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.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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? :-)
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? :-)
Well said, I 100% agree, but as easy as it sounds it is very hard to implement for so many reasons!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
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.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Notice that I said absolutely nothing about starting equipment. The fact that they weren't using basic equipment doesn't mean that they were minmaxed, it just means that they were a higher level party with level-appropriate gear. You're trying to force the term to mean "anyone who's better at something than I am." Seriously, if you made a character who was 1st level and had basic starting gear, would you call another character who was 5th level and had a few magic items "minmaxed?"
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
we don't know that the "semi pros" were actually skilled,
Oops, I didn't include the outcome. Sorry about that.
There were three companies involved in the game: our supplier (the semi-pro team), us, and one of our customers. Each of us had 10 people. We teamed with our customer, making it 20 v 10. The semi-pro team of 10 won the first gameby a small margin.
For the second game, the people running the arena had noticed what was going on so they got us to play a game with mixed teams of 5. That was much more fun, and what we should have done right at the beginning.
we don't know that the "semi pros" were actually skilled,
Oops, I didn't include the outcome. Sorry about that.
There were three companies involved in the game: our supplier (the semi-pro team), us, and one of our customers. Each of us had 10 people. We teamed with our customer, making it 20 v 10. The semi-pro team of 10 won the first gameby a small margin.
For the second game, the people running the arena had noticed what was going on so they got us to play a game with mixed teams of 5. That was much more fun, and what we should have done right at the beginning.
So the "DM" saw the problem and came up with a way to save the game and make it enjoyable for all players?
Okay, to steer this conversation back to D&D, in 5E it's extremely easy to make a character that's good at one particular thing. It's nearly impossible to build a character who's the best at everything. People forget that the "min" part of "minmax" is part of the equation. Such a character will inevitably have some things that they're not good at. If one character is minmaxed and dominating every fight, the GM is probably screwing up in one or more ways. For one, they're probably not throwing enough encounters at the party per long rest, allowing the minmaxer to freely use all their limited use abilities instead of having to actually consider whether or not they want to burn them now or wait for the next fight. If the minmaxer is also a spellcaster, the GM is likely clustering enemies too tightly together, allowing AoE spells like Fireball to become more effective than they really should be. And they're probably not throwing enough variety into the fights so the party never encounters foes that force them to change tactics once in a while.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
Notice that I said absolutely nothing about starting equipment. The fact that they weren't using basic equipment doesn't mean that they were minmaxed, it just means that they were a higher level party with level-appropriate gear. You're trying to force the term to mean "anyone who's better at something than I am." Seriously, if you made a character who was 1st level and had basic starting gear, would you call another character who was 5th level and had a few magic items "minmaxed?"
is level disparity always min/maxing? no. is it sometimes? maybe. what's fundamental is that there are ways to stand out while not alienating others. seems like player intent would swing things heavily, but that's difficult to rely on (or interpret).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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: providefeedback!
Optimization/ Min-maxing is by no means bad when used appropriately. The problem comes when somebody only cares about dealing with any kind of issue by blowing everything up. It can also get in the way of the story or what would make sense within the campaign, like having 28 AC at Level 4. For example, say an average sized party is in a very dangerous situation against an enemy that they really need to weigh their options on what they're going to do, and plan out their moves. Now, if there is a very heavy optimizer in the party, this can all go out the window when they only want to deal an average of 120+ damage per turn at level 9. This can completely lower the stakes of almost every situation the players are in, considering that if a character is very well optimized, they are better than just about everyone else in their party at anything, and can make players feel useless or less interesting in any situation. As long as a DM can find a way to make this work so that they and the other players are having fun and feel useful though, then it's all fine.
Notice that I said absolutely nothing about starting equipment. The fact that they weren't using basic equipment doesn't mean that they were minmaxed, it just means that they were a higher level party with level-appropriate gear. You're trying to force the term to mean "anyone who's better at something than I am." Seriously, if you made a character who was 1st level and had basic starting gear, would you call another character who was 5th level and had a few magic items "minmaxed?"
is level disparity always min/maxing? no. is it sometimes? maybe. what's fundamental is that there are ways to stand out while not alienating others. seems like player intent would swing things heavily, but that's difficult to rely on (or interpret).
