Min / Maxing and how far is too far?

[VedounMar]

Shifty wrote:

When its out of synch with the theme of the game and stops being fun for those around you.

This still says it all.

One thing I tend to emphasize is that RPGs are Cooperative Storytelling. . . whether the story is about bashing in zombie skulls or political melodrama, players and GMs kinda hafta work together to "Min/Max" fun. Player vs. DM is as old as the RPG itself, largely due it arising from competitive table-top games. . . The mimic is a classic example of this, or read the Tomb of Horrors for further examples. . . This, however, is something I tend to put down as a poor tradition, maintained more out of habit then intent. No one seemed to be putting such competition as a goal or ideal, but some of the comments seemed to imply it as baseline. . . and I felt the need to preface with this fundamental.

The idea of a character (melee or otherwise) doing 77 points of damage to a key opponent in one strike, practically killing it . . . cool. As a DM who has that happen to my villains on a regular basis, my response as a DM is to say "Wow, that rocked. . . Who's next?" Why get frustrated? The players don't know the hit points, and I can keep adding till everyone gets their time in the sun.

Just a couple of weeks ago I tossed in a Blue Dragon mixed with Kyton abilities. . . fun visual. . . Players had him dead before I even let on he was badly hurt, and the creature didn't drop until well after -50. . . What finally put it down was when the PC Barbarian with a throwing ability out of APG decided to lob a player armed with a spear at it. The player with the spear asked if he could land point first, and that was when I decided it best to say "Yes." and let the thing die. (An attack roll was involved)

I had been unimpressed with that throwing ability when I read it. . . didn't catch my Min/Max'n eye. . . but the player was enthused and I wasn't about to discourage. . . instead I helped set up and interpret situations so that the player could come out awesome. . . As a GM its my responsibility to help enable the story of my players . . . even when I think their "builds" are less then optimal. (though sense of accomplishment still requires a real threat of PC death, even TPK. . . thems the risks)

As for spellcasters being overpowered?. . . depends. A player that wants to break the game will almost always choose a caster to do it, I've seen pursuits using non-spellcasters with varying degrees of success. But the broken builds aren't broken because of a fly spell. . . or remove curse or some such. Heck, I've had a player do more damage to my calm with: a woman's shoe, pencil, camera, and rubber ball then any player accomplished with a fly spell (true story, I'm not kidding). . . The Macguyver style casters aren't broken, they're just fun.

For truly broken casters. . . pick up Dominate. Person or monster. Master Manipulator out of the Drow of the Underdak book. . . ThrallHerd. . . This theme tends to create scenarios where one player dominates the table and makes it very difficult to get everyone involved. . . See Shifty's comment which I shamelessly quoted.

Quick solutions. . . change the dominates to a Duration of Concentration, forget the Master Manipulator exists (or remove the Greater Minion ability and the add CHA + abilities, replace with 3 lvls of spellcasting. . . or something similar). . . and . . . well there isn't a quick solution to the Thrallherd other then not letting in the game. . .

Either way it has little to do with "Balance" per se, as it has with Player Involvement. If everyone's involved and having a good time, let it ride.

Those rare occasions where players actually build game breaking characters? Solved with a short friendly conversation, often blaming my ineptitude at being overwhelmed by X and Y. Then asking the player's help in getting the rest of the party involved and up to snuff. . . involving the player rather then condemning them as a Min/Maxer (or less friendly epithets) has worked well so far :)

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[ESCORPIO]

kyrt-ryder wrote:

ESCORPIO wrote:

If you start considering... taking aberrant bloodline feats you have gone too far.

Huh???

From lords of madness, inhuman reach the most common.

[CASEY BENNETT]

I'd say that the too far mark is either when the character/player is negatively impacting the fun of the others more than a small degree, OR the DM just can't reasonably deal with it.

The first can often be resolved by a small tweak in tactics, only fully letting loose on the really tough encounters, focusing more on buffing/debuffing and crowd control are two of the major middle ground strategies.

The latter issue of DM may be harder. If they are an experienced DM, maybe just not a great optimizer his/herself, getting some advice on challenging the particular problem is probably the best course. Even if one isn't comfortable with getting that help from someone playing in the game, there are a lot of resources online. They can find a buddy that can look over the problem and suggest bumps for future encounters that will help reestablish an equilibrium. An inexperienced DM may just have no better options than to run lower level games or adhering to a tier-based game.

What I mean by that is a game that just doesn't feature certain classes that generally prove to be game-wrecking if not handled by a considerate player. I don't think anyone has done a breakdown of PF classes by tier, at least not that I have seen, but a comprehensive 3.5 list with justifications is out there and not too hard to find. I know it is posted on brilliant gameologists. That could serve as a good guidepoint for a tier-restricted game.

['Rixx]

I think something to remember about min/maxing is the "min" aspect - the idea of min/maxing is to minimize your disadvantages while maximizing your advantages. Sure, it's rules-savvy gameplay to dump certain stats in favor of others, but how that comes into play with your character is important. For my Pathfinder Society character, I made a character who dumps both WIS and CHA down to 8 in order to get good enough stats elsewhere to realize her character concept - because of this, she's weak-willed and shy, speaking very quietly and acting kind of awkwardly around people. I traded a strength for a weakness, and I'm playing the weakness as well as the strength. Likewise, taking feats or traits to cover up weaknesses is fine - if you dump your Wisdom score, then take Iron Will to help your poor will save, you've invested resources (and highly limited ones at that) into covering your weakness.

A typical min/maxer will only take a weakness if he can reasonably ignore it or explain it away, or cover it up with magic items or other gear at minimal cost. I played with someone who had his character's backstory involve countless years of experience as a celestial soldier / sergeant / general / Solar angel (it got retroactively more and more glorious as time went on), which he used to justify using metagame knowledge constantly without putting any ranks into any knowledge skills. This was also common back in the 3.5 days, when druids would dump all their physical stats and just stay in wild shape all the time (despite the disadvantages of being a dog or bear for most of the day, which the character would have to suffer rather than the player). And this is just typical min/maxing behavior - sometimes it gets even sillier, with techniques that would be downright stupid if you read them in a fantasy story, but work out well from a mechanical standpoint (such as having a large friend grapple you and move you around, so you can get your skirmish damage and still full-attack). A weakness that's ignored, or a weakness that isn't really a weakness, when traded for a strength of disproportionate value, is min/maxing to me, and is what goes too far.