D&D 5E Where does optimizing end and min-maxing begin? And is min-maxing a bad thing?

[clearstream]

Optimizing is the art of making the mechanics of your character match your character concept.

In WotC's old D&D forums "optimise" and "minimax" were used synonymously. That said, even in those forums I felt a sense that players wanted optimising to imply making the mechanics match their concept. So if my character concept is to play an inept thief, then I can assign low values to my Dex and Int and allocate my Expertise bonuses to irrelevant skills (or ones that are based on poor stats), and I will be "optimising".

Min-Maxing is a type of optimization in which your character concept revolves around being very good in a narrow set of abilities at the exclusion of all else.

I agree with your observation here that minimaxing tends to lead to narrow sets of abilities, but I don't believe that is its sole intent. Minimaxing is all about maximising mechanical advantage. The maxxed 3.5ed kobold Punpun is great at everything.

Because 5e has a baseline that doesn't assume min-maxing, that means that choosing to do this trivializes the combat pillar of the game. In essence, it is like choosing to play in "narrative" or "easy" mode in a modern video game. If I have a player min-max in this way, it doesn't bother me, because it tells me that they want combat to be easy. If they don't want combat to be that easy, I encourage them to try different character concepts.

This seems to belittle minimaxing needlessly. From experience, the more maxxed out characters in my games have had a much greater interest in mechanically hard fights than the sub-optimal characters. I think that is because the players who focused on RP were more interested in exploring the fiction than overcoming mechanical problems.

The fiction and the stats SHOULD be bent together - they are apart of the same reality. The only question should be is if they are ever out of step with one another. Whether you bend one or the other fixes the problem equally.

I feel like that ideal (that fiction and stats manifest in one stroke as a melded whole in the mind of the player) doesn't happen in play. What I have experienced is that players come at the job of creating a character from all kinds of angles. Some players will have a piece of fiction in mind and then search through the rules to put flesh to that fiction. Others will have read the rule book, taken note of mechanics that interested them and created their character; and then retconned their fiction to fit that mechanical entity. So that is what I intended to imply about where you start, and which is bent toward which.

Assuming one is more "right" than the other (to me) itself breaks the suspension of disbelief more than anything else.

I don't make that assumption. I agree that someone pronouncing that their way is better at the table can be a jolting experience, breaking SOD. Although I would probably nuance that to say that anyone making a pronouncement that goes against the mores of their group is likely to cause such a jolt. So if for some group RP is prioritised and considered better than OP, then some player asserting that they are not allowed to have that assumption is going to break their SOD. In my view they are perfectly well allowed to have that assumption, at their table.

 

[TwoSix]

I think more often you get someone that has a strong sense of how systems work, and uses it to fulfill their character concept, and people with a bias against "munchkins" see the number chrunching and don't notice anything else.

I've literally been called a munchkin for using feats and mcing to make...a less statistically powerful character that fulfills the concept with mechanical representation. Specifically, my 4e half-elf Cunning Bard swordsman, mc rogue and ranger, with the rogue feat to use longswords. Like...there are so many points that make him unoptimised. But bc my friend didn't really grok the system and what was optimal, he just saw me picking specific feats and combinations and went right to munchkin. The character literally had several features that sacrificed optimization in order to fullfil a roleplaying concept...and it's a munchkin build? Ooookay.

Yea, I've seen that kind of behavior too. It's like a D&D version of the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people who aren't very good at stuff think they're way more competent than they are. (And then judge you for not playing up to their non-existent skill level.)

 

[jasper]

.... They just have a 10 in role-play and a 16 in number crunching.

I...

Quit TALKING ABOUT ME BEHIND THE SCREEN. Besides it os a 11 in roleplay and 15 in number crunching.

 

[OB1]

In WotC's old D&D forums "optimise" and "minimax" were used synonymously. That said, even in those forums I felt a sense that players wanted optimising to imply making the mechanics match their concept. So if my character concept is to play an inept thief, then I can assign low values to my Dex and Int and allocate my Expertise bonuses to irrelevant skills (or ones that are based on poor stats), and I will be "optimising".

There are much easier ways to play an inept anything, simply make all the wrong choices in what you are doing. What I am talking about is the concept of making the thief who is trying to be great, but doesn't have the natural ability at the beginning of her career. This character, even when starting with a dex of 8 and an int of 10, will still make every choice possible to make the character as effective as possible.

This seems to belittle minimaxing needlessly. From experience, the more maxxed out characters in my games have had a much greater interest in mechanically hard fights than the sub-optimal characters. I think that is because the players who focused on RP were more interested in exploring the fiction than overcoming mechanical problems.

My point is that those players are working against themselves in 5e, and it certainly wasn't my intent to belittle. I personally play most video games on easy or narrative difficulty setting. Nothing wrong with that choice. And some games litterally tell you that choosing easy means that your character will hit harder, have more HP, and be hit less than the baseline. Basically, your character is being min-maxed!

What I am trying to get at is that the designers of 5e figured out that the arms race between players who max out there characters combat ability and the designing of monsters to combat them was unwinnable. 10,000 minds working together on the internet for years after the books are released will always beat the designers, regardless of how tightly they try to balance everything.

So instead, they said okay, if you want to make a mechanically superior PC, you will BE mechanically superior. That inevitably means the game will be less random and also easier. Just like getting magic weapons in 5e actually has a permanent positive effect, there are certain combinations of abilities with classes that does the same.

If your players want mechanically hard fights, the best way to achieve that is to NOT min-max their characters!

