If you've got 10 minutes, here's a story about a hyper-optimized character that I think is really illustrative (I'll summarize it below, but I recommend watching the video to get the full effect): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dxNGLUDGj-4
So, I think this is a great story. We've got a ranger who's extremely optimized for long-ranged combat, and he's doing some really incredible things. The player hasn't neglected the RP side, either; he's got a simple but effective backstory, and a clear characterization he's going for. What could possibly be wrong with this?
Imagine for a second what it would be like to be any other player in this campaign. Seemingly at random, your ranger player calls for the group to stop. He starts rolling dice. The DM rolls some other dice. You have no idea what's going on. Neither of them explain. This goes on for potentially minutes at a time. Much later, the battered remnants of an enemy battlegroup stagger out of the treeline, and you finally get to play the game. You mop up the survivors and move on. A while later, the scene repeats. Gradually it dawns on you. Every encounter on open ground is going to be like this. You sigh to yourself and start looking over options for a long-ranged support build, because that's what you and everyone else in your party is now.
This is what's called "sucking all the air out of the room", and it's the main reason DMs don't like hyper-optimized characters. It's not that the character or even the player is a problem on their own, it's the way they warp the campaign around them and force everyone else to adapt. It makes for great YouTube videos and absolutely miserable games.
This sounds less like a problem with optimization and more like a problem with a GM who has no clue how to actually run a game. The number one job a GM has is to communicate with the players and that's not happening in this story. Instead, they're giving all their focus to one player and not letting anyone else have a chance to do anything. That's what's actually sucking the air out of the room.
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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.
If you've got 10 minutes, here's a story about a hyper-optimized character that I think is really illustrative (I'll summarize it below, but I recommend watching the video to get the full effect): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dxNGLUDGj-4
So, I think this is a great story. We've got a ranger who's extremely optimized for long-ranged combat, and he's doing some really incredible things. The player hasn't neglected the RP side, either; he's got a simple but effective backstory, and a clear characterization he's going for. What could possibly be wrong with this?
Imagine for a second what it would be like to be any other player in this campaign. Seemingly at random, your ranger player calls for the group to stop. He starts rolling dice. The DM rolls some other dice. You have no idea what's going on. Neither of them explain. This goes on for potentially minutes at a time. Much later, the battered remnants of an enemy battlegroup stagger out of the treeline, and you finally get to play the game. You mop up the survivors and move on. A while later, the scene repeats. Gradually it dawns on you. Every encounter on open ground is going to be like this. You sigh to yourself and start looking over options for a long-ranged support build, because that's what you and everyone else in your party is now.
This is what's called "sucking all the air out of the room", and it's the main reason DMs don't like hyper-optimized characters. It's not that the character or even the player is a problem on their own, it's the way they warp the campaign around them and force everyone else to adapt. It makes for great YouTube videos and absolutely miserable games.
This sounds less like a problem with optimization and more like a problem with a GM who has no clue how to actually run a game. The number one job a GM has is to communicate with the players and that's not happening in this story. Instead, they're giving all their focus to one player and not letting anyone else have a chance to do anything. That's what's actually sucking the air out of the room.
Yeah the GM messed up letting that build through, but also I don't know that it's completely fair to let the player who actually built it off the hook. TTRPGs necessarily build up a certain reverence for The Rules because if they didn't, they'd have nothing to sell you. Plenty of GMs aren't comfortable saying no to things that are technically conformant to The Rules. Players know this, and they exploit it all the time. So between the player who knows they're putting together something game breaking and the GM who fails to stop them, who bears ultimate responsibility? I don't think it's an especially valuable question to answer. The bottom line is: everyone at the table, including but not exclusively the GM, is responsible for making sure everyone at the table having fun.
The character's build is not the problem. The fact that the GM and the player were off doing their own thing while ignoring everyone else at the table is the problem. All the other players should have been told what was happening and been allowed to actually act. When combat happens, initiative gets rolled for everyone, not just one person.
On top of that, the video you linked to is a story, not the records of a campaign session. You really can't pull something like that off, especially in 5E even if your character is six levels higher than everyone else.
