The WotC Char. Op. Board - Tell us about your experiences an

[User3]

Obviously, with the recent November contest at the WotC CharOp board, a bit of bad blood seemed to have been stirred up between them and us. Although going forward, I think we should keep in mind that the regulars there have a lot more in common with the Gaming Den regulars than any other forum I can think of. At least from a D&D game mechanics perspective.

The reason for this thread is to get some feedback from the Gaming Den regulars on their own experiences over at the CharOp board throughout the years. Please ... PLEASE ... no bashing! Just constructive criticism or constructive compliments. We don't need FBMF shutting down this thread.

My own experiences have been that CharOp regulars like Snow Savant and LordShade (both seemingly not around any more) have very similar mechanical ideologies, hacker mentalities, and deconstruction approaches to 3.X D&D as folks like Frank, K, Lago, Catharz etc. Both of the former would bring to light glaring rules loopholes and gleefully the CharOp masses would embrace their ideas.

So anything good, odd, constructively critical, or controversial you have to say about CharOp is welcome.

And finally, new recruits from CharOp to the Gaming Den would probably be welcome. There are some astute and creative minds over there that probably are looking to explore the game from a more abstract and incisive angle. I believe Catharz is one of those who made the move over here.

[Draco_Argentum]

I remember Char-Op having two threads devoted to trying to prove one of Kkat's PrCs was definitionally overpowered. It was a ftr/wiz version of the Myth. The Char-Opers had nothing. One fool tried to say it was more powerful than a cleric archer. I asked Frank the do up a quick cleric archer and foolboy couldn't even understand the build.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I went to that board a long time ago. I was asking abotu a build that I was working on for an NPC villain.

I wanted to make a challenge for my players. So, I told them what it had to be (Gave a race, and about what I wanted it to do), and asked them for advice. (It was supposed to be a conjurer wizard type.)

Not one person told me how to make a good conjurer wizard. They all went off on bizarre tangents. Except the tangents basically were unimpressive. (For example, if I had asked for an archer, and told them I wanted it to be a ranger, and they gave me a cleric archer, that would be fine, it's related to what I asked. They kept making unrelated suggestiosn, one cahracter was actually a barbarian if I recall corectly.)

Now, that was a huge problem at that time everywhere on wizards.com, so it might not be so bad now.

[The_Hanged_Man]

I just remember any question seemed to be answered w/ a bustle of feats and PrC's from a scad of different books, and so wasn't really helpful . . . unless you were trying to post a l334 build on the Min/Max board. Some interesting ideas, though.

[Username17]

My big problem with the idea back when I was a WotC poster, was that it was staffed by a bunch of hungry kobolds that angrily protested incursions into their territory. That, and people did not actually look up rules very often. I was regarded as "terrifying" back then, because I had the tendency to back up my posts with word for word copies from the books with page numbers. That was me... and basically just me.

Other people had a tendency to argue from the standpoint of "nuh-uh!" or my personal favorite "Stop being such a cheesy bastard!" It was grating.

Generally, if you post anything more powerful than a Core Fighter, you are lambasted as a munchkin. And if you are perceived as the "munchkin" in a debate, you get no love from the moderators. If you came in and weren't a regular, you got flamed for being a munchkin whatever you were talking about, and the no-love rule applied.

The weirdest thing, though, was the mob mentality of rules lawyering that went on there. Noone went and read rules for themselves, one person would foment an argument based on some tenuous piece of logic attached to some text that he probably wouldn't even quote - and if that person was a regular, every oter regular would immediately accept the reading as gospel and shout out anyone who said different. All kinds of weird phantasmal rules were used by regulars and against newcomers that had no basis in written text anywhere. People would refer to threads rather than books, and the whole thing ended up looking basically nothing like the D&D written in my books. They seriously may as well have been playing a different game from the rest of us.

That's the way it was, back when it was called something else. The Min/Max forum perhaps? I forget. I never went there much, and if you wanted to have a real rules discussion you went to one of the other forums where Josh or Chonjurer went, not that heap of garbage.

I don't read it, and haven't for a long time. I don't have direct evidence that it is the same or different no as it once was. But let's just say that the contest fiasco hasn't made me salivating at an opportunity to go crawling back.

-Username17

[User3]

I really liked how, when I pointed out that a +200 to Int for year was possible using Epic spells and Planar Binding, my posts were deleted. That crap was hilarious.

So hilarious, in fact, that I stopped posting for a few years.

Or that time I won a contest and the Mod changed the rules after the fact to disqualify me.

That was great.

BEST TIME EVER.

