This has been quite exciting: I've never really been on D&D forums until a few weeks ago. I am an old skool player who hasn't played much this century, and it's never really occurred to me to see what other people say online. I am having a lot of fun!
But here's the thing that confuses me: why are so many people trying to get the maximum power possible out of their build?
I am usually a DM. It is my job to give you a fun and challenging fight. If the party has only 3 people, I reduce my fights to match. If there are 7 people, I make the fights bigger. And if everyone has super-optimal builds and get every erg out of the rules, then obviously I need to make the fights harder. Otherwise they won't be fun.
...doesn't everyone?
If the players like easy fights and want to feel super cool murdering all before them, as a DM I can supply that. Doesn't matter what you built, I can supply that. But my default is to give roughly a fairly easy fight, a fairly hard one, and a bastard of a fight, very roughly in those numbers and in that order. (I mean, not really, but sorta). To do that, I need to know your party, and build enounters to match.
If the party all have advantage-granting-familiars and no out of combat skills and perfect dump stats and barely-legal spell interactions, then I just make the fights harder. Why would you want to just walk over everything? Surely you want a hard fight sometimes right?
I can see two reasonable reasons to min-max really hard:
1. Your DM is running a premade adventure and doesn't want to change anything. Fair enough: maybe it's a super hard module and you need to pull out all the stops to get through it, and maybe your DM doesn't like modifying the fights.
(on the other hand, isn't going online to get the best possible build kinda cheating anyway? doesn't really matter)
2. The whole party is min-maxing, and want the DM to throw them the most insane DR levels the world has ever seen.
(though surely it's still just going to be balanced to the power level, so how is that different in actual challenge from being less powerful and having a lower DR? but whatever, maybe people compare stories on the worst DR differential or something)
But outside that... what's the point? Why are so many people seemingly engaged in this? Isn't it just a zero-sum?
Which brings me to the problem: what do you do if one or two people in the party have gone nuts, and the rest are just playing their character?
Now I'm not talking about just knowing how healing word works or something. I hope people have made a bit of effort to know how to play and built a character that works. I'm talking about someone who has gone for the most broken possible build. Isn't that likely to make the rest of the players have less fun?
If one player is pretty much carrying the rest, how is that a good experience for the folk being carried? Easy fights would see the Buff Dude doing most of the cool stuff. Hard fights would see the lower-powered folk struggle.
DMs, what do you do? Do you have a word? Do you give items to the other players to bring them up? Do you target the higher-power player and try to mitigate their advantage?
Which brings me back around to: why even do it? Why not just pick something fun, make sure it can cover some general bases, and go from there?
Or are people (I hope!) working out what the "best" possible build is, then pulling back a bit and not actually choosing all those options? Just making sure they know where the top is, so they make sure they stay within some reasonable reach of it?
Or is the unspoken idea here to be better than the rest of your party? Because that seems a bit... pooh.
I’ve never even paid any mind to my PCs design choices in 5e. There just isn’t that many broken combos in this game that aren’t suitably challenged with the normal use of the rules and just playing the monsters more intelligently.
But here's the thing that confuses me: why are so many people trying to get the maximum power possible out of their build?
Because there's a limit to what we can discuss online. Min-maxing lends itself well to online discussions because everyone agrees on the differences between builds. Other character creation topics tend to be answered by: here are a few options, choose the one that suits you.
I’ve never even paid any mind to my PCs design choices in 5e. There just isn’t that many broken combos in this game that aren’t suitably challenged with the normal use of the rules and just playing the monsters more intelligently.
Or, for example, discussion here about using a familar on your shoulder to get always-on advantage (taking a help action) until the DM can kill it (with mixed veiw on whether the DM should).
That stuff can give you a really big advantage over the rest of your party.
Or really just anyone who gets all the optimal feats and abilities compared with people who pick the ones that actually match the sort of thing their character would do.
(Actually, thought of another example: someone who casts Levitate on every important melee enemy. Now you've got 100 turns to kill it. Once-save-and-dead at 2nd level. That sort of thing - not necessarily a build but a play style).
I think optimization really only becomes an issue between players if they have similar roles they’re attempting to fill. If you have multiple people wanting to be the high damage person, it doesn’t seem to go well in my experience. Even if they’re not particularly optimized. I was recently a part of a game where one of the martial players was particularly unlucky with their die rolls almost the entire session, and my monk character was slightly lucky with its rolls dealing more damage and actually killing some creatures. The other player seemed visibly upset several times and I didn’t realize how to alleviate it at the time. These overlapping roles can sometimes lead to negative game play experience due to the development of competitive/overlapping roles in what should be a cooperative storytelling game.
I think optimization really only becomes an issue between players if they have similar roles they’re attempting to fill. If you have multiple people wanting to be the high damage person, it doesn’t seem to go well in my experience. Even if they’re not particularly optimized. I was recently a part of a game where one of the martial players was particularly unlucky with their die rolls almost the entire session, and my monk character was slightly lucky with its rolls dealing more damage and actually killing some creatures. The other player seemed visibly upset several times and I didn’t realize how to alleviate it at the time. These overlapping rolls can sometimes lead to negative game play experience due to the development of competitive/overlapping roles in what should be a cooperative storytelling game.
I had a game when 5e was first released where an Eldritch Knight was doing pretty much as much damage as the rest of us put together. I mean, they *really* wanted to, so I guess we rolled with it and left it to them to have that fun, but at the time I thought it could easily have been a negative experience for some players.
But here's the thing that confuses me: why are so many people trying to get the maximum power possible out of their build?
