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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8395264" data-attributes="member: 6799660">You are correct. You did not. This is a tempest in a teapot invented from whole cloth not of your doing.Successful rebuttal to non-existent opponent position notwithstanding, it is correct to say D&D has had min-maxing ever since there was any ability for players to choose character traits (which, arguably, existed since the beginning since you could trade out one stat for another at various ratios, or just play reckless with your poorly rolled character until they died and you could reroll), no question. What did occur, slowly over time, was a tendency to increase the amount of control a player had over their character's build-- be it weapon specialization in 1e's UA, or NWPs (which slowly over time starting including more and more combat-beneficial options), or eventually 2e's Player's Option modular systems. 3e and later just took this existing trend and took it to the next logical step down that trendline (and put more of the new structures in the core books, which may or may not be relevant). None of that initiated min-maxing, nor necessitated it, but it does facilitate the process and make it more directly beneficial. I'd say probably up to the end of AD&D-- while you could min-max with player-controlled levers of control-- a couple good HD rolls at level-up or a lucky treasure drop would more greatly contribute to overall character success. 3e made character build choices competitive to those factors, but that's it. The rest is how people decided to use each system, not the system itself (and on that I think those of use who spend entirely too much time online probably have a skewed view).</blockquote>

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