If this go on, we might as well just start exchanging e-mails.
morrolan said:
They are not inherently more interesting. They are uncommon, thus unexpected, thus interesting. As a gm, if a player comes along and says "I wanna be a fighter, 18 str, power attack etc etc," I'm fine with that. I expect it because the system encourages that to a degree.
But if he comes along and says "I wanna be a fighter with 12 str and 16 int, and skill focus herbalism', I say "hmmm, well that's interesting, why?" And the player might say "well, dude wanted to become an apothecary, but couldn't afford to go to school, then was conscripted by the militia to fend off raids by the foul myrmidons etc, etc". I know he's put some thought in and wants his stats and skills to reflect that, and i'm more interested in how he's gonna do against that first group of goblins or whatever. Will his party be optimised for that combat? maybe not. But what happens when they meet will be more interesting to me as GM, and hopefully that will translate to what I put into the game.
But I can write.. 4-5 truly different backgrounds for that fighter with the 18 STR with Power Attack. Why? Because the base is a trope, and it's -easier- to concentrate on roleplaying aspect that disregard (while still taking it into account) tropes. The herbalist fighter? Well ok, it might work once. From a truly RP perspective, other builds would probably make more sense, actually.
Min/maxed fighter takes down goblin warchief is dog bites man, really. You expect it, and can even statisticaly predict it. Whoop de doo. It might make him a hero in the village, but to us jaded types, it's just another day in D&D-land. Time to make the donuts.
But if our hapless apothecary finds he can't take down king gobbo, and the party has to come back later? Maybe he can find some lesser fartbloom, and have the rogue sneak it into the gob's stewpot, so that the next time they meet, King Gobbo's not feeling so good.
They can -both- be interesting.. Note that since most fighter builds do not depend on skills, they can pick some interesting skills to round up characters, instead of "jump/swim".
But you get my point. It's the same for me with backgrounds. If someone comes at me with the old "my village was burned by orcs and swore revenge", I can roll with it, it gets the job done, but it's ho-hum.
For a min/maxer/roleplayer, background is very, very important, as it's the only part of character building in which the roleplaying part comes into play.
As I said above, though, the same story wears thin quick. Interest in stories (novels) comes from conflict and limitation. You bite your nails when the character is up against something you know they can't get out of, and applaude when they find a way. The Jordan books were kind of fun despite the characters, just from a world building aspect (ok, really just for the magic system). But the characters themselves were sort of stock and boring really.
I've actually once used the exact same character (a dual-dagger-wielding halfing rogue/fighter, btw) twice, completely making them into different characters simply through background. YOu can make up an infinite amount of stories. Characters, while large, are limited.
Well I meant by defenition min/max means one dimensional, ie you focus all development in one area at expense of the others. Which sometimes does affect personality. If every barbarian buys points in str and con at the expense of cha and int, and people play characters accordingly, you have a bunch of dumb thugs who sit around picking their nose at dinner parties. Maybe some have axes, and some greatswords, but you know...
I've actually always viewed the "min" part of min/max as "minimizing weaknesses" while maximizing efficiency. But anyway. D&D favors specialization, there's no doubt about that. One of the rulebook actually -tells- you that it's better to maxed out a few skills than having 1 rank in a bunch of different ones. And with the escalating DC system, it's true. It's also why characters group together, since 4 specialists will be better than 4 jack-of-all-trades,
But which is more interesting? if someone tells me "My 7th level human fighter killed that 9th level barbarian in a str8 up fight!", well, ok, bully for you. If he says "Well, my character, the third son of the house of Cumrath was in the Salt Plains of Garumhet where he met the tribe of Caluther. What? Oh, they're like, that tribe of orcs, but they also have humans and half-orcs. Anyway. So the leader was acting uppity, and he -did- look tough. But my character, Harold, has a high opinion of himself too! So.. Well, we fought, and I killed him",
Well then I've learned something of his story, and the gameworld.
The OP wanted to know why min/maxing is regarded as bad, and I don't think it is really. It's a valid play style. I'm just thinking through under which circumstances I would find it "bad", and when things get stale, thats bad to me.
My point with that example, which wasn't very clear, is that they are both meant to be the same people. But one took me barely one sentence, and the other a paragraph. So when people talk about their characters, unless the back story is relevant, they'll fall back on class/levels/whatever. It doesn't mean the background isn't important, just that it takes longer to get into in this type of forum, so you are bound to hear more of the former than the latter.
P.S. I also totally made up both situations.