Because there's a limit to what we can discuss online. Min-maxing lends itself well to online discussions because everyone agrees on the differences between builds. Other character creation topics tend to be answered by: here are a few options, choose the one that suits you.
Yeah, that's fair enough. I just get the impression some folk actually do use the maximised build.
I’ve never even paid any mind to my PCs design choices in 5e. There just isn’t that many broken combos in this game that aren’t suitably challenged with the normal use of the rules and just playing the monsters more intelligently.
Or, for example, discussion here about using a familar on your shoulder to get always-on advantage (taking a help action) until the DM can kill it (with mixed veiw on whether the DM should).
That stuff can give you a really big advantage over the rest of your party.
Or really just anyone who gets all the optimal feats and abilities compared with people who pick the ones that actually match the sort of thing their character would do.
Coffe-locks scale in power exactly as much as the DM allows. The DM designates when a shortrest is successful, and also how long it actually takes. 1hr is the raw minimum, but it can be longer or even interrupted.
familiars have their own initiative, it’s unlikely the familiar with give the caster advantage if martials are in the picture. I don’t know how that would give an advantage over the party, or even why that’s a perspective. DnD is a cooperative role playing game where the players are expected to work together to overcome challenges. Being mad at a teammate because they’re are doing well while simultaneously helping their team seems like an unproductive perspective.
i find at my table that Optimal feats feel better to the player than they actually are. I often play alongside a character with a greatweapon master and the misses really do add up to even out the damage.
I think optimization really only becomes an issue between players if they have similar roles they’re attempting to fill. If you have multiple people wanting to be the high damage person, it doesn’t seem to go well in my experience. Even if they’re not particularly optimized. I was recently a part of a game where one of the martial players was particularly unlucky with their die rolls almost the entire session, and my monk character was slightly lucky with its rolls dealing more damage and actually killing some creatures. The other player seemed visibly upset several times and I didn’t realize how to alleviate it at the time. These overlapping rolls can sometimes lead to negative game play experience due to the development of competitive/overlapping roles in what should be a cooperative storytelling game.
I had a game when 5e was first released where an Eldritch Knight was doing pretty much as much damage as the rest of us put together. I mean, they *really* wanted to, so I guess we rolled with it and left it to them to have that fun, but at the time I thought it could easily have been a negative experience for some players.
I think that is another example of expectations vs reality.
The Eldritch Knight can be one of the most reliable damage dealing class/subclass options in the game. An elven Eldritch Knight with elven accuracy and the shadowblade spell deals more reliable damage than any sharpshooter/greatweapon build I’ve come up with, and does so with accuracy against high AC creatures. They just can’t do it very often with their limited slots.
imagine a straight fighter classed Eldritch knight dealing more damage than some sharpshooter multiclass build and how frustrated a player might feel if they don’t think their choices or investments met their expectations when they spent their feats on “optimal” choices.
Because it’s fun. I like to create a character concept, whatever it might be, that is fun, though not necessarily optimised. Then once I have the idea I will min max it to make it the best it can be within the constraints of the original concept. An example - I currently have a healbot character. Now everyone says that in combat healing is not optimal, not good, a waste of time. So I made one, and I optimised the hell out of it, and it is great fun. The people I play with are really grateful, and love it when I am there as they know that they are only likely to go down on a massive crit hit.
I have 3 players who min-max ruthlessly, one who has a pretty standard setup, and one who has put everything into social interaction skills (joining at level 9) to the point that I told him he needed to change out at least one Bard spell to something that has combat functionality or else he'd feel useless in many fights. After 2 fights against Gorgons and some humanoids who were in no mood to talk, he said he was very glad that he had take Shatter.
I initially balanced by just giving the one original non-min-maxer a magic item that added his Wisdom modifier to spell and cantrip damage, and that has kept him relevant ever since. The other players were all perfectly happy with him being up-powered.
You are quite right: it is zero sum to some extent. If my barbarian player wasn't making attack rolls for 2d6+25 damage and my Bloodhunter player wasn't shooting for 1d10+1d6+1d6+15 damage at level 9 (and the barbarian has a level in sorcerer, and the bloodhunter has a level in wizard!), then I wouldn't be giving all my monsters double hit points. But they LOVE rolling lots of dice or laughing at their own big numbers. I lean into it, and let them enjoy their min-maxing.
Interestingly, most min-max is about raw damage output. All of my min-maxers have subsequently multiclassed to give themselves more versatility both in and out of combat because a party that does nothing but damage is a party that gets stuck on puzzles, social interactions and mysteries.
So handling that one character...
The truth is, unless they built something so insane that it is breaking the game, just allow it. The party doesn't have to have balanced damage per turn, or balanced anything. If seeing that character inspires certain feat choices or more min-maxing that's fine, but I doubt that it will. If you have players who are taking very sub-optimal builds you need to discern whether they are doing it deliberately for RP, or doing it out of not knowing their options or how the rules work. If the former leave it, if the latter, change it. The hobbits in LOTR weren't much use fighting initially, but they all contributed to the story while Aragor, Boromir, Legola and Gimli did the DPS.
Bingo. Optimizing is fun for a certain kind of player. It's a puzzle to solve. If you ever ask yourself "why are people doing this" in a game (or: "why don't people like this game as much as I do") the answer is almost always that...their idea of fun isn't the same as yours. I highly recommend reading Eight Kinds of Fun. Optimizing scratches two itches: challenge (solving the optimization puzzle and/or doing something that'd normally be impossible) and expression (optimizing an unconventional idea to create a unique character that's still playable.) The fact that your two reasons to min/max basically boil down to "the DM upped the stakes and I don't want to lose" tells me you don't really get the fun angle. That's ok! But even if you don't get it, it's important to understand that it's fun for them.