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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.
Yeah, what's described here can't really happen without prior collaboration between the DM and the one player. There's no way for a player to simply realize midgame that a group of creatures are moving off-screen without the DM either setting up the scene ahead of time with them or giving the entire party a cue they can roll on.
Argument by hyperbolic example is not my favorite illustrative tool - people far too often miss the point and respond to the hyperbole rather than the underlying point, as folks are demonstrating here.
The point the hyperbole is making, however, is a valid one - optimization can lead to a sucking the air out of the room problem. This might be intentional (the optimizer is selfish and wants to be the center of attention) or unintentional (their character is so much more powerful/better at doing things that folks begin deferring to that character, as that character taking actions is generally the optimal choice for the party). This can also result in players deciding to focus more on supporting the “main character” than telling their own tails.
These are problems which can also exist independent of optimization - main character syndrome is a pretty darn common player flaw, and the campaign focusing around one player even without MCS at play can occur organically for any number of reasons.
Like with many other issues, optimization can exacerbate existing divides and problems. In that sense, it can be a catalyst for making “sucking the air out of the room” worse, and it is not hard to see why some players might get frustrated and blame the easy-to-see issue of optimization over “man, that person I was playing with was just kind of a selfish jerk.”
The character's build is not the problem. The fact that the GM and the player were off doing their own thing while ignoring everyone else at the table is the problem. All the other players should have been told what was happening and been allowed to actually act. When combat happens, initiative gets rolled for everyone, not just one person.
On top of that, the video you linked to is a story, not the records of a campaign session. You really can't pull something like that off, especially in 5E even if your character is six levels higher than everyone else.
Yeah, what's described here can't really happen without prior collaboration between the DM and the one player. There's no way for a player to simply realize midgame that a group of creatures are moving off-screen without the DM either setting up the scene ahead of time with them or giving the entire party a cue they can roll on.
Okay, yeah, you guys raise fair points. I can accept that the example I gave wasn't very good, but I don't think it's really core to the argument. I thought it was an entertaining example of the way min-maxers view their characters, and an opportunity to present the other side of that. But I see now that's it's mostly distracting from the broader discussion. There are better examples of the argument I was trying to make elsewhere in the thread, so I'll go ahead and remove the post.
I think it's important to determine the difference between "Optimized" and "Efficient" WRT any sort of discussion on the subject of whether this is problematic or not.
Like If you are building a character around a theme or idea then it makes sense to have the things that support that Idea/Theme; Like If you're playing "Large Mchuge Man" and want him to be a guy swinging around a big sword really hard it makes sense that he's a fighter with a focus on strength, great weapons and maybe giving him some feats like GWM or Slasher to push his damage a little further while also not neccesarily entering into problem territory due to how he's certainly good but he's pretty much good at one specific thing (swinging a sword around) and probably going to lag behind in some other area (IE talking to other people or sneaking or recalling specific lore).
This is what I call "efficient".
The Alternative to this at the extreme end of optimization, is the lucky halfling diviner with Tasha's lineage rules thrown in and Krynn's backgrounds tossed in for the extra feat. This is a character that is going to very quickly become all things to all situations because of there sheer ability to brute force dice rolls to be whatever the hell they want them to be and also gaining a versatile arsenal of spell that can let them do pretty much whatever the player wants and likely overshadowing much of the table as you go. As a Cherry on top it forces the GM to either Tailor encounters to counter the LHD or deal with the fact that there is a character that can run roughshod over everything.
As to Multi-classing: never really been a fan (particularly after the fiasco that was 3rd) but in 5th I find that it's more of an annoying hold over that tends to ignore how subclasses and feats cover pretty much everything you could possibly want a core class to do whether that's having your spellblade or warpriest or skald or shaman or whatever the hell comes to you while not being a naked power grab.
Here's a non-RPG example, from a work event many years ago.
One of our suppliers invited us to play paintball. It would be fun, they said. Meet at the arena this weekend.
We rocked up, with our old green clothes, and headed in to arrange rental of guns.
