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.
No, I'm not saying min-maxers are wrong. If it's clear in session 0 that the campaign will be about combat, then min-maxing for combat is not wrong. If that is the type of game a DM is running, then I will min-max too.
What I'm saying is combat is potentially, depending on the DM and the type of game being run, only one third of the game. If a min-max player focuses only on 1/3 of the game and ignores the other 2/3... the DM is not wrong to put them in situations where their builds fail in 2 of 3 pillars.
This is ESPECIALLY true if the other players at the table as well as the DM have all agreed to play a game containing all 3 pillars. There is a social contract to playing D&D and if a player ignores this contract, why should it be on all the other players and the DM to accommodate that choice?
The flip side to that is you alienate the players who want to explore or socialise. Fun is subjective and depends on your group.
Nothing stops you from building an unstoppable combat monster but you have to expect to have issues chatting up the local magic merchant, or plotting their way through the Underdark. Similarly, the social butterfly might have trouble surviving trap laden areas. Choice without consequence is meaningless.
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.
Exactly....a while back DnD Beyond had a breakdown of character creation stats....and it showed that for the majority of players they will absolutely min/max their stats.
I do not have the link/data right now but I am trying to find it...it was pretty clear people want their character to actually do what its suppose to do.
The flip side to that is you alienate the players who want to explore or socialise. Fun is subjective and depends on your group.
Nothing stops you from building an unstoppable combat monster but you have to expect to have issues chatting up the local magic merchant, or plotting their way through the Underdark. Similarly, the social butterfly might have trouble surviving trap laden areas. Choice without consequence is meaningless.
This is a myth. If you are optimized for combat, what stops you from being good at other things?
The flip side to that is you alienate the players who want to explore or socialise. Fun is subjective and depends on your group.
Nothing stops you from building an unstoppable combat monster but you have to expect to have issues chatting up the local magic merchant, or plotting their way through the Underdark. Similarly, the social butterfly might have trouble surviving trap laden areas. Choice without consequence is meaningless.
This is a myth. If you are optimized for combat, what stops you from being good at other things?
Heck a DPR machine SS/CBE Fighter is SAD as hell so they can invest in WIS/CHA/INT to 14 to start with no real issues. Take your pick on skills too depending on race/background.
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).
The coffee-lock and fly-by owl for advantage every turn are exploits, and generally shunned by the vast majority of players, including optimizers. I don't know how effective feats going against what their character would do is actually a thing. An archer would certainly become better at what they would do, and feats that do so is in line. Same with feats that enhance spell casting and melee attacks. Levitate is a single target concentration spell with a Con save (the worst kind). That's definitely not broken.
The flip side to that is you alienate the players who want to explore or socialise. Fun is subjective and depends on your group.
Nothing stops you from building an unstoppable combat monster but you have to expect to have issues chatting up the local magic merchant, or plotting their way through the Underdark. Similarly, the social butterfly might have trouble surviving trap laden areas. Choice without consequence is meaningless.
This is a myth. If you are optimized for combat, what stops you from being good at other things?
Optimisers aren't the same as min/maxing in my book.
It's not so much "being good at other things" as "not being bad at something else". If not, then the choice is meaningless.
The flip side to that is you alienate the players who want to explore or socialise. Fun is subjective and depends on your group.
Nothing stops you from building an unstoppable combat monster but you have to expect to have issues chatting up the local magic merchant, or plotting their way through the Underdark. Similarly, the social butterfly might have trouble surviving trap laden areas. Choice without consequence is meaningless.
This is a myth. If you are optimized for combat, what stops you from being good at other things?
Optimisers aren't the same as min/maxing in my book.
It's not so much "being good at other things" as "not being bad at something else". If not, then the choice is meaningless.
IC said everything I would have said about optimizing in post #12.
I'll just add that in situations where I have a party with that one guy who likes to optimize, I encourage him to be a support character and optimize how awesome he can make everyone else. This can be really fun for everyone.
