claim fluff does not conflict with mechanics. Mechanics, however are required to get anywhere.
If that's so and fluff does not conflict with mechanics, how is defeating the fluff of an avatar of a deity with the mechanics of a mid level cleric and a dozen dretches (BTW, neither of that is a correct guess, but let's roll with it) any less epic than defeating the fluff of the avatar of the deity with the mechanics of an avatar of a deity?

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Originally Posted by Ikul View Post
The problem here is you assume a character is 'terrible' because they are not effective in combat. IE, because they are not effective mechanically. No matter what you said before, you made your judgement purely based on the character's mechanical abilities and completely ignored RP possibilities.
Behold, why people believe optimizing and good RP are irreconcilable.
Not at all. The character is terrible because it's a bigger danger to the party than any other challenge they'll face. If a guy happens to like fire, but is accident-prone (both RP traits, mind you), then things will almost invariably turn out badly. It doesn't matter how well-developed your backstory is if once a week the party is chased out of town because the wizard managed to set yet another house on fire. I haven't even gotten into the mechanical aspects of it and you can already see why this is a bad character to play.

Now, mechanically, I could make him Super McBlasterton and dominate everything we come across that has any chance at all to in some way be affected by fire (hint: with proper selections, this is everything) or even something effective, like using save-or-loses instead of blasting, but that wouldn't fit the image of the accident-prone, bad-aim pyro. This would be a case where the mechanics detract from the roleplaying.

And in both cases, you still have a bad character if you roleplay him properly, because the party will take the soonest opportunity to dump him. He's just too much of a liability.


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Not at all. In fact, the DM was shocked we defeated it. We were never supposed to.
The simple difference is the DM did not just look up the Nth monster that's supposedly CR-appropriate and throw it at us. He made a monster which was an appropriate -he expected, even, narrowly impossible-, described it as fit the story, and allowed the monster's mechanics to enhance the roleplay.
As mentioned before, the DMs have the power to make an encounter more or less difficult, depending on power level. Mine did exactly that: he made a party-appropriate encounter.
So he homebrewed something specifically for you guys to fight and have a shot against and was surprised when you beat it? This is handwaving. This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about earlier.

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Originally Posted by Ikul View Post
Okay, you're probably right about most of that is, but despite all of that, I for one build my character to be able to keep up with the other players, because I trust a good DM to make his encounters appropriate to the party he has. As long as the whole party is on the same power level, problems shouldn't arise.
And I highly doubt I'm a special unique little snowflake.
An inexperienced DM thinks that a balanced party is in fact imbalanced. Cleric/Fighter/Rogue/Wizard, need I say more? A lot of DMs, and a lot of players are still stuck thinking like that. Even I regularly get the people to which I have to explain that no, the Cleric's role is not to Healbot, it's to run Persistent buffs and toss down the save or loses and/or melee smackdown. Or that the Rogue's role isn't to fool around with traps and such (that they will ultimately set off on themselves anyways), it's strict straight up DPS with flasks.

And that means that stock encounters, enhanced enemies or whatever the DM uses, you can very, very easily end up in a scenario in which some people flat out cannot pull their own weight. Which means those that can have more work to do.

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If that's so and fluff does not conflict with mechanics, how is defeating the fluff of an avatar of a deity with the mechanics of a mid level cleric and a dozen dretches (BTW, neither of that is a correct guess, but let's roll with it) any less epic than defeating the fluff of the avatar of the deity with the mechanics of an avatar of a deity?
That... doesn't even make any sense. It almost sounds as if you are arguing that if you call a 5 year old child Mike Tyson and then knock him out that makes you the best boxer in the world (as opposed to a child abuser and a bully). Metaphorically speaking that is. Wow, who knew being good at something was so easy? All you have to do is erect a strawman, and then burn it down... *rolls eyes*

Because going by the actual mechanics of the actual game, avatar of a deity means mid teens CR, DR/Magic (which isn't normally a problem, but does give it Immune: Mooks, which you qualify as), and stats high enough to ignore everything you do and counter with automatic annihilation. So even if his minions were mere dretches, the boss alone sweeps you faster than a sand team sweeps an in game team. If you are playing D&D, and not freeform.

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Originally Posted by Roy View Post
That... doesn't even make any sense. It almost sounds as if you are arguing that if you call a 5 year old child Mike Tyson and then knock him out that makes you the best boxer in the world (as opposed to a child abuser and a bully).
No, it'll just make you the toughest kid in the sandbox. This setting happens to very low-magic, therefore it's the proverbial sandbox. I'm arguing that a small child becoming the toughest kid in his sandbox (IE, defeating an party-appropriate encounter for a low-power party) is no less an achievement as a grown man becoming boxing champion of his city (or village, or some scale-appropriate size).

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Originally Posted by Roy View Post
Because going by the actual mechanics of the actual game, avatar of a deity means mid teens CR.
Sure, if you just go by the mechanics of the actual game. DnD is a game with mechanics, but it's a roleplaying game. It has more than just mechanics. And if you go by the rules of the game, "avatar of a deity" means whatever the DM says it is.



Although the books are written around Greyhawk, nothing says we have to play there. We don't have to take the Greyhawk fluff, and we don't have to take the Greyhawk mechanics and power level if we don't want to.

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Originally Posted by Ikul View Post
No, it'll just make you the toughest kid in the sandbox. This setting happens to very low-magic, therefore it's the proverbial sandbox. I'm arguing that a small child becoming the toughest kid in his sandbox (IE, defeating an party-appropriate encounter for a low-power party) is no less an achievement as a grown man becoming boxing champion of his city (or village, or some scale-appropriate size).
And... you are fighting the incarnation of a god. Which still means you auto lose, interestingly enough.

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Sure, if you just go by the mechanics of the actual game. DnD is a game with mechanics, but it's a roleplaying game. It has more than just mechanics. And if you go by the rules of the game, "avatar of a deity" means whatever the DM says it is.
D&D is a meritocracy. It is full of things that will happily kill you and take your stuff if given a chance. That is why you need the capabilities to reinforce your desires, in other words, you have to be competent to get anywhere. Even non combat stuff, like skills is a function of level.

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Although the books are written around Greyhawk, nothing says we have to play there. We don't have to take the Greyhawk fluff, and we don't have to take the Greyhawk mechanics and power level if we don't want to.
It doesn't matter which you pick.

FR: You can't walk down three consecutive city blocks without running into an epic level NPC/avatar of a deity/the deity themselves. You're barely even worth a name unless you're a level 15+ character with plenty of magic and magic items.

Eberron: Lower level... but still lots of magic, and no gods to be found. You're still getting nowhere fast without magic, be it spells or items.





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