genuinely learned a TON from this video. I hope we can stay on this trend of self accountability, it's super healthy and can also help others learn more as well. Also I'm jealous of your ability to properly structure a video.
It's one thing to make a "hot take video" it's another to realize your take is from your wounded ego and address that you were wrong. Less egos = better dnd.
@@EthanLR I mean all this information seems something you'll know if you play the game naturally. If a channel who posts D&D videos for years, and it's pretty good content mind you, states that there was new information in there that means that others probably know less. Which is concerning, because what are you even doing.
Ginny, as one of the *really* Old Guard--I worked at TSR beginning in 1978 as an editor and designer and was one of the editors for the 1st Edition DMG and Deities & Demigods--I watched your first MinMax video and found nothing wrong with it. Indeed, starting with the Original 3 booklets of D&D, the die rolls in order dictated your character choices, but then your role-play could take over--and there was enough character death that you'd eventually get to play everything! We used 3x5 index cards for character sheets (and marching order tokens until we could afford enough miniatures), and encumbrance was self-limiting--what you could write on the back of the card! So yes, we OG were flexible--and one of my characters with terrible rolls was played so desperately and inventively (ahem!) by me that he eventually landed in TSR's Rogues' Gallery product. The character had a low Con, low HP rolls, and had 3 hit points at 3rd Level! All of your points today are valid. It's truly a value-added game--what you put in will usually control the amount of fun you get out of it. I'm in a campaign now with a couple of Min-Maxers who do like to ramble on about how if I had chosen X spell or feat, I could have done a point more damage--but I'm having more fun playing my Halfling Dex Barbarian with two short swords (Just give me a toss and I'm Death From Above!!) than they are ("Is it time to hit something yet?"). So keep on keeping on--I enjoy your videos and songs and if you ever hit the "middle" cons I guest at (Gamehole-Madison, WI; GaryCon --Lake Geneva, WI; North Texas RPGCon--Dallas, TX) I'd love to see you, have you play in one of one of my games/play in yours, and definitely chat about ren faires etc over beers! Best, Allen Hammack (Ghost Tower of Inverness)
Honestly glad to see someone echoing my sentiments. Fun and optimization don't have to be mutually exclusive, but I think optimization is always a dead end. If you are an optimizer, you have fun optimizing (obviously). The only problem is there is by definition of optimizing, it is self-limiting to a number of builds that perform "best" in their chosen fields. Once you get to the end of that rabbit hole, there's no more optimization fun for you, only roleplay and progression, which you already had from the start, and are both theoretically limitless. The only problem is often time optimizers make it harder for other characters to shine unless they are also optimized. Secondarily, a lot of "optimization" boils down to the same stuff. Ranged is always better than melee since their are less threats meaning less damage taken meaning higher survivability. I've seen a video where someone instructs players to group stealth on cooldown, and any encounter out in the open is just a kite fest with longbows/crossbows until the enemies are dead. How is that any fun at all? It's rolling dice until the DM says you win.
I started playing D&D in '78 or so as well. I would say one of the reasons we Old Guard didn't really care about optimizing is because we were also war-gamers. D&D wasn't designed as a war-game. It was pre-CGI, book-fed fantasy. So we didn't really worry about building the "right" tactical choice into characters - we got that elsewhere with Avalon Hill games like Third Reich.
@@brb0127 I started playing shortly after the DMG was released in '79. Basically a lifetime with the game including some horrific years feuding with munchkins at my table who turned out to be sociopaths. Afterwards, starting therapy for trauma, the psychologist suspected my friends of being predatory psychopaths and asked me to characterize our dynamics. I mentioned we'd often conflict over a game called D&D, with me being all about the imagination and them being all about the mechanics. The psychologist nodded and confirmed, yes, that's consistent. Of course, a lot more went into the diagnosis, but it's been demonstrated that the word choices of sociopaths draw from the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs -- objects, things, touch, taste, stuff stuff stuff -- and not the higher levels of relationships and emotions (Hancock, 2013, Hungry Like the Wolf). Not all munchkins are sociopaths, but it's been my experience that all sociopaths are munchkins. It appeals because it's just how their brains work.
@@FastFacto4 This is where people misunderstand optimisation. I don't optimise to be the absolutely best character in the entire game. Nor do most sane people, that's boring as fuck. For me Optimisation is an exercise in being good/the best at what I want the character TO do. That could be a ranger sniper who focuses on archery and stealth, is it 100% optimal? No, far from it, is it fun as fuck? Hell yeah.
@@RoxxiTheDiceGoblin I believe this is the minority, otherwise people who optimize would accept others build choices and simply inform them of ways to make it the best performing character the way the players wants, and not simply state some abilities/spells/etc are just purely unoptimized and you should never pick them, which is the more common trend. Just watch Pack Tactics videos. Extremely common to say "do not pick this" instead of "this is how to optimize a suboptimal character"
As a 1E veteran who played through the Satanic Panic, the best roleplaying advice I got from a DM was his Rule 0: Everyone has fun. My advice shouldn't hold anymore weight than someone who just started playing. Once you get the game, it's your game. Play the game you want to play.
Thank you for your service, brave soul. Our generation of normalcy and acceptance stands on the backs of y'all old school bois. Literally, unironically, thank you for playing ☺️
I got a neighbor that made his son my friend keep his MTG deck at my house because he thought it was witchcraft and if it was left in his house they'd get haunted by demons or some shit
D&D has been my passion since I was 7 and I’m 51. I’m now living the dream as a successful, full time, paid DM. For me, you can’t go wrong as long as you are having fun that is not at the expense of anyone else at the table and you are genuinely committed to telling a story together. How you build your character should simply follow that guideline and you’ll generally be ok. The other thing you need to do is communicate with your group and DM if there is even a hint of a question. “Hey DM, I know this is a combat heavy campaign, but will my grossly underpowered build, built on diplomacy cause a problem?” Or, “I know this is super heavy RP, but my character is quiet and combat starved.” Just ask questions. Not everyone has a play style that works together. Communication keeps games alive. I’ve seen it so many times over that last 40+ years. I’m SUPER picky about who I play with and ask a lot of questions at session 0. It’s served me very well.
How do you make a living as a dm? It seems very difficult, and although it would be an ideal job, I can't imagine the pay is very good without doing it for 8 hours each day, not including prep time.
@@JustLilyTbh I charge $25 per person with 6 person groups. I have 17 groups. My sessions are 100 minutes and being they are all minors, this is a good amount of time, as they start to get antsy at 2 hours. So, I make about 120K. My prep time is minimal, aside from setting up new campaigns. I'm a skilled improv artist and actor and have played D&D since I was 7 and have been mostly the DM. I've been playing longer than most of these famnous DM's have been alive. I'm pretty good at it.
So cool, you dm professional. And yeah I think as long as everyone at the table has the same level of character build. What I mean is if the whole table agrees to optimize. Go ahead optimize. We had to kick a guy that optimize when the rest of us made character arc characters that picked builds based on my character would want this spell because they like flowers or whatever so the optimizer broke combat by one shooting enemies the rest of us we on equal level to. We had to kick him when he didn't understand why we found all his characters annoying. It's all about balance and finding the right group
This is where I have the most fun. The mishmash of things I had to do to make a character who only uses a whip do good damage in combat was super fun and made a really odd character. I've been trying pretty much since 5e came out to make a net function in combat but I haven't cracked that one yet.
I used this philosophy to build my "party mom" alchemist artificer. All her spells are potion/concoction effects, she does a lot of support, and calls everyone in the party "sweetie." And she has a 20 AC at level 4. With starter gear + artificer infusions, no pre-magical items or homebrew at all.
Really big of you to go back and address this (as opposed to just delete/ignore this). I did think that you made some good points in the previous video, most pertinent of which is don't be afraid to do something that's not optimal in the interest of rp. Don't thinks the old video is completely invalid, but interesting to see how to developed over the past two years. (Also most importantly... your eye makeup is absolutely FIRE in this video).
I absolutely 100% think that sweaty palmed optimizers and mislabeled roleplayers just wanted something to yell about and didn't like a new players perspective. The roleplay vs. optimization from a play time and dnd version perspective argument has always been subjective at best. I played with plenty of optimizers that were also jerks about it in 2.0, and still see them at the table today. I really thought the old video slapped right, and wish people would experiment more. In fact, I am thinking about picking up an odd multi class for my level three fighter because of this dialogue
Very true. From personal examples, I recently made a character that is SUPER good at healing, probably one of the two builds in the game that can almost keep up with monster damage. But, I have like 0 dmg (besides my character’s self sacrificial nature as a personal flaw). They can keep the party alive, but without the party, they are useless, and I try and make that clear in the game.
That's the messsage I ultimately took from the video, but it may be because it was already an opinion of mine. Suboptimal mechanical choices should not get in the way of a character concept. I'm an optimiser, it is not very efficient to play a small barbarian, since they can't use heavy weapons, but yet I still have a character in mind who is a kobold ancestral guardian babarian. For me the fun of optimisation is to find the most effective build *given certain restraints.* If I have free reign to do anything without regard for a character concept, then that has already been calculated. And then there's the subjectivity of what *effective* means. Sometimes I want a skill monkey, sometimes a damage dealer, sometimes a utility character with loads of spells or cantrips etc. As long as it doesn't mess with the group dynamic by making things unnecessarily hard for the DM, or you talk to the DM and they say they can manage things, go for it!
I really appreciate that you made a correction video. Not a lot of people take the time or have the courage to admit they were wrong in the past so thoroughly. You earned my respect for that.
The biggest compliment I ever got from my DM was him sending me a comic that depicted 3 types of Players, one who optimized their character, one who got really deep into the roleplay and one who would make their characters with built in jokes and told me "somehow, I think you're all 3". Made me feel super accomplished as a Character Designer and Player.
That IS quite a compliment and congratulations to you for figuring out how to "win" the game; i.e., play it as challenging enjoyment for yourself and entertaining those you game with. 👏👏👏
A comment on optimizing at a non-optimizer table: one of the best pieces of advice I've seen on that front is to optimize a support character. It sucks for the rest of your group if you're taking everything out, but if *they're* taking everything out using your buffs [or heals or whatever], that feels good for other players while still letting you make a relatively absurd character.
Alternatively, if you do want to play a damage dealer, you can intentionally not optimize all the way. Maybe you're a Drakewarden with a longbow, instead of a Gloomstalker with a hand crossbow.
What, people evolving, maturing in terms of experience with something, changing their minds, and admitting it publicly? This still exists in today's world? *sheds a tear* I thought we had lost the art of being reasonable, looking at the state of the world nowadays. Thanks Ginny for putting a smile in my face ^_^
For what it's worth, I really like your "bubbly preschool teacher energy." Your advice in that old video could be reframed, granted, but there is value in the underlying message that playing something outside your comfort zone is a way to grow as a player and as a person, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with optimizing for story at the expense of mechanics if that's what you're into.
If it helps, the actor for a Superman movie stood *under his own billboard* and very, very few people recognized him. Clark Kenting's actually a legitimate disguise method.
@@coin0matic Stooped shoulders and a different mental attitude are stunning in their effectiveness. And just as effective the other way, a purposeful walk and chin slightly up projects an aura of authority that people subconsciously accept. "Act like you belong, and you do" and "Fake it till you make it"! 🙂
As someone who saw the Stormwind Fallacy get unveiled, honestly I found your old video to also be helpful to people who were stuck in a rut on optimization. Sometimes people just get too obsessed with charops. That said, this video is also very refreshing to hear, and I think I just love both takes. In the end, D&D advice is often contradictory, because there's no one true correct approach, there are only chisels that get us closer to some ideal we have at the time of play.
Was there as well, I miss the ol' boards. I saved threads/handbooks, revisited them on the WaybackMachine, etc. It's funny to hear concepts that emerged 18-20 years ago.
@@Zigg33 Why? Here's a story: I have a player who chose to play very suboptimally in our group. Basically a priest/healer concept, but he chose Barbarian, but wants to wear heavy armor, which he isn't proficient with, and didn't have the strength for. His speed is 40% slower, and the group can't Stealth anywhere, or escape without leaving his character behind. He's only "multiclass cleric" (in Pathfinder 2e), so he has the weakest heals vs. other spellcasters. He uses Battle Medicine, but didn't pick medic. His rage prevents him from casting spells. He is too slow to reach dying people. As a GM, I hate everything about his character build. He enjoys roleplaying the flaws, but to the detriment of the group.
@@BarbeChenue well that looks lie a troll build. But still I hate when players with more expirience are telling others what to pick as they know what works... same reason why i hate dnd castle ravenloft.. its a power play coop. I better play it solo as i know the game best and to play optimally I should say what to do to everyone. Same happens here and it makes me feel i play with 1 player, not 3.
When talking about Min-Maxing, a lot of people seems to forget about the "Min" part. A perfectly optimised character has, thanks to the skill point system, flaws, or at least things they can't do. A Fighter can't do magic (unless Eldritch Knight), a Wizard can't melee (as well as a Fighter). A party needs balance.
This. I think a lot of people use min-max as a catch-all term for powergamers, but the thing is, you actually CAN build a max-maxed character and that absolutely can be a problem if no one else is doing it. Min-maxing implies means you are maximizing some stats at the expense of others, but 5e more than other editions allows you to make a character with basically no flaws. Now, I do think you still should pick things that at least fit your character concept/theme rather than feats that are mechanically sound but don't fit your character at all, but that doesn't mean it is or isn't optimized and that's okay.
I agree with everything except wizard can't melee considering how broken spell casting is. I mean you could make a melee wizard with only wizard class ( even easier if you're allowed optional feats rule).
@@modtyrant1784 I agree that the Bladesinger offer a melee option for the Wizard, but you'd still have 1 "attack", as for the Fighter still have 4 max, 8 with Action surge.
1. You forget about Bladesingers 2. Point system doesn't make you weak. If you use default pointbuy system you will have positive summ modifiers (+6? I don't remember) and the whole system want you to min max and play an unduying hero. So as it said "don't blame the player - blame the game" I don't like 5e and I'm playing osr instead
@@nickglover It doesnt imply that at all. Min-max is shorthand for "minimum downsides/costs maximum benefits/power". Its having 1 point in every trained skill that doesnt help scale in 3e or in 5e its level 1 and 6 (or 7 or 8) in fighter for the 2 levels to get action surge since the last 2 levels of wizard are dead in comparison and casting progression isnt sufficiently slowed to not be worth to both the initial survivability, proficiencies and action surge.
My buddy L was one of my favorite people to play with, he’d show up every time with an optimized character, and roleplay the hell out of it. Truly that’s what broke the storm wind fallacy for me, once I could see that the only person hyper ready for roleplay at my table while I was dming was also the min maxer, and he really just wanted his character to consistently do the things he liked hence the maximization.
This is how I try to play. I like to have a theme around my character build, but within the restrictions of that theme I will optimize the hell out of is. I also find the restrictions somehow help me do better with RP as it guides the type of character I'm playing.
I'm a very strange player. I try to find a weird character concept and then min/max the hell out of it. I remember in the early days of World of Warcraft I played a healer shaman. But as Enhancement. It worked surprisingly well, actually. In RPGs I tend to prefer a wizard that focuses on buff spells to make myself as tanky as possible. "But you could play any divine caster and it would work way better!" Maybe. I don't care.
@@citizen_wayne Yeah, things can go wrong, I don't see that as a handicap, it's the game. What I'm saying is being open to the possibility that not everything is going to work out, and taking that into the story being woven. Like something cool happening because of luck or lack thereof. I think most of the time it falls on the DM being sensible. A skilled archer can still fumble a shot depending on the situation. A skilled warrior can trip if they're not focused. But I find that trying to negate the unpredictability of TTRPGs *usually* brings less fun for the table in general. It's no fun throwing dice if you *know* you're gonna succeed.
As someone who is totally new to this hobby, I appreciate you explaining the debate and making a good case for the pros and cons of each style. It's so helpful to have a nuanced discussion. :)
So true. I hadn’t even seen her past video, but I clicked anyway thinking it might be a good way to hear about a debate from two sides real quick-and Ginny delivered. On top of that, I am coming away from it with a refined understanding of motivations that go into character building. Nice :)
Maybe a better initial message would have been along the lines of: "Don't *stress* over optimization, when you're new to the game, and everyone else at your table is also finding their way. Do it, if that's where you find your fun, but don't feel obligated to do it. You'll possibly choose new directions with later characters, building on what you learn in the meantime."
I would argue a better message is "Don't worry about optimization" or "It's OK to play non optimized characters" Your suggestions still sort of suggest that you should optimize, whereas the message should probably be more along the lines of there is nothing wrong with optomising and nothing wrong with not optimizing.
Love this! Also, I'd like to add that new players should always feel free to ask about optimization without fear of losing out on the roleplaying aspect.
@@Peter_Cordes that's where things differ from table to table. If you play a character who is non optimised at a table who partake in a lot of combat and and run optomised characters then yeah you are likely to miss a lot which could hurt your enjoyment. However if you are playing at a table thay does very little combat and plays with minimal optimisation then not optomising your character shouldn't hinder your experience. Each table and group is different so you should build your character with your group in mind. That said I would argue my point still stands. You can play the game however you want to play it. If you want to play an unoptomised build then work away. There's nothing inherently wrong with it. Yeah in my opinion you should have your mechanics back up the rp character you want to play. That doesn't mean they have to be optimised though. Logically it makes more sense to put points into dex or constitution as a wizard right? But what if your character is a really buff wizard so you decided you want to prioritise strength over dex and con. That's not optimal given the general playstyle of the wizard class, but it's still fine to do it. To me you seem to be coming at this discussion from a combat standpoint. And yeah mathematically having better numbers means you can do better in combat. However not all tables have that much combat. For example at my table we tend to have a max of one combat per session and it's not uncommon to have sessions without combat. Even when we have combat we don't tend to really play it in an optomised way. We just play it as a casual group of friends having a laugh. That said I am sure if I brought some of my characters from this campaign to a different campaign where combat is a bigger part and players are generally more optomised my characters would end up being a lot less enjoyable. The fact that you broke down the numbers in such detail suggests to me you enjoy optomising characters, which I think is great, I do like to some times create an optomised character. However I think my point still stands that the message should be thay there is nothing wrong with building and unoptomised character and there is nothing wrong with building an optomised character. Just make sure you know what sort of table you will be playing at.
