Hi Henry,
Its interesting to hear your thoughts on this. I think the overwhelming majority of us are here for a deeper gaming experience than some of the "popcorn" mods we sometimes see in other living style campaigns. Like you we care about the Arcanis Story. And all its secrets. I for one am not leaving until I know the creation story of the val'Holryn. At the same time PCI has made game that is fairly complicated mechanically.
PCIHenry wrote:
...snip... So now in Legends of Arcanis, we are faced with a situation that certain players are once again optimizing themselves and waltzing through combats. Writers hear about this and want to up their game and we have the Arms Race all over again.
J
...snip...
This is why I have been and will remain against the need to optimize characters for combat. It's about the story, not how many points you did on average.
People need to get out of this D20/WoW mentality. The philosophy of the Arcanis system was that each and every character was a three-dimensional hero on his/her own. No one needs to specialize to be the Tank or the Healer; each character could theoretically be lifted from a group and be able to hold their own.
So – as I see it, we optimize at our peril because I just don’t see a way where we’re all winners in such an environment.
Henry I want to be respectful, but I think its possible that there some very mixed messages coming out from the campaign on this subject.
There is the prologue of the Codex of Hero's ... Which made me laugh when I read it, but is also an ode to the roll side of roleplaying. FTW indeed!
There is also your mod Desecration. My personal opinion is that it has the hardest final combat outside of the toughest scenarios in a BIs. And you also specifically tell judges that if they fudge the encounter to make it easier they should then award half xp to the players. Again its my opinion, but I can see a party lacking a couple of very competent fighters getting creamed or TPK'd. And of course if you want full xp for the mod then you have a strong incentive to be able to bring the heat.
The fight with the Fiendish Huntsman could also be pretty ugly for a party of patricians.
Do you see these as incentives to look at the mechanical side of builds? Or have i misinterpreted these two examples?