How much min-maxxing does a man need?

[Lago_AM3P]

Josh said, way back on the Nifty Message board, that DMs set challenges according to what the party can do, not what you can do. Of course, this was an argument used AGAINST people who don't min-max.

However, I am planning to play a persistent spelled-up cleric in a campaign where there are seriously genasi with levels of wizard and fighters who take odd levels and people who take levels of arcane archer.

I don't want to make the DM set the challenges such that the poor sap with his aristocrat level gets mauled just because my character is good. I also don't want to make it so that the DM would set challenges as if I was the other guy and instead I mauled the opposition.

However, I also don't want to intentionally cripple my character for the sake of 'story'. What should I do? Moving to a different tabletop or online construct will not work because this happens practically everywhere. In my experience, the vast majority of players still think that 8 levels of fighter are the bees' knees. Trotting out a clerical archer is as disruptive as if I was going to be a kender.

So what should I do? Have we seriously advanced way too much for this game? It's not like once I've seen real ultimate power I can go back. So let me ask you this: How much min-maxxing does a man need?

[Oberoni]

Interestingly enough, I find that my min/maxxing has actually helped the weak builders of my group continue to play what they want to play.

Seriously, I'm not outshining them so much as letting them get away with playing weaker characters. My Vow of Poverty Druid (thanks Frank et al) is versatile and powerful. He picks up the slack created by some of the other members of the group. In particular, we have a:

*Hexblade/Occult Slayer: No offensive class features; spent multiple feats on raising his Bluff score

*Monk: Girl playing the monk doesn't really know what she's doing

*Fighter/Sorcerer/Eldritch Knight/Spellsword that wants to "be good at sword-fighting, archery, and magic." You can imagine how strong he really is at any of the three

These guys are seriously pretty weak and substandard, but thanks to the fact that I'm playing a party member that can at least respectably (and oftentimes way more than respectably) fill a fighter/healer/blaster/investigator role, I actually help keep us from dying horribly.

Furthermore, the Monk gets off a crit or rolls a 17 or something every once in a while, which means that she hits the enemy, and feels proud that she contributed to battle. And it goes the same with the others as well--they occasionally shine with their substandard characters, while the well-built characters pick up most of the slack.

So, honestly, unless we're talking about infinite loops or attack bonuses of +30 at 7th level, don't spare the min/maxxing.

[Boulie_98]

Most people don't min-max. Guess what, most of my characters are probably sub-standard (I played an Orc Fighter TWF/Archer from level 2 to 24, scary huh) except for a couple of simple powerful pcs - simple because it's straight Cleric or straight Telepath, with no PrCs in there, which I use in the big RttToEE and CotSQ modules respectively. You know, where they kinda expect you to be able to survive EL 15 encounters at level 13. In both modules the others have had at least one and mostly two or more PC deaths each because their builds are simply a little less powerful, except for the guy that plays a Cleric Archer in the CotSQ (not tricked out though, though he did get one Strand of Karma bead as per my suggestion).

Basically, I know how to make a sexy Cleric PrC'd with Complete Divine, a Nature's Avatar Druid or Mr. Wish-as-a-supernatural-ability PC but I don't because then the gap with the others gets too big. Also, I never did really feel like building one of those, don't know why.

But you're on your own when you make a Monk. Unless you have ungodly stats to make up for your overall weakness you'll be nicknamed Swish and your one single joy is to be able to mention you're faster than the rest.

[MrWaeseL]

My entire old group was into min/maxxing, (except for one person, but he died a lot anyway.) so we never had that problem, really.

[Lago_AM3P]

Do you feel as though you're artificially raising the challenges the DM sets when you play a strong character, thus making it even worse on the suboptimal characters?

Further, have you ever been in a situation where you encountered resentment from other players or DMs because of your character?

[Boulie_98]

No and mostly no.

One of our DMs is a so-called killer DM, but only for the other players since their characters are slightly subpar while I make sure mine are above par for this particular DM. Once or twice I got a sidelong glance because of yet another tpk of everyone's pcs except mine, but then I'll point out that an anthropomorphic monkey monk or an epic twf ranger just won't cut it for this DM's campaigns.

I feel that the power level you can give your PC depends on the campaign and the DM. For instance, in another rp-heavy campaign there are few battles, and another guy there feels his slightly below par pc is outshining the others too much in combat because he built a Spiked Chain fighter. And I'm pretty sure if I tried my slightly tricked out Telepath in that campaign I would be draining the fun from the game, for everyone. So I guess there's some self-censorship from the two of us that have far more knowledge on min/maxing than the others (them being the sort of people that think Fireball is the ultimate tool of destruction).