@@Peter_Cordes yeah my point is still the same. I don't believe it is wrong to build a character who isn't optimised. Wether that be not optomised for combat or not optomised for social situations or not optomised for puzzle solving. I think you should build your character however you want even if that means you aren't playing the best build for the purpose you need it. Yeah I agree that optomisation is sort of a sliding scale. For example maxing our intelligence on a wizard is optimal for the class and obviously 16 int is more optimal than 8. But my point is more related to intent. If you are building a wizard and decide "I want my wizard to be pretty smart so I will give him an int of 16" you aren't making that choice to make an optomised character, you are making that choice because that's the character you want to build. Whereas of you say "I am making a wizard so I am going to put my 16 into intelligence because that's what wizards need" then you have chosen to optimise your character there. Again there's nothing wrong with doing that it's a perfectly reasonable way to play.
As a part of that AD&D group who's been doing this for 30+ years. I had no real problem with your original video. Then again, I understood the underlying premise of your original video and was more than willing to overlook the mechanical weaknesses in your delivery. You make good content.
Exactly. The words in the first video were wrong the sentiment was actually correct. Which is opposite in this video. People like to believe there isn't a wrong way to play dnd.
@@gabriellynch2764 As long as everyone is having fun, there isn't really a wrong way to play D&D. I don't think the sentiment in this video is wrong either.
@@ArchetypeLunaThat's a hell of a qualifier isn't it? "As Long As Everyone is Having Fun" That covers all manner of sins. Because it discounts any situation in which one participants behavior directly impacts the enjoyment of others. That directly means there is a wrong way to play D&D... that way is "Selishly"
@@AlexStar6 The problem I had with the previous video was that it felt like it really leaned towards Min/Max is bad. Hence why I am assuming this particular video was being made.
@@ArchetypeLuna It's all about intent. Min/maxing for the purpose of building a character to fulfill the fantasy you desire is not inherently wrong. Min/maxing for the sole purpose of creating a character designed to dominate the narrative and be the main character of the campaign is problematic. Can you build a character another way and attempt to do that? Yes, but it is less common by a very wide margin. If you've encountered a player who is actively ruining the experience for a group it is more than likely that player is a min/maxing power gamer. Note: even with that, 19/20 min/maxing power gamers are not hurting their games in any way. But 9/10 players that are disruptive are min/maxing power gamers. This is by no means based on any kind of study, it's simply my observation amongst the hundreds of people I've played with and DM'd for in the 30+ plus years I've been playing D&D.
I'm an old school guy. Been DMing for 30+ years. I like your blue/green/whatever hair and preschool teacher energy. Keep it up. This particular grognard is thrilled that you and your millennial friends have brought new enthusiasm and ideas to my beloved hobby. More power to you.
She's also very creative, smart, and funny. She can sing, she cosplays, and she seems genuinely a very nice person. RPGs aside, one of the best channels on yt.
One of my DMs made the point that “the best” character build is the one you enjoy playing. I’m playing a Wizard/Fighter multi class because it seemed interesting rather than being optimized.
Pretty much. I've tried this once, I accidentally over-built my first ever D&d character, and to try nerfing it I decided to pick levels in Wizard for story reasons and messing with my own max-dpr rotation. Didn't really help too much because I was still dealing more damage than most of the party, but still, love to just mess with characters for funzies.
You can optimise a wizard/fighter. People often confused optimised build with a meta build. You be the best damn wizard fighter you can be and that is a optimised wizard fighter. Optimising just means making your concept as effective as possible. It could be the best one legged wizard fighter and still be optimised. And yeah wizard fighter is fun as is a scroll fighter. Good times
Action Surge lets you cast another full spell. So it's actually used in optimization sometimes. It'd be fun to do Sorcerer more than wizard, and you can throw in Quickened spells along with it (Not at the same time, unless you really want to use 3 cantrips at once), but lets you pace yourself a bit better using metamagic on some turns and action surge(s) on others. and sorcerers being more physical / natural blends well with being a little more martial. Though of course anyone can be academic and pick up the spellbook to learn if they've got the wits for it.
As a member of "the Old Guard" it was REALLY hard to optimize when you are randomly generating your stats by rolling 3d6 in order. But inevitably rolling below average in half of your stats really forced you to play a character with Flaws, which actually DOES encourage roleplaying.
TLDR: The point though is that even optimized characters will always have flaws. My leonin ranger/barbarian (who isn't exactly "optimized" but is certainly tough as hell and has a diverse skillset in combat) has plenty of personality flaws. He is entirely too sure of himself in social situations, even though 1. He thinks the world believes him and the party to be the absolute shit without it having been proven yet 2. He doesn't understand humor 3. He has 0 social graces and only gets embarrassed long after he should already have and 4. He can be very overly protective of his friends in situations where it isn't necessary. Further, in combat he's a beast, but his AC isn't amazing and he gets hit a lot, has trouble with mental saving throws, and sometimes has to spend a round getting into combat since he isn't terribly efficient with his ranged options and his personality/skillset dictates he wouldn't usually want to fight from a range anyway. The point of the video is that while any character can be roleplayed very well, being more mechanically flawed does not at all mean your roleplaying experience will be better. It might be different, but you can play to whatever flaws you want as whatever character you play. By the way, having a character with 0 strengths can *actually* cause problems at a table. D&D is a heroic fantasy game, and your character missing every round, having enemies save against most of your spells, dealing low damage when they do manage to hit, etc. is legitimately disappointing. You're losing out on a key aspect of the game, that being heroism, more often than not, while those with even moderately well built characters (a druid with good Wisdom, for instance) will get their chance to shine fairly frequently. On that note, strengths can be equally fun, satisfying and compelling to roleplay as compared to flaws. Bringing up my ranger again, he is mechanically an excellent tracker, hunter, scout, forager, and general survivalist. He's a physical beast who can make pretty amazing athletic maneuvers, and in combat he can stand up to powerful enemies, putting up a decent fight even when he doesn't win outright (which he often does). I have a LOT of fun roleplaying his competency. I make jokes (even though he himself isn't joking) about other players being small or acting like they think I'm very impressive. He loves the wilds, and I make detailed descriptions of tracking, describing markings I find after a successful Survival check. I describe dope as hell maneuvers, savage attacks, roars of rage, and brutal kills when in combat. My DM even lets me use my strength score for my intimidation checks because it just makes more sense that way. In conclusion, while there is nothing wrong at all with playing a character like the one you described as long as you enjoy the roleplay and can have fun in combat despite some shortcomings (very doable), there's also nothing about having strengths that makes you less likely to want to roleplay, and in fact strengths can encourage roleplay as much as flaws can. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
That's sounds like hell, haha. Like I feel like there's a difference between having some flaws and just being the worst wizard ever because you rolled a 3 for your int lol
Both Hamlet and Macbeth would totally be "Optimized characters" if roleplayed! The difference is that in both of their stories, their strengths BECOME their flaws... but if Macbeth and Hamlet were to swap places and play through eachother's campaigns, they would become Champions, instead of tragedies!
"I don't wanna be the kind of person who doesn't change my mind when I learn new things." - clearly the best message here. And this can go for some truly ugly/dark/inappropriate thoughts as well. If you've changed, and it is for the better, good.
You are a good role model in many ways, and your stance towards acknowledging past mistakes or even being open to changing your mind as you learn new things is a big one. You keep that pre-school teacher energy going, girl! You are a smile-inducing fresh breeze and we love you for it
Wait, someone on the internet can change their mind after becoming more experienced?? Madness!! Actually, I give you a lot of points to redo a video that you feel was, done from a biased or at least less experienced point of view. That being said, and since I just commented on said video, I stand by my comment. My thoughts were not that maximized characters had no interesting backgrounds but that a character doesn’t have to be maximized to be a solid team member. Thank you for showing that we evolve as we grow and our opinions don’t always have to stay the same. Love seeing this as well as all your opinions and thoughts on the game. In the end, we all want the same thing. To have fun with our characters and our friends.
this is really appreciated. my favorite character i've ever played was a min-max'd Phoenix Sorcerer back when it was still an experimental sub-class.... he by FAR carried the party when it came to pure damage output, and if not led the charge in most non-combat scenarios, was extremely USEFUL in almost any.... but even with a damn near perfect set of skills ON PAPER for the campaign, he was also by far the most FLAWED character in that campaign, and his personality growth throughout the story has left large marks and echoes throughout our table's extended universe, for better AND worse. he was an impulsive, research and loot obsessed man with a bad habit of accidentally starting large fires before ANYTHING had started, with a FIERCE loyalty to anyone he considered a friend (which turned out to be anyone who didn't just attack him on sight). by the end of the campaign he had managed to free an 'evil' god and redeem them within the eyes of the world, re-connected the elemental planes that had been blocked from the world, the myriad of pets (a Mimic and 3 Rust Monsters among them) he'd found along the way have grown into benevolent paragons of their respective races, guarding and protecting the descendants of every friend he'd made along the way, and eventually ascended to god-hood in his own right, all the while dragging his entire party along with him, but all of the large and great successes he had were built upon a MOUNTAIN of failures, blood, sweat and tears. he had willfully thrown himself into the path of what would otherwise be certain death countless times to save his party because despite all of his pride, ego, intelligence and everything else, he was ultimately a scared child, terrified of losing the people he cared about, even for a MOMENT. (my favorite moment will always be him single-handedly taking aggro for a max damage cast of Meteor Swarm by dragging the caster as far from the party as he could within one turn, which with a mixture of clever meta magic uses and teleportation, along with movement enhancements, managed to get out of the mile range, and then take all 3 meteors directly to the face totaling at 360 damage to his 60-odd hp, as he knew he was the only party member with a HOPE of surviving that sort of damage, due to being able to revive himself)
Exactly. This is possible because the apology was (1) Not forced by public pressure and threats, (2) Issued after the apology-maker independently had new experiences that changed her opinion, and (3) About how to approach a hobby, rather than failure to comply with constantly-changing standards of decency and/or fundamental worldview. It's great that she's made this video to explain how and why she changed her mind, but this type of thing doesn't even need to be an "apology," per se, because that assumes she caused harm to anyone with her original video. She didn't. She expressed something that wasn't necessarily correct, but that nobody had any obligation to agree with or obey.
A really awesome perspective! There really isn’t a “right” or “wrong”, what really matters is everyone at the table has an enjoyable experience. I’m DMing a great combination of seasoned veterans that min/max with incredible artistry, and others that are learning D&D and just like to create cool stuff. It’s finding that balance so everyone feels like a hero during the game, and no one feels left out during a challenge. Right now I’m developing homebrew feats that will give sub optimised players some extra kick, but also offer some lateral gains to the epically min/max’ed players (so they don’t feel left out for making efficient PC’s) Note I’ve got 2 Battle master crossbow sharpshooters and a brutally defensive evocation wizard sprinkled with some wonderfully crazy multi-classes!
That's definitely the lesson to learn, different sorts of character optimisation for different sorts of campaigns. Yes, sometimes a non-optimal character is the best choice but other times severe optimisation is also what's called for.
The lesson I took away from the previous video was, “Don’t let Optimization prevent you from playing the character you want.” I framed this through a conversation that I had with another player at my table. We were discussing a character he was wanting to create. We had the overarching concept of the character and were trying to find matching mechanics. As we had nailed down his player’s class I suggested a specific race (don’t remember which one) and he goes, “Ehh but (that class) doesn’t really go with (that race). I was confused by this because, if it fit with the character, who cares? We were a table of noobs with an experienced and godly patient DM, no one expected us to come to the table with perfect builds. I don’t typically minmax, simply because I’m too new in this community to understand the mechanics that well so I’ve personally enjoyed leaning into the kooky builds, but there are also parts of my builds that are optimized too. I don’t think it’s good to say one ought to be one or the other.
Big time respect for making this. I always say to optimize as much as you find fun and reasonable. Fun is the most important one, you need to have a good time with the character, so picking spells that fit a play style or fantasy that you enjoy I’d important, even if it’s not optimal. Reasonable means you need to fit the vibe of the game. How tough is combat? How strong are the other players? Is there even combat at all? If you’re playing a particularly weak (or even extremely strong) character, that can put pressure on the game / the DM. Follow both rules and talk to both the DM and party while you’re building out the fantasy character of your dreams.
I've DMed and played a lot of DnD for the past six years, and if there's one thing that holds true is that there is never only one solution to any problem you encounter. Thinking outside the box - better if you can do it in the context of the character - is one of the best skills you can develop, because you might lack the AB to hit that golem with AC 40, but knowing to ask the material of the pillars around the room and plan a coordinated distraction with a localized charge in the right moment will do wonders. I cannot stress enough how important it is to consider every tool at your disposal. Every last implication of a needle in your inventory, every last loose piece of rubble on the floor, every combination of words of noises you could possibly utter that may change the course of the battle. Everything that surrounds you is a resource, from your abiltiies to the tragic backstory of your friendly dwarven engineer, and knowing where they fit is the largest puzzle far more important to solve than any mechanical conundrum. Because having a barbarian with some 24 nat STR may do absolutely nothing at all when fighting a construct that is entirely immune to physical attacks.... but you can always ask your engineer if they know the schematics and what's the closest thing to an off switch that you can flip.
Due to Satanic Panic in the 80s/90s we embraced RP and storytelling so ppl/teachers wouldn't see the dice/books but we wanted to feel powerful because we weren't. We often argued these points as kids and I didn't see any issues with your video. We were happy trying to get anyone to play with us and maybe all the art wasn't inclusive but our imaginations were. You want to optimize? The DM has to optimize. A certain level of balance needs to be maintained. You can't imagine wrong. The only way to fail at having fun is when people aren't having fun.
Regarding interesting characters, I absolutely love playing a very standard and typical race/class combo, because I find that the race and class take a back seat. That doesn't necessarily mean they're better or worse, of course. An unusual race/class combo can give you a really strong anchor to your character, while the supposedly bland human fighter combo is a blank canvas on which you can paint almost anything you want.
This is so true! Some of my favorite characters ever have been "generic" on paper, but very interesting in roleplay! I once made a half-orc fighter who was the illegitimate son of a human nobleman in a kingdom that was at war with the orcish clans. He was a dexterous fencer with a strong code of honor and courtly manners who sought a way to end the conflict between his two bloodlines. A generic half-orc fighter on paper, certainly. But in practice, very different than you would expect.
@@Spaloooshify Is that not a textbook example of the Stormwind Fallacy? One does not preclude the other. You can play a human for both of those reasons or neither of them.
I find it's easier for me to come up with a creative backstory to justify my min-max choices. It just gives me fuel to say "how would I have ended up here?" and create a story around that. On the "blank canvas" sometimes I end up with writers block. Other times I end up with a non-optimized character because I'm adhering to my envisioned story concept. Whatever gets you there...
I'm pretty sure the original video is the reason I subscribed to your channel, so it's really interesting to see you coming back to it. Congratulations on your progress, it's really nice to see you coming back and fixing your past mistakes
I recently got into d&d after only playing a little in the past and your original video actually helped me understand there is no wrong way to build a character [which i was told there was] so it actually gave me the confidence to get back into it so it's still a win in my book
Yeah, I think that core message is important! (Also that you should just pick something that sounds fun and learn from it for your first couple characters, and not put that much pressure on the build process.)
A saying comes to mind: Admitting past mistakes just means you are wiser today then you were yesterday. Kudos for being open to changing your mind and sharing that growth with your community.
@Ryno Watcher You can certainly go through life assuming the worst of people, but I find that that's a pretty unpleasant way to live. Nothing I say can change your mind if you don't think I'm being authentic. That said, I would gently remind you that if you think so poorly of me, you don't have to click on my videos - you can choose to consume content you actually enjoy.
@@rynowatcher Just because a title is well made, doesn't mean that that it is clickbait (doesn't mean it isn't). This title seems informative, and yet catches the attention ("clickbait"?). I'd say it is just a good title. If she had no more ideas, she probably wouldn't do self roast and instead start reacting to other content while adding noting of any worth. But what do I know?
what a lucky gal to make a living doing what you love on youtube! With great power comes great responsibility, and Im so glad that I get to watch someone so deserving of their position as a popular video maker! What an amazing video!
There are very few people with the introspection and emotional intelligence to not only realize this, but make a video publically calling it out. Genuine character building 100%
In this day and age, hearing someone say "I was wrong, let me correct myself" is the single most wonderful thing in the world. Never change, you green haired weird person on the internet!
This comment is funny because you contradict yourself. The first statement admires her for changing and the second tells her to never do that. It's even funnier because I don't think she should've her changed opinion in the first place. I also do realize there are some paradoxes going on here in that the only thing that doesn't change is change so you can't just stay in one spot. Watch in a few years she make a video flip-flopping again.
Just for context, I started playing back in the 70's with Basic (just for the record, 2nd edition AD&D is still my favorite). Now I DM for my grandkids. I actually agree with points from both your old and new vids. Point is I have played with Min/Maxers that just don't role-play at all. They multi-class/duel-class to get perks/feats they want, they don't even bother with having a character background, they just want to do max damage and move on to the next critter the DM throws at them. Thing is I prefer to play with people that are role-playing (even if they are bad at it), and I myself get into my role-playing also, but I have noted that many M/M's don't role-play at all, or will do the bare minimum. Not true for all M/M's, but in my experience most have no interest in RP, and are thus boring to play with. As far as having character designed weaknesses, I actually like that. It's easier to add 'character' to a character with just a weakness of some sort built in that is not stat related. For example a character that will never drink a potion they themselves didn't make because they were poisoned once, etc. These just add flavor to a character and is something a M/M would never do. Which in general (not always) makes M/M players just boring IMO.
I think this really shows how you've grown and changed as a player. I can see how being told your character is built poorly would make a relatively new player react in that kind of way, I know my first few characters were mostly tieflings because I was obsessed with that race and the other players would really try to push me to play other races in a not so constructive way (despite the fact that they all had favourite races that they didn't really explore that far out from, but that's besides the point) but honestly I just love the tiefling race and would happily only play tieflings if I had the chance. When I saw your original video at first, I was pretty new as well, and I remember it resonated with me a far bit at the time, but for me it definitely came more from a place of feeling frustrated with having players in my group who would sometimes make fun of me for the kinds of characters I would build, so I guess looking back now I was more so relating to your issue with people complaining about your character not being correctly optimised than anything else. Now I've had the chance to DM a year long game, plus a couple one shots, and dipping my toes in to other systems, I'm more of the opinion that min maxing is fine, but being rude towards other players because they chose to build a character in a certain way is not, and because of that I find I'm a lot more selective with who I play with and who I run games for (since back then I would literally just play in any game that would take me lol). I think as a player it's fine to give advice to other players on how they can improve their characters, but if they don't want to accept that advice, that's okay too. As a DM/GM though, I try to spend a decent amount of time with my players to make sure they have characters that will fit in well with the world/game I want to run, but so long as it's something that fits in with the game and my players are respectful, I don't mind if they want to try something a bit unconventional. I will not stand for players bullying other players for building their characters 'wrong' though.
