How to limit min-maxxing in your game system.

[Lago PARANOIA]

This particular guide does not apply to limiting min-maxxing once people are actually playing the game--there's actually no need to do it once you're at that stage, because the DM/GM/ST/whatever can just say 'No'. This is at the design level.

Let me just come out and say right now that min-maxxing isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can actually be very good; all things being equal someone who min-maxes probably has a greater interest in the game you're running then someone who just picks something that 'sounds good'. The problem comes when someone who min-maxxes ends up with substantially more screentime or awesomeness than someone who didn't. And while we expect a certain degree of payoff for people who work harder or know the rules better, it can quickly get out of hand.

Thus, most of the work done to limit the bad effects of min-maxxing must be done in the bulk of the rules. This means writing balanced rules and doing thorough playtesting. However, it would be insanely arrogant and almost certainly wrong for anyone to claim that they can write a perfectly balanced rules-set with no problems in it. There are also certain ways to write rules that tend to create more min-maxxed results than others. This isn't always true, however; most of the vertical advancement options (see below) in 3rd Edition D&D suck hardcore and yet these rules are notorious for being unbalanced.

Limit players' abilities to select vertical advancement options.

I'm not saying take vertical advancement out of the game entirely since it's no guarantee it'll make the game better; M&M d20 and 3E D&D are prime examples of systems where min-maxxers tend to focus on horizontal advancement. I'm just saying severely limit the amount of vertical advancement players can take.

Feats like Weapon Focus and Weapon Expertise and Two-Weapon Fighting are bad. Feats like Whirlwind and Polearm Gamble are better. The reason why you want to do this is because vertical advancement tends to lead to people having a 'Five Moves of Doom' chart. Seriously, look at 4th Edition D&D if you don't believe me. Every Rageblood Barbarian selects their feats in roughly this order:

1) Hide Armor Expertise
2) Weapon Proficiency: Execution Axe
4) Weapon Focus: Axes
6) Weapon Expertise: Axe
8) Deadly Rage

That stinks. It's also incredibly boring; all of the barbarian feats do nothing except modify rolls.

Limit prerequisites for later-era expansion options.

Feat chains suck. We hate them. Not just because they suck up all of your feats now for a later payoff, but also because they're impossible to get without planning your character. In this thread, I talk about the horrible realization I had when I found out that I wouldn't be able to get everything I wanted. I originally just wanted to select what sounded cool but that just wasn't possible; I had to think about what I wanted my character to do way ahead of time. And while it is cool to fantasize about the awesome things your character will get to do (and is one of the prime rewards of grindings) it's not cool to realize that you need to do things in a certain way or you'll suck.

Going back to 3rd Edition again, one of the worst things about that edition were prestige class requirements. Not prestige classes themselves; those things were fucking awesome. No, what sucked about them was that they required obscure feats in things like Destructive Rage and Skill Focus: Scry and putting your ranks into shit you would never think about.

So if you imagined your character entering a prestige class but also wanted them to complete a feat chain, you were double-fucked unless you planned out your character ahead of time. And I don't know about you, but when I was a beginner plotting things out more than a couple of levels in advance was just irritating. Unfortunately, that's what happens. You're pretty much forced to min-max now.

4th Edition D&D by and large got rid of prestige class paragon path prerequisites. That's very good. Unfortunately, they also started worshiping on the altar of vertical advancement, which wiped out any benefit of this system. That's bad.

Give players plenty of chances to overcome 'bad' decisions.

3rd Edition's rebuild option in the PHBII was a great idea. 4th Edition's retraining option was even better even though they completely wrecked the idea by not letting people retrain class features and letting people trade in lower-level options for higher-level ones.

Now you might be thinking to yourself 'wait, won't letting people switch around their options much actually lead to increased min-maxxing'? The answer to that, surprisingly, is no. People who are actually good at min-maxxing plan their builds so meticulously that there is actually not a need for them to replace 'bad' options unless they're using a stupid system like 4E's retraining rules.

If you have a system where you can correct earlier mistakes, people have less motivation to build their character perfectly ahead of time on the assumption that they're stuck with one bad choice for the rest of their life if they mess up.

Do not have people pay for non-combat resources out of their swords fund.

The final nail in the coffin for 4th Edition rituals, aside from being too unwieldy to cast and having bupkis effects, was that they cost money. Money that you needed for swords.

This means that anyone who cares about the Swording part of the game will elect to avoid using rituals whenever possible. And that might have actually been a goal of the 4E's design team; if so, it was a retarded one, because some people actually feel it's important that their druid gets to control weather in a 3-mile radius for 24 hours or that their wizard gets to lock a door really hardcore. So it ends up hurting beginners or 'Real Roleplayers', which is the same as benefiting min-maxxers.

