Power Gaming and Min Maxers in 5e Dungeons & Dragons & TTRPG
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- Опубліковано 21 жов 2024
- Do you know how you be a good power gamer? They do exist! We are power gamers! Here's what we think about this controversial term and how to be a power gamer who makes their group great.
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Web DM thank you for all the awesome content guys keep on going and also thank you for well getting me over the bridge to be honest web dm Nerdarchy and taking 20 tfs at the table encounter role play xp to level 3 davvy cheaply and critical role you guys inspired me to start playing d and d so thank you I can not thank you enough for the laughs and content and I promise you got a fan for the long haul
Thanks Sam!
Team play? Have you seen what a 20th level optimised Bard does? He or she does not need any other PCs period.
@@rowanhawklan9707 The same can be said for any 20th level character. That doesn't represent the majority of play.
no periods~! still a decent story @George Gebhard
Just because you min/max your character doesn't mean you cant role play.
Exactly
Sometimes you feel obliged to "power game" when you pick an RP off-schedule class combo, to "keep up" with inherently strong class combos your friends might be picking. Few people enjoy playing the "weak link".
As someone that has seen the horror of the foxtits build in Pathfinder firsthand while also watching the player of said build roleplay like a champ, I can confirm this is true.
also, it makes sense in universe. think about it: D&D worlds are often filled with monsters and villains of all kinds... anyone that survives in that kinda of environment is not gonna be just choosing what spells to learn or what weapons to use based on personal preference, but rather on how their affect their odds of survival. otherwise, they die.
I feel like the people who complain about power gamers are the ones you want to participation trophy for making mechanicaly poor characters... then get mad cause you put in 10 hours scouring the book to make an awesome character....
My philosophy on power gaming: power game for the party, not in spite of the party.
Connor Flaherty This exactly. My currently min/maxed Bard is so that I can most effectively buff my team and debuff our enemies. Do it for the party.
Connor Flaherty I have a minmaxed abjuration wizard, and I have basically made our fighter into an unkillable human (or, really, half-orc,) shield. Unless a natural 20 is rolled, or whatever we’re fighting has a massive attack bonus. Our fighter has only been knocked unconscious three times, or four times, if we’re counting our dream sequence one-shot.
@@TardisPilot2004 Would you mind reccomending some spells to me. I am going to play an alteration wizard for the first time and I want to play him mostly supportive but I am a little overwhelmed with spell options and would love some reccomendations. Currently I am thinking of a disruption wizard that doesnt really output much damage but he dominates combat by restricting enemies, teleporting allies, etc.
Edit: Adding information about my character concept.
@@rafaelagonzalezgalloza3096 Which level?
@@ElfosDeMordor The camlaing starts at 5th level so I wwould say from 1st to 3rd level spells.
power gamers unite!!! (with the rest of the group)
Oh, shit. The five-oh!
One of my regular players is normally all about optimizing his characters and he's a blast to have around. As you guys have said, power gamers are not by default disruptive or somehow unfun to have.
Power gaming can often come from just super invested players who care deeply about the hobby and all there is to it. Mind you, that can by itself be a bad thing but, good or bad, it's helpful to understand that the dichotomy between people who power game and people who RP is a false one. Players can have both or neither of these attributes . Bad players can have both or neither of these attributes. Good players can have both of these attributes. I'm split on whether good players can have neither of these attributes but I'm leaning towards yes, they can.
@@oOPPHOo yes yes they can I would consider 2 of my players good players there involved in the game they are not good role players or do they power game they just sit back help when they can and laugh with the rest of us when weird shit happens
Nobody even realizes I am a power gamer because I rarely roll above a 12 and that's a rough life for even a min-maxed character.
Big mood
@@WebDM Sounds like my min-max character for a One Shot. Lv 5 half-elf bard with all the shiny things... didn't roll above an 8 all night. At least I got the Vicious Mockery kill confirm.
I feel you there. I am playing a swashbuckler rogue/ hexblade warlock that I tried to design to go early in the round (+10 Init). Often, I am going 3rd or 4th (out of the 5 of us) because I rolled a 5 on the d20.
Play a roll under system like GLOG! You’ll dominate!
@@eamonmulholland3159 I've tried that, I always roll high whenever it's a roll under system. Dice just don't like me doing cool things.
As a DM, I have a whole group, my sister who is new to the game, two actor players who are really into rp, and two players who are autistic and have some trouble getting into character but are some of the coolest people. Those 2 are the ones im going to talk about.
They see the rules as a gateway to my world, something concrete that they can understand, and i have made it a point to make it so that the rules the players follow, are the same rules the npcs and villains follow. I personally like to optimize my combat encounters cause i think its fun, and encouraged both those players to do the same with their characters. They generally don't RP that often, but when they do, they blow the socks off the rest of the group.
For example, one of them was playing a warforged eldritch knight named Otto who was a essentially a magic cop. His friend in the middle of the city (ex PC) was caught in a cage of force by an evil wizard they angered in the street by accident.
Otto shouted out in the middle of combat "By the power of the law! Stand Down!" I felt the anger, the emotion welling inside him. When the wizard responded "Your laws mean nothing to me." and casts disintegrate killing the pc before teleporting out of there... the moment was magical, as the anger soured, and turned to genuine sadness. I saw a couple tears, not just from him but most of the group, and the party unanimously decided they would hunt down and kill that bastard. I double checked after the session, and everyone was in both in awe of what happened, and was looking forward to the next session.
(i talked with the player who died before that session, that he might die and he was cool with it)
TL;DR: Powergaming can be a method to coax out Roleplaying from your friends, and even help them with their social skills.
