Talk:3.5e Optimized Character Builds

Half-Optimizations

I believe it would be a good idea to create a seperate branch of this page: Half-Optimizations. This would be any cool tricks that are no doubt useful, but too small to warrant their own Builds. --Sir Milo Teabag 17:08, 16 January 2008 (MST)

Added. --Green Dragon 14:19, 18 January 2008 (MST)

it would be nice if this was added to the omptimized character build template. i didnt know how to make one until i mimicked one of them. --Hijax 07:10, 21 February 2009 (MST)

Class Guides

Wouldn't it also be a good idea to add a section for class guides (like the Artificer's Player's Guide?)? This would open a whole new field for those who know how to play a particular class very well and would like to teach others to do the same. -- OptimizationFanatic 20:36, 23 January 2008 (MST)

Added. --Green Dragon 23:01, 23 January 2008 (MST)

Indeed, some of the Half-Optimizations might do better under here... --Sir Milo Teabag 06:33, 24 January 2008 (MST)

Perhaps. -- OptimizationFanatic 21:55, 24 January 2008 (MST)

And the Wizards' Handbook is complete, making it the longest article posted in this section. -- OptimizationFanatic 17:05, 25 January 2008 (MST)

Gestalt

Just a question. I have made a gestalt build on another site and wanted to post it here. I just wanted to make sure that gestalt builds were allowed. FYI, the build was for the Magnificint Monsters challenge on Giant In the Playground.--Ghostie1337 22:41, 4 April 2008 (MDT)

It certainly should be. Please preface your build with Gestalt or something, though :) -- OptimizationFanatic 20:09, 15 April 2008 (MDT)

We now actually have a Gestalt Optimization, thanks to Yours Truly, and i was wondering if they deserved their own category, to separate them from the standard builds. What do the other optimizers/Admins think? --Ganre 00:53, 5 May 2008 (MDT)

Why not, Category:Gestalt it is. --Green Dragon 23:47, 5 May 2008 (MDT)

Monk

A small optimisation that isn't enough to give it its own page. Uses "Ultimate Prestige Classes 1", "Complete Warrior", "The Book of Exalted Deeds", the eberron book and the srd. It is gasalt and it has classes as follows... 12 monk/5 fighter/5 war shaper/2 student of the dragon.

It is linked here.. [1] --Sabre070 07:36, 13 October 2008 (MDT)

Removed. --Sabre070 22:10, 2 December 2008 (MST)

A ton of the monk builds on here take levels of Ranger to get Two-Weapon Fighting when it it doesn't work that way. Is there a tag that should be attached to these and similar builds that don't conform to the rules? --Ghostwheel 07:55, 21 July 2009 (MDT)

Where's the optimization?

I've been looking through a number of these builds, and most of them seem bereft of any optimization, built either for flavor or a mishmash of things that don't work towards a specific goal rather than optimizing a character. Perhaps some pruning might be a wise choice? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.169.236.139 (talk • contribs) . Please sign your posts.

We are looking at implementing a new (easy to use) rating system that would apply to all articles on the wiki. That will probably solve the problem here. --Aarnott 07:44, 25 June 2009 (MDT)

Any idea when this goes into effect? Ghostwheel 02:07, 6 July 2009 (MDT)

Not sure yet. We first need to set up a vote, wait for the results (which will almost certainly go through), and then implement it. Give it another week or so at the very least. --Aarnott 08:10, 6 July 2009 (MDT)

I believe we should avoid using a rating system, however, I do have a suggestion. How about a template that a person can put at the top of a page that they thin is suboptimal, something that says "the optimization of this build is currently being questioned. for more information see the talk page." or such. Then, that person can list their issues with the build in the talk page. If the author agrees and alters, then remove the template. If not, and for valid reasons (i.e. "this optimization was built with only certain books" etc.) then the person who had the initial complain can make a variant page building it the way they saw fit. Then, finally, the pages could share a link to each other at the top (and any other similar pages). This avoids the issues that anything called "rating" typically gets, and will also provide positive feedback for authors of builds.   Hooper   talk    contribs    email   15:17, 2 September 2009 (MDT)

