So, you’ve read all about how to how to make a character with a compelling story and how to play D&D tactically. You love your character, and you don’t want them to die. It’s only natural to start thinking about making your character as powerful as possible so they aren’t casually slain by a lucky kobold. Whether you’re a roleplaying maven who wants to give your character a beautiful arc or a combat fanatic who wants to slay everything that stands against you, it only makes sense for your thoughts to turn to powergaming.
In this installment of the New Player’s Guide, we take a look at a controversial topic that has driven many D&D groups apart: will optimizing your character improve your D&D game, or tear your group apart? The answer is more nuanced than you might think.
What is Powergaming?
Powergaming is a term that describes the act of optimizing your D&D character and acting in a way that maximizes reward while minimizing risk. “Powergamer” is roughly synonymous with terms like “min-maxer,” and “munchkin,” and all of these terms carry a degree of derision. That might be because this efficient way of playing largely ignores the “roleplaying” aspect of roleplaying games, and focuses almost exclusively on winning the “game” aspect.
Some powergamers think deeply about the systems of D&D to find broken combos and exploits in the rules, whereas others simply look at character optimization (“char-op”) boards to find powerful combos that other players have theorized about online.
Why Some Folks Optimize, and Why Others Don’t
Everyone who optimizes does it for different reasons, but one common through line is that being strong is fun. If you make a character and envision them as a mighty demon slayer, you want the game to support your story with the mechanics. You want your character to be cool, right? D&D rewards a clever understanding of its mechanics with greater power—essentially, the ability for your character to do cool things more consistently.
In a more extreme case, you might want to create an all-powerful character because the relationship between you and your Dungeon Master is antagonistic. If your DM tries to screw your character over at every opportunity, like you’re playing the Tomb of Horrors in every session, it makes sense to create a character that can’t be defeated.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with optimizing your character; it just means that you’ve put in work to allow your character to do the cool things that you want them to be able to do. On the other hand, there is a dark side to powergaming. If your DM just wants to play a collaborative game where the DM sets interesting challenges in front of the players, but isn’t going out of their way to annihilate your characters, optimizing your character into an all-powerful death machine could leave other players in the dust.
If everyone in your group is optimizing their characters to the best of their ability, this isn’t a problem; everyone’s playing Gandalf or Galadriel or Elrond, the campaign becomes a super-powered thrillfest where powerful wizards and warriors battle evil liches and their undead servants.
On the other hand, there are lots of players who don’t like to optimize. Some do so because they don’t have the time to dedicate to fussing over every minute detail of their character sheet because of their job, home life, or because of any number of real-world concerns. Life is hard, and the people who are working hard to make their real life work deserve to have fun just like the folks who are able to dedicate hours to learning how to optimizing their D&D character. If everyone in your game is “optimization neutral” in this way, you might have a party made up of Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir, and Gimli. All powerful warriors in their own rights, but with a few flaws that force them to rely on one another to survive.
There’s another type of players, too: the kind that actively choose not to optimize their character because they like their characters to have character flaws that are represented in their game stats. These players might optimize their characters in some ways, and lean hard into their weaknesses. Or, they might be happy to be defined by their flaws more than they are by their strengths. A group of players that would rather play Frodo, Sam, and Gollum desperately surviving in a world too powerful for them might play characters like this.
It’s easy to have fun in any group filled with players that all have the same philosophy towards character optimization—even if they don’t have the words to articulate what that philosophy is. However, things become messy when characters of wildly different levels of optimization are in a party together. Gandalf fights the Balrog alone at the Bridge of Khazad-Dum in The Fellowship of the Ring because, as he tells the Fellowship, “This foe is beyond any of you.” This is an awesome moment in the Lord of the Rings films and novels, because we’re an audience that gets to watch one character have the spotlight in a scene that is at once both tragic and epic.
But in a game, the wild power disparity between the hyper-competent Gandalf, the strong-but-flawed warriors like Aragorn and Boromir, and the kind-hearted but physically weak hobbits would be incredibly frustrating. Unless you know that your group is actively excited for that kind of power disparity, you need to figure out a solution.
