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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="Gradine" data-source="post: 7079174" data-attributes="member: 57112"><p>This seems to me to be an enforcement of an "every individual PC must be minimally competent in areas A, B, C, etc." rule that doesn't seem to exist or even really seem to be encouraged by any system's core rules. I'm okay with that in a specific campaign (I've run a "You are all spies" campaign before, after all) but as an overall rule to follow every campaign, every game? I'm definitely not a huge fan of that.</p><p></p><p>In contrast, I see the huge wealth of character options as the rules being built to encourage specialization, which is great because specialization is what so many of the character tropes many players design their PCs around tends to do. And, as I mentioned, while there are such tropes that are very D&D-unfriendly, there are plenty of character archetypes that aren't. To name two off the topic of my head that I've played, the bookish lore seeker and the creepy child telepath. Both were a lot of fun to play, always had a ton of interesting ways to help the party, and never felt like or were treated like burdens. If they ever encountered an adventure with a "you must be able to succeed on a <DC> Climb check to continue" and didn't allow for any kind of creative problem solving to get around it; that would have been a terrible adventure.</p><p></p><p>DMing in that kind of style is kind senselessly limiting the range of uniqueness in character types. I won't go so far as to say I can understand the appeal to something like that, because I honestly can't. I understand that it does appeal to others, but that's a table I'd never personally want to play at.</p><p></p><p>I'd imagine the feeling would be mutual, of course. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gradine, post: 7079174, member: 57112"] This seems to me to be an enforcement of an "every individual PC must be minimally competent in areas A, B, C, etc." rule that doesn't seem to exist or even really seem to be encouraged by any system's core rules. I'm okay with that in a specific campaign (I've run a "You are all spies" campaign before, after all) but as an overall rule to follow every campaign, every game? I'm definitely not a huge fan of that. In contrast, I see the huge wealth of character options as the rules being built to encourage specialization, which is great because specialization is what so many of the character tropes many players design their PCs around tends to do. And, as I mentioned, while there are such tropes that are very D&D-unfriendly, there are plenty of character archetypes that aren't. To name two off the topic of my head that I've played, the bookish lore seeker and the creepy child telepath. Both were a lot of fun to play, always had a ton of interesting ways to help the party, and never felt like or were treated like burdens. If they ever encountered an adventure with a "you must be able to succeed on a <DC> Climb check to continue" and didn't allow for any kind of creative problem solving to get around it; that would have been a terrible adventure. DMing in that kind of style is kind senselessly limiting the range of uniqueness in character types. I won't go so far as to say I can understand the appeal to something like that, because I honestly can't. I understand that it does appeal to others, but that's a table I'd never personally want to play at. I'd imagine the feeling would be mutual, of course. :p [/QUOTE]
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Where does optimizing end and min-maxing begin? And is min-maxing a bad thing?
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