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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 7079601" data-attributes="member: 71699">In WotC's old D&D forums "optimise" and "minimax" were used synonymously. That said, even in those forums I felt a sense that players wanted optimising to imply making the mechanics match their concept. So if my character concept is to play an inept thief, then I can assign low values to my Dex and Int and allocate my Expertise bonuses to irrelevant skills (or ones that are based on poor stats), and I will be "optimising".I agree with your observation here that minimaxing tends to lead to narrow sets of abilities, but I don't believe that is its sole intent. Minimaxing is all about maximising mechanical advantage. The maxxed 3.5ed kobold Punpun is great at everything.This seems to belittle minimaxing needlessly. From experience, the more maxxed out characters in my games have had a much greater interest in mechanically hard fights than the sub-optimal characters. I think that is because the players who focused on RP were more interested in exploring the fiction than overcoming mechanical problems.I feel like that ideal (that fiction and stats manifest in one stroke as a melded whole in the mind of the player) doesn't happen in play. What I have experienced is that players come at the job of creating a character from all kinds of angles. Some players will have a piece of fiction in mind and then search through the rules to put flesh to that fiction. Others will have read the rule book, taken note of mechanics that interested them and created their character; and then retconned their fiction to fit that mechanical entity. So that is what I intended to imply about where you start, and which is bent toward which.I don't make that assumption. I agree that someone pronouncing that their way is better at the table can be a jolting experience, breaking SOD. Although I would probably nuance that to say that anyone making a pronouncement that goes against the mores of their group is likely to cause such a jolt. So if for some group RP is prioritised and considered better than OP, then some player asserting that they are not allowed to have that assumption is going to break their SOD. In my view they are perfectly well allowed to have that assumption, at their table.</blockquote>

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