How did you lose your CO virginity?

[muktidata]

I read a post earlier by SkyDragonKnight about one of his first optimized character builds - a Halfling Outrider with Devoted Tracker - and it made me reminisce. Before I ever looked at a CO forum, I stumbled upon a character idea that totally blew me away - I thought it would be the strongest character imaginable. I looked all over the internet for a place for advice on how to tweak my Hexblade/Paladin of Tyranny/Blackgruard to perfection and finally found the 339 boards. I was met by a slew of replies that gently, OK, not-so-gently, corrected my thinking and offered advice. After that I was hooked on CO boards and DnD was never the same for me - in a good way.

What was the first time you went "Holy crap!" and built a character around something you thought was powerful? Your first build, as it were? How'd you get into CharOp?

[ariasderros]

I had played some good builds in 2e. A Bladesinger (Don't look at the 3.0 or 3.5 version, Duskblade was the update to 3.5 for the real bladesingers). A few Wizards. A Psion or two. Good stuff. Good times. Never had anything more than the people I played with.

Then 3.0, and 3.5 came out. I played a few different builds. Some I liked more than others. But I wanted to play a better buffer-bard. Oh, I could build and play a manipulator bard just fine, but that gets old, and doesn't always fit with the party. But if I played a Druid or Wizard, or even Sorcerer, it was way too easy to outshine other players.
So buffer-bard it was. But I needed help to do so.
CO on IC. A lot of reading later, and it was done.

[InnaBinder]

My first optimized character in 3.X was a Pious Templar (yeah, yeah, I know).  I was building around a concept, and before I knew it, I was a better melee combatant than the party's Barbarian, plus, you know, caster.

[SorO_Lost]

I was born an optimizer, video games only improved my understanding of this.

I mean, who didn't use Donatello against bosses and sacrifice Raphael to the underwater deadly seaweed? Heck, by the time I was eight years old I choose Sub-Zero for his Trip-to-Slide combo and his Freeze worked against mid-air opponents (scorpion's dropped them after pulling them over). Plus he is a ninja (or was at the time), and ninjas rock.

[Necrosnoop110]

I started out DMing 1st/2nd edition and the few times my group would let me run a PC they'd all complain about how I've "hacked" the system and that my characters were too powerful. Duel class shenanigans, elf bladesingers, and necromancers was my thing back then. I "knew" that there were stronger choices for characters vs weaker choices. But my certainty of stronger vs weaker was mostly gut instinct I still had no real concept of optimization - this was pre-internet days - so I only had about 10 or so of my school chums to discuss such things with.

I was in college when 3E came upon my radar screen and not soon after I came upon the Arcane Trickster PrC in Tome and Blood. Well, I built my Trickster and I thought I had created a masterpiece. At my first session the straight caster was housing-me and pulling things in game that I just could not do. After that game I complimented him on his character and he told me to check out the 339 boards ... I've been hooked ever since.     

I'd say the first build that I would consider truly optimized that I actually used in a campaign was a Psion Telepath I built under the tutelage of Carnivore.

[Jackinthegreen]

I got into D&D CO by simply looking at the forums.  First I went to the official D&D forums, then got directed to ENworld, and then I think it was Solo/Dandu who posted a link to BG when I asked if there was more of a number-cruncher site.

I've always been fond of math and playing with numbers, so when I took a deeper look at D&D 3.5 I noticed there could be some optimization.

[phaedrusxy]

When I realized that my ranger would have been better off to have been a druid. Things were never the same after that.

[VennDygrem]

Amusingly enough, it was not long after I got back into D&D, when I was invited to play in my older brother's 3.5 Eberron campaign, when I began thinking of 'optimizing' my characters. I knew I wanted to play one of the new races, and thought I'd be crazy not to play a Warforged Barbarian. I mean, come on, they don't get fatigued after raging because they're immune to fatigue! How crazy is that? 
From there, I created a Changeling Monk/Warshaper, and I started getting closer to real char-op. I started looking at the WotC forums for help building my characters up, mainly looking for ideal feat progressions and items and such... Then someone linked over to the BG forums, advertising a Play by Post game going on. I joined up and haven't looked back.

