I just saw an interesting video on YouTube about the merits of building a character “wrong”, as in “not optimized”. The video itself deals with D&D in particular, but I believe has application with any RPG system, so I thought I’d post it here.

Totally agree, but it's also obvious. I guess every year a new crop of blowhards comes online, or an old crop gets more fossilized, so the need for videos like this will never end.

Ultimately it's about how it works at the table. If all your friends are one-trick ponies (eg: a Brawn 5 Wookiee with 2s for the rest), while you're running around with base stats because you spend all your initial chargen points on skills and talents, the success differential is going to make it really hard for the GM to scale things appropriately, and really hard for the other players to trust that you'll be effective no matter what task you take on. Even "Easy, with a setback" becomes a real challenge.

So you'd need to either conform to the general expectations, or convince the rest to join you in something more flavourful.

I do think this game can be a bit more forgiving than D&D in that regard.

Building for non-optimization is still optimizing.

"Character building" should be building towards a goal. A great fighter? A goofy nerf-herder? A crazy cat-lady?

Having been through this discussion a million times in as many games in a half-dozen systems, I care about two things:
1: Is my/your character good at doing the thing?
2: Is my/your character's capability, or lack thereof, hindering enjoyable gameplay?

The problem with telling people not to optimize, is that is assumes they know what the optimal choices are. A lot of "building your character wrong" comes down to simply not knowing the system well. A lot of the base choices in D&D 3.5 are just bad . Even within the context of a "PHB only" question. When compared to the broader official material, they're even worse . But you have to have a certain level of system mastery to understand why things like Weapon Focus are actually not as good as they seem. Once you understand that, then you can make informed choices on builds. But you have to understand why a choice is good or bad before you can make a de-optimized build decision.

If you're just telling people to "pick whatever you want" you're not really helping them, especially if "what they want" is to be good at doing the thing they want to do. They quite literally don't know . Telling people to pick whatever flavor of ice-cream they want from 101 flavors isn't helpful if they've never had it before, or only ever tried chocolate and vanilla.

Further, optimization works great when everyone in the party specializes. There are some systems (like D&D 3.5) where the Wizard or the Cleric or the Druid can dominate all realms of the game, but that's not an optimization issue. That's a system issue. You can't fix it by telling people to not optimize. If you do you only reveal how badly everyone else does at those realms and how difficult it is for some classes to optimize at all .

Alternatively, optimization can work great when we're all awesome at everything!

A game doesn't necessarily need to mechanically challenge the characters. It needs to be fun for the group. If the group(GM included) is having fun steamrolling through everything, who cares?

A player who prioritizes their enjoyment over the group, regardless of if they're optimized, will be problematic in any group-based game.

Every time I see a barbarian with a heavy crossbow, I say to myself that person is trying to passively aggressively pvp the party.

4 hours ago, False God said:

Building for non-optimization is still optimizing.

"Character building" should be building towards a goal. A great fighter? A goofy nerf-herder? A crazy cat-lady?

Having been through this discussion a million times in as many games in a half-dozen systems, I care about two things:
1: Is my/your character good at doing the thing?
2: Is my/your character's capability, or lack thereof, hindering enjoyable gameplay?

The problem with telling people not to optimize, is that is assumes they know what the optimal choices are. A lot of "building your character wrong" comes down to simply not knowing the system well. A lot of the base choices in D&D 3.5 are just bad . Even within the context of a "PHB only" question. When compared to the broader official material, they're even worse . But you have to have a certain level of system mastery to understand why things like Weapon Focus are actually not as good as they seem. Once you understand that, then you can make informed choices on builds. But you have to understand why a choice is good or bad before you can make a de-optimized build decision.

If you're just telling people to "pick whatever you want" you're not really helping them, especially if "what they want" is to be good at doing the thing they want to do. They quite literally don't know . Telling people to pick whatever flavor of ice-cream they want from 101 flavors isn't helpful if they've never had it before, or only ever tried chocolate and vanilla.

