Anyone feel like min-maxxing in D&D anymore?

[Lago_AM3P]

I don't. It's way too boring.

I tried making a 3.5E cleric archer and the whole experience was depressing. He ended up being vastly more powerful than his 3.0E counterpart.

I just don't have the heart for it I used to.

[dbb]

Yes and no.

I have some interest in experimenting with particular selected rulesets to see what I can do with them, or how I can make some notoriously recalcitrant concepts work with a limited amount of crunchy bits.

But I don't have any interest in just putting together the biggest can of whupass. Of course, I say this as the player of a Water Genasi wizard, so that part is pretty much obvious.

--d.

[PhoneLobster]

You can't know whats in the middle if you don't know the minimum or the maximum.

Various forms of character builds and rules combinations continue to be of vast use in assisting my players to prevent them from producing dumb stuff. Like monkbards.

It also assists me in the very rare games that I get to play, where I am regularly stuck with less experienced DMs. Knowing how to build a damn good character is a very useful way of ensuring that a DM who knows little or nothing about anything doesn't accidentally leave your character dead in a ditch somewhere.

Just as knowing how to exploit various rules and tactics for good effect from a purely mechanical standpoint is of vast use.

Like the damn kid running a recent star wars d20 game I played in throwing hoards of droids at us, some of them vastly superior to our minimal character numbers and level. But by knowing the rules enough to take cover and grenade them until the cows came home we still won.

Sure some may see it as sabotaging the GMs obvious intention of seeing us all captured by the bad guys. Myself I see it as means of proactively taking control of our share of game events, and teaching a young GM important lessons about how to run games.

And I'm hoping to see that game run again some time in the next several weeks so I can test out my "I'm virtually immune to 2/3rds of all damage in the universe" star wars character build I keep going on about. (and ass to that dumb ass on nifty who insisted that dissipate energy didn't apply to vitality point damage, I got my book back and looked up the damage rules, damage is damage! Hah!)

But anyway. Even if min-maxing itself becomes boring the use of it facilitates other fun things, meaning it remains fun to be able to use it until such a time as you don't actually want to play the game anymore.

[erik]

Soitently.

I've started playing bunches of living greyhawk, and am getting my wife involved too. I enjoy trying to cover as many bases as possible with various character concepts and trying to buck trends (like making a worthwhile bard). I don't really want to try and break anything, just make up for the truly horrible characters that most people play, and their even worse tactics. For example, this weekend there was a weak-as-ninjas level 6 cleric/fighter in a fight with a blue slaad, and it charges him putting him to half HP in one attack. He then decides to step forward and try to hit it once with a crummy attack, after my warning that a full out attack from that thing will kill him outright. Sure enough it over-killed him a bunch. The DM had it stop attacking him once he fell unconscious from going below zero hp, even though the second hit (4 of 5 attacks hit) took him from 4 hp to -12, then the player reminds the DM that he has the die hard feat and doesn't actually fall unconscious. But the DM lets him off the hook anyway.

I would have killed that character six ways to sunday as the DM, he was warned. Oy. So yea, when there is a party full of fools like that, I feel obligated to step up. I killed the stinkin slaad in one hit with my level 4 guy (tho it took some trifling damage from a couple arrows prior to that... otherwise it mighta required 2 hits or a bite from my puppy-mount... stinkin SRD doesn't have slaads so I can't check their hp).

Also I'm trying to help my wife get a good grasp on min/maxing and simple battle tactics. It's a trying experience since she's starting with a simple barbarian, and she barely ever decides to rage. Like once in the last 5 adventures has she raged. Oy.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I don't try to make characters that beat everything, on the grounds that I'm actually really terrible at that. Certainly nowhere near as good at the people here or Nifty.

What I like to do when I actually play is take bad character concepts and see how/if I can make them work.

If my crappy character who is supposed to suck from the very foundations can keep up with non min-maxed characters, I call it a triumph.

[Murtak]

- Min-maxing is still fun for me. Maybe I am weird (or weirder than most anyways) but I actually like fitting classes, feats and so on together until the end result is quite a bit better than the sum of the parts.

- Min-maxing is also necessary if you want to play a non-primary caster above, say, level 6 or so.

Basically I min-max to meet (or possibly slightly exceed ) the party power level. Anything above that stays confined to my hard drive, ready for use should it ever be needed.

[MrWaeseL]

I really suck at writing backgrounds and such, so min-maxing is the only way for me to create a memorable character.

I enjoy it, though, and am trying to teach it to my players.

[Tae_Kwon_Dan]

I don't even play D&D anymore so I guess the answer to your question is definitely no.