I think in these kinds of discussions we need to be very clear about what we all mean by optimizers and min-maxing because these terms are thrown around wildly with no agreed-upon definitions. Typically I consider optimization to go well beyond just combat performance, and you can apply min/maxing to social encounters as easily as damage numbers.
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.
SUCH good explanations! If you want to get into the mind of a "min/max"er, read what InquisitiveCoder wrote right here.
In my experience optimizing the other two pillars isn't nearly as game-breaking because the social interaction and exploration rules tend to be conditional pass/fail scenarios, while there's no hard limits to how much ass you can kick.
You can stack bonuses until your minimum Persuasion roll is 40, but the DM still decides if a request has a chance of success and how far an NPC is willing to go. Being able to roll that high just means you pretty much never fail, but it doesn't let you ask for more. You can stack extreme Stealth bonuses but you still need a way to hide and you still have to avoid any actions that would give you away. You can have 30 Passive Perception but still miss a key buried in a pile of clothes in someone's drawers if you don't think to look there and dig around.
The flip side to that is you alienate the players who want to explore or socialise. Fun is subjective and depends on your group.
Nothing stops you from building an unstoppable combat monster but you have to expect to have issues chatting up the local magic merchant, or plotting their way through the Underdark. Similarly, the social butterfly might have trouble surviving trap laden areas. Choice without consequence is meaningless.
Deliberately going after those player to penalize them is not the same as catering to explorers and socializers. The original topic of the thread is "what to do about that" as though it's a problem in and of itself.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
The flip side to that is you alienate the players who want to explore or socialise. Fun is subjective and depends on your group.
Nothing stops you from building an unstoppable combat monster but you have to expect to have issues chatting up the local magic merchant, or plotting their way through the Underdark. Similarly, the social butterfly might have trouble surviving trap laden areas. Choice without consequence is meaningless.
Deliberately going after those player to penalize them is not the same as catering to explorers and socializers. The original topic of the thread is "what to do about that" as though it's a problem in and of itself.
Imbalance within a party is a legit problem. Ideally the players are all kind of on the same optimization "tier," but it's totally possible for someone to bring a character that can basically do everything another player's character can do - but better - and do a bunch of additional things.
There's plenty you can do on the DM side to counter this, but it's more work and part of OP's question is asking what these measures are.
Truly broken builds turn out to make things fairly boring, so that tends to work itself out. When my players have brought out the really big guns, it doesn't take more than 1-2 sessions for them to say, "ok yeah, that was fun but it's too much." Once they've played out their proof-of-concept, many folks are willing to tone it down for the good of the team. Those that aren't? You treat them like any other problem - take them aside, explain the issue, and work out a solution you can both agree on.
I think the issue is that the min-maxers tap into various empowering synergies while other characters don't.
From my perspective, min-maxing isn't 'tapping into empowering synergies'; it's that the entire point of your build is those synergies
You aren't making a character, you are optimizing a set of numbers. If that's your thing, fine (but it's not mine)
And as has been said already, the way to "fix" that in a party where some people take that approach and some don't is to make sure everyone is getting a chance to play the style of game they want to play. Let the min-maxers have fun wrecking fools in combat while the role-players take a back seat, but then flip that around next session for a noble family's wedding reception
Just so long as no one expects to be the center of attention all the time, there shouldn't be any issues
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then the HELL with you!
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I think the issue is that the min-maxers tap into various empowering synergies while other characters don't.
From my perspective, min-maxing isn't 'tapping into empowering synergies'; it's that the entire point of your build is those synergies
You aren't making a character, you are optimizing a set of numbers. If that's your thing, fine (but it's not mine)
And as has been said already, the way to "fix" that in a party where some people take that approach and some don't is to make sure everyone is getting a chance to play the style of game they want to play. Let the min-maxers have fun wrecking fools in combat while the role-players take a back seat, but then flip that around next session for a noble family's wedding reception
Just so long as no one expects to be the center of attention all the time, there shouldn't be any issues
It's not a choice between between story/RP and building for combat. I've spent a lot of time interacting with other players who like to optimize. One in particular is a friend of mine and we bounce ideas off each other all the time.
