What type of minmaxing irks tables the most in your opinion?

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 1:47 am

None of those 4 bother me.

It's mostly when a player has some overly complicated power-combo/tactic or whatever that makes me zone out before grasping exactly what they are trying, or they rely upon some stupid grey area ruling or exploit. More often than not in either case the player in question often gets something wrong in the rules on top of it all which just adds to the irritation.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:23 am

Kaelik wrote:Minmaxing doesn't refer to advantages and disadvantages at all.

Of course it does. Minmaxing is the accumulation of advantages you care about at the expense of disadvantages you don't. Any exercise in optimization is about advantages and disadvantages, whether it's global or local optimization, and some of those advantages and disadvantages are non-numeric. Why are "combo-ing" and "tactical control" not things you can minmax with respect to?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 4:53 am

DSMatticus wrote:
Kaelik wrote:Minmaxing doesn't refer to advantages and disadvantages at all.
Of course it does. Minmaxing is the accumulation of advantages you care about at the expense of disadvantages you don't. Any exercise in optimization is about advantages and disadvantages, whether it's global or local optimization, and some of those advantages and disadvantages are non-numeric. Why are "combo-ing" and "tactical control" not things you can minmax with respect to?

No, minmaxxing is not the accumulation of advantages you care about at the expense of disadvantages you don't. It's maximizing some attributes at the expense of minimizing other attributes. If there is nothing you are minimizing, then you are not minmaxxing.

What makes comboing and tactical control not things you do min max is that in most games those don't come at the cost of minimizing anything else. It's not minmaxxing to pick feat A instead of feat B unless Feat A gives you penalties to things. Because then you are only maximizing, while staying just as good at everything else as you were before you picked the feat or spell.

RobG · Post by **RobG** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:07 am

Irks the table? I think 2-4 may irk the DM but not players. 1 may irk both.

I think the type of MMaxing that irks people the most is when one player out-jobs another players character concept. I see it most often when a Cleric starts out-meleeing the fighter-types and sometimes when the Wizard is using spells that make the rogue useless.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:13 am

Fucking fuck. Minmaxing is an actual thing in actual fucking game theory and you assholes don't get to just make shit up for it. It's making decisions that minimize loss and maximize gain. You definitely can minmax with non-numeric attributes, because it's about choices, not necessarily attributes.

The original Minmaxing is done on a turn by turn basis. The fact that you can minmax choices in chargen for RPGs at all is an emergent property of the fact that choices made during chargen affect the results of future choices later in the game.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:26 am

FrankTrollman wrote:It's making decisions that minimize loss and maximize gain.

No, it's not. It's not about minimizing loss and maximizing gain. It's about maximizing some things you want by minimizing other thing you would also want.

More good less bad is not minmaxxing. That doesn't need two things. That's just getting advantages. There is no reason to have two words for the process of trying to be good by being good and not being bad.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:43 am

minimizing "cost" to maximize "profit"...

this occurs in cases where opportunity cost of things are involved as well.

point-buy system you minimize the least need/dump stat to maximize your prime stat.

minimize gear to have little armor for the best weapon.

min-maxing takes a focus and maximizes the output or value of that focus at the expense of ANYTHING or EVERYTHING else.

it has nothing to do with fucking game theory shit that came LON after the idea itself.

ChapOp is minmaxing.

cleric as a healbot is minmaxing

nuke wizards are minmaxing.

when you have a singular focus to the exclusion of everything else, THAT is minmaxing.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:47 am

This is one of those areas where people just need to fucking accept that they don't have a monopoly on language. Minmax, maximin, and minimax are all old terms that have been used by different people for different shit for a long time now. Some of those people are professors specializing in decision theory and have educations that cost more to acquire than your house and some of these people are seriously just some guy on the internet bitching about their friend who always has at least a couple eights on their character sheet.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 6:14 am

Wikipedia wrote:Min-maxing is the practice of playing a role-playing game, wargame or video game with the intent of creating the "best" character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones.

