Min-Maxing

I don't know if this is the correct forum, and no I am not about to bash min-maxing. Some of the games asking for players say no min-maxing which is understood because we all want someone to fit within our group. The problem is that if you go to a forum, and ask what min-maxing is you will get different answers. Another problem is that different people have their own opinions of what feat/class/etc combinations are "too much". So rather than saying no mix-maxing it is probably better to give one of two examples. Examples: Finding ways to add +5 to your caster level or raising DC's so much that even a monster that is 4 above your party's CR has less than a 50% chance at making the save.<----Some may think this is too much while another GM may think it is ok. That is all. Have fun everyone.

I think the concept of min-maxing is something that inexperienced GMs are terrified of... because they are the ones that haven't played long enough to know what combinations should be banned from their games. It would be easier to just reserve the right to ban a character at any time the GM deems it broken. From my personal experiences as a GM, if a player doesn't do some min / maxing and brings a completely useless character to my game, I will very likely not accept them. If they cannot contribute to the party, then in my view they are simply dead weight. In 37 years of gaming, only one PC was amusing enough to play with that was completely useless to the party, so it is possible for a great RPer to make a fun contribution without making an actual contribution, but that is VERY rare in my experience.

Min-max is usually a 20 STR/14 CON barbarian with 10's or less in every other stat, power attack, etc... they tend to be one dimensional, or a one trick pony. Not a lot of people min max to that extreme though. Most are good optimizer's, while not being completely one dimensional.

Most people who say no to minmaxing are because the majority of players they get who do that end up focusing more on making their character the ultimate badass instead of sticking to the roleplay of the group and campaign. It's not very fun to have 1 player entirely focus on just killing monsters the fastest rather than having a creative, and challenging experience. I mean look at 4e groups here on roll20, most of them already turn into dungeon crawlers because of it, although a lot of the blame is on the system. I don't think there needs to be any clarification when it comes to people asking for no minmaxing as the powerplayers will know what they mean when they see it.

My campaign descriptions might sometimes say something like 'no min/maxing' but yes, I agree with the OP, in that I tend to list a dozen other descriptors of my campaign. "No Min/max" is not the only thing for you to go on, in deciding if my campaign description appeals to you. I'll be honest, I don't say much more about min/max or optimizing -- I don't list off examples of it -- but I give plenty of other descriptive terms that set the tone for the style of gameplay I'm recruiting for.

