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

[Altalazar]

If this comes across as curt, I apologize, but don't you think you are presuming a bit much in that statement? First that my only problem with min-maxing is combat min-maxing, second that I am too stupid to realize that I can limit combat min-maxing by limiting combat, and third that I am too stupid to realize that as DM I have the power to award XP for things besides combat?

My problem with min-maxing is not just combat min-maxing. I do not dole out combat-based XP anyway, and I rarely do combats at all. So, min-maxing is not just about combat for me. I'll give an example of a non-combat situation where min-maxing can ruin the fun.

If I have a character, and one of his main issues is the regret he feels for abandoning the woman he loved because of social obligation, it would make me less than happy if a silver-tongued bard (Bluff and Diplomacy maxed out, with feats and spells to enhance it) smoothed things over without my character having to make any decisions or sacrifices. Or, if my character's lover had some object or information vital to the party, min-maxed bard could use spells to get what he wanted out of her and completely bypass my character dealing with the issue I designed for him. It'd be the same if he were an NPC. Of course, if the characters were hired, coerced, or cajoled into reuniting that character with his lover, it's one thing. But if it isn't, and one of the driving ideas behind the game is forgiveness, then I won't be too happy if it is all just glossed over.

Even if the min-maxer's character were a barbarian, there's nothing I can do to prevent that character from turning the encounter with my character's long-lost love into a disaster. With a maxed Intimidation and a huge sword, my character's lover would probably shun him not because of something he did, but because of what the other player did. Indeed, said character might just kill her and be done with it. If said character were anything besides Neutral or Chaotic Evil, I can give an XP penalty, but sometimes min-maxers even take alignment into consideration. Granted, I can say "no evil characters," but that rule would only be made to keep the min-maxer from playing it like that, which hampers the other players in the group.

Actually, I was presuming based on what every single other complaint about this I have ever seen has had as the common theme - combat min/maxing is what is complained about - even the die-hard min/max haters seem to agree that combat is the problem and non-combat min/maxing doesn't really bother them.

Your post is actually the first I can ever recall that mentions min/maxing problems in the realm of anything outside of combat.

And I was presuming no stupidity on your part - especially when you consider that these threads are read by many others besides you and me, and perhaps what is obvious to you and me might not be as obvious to someone else. And even if it is obvious, I thought it needed stating. No need to take it so personally.

The situations you described seem to be much less about rolls and more about roleplaying anyway. And players can always do something other than what the DM expects, especially when it comes to social interactions with NPCs - I don't see how min/maxing has anything to do with that.

 

[FireLance]

Anyway, thats why I think people worry much more about min-maxing in the combat heavy stats. OTOH, if you have a player with a forceful and persuasive personality maxing that CHR, watch out! You may never have a combat again.

Heh. The bigger problem is the combat brute that maxes Strength, Dexterity and Constitution, mins Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma, and tries to get by on the player's (not the character's) brains and personality.

But, to get back on topic. The reason why combat min-maxing tends to be a problem is because we get a lot of combats in D&D. And why not? It's exciting, it usually involves all the players, and it's relatively easy for the DM as he can just choose a few suitable creatures and run them straight out of the MM. A session with nothing but traps occupies the rogue, but everyone else is sidelined. A tricky negotiation may involve the bard and the paladin, but the barbarian gets bored. However, all PCs are expected to be able to contribute something to combat, whether it is melee attacks, sneak attacks or spells.

Because it happens so often, and because everyone is able to contribute, differences in ability become more obvious. The party doesn't react negatively if the rogue is the best trapfinder in the land - it's his area of specialty, not theirs, and they don't see that many traps anyway. However, if the raging barbarian deals over 100 points of damage in a round, or if the sorcerer completely wipes out the opposition with a single spell, some people may sit up, take notice and feel threatened.

Another problem with combat is that it threatens every member of the party more or less equally. When a rogue is disarming a trap, the rest of the party can try to find a safe place to stand. The DM can increase the challenge of the trap to match the rogue's ability without worrying about a TPK. However, increasing the challenge of combat to match the ability of the combat min-maxer may result in the deaths of one or more other party members.