No, for two reasons. First, optimizing is fun in and of itself, and second, if you adjust the difficulty, you're giving the optimizers exactly what they want. In D&D some creatures are objectively stronger than others. Verisimilitude matters in a role-playing game. If you make the fights harder, that means you're throwing deadlier monsters or larger numbers at the players. They can see this. By defeating stronger monsters, you give them the opportunity to put their optimization into practice and give them the validation they want ("look at what we were able to take down!")
Look at it this way. This kind of thing happens outside of games. Most long-running action series constantly tip the balance of power back and forth between the heroes and villains. A stronger villain shows up, the heroes find a way to get stronger, and the cycle repeats. When it's executed well you're not thinking "that was pointless", you're thinking "wow that bad guy was way stronger than anything they've ever seen and they still found a way to beat it" because you're seeing the escalation in power. You can tell the heroes are objectively stronger than they used to be and could easily beat the previous antagonists now.
Which brings me to the problem: what do you do if one or two people in the party have gone nuts, and the rest are just playing their character?...DMs, what do you do? Do you have a word? Do you give items to the other players to bring them up? Do you target the higher-power player and try to mitigate their advantage?
Optimizers are going to optimize. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Take that away from them and you take away a big part of why they engage with the game. "Having a word" should be your last solution if the player isn't engaging in antagonistic behavior (in which case, yeah, tell them to stop being a jerk.)
It's not the optimizer's fault the others aren't having as much fun because they're being outperformed by a factor of 2 or more. If pointing the finger at the optimizer is valid because they could "choose not to do that", you could just as well point the finger at the non-optimizers because they could just start optimizing. Both sides are just trying to play in the most personally enjoyable way. The fault lies with the game. Some rules and class features simply aren't well-designed or well-balanced. Optimizing should give optimizers an edge, but not one so big it starts to feel like the other players aren't contributing or aren't necessary
So yes, consider evening the playing field by giving the other players rewards that play to their character's strengths. Consider throwing a wrench in the optimized character's strategy every once in a while. But in the long run you might also want to consider nerfing the parts of the game that are creating this huge disparity. The former solutions address this group of characters, but if you don't get at the root cause, you're going to have to deal with this with every new set of characters or players.
If you don't want optimization to ruin the fun, you have to give players a game that's still fun even if you optimize. You can't fault them for playing within the rules you all agreed to and then taking them to their logical conclusion.
Which brings me to the problem: what do you do if one or two people in the party have gone nuts, and the rest are just playing their character?
TLDR; nothing. Run the game as you normally would. Min-maxers are usually optimized for combat.(more specifics below)
Now I'm not talking about just knowing how healing word works or something. I hope people have made a bit of effort to know how to play and built a character that works. I'm talking about someone who has gone for the most broken possible build. Isn't that likely to make the rest of the players have less fun?
Simple answer: yes it can degrade the fun that others have at the table/during the game. Sometimes people want to "win D&D" and don't care if anyone else is having fun while they do it.
If one player is pretty much carrying the rest, how is that a good experience for the folk being carried? Easy fights would see the Buff Dude doing most of the cool stuff. Hard fights would see the lower-powered folk struggle.
Change the test. They have the answer key.
Set up more mobs with low AC and minimum HP for the Buff Dude to murder. One. At. A. Time. They will be overclocking damage on each hit, while the rest of the party will be right on spec and operating efficiently. Action Economy matters.
Too high AC? Mob attack rules alleviate the requirement for the DM to make a successful attack roll against the PC. Just throw enough minions at a thing, they'll hit.
Create monsters that cause AOE damage when they take damage. (see also: Remorhaz) Find Hags that use (and are immune to) a lantern powered by Sickening Radiance.
Use constrained terrain or adverse environmental effects that harry or hinder the entire party. Once your Murder Wagon slows down because of too much baggage they will be hard pressed to continue. Exhaustion rules tend to slow down the hardiest of them all, and doesn't go away with a short rest. Only 1 level per long rest or the expenditure of spell slots which burns off resources.
DMs, what do you do? Do you have a word? Do you give items to the other players to bring them up? Do you target the higher-power player and try to mitigate their advantage?
Change the test. Not all challenges require combat.
Provide areas for the other PCs to shine. If someone can breathe underwater, do something that requires holding one's breath for a good long time. Give them a puzzle to escape the death trap dungeon. Use Grimtooth's. Try a social encounter with a [Tooltip Not Found] to give the other PCs something to do. Challenge the party, not the PC. Again, they are most likely optimized for combat. Lean into social and exploration.
Run games that incorporate the 3 pillars. Combat, Social and Exploration.
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If the party is OK with what is going on then I would leave well enough alone.
Unbalanced parties are often a problem, but until the party has reservations about it I would want to let them have the fun they enjoy, so long as I (the DM) could have fun too.
As an option, design encounters where one of the party members will be "taken out of combat". Make sure to rotate which PC is shut out, so the whole party gets to experience the manner the fight will take when each of the other PCs is out. For example, a tank player could slip down a sloping trap door into a pit deeper than he can escape without help just as the fight begins. In another situation, a spell caster could be the victim of a hold person or hold monster spell, or they might fall into a pit where a silence spell is in effect by way of an item so it can't be dispelled. This will open up new challenges for the DM and the party.
