[TOUCHY SUBJECT] Why all the hate for min-maxing?

[DrZombie]

Min-maxing. My friends say that I'm a min-maxer, wich might be true. The thing is, I start with a character concept, work that out a little, then dive into my books and look for feats fitting with/augmenting that character. If I want to play a roguish figure that can talk his way out of anything, you can bet I'll look at every feat and prestige class that can augment my character. Why on earth shouldn't I take a certain feat if it fits the character? If I can find a combo that makes him twice as good, why shouldn't I take it?

The thing most people forget is that when you take a feat there's a dozen that you don't take. If your character excells in one thing he'll suck at three others.

The difference with some other people is that I will never overspecialise in one area, leaving the rest undeveloped. In my group that would give me the life-expectancy of a turkey at thanksgiving.

I've seen the half orc lvl 16 fighter/barbarian/chainsawwieldingmaniacprestigeclass(tm) with a strength of 35 and an intelligence of 4 with the as skill descriptions : intimidate 15 ranks, jump 5. That's not a min-maxed character, that's an absolutely silly character that couldn't ever have reached lvl 15 if it started at lvl 1. Even at lvl 15 straight-out-of the box it wouldn't survive the first night of gaming at my table. He'd probably get into so much trouble in the city on his first night out that he'd be found floating face-down in the harbor. No use in having a +36 whirling attack of death if you're too stupid to realise people have been feeding you poison all night, and now the green elephants are pariding inside yous skull.......
[/ foaming at mouth mode]


Now, if you want truly artfull min-maxing, go for 7th sea, now that'll make you drewl....

 

[d4]

like MarauderX and Zappo, the only time i really have a problem with minmaxing is when only one player is doing it.

i don't like having an unbalanced party, where one character clearly outshines everyone else.

 

[Darklone]

I don't like minmaxxing when it makes everyone forget about the game.

 

[Nifft]

IMHO, it's a matter of fun for the player, and how the player can destroy the fun for the rest of the party.

Since a min-maxer expects to dominate combat, if he fails to do so, there are cries of "unfair!" -- after all, he's "supposed" to fight and win -- that's all he's designed to do!

This means that it's hard to pleasantly surprise a min-maxer, but easy to unpleasantly surprise one. Meaningful rewards are reduced to things that grant numerical bonuses, which sucks color and flexibility out of the game.

It's like not participating in half of the game. It certainly cuts down on the fun and creativity.

-- N

 

[Umbran]

Problem is, lots of people don't have fun doing min-maxing. Second problem is, if one player in the party is doing serious min-maxing and the rest aren't, he is going to have a substantially more powerful character, leading to intra-party inbalance.

In addition, the min-max player generally has to deal more directly with the rules during play to take advantage of his or her chosen specialty. In general, in a game with a serious min-maxer, I find there to be much more rules-discussion and maniuplation, counting squares on battlemats, and so on. Generally combat runs more slowly, and gets tactically chewed over to the point where it loses much of it's excitment and visceral impact.

There is, of course, nothing at all wrong with this, so long as everyone at the table likes that sort of thing. But if you're playing with folks who want to make combat decisions based upon a character's emotional state, for example, there's going to be a major style-disconnect.

More problematic, in my experience, is that strongly min-max players tend to get bored when the game turns away from their chosen specialty. Usually that specialty is combat, meaning that these folks tend to prefer hacking and slashing to story and plot development. Again, not a problem, unless other folks in the group lean in different directions.

NB: All the generalizations and observations from one lone gamer's experience. I recognize that lots of individuals don't fit the above molds. The original poster asked about min-maxing in general, not about an individual case, and I'm talking about the worst cases here.

 

[Tuzenbach]

The reason why min-maxing is a problem a lot of the time is that people who do it are missing out on a lot of the real fun in roleplaying. I have found that many min-maxers focus their entire attention on creating the best character possible put this focus takes away from the creating of an interresting character.

Untrue. If a gamer spends all of his or her energies in a mix/maxing endeavor, then that IS the "real fun" for them.

I don't know about you, but when I'm doing random home maintenance with a hammer & nails, 100 times out of 100 I'm going to try and NOT hit my thumb with the hammer. Persons generally avoid things that are painful and focus upon things that they believe will make them happy. If I've got gamers who spend 100% of the time min-maxing, guess what? They're enjoying themselves. The whole purpose of D&D is not how accurately players exorcise their thespiatic skills in an effort to supply a "correct" portrayal of their characters. The purpose, like any other game, is to have fun. I've gamed with countless persons who really didn't know the first thing to do when informed harshly by the DM that they were "playing wrong" and have to "act like" their respective characters. I've seen a lot of good people become alientated and lose interest in D&D all together that way.

