Author Topic: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?  (Read 42328 times)

Offline Unbeliever

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #80 on: November 11, 2012, 10:46:22 AM »
Quote from: Unbeliever
Alternatively, if you believe even the most optimized Swift Hunter (or Rogue) build, one that cranks out a ton of damage combined with a bit of battlefield control or debuffing, is mobile and athletic, and also fairly good at some non-combat things like stealth, etc. just cannot possibly be on par with the proposed baseline Druid, then yes, the restrictive character concept issue is going to bite in both cases.  I happen to believe that this is demonstrably false.  There are builds I have in mind, but it also strikes me as hard to imagine that characters who can dungeoncrash the entire battlefield, stagger a ton of enemies, or lock everyone down are automatically < Druid.
The reason I believe this, personally, is because I was in a group where I was the Swift Hunter, and everyone else was a full caster of some sort; the only times I was relevant were when a) the other party members chose to buff me rather than themselves or their pets/summons, or b) the DM clearly and obviously went out of his way to attempt to create a situation where I'd shine.  Even in those situations, my moments essentially boiled down to someone else in the game going "Guys, let's give IB a crack at this one."
I believe in inductive reasoning, so that's a good counterpoint.  Can I ask what the other people were playing?  Roughly, as no one wants to type up entire builds.  It strikes me as they were very optimized or perhaps something else was going on, such as the structure of the encounters or things were happening at a level I don't play often where the imbalance hits particularly hard. 

This might have gotten lost in my earlier posts/argument, but to the extent that's the case, then I'd wholeheartedly support lowering the OP bar a bit.  I don't think it necessarily needs to go all the way down to "everyone plays Tier 3 or below" for the Swift Hunter to shine.  But, perhaps it needs something like "no Celerity" or even "if you use Celerity, you're dazed, deal with it, it's just like the Psi power that does the same thing." 

I also want to take the opportunity to reiterate a point I believe Veekie made:  all of what I've been discussing with regards to character creation and optimization can be reasonably characterized as work.  It happens to be work that I, sick person that I am, enjoy.  And, due to selection effects, many of the people reading this enjoy as well.  But, not everyone does. 

I don't think a low OP game would be devoid of work.  I think even defining what counts as low OP takes a non-trivial amount of effort and I think it presents its own challenges as the game assumes the PCs will have certain abilities that they will lack.  Further, I admit a preference for more -- I'd rather have my duelists bat arrows out of the air and weave steal cages of death instead of weakening the rest, but that's just a preference and not a value judgment. 

Please read my current line of argument as taking the Original Post's invitation to lay out the pros and cons of a low OP campaign. 

Offline InnaBinder

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #81 on: November 11, 2012, 02:21:56 PM »
Quote from: Unbeliever
Alternatively, if you believe even the most optimized Swift Hunter (or Rogue) build, one that cranks out a ton of damage combined with a bit of battlefield control or debuffing, is mobile and athletic, and also fairly good at some non-combat things like stealth, etc. just cannot possibly be on par with the proposed baseline Druid, then yes, the restrictive character concept issue is going to bite in both cases.  I happen to believe that this is demonstrably false.  There are builds I have in mind, but it also strikes me as hard to imagine that characters who can dungeoncrash the entire battlefield, stagger a ton of enemies, or lock everyone down are automatically < Druid.
The reason I believe this, personally, is because I was in a group where I was the Swift Hunter, and everyone else was a full caster of some sort; the only times I was relevant were when a) the other party members chose to buff me rather than themselves or their pets/summons, or b) the DM clearly and obviously went out of his way to attempt to create a situation where I'd shine.  Even in those situations, my moments essentially boiled down to someone else in the game going "Guys, let's give IB a crack at this one."
I believe in inductive reasoning, so that's a good counterpoint.  Can I ask what the other people were playing?  Roughly, as no one wants to type up entire builds.  It strikes me as they were very optimized or perhaps something else was going on, such as the structure of the encounters or things were happening at a level I don't play often where the imbalance hits particularly hard. 
As I recall and understood it, at 7th level, one person was playing the very same "baseline" Druid I outlined, another was playing a Binder-less (or only 1 Binder level) Anima Mage, and one was playing a Master of Shrouds (I've no idea what his entry method was).
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Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #82 on: November 11, 2012, 09:32:43 PM »
What were the entries to Anima Mage and Master of Shrouds? The former can be one of the more powerful Casting Prcs in the game and the latter can also be pretty scary if early entry is used. I'm assuming the MoS wasn't using the rebuilding rules to be a "[Divine Class]1, MoS 5 because that would be a seriously optimized build.