Me near the start of this video: "She started playing in 2019 and thinks she's been playing a while? Oh, you sweet summer child." Me by the end: "I had no idea what the Stormwind fallacy was until today." Goes to show, you can always learn - even from the younglings. From a veteran of every edition, well done Ginny D.
I've known of the idea for a long time, but not known it by any name. I recall arguing with people at university who were making the fallacy about it by comparing it to stuff like White Wolf games, which are of course not in anyway min-maxable (last bit is sarcasm).
@@Daktangle Same. I had no clue the TTRPG community has a name for it. It was pleasantly humbling to come into the video with this arrogant attitude of, "that's right, kid. Learn what the rest of us learned ages ago." And then she schooled me on the history of a hobby I've been in for twenty years. It was really cool.
@@Daktangle Me at a gaming table about a year after V:tM came out: I mean if we wanted to be jerky min-maxxers we'd all have focused Dexterity instead of Strength because extra hit successes add to damage anyway and you don't damage if you miss Five other people, including the Storyteller: *all exchange looks with one another* Me: oh no
You can do something your entire life and become a master of your craft, and still not know everything to know on the topic. And on your last day before retiring, a new apprentice can show up on their first day and teach you something you never knew.
I really hate when I ask about a player's character and all i get is a race/class/level breakdown. I'm all like, "ok, but what do they feel, think or dream?" If you can get a character that is an actual character, and not just a stat sheet, then you got it right. It's a bonus if they're optimised
Eh, it takes longer, granted sometimes you want “distressingly fascist turbo-frog” and can then get into it, I find explaining it as “Gripli swashbuckler” is easier for people who are *interested* and are likely to ask about the campaign, that, and the former opens some very interesting rabbit holes XD Edit: Auto correct
Eh sometimes they need time to get used to their character, if its a first interaction with them, they really might not feel comfortable sharing much about themselves either. All depends on how much they've done rping as well.
"Bubbly preschool teacher energy" is a really spot on way to describe you, and I definitely mean that as a compliment. The vibe is part of the reason why I subscribed.
I relate! People ask me if I'm a teacher based on the way I dress and my personality. In fact, it helped me quit my terrible job to go back to school and become, you guessed it, a teacher!
One of my favorite things over the past almost 9 years is watching all these new gamers to the hobby go through the same growing pains that previous generations have. You weren't right, or wrong Ginny, those were all points of view. The best thing about roleplaying is that there is no wrong way to do it and the right way is how your table decides is best for them.
I appreciate a lot about this video: conversational content, the presentation, the editing, the spine it took to openly evaluate your past self-but I also want to say I liked her Interpretive Dance announcer’s tied back hair look 😇
Lol as a veteran who really hasn't played in the last few editions, it odd and interesting to see someone learning the lessons I learned decades ago. I need to find a good group to remind myself of the things I have forgotten. Role-playing is more than a game, it is literally a way to develop empathy for your fellow man as well as: deal with stress, hang with friends, escape the everyday grind, EXPRESS YOURSELF, help others express themselves, be heroic, explore your weaknesses. And overall just help develop yourself as part of the human race. So, I hope you love for it grows even as you realize there is no right way to do it. There as as many right ways, as there are role players.
An "old grognard" here who rarely posts comments - One of my favorite recent characters was both min/maxed and totally u-noptomized. I had a socially awkward, effeminate, elf wizard, all of the stats were set for a very effective character. However, this particular wizard did not like the idea of killing the natural creatures of the world. We ran through Lost Mines of Phandelver, I had one, yup, one, spell that was combat oriented. I still ended up being very effective in combat situations and had some amazing role-play. I appreciate you hearkening back to your old video and pointing out that you have grown in your understanding of the hobby. Over 30 years of gaming, and I find myself watching you, and so many new players join the fun, keep growing, keep learning, and keep rolling those nat 20s!
You are the new generation of DMs I love. You have actually listened and taken things spoken of from us 40+ year old DM/GMs. You also added your own ideas which is beautiful. This wonderful game can only grow if we listen and use what has gone before but then add or remove parts to fit this new era of gaming. I applaud your efforts to continue growing as a person/Artist and entertainer. You have learned something special by reflecting on your thoughts and actions of the past. Most of us do not have the ability to see and hear a recording of our younger self lol The world might be a better place if we could. You are a special person, and I look forward to seeing you grow even more. FYI I saw a lot of this at this year‘s GenCon Convention which gives me hope for the industry in the coming years.
For me the most important thing you said is to look at what abilities actually do, rather than thier fluff. Once you (and your DM!) realise this character building gets much more fun and free.
@@cernunnos8344 What the abilities do is much more important than how what it does looks like. Because of this, you can change how something looks or feels without changing how it works, and it makes it easier to flavour a character without worsening them mechanically
@@cernunnos8344 How they look like. Thats... what I said. What the abilities actually do mechanically is important, so you can't change that all that much. But how the things look is almost entirely unimportant to how the game works, so you can change how things look very easily
@@cernunnos8344 Spells are a good example. You can easily add flavour to your spells by describing how they look. Magic Missile creates 3 darts that do 1d4+1 each, but there's nothing in the spell description that says what the darts look like. They could be little birds, tiny skulls, anything that doesn't affect the mechanics. You could even (with DM permission) reflavour an entire class or subclass. In my Wildemount game, my Forge Cleric doesn't actually worship a deity, she believes in her self-developed, slightly heretical offshoot of Moradinism, called the Doctrine Of The Forge. She's still a Forge Cleric, wearing Full Plate and casting Spirit Guardians, but with a minor tweak of the flavour text, you have an entirely new set of RP possibilities
Thank you for this very calm, mature video addressing personal viewpoints which have changed over time. Brava. As an Optimizer who has spent many years being told that since I Optimize I "don't want to have fun," "must care more about numbers than people," or "don't care about the world and lore," I really appreciate what you've said here. I became an Optimizer because the table I learned to play D&D at (15 years ago) was a table of Optimizers. For the first few years I watched the others pull off devastating combos, god-like skill checks, and amazingly creative applications of their abilities and skills while I (building concept characters which seemed cool) could only follow along behind and try to help. Now, this was not a bad table - the other players (I still play regularly with this group) are open and helpful (if opinionated) and they never made me feel like my characters were useless or unwanted or told me I was holding them back or building characters "wrong." The Philosophy of Optimization I was taught was basically "we optimize for the sake of the party." When you build a character, try to make them excellent at what they do to benefit and support the party with whatever skills they have. Building melee DPS? Build a god of war to stand between the squishies and danger. Building support-specialist? Have high ranks in every skill you can get. Why yes, I DO speak eleven languages and have 10 ranks in Appraise. Building a healer? Become the literal font of life to bring the party back from a near TPK. Not to steal the spotlight or to show off, but so that you can boost the party through challenges in your given field. Your god of war will be useless at diplomacy and that's fine - that's the Charisma Monkey's job. Your Trapmonkey will be crap at combat and that's fine - no one else can pick locks. Your Bard has a quarter the HP of everyone else and that's fine - they can buff/debuff like a god. Party balance meant everyone was good at something, but we were good at different things. As a new player who struggled to keep up with 4-5 Optimized characters, I decided I was just going to have to, as we say, "git gud." I studied the handbooks. I looked up build guides and read long forums on build options. I built many, many practice characters and spent long hours on my own studying spells, skills, and abilities so I understood and could apply them better. And over a few years of work and regular gaming, I became a much better player. I could keep up with my original table and be soundly effective at other tables. Then, while playing at some of these other tables, I found myself being labeled a "min-maxer" and "power gamer" and told I was playing the game "wrong." I was confused. At this point, I had spent about seven years working hard to learn several gaming systems so I could play effectively in all of them. I always gave my characters quirks and backstories and tried to break the common stereotype molds. But then I would be told by a table of orphaned half-orc barbarians and brooding elf rangers with wolf companions that I was "power gaming" because I made my arcane trickster a human so I could get the extra feat. Well, uh, yeah. That feat will let me be better at disabling traps, which will benefit the whole party. Why does just being human make my character "boring"? My characters have never backstabbed or betrayed the party, never abandoned their comrades or kept valuable loot for themselves. I've lost characters saving party members and made sure my characters had solid backstory motivation to stick with the party no matter what. I've never scoffed at people for flavor builds and done my best to RP with them in keeping with their flavor. So as a player, it bothered me to be told I was playing "wrong" when I would Optimize my characters so I could be the most helpful and effective party member I could. I know a lot of people have had bad experiences with min-maxers who only care about looking awesome and want everything to be about them. But the thing is, bad players come in all flavors and it's important not to decide everyone who tends towards a certain playstyle must be a killjoy or a horrible person because of it. I applaud you for having the courage to address your own changes in viewpoint (on YT, no less!) and hope you have many happy years of gaming at great tables. TTRPG's are all about having fun with others!
The thing about AD&D was the randomized characteristic rolls. EVEN IF you were allowed to move stats around, not having "point buy" would result in at least one bad stat. Combined with AD&D's lethality, you basically ended up always having to "think outside the box" during play in order to survive. Part of the fun was trying to figure out what to make a suboptimal "rolled PC" so they had a chance of survival.
"We are all different people all through our lives and that's okay, that's good you've got to keep moving so long as you remember all the people that you used to be." -Matt Smith as 11th doctor.
The example i always use for Stormwinds Fallacy is a character i once rolled named Juan Jane (syllabic switch of John Wayne), a fighter crossbow/sharpshooter build. Those that are familiar with min/maxing will probably already be familiar with crossbow expert/sharpshooter as being one of the highest DPR builds that can be made at 6th level in 5e, basically the poster child build of min/maxing. Because the build is fairly complete without the subclass, and all the subclass really adds to the build is utility, its pretty open ended what can be chosen there, usually eldritch knight or battle master. Because Tasha's Cauldron had just released and our DM bought it when i made this build, I chose one of the new sub-classes: Rune Knight. I played the character like a spaghetti western cowboy gunslinger with all the mannerisms and prone to saying corny catchphrases. For flavor, and also because they seemed like the best options, for Rune Knight runes, I chose Cloud rune and Stone rune, and affixed them to my pistols (mechanically, crossbows, but for flavor, 6 shooter pistols), named the pistols Liberty (cloud rune) and Justice (stone rune). One of the corny catchphrases was, after killing an enemy, "Liberty and Justice for All" *blows smoke from gun barrels, twirls them around and re-holsters them* Point is, min/maxing doesn't have to look like "cardboard cutout of guy with 2 hand crossbows and no personality or intrigue beyond doing good damage" Get creative. There's a good reason the "background" section of character creation adds very little mechanically.
Also, in the same one-shot series, one of my party members rolled a Florida-Man inspired build named "Jim-Bob Gatorf***er," so there was already plenty of "flavor" floating around the table anyway. DM rolled an unplanned Alligator fight mid-session just for him. The legend will never die.
Also, it's very interesting to play a combat-centric character In a party of social, exploratory characters. Case in point, Brock Samson from the Venture Brothers TV show. He is a complete veteran of combat that strikes fear into everyone he opposes. He is a terrifying whirlwind of death, and the rest of his group has almost zero combat abilities. He's the bodyguard for a famous scientist in his two goofy idiots sons. I think the more important thing is that everyone should have something that their character can do and that everyone enjoys. So maybe the combat characters have a bunch of minions to mow down, while all the social characters have some MacGuffin to chase down or wrestle out of the hands of an equally weak scientist while slapping each other.
@@viewerguy10 It's not a DnD reference, it's a _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ reference. In one of the books: *_“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”_*
The thing about the 3.5 generation of players being so uptight about optimisation is that, in 3.5 you HAD to optimize or you would'nt keep your character at higher levels and most martial classes were terrible classes to play if you did'nt multiclass (espetially the fighter much to my eternal dismay). One of the main designer of the system himself said ''Players are rewarded for achieving mastery of the rules and making good choices rather than poor ones.'' something he later regrets designing this way but the damage is done.
You are 99% correct. The only part where I'd disagree is about the fighter. Since you basically get 800 extra feats you technically were the LESS TERRIBLE martial class to go in without multiclass.
@@cariocaemfuria3946 The Fighter was pretty much used as an easy way to get feats needed to meet the pre-reqs of whatever PRestige Class you were going for. Most people didn't stick to a Fighter for 1-20. But really, for just about every class there wasn't a terribly great reason to stay in that class when Prestige Classes gave so much extra power.
@@MrJellmoo That's true. But if you HAD to stay in one basic martial class, Fighter was your better option because you could at least get various powerful feats. Not as flashy or even powerful than the best prestige classes, but the only one on the same league. Any other martial class was MUCH MUCH behind.
I honestly find optimization to lead to more interesting characters (specifically when i do it as I have a specific way of making characters) I typically find a class I like a lot try to build it in the strongest way I can. Then I have a free prompt for my character just by what choices I chose. For example, I made a necromancer wizard but I wanted to make sure he got hit as little as possible, so I chose a dwarf to get medium armor proficiency to bump my ac up. That way when I cast shield I can push my ac to 21. As well as poison resistance. So I was left with a prompt of why a necromancer might occur in dwarven culture, for reasons other than generic ones. So I decided he wanted to build a massive undead workforce to protect his people's kingdom to make less life lost when the city was attacked, as well as have a workforce to haul minerals and resources long distances to increase their efficiency in the mines. And to have non living creatures to transport deadly and toxic materials. But he was banished from his kingdom for proposing the idea The build ended up giving me a prompt for making a character. Which is a way that may not work for everyone but it's one I like.
I think this can work both ways. If you min-max first, you can come up with some very interesting character designs and back stories. If you start with an idea of what you character is, a Drow Barbarian, I now have to come up with an interesting backstory and have to dig through feats and classes to make this viable. The character I am currently playing was supposed to be a quick one shot, character for a trap heavy dungeon with plenty of combat, and mild roleplay. So I quickly threw together a 3rd level Barbarian and got rolling. But our GM has invented his own persistent world, changes that players make will have an effect on future campaigns. So I decided I wanted to have a character to create a chain of high end restaurants but I felt like changing the Barbarian storyline would be weird because we had done one session already. We play 3.5, and I decided for my build to work my character would need high Int as a barbarian to identify animals/monsters and how too cook/eat them. I dug around 3.5 and found Factotem they sub Int for Strenght checks and a few other things and there is a feat that adds a modifier to attack and damage depending on you knowledge check. Thus Gorram was born An intelligently gifted half-elf who due to a failed teleport was trapped in a harsh jungle of Barbarians, after he learned to survive in the jungle he finally stumbled on a port and managed to convince the captain to take him along for his intelligence. But after having to eat anything to survive he gained a taste for various foods and needed to know what every creature tasted like. He decided to study as a factotem so he could traverse any terrain to find his prey, from demon, to aberration, to dragon. Gorram (GORdan RAMsey) is a half-elf 2nd level barbarian with flesheater variant, fourth level factotem. He has a vast knowledge of all monsters and humanoids and is writing his cookbook and collecting ingredients. He has ranks in profession chef and butcher lol.
I have the same method and has worked well for me for many years. My builds ended up being our NPC/Pick up Character vault because all of them were so unique both in mechanics and in character.
That's exactly how i prefer to play- i find a character build that would be fun to play that is optimised for something specific, and then build the character's backstory and personality around that. That gives way more inspiration and creative ideas than otherweise which they'd be pretty generic. Optimisation makes the game more fun for everyone. A lot of pushback is "its what my character would do", which is a bad argument when it comes to betraying the party, so why do some people think its a valid argument when you have a 8 in wizard who doesn't pick fireball or hypnotic pattern, or who plays a class with access to healing word but never prepares/knows healing word. Change your character so that they better fit in with the party. Your character doesn't have to focus on fireballing or healing word, but they should at least have it in their back pocket in case they need it so that everyone can have fun and your DM doesn't have to babysit the party.
I'm personally also a mechanics first builder, but I'd like to point out that one can also be a story first builder and an optimizer. One aspect of optimization that often gets neglected is that it isn't necessarily about building the best combatant around, but rather about building the best build *for your concept*, and so when I have others in my group who are story first builders, I'll listen to their concept and then propose a build optimized for that concept, this way they can do their weird idea AND be effective while doing it. I find it's more useful to divide build philosophies by mechanics first vs story first rather than optimizer vs roleplayer, since it is easy to do both well and frankly nobody should focus on one to the exclusion of the other, however, especially when people are newer to the game, it can be easy to get caught up in whichever you are personally more drawn to. By reframing it around where you draw your primary build inspiration from and putting the focus on doing the best you possibly can with your idea you encourage both kinds of people to grow as players rather than shutting them down for not putting enough emphasis on one area or another. I get inspired by seeing mechanical combinations that I want to play with, and I create an interesting character around that build, another player at my table has a variety of interesting characters she's dreamed up that she wants to make a build for. These are both equally valid directions to come at character creation from, and they can both arrive at optimal builds and interesting roleplay.
This whole thread is great! I'd add that it depends on your table as well. Have a DM that is nerdy about how much rations you have and how much time has gone by. So my Ranger took some hunting stuff over combat stuff so that we don't have to worry about it. Maybe not optimal, but for our game it helped.
I really like coming up with a character concept or build, and then min maxing that. Basically like a themed challenge run of a game. For example, I wanted my Warlock to be very good at problem solving and utility casting, with an emphasis on illusions and cantrips. So while I picked Archfey and have taken none of the Eldritch blast evocations, I found out how to make a continuous, 15 square foot illusion with sound at level 2, by combining the sound of minor illusion (it’s a cantrip that is infinite and can be up-kept every turn) and misty visions, which can be cast for free instantly, and is the silent image spell. That means with just your action, you can have a moving, 15ft illusion with sound. Very useful, very fun.
That is optimising a concept, concept always come first for optimisers and the challenge is to find more and more ways to actually ALSO make it mechanically efficient. Great example.
Yup, while there are optimizers that do focus purely on power. Most of us are like you, and like to optimize for concepts and see if we can mechanically support them somehow.
Pretty much all my characters are built like this. 'Who is this character and what are they good at?' Sometimes you get a very simple character who's just really good at the basics and sometimes you get a character with a particular set of skills that they're crazy with. But there's always at least a general character and concept there.
This is one of the best deconstructions of this common misconception I have ever seen. You've earned a subscriber and I will be sending this to people as a great thinkpiece on the Stormwind Fallacy in the future. Kudos on your growth!
When I first started playing I jumped straight into the books and tried my hand at optimization from the first character on. I was joining a table of peoples that had been playing for years and thought I had to start out swinging to keep up. Turns out I over estimated my table a bit and started challenging the dm to keep up with me. Since then I have gotten a large group of friends into the game and knowing it was going to be rough from a build standpoint I started doing something to compensate for my builds. I began to kneecap myself. For about three years now my builds look about 80% optimized, with glaring weaknesses, be it mechanically or rp. It's helped my friends take moments in campaigns and feel less like sidekicks and more like companions. Now even when I get to (more) "hardcore" tables I still bring my kneecaps. Guess I got a fetish for it now.