Devan Hayes That’s fucking cool. Letting people explore a world and narrative with their friends.
@@chickenmonger123 Also a little sparkly-eyed at the concept of a magic cop
I'm autistic, and yeah, what others call powergaming is just... how I approach the game. I've branched out into hardcore rp over my two decades of gaming, but it was the solid framework provided by the rules that I first fell in love with.
I have Asperger's and had a similar experience first starting to play; I had a hard time conceptualizing what exactly *COULD* be done in DnD, and so I used the rules as a pathway to that. I have very few problems doing so freely now, but starting out was a bit of a struggle, so I dealt with it through the rules, and made optimized characters so I could at least help out the party.
Well... don't leave us hanging. Were they able to bring him back? Either through True Resurrection or by some other means? If not, did the player still participate somehow?
Each intro gets trippier
"NOOOOOOO!!!!1! YOU CAN'T JUST CHEAT THE SYSTEM!!!"
"ha ha, polearm master + sentinel go brrr"
Is this the best thumbnail? It is. Thumbnail guy you win the golden thumbnail award. Intro guy? You're pretty good also.
Feets. That is all.
I'm a power gamer but I honestly just like to optimize, if i try to make a character to do a specific thing and i don't do that thing then i just feel like i wasted my time.
Unfortunately failure is baked into dnd
If you don't want to ever fail, you've adopted the wrong system
Your dm can redesign the game to do anything, but the fact a d20 is used when endgame modifiers 11-17 for trained skills, the game is INTENDED to involve failure. Its a story based game, whether you understand that or not
@@seeker296 i didn't say i never want to fail, i just want my characters to be good at what i made them for. If i make a character with the intention of being good at combat, i want them to be the best at combat i can make them within my control, same with characters who specialize in social situations or exploration. I know there's a CHANCE to fail, the idea is to just minimize that chance as much as possible
I wish I could sit down and play a campaign with you guys. To have a group that uses all 3 pillars of play and to have the opportunity to actually roleplay sounds like a dream at this point
Have you checked out our live stream games??
@@WebDM I got a chance to watch one night, but its been a while since.
Well i hope your playing with friends but if u want more out of the game then you should step up, talk to your group and hold everyone to a higher standard, like "hey im looking to get a bit more out of the game can we try this? Or can we sit back and take things a bit slower and try to do things different" doesnt have to ruin the fun when its done right
Like i started playing dnd a year ago (dm) group all new to dnd aswell but i read the rules, watched a ton of webdm and other YT's and i sat my group down and was like hey this is what i want out of the game, and a year later were still in the same campaign and everyone is loving it, we did have a character die but its still wacky and fun.
But also have fun yalls way
@@snowman9631 at the moment its more or less a new group for me. We've done almost 2 modules. Princes of the Apocalypse and Tomb of Annihilation. Unfortunately with these 2 modules they're like world ending events and there's an inherent feeling of needing to save the world, so i understand that there wasnt time to flesh out character relationships and whatnot, but I've noticed that Exploration is actively asked to be skipped. "Can we just *poof* and be there?" And similar things are said along the same lines. We've done a one shot that was a murder mystery that was a nice touch, especially since it was just Clue reskinned, but it didn't last and you could tell the DM wasn't really prepared for it. I'll make sure to bring it up for the next campaign since it's not a module and by the sound of it we'll have time to explore our characters
Top notch intro as always 😂
If you want to power game and your group is against it, play a healer. No one complains about getting too many heals.
An aasimar Divine soul Sorcerer/Paladin very optimized for dammage but also healing and Buffs.
Basically a Twilight Cleric
I am currently playing a warforged Paladin, (of redemption) and a big part of his concept is “how high can I get his AC” I am well on my way to get it upto a 25.
My old D&D group from high school defined "power gamer" as "the kind of person who tries to win D&D." 3rd edition did not alleviate this idea. 5th edition is much more like older D&D/ AD&D, in which super stats were not necessary to have fun, nor even to survive.
Of course, this really all changed when we got the stats for Drizzt ...
What I've noticed about power gaming that I find interesting is that it's usually about how much damage a player can do. If I make a super optimized RP heavy character, I don't really see people complain.
I think it’s because just going “Max CHA and proficiency/expertise in CHA skills = RP powergame”
There’s no “dex vs str” or “AC vs saves vs hp” or “greataxe vs greatsword” type of debates.
@adamkaris I'll start one if you want
High WIS and Insight make better minmaxed RP characters than maxed CHA bc reading people is like, 80% of social engineering
Those windows behind you are a good choice for a new background
@4:54 I feel this is where the line is drawn between power gamers. I personally would consider myself to be an "optimizer" so I can maximize my options. In a game of survivability, I see the other PCs as a resource; I would never just run in guns ablazing without consulting them first.
Just wanted to say that you all are keeping me awake this morning and keeping me sane. Much love.
Good Morning Tim!
Morning morning! Hope you all have a cracking day Web DM 😊
Very bold of pruitt to talk about being depressed and depraved in the past tense
How?
@@HeyBoSsBar As in, " bold of him to assume we're not all currently depressed and, or, depraved", present tense. I guess?
Create a character concept that has nothing to do with the game mechanics, then optimize the shit out of those mechanics to fit the concept. Work within the constraints of the concept, compromises will have to be made. This is much more fun and challenging to me then just going PAM/GWM, Crossbow Expert/SS, Hexblade-Whatever type of character and then trying to tack some personality on to it.
So I had a power gamer in one of my Iron Kingdoms games. He made some pretty broken combos but would throw them away whenever someone else in the party out did him.