Hmm, that was... about 5 years ago? For what it's worth, that game was Sinfire Titan's Skies of Arcadia game, and I was just pleased as punch to be allowed to play a gestalt Ranger//Swordsage with not just the Wildshape ACF, but swapping that out for the Shapeshift variant. 

Guess I still haven't really learned my lesson, I still love shapeshifting-style classes. 

[wotmaniac]

Around the beginning of '07, (I had just pick back up the hobby after a several-year break), in my 2nd 3.x campaign, one of the guys in my group proposed a series of 1-off challenges .... so I went to the internet for help.
Now, up until this point, I didn't even know about "forums", let alone CharOp.  Up until that point, I still looked at things through the naive perspective of the traditional "blasty wizards, healbot clerics, etc., etc." 
I simply went to google and typed in "most powerful D&D character" ..... and, well, yeah. 

Popping my CO cherry?  by the end of that weekend, I felt like Lisa Sparks.
And I've never been able to look at the game in the same way since.

[littha]

My fist D&D character was a (3.5) druid. It made me wonder why I was stomping everything in sight in a supposedly balanced system. That combined with playing a lot of fighting games at the time (Street Fighter etc) led me to search for a tier system for D&D 3.5 that then led me to the BG forums.

[muktidata]

I was born an optimizer, video games only improved my understanding of this.

I mean, who didn't use Donatello against bosses and sacrifice Raphael to the underwater deadly seaweed? Heck, by the time I was eight years old I choose Sub-Zero for his Trip-to-Slide combo and his Freeze worked against mid-air opponents (scorpion's dropped them after pulling them over). Plus he is a ninja (or was at the time), and ninjas rock.

Well, yeah, I suppose I was an optimizer when I chose peach baby food over peas baby food, but I'm talking about DnD here.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

I've liked the fluff of Psionics from 1e and 2e.
I also like the cosmic Marvel comics stuff,
and the basically similar deity+epic stuff in 3e.

The wotc Epic board had a competition for
gestalt 50th level PCs.  I thought I might try it.
In MM2 I found the Reason Stealer.
Talked out the preliminaries, and dude said
No ; and you oughta check out the C.O. board.
Meanwhile I had been reading the psi board.
"Signs" kept pointing to C.O.  And the game
wasn't treated as a great big Tea Party there.
Awesome!
I found my d&d home.  It took 2 years of reading
to unlearn bad habits, and learn the ropes.

[Bloody Initiate]

There was a similar thread called "When was the first time you were broken?" or something similar that asked a similar question. Since your subject line was dramatically different I answered it first.

(click to show/hide)

Somewhere around the time I saw a lot of optimization going too far, sacrificing levels of "cool" or "normal" for numbers-on-paper-power, I lost the sense that optimizing well was inherently impressive and the idea that the people who were good at it were automatically any better than people on the other side of the spectrum.

That isn't to say optimizers all go too far or anything like it, just that I figured out people who create problems in games aren't restricted to any play-style, both sides have jerks, and each side's jerks give the group a bad name. Hang around optimizing boards for any amount of time and you encounter the same snobs, butt-hurt geeks, and straight-up freaks as you do if you hang around a community that shuns optimization.

So my CO "innocence" was lost when I found that the "best" builds filled me with disgust for their design and lack of common-sense restraint, and the people who worshipped these builds were often appalling snobs about their quality.

As for the first time I personally played a character who was broken, I played a fox-shapeshifter in Shadowrun before an errata kept their regeneration from healing drain. The character could overcast spells at a high force without worrying about hurting himself due to regeneration, and he had the capacity to control and re-write characters. He could sieze control of an NPC, probe their mind for any and all information he liked, and then re-write their memories to suit his purpose. He also had an extremely high initiative and made it his business to end encounters before they started. He made me think that perhaps a good way to measure if a character is broken is if you would tolerate them being used against you, and no player should tolerate having their backstory re-written and much of their RP personality dictated to them. My character never did it to a PC, but there was nothing really stopping him from doing so aside from my personal discretion and the GM's as well (Neither of us would have let it go in that direction). I didn't build that character though.