[Username17]

Quite often when the players are inexperienced, the DM is too. Going to 14th level is, for the vast majority of people who do it at all, new ground. This means that most of the time when a DM sets a monster down on the table, he or she has no idea what that monster is like in actual play.

How many times have you heard about how giant scorpions are "unkillable" and are "a death sentence to the whole party"? I'm betting the answer is many. And it's not because even a woefully under-maxxed group can't hand one its ass several levels before its CR.

It's because the players don't understand how to beat monsters, and the DM doesn't understand what monsters can do. This adds upto Devastator, the most evil and powerful of the Deceptacons. The natural result is that the DM doesn't understand that a creature with a CR of 10 might be virtually unbeatable in one form of combat and nigh (or actually) helpless in another, and neither do the players. So the DM will blithely whip out a giant scorpion in a closet with the players, and the players will gamely take it on in that environment and everyone will die.

I've heard this horror story over and over again (and even been there for it), with all kinds of different levels of character involved. You can get similar results with Girallon, or any of a number of other creatures. How many players understand that the only way to beat a creature with Rend is to take a single attack action, move back and spread out? How many DMs understand that players need to have enough space to do that or they'll die?

Min/maxxing your build and your tactics can help your party overcome DM inexperience. And it can lead by example to show other players how to min/max their builds and tactics and get your party working like a team instead of like a stampede of animals.

If the other players aren't shown that you can take on tough challenges and survive, they'll just die all the time, think it's normal, and never change.

-Username17

[Oberoni]

1088780662[/unixtime]]Do you feel as though you're artificially raising the challenges the DM sets when you play a strong character, thus making it even worse on the suboptimal characters?

Further, have you ever been in a situation where you encountered resentment from other players or DMs because of your character?

1. No, our DM throws pretty challenging stuff at us regardless.

2. Not really. My characters are fun and colorful. I would imagine the other members of the party like my characters being strong and versatile.

[User3]

I've played in Shadowrun* games where I was the weakest link, and I've played in DnD** where my character, despite my best intentions and attempts to self-nerf, roxxored the enemy well enough with Core rules that that other party members needed power-ups on their feats, PrCs, races, magic items, or base classes.

I hate min/maxing numbers, but love min/maxing abilties. I don't want to read through every book and come up with the perfect combo of stuff to make an AC of 40 as 7th level character. I can, but I don't want to.

I don't mind using Expert Tactician and Silent Image to be the guy who blinds the enemy, giving the party a 50% miss chance, and who also gets a longspear attack of his own. That's pretty cool.

Basically, the game should be built in a way that there are no bad choices. Since that's not going to happen, the DM needs to make PrCs and feats that make things like anthropormorphic monkeys OK to play.

Failing that, you must step up to the plate and self nerf. Weaker players need stronger characters, and stronger players need to set themselves to weaker characters level of play. Otherwise, you are cheating them of fun. RPGing is a democracy. We build the story together.

--------------

*Shadowrun 2e. Played a Combat Mage with min-maxed Move-by-wire/combat computered near cyberzombies. Cast one spell in combat during the entire campaign, an AoE Stun effect, and was almost knocked out by the drain and I couldn't cast the rest of the adventure. Every other time the Sammies killed the enemy before my spell action went off. I was eventually relegated to the being the guy who cast Healing spells after missions or did Astral overwatch from the medical van. Biggest contribution: when going into a Universal Brotherhood chapter, said "Shoot the secretary!" Turns out that she was the hot spellslinger/major encounter of the mission.

**DnD: PLayed a Sorcercer(self-nerf) who picked up all the Image spells(self nerf). Had to force myself to not turn into a Hydra with Polymorph and outfight the Fighter, or use Alter Self/Polymorph to outsneak the ninja. Did not get Energy Substitution and concentrated on Fire spells so that I'd have an exploitable weakness(self nerf). DM did not allow Planar Binding(DM nerf). Picked up combat feats(self nerf). Choose PrC abilties much like the Witch Hunter from OA(self nerf). Did not pick up a familiar until 7th level(self nerf). Got a Will O' Wisp(OK, I splurged.) Did not get Web, Sleep, or any of the low level Save or Die Spells, and did not use illusions to put Zombies in a box the few times we fought them(self nerf). Did not use Shadow Magic to duplicate the dozens of non-core spells that Roxxor(self nerf). Did not use Shadow Conjuation/Minor Creation to make poisons. Did not take any Wall spells(self nerf).

And those are just the easy things I did. I;m not eve talking about the crazy spell combos I avoided.

Contributions: Almost cleared an entire adventure using using Circle of Protection from Evil to protect the PCs and NPCs from Sirine Charm attacks while I then flew over and Fireballed them. DM had to put a trap in the end lair that Dispelled all of my spells as I cast them.

Used Color Spray on the first round of many combats, knocking out the sole enemy, or used mulitple CSs to keep him stunned the whole combat.