Halfway through the campaign I made and npc party of all the discarded characters to hunt down the merry band of murder hobos wreaking havoc in the country side.
I mainly MinMax so I can spend more time with my D&D stuff. I obviously want to be cool and epic too, but I also love just being funny or interesting, so it really comes back to the immense time I love to spend with this awesome game.
I kinda sound like an addict, don't I....?
Never forget that you can "power game" in ways other than just stats and damage. Maximizing movement speed, learning certain spells, and utilizing specific skills can make a serious impact on the game, especially if you arent playing a combat-only campaign. Its a good challenge to make characters than excell in unanticipated ways.
"powergaming" for me comes from my love of coming up with character concepts and figuring out how they would work mechanically in game
whether its "I want to create a character with this type of style or abilities" or "what abilities would fit this character's personality" whenever I optimize a character concept I'm always trying to fit it into roleplaying. I try to make the abilities a character has synergize well with the personality of the character so it emphasizes the type of character they are.
and luckily I've noticed lie with "not roleplaying" most of the problems pointed out about powergamers I already go against with what I do.
like with creating a character before everyone else or before we discuss the game, yes I have alot of character ideas beforehand but I often try to optimize a character based on the setting so I want to know about the world beforehand. we doing a sea campaign? make a character good with water. we doing an underdark campaign. make a character good with shadows.
and then with not being a team player I often power game to try to cover what we dont have in the party so the other players dont have to worry about choosing powerful options and they can play however they want to
like starting with a monk character concept and realizing no ones playing rogue. so I choose rogue like skills when creating the character to cover that part of the game
I do similar. For example, i noticed my party didn't have much ranged damage, besides our life cleric. We had magic and tanking covered, so I decided I'd do something with a bow, then looked at feats. I noticed the interaction with Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter. So i made a Goblin crossbow wielding Battlemaster for some REALLY insane action surges.
I gave him a pretty good backstory and personality, and he was fun to RP. I got to have my combat glory, sure, but I also remembered to participate in the rest of the game.
A new episode of WebDM? On my birthday? Jim, Pruitt, you guys shouldn't have.
Happy Birthday!!!
Something that a lot fail to realize: there is a difference between an optimizer, and a munchkin. A munchkin wants to "win" the TTRPG; the optimizer just wants to try and minimize avoidable TPK's. Just to confuse matters however, there can be a bit of a fine line between them, especially if an optimizer is a bit rude about pushing for more optimal choices among other players (I've toed that line with an Immortal Mystic in my group, has both Psionic Weapon _and_ Brute Force and I tried a couple times to get him to trade the latter for something else such as Giant Growth or whatever before level 5 as we're using a rule similar to UA about rebuilding characters, didn't get around to attempting to pitch Wood and Earth, I might suggest that later as a possible future discipline still).
The best character is the one you will most enjoy playing to the most total success. As GM, it's my job to help each player make that character. No amount of min-maxing will beat the GM, so don't even try, because I can always throw another troll or wolf-pack into a combat to balance it. What you can do is develop a character over a number of levels that will fulfill your place in the story to your satisfaction and everyone's enjoyment. That's the real power.
I don't care how you massage the system, a level 1 character is a level 1 character, and a level 10 character is... more. Having higher stats or a tighter synergy in your abilities may make you a better level 1, but it doesn't make you level 10, and you can reach level 10 with a more humble set of stats. Maybe it takes a little longer, but not much, and the extra side-adventures of lower-risk building will still be fun & challenging, because it will progress according to what you actually bring. Feedback loop works on its own cycle.
It's also up to me as GM to make things matter that min-maxing can't win. Recruiting and coordinating allies, sources, and factions; having good strategies & tactics, information management, having the right equipment, choosing the right time to act, all that. 90% of a good party's power (in low-mid level at least) really comes from things that a slightly bigger bonus won't buy. Up to a point, min-maxing will help have the right combination of abilities to succeed in what you think you have planned with a better margin of error.
The most powerful min-maxing or power-gaming a party can do is in how they coordinate their efforts and development as a group over a series of levels, with a good balance of specialties and overlaps that can work together. That multiplier is an order of magnitude greater than anything any one of them could create on their own.
Could not agree more 🍻
But then doesn't that sucks for the players who didn't.
Currently I am playing a Storm Sorcerer/Tempest Cleric combo, we are level 9, and I have 4 levels of sorcerer and 5 levels of cleric. This combo has turned out not only to be really thematically cool, but also quite powerful in combat, I have a number of different abilities that are powerful in unique ways (Metamagic + Cleric spells is pretty good). I have gotten flak from some of the people in my group for being a "power gamer", they accuse me of not caring about the story at all, when in actuality, I am incredibly invested in the story of the campaign and of my character. I really don't like being thrown in with disruptive, careless players just because I made a character who has some powerful abilities.
Tbh, your characters doesn't seem broken at all. To be even more honest, and not wanting to offend nor to criticize (just making my point), your character seems pretty weak to me. If the other players are complaining that you are a power player, it might be cause you aren't roleplaying too much or because your characters has a lot of different feats and combos that can be done in combat, so the other players think your turns in combat are too complex and they have a problem with it for some reason (sorcerers in general tend to have complex turns if played by 'good' players). Either way, it's not your fault. If you are having fun playing this way and you are not destroying other player's spotlights, you are doing nothing wrong and I desire you good luck at your table!
@@ElfosDeMordor It may not sound very powerful but trust me it is, there is more too it than just that. It's not 100% optimized, but it is still quite powerful.
As for rp, I don't rp as much as some other people in the group but that is largely because I am just a shy person, and I am bad at thinking about the situation as my character would. I am relatively new to the game, compared to some of the others in the group.
