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

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lowkey13 said:

Well, yeah, but people survive cancer.

Wildly unbalanced characters kill campaigns and create giant argumentative threads on enworld.

Tossup?

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Let me tell you about my last character, who rolled 4 18s, took levels in five different classes, and caused mass famine in three different real world countries.

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lowkey13 said:

Well, yeah, but people survive cancer.

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Not my good friend (who died way too young at 32), nor my aunt, and neither of my two coworkers...

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Min-maxing is just a flavor of optimizing. It means you are optimizing for some things by ignoring others, and often it means optimizing for one thing by ignoring everything else.

But optimization could refer to having a well-balanced character with no weaknesses. If that's what you're trying to accomplish.

E.g., given that point buy costs increase non-linearly, you could equally argue that you are "optimizing" by giving your character nothing higher than 13 (before racials).

This is basically an "8 kinds of fun" issue. In terms of the Aesthetics of Gameplay, an optimizer will generally be a strong "Challenge"-seeker. Other players at the table may or may not have strong inclination towards seeking Challenge in a tabletop RPG; they may be a Narrative or Discovery seeker. As long as each player's aesthetics of play are being met in roughly equal proportion, it would be doubtful that even an unbalanced party would pose much of an issue (if I don't care about Challenge at all, as a player, it doesn't matter to me if my PC is being outclassed in battle as long as my need for a good Narrative and opportunities for Expression are being met). That's not to say a lack of PC balance can't be problematic; two Challenge-seekers with varying levels of system mastery might create issues if the second player becomes jealous of the spotlight-hogging of the first; just that it's likely to be less of a problem than one might expect.

Considering all that, optimization is a "problem" only in the way any issue is "problematic"; when its proponents or detractors engage in one-true-way-ism. I theorize that it's a bigger issue than most because its most extreme proponents take their system mastery as an excuse to act as if they know the only right way to play the game (this is where you get into discussions of flavorful character options being dismissed as "traps"); and its most extreme detractors wear their "I role-play, not roll-play" point of view as a badge of honor that is besmirched by the mere presence filthy min-maxers.

Here's the dirty secret: both play styles are not only valid ways to approach and play D&D, but they're also less incompatible than one might expect. To the extent that D&D is fairly combat-focused, as far as TTRPG's go, it probably slightly favors Challenge-seekers (optimizers) over other aesthetics, but not so much that a good DM with a well-designed adventure can't scratch most of those itches in a single session.

Tony Vargas said:

'Dumping' in 5e point buy is still an 8, barely off the mean. Unless you have an IQ higher than a pro quarterback, you don't have to play particularly dumb to carry off an 8. 18 should be more of a challenge.

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Agreed. Think about prior editions, and how you could swing those stats. Another way to think about it, -1 is the least amount you could have in the negative. Set the min to 10, and now everyone is forced to be at least average on everything - how realistic is that? Finally, if your "stats" weren't such to become a cleric, why "in RP terms" would you want to become one? People don't normally strive to become something that they aren't good at.

Gradine said:

Here's the dirty secret: both play styles are not only valid ways to approach and play D&D, but they're also less incompatible than one might expect. To the extent that D&D is fairly combat-focused, as far as TTRPG's go, it probably slightly favors Challenge-seekers (optimizers) over other aesthetics, but not so much that a good DM with a well-designed adventure can't scratch most of those itches in a single session.

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Agreed. The worse thing that happens if a few players have stronger characters is that you beat your encounters; considering most games expect to you to win your encounters, that hardly seems a major hardship to overcome.

TwoSix said:

I think that "time" was just 3.5. And Pathfinder too.

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I think my point was understood!

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