I'm not going to say *no* optimizers care only about combat, because I don't know everyone on the planet. But I will say I never run into them, ever.
Think about this... with the insanely large volume of rules, game mechanics, and choices you can make between races, subraces, classes, subclasses, spells, equipment, abilities, stat scores - and on and on.... NOBODY could possibly even attempt to optimize a build with something so complex unless they obsess about D&D. And those of us who are that obsessive are not likely to be in it just one, single dimension of the game.
This is the "my players like to be good at things and I don't know what to do about that" problem.
The answer is let your players be good at things, and just keep running the game.
InquisitiveCoder laid it out beautifully - optimizing is fun for some people. Those people enjoy when their optimization is challenged. I'm playing my best D&D when I'm at the helm of a highly competent hero with a plethora of useful talents and abilities being tasked with a grueling challenge only a teamful of equally competent and exquisitely trained heroes could accomplish. I like when the DM says "Okay, y'all are good at this shit and your characters are really well set up. Cool! Time to put the kiddie gloves away, pull out the back-room DMG with the real rules in it, and see if you folks are as brassy a set of ass-kickers as you say you are."
A lot of folks who clearly believe that optimization is intrinsically bad say you 'challenge' an optimizer by throwing non-fighty things at them. That shows a poor understanding of optimization. I won a powergamer-build challenge in this very Tips & Tactics forum a while back with a build I optimized for EVERYTHING, not just combat. Wombo-combo novamonkey burst damage builds that rely on a bunch of strained, janky rules interactions and need three turns to set up their schtick are bad and any decent optimizer knows it. And frankly, the people who're most likely to get really invested in planning out a super awesome high-octane build are also the ones likely to be invested in figuring out a great story for why that build exists. Because they're invested in the game, and they want to be good at it and in it.
Yeah, the whole "the optimizer just enjoys combat and isn't in to roleplaying" is a reductive stereotype that doesn't fit my experience. Just as some (but not all) folks who enjoy driving also enjoy getting "under the hood" of their car, so too do some (but not all) folks who enjoy roleplaying games also enjoy really getting up to their elbows in the guts of how the systems work mechanically.
This is such a long-standing and well-known false dichotomy that it has a name of its own: The Stormwind Fallacy. There is no choice between role play and min-maxing. Being a good min-maxer doesn’t mean you are a bad role player and being a good role player doesn’t mean you are not a min-maxer. Both are possible. With the same character. By the same player.
As far as what to do with the player that’s outside of the optimization level of the rest of the group: ask them to stop. Other than DDAL, we are playing with people who are ostensibly our friends, right? A friend will say when there’s a problem. A friend will listen when they’re told there’s a problem. Friends will work together to solve the problem.
This is the "my players like to be good at things and I don't know what to do about that" problem.
The answer is let your players be good at things, and just keep running the game.
InquisitiveCoder laid it out beautifully - optimizing is fun for some people. Those people enjoy when their optimization is challenged. I'm playing my best D&D when I'm at the helm of a highly competent hero with a plethora of useful talents and abilities being tasked with a grueling challenge only a teamful of equally competent and exquisitely trained heroes could accomplish. I like when the DM says "Okay, y'all are good at this shit and your characters are really well set up. Cool! Time to put the kiddie gloves away, pull out the back-room DMG with the real rules in it, and see if you folks are as brassy a set of ass-kickers as you say you are."