It also doesn't help that some of the other people in the group are hardcore roleplayers. They care more about the plot of the game then whether they are actually having fun or not. I care about the plot too, but to the degree that these people do. It's hard to describe how extreme they are.
It really isn't that strong: you need 2 spellcasting atributes, cleric levels give basically no advantages to the sorcerer counterpart, you are dellaying your high level spells by too much, besides a lightning bolt for full damage you don't get any late game compensations for the loss of 9th and 8th level spells (I'm supposing your end game will be Sorc14/Cleric6) and right now your characters isn't good enough at anything in particular (dps, power, cc, healing or versatility), maybe with the exception of tanking, to justify the multiclassing.
That being said, I wouldn't be shocked if you were the strongest character at your table, your character isn't bad, he just isn't insane nor top tier.
About your other point of you being shy and new to the game; that's normal! Once you get used to it, you are going to enjoy more roleplaying and be less shy in general (inside and outside the table!). Don't be afraid that your group is gonna laugh at you and don't think that just because you don't have anything too important to rp, you just won't rp, enjoy the game! Also if you don't want to rp, no problems; rpg is all about the players having fun in their own ways!
This video said exactly what I needed to hear. I don’t need to optimize my character in the route of being the best of the party or being the person who single-handedly can be the hero who keeps the party on track and saves the day. Taking my character in the direction of one goal was the best advice for me. I feel like I have permission now to be bad at some things whereas before I just felt like if I didn’t make these objective better choices I would be missing out. You guys have cured me of my character building FOMO. Thank you.
I have two power gamers at my table and two people at my table who dont care and just want to roleplay and have fun with a concept the games are amazing and they all roleplay great together and interact with the world and look for any opportunity to talk to npcs power gaming is not inherently bad or wrong it depends on the person.
in the game that im running right now one of my players is a really fun power gamer and its nice having a pc around that can do high damage all the time so i can run them through fun and more difficult encounters
My DM gave me strange looks for having two 8s on my character sheet. I don't want to break your game, I just want my wizard to have decent Sleight of Hand.
Having double 8s isn't terribly uncommon for a lot of race/class combos. Barbarians almost always have 8 INT and 8 WIS or CHA.
I'm also pretty sure there's a viable point buy for a Rock Gnome wizard that goes all-in for INT, DEX, and CON, ending with tripple 8's in remaining stats.
Some great ideas and thoughts as always guys, keep fighting the good fight
I just don’t know how to handle DMing for a group when I’ve got 3 other players and a power gamer- when the other three go to attack, miss one and land two hits that comes to ~12 damage total, and then he walks up, hits, crits, and rolls max on his sneak attack *and* follow-up monk bonus action unarmed strike and casually slaps 38 damage onto the enemy at level 2, for the third time in the last 2 sessions, my mind just slowly starts to snap because encounter design revolves around this one player. I talked to him about it, and he showed up to the next campaign with a character who had two 18s, two 16s, an 11 in intelligence and a 9 in strength. I have no idea what to do anymore.
I roll my stats in order whenever I make a new character and have a tough time figuring out what it's gonna turn in to but once I get a cool idea I want to optimize it as much as possible.
I move for the rebranding on powergaming to 'Hyper-Optimizing for Specialization of Death Dealing Capability"
HOSDDC?
Thanks for this video! I've been worrying about a power gamer in my group (I'm the DM), since I want them to be engaged in the world instead of only their own character, but still allow them to play the game the way they like, so they're having fun playing.
There was a group of people I thought of as friends who would constantly and always mock me for my spell choices. I really didn't mind bc I was comfortable with my reasons but every now and then they would complain about me not having something like fireball or whatever (evocation as forbidden school) while forgetting every time my spells had saved their asses.
I love to optimize my characters to do one thing really well! Alas they all gather dust since ive become a DM :D which i might add is thanks in large part to your awesome advice!
I'm a proud power gamer that took a level 1 soulknife in Pathfinder all the way to level 20 in a 2 year campaign. My DM never pulled any punches and was incredibly lethal. There was one instance where 2 new players joined the session with their characters and were killed their first session. That was how lethal my DM was. I earned that progression through optimizing and that entire campaign was something that I will remember for the rest of my life. Shouts out to my DM Richard and the entire Riftwatch. It was one hell of a ride.
I do some optimization, for survival purposes, but it's almost always motivated by the desire to role play my character for as long as possible.
Otherwise, I pick abilitys that fit my character concept.
100% agree with u guys u hit this subject on the head
Best intro so far, well done!
These last batch of shows have been terrific -- huzzah to all involved!
2:54 This is the greatest call out ever made. I hate how toxic certain areas of the dnd community can be and one of the worse ways it comes through in my opinion is in this strange shared idea of "the perfect way to play dnd". This is the classic everyone has to roleplay 100% of the time, fudging dice roles only ever serves to undermine the players and instantly and irrecoverably ruins the game, and of course: good stats mean you're a bad player. It will never cease to amaze me how these people think that their way of having fun is the only way and if you don't agree you and your fun are somehow inferior and illegitimate. Just let people play the game in the way they find fun, as long as it doesn't ruin other people's fun
My current enchanter wizard in PF1E is lightly optimized, in that the saves for his enchantments are pretty sky-high for the current level. It's never been a huge issue in the campaign because I play my character as himself, slightly cowardly and terrified of using his leveled spell-slots unless it's about to save the life of him or someone he cares a lot about. He also always has an invisibility and vanish spell prepared so he can get out of dodge, if need be. Most of the time he's perfectly content to cast enlarge person on whoever is standing in front of him and holding a melee weapon and throw out daze cantrips.
