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

[dreaded_beast]

Once again interesting responses so far from everyone.

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.

I can understand your logic here, but I don't necessarily think it is a bad thing.

So in you're particular game, creating this type of Diplomat character would be considered min-maxing? If that is the case, you would discourage players from maxing out their ranks at the lower levels, going for synergy bonuses, or putting a high stat to compliment the skills they have selected?

Would you also discourage a fighter type from putting an 18 in Strength and getting the Weapon Focus feat?

In my opinion, it seems as if you would prefer your characters to be "generalists" instead of "specialists". How do players create characters in your games then, interms of where to place stats, how many ranks of skills to get, etc.? It would seem that if players are not able to put ranks and stats where they want, based on the whatever the house rules are for building characters, then subsequent characters would probably look the same depending on what class would be taken. The rogue for instance, would not be allowed to get 4 in the CHA skills at the same level, so where would he put those skills? All the following rogue characters would face the same dilemma and may end up selecting the same choice of skills, since the options have been somewhat limited. I mean no offense, so I hope this doesn't come accross as rude question.

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

Based on the above statement, then would you say that all characters have to fit a "common mold"? Only the cleric should be good at "knowledge religion"? (I understand the circumstances for you game were not the best, so my questions are just based on that single quote.)

In my opinion, I don't think that characters should fall into "common molds". I think the fun of RPGs and with the rules of 3.0/3.5, characters are able to somewhat become what the player envisions their character to be.

In general:

So in regards to players min-maxing their characters, how would you prefer players to make their characters then? In my opinion, if characters are not able to min-max their characters to a certain extent, then all the characters will be relatively the same, since they may not be allowed to specialize, or focus their abilities in one area suited to their class as a result of the dislike for min-maxing.

For instance, if a player cannot be a half-orc barbarian with a 20 STR at 1st level, then how would the player arrange their stats? If I was going to play a fighter type, I would certainly put my highest stats into STR, CON, DEX. And get Weapon Focus and Power Attack. If that is considered min-maxing, then where would the player who wanted to play the fighter type put there stats in your game? What feats would they get? Would they have to put their highest stats in CHA and INT, along with picking Skill Focus and Stealthy? The same could be said for the diplomat character.

So in other words, how do players in your games create their characters if they can not make them powerful in the aspect that is suited to their class?

I understand that some may say the challenge, the chance to role-play a unique character, I don't need a "power" character to have fun, etc. However, I consider this more a "play-style" choice then.

To put in the words of one poster:

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

Hopefully this didn't sound too ranty and no offense to anyone.

 

[dreaded_beast]

Not as touchy as your avatar.

Heh.

I thought it was funny, my name "dreaded_beast" and underneath, a picture of Jacko.

But I should ask the mods if that is appropriate.

Off to the Meta boards!

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I thought it was funny, my name "dreaded_beast" and underneath, a picture of Jacko.

Actually, I hadn't made that connection. I was just joking cause I think he's a freak; no intention of suggesting it was inappropriate was meant.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Would you also discourage a fighter type from putting an 18 in Strength and getting the Weapon Focus feat?

Well, if you check his group's character generation method, nobody "puts an 18 in Strength".

He declares "I'm playing a half-orc fighter"... then he rolls 4d6-drop-1 for Strength. If that comes up 18, no problem. If it comes up 12, that's the number. If it comes up 6, maybe they'd let him scrap that character and start again.

There's no assigning of stats at all... they roll each ability in order.

-Hyp.

 

[Elf Witch]

When I made the comment that it sucks for the wizard to be better at knowledge religion than the cleric what I meant was the wizard was better than the cleric because he had rolled much better had at least a 44 point buy to the cleric's 29 point buy. The cleric had a 10 int the wizard had 20. The cleric had more ranks in the skill but the +5 for int really made a difference. The cleric was all about being very religious the wizard was not.

And the player playing the wizard would always jump in and say I roll to see if I know there by always taking the spotlight away from the cleric. The least he could have done was wait to see if the cleric did it and if he failed then tried to see if he did better.

That is one of the problems with some of the people who min/max they shine so brightly they put the rest of the party into shadow.

 

[dreaded_beast]

Well, if you check his group's character generation method, nobody "puts an 18 in Strength".