Then the people from the supplier arrived. They got out of their cars dressed in head-to-toe camo. They all opened their tailgates and started unloading gear. First gun, into a holster. Second gun, into a holster. Third gun, over the back on a sling. Then paintball masks, full-face, camo colours, with battery powered fans to stop them fogging up.
Yeah, they "forgot" to mention that they were a semi-pro team.
It was a perfect example of "sucking the air out of the room." We might have been in the same forest as they were but we weren't all playing the same game.
Here's a non-RPG example, from a work event many years ago.
One of our suppliers invited us to play paintball. It would be fun, they said. Meet at the arena this weekend.
We rocked up, with our old green clothes, and headed in to arrange rental of guns.
Then the people from the supplier arrived. They got out of their cars dressed in head-to-toe camo. They all opened their tailgates and started unloading gear. First gun, into a holster. Second gun, into a holster. Third gun, over the back on a sling. Then paintball masks, full-face, camo colours, with battery powered fans to stop them fogging up.
Yeah, they "forgot" to mention that they were a semi-pro team.
It was a perfect example of "sucking the air out of the room." We might have been in the same forest as they were but we weren't all playing the same game.
That's not a problem with minmaxing, that's just straight up bad sportmanship.
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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.
I’ve seen it everywhere, to be completely honest. Someone (naming no names) says they don’t like multiclassing because it can be used for optimising. What is actually, inherently bad about optimisation?
Often, it lets some players get easily outshined or useless. The DM typically has to adjust the encounters to make them harder for the optimized player but easier for everyone else. Doing that successfully is ridiculously hard.
So min-maxing is cool and usable in some games, but extreme optimization can be super problematic.
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Regarding multiclassing, there's also the fact that sometimes people will want to weld incongruous classes together for the mechanical benefit which some DMs don't appreciate, particularly if they're trying to run a more narratively focused campaign. Fortunately for them, multiclassing is already optional and honestly should stay that way; it means WotC doesn't need to worry overmuch about gimmick multiclass builds like coffeelock messing with the game balance because their presence in a campaign is dependent on getting a greenlight from the DM.
Here's a non-RPG example, from a work event many years ago.
One of our suppliers invited us to play paintball. It would be fun, they said. Meet at the arena this weekend.
We rocked up, with our old green clothes, and headed in to arrange rental of guns.
Then the people from the supplier arrived. They got out of their cars dressed in head-to-toe camo. They all opened their tailgates and started unloading gear. First gun, into a holster. Second gun, into a holster. Third gun, over the back on a sling. Then paintball masks, full-face, camo colours, with battery powered fans to stop them fogging up.
Yeah, they "forgot" to mention that they were a semi-pro team.
It was a perfect example of "sucking the air out of the room." We might have been in the same forest as they were but we weren't all playing the same game.
That's not a problem with minmaxing, that's just straight up bad sportmanship.
No, it's an illustration of the problem of mixing minmaxxing with non-monmaxxers. The bad sportsmanship was what allowed it to happen.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Here's a non-RPG example, from a work event many years ago.
One of our suppliers invited us to play paintball. It would be fun, they said. Meet at the arena this weekend.
We rocked up, with our old green clothes, and headed in to arrange rental of guns.
Then the people from the supplier arrived. They got out of their cars dressed in head-to-toe camo. They all opened their tailgates and started unloading gear. First gun, into a holster. Second gun, into a holster. Third gun, over the back on a sling. Then paintball masks, full-face, camo colours, with battery powered fans to stop them fogging up.
Yeah, they "forgot" to mention that they were a semi-pro team.
It was a perfect example of "sucking the air out of the room." We might have been in the same forest as they were but we weren't all playing the same game.
That's not a problem with minmaxing, that's just straight up bad sportmanship.
I think you've hit on something interesting here. There's a reason this story from a totally unrelated sport "feels" like minmaxing to some people (even though it definitely isn't). I think that reason is that most people who dislike minmaxing consider it a kind of bad sportsmanship, akin to rolling up your semi-pro paintball team to plaster a bunch of schlubby office workers.
