Why is Min/Maxing a bad thing?

Why do people constantly criticize min/maxing? I mean, ok, beyond a certain point and it becomes little more than an exercise in breaking the system but there seems to be this opinion that any amount of min/maxing immediately makes you a bad roleplayer because it cancels out the ability to roleplay that character.

Or something to that effect.

I see it countless times where DM's say how they limit players and how they're disappointed that their players min/max or how doing so somehow detracts from roleplaying. I think that attitude is just ridiculous.

I honestly think it's just popular to think that and most people love getting on a bandwagon and being in the 'in' crowd.

Well... I'm a min/maxer and, if given the chance in a game where roleplaying is encouraged, I'm a damn good roleplayer too.

How it ever came to be that a hero had to be average to be 'realistic' or how min/maxing ever became a bad thing I truly don't understand.

I always focus my characters on one or two particular aspects or around a particular theme and in doing so end up min/maxing. The character, as a result, has strengths AND weaknesses. How is this a bad thing? How does this in any way detract from my ability to roleplay such a character? If anything, it gives me MORE to roleplay, not less because my character isn't some cookie-cutter, average Joe but rather a person with specific goals and aspirations.

So why is min/maxing a bad thing?

There's a fine line in there somewhere. One one hand, I hope that PCs are efficiently designed so that they can face challenges in the game. I remember I had a player new to 3e and psionics made a psychic warrior whose feat selection seemed to be made around the "this sounds neat" principle and was pretty much the weakest character in the party.

On the other hand, when players start fishing out every possible advantage they can get, to the point that they abandon concept in favor of buttkicking potential, and start engaging in rules-lawyeristic combinations and distorted interperetations of the rules and exploiting unintended combinations between things by different publisher, THEN the mindset is a problem and should be smacked down with extreme prejudice.

Fourecks said:

Why do people constantly criticize min/maxing? I mean, ok, beyond a certain point and it becomes little more than an exercise in breaking the system....

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You said it yourself...min/maxing is fine up to a certain point. In my experience, min/maxing is almost always escalated into trying to break the system.

When done within reason - it is not a bad thing. My players seem adapt at making capable pc's, but tend to falter when it comes to the larger picture of group dynamics.

If it is done to the point where every confrontation is resolved with some cheap little trick they figured out, then this leads to problems.

However- in the end I have one golden rule: Anything they can do, I can do.. better.

Since they accepted that, they have been pretty good about being reasonable with their character designs. Occasionally one will want to dip into a couple of PrC's to get access to abilities, but I do my best to work with the player so that such silliness does not need to take place.

SD

To me, it isn't, to a certain extent. If it goes to the extent that it interferes with the other players who wish to play the game, then it needs to be moderated, just as excessive roleplay does. Not everyone enjoys the same things in a group.

But in my mind, if you were trying to roleplay a serious group of adventurers, who go into life-threatening situations DAILY, then you'd BETTER do some maximizing of your strengths, and minimizing of your weaknesses!!!

Look at the Green Berets, the SEALs, the rangers, or any special forces group. They COULD go in with a knife in their teeth, and ripples in their ab's, and possibly take down the opposition, but they DON'T WANT to do it that way - that's the path to never coming home again.

They'll gear up, sneak, steal, and cutthroat their way to the opposition, and if they do their jobs well, the enemy is neutralized and they are gone before anyone knows it. They maximize their strengths and positions, and NEVER show the enemy a weakness.

Many players have a vision of the heroic underdog, taking on all odds with all his foibles showing - and there's nothing wrong with the style of play. But it should also be recognized that plausibly, no sane group would risk life and limb daily, and more importantly without every advantage they could get hold of.

IME, there are many "min/maxers" who are simply trying for "an efficient build" for their character concept. That's fine by me. For instance, if playing a sorcerer, why WOULDN'T you put the 18 you rolled into CHA?

The problem I see the most often is where a player starts min/maxing through multiclassing. They have absolutely no reason for their character to take a level of cleric or barbarian other than the player wants the domain ability or rage, repectively. This is where I start putting the brakes on, usually trying to keep it in game & in character. "How does your fighter, who has been adventuring in a 'civilized' kingdom suddenly gain a level of Barbarian?" Answer? He doesn't. Not IMC.

OTOH, I am usually happy to work with a player to figure out ways to incorporate their "design goals" into the campaign. I'd rather tell them up front that I don't think their idea will fly than have them get "slapped down" after working towards it for 3 levels.