What was the Spy build? Im interested what choices you made :)
I had a power gamer in my one campaign. (One of the bad ones)
Previously had told all of my younger and newer players how to play, yelled at them when they did something "less than optimized" So happy that they have left my group and we can play in peace.
I naturally am a power gamer, coming moreso from video games than roleplaying (though I’ve roleplayed online extensively) when I got into D&D. I play at an Adventurers League, and have never played a proper home game, so roleplaying very often takes a back seat for me because not everyone I’m playing with is doing it, it’s not often encouraged, and I have yet to get fully into character because the adventures I play aren’t for my characters, and so they’re not always invested. Power gaming ends up being my only option to have fun every week.
I find if I am as optimized as I can be going into a campaign (initial build, character plan, etc.) I have less anxiety about the mechanics and it frees me to be a bit more focused on understanding my character, how they behave in different situations, and just be more mindful of the RP aspects of the game.
Somebody lost 40lbs.... good job! Also, maybe my favorite thumbnail.
You guys are the best. Thanks for your efforts 😊
I've got a few power gamers in my game but the kinds of power gamers that they are varies. Yeah I have a couple bruisers that would love to fight a bandit camp and see how far they could cut in before actually having to use their brains. We also have power negotiators as we call them as they really like to follow the role play and talk to the bandit leader to get a surrender out of them as the fighters do their thing to the camp. My one friend always wants to be the biggest utility guy. He barely carries attack spells because he wants to be a magic swiss army knife for any situation. The group loves his attitude as he's the best dude to break them out of situations where they can't punch the problem away. Once in a fight he took two uninterrupted minutes in game minutes figuring out the locking mechanism to a door while the ones more built for combat got to handle the incoming enemy waves. So we have a character walking back in forth thinking "no no that can't be the activation condition, it must be this" while the rest of them are fighting with improvised weapons, looting downed enemies for better weapons etc. I like power gamers so long as they're varied in their specialty.
I'm kinda new to d&d (at least 5th ed., some of my oldest memories are of playing before I was truly literate), so I'm not very good at it, but I'm a min-maxer. I like having a character that fits a specific role very well- my current character is a sorcerer-warlock dhampir, who's very good at ranged supporting fire. She's also a tailor. In my most recent session, we were exploring an abandoned temple, and fought a giant centipede and some very large ice spiders. The centipede's chitin was perfect for buttons and armor, and the spider's silk perfect to make fabric from. There were also some beds for giants with hide blankets. Just playing as a tailor completely changed how I looked at the environment.
Also, I like giving my characters weaknesses. Ailimer, the tailor, doesn't wear armor, because it's not fashionable. This plays into her role as fire support, and gives me more options for redesigning her clothing.
My rule of thumb is that your character's badassery ends where the other player's fun begins.
The line between optimizing/power gaming goes from good to bad when it starts to take away fun from the rest of the group. To some extent, everybody wants to get the most out of their characters. Of course a monk is gonna want maximum DEX, of course a Rogue is always gonna sneak to attack at advantage, of course a Wizard is gonna choose massively powerful spells, ect. Everybody's gonna be good at something, and everybody wants to be the best at what they do.
But when that line is crossed... it's bad. For example, in the campaign I am currently in, there is a barbarian who is so good at combat that hardly anybody else even gets a turn to do any damage. His turns take 5-10 minutes every time and he rolls shitloads of dice, and does crazy actions and somehow always rolls at advantage on those. Nobody else really gets a chance to do anything useful in combat. He doesn't seem to understand teamwork. Such as moving in front of the archer and mage, not trying to help teammates in trouble, ect.
I know there is more to D&D than combat. Fuck my best memories are the non-combat events that transpired! But combat is none the less a bit part of D&D.
I grinned ear-to-ear when I saw that thumbnail, and the intro summoned forth the "Giggle Madness" curse to go with the grin.
Now people avoid me because I look like I'm scheming... Thanks Web DM! :)
My negative experience with power gaming stems from the fact that power gamers/min-maxers tend to raise the bar too high. I've been in many games where most players would have relatively good builds that aren't exactly optimized except in terms of how they want their character to be, but because one or two power gamers get mixed in, they then become the players that suffer the most when the DM throws an encounter that's tailored to challenge the power gamers and likely brutally punishing the other player characters for not being optimized (usually, but not always, resulting in character death). When I DM, I always try to make "natural" encounters in that not only do I hint at unique encounters, but some will be easy and some should just be avoided - I kind of hate the idea of always "balancing" everything based on CR, EL or whatever. However, a group with a couple of power gamers is more likely to get in over its head with a dangerous encounter because the min-maxers might believe that they can win, regardless of any hints I might give to the contrary. This, then, ends up reducing morale among the "normal" players, especially if they either end up getting wiped out with contributing much, or they realize that the enemies focus their fire on the power gamer PCs to mitigate potential deaths.
In my 23+ years of gaming, I've always been more about character/party development (not just mechanics), group interaction, and overall story, but it doesn't mean I don't min-max if I know I'm getting into a game run by a power gamer specifically for min-maxers. I just tend to avoid those games if I can because in my experience, groups like that tend to focus more on the numbers than on the story/roleplaying. I'm not saying it _always_ happens, but when players put so much stock in the mechanics of their characters, they generally want to see them in action more often so that they *can* be "big damn heroes." A cycle of numbers, in a sense.
I wouldn't care as much if I ran/played a game that's meant to be difficult, so power gaming is expected. But when it's a mix, it gets wonky, and those who don't optimize generally end up feeling discouraged or disappointed from playing what they want to play.