"Bad sportsmanship" might actually be the most useful explanation of the feelings about minmaxing we've identified in this thread; like other actions that can be considered bad sportsmanship, hyper-optimization is appropriate in some contexts, but frowned upon in others. Consider the difference between a basketball coach calling for an intentional foul in (A) an NBA game, or (B) a little league game. Very different vibes, right? But unlike a lot of sports that have clear bracketing for players of varying skill (and seriousness), D&D is kind of a big mash of individuals with different preferences who all think they're playing the same game.
I’ve seen it everywhere, to be completely honest. Someone (naming no names) says they don’t like multiclassing because it can be used for optimising. What is actually, inherently bad about optimisation? It’s not like you can’t RP an optimised character. I have done so successfully on numerous occasions. Not investing in your character’s backstory and personality is an entirely separate problem. If anything an optimiser who actually plays D&D regularly is more likely to invest in their characters’ backstories and personality, because they care about the game.
Optimising in a low-stakes game is a different story, obviously - if you’re deliberately making a character that outshines everyone else’s, that’s a problem. But it’s a problem you can just mention. In the session 0. Talk about the expected power level. And it’s not like this is a minmaxer problem, either. A controller wizard in a party of three martials and that wizard is going to feel a lot more powerful, but talking about improving martials often gets disagreed with by the same people who dislike minmaxing/optimisation on these forums. (as a general, not a universal. I’m aware that this is not always the case).
This is basically a poll without the poll because I can’t predict people’s opinions.
TSR knowingly or unknowingly stopped min-maxing before it became a thing. Back in AD&D only non-humans could multiclass and it wasn't a big deal beacuse since they have innate magical and non-magical gifts they could only level up so high. Humans' leveling was unlimited, but the trade off was they didn't have any special innate gifts and that they could only Dual Class. What does that mean? I means they could start off in one class then at some point quit the class and start as another class. If you used anything from your previous class you would forgoe any experience points. It's not Respeccing, but you still keep your hit points from the previous class and you can wear armor to cast magic (if your previous class allwed armor of course).
IMO 5e just destroyed the game by allowing people to min-max. You might as well pay something like Marvel Superheroes
if your doing it to your stats then you leaving yourself a pretty narrow character. You will really need to depend on other characters.
If your doing it by multi classing then your pretty much limiting your top powers just to gain a few low level powers. You could start to step onto other characters shoes. At least until higher levels are gained. Then you will start to drop behind and never have a chance to catch up in power.
Here's a non-RPG example, from a work event many years ago.
One of our suppliers invited us to play paintball. It would be fun, they said. Meet at the arena this weekend.
We rocked up, with our old green clothes, and headed in to arrange rental of guns.
Then the people from the supplier arrived. They got out of their cars dressed in head-to-toe camo. They all opened their tailgates and started unloading gear. First gun, into a holster. Second gun, into a holster. Third gun, over the back on a sling. Then paintball masks, full-face, camo colours, with battery powered fans to stop them fogging up.
Yeah, they "forgot" to mention that they were a semi-pro team.
It was a perfect example of "sucking the air out of the room." We might have been in the same forest as they were but we weren't all playing the same game.
That's not a problem with minmaxing, that's just straight up bad sportmanship.
No, it's an illustration of the problem of mixing minmaxxing with non-monmaxxers. The bad sportsmanship was what allowed it to happen.
Doesn't sound like minmaxing, just sounds like the other team was higher level. Minmaxing doesn't really mean much in the real world where you can't pick and choose your stats and skills directly the way you can with a game character.
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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.
A lack of communication. In this case, it was the suppliers not communicating to us that they were a semi-pro team when they invited us to a "friendly game." In short, they set us up. To be fair to them, there wasn't any maliciousnes, just a bit of fun, but they didn't realise their "bit of fun" was our "well I guess we're not going to enjoy this game."
Same with a gaming table. The highly competitive players and the social players aren't communicating their playstyles.
Often this is because they don't realise playstyle differences even exist. I had one friend puzzled by another players lack of interest in optimising their character. They thought the suboptimal character was just because the player didn't know the rules. The idea that the player didn't care about a suboptimal character genuinely never ocurred to them.