New category or subtype

Many of these contain things that aren't allowed in many games (Savage Species (3.0) material, Leadership, Hulking Hurlers, Divine Metamagic, and so on). Could we make a category for things that might be considered "cheesy"? Or would that be too pretentious? --Ghostwheel 02:51, 14 July 2009 (MDT)

Similar Builds

A few of the builds presented here are quite similar to one-another, differing by only a class level or three. How would one go about merging them, or presenting one as the variant of another? --Ghostwheel 03:17, 14 July 2009 (MDT)

I'm not usre if I would go that far, but we could certainly link similar builds, that would be neat. --Ganre 22:30, 16 July 2009 (MDT)

Mysterious "d"

Anyone else notice all the optimizations have a "d" after them now? --Ganre 05:26, 26 December 2009 (MST)

Yeah. When I made this page use SMW (the un-commented out information on the page) an extra d (Optimized Character Build) showed up. Who knows. --Green Dragon 21:52, 27 December 2009 (MST)

Page works strange

Tried IE, Mozilla and Opera, from my, and from some other computer, nad page keep looking like this in this section This wasn't case at the begining, it worked just fine few weaks ago. --Leviathan616 08:56, 17 July 2010 (UTC)Leviathan616

This is another side effect of when GD moved the wiki. As far as I know this, and a few other errors, are still plaguing the wiki, but he's working on a fix. It's not you, it's the wiki. It should be working again "soon", he said. --Badger 17:57, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Tough Love

I think this section needs some. We need to categorize it better, maybe make it so all the builds don't show up on one page, or start removing some of this stuff. It looks really bad, and the d at the end of all the titles still makes me sad. --Ganre 14:50, 13 February 2012 (MST)

It's also smattered with 4e builds now which have no place in the 3.5e sections... - Sleaker (talk) 23:14, 19 October 2012 (MDT)

Role Playing vs. Roll Playing

I've been looking at quite a number of these builds, and I'm realizing that a lot of them are just number play with class, abilities, and magic items. A lot of these classes are strung together in a mix and match kind of way and don't make sense. Also these builds are very specialized in usually one area, like "high AC", or "awesome crit range". Honestly, as a D.M., I would never allow a character to get that overpowered. I'll admit it would be fun to use some of these builds on a "fudge" around hack and slash, but beyond that I feel most of these builds break the game. It looks like roll playing took presidence over role playing. I would like to see a back story on how they became a Barbarian/Dervish/Spellblade/Duelist(<-just a random example, not saying this wouldn't work). So, what happens when your character is in a situation where he loses his magic items and/or abilities, being now rendered ineffective, do you just die.

I would like to see more well rounded character builds designed to handle more situations than just combat. If these are builds your actually playing maybe add a back round story of your character, I love back round stories. In all my years of playing the best characters at my table have always been the ineffectual ones. The Wizard who made a vow to never use hurtful magic, or the Barbarian who hardly had the strength to pick up a greatsword. I guess what I'm trying to say is, to me an "optimized character build" is not just how you play your numbers, but how you play your character as well.

You are in the wrong section. This area is for people who like to play with the system. If you don't that's cool, but I'd prefer not to be critizied for how I play the game. Also, just because I have optimized my character doesn't mean I do not role play them, as the terms are not mutually exclusive. --Ganre (talk) 13:02, 15 November 2012 (MST)

I am not entirely sure about when to make a new page so here are two ideas:

1- "DM Knows I'm a Lucky Man..." Combine Complete Divine "Piety Feats", Advanced Player's Manual "Luck Stat" choosing the variant luck/day, AND Book of Roguish Luck Luck points. Effect- You now at level 1 should have enough luck for most any adventure. This is at level 1. There are more than enough feats you can take from CD and BoRL to continue this insane luck streak for close to if not fully the other 20 levels.