4E could have gone a long way towards mitigating this effect if they had implemented a sane Wealth-By-Level system like 3E did. In 3E, even if you blow all of your money on scrolls of Rabbit Fucking down to melting down your armor for money then at least by next level you would get reimbursed. 4E only exacerbates the effect. Every time you use a ritual you are going to be paying for it for the rest of your life. That is really bad if you want to avoid min-maxxing.

Be careful about balancing limited-use items versus permanent items.

Here's a question for you. Why does a wand of Mage Armor (750 gp) cost less than +3 bracers of armor (9000 gp) despite costing a 1/12th of what they do? Well, the layman might answer that you are eventually going to run out of Mage Armor wand charges while the Bracers of Armor last forever.

But that's crap. People are going to immediately ditch their +3 Bracers of armor once they find +5 Bracers of Armor. Similarly, the person with a wand once they find these bracers (and can't trade them in for anything) is never going to use another charge from the wand again because it's a waste of time. The game also tells us that there are a finite number of encounters a player with the +3 bracers of armor will face before +5 BoA will drop in their lap, completely eliminating the need to use the latter.

So we can see right away that if the wand has 50 charges in it but there are only 30 encounters to get from +3 BoA to +5 BoA, the person who chose the permanent cost item is getting ripped off.

3E failed because of this system, but it wasn't really noticable for two reasons:

1) Spells (which were free) did a better job than the limited-use items with of course the notable exceptions of wands of cure light wounds and the light.

2) Limited-use items had a limited overall effect anyway. Wands topped out at level 4, potions couldn't have personal effects and topped out at level 3, etc.

4E failed even more hilariously; if you ever use a reagent or those potions which let you burn a healing surge for some effect you'll get the stink eye at your table like you're a fucking munchkin. And you probably are, too. You cannot use these things unless your DM is completely clueless. Those things are overpowered because the game designers just weren't thinking of the paradigm that 'permanent' use items are in fact not.

If your price sheets for permanent and limited-use items don't match up then expect any min-maxxer to calculate how many times a 'permanent' item will actually be used and making decisions based on that basis. If you can't make them match up then you can make them come out of two different resource pools (tokens that can only be traded for limited-use and a different set of tokens that can only be traded for permanent-use) and don't make them intersect--for example, you can have wands of temporary armor bonuses and bracers of always-on fireball (or vice-versa), but you can't have wands of temporary armor bonuses and bracers of permanent armor bonuses in the system.

And if you can't do either then for Koresh's sake implement a wealth-by-level system; at least that way the person with the +3 bracers of armor can fix their mistake after they realize it.

[Grek]

wands of temporary armor bonuses and bracers of permanent armor bonuses in the system.

I fail to see the issue with this, assuming that the temporary armor bonuses and permanent armor bonuses stack with eachother without going off the RNG.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I fail to see the issue with this, assuming that the temporary armor bonuses and permanent armor bonuses stack with eachother without going off the RNG.

There isn't, technically, but that's veering dangerously into the realm of vertical advancement anyway.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Ya know, you do give some good advice here. But as usual, your hard-on for 3e leads you to one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard:

4E could have gone a long way towards mitigating this effect if they had implemented a sane Wealth-By-Level system like 3E did.

3e WBL is one of the most arbitrary, lopsided and insane bits of math-pheliac geekery in D&D's history. The DMG makes some vague suggestion about strictly monitoring wealth, but fails to make any suggestions about exactly what PCs are expected to spend their cash on.

As DM you can easily take that vague suggestion to mean 'a PC of X level should have X amount of permanent magic bling,' but that's no better than completely ignoring the vague suggestion: because while ignoring minor expenditures like Scrolls of Goat Fucking does downgrade a PC's wealth for the rest of his career, adding more and more loot to make up for minor expenditures encourages min/maxers to spend cash on broken bullshit like Force Cage.

If you want to make a useful suggestion that improves on D&D's wealth system, suggest scrapping it. Finite wealth inherently discourages players from buying anything but the next best sword enchantment, so I suggest taking a page from WW. *gasp* Just give all your PCs a wealth level:

Level 1: You have enough money to eat and lodge at the local adventurer's tavern, and to buy X amount (or any amount within reason) of mundane swords and other gear.

Level 2: You have enough money to eat and lodge at high class establishments and pay guild dues. You can buy X amount (or any amount within reason) minor magical items and fancy mundane stuff like spyglasses.

Level 3: You have enough money to own your own small estate. You can buy X amount (or any amount within reason) mediocre magical items and any mundane stuff you want.

etc...