Further, optimization works great when everyone in the party specializes. There are some systems (like D&D 3.5) where the Wizard or the Cleric or the Druid can dominate all realms of the game, but that's not an optimization issue. That's a system issue. You can't fix it by telling people to not optimize. If you do you only reveal how badly everyone else does at those realms and how difficult it is for some classes to optimize at all .

Alternatively, optimization can work great when we're all awesome at everything!

A game doesn't necessarily need to mechanically challenge the characters. It needs to be fun for the group. If the group(GM included) is having fun steamrolling through everything, who cares?

A player who prioritizes their enjoyment over the group, regardless of if they're optimized, will be problematic in any group-based game.

Very true. That’s one thing I like about this video in particular. She never once tells people that they should build a non-optimized character, rather gives suggestions on how to go about doing so, why it’s not inherently bad to make a character that isn’t “optimized”, and how those choices can enhance role play.

I feel like in SWRPG there's a baseline optimisation of 'Spend all your starting XP on stats', but you don't have to optimise beyond that for a fun game. I've probably spent most of my XP on talents I rarely use for my current character, because they're interesting. Just hit 500XP, and compared to the previous party I GMed for who did moderate optimisation we are vastly, vastly less powerful.

3 hours ago, Talkie Toaster said:

I feel like in SWRPG there's a baseline optimisation of 'Spend all your starting XP on stats', but you don't have to optimise beyond that for a fun game. I've probably spent most of my XP on talents I rarely use for my current character, because they're interesting. Just hit 500XP, and compared to the previous party I GMed for who did moderate optimisation we are vastly, vastly less powerful.

As a GM I address that one by allowing people to spend up to their starting XP on stats, but don't insist that they do it at Character Generation. Given that Oggdudes (which we use) will flag it anyway, and doesn't distinguish character gen, that lets you keep balance whilst opening up options.

The general idea is fine. What I usually do is come up with a concept for a character first, then try to see how to make that idea successful. Often my concept is flawed from the beginning and there is no way to make it perfectly optimized, and that's okay. I've had characters who lag behind in some ways but are extremely fun and to me that's what matters.

But I've also been at tables where a person has tried to put together an idea and did it "wrong" and was frustrated. I was in a game (not Star Wars) where someone had a melee character who was no very strong at all physically, and she was frustrated that she was often unable to penetrate enemies' defenses. It often took away her fun, because she had pumped up the character's combat skills and came up with a cool costume and had flashy powers, and wanted the character to be a real force in hand-to-hand fighting, but just couldn't hit hard enough. At some point I let her know that melee combat in that game pretty much mandates a lot of strength or it doesn't work. She did eventually get some weapons that overcame her lack of strength to a degree, and she went from doing no damage most of the time to usually being able to hurt things if they weren't too tough. But she definitely would have enjoyed herself more with some optimization.

That's the key to me... What you're doing works if you're having fun doing it. Don't ignore optimization, the insistence that you should just experience a "bad" character is terrible advice and I feel like the video is made by someone who is trying to be edgy for its own sake. It's not a good video. But totally min-maxing and only doing the most optimal thing is not necessary, I'll agree with that much.

12 hours ago, Darzil said:

As a GM I address that one by allowing people to spend up to their starting XP on stats, but don't insist that they do it at Character Generation.

That's a really simple and really effective house rule. I will likely implement that if I choose to run another game with this system.

12 hours ago, Darzil said:

As a GM I address that one by allowing people to spend up to their starting XP on stats, but don't insist that they do it at Character Generation. Given that Oggdudes (which we use) will flag it anyway, and doesn't distinguish character gen, that lets you keep balance whilst opening up options.

As a question, since I do something similar, do you just allow them to spend the "character creation" cost to upgrade a stat? Ie: 2->3=30xp?

A follow-up question... Does “up to their starting XP” exclude the bonus XP they get from extra obligation at character creation?