In 5e, how much in party level disparity do you see in your games?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Okay, to steer this conversation back to D&D, in 5E it's extremely easy to make a character that's good at one particular thing. It's nearly impossible to build a character who's the best at everything. People forget that the "min" part of "minmax" is part of the equation. Such a character will inevitably have some things that they're not good at. If one character is minmaxed and dominating every fight, the GM is probably screwing up in one or more ways. For one, they're probably not throwing enough encounters at the party per long rest, allowing the minmaxer to freely use all their limited use abilities instead of having to actually consider whether or not they want to burn them now or wait for the next fight. If the minmaxer is also a spellcaster, the GM is likely clustering enemies too tightly together, allowing AoE spells like Fireball to become more effective than they really should be. And they're probably not throwing enough variety into the fights so the party never encounters foes that force them to change tactics once in a while.
This is true in a vacuum, but it kind of misses the forest for the trees. I can build an encounter around a highly optimized character; I can't build a game around a player who wants to be a god. The two aren't the same thing, but they are correlated; I'm not saying every optimizer is a selfish jerk, but I am saying that a disproportionate number of selfish jerks are optimizers. Restructuring your encounter design doesn't solve the selfish jerk problem, and that's why a lot of DMs are apprehensive about highly optimized character builds; it's not necessarily about what they specifically do, it's about what they represent.
Y'all can skip this story if you want, it's not core to the point, but I can tell you the exact reason I decided I had to audit my players' build choices. I once ran a three-session short adventure for young adults at a library; at session zero, all the players indicated that they were familiar with 5e, so we decided to play at level 6. One player asked if he could use the Tunnel Fighter style from that one Unearthed Arcana. Should've been a bigger red flag, but I decided to let him. I had a general idea what was coming, so I made sure the first combat included a few spellcasters to give the other players time to shine. Sure enough, our boy showed up with the legendary Bugbear Polearm Sentinel with Tunnel Fighter, and proceeded to shut down every melee monster on the field. That was fine because there were also casters, and his Wis save was +0. The look in this dude's eyes when he got hit with one Command spell. His party mates mopped up the casters (teamwork!) but I could tell from that moment on this was gonna be war.
He showed up to the next session with a completely different character build (without asking), and I let him play it because we only had the room for two hours and I decided it wasn't worth it. Sorlock this time; the super-long-ranged kind. I threw in a few monsters with a burrow speed and halfway decent stealth; the rest of the party thought that was great, but you best believe big man didn't care for it. I wanna be clear that at no point was min-Maxwell anything but the absolute most deadly character on that table, but it wasn't enough for him. Third session he showed up with some kind of weird Barbarian-Rogue hybrid; I'm honestly not sure what it was supposed to do and by that point it didn't matter; party fought a zombie dragon, party killed the zombie dragon, adventure ended, I never saw that guy again.
So here's the punchline; I did the thing DMs are supposed to do. I adjusted my encounters to allow a player to use their highly optimized build while also providing opportunities for their less optimized teammates to do well. You know what I got for it? I got a butthurt optimizer and four other reasonably satisfied players who had no idea they'd just watched me DM three of the hardest sessions of my life. (I also got invited back to DM at the library again but thus far I've demurred) Could I have sat down and had a talk with Bugbear guy? Sure, maybe, but I'm not his dad and despite what a lot of players seem to think, DMs aren't literal magicians. I don't know a series of words that turns a jerk into a not jerk, and I feel it's kind of unfair to tack amateur therapy onto all the other work I'm already doing for my campaigns. So, yeah, minmaxing isn't the problem; but it's sometimes a pretty good barometer of the problem, and I for one am never letting a player who wants to use Tunnel Fighter sit at my table again. Unless they bring snacks.
