Your argument "min-maxing is a win button and the players never fail" seems to assume some sort of mythical min-maxing that makes a character succeed at everything. Really, min-maxing is being about being very good at a specific thing (or a few specific things). Yes, those characters are likely to succeed when doing those things, but importantly, will probably have problems when doing anything else. A good DM, then, throws a mix of those situations at that character, so sometimes they can be awesome at the thing they are awesome at, and sometimes their weakness bites them. A party might be able to cover some of each others' weaknesses (and I wish such teamwork mechanics were ingrained more in RPGs), but if they are covering all of the weaknesses then that's lack of imagination in the DM and not a problem of min-maxing players. Sure, if the party is highly optimized for combat, then you can throw harder stuff at them. Let them mow through some an encounters and be combat bad-assess, because those are the characters they want to play. Give them tougher-than normal fights that other parties couldn't handle, because that's the story they want to play. I'm sorry you throw in the towel on your campaigns before the players have the awesome fun of a barbarian that can soak a thousand points of damage during a battle, a wizard wiping out an army with a Meteor Swarm, the fighter who can stand toe-to-toe with a giant, and the Cleric who can bring back their friends who died saving the world. You miss out on a lot of fun.
A wizard who can wipe out an army with a meteor swarm requires a stockpile of armies for them to kill and the constant threat of things that eat mountains. It is obvious that you (plural) need to adapt and change in the escalation and power expansion of the characters, but that doesn't stop it becoming silly. A barbarian doing 1,000 points of damage is matched by few things. If he is a murder hobo, there is nothing he can't kill.
@@QuestGivers That barbarian or wizard will still have weakness something they are bad at or vulnerable to. That 1000 points of damage a barbarian is capable of doing means nothing when they are running away in fear or cant reach the enemy Exploit the barbarian's weakness and challenge them that way
@@QuestGivers That barbarian would still be slaughtered by high level caster at range, that wizard will get stomped by a rakshasha (depending on the edition) or another high level caster accompanied by brutes (you could even have a pair of wizards where one has the sole purpose of disrupting the enemy wizard via counterspell). That barbarian should struggle with anything related to magic, including deciphering the arcane runes that hold a clue or understanding some magical device; the wizard will struggle in tests or feats of strength. And then more problems arise when players don't "min-max" because now no one is very good at anything.
I have to agree with you both coming from a DM's standpoint, as well as that of a player. I play d&d 5e, but I have had a bad history with 3.5e because of how easy it was to exploit the rules of the game. As a DM playing 5e, I recently had a player who said he was multiclassing for the sake of character story, but I saw that he simply just wanted to make his character more powerful, by exploiting a lot of rules and making complex and ridiculous combos. I play 5e and he talked endlessly about multiclassing a wizard/eldritch knight fighter to get the extra spells, cantrips, all while wearing plate armor and choosing specific feats to augment everything. He even mentioned he wanted to choose the Alert feat, merely because it is a "bane of all DMs". He begged me one time to start at 13th level, and when I refused he pouted and mopped. As a player playing 3.5e about 6 years ago, I encountered another player who made this character just to make the most powerful grappler ever, and all I did was make a really cool druid on his pilgrimage, with a panther companion because...I like panthers! Lol. But this guy started as a monk, then Crusader (basically another type of paladin) just for the features, then into barbarian, and all this crazy stuff! He was destroying everything the DM threw at him, and all I was doing was shooting arrows, commanding my panther to sneak around and ambush enemies, and speaking in a British accent (I'm American XD). Personally, as much as I want my character to be the best they can be mechanically, I myself prefer not to exploit the rules. Like, a paladin who is more focused on Strength and Charisma over Dexterity, who also wears plate armor and wields a greatsword (thinking Ned Stark from Game of Thrones). While I may take feats that augment that two-handed fighting style I chose, I try not to calculate every single thing and just go with the flow of the story. Though, there is one thing I sometimes of go against in this video. Not often, but a couple times I have. In 6:50, DMG, you mention you don't like games that don't start at level 1. I agree to that, but sometimes I like to start my players off at 3rd in 5e, because of the subclasses that I believe can further flesh out a character. But more often than not, I still start at 1st level.
This. I've got one who has proficiency in almost everything and then he gets cranky if others in the party aren't investigating etc when we're all like 'what's the point, your character can do everything anyway'
Min-maxing is the natural reaction to the type of game the creators of dnd enjoyed and empowered their dms to engage in during structured play. If you hate minmaxers, blame gygax and AL and the community for empowering them both. The reality of dnd is this, because dms want their players to be challenged at all levels the problem scales to the player level. Your character doesn’t get stronger compared to the problem they face, ever. The cgi budget just gets higher. Where this curve of difficulty starts doesnt really matter so long as you’re building a campaign for the characters and not staring impotently at a module that’s been outscaled.
