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Is this min maxing?

So is it min-maxing

  • Yes

    Votes: 38 44.7%
  • No

    Votes: 47 55.3%

Calico_Jack73

First Post
Yes it is Min Maxing but then again starting a game at that level pretty much guarantees that all the characters will be min-maxed. The DM let you know what you would be facing... only an idiot wouldn't prepare for it. If I'd been in your position I'd have created a Wizard with an insane Int score and I'd make sure that I had the Wish spell in my book. The fact you took a Ranger shows that you didn't totally Min-Max. At that level a Wizard would be truly frightening.

Edit: If you wanted to Min-Max a Warrior you would have taken all Fighter levels for all the extra feats. You'd be able to fight better than your Ranger and have more hit points.
 
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Piratecat

Sesquipedalian
An AC of 43 (less actually, since the shield bonuses won't stack) and a +28/+29 to hit isn't unreasonable at 18th lvl. You're a terror in hand to hand combat, but you're lousy at range, and you're only one sunder or disarm attempt away from losing a whole string of attacks.

I say that your character is highly optimized, but that's not a bad thing. There are still lots of ways to challenge you.
 

Al

First Post
Min-maxed? Hardly.

AC is respectable, as is damage potential but "min-max" necessitates that one minimising the weakness whilst simultaneously maximising one's strength.

His Will save, for one, is pitiful: +13? Against any respectable 18th level enchanter, that's begging to be Dominated. There is an absolute lack of any 'special material' weapon- against any form of damage reduction other than /magic, he's doomed. A demon some three or four CR points lower would cause a very severe challenge. His ranged capabilities seem decidedly inferior, and given his absolute lack of mobility, flying creatures will make short way of him. Against dragons, he's toast. They can hover and attack with their reach while this guy is swinging his sword some 10' below them. A poor Wisdom means that he cannot make the most of his spells.

This character would be far better as a pure fighter, or a fighter/ranger, or fighter/ranger/dervish. The pure fighter can take Greater Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Specialisation, hugely increasing the efficiency of his melee attacks and be a superior two-weapon combatant. By ignoring ranged attack, flight, his Will save and special material DR he's opened himself to a series of potentially bruising encounters. Against a dragon, this character is singly unsuited. Not only is he unlikely to get a full attack, getting up close and personal is tantamount to suicide!

This character is, at best, a standard 18th level character build. Of course one puts feats into two-weapon fighting; to do anything other would be sub-optimal. Min-max? Nowhere close. Even in damage potential, it's inferior to a proper two-weapon fighter build, and falls far short of the frenzied berserker. Moreover, it's a one-trick pony (as outlined above)
 

CrazyDrake

First Post
i said yes, you're min/maxed, but like everyone else, there's nothing wrong with that. you didnt munckin the character (nothing out of draconomicon, for example), it's a short game, and you started at 18th level. did they expect you to take skill focus or combat casting?

you made a very good character, one that is well put together but still plausable. that's min/maxing. if they're really not happy, come back here and get us to stat up a munckin dragon hunter so you can show them the difference.
 

OrChasmatron

First Post
I say it is not min-maxing. If you were min-maxing, I think you would have arranged your stats as follows:

str 14
dex 18 (21)
con 17 (16)
int 12 (11)
wis 16
cha 15 (14)

Then taken the weapon focus (rapier), weapon finesse (rapier), and improved critical (rapier) feats. Next you replace the scimitars with equivallant rapiers and get items that improve your Dex instead of your STR. I think that would be a min-maxed character.
 

starkad

First Post
Somewhat min-maxing, yes, but he also made you very powerful, so I'd say it's acceptable.

One thing, though - Your GM made the race with odd ability score modifiers. That not only goes against what races are supposed to have (even ability modifiers to avoid twinkage), in my opinion it encourages you to min-max.

I say have at it, and take it for what it sounds like is intended: pure high level power fun.
 



Elder-Basilisk

First Post
A true maximizer would have bought paired scimitars of wounding.