One thing I love about playing homebrew content is getting that optimization out of it. With the core rules, people online have pretty much done all the work for you, and I'm the kind of person who will find it all. So to be able to take that knowledge and apply it to a class no one is talking about is a lot of fun.
For an example, I'm currently playing a game in the Avatar world, using the "Incarnate: Last of the Lacers" supplement. I rolled an airbender with high Strength, and figuring out what spells, abilities, feats, equipment and multiclass would best complement my role in the party, without having it be solved already by someone else, is a lot of fun.
I've been a power gamer for over 10 years, back in 3.5 it took me a week to make a character. My biggest issue was for the longest time I wanted to get into the story but I was too shy to RP so combat was my time to shine. Once I became comfortable RPing people stopped complaining about my power gaming so much. Since 5e I find it easier to be an optimized character creator because there isn't a huge skill gap between the optimizer and the RPer anymore.
Seeing my roommate who's 5 years younger and not comfortable RPing with real people and is a total power gamer, I tried pushing him to RP more but that backlashed as he presumed to just tell everyone how much better his character was than theirs...in character. I've also noticed as the more I was stuck as DM the more I fell in love with 5th edition and the more he would complain that 3.5 was a superior system. He has started DMing with a different group, he told me the other night he doesn't prep games he just runs random encounters as he flips through the monster manuals of 3.5. I wanted to cringe and tell him my opinions but if he's happy maybe there's a place for murder hobos power gamers out there who aren't ready to RP yet.
I had a drunken master lizardfolk named Lisandro(Lee for his friends) and he basically has decent damage but Infinite armor class, and I would have tons of fun roleplaying how my 7 foot tall lizard would dodge blows like a bailarina or a complete moron and then use his drunken skills to make his enemies hit each other like complete incompetents, there were also moments I would test his survival by making him act disrespectful against tyrants and rulers who in his vision were only small food for him to feed because in appearance they showed no intimidation for him.
Man I miss him a lot.
I've been playing a Goblin Rogue (7th Level Scout) which I multiclassed into Druid (6th level Circle of the Shepherd) and Barbarian (7th level Path of the Totem Warrior) purely to play out the Hermit background and his Druid Benefactor. Heaps of fun!
My rationale for powergaming/ optimizing has always been 2 things.
1. Working to make my time mechanically as easy as possible, to be prepared by knowing what I should expect / what my character should expect from themselves.
2. Making sure I do my utmost to make sure my character is able to attempt the things they should be good at according to their theme/concept.
2 has been somewhat easier due to the lesser DC in 5th edition.
Nice work as always guys. It was pretty obvious what take you were going to have on this issue, but you argued well for the side of balance and sanity.
I actually think terms like "power gamer" and "character actor" - ways to classify players - have long outlived any usefulness they might have had. "Power Gamer" in particular started off as simply a descriptor of a playstyle and quickly became a pejorative denigrating that playstyle. It seems to be mostly used to imply that rules mastery and roleplaying are somehow exclusive in RPGs: being better at the G means you are worse at the RP.
Video game designers tend to use approaches like the MDA framework, which looks at different "aesthetics" - types of fun, basically - that a player can get out of a game.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDA_framework
I think this approach is much more useful for a DM trying to work out what they should concentrate more or less on in their games. Envisaging the game as a series of sliders where you can alter different aesthetics independently of one another is just a better way of doing game design than trying to fit _players_ somewhere on a single continuum.
Pretty much the only dealbreaker as far as this analysis of games go for TTRPGs is that a player who doesn't like the "Fellowship" aesthetic probably needs to find a different hobby.
This is a team sport.
The thumbnail art keeps getting better and better!
The question is: Are we playing normys that go on an adventure or are we playing heroes that are going out to do the do.
A great episode - you two never disappoint. As someone who got into tabletop games by way of video games, I do have a bit of an inclination toward optimization that I always worry about causing friction with people, even though I never consider myself one to go overboard with it (and, also, I'm probably far from the best at it). I'll craft a character concept without worrying about whether it's optimal or not, but then I'll try and optimize within that. I see it as connected to the RP - if a character's allegedly good at something, I want the mechanics to support that.
Also, the bit you guys mention about some people seeing low stats as some sort of virtue always perplexed me. It seems like a reactionary mindset of people with negative opinions on power gaming using the faulty logic that "if powergaming is bad, then making my character lack even the slightest hint of optimization must be good." Or players who feel they need to prove something - like they need to have the unoptimized character to prove that they're focused on the RP, and that that somehow makes them better than others - which really seems just as bad as powergaming, especially if their unoptimized character ends up holding the party back.
TL;DR: With D&D, unless there's some other plan for the campaign, I default to seeing it as a story of fantasy heroes doing grand and heroic things. So I see making a character who's good at what they do as simply being part of engaging with that fantasy, not something that detracts from it.
Honestly thank you guys, ive had real issue with a couple of my fellow power gamers. Realizing the real issue is definitely tone related helps, they seem to want to break the campaign at times. I need to get over myself with the rest of it, I was being ignorant in the way I like to play. So I truly appreciate this video, hit on a lot of stuff I need to reconsider.
I am always confronted with the problem that the story I want to tell about my characters is never going to happen within the rules. And then there is the other thing which no developer, whether table top or video, seems to be able to understand:
If I wanted to be broke, unsuccessful, and look bad, all I have to do is walk out my front door and play real life. I do not play fantasy games to be broke, unsuccessful, and look bad.
I'm often listening to Web DM to fall asleep, but the outro music keeps waking me up hahaha
Am I the only one who is annoyed that the kids made Demigorgon a random encounter in Stranger Things?