My problems have been with other party members. When the DM gives too much power to the party and some characters become too incredible, the other PCs can find combat overly difficult because it has been designed to give that super fighter some worries. Now PCs are getting one-shotted and the fighter is trying to stay alive. But once your PC drops it becomes un-fun so the fighter is having all the fun. High AC PCs are difficult to challenge without it becoming a case of targeting a single player. Of course, Heat Metal can slap down most high AC players, but then it looks like targeting one player. My DM once threw a swarm of insects at a plate mail encased fighter and he couldn't swat the bugs, and the rest of us couldn't either. I think they cast burning hands on him, giving him some damage, but removing the swarm of insects. But a high AC player doesn't really care if there are five enemies or twenty-five. That is an exaggeration because of natural twenties, but any semi-smart monsters are going to see that they can take down the rest of the party and deal with him last. That's pretty un-fun for the wizards, sorcerers and bards.
TL/DR If the party is having fun and you can shrug it off, don't worry about it. But don't ignore this when it comes up, because it might be a problem.
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Which brings me to the problem: what do you do if one or two people in the party have gone nuts, and the rest are just playing their character? ... Or is the unspoken idea here to be better than the rest of your party? Because that seems a bit... pooh.
The first thing that I'd do, at an appropriate time, is to ask why they've gone nuts.
Of course, it's possible that they just want to be better than the rest of your party... alternatively that player may just want to be the best tactical player that they can be making the best possible decisions that they can make with what they are given.
In this case, it may be perfectly possible and even appreciated to give them less. Maybe they'd also prefer to be in games with more jeopardy but, of course, that would be difficult without potentially ramping things up to extreme levels for less capable characters.
Some players may be fine, even not tell the other players and have their characters affected by something that, say, holds back their experience progression.
That player could still min-max to their heart's content and with even less worry about taking their now more limited assets and honing them to evermore radical extremes.
It may also be worth asking whether players with weaker characters feeling uncomfortable or if they'd enjoy games more with a more even distribution of practical power? A weaker build that manages to survive has achieved something even at a basic level.
The hobbits in LOTR weren't much use fighting initially, but they all contributed to the story while Aragor, Boromir, Legola and Gimli did the DPS.
Yes, but the LOTR hobbits had intrinsic importance because of their magic resistance ability as utilised in the carrying of the ring and their value in supporting their fish out of water friend Frodo.
If players don't feel like spare wheels then no problem. If the focus is to develop a culture of min-maxing then just work on the other players. If some players want, perhaps, less contrived character developments then, yes, some kind of rebalance could help everyone.
Haven't read all of this, so I apologize if I'm duplicating what someone has already said.
There are 3 pillars to D&D. Combat is only one of them. It is my understanding that when people talk about min-maxing, they USUALLY are talking about combat prowess. I've seen concept builds that go out of their way to maximize some class skill, or feat, or weapon, etc... To the point that they become useless for the other two pillars.
And that weakness is how I would deal with min-maxers. I'd make lots of easy encounters that they will steam-roll through, and then pepper those characters with skill checks for exploration and social interactions that they will invariably fail more often than not. I will also make sure the consequences of the failures in the other two pillars effects the story arcs in equal proportion to the combat, such that combat is only 1/3rd of the required effort, so not everything hinges on good results in combat.
It becomes a lot less fun to win every battle, but lose the war anyway.
Haven't read all of this, so I apologize if I'm duplicating what someone has already said.
There are 3 pillars to D&D. Combat is only one of them. It is my understanding that when people talk about min-maxing, they USUALLY are talking about combat prowess. I've seen concept builds that go out of their way to maximize some class skill, or feat, or weapon, etc... To the point that they become useless for the other two pillars.
And that weakness is how I would deal with min-maxers. I'd make lots of easy encounters that they will steam-roll through, and then pepper those characters with skill checks for exploration and social interactions that they will invariably fail more often than not. I will also make sure the consequences of the failures in the other two pillars effects the story arcs in equal proportion to the combat, such that combat is only 1/3rd of the required effort, so not everything hinges on good results in combat.
It becomes a lot less fun to win every battle, but lose the war anyway.
I'm not sure that having dump stats is an issue here as even less efficiently formulated characters may have those. There are also lots of min-maxed builds for various purposes that can also have strengths in exploration and social interaction. I think the issue is that the min-maxers tap into various empowering synergies while other characters don't.
Haven't read all of this, so I apologize if I'm duplicating what someone has already said.
There are 3 pillars to D&D. Combat is only one of them. It is my understanding that when people talk about min-maxing, they USUALLY are talking about combat prowess. I've seen concept builds that go out of their way to maximize some class skill, or feat, or weapon, etc... To the point that they become useless for the other two pillars.
And that weakness is how I would deal with min-maxers. I'd make lots of easy encounters that they will steam-roll through, and then pepper those characters with skill checks for exploration and social interactions that they will invariably fail more often than not. I will also make sure the consequences of the failures in the other two pillars effects the story arcs in equal proportion to the combat, such that combat is only 1/3rd of the required effort, so not everything hinges on good results in combat.
It becomes a lot less fun to win every battle, but lose the war anyway.
Way to alienate people who enjoy the combat pillar and build characters for that. Once upon a time, that's the only thing most of us cared about....RP was a side gig.
You're all assuming the people that maximize their character are wrong. Why should I have to build a character that I think sucks because someone else wanted to do something stupid and "quirky" that's barely viable? I shouldn't have to make something I feel is weak because Joe wanted to turn himself blue randomly.
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Haven't read all of this, so I apologize if I'm duplicating what someone has already said.
