What does the term "Munchkin" mean in the context of D&D? I've heard (well, mostly read) it a few times recently, and want to know what it means
Edit: So, it's basically a derogatory term for people who optimize their character to be as powerful as possible in combat, while not caring about roleplay?
Would making a character who's able to use a "super attack" (minimum 50 damage, maximum around 100 without crits) once (or twice depending on spell slots) per LONG rest count as a munchkin character, despite their backstory tying into their class', and being involved in the roleplay? In other words, they're a full character with a past and ambition and personality, but also built to deal a super attack against boss'. (The character in question is my Triton Storm Sorcerer 5, fighter 2, Tempest Cleric 2, Who can combine metamagic, action surge, and Chanel Divinity to deal 50-100 lightning damage with 2 lightning bolts, but only if they have the 3rd level slots to cast them.) (l just want to know if this counts, but l honestly don't care either way, as I know i'll have fun playing them when they eventually reach (Total) level 9. (They're currently level 1, and will build to this power as they adventure) and having fun is all that matters, imo.
Powergaming play style for the XP and LOOT, almost like they're playing for a "score." The goal of the game is to accumulate the biggest numbers and bonuses on the character sheet. It's a play style parodied by the Steve Jackson Game of the same name, which is fun (like Munckin playing can be). Word can be use derisively or self-deprecatingly, sometimes affectionately.
The DM corollary to the Munchkin player is the Monty Haul, who basically overlavishes their players with excessive rewards for playing the DM's game.
Powergaming play style for the XP and LOOT, almost like they're playing for a "score." The goal of the game is to accumulate the biggest numbers and bonuses on the character sheet. It's a play style parodied by the Steve Jackson Game of the same name, which is fun (like Munckin playing can be). Word can be use derisively or self-deprecatingly.
The DM corollary to the Munchkin player is the Monty Haul, who basically overlavishes their players with excessive rewards for playing the DM's game.
Thanks, I do want to make a distinction that munchkinism is a particular variety of power gaming. There are plenty of reasons a player may want to engage in an "optimized" build of a character that would not necessarily result in munchkin style play. Just like a DM could be particularly generous with resources given a party at its onset if they wanted to run a particular sort of high power play that's not necessarily a loot them all game.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Powergaming play style for the XP and LOOT, almost like they're playing for a "score." The goal of the game is to accumulate the biggest numbers and bonuses on the character sheet. It's a play style parodied by the Steve Jackson Game of the same name, which is fun (like Munckin playing can be). Word can be use derisively or self-deprecatingly, sometimes affectionately.
The DM corollary to the Munchkin player is the Monty Haul, who basically overlavishes their players with excessive rewards for playing the DM's game.
Beyond that, a "munchkin" player is one who'll usually try to dump stat every non-combat ability in favor of scraping out every last bonus to combat they can. It's harder to do in 5E thanks to bounded accuracy, but in older editions like 3.5 this could be accomplished by giving a character minimal intelligence and charisma and dumping everything into strength and constitution, then take a bunch of social-related character flaws (an optional rule in that edition) in order to start with a bunch of bonus feats. The end result was generally a character who was unstoppable in combat but outside of it was so incompetent that they couldn't put their pants on without assistance. A serious munchkin wouldn't even attempt to roleplay these limitations.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Munchkin is a very old term that was invented on the Champions bulletin boards back in dial-up days. It was actually a mis-read of the word MUCHKIN, as in Much-kin. It was used to describe players who were not just optimizing but were actually trying to have too much power -- to be OP for their game. They wanted "too much", hence, "Much" Kin.
Because "muchkin" looks a lot like "munchkin," people mis-read the term, and it has been "munchkin" ever since.
At a guess, since "The Wizard of Oz" has been around since 1939, and the first edition of Champions seems to have been in 1981, the ones from Oz is where the name came from. :-)
Yes that's where the word came from (Wizard of Oz).
But... the application of the word much-kin to the RP phenomenon of powergaming first occurred, as far as I am aware, on the Champions bulletin boards back in the old days of dial-up and very slow modems.
On that board, muchkin was mis-read as munchkin, and it has been written as munchkin ever since.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Basically every post you see about a "build" on these forums is about 90% likely to be someone trying to Munchkin. It comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the game works. The best line to illustrate this is on page 118 of the DM's Guide: There are no rules for determining when a shipwreck happens: it happens when you want or need it to happen. The Munchkin player has forgotten that the DM is basically the game-god, and can kill their character instantly, whenever they want. The Munchkin thinks that their character can somehow 'win' at the game and attempts to create a character that is more likely to do so.