[Lago PARANOIA]

3e WBL is one of the most arbitrary, lopsided and insane bits of math-pheliac geekery in D&D's history. The DMG makes some vague suggestion about strictly monitoring wealth, but fails to make any suggestions about exactly what PCs are expected to spend their cash on.

And as it turns out it doesn't matter at all; if the PCs are dumb enough to spend all of their money on scrolls of Troll Pornography, they at least get reimbursed for it after a bit of sucking. It's not perfect, but it's a better system than 2E (if your DM rolls badly on the treasure charts, sucks to be you!) or 4E (if you ever bought a scroll of Troll Pornography ever in your life, then sucks to be you!)

because while ignoring minor expenditures like Scrolls of Goat Fucking does downgrade a PC's wealth for the rest of his career,

That's absurd. If it downgrades your wealth for the rest of your career then you can't ignore it. It'd be one thing if the permanent-cost effects were so tiny we could just ignore it, but they aren't. 4E actually scales the costs of its non-permanent expenditures like rituals and potions to your level so you're always taking it in the ass for a level-appropriate effect. The only way to win is not to play.

adding more and more loot to make up for minor expenditures encourages min/maxers to spend cash on broken bullshit like Force Cage.

Why is that a problem of the wealth-by-level system? If they load up on scrolls of Force Cage then they can't afford Swords of Penis Compensation.

What you actually have a problem with is how 3rd Edition priced permanent vs. nonpermanent expenditures, which has nothing to do with the wealth by level system. 4E does not have wealth-by-level and it still follows the same bassackwards pricing of permanent vs. nonpermanent expenditures.

so I suggest taking a page from WW. *gasp* Just give all your PCs a wealth level:

Have you played d20 Modern? Anyone can tell you that what you proposed is an enormously awful idea in a system where PCs can select what items they get and where some items are better than others.

If what you're actually proposing is that a PC's level of wealth is fixed and unchangeable except by specific DM intervention but they can pull any wealth-appropriate magical item out of the catalogue, that's okay. In abstract anyway; that would completely fuck over D&D's system where you're supposed to get excited about treasure piles, but I can understand where you're coming from.

[Lokathor]

In nWoD: Resources is a "merit" (read: feat) you pay XP for. You use it to get gear other than your starting gear during the game. It also influences your starting gear, but even at Resources 0 you get to start with stuff. You can buy two things at your resources level per month. Sometimes you can get something at your level +1, but then nothing next month or something like that; this is major ST fiat territory as far as getting stuff above your resources level.

And it kinda works out, until all the supernaturals come in with the ability to rob banks with impunity and other such nonsense. Mundane equipment in WoD is pretty much all bland anyways. You can't really buy magical gear with Resources, but you don't really even need the magical gear in the first place in the same way that DnD expects you to have X gear quality at Y level.

[Grek]

Could have a system where wealth level increases like BAB. The Wizard gets less wealth because his half of the treasure is mostly magical books and jars of bat guano instead the gold coins and magic swords.

[Thymos]

In nWoD your wealth stat also can't get you artifact swords of awesome. It is a good idea I think to tie your magic items to your character advancement directly rather than indirectly.

Lago, you overlooked options that gimp players. Things like Monk are hardly ever focused on in 3.5 because they don't break the game in half like polymorph, but as far as powergaming goes they are a huge cause of it.

Why?

No one wants to play class suckfest.

How do you avoid the shittiest options out there?

Powergame, how else will you see which options are shit.

A large solution to stop people from min-maxxing is to remove gimp options so they don't have to worry as much about making a shit character accidentally.

[Caedrus]

I gotta agree with Tequila Sunrise here LAGO. 3e's wealth system was... bleh.

Ya know, you do give some good advice here. But as usual, your hard-on for 3e leads you to one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard:

4E could have gone a long way towards mitigating this effect if they had implemented a sane Wealth-By-Level system like 3E did.

3e WBL is one of the most arbitrary, lopsided and insane bits of math-pheliac geekery in D&D's history. The DMG makes some vague suggestion about strictly monitoring wealth, but fails to make any suggestions about exactly what PCs are expected to spend their cash on.

As DM you can easily take that vague suggestion to mean 'a PC of X level should have X amount of permanent magic bling,' but that's no better than completely ignoring the vague suggestion: because while ignoring minor expenditures like Scrolls of Goat Fucking does downgrade a PC's wealth for the rest of his career, adding more and more loot to make up for minor expenditures encourages min/maxers to spend cash on broken bullshit like Force Cage.