For me even with an optimized character, a lot of room exists to RP off of the dice rolls and rolling for things they are not good at. As a DM I recently had two players trying to figure out more about their shared tragedies in their backstory. One rolled quite well and made progress, RPing that they felt better about their direction. The other, making the same rolls in single digits, they RP’ed not feeling that connected to the subject and finished the night passing out in a tavern.
I appreciate you making this video. Optimization creators say this stuff all the time, but the problem is that they’re generally preaching to the choir. Your platform reaches people who maybe haven’t thought about things this way, and I think it really makes a difference.
Gianni rolled a nat 20 on her wisdom save. It takes amazing courage and insight to admit mistakes. Well done and thank you for showing us how to grow. Great example!
As someone who comes from B/X back in the 80's - you are an amazing addition to our hobby and I always look forward to your insights! Coming back and changing an outlook on something is a great mind set and helps bring more people to the table. More people, more games - more fun!
There were plenty of players all around me in the mid 1970s who were all about optimizing their characters to take advantage best they could "against the rules." It's all good: do whatever you like to have fun--as long as, of course, you don't make it less fun for others.
I played d&d for 30 of my 40 years, on each side of the table and with any kind of people. I always thought the beauty of the game is that you can literally play it the way you like, making rules, changing settings and be whoever you desire to be, even if for only a few hours a week. I'm so happy to see more and more people enjoy it nowadays and interpreting it the way they like :) And I watch your channel because I like to see your point of view and understand what makes you enjoy it and maybe it will make me a better dm as well. You don't have to be embarassed of your past self as she was having fun and that's all that is important :) That and sharing the things you love :)
I love you made an update on your past vids. Shows you’re growing and learning, you don’t need to show it and I personally don’t expect it but I 100% appreciate it because I love to learn and grow too.
I... gotta say. Roleplay and optimization are not mutually exclusive However, each route does block off some choices from the other. For a... well, very obvious way of putting it, look at warlock You can choose to take Eldritch Blast, or not. Taking it is obviously the most optimal choice, because it will consistently be the best thing to do on your turn when you're not casting spells with slots However, taking it does mean that you'll be using it on nearly every turn, which makes it harder to roleplay in combat doing cool things if you know that no matter what, it'd be more effective to stand at the back of the party and just zap. If you don't take it, now you're doing consistently less damage, which means you're not optimized. Eldritch blast is just the most glaring of these situations, every choice blocks something off... that's okay. You have two talent trees to go down, and a limited number of points. Its up to you to decide how optimal you want your character to be. And if anyone ever says you're doing it wrong, then they're the ones playing the game wrong. The only way to play DND wrong is to say that someone else is.
Slight tangent. As a GM, I have a homebrew that I think is so obviously smart, I don't know why it isn't just the rules, but... As a warlock, an invocation you that that refers to eldritch blast applies to any damage dealing cantrip you get from the warlock class. It applies to green-flame blade, toll the dead, whatever. Eldritch Spear, Agonizing blast, whatever. Add charisma to damage, push 10 feet, pull 10 feet. I don't care. The invocations should, from the beginning, have always been applicable to every damaging cantrip on the warlock spell list. Quite frankly, even with this change, the fact that EB turns into multiple attacks instead of one attack with scaling damage *still* makes it objectively the best damage cantrip on the warlock list but at least with this you *can* take something more flavorful without just crippling yourself
This is among the reasons that many people think EB should just be a Warlock class feature, rather than a cantrip. It's basically a fundamental part of being a Warlock, but they pretend it's a choice. In reality, not taking EB as a Warlock is like never using Wildshape as a Druid, or never using Rage as a Barbarian. And the only real way to solve the problem would be for them to introduce another mechanic that's equally awesome but mutually exclusive so that you could actually choose that alternative and not feel like you shot yourself in the foot.
@@roflcopterprods I'm sorry Im trying to understand you homebrew here but I'm not sure I'm getting it. can you elaborate on it? I think I want to make something like this available to my players! Thank you
But the same could be said of any melee character. If you choose the "wrong" weapon, your damage output is negatively impacted ~ but you are edgy and unique (LOL)! And since your action every round will be the same "I swing my weapon"... That is really no different than your Warlock's lament, IMO.
Eldritch Blast is only optimized if you take the Agonizing Blast invocation though. But optimization would be, "build your character so it doesn't suffer negative effects from using EB". For example, playing V.Human so you can have Crossbow expertise. Getting Devil's Sight and combining it with the Darkness Spell. Taking Spell Sniper so you don't suffer from cover, etc. You are fully optimizing at that point so you never suffer while having to cast Eldritch Blast and ignoring all the other warlock features. Not taking EB is like playing a fighter and choosing to fight with a dagger instead of a longsword. Nothing necessarily wrong with it, but at that point you're going to the other end of the spectrum.. optimization -> normal gameplay -> purposefully weakening your potential. 😀
4:28 A cleric I've played in the last year came upon an interesting trait by accident due to her background: she had to pick an instrument proficiency as a Knight of the Order. I just picked the flute mostly at random, expecting to do nothing with it. Fast forward several months of playing her off and on, and not only does she have a flute, she's made use of that proficiency. She's not professional-musician-caliber, mostly due to a flat 10 charisma, but the dice gods have conspired to make that bit of her order training pay off. She even used it once to soothe some irate animated books. So instead of just being a big butch-lesbian valkyrie, she's a big butch-lesbian valkyrie with a fairly well-rounded education and a penchant for music. Even "dumped" stats can find some use, if you invest a bit of attention (either mental or mechanical) into them. The dice gods sometimes reward creative thinking, and for that matter, so do DMs.
As a DM I might eventually let you use wisdom with the lute the more you play it. Signaling that even though your character is naturally talented as others, they are wise enough to get better through experience.
I like both rp and optimization! When building a character I like to pick who the character is first, and then use that as a theme or guide to the Stat building aspect. I had a sparky lightning infused character.... So if there were spells that were not lightning, thunder, or wind based, then I couldn't use it... Or I would ask the dm if I could flavor another spell after my theme. It worked really well! Can't wait for the fall when I can play some more with my next crazy character.!
Watching this helped me realize that I had interpreted the message of the first video as "Don't play a character because they are strong or useful in some specific way, play a character because you find them interesting to roleplay." It's a good clarification to say that every character should be built to suit their table.
I still honestly agree with your thought expressed in that video. I didn't even understand the message as "stop optmizing!", but more like "don't feel pressured to always optmize". The "different tables, different game" stuff is true and has to be known, but your video talked about a possibility of game that players tend to ignore and a lot of people would really enjoy.
I've seen sub optimal and optimal characters work just fine next to each-other. Sure certain characters shine in certain moments, and that could be due to optimization, but it's by no means 'bad' if they are played together. Optimize characters generally do one thing really well, and that means there is space for other characters too. What IMO does cause friction is people playing the game completely differently together: A min-maxer in it for the tactical combat who doesn't RP versus someone who deeply roleplays and prefers not to fight for instance, that can cause issues. I've seen that, too. But that takes a DM clearing that up with the players before it becomes a problem: Expectation management ftw ;-)
My method is "optimize the character, not the other way around" Ask yourself: "How do I want to play? What do I want to do in the world? What classes will help make my combat special?" Now ask yourself: "What backstory would produce an adventurer who does this? How were they raised? Are they part of a culture? What brought them here?" Lastly: "How do I make this character as effective as possible mechanically? How can I reflavor my classes to feel like a singular class progression?" That's how I ended up with a duergar saboteur who escaped life as a janissary under a drow empire with levels in battle rager, rune knight, and armorer. He's a wacky little guy who practically worships his armor and does a darn good job of drawing aggro in a game that's not really built for it.
On the rare occasions I get to play I build my characters a variety of ways, but if I'm going for a particular build or subclass as my starting point this is more or less my method as well. (With one small change -- I remove 'as possible' from the 'how do I make this character effective' question. I don't care about wringing every last point out of the build, but I don't want it to be a random mishmash that doesn't work at all or has too much bloat or wasted space.)
This is basically what I do, although I'm not nearly this organized, lol Generally speaking my choice is based on the question, "What is the best option that makes sense for my character?" Meaning if I can't justify an option, I won't take it even if it's the 'best' option in theory, but conversely if an option is more thematically-fitting but just isn't very strong, I will usually take an option that still fits, but maybe not as well, if that option is stronger. Now, that said, if the GM is flexible I can sometimes convince them to buff the weaker option that fits better so I can use that and not feel gimped because of it. This usually ends up working out the best, but it's also usually the one that requires the most effort, so it's not as viable in more casual games.
I've always seen optimization as good, because its just pursuing the best path towards your character design goal. An optimized support wizard will look very different from an optimized CC/debuff wizard and have key differences in mechanics, character design choices, and play decisions. An optimized nautical swashbuckler will be fairly different from an optimized sailing samurai. So what I really think people have problems with is minmaxing or game breaking. Especially if you're using a niche mechanic/interaction or have a build that is atypical. Which is rather ironically what I'd call being out of the box. IMO, both sides are basically saying you're having fun incorrectly. Minmaxers reject what doesn't match their limited definition of optimal, Anti Minmaxers reject what doesn't match their limited definition of creative. Which is silly because ultimately both are engaging in different forms of optimization, just towards different goals or for different purposes. In the end, your character design choices are made to further a goal or serve a purpose. This could be something like damage, pulling off a particular combo, social encounters, sailing, healing, summoning, a particular play style, a theme, a storyline, a trope or character concept. So out of all the various possible choices, you have made the choice that made the most sense to you. Whether you are engaging in minmaxing, roleplay, or whatever else, you have just engaged in optimization! You thought about which choice would best serve the character you are building! tldr; the optimization argument is silly because optimized=/=minmaxed.
I've always liked to minimax my characters, or at the very least exploit broken combos. But what I found is that even if your character has the potential to be broken you don't have to play it that way. Save your trump card or overpowered combo for a moment that the party needs to be saved. Knowing who you're playing with and your setting is just as important as knowing how to play your character. I love this video and I think both sides are true.
@@Max_G4 a wizard with 18 str and 8 int can still use clone and true polymorph to turn himself into a gold dragon. My characters usually have optimally placed stats, but I tend to like balancing those stats and using other methods. Like a barbarian druid combo with strength as the dump stat still makes a fantastic tank. Though if I can minimax the stats too that's great! I hope that makes sense.
The most vital component to a character is your, the player's, interest in playing it. If a min-maxed optimized character interests you, and motivates you to show up to the table.....then by all means. And if suboptimal builds constructed around a story is what interests and motivates you to show up to the table, by all means. As long as you show up to the table ready to play the game.
Good for you. I random roll everything I can during character creation. Some things I probably shouldn't. But I harbor no ill will towards min-maxers. Glad you're willing to be open to other points of view.
On that topic actually. A well optimized character can actually *help* sell the role play better. So for instance one of my characters Sephie is a sorcerer optimized for outputting a whole Lotta damage very quickly, at the cost of burning through resources like spell slots and sorcerery points faster than average. As a character, Sephie is deeply emotional and very naive and reckless, she's the type to jump in and save the day before thinking about the danger. To play her optimally I have to think like she would in a fight. Hit first hit hard before your loved ones get hurt
Yes! This is really cool. A lot of people overlook the gameplay aspect of the role playing. That how your character chooses to engage in combat is and should be part of their personality. Lots of times combat is overlooked as separate from roleplay, when really it’s an aspect of it. This is something I learned in a video game design course, cool ways of making the gameplay itself express the personality of a character.
This is actually a very cool idea, and seems to play into dealing a shit-ton of damage very smoothly. I am new-ish and was looking into a way to rp a spell casting half-orc, but my first attempt was shit. I can to steal, yes?
I had an optimized Star Wars character that had no combat skills, but was stacked with skills for sabotage. His plans always revolved around avoiding combat because he knew that one bad shot was all it took to make combat go awry. That didn't mean he was looking to not kill anybody, though. If there was an organic thing in between the party and their goals, he would exploit anything to make it go away and ensure his friends' safety. He ended the campaign with the highest body count in the party through the use of chemical weapons, structural sabotage, and mind games. He did get reined in by an intervention the party had. By the end of the campaign, his goal was to become a ghost-like spec ops agent; getting the job done with the enemy none the wiser.
When min maxing crosses into power gaming is when it gets really bad. People who take the game too seriously and fight for more power than other players. I'm about to kick a player for this and it's really shitty and awkward. The dynamics are all off when you have a "main character."
Yeah this is really shitty behavior. I'm gonna be playing in a game soon with some people who are new. The GM wants to do Tomb of Annihilation... I know how notorious of an adventure that is... so I'm making an optimized Sorlock... but my goal is to spend most of the time buffing allies and debuffing enemies, playing a support role. BUT if we ever get into a sticky situation where I fear people may die. I'm flying that little fairy in the air, casting darkness on myself (while having devil sight) and launching 4 Eldritch Blasts at advantage every round for an average of about 52 damage. I can turn on "OP MODE" when I as the player feel that we may lose people.
Well it sounds like the problem is wasn't that the play was optimizing their character. It sounds like the problem was that the player was trying to make a powerful character to FORCE their character into the spotlight. Essentially using optimization to justify a toxic roleplay regime.
And full disclosure: This is only my second "epic" campaign and I was the timid DM. I allowed the player to beat me down on allowing some things, and some things were kind of fast ones that I missed that violated the spirit of my rulings while complying to the letter. I learned a big lesson on two things. 1. Rulings are final. Don't like it, don't play at the table. Getting into negotiations over things like point buy or what options are allowed for character creations is not a great road to go down and it can turn toxic. This doesn't mean be unreasonable, but when you make a basic ruling like "gotta use point buy but I'll give you 3 extra points and raise the limit to 16" then that ruling needs to be final. I got basically bullied into changing and it ruined my enjoyment of running the campaign and made the other players feel left out. A request to nerf the offending character to be equal with the rest of the party... was not taken well. 2. Do more due diligence around characters if you want a balanced campaign. Look at not just the level 1 abilities, but where that character goes in the future. I allowed a certain race in a campaign after reviewing the character sheet, not realizing the race is completely broken at level 3 and violates my "no flying or broken movement races" rule. I was pretty up front with the setting and style of the campaign and the limitations I imposed to promote creativity. The other players were happy about it and it made them even more excited about the campaign, but one looked for cracks and how they could avoid all challenges and be the main character. And gave me huge rants in private messages how I'd be dumb and a bad DM for not allowing him to roll his "math rocks" for stats.
Some of the most fun I've ever had playing DnD is with a Goblin Swashbuckler that would literally do whatever someone he liked told him to do and an Aarakocra Arcane Archer that was essentially the babysitter of a bunch of not quite murderhobos. Now that being said the Swashbuckler was almost unhittable by anything with average stats and the Arcane Archer could roll 25s on hit checks pretty consistently (with the help of an Oathbow)
![Coheed and Cambria - Searching for Tomorrow [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hDsYGLbmadg/mqdefault.jpg)
She enjoyed the concept of character growth so much she used herself as an example.
🤣
Is it possible to learn this power?
@@mayflower2765 Not from a Jedi
she should try minmaxing herself :D
😂
genuinely learned a TON from this video. I hope we can stay on this trend of self accountability, it's super healthy and can also help others learn more as well. Also I'm jealous of your ability to properly structure a video.
Still don't think she was wrong in her first video on a lot of her thoughts though.
It's one thing to make a "hot take video" it's another to realize your take is from your wounded ego and address that you were wrong. Less egos = better dnd.
I thought all of this information was obvious, this is concerning.
@@Limrasson its concerning that you thought all this was obvious :P
@@EthanLR I mean all this information seems something you'll know if you play the game naturally. If a channel who posts D&D videos for years, and it's pretty good content mind you, states that there was new information in there that means that others probably know less.
Which is concerning, because what are you even doing.
Ginny, as one of the *really* Old Guard--I worked at TSR beginning in 1978 as an editor and designer and was one of the editors for the 1st Edition DMG and Deities & Demigods--I watched your first MinMax video and found nothing wrong with it. Indeed, starting with the Original 3 booklets of D&D, the die rolls in order dictated your character choices, but then your role-play could take over--and there was enough character death that you'd eventually get to play everything! We used 3x5 index cards for character sheets (and marching order tokens until we could afford enough miniatures), and encumbrance was self-limiting--what you could write on the back of the card! So yes, we OG were flexible--and one of my characters with terrible rolls was played so desperately and inventively (ahem!) by me that he eventually landed in TSR's Rogues' Gallery product. The character had a low Con, low HP rolls, and had 3 hit points at 3rd Level!
All of your points today are valid. It's truly a value-added game--what you put in will usually control the amount of fun you get out of it. I'm in a campaign now with a couple of Min-Maxers who do like to ramble on about how if I had chosen X spell or feat, I could have done a point more damage--but I'm having more fun playing my Halfling Dex Barbarian with two short swords (Just give me a toss and I'm Death From Above!!) than they are ("Is it time to hit something yet?").
So keep on keeping on--I enjoy your videos and songs and if you ever hit the "middle" cons I guest at (Gamehole-Madison, WI; GaryCon --Lake Geneva, WI; North Texas RPGCon--Dallas, TX) I'd love to see you, have you play in one of one of my games/play in yours, and definitely chat about ren faires etc over beers!
Best,
Allen Hammack (Ghost Tower of Inverness)
Honestly glad to see someone echoing my sentiments. Fun and optimization don't have to be mutually exclusive, but I think optimization is always a dead end. If you are an optimizer, you have fun optimizing (obviously). The only problem is there is by definition of optimizing, it is self-limiting to a number of builds that perform "best" in their chosen fields. Once you get to the end of that rabbit hole, there's no more optimization fun for you, only roleplay and progression, which you already had from the start, and are both theoretically limitless. The only problem is often time optimizers make it harder for other characters to shine unless they are also optimized.
Secondarily, a lot of "optimization" boils down to the same stuff. Ranged is always better than melee since their are less threats meaning less damage taken meaning higher survivability. I've seen a video where someone instructs players to group stealth on cooldown, and any encounter out in the open is just a kite fest with longbows/crossbows until the enemies are dead. How is that any fun at all? It's rolling dice until the DM says you win.
I started playing D&D in '78 or so as well. I would say one of the reasons we Old Guard didn't really care about optimizing is because we were also war-gamers. D&D wasn't designed as a war-game. It was pre-CGI, book-fed fantasy. So we didn't really worry about building the "right" tactical choice into characters - we got that elsewhere with Avalon Hill games like Third Reich.