Interesting video. I mostly think about my character concepts on a scale from beeing a specialist to generalist. Specialists probably beeing more optimized, while generalists are less so.

My current character is a specialist, a technician with high intelligence, and a lot of XP in a lot of the int-based skills, mainly mechanics, computers, medicine and talents that help these skills. Only a few skills outside the characters area of expertise. So the character could be called min-maxed or optimized. But I feel that specialized is a better word for it, she's a highly trained, specialized mechanic.

After playing a specialist, my next character tends to be a generalist, with a wide range of skills and characteristics but probably nothing above 3 and often my generalist characters tend to be less optimized when choosing species, career, specialization etc.

The Idea behind the Video is awesome. I myself tend to often come up with wierd/strange/exotic concepts.

But based on my own experiences this whole thing comes down to the system you try to acomplish this.

And from all the ones i played myself, DnD is probably the worst - character development is massively restricted from the get go (especially since multiclassing has attribute minimum requirements and is an optional rule to begin with, plus there are only some combinations that actually work together at all) and the whole f***ing game is a number crunch festival. Just throw a challenge rating appropiate encounter at a party "build wrong" and there likely will be a TPK in reach every single time.

Even Shadowrun, where optimization is a well known guest at the table so you can even attempt the heist jobs, you can "build wrong" and still be a useful part of the group.

8 hours ago, atama2 said:

A follow-up question... Does “up to their starting XP” exclude the bonus XP they get from extra obligation at character creation?

If I were to use this house rule, I would allow extra Starting XP taken at character creation (by whichever means the specific game line being used allows) to be included in the spending limit just as if those were spent at the start of the game.

5 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

If I were to use this house rule, I would allow extra Starting XP taken at character creation (by whichever means the specific game line being used allows) to be included in the spending limit just as if those were spent at the start of the game.

What house rule are you talking about ? And how long haven't you read the SW RPG character creation rules ?

Because starting XPs are the only XPs that can be used to raise attributes directly. And the 10 XPs bonus you can get at character creation counts as starting XPs and can be used for raising attributes.

33 minutes ago, WolfRider said:

What house rule are you talking about ? And how long haven't you read the SW RPG character creation rules ?

Because starting XPs are the only XPs that can be used to raise attributes directly. And the 10 XPs bonus you can get at character creation counts as starting XPs and can be used for raising attributes.

The one Darzil mentioned earlier, so if someone should be checked for reading abilities it's not HappyDaze...

1 hour ago, WolfRider said:

What house rule are you talking about ? And how long haven't you read the SW RPG character creation rules ?

Because starting XPs are the only XPs that can be used to raise attributes directly. And the 10 XPs bonus you can get at character creation counts as starting XPs and can be used for raising attributes.

It's a reference to this house rule:

On 12/3/2020 at 5:55 AM, Darzil said:

As a GM I address that one by allowing people to spend up to their starting XP on stats, but don't insist that they do it at Character Generation. Given that Oggdudes (which we use) will flag it anyway, and doesn't distinguish character gen, that lets you keep balance whilst opening up options.

I don't think anyone misunderstands the character creation rules, this is an idea to allow someone to spend XP after character creation on stats but to not put more than the starting amount of XP into stats.

The house rule is interesting and makes sense to me. So let's say you have two different people playing Gands, Bill and Ted. Gands start with 100 XP. Bill makes a Smuggler (Pilot) and Ted makes a Hired Gun (Marauder).

Bill invests 30 XP to raise Agility to 3, another 40 to raise Agility to 4, and 30 to raise Cunning to 3. That's all of his XP. He will raise his skills and buy talents with acquired XP during play.

Ted on the other hand raises his Brawn to 3 for 30, and then 4 for 40, spending 70 total XP out of the 100. He leaves it there, figuring he wants to focus on melee weapons and being tough. He then spends 30 XP buying the entire top tier of Marauder talents (4 talents for 5 XP each, at 20 XP total), and grabbing the second tier rank of Feral Strength for another 10 XP. He's a fierce monster of a Gand.

