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Message: <blockquote data-quote="buzz" data-source="post: 2903595" data-attributes="member: 6777">I'll have to disagree with you a bit, Hussar. D&D may not assume that all PCs are min-maxed, but it does assume that they are competent. There is no reward in D&D for actively choosing to make your character weak.D&D also facilitates certain types of play better than others. Play focused on situation and challenge, with an emphasis on combat and high-risk physical action is well-supported. Play focused on, say, exploration of moral issues is pretty much wholly unsupported; you leave the ruleset behind when you start focusing on that.Certainly true. That said, there's really not a whole lot in core D&D that supports a high-intrigue, political game.Look at a D&D character sheet. Most of the numbers on that sheet have to do with combat. Every class has built into it a BAB progression; it's impossible to advance in level and not get better at fighting. Most of the feats, class abilities, and spells are for combat applications. The primary method of acquring XP is via martial conflict.These are all big red flags that D&D waves in our faces to let us know what the game is all about. That's not to say there isn't some support for other aspects; every character has a Cha score and can use Diplomacy. But the page count and depth of mechanics for this kind of stuff is much less than what's dedicated to action and fighting. Again, the more you venture into that territory, the more of the ruelset becomes unapplicable.So... the point of that rambling is: I cannot see how anyone can fault a D&D player for wanting to min-max to some degree. The better the numbers on the sheet, the better able the player is to participate and flourish in gameplay.Take hit pionts for example. Why do you think max hp at 1st level was a common house-rule that became cannon in 3e? Becasue it's no fun to play a character with 1hp. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The longer you can stay in the fight, the more fights you can have, the more saves you can make, the more spells you can cast... the more you can participate in the game.</blockquote>

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