@@brb0127 I started playing shortly after the DMG was released in '79. Basically a lifetime with the game including some horrific years feuding with munchkins at my table who turned out to be sociopaths. Afterwards, starting therapy for trauma, the psychologist suspected my friends of being predatory psychopaths and asked me to characterize our dynamics. I mentioned we'd often conflict over a game called D&D, with me being all about the imagination and them being all about the mechanics. The psychologist nodded and confirmed, yes, that's consistent. Of course, a lot more went into the diagnosis, but it's been demonstrated that the word choices of sociopaths draw from the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs -- objects, things, touch, taste, stuff stuff stuff -- and not the higher levels of relationships and emotions (Hancock, 2013, Hungry Like the Wolf). Not all munchkins are sociopaths, but it's been my experience that all sociopaths are munchkins. It appeals because it's just how their brains work.
@@FastFacto4 This is where people misunderstand optimisation. I don't optimise to be the absolutely best character in the entire game. Nor do most sane people, that's boring as fuck. For me Optimisation is an exercise in being good/the best at what I want the character TO do. That could be a ranger sniper who focuses on archery and stealth, is it 100% optimal? No, far from it, is it fun as fuck? Hell yeah.
@@RoxxiTheDiceGoblin I believe this is the minority, otherwise people who optimize would accept others build choices and simply inform them of ways to make it the best performing character the way the players wants, and not simply state some abilities/spells/etc are just purely unoptimized and you should never pick them, which is the more common trend. Just watch Pack Tactics videos. Extremely common to say "do not pick this" instead of "this is how to optimize a suboptimal character"
As a 1E veteran who played through the Satanic Panic, the best roleplaying advice I got from a DM was his Rule 0: Everyone has fun. My advice shouldn't hold anymore weight than someone who just started playing. Once you get the game, it's your game. Play the game you want to play.
But, but, if people are not having fun the same way *I* have fun they are doing something wrong and must be stopped!
@@brettmajeske3525 Or you can find the table that works best for you. (I know you were being sarcastic btw.)
Thank you for your service, brave soul. Our generation of normalcy and acceptance stands on the backs of y'all old school bois. Literally, unironically, thank you for playing ☺️
I got a neighbor that made his son my friend keep his MTG deck at my house because he thought it was witchcraft and if it was left in his house they'd get haunted by demons or some shit
@@historicalaccuracy15 I can definitely relate to that. I lost some of my books because of that.
‘This has made a lot of people very mad was widely registered as a bad move’
Love the hitchhiker guide/restaurant at the end of the universe reference
I came here just to make that same comment, but you beat me to it. =D
One of my favourite Douglas Adams lines. And he had a butt-load of them!
@@madelinebutler3349 This just takes me back.
YES! I caught that as it left HER mouth
@@krudmonger i came here to do the same...but you both got better dex scores it seems...
D&D has been my passion since I was 7 and I’m 51. I’m now living the dream as a successful, full time, paid DM. For me, you can’t go wrong as long as you are having fun that is not at the expense of anyone else at the table and you are genuinely committed to telling a story together.
How you build your character should simply follow that guideline and you’ll generally be ok. The other thing you need to do is communicate with your group and DM if there is even a hint of a question. “Hey DM, I know this is a combat heavy campaign, but will my grossly underpowered build, built on diplomacy cause a problem?” Or, “I know this is super heavy RP, but my character is quiet and combat starved.” Just ask questions. Not everyone has a play style that works together.
Communication keeps games alive. I’ve seen it so many times over that last 40+ years. I’m SUPER picky about who I play with and ask a lot of questions at session 0. It’s served me very well.
How do you make a living as a dm? It seems very difficult, and although it would be an ideal job, I can't imagine the pay is very good without doing it for 8 hours each day, not including prep time.
@@JustLilyTbh I charge $25 per person with 6 person groups. I have 17 groups. My sessions are 100 minutes and being they are all minors, this is a good amount of time, as they start to get antsy at 2 hours. So, I make about 120K. My prep time is minimal, aside from setting up new campaigns. I'm a skilled improv artist and actor and have played D&D since I was 7 and have been mostly the DM. I've been playing longer than most of these famnous DM's have been alive. I'm pretty good at it.
@@chrisbolducrowan5110 Ah, I see. Thanks for responding!
So cool, you dm professional. And yeah I think as long as everyone at the table has the same level of character build. What I mean is if the whole table agrees to optimize. Go ahead optimize. We had to kick a guy that optimize when the rest of us made character arc characters that picked builds based on my character would want this spell because they like flowers or whatever so the optimizer broke combat by one shooting enemies the rest of us we on equal level to. We had to kick him when he didn't understand why we found all his characters annoying. It's all about balance and finding the right group
Optimize the themed build. That’s the most fun IMO. In other words, start with a concept, and then try to make it good.
This is where I have the most fun. The mishmash of things I had to do to make a character who only uses a whip do good damage in combat was super fun and made a really odd character. I've been trying pretty much since 5e came out to make a net function in combat but I haven't cracked that one yet.
I used this philosophy to build my "party mom" alchemist artificer. All her spells are potion/concoction effects, she does a lot of support, and calls everyone in the party "sweetie."
And she has a 20 AC at level 4. With starter gear + artificer infusions, no pre-magical items or homebrew at all.
This is my favorite way too. Story first, then make it badass.
This is precisely my take on it. Also, take your optimized spell list, then add character specific flavor to how they look/are cast/etc.
you can optimize anything. Halfling Diviner with Lucky is optimized, so is Sorlock, so is Tabaxi Monk with Mobile, for different reasons.
Really big of you to go back and address this (as opposed to just delete/ignore this). I did think that you made some good points in the previous video, most pertinent of which is don't be afraid to do something that's not optimal in the interest of rp. Don't thinks the old video is completely invalid, but interesting to see how to developed over the past two years. (Also most importantly... your eye makeup is absolutely FIRE in this video).
I absolutely 100% think that sweaty palmed optimizers and mislabeled roleplayers just wanted something to yell about and didn't like a new players perspective. The roleplay vs. optimization from a play time and dnd version perspective argument has always been subjective at best. I played with plenty of optimizers that were also jerks about it in 2.0, and still see them at the table today.
I really thought the old video slapped right, and wish people would experiment more. In fact, I am thinking about picking up an odd multi class for my level three fighter because of this dialogue
@@jgcapers3860 Spike, Johnny, Timmy mentality. All my homies hate the Spikes.
It's a balance with everything and she looks good every video fire fr
Very true. From personal examples, I recently made a character that is SUPER good at healing, probably one of the two builds in the game that can almost keep up with monster damage. But, I have like 0 dmg (besides my character’s self sacrificial nature as a personal flaw). They can keep the party alive, but without the party, they are useless, and I try and make that clear in the game.
That's the messsage I ultimately took from the video, but it may be because it was already an opinion of mine. Suboptimal mechanical choices should not get in the way of a character concept. I'm an optimiser, it is not very efficient to play a small barbarian, since they can't use heavy weapons, but yet I still have a character in mind who is a kobold ancestral guardian babarian. For me the fun of optimisation is to find the most effective build *given certain restraints.* If I have free reign to do anything without regard for a character concept, then that has already been calculated. And then there's the subjectivity of what *effective* means. Sometimes I want a skill monkey, sometimes a damage dealer, sometimes a utility character with loads of spells or cantrips etc.
As long as it doesn't mess with the group dynamic by making things unnecessarily hard for the DM, or you talk to the DM and they say they can manage things, go for it!
I really appreciate that you made a correction video. Not a lot of people take the time or have the courage to admit they were wrong in the past so thoroughly. You earned my respect for that.
The biggest compliment I ever got from my DM was him sending me a comic that depicted 3 types of Players, one who optimized their character, one who got really deep into the roleplay and one who would make their characters with built in jokes and told me "somehow, I think you're all 3". Made me feel super accomplished as a Character Designer and Player.
Would it perhaps be the Blizzard Lizard Wizard comic?
@@wooptyfrickendoo6203 Yup, that’s the one, lol.
Are you Sam Riegel?
That IS quite a compliment and congratulations to you for figuring out how to "win" the game; i.e., play it as challenging enjoyment for yourself and entertaining those you game with. 👏👏👏
... and somehow, I'm none of them
A comment on optimizing at a non-optimizer table: one of the best pieces of advice I've seen on that front is to optimize a support character.
It sucks for the rest of your group if you're taking everything out, but if *they're* taking everything out using your buffs [or heals or whatever], that feels good for other players while still letting you make a relatively absurd character.
Absolutely. See Treantmonk's video on the origin of the "God Wizard" for more details.
Yeah, like the God wizard by treantmonk. Supports are great, lol
Alternatively, if you do want to play a damage dealer, you can intentionally not optimize all the way. Maybe you're a Drakewarden with a longbow, instead of a Gloomstalker with a hand crossbow.
Came here to cite the God Wizard.
This is really good advice thanks!
What, people evolving, maturing in terms of experience with something, changing their minds, and admitting it publicly? This still exists in today's world? *sheds a tear* I thought we had lost the art of being reasonable, looking at the state of the world nowadays. Thanks Ginny for putting a smile in my face ^_^
For what it's worth, I really like your "bubbly preschool teacher energy."
Your advice in that old video could be reframed, granted, but there is value in the underlying message that playing something outside your comfort zone is a way to grow as a player and as a person, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with optimizing for story at the expense of mechanics if that's what you're into.
Seeing Ginny in glasses and her hair tied back makes me realise that I would fall for the Clark Kent disguise if Superman were a real person.
Actually had someone not recognize without having my glasses on .
If it helps, the actor for a Superman movie stood *under his own billboard* and very, very few people recognized him. Clark Kenting's actually a legitimate disguise method.
@@coin0matic Stooped shoulders and a different mental attitude are stunning in their effectiveness. And just as effective the other way, a purposeful walk and chin slightly up projects an aura of authority that people subconsciously accept. "Act like you belong, and you do" and "Fake it till you make it"! 🙂
right? I thought she looked a little like Laura Bailey there.
I'm a long haired guy who wears his hair in a pony tail. I've had coworkers no recognize me when I come in with my hair down.
As someone who saw the Stormwind Fallacy get unveiled, honestly I found your old video to also be helpful to people who were stuck in a rut on optimization. Sometimes people just get too obsessed with charops. That said, this video is also very refreshing to hear, and I think I just love both takes. In the end, D&D advice is often contradictory, because there's no one true correct approach, there are only chisels that get us closer to some ideal we have at the time of play.
getting over-obsessed with charop can be a problem too, ngl. its the main reason i will probably never roll a ranger.
Was there as well, I miss the ol' boards. I saved threads/handbooks, revisited them on the WaybackMachine, etc. It's funny to hear concepts that emerged 18-20 years ago.
Sad to hear she changed her opinion...
@@Zigg33 Why? Here's a story: I have a player who chose to play very suboptimally in our group. Basically a priest/healer concept, but he chose Barbarian, but wants to wear heavy armor, which he isn't proficient with, and didn't have the strength for. His speed is 40% slower, and the group can't Stealth anywhere, or escape without leaving his character behind. He's only "multiclass cleric" (in Pathfinder 2e), so he has the weakest heals vs. other spellcasters. He uses Battle Medicine, but didn't pick medic. His rage prevents him from casting spells. He is too slow to reach dying people. As a GM, I hate everything about his character build. He enjoys roleplaying the flaws, but to the detriment of the group.
@@BarbeChenue well that looks lie a troll build. But still I hate when players with more expirience are telling others what to pick as they know what works...
same reason why i hate dnd castle ravenloft.. its a power play coop. I better play it solo as i know the game best and to play optimally I should say what to do to everyone. Same happens here and it makes me feel i play with 1 player, not 3.
When talking about Min-Maxing, a lot of people seems to forget about the "Min" part. A perfectly optimised character has, thanks to the skill point system, flaws, or at least things they can't do. A Fighter can't do magic (unless Eldritch Knight), a Wizard can't melee (as well as a Fighter). A party needs balance.
This. I think a lot of people use min-max as a catch-all term for powergamers, but the thing is, you actually CAN build a max-maxed character and that absolutely can be a problem if no one else is doing it. Min-maxing implies means you are maximizing some stats at the expense of others, but 5e more than other editions allows you to make a character with basically no flaws.
Now, I do think you still should pick things that at least fit your character concept/theme rather than feats that are mechanically sound but don't fit your character at all, but that doesn't mean it is or isn't optimized and that's okay.
I agree with everything except wizard can't melee considering how broken spell casting is. I mean you could make a melee wizard with only wizard class ( even easier if you're allowed optional feats rule).
@@modtyrant1784 I agree that the Bladesinger offer a melee option for the Wizard, but you'd still have 1 "attack", as for the Fighter still have 4 max, 8 with Action surge.
1. You forget about Bladesingers
2. Point system doesn't make you weak.
If you use default pointbuy system you will have positive summ modifiers (+6? I don't remember) and the whole system want you to min max and play an unduying hero.
So as it said "don't blame the player - blame the game" I don't like 5e and I'm playing osr instead
@@nickglover It doesnt imply that at all. Min-max is shorthand for "minimum downsides/costs maximum benefits/power". Its having 1 point in every trained skill that doesnt help scale in 3e or in 5e its level 1 and 6 (or 7 or 8) in fighter for the 2 levels to get action surge since the last 2 levels of wizard are dead in comparison and casting progression isnt sufficiently slowed to not be worth to both the initial survivability, proficiencies and action surge.
My buddy L was one of my favorite people to play with, he’d show up every time with an optimized character, and roleplay the hell out of it. Truly that’s what broke the storm wind fallacy for me, once I could see that the only person hyper ready for roleplay at my table while I was dming was also the min maxer, and he really just wanted his character to consistently do the things he liked hence the maximization.
This is how I try to play. I like to have a theme around my character build, but within the restrictions of that theme I will optimize the hell out of is. I also find the restrictions somehow help me do better with RP as it guides the type of character I'm playing.
But then, NOT having control is part of D&D magic.
@@beetledjuice3062 Even with a +10 to attack or Persuasion, you'll fail a check eventually. The risk is everpresent, no need to handicap yourself IMO.
I'm a very strange player.
I try to find a weird character concept and then min/max the hell out of it.
I remember in the early days of World of Warcraft I played a healer shaman. But as Enhancement.
It worked surprisingly well, actually.
In RPGs I tend to prefer a wizard that focuses on buff spells to make myself as tanky as possible.
"But you could play any divine caster and it would work way better!"
Maybe. I don't care.
@@citizen_wayne Yeah, things can go wrong, I don't see that as a handicap, it's the game. What I'm saying is being open to the possibility that not everything is going to work out, and taking that into the story being woven. Like something cool happening because of luck or lack thereof. I think most of the time it falls on the DM being sensible.
A skilled archer can still fumble a shot depending on the situation. A skilled warrior can trip if they're not focused. But I find that trying to negate the unpredictability of TTRPGs *usually* brings less fun for the table in general. It's no fun throwing dice if you *know* you're gonna succeed.
As someone who is totally new to this hobby, I appreciate you explaining the debate and making a good case for the pros and cons of each style. It's so helpful to have a nuanced discussion. :)
So true. I hadn’t even seen her past video, but I clicked anyway thinking it might be a good way to hear about a debate from two sides real quick-and Ginny delivered.
On top of that, I am coming away from it with a refined understanding of motivations that go into character building. Nice :)
Maybe a better initial message would have been along the lines of: "Don't *stress* over optimization, when you're new to the game, and everyone else at your table is also finding their way. Do it, if that's where you find your fun, but don't feel obligated to do it. You'll possibly choose new directions with later characters, building on what you learn in the meantime."
I would argue a better message is "Don't worry about optimization" or "It's OK to play non optimized characters" Your suggestions still sort of suggest that you should optimize, whereas the message should probably be more along the lines of there is nothing wrong with optomising and nothing wrong with not optimizing.
Love this! Also, I'd like to add that new players should always feel free to ask about optimization without fear of losing out on the roleplaying aspect.
This is exactly it tbh. Honestly i Think that's the message i got initially Anyway but i can see where the meaning got lost in the sauce 😅😅
@@Peter_Cordes that's where things differ from table to table.
If you play a character who is non optimised at a table who partake in a lot of combat and and run optomised characters then yeah you are likely to miss a lot which could hurt your enjoyment.
However if you are playing at a table thay does very little combat and plays with minimal optimisation then not optomising your character shouldn't hinder your experience.
Each table and group is different so you should build your character with your group in mind.
That said I would argue my point still stands. You can play the game however you want to play it. If you want to play an unoptomised build then work away. There's nothing inherently wrong with it.
Yeah in my opinion you should have your mechanics back up the rp character you want to play. That doesn't mean they have to be optimised though.
Logically it makes more sense to put points into dex or constitution as a wizard right? But what if your character is a really buff wizard so you decided you want to prioritise strength over dex and con. That's not optimal given the general playstyle of the wizard class, but it's still fine to do it.
To me you seem to be coming at this discussion from a combat standpoint. And yeah mathematically having better numbers means you can do better in combat. However not all tables have that much combat. For example at my table we tend to have a max of one combat per session and it's not uncommon to have sessions without combat. Even when we have combat we don't tend to really play it in an optomised way. We just play it as a casual group of friends having a laugh.
That said I am sure if I brought some of my characters from this campaign to a different campaign where combat is a bigger part and players are generally more optomised my characters would end up being a lot less enjoyable.
The fact that you broke down the numbers in such detail suggests to me you enjoy optomising characters, which I think is great, I do like to some times create an optomised character.
However I think my point still stands that the message should be thay there is nothing wrong with building and unoptomised character and there is nothing wrong with building an optomised character. Just make sure you know what sort of table you will be playing at.
@@Peter_Cordes yeah my point is still the same. I don't believe it is wrong to build a character who isn't optimised. Wether that be not optomised for combat or not optomised for social situations or not optomised for puzzle solving. I think you should build your character however you want even if that means you aren't playing the best build for the purpose you need it.
Yeah I agree that optomisation is sort of a sliding scale. For example maxing our intelligence on a wizard is optimal for the class and obviously 16 int is more optimal than 8.
But my point is more related to intent. If you are building a wizard and decide "I want my wizard to be pretty smart so I will give him an int of 16" you aren't making that choice to make an optomised character, you are making that choice because that's the character you want to build. Whereas of you say "I am making a wizard so I am going to put my 16 into intelligence because that's what wizards need" then you have chosen to optimise your character there. Again there's nothing wrong with doing that it's a perfectly reasonable way to play.
As a part of that AD&D group who's been doing this for 30+ years. I had no real problem with your original video. Then again, I understood the underlying premise of your original video and was more than willing to overlook the mechanical weaknesses in your delivery.
You make good content.
Exactly. The words in the first video were wrong the sentiment was actually correct. Which is opposite in this video. People like to believe there isn't a wrong way to play dnd.