Mod Edit: Link removed

[User3]

The board is good for helping newbies avoid dumb feats (Die Hard, Delay Spell), dumb spells (Find Traps, etc.), and dumb prestige classes and instead directed to pick the obvious good mechanical choices.

the number crunchers are also pretty savvy. maybe 1 out of the 10 regulars are worth listening to. otherwise, you are better off visiting other boards.

[The_Hanged_Man]

IMO, you were always better off just going to the Combat board, or the Spells board, and asking questions there. Less flaming, more actual quotes from the SRD or the books, less irrelevant tangents. The min-max board seemed more like a clique of peeps who had their own way of looking at things and talking about things.

[Josh_Kablack]

With the caveat that I haven't visted Char_Op in quite a long time, I find them largely irrelevant. They're alright for coming up with builds involving stuff from <hot new book X> and really bad at coming up with builds limited to stuff from the material sets I use as DM or which my DM allows in his game. And by really bad, I mean generally not interested in even trying.

From a year and a half ago, I do remember some spillover of my hate for the 3.0 Blood Magus and 3.0 Spellsword being resisted on that board - which seems a bad thing in an optimization forum. I mean threads about how take make the most optimized commoner belong there, but the attitude that commoner is a viable class in general doesn't.

[User3]

Josh, I recall the issue re: the Spellsword 3.0. The regulars agreed with you, the non-regulars were arguing with you. 3.0 Spellsword has NEVER been popular on the CharOp board except for at the most, a 4 level dip as a bridging PrC.

I also have serious doubts that a CharOp regular would ever in his right mind defend the 3.0 Blood Magus. EVER. Do you have a linky to that thread? Blood Magus has always been considered crap at CharOp. I do recall the novelty of a 1 level dip being discussed at times for the DC boost the class gave you. But more often than not, the Regs would laugh at you for even thinking of trying to integrate the Blood Magus and its horrific pre-req.'s as well as weak mechanics.

This is actually your fault, Josh. Or the petitioner who requests help from the CharOp folks. It falls on the petitioners shoulders to ALWAYS state which books he has access to. Otherwise, you'll get the most obscure tidbits of spells, PrCs, feats, and weapons thrown at you that you never knew existed in the various WotC D&D books in order to squeeze out the most "ultimate power" possible in a given build.

Min/max forums in general suffer from petitioners complaining at the wacko stuff suggested - when in fact the petitioners often ask for very open-ended and no-parameter guideline criteria for their given build. Ergo, beware what you ask for ...

[User3]

1101952136[/unixtime]]This is actually your fault, Josh. Or the petitioner who requests help from the CharOp folks. It falls on the petitioners shoulders to ALWAYS state which books he has access to. Otherwise, you'll get the most obscure tidbits of spells, PrCs, feats, and weapons thrown at you that you never knew existed in the various WotC D&D books in order to squeeze out the most "ultimate power" possible in a given build.

This is sometimes true, but it is also sometimes not true. I can't count the number of times I've looked at a thread asking for help and seen all kinds of bizarre things far outside the scope of what was asked for, book-wise. The board denizens are at fault for this at least as often as the petitioners are.

And, in all honesty, I find the "dig the most obscure tidbits out of the most obscure books" approach unhelpful. It's especially strange to see this held up as a good idea in the same week that people are demanding to have builds thrown out of the contest because "no DM would ever allow them".

--d.

[Josh_Kablack]

1101952136[/unixtime]]Josh, I recall the issue re: the Spellsword 3.0. The regulars agreed with you, the non-regulars were arguing with you. 3.0 Spellsword has NEVER been popular on the CharOp board except for at the most, a 4 level dip as a bridging PrC.

I also have serious doubts that a CharOp regular would ever in his right mind defend the 3.0 Blood Magus. EVER. Do you have a linky to that thread?

Seeing as it has to have been before 3.5 was released, and is therefore at least 15 months ago, I doubt it even exists anymore. Part of the resistance was due to a well-written "How to run a Blood Magus" thread having been posted to PrCs not to long before my rants.

This is actually your fault, Josh.

Yes, but not in the way that you are implying here. I'm well aware that everybody operates under a different ruleset. My complaint was that when I explicitly listed the materials set I was using and asked for suggestions I would generally get either no responses, or responses which used significant amounts of material from outside the set I had listed. That sort of reaction rendered the board irrelevant to me. Now of course, people who use broader sets of material in their games probably found it a lot more useful. And as a further caveat, I have to state that these responses came even longer ago, so that there were probably a largely different set of "regulars" posting then than there are now.

[Terror_Beach_Party]

This is sometimes true, but it is also sometimes not true. I can't count the number of times I've looked at a thread asking for help and seen all kinds of bizarre things far outside the scope of what was asked for, book-wise. The board denizens are at fault for this at least as often as the petitioners are.