In the course of play, Ted wishes he'd invested some XP into raising his Agility to 3, because he decides he also wants to use a blaster. He saves up 30 XP and the GM allows him to spend that using his house rule because he hadn't spent the full 100 starting XP on stats.

When all is said and done, Bill has spent 100 XP on his stats. Ted has spent 100 XP on his stats. They each have the same distribution of stat numbers, just across different stats (Bill has 4 Agility and 3 Cunning, Ted has 4 Brawn and 3 Agility). The 30 XP that Ted saved up and later spent on stats, Bill has spent on getting some Pilot talents. If you look at their character sheets you can't tell which of them spent XP on stats at character creation and which one spent that XP to raise stats later. Even though Ted was allowed to break the rules for spending XP, in the long run he wasn't able to do anything that he couldn't have done had he invested his XP differently at the start. The house rule is just making the game a bit more forgiving if someone has "buyer's remorse" later on. I don't think it's needed , but I don't see it doing any harm.

1 hour ago, WolfRider said:

What house rule are you talking about ? And how long haven't you read the SW RPG character creation rules ?

Because starting XPs are the only XPs that can be used to raise attributes directly. And the 10 XPs bonus you can get at character creation counts as starting XPs and can be used for raising attributes.

If you hurry, you might still be able to get into the Derek Zoolander Center For Children Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too.

18 hours ago, False God said:

As a question, since I do something similar, do you just allow them to spend the "character creation" cost to upgrade a stat? Ie: 2->3=30xp?

Yes. That keeps the spend (and limit as you can't go above the character creation limit) the same as for any other character.

25 minutes ago, Darzil said:

Yes. That keeps the spend (and limit as you can't go above the character creation limit) the same as for any other character.

Ah okay.

I ran the numbers and it comes out to about 75-125xp to reach a Dedication in any given tree, so after character creation I told my players they could spend 100xp to get +1 in any score be it 2 or 5 (and +1FR as well, since it has a similar investment cost). I wanted to encourage them to actually use the trees and the system, but if they totally didn't want to I have no problem with letting them pump up scores, just at a comparable cost to the people who did invest in the trees for those Dedications.

At some game tables (especially in D&D), there can be a subtle assumption that "everyone" will have an optimized character. You really have to 'know' your table. I've seen this condescension coming more from people who were not long time gamers with each other before. If it is online gaming, then it might be something to bring up when making characters. Some groups want the tank, face, pilot, etc... to all have 4's in the main characteristic and a well-chosen spec. That's their business, but you just have to know your group. I don't enjoy those groups, but in the FFG SW system, playing the one guy without a 4 in your main stat can leave you pretty ineffective.

I would disagree that it is new vs old players, where the older players (in game experience or age) are more of the optimizers. I think back in my nearly 30 years of gaming and the old crew of gamers never would talk down to someone who built their character 'wrong'. Actually, it was kind of a fun thing to do when you had a non-optimized character with lots of backstory. It was all about having a fun group. I never really heard about 'doing it wrong' until going online with Paizo forums, W.O.W., other online gaming, and such.

I think that our society is becoming more and more tech-savvy and 'smart'-oriented and that talking down to people comes from all ages. I believe the concept of building a character 'right' is mostly just the product of cultural pressure that has developed in the internet/data age. Everything is about data. There is a right way and a wrong way, no middle ground. There is a phone app that does that for you and "smart people" have that app. Smart phones, smart cars, smart TV's, etc... I believe the "your doing that wrong" in gaming comes from this and not just from veteran players who have figured out the best way(s) to build each class. That said, as someone noted above, there IS the new player who just does not know about other options and methods of character build and that's a bit different, but it should be done while focusing on character development and not just stats. Some groups want optimization and you just have to know that upfront. Just my opinion.

