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.