[fbmf]

My character in the current campaign blows away the damage output of the other four. it isn;t even fun anymore, and they are getting frustrated. I will always make sure my character is worth playing, but I'll never go balls to the wall like that again.

Game On,
fbmf

[power_word_wedgie]

Yeah, I'm kinda taking a break from it as well. (However, with school and everything, I'm taking a break from my D&D game as well) In the future, I think I'm just going to play characters that I want to play, not just for optimization value. Now, please don't misinterpret that I'm saying, "Wow - this guy has a strength of 6 ... I'm going to make a fighter." For attribute and hit points, I'll probably max/min, but for skills and feats I'll take a break.

[RandomCasualty]

I find more than anything min/maxing just isn't worth it. You piss off the other players if you're way better than them, you piss off the DM since he has to go through a lot of trouble nerfing you or otherwise rewriting the quest to prevent you from walking over everything.

All in all it doesn't make you any friends at the gaming table and unless everyone else is doing it to the degree you are, is overall pretty selfish, since you're having fun at everyone else's expense.

[erik]

Uh, simply min/maxing doesn't mean that you blow everyone out of the water, or have to go full on and show everyone up all the time. There are certainly degrees.

Even if you do blow everyone away with damage output, you don't have to use it all the time. I sometimes wind up choosing tactically inferior choices which allow the other players to be involved, since it's more fun than just saying "I hit it and it dies."

[RandomCasualty]

1125523581[/unixtime]]Uh, simply min/maxing doesn't mean that you blow everyone out of the water, or have to go full on and show everyone up all the time. There are certainly degrees.

Even if you do blow everyone away with damage output, you don't have to use it all the time. I sometimes wind up choosing tactically inferior choices which allow the other players to be involved, since it's more fun than just saying "I hit it and it dies."

Well honestly, I find it pisses people off even worse when you hold back. Since generally your deliberately being inferior and still beating them out by a bit, which just makes them feel crappy. It's insulting enough to totally blow someone away power wise. It's even more insulting when you start openly pitying them. Nobody likes the super character who sits on his hands and waits until everyone gets in hot water so he can singlehandedly save the day and steal the show.

You just don't do anyone any favors by holding back and giving them pity kills and trying to make them feel useful. People don't want the illusion of usefulness they want the real thing.

[Lago_AM3P]

It reaches a certain point where I just can't randomly select whatever and whatever anymore. Which if you don't min-max that's basically what you're doing.

I hate doing anything halfassed when it comes to fantasizing or storytelling. Avoiding infinite power loops is one thing; making a divination-based wizard who contemptuously blows away all of the challenges in the game with simple tricks that gets asked to get toned down is disheartening.

It basically reaches a point where people are basically telling me 'don't cast silent image and glitterdust anymore and cast fireball and lightning bolt' and that's just sad. Damn sad. Such a disgusting lack of effort.

However, I have roleplayed with people who were openly declared min-maxxers but didn't understand the numbers well enough or were just inexperienced with the game. They generally don't really care if your character totally blows them away; they'll just come back with the Next Big Thing and take your lessons to heart (which is why I wasn't pissed off when Frank mathematically proved that my precious monk sucked). That I can respect and work with.

Unfortunately, most people who play this game refuse to put any effort into it beyond 'oh, I think I want to play a guy who shoots ki bolts and sings--should I go bard or monk/rogue?'. So yeah. I'm not too keen on min-maxxing anymore.

[Murtak]

Whoa, I just had my first post eaten. Luckily it was not long. Anyways ...


So the reason why some of you do not like min-maxing anymore is that it ruins the fun for everyone if one character is vastly more powerful than the other party members, correct?

[RandomCasualty]

1126031281[/unixtime]]
So the reason why some of you do not like min-maxing anymore is that it ruins the fun for everyone if one character is vastly more powerful than the other party members, correct?

That and the fact that it can be a pain in the ass for the DM to keep his encounters competetive.

Min/maxed characters tend to blow right by the CR standards at higher levels.

[Crissa]

I don't like min-maxing D&D anymore because it used to feel like it had rules, and now it feels like 2.0 again - where anything goes, and there's no rhyme or reason to it.

They don't add in interesting rules, or fix what's there, they just layer on more and more spells and abilities which just make me cry.

All the things I want to do in D&D, they seem to have specifically broken in 3.5 and especially the suppliments... There's no standard, no reason to argue it out, because there's no one book anymore. And even where there is, they contradict each other, and the publisher doesn't care.

-Crissa

[User3]

Min-maxing DnD broke my heart.

As long as people like Crissa can't use the rules to easily make a decent catgirl or centaur-chick (or whatever their desired character concept is), I think my heart is going to stay broken.

You just shouldn't have to design a character 20 levels in advance before you play it.