Am I the only one who got annoyed that the kid playing the wizard was debating casting shield as an action.
P.S I only know 5e and haven’t watched stranger things in a while so forgive me if this is wrong
didnt they kill him with fireball, despite him being immune in older editions......?
I mean they're like 10-year-old kids. They can do whatever they want as long as it's cool.
@@Danmarinja I agree somewhat... But if you look at the stat block of Domogorgon, that's a TPK. And the kids reactions tell you that they know it as well.
Yeah, your approach to power gaming is the exact same as my approach.
Currently, I'm playing a Changeling Warlock/Rogue. I took Pact of the Blade, and my DM okay'd Glamoured armor for me, because I wanted to be the ultimate double agent. In one turn, I can completely alter my character's appearance and clothing, and I'll be able to summon a weapon on my next turn. Maxed out my Charisma, got Expertise in all of the social skills, and called it a day.
Somone get Pruit a hug.
I min-max, but it's not about making the most powerful character I can, it's about taking a character with a weakness, the more serious the better, and finding ways around it to make them strong in other ways. People will actually root for a character like that to succeed, and their inherent mechanical failings can add to the drama without making them a total liability.
Examples of such characters include:
"I have a walking speed of 5, but my horse is fast enough for both of us."
"I have 1 Int, so I'm basically a vegetable, but when I Rage I know exactly what I'm doing!"
"Oh no, you caught me, the Kobold sneaking around your base, wouldn't it be a shame if I... wild-shape into a Grizzly!?"
"As a robot, I have trouble relating to people, but I can decode what they're saying like a walking Enigma Machine."
One house rule I've always liked is if you prebuild your character at home ahead of time, you have to use the standard array of stats for it to be acceptable. That way there's no real dice fudging to worry about and you can still theory craft alts to your heart's content. 👍
That introduction put a smile on my face. Thank you guys
Why would you power game?
1- it's really fun to figure out the quirks of the system that can enhance the power of the character. It's just fun to watch a build play out when I drop a ton of dice on the table, or go an entire fight on the front lines without taking a hit.
2- it's more fun to succeed than to fail. I don't want to have every encounter be a tpk. Struggles have their place, but I prefer characters who can succeed from time to time.
3- it's better for the group if your character can pull their weight. I don't want to overshadow the group, but I'm sure as hell not going to be the weak link. What I do, I will do as well as possible. If you have a character with a 10 in their prime stat, you are dead weight in the party, and everyone else is going to have to carry them. That's not fun to me, and I don't want to be that guy either. I don't mean to say that anyone who isn't power gaming is playing wrong, but I do have some expectation that everyone else be competent in what they do.
4- it's realistic. A shocking theory I have - most people like to survive. Therefore, most people are going to try to acquire skills and abilities that a) fit with who they are (I.E they will choose a class that fits their stats), and b) will keep them alive (meaning they might multiclass, optimize, and look for combos in hopes of surviving). Further, the incredibly unoptimized character is not likely to end up being an adventurer for too long. The 10 int wizard is more likely to be a the guy who keeps studying, not the guy who assumes his abilities are well served raiding dungeons, and if he tried, he's likely to die. Those characters who are absurdly underpowered make really good NPCs, but not good PCs.
Now, some power gamers are just dicks, and there's no way around that, but not everyone who is optimizing, min-maxing, or trying out synergized builds is a jerk out to hog the spotlight. I have fun with characters that can do a ton of damage, or who can never take damage, or who can use every skill, but never to the detriment of the table. I'll do my damage, but you can have your time to shine as well. Further, power gamers aren't the only ones who hog the spotlight or ruin games. I've played with groups where an actor was eating up the spotlight and caused tension. It's not a matter of playstyles, it's a matter of not being a dick.
Completely with you. When I read YT comments on other vids (i.e. Web DM's vid on rolling stats) that high star chars are no fun make me roll my eyes and call BS. Nobody likes being a character who is perpetually trivialized unless they are trying to be a joke character. Still waiting on these players to prove that a character with a 14 as their best stat and single-digits for the rest are valuable gaming experience material.
In my first ever session I had a power gamer at my table. He was a warlock with devils sight and the darkness spell. In our first combat he cast darkness on the hydra we were fighting, so that it would have disadvantage on all of its attacks. But since he was the only one with devils sight, everyone else in the party also had disadvantage on all their attacks. That’s the kind of BS I associate with power gamers.
That's the Chaotic stupid equivalent of power gaming, a REAL power gamer realizes that 4 people preforming well > one person doing well. A real optimizer make EVERYONE stronger, and doesn't blind his whole party when fighting.
By for instance casting hold person as opposed to darkness.
Never ceases to delight and amaze at all the characters you two have buried inside yourselves.
Thanks for that look in the Intro, Mr. Pruit, well played!
The view in the background is gorgeous!
Is there a distinction between 'compelling someone else how to play the game/pick spells/abilities' and letting them know about options you think they may have overlooked? like the pros/cons of healing word over cure wounds for example? to extrapolate, if someone likes to RP their character by always touching the people they heal, no problem at all. but if they are always casting cure wounds because they don't know the benefits of healing word....how does one inform without looking like they are compelling?
I play with a guy who power games, but our group has talked with him about it, but what was annoying is that he was bad at role playing but his current character Zaffrab the Artificer Gnome has progressed and he has learned more so how to role play, though we are all still getting better at it and he is pretty fun to play with.
