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

[Lanliss]

I largely agree with folks who are saying it isn't really an issue. I think most often, it really isn't...unless, as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] suggested, people make it an issue. I think the 5E mechanics make it far less of an issue than some prior editions.

I do have an example where this came up. This was during the time when my group had abandoned 4E and moved over to Pathfinder. This was the last time I DMed for a Pathfinder game.

I had a player who played every week. He built an Arcane Archer that he loved. The character had a good deal of versatility and utility, and was very effective with his bow in combat.

I had another player who played occasionally. Every time he played, it was with a new character. He had access to just about all the books, so the options available to him were plentiful. All of his characters were specialized in one way...he made a polearm fighter who focused on tripping his enemies, or a pure tank to have as high an AC as possible, and so on.

So the occasional player made a new character...a barbarian of some sort, and he could basically force enemies to attack him in melee through some BS feat. Character was min/maxed to the gills, multiclassed in some way that I can't recall, and was a beast in combat. A bit annoying, but we can deal.

The issue came up when, at a moment when the character was unable to rage, he found himself needing to draw his bow to try and reach his enemies.

And that's when I found out that this barbarian had a better ranges to hit than the arcane archer. And that just annoyed me. This is like the thing that he's third best at...and he's better than the arcane archer. Bonkers.

So now....what do you guys think? Should my regular player who uses the same character that he loves every session be outshines by the occasional player who just sits at home for hours and creates builds for different characters and then tries them once and discards them?

I think you missed the part where most people are saying it isn't a problem "As long as all the players do it". They are all specifically saying that a single player outshining others is a bad thing, but that min/maxing itself is not the bad thing.

 

[Hussar]

Complaints about Min/maxxing, or powergaming, or whatever, is a lot like complaints about meta-gaming. It's mistaking the symptom for the disease. The actual problem pretty much always comes down to a mismatching of preferences and assumptions at the table. The cure for this is being open and stepping outside the game for a bit and discussing these things. These things only really become a problem when people try to resolve them through play - the DM ups the power curve in combat, so, the players respond by min/maxxing even more which prompts the DM to up the power curve again.

And eventually you get Agony Aunt type threads complaining about how the mechanics don't work.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

To me, this is a case in point. Note that [MENTION=6801585]Rya.Reisender[/MENTION] has adjusted the mechanics for Inpiration. This isn't what is in the PHB. The question I ask is, "why?" Why alter the rules?

Because the altered rules result in the most balanced and least forced gameplay for the players and consequently leads to the group having the most fun. With this adjusted rules, players can play whatever they feel like without being at advantage or disadvantage. They can always make the most optimized decisions and I'll never have to stop them. But they can also bring their group into trouble because they feel it fits their character and then I balance it out by giving them inspiration.

I actually got inspired to do it like this on these forums. Someone (I thought it was Iserith, but apparently it wasn't?) said that the only correct way to use inspiration is to use to to balance out the disadvantage a player gets from playing out his character's flaws. And then I tried it myself and it worked like a charm. For me it's THE way to go now.

 

[iserith]

I actually got inspired to do it like this on these forums. Someone (I thought it was Iserith, but apparently it wasn't?) said that the only correct way to use inspiration is to use to to balance out the disadvantage a player gets from playing out his character's flaws. And then I tried it myself and it worked like a charm. For me it's THE way to go now.

I toyed with that method early on, but eventually abandoned it. Chiefly the reason I wanted to do it that way was to set up a method where the DM was effectively removed from the process in which the PCs got Inspiration. I've achieved that same goal by the method I use now which is that the players just claim Inspiration when they play to their characters' personal characteristics (limit one per characteristic, so up to four times total per session).

I think this produces a better result because the players always know what they need to do to get Inspiration. The limitation of one Inspiration per characteristic means they can't spam a Personality trait which means if they want that sweet, sweet Inspiration, they need to put more than one characteristic on display. What's more, I don't have to know anything about their characteristics so there's no onus on me to memorize 16 to 20 different things about the characters. They just act it out, hit a button that spits out the characteristic in Roll20 and take their Inspiration with no pause in the game.