A lot of folks who clearly believe that optimization is intrinsically bad say you 'challenge' an optimizer by throwing non-fighty things at them. That shows a poor understanding of optimization. I won a powergamer-build challenge in this very Tips & Tactics forum a while back with a build I optimized for EVERYTHING, not just combat. Wombo-combo novamonkey burst damage builds that rely on a bunch of strained, janky rules interactions and need three turns to set up their schtick are bad and any decent optimizer knows it. And frankly, the people who're most likely to get really invested in planning out a super awesome high-octane build are also the ones likely to be invested in figuring out a great story for why that build exists. Because they're invested in the game, and they want to be good at it and in it.
Congrats on the win, I totally forgot about that one. The concepts looked pretty cool.
Regarding this particular thread, I think there might be an issue with what exactly a balanced party or fairness might be. If a player dedicates their resources and choices to optimizing toward combat, there should be some type of validation for those expenditures. Similarly if another player dedicate their choices and resources toward social interactions or exploration, it’s reasonable to expect a measure of success for those types of encounters. If you have several players in the party whose strengths can be used in each of the pillars, I’d say the party is pretty balanced. Even then, the balance isn’t really necessary though. The two scenarios I’ve seen “balance” used as some sort of talking point at my tables is when players expect to fill a role in the party but fail to make mechanical choices to fulfil their own expectations or if there are two players attempting to fill the same role.
example one, I’ve played a wizard for a while. I have 3 other players at the table, all of which play different higher damage classes and subclasses. Usually when I play my wizard I attempt to make use of control spells or even low level buffs I have access to to make the party better and help the other players feel better at what they want to do. The very last session I made use of the Steel wind strike spell and happened to kill like 3 or 4 creatures. I suspect the creatures had low starting hitpoints or the DM may have been using minion mechanics. Either way, the efficacy of the spell in basically the most optimal situation applicable with it, since the minions were scattered around and my team were too, left some of the table feeling different. The mood seemed to change a bit, but no one directly said anything about it for a few days.
Example two, the very first time I played the game I picked a champion fighter to play at the advice of my friends. I had an idea of what I wanted my character to be able to do, which was be a “tank”, but didn’t have an understanding of the mechanics to actually make that happen. I made a human, took the shield master feat and the heavy armor master feat, and never felt fulfilled because I made unknowingly made decisions to limit my own fun. I didn’t blame anyone for it, but the feeling did sap some of my enjoyment from the game.
I think combat seems to get a lot of focus because it’s relatively easy to track the metrics of how effective a character is, especially with the prominence of online gaming.
No, I'm not saying min-maxers are wrong. If it's clear in session 0 that the campaign will be about combat, then min-maxing for combat is not wrong. If that is the type of game a DM is running, then I will min-max too.
What I'm saying is combat is potentially, depending on the DM and the type of game being run, only one third of the game. If a min-max player focuses only on 1/3 of the game and ignores the other 2/3... the DM is not wrong to put them in situations where their builds fail in 2 of 3 pillars.
This is ESPECIALLY true if the other players at the table as well as the DM have all agreed to play a game containing all 3 pillars. There is a social contract to playing D&D and if a player ignores this contract, why should it be on all the other players and the DM to accommodate that choice?
The flip side to that is you alienate the players who want to explore or socialise. Fun is subjective and depends on your group.
Nothing stops you from building an unstoppable combat monster but you have to expect to have issues chatting up the local magic merchant, or plotting their way through the Underdark. Similarly, the social butterfly might have trouble surviving trap laden areas. Choice without consequence is meaningless.
Exactly....a while back DnD Beyond had a breakdown of character creation stats....and it showed that for the majority of players they will absolutely min/max their stats.
I do not have the link/data right now but I am trying to find it...it was pretty clear people want their character to actually do what its suppose to do.
This is a myth. If you are optimized for combat, what stops you from being good at other things?
Heck a DPR machine SS/CBE Fighter is SAD as hell so they can invest in WIS/CHA/INT to 14 to start with no real issues. Take your pick on skills too depending on race/background.