And a side bar: When I was DMing a lot a decade ago or so, the focus was of my campaigns were always the plot lines (I had to ensure they'd keep showing up), hidden knowledge (i.e., sure, it looks like a cool sword, but you won't know whether or not it's cursed until you shell out 1000 gp to that sage), strategy, and competition between players (which a lot of the time boiled down to which player could use their INTELLECT the most productively for the min/maxing of their character). Then a few years later I became a player in a group whose sole focus was theatrical "role-playing". Horrible British accents and ridiculous Orc gruntalations were flying around and I could feel my brain slowly withering away. It was kind of like being forced to watch WWE wrestling! In short, this "true" interpretation of the way D&D was "supposed" to be played (according to yourself and that DM at the time) was dreadful for me. I hated it, but had a hard time leaving for fear of hurting persons feelings and all that crap. I think I threw my character into a volcano on purpose, that's how bored and frustrated I became. [/Rant]

 

[reiella]

Untrue. If a gamer spends all of his or her energies in a mix/maxing endeavor, then that IS the "real fun" for them.

I don't know about you, but when I'm doing random home maintenance with a hammer & nails, 100 times out of 100 I'm going to try and NOT hit my thumb with the hammer. Persons generally avoid things that are painful and focus upon things that they believe will make them happy. If I've got gamers who spend 100% of the time min-maxing, guess what? They're enjoying themselves.

Not quite/always true.

A look at the MMO craze can showcase this a bit.

Min/Maxing/Level Grind/etc can simply become addictive, and although the individual may not 'enjoy' doing it, they feel that they 'have to' in order to get the most out of the game/etc. Not saying that's always the case or even the most common case, just that it is a case.

 

[Altalazar]

I think certain character concepts just about require min/maxing in one form or another. If you don't, those skills and things you do as your 'signature' will likely just be about the same or only slightly better than other characters who aren't focused on that trait at all.

For instance, say you had a character concept that required you to be some sort of super-olympic swimmer. With the way the rules are set up, if you didn't min/max with your stats and such to really give yourself a high swim rating, you'd probably end up with about the same swim skill as everyone else in the group - perhaps even less if there is some sort of fighter or barb who also took swimming skill. Then you end up with the incongruous result of being the "champion swimmer" who is outswum by one or more members of the group who basically took swimming as an afterthought. That just isn't very fun or interesting.

I min/maxed a character that actually wasn't all that useful in combat - this was OA, and I made a "monkey" race character with everything geared toward jumping, climbing, and balance. I maxed all of those out, I used my starting money (we didn't start at first level) to get magical items to add to that (ring of climbing, one of jumping, boots of striding and springing - all of which are actually rather cheap), and so forth. He was also very very smart, so he at least could do more than jump around. He pretty much jumped everywhere. He was always climbing along the walls rather than the floor. He did all sorts of very fancy acrobatics - mostly for roleplaying flavor than any actual use. (Though as I recounted in another thread, his jumping ability actually ended up being the key thing needed in the ultimate combat encounter at the end of the campaign - rather by accident. That the fighter screwed it up wasn't his fault...)

That character was fun to play, and had all sorts of interesting roleplaying potential (he also threw things in combat). And he just wouldn't have been able to work without the min/maxing. (His jump was like up to 60 and his balance and climb were both in the 40s, i think). And this was at 7th or 8th level - there were racial bonuses to these as well.

So there is absolutely nothing wrong with min/maxing. I think, actually, it helps to differentiate characters from each other. Otherwise, you end up with a bland party where everyone is just about the same as everyone else in everything but the short list of class-specific abilities.

 

[nopantsyet]

I'm fine with min/maxing, provided it's all done outside the game itself. I honestly don't mind when my players try to optimize their characters. (I'll never tell them that though. ) As long as there's no real abuse.

Now, I once had a player who was playing a rogue/wizard and wanted to single levels of fighter and ranger for the front-loaded boosts, but skip the XP penalties, then take the Assassin PrC without being bound to the prerequisites. That's over the line for me. But I try to be as insidious as I can and expect the players to be resourceful and ingenious to an equal degree in order to succeed. So if they learn the rules well enough to really use them to their advantage, more power to them.

Also, as unpopular as this may be, I do not cater encounters to their strengths and weaknesses. I create the BBEG's based on who they are and what they are doing. I keep character sheets of the PCs, but I transfer a few skills & combat stats to a 3x5 card and ignore the sheets, so I don't even know what the PCs have up their sleeves half the time. Makes it exciting for me as well.

 

[DragonLancer]

In my mind, min-maxing is akin to cheating. Just play the game, not the rules.