To echo what others have said above, it depends on the table.

My two cents for what I do and would suggest, start with either 43 or 333, 4331 if you can get it. Unless you started with 433, your first Dedication should put you there. Second should probably either put you to 443 or 4333. That balances specialization with generalization. Then build your skills based on your character, investing based on what you do, what you use, etc. So your Soldier: Commando gets badly injured and just completed his recovery? Pick up a rank in Resilience.

I build characteristics to both represent the character and make sure they are going to be decent at what they want to do. So for a mechanic, I might give a build of 323232.
I build skills based on what the character does and trains for. It tends to break down into a couple "key" skills, and a few supporting skills. So, Mechanics and Computers are the focus skills (the ones where the character shines), then I pick up Brawl, Vigilance, and Knowledge (Lore) to add flavor to the character. The skills you select beyond the baseline required to operate in the field in question are what make the character different. The least interesting builds I have seen are the ones with the most narrow or "purpose-built" builds.
I build talents based on a pre-determined path of what is useful and what would be fun, because they are not generally applicable and need more thought. That is not to say I do not roleplay my selections, but that largely comes on the macro level of selecting specs and (by extension) slates of talents. A few particular ones in a tree that I want for the character, and then the nice passives and bonuses that aren't particularly unique.

There are so many contingencies, situations, and differences that I can't state anything across the board, this is just a general statement.

To sum it up, I try to balance both, always keeping an eye on the story. That's what I try to build to and from.

I'll comment that all characters should be built to effectively fulfill their concept, and that in no way opposes the point of the video.

Playing a character who is narratively flawed and statted accordingly... is built to effectively fulfill the concept.

Building an 1800 xp character that is s narratively the most badass uber jedi that everyone else is in awe of, that a well built well rounded (i.e. optimized for utility not power) 700 xp character can trounce in *everything* the narratively uber character is supposed to be good at, and a well built specialized starting character can trounce in the the narratively uber character's area of focus, well that 1800 "narratively uber" character is not effective at fulfilling their concept, and a hypothetical player who built such a character should not be surprised when other players at the table don't treat him/her with awe and reverence after he proverbially writes a bunch of checks the his/her stats couldn't cash.

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

I'll comment that all characters should be built to effectively fulfill their concept, and that in no way opposes the point of the video.

Playing a character who is narratively flawed and statted accordingly... is built to effectively fulfill the concept.

Building an 1800 xp character that is s narratively the most badass uber jedi that everyone else is in awe of, that a well built well rounded (i.e. optimized for utility not power) 700 xp character can trounce in *everything* the narratively uber character is supposed to be good at, and a well built specialized starting character can trounce in the the narratively uber character's area of focus, well that 1800 "narratively uber" character is not effective at fulfilling their concept, and a hypothetical player who built such a character should not be surprised when other players at the table don't treat him/her with awe and reverence after he proverbially writes a bunch of checks the his/her stats couldn't cash.

And has such a character been brought up? Nope. 😝

3 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

I'll comment that all characters should be built to effectively fulfill their concept, and that in no way opposes the point of the video.

Playing a character who is narratively flawed and statted accordingly... is built to effectively fulfill the concept.

Building an 1800 xp character that is s narratively the most badass uber jedi that everyone else is in awe of, that a well built well rounded (i.e. optimized for utility not power) 700 xp character can trounce in *everything* the narratively uber character is supposed to be good at, and a well built specialized starting character can trounce in the the narratively uber character's area of focus, well that 1800 "narratively uber" character is not effective at fulfilling their concept, and a hypothetical player who built such a character should not be surprised when other players at the table don't treat him/her with awe and reverence after he proverbially writes a bunch of checks the his/her stats couldn't cash.

If you want to build a... let's say a supreme melee fighter, and you fail to do so with 1800 XP, than you are failing on purpose and are going out of your way to take non-melee specialisations and talents and Dedications.