I'm also assuming the Druid wasn't using Greenbound, or you'd have mentioned it, but even so a Druid with a strong summoning focus sounds a bit more optimized than the baseline "Druid + Natrual Spell" that Unbeliever was talking about.

Offline Unbeliever

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #83 on: November 11, 2012, 11:38:42 PM »
What I have in mind should be able to tolerate a Druid (or other caster) who specializes a bit in summoning.  Obviously, Greenbound would throw that out the window, but that feat is zomg! broken. 

I'm not sure what accounts for the difference in our experiences.  Obviously, it's an art and not a science, but it sounds like there's a big difference.  Some of it might be due to the Master of Shrouds -- an early-entry MoS is at the zenith of its power at about those levels.  Some of it might be due to encounter design.  I don't know.  As I indicated, given that experience, I can see the inclination for a lower OP game, though the implementation of it is something that is non-obvious to me.

Just to give some content to what I'm talking about, I played a campaign a while ago where I played an optimized TOB character (Antaeus, the Pillar, grandson of Theseus b/c I know you care) alongside a caster-focused Conjurer/Anima Mage with Otherworldly and Persistent Spell and a high DC Beguiler.  The Anima Mage, in particular, is clearly a high OP character.  Most of my recollections are in the 9th-12th level range. 

There were a few encounters that a spellcaster simply trivialized, frankly that goes with the territory when there's a Beguiler on the board.  I recall one where Illusory Pit turned the encounter effectively into a series of Diamond Mind coup de gras.  But, the party was characterized by an awesome level of synergy.  The casters would lay down battlefield control or debuffs.  A common tactic would be to lay down something like a Solid Fog and that wouldn't affect the melee fighter (due to various feats or items), which would turn something like a 6 on 1 fight into a 2 on 1 or even a 1 on 1 duel.  A reasonable summary would be that my character was tough and certainly the primary damage dealer, one of the few nice things that D&D gives fighteresque characters, and the spellcasters would often either funnel their forces to me under favorable circumstances, or pull their claws so that they were not threats while I murdered them. 
« Last Edit: November 11, 2012, 11:41:30 PM by Unbeliever »

Offline veekie

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #84 on: November 12, 2012, 06:04:12 AM »
It just illustrates the point better though. At low optimization, many more concepts are on par with each other. The Einhander has a much lower gap in power relative to the blaster wizard than the God wizard. The druid making inept use of wild shape and companions(or spells, etc, the druid can suck in a lot more places than other classes before it's useless, in contrast with say, Artificers, who rapidly become useless without WBL manipulation) is much closer to the sword and board fighter than the Warblade is to a Natural Spell Druid.

Also, as a clarification to the term 'work' I used earlier. This applies to everyone. The player in question, the other players working to keep relevant, the GM attempting to generate challenges to the group, etc, all of their efforts count as work. Keep in mind that again, for optimization, offense grows disproportionately to defense, it is easier by far to crush everything with overwhelming power than to survive moderate offenses. Thus there is a sweet spot where offense growth has yet to keep up with defense growth. This sweet spot is the baseline 'minimum work' for all parties, further adjusted by inclinations and preferences.
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Offline LordBlades

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #85 on: November 12, 2012, 06:41:32 AM »
It just illustrates the point better though. At low optimization, many more concepts are on par with each other. The Einhander has a much lower gap in power relative to the blaster wizard than the God wizard. The druid making inept use of wild shape and companions(or spells, etc, the druid can suck in a lot more places than other classes before it's useless, in contrast with say, Artificers, who rapidly become useless without WBL manipulation) is much closer to the sword and board fighter than the Warblade is to a Natural Spell Druid.

Also, as a clarification to the term 'work' I used earlier. This applies to everyone. The player in question, the other players working to keep relevant, the GM attempting to generate challenges to the group, etc, all of their efforts count as work. Keep in mind that again, for optimization, offense grows disproportionately to defense, it is easier by far to crush everything with overwhelming power than to survive moderate offenses. Thus there is a sweet spot where offense growth has yet to keep up with defense growth. This sweet spot is the baseline 'minimum work' for all parties, further adjusted by inclinations and preferences.

