Role player, hands' down. Power gamers are my anti-thesis. I attribute them to Forgotten Realms and middle schoolers. Sorry if I offend. Just my perspective is all.
But that said, it doesn't mean that I don't like a good, ol' fashioned scrap where the ring of steel and flash of magic resound! Quite the opposite, actually, but I like characters come to life from pieces of paper.
I enjoy a fairly close balance between stats and role playing - the statistics are there to help guide my interpretation of the PC. LEt's face it - low Wisdom or Intelligence (or any other stat for that matter) directly affect how your PC tends to com across in a given situation.
That said, if I had to pick between the two extremes in a choice of gaming groups, I'd take the role players every time. Power gaming can be fun, but it wears off fairly quickly in my experience. _________________ <div>Braggi, Swain and Varlet at Large<br /></div>
With new/young players, I allow them to roll up characters and adjust them as they like to maximize their attributes. It's fun for them and having trumped up PCs allows me to play the monsters they encounter in a more deadly fashion, so I don't mind it at all.
When I make up a character of my own nowadays, I try to give them an average attribute that would normally be their prime (eg. strength for a fighter) and give them a high attribute not normally associated with that class of character (eg. intelligence for a fighter). I develop a backstory to explain why the PC became a member of that class rather than one more appropriate to their stats, then I take as much advantage of the stats as I can.
For example, I have the 11 strength, 17 intelligence fighter specialize with ranged weapons or weapons with reach to avoid being on the front line of combat. I have her use the high number of skill ranks from her intelligence to become the party's specialist in certain skill areas. When she's attained a certain level in fighter, I might have her start taking levels in another class, like bard.
So, yes, I am min/maxing, but I do it in a way that is much more of a challenge than simply rolling up a fighter PC with an 18 strength, dexterity, and Constitution.
There does have to be a good story, though, or the whole thing is boring. So, I love both the roll playing and the role playing equally, I think.
By "both", I mean "Power gaming that is in character". You know, like...
"Lightly I toss my hat away,
Languidly over my arm let fall
The cloak that covers my bright array-
Then out swords, and to work withal!
A Launcelot, in his Lady's hall...
A Spartacus, at the Hippodrome!...
I dally awhile with you, dear jackal,
[Yes, I have been putting all +21 of my Combat Expertise + Improved Combat Expertise + Dodge in AC while I toy with you...but now it is time for Weapon Finesse + Power Attack + Weapon Focus + Weapon Specialization + Greater Weapon Focus + Greater Weapon Specialization + Improved Critical + Power Critical]
Then, as I end the refrain, thrust home!" _________________ - Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -
The question is this: are you a power gamer where stat's are the main goal,kills and max damage ? Or is it all about role playing ?
-Ah! The question that gets to heart of a few previous discussions!
I haven't answered the poll, because I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Somewhere in here:
Cebrion wrote:
Where's the "Both" option?
By "both", I mean "Power gaming that is in character". You know, like...
"Lightly I toss my hat away,
Languidly over my arm let fall
The cloak that covers my bright array-
Then out swords, and to work withal!
A Launcelot, in his Lady's hall...
A Spartacus, at the Hippodrome!...
I dally awhile with you, dear jackal,
[Yes, I have been putting all +21 of my Combat Expertise + Improved Combat Expertise + Dodge in AC while I toy with you...but now it is time for Weapon Finesse + Power Attack + Weapon Focus + Weapon Specialization + Greater Weapon Focus + Greater Weapon Specialization + Improved Critical + Power Critical]
Then, as I end the refrain, thrust home!"
...is what I'm getting at.
In what I like to call my "real life," I have ethical and moral motivations, emotions and eccentricities (role playing), but I've spent a good bit of effort into selecting "classes," improving my "stats," and collecting "skills" and "feats" which would make me more "powerful" (roll playing) in order to accomplish those goals.
Put another way, any character, particularly an adventurer, would put a lot of effort into maximizing his abilities, since it's important to his life and limb, that of his friends, and to the success of whatever "cause" he might chose.
Braggi wrote:
I enjoy a fairly close balance between stats and role playing - the statistics are there to help guide my interpretation of the PC. LEt's face it - low Wisdom or Intelligence (or any other stat for that matter) directly affect how your PC tends to com across in a given situation...
...and...
SirXaris wrote:
...For example, I have the 11 strength, 17 intelligence fighter specialize with ranged weapons or weapons with reach to avoid being on the front line of combat. I have her use the high number of skill ranks from her intelligence to become the party's specialist in certain skill areas. When she's attained a certain level in fighter, I might have her start taking levels in another class, like bard...
-These, too. In D&D 3.5, an intelligent character can do a lot physically by putting skill points into "Climb", "Jump", "Swim", "Balance", "Tumble" etc.