Side Note: The Stormwind Fallacy
Worth noting is that these broad categories aren’t the be all and end all of powergaming. A classic RPG fallacy is the “Stormwind Fallacy,” which states that character optimization is antithetical to roleplaying. This statement is fallacious because it’s absolutely possible to have a flawed, three-dimensional character and still optimize their build so that they can reliably do cool things, too. Aragorn and Boromir are great examples from the Lord of the Rings characters mentioned above; they’re powerful combatants, but have intense roleplaying flaws. In the films, Aragorn is reluctant and fearful to lead, so he chooses not to claim his birthright and lead the mighty armies of Gondor. Boromir is a talented warrior with many advantages, but he is vulnerable to the corrupting influence of power and the will of the One Ring—a temptation that leads to his downfall.
Some of the best story-focused roleplayers are willing to put their powerful, optimized characters into compromised, suboptimal situations because it creates a dramatic and exciting story. You can see this in Critical Role, Tales from the Mists, and any number of other beloved D&D streams. It can take a lot of trust in the DM to present you with situations that let you kick ass and situations that prey upon your characters’ weaknesses. Nevertheless, playing this way is incredibly rewarding.
What Kind of Gamer are You?
There are too many positions on powergaming and character optimization to count; the spectrum of opinion between “it’s the only true way to play” and “it ruins D&D” contains infinities. Likewise, there’s a continuum of how intensely players will optimize their characters. Some players have an innate knack for finding powerful combos and gravitate to optimizing automatically. Some read char-op threads on D&D forums to learn the best strategies. Some are just happy to play. Some still actively give their characters debilitating flaws because it helps them create a more dramatic and nuanced character.
All of these playstyles are valid. Even so, just because they’re all fine ways to play D&D doesn’t mean that people with different playstyles won’t come into conflict. Some of these playstyles are so disparate that it’s almost inevitable that someone will get annoyed with someone else for playing the game “wrong.” But don’t despair. This doesn’t mean that your group is doomed if some people want to optimize and others don’t.
Communicate Early and Often
If you’re playing with veteran D&D players, they probably know whether or not they like to optimize their characters. In that case, just ask them straight away as part of your Session Zero. As usual, clear and open communication with your fellow players is the solution to 90% of all problems at the game table. Try to align everyone’s goals by finding out if some people don’t like the power imbalance that powergaming can create between player characters, or if they don’t mind.
If your players are new to D&D, they probably don’t know for sure if they’re going to min-max or not, so asking directly won’t be as useful as it would with a veteran player. You might be able to guess how they’ll approach the game based on their personalities or taste in other media. D&D players who play collectible card games or MMORPGs may be more inclined to optimize their characters in D&D because the types of games they play heavily encourage optimization, whereas players who were more into fantasy novels or films may be less inclined to min-max. This is just a rule of thumb; it’s not true for all people. The only way to know how new players will approach the game is to play with them for a few sessions.
Once you know roughly where on the powergaming continuum your players fall, you can host a Session Zero and lay out some expectations for your campaign. Remember, you can have a Session Zero at any time during your campaign, not just before the first session. This works even better if everyone can talk about their own expectations too; this will make your Session Zero less of a lecture from the DM and more of a conversation between friends.
Here are some questions to ask new players that haven’t thought about powergaming before:
- If one of the characters is stronger than all the others, would that make the game less fun for you?
- On the other hand, would you have less fun if your character is weaker than all the others?
- If one character hogs the spotlight and consistently spends more time doing cool things than you, would you be annoyed?
- Do you want this game to be the sort of game where we all work together to tell a story, or do you see it as a competition between the players and the DM?
These questions will help identify your players’ feelings towards intra-party balance (how powerful the characters are in relation to one another), without once mentioning the jargony words of “powergaming” or “optimization.” If the players tell you that these things don’t bother them, great! Just let them know that they can always tell you if something feels bad about your campaign, then go play some D&D!
If a player answers “I don’t know,” then take their answer at face value. Don’t assume they’re hiding something from you. Optimization is probably just a topic they haven’t thought about before, or one that doesn’t impact their enjoyment of the game. Don’t interrogate them, just move on. Trust that if someone’s optimization (or lack thereof) bothers them during the campaign, they’ll let you know.
If the players tell you that yes, some of these things would bother them, you can facilitate a conversation in which the players can agree to not do things that will upset the other players. You’re all here to have fun together, after all. If someone feels like their fun is being trampled on because they feel forced to consider what’s fun for other people, that’s not the kind of person you want in your weekly gaming group. You can ask questions like these to work out a compromise:
- It sounds like most people want the group to not be too overpowered. Would you feel okay not reading any character optimization guides or choosing overpowered combos?