Regarding concepts: it depends a bit on how exactly you define 'concept'. As in: are blaster wizard and god wizard two different concepts? Or they both get folded into the 'wizard' concept? If it's the former, then probably the low-powered game invalidates just as many concepts as the high-powered one. If it's the latter then yes, your point stands.

Regarding work: from my experience, both as a player and as a DM the least work lies in the middle of the park (let's say decently competent tier 3-4 game). As a player you don't need to spend too much time optimizing, and as long as you pick a decent class from the get-go, you can pretty much go with the flow and be competent enough. As a DM, you don't need to spend hours optimizing your monsters, but you don't really need to worry about accidentally overpowering them because you failed to account for a weakness.

Offline InnaBinder

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #86 on: November 12, 2012, 07:50:22 AM »
What were the entries to Anima Mage and Master of Shrouds? The former can be one of the more powerful Casting Prcs in the game and the latter can also be pretty scary if early entry is used. I'm assuming the MoS wasn't using the rebuilding rules to be a "[Divine Class]1, MoS 5 because that would be a seriously optimized build.

I'm also assuming the Druid wasn't using Greenbound, or you'd have mentioned it, but even so a Druid with a strong summoning focus sounds a bit more optimized than the baseline "Druid + Natrual Spell" that Unbeliever was talking about.
I don't have their sheets (and it was a good while ago), but I thought the Anima Mage entered via Sorcerer, either with straight feats to get the Binding requirements, or a single Binder level.  As indicated, I don't know the MoS' entry method, but play style hinted that it was either a focused Necromancer with a Cleric dip or a Dread Necromancer.

Two things about the "Druid + Natural Spell that Unbeliever was talking about": 1) A Druid + Natural Spell will, per force, have 2 more feats at a minimum, with Augment Summoning and its pre-req ranking pretty high on the list of expected choices; 2) My example expressly set "Gnome Druid + Augment Summoning + Natural Spell" as its baseline, to discuss the notion that hi-OP games are more inclusive of concept than low-OP games, which has been posited in this thread.

Quote from: Unbeliever
A reasonable summary would be that my character was tough and certainly the primary damage dealer, one of the few nice things that D&D gives fighteresque characters, and the spellcasters would often either funnel their forces to me under favorable circumstances, or pull their claws so that they were not threats while I murdered them. 
That sounds perilously close to my previous contention that such a character is only viable when the rest of the party says "Hey, let's throw [Unbeliever] a bone."  The mere fact that they had to "pull their claws so that they were not threats" indicates they were deliberately holding back to give you spotlight time, unless I'm grossly misunderstanding how you're using the pronouns.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2012, 07:55:36 AM by InnaBinder »
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Offline Unbeliever

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #87 on: November 12, 2012, 08:59:07 AM »
Quote from: Unbeliever
A reasonable summary would be that my character was tough and certainly the primary damage dealer, one of the few nice things that D&D gives fighteresque characters, and the spellcasters would often either funnel their forces to me under favorable circumstances, or pull their claws so that they were not threats while I murdered them. 
That sounds perilously close to my previous contention that such a character is only viable when the rest of the party says "Hey, let's throw [Unbeliever] a bone."  The mere fact that they had to "pull their claws so that they were not threats" indicates they were deliberately holding back to give you spotlight time, unless I'm grossly misunderstanding how you're using the pronouns.
It's the latter.  There was no pulling back at the table at all.  The character in question was a powerhouse.  He had everything you could want, like the other character I listed before.  He could lock down enemies and deny them actions (Imperious Command, Boomerang Daze + Aptitude), had powerful defenses (crazy AC, TOB counters, good saves), high mobility (gear, Shadow Hand teleports), and so on.  And, he did the most damage in the party.  Frankly, if you need a character more optimized than that or the other character I referenced in this thread, I'm a little afraid of that table. 

But, in a well-run game, it's the case that generally no single character can take on an entire challenging encounter on his own.  That's one of the large points of battlefield control:  reduce the fight from 10 on 4 to 2 on 4 through uses of Web and Solid Fog, etc.  This is standard stuff.