Um, care to give us some examples? You make it sound like a consistently annoying occurence. To my knowledge, every time I see someone ask for information from a given set of rulebooks, I see that person get what they ask for. The rare wingnut who offers something outside those set of books is just that - rare.

[User3]

1101956000[/unixtime]]Um, care to give us some examples?

Not really. It's been several months since I hung out there with any enthusiam and a lot longer than that since I watched the build threads hardcore. If you're really enthused, you can probably find some, but until my cold clears up I really don't feel like digging.

Sorry if that bugs you. Oh, well.

1101956000[/unixtime]]You make it sound like a consistently annoying occurence. To my knowledge, every time I see someone ask for information from a given set of rulebooks, I see that person get what they ask for. The rare wingnut who offers something outside those set of books is just that - rare.

It by no means happens -- or, I should say, happened -- every time. There are a lot of helpful people who actually do read the guidelines and contribute things that conform to them. Unfortunately, there are also people (still helpful) who sometimes don't, or who just plain look right through them. This isn't a criticism -- it's happened to me.

More to the point, I think the default assumption of "anything goes" is a silly one. It is of course up to the people posting suggestions to fill in the assumptions if the original poster doesn't provide guidelines -- but the CharOpt board is like an auto broker who provides you with a six-wheeled, armored, ten-ton personnel carrier with a .50 caliber machine gun that gets 5 miles per gallon if you ask for "a car". Yes, yes, you should have been more specific, but honestly.

[erik]

1101956000[/unixtime]]Um, care to give us some examples? You make it sound like a consistently annoying occurence. To my knowledge, every time I see someone ask for information from a given set of rulebooks, I see that person get what they ask for. The rare wingnut who offers something outside those set of books is just that - rare.

It has been a long good while since I've been there, but one of the many reasons for leaving was that people couldn't follow the simplest directions. A newb says he can only use Core and wants to make an "X", and out of the woodwork come FRCS garbage, splat books, 3rd party material, etc. People would recommend buying new books rather than solving issues at hand.

The sycophants following people who can't back the simplest claims with any sort of argument were irritating. At least one of the "big names" abjectly refused to support any of his statements, ever. And they gave him the role of creating a stickied list of what was authoritatively "good". That was sickening enough right there to make me wanna leave.

In the end I left because nothing worthwhile was produced after a certain period (actually before it even became CharOp board, though I stuck around after the transition, in vain hopes something clever would be posted), and with my refusal to hop on the 3.5 bandwagon, my advice and opinions became increasingly irrelevant.

I also have serious doubts that a CharOp regular would ever in his right mind defend the 3.0 Blood Magus. EVER.

For what it's worth I may well have tried on either this board or the nifty message board to support that that class does have some uses. The lack of need for material components makes him a decent cohort item crafter for the thrifty-minded, if nothing else. Give him sanctum spell and then you can make wands and scrolls *cheap*.

As a one shot character (i.e. not so BBEG), he has some value with his 1/day abilties, if you build him as a Con-machine who uses Tenser's Transformation + Polymorph Self after throwing a boom spell to make people think they're fighting a typical wizard whose weaknesses would be HP and Fort.

[RandomCasualty]

1101975235[/unixtime]]
It has been a long good while since I've been there, but one of the many reasons for leaving was that people couldn't follow the simplest directions. A newb says he can only use Core and wants to make an "X", and out of the woodwork come FRCS garbage, splat books, 3rd party material, etc. People would recommend buying new books rather than solving issues at hand.

Yeah, I can certainly agree with that. I have never actually posted at the char op board, but several of my players have, looking for advice. They'd routinely recieve nothing but garbage advice, all based around books that were expressly forbidden from use. It seemed like the idea of "My DM won't let me use this class" was completely alien to them.

I think most of them are totally incapable of thinking outside the box, and just end up regurgitating old builds. The moment you tell them "You can't use X, Y or Z" they started giving you blank looks for a moment and then went right ahead and made a build using X, Y and Z anyway.

[Wrenfield]

Funny that, RC. A number of my players who seek C.O. forum advice over the years have routinely asked that board for tweaks and optimization advice and quality checks. To my knowledge, every time they have always gotten advice that fit within the parameters of the material they were looking for. Not all the advice was good, but since they explicitly stated what books they were using, they got suggestions from that array of books. James stated he got some suggestions from other books, but with the preliminary notification that the information was a good suggestion for him in the event that he got additional resources. And at the bottom of a post that gave him material he needed with the sources he stated.