- It sounds like most people want the group to be relatively powerful. Would you feel okay reading a bit about your character’s class before playing? (The Class 101 series is a great place to start to get an overview of your character.)
Balance between player characters can be one of the most important topics a D&D group can discuss. Or, it could be completely unimportant! Figuring out what works for your group must be your number one priority as a Dungeon Master. If you and your players can communicate clearly and effectively with one another, you’ll all come back to the game week after week, excited to play again.
Are you a powergamer, or does someone in your gaming group love to optimize their characters? Have you ever talked with your group to work out how to deal with power imbalances in the party? Let us know in the comments?
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James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
As a player, I often powergame to some degree. Even so, I feel that the characters' personalities ought to play a bigger role than their stats. The difference between an optimized character at level 1 is often only a 5% increase on hitting things and 1 more point of damage per hit over one that's suboptimal.
Bards are primarily support, especially at low levels. Making one that outshines the other party members is very hard when you make everyone else better by tagging along for the ride, yet people also say bards are the strongest spellcasters due to Magical Secrets.
Personally, I find someone who brings a character with no personality, backstory or description rather frustrating, much moreso than one who is great at what they like to do.
I love roleplaying. Roleplaying is THE BEST. I am usually the DM, but when I'm a player, I roleplay a lot.
Great Article, James!
Second Comment
:)
My current character is a half orc fighter/barbarian combo. I rolled the best stats I every got and followed through with a good build. I'm not powergaming per se, but the other players make fun of me for bragging too much about my character :(
at 9th level (fighter 8/barbarian 1), has a 20 in strength, 18 dex, and 18 con. With bracers of defense that makes AC 20, with +8 to hit with a greataxe.
I don't think anyone plays 10th level D&D to _not_ be able to cast cool spells or fight dragons or whatever. Unless you are talking about broken combos, putting some thought on character build is perfectly normal.
If you don't want to cast cool spells and fight dragons, there's also a ton of RPGs out there that are not like D&D. They are also very cool!
I don't min-max, but I still try to make my character the best it can be- and still fit in with my backstory. I my characters are usually a tiny bit better than the rest of my party's.
Yeah I personally think that it’s fine to powergame, as long as your character still has personality, backstory and description. If your character doesn’t have those things, it’s just stats, powers, spells and weapons, and D&D turns into a wargame, where the only meaning to your character is how many enemies it can kill and how much you can brag about your character’s power level or show off without bragging. Your character needs to have meaning outside of combat, especially if it’s an optimized and well-made character.
I love powergaming. I am a 7th level Bard with proficiency in nearly every skill (24 passive perception with the observant feat.) and a Wand of Fireballs. It's amazing and almost everyone else in my party does it too.
It depends entirely on what that player is looking for. I've seen people in the comments say things along the lines of "powergaming is fine so long as your character has more to them than their stats." This line of thought is fine but it is also narrow minded. What if the player doesn't care about the role play side of D&D and only wants to hang out with their friends and scratch that power fantasy itch of being a walking demigod in combat? If they let the RPers have their fun out of combat without complaint, why can't the powergamer enjoy the thing that he is there for?
As much as powergamers can ruin a campaign, gatekeepers against powergaming are just as guilty imo.
Great article!
It's interesting, because in the circles I came up in, the terms "minmaxer", "munchkin", and "powergamer" meant three different things, although they were often all found in the most problematic players. Here's my understanding of the differences, obviously they will differ slightly between subcultures and groups:
Minmaxing is the one most players are probably familiar with, even if they don't know the term- the classic big hulking barbarian with an INT, WIS, and CHA of 8 so they can buff their STR and CON is no stranger to many tables. There's really nothing wrong with focusing your points on the stats that will make your character perform effectively, and most classes have one or two prime requisites around which the majority of their abilities are built.
A "munchkin" is a player who wants to "win" the game by becoming as powerful as possible. They usually start with minmaxing, and then do anything and everything to accrete more power, via items, multiclassing, exploiting edge cases, or whatever they can find- even if it "breaks" the game. Story or roleplaying are often secondary, or even completely ignored, unless there's a way to use them to gain power. Again, depending on the game and the table, this isn't inherently "bad" play. Especially for players coming from video or computer rpgs, this is just the obvious, default way to play. It can be a problem if it clashes with the rest of the table, though.