So, what's the solution? Step back from the game and have a discussion. (Gee, how many times have we said that on these forums? :-)
Here's a non-RPG example, from a work event many years ago.
One of our suppliers invited us to play paintball. It would be fun, they said. Meet at the arena this weekend.
We rocked up, with our old green clothes, and headed in to arrange rental of guns.
Then the people from the supplier arrived. They got out of their cars dressed in head-to-toe camo. They all opened their tailgates and started unloading gear. First gun, into a holster. Second gun, into a holster. Third gun, over the back on a sling. Then paintball masks, full-face, camo colours, with battery powered fans to stop them fogging up.
Yeah, they "forgot" to mention that they were a semi-pro team.
It was a perfect example of "sucking the air out of the room." We might have been in the same forest as they were but we weren't all playing the same game.
That's not a problem with minmaxing, that's just straight up bad sportmanship.
No, it's an illustration of the problem of mixing minmaxxing with non-monmaxxers. The bad sportsmanship was what allowed it to happen.
Doesn't sound like minmaxing, just sounds like the other team was higher level. Minmaxing doesn't really mean much in the real world where you can't pick and choose your stats and skills directly the way you can with a game character.
i disagree that the paintball example doesn't sound like min/maxing. the 'semi-pros' couldn't have done much about their coordination, teamwork, and familiarity with the range. hard to put that "higher level" (and meta knowledge) down. but the camo team could absolutely have stowed their tuned and sighted weapons and side arms and paint grenades and orbital lasers to rent similarly powered field equipment for the presumption of a fair fight. the equivalent of deciding to embrace the novelty of single-class characters without feats for a bit. it's supposed to be a collaboration, not a "you hold the paint while i do the artistry" situation. when something similar happened to my paintball friends a thousand million years ago the literal army guys that rolled up (randomly in our case) offered to shuffle the two teams together (and consider it leadership training). they understood the assignment.
there are things that can be done to mitigate the perception of min/maxing within a non-min/max situation. it starts with a conversation.
i disagree that the paintball example doesn't sound like min/maxing. the 'semi-pros' couldn't have done much about their coordination, teamwork, and familiarity with the range. hard to put that "higher level" (and meta knowledge) down. but the camo team could absolutely have stowed their tuned and sighted weapons and side arms and paint grenades and orbital lasers to rent similarly powered field equipment for the presumption of a fair fight. the equivalent of deciding to embrace the novelty of single-class characters without feats for a bit. it's supposed to be a collaboration, not a "you hold the paint while i do the artistry" situation. when something similar happened to my paintball friends a thousand million years ago the literal army guys that rolled up (randomly in our case) offered to shuffle the two teams together (and consider it leadership training). they understood the assignment.
there are things that can be done to mitigate the perception of min/maxing within a non-min/max situation. it starts with a conversation.
Again, that really doesn't describe minmaxing as it's typically portrayed in games, which is about base character builds rather than gear choices. If the definition of the term is so broad that any sort of advantage falls under it, well, to paraphrase Syndrome, when everything is minmaxing, nothing is.
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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.
i disagree that the paintball example doesn't sound like min/maxing. the 'semi-pros' couldn't have done much about their coordination, teamwork, and familiarity with the range. hard to put that "higher level" (and meta knowledge) down. but the camo team could absolutely have stowed their tuned and sighted weapons and side arms and paint grenades and orbital lasers to rent similarly powered field equipment for the presumption of a fair fight. the equivalent of deciding to embrace the novelty of single-class characters without feats for a bit. it's supposed to be a collaboration, not a "you hold the paint while i do the artistry" situation. when something similar happened to my paintball friends a thousand million years ago the literal army guys that rolled up (randomly in our case) offered to shuffle the two teams together (and consider it leadership training). they understood the assignment.
there are things that can be done to mitigate the perception of min/maxing within a non-min/max situation. it starts with a conversation.