If you want to make a useful suggestion that improves on D&D's wealth system, suggest scrapping it. Finite wealth inherently discourages players from buying anything but the next best sword enchantment, so I suggest taking a page from WW. *gasp* Just give all your PCs a wealth level:

Level 1: You have enough money to eat and lodge at the local adventurer's tavern, and to buy X amount (or any amount within reason) of mundane swords and other gear.

Level 2: You have enough money to eat and lodge at high class establishments and pay guild dues. You can buy X amount (or any amount within reason) minor magical items and fancy mundane stuff like spyglasses.

Level 3: You have enough money to own your own small estate. You can buy X amount (or any amount within reason) mediocre magical items and any mundane stuff you want.

etc...

So where does looting the goblin lair come into that equation for D&D adventurers? What about consumables?

[Lago PARANOIA]

I gotta agree with Tequila Sunrise here LAGO. 3e's wealth system was... bleh.

Look, I can understand why you wouldn't like 3E's wealth system in abstract. However, as far as I can tell these were the design goals of 3E and 4E:

- Make it so that people have a reasonable chance of getting what they want.
- But make it also so that people get legitimately surprised sometimes at treasure hauls, which also means getting people to use stuff not on their wish lists.
- Have most of peoples' wealth invested in combat-affirming stuff.
- Prevent treasure from accumulating too much in the hands of one person.
- Have people use a fair amount of consumables.

The best system I've seen so far for all of this is wealth-by-level. It's not perfect by a long shot. I personally prefer the DM handing out treasure in accordance with player goals. But that's not the system D&D wants to use, because it eliminates the surprise/joy of find treasure and it also leads to people repeatedly using the same magical items repeatedly for over the course of their repetitive lives. Averting those things are defensible design goals, because let's face it--the catalogue system TS proposed (and which I secretly prefer) actually does that.

But I'm not talking about whether those design goals are bad, I'm talking about whether 4th Edition actually met those design goals.

4E's system had AFAICT the design goals I posted and it fails miserably at achieving them, mostly for reasons in the thread I linked earlier. But one of the generically applicable lessons of its failure (the reason why I made this thread) was that it made the mistake of charging people for non-combat resources out of the same pool of money used for combat resources; a mistake that's not just limited to 4th Edition, but it's a very endemic design 'feature' in most RPGs. It's especially baffling because its predecessor had a much better system despite also being deeply flawed in many few areas.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Lago, you overlooked options that gimp players.

I didn't put that up because it's just such a glittering generality that I don't even need to describe it.

Hey, you know what else also prevents min-maxxing? Writing balanced rules. That's true, but it's also a pretty useless thing to say.

[Psychic Robot]

Lago, could you into more detail about horizontal vs. vertical advancement?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Lago, could you into more detail about horizontal vs. vertical advancement?

Horizontal advancement: A blaster wizard learning how to jump really hardcore. Basically, advancement which adds a new tactic to a character's repertoire.
Vertical advancement: A blaster wizard getting a +1 bonus to attack rolls of powers with the Fire keyword. Vertical advancement improves tactics that a character already has.

It's actually a bit of a misnomer; there's really no such thing as strictly horizontal or vertical advancement. For example, said blaster wizard might be playing in a 3E game where attacking from higher ground gives a bonus to attack rolls, so his super-jumping ability actively improves his blasting ability.

Similarly, if a wizard picked up a feat that gave them a +1 BAB per extra level if they used an axe in one hand it suddenly opens up the 'Axefight' option with them, which changes their tactics; the vertical advancement recycled into horizontal advancement.

Experience has shown us that you want to take vertical advancement out of the hands of players as much as possible. While this will still lead to characters fishing for options through books trying to find new options to improve their core tactic, I personally find it vastly more interesting than just searching for a pile of bonuses and ladling it on.

An barbarian who min-maxxes by fighting with a rock with Continual Darkness in their mouth and by using their summoned earth elemental to grab enemies is at least more interesting than a barbarian who has a +5 bonus to hit and a +10 bonus to damage than most other barbarians but still uses the same core tactic of 'run up to enemy, hit with axe until dead'.

[Judging__Eagle]

As characters approach infinite wealth, they all approach equal power when it comes to equipment.

As characters approach being able to customize whenever they need or want, the all approach power equity when it comes to abilities.

As characters approach non-correlation between class abilities, and specific stats; the characters approach equity when it comes to character concept acceptance by the system.

Basically, if you throw enough things at a shitty character, they will obviously get better.

In 2e this was done with crazy crap for loot; in 3e this was usually done by the DM cheating, and the players being too stupid to realize that "an amulet that changes you into a tiger" is a bit much for below 10th level play.