Now for the important one- the powergamer. In my circles, a powergamer is a person who is going to have fun their way at all costs. They do not care about what anybody else at the table's desires or preferences. Whatever kind of kick they are looking for, you'd better not get in their way, because you are just there to support their personal agenda. It's their table, and everyone else (including the DM) exists to serve the powergamer's story. They may or may not be a minmaxer, and they may or may not be a munchkin. They may even be super interested in the story- provided the story is about them.
These can and often do overlap, but they don't have to. And while any of them can be problematic, only the last one is a clear and present danger to any table.
Anyway, just thought I'd share my experiences. Y'all's mileage may vary ;)
Thanks for the solid article!
power gaming sucks this really isn't a good article. It just makes a competition between players to show off. A good DM will match the experience with the group so it should scale unless ones is OP then it's not a great game. Your system really isn't robust enough to be 'powergamed'
Also don't agree with certain fallacies listed here.
Power play, to some degree, is fine. Everyone wants to play a character which is awesome to some degree. The trouble starts when a player enters the game with a character which is designed to be awesome period. Who want to excel in everything the game has to offer and focus on all the nitty-gritty rules and options to make their characters even more awesome. Those players are both power players and rules lawyers. Wanting to get every advantage the rules might give them, while at the same time incessantly discussing with the DM to bend the rules in their favor...
Those players tend to forget the most important part of this whole game: It's supposed to be fun for everyone and it's a game which can't be 'won'. Because if this game can be 'won', the DM wins. always.
Optimizing a character to focus on a shtick? Sure, go ahead. But optimizing it and being the rules lawyer to get everything out of it? Please no.
did I mention I hate rules lawyers?
It's fine to powergame, as long as it doesn't outshine your roleplaying.
I like this example because I suspect a lot of new players would come up with this without intentionally trying to "powergame". They're playing a Barbarian and figure that stereotypical Barbarians have high physical stats and maybe not such high mental stats. They might well manage to create a min-maxed Barbarian without a thought about how powerful the character will be.
That said, I have played in games with powergamers who were only interested in acting like a badass. Their characters' personalities were pretty much just "look how badass I am". They try to make everything about combat and loot. They try to make everything about them and their power fantasy, even if they're not directly ordering other players around (that would be "Alpha Gaming"). This is the sort of toxic powergaming which people complain about. The actual optimization of stats is not the problem, but it is a common symptom of an underlying condition which is a real problem and which makes D&D not fun for the other players and GM.
It seems like a lot of the argument around powergaming is about terminology. When I complain about "powergaming", the toxic behavior I described in the last paragraph is what I'm complaining about, but sometimes people try to correct me saying that "powergaming" is just stats optimization which is fine. Since "powergamer" seems to mean different things to different people perhaps we need more precise terminology?
I don't like the way those 4 questions are worded. The answer to them is important to any group, but especially the last one feels loaded. If I'm the DM asking that question it feels like I already expect the players to be my "opponents" in a "wargame." If I asked them these I'd paraphrase the questions (and I did for this last Baldur's Gate game I was in)
This can be a big dividing point in groups. I've never seen a fistfight break out. But I have experienced some heated discussions. Attitudes are everything. If players and DMs come into it with different points of view but a good attitude the game can progress.
I... optimize in the sense of being good at what I do. I will use my Wizard as my example. We rolled for stats and I rolled VERY well. (my lowest was a 9; 2nd lowest was 14.) Because of how well I rolled, and not wanting to be "OP," I offered the DM a reroll of stats. He said keep them... but I still felt bad. So I self-imposed a -2 to the 9 (STR, obviously). so I'm at 7 there instead. Of course, there's also the fact that I'm the lowest damage dealing character in the campaign. After more than a year at this point, my total damage output is likely still in the double digits (ie less than 100 points of damage in total). But that wasn't the focus of my character. I'm the Wizard that let's everyone else shine in combat, while likely being the hidden MVP. Spells like Web, Hypnotic Pattern, and other Battlefield Control spells. And as the game's narrative required, I started delving into religious studies... eventually leading to my 5 level over being in Cleric. While this is (I found out later) a power gaming combo, I did it because the game seemed to require it. And we needed healing, so that helped. To date, thanks to a... let's call it "misunderstanding," only 1 person has died since then.
