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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guilt Puppy" data-source="post: 690068" data-attributes="member: 6521">I'm probably in the "min/maxing is bad" camp, but I usually try to frame it in a "that's not the sort of game I want to play" context than the "people who play that way are dumb" context.Also, when most people talk ill about mix/maxing, they're usually not talking about Half-Orc Barbarians with 20 Strength and 6 Int/Cha...It's more the Half-Orc Ftr8/Rgr1 who wants S&F without errata so they can duel-wield keen bladed gauntlets yadda yadda...Basically, you can say there's a gradiation in character creation, between having effective stats and having an interesting background/personality/whatever. And sometimes the two bleed into each other: A distinct fighting style, for instance, can be part of what makes a character interesting, and you need to back that up and make that effective. Which is okay.What frustrates me (and other DMs) is when character concept drops entirely out of the picture, and players want to play a really strong stat-block, because the numbers work out really well. Players who have no concept of their characters' personality, even on the battlefield, just aren't interesting to game with, by my standards. Basically, I want players who start with a character concept first, even if it's as simple as "I want an elven archer who totally rocks, like Legolas in the movie!" At least then they're playing a powerful character... If someone wants to play a character because they figured out a way to do a lot of damage, I'm not so happy. We're not playing the same game, or they're not playing the whole game, or however you want to frame it, the two things we're doing just don't jive.Then, of course, is the extreme case of people making characters that are just too damn powerful, or at least two damn min-maxed... This is kind of independent of the above, but occurs less often with people pursuing a character concept (especially when that concept is more RP-oriented). The DM can always create something that can defeat a character, and the DM can always create something that can lose to that character: Neither of these are all that interesting, and for most encounters you want this to be somewhere in-between. Now, that range is normally pretty broad, but I've found that it gets narrower and narrower with increasing power level, until you reach the point that you can't design an encounter where the outcome is not predestined. And that's no fun to DM, for me, and I can't honestly see how that's fun for the player. Not to mention, of course, the difficulties of in-party balance this brings up...</blockquote>

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