Of course, a creative DM can work round the problem by having different types of challenges, specifically targeting the combat min-maxer's areas of weakness, or cause opponents to focus attacks on the combat min-maxer, but it gets difficult to do this repeatedly over the course of a campaign. It's just a lot of extra work for the DM.

 

[dreaded_beast]

But, to get back on topic. The reason why combat min-maxing tends to be a problem is because we get a lot of combats in D&D. And why not? It's exciting, it usually involves all the players, and it's relatively easy for the DM as he can just choose a few suitable creatures and run them straight out of the MM. A session with nothing but traps occupies the rogue, but everyone else is sidelined. A tricky negotiation may involve the bard and the paladin, but the barbarian gets bored. However, all PCs are expected to be able to contribute something to combat, whether it is melee attacks, sneak attacks or spells.

Because it happens so often, and because everyone is able to contribute, differences in ability become more obvious. The party doesn't react negatively if the rogue is the best trapfinder in the land - it's his area of specialty, not theirs, and they don't see that many traps anyway. However, if the raging barbarian deals over 100 points of damage in a round, or if the sorcerer completely wipes out the opposition with a single spell, some people may sit up, take notice and feel threatened.

Another problem with combat is that it threatens every member of the party more or less equally. When a rogue is disarming a trap, the rest of the party can try to find a safe place to stand. The DM can increase the challenge of the trap to match the rogue's ability without worrying about a TPK. However, increasing the challenge of combat to match the ability of the combat min-maxer may result in the deaths of one or more other party members.

Of course, a creative DM can work round the problem by having different types of challenges, specifically targeting the combat min-maxer's areas of weakness, or cause opponents to focus attacks on the combat min-maxer, but it gets difficult to do this repeatedly over the course of a campaign. It's just a lot of extra work for the DM.

One of the best answers I have read so far.

I think I can get a better grasp on the pitfalls and concerns regarding min-maxing based on the above, as well as everyone who has posted in this thread.

 

[dagger]

Thank you!

Min-maxing is orthogonal to role-playing.
They are not related.

You can roleplay an interesting, powerful character as easily as a interesting loser character, regardless of what many 'thespian' players would say.

Geoff.

 

[jester47]

Do you use point buy for stats? And you are talking just about the subset of min/maxing, combat min/maxing, right?

Nope, we don't use point buy. I find that point buy causes more problems than it solves. Mainly it invites min/maxing to come and sit down with you at the table. I did use point buy until I started seeing the same numbers over and over again. Bepending on the point buy ammount, there are certain combos of numbers that allow for a optimised character. When you keep seeing the same numbers that means that your players are in a mode of thought that is dangerously close to min/maxing.

No, we use: state race, state class, roll 4d6 drop lowest in order of stats, total stat bonus must be +2 or better or the set gets thrown out and you have to roll them again. Also, if the stats after racial adjustment make the character unplayable (sorc with a cha of 8) they get to reroll. Draconian? yes. Keeps players from tweaking thier character? You betcha. Do the players like it? Anyone who has tried it has not gone back.

And no I am not talking just combat min maxing. Take for example the Diplomat character. We have all seen it. The player with a half elf puts a high stat in cha. (for calculation purposes, lets say its an 18) Puts four ranks in Diplomacy, 4 in bluff, 4 in Sense Motive, 4 in Knowledge (nobility and royalty). He graduates the character to second level. Add one to all the skills. He now gets synergy bonuses to his diplomacy. diplo 5 + syn 6 + cha 4 + race 2. Thats a +17 at second level to any diplomacy checks. That causes problems. Cause now for me as a DM to really make a challenge for that player I have to make all the diplomacy checks between 26 and 31. If its an opposed check this skews the NPC balance which would be important to me if I custom fit everything to my players (which I don't) and any NPC that I might randomly pull out of a book has no chance. On influencing people's attitudes, this is a character that can turn a hostile NPC into a friendly one 50% of the time. At 2nd level. They can make the character indifferent 75% of the time. 25% of the time they can make the hostile character friendly. The player has essentially lost any challenge the game had WRT diplomacy at 2nd level. Combat is not nearly as bad.