However, the question "Is this min/maxing?" is a silly one. Of course it is. All character creation is. Could I create an utterly pathetic 18th level character. Of course I could. Hello halfling mnk 2/Ftr1/Rgr1/ex bbn 1/ex-brd 2/rog 2/ex-drd 1/Pal 2/Clr 2/Wizard 2/Sor 2 with his low score in wisdom, and his high scores in int and charisma. His saves are pretty good but at 18th level he can only cast 1st level spells and has a BAB +11. So he's no good at spellcasting and isn't good at fighting either. Now some people would create such a character and call it role-playing as if playing a character who can contribute nothing to a party except for (maybe) drawing a few attacks before his foes figure out he's harmless is the only way to prove that they're a "roleplayer" rather than a munchkin, power-gamer, or "roll-player." I believe the accepted term for such tendencies is "role-wimp." (Ironically, there is another category of characters that end up like this: those constructed by incompetent power gamers who think they're getting power by strange multi-class combos but end up neglecting important aspects of their characters and are consequently useless).

While you took care to reduce your weaknesses and increase your strength vis a vis the role-wimp character, there's nothing unusual or unacceptable about that.

On the other end of the scale, there's the fighter 2/ranger 2/ex-barbarian 2 (for uncanny dodge)/Monk 2 (for evasion)/paladin 3/Pious Templar 3(for mettle and weapon specialization)/Exotic Weapon Master 3/Dragonslayer 1 who talked his DM into creating a god with favored weapon: spiked chain, etc. This character (or a similarly optimized build--possibly substituting Occult Slayer or Holy Liberator for Paladin) has twisted the rules a lot more in order to exaggerate his strengths and minimize his weaknesses vis a vis your character. I would normally consider this a power gamed character. But I imagine that the folks of the WotC character optimization boards could create a better build than this.

So, there's a wide spectrum of optimization and efficiency in design. The role-wimp character is designed to be as weak as possible. The power-gamer character is designed to be as strong as the creator can make him. That doesn't, however, mean that any character not designed to be weak is bad. Let's consider, for a moment, what the baseline for an 18th level character should be:

For a fighter, let's consider this:

Ftr 18. High strength, high con, mid dex. Wears adamantine fullplate, wields a bastard sword and large shield. He's got EWP, weapon focus, specialization, greater focus, greater specialization, and improved critical with his bastard sword. He's also got Power attack, cleave, great cleave, improved sunder. He's got combat expertise, improved trip, improved disarm, iron will, and lightning reflexes. He's also got quickdraw, dodge, and mobility. With his starting 25 strength (starting 15 +4 lvl+6 belt), boots of speed, +5 sword (we're talking an extremely basic fighter), he attacks five times per round at +33/+33/+28/+23/+18. He can disarm foes with weapons or sunder them, trip small foes (actually, if enlarged by the wizard, he's got a pretty good chance to trip some giants), boost his AC with Combat Expertise when he needs to hold the line, and punish low-AC foes with power attack (eschewing the buckler's AC bonus for two-handed power attack damage). If he kills his enemy before he finishes his full attack action, he can hold his bastard sword in his buckler hand, and quickdraw and throw magic javalins (or javalins of lightning) with the rest of his actions--so he's competent at range. With his +5 buckler, +5 fullplate, +5 amulet of natural armor, +5 ring of protection, boots of speed, rose prism ioun stone, and +1 dex bonus, he has an AC of 42 before combat expertise (it's 43 against his dodge target, would be 46 if he had a tower shield, and could be 52 if he drinks a potion of alter self). With a basic +5 cloak of resistance and a stone of good luck, his saves start at +17/+14/+14. (Since he had has enough stats to have con, dex, and wis bonusses and money to but a con item and has a slot for gloves of dex, his reflex and fort saves are better than that). And that's very much a plain vanilla fighter. He hasn't multiclassed, hasn't taken any builder book or 3rd party feats, hasn't used any special weapon or armor abilities, and didn't start out with particularly impressive stats. (With your starting stats, he'd be a lot better).

One could, of course, optimize that fighter a lot more. But at high levels, it would also be pretty easy to take the role-wimp road and deliberately make him weaker. However, if one did that, one would be intentionally making him weaker.

I think your ranger shows up as pretty similar to that base-line, by the book fighter. Which means that he's neither particularly power-gamed nor has he been constructed as a role-wimp.
 

Darklone

Registered User
It's not minmaxxing. A minmaxxed guy with two scimitars would have taken 10 dervish levels (CW) to avoid the TWF penalties for the two one handed weapons and get some extra bonuses. You'd have one feat more and would annihilate nearly anything in close combat with maximum bonuses on your attacks of a +40 or higher.

AC 43 (even if you would have it) is ... well. You could easily do better at level 18. Even without some big bad prestige classes.

Last but not least, and already mentioned: A TWF twink is only minmaxxed with two wounding weapons. :D
 

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