In some campaigns, I add additional ways to earn Inspiration, but this is my baseline.

 

[iserith]

The issue came up when, at a moment when the character was unable to rage, he found himself needing to draw his bow to try and reach his enemies.

And that's when I found out that this barbarian had a better ranges to hit than the arcane archer. And that just annoyed me. This is like the thing that he's third best at...and he's better than the arcane archer. Bonkers.

So now....what do you guys think? Should my regular player who uses the same character that he loves every session be outshines by the occasional player who just sits at home for hours and creates builds for different characters and then tries them once and discards them?

I don't see this as an issue because it sounds like it's essentially a corner case - the barbarian was unable to rage, so he went with ranged attacks. I take that to mean in most situations, he'd prefer to rage and get into melee.

Also, it would seem based on your post (I don't play PF) that the arcane archer is better at utility than the barbarian. Based on this information, I'd call this a wash.

 

[Gradine]

I think you missed the part where most people are saying it isn't a problem "As long as all the players do it". They are all specifically saying that a single player outshining others is a bad thing, but that min/maxing itself is not the bad thing.

I'll chime in and say I'm definitely in the "power-gaming isn't a problem unless someone makes it a problem" camp, but I think that if someone makes it a problem it then becomes a legitimate issue. A DM who doesn't like having to re-balance of their encounters has maybe less of a leg to stand on than a player who is tired of their PC getting out-classed by another, but in both cases the play style is legitimately getting in the way of a player's engagement with fun (and I include the DM as a "player" in this particular sense). Of course, what's going on here isn't that somebody is playing the game wrong, rather, the issue is that the play aesthetics of the group may be incompatible. When your options for games/players are many, this is easily resolved by simply finding a new game that better suits your play style. When options are limited, the work becomes finding a way to run the game that still allows everyone to pursue their own personal aesthetics, which is clearly much more difficult work, but certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

That said, I am most definitely not in the "as long as all the players do it" camp. I can certainly think of scenarios where one PC out-shining others will be a problem for the other players; I've both run and played in games where one PC out-shined others and nobody so much as batted an eyelash over it. Our group had one definite powergamer, a Challenge-seeker through and through; the rest of us were so wrapped up in Narrative and Expression (and to a slightly lesser extent Discovery) that none of us were really building our characters with Challenge much in mind... it was actually to our benefit to have someone along who could easily handle the combat encounters. Hell, one of my friends was playing a grappling Fighter/Reaping Mauler, a build I once got reamed out for suggesting on the RPG Stack Exchange (despite the fact that he once choked an owlbear to death. Seemed plenty effective. to me :shrug: )

This is what I mean, by the way, when I say D&D as a game tends to favor Challenge over all the other Aesthetics of Play. Nobody cares that much when a PC "outshines" the rest of the party... unless it happens in combat. It never seems to bother anybody when the party face (who always seems to be the same player or players; almost as if they were strong Expression-seekers) dominates social encounters; other when the skill-monkey dominates stealth segments or encounters with traps (and sometimes a Challenge-seeker focuses on challenges outside combat also). D&D divides every possible aspect of gameplay into niches and makes each niche solvable by a single PC... except for combat, where suddenly everyone is supposed to contribute equally. Moving beyond D&D and D&D-esque games you don't really see this happening; combat is just one more niche a character can either excel at or not have much to contribute to it at all. All it takes is rejecting the notion that all characters are supposed to contribute equally to combat to create a table where one PC can out-shine the others in that particular aspect of the game without causing any sort of friction or tension at all.

FWIW, my main issue with powergamers has nothing to do with the actual gameplay itself and more to do with how they engage with the community; most optimizers are more than happy to share their considerable game system knowledge with those who ask, but there is a tendency for a handful of bad apples who insist their style of play is the only right way to play, and shout down or ridicule players who select "suboptimal" or "trap" character options because that's how they see their character developing. Of course, there are bad apples in every bunch; the flip side has its fair share of "role-play not roll-play" zealots who shout down any attempt to gain game mastery over, well, the game. I've just tended the find the former group more commonly in online gaming communities than the latter.