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[nswanson27]

Because 5e has a baseline that doesn't assume min-maxing, that means that choosing to do this trivializes the combat pillar of the game. In essence, it is like choosing to play in "narrative" or "easy" mode in a modern video game. If I have a player min-max in this way, it doesn't bother me, because it tells me that they want combat to be easy. If they don't want combat to be that easy, I encourage them to try different character concepts.

I find this to be statement to be false in practice. I've seen plenty of games with optimized characters, where it all came down to the wire in combat, and none that I would call "trivial". Also the designers did a pretty good job of balancing out so uber-minmax isn't too far ahead of a "normal" build. Now, there definitely ways to build mechanically bad characters where the power delta is big, but I see that as a separate problem.
Another point, people who build min-maxed characters also tend to play with better battle tactics (in general). Give those same players non-optimized characters, and you would probably find similar outcomes with their tricked-out characters.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yea, I've seen that kind of behavior too. It's like a D&D version of the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people who aren't very good at stuff think they're way more competent than they are. (And then judge you for not playing up to their non-existent skill level.)

Yeah, certainly. In this case, though, it wasn't even that. He didn't think he had high system mastery, he just assumed he knew min/maxing when he saw it, and the fact that I was tinkering the mechanical choices to do what I wanted the character to do meant I was "munchkining". He wasn't even a douche about it, really, he just gave me a bit of a hard time.

I mean, I did give the character one of the highest "main stat" values I've given a character, but mostly because I saw the character as one of those guys that excercises virtue of living an active life, but puts no special effort into it, and still seems to be extremely good looking and quite fit, so his strength was 10, his Dex was 12, his con was 14, and his int and charisma were high. I used his race bonus to make his wis not terrible, bc he isn't a dolt, but the main things that defined him were being very skilled/adept at learning new skills, and being very intelligent and charismatic/strong of will. And I will never buy the supposed relationship between wisdom and a strong will. Being wise doesn't make your will stronger. They are separate things.

But, even though those are all thoughts about modeling a roleplaying concept in the game world, to enhance my own immersion and help the character look and feel the way I want from the outside, etc, ie they are roleplaying choices, it is munchkining....because I'm thinking mechanically to accomplish it? What?


And this is why I don't understand the "play with a group that also optimizes" mindset. Have you guys seriously not had roleplayers with high system knowledge in your groups? I've never played in a group that was all one way or another.

When I get to the table, and actually also when making the haracter bc we do that as a group activity, I am roleplaying, absolutely the whole time. I mean, we aren't actors, we don't exclusively talk in character or whatever, but my focus is the characters and the world and all that, not the numbers. I crunch the numbers outside of play to make sure that when it makes sense for my character to skillfully buckle some swashes, he can do so with the finesse, panache, and cheesy wit, that I imagine him doing.

I am 99% sure that if I were in most groups of posters in this thread, we'd have a great time, and you would t walk away thinking of me as a min/maxer, unless you spent the session staring at my sheet looking for signs of a munchkin.

Idk, the whole discussion very much baffles me.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I find this to be statement to be false in practice. I've seen plenty of games with optimized characters, where it all came down to the wire in combat, and none that I would call "trivial". Also the designers did a pretty good job of balancing out so uber-minmax isn't too far ahead of a "normal" build. Now, there definitely ways to build mechanically bad characters where the power delta is big, but I see that as a separate problem.
Another point, people who build min-maxed characters also tend to play with better battle tactics (in general). Give those same players non-optimized characters, and you would probably find similar outcomes with their tricked-out characters.

Player skill in combat is definately a bigger deal than the numbers, most of the time. And not just in 5e DnD.

 

[iserith]

Idk, the whole discussion very much baffles me.

Yep, me too. It's hard to say what the underlying issue is. I tried to peg it to fairness, at least with respect to Intelligence-dumping, in this thread or another. But there a lot of side objections that seem rooted elsewhere. I think some of it has to do with thinking acting is roleplaying and rules-as-physics combined in some part with just jerk behavior on the part of some players who are associated with min-maxing, but it's really just jerk behavior. Let's face it - our hobby is pretty rife with intelligent people whose social skills could use some polishing.

I have run for a lot of pickup groups in both D&D 4e and 5e since 2011 or so and that means having groups with varying experience and priorities. I've never had a serious problem. Sometimes you'll pick up a player with some behavioral issues, but even that is exceedingly rare in my experience. Even in my current campaign there are optimizers and folks who could barely get through making their characters with exactly zero effect on the game experience. I'm a pretty experienced DM and confident in my abilities, sure, but it can't all be me evening things out.

Ultimately, I don't think this is a rational problem. It has all the hallmarks of an emotional one. There is some underlying, fundamental thing that gets some folks riled up. I just can't quite put my finger on it.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

In WotC's old D&D forums "optimise" and "minimax" were used synonymously. That said, even in those forums I felt a sense that players wanted optimising to imply making the mechanics match their concept. So if my character concept is to play an inept thief, then I can assign low values to my Dex and Int and allocate my Expertise bonuses to irrelevant skills (or ones that are based on poor stats), and I will be "optimising".


I agree with your observation here that minimaxing tends to lead to narrow sets of abilities, but I don't believe that is its sole intent. Minimaxing is all about maximising mechanical advantage. The maxxed 3.5ed kobold Punpun is great at everything.

I think it's interesting how we use the terms in different ways.

For example, I don't think the terms are interchangeable. They crossover, but describe different things.

To be good at *everything* might be an optimized character, but it's not a min-maxed one (IMO). Where is the "min"?

On the other hand, to be a rogue with a 12 strength, is not optimized (again IMO) no matter how well it suits your character concept. It can certainly be a fun character, and if you use min-maxing OR optimization tricks in other ways, you may be able to make it powerful enough to be not-gimped, but not what I would call optimized.

So we use the terms differently. (Shrug!)

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