Edit: I should also mention that while I love RP, my character is TERRIBLE at it! On purpose. I chose, and play up, the flaw "I overlook obvious solutions in favor of complicated ones." So I tend to not speak very straightforward and give as few actual details as I can while still telling the truth. He's certainly capable of speaking plainly, but it's rare... and usually only in dire need. Or great trust.
Heck, I've even self-imposed a Wisdom Save (similar to Caleb from CR2) more than once due to WHAT we were fighting (something from my backstory). I told the DM, "Set a decent DC ahead of time. And I'm not allowed to use Portent for it." Of course, I ended up rolling a Nat20 and passed the DC23 set. But if I hadn't passed, I would effectively been stunned the entire fight.
So, while I do optimize stats where I can, I also screw myself over in other areas.
Another great article, James. While I'm not against powergaming, I personally prefer playing flawed characters because they lend a bit more realism. Where I tend to run into problems with "powergamers" are those who critique or condemn another player for having a suboptimal build. Players should not judge one another's PC, or provide unsolicited advice for improving or playing said character. If you are concerned about another player's choices, it is better to ask about their motivations or character concept outside the game, and let them request your assitance rather than trying to force it on them.
I've been DMing the same campaign for about a decade now. We only play on average 8 times a year, instead of 50, so my players are only around 13th level so far. I've had 4 players since (more or less) day one that are still around, and another 5 or 6 that rotate in or out. Some of the newer and/or less committed players have no idea how to optimize their character, nor do they have the time or energy to learn, while some of the more long-term players have very optimized characters. To solve for this, I either suggest powerful character options to the less knowledgeable players as they level up, or make sure they get cool magic items (not necessarily weapons), or give them compelling subplots that heavily intertwine with the main narrative - all different ways to make sure each player has a chance for the spotlight. It's not perfect, but my players are all happy 10+ years in!
The worst thing to do is be a lizardfolk bard with 3 charisma in a powergame campaign.
In general as it has often been said the ideas you talked about could be expressed in more detail in 100 or so pages.
I also try and keep in mind there are many ways to play a game and the many mistakes and evolution's I have gone through as a player and a GM.
Keeping that in mind there was one statement that I saw above that I have seen lead to a lot of trouble since I started playing in 78, and that is a competition between the GM and the players. Before I get into the issues I have seen I will state where I have seen it work, and that is when one person is essentially the rules judge like in a board game and the GM is just moving the pieces as required by the stated rules. But in most cases the GM is creating content, modifying content and thinking the creatures will do this action (in other words the GM does not have a scripted program for every action). I also have seen in the past few years a number of groups playing pen and paper RPG's in a more video game like fashion and in some cases the GM has no problem taking a back seat and running the game. In the past I have also seen a GM run two groups, one a "player" group and one a "monster" group run by other players and they were simply the CPU (Central Processing Unit) that interpreted their actions like you would in a blind board game.
The problems I have seen are many if it is taken as a competition from the most basic Player-GM issues (where the GM really wants to be a player and the other players are just NPC's in their story) to the more extreme I keep track of all wins and loses and gauge my enjoyment in the number of PC's I kill which is fair since the PC's kill my (or MY) creatures all the time. Another big area I have seen (especially in the area of just change a creatures stats to fit the situation) is that the GM controls all of the rule interpretations. So what they say goes and it can change at any time or they can pull out the "it works because of magic" line to explain why something is as it is. (Note I have used the PFM (pure fracking magic) line in my game all the time but try and provide a rational reason why it is that way and to stay away from using it to simply throw unique things at the players). The GM also generally the person who buys the most books and has access to that material to design and build their NPC's, creatures and encounters where as often then players rely on the material the GM provides and often are bound by character leveling guidelines (simply what I am trying to say is that new books can have new options that create powerful combos that may not have been foreseen by the authors and do to character "access" NPC's can use them but the players cannot.)
There are more examples I can provide but I think in the effort to keep it brief I will stop.
MDC
Optimizing a character should almost come as the character is played 5th edition even gives you ASI's as you level to improve and optimize said character. I don't understand how players can gripe on other players optimizing their character, no one makes a character worse at level 5 then they were at level 1. So that is one point of opinion. But then there is the extreme optimizing where your paladin's are all 3 levels hexblade warlock for the 1 attribute attack stat and the magical weapon they can never lose, or the sorlock builds where 2 levels lock for agonizing blast quicken spell meta magic which is getting tired to see lol.