Is Min/Max a bad thing?

Arkandel · Apr 25, 2022, 10:03 PM

Did I do it wrong.

Without reading the rest of the post, almost certainly!

TheBigD · Apr 27, 2022, 2:03 PM

@arkandel I'm of mixed thoughts on this.

On the one hand, if it's just min-maxed stats? That alone won't win fights if said stats mean +2 extra damage over everyone else, or maybe a few more of the bad guys fail their saves on that fireball.

On the other hand, if it's full out min-maxed everything? Eeesh. I'm watching my current GM struggle to contain the character of his son, who has definitely picked a very good class for min-maxing. He can do ridiculous damage, to the point of one-shotting anything we've faced for the most part. My buddy-GM has had to pull out all the tricks just to slow his son's character down. xD There's a broad line between "I do a little more damage." and "Nothing lives if I can get close enough to hit it." The GM knew the risks, but it's his son. We've not been robbed of our fun, such is our GM's ability. But if his son was a jerk, or he was inexperienced GM? Yeah, that'd be a whole lot of not fun.

When I GM, I allow folks to min-max stats. But I really encourage character flaws too, everyone needs an achille's heel. Mooks are for killing, as they say, but you can be darned sure that if the BigBad gets a whiff of you, they're going to be studying your character from afar. They may find out that they need to stab you in the girlfriend, or long lost twin or something, to bring you down without having you get close enough to one-shot them.

Solstice · Apr 27, 2022, 4:01 PM

I think of min-maxing your character's specialization as a pretty organic way of telling a given character's story. I'm not going to say that no one is interested in a story where a character works really hard to improve themselves, and then gets killed by a gnoll because of a really bad series of botched dice throws, because... well, come on, that's funny.

But it's less funny in the context of a story-rich game where you've spent literal years building up a character. The specter of possible death is a good motivating force, and the dice won't always be on your side, but I can say that on slow-burn games, having a bad dice day on something your character is supposed to be good at can feel gutwrenching.

"Aw, man, I only get to do this maybe once a year, and I failed every roll."

So people tend to drift towards trying to mitigate that feeling. This is especially true for combat stats, I feel, because they tend to directly impact whether you're killed. Failing a seduction roll isn't quite the same stakes (usually) as failing a roll to see whether the fragment of meteorite that just fell on your head kills you or not.

This is all completely mitigated when playing with a trusted GM, who knows that what's funny isn't always fun, and what's realistic isn't always preferable. I can and have fudged the numbers in campaigns so that my crew can get through by the skin of their teeth rather than having two of them get killed by a random mob at the start of a dungeon. Permadeath is scary, yo.

I think it's extra difficult for players to feel safe with that rapport on a game where you don't know who's GMing for you, especially when you're a new player. Thus, min/maxing is a pretty natural outcome. Sometimes the people who have the highest stats in something aren't trying to be master of the blade, they're just trying to not suck when it matters most.

But yeah, I side-eye people who want to be good at everything, and drift through scenes with perfect poise. If it's fun for them, cool. But goodness is it stale to react to as a player or a scenerunner.

ETA: In short, It's complicated. I think the best-intentioned min/max categories are people wanting their character to survive (or other bad-luck protections), and people will do this in environments where they don't feel super duper safe for any number of valid (or perceived) reasons.

MisterBoring · Apr 27, 2022, 4:43 PM

@solstice said in Is Min/Max a bad thing?:

I think of min-maxing your character's specialization as a pretty organic way of telling a given character's story.

There's a big difference between making a character who is competent at their specialization and min-maxing in my book. Min-maxing is the difference between being competent and world class.

For example, I am a competent swimmer. Michael Phelps is min-maxed for swimming.

Tinuviel · Apr 27, 2022, 4:49 PM

@misterboring said in Is Min/Max a bad thing?:

There's a big difference between making a character who is competent at their specialization and min-maxing in my book. Min-maxing is the difference between being competent and world class.

As has been said before in this thread, the biggest problem with talking about 'min-maxing' is that everyone has different ideas of what min-maxing is. The "badness line" invariably being just below whatever it is they're doing.

Seraphim73 · Apr 27, 2022, 6:36 PM

@faraday said in Is Min/Max a bad thing?:
Unless you've got some grand scheme to sustain non-combat RP plots across your playerbase, just tell them up front that combat/adventure is going to be the main focus and make sure your chargen/approval process is structured accordingly. If someone REALLY wants to play a chef despite all that, make sure they understand that they'll be sandboxing their own fun.

It's all about expectations.

This is why I really appreciate the distinction between Action Skills and Background Skills in FS3. Not because physical skills should cost more to purchase out of Chargen, but because the distinction between the two types of skills can and should let you know what type of game you're playing. Sadly, it doesn't always, because Staff either want to run an adventure game or think that they have to have Athletics, Melee, and Ranged as Action Skills because they're active, and involve action. But they can!

Imagine, for example, a theoretical FS3 MUSH about Ministers of Parliament or Congresspeople -- Athletics, Melee, and Ranged would all be Background Skills, while the Attributes and Action Skills might be Composure, Hometown Support, Pontificating, Deception, Willful Obliviousness, Investigation, Connections, War Chest, Soundbites, etc. I don't know if that would be awesome, horrifying, or both, but the Attributes and Action Skills would certainly tell you what the game was about.

Derp · Apr 27, 2022, 7:14 PM

@seraphim73 said in Is Min/Max a bad thing?:

Imagine, for example, a theoretical FS3 MUSH about Ministers of Parliament or Congresspeople -- Athletics, Melee, and Ranged would all be Background Skills, while the Attributes and Action Skills might be Composure, Hometown Support, Pontificating, Deception, Willful Obliviousness, Investigation, Connections, War Chest, Soundbites, etc. I don't know if that would be awesome, horrifying, or both, but the Attributes and Action Skills would certainly tell you what the game was about.

This made me lol and I needed that today. Take your upvote, sir.