There are 3 pillars to D&D. Combat is only one of them. It is my understanding that when people talk about min-maxing, they USUALLY are talking about combat prowess. I've seen concept builds that go out of their way to maximize some class skill, or feat, or weapon, etc... To the point that they become useless for the other two pillars.
And that weakness is how I would deal with min-maxers. I'd make lots of easy encounters that they will steam-roll through, and then pepper those characters with skill checks for exploration and social interactions that they will invariably fail more often than not. I will also make sure the consequences of the failures in the other two pillars effects the story arcs in equal proportion to the combat, such that combat is only 1/3rd of the required effort, so not everything hinges on good results in combat.
It becomes a lot less fun to win every battle, but lose the war anyway.
Way to alienate people who enjoy the combat pillar and build characters for that. Once upon a time, that's the only thing most of us cared about....RP was a side gig.
You're all assuming the people that maximize their character are wrong. Why should I have to build a character that I think sucks because someone else wanted to do something stupid and "quirky" that's barely viable? I shouldn't have to make something I feel is weak because Joe wanted to turn himself blue randomly.
Players didn't just care about killing people. We also cared about sneaking up on them so we could kill them... that and not falling into ad&d traps on the way. I think that mainly covers it.
Sometimes it's the reverse of saying that min-maxers are wrong. Sometimes ~they are so right that, in some situations, it may be that others don't keep up.
Conan never needed to RP. Sorry but I just don't see many situations where there would be a need. It would often be up to others to RP to get Conan on their side. That's how many things would work in a logical world.
There's got to be other ways for less forensic players to either get more competitive, or to find ways to enjoy the game with less able characters, or to simply leave with grace.
EVERYONE "min-max"s. Well, okay with the millions and millions of people playing I'm sure there is someone who does not do it at all, but I'm not talking about extremely rare outliers.
The vast majority of players are maxing their main stat, putting a decent amount into cons, etc. Most players are putting points into skills that match their ability scores, at least to some degree. Most players consider how effective each spell is when they choose them. Most players build their character to be effective, but sure, they don't necessarily obsess about it. Those of us who do obsess about it are told we are trying to "win" D&D.
When I point this out I'm sometimes told "but that's not min-maxing!" And then they explain that min-maxing is when someone maximizes some things and minimizes others, so they're only good at ONE thing. First of all, who are these people? I know some optimizers, and none of them try to only be good at combat, or any one thing. But second of all, that's nearly impossible to do in 5E unless you're literally trying to be bad at everything else. You are limited in how far up or down you can put your ability scores. You're given a bunch of skills to select for free, so you're going to apply them. And the game mechanics make it so if you have like 16 16 8 16 8 8 you're going to suffer somehow, even in combat. AND... let's say you built it that way... that is THREE ability score categories that apply to many different skills. It's impossible to build a character who is "only" good at combat, unless you are trying to. So this criticism is based on a myth.
Really what it comes down to is a vocal minority of people don't players who spend a lot of time brainstorming powerful builds and combinations. There are SO many choices in 5E and coming up with powerful build ideas is part of the fun (for us). But we do NOT like cheese or ease. For example, I don't like the Twilight domain cleric, because it's OP and there is no thought put it. Just - "I choose Twilight." That's it.
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This has been quite exciting: I've never really been on D&D forums until a few weeks ago. I am an old skool player who hasn't played much this century, and it's never really occurred to me to see what other people say online. I am having a lot of fun!
But here's the thing that confuses me: why are so many people trying to get the maximum power possible out of their build?
I am usually a DM. It is my job to give you a fun and challenging fight. If the party has only 3 people, I reduce my fights to match. If there are 7 people, I make the fights bigger. And if everyone has super-optimal builds and get every erg out of the rules, then obviously I need to make the fights harder. Otherwise they won't be fun.
...doesn't everyone?
If the players like easy fights and want to feel super cool murdering all before them, as a DM I can supply that. Doesn't matter what you built, I can supply that. But my default is to give roughly a fairly easy fight, a fairly hard one, and a bastard of a fight, very roughly in those numbers and in that order. (I mean, not really, but sorta). To do that, I need to know your party, and build enounters to match.
If the party all have advantage-granting-familiars and no out of combat skills and perfect dump stats and barely-legal spell interactions, then I just make the fights harder. Why would you want to just walk over everything? Surely you want a hard fight sometimes right?
I can see two reasonable reasons to min-max really hard:
1. Your DM is running a premade adventure and doesn't want to change anything. Fair enough: maybe it's a super hard module and you need to pull out all the stops to get through it, and maybe your DM doesn't like modifying the fights.
(on the other hand, isn't going online to get the best possible build kinda cheating anyway? doesn't really matter)
2. The whole party is min-maxing, and want the DM to throw them the most insane DR levels the world has ever seen.
(though surely it's still just going to be balanced to the power level, so how is that different in actual challenge from being less powerful and having a lower DR? but whatever, maybe people compare stories on the worst DR differential or something)
But outside that... what's the point? Why are so many people seemingly engaged in this? Isn't it just a zero-sum?
Which brings me to the problem: what do you do if one or two people in the party have gone nuts, and the rest are just playing their character?
Now I'm not talking about just knowing how healing word works or something. I hope people have made a bit of effort to know how to play and built a character that works. I'm talking about someone who has gone for the most broken possible build. Isn't that likely to make the rest of the players have less fun?
If one player is pretty much carrying the rest, how is that a good experience for the folk being carried? Easy fights would see the Buff Dude doing most of the cool stuff. Hard fights would see the lower-powered folk struggle.