Disarmed the Blood Sword from the BBEG before it could hit anyone(or do decent AoOs on the guys that Bullrushed him into the disinigration trap).

Disarmed the Black Scroll from the BBEG, allowing him to die.

Killed the ghost Pirate captain with a single spell, and the DM had to come up with an extra "ghostly presence" for the party to fight.

Blinded the Water dragon(boss monster) so that it never hit once(despite a very high HD and attack).

And several other things. The other characters diverted attacks, or dished out damage, but the whole time I really felt like I was kicking ass and that without my help, the CRs of the encounters would drop by like 4. The only thing that diverted me was the fact that DM was deliberately not concentrating the attacks of several monsters on my low AC/HP guy.

[User3]

1088753194[/unixtime]]
So what should I do? Have we seriously advanced way too much for this game? It's not like once I've seen real ultimate power I can go back. So let me ask you this: How much min-maxxing does a man need?

You already know my answer to this, Lago, but I'll repeat it anyway: I want exactly as much min-maxing as it takes for my characters to be useful members of the adventuring groups they're part of, and no more.

If I don't min-max enough to match up to the rest of the party, other players get frustrated because I'm not helping them, and I get frustrated because I'm not helping them. If I go past "useful member" and reach "dominant member", then suddenly the rest of the group gets bored more often, and I get frustrated with them.

These problems are a lot easier to deal with in tabletop. If you really screw up your estimate of how good the rest of the party is in a tabletop game, there's a pretty good chance that your GM, if he is not an incurable ass, will let you tinker with some things about your character so that you're happy, he's happy, and the rest of the group is happy. And they're also easier to deal with because the answer to the question "how good is the rest of this party?" doesn't change much -- absent people quitting, or characters dying and the player bringing in someone new, you're more or less going to be working with the same people all the time.

In HMORPGs -- heavily multiplayer online RPGs; I'm using this term to distinguish games that have too many people to be just an online tabletop game, but too few to be "massively" multiplayer games where you can essentially always find someone of the right level -- the latter problem is magnified about a hundredfold, because not only does everyone have different ideas on how much minmaxing is appropriate, but you're going to be playing with a different subset of those people on virtually every adventure. So unless you are on one of the far ends of the min-maxing spectrum, you're inevitably going to run into both games where you suck too much to do any good, and games where you can wipe out the entire enemy force with your little finger.

The problem isn't that the min-maxing community has advanced too far for the game. Well, it is, but that's really a symptom of the actual problem, which is that D&D sucks dead rats through a Krazy Straw as a system for a game with a whole bunch of players and vague, erratic, and inattentive GM oversight.

Having said that: what's the big deal with designing a character who has less than real ultimate power? Ask yourself why you're getting involved in the game, and follow the answer where it leads you. If what you're after is, in fact, real ultimate power, then don't hold back, because you're going to be unhappy if you do. My goal is to get a character design that sits in the sweet spot between lack of effectiveness and lack of challenge, because, unlike in real games, the GMs in online games generally won't care enough to adjust the stuff they run based on how good or bad my characters are, and there's nothing interesting to me about just running around stomping on stuff because the guy running the adventures is too stupid to realize that they're absolutely no challenge to a properly built melee druid or whatever.

--d.

[RandomCasualty]

I always use a "when in rome do as the Roman's do" attitude toward min/maxing. If it's prevalent in the game I'm joining, then I'll min/max too, if it's not so prevalent then I won't min/max.

The reason is this. The power level of the party compared to the monsters is irrelevant. The DM can always jack up the competetion or weaken them depending on what the group is. So that stuff is relatively trivial. It really doesn't matter if your character is 20th level and can't kill a beholder easily, so long as your DM takes that into account.

What isn't so trivial is how your fellow party members feel about you. If you're making a super character and making them have less fun, then you really look like an ass. And that's something you really have to be careful with. When you're in a game that doesn't min/max you really have to tone down your own min/maxing too.

The objective of the game is to have fun, not to "win". Players have an obligation to try to keep their characters within approximate power of each other, so everyone can have fun. This can mean excessive min/maxing or not min/maxing at all, depending on circumstances. The only thing that dictates how much you need to powergame is how the rest of the group is playing. Just like the DM adjusts his quests based on the power level of the group, you have to adjust your character too. Inevitably, words like munchkin and killer DM are used to describe players and DMs who can't make those necessary adjustments.

So in such a game, you don't have to make an optimal character, you don't have to always be worried about making the proper tactical decision at every juncture. There is no reason why you have to min/max in a group that doesn't min/max much, because you'll be competetive just making a normal character. And doing anything more than that is going to drain fun from the group and possibly get you ejected from the game for ruining the fun.