If your players always succeed and there is nothing to propel the game forward because they read the rules and made an effective character then you need to learn to DM better. I encourage my players to make effective characters and teach them how to do it. You litterally control the entire world, challenging players is not that hard.
@QuestGivers What you call min-maxing is what I call effective. Making a character that is good at what it does. For example, if you want to play a hippy, nature focused healer then a stars druid with a single level of life cleric is much more effective than a straight land druid. Knowing that requires reading the rules and thinking about the mechanics of your character.
Effective at what? Mechanically effective? Wouldn't be naratologically effective? How does this "effectiveness" play out? Do you have to create situations for them to be more hippy? To my way of thinking, there is no such thing as an "effective" character - that's the point. A character is built and developed through play and narrative decisions. Not by picking items off a menu. How does this hippy come to be a hippy? That is the more emersive and interesting game in my opinion. Any character is effective in that sense, so you don't need to optimize for some mechanical advantage. Even the most useless of beings can grow in play.
@@QuestGivers 1. Your video is complaining about players who make mechanically effective characters. I specify what I mean by effective in the first line of my last post. 2. Whether a player 'minmaxes' as you call it has nothing to do with whether they roleplay well. Of course a character grows through RP choices but that's not the subject of your video. You seem to believe the old stormwind fallacy. You use the fact that you are personally more interested in RP than mechanics as an excuse to criticise those who learn the rules and use that. Let your players play how they want and if it's causing problems with the way you DM- talk to them to find a mutually acceptable resolution. Don't blame players for playing (mechanically) well.
I am not more interested in roleplaying than mechanics. I am interested in balancing the two. It is a game, you can play however you wish. If a DM played in a rules effective optomised way... the characters would all be dead pretty quickly. You wouldn't want a DM to play an optimised narrative either... a railroad. It is far more "effective" to give characters no choices. Ultimately, it comes down to what is fun for the whole table... DM included. If everyone at the table just wants to do one thing in the same scenarios over and over again, have at it.
I disagree. Saying that high level adventures with competent players are boring by default is a DM excuse. Yes, it requires creativity and a robust setting (plus a good understanding thereof) to plan a high level campaign, but games like DnD are ABOUT the players' power fantasy. If you want something grittier and more limiting to players, choose a different system. And if the DM doesn't want to focus on balancing challenges because it isn't fun for them, they need to talk to their players ahead of time and establish expectations for the campaign (which is what you should always do anyway).
We didn't say "with competent players". We are saying with characters that have basically had all their progress piled into a single aspect of their character. This makes the character less dynamic and more one dimensional.
@@QuestGivers Does it really? If a character focuses on a single strength, then everything else is a weakness for them, right? If so, that leaves plenty of room for amazing roleplay. I think we might be talking about two different things. I'm referring to min-maxing as an approach to character building that any player can use, while you're talking about power gamers who treat RPGs like games they can win. That's not about exploiting rules mastery, though - it's about players' and DMs' expectations not aligning.
DMG nailed it at 7:02. I've often played games where the DM started everyone on level 3,4,5. None were the better for it. It's the struggle that makes the game interesting.
Hey G & Scotty, really enjoying these thought provoking videos. Back in the day when I was always the DM. We never went past level 15, by then everybody was ready to play a new character. The group would just state they are ready to start at level one again. I have always enjoyed levels 1-10 the most as a DM and a player. As far as playing an OP character, its not necessary. The dice are random, even OP characters fail. My experience as a DM, people (children & adults) who want these OP characters. Simply freak out when they fail. They just can't believe their superman has just failed or even died. "With failure comes growth". Thanks Scotty & G, you gentlemen have a great day.
I'm still not sure if I understand, is minmaxing when a person makes a character who is too powerful? I thought minmaxing was when a character Maxes out the things they are already good at so that they can almost never fail those specific things, BUT leaving themselves weak to other things. For example I've been accused of minmaxing. I'm a new player, so it's not like I actively was trying to cheat the game. I made my character in the way that made sense to me. I'm a tabaxi rogue, a sassy Mae West-type Arcane trickster. I pretty much can never fail persuasion, deception, stealth, acrobatics, slight of hand, and arcana (reliable talent in all of those.) And in most scenes I tend to roleplay, I lean towards those things and do exceptionally well (flirting with people for info, picking pockets, etc.) BUT I'm pretty useless for anything that requires intelligence, strength or constitution. I die in most combat if I'm not constantly hiding and I don't do much damage. But I also take the role playing very seriously. I think personality wise my character is very complex. Did I minmax by accident? Doesn't it make sense to play to your strengths?