The coffee-lock and fly-by owl for advantage every turn are exploits, and generally shunned by the vast majority of players, including optimizers. I don't know how effective feats going against what their character would do is actually a thing. An archer would certainly become better at what they would do, and feats that do so is in line. Same with feats that enhance spell casting and melee attacks. Levitate is a single target concentration spell with a Con save (the worst kind). That's definitely not broken.
Optimisers aren't the same as min/maxing in my book.
It's not so much "being good at other things" as "not being bad at something else". If not, then the choice is meaningless.
What is min/maxing in your book?
IC said everything I would have said about optimizing in post #12.
I'll just add that in situations where I have a party with that one guy who likes to optimize, I encourage him to be a support character and optimize how awesome he can make everyone else. This can be really fun for everyone.
I think in these kinds of discussions we need to be very clear about what we all mean by optimizers and min-maxing because these terms are thrown around wildly with no agreed-upon definitions. Typically I consider optimization to go well beyond just combat performance, and you can apply min/maxing to social encounters as easily as damage numbers.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
SUCH good explanations! If you want to get into the mind of a "min/max"er, read what InquisitiveCoder wrote right here.
In my experience optimizing the other two pillars isn't nearly as game-breaking because the social interaction and exploration rules tend to be conditional pass/fail scenarios, while there's no hard limits to how much ass you can kick.
You can stack bonuses until your minimum Persuasion roll is 40, but the DM still decides if a request has a chance of success and how far an NPC is willing to go. Being able to roll that high just means you pretty much never fail, but it doesn't let you ask for more. You can stack extreme Stealth bonuses but you still need a way to hide and you still have to avoid any actions that would give you away. You can have 30 Passive Perception but still miss a key buried in a pile of clothes in someone's drawers if you don't think to look there and dig around.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
Deliberately going after those player to penalize them is not the same as catering to explorers and socializers. The original topic of the thread is "what to do about that" as though it's a problem in and of itself.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Imbalance within a party is a legit problem. Ideally the players are all kind of on the same optimization "tier," but it's totally possible for someone to bring a character that can basically do everything another player's character can do - but better - and do a bunch of additional things.
There's plenty you can do on the DM side to counter this, but it's more work and part of OP's question is asking what these measures are.
Truly broken builds turn out to make things fairly boring, so that tends to work itself out. When my players have brought out the really big guns, it doesn't take more than 1-2 sessions for them to say, "ok yeah, that was fun but it's too much." Once they've played out their proof-of-concept, many folks are willing to tone it down for the good of the team. Those that aren't? You treat them like any other problem - take them aside, explain the issue, and work out a solution you can both agree on.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
From my perspective, min-maxing isn't 'tapping into empowering synergies'; it's that the entire point of your build is those synergies
You aren't making a character, you are optimizing a set of numbers. If that's your thing, fine (but it's not mine)
And as has been said already, the way to "fix" that in a party where some people take that approach and some don't is to make sure everyone is getting a chance to play the style of game they want to play. Let the min-maxers have fun wrecking fools in combat while the role-players take a back seat, but then flip that around next session for a noble family's wedding reception
Just so long as no one expects to be the center of attention all the time, there shouldn't be any issues
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
LOL wut? Conan RP'ed all the time
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It's not a choice between between story/RP and building for combat. I've spent a lot of time interacting with other players who like to optimize. One in particular is a friend of mine and we bounce ideas off each other all the time.
I'm not going to say *no* optimizers care only about combat, because I don't know everyone on the planet. But I will say I never run into them, ever.
Think about this... with the insanely large volume of rules, game mechanics, and choices you can make between races, subraces, classes, subclasses, spells, equipment, abilities, stat scores - and on and on.... NOBODY could possibly even attempt to optimize a build with something so complex unless they obsess about D&D. And those of us who are that obsessive are not likely to be in it just one, single dimension of the game.
This is the "my players like to be good at things and I don't know what to do about that" problem.
The answer is let your players be good at things, and just keep running the game.
