Min/Max Boards

I'm going by Optimization by the Numbers. Usually averages are misleading, but for HP they're more accurate than the other stats.

Hit Points
Minimum Hit Points:
Average Hit Points:
Maximum Hit Points:

Initiative
Minimum Initiative:
Average Initiative:
Maximum Initiative:

Melee Attacks
Minimum Melee Attack Bonus:
Average Melee Attack Bonus:
Maximum Melee Attack Bonus:

Minimum Melee Damage Per Round:
Average Melee Damage Per Round:
Maximum Melee Damage Per Round:

Ranged Attacks
Minimum Ranged Attack Bonus:
Average Ranged Attack Bonus:
Maximum Ranged Attack Bonus:

Minimum Ranged Damage Per Round:
Average Ranged Damage Per Round:
Maximum Ranged Damage Per Round:

Saving Throws
Minimum Fortitude:
Average Fortitude:
Maximum Fortitude:

Minimum Reflex:
Average Reflex:
Maximum Reflex:

Minimum Will:
Average Will:
Maximum Will:

I fixed that for you by removing the irrelevant statistics. Direct stats such as Str on enemies only matter in the sense of what effects they have on derivative abilities. Speed matters in so few situations so as to not be worth tracking, and in the scenarios it does matter an average of all enemies would be highly misleading. Either they're melee and faster than you, ranged and still faster than you, or their ability to move is irrelevant. The AC part is meaningless because you're going to get numbers all over the place. Some will have literally single digits, others (any monster with the intelligence and resources to buff) will have very high numbers. Between that, and beating enemies not being a primary factor of physical attacks vs AC anyways (they'll at least make touch attacks) trying to draw any form of conclusion from enemy AC is moot.

The melee and ranged sections are only relevant if you only count things based on those attack forms. No caster quarterstaff attacks dragging down melee averages, no Brutal Throwless brute Javelins dragging down ranged averages, etc.

Reach also only matters for melee creatures and space matters even less so I knocked that off.

Quote from: Basket Burner on April 04, 2012, 12:54:56 PM

I did answer your question. This isn't about me or any given person. This is about the D&D community, especially optimization boards behaving in a downright shameful manner.

So, your complaint is about something... subjective?

Last I checked, expecting optimizers to optimize is like expecting fire to be hot. It goes beyond objectivity to just... happening...

Edit: It's still broken. Unless your taking credit for my words is some odd way of agreeing?

13 is actually the average at level 1. And given that everything that's not a Whirling Frenzy Barb only has one attack and how HP damage works that means you need OHKOs to do anything. Not that level 1 matters in any case, as it's pure randomness, but that does illustrate the concept well.

This is about your type of player because you just equated the two. You're looking for quality and demanding more quality.

So, it's not just this board's responsibility to provide you with a better quality of player, but everyone who plays D&D's responsibility?

It's about the entire D&D community, right? The entire community that needs to get up to your standards.

This isn't about me or my desires. It's about the quality of the entire community, even on optimization boards dropping over time. So knock off the subjective dismissals already.

Lans is an anecdote, in this case. I haven't seen any compelling evidence that "most people" cannot change their posting style based on the context of the thread. Just off the top of my head, Dman, Prime, Veekie, Kuroimaken, and Ubernoob. All do this. And that's just me grabbing a handful of people that I've talked with in the past about opinions on the game and who I've seen offer valid optimization advice.

I'm just not seeing the evidence here.

There's more overlap between the optimization section and this one even if you just stick to the two threads I mentioned. Prime and veekie (particularly the latter) are very consistent about claiming there either aren't any objective standards or they are so low to be entirely meaningless. Dman is also very consistent in this regard.

It sure is possible under different play styles. You don't get to keep No True Scotsmaning them away because you don't like them.

More subjective dismissals.

People still get called out on the various WotC fallacies here. About the only real "drop in skill" I see is that a lot of the WotC Old Guard didn't move over or stay long, but dwelling on that just seems more like nostalgia than anything. Sure, there are a lot of new posters here, but there seem to be plenty of competent optimizers posting here. Just go to the min/max board.

A lot of the big names are no longer here. It isn't even just the good players either. A lot of people have left in general. For example Jaron hasn't been active in over two months. He's clearly not a skilled player (else he wouldn't defend things like skills so adamantly). It isn't about people being new. I knew nothing about D&D beyond a general idea of what it involved before. It's about how they learn, what they learn, and who they learn from. If you go to the CO boards, you see things like "there is no true tier system" and "better =/= good" being met with heavy hostility when they should and would have been met far more positively in the past.

