Quote from: rgrove0172;988844If a choice of a skill or something was discovered to be a disadvantage to a character, thats simply what that person has to deal with in life. They can work around it, learn something else eventually or whatever but the very notion of spending a long periods, min-maxing over what abilities to choose and how they, mechanically, relate is so foreign to me I find it hard to grasp.

Am I a rarity in this?

B: No you are not a rarity. I feel exactly the same. But sometimes it sure feels it!
I like to create characters. Sometimes those characters are fairly competent. But very often I take skills or equipment that is not "optimal" because it fits the character concept or just interested me at the time. Or during play I'll tend to keep my first magic weapon or item I found as it is usually something early on and hard fought to have lived to walk away with.

A: Some fora are worse than others. BGG/RPGG comes to mind now and then. Though thats died down over the last few years. Somewhere if I think the late 70s or early 80s these sorts started to crop up. Rare. But vocally obnoxious. Enough that they got commented in increasingly derisively in gaming magazines. Youd see in with Gurps alot too. Then along came 3e D&D/d20 and BOOM! Am RPG that pretty much required you to plot out your characters future and optimize.

Quote from: cranebump;988866It's a lot harder to "optimize"* when you take out all the widgets. There's a difference between buying better armor and planning your "build" 10 levels in advance. Of course, I'm sure you can RP using any system, whether you munchkin it up or not. I'd just rather not wait two hours for you to roll your PC out the garage, when we could be 10 miles down the road already while you where constantly checking under your hood for that extra module to bolt on.

*euphemism for unabashed min-maxing.

2e has a LOT of character building involved if you use kits etc. - it just mostly happens at first level instead of being spread out.  (Other than duel-classing, which from an optimizer's view was the only reason to play a human unless playing a human-only class or actually anticipating very high levels.)

Really though - what's with all of the badwrongfun complaints here?

I was a min maxer for many years. All through 2e, 3e, shadowrun and a bunch of systems. Our whole group was. And it works fine as long as you all are. And yes we roleplayed heaps, no worry about that. Minmaxing is no bar to having cool RP moments/stories.

Where it falls apart is when not everyone is minmaxing, then it inevitably results in an early campaign death - either because the other players get jack of your mixmaxed beast, or the GM accidentally TPK's the whole party trying to challenge your minmaxed PC. Over time however, starting around 4e  I guess (perhaps others in my group earlier than me, or a bit later, doesnt really matter i suppose) came to the realisation that minmaxing doesnt really help. If the whole party is doing it, and keeping up, then the GM just adds more monsters/makes them more powerful = zero net gain. If only some of the PCs are doing it, the campaign ends early and you start again (for reasons above).

So, to my mind, minmaxing doesnt really help/make the game more fun in the long term. Yes it can be a fun intellectual exercise but, often, it is downright detrimental to a campaign and can f*ck it up completely. Better to spend your time on other things.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: Psikerlord;988941If the whole party is doing it, and keeping up, then the GM just adds more monsters/makes them more powerful = zero net gain. If only some of the PCs are doing it, the campaign ends early and you start again (for reasons above).

So, to my mind, minmaxing doesnt really help/make the game more fun in the long term. Yes it can be a fun intellectual exercise but, often, it is downright detrimental to a campaign and can f*ck it up completely. Better to spend your time on other things.

I'll say - I enjoy coming up with interesting builds and seeing what I can make work.  (copy-pasting internet builds is boring to me)  I enjoy coming up with oddball concepts which I can make work through power-gaming the crap out of it to make it viable.

Quote from: sureshot;988865Every edition encouraged it imo. With 3E and later it's more obvious. With 2E their was actual penalties to dump stating so their was less of that. Yet people optimizing characters by taking certain proficiences and attributes it was still there.

Quote from: Spinachcat;988874PC build culture did not begin with 3e, but the D20 explosion brought the concept into the mainstream of gaming. Pre-2000, PC build culture was mostly limited to Hero fans and other fans of point-buy games.

It's true that shuffling and optimizing of stats and skills didn't begin with 3e. But still, there's minmaxing and there's builds. It's a difference whether I minmax a few stats at character creation or whether I have to pre-plan my experience track for 20 levels.

But 3e wasn't the game to begin this. The first game where I saw players pre-planning advancement and class dipping (or rather, career dipping) was WHFRP. But it wasn't as "bad" as with 3e because there were no trap choices and as many prerequisites to meet.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;988859Yes, we are rarities.

It's one of the reason I hate 3rd edition and later.  I can tolerate complicated character generation in a complex point buy game like CHAMPIONS, but modern D&Ds combination of levels, skill points, and feats is a hellish 17-sided clusterfuck of gaming fail.

Added to by the fact that the rules are garbage; rather than playtesting, the asswipe in charge at one point said that bad choices were left in the rules to "encourage system mastery," which is fancy language for "we don't know what we're doing."  In Star Wars d20, for example, there are rules that actually do the opposite of what the text says they do.