We've seriously seen instances where a player talked about how their monk was not a shitty character, and talked about all of his cool items. Items which he wouldn't have had, if not for the DM seeding the treasure chests with said items; most of which were above his expected power of items.

Then again, everyone realizes that giving the Dwarf fighter a full set to use a Dwarven Thrower is obviously going to make the PC in question 'better'; he just got a lesser artifact and some high end magical stat-boosting gear. Likewise, a human sword fighter getting The sword of Kas.

[Lago PARANOIA]

In 2e this was done with crazy crap for loot; in 3e this was usually done by the DM cheating, and the players being too stupid to realize that "an amulet that changes you into a tiger" is a bit much for below 10th level play.

Da_Vane is never ever going to live that one down, is he?

[Username17]

As characters approach infinite wealth, they all approach equal power when it comes to equipment.

As I recall from the Why Monks discussion, as characters approached infinite wealth, the character wearing armor got larger bonuses cheaper than the monk and ended up not onlystill superior, but more superior than he was before.

Da_Vane is never ever going to live that one down, is he?

Nope.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

So having, for example, different weapons have various bonuses against different armors, then allowing the player to get more weapons as they advance, is an accepted kind of mild vertical advancement? They can switch weapons to get a bonus, but only within an expected range.

RPS systems are overall good?

[Username17]

RPS systems are overall good?

Yes. RPS systems are good in several ways. Firstly, it allows players to rotate MVP roles fairly easily. Secondly, it allows the DM to spike the RPS ratios on team monster in order to easily throw a bone to an underperforming character without giving apparent favoritism. And finally, it offers a source of tactical interest and depth that is easy to extrapolate by the players.

-Username17

[Koumei]

To assist in Da_Vane not living that down, could someone point me to what I missed/forgot?

And RPS is generally good in RPGs, particularly where the PCs realise it ahead of time and make teams that compliment each other*. So basically, they do what you do in Pokemon comp-play and field your Flying Dragon and your Psychic, then specifically field a Fire type to cap the Ice type that others use against your Flying Dragon, and you include a Fighting type to counter the Dark that counters your Psychic...

You get the idea. The players can really cover each other and it makes combat more interesting.

*Not in the sense of "That's a nice shirt." "Thank you, you're looking quite smart today."

[Judging__Eagle]

Once, long ago, someone named Da_Vane basically went on and on and on about how monks were fine, and balanced. This happened on The Nifty Boards.

Then presented some really retarded item that their DM had given their monk. As being the reason why monks were fine. It was some item that let the PC change into a mother-fucking Tiger (oh shit! get in the truck!); at like... level 6 or 10 or something.

It's like saying that the 3.0/3.5 PHB Fighters are fine, because at 10th level, they automatically get The Sword of Kas, and a suit of +5 (fuck it, they might as well get a +10, screw the rules) Adamantine Demon Armour. Plus maybe a vorpal dagger if they have TWF.

Obviously, that's why the 3.0/3.5 PHB Fighter is perfectly fine. Just the same as the 3.0/3.5 PHB Monk. Perfectly fine, and balanced. Oh, abso-fucking-lutely.


Mod Edit: Now, now. The man's not here to defend himself.

On the internet, there's really nothing that you have, except reputation. Let's just say that 'Mis(ssy)/(ister)' Da_Vane doesn't have a very good one.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a chop that needs to be dealt with all Fire Mage style.

-JE

[Psychic Robot]

Mod Edit: All right, enough about Da'Vane.

What does RPS stand for--Rock, Paper, Shotgun?

[Username17]

What does RPS stand for--Rock, Paper, Shotgun?

Close. It stands for Jan Ken Pon.

-Username17

[shadzar]

For in game, you just throw things at the players that their specialized min-maxxed whatever will have no use for. That will force them to make more adaptable characters rather than the perfect character for job Z, but unable to do anything for jobs A~Y.

At design level, just make them aware that their characters will likely face things on their own, that they will ahve to be able to handle as a character to survive.

It they do not have a versatile character, but have one that is specialized for but a single task, then they will likely not like their character very long.

Bo knows....how many sports? He wasn't just a one-trick pony because sooner or later that one trick wouldn't be effective anymore and he would need something else to rely on. Even Jordan started playing golf.

A character is best a jack of all trades, and master of none.

[Psychic Robot]

Posting at 4:00 in the morning impairs my cognitive faculties from connecting RPS to "rock, paper, scissors" instead of "rock, paper, shotgun."

[Koumei]

I once had a manager who used jan-ken-pon to resolve things: whoever comes up with the most original form of cheating wins. From siamese-twins Anubis to facehugger alien, I always won.