DMs, what do you do? Do you have a word? Do you give items to the other players to bring them up? Do you target the higher-power player and try to mitigate their advantage?
Which brings me back around to: why even do it? Why not just pick something fun, make sure it can cover some general bases, and go from there?
Or are people (I hope!) working out what the "best" possible build is, then pulling back a bit and not actually choosing all those options? Just making sure they know where the top is, so they make sure they stay within some reasonable reach of it?
Or is the unspoken idea here to be better than the rest of your party? Because that seems a bit... pooh.
I’ve never even paid any mind to my PCs design choices in 5e. There just isn’t that many broken combos in this game that aren’t suitably challenged with the normal use of the rules and just playing the monsters more intelligently.
Because there's a limit to what we can discuss online. Min-maxing lends itself well to online discussions because everyone agrees on the differences between builds. Other character creation topics tend to be answered by: here are a few options, choose the one that suits you.
I mean, for example, a coffee-lock.
Or, for example, discussion here about using a familar on your shoulder to get always-on advantage (taking a help action) until the DM can kill it (with mixed veiw on whether the DM should).
That stuff can give you a really big advantage over the rest of your party.
Or really just anyone who gets all the optimal feats and abilities compared with people who pick the ones that actually match the sort of thing their character would do.
(Actually, thought of another example: someone who casts Levitate on every important melee enemy. Now you've got 100 turns to kill it. Once-save-and-dead at 2nd level. That sort of thing - not necessarily a build but a play style).
I think optimization really only becomes an issue between players if they have similar roles they’re attempting to fill. If you have multiple people wanting to be the high damage person, it doesn’t seem to go well in my experience. Even if they’re not particularly optimized. I was recently a part of a game where one of the martial players was particularly unlucky with their die rolls almost the entire session, and my monk character was slightly lucky with its rolls dealing more damage and actually killing some creatures. The other player seemed visibly upset several times and I didn’t realize how to alleviate it at the time. These overlapping roles can sometimes lead to negative game play experience due to the development of competitive/overlapping roles in what should be a cooperative storytelling game.
I had a game when 5e was first released where an Eldritch Knight was doing pretty much as much damage as the rest of us put together. I mean, they *really* wanted to, so I guess we rolled with it and left it to them to have that fun, but at the time I thought it could easily have been a negative experience for some players.
Yeah, that's fair enough. I just get the impression some folk actually do use the maximised build.
Coffe-locks scale in power exactly as much as the DM allows. The DM designates when a shortrest is successful, and also how long it actually takes. 1hr is the raw minimum, but it can be longer or even interrupted.
familiars have their own initiative, it’s unlikely the familiar with give the caster advantage if martials are in the picture. I don’t know how that would give an advantage over the party, or even why that’s a perspective. DnD is a cooperative role playing game where the players are expected to work together to overcome challenges. Being mad at a teammate because they’re are doing well while simultaneously helping their team seems like an unproductive perspective.
i find at my table that Optimal feats feel better to the player than they actually are. I often play alongside a character with a greatweapon master and the misses really do add up to even out the damage.
I think that is another example of expectations vs reality.
The Eldritch Knight can be one of the most reliable damage dealing class/subclass options in the game. An elven Eldritch Knight with elven accuracy and the shadowblade spell deals more reliable damage than any sharpshooter/greatweapon build I’ve come up with, and does so with accuracy against high AC creatures. They just can’t do it very often with their limited slots.
imagine a straight fighter classed Eldritch knight dealing more damage than some sharpshooter multiclass build and how frustrated a player might feel if they don’t think their choices or investments met their expectations when they spent their feats on “optimal” choices.
Because it’s fun. I like to create a character concept, whatever it might be, that is fun, though not necessarily optimised. Then once I have the idea I will min max it to make it the best it can be within the constraints of the original concept. An example - I currently have a healbot character. Now everyone says that in combat healing is not optimal, not good, a waste of time. So I made one, and I optimised the hell out of it, and it is great fun. The people I play with are really grateful, and love it when I am there as they know that they are only likely to go down on a massive crit hit.
I have 3 players who min-max ruthlessly, one who has a pretty standard setup, and one who has put everything into social interaction skills (joining at level 9) to the point that I told him he needed to change out at least one Bard spell to something that has combat functionality or else he'd feel useless in many fights. After 2 fights against Gorgons and some humanoids who were in no mood to talk, he said he was very glad that he had take Shatter.
I initially balanced by just giving the one original non-min-maxer a magic item that added his Wisdom modifier to spell and cantrip damage, and that has kept him relevant ever since. The other players were all perfectly happy with him being up-powered.
You are quite right: it is zero sum to some extent. If my barbarian player wasn't making attack rolls for 2d6+25 damage and my Bloodhunter player wasn't shooting for 1d10+1d6+1d6+15 damage at level 9 (and the barbarian has a level in sorcerer, and the bloodhunter has a level in wizard!), then I wouldn't be giving all my monsters double hit points. But they LOVE rolling lots of dice or laughing at their own big numbers. I lean into it, and let them enjoy their min-maxing.
Interestingly, most min-max is about raw damage output. All of my min-maxers have subsequently multiclassed to give themselves more versatility both in and out of combat because a party that does nothing but damage is a party that gets stuck on puzzles, social interactions and mysteries.
So handling that one character...