Come on, Gronan, just tell us already how you really feel about 3rd edition and later:D!

For the record, I don't like those editions, either, because the optimization usually doesn't correspond to anything in the game world. OTOH, I'd gladly play Legends of the Wulin, which is a game of heavy optimisation, but every part of it corresponds to very concrete things in the game world;).

I'll see your Gronan and raise you an "all RPGs suck".

I don't like games where gaming the system is a large part of play. 3e really started the ball rolling on this one. Yes, GURPS and Champions reward system familiarity and have more or less efficient ways to spend character points, but an experienced character is not as likely to be crippled by a choice you didn't realize you were making at the start.

I think it has also given players the expectations of unlocking all sorts of new k3wl powerz when they "level up". Maybe my old school roots are showing, but I prefer slow incremental growth.

Min-maxing has always been a thing. People have been complaining about munchkins since the AD&D cartoon was on Saturday mornings.

Character builds really came into prominence during 3E, I think, because of a combination of the traditional D&Dism "everyone plays a different role and pulls his own weight, so that together we win" with the fact that the system was so terribly balanced and (intentionally) filled with "trap options" meant that you almost HAD to optimize, just so your martial character could keep up for at least a little while with CoDZilla. 3.5E punches you in the arm and whines until you DO embrace optimization, whether you want to or not. Nobody wanted to have a TPK because the Paladin sucked--so you'd better build him so he works as well as he can. Oh, here's another book of options to look through. Oh, and another. Have another...

With so much mechanical cruft to pore over, it's no wonder optimization boards became a thing. If you just wanted to play a Fighter and have fun, and not have the other players wishing they hadn't brought you along because your Fighter is a burden, then you might have to look up some tips online. It's the equivalent of pulling out your old Game Genie because you're just tired of the frustration.

Character optimization tends to be a little different in other games. In some games, you'll just realize, hey, if you take this option and combine it with this option, and then take this advantage on top of that, you can do This Cool Thing. And you'll say to yourself, "Hey, I think I'd like to do That Cool Thing. Next time I make a character for this game, I'm going to try this." Nothing wrong with that, but if it's the kind of thing you really enjoy, you ought to try GMing instead--then you get to build characters with wonky gimmicks all the time.  

And if it's the type of game where the PC's don't stick together all the time and go on missions, but split up to pursue their own agendas and get back together occassionally to compare notes and maybe work together on a big caper/boss fight, then optimizers tend to be a lot less of a problem. That one guy optimized his character, and the rest of us didn't? Good, when he hares off on his own, he can get ambushed by Blue Wubblies, they have more hit points. The rest of us will be adequately challenged by the more common Orange Wubblies.

Quote from: Barghest;989010Character builds really came into prominence during 3E, I think, because of a combination of the traditional D&Dism "everyone plays a different role and pulls his own weight, so that together we win" with the fact that the system was so terribly balanced and (intentionally) filled with "trap options" meant that you almost HAD to optimize, just so your martial character could keep up for at least a little while with CoDZilla.

Plus it came out just as the internet became semi-ubiquitous.  I know MtG has ALWAYS been about builds, but it became less okay to bring lame decks around then too.  (albeit since it's not co-op, it's entirely different social situation)

I shouldn't need to say it, but there is a difference between min/maxing the system and min/maxing in character.

Example being I once made an aging gunfighter for an old west game. Based on the age and treachery trumps youth and skill concept he had a variety of weapons to match each to the right situation. Granted this was based on rules, but in character these things matter as well.

The GM had a hissy fit about cheating and min-maxing because he always had the right tool for the job. That was basically the point, that was his thing. His stats were average, but he could usually come out on top through skill and having the perfect tool for the situation. Ironically, from a purely rules based examination, he wasn't a particularly efficient build.

He was loosely based on Lee van Cleef's intro from For a Few Dollars More and his horse mounted tool roll of deadly wonder (TM), with a large dose of Brian Keith's Buckshot Roberts (Young Guns) and a touch of Clint Eastwood's William Munny from Unforgiven. Just a tough old codger who used his experience to best advantage, and felt fair fights were for suckers.

He sounds just right for a character in Boot Hill.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Thanks for the corrections.

And D&D writers finding out that people are, in fact, pretty fucking stupid goes back to 1974, so my sympathies to the new kid.

Quote from: Spinachcat;988874PC build culture did not begin with 3e, but the D20 explosion brought the concept into the mainstream of gaming. Pre-2000, PC build culture was mostly limited to Hero fans and other fans of point-buy games. It was an inherent part of Champions RPGing. AKA, you have 200 points, go forth and do what thou wilst as long as you only use 200 points. Thus, many players did everything possible to squeeze the maximum out of those 200 points. Not a big surprise. Of course, there was also Car Wars, where a similar PC build culture exists. AKA, you have $20,000 and you want to max out your ride for the arena.

Not true, it was done with magic items rather than formal character mechanics and skills.