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<blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6475021" data-attributes="member: 27160">There are various ways to approach the issue in the OP, to wit, the avoidance of &quot;min/maxing&quot; as opposed to general optimising. You say you want a &quot;slice of life&quot; type of game, in which case I commend to you HârnMaster and the associated world of Hârn, which features a working economic and social system such as is necessary to support such a game. To avoid overspecialisation, it encourages a &quot;pre-game&quot; form of character generation that builds character abilities organically from the opportunities and challenges that meet them in their life prior to becoming an &quot;adventurer&quot; (should they, gods forbid, become so short of options as to pursue so desperate a path in life - which, of course, all of them eventually will...).As an alternative to this, however, I also suggest considering a brief analysis of what the players may want. In my (admittedly partial - the world is a big place) experience, many players &quot;optimise&quot; because they want to play a character that is able to do something &quot;cool&quot;. They want, in short, to &quot;show off&quot; in front of their friends. In a pastime designed to be played for fun in convivial company, that seems to me to be a very appropriate and reasonable goal.Now, consider a game that gives the characters &quot;cool&quot; piecemeal. In 3.x D&amp;D, for example, spending a skill point on Acrobatics does not make your character a miraculous tumbler - it just makes them barely competent at a few simple tricks. To get to be &quot;cool&quot;, concentrated investment of character resources is required - and each little investment makes your PC just a smidgeon more &quot;cool&quot;. Little wonder that players concentrate on one area and go for maximum &quot;cool&quot; in that area. Such wide-ranging resource apportionment can be fun in its own special way, but if you yearn to &quot;go for the cool&quot; then it naturally impels you toward min/maxing.Consider, on the other hand, a game that packages &quot;cool&quot; in discrete, individual packages, each complete unto itself. This, for me, is part of the genius of 4E D&amp;D's powers; take a power and it allows you to do one cool thing - NOW. You don't need to &quot;save up&quot; or pursue the investment over several levels, the ability to &quot;declare cool&quot; is there immediately - in that one, specific way. Sure, in 4E you can build on it with feats and items (which is where you see the great majority of min/maxing happening in 4E), but I'm just talking about the powers system, for now. You can't &quot;build on the cool&quot; or multiply it by taking more powers - at best you can get to do approximately the same thing more times; hardly a thrilling enticement. So, in my experience, players pick reasonably unrelated powers. Utilities and Skill Powers add to this, giving each character a range of useful tricks they can perform.Now, I'm not saying that the execution was perfect in 4E - far from it - but, if you wish to encourage players who want characters that do cool things to diversify their PC design, it seems to me that parcelling up character abilities into &quot;gobbets of cool&quot; is a good way to go, design-wise. Have each &quot;character ability&quot; element allow them to do something cool - no ifs, buts or additional stuff required - that is complete in itself and not &quot;improved&quot; by the addition of some other ability (which is, itself, not really that cool without the ability that it is added to). It sounds as if, unfortunately, such an approach would require a considerable redesign for your system, but, on the other hand, you might find that it gives you what you seek.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Balesir, post: 6475021, member: 27160"] There are various ways to approach the issue in the OP, to wit, the avoidance of "min/maxing" as opposed to general optimising. You say you want a "slice of life" type of game, in which case I commend to you HârnMaster and the associated world of Hârn, which features a working economic and social system such as is necessary to support such a game. To avoid overspecialisation, it encourages a "pre-game" form of character generation that builds character abilities organically from the opportunities and challenges that meet them in their life prior to becoming an "adventurer" (should they, gods forbid, become so short of options as to pursue so desperate a path in life - which, of course, all of them eventually will...). As an alternative to this, however, I also suggest considering a brief analysis of what the players may want. In my (admittedly partial - the world is a big place) experience, many players "optimise" because they want to play a character that is able to do something "cool". They want, in short, to "show off" in front of their friends. In a pastime designed to be played for fun in convivial company, that seems to me to be a very appropriate and reasonable goal. Now, consider a game that gives the characters "cool" piecemeal. In 3.x D&D, for example, spending a skill point on Acrobatics does not make your character a miraculous tumbler - it just makes them barely competent at a few simple tricks. To get to be "cool", concentrated investment of character resources is required - and each little investment makes your PC just a smidgeon more "cool". Little wonder that players concentrate on one area and go for maximum "cool" in that area. Such wide-ranging resource apportionment can be fun in its own special way, but if you yearn to "go for the cool" then it naturally impels you toward min/maxing. Consider, on the other hand, a game that packages "cool" in discrete, individual packages, each complete unto itself. This, for me, is part of the genius of 4E D&D's powers; take a power and it allows you to do one cool thing - NOW. You don't need to "save up" or pursue the investment over several levels, the ability to "declare cool" is there immediately - in that one, specific way. Sure, in 4E you can build on it with feats and items (which is where you see the great majority of min/maxing happening in 4E), but I'm just talking about the powers system, for now. You can't "build on the cool" or multiply it by taking more powers - at best you can get to do approximately the same thing more times; hardly a thrilling enticement. So, in my experience, players pick reasonably unrelated powers. Utilities and Skill Powers add to this, giving each character a range of useful tricks they can perform. Now, I'm not saying that the execution was perfect in 4E - far from it - but, if you wish to encourage players who want characters that do cool things to diversify their PC design, it seems to me that parcelling up character abilities into "gobbets of cool" is a good way to go, design-wise. Have each "character ability" element allow them to do something cool - no ifs, buts or additional stuff required - that is complete in itself and not "improved" by the addition of some other ability (which is, itself, not really that cool without the ability that it is added to). It sounds as if, unfortunately, such an approach would require a considerable redesign for your system, but, on the other hand, you might find that it gives you what you seek. [/QUOTE]

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