The truth is, unless they built something so insane that it is breaking the game, just allow it. The party doesn't have to have balanced damage per turn, or balanced anything. If seeing that character inspires certain feat choices or more min-maxing that's fine, but I doubt that it will. If you have players who are taking very sub-optimal builds you need to discern whether they are doing it deliberately for RP, or doing it out of not knowing their options or how the rules work. If the former leave it, if the latter, change it. The hobbits in LOTR weren't much use fighting initially, but they all contributed to the story while Aragor, Boromir, Legola and Gimli did the DPS.
Bingo. Optimizing is fun for a certain kind of player. It's a puzzle to solve. If you ever ask yourself "why are people doing this" in a game (or: "why don't people like this game as much as I do") the answer is almost always that...their idea of fun isn't the same as yours. I highly recommend reading Eight Kinds of Fun. Optimizing scratches two itches: challenge (solving the optimization puzzle and/or doing something that'd normally be impossible) and expression (optimizing an unconventional idea to create a unique character that's still playable.) The fact that your two reasons to min/max basically boil down to "the DM upped the stakes and I don't want to lose" tells me you don't really get the fun angle. That's ok! But even if you don't get it, it's important to understand that it's fun for them.
No, for two reasons. First, optimizing is fun in and of itself, and second, if you adjust the difficulty, you're giving the optimizers exactly what they want. In D&D some creatures are objectively stronger than others. Verisimilitude matters in a role-playing game. If you make the fights harder, that means you're throwing deadlier monsters or larger numbers at the players. They can see this. By defeating stronger monsters, you give them the opportunity to put their optimization into practice and give them the validation they want ("look at what we were able to take down!")
Look at it this way. This kind of thing happens outside of games. Most long-running action series constantly tip the balance of power back and forth between the heroes and villains. A stronger villain shows up, the heroes find a way to get stronger, and the cycle repeats. When it's executed well you're not thinking "that was pointless", you're thinking "wow that bad guy was way stronger than anything they've ever seen and they still found a way to beat it" because you're seeing the escalation in power. You can tell the heroes are objectively stronger than they used to be and could easily beat the previous antagonists now.
Optimizers are going to optimize. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Take that away from them and you take away a big part of why they engage with the game. "Having a word" should be your last solution if the player isn't engaging in antagonistic behavior (in which case, yeah, tell them to stop being a jerk.)
It's not the optimizer's fault the others aren't having as much fun because they're being outperformed by a factor of 2 or more. If pointing the finger at the optimizer is valid because they could "choose not to do that", you could just as well point the finger at the non-optimizers because they could just start optimizing. Both sides are just trying to play in the most personally enjoyable way. The fault lies with the game. Some rules and class features simply aren't well-designed or well-balanced. Optimizing should give optimizers an edge, but not one so big it starts to feel like the other players aren't contributing or aren't necessary
So yes, consider evening the playing field by giving the other players rewards that play to their character's strengths. Consider throwing a wrench in the optimized character's strategy every once in a while. But in the long run you might also want to consider nerfing the parts of the game that are creating this huge disparity. The former solutions address this group of characters, but if you don't get at the root cause, you're going to have to deal with this with every new set of characters or players.
If you don't want optimization to ruin the fun, you have to give players a game that's still fun even if you optimize. You can't fault them for playing within the rules you all agreed to and then taking them to their logical conclusion.
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TLDR; nothing. Run the game as you normally would. Min-maxers are usually optimized for combat.(more specifics below)
Simple answer: yes it can degrade the fun that others have at the table/during the game. Sometimes people want to "win D&D" and don't care if anyone else is having fun while they do it.
Change the test. They have the answer key.
Set up more mobs with low AC and minimum HP for the Buff Dude to murder. One. At. A. Time. They will be overclocking damage on each hit, while the rest of the party will be right on spec and operating efficiently. Action Economy matters.
Too high AC? Mob attack rules alleviate the requirement for the DM to make a successful attack roll against the PC. Just throw enough minions at a thing, they'll hit.
Create monsters that cause AOE damage when they take damage. (see also: Remorhaz) Find Hags that use (and are immune to) a lantern powered by Sickening Radiance.
Use constrained terrain or adverse environmental effects that harry or hinder the entire party. Once your Murder Wagon slows down because of too much baggage they will be hard pressed to continue. Exhaustion rules tend to slow down the hardiest of them all, and doesn't go away with a short rest. Only 1 level per long rest or the expenditure of spell slots which burns off resources.
Change the test. Not all challenges require combat.
Provide areas for the other PCs to shine. If someone can breathe underwater, do something that requires holding one's breath for a good long time. Give them a puzzle to escape the death trap dungeon. Use Grimtooth's. Try a social encounter with a [Tooltip Not Found] to give the other PCs something to do. Challenge the party, not the PC. Again, they are most likely optimized for combat. Lean into social and exploration.
Run games that incorporate the 3 pillars. Combat, Social and Exploration.
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If the party is OK with what is going on then I would leave well enough alone.
Unbalanced parties are often a problem, but until the party has reservations about it I would want to let them have the fun they enjoy, so long as I (the DM) could have fun too.
As an option, design encounters where one of the party members will be "taken out of combat". Make sure to rotate which PC is shut out, so the whole party gets to experience the manner the fight will take when each of the other PCs is out. For example, a tank player could slip down a sloping trap door into a pit deeper than he can escape without help just as the fight begins. In another situation, a spell caster could be the victim of a hold person or hold monster spell, or they might fall into a pit where a silence spell is in effect by way of an item so it can't be dispelled. This will open up new challenges for the DM and the party.