Despite that, it's also just loads of fun making your character cause big numbers and feeling like you're much more powerful than regular joes, or even the monsters that you face.
Despite their best efforts, Munchkins ultimately don't really achieve anything. There are two main scenarios:
1. I am the only Munchkin in the group
One player in the group goes all out munchkin-ing. The other players feel annoyed that they are dealing 50% of the damage of Mr. Munchkin, and begin plotting their own ways to level into more Munchkin-power. This invariably leads to (2). Alternatively, they just feel that their character doesn't achieve much (typically if you have one experienced Munchkin and a group of new players who don't read forums).
2. The whole group are Munchkins
Munchkins are almost entirely built around boosting their damage output. This is normal with any player to some extent - taking a feat like Savage Attacker, or choosing to wield a Great Weapon are ways of upping your damage. But Munchkin players take this to the extreme, pumping everything they have into dealing more damage. You get a situation where around level 8, instead of the characters hitting for a reasonable 9-12 damage per attack, they are instead hitting for an average of 25 damage per attack.
The end result of this is that the DM is just going to double the number of hit points that every monster in the game has. For all the Munchkin's power building, they haven't really achieved anything at all. The numbers are only as relevant as the DM chooses to make them. They may find themselves fighting harder CR monsters than they normally would, which just means that they're about 2 levels further into the adventure than they otherwise would be.
Moreover, if the DM doesn't double the monster hit points or make them harder to beat in some other way, then the encounters become incredibly tedious. A CR15 Adult Green Dragon has a measly 205 hit points. 4 of my group of 5 level 8 players average 25 damage per turn, meaning that the poor old dragon is going to be worm food in just 2 turns of combat. So any dragon that they face just has to have 400+ hit points to give them an enjoyable fight.
Of course, I am always going to munchkin my own characters as well because big numbers are more fun :D
Here's a Munchkin build from a character in my group:
Level 8 Blood Hunter heavy crossbow build:
Archery fighting style
Order of the Profane, take Hex
Crossbow Expert (never get disadvantage on shooting, ignore reloading)
Sharpshooter
Crimson rite, choose lightning as fewer creatures are resistant
+1 Heavy Crossbow (you can get rid of this if you want, but most characters are likely to have a +1 weapon at level 8)
As long as you can get a Hex up, with an 18 Dex, that's two attacks at +10 to hit for 1d10+1d6+1d6+5 damage (average 17) or two attacks for +5 to hit for 1d10+1d6+1d6+15 damage (average 27).
Against low AC targets, this Munchkin is going to easily deal 50+ damage in a turn, and even targets in full plate are likely to take 30+, all dealt at a magnificent range and ignoring half and three quarters cover and no disadvantage at long range.
I've experienced an interesting thing in MMO games. I played WoW from about a month or two after it was released and kept playing for something like 6 years. The higher your level, the less damage you did, and the longer the fights lasted because of that.
The game was designed not to require split second reaction times or complex decisions, but at the high levels, that's exactly what you needed. Many things would get nerfed. Each new ability at a higher level suffered from this fate. You ended up having to use a "rotation" in which buttons to use when and in what order. People tried to game the system with mods to the game that make it easy, and those had to be killed off quickly.
The same applies to D&D, it's really just a very small scale MMO in a sense, and roleplaying games are what inspired those MMO games. You kind of have to be a "much-kin" to play well. The difference between a Much-Kin and a Munchkin is pretty much that one uses the rules to their best effect, and the other tries to find their way around the rules.
Raiding is the rough equivalent of Boss fights in Tier 4. "end game" That's not what I am talking about. In normal fights, if you're in Tier 3 and you go mess with monsters with a CR that belongs in Tier 1, you'll probably one-shot them. Same as going to the newbie zones in WoW.
The people using those mods that did auto ability rotations were "Munchkins" People trying to get around the rules instead of trying to use the rules efficiently. A Wizard prepares their spells and picks the the right one to use at the right time and if it's worth upcasting. Munchkins try to find ways to get more spells in, or more slots, or mess with the timing rules.
