Pathfinder 1E Over-Optimized

[Mad Old Wizard]

Ok guys, jeez... As a DM, when I see one player out performing the rest, that's when I use magic items to increase the performance of lackluster PCs. Players are free to bulldoze through remaining pre made content as fast as they want as I gradually scale things up to meet them.

That's kind of what /magic items are for/.
Its not rocket science.

*3 decades of D&D experience

 

[Mad Old Wizard]

First post double posted because i forgot to refresh. Trying to delete this

 

[John R Davis]

PF 1 is a great game for the OP build. Even at first level it is silly when a PC can do damage= 4x their own hit points, perception and intimidate can quickly get to game ruining proportions and such.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

Having played and ran campaigns where over-optimization was an issue (whether single person or not), I really don't tolerate it anymore. I got better things to do with my time than keeping up with any paradigm of the sort.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I've encountered problems with insufficiently-optimized characters more often than with over-optimized ones, on both sides of the GM screen. But I may be unusually tolerant of highly-capable PCs when I GM. One of my touchstones is "Would I introduce an NPC like that? Or would it be unfair to the players for me to do so?"

 

[delericho]

Sadly, my experience has often been that 'optimization' is code for 'cheating'.

The one and only time I played in a Pathfinder campaign I found myself in the nasty position where there was another PC who could do everything my character could do, better, and a whole bunch of other stuff as well. However, this was achieved by creatively ignoring all of the limitations built into the rules and trusting that the GM would never check.

And since everyone else in the group was doing much the same thing, five sixths of the people at the table were having a great time.

 

[James Gasik]

What I saw, when I played Pathfinder public play, was that if you didn't make the best choices when creating your character, you tended to have a bad experience. It wasn't like the adventures required optimization, but if you sit down at a table with four other players, and they all have cracked out characters and you didn't, it was pretty miserable when your contributions either didn't matter, or worse, you were just holding the group back.

I always found it strange, you build a game with choices, some better than others. Then if a player makes good choices, the game's challenge literally falls apart. A good example of this was my roommate.

He wanted to play an archer in Pathfinder. So he decided "well, Fighter is best at fighting, so I'll be a Fighter". He didn't even take an archetype, he just gave himself good Str/Dex, and took all the archery Feats he qualified for.

And he was a holy terror, full attacking the instant his initiative came up (often before the enemies because of his 22 Dex), making four attacks per turn thanks to Rapid Shot and some other Feat that let him fire another arrow (the name of which is eluding me right now...Manyshot?). He could fire arrows into melee, and even damage reduction was little more than a speed bump because he could add all his damage together before DR was applied thanks to Clustered Shots.

This was at like, level 7. We often had fights where he'd have major enemies almost dead before the melee could reach them. And the only thing that could stop him was basically by shutting down his build entirely with miss chances or Wind Wall (and even there, we discovered the system had workarounds for, by picking up specialized arrows).

And this wasn't some outlandish build like "dex magus with scimitar and shocking grasp", this was just "I make a character who is good at bow".

Heck, we had a goblin cavalier in one session. He had a riding dog. He's charging for like 70+ damage because he took a class that's meant for mounted combat, and mounted combat feats. It's no wonder optimization gets a bad name when the game folds in half to a player who says "hey, I'm going to be a cavalier who does cavalier things"!

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I have found that in PF1e that one doesn't really need to go beyond the core rule book to have an effective character. I've had a experience with an archer in a game similar to yours, @James Gasik. And a similar experience with a crit-fishing gnome melee fighter. Both in the same party. They did soooo much damage. All built from the core rule book only.

 

[Voadam]

I have found that in PF1e that one doesn't really need to go beyond the core rule book to have an effective character. I've had a experience with an archer in a game similar to yours, @James Gasik. And a similar experience with a crit-fishing gnome melee fighter. Both in the same party. They did soooo much damage. All built from the core rule book only.

CoDzilla works straight out of the PH in 3e.

 

[James Gasik]

CoDzilla works straight out of the PH in 3e.

Oh definitely, this is one truth about 3e in general. You hear a lot of complaints about wacky builds and splatbooks, but the most broken stuff was right there in the PHB.

Simulacrum, Gate, Shapechange, Polymorph Any Object, Item Crafting, pick whatever infinite gold exploit you want (Wall of Iron + Fabricate is a favorite of mine, but honorable mention to buying a ladder and converting it into two 10' poles), prices for spellcasting services, Clerics, Wizards, and Druids.

Heck, the original PHB had the broken save DC feats that let you increase the DC's of your school of choice by FOUR. Nothing like tossing out a Stinking Cloud and telling the DM his monsters have to make DC 22 Fortitude saves- oh what's that, they have good Fort saves? I meant Slow, obviously.