Wikipedia wrote:Minimax (sometimes minmax) is a decision rule used in decision theory, game theory, statistics and philosophy for minimizing the possible loss for a worst case (maximum loss) scenario. Alternatively, it can be thought of as maximizing the minimum gain (maximin).

Those aren't the same thing. At all. Minimax is an algorithm for maximizing the minimum gain; i.e., it computes the "best move" in the context of a rational, adversarial opponent, given the rules of the game, game states to analyze, and some performance metric to judge those states by, assuming that the opponent will do his best to fuck you over.

Minmaxing in the TTRPG sense has absolutely nothing to do with that. Chargen, after all, has only one actor. You make all the decisions. There is no need to minimize the loss caused by your adversary, because no such adversary exist. It's a totally different process.

Minmaxing is actually just a simple search algorithm where you try to optimize an intentionally narrow performance metric, like "punching people in the face," "sneak attack," "evocation spells," or "healing people." As a result, decisions which don't affect that performance metric get minimized if it can increase the performance metric. If your metric is "punching people in the face," charisma get minimized because it doesn't help you score higher on the performance metric, but using that charisma to buy str or dex or con does help you score higher on that performance metric. Ergo, your search of the chargen space pushes you towards states where charisma is low because their score on the performance metric is higher.

Kaelik wrote:No, minmaxxing is not the accumulation of advantages you care about at the expense of disadvantages you don't. It's maximizing some attributes at the expense of minimizing other attributes. If there is nothing you are minimizing, then you are not minmaxxing.

? Dude. Minimizing something is a disadvantage relative to having not minimized that thing, provided that thing has any effect on your game at all. If it doesn't have an effect on the game, then you haven't actually minimized anything; if there was a seventh stat 'flubbergorgle' that had no gameplay effects minimizing it would not be minmaxing. The thing you are minimizing is your performance on metrics you don't care about to maximize performance on metrics you do care about, but being weaker in that performance matric than you would be otherwise is a disadvantage in the actual game. It just doesn't matter at chargen, because your chargen performance metric wasn't "the game" it was "this specific role."

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 6:40 am

DSMatticus wrote: Those aren't the same thing. At all.

Right, but people use the same words and sperging out over it is basically pissing directly into the wind.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 6:44 am

DSMatticus wrote:
Kaelik wrote:No, minmaxxing is not the accumulation of advantages you care about at the expense of disadvantages you don't. It's maximizing some attributes at the expense of minimizing other attributes. If there is nothing you are minimizing, then you are not minmaxxing.
? Dude. Minimizing something is a disadvantage relative to having not minimized that thing, provided that thing has any effect on your game at all. If it doesn't have an effect on the game, then you haven't actually minimized anything; if there was a seventh stat 'flubbergorgle' that had no gameplay effects minimizing it would not be minmaxing. The thing you are minimizing is your performance on metrics you don't care about to maximize performance on metrics you do care about, but being weaker in that performance matric than you would be otherwise is a disadvantage in the actual game. It just doesn't matter at chargen, because your chargen performance metric wasn't "the game" it was "this specific role."

I'm not sure how what you are saying here in any way contradicts what I said above, or in any way supports your position. Minmaxxing is not about minimizing disadvantages, it's about minimizing advantages that you would like if you could have them not at the expense of what you are maxxing.

So minmaxxing is about maximizing disadvantages to maximize advantages. Not minimizing disadvantages.

I agree, you relatively competently restated my position, and almost demonstrated why comboing is not minmaxxing. Why do you think that supports your point?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:43 am

Kaelik wrote:I agree, you relatively competently restated my position

It took us awhile, but we finally got you to stop arguing with yourself. Awesome. Now here's where this is going:

None of the things Lago originally mentioned, in a vacuum, are min-maxxing. Not a single one. They are all potential things you can choose to minmax around. When you started off this conversation by rejecting #2 and #3 as min-maxxing and accepting #1 and #4, that was weird and wrong. Either you reject them all or accept them all because:
A) Lago failed to demonstrate a minimized quality, so they aren't actually minmaxxing, or;
B) You accept the existence of some implicit minimized quality.