@@gabriellynch2764 As long as everyone is having fun, there isn't really a wrong way to play D&D. I don't think the sentiment in this video is wrong either.
@@ArchetypeLunaThat's a hell of a qualifier isn't it? "As Long As Everyone is Having Fun" That covers all manner of sins. Because it discounts any situation in which one participants behavior directly impacts the enjoyment of others. That directly means there is a wrong way to play D&D... that way is "Selishly"
@@AlexStar6 The problem I had with the previous video was that it felt like it really leaned towards Min/Max is bad. Hence why I am assuming this particular video was being made.
@@ArchetypeLuna It's all about intent. Min/maxing for the purpose of building a character to fulfill the fantasy you desire is not inherently wrong. Min/maxing for the sole purpose of creating a character designed to dominate the narrative and be the main character of the campaign is problematic. Can you build a character another way and attempt to do that? Yes, but it is less common by a very wide margin. If you've encountered a player who is actively ruining the experience for a group it is more than likely that player is a min/maxing power gamer.
Note: even with that, 19/20 min/maxing power gamers are not hurting their games in any way. But 9/10 players that are disruptive are min/maxing power gamers.
This is by no means based on any kind of study, it's simply my observation amongst the hundreds of people I've played with and DM'd for in the 30+ plus years I've been playing D&D.
I'm an old school guy. Been DMing for 30+ years. I like your blue/green/whatever hair and preschool teacher energy. Keep it up. This particular grognard is thrilled that you and your millennial friends have brought new enthusiasm and ideas to my beloved hobby. More power to you.
Wow. She actually pulled no punches on herself. I was actually moved by how brutally honest she was about herself. Very courageous. Subscribed
She's also very creative, smart, and funny. She can sing, she cosplays, and she seems genuinely a very nice person. RPGs aside, one of the best channels on yt.
Same here.
"If you cringe at your past self, you're growing!" Introspective videos like this are educational and fun!
One of my DMs made the point that “the best” character build is the one you enjoy playing. I’m playing a Wizard/Fighter multi class because it seemed interesting rather than being optimized.
Pretty much. I've tried this once, I accidentally over-built my first ever D&d character, and to try nerfing it I decided to pick levels in Wizard for story reasons and messing with my own max-dpr rotation. Didn't really help too much because I was still dealing more damage than most of the party, but still, love to just mess with characters for funzies.
You can optimise a wizard/fighter. People often confused optimised build with a meta build. You be the best damn wizard fighter you can be and that is a optimised wizard fighter. Optimising just means making your concept as effective as possible. It could be the best one legged wizard fighter and still be optimised. And yeah wizard fighter is fun as is a scroll fighter. Good times
Action Surge lets you cast another full spell. So it's actually used in optimization sometimes.
It'd be fun to do Sorcerer more than wizard, and you can throw in Quickened spells along with it (Not at the same time, unless you really want to use 3 cantrips at once), but lets you pace yourself a bit better using metamagic on some turns and action surge(s) on others.
and sorcerers being more physical / natural blends well with being a little more martial.
Though of course anyone can be academic and pick up the spellbook to learn if they've got the wits for it.
0:06: "This has made a lot of people very angry, and been widely regarded as a bad move."
I see what you did there...
Glad I wasn't the only one to catch the Hitchhiker's Guide reference! 😁
Oh shit I did not catch that lmao
Aha, this is the comments I was looking for 👍
I couldn't get past the reference before I had to jump in the comments to see if anyone else caught it!
As a member of "the Old Guard" it was REALLY hard to optimize when you are randomly generating your stats by rolling 3d6 in order. But inevitably rolling below average in half of your stats really forced you to play a character with Flaws, which actually DOES encourage roleplaying.
I am currently playing a game with characters generated that way. Fortunately the only player that rolled poorly is playing a Moon Druid.
TLDR: The point though is that even optimized characters will always have flaws. My leonin ranger/barbarian (who isn't exactly "optimized" but is certainly tough as hell and has a diverse skillset in combat) has plenty of personality flaws. He is entirely too sure of himself in social situations, even though 1. He thinks the world believes him and the party to be the absolute shit without it having been proven yet 2. He doesn't understand humor 3. He has 0 social graces and only gets embarrassed long after he should already have and 4. He can be very overly protective of his friends in situations where it isn't necessary. Further, in combat he's a beast, but his AC isn't amazing and he gets hit a lot, has trouble with mental saving throws, and sometimes has to spend a round getting into combat since he isn't terribly efficient with his ranged options and his personality/skillset dictates he wouldn't usually want to fight from a range anyway.
The point of the video is that while any character can be roleplayed very well, being more mechanically flawed does not at all mean your roleplaying experience will be better. It might be different, but you can play to whatever flaws you want as whatever character you play. By the way, having a character with 0 strengths can *actually* cause problems at a table. D&D is a heroic fantasy game, and your character missing every round, having enemies save against most of your spells, dealing low damage when they do manage to hit, etc. is legitimately disappointing. You're losing out on a key aspect of the game, that being heroism, more often than not, while those with even moderately well built characters (a druid with good Wisdom, for instance) will get their chance to shine fairly frequently.
On that note, strengths can be equally fun, satisfying and compelling to roleplay as compared to flaws. Bringing up my ranger again, he is mechanically an excellent tracker, hunter, scout, forager, and general survivalist. He's a physical beast who can make pretty amazing athletic maneuvers, and in combat he can stand up to powerful enemies, putting up a decent fight even when he doesn't win outright (which he often does). I have a LOT of fun roleplaying his competency. I make jokes (even though he himself isn't joking) about other players being small or acting like they think I'm very impressive. He loves the wilds, and I make detailed descriptions of tracking, describing markings I find after a successful Survival check. I describe dope as hell maneuvers, savage attacks, roars of rage, and brutal kills when in combat. My DM even lets me use my strength score for my intimidation checks because it just makes more sense that way.
In conclusion, while there is nothing wrong at all with playing a character like the one you described as long as you enjoy the roleplay and can have fun in combat despite some shortcomings (very doable), there's also nothing about having strengths that makes you less likely to want to roleplay, and in fact strengths can encourage roleplay as much as flaws can. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
That's sounds like hell, haha. Like I feel like there's a difference between having some flaws and just being the worst wizard ever because you rolled a 3 for your int lol
@@rynowatcher really? Interesting. The most experience i have with older dnd is the original baldur's gate...and i still need to finish that haha.
@@MythicByrd HA, actually what you'd often do is say you'd rolled a peasant and just try again if it was that bad.
Both Hamlet and Macbeth would totally be "Optimized characters" if roleplayed! The difference is that in both of their stories, their strengths BECOME their flaws... but if Macbeth and Hamlet were to swap places and play through eachother's campaigns, they would become Champions, instead of tragedies!
"My hair is clearly green now!" I literally laughed out loud at this one. I saw it coming from a mile away and it still made me laugh!
"I don't wanna be the kind of person who doesn't change my mind when I learn new things." - clearly the best message here. And this can go for some truly ugly/dark/inappropriate thoughts as well. If you've changed, and it is for the better, good.
You are a good role model in many ways, and your stance towards acknowledging past mistakes or even being open to changing your mind as you learn new things is a big one.
You keep that pre-school teacher energy going, girl! You are a smile-inducing fresh breeze and we love you for it
Wait, someone on the internet can change their mind after becoming more experienced?? Madness!! Actually, I give you a lot of points to redo a video that you feel was, done from a biased or at least less experienced point of view. That being said, and since I just commented on said video, I stand by my comment. My thoughts were not that maximized characters had no interesting backgrounds but that a character doesn’t have to be maximized to be a solid team member. Thank you for showing that we evolve as we grow and our opinions don’t always have to stay the same. Love seeing this as well as all your opinions and thoughts on the game. In the end, we all want the same thing. To have fun with our characters and our friends.
I just love ppl who can publicly say "Yo, I messed up. Let me correct myself." One more reason to have you as my favorite d&d mentor :D
this is really appreciated. my favorite character i've ever played was a min-max'd Phoenix Sorcerer back when it was still an experimental sub-class.... he by FAR carried the party when it came to pure damage output, and if not led the charge in most non-combat scenarios, was extremely USEFUL in almost any.... but even with a damn near perfect set of skills ON PAPER for the campaign, he was also by far the most FLAWED character in that campaign, and his personality growth throughout the story has left large marks and echoes throughout our table's extended universe, for better AND worse.
he was an impulsive, research and loot obsessed man with a bad habit of accidentally starting large fires before ANYTHING had started, with a FIERCE loyalty to anyone he considered a friend (which turned out to be anyone who didn't just attack him on sight). by the end of the campaign he had managed to free an 'evil' god and redeem them within the eyes of the world, re-connected the elemental planes that had been blocked from the world, the myriad of pets (a Mimic and 3 Rust Monsters among them) he'd found along the way have grown into benevolent paragons of their respective races, guarding and protecting the descendants of every friend he'd made along the way, and eventually ascended to god-hood in his own right, all the while dragging his entire party along with him, but all of the large and great successes he had were built upon a MOUNTAIN of failures, blood, sweat and tears. he had willfully thrown himself into the path of what would otherwise be certain death countless times to save his party because despite all of his pride, ego, intelligence and everything else, he was ultimately a scared child, terrified of losing the people he cared about, even for a MOMENT. (my favorite moment will always be him single-handedly taking aggro for a max damage cast of Meteor Swarm by dragging the caster as far from the party as he could within one turn, which with a mixture of clever meta magic uses and teleportation, along with movement enhancements, managed to get out of the mile range, and then take all 3 meteors directly to the face totaling at 360 damage to his 60-odd hp, as he knew he was the only party member with a HOPE of surviving that sort of damage, due to being able to revive himself)
This feels like a real self analysis, not just reading a statement to get it over with, but real, reasoned, point by point explanations.
Yep, an actual apology video, here, on RUclips, i never thought i would see the day.
Exactly. This is possible because the apology was (1) Not forced by public pressure and threats, (2) Issued after the apology-maker independently had new experiences that changed her opinion, and (3) About how to approach a hobby, rather than failure to comply with constantly-changing standards of decency and/or fundamental worldview.
It's great that she's made this video to explain how and why she changed her mind, but this type of thing doesn't even need to be an "apology," per se, because that assumes she caused harm to anyone with her original video. She didn't. She expressed something that wasn't necessarily correct, but that nobody had any obligation to agree with or obey.
@@RianeBane You are right for the most part.
It is an apology for her tone, attitude and the reinforcement of stereotypes.
A really awesome perspective! There really isn’t a “right” or “wrong”, what really matters is everyone at the table has an enjoyable experience.
I’m DMing a great combination of seasoned veterans that min/max with incredible artistry, and others that are learning D&D and just like to create cool stuff.
It’s finding that balance so everyone feels like a hero during the game, and no one feels left out during a challenge.
Right now I’m developing homebrew feats that will give sub optimised players some extra kick, but also offer some lateral gains to the epically min/max’ed players (so they don’t feel left out for making efficient PC’s)
Note I’ve got 2 Battle master crossbow sharpshooters and a brutally defensive evocation wizard sprinkled with some wonderfully crazy multi-classes!
That's definitely the lesson to learn, different sorts of character optimisation for different sorts of campaigns. Yes, sometimes a non-optimal character is the best choice but other times severe optimisation is also what's called for.
The lesson I took away from the previous video was, “Don’t let Optimization prevent you from playing the character you want.” I framed this through a conversation that I had with another player at my table. We were discussing a character he was wanting to create. We had the overarching concept of the character and were trying to find matching mechanics. As we had nailed down his player’s class I suggested a specific race (don’t remember which one) and he goes, “Ehh but (that class) doesn’t really go with (that race). I was confused by this because, if it fit with the character, who cares? We were a table of noobs with an experienced and godly patient DM, no one expected us to come to the table with perfect builds. I don’t typically minmax, simply because I’m too new in this community to understand the mechanics that well so I’ve personally enjoyed leaning into the kooky builds, but there are also parts of my builds that are optimized too. I don’t think it’s good to say one ought to be one or the other.
Big time respect for making this. I always say to optimize as much as you find fun and reasonable.
Fun is the most important one, you need to have a good time with the character, so picking spells that fit a play style or fantasy that you enjoy I’d important, even if it’s not optimal.
Reasonable means you need to fit the vibe of the game. How tough is combat? How strong are the other players? Is there even combat at all? If you’re playing a particularly weak (or even extremely strong) character, that can put pressure on the game / the DM.
Follow both rules and talk to both the DM and party while you’re building out the fantasy character of your dreams.
I've DMed and played a lot of DnD for the past six years, and if there's one thing that holds true is that there is never only one solution to any problem you encounter.
Thinking outside the box - better if you can do it in the context of the character - is one of the best skills you can develop, because you might lack the AB to hit that golem with AC 40, but knowing to ask the material of the pillars around the room and plan a coordinated distraction with a localized charge in the right moment will do wonders.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to consider every tool at your disposal. Every last implication of a needle in your inventory, every last loose piece of rubble on the floor, every combination of words of noises you could possibly utter that may change the course of the battle. Everything that surrounds you is a resource, from your abiltiies to the tragic backstory of your friendly dwarven engineer, and knowing where they fit is the largest puzzle far more important to solve than any mechanical conundrum.
Because having a barbarian with some 24 nat STR may do absolutely nothing at all when fighting a construct that is entirely immune to physical attacks.... but you can always ask your engineer if they know the schematics and what's the closest thing to an off switch that you can flip.
Due to Satanic Panic in the 80s/90s we embraced RP and storytelling so ppl/teachers wouldn't see the dice/books but we wanted to feel powerful because we weren't. We often argued these points as kids and I didn't see any issues with your video. We were happy trying to get anyone to play with us and maybe all the art wasn't inclusive but our imaginations were. You want to optimize? The DM has to optimize. A certain level of balance needs to be maintained. You can't imagine wrong. The only way to fail at having fun is when people aren't having fun.
*"Maybe all the art wasn't inclusive but our imaginations were"* Love. That.
Regarding interesting characters, I absolutely love playing a very standard and typical race/class combo, because I find that the race and class take a back seat. That doesn't necessarily mean they're better or worse, of course. An unusual race/class combo can give you a really strong anchor to your character, while the supposedly bland human fighter combo is a blank canvas on which you can paint almost anything you want.
This is so true! Some of my favorite characters ever have been "generic" on paper, but very interesting in roleplay! I once made a half-orc fighter who was the illegitimate son of a human nobleman in a kingdom that was at war with the orcish clans. He was a dexterous fencer with a strong code of honor and courtly manners who sought a way to end the conflict between his two bloodlines. A generic half-orc fighter on paper, certainly. But in practice, very different than you would expect.
And this is why the Tasha's (optional) rule(s) are so good
Eh, you don't play human to be a blank canvas. You play human for the optional feat rule. There's a reason like 80% of people play v. Human.
@@Spaloooshify Is that not a textbook example of the Stormwind Fallacy? One does not preclude the other. You can play a human for both of those reasons or neither of them.
I find it's easier for me to come up with a creative backstory to justify my min-max choices. It just gives me fuel to say "how would I have ended up here?" and create a story around that. On the "blank canvas" sometimes I end up with writers block. Other times I end up with a non-optimized character because I'm adhering to my envisioned story concept. Whatever gets you there...
I'm pretty sure the original video is the reason I subscribed to your channel, so it's really interesting to see you coming back to it. Congratulations on your progress, it's really nice to see you coming back and fixing your past mistakes
I recently got into d&d after only playing a little in the past and your original video actually helped me understand there is no wrong way to build a character [which i was told there was] so it actually gave me the confidence to get back into it so it's still a win in my book
Yeah, I think that core message is important! (Also that you should just pick something that sounds fun and learn from it for your first couple characters, and not put that much pressure on the build process.)
There is a wrong way to build a character: The way that doesn't accomplish your goal for the character.
That's the difference.
A saying comes to mind: Admitting past mistakes just means you are wiser today then you were yesterday. Kudos for being open to changing your mind and sharing that growth with your community.
If you aren't wiser today than you were yesterday, then you're doing it wrong ;)
@Ryno Watcher You can certainly go through life assuming the worst of people, but I find that that's a pretty unpleasant way to live. Nothing I say can change your mind if you don't think I'm being authentic. That said, I would gently remind you that if you think so poorly of me, you don't have to click on my videos - you can choose to consume content you actually enjoy.
@@rynowatcher Just because a title is well made, doesn't mean that that it is clickbait (doesn't mean it isn't). This title seems informative, and yet catches the attention ("clickbait"?). I'd say it is just a good title. If she had no more ideas, she probably wouldn't do self roast and instead start reacting to other content while adding noting of any worth. But what do I know?
what a lucky gal to make a living doing what you love on youtube! With great power comes great responsibility, and Im so glad that I get to watch someone so deserving of their position as a popular video maker! What an amazing video!
There are very few people with the introspection and emotional intelligence to not only realize this, but make a video publically calling it out. Genuine character building 100%
In this day and age, hearing someone say "I was wrong, let me correct myself" is the single most wonderful thing in the world.
Never change, you green haired weird person on the internet!
In these days of ideological insanity it's damn near revolutionary.
+
Correct your past mistakes, but never change? Sounds a bit counterintuitive 😉
This comment is funny because you contradict yourself. The first statement admires her for changing and the second tells her to never do that.
It's even funnier because I don't think she should've her changed opinion in the first place.
I also do realize there are some paradoxes going on here in that the only thing that doesn't change is change so you can't just stay in one spot. Watch in a few years she make a video flip-flopping again.
@@gabriellynch2764 wow, you really don't want to understand.
Just for context, I started playing back in the 70's with Basic (just for the record, 2nd edition AD&D is still my favorite). Now I DM for my grandkids. I actually agree with points from both your old and new vids. Point is I have played with Min/Maxers that just don't role-play at all. They multi-class/duel-class to get perks/feats they want, they don't even bother with having a character background, they just want to do max damage and move on to the next critter the DM throws at them. Thing is I prefer to play with people that are role-playing (even if they are bad at it), and I myself get into my role-playing also, but I have noted that many M/M's don't role-play at all, or will do the bare minimum. Not true for all M/M's, but in my experience most have no interest in RP, and are thus boring to play with. As far as having character designed weaknesses, I actually like that. It's easier to add 'character' to a character with just a weakness of some sort built in that is not stat related. For example a character that will never drink a potion they themselves didn't make because they were poisoned once, etc. These just add flavor to a character and is something a M/M would never do. Which in general (not always) makes M/M players just boring IMO.