As is well-known, debuffs can have a similar effect.  Solid Fog or Web keeps a horde of melee baddies at bay so that they can be dealt with one at a time.  Likewise, dazes, stuns, slows, have a similar effect.  The Beguiler, naturally, was more focused on debuffs, that's all I meant to say.  Sorry to muddy the description, I just wanted to be true to the facts.  It was actually an effective example of squishy mages, tough warriors. 
« Last Edit: November 12, 2012, 09:04:46 AM by Unbeliever »

Offline Unbeliever

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #88 on: November 12, 2012, 09:13:31 AM »
...
Regarding concepts: it depends a bit on how exactly you define 'concept'. As in: are blaster wizard and god wizard two different concepts? Or they both get folded into the 'wizard' concept? If it's the former, then probably the low-powered game invalidates just as many concepts as the high-powered one. If it's the latter then yes, your point stands.
I'd define god wizard and blaster wizard as separate concepts.  Just as I'd define sword and board tank and greataxe wielding destroyer as different concepts.  They look and feel and play very differently. 

Honestly, I don't know what accounts for my different experiences.  As I indicated before, most of us use monsters off the rack with slight modifications.  That is, we don't put hours of work into customizing our encounters -- I tend to double the hit points and usually add a feat, tweak a spell-like ability (they are mostly PHB spells, for the obvious reasons, so I like to change it up a little bit) or add a magic item here or there.  Some of the DMs I play with have done incredible jobs advancing HD and adding feats, but that's for a boss encounter that is usually the highlight of an arc.  There's a particularly traumatic (by which I mean awesome) marilith fight that I'm recalling.  It might be that we aren't committed to eking out the maximum amount of firepower from any of our builds:  we tend to be both more concept-driven than that and also to have a sense of when a character is "optimized enough."  It's, naturally, a bit of an art, and sometimes we stray in one direction or another and have to correct.  It might be the case, for example, that even when I think Battlefield Control Mage, there is still a lot of restraint there -- every BFC Mage I/we make or play doesn't use every trick available to the archetype, which would be boring. 

Anyway, I assume we mostly agree with the goal -- widest degree of character concepts, least amount of headaches for everyone involved.  Supposing that's the aim, I have a question about implementation.  The Tiers system leaves me cold.  It is useful as a heuristic for new people to the game, as it gives you a sense of what the upper bound of power for a given class can be.  But, I can't see how it would work for these purposes.  I am confident that my most optimized Duskblade will be considered "high OP" -- it'd certainly be tougher than the straightforward Druids I and InnaBinder have been referencing. 

My only sense of how to do things would be to use a holistic measure of optimization, i.e., "how powerful is this build?"  That's what I do every time I make characters, my goal is to clear the hurdles as I see them -- the build needs to succeed in delivering the concept at the table, but also needs to not run roughshod over the campaign.  I would probably treat a low OP game the same way, and just push that bar down a bit to whatever is appropriate.

So, two questions I guess, addressed to no one in particular.  (1) In setting up a low OP, or even just a "best D&D game that everyone enjoys" how do you go about doing it, especially in light of the concern of eliminating a huge chunk of the concepts that are iconic to fantasy and D&D?  (2) And, what builds/character concepts are in that sweet spot, what's the goal OP-wise?

Offline LordBlades

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #89 on: November 12, 2012, 09:17:37 AM »

It's the latter.  There was no pulling back at the table at all.  The character in question was a powerhouse.  He had everything you could want, like the other character I listed before.  He could lock down enemies and deny them actions (Imperious Command, Boomerang Daze + Aptitude), had powerful defenses (crazy AC, TOB counters, good saves), high mobility (gear, Shadow Hand teleports), and so on.  And, he did the most damage in the party.  Frankly, if you need a character more optimized than that or the other character I referenced in this thread, I'm a little afraid of that table. 

But, in a well-run game, it's the case that generally no single character can take on an entire challenging encounter on his own.  That's one of the large points of battlefield control:  reduce the fight from 10 on 4 to 2 on 4 through uses of Web and Solid Fog, etc.  This is standard stuff.

As is well-known, debuffs can have a similar effect.  Solid Fog or Web keeps a horde of melee baddies at bay so that they can be dealt with one at a time.  Likewise, dazes, stuns, slows, have a similar effect.  The Beguiler, naturally, was more focused on debuffs, that's all I meant to say.  Sorry to muddy the description, I just wanted to be true to the facts.  It was actually an effective example of squishy mages, tough warriors.

Looking at it form a slightly different perspective:

Did you need the mage(s)? Would you have been able to take on the same kind of encounters without the debuffs they were putting on the field?

Did the mage(s) need you? Did your staying power and abilities matter much once the enemies were debuffed to hell and back? Or did their debuffs trivialized encounters to the level a summoned/called/dominated minion would have done the job as well?

Offline Unbeliever

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #90 on: November 12, 2012, 09:35:25 AM »
^ yes on both counts. 