Honestly, I think the vast majority of you complaining in this thread are using generalities to paint an overarching picture of chronic and systemic ineffectiveness at C.O. .. which just ain't true. I've been posting to C.O. for about 4 years (although I would not consider myself a regular), and it definitely has its problems and shortcomings. But without a handful of some definitive examples of proof threads from you guys, you all come across as a bunch of whining, bandwagonish bashers. Which the original author of this thread wanted to avoid.

There are some genuinely great posters at C.O. that have helped & collaborated with me and my players, pushed the envelope of creative buildcrafting, and provided excellent community support both in and out of the WotC boards. Examples over the years include Balthanon, Snow Savant, Stoned Golem, Lord Shade, Catharz, & Mommy was an Orc.

It's easy to overlook people like this since literally hundreds of people post at least on a semi-consistent basis at C.O. And its bad for for us Gaming Den folks to systematically lump hundreds of fellow gamers from a related demographic all into the crap-pile. C'mon .. hand out kudos where kudos are due. At least balance out some of the written filth you guys are handing out without blinking. We aren't a "good ole' boys" club here.

The sycophants following people who can't back the simplest claims with any sort of argument were irritating. At least one of the "big names" abjectly refused to support any of his statements, ever. And they gave him the role of creating a stickied list of what was authoritatively "good". That was sickening enough right there to make me wanna leave.

Clikml, I know what you mean. The 3.0 and 3.5 C.O. FAQ authors are not people who should have been picked to write such works. Unfortunately, both are the only people I think who actually wanted the daunting task to write such works. Sadly, the neccessity of consistent and constant FAQ updating is not being followed at the C.O. And as a result, the buildcraft methodologies and advice there are somewhat sub-par.

Last - I do remember the days when Clikml posted. As well as other good contributing folks like Grey Muse, Talen Mist, etc. He was very controversial quite often, but always well respected.

[RandomCasualty]

I can't speak of the CO boards as a whole, but I can speak of experiences I have had with it. And regardless of what may or may not be true about the boards, the experiences I have had with it have been predominantly negative.

[Draco_Argentum]

1102007299[/unixtime]]
Honestly, I think the vast majority of you complaining in this thread are using generalities to paint an overarching picture of chronic and systemic ineffectiveness at C.O. .. which just ain't true.

I'm useing the only three threads I've participated in to paint an overarching picture. The two thread's about Kkat's Eldritch Knight and one where people were trying to prove that Imbue With Spell Ability dosen't let you qualify for PrCs.

All three threads had poor ruleslawyering and bad min/maxing. In the two EK threads the only support I seemed to be getting was from a few non-charop people.

You can claim this isn't a representitive sample but it sure isn't inspiring.

[Wrenfield]

Draco,
I just ran a search of your username with search words such as "eldritch knight", "eldritch", "kkat", etc. And it appears that no threads exist along those lines anymore. Perhaps those posts were from about 2 years ago or older when the last archive purge took place. Nor have you posted anything in CharOp since then. Of course, if you posted that stuff under an alternate ID, that changes everything.

In that case, your strategic assessment based upon a few fading memories of old isn't very inspiring either. Heck, the Nifty board and the Gaming Den has changed considerably in the last 2 years.

Even on a quarterly basis, "regular" poster turnover is significant at the WotC & EnWorld boards ... as well as smaller ones like ours.

[GhostWhoTalks]

The poster "turn over" rate is one of the things about the WOTC boards in general that I think should most probably be ringing warning bells somewhere.

When I look at the details of the posters the majority of them seem to be dated to joining LESS than a year ago. I've been around there on and off for longer than the date on my own acount (which is only a couple of years old) and thats the way its basically ALWAYS been as far as I can tell.

Its a bit of an oddity to see someone with an account over a year old, and pretty much a remarkable rarity to see anyone with an account anything over two.

Maybe its because somewhat like me if they go and post or reply to anything on wotc, (other than pure unadulterated uninteresting fluff posts that is), anywhere, not just in CO, the result is almost invariably complete degeneration into stupidity and the arrival of a bunch of trumped up idiots who won't listen to reason and insist their baseless opinion is not only fact but the only true art of role play (against which all else is munchkinism). Then you just go "screw that, I'm not bothering with that place".

Unlike others once every 6 months or year or so I dig up my accounts password and go back for a lookie, but its the same story every time.

Just off the top of my head I remember people defending ECL as a PERFECT system totally pissing me off, idiots insisting wizards DON'T know their own spells pissing me off (and my account at the time "mysteriously" not letting me post anything for a month or something without any official explanation), and now this.

