| Shoeless |
I'm in the campaign Kaptain's joining, so I figured I should comment before many more people put much thought on this.
This is the first game ever for two of the players in the group, and two of the others have played D&D a lot in the past but never bothered to learn the rules.
That makes me and Kaptain the only players in the group (not counting the GM) to understand the nitty gritty mechanics. So when Kaptain asked to join, I warned him to avoid min/maxing so that he wouldn't leave the other players in the dust. I think I over-emphasized the warning, though. =P
The other players may not have min/maxed their characters, but I did help them make some optimizations. So Kaptain is going back to the drawing board to make a better character design (probably one that doesn't involve pyromaniac gnome clerics).
Thanks for everyone's help!