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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7480533" data-attributes="member: 6775031">Personally, I saw less of it, but that's just because I got out of the game before any of the supplements landed. As I understand it, late 4E saw roughly the same degree of optimization as late 3E (i.e. the combination of alternate racial features and feats and magic items and class features from different supplements, to create powerful combos that could completely overwhelm anything a new player could hope to achieve). That is to say, the phenomenon of min-maxxing wasn't any less common, although the effects of it weren't quite as disruptive.Two things that kept optimization in check were: 1) Abilities were much more tightly designed, with less of a focus on natural language and more of a focus on constraining the math; and 2) Enemies suffered extreme degrees of HP bloat, such that a fully optimized character still couldn't one-shot anything, although they could possibly two-shot a monster that would take seven hits from less-optimized characters of the same level.It's also worth noting that 4E raised the baseline expectations for optimization across-the-board. It was entirely expected that everyone would start with an 18 in their one important stat, and pick a race that synergized well with their class. The math assumed it, so you weren't actually gaining anything by doing so; you were merely hindering yourself if you failed to do it. Missing still felt like failure, and it took even longer before it came back around to my turn again.On the other aspect of the question, where combat optimization is necessary to keep a character alive, there was no real fear of death in 4E. Because of the massive HP bloat, everyone could easily withstand several hits before falling. You didn't have the 3.X situation, where a single critical hit (or failed save) could instantly kill you. And while that might seem like optimization was less important, since you never made one single all-important die roll, it wasn't really the case. With everyone requiring several hits to drop, you needed to optimize your attack roll as much as ever, just so that you could kill the enemies in a reasonable amount of time. When it takes half an hour to play through one round of combat, you really don't want combat to go on for one more round.</blockquote>

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