It's not really min-maxing, but you can choose a flaw or a FLAW. Not all are equally negative. You can minimize how bad for your character the flaw is likely to be. You can also choose ideals, etc. the same way. The ideal of tradition is less likely to garner good will and future reward than the ideal of charity is. Or if keeping your hard won loot is more your thing, you'd pick power over charity. There are better and worse choices to make for your character.
I suppose, but the rewards are so meager that it seems to me like a lot of work for a reward of thin gruel. It's nothing like picking, i.e., Disadvantages in Champions, where you want more points for less actual in-play cost.
Well I missed that context.
It depends on who you are charitable to I suppose. Sometimes having a place to hide where you have someone loyal and won't give you away is worth more than a pile of gold. Sometimes the person is just at a down point in life and will return to power and be able to help you considerably for your favors. And there are also other traits that can be chosen for PC gain, instead of neutral or bad.
I like the idea of having Patrons, advantages and disadvantages etc.... but I think I'd prefer them to be separate subsystems to prevent manipulation. Starting the game with some allies is a good thing. This is something that 13th Age did well. Not endorsing that game for other reasons but I liked that aspect of it.It depends on who you are charitable to I suppose. Sometimes having a place to hide where you have someone loyal and won't give you away is worth more than a pile of gold. Sometimes the person is just at a down point in life and will return to power and be able to help you considerably for your favors. And there are also other traits that can be chosen for PC gain, instead of neutral or bad.
I also agree with you, which is why I opened with, "It's not really min-maxing..."
OSR play significantly deempahsizes the 5 minute work day. There are far less per day abilities and far less per day healing. A greater emphasis on resource management also makes the 5MWD less appealing because there are significantly more pressures on the party's time due to things like food and torch use, things that are laughably hand wave-y in 5E and newer editions. The newer the edition, generally speaking, the more you deal with 5 minute workday style play. Pointing to OSR play here is probably a mistake on your part.
In my experience, it was prevalent in every edition from Basic on up. You pretty virtually every party had spellcasters and it was almost always the better choice to keep them rested to get spells back. Especially if you had a cleric for magic healing. Magic healing = overnight healing when you get high enough level.
I think this really depends on the scenario. ToH particularly, but also White Plume Mountain and Castle Amber, all seem to welcome it!
High level play is the least common play tier, so why is that the yardstick? I'd also submit that played with strict attention to detail on the resource side, this isn't how B/X or BECMI actually play, and certainly not at low or mid tier. I was specifically addressing the 5 minute workday remember, which isn't just about healing, but also blowing nova abilities, a thing that those editions don't really have.
Published adventures that are at odds with the game rules? Perish the thought sir, perish the thought.
Also, see above.
It's not. The 5 minute work day is actually more prevalent at lower levels than high levels. First, when you only have 1-4 spells per day to cast(levels 1-4), you rest a whole lot after fights so that the spellcaster(s) can get back into combat. Second, you can start fully or nearly fully healing the entire party overnight at mid levels, not high levels.
No, they didn't really "nova," but they did run out of resources after 1 fight at low levels. Unless of course the wizard ineffectually attacked with a staff or daggers. The cleric could at least wear armor, so fighting wasn't a God awful choice.
Yeah, there's definitely an element of this. You also see the flipside, though, with people leaning so heavily into their stuff that it borders on "you have to be bad at things in order to roleplay!" territory. I have seen plenty of "but that's my character's alignment/flaw/whatever!" excuses in the past, in various games I've played.
Yeah. I've seen that flipside as well. Personally, I just look for whichever one fits my character concept the best and go with it. Whether that's the best, most debilitating, or somewhere in-between. Of course, if there are two choices that are equally valid, I'll go with the less debilitating of the two.
This is a tad lazy -- you haven't explained how @Fenris-77 is incorrect in his assertion (which I believe is largely correct), just offered a fairly obvious statement that games have a range of ways they can be played within their rules. This statement does nothing to refute @Fenris-77's statement, but it seems to want to try to. Just not very hard, mind.
The argument was lazy, I wasn't making any comment on your habits or behaviors. So, yeah, I guess that you should get out of the habit of making public assessments about people's internal states as a way of dismissing what they say, eh? Given you isolated this one thing and didn't have anything to say on the larger point (which the grammatical structure of the sentence you quoted indicates is an expansion of the bit your snipped out, and clearly shows that it refers to the argument made), I'd suppose this is much more relevant advice for you.
This is effectively you saying "analysis of systems design is pointless".
Honestly, any honest analysis, in my view also probably ought to account for what Umbran says here.