You're getting hung up on the different boards again. If you don't want opinion, go to the boards that focus on optimization.

Like... the optimization subforum, the very place in which the very examples you just ignored entirely took place... Oh wait...

Check your PMs.

The IP thread was removed because:

We decided unanimously there should be no discussion thread, despite there being one for every other handbook as it would only lead to unproductive posts. So I didn't make one.
You made one anyways. Nothing bad happened... yet. But it's very obvious how these things work
I asked you to lock the thread so it wouldn't become unproductive.
Had you done so, I would have then copy pasted your information in with full credit to you.
Instead you ignored me. So I took it down until you decided to honor my request. And when you refused after a while...

Your current attitude explains your past motivations very well. It's not my loss though.

Hold the phone. Are you saying it's literally everyone on this forum's responsability to make it easier for you and Sunic to find your type of gamer? Really?

At least pretend to read my posts before responding to them. What I actually said was:

Quality players are extremely rare.
The only way to get them in any decent quantity is to go out of your way to create new ones.
People shouldn't have to resort to that degree of time and effort to get a quality gaming group. Not. Even. Close.

If, instead every single other D&D community out there were not dragged down by basket weavers, etc then quality players would be far more common because they wouldn't be either driven out, drug down, or both. People could just find quality games, with quality players, and that in turn naturally creates more quality games and so forth.

This is a CO community. It's just a bigger forum than that. If you want CO only, final destination, then go to the min/max board. That's what it's there for. If someone starts up a poll in the polling place for opinions on tanking, then guess what you're gonna get? Opinions. I could see your complaint if people were giving out shitty ideas about how to and when to tank in the min max board, but this is getting ridiculous.

At which point I'd be met with things such as better does not equate to good, low tier characters are completely viable despite having a 1/60 chance to not get swept on the first fight of the day... You know, exactly the same sort of nonsensical nonarguments that are thrown about here. Because when someone goes to a different section of the same board they don't start thinking and acting drastically differently. Turns out that whatever a person thinks about gaming is going to reflect in the posts they make regarding gaming!

Perhaps you don't understand the No True Scotsman fallacy. You don't get to shift the goal posts on what optimization is to define who the "true" optimizers are. They might not optimize well enough to play in your game, but that doesn't mean they're not "actually" optimizing.

Shifting the goal posts involves change. Using the actual definitions does not involve change.

Will you say now that fire is cold because you have decided that cold is now a word used to describe high temperatures?

Or perhaps, will you simply stop reading after the first line again?

I just would like to point out that stock values are often misleading.

For example.

Ask someone what the to hits of CR 20 monsters are.

Assuming they actually look at the books they'll give you 2 numbers around 30, 6 numbers in the 36-42 range, and one number of 57. Most people don't even do that much. Instead they go look at some so called baseline that doesn't even pass a giggle check such as the PF bestiary table (does not describe even PF stock enemies accurately), or that Trailblazer nonsense (any guide that tells you 9 numbers that are all greater than 29 average 29 can be ignored on principle).

So what's the problem with this?

The first two are pure casters. Their to hits don't matter. The next six are dragons, and 36-42 are the numbers they get from BAB and Str alone. Not their final numbers. The last one is going to be at least mostly accurate.

But say you make determinations without reading into things. That gives you an average of 39... which is almost an entire D20 lower than the high number. It also gets you hit on a 2 by almost every single melee enemy even if you forget they have feats, items, and spells entirely... and the few exceptions hit on a 3.

Not only is that not an accurate baseline, it's worse than no baseline at all.

Now let's say you look at this properly.

The two casters won't attack, so you ignore their attack stats.

The six dragons all have the wealth of an NPC of their level, spellcasting ability, and 10-12 feats. That 36-42 ends up closer to 50-60 in practice. The Tarrasque doesn't change much or at all.

That gives you a bunch of numbers in the 50s. Very consistent.

Quote from: Basket Burner on April 03, 2012, 09:24:32 AM

objectively

You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.  See, I work in a field were objectivity is king (physics).  If someone presents an argument, like you tend to do, repeatedly, ad nauseum, that does not include numbers, clearly defined premises with a logical progression to the conclusion or a clear thesis statement they would be laughed at and ridiculed.

If you think I haven't explained it that well you haven't been paying attention. Turns out that you can explain things well once, and then reference those things without copy pasting them! Because damn, this thread is long enough as is.

