The Min-Max Problem: Solved

[GMMichael]

I see three causes of min-max character creation:

1) Quantitative/optimization preference.
2) Suppressed bloodlust.
3) Succeed/fail rules.

Now if you're a min-maxer, I'm sure you love to make those numbers pop, per #1, and you're not actually a threat to society. That's your preference, and that's cool. But some of your brethren have primal blood, so #2 is an issue for them. You may or may not gravitate toward games that have succeed/fail rules, #3.

#3 is under the direct control of game designers and GMs, so it's the one cause that we can remedy.

Why succeed/fail rules? First, these are a known issue, which is probably why the "fail forward" idea has been raised, as well as "damage on a miss." But, for me, it boils down to this:

Rolling a failure means that the time you've been waiting for your turn to arrive is wasted time that you'll never get back. Ever.

So why make a character that can fail? Why waste time? The obvious solution is to make a character with the greatest possible bonus to whatever he could possibly fail, which is most often attacks in combat. Failure will still happen, but at least it's minimized, which means that the player spends the least amount of time twiddling her thumbs.

As a GD/GM, you can give PCs something interesting to do - all the time - so that sitting around, doing nothing, is not a concern of the player. And min-maxing is not necessary for maintaining interest in the game.

Are there other causes of min-maxing? Do you dread doing nothing at the table while watching the other players have fun? What games have addressed this and subsequently reduced min-maxing?

 

[MNblockhead]

I enjoy being at the table and with friends. Even if my PC is petrified or unconscious, I'm still having fun. Of course, I don't want to be a spectator the entire game, but 20-30 minutes now and then don't bother me, and I certainly don't cry over a missed turn.

A failing *is* doing something.

5e moves fast enough that a "wasted" turn is not a big deal and as a player, I can make it fun by narrating the failure.

 

[Vesve]

So why make a character that can fail? Why waste time? The obvious solution is to make a character with the greatest possible bonus to whatever he could possibly fail, which is most often attacks in combat. Failure will still happen, but at least it's minimized, which means that the player spends the least amount of time twiddling her thumbs.

Are there other causes of min-maxing? Do you dread doing nothing at the table while watching the other players have fun? What games have addressed this and subsequently reduced min-maxing?

Mike,

As a recovering Min-Maxer, I ask you to seek systems with more cinematic or fluid mechanics. DMs control these situations easier. Your interpretations add balance, but will not fix the min-maxing. Min-maxing is the art of rules-interpretation when the player feels the need to overpower in leu of role-play. Engage all the players whenever possible by use of the story. Have a game session with limited dice rolling from time to time to keep the focus on the adventure, not the character's abiities, items, or spells.

The more rules made to control the game; the more opportunities to maximize the outcomes. Rules light might be the answer, but essentially it comes down to the specific player's need to have control. I think you nailed it with #3. Most min-max spell casters will use spells with no-save or zero failure chance. So one "cure" is to have all spells work all the time. But, these can no longer be instant encounter ending spells like disintegrate, etc..

Just some thoughts.

 

[Celebrim]

Everyone plays games in some sense, at least in part, for the illusion of 'success'.

Some players only play games for the illusion of success and that is 100% of their enjoyment of the game. They are addicted to the self-validation that in game success gives them. And frankly, if you play games you ought to be at least some what sympathetic to that, since we've all felt the rush.

The problem is that there is absolutely no way to solve that problem, if it is in fact a problem.

Even systems which do things like 'fail forward' and 'partial success on failure' only move the problem around. They don't actually get rid of players that only play with the desire to win big and win all the time. In fact, for a subset of these players, those games are even more attractive and more open to min/maxing than more traditional games, and you still see power gaming dynamics in those games where one person wants to not only win all the time, and not only receive validation from the GM that they are a winner, but win bigger and better than anyone else at the table. All you might do by playing with the mechanics like that is ruin the illusion for a few of those players, because since its obvious to them that they can't lose, they can no longer sustain the illusion that this is real success and they'll move to systems where they feel that the winning is more 'real' (even though its never real in any RPG). But by and large, you'll still have min/maxing regardless of the system you are playing.

Thus, your suggested 'fix' or 'solution' doesn't even really address the problem, because min/maxing is never driven by what you think it is. At some level, you even recognize that when you say things like, "Do you dread doing nothing at the table while watching the other players have fun?" How are you defining "fun" in that statement?

 

[ccs]

So why make a character that can fail? Why waste time? The obvious solution is to make a character with the greatest possible bonus to whatever he could possibly fail, which is most often attacks in combat. Failure will still happen, but at least it's minimized, which means that the player spends the least amount of time twiddling her thumbs.

I don't know, I my experience my success or failure takes about the same amount of time & both add to the story. So success or failure, I'm good.
Where the thumb twiddling occurs is during other peoples turns. The designers giving me something interesting to do, that doesn't hinge on me min/maxing, on my turn? Doesn't touch that. No matter how interesting my thing, I'm still waiting on x # of others to each do their own interesting thing.
You know what does though? Min/Maxing! So that when it comes to my turn I can succeed & limit the amount of turns the others get. Thereby reducing the amount of time I spend waiting to act again. Maxing your initiative is key in this. You always want the 1st/most chances to short cut the encounter.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I never got worked up over missing a turn due to some failure of the dice or my planning, or just bad luck. Its part of the game. With no chance of failure success is an illusion really and isn't very sweet. If the game rewards everything, even if you miss you really hit, etc I'll pass.