Everyone min maxes to a certain extent, just look at point buy. Almost everyone dumps a stat or lowers one in order to boost a more important stat. Most people also optimize, you can't blame them either to a certain point. Everyone just wants to feel useful. The problems are a two way street and both the players and GM are at fault usually. GMs generally do "All books are open" or "Any official source is permitted such as dragon magazine or feats/spells/equipment from Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dragonlance". You have to remember that the developers didn't design all of this content to work together. As a GM, you must limit the options available to players in order to reign in balance. A game with every book open compared to only Spell Compendium + Core + Complete books is a lot less balanced, especially if you throw in setting specific material (Artificers and Incantarix, I'm looking at you). You also have to inspect characters and have players discuss how they wish to proceed with their characters (both RP and mechanically) and the full extent of the abilities of the characters they wish to play. If you give players a blank check, don't flip out when you see a ludicrous amount. So remember to make it absolutely clear what content you wish to make open to your players and don't budge on that without an extremely good RP reason. Inexperienced GMs tend to run into the issue a lot of wanting epic, grand scale games but no idea of how to actually run them or the necessary knowledge of the system + good storytelling on how to do it. Too many games have I seen when the GM just throws in the deck of many things without any explanation aside from his own personal interest in seeing it. You can't complain that the game is broken after you chose to break it. The best resource for good storytelling: <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage" rel="nofollow">http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage</a> Another major thing with inexperienced GMs and inexperienced players is the actual rules. Far too often have I seen GMs and players whine about classes/feats/spells/combinations about being broken and you know what? They were right? How and why? That's because they were. Players or GMs failing to read the rules correctly or conveniently ignoring/skipping over them. Yes, I'm sure I would be very powerful if I chose to start ignoring laws and stop paying taxes whilst having no one bother to keep me in check. If you don't check how your players are doing something and they break the game by cheating or using RAW logic, then yeah you've allowed them to take min/max and optimization to a whole new level; a level where rules don't matter. Good luck running a system where rules don't matter. An inexperienced GM should start with core only (PHB + DMG + MM) and work from there. That same GM should also play in other games that have other books open so he can be exposed to those books and understand them better in order to open them up to their own game. Min/max and optimization is also usually aimed towards people who build their characters mechanically to do things really well, but completely ignore the RP side of things. You'll run into a lot of rules lawyers and combat only types. A character with a powerful build has more sympathy if there's a great explanation and story to explain why they have that. A best defense against a character death is to make your character interesting and exciting for a GM to use in their campaign, not numbers. Of course there's also the element of chance, critical hits and what not, but chance can't be manipulated with without outside intervention. A good GM may manipulate chance to allow his players to live or survive, a bad GM will manipulate chance for his own ends (this is a huge red flag and you should run far). Remember, a GM has infinite resources to throw at you. He can always create more monsters, bosses, environments, and encounters. The player however only has his single character and he shouldn't consider them expendable. So as a GM, if you're at a crossroads on what to do, err on the side of players. After all, you have infinite resources, you can always make more stuff. Everyone is just trying to have fun. I've seen a lot of powerful builds be accepted by groups because the character is interesting. If you don't make your character compelling and fun, there's little for others to see in your character aside from the min/max and optimization creature that it is. Lastly and very important, the system is designed so certain classes/feats/combinations are just better. 3.5 was built for prestige classes and once you open that pandora's box, you had best be ready to accept what comes your way. Wizard, cleric, and sorcerer virtually lose nothing by leaving their class and joining a prestige class. Their spellcasting defines them and as long as their prestige class has it, they will only gain. Martial classes, as well as others, gain their powerful through their class and not by their spellcasting which makes it tougher for them to choose prestige classes. You have to remember that the d20 system, without house rules, favors spellcasters as you get higher up. The system starts to break down once you get past 15. Eventually you get crazy high numbers across the board. You get the type of people that can't fail a saving throw unless they roll a 1 or those that can't succeed without a natural 20. I'm of the opinion that you can't break a martial character. You can't break any character unless you introduce full spellcasting. Some will argue with this of course, but I'd be happy to point out some Divine Metamagic Archivists, Incantarix + Shadowcraft mages, Artificers, and Planar Shepard Druids that would disagree with you. I admit that those are the crazy high end examples of classes, but its true. I personally don't like point buys, I prefer dice rolled stats that allow players to get within the same area of each other. If a person has a 42 point buy whilst another has a 48 point buy, it matters little; once you get to that high of a point buy it tapers off. Also giving more equipment/supplies to martial classes instead of spellcasters may help. I've seen too often GMs running low-magic games where magical equipment is exceedingly rare. That doesn't hurt spellcasters, they already have their spells. That only hurts martial based classes. Take a level 20 fighter with only +1 equipment and +2 stat boosters, then take a level 20 wizard with the same equipment. See who comes out on top. Martial classes are more reliant on weapons/armor/stat boosters. That was a long post, but I'm sure anyone who has played a few 3.5 games will know this. These hold true for most other systems as well and I'm sure you can take the non-system specific material and apply them to your own games.

In my own opinion, and this is coming from a player that has had years of experience with a group of 8-11 people that min-maxes in every campaign, it is up to the DM to counter a min-max group and i do mean GROUP by offering up a challenging experience. This is to mean you need to know your players characters (not every detail but a basic understanding) and you need to know what they would be able to possibly handle. For example, the campaign calls for a named mob with 2 bodyguards to bash the party of 4 skulls in? Well if they are min-maxers they could chew them up and spit them out so you need to add a few levels to the named mob maybe a few extra DR or spells of some sorts and then modify the bodyguards to maybe 4 or 6. I just think its the core responsibility to not "restrict" what a player can do or modify the rules but to react and give the players a challenge in a world you are supposed to control anyways. If the players are too powerful then put an army against them, let their min-max characters fight a group of lvl 12 mobs, or do something that doesnt make the players feel so restricted that they feel they wont enjoy themselves because the DM is restricting their playstyle.

Just play 5th Edition D&D (currently) as it seems that they have balanced things well (but that doesn't give them a lack of room to splat book it up later)