Notice that I said absolutely nothing about starting equipment. The fact that they weren't using basic equipment doesn't mean that they were minmaxed, it just means that they were a higher level party with level-appropriate gear. You're trying to force the term to mean "anyone who's better at something than I am." Seriously, if you made a character who was 1st level and had basic starting gear, would you call another character who was 5th level and had a few magic items "minmaxed?"
is level disparity always min/maxing? no. is it sometimes? maybe.
Explain exactly how you use minmaxing to achieve a level disparity in the party.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
This is true in a vacuum, but it kind of misses the forest for the trees. I can build an encounter around a highly optimized character; I can't build a game around a player who wants to be a god. The two aren't the same thing, but they are correlated; I'm not saying every optimizer is a selfish jerk, but I am saying that a disproportionate number of selfish jerks are optimizers.
My experience is that the selfish jerks don't really optimize, they just cheat.
This is true in a vacuum, but it kind of misses the forest for the trees. I can build an encounter around a highly optimized character; I can't build a game around a player who wants to be a god. The two aren't the same thing, but they are correlated; I'm not saying every optimizer is a selfish jerk, but I am saying that a disproportionate number of selfish jerks are optimizers.
My experience is that the selfish jerks don't really optimize, they just cheat.
Okay I know this isn't the topic but I'm morbidly curious; cheat how?
This is true in a vacuum, but it kind of misses the forest for the trees. I can build an encounter around a highly optimized character; I can't build a game around a player who wants to be a god. The two aren't the same thing, but they are correlated; I'm not saying every optimizer is a selfish jerk, but I am saying that a disproportionate number of selfish jerks are optimizers.
My experience is that the selfish jerks don't really optimize, they just cheat.
Okay I know this isn't the topic but I'm morbidly curious; cheat how?
The classics are "forgetting" to record use of spell slots, points, and other consumable features or even damage, frequently "accidentally" rolling so the d20 falls off the table or is otherwise out of most peoples' LoS and insisting they got a high roll that should count, and insisting that spells or abilities have much more powerful effects than they actually do.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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? :-)
Well said, I 100% agree, but as easy as it sounds it is very hard to implement for so many reasons!
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
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.
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!
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!
Notice that I said absolutely nothing about starting equipment. The fact that they weren't using basic equipment doesn't mean that they were minmaxed, it just means that they were a higher level party with level-appropriate gear. You're trying to force the term to mean "anyone who's better at something than I am." Seriously, if you made a character who was 1st level and had basic starting gear, would you call another character who was 5th level and had a few magic items "minmaxed?"
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.
Oops, I didn't include the outcome. Sorry about that.
There were three companies involved in the game: our supplier (the semi-pro team), us, and one of our customers. Each of us had 10 people. We teamed with our customer, making it 20 v 10. The semi-pro team of 10 won the first gameby a small margin.
For the second game, the people running the arena had noticed what was going on so they got us to play a game with mixed teams of 5. That was much more fun, and what we should have done right at the beginning.
So the "DM" saw the problem and came up with a way to save the game and make it enjoyable for all players?
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Okay, to steer this conversation back to D&D, in 5E it's extremely easy to make a character that's good at one particular thing. It's nearly impossible to build a character who's the best at everything. People forget that the "min" part of "minmax" is part of the equation. Such a character will inevitably have some things that they're not good at. If one character is minmaxed and dominating every fight, the GM is probably screwing up in one or more ways. For one, they're probably not throwing enough encounters at the party per long rest, allowing the minmaxer to freely use all their limited use abilities instead of having to actually consider whether or not they want to burn them now or wait for the next fight. If the minmaxer is also a spellcaster, the GM is likely clustering enemies too tightly together, allowing AoE spells like Fireball to become more effective than they really should be. And they're probably not throwing enough variety into the fights so the party never encounters foes that force them to change tactics once in a while.
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.
is level disparity always min/maxing? no. is it sometimes? maybe. what's fundamental is that there are ways to stand out while not alienating others. seems like player intent would swing things heavily, but that's difficult to rely on (or interpret).
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!