But at the actual table? Never seen either to be much of an issue at all. Even when in "mixed" company, for lack of a better term.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[hejtmane]

Mixed company?

You mean- paladins, gnomes, and people I want to play with?

The only good gnome is a dead gnome

 

[nswanson27]

I'll chime in and say I'm definitely in the "power-gaming isn't a problem unless someone makes it a problem" camp, but I think that if someone makes it a problem it then becomes a legitimate issue. A DM who doesn't like having to re-balance of their encounters has maybe less of a leg to stand on than a player who is tired of their PC getting out-classed by another, but in both cases the play style is legitimately getting in the way of a player's engagement with fun (and I include the DM as a "player" in this particular sense). Of course, what's going on here isn't that somebody is playing the game wrong, rather, the issue is that the play aesthetics of the group may be incompatible. When your options for games/players are many, this is easily resolved by simply finding a new game that better suits your play style. When options are limited, the work becomes finding a way to run the game that still allows everyone to pursue their own personal aesthetics, which is clearly much more difficult work, but certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

That said, I am most definitely not in the "as long as all the players do it" camp. I can certainly think of scenarios where one PC out-shining others will be a problem for the other players; I've both run and played in games where one PC out-shined others and nobody so much as batted an eyelash over it. Our group had one definite powergamer, a Challenge-seeker through and through; the rest of us were so wrapped up in Narrative and Expression (and to a slightly lesser extent Discovery) that none of us were really building our characters with Challenge much in mind... it was actually to our benefit to have someone along who could easily handle the combat encounters. Hell, one of my friends was playing a grappling Fighter/Reaping Mauler, a build I once got reamed out for suggesting on the RPG Stack Exchange (despite the fact that he once choked an owlbear to death. Seemed plenty effective. to me :shrug: )

This is what I mean, by the way, when I say D&D as a game tends to favor Challenge over all the other Aesthetics of Play. Nobody cares that much when a PC "outshines" the rest of the party... unless it happens in combat. It never seems to bother anybody when the party face (who always seems to be the same player or players; almost as if they were strong Expression-seekers) dominates social encounters; other when the skill-monkey dominates stealth segments or encounters with traps (and sometimes a Challenge-seeker focuses on challenges outside combat also). D&D divides every possible aspect of gameplay into niches and makes each niche solvable by a single PC... except for combat, where suddenly everyone is supposed to contribute equally. Moving beyond D&D and D&D-esque games you don't really see this happening; combat is just one more niche a character can either excel at or not have much to contribute to it at all. All it takes is rejecting the notion that all characters are supposed to contribute equally to combat to create a table where one PC can out-shine the others in that particular aspect of the game without causing any sort of friction or tension at all.

FWIW, my main issue with powergamers has nothing to do with the actual gameplay itself and more to do with how they engage with the community; most optimizers are more than happy to share their considerable game system knowledge with those who ask, but there is a tendency for a handful of bad apples who insist their style of play is the only right way to play, and shout down or ridicule players who select "suboptimal" or "trap" character options because that's how they see their character developing. Of course, there are bad apples in every bunch; the flip side has its fair share of "role-play not roll-play" zealots who shout down any attempt to gain game mastery over, well, the game. I've just tended the find the former group more commonly in online gaming communities than the latter.

But at the actual table? Never seen either to be much of an issue at all. Even when in "mixed" company, for lack of a better term.

Yeah it's more about attitude than it is about playstyle preferences. And I suspect that people who try to pigeonhole the other side are the very "bad apples" for their side.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

I think that 5th edition is a bit more accommodating of groups with mixed expectations and play styles than some of the previous editions. Due to the flatter math and less decision points in character progression, there is a smaller gap between a min/maxed character and character that just takes the standard array and quick build options. Because of this mix/maxing is less disruptive to group dynamics and in general making it less of a problem. I have seen some talk about how taking certain feats or multiclassing can result in hyper damage, but it seems that those characters specialize in one thing and still need the rest of the group to get by.