Comments on: D&D min-maxing: who cares about the story

By: John

John — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:46:47 +0000

The only reason I am min/maxing on my latest character is to annoy my DM. If a character dies in his campaign, we are forced to start at level 1 with a new character. Pretty much useless around level 10’s. He does bump the XP gain so you can catch up (but always 1-2 levels behind) but you are useless addition for several gaming sessions.

So time to min max and put a thorn in his side.

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:42:33 +0000

I mostly let players do whatever they want as long as it fits in the rules that I adhere with. Everyone make is own fun with different thing (storyline, stats, gold, etc…). As a player, I like to be bulletproof against any DM plot and encounters. I don’t care how much damage I do as long as I can save the party when times come. As a DM, I am often generous in XP award when a character save the day with what Minmaxers considers a useless skill or feats or spell. I often give story XP award penalty for players that don’t roleplay well their stats or alignment or religion. I take notes during the game and decide later wheter character X get is Alignment/Honor/Roleplay XP bonuses. I also clearly state to the player why he did get or didn’t get a bonus. This is also negotiable.

By: Dirk

Dirk — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:51:59 +0000

Players don’t min-max to compete with the DM, they min-max to compete with each other. They are competing to have the most powerful and decisive character in the party. The reason they do that is that no one wants to be useless, and if one player min-maxes, then the DM has to beef up the encounters, which makes any player that didn’t min-max useless. There’s nothing worse than plunking at titans with 1d6+1 while the character next to you hits for 2xd8+12/d6+12.

By: Dungeon Mastering » D&D Monday morning speedlinking

Dungeon Mastering » D&D Monday morning speedlinking — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 05:35:37 +0000

[...] week-end and they spurred interesting discussions. If you haven’t read them yet do it now (Min-maxing – who cares about the story, 7 anti-min-maxing rules) then read Steve’s guide to making sweet D&D characters. Some [...]

By: Yax

Yax — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:01:24 +0000

Yep. It is the player’s responsibility to act out a poor charisma score. I know as a DM I’m thinking about so much stuff I never think about players not acting out their weaknesses.

Between games I might mention it to players though.

By: Dave T. Game

Dave T. Game — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:34:12 +0000

Actually, min-maxed characters usually do have flaws (the min part). It’s only a problem when players don’t play their characters like they have flaws. If you’re a killing machine but took charisma as your dump stat, I expect you to not function well in social situations and argue (IC) with your party.

By: rekres

rekres — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:45:14 +0000

“Since the DM will make the encounters tougher by working hard (er, fudging hit points and dice rolls) min-maxing is useless.”

Define min-maxing: Minimizing weaknesses, Maximizing strengths.

Everybody does it to some degree or other.

For example, I was playing one D&D game. I wanted to play a diplomat-spellcaster. I chose human because humans get an extra feat and extra skill points. I chose sorcerer because their spellcasting is based on Charisma and all the social skills are also based on Charisma. Because we were starting at pretty high level and had a lot of cash to buy equipment I invested in a Cloak of Charisma, which further strengthened by social skills and my spellcasting.

Am I a min-maxer? Dunno… I did some min-maxing in the process…

By: rekres

rekres — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:16:04 +0000

Everyone min-maxes!

Everyone likes to get the most bang for his buck. Why take feat X if I can get more by taking feat Y. That is just good sense.

We generally only stick the label ‘min-maxer’ on those who do it to extreme, but everyone does it in some form or other.

By: ChattyDM

ChattyDM — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:02:41 +0000

There are actually 2 types of players that will go for MinMaxing and that’s Power Accumulators (Power Gamers) and Brilliant Planners (Wargamers).

To them, the fun of the game is having an efficient, mean, lean piece of optimized statistics. The 1st types derives his fun from the optimization, the second thrives on planning his character like he plans his battles.

I know you and your players have a more casual streak Yax, but I have such players in my group. The challenge I have with them is to have them create interesting, deep characters in spite of having made them like Hanzo Swords…

By: Reverend Mike

Reverend Mike — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 06:42:03 +0000

I concur…my favorite characters are always the ones that are immensely flawed in some way…especially when that flaw can come out in roleplaying…

My first character had an intelligence of 5…a gnome rogue under 3.0 rules…he was quite skilled in combat for some reason, but during less physically demanding situations he was the party clown…

More recently, I played a half-giant barbarian with the mind of a child who is completely unaware of what goes on when he enters rage (using the Berserker Rage from PH2 where they automatically rage when below a certain hp)…CG to CE with no consciousness of it…’twas an interesting experience for me and my fellow players…