Optimization/ Min-maxing is by no means bad when used appropriately. The problem comes when somebody only cares about dealing with any kind of issue by blowing everything up. It can also get in the way of the story or what would make sense within the campaign, like having 28 AC at Level 4. For example, say an average sized party is in a very dangerous situation against an enemy that they really need to weigh their options on what they're going to do, and plan out their moves. Now, if there is a very heavy optimizer in the party, this can all go out the window when they only want to deal an average of 120+ damage per turn at level 9. This can completely lower the stakes of almost every situation the players are in, considering that if a character is very well optimized, they are better than just about everyone else in their party at anything, and can make players feel useless or less interesting in any situation. As long as a DM can find a way to make this work so that they and the other players are having fun and feel useful though, then it's all fine.
In 5e, how much in party level disparity do you see in your games?
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
This is true in a vacuum, but it kind of misses the forest for the trees. I can build an encounter around a highly optimized character; I can't build a game around a player who wants to be a god. The two aren't the same thing, but they are correlated; I'm not saying every optimizer is a selfish jerk, but I am saying that a disproportionate number of selfish jerks are optimizers. Restructuring your encounter design doesn't solve the selfish jerk problem, and that's why a lot of DMs are apprehensive about highly optimized character builds; it's not necessarily about what they specifically do, it's about what they represent.
Y'all can skip this story if you want, it's not core to the point, but I can tell you the exact reason I decided I had to audit my players' build choices. I once ran a three-session short adventure for young adults at a library; at session zero, all the players indicated that they were familiar with 5e, so we decided to play at level 6. One player asked if he could use the Tunnel Fighter style from that one Unearthed Arcana. Should've been a bigger red flag, but I decided to let him. I had a general idea what was coming, so I made sure the first combat included a few spellcasters to give the other players time to shine. Sure enough, our boy showed up with the legendary Bugbear Polearm Sentinel with Tunnel Fighter, and proceeded to shut down every melee monster on the field. That was fine because there were also casters, and his Wis save was +0. The look in this dude's eyes when he got hit with one Command spell. His party mates mopped up the casters (teamwork!) but I could tell from that moment on this was gonna be war.
He showed up to the next session with a completely different character build (without asking), and I let him play it because we only had the room for two hours and I decided it wasn't worth it. Sorlock this time; the super-long-ranged kind. I threw in a few monsters with a burrow speed and halfway decent stealth; the rest of the party thought that was great, but you best believe big man didn't care for it. I wanna be clear that at no point was min-Maxwell anything but the absolute most deadly character on that table, but it wasn't enough for him. Third session he showed up with some kind of weird Barbarian-Rogue hybrid; I'm honestly not sure what it was supposed to do and by that point it didn't matter; party fought a zombie dragon, party killed the zombie dragon, adventure ended, I never saw that guy again.
So here's the punchline; I did the thing DMs are supposed to do. I adjusted my encounters to allow a player to use their highly optimized build while also providing opportunities for their less optimized teammates to do well. You know what I got for it? I got a butthurt optimizer and four other reasonably satisfied players who had no idea they'd just watched me DM three of the hardest sessions of my life. (I also got invited back to DM at the library again but thus far I've demurred) Could I have sat down and had a talk with Bugbear guy? Sure, maybe, but I'm not his dad and despite what a lot of players seem to think, DMs aren't literal magicians. I don't know a series of words that turns a jerk into a not jerk, and I feel it's kind of unfair to tack amateur therapy onto all the other work I'm already doing for my campaigns. So, yeah, minmaxing isn't the problem; but it's sometimes a pretty good barometer of the problem, and I for one am never letting a player who wants to use Tunnel Fighter sit at my table again. Unless they bring snacks.
Explain exactly how you use minmaxing to achieve a level disparity in the party.
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.
My experience is that the selfish jerks don't really optimize, they just cheat.
Okay I know this isn't the topic but I'm morbidly curious; cheat how?
The classics are "forgetting" to record use of spell slots, points, and other consumable features or even damage, frequently "accidentally" rolling so the d20 falls off the table or is otherwise out of most peoples' LoS and insisting they got a high roll that should count, and insisting that spells or abilities have much more powerful effects than they actually do.