Poll: How powergamey/roleplaying are your CRPG parties?

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Because of some recent discussions about powergaming...

How do you usually make your characters/parties in IWD, NWN, BG and such games?

Are they made to optimize their efficiency (like jukkas party guides for IWD2)??? Are they made with no thought on how good they work together in the game???


For me I usually make parties with some general theme and an idea of how each character shoule be but then I optimize them be as good as possible while still following that theme (5).

 

#4 for me too. I try to build a well balanced party of powerful characters but I don't min/max or use any of the crazy buffing schemes that the real powergamers seem to love.

 

#4, with a tendency to #5. I do min-maxing, but I don't like heavy multiclassing or acting towards HoF mode in a normal game.

 

Numero quattro. "Pure" roleplaying is closer to masochism (imo), where the point isn't neccesarily to play through a consistent character, but to prove how badass you are by taking ridiculously under-powered characters through the game. I think of it as being similar to the "unter-variant" invasion that occurred in Diablo II v. 1.09 when everyone got bored of playing cookie-cutter Whirlwind Babas. Similarly, I've already gone on record with my thoughts about Jukka's UPP: OTT. Dammit, Einstein's Nobel prize winning paper on the photoelectric effect was two sides of A4 long. How can anyone spend as much time as Jukka analysing the mathematics of a videogame?

 

#3 Balanced for me
Most of my characters are created for roleplaying, but sometimes I pick some powergaming option to make the game more fun. If I want a dwarf fighter to simulate a battlerager I'm going to pick a fighter and give him a few levels (or most levels) as a barbarian. I even pick feats and skills which are mostly useless but they make sense in the great scheme of things. Courteous Magocracy for Paladin of Mystra or Forester for Rangers, Barbarians and Druids.

 

You are misusing the term "roleplaying". It is not the opposite of powergaming, and has (almost)*** nothing to do with how effective your character/party is. Puttinmg together a group of ineffective characters, or even a standard party (F+C+W+R), does not make you more of a roleplayer than someone who chooses a heavily minimaxed JUPP-like party.

Roleplaying has traditionally meant assuming the personality and motivations of a fictional character and interacting with other players who are doing likewise. By that standard, the real roleplaying opportunities in CRPGs run the gamut from nonexistent to mediocre (most of what some people have convinced themselves is roleplaying is nothing more than choosing which of the game designer's plot variations they'll watch, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book wih really good graphics).

Furthermore, IWD2 is extremely close to the "nonexistent roleplaying" end of that scale. Any roleplaying you do while playing this game is about 99% in your head, and only 1% related to what the characters on the screen are doing, mainly because 99% of the time the characters are just killing all enemies on the screen, picking up items, then walking forward to the next screen.


*** I say "almost" because some of the suggested builds posted on this board make me wonder if the player is intentionally "roleplaying" a group of adventurers who don't work well together and are generally ineffective at their job of adventuring. Whch is fine, if that's what the player wants.

 

@JT
This poll was not meant to take up the discussion of how roleplaying CRPG:s are. That has been discussed many times before.
Also the amount of roleplaying possible in IWD2 has been discussed. I think the conclusions there are that you have to make up some stories in your head if you want some more interaction with your characters.

This poll was just to see what you have in mind when you make your party in a CRPG like IWD2!

I know that roleplaying isn't the opposite of roleplaying but one quite common reason for people not making optimal builds is because they want "realistic" characters that fit's better to their own image of his/her. There are other reasons too (like versatility, balancing easy games without difficulty settings and so on).


It seems like most have picked #4 and not many choose the "extreme" alternatives 1 and 6.
Just keep on voting.

And one more question for you that have powerful partys:
How do you balance the difficulty in normal mode in IWD2 (or whatever other game you're playing). HOF mode usually don't need to be made more difficult to be a challenge but normal mode usually requires some changes.

Do you usually just play on harder difficulty setting? Play through the whole game fast? Just enjoy feeling super-powerful while you're beating really weak monsters? Use mods that make it more challenging?

For me to make the game more balanced I usually use really varied tactics that are sub-optimal. What I use depends on where I am and who I fight and not how optimal that is to that kind of enemy.
I also avoid resting and that makes it thougher for my magic-heavy parties. I usually avoid using much spells on weaker enemies, but the problem with that is that the battles where I use much magic are the battles that are supposed to be interesting and challenging and they end too fast with 6 high-lvl magic users blasting everyone in a few rounds.
Maybe I should start doing the opposite: blast my way through the easy (and sometimes booring) battles and enjoy the fun battles agains bosses and such without ending them in a few rounds?
At least I use quite different spell combinations in different boss battles.

 

#4 for me leaning towards #3. I want characters with good stats. Why in the world would I want a fighter with str of 8 or even 10 or a mage that couldn't learn and cast spells above level 3? I try to have a balanced party whether it is created by me or made up of NPC's. These are heroes or at least potential heroes after all.

 

#4.

We are all heroes: You and Boo and I, Hamsters and Rangers everywhere, Rejoice!!


I mostly do RP, with one or two PG ish characters.

 

When it comes to IWD2, that doesn't mean powergaming. Powergaming means to reduce one or more attributes to 3 to boost the other. Like making a Monk with 18 Wis, 18 Dex, 18 Str and 16 Con by reducing Int and Cha to 3. That's powergaming.
Usually, I do not reduce under 8 the attributes. Especially when it wouldn't make sense to reduce it.

 

I went for 4. I don't powergame, but the party has gotta be effective. If the party is crap, it'll die. Simple as that.

 

#6 for me...yeah I know its a role playing game, and the first 2-3 runs indeed were about themes and stuff...but after that, the next 7-8 runs were all about the powergaming...especially when you play in HoF mode...

 

I picked #2, I play with Pen & Paper characters near all the time. So I'd say at least 80% of my characters are based on characters I have played in P&P, the rest are generally characters I like from books that I try to recreate as similar as possible.

The only times I change skills or feats etc are when they are not available or the game won't "let" me (Like it refuses to let me take wizard levels becose my dwarf only has inteligence of 7! Baah!).

Some of my characters are efficient, some are not. But I generally enjoy mixing them together and make new parties, and as I make new characters in P&P I get new ideas for all the CRPG games for teaming them up with older characters etc.

*Most* of my teams need no help in making the normal game more difficult but occationally when I get a team that works to darn good together I up the difficulty a notch until I feel comfortable.

 

I've played the gamut - 1 thru 6. Most often #4.

 

Really? There was no one else who took #1?
I never plan my characters so that they could do Y at level X, but take skills/stats/classes that aren't suitable for anyone. The hells with XP penalty, if my fighter/barbarian suddenly wants to be a thief, he gets to be a thief.

 

You actually gave an example for powergaming.

Giving XP penalties to non-casters is an extreme form of powergaming, even more effective than min-maxing and too extreme for me. This allows the casters to cast powerful high level spells long before they are supposed to.

 

True if I'd taken the thief level for a reason and planned it from the beginning. Not true when I've taken it just for fun, to see what happens.

 

You think powergaming comes in when only when planned from the start? All my parties are planned from the start with the intention of taking them into HoF. This does not mean I'm powergaming them.

 

Well... yes? People don't just happen make a character with 1 CHA, do they?

I was talking about over planning, you're talking about basic planning. There's a difference.