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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThoughtBubble" data-source="post: 2905179" data-attributes="member: 9723">Fun thread. Hope it's not too late to chime in!I think D&D lends itself to min-maxing and a focus on the numbers and combat acumen. That doesn't mean it's a bad system, or that you can't role-play in it. But, all things equal, it does a lot to bring those elements into play. There are a lot of combat related rules in the game. Especially including spells, which add a lot more to track "So, what do I roll to get out of these tentacles?"Here's some stuff, that all put together, can give you some perspective into the min-maxing portions of my little heart. --The game rewards mastery of the system. By looking into what goes well, you can gain big-time benifits. I mean, really, taking toughness isn't that useful, and guys who melee will want strength, and so on. D&D rewards long term planning. Ever decide that your character would really be awesome dual-wielding? I hope you knew that when you picked your stats, because you need a 15+ dex to have a chance at being reasonably good at it. Oh, and I hope you're either a fighter, or about to hit a feat level, otherwise it may be a long while.  Don't get me started on picking up whirlwind attack. You'll need to know that you're going to pick that up at level 12 when you first roll up the character. On a side tangent, I think dropping the stat pre-requisites from feats and dropping them on to the characters more would help the game system feel more open. As long as you're in the "My character does X" range, you're alright, outside of that characters tend to falter (total skill modifiers of +1, or 1/2 bab for examples) . D&D has a lot of hefty penalties that proper planning can avert. Firing into melee, unfamiliar weapons, wearing armor, cross class skills (1/2 skill on non class skills really tends to hurt the classes with few skill points), or trying to hit things with 1/2 bab. Again, planning for this reduces the situations where a character is unprepared.There are preciously few ways to spontaniously say "The outcome of this roll matters so much to me I'll give up a lot to change it." You can't call upon the dark side, or channel your teleport spell into a point blank attack, or re-roll that 3 that had it been a 7 would have let you save the princess and accomplish your life's goal. So, it pays to have the things that you think will matter as high as possible. Hero points are one of my best friends and are getting imported into any D&D game I run from here on out. D&D likes to say "No... Unless..." In my expierence in the game, generally there seems to be a large list of things I can't do, and some very specific criteria I need to hit to be able to do what I want. Often that's taking a prestige class, often it's multi-classing, or buying up the right feat chain, or making sure to get at least 8 ranks in tumble, climb, balance, and swim. This gets compounded with the fact that there are a lot of penalties and tough rolls that await the unprepared. So it's best to know what I want early and get it as soon as possible. The DM can do anything at any time. Not a problem, per se, but it's an important point leading up to the next. All I really have control of is my character. By using the rules as well as I can to make my character as good as possible, I have the best chance of getting what I want out of the game. --It really boils down to that last point. It's not always easy to get what you want in the game. Sure, good groups help with that, but they're not always good groups. There are games when all the good character actions in the world can't change a thing (because the character acting portions are entirely GM defined), but a readied action with an arrow has a much more predictable result. The rules can back you, in some places, when you need them.Some days a wisdom of 8 is a cool chance to play a trusting character who lacks basic suspicions about other people. But it's always a -1 to will saves. I like D&D, it's a fun game.  I hope that this helped anyone wondering about "Why ever min-max" .I just have one question. Why is it that doing something cool seems to have a -2 modifier?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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