Now if the player said "half elf rogue" and then rolled 12, 11, 13, 14, 15, CHA 18, then its a random roll, and in my book, and my house rules, they are free to make the mega diplomat cause that character is fairly rare and was rolled, not designed. I don't feel I have to bump up my NPCs cause it was random, which is somthing that will give the player hours of enjoyment ("I use my diplomacy on the chaimberlain! And these stats were random!"). And I won't see the same trick everytime that player makes a character.

Aaron.

 

[Tessarael]

On a side note, non-combat spotlight time can be an issue. For example, if in your main roleplaying session the Rogue is away from the party a fair bit of the session time, checking for traps, scouting, and so forth. That can result in the spotlight being on the Rogue for most of the session. I've been in sessions like that, and it is boring as hell.

I think this comes down to how the DM handles party splitting and scouting. For example, if scouting is often dangerous, the party split will not be as far, nor for as prolonged periods. Also, the DM can gloss over things and just summarize the scouting with only several rolls from the Rogue. Another alternative is to DM such things outside the main session.

In the campaign where I play a Rogue, there are times when spotlight has been on me. However, usually other characters get involved relatively quickly. It also helps that other characters have some Rogue abilities so that they can be in the vicinity even if I am the main sneak. e.g. One session where my character signaled frantically with a mirror after realising the party Wizard with charmed Yuan-Ti had walked up to their base and was talking to undead - the other sneaks moved in faster, and combat ensued. And the Wizard was better for this sort of thing, courtesy of charm. (There's some things that Diplomacy and Bluff just can't do.

Again though, I think these issues tend to be less of a min/max issue, and more of a DM's focus issue and how the party handles temporary splits.

Just my thoughts ...

 

[Altalazar]

Nope, we don't use point buy. I find that point buy causes more problems than it solves. Mainly it invites min/maxing to come and sit down with you at the table. I did use point buy until I started seeing the same numbers over and over again. Bepending on the point buy ammount, there are certain combos of numbers that allow for a optimised character. When you keep seeing the same numbers that means that your players are in a mode of thought that is dangerously close to min/maxing.

No, we use: state race, state class, roll 4d6 drop lowest in order of stats, total stat bonus must be +2 or better or the set gets thrown out and you have to roll them again. Also, if the stats after racial adjustment make the character unplayable (sorc with a cha of 8) they get to reroll. Draconian? yes. Keeps players from tweaking thier character? You betcha. Do the players like it? Anyone who has tried it has not gone back.

And no I am not talking just combat min maxing. Take for example the Diplomat character. We have all seen it. The player with a half elf puts a high stat in cha. (for calculation purposes, lets say its an 18) Puts four ranks in Diplomacy, 4 in bluff, 4 in Sense Motive, 4 in Knowledge (nobility and royalty). He graduates the character to second level. Add one to all the skills. He now gets synergy bonuses to his diplomacy. diplo 5 + syn 6 + cha 4 + race 2. Thats a +17 at second level to any diplomacy checks. That causes problems. Cause now for me as a DM to really make a challenge for that player I have to make all the diplomacy checks between 26 and 31. If its an opposed check this skews the NPC balance which would be important to me if I custom fit everything to my players (which I don't) and any NPC that I might randomly pull out of a book has no chance. On influencing people's attitudes, this is a character that can turn a hostile NPC into a friendly one 50% of the time. At 2nd level. They can make the character indifferent 75% of the time. 25% of the time they can make the hostile character friendly. The player has essentially lost any challenge the game had WRT diplomacy at 2nd level. Combat is not nearly as bad.

