Talk:3.5e Character Optimization

Rating System
I would like to suggest a rating system for optimized builds, so viewers can get a feel for how powerful each build is. Things to considered would be DPR, AC, and average HP and saves, just to start. Criteria would be altered slightly to take into account what role the build would play in the party (Example: Defenders would be judged more on defense and ability to keep the monsters attention, while strikers would be graded more on DPR).

If anything, I would like to see a minimum requirements section for optimized builds, listing the standards for what is considered optimized. Again, this would be altered somewhat to take into account roles. While I know it will be difficult to judge exactly how a build is better than another, having minimum requirements will help new members see what we are looking for in optimized builds and gives us a set of standards to decide against for deletion.--SiraLinari 23:14, September 5, 2009 (UTC)


 * Just to get the ball rolling, I think a DPR of around 100-120 is the minimum for builds whose main focus is damage, though it might be much higher. That said, I think there should be at least 2 primary differentiations between builds; one for playable builds, where the character is made for play in an actual game, and the second being "theoretical" builds where the purpose is to showcase a mechanism of the system, such as the diplomancer, highest AC, highest Strength, and other world records. --Ghostwheel 02:40, September 7, 2009 (UTC)


 * Oops, I meant to reply to this earlier and forgot. I don't really like adding in such definite characteristics as DPR because even before you get to The Wish and the Word you get some of the most powerful classes and builds in the game not caring about damage at all. I think an attempt to define any universal traits is going to be met with failure and the best that can be done is a neutral one-or-two sentence description of what is going on. That said, I think a differentiation between "campaign smasher" and "not campaign smasher" is good. Surgo 02:44, September 7, 2009 (UTC)


 * A question, if someone has a build up and we see a way to improve it, is it constructive editing to do so as long as it doesn't take it out of its current category despite adding books? (SRD only, WotC material, 3rd Party material.) --Ghostwheel 02:51, September 7, 2009 (UTC)

Nav Page Formatting and General Optimized Build Properties
Gonna clean up the nav page here in a bit, though it's mostly intact as is. The big thing that needs to be cleaned up are the properties. The Optimized Builds use 3.5e Summary, 3.5e Race, and 3.5e Final Class Progression as their properties, and while we probable need to hack the 3.5e part off (with one of Surgo's bots) that seems pretty good otherwise. Optimized builds can probably take on some of the other class properties (like Class Abilities and Class Ability Progression), but we probably don't want to put those in the nav page. Anyone want to add any searchable item to the nav page before I tweak it? - TarkisFlux 04:18, October 8, 2009 (UTC)


 * Searchable things: Role (Defender, Strike, Arcanist, Misc), High/Moderate or Low skill points, melee, ranged, spellcaster, damage-dealer, utility, buffer... Think that's about it, though more may come to mind. --Ghostwheel 04:21, October 8, 2009 (UTC)


 * If you really want to try to ascribe roles to these things, we can have them show up in the table on this page and be sortable. It's the easiest of your list aside from class abilities and progression (which covers spellcasting and other stuff). The rest seems pretty subjective to my eye or would already show up in the summary anyway (which I don't think we can make searchable on these pages, though it will be once some of the other semantic stuff is up). That sound reasonable, or I am not getting what you were thinkin about Ghost? - TarkisFlux 04:37, October 8, 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... I guess a few of the builds (like the knightly charger) fill more than one role, so that doesn't really work. Eh, guess not really then *nod* --Ghostwheel 04:51, October 8, 2009 (UTC)

Lists
Could someone go ahead and split the builds into their different lists? Those would be "Core-only progressions", "WotC Progressions", "3rd Party Progressions", and "Half-Optimization", or something along those lines. For examples, Sacred Fist is 3rd party, and the grapplemancer and basic blaster are half-ops. --Ghostwheel 21:50, February 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * Likely to have the navigation page set up as such, with WotC, Other and Half-Ops each under their own header (as requested by Ghostwheel who has been managing most of the builds). This will likely call for using SMW properties instead of categories on each page. Something like "Optimization Type" with the 3 possibilities. Once it's figured out what to call all these things, the properties can be added to each article (wherever they fit at) and added into the preload as well. The old categories that will be outed can also be removed from each article. After that, the navigation page can be updated to have 3 headers, one for each type, explaining what the differences are and blah blah all that. So yeah, just need some official names and some go-ahead for this before I spend a bunch of time to goof something up hideously. --Ganteka Future 06:22, April 28, 2010 (UTC)

Incomplete Template
Just wondering what people want to do about crap builds that are unoptimized being on here--should we add the Incomplete template, or create a new one? Cedges removed the incomplete template here (mostly because of technicalities/semantics IMO), so should we change the incomplete template to encompass optimized builds as well, create a new template specifically for craptastic builds, or continue using it the same way and simply telling people that it needs to be actually optimized before removing it regardless of what the template says? --Ghostwheel 02:39, June 11, 2010 (UTC)

Character vs Theoretical Optimization
There should be a SMW property for whether a build is actually playable. Infinite damage/attack/stat/ect. builds and builds where the idea is to maximize *one* thing at the expense of everything else should be considered TO and builds meant to be played should be considered CO. Then you can separate CO from TO and possibly remove Ghostwheel's hatred of the Scimerang Slinger. --Havvy 08:55, 1 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm good with this and offer up one more catagory, themed builds. Sometimes I want to build a theme like "This is how you build Link" or "Solid Snake" in D&D.  They might be TO or OP sometimes, but more often they're just normal builds which achieves the stated goal of acting like a character.  It would do well IMO. -- Eiji-kun 09:44, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

3.5e Guide
There are out there handbooks and guides that aren't optimized characters. To increase the semanticness of the URLs, I propose adding new disambiguation tags: "3.5e Guide", "DnD Guide", and "4e Guide". DnD Guide would be used for guides that work for both 3.5e and 4e and for games that DnD is only a part of the list of.

Along with this, I propose changing the name of this page to 3.5e Optimization.

--Havvy 08:55, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Is anybody actually against this? --Havvy 07:01, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Not against it. Wouldn't mind you doing it. - Tarkisflux 17:51, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Page Rename
Along with my suggestions in the above section, I'd like to propose renaming this page to 3.5e Character Optimization. I can try to get permission to move handbooks and what-not onto the wiki and have this place be even more useful. --Havvy 05:19, 5 December 2010 (UTC)