Giving more hp to a monster or something as a DM really something you have to do, for either type. The Much-kins are doing more damage, and the Munchkins are trying to do the same thing in an abusive way. Either way, the fight takes longer, whether you get their by raising the monster's hit points, or lowering the damage the player character can do.
Munchkin is a very old term that was invented on the Champions bulletin boards back in dial-up days. It was actually a mis-read of the word MUCHKIN, as in Much-kin. It was used to describe players who were not just optimizing but were actually trying to have too much power -- to be OP for their game. They wanted "too much", hence, "Much" Kin.
Because "muchkin" looks a lot like "munchkin," people mis-read the term, and it has been "munchkin" ever since.
I think you have a very negative view on people that optimize their characters. It may be that they're not trying to win vs the DM, but trying to win at their party role. They want to be the best at what their role is, and that is 100% legit in character and out of character.
The difference between just playing your character/role well and being a munchkin is generally a matter of degree and the focus of player energy and intent. The thresholds for both of those are subjective and different people will draw the line in different places. But if your idea of a well played social encounter is "I roll to persuade/intimidate the NPC into telling me everything I want to know or doing what I want them to do with my +27 bonus" then you're a munchkin, clearly focused on winning the die rolls than roleplaying. Same with if you think a fun combat encounter focuses on tactics, using terrain features to your advantage, etc, or going in with a +18 to your attack rolls and averaging 50 points of damage on a hit at level ten because "tactics are for wimps, HULK SMASH!"
I think you have a very negative view on people that optimize their characters. It may be that they're not trying to win vs the DM, but trying to win at their party role. They want to be the best at what their role is, and that is 100% legit in character and out of character.
Wanting to be the best at what you do in character, and stacking game mechanics to optimise is not the same thing. Many of the elements that compose a character are backstory or in-character decisions, for example:
A ranger's favoured terrain
The pact a warlock makes
The fighting style of a fighter
and so on. When you find that by some crazy coincidence all of those small decisions stack together so that you are just unbelievably good at one thing, and have no talent in any other area, then it's generally an attempt to combine together disparate parts of the game to make a character that's more powerful than a character who has taken a more organic approach.
What I dislike about these "optimisers" is that they force everybody to play the game their way, or else feel useless. In one campaign I played in, we had a couple of fighters and a paladin swinging away for 10 (1d8+5) damage, or at best our paladin was doing base damage of 12 (1d8+1d6+4) with a Frostbrand. In the campaign I currently run, as I mentioned above the characters are averaging around 20-27 damage per hit, with just +1 magic weapons.
And then the real problem comes in: spellcasters don't typically have these ways to damage stack. Their cantrips and low end spells end up feeling like wasted turns, while their big damage spells can't even keep up with the attack based characters.
Many people use munchkin, powergamer, min/maxer, and optimizer interchangeably, myself included in the past. Treantmonk has This video where he explains the differences. It’s his opinion and you may disagree with some or all of his conclusions. But I thought it was interesting.
What does the term "Munchkin" mean in the context of D&D? I've heard (well, mostly read) it a few times recently, and want to know what it means
Edit: So, it's basically a derogatory term for people who optimize their character to be as powerful as possible in combat, while not caring about roleplay?
Would making a character who's able to use a "super attack" (minimum 50 damage, maximum around 100 without crits) once (or twice depending on spell slots) per LONG rest count as a munchkin character, despite their backstory tying into their class', and being involved in the roleplay? In other words, they're a full character with a past and ambition and personality, but also built to deal a super attack against boss'. (The character in question is my Triton Storm Sorcerer 5, fighter 2, Tempest Cleric 2, Who can combine metamagic, action surge, and Chanel Divinity to deal 50-100 lightning damage with 2 lightning bolts, but only if they have the 3rd level slots to cast them.) (l just want to know if this counts, but l honestly don't care either way, as I know i'll have fun playing them when they eventually reach (Total) level 9. (They're currently level 1, and will build to this power as they adventure) and having fun is all that matters, imo.
(Full attack plan can be found HERE)
Powergaming play style for the XP and LOOT, almost like they're playing for a "score." The goal of the game is to accumulate the biggest numbers and bonuses on the character sheet. It's a play style parodied by the Steve Jackson Game of the same name, which is fun (like Munckin playing can be). Word can be use derisively or self-deprecatingly, sometimes affectionately.