But here, I am going to let you in on this dirty little secret.  There is no true objective standards of D&D because the ruleset of the game lacks the rigor and precision to allow for them.  See, in Pokemon the rules are entirely adjudicated by the programming, in Chess or M:tG the rules sets are complete and there exists no situation in which the rules do not cover.  But in D&D the rules are purposely left subjective and the adjudication of these rules is given to a player, the DM.  This is not to say the DM can do anything he wants and still be playing the game, there are set DCs for many activities, monsters have set stats, etc.  But the guidance of the game is left up to this adjudicator and as such play experience will be governed by the subjective whims of a human being as opposed to a mechanical system. 

No, that's why objective standards are even more important. So you can even begin to have a discussion. After all, Pokemon does have houserules (Tier lists, Sleep Clause, Species Clause, etc), and incidentally that very train of logic is the reason why I'm not hostile to all houserules, only bad ones. Still, you can say Standard OU, Standard UU, etc and everyone knows exactly what you're talking about.

Along the same lines if you say Espeon without an attack power boosting item OHKOs all Scizor you'd be objectively wrong as the specially defensive set takes 70-87% or something like that.

Just as you're objectively wrong if you say even stock enemies can tank as a casual stat comparison shows they can't. Reading further into it to realize they can't even try is an added bonus.

For an example, how does a low intelligence creature interact with a convincing illusion?  The is no set guideline for such a situation and is thus left purely to the subjective whims of the DM.  Or what constitutes believability for a bluff check?  Again subjectivity rears its ugly head.

Such matters are at best pointless to discuss. Though there are a number of means by which a dumb creature can interact with something.

The point being that D&D does not have a rule set that is fundamentally rigorous enough to allow for sweeping objective statements to be made.  Now one can analyze things like monster AB, DCs, etc. and make guidelines to follow but since so much of combat hinges around avoiding the RNG even these are only context sensitive criteria as opposed to true objective facts.  In essence, your entire crusade is tilting at windmills because you have repeatedly failed to examine the game from a wider game theory perspective and only allow your personal biases to guide you towards a false vision of objectivity.

In regards to tanking not being viable? Yes it can, as I and others have already done. In regard to things that aren't automatically and entirely shut down? That's different, but also pointless to discuss at all here.

Where did I dismiss objective standards? I told you that I totally optimize my own PCs when I play; I just don't punish my players for not doing the same. That's not a dismissal of objective standards at all.

By saying that it's just fine to do things any kind of way you dismissive objective standards. Among other remarks. Also, punishment is never a factor. You're not deliberately setting out to kill the weak characters, it's happening naturally. Sure you could throw Wyrmlord Koth at an 8th level weak party and watch as they never get to even move before everyone dies, and have a 95%-100% chance their action doesn't work if they do somehow manage to get an action but given that even stock CR 8 stuff would do the same thing (kill all of them) it's neither necessary nor desired.

And why is that a bad thing? I understand where you're going with this, but I don't see why it's empirically wrong. Find a group to game with that has similar tastes in gaming and have fun.

Because it makes it almost impossible to find a quality group. Know the whole reason I'm here? It's because Sunic encountered the exact same problem... the hard way, and had to build his own group by individually teaching and training players one at a time (of which I'm one, obviously), a process that has taken literally thousands of hours by him alone and the rest of us aren't just receiving either. And sure it developed into so much more than a group of competent players, it became a community, and I'd certainly say it was worth it but are you honestly arguing that other competent players should have to put in even a tenth that time and effort in order to get a quality group for themselves? That's. Not. Fucking. Reasonable. At. All. Anyone who isn't already adamantly determined towards working towards that goal is going to say screw that and go play a game in which they don't have to go grind for hundreds of hours to even begin having fun. And I mean real fun and actual enjoyment, not the caricature used by people playing the fun card in a serious argument.

So... what then? Should they all be driven our way? I'm happy for that, and many of the weak players have already taken to alienating anyone who actually knows what they're talking about... even on a board in which everyone should know what they are talking about. Perhaps you should take a step back and consider you're on a forum about optimization in which subforums are given names such as "Play like you have to". The very names suggest a high degree of seriousness and skill. I think everyone here would agree driving the talent somewhere else is a bad thing. Hell, even I agree with it (more because I don't want to see good players abused even if it ends well but still).

No True Scotsman. You don't get to choose who optimizers are.

That's just it though. I'm not choosing, I'm observing. I post things such as better not equating to good. Three years ago, before I was playing D&D at all and before Sunic was thinking in those terms such a post if anything would have resulted in a circle jerk of everyone agreeing and that's the only problem that'd possibly arise from it. You've seen what actually happened when the same was made more recently.