The first one I built who was really genuinely broken was my first character in a diceless system called Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game (MURPG). He would drain energy in a massive radius uncontrollably, killing thousands or millions depending on his location, and then have all that energy to teleport anywhere in any world to do it again in the next turn. The way I'd set him up he wouldn't actually have any choice about draining the maximum amount in the maximum radius, so the only way he could stop himself was to deliberately NOT relocate and let himself starve. Without stopping himself he'd kill all his allies and all of the world in a matter of days perhaps. I didn't even realize he'd work like this until a GM pointed it out to me when I PMed the character for approval in a PbP game. Given the rules of the world in which he existed, most of the more powerful heroes would have had a hard time stopping him, and since I didn't even want him to work like that, I scrapped the concept.

[Libertad]

It was a gradual process for me, as opposed to a singular moment of revelation.  I was always aware that certain options were better than others, but during the Paizo adventure paths I noticed some glaring power discrepancies.  I first learned of optimization when one of my players in an Age of Worms game used Divine Metamagic.  I first learned of "Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards" in a Shackled City game when the Wizard Disintegrated a Dragon the party's Barbarian was getting ready to attack by climbing the tallest tower in the city.

Then I found the Handbooks on Brilliant Gameologists way back in 2008.  Over time I became aware of the pitfalls, discrepancies, and ways how to make effective characters in games.  And I finally decided to join in late 2011.

I can't remember my first "optimized" character, though.

[SorO_Lost]

Well, yeah, I suppose I was an optimizer when I chose peach baby food over peas baby food, but I'm talking about DnD here.

What I'm saying is I was optimizing before D&D. But if you want my D&D start date, it was Boy Scout sumer camp in the 3.0 era. Not sure exactly which year because I can't pin down what Merit Badges I took in the same year.

[Nytemare3701]

I started optimizing during my first game. I was a druid, I overshadowed the whole party at level 1. To make matters worse, not a single person in the party realized that the tiny numbers shown next to certain weapons were footnotes, not exponents. Saps OP.

[Scottzar]

I don't understand the question. Anyone who takes a cursory look at 3.5's core, possibly 3.0's, and definitely 2nd's splats can immediately see a plenitude of game-breaking abuse.

Everyone who has read core and done grade, what, 3(?) maths would be able to spot things like the crafting inconsistency or the fact that some spells render 50% of classes useless without going through any of the inherent balance mechanisms (e.g. saves) of the system.


The implication that anyone who has read the rules can't make a nigh-unstoppable character is illogical.

[Nytemare3701]

I don't understand the question. Anyone who takes a cursory look at 3.5's core, possibly 3.0's, and definitely 2nd's splats can immediately see a plenitude of game-breaking abuse.

Everyone who has read core and done grade, what, 3(?) maths would be able to spot things like the crafting inconsistency or the fact that some spells render 50% of classes useless without going through any of the inherent balance mechanisms (e.g. saves) of the system.


The implication that anyone who has read the rules can't make a nigh-unstoppable character is illogical.

And yet it happens daily. One of my players is still entirely convinced monks are OP, after years of evidence both in and out of game.

[InnaBinder]

I don't understand the question. Anyone who takes a cursory look at 3.5's core, possibly 3.0's, and definitely 2nd's splats can immediately see a plenitude of game-breaking abuse.

Everyone who has read core and done grade, what, 3(?) maths would be able to spot things like the crafting inconsistency or the fact that some spells render 50% of classes useless without going through any of the inherent balance mechanisms (e.g. saves) of the system.


The implication that anyone who has read the rules can't make a nigh-unstoppable character is illogical.

And yet it happens daily. One of my players is still entirely convinced monks are OP, after years of evidence both in and out of game.

I have had to explain more than twice to the same player why Mystic Theurge isn't borked in the same way that, frex, Planar Shepard is.

[Demelain]

I don't understand the question. Anyone who takes a cursory look at 3.5's core, possibly 3.0's, and definitely 2nd's splats can immediately see a plenitude of game-breaking abuse.

Everyone who has read core and done grade, what, 3(?) maths would be able to spot things like the crafting inconsistency or the fact that some spells render 50% of classes useless without going through any of the inherent balance mechanisms (e.g. saves) of the system.


The implication that anyone who has read the rules can't make a nigh-unstoppable character is illogical.

Humans are innately bad at math, statistics, and probability. If you were among the few that enjoyed math class in school and paid attention, you will easily spot much of the broken bits of D&D. For most, however, fireballs and running really fast are cool, and cool = OP.