I needed the mages, they were definitely a "force magnifier."  But, that's no mystery -- I mean, we're a troupe.  How many games can you play where you can eliminate half or more of the group without changing the power level? 

And, yes, they needed me.  Very few of the monsters could have been managed by a level-appropriate summon.*  Such a summon wouldn't have been able to scratch most of the enemies.  If that hadn't been the case, I think I would not have done my job in sufficiently optimizing my character.  I would have gone back to the drawing board.  As it was, I had to nerf my character a bit after realizing how powerful a combo was.

It's possible that a caster dedicated to minions could have replaced me.  But, that would have involved one of the casters radically changing their build to do so.  I mean, it's certainly the case that a Malconvoker can replace a melee character, that's kind of the point of the build.  Ditto, a gish.

It's the case that the casters ended some encounters before they had fairly begun.  But, that's what it means to have a save or suck/die caster like a Beguiler along.  That's no surprise, nor is it a real issue. 

But, look at it this way, the Anima Mage with persistent Polymorph + Otherworldly and persistent Bite of the WereX still couldn't hold a candle to me in combat against the enemies we were fighting.  He could swoop in and maybe do something without worrying about being wiped out in a round or two -- he had a high AC and plenty of defenses.  And, he might have been able to even stand against these enemies in melee combat and outlast them.  But, it would have been a much closer thing. 

As a side note, I had a similar experience as a character in a high-level game alongside another BFC Mage and a Factotum.  And, I think the players of the monk-esque character and the totemist skirmisher would say similar things in our current campaign where I play a sort of weird homebrew thingy kind of like a Beguiler. 

EDIT:  note that this is a counterfactual, so I can't speak with 100% certainty.  It is surely possible that the Beguiler and the Anima Mage would have emerged unscathed from these encounters.  They are both skilled players, good optimizers, and had potent builds.  But, at no point did I ever feel useless.  And, at no point did the other PCs "step aside" to make me feel better.  My melee character never felt superfluous.  Quite the contrary, actually, I consistently felt powerful and dangerous in combat.  I was easily their equal in the things I was meant to be good at. 

I can speak a little more authoritatively about the more recent game where it was me, BFC Mage, and Factotum.  There, I'm pretty confident the others would have died without me.  It was usually all the BFC Mage could do to lock down part of the battlefield, leaving me and the Factotum (who was sort of lock down oriented) to handle the rest.  And, the characters operated well with a division of labor.  My character would target spellcaster type characters b/c he was well-built against them and kill them quickly and efficiently, while her BFC was more effective against big brutes with fewer special abilities, so she would focus on locking them down. 


*note the qualifier.  It's possible that with sufficient optimization hijinks, like extensive use of Planar Binding, that the character could be replaced.  But, you can use PB to get a Pit Fiend or something, and that's not the sort of thing that sees actual play. 
« Last Edit: November 12, 2012, 09:42:37 AM by Unbeliever »

Offline InnaBinder

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #91 on: November 12, 2012, 09:36:03 AM »

It's the latter.  There was no pulling back at the table at all.  The character in question was a powerhouse.  He had everything you could want, like the other character I listed before.  He could lock down enemies and deny them actions (Imperious Command, Boomerang Daze + Aptitude), had powerful defenses (crazy AC, TOB counters, good saves), high mobility (gear, Shadow Hand teleports), and so on.  And, he did the most damage in the party.  Frankly, if you need a character more optimized than that or the other character I referenced in this thread, I'm a little afraid of that table. 

But, in a well-run game, it's the case that generally no single character can take on an entire challenging encounter on his own.  That's one of the large points of battlefield control:  reduce the fight from 10 on 4 to 2 on 4 through uses of Web and Solid Fog, etc.  This is standard stuff.

As is well-known, debuffs can have a similar effect.  Solid Fog or Web keeps a horde of melee baddies at bay so that they can be dealt with one at a time.  Likewise, dazes, stuns, slows, have a similar effect.  The Beguiler, naturally, was more focused on debuffs, that's all I meant to say.  Sorry to muddy the description, I just wanted to be true to the facts.  It was actually an effective example of squishy mages, tough warriors.

Looking at it form a slightly different perspective:

Did you need the mage(s)? Would you have been able to take on the same kind of encounters without the debuffs they were putting on the field?

