Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 8 - To Min-Max or Not to Min-Max

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

In the last of week 2's episodes, Jeremy talks about min-maxing and how it's not necessarily a bad thing. Please rate, subscribe, and check out www.taking20podcast.com!

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in to Taking 20, Episode 8, To Minmax or Not to Minmax. Please subscribe and rate us wherever you found this podcast. It would really mean a lot to me. Today's totally real sponsor and not made up is money, the easiest way to procure goods and services in the modern world. So minmaxing, what is it? It's a character building strategy where you maximize specific desirable abilities, skills, or powers of a character and minimize everything else.

You minimize statistics that affect your desired ability the least and maximize the ones with the most impact. and maximize the ones with the most impact. An example from a game I'm running right now, the Ranger is amazing with a laser rifle, but awful at everything else. Has a really low strength, really low charisma, really poor ability to do anything other than shoot that laser rifle real good, yeah. Another example would be a player who dumps his character's intelligence to 5 on a point buy system to get a strength of 20 starting out. These character builds emphasize the most hit points or the most damage or the most spells or the best ranged attack or the best psionic abilities or whatever

that is and they diminish those other aspects of the character that don't contribute to that thing that they want the most of. But here's the question. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Some DMs create their homebrew games assuming all of their players are going to min-max, and any characters that don't, their character would be underpowered and likely just overrun by the power of the campaign or adventure itself. A lot of players look at gaming systems like puzzles to be solved. They feel like if they successfully min-max, they've outsmarted the designers of the game, maybe the other players, and maybe even the GM.

Is min-maxing allowed within your campaign? This should be discussed in session zero and maybe even before session zero. So it may not necessarily be a bad thing, but it certainly can be. One of the things about min-maxing is that it really limits creative roleplay. If there is one best way to build a ranger, leshy, dragonborn, monk,

whatever it happens to be, then it treats the RPG almost like a video game. For those of you that have played these type of games, think Fallout, Skyrim, Dragon Age, Pathfinder Kingmaker, where there are ideal evolution paths that may lead to a better overall experience for the player. Yes, it may be fun to min-max in those games, but if you were paying attention, you'll notice that all of those games are single-player games, where min-maxing only affects the game engine and the NPCs in the world that you're sniping before you ever get close to them. Now, I'm painting with a broad brush here. Some video games, like one I'm playing right now

called Disco Elysium, have no optimum evolution path. You can actually just evolve your character however you want, and the gameplay changes based on that. One of the issues with min-maxing characters is that what if you have a table of four players, one of them has min-maxed their character, where the other three have not? Very quickly, since that character seems overpowered compared to the other three, that character will become the focus while the rest of the team just plays support or watches the min-maxed character do these amazing things. It's an example of stealing the spotlight, where one player starts becoming the focus of the game, and the other three just start to fade into the shadows and almost become unimportant by comparison. Min-maxing also limits choices. If there's one ideal way to build a character then there's a

ton of character options feats skills archetypes abilities that are cast aside for this one primary character building method and honestly running your game like that diminishes the game for everyone and it makes it less fun. Finally, on the bad side, if a character is really good at one thing and really poor at a lot of other things, they're going to naturally use that one strong ability to try to solve all of the problems. This is where you get into one of those situations where the combat min-maxed PC is in a social situation, and when things really start getting difficult for him or her, she just says, well, I'm going to punch the Pope.

It's a bold strategy, but that's the only solution they have to a lot of the complicated problems, because their character can really only do one thing well. So min-maxing limits a player's ability to respond to certain challenges, and it diminishes the game as a whole. So there are ways where min-maxing can be a problem. Now there's some of you that may say the existence of min-maxing, the ability to min-max at all, is just bad game design. And honestly, I think that shifts the blame from the player doing the min-maxing to someone else. Basically, they're saying the game should be smarter than I am.

I think that's a very conceited point of view. And just because you can min-max doesn't necessarily mean that you should. I can climb up on my desk and take a gigantic dump right now, but I shouldn't. Why? Because I like my computer, one. Number two, because I shouldn't. Why? Because I like my computer, one. Number two, because I'm married. And number three, and my dog's looking at me right now, and I'm pretty sure if I tried to take a dump on the desk, the dog will try to follow suit. So I don't want to encourage that behavior. So as a player, should you min-max? My answer is talk to your GM. Your GM will be able to tell you whether or not a campaign is being built

assuming players are going to min-max their characters. So talk to your GM about it. As a GM, what should you do if you do have one player that is wanting to min-max their character? Some of the ways players will min-max their character is they will intentionally take a disadvantage to gain additional advantages. For example, in Pathfinder First Edition, you could actually take flaws to gain additional traits. If a character has a disadvantage and the player thinks it's not a big deal, one of the things I would recommend to a GM is that you pick on that disadvantage. Oh, well, my character has a fear of heights, but I gained this extra trait that gives me a plus one initiative. Good. Put them on a bridge. Good. Put them at the top of

a roof. Good. Put them on a rope ladder. Something that will make that player have to deal with that character's disadvantage. Now, a player may get upset by this. They'll feel like that you're picking on them, to which you can simply say, well, I didn't take this disadvantage to gain the additional trait. So since you have this disadvantage, you're going to have to live with it throughout the campaign. Another thing you can do as a GM, min-maxed characters are usually really good at one thing, but not at others. So don't design all of your encounters that allow that player to use that character's advantage every time. If a player is built around maximizing their ability to do range damage, put them in a

confined space. Put them in a social encounter. Don't make every single encounter that you have in a wide open forest with plenty of cover and places where they can hide and pick off bad guys one by one doing massive amounts of damage per round. In general, if all of your players are min-maxing, then you may need to look at your entire adventure or adventure path and up the encounter difficulty all around. Things that you can do. Make the monsters harder to hit. Give them better weapons. For example, if a character has min-maxed their ability to shrug off damage, then give the monsters better weapons that do more damage or can penetrate through that armor.