InquisitiveCoder laid it out beautifully - optimizing is fun for some people. Those people enjoy when their optimization is challenged. I'm playing my best D&D when I'm at the helm of a highly competent hero with a plethora of useful talents and abilities being tasked with a grueling challenge only a teamful of equally competent and exquisitely trained heroes could accomplish. I like when the DM says "Okay, y'all are good at this shit and your characters are really well set up. Cool! Time to put the kiddie gloves away, pull out the back-room DMG with the real rules in it, and see if you folks are as brassy a set of ass-kickers as you say you are."
A lot of folks who clearly believe that optimization is intrinsically bad say you 'challenge' an optimizer by throwing non-fighty things at them. That shows a poor understanding of optimization. I won a powergamer-build challenge in this very Tips & Tactics forum a while back with a build I optimized for EVERYTHING, not just combat. Wombo-combo novamonkey burst damage builds that rely on a bunch of strained, janky rules interactions and need three turns to set up their schtick are bad and any decent optimizer knows it. And frankly, the people who're most likely to get really invested in planning out a super awesome high-octane build are also the ones likely to be invested in figuring out a great story for why that build exists. Because they're invested in the game, and they want to be good at it and in it.
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Yeah, the whole "the optimizer just enjoys combat and isn't in to roleplaying" is a reductive stereotype that doesn't fit my experience. Just as some (but not all) folks who enjoy driving also enjoy getting "under the hood" of their car, so too do some (but not all) folks who enjoy roleplaying games also enjoy really getting up to their elbows in the guts of how the systems work mechanically.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
This is such a long-standing and well-known false dichotomy that it has a name of its own: The Stormwind Fallacy. There is no choice between role play and min-maxing. Being a good min-maxer doesn’t mean you are a bad role player and being a good role player doesn’t mean you are not a min-maxer. Both are possible. With the same character. By the same player.
As far as what to do with the player that’s outside of the optimization level of the rest of the group: ask them to stop. Other than DDAL, we are playing with people who are ostensibly our friends, right? A friend will say when there’s a problem. A friend will listen when they’re told there’s a problem. Friends will work together to solve the problem.
Congrats on the win, I totally forgot about that one. The concepts looked pretty cool.
Regarding this particular thread, I think there might be an issue with what exactly a balanced party or fairness might be. If a player dedicates their resources and choices to optimizing toward combat, there should be some type of validation for those expenditures. Similarly if another player dedicate their choices and resources toward social interactions or exploration, it’s reasonable to expect a measure of success for those types of encounters. If you have several players in the party whose strengths can be used in each of the pillars, I’d say the party is pretty balanced. Even then, the balance isn’t really necessary though. The two scenarios I’ve seen “balance” used as some sort of talking point at my tables is when players expect to fill a role in the party but fail to make mechanical choices to fulfil their own expectations or if there are two players attempting to fill the same role.
example one, I’ve played a wizard for a while. I have 3 other players at the table, all of which play different higher damage classes and subclasses. Usually when I play my wizard I attempt to make use of control spells or even low level buffs I have access to to make the party better and help the other players feel better at what they want to do. The very last session I made use of the Steel wind strike spell and happened to kill like 3 or 4 creatures. I suspect the creatures had low starting hitpoints or the DM may have been using minion mechanics. Either way, the efficacy of the spell in basically the most optimal situation applicable with it, since the minions were scattered around and my team were too, left some of the table feeling different. The mood seemed to change a bit, but no one directly said anything about it for a few days.
Example two, the very first time I played the game I picked a champion fighter to play at the advice of my friends. I had an idea of what I wanted my character to be able to do, which was be a “tank”, but didn’t have an understanding of the mechanics to actually make that happen. I made a human, took the shield master feat and the heavy armor master feat, and never felt fulfilled because I made unknowingly made decisions to limit my own fun. I didn’t blame anyone for it, but the feeling did sap some of my enjoyment from the game.
I think combat seems to get a lot of focus because it’s relatively easy to track the metrics of how effective a character is, especially with the prominence of online gaming.