Once upon a time I was trying to get my best friend into tabletop. She rolled a rogue which is fine, but we were playing Pathfinder which is very much a system where there are wrong choices. Like playing vanilla rogue. So I asked the DM if I could rebuild her character. I turned her into a swashbuckler that had a feat that added her dex to her damage as long as she was one handed. The DM was furious because my friend could now hit, do damage, and get hit less. The DM decided to ban swashbuckler from the table which put my friend off of D&D for a long time because she felt like she had done something wrong for using a strong character. (And I was mad because I had built it well within the rules for Pathfinder.) Considering my friend had never played tabletop and wasn't trying to make anyone feel bad and was honestly just glad she stopped dying as much, it just felt like the DM didn't want to change her encounters and took it out on her. I've learned in many games that no power character is immune to everything. Throw them a curve ball.
I always want to play obscure(3.5) stuff and then i find out that something in the class is extremely broken(A Bard that can cast lvl 9 Spells by level16), but i really wanna play it, so i still play it but i'm still a teamplayer and rolwplayer so its not a problem.
THANK YOU FOR THIS I’ve experienced prejudice by people before I have started playing with people because I showed up with a min maxed character, and they immediately thought I would be a horrible at role playing, and because of this they almost never gave me the chance to role play, but I tried to role play as much as much as I can, I left that group after 4 sessions
You guys are awesome. I'm still playing the warlock barbarian you guys inspired me to play. He's so much fun, and demonstrably OP. Between unarmoured defense and armor of Agathys I can tank like a beast. There was a session where I was being beaten on by 3 ogres and a troll until my rage wore off. My druid put a healing spirit on me when I finally was almost down and they couldn't keep me down. My party calls me the immortal punch clown.
Also, my power gaming stops after character creation, I never look at other players characters unless they ask me to. We play a very role play and story heavy style though.
What's best is when your entire group loves role playing and optimizing different builds. I optimized my regular damage output, our paladin sorcerer optimized his burst, our death cleric optimized his zombies (with DM help to home brew a summon undead spell and make more powerful permanent undead, as the class is rather weak as a player class), and our Druid optimized everything druids can do: Circle of the shepherd, base 30 passive perception and massive wisdom saves, and amazing healing output, and the best summons, quicklings are no joke, ever.
I want to play a Hobgoblin Ranger with an Owl as a companion. Try power gaming with that combo. Might sound like it should work, but you'll find the entire game's mechanics aligned against you from the get-go.
If that was one of the first printings of the 5E Player's Handbook then there would have been a good chance it would have been torn off it's binding easily during that intro.
Difference between making a concept work as efficiently as you can to make it functional within the setting and only picking concepts that make you moar powerful.
In our playgroup, one players seems to find the right line or builds to make his character super effective. He's a great role player, and as the xp goes on his character, we all get less and less effective until he seems to get combat done all on his own. He told me he as an xp plan from day one. As someone who never does this it was an eye opener! He's a wonderful guy, so having a superman around all the time isn't so bad, but when he can take on bad guys seemingly without us... it's hard not to feel overshadowed. But still he's a fantastic guy and wouldn't trade him for anything!
I'm a power gamer largely because I learned from someone in my first real group, but also because I love putting the puzzle pieces together and coming up with a solid build for whatever situation my concept involves. But whatever I build mechanically, I try to back up with the "why" behind it.
Also what I loved about 3rd edition was I never felt like there was a kind of character I outright COULDN'T make like you give me the phb DM's guide monster Manuel and unearthed arcana and I could make ANYTHING
I am working on DMing and one of my buddies, who is also a DM, has suggested me running a game when he needs a break. Problem is, he is WAY more experienced than me. I’ve watched him play. He is an power gamer/optimizer. This makes me, a first time DM, almost afraid to DM for him. Which sucks, because he’s a good guy and a great DM. Just a terrifying power gamer.
I min/max because I feel like it actually helps me with the RP side of things, all while allowing me to shine in an area that the rest of the party may not. For example, I once had a Blood Hunter via point buy who had very average stats. Throw into the mix my inability to ever roll well, and now I effective have a witcher that sucks at every aspect of his job. I rarely hit things, could barely track things, it wasn't fun to play to any degree. I and my character felt like a failure. But now, I play a cleric with a high wisdom, and he's effective in combat because of his high spell DC, a powerful healer with his WIS bonus, but don't ask him to lift anything, because he's extremely frail. He's also terribly awkward in social situations, which lets our charisma characters shine. He's also not the brightest buld, so he's usually just the support of the group who other characters come to for guidance. I love it, the party loves that I'm not a sad sack with a worthless character, everyone wins.
I’m the kind of person who comes up a singular mechanical concept for a character, more so interesting than useful, and focus on doing the one thing well.
There was a guy I worked with who I’d spitball these ideas with, and he’d get worked up over how unorthodox my ideas were and how much thought I put into it to make them mechanically sound.
He’s currently playing one of my characters in his other groups’ campaign and appreciates my concepts more than he used to lol
I always base my characters on a theme or idea and then build the character. They are normally not the most powerful character on the table but that they are fun to play.
Hey guys, great episode! You talked about sharing the spotlight in this episode and I agree that that's an important thing at the table. But I've noticed that in some groups, some people just want to roll some dice and have a good time, they don't put much effort into a backstory, others want to write a small novel. How do you share the spotlight and be equitable when some players really don't seem to want a spotlight?
Watching this, I think I can say there's a bit of Power gamer in all of the people I game with, but there are other things they branch off into as well. I know I love coming in with a fully fleshed out character. That's part of my fun of the game.
In old school D&D, like ancient, characters were rolled with 3d6 to stats (in order) and would often have very low scores or not even a single ability bonus, and yet people still played them and they still suceeded.