I think this really shows how you've grown and changed as a player. I can see how being told your character is built poorly would make a relatively new player react in that kind of way, I know my first few characters were mostly tieflings because I was obsessed with that race and the other players would really try to push me to play other races in a not so constructive way (despite the fact that they all had favourite races that they didn't really explore that far out from, but that's besides the point) but honestly I just love the tiefling race and would happily only play tieflings if I had the chance. When I saw your original video at first, I was pretty new as well, and I remember it resonated with me a far bit at the time, but for me it definitely came more from a place of feeling frustrated with having players in my group who would sometimes make fun of me for the kinds of characters I would build, so I guess looking back now I was more so relating to your issue with people complaining about your character not being correctly optimised than anything else.
Now I've had the chance to DM a year long game, plus a couple one shots, and dipping my toes in to other systems, I'm more of the opinion that min maxing is fine, but being rude towards other players because they chose to build a character in a certain way is not, and because of that I find I'm a lot more selective with who I play with and who I run games for (since back then I would literally just play in any game that would take me lol). I think as a player it's fine to give advice to other players on how they can improve their characters, but if they don't want to accept that advice, that's okay too. As a DM/GM though, I try to spend a decent amount of time with my players to make sure they have characters that will fit in well with the world/game I want to run, but so long as it's something that fits in with the game and my players are respectful, I don't mind if they want to try something a bit unconventional. I will not stand for players bullying other players for building their characters 'wrong' though.
Me near the start of this video: "She started playing in 2019 and thinks she's been playing a while? Oh, you sweet summer child."
Me by the end: "I had no idea what the Stormwind fallacy was until today."
Goes to show, you can always learn - even from the younglings. From a veteran of every edition, well done Ginny D.
I've known of the idea for a long time, but not known it by any name. I recall arguing with people at university who were making the fallacy about it by comparing it to stuff like White Wolf games, which are of course not in anyway min-maxable (last bit is sarcasm).
@@Daktangle Same. I had no clue the TTRPG community has a name for it. It was pleasantly humbling to come into the video with this arrogant attitude of, "that's right, kid. Learn what the rest of us learned ages ago." And then she schooled me on the history of a hobby I've been in for twenty years. It was really cool.
@@Daktangle Me at a gaming table about a year after V:tM came out: I mean if we wanted to be jerky min-maxxers we'd all have focused Dexterity instead of Strength because extra hit successes add to damage anyway and you don't damage if you miss
Five other people, including the Storyteller: *all exchange looks with one another*
Me: oh no
I knew what it was. I didn’t realize it had a name tho. Was really good
You can do something your entire life and become a master of your craft, and still not know everything to know on the topic. And on your last day before retiring, a new apprentice can show up on their first day and teach you something you never knew.
I really hate when I ask about a player's character and all i get is a race/class/level breakdown. I'm all like, "ok, but what do they feel, think or dream?" If you can get a character that is an actual character, and not just a stat sheet, then you got it right. It's a bonus if they're optimised
Eh, it takes longer, granted sometimes you want “distressingly fascist turbo-frog” and can then get into it, I find explaining it as “Gripli swashbuckler” is easier for people who are *interested* and are likely to ask about the campaign, that, and the former opens some very interesting rabbit holes XD
Edit: Auto correct
Eh sometimes they need time to get used to their character, if its a first interaction with them, they really might not feel comfortable sharing much about themselves either. All depends on how much they've done rping as well.
Same. I'm pretty big on character backstory myself and it's incredibly rewarding when the DM incorporates it into the story or gives nods to it.
"Bubbly preschool teacher energy" is a really spot on way to describe you, and I definitely mean that as a compliment. The vibe is part of the reason why I subscribed.
Lilly from How I met your mother...
Same here, I love her energy
@@Party13197Gurl Yes! Now that you mention it Lily does have similar energy.
This comment made me realize I haven't subscribed yet, fixed that. 😂
I relate! People ask me if I'm a teacher based on the way I dress and my personality. In fact, it helped me quit my terrible job to go back to school and become, you guessed it, a teacher!
One of my favorite things over the past almost 9 years is watching all these new gamers to the hobby go through the same growing pains that previous generations have. You weren't right, or wrong Ginny, those were all points of view. The best thing about roleplaying is that there is no wrong way to do it and the right way is how your table decides is best for them.
I appreciate a lot about this video: conversational content, the presentation, the editing, the spine it took to openly evaluate your past self-but I also want to say I liked her Interpretive Dance announcer’s tied back hair look 😇
Lol as a veteran who really hasn't played in the last few editions, it odd and interesting to see someone learning the lessons I learned decades ago. I need to find a good group to remind myself of the things I have forgotten. Role-playing is more than a game, it is literally a way to develop empathy for your fellow man as well as: deal with stress, hang with friends, escape the everyday grind, EXPRESS YOURSELF, help others express themselves, be heroic, explore your weaknesses. And overall just help develop yourself as part of the human race. So, I hope you love for it grows even as you realize there is no right way to do it. There as as many right ways, as there are role players.
An "old grognard" here who rarely posts comments - One of my favorite recent characters was both min/maxed and totally u-noptomized.
I had a socially awkward, effeminate, elf wizard, all of the stats were set for a very effective character. However, this particular wizard did not like the idea of killing the natural creatures of the world. We ran through Lost Mines of Phandelver, I had one, yup, one, spell that was combat oriented. I still ended up being very effective in combat situations and had some amazing role-play.
I appreciate you hearkening back to your old video and pointing out that you have grown in your understanding of the hobby. Over 30 years of gaming, and I find myself watching you, and so many new players join the fun, keep growing, keep learning, and keep rolling those nat 20s!
You are EXACTLY the type of young person i enjoy listening to. Self-reflective, humble and intelligent.
You are the new generation of DMs I love. You have actually listened and taken things spoken of from us 40+ year old DM/GMs. You also added your own ideas which is beautiful. This wonderful game can only grow if we listen and use what has gone before but then add or remove parts to fit this new era of gaming. I applaud your efforts to continue growing as a person/Artist and entertainer. You have learned something special by reflecting on your thoughts and actions of the past. Most of us do not have the ability to see and hear a recording of our younger self lol The world might be a better place if we could.
You are a special person, and I look forward to seeing you grow even more.
FYI I saw a lot of this at this year‘s GenCon Convention which gives me hope for the industry in the coming years.
For me the most important thing you said is to look at what abilities actually do, rather than thier fluff. Once you (and your DM!) realise this character building gets much more fun and free.
Can you develop ?
@@cernunnos8344 What the abilities do is much more important than how what it does looks like. Because of this, you can change how something looks or feels without changing how it works, and it makes it easier to flavour a character without worsening them mechanically
@@trapbuilder2283 what the abilities do in what sense ? The mechanics of it ? ( n of dice etc) or how they look like ?
@@cernunnos8344 How they look like. Thats... what I said. What the abilities actually do mechanically is important, so you can't change that all that much. But how the things look is almost entirely unimportant to how the game works, so you can change how things look very easily
@@cernunnos8344 Spells are a good example. You can easily add flavour to your spells by describing how they look. Magic Missile creates 3 darts that do 1d4+1 each, but there's nothing in the spell description that says what the darts look like. They could be little birds, tiny skulls, anything that doesn't affect the mechanics.
You could even (with DM permission) reflavour an entire class or subclass. In my Wildemount game, my Forge Cleric doesn't actually worship a deity, she believes in her self-developed, slightly heretical offshoot of Moradinism, called the Doctrine Of The Forge. She's still a Forge Cleric, wearing Full Plate and casting Spirit Guardians, but with a minor tweak of the flavour text, you have an entirely new set of RP possibilities
Thank you for this very calm, mature video addressing personal viewpoints which have changed over time. Brava. As an Optimizer who has spent many years being told that since I Optimize I "don't want to have fun," "must care more about numbers than people," or "don't care about the world and lore," I really appreciate what you've said here.
I became an Optimizer because the table I learned to play D&D at (15 years ago) was a table of Optimizers. For the first few years I watched the others pull off devastating combos, god-like skill checks, and amazingly creative applications of their abilities and skills while I (building concept characters which seemed cool) could only follow along behind and try to help. Now, this was not a bad table - the other players (I still play regularly with this group) are open and helpful (if opinionated) and they never made me feel like my characters were useless or unwanted or told me I was holding them back or building characters "wrong."
The Philosophy of Optimization I was taught was basically "we optimize for the sake of the party." When you build a character, try to make them excellent at what they do to benefit and support the party with whatever skills they have. Building melee DPS? Build a god of war to stand between the squishies and danger. Building support-specialist? Have high ranks in every skill you can get. Why yes, I DO speak eleven languages and have 10 ranks in Appraise. Building a healer? Become the literal font of life to bring the party back from a near TPK. Not to steal the spotlight or to show off, but so that you can boost the party through challenges in your given field. Your god of war will be useless at diplomacy and that's fine - that's the Charisma Monkey's job. Your Trapmonkey will be crap at combat and that's fine - no one else can pick locks. Your Bard has a quarter the HP of everyone else and that's fine - they can buff/debuff like a god. Party balance meant everyone was good at something, but we were good at different things.
As a new player who struggled to keep up with 4-5 Optimized characters, I decided I was just going to have to, as we say, "git gud." I studied the handbooks. I looked up build guides and read long forums on build options. I built many, many practice characters and spent long hours on my own studying spells, skills, and abilities so I understood and could apply them better. And over a few years of work and regular gaming, I became a much better player. I could keep up with my original table and be soundly effective at other tables. Then, while playing at some of these other tables, I found myself being labeled a "min-maxer" and "power gamer" and told I was playing the game "wrong."
I was confused. At this point, I had spent about seven years working hard to learn several gaming systems so I could play effectively in all of them. I always gave my characters quirks and backstories and tried to break the common stereotype molds. But then I would be told by a table of orphaned half-orc barbarians and brooding elf rangers with wolf companions that I was "power gaming" because I made my arcane trickster a human so I could get the extra feat.
Well, uh, yeah. That feat will let me be better at disabling traps, which will benefit the whole party. Why does just being human make my character "boring"?
My characters have never backstabbed or betrayed the party, never abandoned their comrades or kept valuable loot for themselves. I've lost characters saving party members and made sure my characters had solid backstory motivation to stick with the party no matter what. I've never scoffed at people for flavor builds and done my best to RP with them in keeping with their flavor. So as a player, it bothered me to be told I was playing "wrong" when I would Optimize my characters so I could be the most helpful and effective party member I could.
I know a lot of people have had bad experiences with min-maxers who only care about looking awesome and want everything to be about them. But the thing is, bad players come in all flavors and it's important not to decide everyone who tends towards a certain playstyle must be a killjoy or a horrible person because of it.
I applaud you for having the courage to address your own changes in viewpoint (on YT, no less!) and hope you have many happy years of gaming at great tables. TTRPG's are all about having fun with others!
The thing about AD&D was the randomized characteristic rolls. EVEN IF you were allowed to move stats around, not having "point buy" would result in at least one bad stat. Combined with AD&D's lethality, you basically ended up always having to "think outside the box" during play in order to survive.
Part of the fun was trying to figure out what to make a suboptimal "rolled PC" so they had a chance of survival.
@@kevinkingmaker7395 and i am sure thats how players liked it back then
"We are all different people all through our lives and that's okay, that's good you've got to keep moving so long as you remember all the people that you used to be." -Matt Smith as 11th doctor.
The example i always use for Stormwinds Fallacy is a character i once rolled named Juan Jane (syllabic switch of John Wayne), a fighter crossbow/sharpshooter build. Those that are familiar with min/maxing will probably already be familiar with crossbow expert/sharpshooter as being one of the highest DPR builds that can be made at 6th level in 5e, basically the poster child build of min/maxing.
Because the build is fairly complete without the subclass, and all the subclass really adds to the build is utility, its pretty open ended what can be chosen there, usually eldritch knight or battle master. Because Tasha's Cauldron had just released and our DM bought it when i made this build, I chose one of the new sub-classes: Rune Knight. I played the character like a spaghetti western cowboy gunslinger with all the mannerisms and prone to saying corny catchphrases.
For flavor, and also because they seemed like the best options, for Rune Knight runes, I chose Cloud rune and Stone rune, and affixed them to my pistols (mechanically, crossbows, but for flavor, 6 shooter pistols), named the pistols Liberty (cloud rune) and Justice (stone rune). One of the corny catchphrases was, after killing an enemy, "Liberty and Justice for All" *blows smoke from gun barrels, twirls them around and re-holsters them*
Point is, min/maxing doesn't have to look like "cardboard cutout of guy with 2 hand crossbows and no personality or intrigue beyond doing good damage" Get creative. There's a good reason the "background" section of character creation adds very little mechanically.
Also, in the same one-shot series, one of my party members rolled a Florida-Man inspired build named "Jim-Bob Gatorf***er," so there was already plenty of "flavor" floating around the table anyway. DM rolled an unplanned Alligator fight mid-session just for him. The legend will never die.
This is the most mature and honest thing I've ever seen on youtube. As somebdoy who has played DnD for 25+ years. Thank you.
Also, it's very interesting to play a combat-centric character In a party of social, exploratory characters. Case in point, Brock Samson from the Venture Brothers TV show. He is a complete veteran of combat that strikes fear into everyone he opposes. He is a terrifying whirlwind of death, and the rest of his group has almost zero combat abilities. He's the bodyguard for a famous scientist in his two goofy idiots sons. I think the more important thing is that everyone should have something that their character can do and that everyone enjoys. So maybe the combat characters have a bunch of minions to mow down, while all the social characters have some MacGuffin to chase down or wrestle out of the hands of an equally weak scientist while slapping each other.
My roommate is playing a half-orc barbarian right now and sometimes in social situations I just can't stop laughing(on the inside of course).
One of the key aspects of finding a good, intelligent person is finding someone who can learn from their mistakes and openly discuss it.
"This made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
I see you. I see what you did there.
I don't get it. I'm a dnd noob.
I love the excellently fitting Hitchhiker's guide reference.
@@viewerguy10 It's not a DnD reference, it's a _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ reference. In one of the books: *_“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”_*
The thing about the 3.5 generation of players being so uptight about optimisation is that, in 3.5 you HAD to optimize or you would'nt keep your character at higher levels and most martial classes were terrible classes to play if you did'nt multiclass (espetially the fighter much to my eternal dismay). One of the main designer of the system himself said ''Players are rewarded for achieving mastery of the rules and making good choices rather than poor ones.'' something he later regrets designing this way but the damage is done.
You are 99% correct. The only part where I'd disagree is about the fighter. Since you basically get 800 extra feats you technically were the LESS TERRIBLE martial class to go in without multiclass.
Its been a while but cleric seemed like it outclassed everything by alot, and you are better off as spell casting class in optimized group.
@@cariocaemfuria3946 The Fighter was pretty much used as an easy way to get feats needed to meet the pre-reqs of whatever PRestige Class you were going for. Most people didn't stick to a Fighter for 1-20. But really, for just about every class there wasn't a terribly great reason to stay in that class when Prestige Classes gave so much extra power.
@@MrJellmoo That's true. But if you HAD to stay in one basic martial class, Fighter was your better option because you could at least get various powerful feats. Not as flashy or even powerful than the best prestige classes, but the only one on the same league. Any other martial class was MUCH MUCH behind.
@@raziel3546 Yes. The stronger classes were Cleric, Druid and Wizard, in no particular order (not considering prestige classes).
5:39 - I really respect you coming back and redressing this, especially the mindset behind why you made the video as you did the first time.
I honestly find optimization to lead to more interesting characters (specifically when i do it as I have a specific way of making characters) I typically find a class I like a lot try to build it in the strongest way I can. Then I have a free prompt for my character just by what choices I chose.
For example, I made a necromancer wizard but I wanted to make sure he got hit as little as possible, so I chose a dwarf to get medium armor proficiency to bump my ac up. That way when I cast shield I can push my ac to 21. As well as poison resistance.
So I was left with a prompt of why a necromancer might occur in dwarven culture, for reasons other than generic ones. So I decided he wanted to build a massive undead workforce to protect his people's kingdom to make less life lost when the city was attacked, as well as have a workforce to haul minerals and resources long distances to increase their efficiency in the mines. And to have non living creatures to transport deadly and toxic materials. But he was banished from his kingdom for proposing the idea
The build ended up giving me a prompt for making a character. Which is a way that may not work for everyone but it's one I like.
I think this can work both ways. If you min-max first, you can come up with some very interesting character designs and back stories. If you start with an idea of what you character is, a Drow Barbarian, I now have to come up with an interesting backstory and have to dig through feats and classes to make this viable.
The character I am currently playing was supposed to be a quick one shot, character for a trap heavy dungeon with plenty of combat, and mild roleplay. So I quickly threw together a 3rd level Barbarian and got rolling. But our GM has invented his own persistent world, changes that players make will have an effect on future campaigns. So I decided I wanted to have a character to create a chain of high end restaurants but I felt like changing the Barbarian storyline would be weird because we had done one session already. We play 3.5, and I decided for my build to work my character would need high Int as a barbarian to identify animals/monsters and how too cook/eat them. I dug around 3.5 and found Factotem they sub Int for Strenght checks and a few other things and there is a feat that adds a modifier to attack and damage depending on you knowledge check. Thus Gorram was born An intelligently gifted half-elf who due to a failed teleport was trapped in a harsh jungle of Barbarians, after he learned to survive in the jungle he finally stumbled on a port and managed to convince the captain to take him along for his intelligence. But after having to eat anything to survive he gained a taste for various foods and needed to know what every creature tasted like. He decided to study as a factotem so he could traverse any terrain to find his prey, from demon, to aberration, to dragon. Gorram (GORdan RAMsey) is a half-elf 2nd level barbarian with flesheater variant, fourth level factotem. He has a vast knowledge of all monsters and humanoids and is writing his cookbook and collecting ingredients. He has ranks in profession chef and butcher lol.
I have the same method and has worked well for me for many years. My builds ended up being our NPC/Pick up Character vault because all of them were so unique both in mechanics and in character.
That's exactly how i prefer to play- i find a character build that would be fun to play that is optimised for something specific, and then build the character's backstory and personality around that. That gives way more inspiration and creative ideas than otherweise which they'd be pretty generic.
Optimisation makes the game more fun for everyone. A lot of pushback is "its what my character would do", which is a bad argument when it comes to betraying the party, so why do some people think its a valid argument when you have a 8 in wizard who doesn't pick fireball or hypnotic pattern, or who plays a class with access to healing word but never prepares/knows healing word. Change your character so that they better fit in with the party. Your character doesn't have to focus on fireballing or healing word, but they should at least have it in their back pocket in case they need it so that everyone can have fun and your DM doesn't have to babysit the party.
I'm personally also a mechanics first builder, but I'd like to point out that one can also be a story first builder and an optimizer. One aspect of optimization that often gets neglected is that it isn't necessarily about building the best combatant around, but rather about building the best build *for your concept*, and so when I have others in my group who are story first builders, I'll listen to their concept and then propose a build optimized for that concept, this way they can do their weird idea AND be effective while doing it.