You applied B to #1 and #4, and you applied A to #2 and #3. It was inconsistent.

Now back to this thing you said earlier:

Kaelik wrote: What makes comboing and tactical control not things you do min max is that in most games those don't come at the cost of minimizing anything else. It's not minmaxxing to pick feat A instead of feat B unless Feat A gives you penalties to things. Because then you are only maximizing, while staying just as good at everything else as you were before you picked the feat or spell.

There are serious problems here. Not getting a bonus is a penalty, and getting a penalty is a bonus. Min-maxxing is any series of decisions which maximize A at the expense of B. If there are the three feats
A-Master: +2 A, +0 B
B-Master: +0 A, +2 B
Jack-Of-Two-Trades: +1 A, +1 B
taking the feat A-Man is a decision which is produced by a minmax charop strategy using A as a performance metric.

If we aren't defining minmaxing as "consistently following decisions produced by a minmax charop strategy," I have no idea WTF else there could be. It doesn't help that D&D is a levelling game, and failing to accrue bonuses to something as you level up actually means you do perform worse at the actual table. Like any Bethesda game, skills you don't level up genuinely do become progressively less useful in actual play as challenges increase, which means your performance is going down even if the numbers on your character sheet don't. Not that that matters, either.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:51 am

Rephrase the OP into "What type of optimising irks tables the most", and get on with the thread?

souran · Post by **souran** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 1:26 pm

Kaelik wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:It's making decisions that minimize loss and maximize gain.
No, it's not. It's not about minimizing loss and maximizing gain. It's about maximizing some things you want by minimizing other thing you would also want.

More good less bad is not minmaxxing. That doesn't need two things. That's just getting advantages. There is no reason to have two words for the process of trying to be good by being good and not being bad.

Actually, on this Kaelik, you are FACTUALLY wrong. minmax appears as a technical term in 1950's era officer training millitary wargames, many of those wargames were designed by the individuals who would go on to found SPI, Avelon Hill, SSI and the other early pioneers in American Wargamming.

From there it spread to miniatures ("old world") wargamming, roleplaying, and even game theory.

Frank is correct thzt it comes from the idea of minimizing loss for maximium gain. Early articles in magazines like "the general" discussed minmax in terms of how to effectively get a local force superiorty against a weakpoint without telegraphing the intent.

So while minmax from a rolepalying perspective uusally does involve the selecting minimum penalties/disadvantages/having weakness in uncommon areas of play in exchange for strength in more common areas that is NOT the definition of the term.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:08 pm

I changed my mind. The most annoying kind of miniature-maxipads is when players pull a Kaelik and start crazy arguments about the definitions of words.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:16 pm

Kaelik wrote: So minmaxxing is about maximizing disadvantages to maximize advantages. Not minimizing disadvantages.

I agree, you relatively competently restated my position, and almost demonstrated why comboing is not minmaxxing. Why do you think that supports your point?

A good min-maxer is going to take non-disadvantages. That is, disadvantages that don't actually do anything harmful. An great minmaxer (or one in an extremely broken game) is going to take disadvantages that are really advantages.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 5:38 pm

While academically, I'm fascinated by the history of words, I am aware of context. Munchkin, minmaxer, optimizer, and twink are in practice all synonyms with varying nuances. Like alignment, there's going to be subtle (to an outside observer) differences of opinion with anyone on the matter.

In my experience, doing anything outside/beyond of the DM's expectations were met with derision; be it wizards with bucklers, buffs/stats that make a fight last less than three or four rounds, etc. For me as a DM, I get most annoyed by min-maxing that results in disproportional turn resolution, and I tell them that is my problem, not that it's too powerful.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 6:08 pm

One time I had a player that was a problem.

He wanted to be a half orc. Fine, whatever. Then he said that he wanted the other half to be dwarf. A little odd, but sure. Then he loudly announced that he was proficient with the dwarven waraxe because he was a dwarf. And argued his point for what felt like hours. I made him set a feat on fire for being a pain.