Now if the player said "half elf rogue" and then rolled 12, 11, 13, 14, 15, CHA 18, then its a random roll, and in my book, and my house rules, they are free to make the mega diplomat cause that character is fairly rare and was rolled, not designed. I don't feel I have to bump up my NPCs cause it was random, which is somthing that will give the player hours of enjoyment ("I use my diplomacy on the chaimberlain! And these stats were random!"). And I won't see the same trick everytime that player makes a character.

Aaron.

Why does that diplomat need to be nerfed? Why does it have to be "hard"? If a player takes all that effort into being a good diplomat, why not let them reap the benefits of it? It certainly won't help in every situation - even in some diplomatic situations it won't necessarily be all that the players need to do. Why does every situation that the DM sets up that requires die rolls have to be one where the players can fail?

And something I still don't understand is how you can consider an identical set of stats NOT to break your game (as you indicated in your earlier example) merely because they were rolled randomly rather than deliberately? Either a +17 diplomacy is a problem or it isn't. I fail to see how the fact that it happened "by accident" changes that - won't you still need those 31 DCs in either case?

I still think random rolls are asking for trouble when it comes to party balance - your method probably has the effect of throwing out anomolous results, on the low side, but you can still end up with pretty unbalanced parties and then you're back to square one in terms of challenges. But I'll leave that to the point buy versus random rolls thread. It is all about fun, after all.

 

[Afrodyte]

The situations you described seem to be much less about rolls and more about roleplaying anyway. And players can always do something other than what the DM expects, especially when it comes to social interactions with NPCs - I don't see how min/maxing has anything to do with that.

I think I said something along the lines of min-maxing being like a lot of other annoying habits that shift the focus of the game to what a single player is, could, or would do.

 

[Elf Witch]

One of the side effects of min/maxing I have seen it the disdain that non min/maxers face at the table playing with min/maxers. In one game I play an Irda sorcerer it fit the concept I was going for. The min/maxer of the party is constantly is asking why with the ECL hit did I not go with wizard because that way I would get my spells sooner.

When I finally asked why it mattered to him he said because of my choice the party's strength was not what it would be.

I have seen that several times in some of the groups I play in where you have players who feel that having the strongest maxed out character is the only way to go.

Sometimes it is blatant like above and sometimes it is subtle like that min/maxed cleric healing the less wounded other min/maxed character than the more wounded less optimal character.

And yes it sucks when the party wizard has a much higher modifier to the knowledge religion roll than the party cleric.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

This is a possible touchy subject...

Not as touchy as your avatar.

Seriously, I have no "hate" for min/maxers on a whole, but rather I have had bad experiences with individual min/maxers at my table. Generally, it stems around their desire for a concept, one that is often shallow story-wise and mostly about numbers, but which requires the inclusion of elements I chose not to include in my game. One example of which was one guy that spent three hour long arguement over whether I had the right as a GM to determine that Half-Dragons aren't in the world (as PCs or NPCs).

I had another individual that gave me a hard time over not disclosing what Prestige Classes were available, whining about the fact that almost all of the Prestige Classes are written by myself exclusively, and that Prestige Classes from various supplements, splat books, or the Dragon Magazine weren't allowed, claiming that I was intentionally screwing him over.

My favorite was a min/maxer that joined us briefly while still playing 2E. He naturally chose all these RP-based hindrances and gained all sorts of combative/survivalist boons. And then game play began and he realized that, with our game focused mostly on RP-based interaction and problem solving, that the hindrances he was used to being irrelevant in other games were actual hindrances at our table that affected him far more than his boosts helped him.

(He left because we were "too advanced" for his tastes, whatever that means...)

So, no, on a whole, I don't have a disliking of those that min/max; But previous experience does often cause me to determine the individual's style and preferences before inviting them to join.

On the other hand, the proposed definition in the Tweaker thread (even if "Tweaker" is dumped as a name) describes min/maxers I don't have a problem with: They min/max using the available options, with knowledge that versatility rather than uber-specialization makes for more viable characters in our game, and have fun, rather than complain endlessly about options they feel that they have a right to choose regardless of the gaming environment (ruining everyone else's fun and quickly being shown the door).