I, too, like to put a lot of emphasis on skills. There are those who prefer the 'combat monster,' but not me. Sure, I like a character to kick some butt. I've got a few of those (my fighter/priest of Trithereon, Belisarius, is one; my namesake, "Lanthorn," a bladesinger, can surely hold his own, too), but they are not shallow on the skill set, either. I am constantly adding to or improving proficiencies as my characters advance in level. The aforementioned 'combat monster' is good for one thing and one thing ONLY. Killing. In the end, when all the enemies are dead, that character is totally useless for anything else. You've basically painted yourself into a corner.
"Lightly I toss my hat away,
Languidly over my arm let fall
The cloak that covers my bright array-
Then out swords, and to work withal!
A Launcelot, in his Lady's hall...
A Spartacus, at the Hippodrome!...
I dally awhile with you, dear jackal,
[Yes, I have been putting all +21 of my Combat Expertise + Improved Combat Expertise + Dodge in AC while I toy with you...but now it is time for Weapon Finesse + Power Attack + Weapon Focus + Weapon Specialization + Greater Weapon Focus + Greater Weapon Specialization + Improved Critical + Power Critical]
Then, as I end the refrain, thrust home!"
Many moons ago our crew played a 2e campaign and decided to min/max/power-game. It was fun for a few sessions, but it ultimately proved very fatal for most of our characters, and our DM was not in TPK mode. I think I cycled through 2 or 3 different characters in the span of 2.x adventures. There's just something about the "realism" of some lower stats to enhance the "fight or FLIGHT" response... it increases survivability.
Groups I participated in had more fun when we didn't really sweat the numbers so much. Oh, but we didn't enforce "non-power" gaming either--if a character was crummy or amazingly average, we'd allow a re-roll. (I'm a champ at that btw. Can get all 9s and 10s every time)
Happy with the results so far. Like I said power gaming cannot sustain a long lasting campaign. It gets old fast, and takes away a lot of the fun of role-playing through many situations. Combat is good but feels like an accounting sessions when you hear do this with that weapon because it will deal x amount of damage a round. When weapon d is faster and lighter. Besides not every 8 character party can be dealt elven chain mail which fits.
I'm a role-playing power gamer. I design my characters around both what I want their personalities to be like and how I want them to be effective in combat. I sometimes enjoy role-playing a BDF with low Int and Cha as that let's me, as a player, relax more during sessions--I leave the heavy thinking to the guys playing smart and charismatic PCs (otherwise, my tactical nature will quickly assert itself and my character will start taking charge during fights). So I agree with others that there needs to be a "both" option.
Re: rules lawyer, guilty when it comes to 3.x. That's because, in Living Greyhawk, we kind of had to be to be effective DMs and Triad members, imo.
aurdraco appropriately posting as Tiny
Last edited by SC-Tiny on Sun Jul 29, 2012 11:04 am; edited 1 time in total
I have gamed with players that construct characters with mathematical precision few college courses achieve and grow irate with any interaction besides combat but still consider themselves role-players.
The one comment I will make on this. I've got one player in my campaign who doesn't care for role-playing. She's got an acting background but HATES improvisation, which role-playing pretty much requires. Her enjoyment of the game comes primarily from kicking the crap out of monsters. That said, she's never been a problem. Doesn't care about making her character into some hell-on-wheels unstopable monster. Never bugs me about wanting more magic or anything. Loves the background I made up for her character because it fits with how she views her, even though she doesn't really riff on it. Would I love for her to get into role-playing more than she does? Sure, but if she's enjoying the game and not causing any problems, I'm happy. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not necessarily an "either or" thing.
I found this in JSTOR. It deals with the psychological/sociological implications of role-playing, particularly D&D. In true academic style, it has a lot of "studies of previous other studies" talk, which they call (I'm not kidding) "ethnographies."
Some parts you can skim over.
It's heavy on exploring "role-playing" as opposed to "roll-playing"; they actually mention min-maxing.
I'm not sure that one of the groups they describe (the one DMed by the guy in the McDonald's uniform) is that typical. Up until now, I've always gamed with friends, with a few friends of friends thrown in, not complete strangers. I think Nerdcav's recent issue of dealing with the oddity of bringing a complete stranger into the group confirms my experience as more typical than the group they focus on.
A lot of the observations are interesting because they point out things so obvious that we take it for granted (the difference between "you" and "you"). But they never really discuss the possibility of players getting emotionally involved in their characters.
Check out note #3 on Gamemasters as a god...
Oh yeah, AD&D came out in 1979, not 1989. Maybe a typo.
It looks to me like someone found an excuse to turn D&D into a research project. Weasles.
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? Or is it all about role playing 
?
. And yes, my grammar sucks!
Surely there is 