He then argued for another extended time period that he should be able to use a huge waraxe with monkey grip. I was unsure what to rule, so i let him. He never hit once with that axe...

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:51 pm

Ted the Flayer wrote:He wanted to be a half orc. Fine, whatever. Then he said that he wanted the other half to be dwarf. A little odd, but sure. Then he loudly announced that he was proficient with the dwarven waraxe because he was a dwarf. And argued his point for what felt like hours. I made him set a feat on fire for being a pain.

He then argued for another extended time period that he should be able to use a huge waraxe with monkey grip. I was unsure what to rule, so i let him. He never hit once with that axe...

For the half-orc thing, asking for the dwarven heritage without making his ultimate goal known, as a weasely way to create a loophole, that's something even I'd be a little miffed about. I'm a fairly lax DM when it comes to power level. I will and have created all sorts of rulings for character creation on behalf of my players' desires, as Cynic can attest from his shapeshifting giant squid whirlwind fighter, or another player's psychic teleporting vampire lion-man in steampowered full-plate and a 30' size-shifting sword.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:55 pm

Whatever wrote:I changed my mind. The most annoying kind of miniature-maxipads is when players pull a Kaelik and start crazy arguments about the definitions of words.

You haven't seen the old WotC CharOp board, if you think this is bad. I remember 10+ page arguments about whether the exact wording of some rule could be interpreted in a convoluted way that prevented a particular broken combination from working. And much of the time, it was fucking pointless, because the combination had a result like "get infinite spells at infinite DC" that any MC would just say "lol no" to.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:59 pm

Whoever just confused minimax and minmaxing needs a slap to the ear.

Dominicius · Post by **Dominicius** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 8:00 pm

When people complain that players stealth optimize they fail to understand that today's players do not trust their DMs. Years and years of Gygaxian culture has driven this hobby to the point where if I were to actually inform a DM about my plans then he will likely some sort of counter for it down the road, which would have not happened had I remained quiet about it.

A lot needs to be done to really restore the trust between players and DMs.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 8:01 pm

Ice9 wrote:You haven't seen the old WotC CharOp board, if you think this is bad. I remember 10+ page arguments about whether the exact wording of some rule could be interpreted in a convoluted way that prevented a particular broken combination from working. And much of the time, it was fucking pointless, because the combination had a result like "get infinite spells at infinite DC" that any MC would just say "lol no" to.

My favourite is the pointless discussion we had on this board where Frank argued that since the word "immobile" (in the spell Blade Barrier) is potentially ambiguous, it's actually synonymous with "mobile".

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 8:21 pm

Dominicius wrote:When people complain that players stealth optimize they fail to understand that today's players do not trust their DMs. Years and years of Gygaxian culture has driven this hobby to the point where if I were to actually inform a DM about my plans then he will likely some sort of counter for it down the road, which would have not happened had I remained quiet about it.

A lot needs to be done to really restore the trust between players and DMs.

there is the otherside problem to that as well.. the DM can't make something for you to USE those plans down the road, and you may never see them used in that case.

to fix the players trust of DMs is just a few things:

1. trust your DM
2. when the DM violates that trust check to make sure it isnt a misunderstanding
3. when the DM unabashedly violates that trust....STOP PLAYING WITH THIS PERSON.

when the bad DMs are gotten rid of and not even allowed to be players, then there wont be anymore bad DMs.

its one of the player powers of old...you played at the DM house or a neutral location. the DM starts screwing up, then everyone can just get up and leave. much easier for you to leave, than get a bad DM to leave YOUR house.

and calling it Gygaxian culture is pretty stupid and showing you might be as well. lets remember that Gygax was the game creator, but he ran his games, not yours. the one responsible for YOUR bad games is YOU, not him. either YOU allow a bad DM to continue doing the bad things, or you didnt.

you dont blame Spalding for the volleyball/basketball/etc or Rawlings for the baseball that smashed your windshield.

i would wager that more DMs today COULD be trusted, if not for spreading falsehoods about how EVERY game pre-WotC D&D had bad DMs.

stop spreading hearsay and rumor, and get down to truths. "i heard of DMs that did so and so and such and such and all were like that", has a clear and simple response of, "who gives a shit what you heard, what have you seen DMs do?" odds are the answer wont be the same as the hearsay

Player's rules:
1. the DM is always right
2. when the DM is wrong, see #1.