Again, that really doesn't describe minmaxing as it's typically portrayed in games, which is about base character builds rather than gear choices. If the definition of the term is so broad that any sort of advantage falls under it, well, to paraphrase Syndrome, when everything is minmaxing, nothing is.
i don't know another better way to describe gathering many small advantages and applying them together strategically to enhance efficiency for gains greater than the sum of the parts. that is min/maxing (to me). 'sharks,' 'pay-to-win,' 'try-hards,' or even 'pub stompers' seem more derogatory than accurate as that's describing a deliberate tier-of-play mismatch, not the effort involved in showing up prepared for a certain level of play. and to be clear: we don't know that the "semi pros" were actually skilled, only that they had the gear a skilled party would likely not be without. we know that they minimized the fog on their goggles, minimized their silhouette outline contrast, and maximized the chances of having a functioning paint delivery device on-hand. even if all that stuff was borrowed or bought minutes before, it's still an advantage at worst and a force multiplier at best. and that min/maxing can be removed to better match intended tier of play (after a conversation).
if anything, i think it's a false equivalency to compare paintballer's gear to only an adventurer's starting equipment. those "semi pros" weren't in starter equipment. those guys came in with researched races, niche weapons, reddit's favorite feats, multiclass for action surge, a previous campaign's cloak of elvenkind, and a charm of heroism from their custom background.
This sounds less like a problem with optimization and more like a problem with a GM who has no clue how to actually run a game. The number one job a GM has is to communicate with the players and that's not happening in this story. Instead, they're giving all their focus to one player and not letting anyone else have a chance to do anything. That's what's actually sucking the air out of the room.
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.
Yeah the GM messed up letting that build through, but also I don't know that it's completely fair to let the player who actually built it off the hook. TTRPGs necessarily build up a certain reverence for The Rules because if they didn't, they'd have nothing to sell you. Plenty of GMs aren't comfortable saying no to things that are technically conformant to The Rules. Players know this, and they exploit it all the time. So between the player who knows they're putting together something game breaking and the GM who fails to stop them, who bears ultimate responsibility? I don't think it's an especially valuable question to answer. The bottom line is: everyone at the table, including but not exclusively the GM, is responsible for making sure everyone at the table having fun.
The character's build is not the problem. The fact that the GM and the player were off doing their own thing while ignoring everyone else at the table is the problem. All the other players should have been told what was happening and been allowed to actually act. When combat happens, initiative gets rolled for everyone, not just one person.
On top of that, the video you linked to is a story, not the records of a campaign session. You really can't pull something like that off, especially in 5E even if your character is six levels higher than everyone else.
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.
Yeah, what's described here can't really happen without prior collaboration between the DM and the one player. There's no way for a player to simply realize midgame that a group of creatures are moving off-screen without the DM either setting up the scene ahead of time with them or giving the entire party a cue they can roll on.
Argument by hyperbolic example is not my favorite illustrative tool - people far too often miss the point and respond to the hyperbole rather than the underlying point, as folks are demonstrating here.
The point the hyperbole is making, however, is a valid one - optimization can lead to a sucking the air out of the room problem. This might be intentional (the optimizer is selfish and wants to be the center of attention) or unintentional (their character is so much more powerful/better at doing things that folks begin deferring to that character, as that character taking actions is generally the optimal choice for the party). This can also result in players deciding to focus more on supporting the “main character” than telling their own tails.
These are problems which can also exist independent of optimization - main character syndrome is a pretty darn common player flaw, and the campaign focusing around one player even without MCS at play can occur organically for any number of reasons.
Like with many other issues, optimization can exacerbate existing divides and problems. In that sense, it can be a catalyst for making “sucking the air out of the room” worse, and it is not hard to see why some players might get frustrated and blame the easy-to-see issue of optimization over “man, that person I was playing with was just kind of a selfish jerk.”
Okay, yeah, you guys raise fair points. I can accept that the example I gave wasn't very good, but I don't think it's really core to the argument. I thought it was an entertaining example of the way min-maxers view their characters, and an opportunity to present the other side of that. But I see now that's it's mostly distracting from the broader discussion. There are better examples of the argument I was trying to make elsewhere in the thread, so I'll go ahead and remove the post.