Did the mage(s) need you? Did your staying power and abilities matter much once the enemies were debuffed to hell and back? Or did their debuffs trivialized encounters to the level a summoned/called/dominated minion would have done the job as well?
That is my question as well.
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Offline ImperatorK

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #92 on: November 12, 2012, 09:42:01 AM »
It got answered a minute before your post.
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Offline InnaBinder

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #93 on: November 12, 2012, 09:47:31 AM »
It got answered a minute before your post.
30 seconds (in other words, as I was hitting "post") and the notion that "it got answered" is certainly debatable.
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Offline ImperatorK

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #94 on: November 12, 2012, 09:54:27 AM »
I'm just saying in case you missed it.
He answered the questions that were asked. There's nothing to debate about it. Unless you have more questions, then feel free to post them.
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Offline Unbeliever

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #95 on: November 12, 2012, 10:16:37 AM »
It got answered a minute before your post.
30 seconds (in other words, as I was hitting "post") and the notion that "it got answered" is certainly debatable.
I have endeavored to give credit to your experiences (e.g., here).  I would ask for the same courtesy.  I can post build stubs and maybe even encounter summaries if you are actually interested.  But, if anything I say will be met with brute skepticism, then I don't know what I could possibly say or write.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2012, 10:27:28 AM by Unbeliever »

Offline InnaBinder

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #96 on: November 12, 2012, 10:28:08 AM »
It got answered a minute before your post.
30 seconds (in other words, as I was hitting "post") and the notion that "it got answered" is certainly debatable.
I have endeavored to give credit to your experiences (e.g., here).  I would ask for the same courtesy.  I can post build stubs and maybe even encounter summaries if you are actually interested.  But, if anything I say will be met with brute skepticism, then I don't see much of a point of bothering to continue this or any discussion.
I am trying to understand why - aside from personal beliefs that it was so - similar experiences produced such divergent perceived results.  In other words, I'm trying to understand why you felt so useful and important in a group of Tier 1s when my experience produced exactly the opposite result.  I believe you when you say that was your perception, and am trying to understand the root of that perception and why it differed so greatly from mine, given similar circumstance, aside from a "glass half full/glass half empty" philosophy.  If in that endeavor I have offended you in some way, I sincerely apologize; it was not my intention.
Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics.  Even if you win, you're still retarded.

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Offline Unbeliever

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #97 on: November 12, 2012, 10:34:59 AM »
No problem, things can become chippy on the internet.  Hard to read tone, and it's not like we know each other that well.  I apologize for any sensitivity on my part. 

Here's a short summary of an encounter that I had in mind with one of the characters (the higher level one) that I had posted a while ago:  http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=7369.msg113397#msg113397


Offline InnaBinder

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #98 on: November 12, 2012, 10:54:07 AM »
No problem, things can become chippy on the internet.  Hard to read tone, and it's not like we know each other that well.  I apologize for any sensitivity on my part. 

Here's a short summary of an encounter that I had in mind with one of the characters (the higher level one) that I had posted a while ago:  http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=7369.msg113397#msg113397.
Your takeaway from that encounter is indeed significantly different than mine.  I note that the Wizard's Anticipate Teleport appears vital in your group's not being debilitated in a surprise round.  I find myself wondering at the tactical savvy of opponents with high caster ability who nonetheless went into combat apparently unbuffed and allowed themselves to lose initiative, then be locked down, and wondering why - once they were locked down - the Crusader was needed to go in for the kill, rather than having the Factotum do it, or having the party move on past a threat that was already handled.

I am glad you felt useful in that encounter.  I cannot say that, in your shoes, I would have felt much more useful than the little girl in the Shake-n-Bake commercials who informs folks that she helped.
Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics.  Even if you win, you're still retarded.

shugenja handbook; talk about it here

Offline Shadowknight12

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Re: Why a desire to play an especially low-op game?
« Reply #99 on: November 12, 2012, 11:13:03 AM »
Are we sure that the differences here weren't the use of Divinations?

The way I see it, you can very easily have a game where everyone feels useful and necessary if the casters don't use Divinations or if they use them to plan responses that include everyone ("I cast Solid Fog and you go in for the kill"). I am fairly certain that the reason why so many T1s are capable of trivialising encounters so easily is because A) they have access to sufficient Divinations so as to be always prepared, and B) they can prepare a response to any attacks singlehandedly. In this case, a T1 caster would use her Divinations to anticipate a battle and then choose her selection of spells that day to ensure that she can take out said battle without her companions needing to do a thing.