DM's rules:
1. you are NOT a player, you dont get a PC.
2. the players can TRY anything in the game
3. you are supposed to give the PCs obstacles/threats to gain XP from, not TPK them.
4. the shared world needs to work for all...make sure you are DMing for the right group.
5. when unsure what to do now or next... ASK THE PLAYERS.

get rid of the DMs that cant do that and the problem is gone, so long as the players stop thinking all DMs are bad.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 9:02 pm

DSMatticus wrote: Those aren't the same thing. At all. Minimax is an algorithm for maximizing the minimum gain; i.e., it computes the "best move" in the context of a rational, adversarial opponent, given the rules of the game, game states to analyze, and some performance metric to judge those states by, assuming that the opponent will do his best to fuck you over.

Minmaxing in the TTRPG sense has absolutely nothing to do with that. Chargen, after all, has only one actor. You make all the decisions. There is no need to minimize the loss caused by your adversary, because no such adversary exist. It's a totally different process.

Minmaxing is actually just a simple search algorithm where you try to optimize an intentionally narrow performance metric, like "punching people in the face," "sneak attack," "evocation spells," or "healing people." As a result, decisions which don't affect that performance metric get minimized if it can increase the performance metric. If your metric is "punching people in the face," charisma get minimized because it doesn't help you score higher on the performance metric, but using that charisma to buy str or dex or con does help you score higher on that performance metric. Ergo, your search of the chargen space pushes you towards states where charisma is low because their score on the performance metric is higher.

I disagree with this heavily. Yes, there will be people who will define their 'make the best character that they can' metric that narrowly. In certain contexts, 'make the best character they can' is in all practical applications synonymous with 'push one narrow performance metric', such as inflicting saving throw penalties. But oftentimes min-maxxing is just plain not that simple.

For one, CharGen and character advancement optimizers do try to analyze game states outside of chargen under the assumption that the opposition will fuck them over. This is why people would prize a feat that gives 'resist 10 necrotic' more than a feat that's 'resist 20 thunder'. Taken by itself the CharGen state makes resist 20 thunder the more attractive option because the opportunity cost is the same; but this would never be obvious unless you actually looked at the monster manual. Or for a more complicated example, consider the metric of 'which ranger does more damage'. A ranger that took 'called shot + prime punisher + prime quarry' (which gives a +2 to attack / +5 to damage) would seem to perform better than a ranger that instead

For two, pushing a narrow performance metric to its breaking point, even if it's a fruitful line of exploitation, can lead to major problems if you don't consider the game as a whole. For example, back when Pit Fighter and Son of Mercy was available to rangers (one errata'd into uselessly explicitly, the other stealth-errata'd), STR/WIS rangers were the shit for the performance metric of 'deal the most damage'. However, STR/WIS rangers did not have a decent option for AC since none of their stats contributed to it and they didn't start with heavy armor. So even though a STR/WIS ranger that busted out of the gate with 'Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword' was better than a range that busted out with 'Armor Proficiency: Chainmail' on that metric, on the metric of 'which ranger is the better character' the second one was because their AC was 4 points higher.

Which just goes to show you: only theoretical optimizers or total amateurs try to evaluate options by 'which gives the biggest numbers'. Non-amateurs/academics are actually pursuing the performance metric of 'which allows me to perform greatest at the challenges the game says I should face' and stuff like 'punching people in the face' or 'sneak attacks, yo' is just a means to an end. Actually realizing what avenues are fruitful to explore in the first place and how far down this avenue should I go actually involves all of those things you said that Minimax is an algorithm for.