I find it's more useful to divide build philosophies by mechanics first vs story first rather than optimizer vs roleplayer, since it is easy to do both well and frankly nobody should focus on one to the exclusion of the other, however, especially when people are newer to the game, it can be easy to get caught up in whichever you are personally more drawn to. By reframing it around where you draw your primary build inspiration from and putting the focus on doing the best you possibly can with your idea you encourage both kinds of people to grow as players rather than shutting them down for not putting enough emphasis on one area or another.
I get inspired by seeing mechanical combinations that I want to play with, and I create an interesting character around that build, another player at my table has a variety of interesting characters she's dreamed up that she wants to make a build for. These are both equally valid directions to come at character creation from, and they can both arrive at optimal builds and interesting roleplay.
This whole thread is great! I'd add that it depends on your table as well. Have a DM that is nerdy about how much rations you have and how much time has gone by. So my Ranger took some hunting stuff over combat stuff so that we don't have to worry about it. Maybe not optimal, but for our game it helped.
I really like coming up with a character concept or build, and then min maxing that. Basically like a themed challenge run of a game.
For example, I wanted my Warlock to be very good at problem solving and utility casting, with an emphasis on illusions and cantrips.
So while I picked Archfey and have taken none of the Eldritch blast evocations, I found out how to make a continuous, 15 square foot illusion with sound at level 2, by combining the sound of minor illusion (it’s a cantrip that is infinite and can be up-kept every turn) and misty visions, which can be cast for free instantly, and is the silent image spell. That means with just your action, you can have a moving, 15ft illusion with sound.
Very useful, very fun.
That is optimising a concept, concept always come first for optimisers and the challenge is to find more and more ways to actually ALSO make it mechanically efficient.
Great example.
Yup, while there are optimizers that do focus purely on power. Most of us are like you, and like to optimize for concepts and see if we can mechanically support them somehow.
Pretty much all my characters are built like this. 'Who is this character and what are they good at?' Sometimes you get a very simple character who's just really good at the basics and sometimes you get a character with a particular set of skills that they're crazy with. But there's always at least a general character and concept there.
This is one of the best deconstructions of this common misconception I have ever seen. You've earned a subscriber and I will be sending this to people as a great thinkpiece on the Stormwind Fallacy in the future. Kudos on your growth!
When I first started playing I jumped straight into the books and tried my hand at optimization from the first character on. I was joining a table of peoples that had been playing for years and thought I had to start out swinging to keep up. Turns out I over estimated my table a bit and started challenging the dm to keep up with me. Since then I have gotten a large group of friends into the game and knowing it was going to be rough from a build standpoint I started doing something to compensate for my builds. I began to kneecap myself. For about three years now my builds look about 80% optimized, with glaring weaknesses, be it mechanically or rp. It's helped my friends take moments in campaigns and feel less like sidekicks and more like companions. Now even when I get to (more) "hardcore" tables I still bring my kneecaps. Guess I got a fetish for it now.
I'm a 40 something Gen X'er and I'm here for the bubbly preschool teacher energy. You're doin' great!
Min-Maxing gets conflated with people who play DnD "To win" because one always does the other, but not visa-versa.
For me even with an optimized character, a lot of room exists to RP off of the dice rolls and rolling for things they are not good at.
As a DM I recently had two players trying to figure out more about their shared tragedies in their backstory. One rolled quite well and made progress, RPing that they felt better about their direction. The other, making the same rolls in single digits, they RP’ed not feeling that connected to the subject and finished the night passing out in a tavern.
I appreciate you making this video. Optimization creators say this stuff all the time, but the problem is that they’re generally preaching to the choir. Your platform reaches people who maybe haven’t thought about things this way, and I think it really makes a difference.
Gianni rolled a nat 20 on her wisdom save. It takes amazing courage and insight to admit mistakes. Well done and thank you for showing us how to grow. Great example!
I really appreciate the humility, we could stand to see more of this from people in general. Well done :)
Confronting yourself takes a lot of maturity, and doing it publicly is quite brave. And hey, you achieved personnel character growth too!
As someone who comes from B/X back in the 80's - you are an amazing addition to our hobby and I always look forward to your insights! Coming back and changing an outlook on something is a great mind set and helps bring more people to the table. More people, more games - more fun!
There were plenty of players all around me in the mid 1970s who were all about optimizing their characters to take advantage best they could "against the rules." It's all good: do whatever you like to have fun--as long as, of course, you don't make it less fun for others.
I played d&d for 30 of my 40 years, on each side of the table and with any kind of people. I always thought the beauty of the game is that you can literally play it the way you like, making rules, changing settings and be whoever you desire to be, even if for only a few hours a week.
I'm so happy to see more and more people enjoy it nowadays and interpreting it the way they like :) And I watch your channel because I like to see your point of view and understand what makes you enjoy it and maybe it will make me a better dm as well. You don't have to be embarassed of your past self as she was having fun and that's all that is important :) That and sharing the things you love :)
I love you made an update on your past vids. Shows you’re growing and learning, you don’t need to show it and I personally don’t expect it but I 100% appreciate it because I love to learn and grow too.
I... gotta say.
Roleplay and optimization are not mutually exclusive
However, each route does block off some choices from the other.
For a... well, very obvious way of putting it, look at warlock
You can choose to take Eldritch Blast, or not.
Taking it is obviously the most optimal choice, because it will consistently be the best thing to do on your turn when you're not casting spells with slots
However, taking it does mean that you'll be using it on nearly every turn, which makes it harder to roleplay in combat doing cool things if you know that no matter what, it'd be more effective to stand at the back of the party and just zap.
If you don't take it, now you're doing consistently less damage, which means you're not optimized.
Eldritch blast is just the most glaring of these situations, every choice blocks something off... that's okay. You have two talent trees to go down, and a limited number of points. Its up to you to decide how optimal you want your character to be. And if anyone ever says you're doing it wrong, then they're the ones playing the game wrong. The only way to play DND wrong is to say that someone else is.
Slight tangent. As a GM, I have a homebrew that I think is so obviously smart, I don't know why it isn't just the rules, but...
As a warlock, an invocation you that that refers to eldritch blast applies to any damage dealing cantrip you get from the warlock class. It applies to green-flame blade, toll the dead, whatever. Eldritch Spear, Agonizing blast, whatever. Add charisma to damage, push 10 feet, pull 10 feet. I don't care. The invocations should, from the beginning, have always been applicable to every damaging cantrip on the warlock spell list.
Quite frankly, even with this change, the fact that EB turns into multiple attacks instead of one attack with scaling damage *still* makes it objectively the best damage cantrip on the warlock list but at least with this you *can* take something more flavorful without just crippling yourself
This is among the reasons that many people think EB should just be a Warlock class feature, rather than a cantrip. It's basically a fundamental part of being a Warlock, but they pretend it's a choice. In reality, not taking EB as a Warlock is like never using Wildshape as a Druid, or never using Rage as a Barbarian.
And the only real way to solve the problem would be for them to introduce another mechanic that's equally awesome but mutually exclusive so that you could actually choose that alternative and not feel like you shot yourself in the foot.
@@roflcopterprods I'm sorry Im trying to understand you homebrew here but I'm not sure I'm getting it. can you elaborate on it? I think I want to make something like this available to my players! Thank you
But the same could be said of any melee character. If you choose the "wrong" weapon, your damage output is negatively impacted ~ but you are edgy and unique (LOL)! And since your action every round will be the same "I swing my weapon"... That is really no different than your Warlock's lament, IMO.
Eldritch Blast is only optimized if you take the Agonizing Blast invocation though. But optimization would be, "build your character so it doesn't suffer negative effects from using EB". For example, playing V.Human so you can have Crossbow expertise. Getting Devil's Sight and combining it with the Darkness Spell. Taking Spell Sniper so you don't suffer from cover, etc. You are fully optimizing at that point so you never suffer while having to cast Eldritch Blast and ignoring all the other warlock features.
Not taking EB is like playing a fighter and choosing to fight with a dagger instead of a longsword. Nothing necessarily wrong with it, but at that point you're going to the other end of the spectrum.. optimization -> normal gameplay -> purposefully weakening your potential. 😀
4:28 A cleric I've played in the last year came upon an interesting trait by accident due to her background: she had to pick an instrument proficiency as a Knight of the Order. I just picked the flute mostly at random, expecting to do nothing with it.
Fast forward several months of playing her off and on, and not only does she have a flute, she's made use of that proficiency. She's not professional-musician-caliber, mostly due to a flat 10 charisma, but the dice gods have conspired to make that bit of her order training pay off. She even used it once to soothe some irate animated books. So instead of just being a big butch-lesbian valkyrie, she's a big butch-lesbian valkyrie with a fairly well-rounded education and a penchant for music.
Even "dumped" stats can find some use, if you invest a bit of attention (either mental or mechanical) into them. The dice gods sometimes reward creative thinking, and for that matter, so do DMs.
As a DM I might eventually let you use wisdom with the lute the more you play it. Signaling that even though your character is naturally talented as others, they are wise enough to get better through experience.
I like both rp and optimization!
When building a character I like to pick who the character is first, and then use that as a theme or guide to the Stat building aspect. I had a sparky lightning infused character.... So if there were spells that were not lightning, thunder, or wind based, then I couldn't use it... Or I would ask the dm if I could flavor another spell after my theme. It worked really well! Can't wait for the fall when I can play some more with my next crazy character.!
Watching this helped me realize that I had interpreted the message of the first video as "Don't play a character because they are strong or useful in some specific way, play a character because you find them interesting to roleplay." It's a good clarification to say that every character should be built to suit their table.
I still honestly agree with your thought expressed in that video. I didn't even understand the message as "stop optmizing!", but more like "don't feel pressured to always optmize".
The "different tables, different game" stuff is true and has to be known, but your video talked about a possibility of game that players tend to ignore and a lot of people would really enjoy.
I've seen sub optimal and optimal characters work just fine next to each-other. Sure certain characters shine in certain moments, and that could be due to optimization, but it's by no means 'bad' if they are played together. Optimize characters generally do one thing really well, and that means there is space for other characters too. What IMO does cause friction is people playing the game completely differently together: A min-maxer in it for the tactical combat who doesn't RP versus someone who deeply roleplays and prefers not to fight for instance, that can cause issues. I've seen that, too. But that takes a DM clearing that up with the players before it becomes a problem: Expectation management ftw ;-)
Okay, I'll admit, I'm usually one of those skip-through-the-sponsor-segment scumbags. But yours was on another level; Bravo.
My method is "optimize the character, not the other way around"
Ask yourself: "How do I want to play? What do I want to do in the world? What classes will help make my combat special?"
Now ask yourself: "What backstory would produce an adventurer who does this? How were they raised? Are they part of a culture? What brought them here?"
Lastly: "How do I make this character as effective as possible mechanically? How can I reflavor my classes to feel like a singular class progression?"
That's how I ended up with a duergar saboteur who escaped life as a janissary under a drow empire with levels in battle rager, rune knight, and armorer. He's a wacky little guy who practically worships his armor and does a darn good job of drawing aggro in a game that's not really built for it.
On the rare occasions I get to play I build my characters a variety of ways, but if I'm going for a particular build or subclass as my starting point this is more or less my method as well. (With one small change -- I remove 'as possible' from the 'how do I make this character effective' question. I don't care about wringing every last point out of the build, but I don't want it to be a random mishmash that doesn't work at all or has too much bloat or wasted space.)
This is basically what I do, although I'm not nearly this organized, lol
Generally speaking my choice is based on the question, "What is the best option that makes sense for my character?" Meaning if I can't justify an option, I won't take it even if it's the 'best' option in theory, but conversely if an option is more thematically-fitting but just isn't very strong, I will usually take an option that still fits, but maybe not as well, if that option is stronger.
Now, that said, if the GM is flexible I can sometimes convince them to buff the weaker option that fits better so I can use that and not feel gimped because of it. This usually ends up working out the best, but it's also usually the one that requires the most effort, so it's not as viable in more casual games.
The world needs more of this kind of self reflection and personal growth.
I've always seen optimization as good, because its just pursuing the best path towards your character design goal. An optimized support wizard will look very different from an optimized CC/debuff wizard and have key differences in mechanics, character design choices, and play decisions. An optimized nautical swashbuckler will be fairly different from an optimized sailing samurai.
So what I really think people have problems with is minmaxing or game breaking. Especially if you're using a niche mechanic/interaction or have a build that is atypical. Which is rather ironically what I'd call being out of the box. IMO, both sides are basically saying you're having fun incorrectly. Minmaxers reject what doesn't match their limited definition of optimal, Anti Minmaxers reject what doesn't match their limited definition of creative. Which is silly because ultimately both are engaging in different forms of optimization, just towards different goals or for different purposes.
In the end, your character design choices are made to further a goal or serve a purpose. This could be something like damage, pulling off a particular combo, social encounters, sailing, healing, summoning, a particular play style, a theme, a storyline, a trope or character concept. So out of all the various possible choices, you have made the choice that made the most sense to you. Whether you are engaging in minmaxing, roleplay, or whatever else, you have just engaged in optimization! You thought about which choice would best serve the character you are building!
tldr; the optimization argument is silly because optimized=/=minmaxed.
I've always liked to minimax my characters, or at the very least exploit broken combos. But what I found is that even if your character has the potential to be broken you don't have to play it that way. Save your trump card or overpowered combo for a moment that the party needs to be saved. Knowing who you're playing with and your setting is just as important as knowing how to play your character. I love this video and I think both sides are true.
Isn't the first sentence kind of supposed to be the other way around?
@@Max_G4 a wizard with 18 str and 8 int can still use clone and true polymorph to turn himself into a gold dragon. My characters usually have optimally placed stats, but I tend to like balancing those stats and using other methods. Like a barbarian druid combo with strength as the dump stat still makes a fantastic tank. Though if I can minimax the stats too that's great! I hope that makes sense.
The most vital component to a character is your, the player's, interest in playing it. If a min-maxed optimized character interests you, and motivates you to show up to the table.....then by all means.
And if suboptimal builds constructed around a story is what interests and motivates you to show up to the table, by all means.
As long as you show up to the table ready to play the game.
Good for you.
I random roll everything I can during character creation.
Some things I probably shouldn't.
But I harbor no ill will towards min-maxers.
Glad you're willing to be open to other points of view.
On that topic actually. A well optimized character can actually *help* sell the role play better. So for instance one of my characters Sephie is a sorcerer optimized for outputting a whole Lotta damage very quickly, at the cost of burning through resources like spell slots and sorcerery points faster than average. As a character, Sephie is deeply emotional and very naive and reckless, she's the type to jump in and save the day before thinking about the danger. To play her optimally I have to think like she would in a fight. Hit first hit hard before your loved ones get hurt
Yes! This is really cool. A lot of people overlook the gameplay aspect of the role playing. That how your character chooses to engage in combat is and should be part of their personality. Lots of times combat is overlooked as separate from roleplay, when really it’s an aspect of it. This is something I learned in a video game design course, cool ways of making the gameplay itself express the personality of a character.
This is actually a very cool idea, and seems to play into dealing a shit-ton of damage very smoothly. I am new-ish and was looking into a way to rp a spell casting half-orc, but my first attempt was shit. I can to steal, yes?
This personality type is an alignment (called Heroic) in the RPG I'm developing.
I had an optimized Star Wars character that had no combat skills, but was stacked with skills for sabotage. His plans always revolved around avoiding combat because he knew that one bad shot was all it took to make combat go awry. That didn't mean he was looking to not kill anybody, though. If there was an organic thing in between the party and their goals, he would exploit anything to make it go away and ensure his friends' safety. He ended the campaign with the highest body count in the party through the use of chemical weapons, structural sabotage, and mind games. He did get reined in by an intervention the party had. By the end of the campaign, his goal was to become a ghost-like spec ops agent; getting the job done with the enemy none the wiser.
When min maxing crosses into power gaming is when it gets really bad. People who take the game too seriously and fight for more power than other players. I'm about to kick a player for this and it's really shitty and awkward. The dynamics are all off when you have a "main character."
Yeah this is really shitty behavior. I'm gonna be playing in a game soon with some people who are new. The GM wants to do Tomb of Annihilation... I know how notorious of an adventure that is... so I'm making an optimized Sorlock... but my goal is to spend most of the time buffing allies and debuffing enemies, playing a support role.
BUT if we ever get into a sticky situation where I fear people may die. I'm flying that little fairy in the air, casting darkness on myself (while having devil sight) and launching 4 Eldritch Blasts at advantage every round for an average of about 52 damage.
I can turn on "OP MODE" when I as the player feel that we may lose people.
Well it sounds like the problem is wasn't that the play was optimizing their character. It sounds like the problem was that the player was trying to make a powerful character to FORCE their character into the spotlight. Essentially using optimization to justify a toxic roleplay regime.
And full disclosure: This is only my second "epic" campaign and I was the timid DM. I allowed the player to beat me down on allowing some things, and some things were kind of fast ones that I missed that violated the spirit of my rulings while complying to the letter.
I learned a big lesson on two things.
1. Rulings are final. Don't like it, don't play at the table. Getting into negotiations over things like point buy or what options are allowed for character creations is not a great road to go down and it can turn toxic. This doesn't mean be unreasonable, but when you make a basic ruling like "gotta use point buy but I'll give you 3 extra points and raise the limit to 16" then that ruling needs to be final. I got basically bullied into changing and it ruined my enjoyment of running the campaign and made the other players feel left out. A request to nerf the offending character to be equal with the rest of the party... was not taken well.
2. Do more due diligence around characters if you want a balanced campaign. Look at not just the level 1 abilities, but where that character goes in the future. I allowed a certain race in a campaign after reviewing the character sheet, not realizing the race is completely broken at level 3 and violates my "no flying or broken movement races" rule.
I was pretty up front with the setting and style of the campaign and the limitations I imposed to promote creativity. The other players were happy about it and it made them even more excited about the campaign, but one looked for cracks and how they could avoid all challenges and be the main character. And gave me huge rants in private messages how I'd be dumb and a bad DM for not allowing him to roll his "math rocks" for stats.
Some of the most fun I've ever had playing DnD is with a Goblin Swashbuckler that would literally do whatever someone he liked told him to do and an Aarakocra Arcane Archer that was essentially the babysitter of a bunch of not quite murderhobos.
Now that being said the Swashbuckler was almost unhittable by anything with average stats and the Arcane Archer could roll 25s on hit checks pretty consistently (with the help of an Oathbow)
"If you were good at everything, that would be really boring."
Cleric-dipped Wizards sweating profusely rn
Artificer-dipped Wizards* now
@@NessOnett8 The most optimized Wizards have at least 1 level of Artificer. 😂