To Munchkinsize: Use variant from APM "Luck Stat is originally based off of (WIS + CHA)/2. Use BoRL's Luck is based off of CHA. To continue, one of the oft-quoted potential for abuse comes from a tattoo which grants CHA Mod to other bonuses- To quote from Pun-pun- "Bellflower Tattoo of the Tattooed Monk (Complete Warrior). This ability allows Pun-Pun to add his charisma modifier as an enhancement bonus to any one of his ability scores." Already we are triple dipping into CHA, to of course bring up luck. Now, Pun-Pun also brought up the Void Disciple's "Void Release" (which is 3/day and duration of 1/2 Void Disciple levels) " The second ability is the Void Release ability of the Void Disciple (Complete Divine). This will allow Pun-Pun to use his highest ability score modifier in place of a lower one. " Now, for a few short rounds (Probably best becoming a void disciple), you have added your CHA Mod to your LUCK stat, which of course then you replace your CHA with LUCK to further increase luck. But who says we are going to let it stay temporary? How about a Permanency? (If you can think of a better idea, like for instance Sudden Extend Ability paving the way for Sudden Persistent Ability (I am quite certain that there is such feat somewhere based off of Unearthed Arcana about Enhancing supernatural abilities)).

2- "Mordankanien (or suitable renown sorcerer) is my familiar!" Benefits (for the tutor) include resurrection has no cost, free SR, able to be affected by student spells for self, free mental link, free intelligence (and probably WIS or CHA). Benefits (for the student) include having the tutor around to clean up the mess (nobody expects the toad to cast timestop...). How? Reincarnation means you take the form of an animal (dm's probably being really mean killing your uber character and then reincarnating him as a toad...) The cost at its simplest: Die, be reincarnated as an animal (familiar animal provides those tiny benefits if you were lucky enough), take natural spell, be your former (ahem!) student's choice for their familiar (if you are a little late, well, you ought to be smarter than both the student AND his familiar, shouldn't be hard to arrange a death for the familiar position...)

To Munchkinsize: You may want to realize that just because you are a familiar, doesn't mean that you can't have your own familiar... It makes your student look like he is carrying around a menagerie, but hey, why can't 2 or more archmages travel around with a lvl 1...? Other ideas... Druids are excellent choices. In fact, they can probably change back to human and if not, who is going to suspect that toad could shapechange into a wolf? Also consider, Druids don't need to die... they just have to be in that shape when the familiar ritual takes place. Another idea, that viper familiar could be a Pun-Pun...

Note: Spellbooks take a bite out of wizard's usefulness here, but if you taught your student everything he knows, you could borrow his...

Fey-yell (talk) 04:24, 23 January 2014 (MST)

Wrong Editions

This page includes builds that aren't for 3.5e. I can only imagine it has something to do with the fact that dot "." is used as part of a special notation in queries. But I'm really just guessing. --MaatMons (talk) 23:15, 2 October 2017 (MDT)

Does anyone know how to fix the page to filter out 4e and 5e builds? This is still a problem. Tag365 (talk) 21:08, 8 June 2021 (MDT)

Quality

I recently came upon this collection of builds, and my impression was very negative. Most "optimized builds" are not even finished articles, with most sections still being the template, and no optimization whatsoever. Seriously, such articles are not even stubs. They shouldn't have been made in the first place, not until the author is finished with a first version. Other articles are obvious builds, nothing special, and not even optimized. In the discussion section "Where's the optimization?", some of those issues were already mentioned a full decade ago. And I don't think a rating system alone suffices. This needs one strong moderator who has no problem kicking out bad articles (maybe with some rule like "if it is not even remotely complete a month after it was first created, it is removed"). Right now, this is a massive pile of garbage that suffocates a handful of great articles. Do something.

You are absolutely right, do something. If you need help on how to mark not finished pages as abandoned, or even propose them to be deleted, see Help:Improving, Reviewing, and Removing Templates.

There doesn't need to be an appointed official who is a "strong moderator" since that goes against our Help:Policies. You could be the "strong moderator", while another user finds it useful to, for example, rewrite the pages to be more useful. --Green Dragon (talk) 22:41, 4 December 2019 (MST)