He declares "I'm playing a half-orc fighter"... then he rolls 4d6-drop-1 for Strength. If that comes up 18, no problem. If it comes up 12, that's the number. If it comes up 6, maybe they'd let him scrap that character and start again.

There's no assigning of stats at all... they roll each ability in order.

-Hyp.

Ah! Yes, that's right. Damn my poor reading skills!

 

[Hypersmurf]

When I made the comment that it sucks for the wizard to be better at knowledge religion than the cleric what I meant was the wizard was better than the cleric because he had rolled much better had at least a 44 point buy to the cleric's 29 point buy. The cleric had a 10 int the wizard had 20. The cleric had more ranks in the skill but the +5 for int really made a difference. The cleric was all about being very religious the wizard was not.

That is one of the problems with some of the people who min/max they shine so brightly they put the rest of the party into shadow.

Well, if you use random ability generation, and someone rolls a 44 point character to someone else's 29 point character, that's not min/maxing. That's an inherent possibility of the random system. If you're concerned about imbalances in the party not due to skill/feat/class selection, but due to stat imbalance, then the dice are to blame, not the players.

As far as the high-Int wizard beating the skilled cleric, remember that Knowledge skills are trained only; with no ranks, you can only know very general information (DC10), no matter what your Int modifier.

If the wizard actually puts ranks into Knowledge: Religion, then he's entitled to know stuff. The difference between him and the cleric is not the magnitude of the knowledge - the cleric studies harder (more ranks), but the wizard is a natural academic (higher Int modifier), and learns more with less effort. The difference is in the presentation. As you described the two characters, the wizard knows the information on an intellectual level; the cleric believes and lives the information. This makes no mechanical difference, but it can be brought out in the way the characters reveal the information the knowledge checks grant them.

-Hyp.

 

[Altalazar]

Well, if you use random ability generation, and someone rolls a 44 point character to someone else's 29 point character, that's not min/maxing. That's an inherent possibility of the random system. If you're concerned about imbalances in the party not due to skill/feat/class selection, but due to stat imbalance, then the dice are to blame, not the players.
-Hyp.

I've seen this distinction mentioned before - so if you get a min/max result by random chance rather than deliberately, how does that really make a difference, if the problem is now that, say combat that would challenge that one character kills everyone else, but if it is appropriate for everyone else, then it is too easy?

I guess I don't see why it should matter if you get the min/max result from random chance or deliberately - it is still the same problem. If you handed over the character sheet to someone else there is no way they could even tell the difference between the deliberate min/maxer and the random chance min/maxer.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I've seen this distinction mentioned before - so if you get a min/max result by random chance rather than deliberately, how does that really make a difference, if the problem is now that, say combat that would challenge that one character kills everyone else, but if it is appropriate for everyone else, then it is too easy?

It doesn't make a difference to the result. But it's not the player's fault.

The player who pushes the rules to the very limit and carefully picks a combination of feats and PrC abilities that synergise to create a character who can wipe up the rest of the party by himself, even though everyone uses the same point buy, is to an extent, to blame if everyone else gets bored and feels overshadowed.

But if a player who doesn't particularly min/max still ends up overshadowing everyone because he randomly rolled a 51 point character to everyone else's 25 point characters, that's not his fault.

The game still ends up being boring for everyone else, because Superman handles every encounter with one hand behind his back while the other characters hold up score cards... but it's not because the player deliberately set out to design a character that outshines everyone.

It's similar to the problems that can result if one character goes up several levels and gains a few wishes via a Deck of Many things (the Sun, the Moon, the Jester, and the Comet, say), while the wizard loses several points of Int (the idiot), the cleric loses a level (the Fool), and the Paladin changes alignment and loses all his class abilities (the Balance). It's not the fault of the first player that his character now is significantly more powerful than everyone else. It's simply something that can result when excessive randomness has a permanent impact on the game (Deck of Many Things or random ability generation).

-Hyp.

 

[Altalazar]

It doesn't make a difference to the result. But it's not the player's fault.
-Hyp.

But isn't fault really irrelevant? I mean, the game is ruined either way. Wouldn't it be better to make sure neither the players NOR the dice can ruin the game? (Point buy being the obvious method to prevent it). I get the feeling I'm missing something here in your assumptions or how you handle this particular problem.