The DM corollary to the Munchkin player is the Monty Haul, who basically overlavishes their players with excessive rewards for playing the DM's game.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
yeah this is pretty much it
Thanks, I do want to make a distinction that munchkinism is a particular variety of power gaming. There are plenty of reasons a player may want to engage in an "optimized" build of a character that would not necessarily result in munchkin style play. Just like a DM could be particularly generous with resources given a party at its onset if they wanted to run a particular sort of high power play that's not necessarily a loot them all game.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Beyond that, a "munchkin" player is one who'll usually try to dump stat every non-combat ability in favor of scraping out every last bonus to combat they can. It's harder to do in 5E thanks to bounded accuracy, but in older editions like 3.5 this could be accomplished by giving a character minimal intelligence and charisma and dumping everything into strength and constitution, then take a bunch of social-related character flaws (an optional rule in that edition) in order to start with a bunch of bonus feats. The end result was generally a character who was unstoppable in combat but outside of it was so incompetent that they couldn't put their pants on without assistance. A serious munchkin wouldn't even attempt to roleplay these limitations.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Munchkin is a very old term that was invented on the Champions bulletin boards back in dial-up days. It was actually a mis-read of the word MUCHKIN, as in Much-kin. It was used to describe players who were not just optimizing but were actually trying to have too much power -- to be OP for their game. They wanted "too much", hence, "Much" Kin.
Because "muchkin" looks a lot like "munchkin," people mis-read the term, and it has been "munchkin" ever since.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
That, and they are in "Dorothy, and the Wizard of Oz".
<Insert clever signature here>
There is also a Munchkin card game created by Steve Jackson Games based upon munchkinism in roleplay. It is hilariously fun.
At a guess, since "The Wizard of Oz" has been around since 1939, and the first edition of Champions seems to have been in 1981, the ones from Oz is where the name came from. :-)
<Insert clever signature here>
Yes that's where the word came from (Wizard of Oz).
But... the application of the word much-kin to the RP phenomenon of powergaming first occurred, as far as I am aware, on the Champions bulletin boards back in the old days of dial-up and very slow modems.
On that board, muchkin was mis-read as munchkin, and it has been written as munchkin ever since.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Basically every post you see about a "build" on these forums is about 90% likely to be someone trying to Munchkin. It comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the game works. The best line to illustrate this is on page 118 of the DM's Guide: There are no rules for determining when a shipwreck happens: it happens when you want or need it to happen. The Munchkin player has forgotten that the DM is basically the game-god, and can kill their character instantly, whenever they want. The Munchkin thinks that their character can somehow 'win' at the game and attempts to create a character that is more likely to do so.
Despite that, it's also just loads of fun making your character cause big numbers and feeling like you're much more powerful than regular joes, or even the monsters that you face.
Despite their best efforts, Munchkins ultimately don't really achieve anything. There are two main scenarios:
1. I am the only Munchkin in the group
One player in the group goes all out munchkin-ing. The other players feel annoyed that they are dealing 50% of the damage of Mr. Munchkin, and begin plotting their own ways to level into more Munchkin-power. This invariably leads to (2). Alternatively, they just feel that their character doesn't achieve much (typically if you have one experienced Munchkin and a group of new players who don't read forums).
2. The whole group are Munchkins
Munchkins are almost entirely built around boosting their damage output. This is normal with any player to some extent - taking a feat like Savage Attacker, or choosing to wield a Great Weapon are ways of upping your damage. But Munchkin players take this to the extreme, pumping everything they have into dealing more damage. You get a situation where around level 8, instead of the characters hitting for a reasonable 9-12 damage per attack, they are instead hitting for an average of 25 damage per attack.
The end result of this is that the DM is just going to double the number of hit points that every monster in the game has. For all the Munchkin's power building, they haven't really achieved anything at all. The numbers are only as relevant as the DM chooses to make them. They may find themselves fighting harder CR monsters than they normally would, which just means that they're about 2 levels further into the adventure than they otherwise would be.
Moreover, if the DM doesn't double the monster hit points or make them harder to beat in some other way, then the encounters become incredibly tedious. A CR15 Adult Green Dragon has a measly 205 hit points. 4 of my group of 5 level 8 players average 25 damage per turn, meaning that the poor old dragon is going to be worm food in just 2 turns of combat. So any dragon that they face just has to have 400+ hit points to give them an enjoyable fight.
