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Where does optimizing end and min-maxing begin? And is min-maxing a bad thing?
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<blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 7060260" data-attributes="member: 5890"><p>I'm not quite sure what you mean here: 'better ranges to hit'? Do you mean he could shoot further? Or that his attack bonus was higher?</p><p></p><p>And if so, so what? Unless the arcane archer was so inaccurate that he misses every other shot, he still had a ton of advantages over the barbarian: elemental arrows, the ability to shoot and cast an aoe spell at the same time, the ability to shoot through walls, the ability to shoot 10 foes with a single shot and the ability to cause instant death with an arrow, plus his spellcasting. If you just want high attack bonus, play a straight fighter or add arcane archer to a ranger. Neither will have the flexibility of a wizard-based arcane archer.</p><p></p><p>It kind of seems like you focussed on one number and judged two entire characters based on just that, which is an attitude lots of DMs and players take which, more than anything else, sucks the fun out of the game. Players looking to be upset at someone they consider an optimizer can look at any isolated ability that a character has, and claim that the existence of a particular number makes the game 'unfun'. The reality is that focusing on the numbers without consideration of the path to them is what destroys fun. So what if the party barbarian does twice the damage of anyone else: you're all here to kill monsters. Why does it matter what specific proportion of that comes from whom?</p><p></p><p>It's slightly different for DMs in that a wide disparity in numbers makes their job harder... in so far as they need to actually understand the numbers that are in the party and take account for them. But I think it's far from an insurmountable task. It's just that most RPGs try to pretend that all characters are somewhat balanced, and therefore don't spend pagecount on addressing how to handle things when they are not, leaving some DMs raving that optimizers wreck their game, while others have hit upon solutions that work and don't know what the fuss is about.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Saeviomagy, post: 7060260, member: 5890"] I'm not quite sure what you mean here: 'better ranges to hit'? Do you mean he could shoot further? Or that his attack bonus was higher? And if so, so what? Unless the arcane archer was so inaccurate that he misses every other shot, he still had a ton of advantages over the barbarian: elemental arrows, the ability to shoot and cast an aoe spell at the same time, the ability to shoot through walls, the ability to shoot 10 foes with a single shot and the ability to cause instant death with an arrow, plus his spellcasting. If you just want high attack bonus, play a straight fighter or add arcane archer to a ranger. Neither will have the flexibility of a wizard-based arcane archer. It kind of seems like you focussed on one number and judged two entire characters based on just that, which is an attitude lots of DMs and players take which, more than anything else, sucks the fun out of the game. Players looking to be upset at someone they consider an optimizer can look at any isolated ability that a character has, and claim that the existence of a particular number makes the game 'unfun'. The reality is that focusing on the numbers without consideration of the path to them is what destroys fun. So what if the party barbarian does twice the damage of anyone else: you're all here to kill monsters. Why does it matter what specific proportion of that comes from whom? It's slightly different for DMs in that a wide disparity in numbers makes their job harder... in so far as they need to actually understand the numbers that are in the party and take account for them. But I think it's far from an insurmountable task. It's just that most RPGs try to pretend that all characters are somewhat balanced, and therefore don't spend pagecount on addressing how to handle things when they are not, leaving some DMs raving that optimizers wreck their game, while others have hit upon solutions that work and don't know what the fuss is about. [/QUOTE]
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Where does optimizing end and min-maxing begin? And is min-maxing a bad thing?
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