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<blockquote data-quote="Tuft" data-source="post: 4820125" data-attributes="member: 60045">It's the DM's job to keep up the appropriate appeareance of a threat against the party. That means that he most probably adjusts the monsters to fit what the party can do. For example, I've had a DM that changed the 3.5 &quot;always hit on a 20&quot; rule into &quot;always hit on a 19-20&quot;, just because members of the party had too good AC. With another GM in a 3E Shadowrun game, the combat prowess of the opposition changed noticably during a single round of combat.That's the problem with hard-line optimization; it is self-defeating. The DM will react to it, and he will change the threat level to compensate. Different DMs react quicker than others, but if you press hard enough, you will force the reaction. That goes for single skill checks, as the OP describes, as well as pure damage output. Now, if you concentrate on optimization, you most probably sink a lot of resources into it (feats, build points, skill points, etc, depending on system); recources you could have spread out on other things. When you force the DM to react, he restores the balance so that you are back where you would have been without the optimization - but you are still out of your spent resources. That's the self-defeating part. The other part is that you are actually worsening the odds for the members of the party that are not on the arms race train, not improving them. If the DM selects or designs monsters to fit your optimized character, they will very probably be a much higher threat to the non-optimized ones.CapnZapp talks above about &quot;computers [...] ensure minmaxing isn't opposed&quot;. The interesting part is that it is not true; minmaxing is opposed even on computers. If enough players in an MMO employs a specific optimization, the game will change - the developers will employ the dreaded &quot;nerf bat&quot;. The MMO developers may react slower than a PnP DM, but they will react...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tuft, post: 4820125, member: 60045"] It's the DM's job to keep up the appropriate appeareance of a threat against the party. That means that he most probably adjusts the monsters to fit what the party can do. For example, I've had a DM that changed the 3.5 "always hit on a 20" rule into "always hit on a 19-20", just because members of the party had too good AC. With another GM in a 3E Shadowrun game, the combat prowess of the opposition changed noticably during a single round of combat. That's the problem with hard-line optimization; it is self-defeating. The DM [i]will[/i] react to it, and he [i]will[/i] change the threat level to compensate. Different DMs react quicker than others, but if you press hard enough, you will force the reaction. That goes for single skill checks, as the OP describes, as well as pure damage output. Now, if you concentrate on optimization, you most probably sink a lot of resources into it (feats, build points, skill points, etc, depending on system); recources you could have spread out on other things. When you force the DM to react, he restores the balance so that you are back where you would have been without the optimization - but you are still out of your spent resources. That's the self-defeating part. The other part is that you are actually worsening the odds for the members of the party that are not on the arms race train, not improving them. If the DM selects or designs monsters to fit your optimized character, they will very probably be a much higher threat to the non-optimized ones. CapnZapp talks above about "computers [...] ensure minmaxing isn't opposed". The interesting part is that it is not true; minmaxing is opposed even on computers. If enough players in an MMO employs a specific optimization, the game [i]will[/i] change - the developers [i]will[/i] employ the dreaded "nerf bat". The MMO developers may react slower than a PnP DM, but they [i]will[/i] react... [/QUOTE]

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