As said above, I like hanging out with my friends and playing games. If my turn blows I'll groan and then see what they are going to do and be invested in that, and see how that will shape my options next turn. Will my failure open up the chance for another PC to grab the glory? I'll cheer them on. Rolling a failure isn't time I'll never get back since its all part of the time I'm spending with my friends and having fun. And IME people who make up stud PCs with a focus on being effective in their role in the party aren't trying to mitigate those wasted seconds from a missed attack. No they just want to make up a fighter who can really fight well, thief well, etc, and help the party accomplish their goals that game night.

 

[Nagol]

I see three causes of min-max character creation:

1) Quantitative/optimization preference.
2) Suppressed bloodlust.
3) Succeed/fail rules.

Now if you're a min-maxer, I'm sure you love to make those numbers pop, per #1, and you're not actually a threat to society. That's your preference, and that's cool. But some of your brethren have primal blood, so #2 is an issue for them. You may or may not gravitate toward games that have succeed/fail rules, #3.

#3 is under the direct control of game designers and GMs, so it's the one cause that we can remedy.

Why succeed/fail rules? First, these are a known issue, which is probably why the "fail forward" idea has been raised, as well as "damage on a miss." But, for me, it boils down to this:



So why make a character that can fail? Why waste time? The obvious solution is to make a character with the greatest possible bonus to whatever he could possibly fail, which is most often attacks in combat. Failure will still happen, but at least it's minimized, which means that the player spends the least amount of time twiddling her thumbs.

As a GD/GM, you can give PCs something interesting to do - all the time - so that sitting around, doing nothing, is not a concern of the player. And min-maxing is not necessary for maintaining interest in the game.

Are there other causes of min-maxing? Do you dread doing nothing at the table while watching the other players have fun? What games have addressed this and subsequently reduced min-maxing?

Some of the other reasons I min/max are the following:

1) I may believe the character should be in the top-tier in his profession -- not because he's missing an 'N' in his descriptor (PC vs. NPC) but because he is just that talented/focused/determined compared to everyone else.
2) There may be tasks inside a game that I do not want to bother with. I'll tend to maximise my capability to minimise the chances I have to deal with them.
3) I may want to play a character for the long haul and want to reduce the chance of death/permanent disability to a minimum.
4) I may want to be a cornerstone for the group -- the one everyone can rely on to get done what he says will be done.
5) I may want to be more of a loner who can accomplish much on his own should the need arise.

Each of these goals requires some form of optimisation though no single optimisation strategy applies to them all.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There's a very clear hierarchy for stats in most games.

1) Action Economy. If there's a stat which lets you get more turns than anyone else, then that's the degree to which you get to participate in the game, and you should maximize that if you don't want to sit around doing nothing.

2) Accuracy. If your attack misses, then you essentially lose your turn. (See above.)

3) Everything else.

Some games double down on the issue, in any number of ways. The Shadowrun engine (as well as the World of Darkness system, which copied it) allows excess accuracy to convert into damage. When the same stat is used to increase your own accuracy (and damage) and also decrease your opponent's accuracy (and damage), you get the classic "god stat" problem. Other games go even further, by letting your Agility-equivalent stat affect accuracy, counter-accuracy, and action economy on top of all that.

To my observations, this remains true regardless of whether your goal is to participate or to "win" the game, because there's a direct correlation between how much you can do and your chance of reaching a positive outcome.

I'm not sure that binary success/failure is the enemy here, though. For the participation-oriented player, half-damage on a miss will still feel like they aren't contributing much, because their expectations will normalize around the new baseline. For the power-oriented player, there will always be somewhere else in the formula that they can re-optimize around, even if it's something like damage or endurance. In any case, the cost associated with implementing a graduated success scale is in complexity, which multiplies the length of time required to resolve poor rolls for everyone else at the table; even if you do some damage instead of no damage, it takes twice as long before it gets back to your turn, because everyone else is also doing something on a miss.

Remember how 4E addressed the issue of boring fighters who only took the attack action? This is a similar issue, which can similarly be addressed by making the turns resolve more quickly.

 

[Lanefan]

I see three causes of min-max character creation:

1) Quantitative/optimization preference.
2) Suppressed bloodlust.
3) Succeed/fail rules.

#3 is under the direct control of game designers and GMs, so it's the one cause that we can remedy.

A GM can easily enough remedy #1 for her own table by simply not inviting such players into her games.

So why make a character that can fail? Why waste time? The obvious solution is to make a character with the greatest possible bonus to whatever he could possibly fail, which is most often attacks in combat. Failure will still happen, but at least it's minimized, which means that the player spends the least amount of time twiddling her thumbs.

Before going further here, I think you're making a rather big and quite possibly incorrect assumption behind all this: that a player's fun only happens on her "turn", and that watching what happens during other players' turns (and the monsters' turns, of course) is not fun.

Even further, it also assumes fun is only had during combat; the only part of the game where "waiting for a turn" is an issue.

Are there other causes of min-maxing?

Yes, as other posters have already hit.

Do you dread doing nothing at the table while watching the other players have fun?

No. Downtime when one's character is dead or unconscious or stuck behind a blocked doorway is a known and accepted part of the game. And ironically enough, if a couple of PCs are out of action the combat part of the game speeds up anyway as there are fewer "turns" per round.

What games have addressed this and subsequently reduced min-maxing?

Some games e.g. 4e have tried to address it but have been tilting at windmills IMO, as failure is as much a part of the game as success. If a player can't accept this that's on the player, not on the system.

Lan-"and just because it's not your "turn" doesn't mean you can't shout warnings to your allies, taunt your enemies, or do other non-game-mechanical things"-efan

 

[Les Moore]

Min-maxing is a great deal of the fun, IMO. Progressing thru levels, and advancing your character adds to the reality, and the fun. When I am in game,
I'm constantly reviewing my character sheet, considering either skill or equipment enhancements, or future moves, responses, or reactions. So there's
never any "wasted time". It's not only what you play, it's how you play.