Of course, I am always going to munchkin my own characters as well because big numbers are more fun :D
Here's a Munchkin build from a character in my group:
Level 8 Blood Hunter heavy crossbow build:
As long as you can get a Hex up, with an 18 Dex, that's two attacks at +10 to hit for 1d10+1d6+1d6+5 damage (average 17) or two attacks for +5 to hit for 1d10+1d6+1d6+15 damage (average 27).
Against low AC targets, this Munchkin is going to easily deal 50+ damage in a turn, and even targets in full plate are likely to take 30+, all dealt at a magnificent range and ignoring half and three quarters cover and no disadvantage at long range.
I've experienced an interesting thing in MMO games. I played WoW from about a month or two after it was released and kept playing for something like 6 years. The higher your level, the less damage you did, and the longer the fights lasted because of that.
The game was designed not to require split second reaction times or complex decisions, but at the high levels, that's exactly what you needed. Many things would get nerfed. Each new ability at a higher level suffered from this fate. You ended up having to use a "rotation" in which buttons to use when and in what order. People tried to game the system with mods to the game that make it easy, and those had to be killed off quickly.
The same applies to D&D, it's really just a very small scale MMO in a sense, and roleplaying games are what inspired those MMO games. You kind of have to be a "much-kin" to play well. The difference between a Much-Kin and a Munchkin is pretty much that one uses the rules to their best effect, and the other tries to find their way around the rules.
<Insert clever signature here>
Raiding is the rough equivalent of Boss fights in Tier 4. "end game" That's not what I am talking about. In normal fights, if you're in Tier 3 and you go mess with monsters with a CR that belongs in Tier 1, you'll probably one-shot them. Same as going to the newbie zones in WoW.
The people using those mods that did auto ability rotations were "Munchkins" People trying to get around the rules instead of trying to use the rules efficiently. A Wizard prepares their spells and picks the the right one to use at the right time and if it's worth upcasting. Munchkins try to find ways to get more spells in, or more slots, or mess with the timing rules.
Giving more hp to a monster or something as a DM really something you have to do, for either type. The Much-kins are doing more damage, and the Munchkins are trying to do the same thing in an abusive way. Either way, the fight takes longer, whether you get their by raising the monster's hit points, or lowering the damage the player character can do.
<Insert clever signature here>
Thanks for the etymology. I love that stuff.
Altrazin Aghanes - Wizard/Fighter
Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
I think you have a very negative view on people that optimize their characters. It may be that they're not trying to win vs the DM, but trying to win at their party role. They want to be the best at what their role is, and that is 100% legit in character and out of character.
Altrazin Aghanes - Wizard/Fighter
Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
The difference between just playing your character/role well and being a munchkin is generally a matter of degree and the focus of player energy and intent. The thresholds for both of those are subjective and different people will draw the line in different places. But if your idea of a well played social encounter is "I roll to persuade/intimidate the NPC into telling me everything I want to know or doing what I want them to do with my +27 bonus" then you're a munchkin, clearly focused on winning the die rolls than roleplaying. Same with if you think a fun combat encounter focuses on tactics, using terrain features to your advantage, etc, or going in with a +18 to your attack rolls and averaging 50 points of damage on a hit at level ten because "tactics are for wimps, HULK SMASH!"
Wanting to be the best at what you do in character, and stacking game mechanics to optimise is not the same thing. Many of the elements that compose a character are backstory or in-character decisions, for example:
and so on. When you find that by some crazy coincidence all of those small decisions stack together so that you are just unbelievably good at one thing, and have no talent in any other area, then it's generally an attempt to combine together disparate parts of the game to make a character that's more powerful than a character who has taken a more organic approach.
What I dislike about these "optimisers" is that they force everybody to play the game their way, or else feel useless. In one campaign I played in, we had a couple of fighters and a paladin swinging away for 10 (1d8+5) damage, or at best our paladin was doing base damage of 12 (1d8+1d6+4) with a Frostbrand. In the campaign I currently run, as I mentioned above the characters are averaging around 20-27 damage per hit, with just +1 magic weapons.
And then the real problem comes in: spellcasters don't typically have these ways to damage stack. Their cantrips and low end spells end up feeling like wasted turns, while their big damage spells can't even keep up with the attack based characters.
Many people use munchkin, powergamer, min/maxer, and optimizer interchangeably, myself included in the past. Treantmonk has This video where he explains the differences. It’s his opinion and you may disagree with some or all of his conclusions. But I thought it was interesting.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?