IMHO it's most fun to play someone who can kick butt. You don't have to be the best butt-kicker in the world, and you shouldn't be able to kick butt in all situations, but there ought to be some area in which you are very, very good.

Separately, make some kind of personality choices.

Now, see if your personality and/or butt-kicking aspects either conflict or synergize, or lead to some personality-style synthesis which is cooler than either concept originally.

It's fun to role-play both strength and weakness -- less stressful to role-play strength, perhaps, but ultimately more rewarding to triumph in spite of weakness. Constantly overwhelming the opposition gets boring really quickly.

-- Nifft

Psion said:

On the other hand, when players start fishing out every possible advantage they can get, to the point that they abandon concept in favor of buttkicking potential, and start engaging in rules-lawyeristic combinations and distorted interperetations of the rules and exploiting unintended combinations between things by different publisher, THEN the mindset is a problem and should be smacked down with extreme prejudice.

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In my experience, obnoxiousness of minmaxing is far more a function of the individual player, than anything else. Some powergamers are reasonable people. Others are just annoying. The solution is not to play with the annoying powergamers, while trying to accommodate the wishes of the reasonable ones. Hey, if you design plotlines so that storytellers can be satisfied, and you drop in puzzles so that the tacticians can solve them, why not throw in some crunchy bits for the players who like them?

This was one of the things I had in mind when writing up Britannia 3E. On the one hand, the setting emphasises virtues, things such as honor, sacrifice, compassion and whatnot. Your typical plunder-everything-in-sight adventure would be rather out of place here (plus I was a bit tired of always looting dead bodies anyway). On the other hand, I also didn't want to screw the players out of the fun of getting treasure, magic items, and stuff like that.

So what I did was to allow characters to "imbue" their own magic items, using some homebrew rules for spending XP to make items magical. This alone removed most of the incentive that characters usually have for hoarding treasure. I also relaxed the usual rules for buying resurrections and other favours at healing places, and instituted a system whereby consistent virtuous behaviour led to in-character rewards like bonuses to saves or hit points.

Lo and behold, everyone gets the powerups they're after, and they can also play the generous good guys without feeling like they're screwing themselves. Two sessions ago, they paid to get an NPC resurrected out of their own pocket, after they failed to rescue him from a dragon. One of the biggest powergamers in the group is also mouthing virtuous platitudes about humility and sacrifice and whatnot, which is most ironic given his usual mercenary attitude. So they're happy, and I'm happy.

The only person who doesn't like it is a more RP-oriented guy, who thinks it's all a bit artificial. To which I say, bah, humbug. It's all make-believe anyway, and I'm not one to confuse player motivations with character motivations.

Min-Maxing is only a problem when it's done at the expense of role-playing. In most cases, I've found that the desire to make your character kick butt can be a great hook for a reluctant roleplayer. I once ran a small campaign for a few friends, 3 of them heavy roleplayers, one an unrepentant powergamer, and everyone was miserable UNTIL I suggested he work his min-maxing into the character concept. Retroactively, his wizard character became the short, youngest son of a middle-class merchant, who grew up being constantly overlooked in favor of his more athletic brothers. Thus he vowed to study magic and devote himself to becomming the absolute best he could be. His behaviour never really changed, but with a character concept to hang it on everyone had more fun, including him.

I do it, too. I confess, my rogue character took a level of ranger in order to get 2-weapon fighting on the cheap, not to advance a character concept. BUT I had fun playing up to the single-classed ranger in the party, begging him to teach me his techniques. Ultimately, we fought as a pair (hence getting me a flanking bonus), and during down-time I agreed to help him with his stealth abilities (by sneaking us into a noble's house late at night and getting us into heaps of trouble). Good roleplaying AND min-maxing in concert. That's how it can (should?)work.

PS: Hong, your campaign sounds like loads of fun. Is Britannia 3E being written up for publishing? Or is it posted on your website?

F5 - you are a credit to RPGer's! That you took the common munchkin combo (Ranger1/anything else x) is to be scorned D - only joking) but that you turned it into a roleplaying opportunity, great.

To me, that is the difference between min/max and playing the game. You obviously aren't a min/maxer, because you made the effort to bug the party ranger, and taught him something in return. My congratulations!

Personally, I'm someone who makes up a character with a concept, some personality, and some butt-kicking prowess. I've tried the "cleric-who-buffs-everyone-else" and the "selfless-transmuter" and so forth, and it's just not as much fun as the "name-taking-kick-ass-fighter", the "big-badda-BOOM-mage" or the "And-I-Shall-Smite-Thee-With-Holy-Vengeance" cleric.