I think it's important to determine the difference between "Optimized" and "Efficient" WRT any sort of discussion on the subject of whether this is problematic or not.
Like If you are building a character around a theme or idea then it makes sense to have the things that support that Idea/Theme; Like If you're playing "Large Mchuge Man" and want him to be a guy swinging around a big sword really hard it makes sense that he's a fighter with a focus on strength, great weapons and maybe giving him some feats like GWM or Slasher to push his damage a little further while also not neccesarily entering into problem territory due to how he's certainly good but he's pretty much good at one specific thing (swinging a sword around) and probably going to lag behind in some other area (IE talking to other people or sneaking or recalling specific lore).
This is what I call "efficient".
The Alternative to this at the extreme end of optimization, is the lucky halfling diviner with Tasha's lineage rules thrown in and Krynn's backgrounds tossed in for the extra feat. This is a character that is going to very quickly become all things to all situations because of there sheer ability to brute force dice rolls to be whatever the hell they want them to be and also gaining a versatile arsenal of spell that can let them do pretty much whatever the player wants and likely overshadowing much of the table as you go. As a Cherry on top it forces the GM to either Tailor encounters to counter the LHD or deal with the fact that there is a character that can run roughshod over everything.
As to Multi-classing: never really been a fan (particularly after the fiasco that was 3rd) but in 5th I find that it's more of an annoying hold over that tends to ignore how subclasses and feats cover pretty much everything you could possibly want a core class to do whether that's having your spellblade or warpriest or skald or shaman or whatever the hell comes to you while not being a naked power grab.
Here's a non-RPG example, from a work event many years ago.
One of our suppliers invited us to play paintball. It would be fun, they said. Meet at the arena this weekend.
We rocked up, with our old green clothes, and headed in to arrange rental of guns.
Then the people from the supplier arrived. They got out of their cars dressed in head-to-toe camo. They all opened their tailgates and started unloading gear. First gun, into a holster. Second gun, into a holster. Third gun, over the back on a sling. Then paintball masks, full-face, camo colours, with battery powered fans to stop them fogging up.
Yeah, they "forgot" to mention that they were a semi-pro team.
It was a perfect example of "sucking the air out of the room." We might have been in the same forest as they were but we weren't all playing the same game.
That's not a problem with minmaxing, that's just straight up bad sportmanship.
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.
Often, it lets some players get easily outshined or useless. The DM typically has to adjust the encounters to make them harder for the optimized player but easier for everyone else. Doing that successfully is ridiculously hard.
So min-maxing is cool and usable in some games, but extreme optimization can be super problematic.
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HERE.Regarding multiclassing, there's also the fact that sometimes people will want to weld incongruous classes together for the mechanical benefit which some DMs don't appreciate, particularly if they're trying to run a more narratively focused campaign. Fortunately for them, multiclassing is already optional and honestly should stay that way; it means WotC doesn't need to worry overmuch about gimmick multiclass builds like coffeelock messing with the game balance because their presence in a campaign is dependent on getting a greenlight from the DM.
No, it's an illustration of the problem of mixing minmaxxing with non-monmaxxers. The bad sportsmanship was what allowed it to happen.
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I think you've hit on something interesting here. There's a reason this story from a totally unrelated sport "feels" like minmaxing to some people (even though it definitely isn't). I think that reason is that most people who dislike minmaxing consider it a kind of bad sportsmanship, akin to rolling up your semi-pro paintball team to plaster a bunch of schlubby office workers.
"Bad sportsmanship" might actually be the most useful explanation of the feelings about minmaxing we've identified in this thread; like other actions that can be considered bad sportsmanship, hyper-optimization is appropriate in some contexts, but frowned upon in others. Consider the difference between a basketball coach calling for an intentional foul in (A) an NBA game, or (B) a little league game. Very different vibes, right? But unlike a lot of sports that have clear bracketing for players of varying skill (and seriousness), D&D is kind of a big mash of individuals with different preferences who all think they're playing the same game.