My problems have been with other party members. When the DM gives too much power to the party and some characters become too incredible, the other PCs can find combat overly difficult because it has been designed to give that super fighter some worries. Now PCs are getting one-shotted and the fighter is trying to stay alive. But once your PC drops it becomes un-fun so the fighter is having all the fun. High AC PCs are difficult to challenge without it becoming a case of targeting a single player. Of course, Heat Metal can slap down most high AC players, but then it looks like targeting one player. My DM once threw a swarm of insects at a plate mail encased fighter and he couldn't swat the bugs, and the rest of us couldn't either. I think they cast burning hands on him, giving him some damage, but removing the swarm of insects. But a high AC player doesn't really care if there are five enemies or twenty-five. That is an exaggeration because of natural twenties, but any semi-smart monsters are going to see that they can take down the rest of the party and deal with him last. That's pretty un-fun for the wizards, sorcerers and bards.
TL/DR If the party is having fun and you can shrug it off, don't worry about it. But don't ignore this when it comes up, because it might be a problem.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
The first thing that I'd do, at an appropriate time, is to ask why they've gone nuts.
Of course, it's possible that they just want to be better than the rest of your party... alternatively that player may just want to be the best tactical player that they can be making the best possible decisions that they can make with what they are given.
In this case, it may be perfectly possible and even appreciated to give them less. Maybe they'd also prefer to be in games with more jeopardy but, of course, that would be difficult without potentially ramping things up to extreme levels for less capable characters.
Some players may be fine, even not tell the other players and have their characters affected by something that, say, holds back their experience progression.
That player could still min-max to their heart's content and with even less worry about taking their now more limited assets and honing them to evermore radical extremes.
It may also be worth asking whether players with weaker characters feeling uncomfortable or if they'd enjoy games more with a more even distribution of practical power? A weaker build that manages to survive has achieved something even at a basic level.
Yes, but the LOTR hobbits had intrinsic importance because of their magic resistance ability as utilised in the carrying of the ring and their value in supporting their fish out of water friend Frodo.
If players don't feel like spare wheels then no problem. If the focus is to develop a culture of min-maxing then just work on the other players.
If some players want, perhaps, less contrived character developments then, yes, some kind of rebalance could help everyone.
Haven't read all of this, so I apologize if I'm duplicating what someone has already said.
There are 3 pillars to D&D. Combat is only one of them. It is my understanding that when people talk about min-maxing, they USUALLY are talking about combat prowess. I've seen concept builds that go out of their way to maximize some class skill, or feat, or weapon, etc... To the point that they become useless for the other two pillars.
And that weakness is how I would deal with min-maxers. I'd make lots of easy encounters that they will steam-roll through, and then pepper those characters with skill checks for exploration and social interactions that they will invariably fail more often than not. I will also make sure the consequences of the failures in the other two pillars effects the story arcs in equal proportion to the combat, such that combat is only 1/3rd of the required effort, so not everything hinges on good results in combat.
It becomes a lot less fun to win every battle, but lose the war anyway.
I'm not sure that having dump stats is an issue here as even less efficiently formulated characters may have those.
There are also lots of min-maxed builds for various purposes that can also have strengths in exploration and social interaction.
I think the issue is that the min-maxers tap into various empowering synergies while other characters don't.
Way to alienate people who enjoy the combat pillar and build characters for that. Once upon a time, that's the only thing most of us cared about....RP was a side gig.
You're all assuming the people that maximize their character are wrong. Why should I have to build a character that I think sucks because someone else wanted to do something stupid and "quirky" that's barely viable? I shouldn't have to make something I feel is weak because Joe wanted to turn himself blue randomly.
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Players didn't just care about killing people. We also cared about sneaking up on them so we could kill them... that and not falling into ad&d traps on the way. I think that mainly covers it.
Sometimes it's the reverse of saying that min-maxers are wrong. Sometimes ~they are so right that, in some situations, it may be that others don't keep up.
Conan never needed to RP. Sorry but I just don't see many situations where there would be a need. It would often be up to others to RP to get Conan on their side. That's how many things would work in a logical world.
There's got to be other ways for less forensic players to either get more competitive, or to find ways to enjoy the game with less able characters, or to simply leave with grace.
EVERYONE "min-max"s. Well, okay with the millions and millions of people playing I'm sure there is someone who does not do it at all, but I'm not talking about extremely rare outliers.
The vast majority of players are maxing their main stat, putting a decent amount into cons, etc. Most players are putting points into skills that match their ability scores, at least to some degree. Most players consider how effective each spell is when they choose them. Most players build their character to be effective, but sure, they don't necessarily obsess about it. Those of us who do obsess about it are told we are trying to "win" D&D.
When I point this out I'm sometimes told "but that's not min-maxing!" And then they explain that min-maxing is when someone maximizes some things and minimizes others, so they're only good at ONE thing. First of all, who are these people? I know some optimizers, and none of them try to only be good at combat, or any one thing. But second of all, that's nearly impossible to do in 5E unless you're literally trying to be bad at everything else. You are limited in how far up or down you can put your ability scores. You're given a bunch of skills to select for free, so you're going to apply them. And the game mechanics make it so if you have like 16 16 8 16 8 8 you're going to suffer somehow, even in combat. AND... let's say you built it that way... that is THREE ability score categories that apply to many different skills. It's impossible to build a character who is "only" good at combat, unless you are trying to. So this criticism is based on a myth.
Really what it comes down to is a vocal minority of people don't players who spend a lot of time brainstorming powerful builds and combinations. There are SO many choices in 5E and coming up with powerful build ideas is part of the fun (for us). But we do NOT like cheese or ease. For example, I don't like the Twilight domain cleric, because it's OP and there is no thought put it. Just - "I choose Twilight." That's it.