Wallsingham's page

Never laugh at live dragons.

Actually, laughing at undead dragons is usually not a good idea, either...

Never laugh at live dragons.

Kill them.

Throw them into the Tomb of Horrors?

Well the rest of the party has a min-maxed Zen Archer, a Tiefling Duelist with a minor artifact and a cleric that can chain cast Fireball inside his comfy +3 Full Plate and shield. So there is already some major cheese going on

Well then, nothing to see here. Move along.

"Because sometimes the truth isn't good enough, because sometimes people deserve to have thier faith rewarded"

These aren't minmaxing, but funmaxing.
Is dealing with broken spellbooks fun? No. You never found it fun. Be honest. Unless you like being mean to others (you aren't wizard) but that messes with their fun.

And Cha never was just looks. The game never said it was looks even "back in the day", that was the comliness trait back in the day. So the current players are correct.

So the only claim you are correct is squeezing rules. And it depends on what you mean by "big weapons".

The issue comes in when someone wants to exploit the rules for benefit, but not have to deal with the rules that would counter that benefit.

We have a table rule, if you try some shady rules lawyer stuff and the DM allows it, you can be certain the GM will use the same rules against the party later.

The GM should hold the group to the rules they want to play by. But if you want to be a min/maxer, you should be held to the penalties of the Min if you want the benefits of the max.

there are three seperate topics in the forum right now which show that it's possible to optimize beyond min-maxing
Those topics are

1.) Allowing characters to take Charisma as a dump stat, but not penalizing them for it - after they use it as a dump stat, they ought to be able to say that their character is attractive and, thereby, gain positive modifiers to social encounters

2.) Allowing a Wizard to collect a god-like spell book without having to worry about keeping it safe

3.) Allowing a character to optimize towards big weapons and never have to worry about the down side of when those weapons shouldn't be usable (due to space requirements)

In all three cases, rather than min-maxing, the character maxes and then demands that the GM sweep the min under the rug where it will never be seen.

Am I simply old school? Does all the passion with which these things are argued influence the game designers? Does it indicate the future direction of the game?