Give the monsters class levels. Give the monsters additional skills that maybe aren't in the book. Give the monsters special attacks. It's important to realize as a GM that the monsters that are laid out in the adventure path and the monsters that are laid out in the Bestiary Monster Manual, whatever your gaming system calls its collection of baddies, those are typical stats for those creatures. Not every one of those creatures need to have the exact same stats. You can raise the stats if all of your players are min-maxing, and that at least makes the game more challenging.

So as I was putting this together, my brain kept running to examples from popular culture, things that I've read, things that I've watched, of possible examples of min-maxed characters. And one of the first ones I thought of was from the series Firefly, Jane. For those of you who haven't seen the series, what the hell have you been doing with your life and why are you listening to me right now? Pause this podcast, go watch the entire series of Firefly and the movie Serenity to boot, then come back and listen. Jane is this big, tough, former mercenary, not the smartest person in the world, ideally built for combat, but really not good in social encounters, really not good when he has to do the thinking. And so that would

be an example of a possibly min-maxed character. For those that have read the Dragonlance Chronicles, Raistlin is a prime example. From the description in the book, he likely dumped his constitution score low to increase his intelligence and be a better wizard because of it. Plus, he has some flaws involving the way his eyes work. He sees time as it affects all things. Star Wars, for example. I love the idea of a player coming to the DM and saying, okay, I want to play a seven foot tall Wookiee. I'm super strong and I'm really good with a bowcaster, but I can't speak to anyone who doesn't speak my language. Some of you may disagree with some of these min-maxed examples, but I included them just so that you could think about examples of characters

who have diminished one ability to dramatically increase others. Now, I want to take a minute and differentiate something here. There are players who take flaws that don't directly benefit their character in some way. Those are just character flaws, and that's not an aspect of min-maxing. It's the players who take flaws that the game grants them ability to take additional advantages because of those flaws. That would be a case of potential min-maxing. So really, as a DM, if all your players min-max or none of your players min-max, you don't have a problem. Live happily ever after.

You just may have to scale encounters up or down, but the playing field is level and everybody can have a good time. The problems start to creep in when one or just a few players are min-maxing their characters and the others aren't. That means you'll have to set up encounters and situations and traps that minimize their ability to dominate combat or dominate the social encounter. You may have to set up situations where it takes two simultaneous characters operating at the same time in order to proceed. You need two people to disarm a trap, so maybe one of the min-max characters can do it and maybe one of the non-min-max could as well. can do it and maybe one of the non-min-max could as well. To my players out there, there's one thing I want you to embrace when you're playing tabletop RPGs. You can't win them. Tabletop RPGs are about fun for everyone around the table. It's an opportunity for you to get together with friends or make new friends and have a great time doing it. Just because your

character is the big badass that seems to always get the killing shot, that may or may not be fun for those around you. So build the character you want to build, even if some of the online guides say that's not optimum. Discuss it with the GM, discuss it as a group, and build the character that you want to build. So flipping back to GMs, what are my recommendations? Roll out some house rules. A lot of RPGs, for example, have a point buy system for establishing your base statistics. Have a limit. You can't reduce any ability score lower than 8. It keeps players from dumping stats down to 6 to raise others to 17 or 18. Another thing you can do is give an array of ability scores. Okay players, all of your characters, their 6 ability scores will be this distribution. 16, 15, 14, 12, 12, 10.

Pick one of those numbers to go in each of your ability scores, and you can't dump one to raise another one. There are obviously going to be ancestries and races applied that may bump those scores up and down. That's not min-maxing in my mind. But having everybody start with a common set of ability scores will keep things on a level playing field. A final thing that you can do is you can ban flaws that gain players an advantage on the other side. You can prohibit a character from taking the tough trait which drops their dexterity but increases their strength. Alternately, you can allow them to take flaws or drawbacks or whatever your system calls them, but they don't gain the positive benefits on the other

side. It gives your character depth, it gives your character life, and makes them more believable. Coming out as a GM and saying, I'm banning min-maxing is going to be nearly impossible to enforce, because how do you define it? Even veteran players who have been playing role-playing games for dozens of years aren't going to agree exactly what constitutes min-maxing. So since it's hard to define, it's going to be hard to ban. So my recommendation is use house rules to kind of help police that. Finally, what if you have one or two players who come to you and say they only have fun playing RPGs if they're allowed to min-max? There's multiple solutions here, and I'm not going to suggest that you kick them off of your table. If you still want to play the game with them, give them the

ability to work with the other players who don't know how to min-max or maybe they're newer to the system or can't min-max at all. Allow those veteran players who want to min-max the fun of helping others min-max their characters. Character consistency gives players the most fun at the table and it makes it easier on you, the DM, to boot. So in summary, keep your players on the same page. Either allow min-maxing or house rule character creation to minimize the capability of one player having ludicrous abilities compared to others who don't. It's more fun for you, and it's more fun for them. Well, this episode wound up being shorter than normal. That just gives you more time to play this game that we love. Once again, I want to thank our totally

made-up sponsor. Ooh, I just admitted it, didn't I? Once again, I want to thank our totally made-up sponsor, Money. It only has value because people believe it does. Thank you so much for listening to Taking 20, Episode 8, Min-Max or Not to Min-Max. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.