I post things such as the results of what happens when my students humor the weak players by playing down to them and running a low tier party vs a single day's worth of low tier encounters. Despite there not being a tier system at all at the time and the usual disclaimers about it being beyond both my own and Sunic's level of system mastery at the time, most people then would have realized and accepted that the party needed some more powerful classes in order to succeed... even when they were being played down to as they were there. You've seen what actually happened when the same was made more recently.

And in all manner of different threads people are hiding behind subjectivity, defending non viable things as viable, spreading false information... all things that are all the exact opposite of what an optimizer would do. And even regarding the people that are optimizers, much of the things I've said have been too advanced for them.

What the heck does "average play quality" even mean, anyway, and how does one "drag it down?"  As far as I know, "winning" D&D still means that A Good Time Was Had By All, not that someone came up with the mathematically optimal result of every encounter (the two aren't mutually exclusive, to be clear, but they're not necessarily dependent upon each other, either).

I have a hard time imagining that the DM who consistently out-optimizes his players is going to have much fun in the long haul, unless standing over his miniatures at an otherwise empty gaming table shouting "YEAH!  I FRELLING SHOWED THEM!  I WON!" qualifies as his idea of a fun evening.

It means exactly what it says. Take the play quality of everyone and average it. The higher it is the more likely any given player is a good player and vice versa. When you have a bunch of people doing nothing but spreading false information and misleading the masses, good luck finding anyone that understands anything.

Winning D&D is a factor of optimization as whatever your character goals, you have to do stuff to accomplish them and what makes you good at doing stuff? Exactly.

Nice strawman, but that isn't what this is about and never has been.

Agreed, that is a false dichotomy. Disagreed, that I am suggesting it in any way, shape or form. In fact, I didn't say anything that spoke to it either way, so I'll make a clear statement: serious and casual players enjoy the game in different ways.

Your post implies it. Regardless, if you're not moving on. Though one thing first. It's hard to enjoy a game you cannot play at all.

Could I quote you to my girlfriend? She pretty much talks about volleyball the way you talk about D&D, and uses many of the same arguments!

Volleyball is competitive. D&D isn't. That's the problem. Pokemon, as much as I talk about it can be approached casually. Someone just wants to play in game or battle randoms, whatever. I don't want to see it but I otherwise don't care. As long as they don't interfere with the good players neither does anyone else.

The reason why those things are viable is because everyone sucks equally, and the enemies are not over there. That, and they usually do shut up and leave the serious players alone. I've been voluntarily refraining from using this phrase but I will use it once here. The Basket Weavers not only refuse to acknowledge and accept there are objective standards that they are not currently living up to but they don't shut up. They deliberately enter topics/threads/etc about quality play and then spam non arguments about nothingness, dragging average play quality down over time.

If casual volleyball players or martial artists were that consistently annoying you'd see many more elitist jerks among them.

No, they aren't. No more than if you are playing chess, the enemy is the black pieces. Whether you have chess pieces, miniatures, or encounter notes in the DM's notebook, the game pieces are over there. And frankly, casual D&D is less competitive than chess, because in most games, everyone is working towards the same or aligned goals, including the DM. The enemy is an illusion, designed to entertain and challenge the players. If they were enemies, they'd be designed to kill the players. In game, that is the goal of the monster, but it's not the goal of the DM. In real life, no one hires a level appropriate assassin to go after their enemy. In game, the assassin IS level appropriate (even in a "serious" game) because the assassin is only the enemy of the characters as part of the narrative. To the players, the assassin is an encounter in a game and is designed to be a appropriate challenge, where appropriate takes into account character power, player skill, and what the participants (DM & player) enjoy.

Wrong. In chess, both sides have the same pieces and resources.

In a competitive game if both players are weak they're still evenly matched.

When the enemies are over there there is a sign saying that you must be this tall to play. And either you're tall enough and you play, or you are not tall enough and you do not play.

Because there isn't a direct competition but still is a competition (enemies trying to kill party, party trying to kill them and not die) that means you can't just say oh player x sucks, but that's fine. You can't say the only problem is if one player is better than the other. The only way to compare it to some sort of competitive game would be if you flat out could not beat the in game mode unless you were at least this good. To which I say fuck you Whitney. Fuck you and your fucking Miltank.

That was a joke, obviously. 2nd gen in game wasn't that hard.