And almost inevitably as long as they do it in the name of the war against "munchkins" (those imaginary bastards who are abused to justify every stupid rpg argument in existance) they seem to not get themselves kicked in the nuts by authorities no matter how unreasonable and abusive they get, but someone arguing from a purely rules or even a simple game playability stand point has to be VERY careful how they step and precisely which words they use or else.

Not to mention some significant difficulty with getting away with critism of WOTC materials without similar bastards chiming in with stupid "Well IIIII think its perfect, so therefore its great!" lines, or often even offensive attacks on the critic.

So yeah, it seems like WOTC boards in general have a pretty bad rep, probably because so many people have been members for such a short time before they get offended into leaving or booted off for arguing from any standpoint other than "munchkins suck, WOTC rules!" or responding too angrily to the morons who repeatedly and venemously do argue from that standpoint.

[GhostWhoTalks]

And while I'm at it... have you guys ever read some of the horrific things various people advise poor inexperienced young DMs should do to their gaming buddies when they seek help in the "Whats a DM to do?" board? I mean seriously holy heck!!!

"Hi, I'm a first time DM and my buddy Joe was confused by alignment rules and pissed off the paladin/is a wizard and is too powerful/has half as many hit points as everyone else and keeps dying/appears to be a little slow on the uptake"

Then a pile of people advise dropping Tarresques and rule zeroed lightning bolts on the whole party to kill them in retribution.

About as many or more will suggest he simply disown all his friends and never game with, or possibly even speak to, them again.

A bunch more advise him to attack them with bricks/shovels/fistsdice/other weapons. (Which even if a joke is really NOT a helpful thing to add, and some of them really don't sound like their joking).

One or more advise him to start over and convert to a "low magic" setting, on the fly, despite being a begginer, despite the fact thats screwy even if you're good...

Others will tell him his problem is that the player/players are munchkins and don't know how to role play and should be kicked out, or taught the wonders of real role play by being forced to play as commoners next time round.

Others still will tell him HE is the problem, and he just plain sucks. Which may or may not be true, but just doesn't help either.

... seriously... piles of counter productive crazy talk is the NORM for advice/discussion almost anywhere on WOTC. From day one that newbie DM is being initiated right into the pure insanity of it.

[Draco_Argentum]

1102129366[/unixtime]]Draco,
I just ran a search of your username with search words such as "eldritch knight", "eldritch", "kkat", etc. And it appears that no threads exist along those lines anymore.

Its pre the latest software change. You won't find it. Although if you really want I quoted the guy I was argueing with in the cheese thread at Nifty.

The latest debacle isn't inspireing me with hope either.

Not that it matters since I'm not a min/maxer and didn't find char-op interesting in the first place. But it just isn't the awesome place its touted as.

[Lago_AM3P]

As we all know, the flak created by the Wish and the Word will probably impose this crack-ass standard for contests from now on.

Seriously, what the hell is a reasonable character? I've never heard of it. The closest thing D&D has ever defined as a reasonable character is the wealth-by-level limits, which are an OPTIONAL rule. I'm serious.

Two nights ago on the carrier, I played in a high-level tabletop game where the DM let me have my core-only Red Wizard of Thay who had golem, nymph, and choker on backorder and let me abuse circle magic (I was careful not to generate any unstoppable save DCs, however) yet felt it was necessary to NERF someone else's Shintao Monk.

I have also played in a game with a different DM who assigned reasonable characters according to how big their numbers were. He let me, honest to god, play an Initiate of Mystra (his eyes kind of glazed over when I tried to explain the antimagic thing and caster levels, so just told me that all of my spells worked in that field). Yet he rejected someone else's waverider character who was on a flying, air-breathing fish, claiming it was too silly.

These are things that happened to me less than a month ago, and both of the DMs are pretty reasonable and grounded in the rules. Yet I can definitely see people rejecting my characters and accepting other people's characters.

Seriously, contest bastards. What the hell?

[Lago_AM3P]

While we're at it, a thought on the Wish.

In 3.0E, having unlimited money really didn't do anything for you. Even monks pretty much could afford all of the items they could need by level 17, and prayer beads of karma were so cheap that you could accumulate a pile of caster level bonuses with what they gave you. The best sword you could get in 3.0E was a +1 vorpal, ghost touch, something x3 sword, which was well within the means of fighters.

In 3.5E, however, having unlimited money does stupid things like letting you become a demilich, crafting items way in advance of your level, making intelligent items mind-bendingly powerful, and giving you an unlimited caster level bonus.

As long as we got rid of the time-reset thing and the simacrulum, unlimited planar bindings/allies thing from Wish, the Wish using 3.0E wish wouldn't be all THAT bad in his home edition. He'd still run away with the game, but, yeah.