TSR knowingly or unknowingly stopped min-maxing before it became a thing. Back in AD&D only non-humans could multiclass and it wasn't a big deal beacuse since they have innate magical and non-magical gifts they could only level up so high. Humans' leveling was unlimited, but the trade off was they didn't have any special innate gifts and that they could only Dual Class. What does that mean? I means they could start off in one class then at some point quit the class and start as another class. If you used anything from your previous class you would forgoe any experience points. It's not Respeccing, but you still keep your hit points from the previous class and you can wear armor to cast magic (if your previous class allwed armor of course).
IMO 5e just destroyed the game by allowing people to min-max. You might as well pay something like Marvel Superheroes
Min/max is not bad. To a point.
if your doing it to your stats then you leaving yourself a pretty narrow character. You will really need to depend on other characters.
If your doing it by multi classing then your pretty much limiting your top powers just to gain a few low level powers. You could start to step onto other characters shoes. At least until higher levels are gained. Then you will start to drop behind and never have a chance to catch up in power.
Doesn't sound like minmaxing, just sounds like the other team was higher level. Minmaxing doesn't really mean much in the real world where you can't pick and choose your stats and skills directly the way you can with a game character.
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.
A lack of communication. In this case, it was the suppliers not communicating to us that they were a semi-pro team when they invited us to a "friendly game." In short, they set us up. To be fair to them, there wasn't any maliciousnes, just a bit of fun, but they didn't realise their "bit of fun" was our "well I guess we're not going to enjoy this game."
Same with a gaming table. The highly competitive players and the social players aren't communicating their playstyles.
Often this is because they don't realise playstyle differences even exist. I had one friend puzzled by another players lack of interest in optimising their character. They thought the suboptimal character was just because the player didn't know the rules. The idea that the player didn't care about a suboptimal character genuinely never ocurred to them.
So, what's the solution? Step back from the game and have a discussion. (Gee, how many times have we said that on these forums? :-)
i disagree that the paintball example doesn't sound like min/maxing. the 'semi-pros' couldn't have done much about their coordination, teamwork, and familiarity with the range. hard to put that "higher level" (and meta knowledge) down. but the camo team could absolutely have stowed their tuned and sighted weapons and side arms and paint grenades and orbital lasers to rent similarly powered field equipment for the presumption of a fair fight. the equivalent of deciding to embrace the novelty of single-class characters without feats for a bit. it's supposed to be a collaboration, not a "you hold the paint while i do the artistry" situation. when something similar happened to my paintball friends a thousand million years ago the literal army guys that rolled up (randomly in our case) offered to shuffle the two teams together (and consider it leadership training). they understood the assignment.
there are things that can be done to mitigate the perception of min/maxing within a non-min/max situation. it starts with a conversation.
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Again, that really doesn't describe minmaxing as it's typically portrayed in games, which is about base character builds rather than gear choices. If the definition of the term is so broad that any sort of advantage falls under it, well, to paraphrase Syndrome, when everything is minmaxing, nothing is.
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.
i don't know another better way to describe gathering many small advantages and applying them together strategically to enhance efficiency for gains greater than the sum of the parts. that is min/maxing (to me). 'sharks,' 'pay-to-win,' 'try-hards,' or even 'pub stompers' seem more derogatory than accurate as that's describing a deliberate tier-of-play mismatch, not the effort involved in showing up prepared for a certain level of play. and to be clear: we don't know that the "semi pros" were actually skilled, only that they had the gear a skilled party would likely not be without. we know that they minimized the fog on their goggles, minimized their silhouette outline contrast, and maximized the chances of having a functioning paint delivery device on-hand. even if all that stuff was borrowed or bought minutes before, it's still an advantage at worst and a force multiplier at best. and that min/maxing can be removed to better match intended tier of play (after a conversation).
if anything, i think it's a false equivalency to compare paintballer's gear to only an adventurer's starting equipment. those "semi pros" weren't in starter equipment. those guys came in with researched races, niche weapons, reddit's favorite feats, multiclass for action surge, a previous campaign's cloak of elvenkind, and a charm of heroism from their custom background.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!