Okay. But even a skilled optimizer, or one desiring to acquire optimization skills may want to play in casual games from time to time and discuss them here. Is that right? Even Roger and Ebert had their list of "Guilty Pleasures" in movies. Communities can and do change over time. I can't fault you for wanting to move the community to a different tone and focus (though I do object to some of your tactics) and I won't argue that you shouldn't try to move them that way, but as you say: it doesn't work out that way anymore. The board operators and the mods could enforce a commitment to the serious only style, and it would be their right to do so. However, the boards currently act as a mix of casual and serious, and the mods aren't enforcing a single style. In light of that, denigrating casual players may be inappropriate.

Why? Serious question. Anyone that's already skilled is going to find them trite, boring, and constraining. Beneath their ability. Anyone learning is setting themselves back hard. It's easier to learn good habits than unlearn bad ones which is why 6 months in I was meeting or surpassing someone whose been at it for closer to 6 years by his own admission. His learning process was long and slow as he had to find out the hard way what not to do. He had to waste a ton of time. I didn't. And different tone? The forum originally came about because of a huge migration of optimization board posters (yes there were some people there before discussing some podcast, but the site admin did bring everyone over from a specific section with a specific goal). It stayed to its focus for a while. It's still named and described as if it should uphold its focus, but sadly it has turned to crystal.

As for mod actions...

Let's say I went to Smogon right now. I could talk seriously about the subject matter (competitive Pokemon) and as long as I knew my stuff and showed I knew my stuff no one would have any problem with me. If I didn't know my stuff, but showed I wanted to learn and didn't overstep my bounds by talking about things I had no idea about... no one would have any problem with me whatsoever. If I made threads with no practical value, non arguments about nothingness or any of that foolishness I'd get threads locked, infracted, and even banned if I didn't heed their warnings to knock it off.

And you know what? It remains both a high quality informational resource and a solid community due in large part to that. Those guys seriously go out and meet other board members in the real world and joke around and laugh with each other... it's amazing. And it would never happen if the mods let people ruin the focus of the forums.

But yes, I can understand you want this board to be more for serious players.

It isn't just that I want it, it's that it should be and used to be so why isn't it now?

My whole point is that behavior would be inappropriate in the context you give. The question becomes: is the whole of these boards an inappropriate place for the discussion of casual play? It seems to me that you think it is; others disagree. In which case, many of the posts in this thread may be inappropriate (in your opinion), but it still leaves you in the position of arguing apples to oranges when you respond as if they are.

When it comes down to it, it isn't competitively viable. Competitively meaning seriously in this instance. These threads should be about things that are seriously viable, and the place for people that don't know those things already is "new, but willing to learn". Whereas the sand and a net thing is something that most people are going to lose interest in as soon as they realize it's not a veiled sexual reference.

Ignoring the pejorative term "lazy", let me state my counter opinion: Playing "casually" in a serious campaign won't work, but you can try.

While it is an insulting term I was using it literally. The player just doing whatever, and expecting others (players/DM) to take up the slack for them IS being lazy. They're not doing what is expected of them, aka making an adventurer that can adventure. And sure, you can try. You'll die, and the slaughter will continue until play improves. Somehow I don't consider that viable.

At this point, I think I'll stop. This thread has been hijacked enough, and I've been more than guilty of that. If Basket Burner wants to start a new thread about this topic of the focus, tone, style, appropriate subject matters, etc., etc., of this board, then I'd be very interested in following it and perhaps even participating in it. It's a topic worthy of discussion.

I've already tried that. I've linked to it even. It didn't work, as you can see.

On the actual topic of this thread: without a home brew class, I don't think you can tank effectively in D&D past the low levels, and even in the low levels you need buffer support and some serious work and party support to divert the enemy to you. (Suggestion, Mass, "Attack the guy in blue armor"). Essentially, tanking is a specialized form of battlefield control, and no class in the game is designed to do it.

Mass Suggestion isn't low level. That said... Suggestion: "Run for your lives!"/"Stop attacking us!"/"Drop your weapons and surrender!" among many others have the enemies attacking no one instead of someone.

Quote from: Basket Burner on April 03, 2012, 10:24:15 AM

"Gets a different playing experience" = standard subjective dismissal. I'm still trying to avoid using that phrase.

Dismissal of what?

Quote from: Basket Burner on April 03, 2012, 10:24:15 AM

Describing what actually happens in detail, and why that's a problem = actual argument.

Why's it a problem?

A dismissal of what actually happens, of objective standards, and of any and all of my points. I've already explained why that is a problem. Because it leads to a bunch of players running around with no idea what they're doing dragging average play quality down. See this CO board in which few people are actual optimizers? That is the direct result of your philosophy over the years.

I can only assume that Brassthorn joined this thread to flame and troll by calling me of all people Basket Weaver. Well, that's one less person to respond to in this thread.