EK said: Everyone min maxes to a certain extent, just look at point buy. Almost everyone dumps a stat or lowers one in order to boost a more important stat. Most people also optimize, you can't blame them either to a certain point. Everyone just wants to feel useful. The problems are a two way street and both the players and GM are at fault usually. GMs generally do "All books are open" or "Any official source is permitted such as dragon magazine or feats/spells/equipment from Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dragonlance". You have to remember that the developers didn't design all of this content to work together. As a GM, you must limit the options available to players in order to reign in balance. A game with every book open compared to only Spell Compendium + Core + Complete books is a lot less balanced, especially if you throw in setting specific material (Artificers and Incantarix, I'm looking at you). You also have to inspect characters and have players discuss how they wish to proceed with their characters (both RP and mechanically) and the full extent of the abilities of the characters they wish to play. If you give players a blank check, don't flip out when you see a ludicrous amount. So remember to make it absolutely clear what content you wish to make open to your players and don't budge on that without an extremely good RP reason. Inexperienced GMs tend to run into the issue a lot of wanting epic, grand scale games but no idea of how to actually run them or the necessary knowledge of the system + good storytelling on how to do it. Too many games have I seen when the GM just throws in the deck of many things without any explanation aside from his own personal interest in seeing it. You can't complain that the game is broken after you chose to break it. The best resource for good storytelling: <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage" rel="nofollow">http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage</a> Another major thing with inexperienced GMs and inexperienced players is the actual rules. Far too often have I seen GMs and players whine about classes/feats/spells/combinations about being broken and you know what? They were right? How and why? That's because they were. Players or GMs failing to read the rules correctly or conveniently ignoring/skipping over them. Yes, I'm sure I would be very powerful if I chose to start ignoring laws and stop paying taxes whilst having no one bother to keep me in check. If you don't check how your players are doing something and they break the game by cheating or using RAW logic, then yeah you've allowed them to take min/max and optimization to a whole new level; a level where rules don't matter. Good luck running a system where rules don't matter. An inexperienced GM should start with core only (PHB + DMG + MM) and work from there. That same GM should also play in other games that have other books open so he can be exposed to those books and understand them better in order to open them up to their own game. Min/max and optimization is also usually aimed towards people who build their characters mechanically to do things really well, but completely ignore the RP side of things. You'll run into a lot of rules lawyers and combat only types. A character with a powerful build has more sympathy if there's a great explanation and story to explain why they have that. A best defense against a character death is to make your character interesting and exciting for a GM to use in their campaign, not numbers. Of course there's also the element of chance, critical hits and what not, but chance can't be manipulated with without outside intervention. A good GM may manipulate chance to allow his players to live or survive, a bad GM will manipulate chance for his own ends (this is a huge red flag and you should run far). Remember, a GM has infinite resources to throw at you. He can always create more monsters, bosses, environments, and encounters. The player however only has his single character and he shouldn't consider them expendable. So as a GM, if you're at a crossroads on what to do, err on the side of players. After all, you have infinite resources, you can always make more stuff. Everyone is just trying to have fun. I've seen a lot of powerful builds be accepted by groups because the character is interesting. If you don't make your character compelling and fun, there's little for others to see in your character aside from the min/max and optimization creature that it is. Lastly and very important, the system is designed so certain classes/feats/combinations are just better. 3.5 was built for prestige classes and once you open that pandora's box, you had best be ready to accept what comes your way. Wizard, cleric, and sorcerer virtually lose nothing by leaving their class and joining a prestige class. Their spellcasting defines them and as long as their prestige class has it, they will only gain. Martial classes, as well as others, gain their powerful through their class and not by their spellcasting which makes it tougher for them to choose prestige classes. You have to remember that the d20 system, without house rules, favors spellcasters as you get higher up. The system starts to break down once you get past 15. Eventually you get crazy high numbers across the board. You get the type of people that can't fail a saving throw unless they roll a 1 or those that can't succeed without a natural 20. I'm of the opinion that you can't break a martial character. You can't break any character unless you introduce full spellcasting. Some will argue with this of course, but I'd be happy to point out some Divine Metamagic Archivists, Incantarix + Shadowcraft mages, Artificers, and Planar Shepard Druids that would disagree with you. I admit that those are the crazy high end examples of classes, but its true. I personally don't like point buys, I prefer dice rolled stats that allow players to get within the same area of each other. If a person has a 42 point buy whilst another has a 48 point buy, it matters little; once you get to that high of a point buy it tapers off. Also giving more equipment/supplies to martial classes instead of spellcasters may help. I've seen too often GMs running low-magic games where magical equipment is exceedingly rare. That doesn't hurt spellcasters, they already have their spells. That only hurts martial based classes. Take a level 20 fighter with only +1 equipment and +2 stat boosters, then take a level 20 wizard with the same equipment. See who comes out on top. Martial classes are more reliant on weapons/armor/stat boosters. That was a long post, but I'm sure anyone who has played a few 3.5 games will know this. These hold true for most other systems as well and I'm sure you can take the non-system specific material and apply them to your own games. Sage

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