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D&D (2024) 75 Feats -- not nearly enough


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FitzTheRuke

FitzTheRuke

Legend
jasper said:
yes. So fighters become generic if everyone or lots of them are taking the must have feats.
And with more feats, it makes the running the older modules harder to balance. got to go.
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Well, I hope you'll find the new feats to be better. My IRL group barely uses feats, (not because we outlaw them, but because we usually go for ASIs.) but I've seen the issues you had. So far the playtest feats seem both more interesting and less unbalanced. We'll see.
 

tetrasodium

tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
Epic
Bacon Bits said:
I wouldn't describe any of that as elements of power gaming. I would call that basic social awareness, paying attention to the other players, and simply having system mastery. To be fair, I've known a lot of TTRPG players that have been lacking in those areas. But I don't think there's anything inherently bad or toxic about power gaming.

Critically, I don't think power gaming implies any system mastery or skill. A tryhard power gamer and a successful power gamer are both power gamers. Power gaming describes a player's goals in making or playing a given character. Power gaming is about intentionally making your character powerful. It's about making your character more effective. Regardless of how successful you are, that's the behavior central to the terminology. That's the behvaior and goal it describes.

Because of that, I think power gaming is inseparable from power fantasies. Even if you're just keeping up with the Joneses, if you're power gaming then you're expressing a power fantasy as best you can. On the other hand, if you're expressing system mastery without maximizing character effectiveness, that's not power gaming. It doesn't matter if you know it or not. If you're not doing it, you're not doing it.

That isn't to say that all power gamers prioritize character power so highly that it's detrimental to role play, story, and cooperation with the other characters or players or that they're foregoing sportsmanship or anything else. It's not inherently toxic. But it's inseparably about that power fantasy, even if it's just a power fantasy relative to other hypothetical characters. That means power gaming is a style of play because it will only create certain types of characters. Further, the fact that some players power gaming and other players not being interested in power gaming can cause friction and strife at the table is partly how we know it's a style of play. That's the kind of conflict that only happens when there's a mis-matched style of play.

Meanwhile, I think terms like "munchkin" are simply purely pejorative terms for power gaming or optimization. That's why they're not really used anymore. They aren't really about how I feel about my game, and are more about how I feel about your game. It's meant to villainize. But the existence of a villainous term does not mean that power gaming is virtuous. It's neither virtuous nor villainous. It's neutral, and can only be judged in terms of how the rest of the table feels. It can only be judged by how well it matches the style of play of the rest of the table.
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I Read this in traffic and don't think I disagree with what I think I read, except there is a very big but that poses significant problems to nearly all of it. Power gaming without those elements of social awareness and such tends to devolve towards a style of play normally only lauded or even considered acceptable in single player console/computer and fps games without a team component where "I play to DOMINATE" is relatively victimless given the game's objectives of shooting the other players before they shoot you.

Even if many of us disagree where the line is... Because of the fact that pretty much everyone seems to agree to there being some point where Bob has taken charop & power gaming a step too far it's not unreasonable to refer to crossing that line in the various ways that negatively impact the group as munchkinism.

I pointed at your post because you neatly demonstrated how players just need to pick the gold choice or two without needing to understand how to assemble the many different possibly conflicting gold choices that are made gold based on a collection of choices as they once did .
 



bedir than

bedir than

Full Moon Storyteller
Neonchameleon said:
This sounds like One True Way-ism to me. A lot of people use it in different ways, and trying to dismiss some of them by calling them "power gamers" doesn't help anyone.
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1 - I'm using the label as the people who call themselves call themselves.
2 - I'm participating in a discussion, which is the antithesis of dismissal.
3 - I've not suggested that there's only one way to play the game. In fact I was saying that it is wrong to only include power gamers in testing as the claim was made in the quotes I responded to.
 

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