Essentially min maxing is "putting all your eggs in one basket". It isn't against the rules in most games, and some games will embrace the practice, but it detracts from the experience of the game to some extent. If the only thing your character can do is flirt and pick pockets, they are only valuable in certain scenarios and in certain types of games. If your character enters a session where there is mostly combat with unintelligent undead monsters you will have a problem "being useful". This does a disservice to you firstly, and secondly to the rest of the players in the group if your character is not bringing anything to the experience. That being said. It isn't "wrong'. You should play the character you want to play. Our advice is basically allow your character to have some other skillsets that may not be very good, but at least allow you to participate. Would you want to be the character who's sole purpose is ONLY doing the party healing, you'd basically be the group mobile healing potion drinking fountain. You run the risk of your character become 1 dimensional. They only do that thing. They are only good for one thing. Minmaxing does mean that a character can be too powerful in one specific area, but on the flip side you are super weak in almost everything else, the min to the max in MinMax. Personally I feel there is a problem with "never failing". A character that "never fails" never grows. There should always be room for failure. I have 3 decades of experience running, playing and writing games and trust me when I say, failure is where the BEST adventures happen. As an experiment: Try running the very same character, but don't put all your effort into being the best at the arcane trickster abilities. Just put in the prescribed minimums. Play the character as if she THINKS she is THE BEST at flirting and picking pockets, but really is average. The effects on the character of coming to grips with the fact that she is NOT the best makes for a better role-playing experience. This is also why it is super important that all characters should start at level 1. Level 1 is the seed of your character. You character grows as you play them. You backstory should evolve and adapt and be created in the game.
@@QuestGivers if every character is average at things whos going to be good at anything? I assume the minmaxer, optimizer or power gamer. Also what are your thoughts on a sorcerer that doesnt use spells and has a negative in every stat.
@@Whyvren950 no one's saying every character is going to be average. Obviously The Bard's going to have high charisma, the wizard has high intelligence, and the barbarian has high strength. The difference between average and min maxing is if all those characters have a 20 in their highest stat at level one and also took feats that cheese out some of the basic rules in order to auto win. For instance, the one min maxer in my party made a new character who uses firearms and of course he chose feats and a class that allow him to always have advantage on attack roles meaning he also gets sneak attack damage (also he has 20 DEX). The DM in this case just needs to put the enemies out of range. But still not fun when everyone else is playing normal characters and you have the one guy in the party who's trying to be the main anime protagonist who always wins at everything. My advice to the minmaxers is always to go into their favorite vtt or IRL D&D board and just set up a bunch of figures and play by themselves and kill all the enemies they want. Or just play a video game. TT RPGs are not about speed running a campaign it's about working through the adventure and the challenges of the game which DOES include failure
These are brain dead takes. Imagine if Elmister stopped at level 6. Boring. Maybe as a DM you should read lore and learn the mechanics of the game so you can challenge your players like most responsible DMs can do. You guys want baby parties because you don't like thinking about tactics beyond throwing kobolds at the party.
@007ohboy I think its good for DMs who struggle with game mechanics to stop at low level. It's also fine for them to ban specific powerful combos that they can't cope with- provided that's communicated in advance. What's not OK is to suggest that the player who put effort in to learn the rules and play well is the problem.
I agree to a point. Power gaming can be fun with the right group and mentality. I have played in many campaigns that our group was min-maxed and had a great story and narrative. If a GM can't handle min-maxed character, then they need to either learn how to deal with them in game, this does not mean they have to become an adversarial GM, just have to hit the PC in the dump stat or present challenges at the PC power level. Talking to the player(s) and tell them "hey I am not comfortable running PC that are this powerful, lets tone it down", is another way for GM to bring the game back down to a manageable level for them. If a party doesn't help the GM in this request then it's not the right group for them and no gaming is better than bad gaming. The biggest problems come from min-maxers who are all about the numbers and have a GM that is all about the narrative. The player isn't even wanting to engage in the story then that is a problem min-maxer. I disagree about having to start at level 1 and rolled stats. If needing to start at level 1 is the only way to get players to be invested in the world, then I would look at your storytelling and the party. I tend to start my D&D 5e games between lv 3 to 6 (most commonly lv3) so that the meat of the campaign will happen between lv 12 - 16, where 5e was designed to plateau out (level 8 to 12 was for 1e) and I have had all my players invested in the world and the story. In my experience PC that has had their stats rolled down the line tend to be throwaway characters, or become one-note background characters in the party (often the comic relief), even more so if they have a really low stat (3-5). Point buy and assigned stats gives the players an investment into a character they want to play and not one they forced to play. Min-maxed games aren't for everybody, I personally prefer not to play power-gamey min-maxed games (but you would call starting above level 1 min-maxed), but I also do enjoy playing in a min-maxed game, from time to time, with the right group (ie. not a number solely a number crunch feast). What it really comes down to is, if you and the rest of the gaming group are having fun, then you are doing it right.
Paul Ross you tell them and they whine and complain that they can’t play their min maxed character. You told them in the game description and session 0 that you are a story and character centric dm and they still entered the game. Min maxer fault.
Hey the dm can just say “please don’t min max, and make a character”. I agree that with inexperienced dms players shouldn’t try to “break the game”, but I really think that a dm can work around it, or if there is really a problem, kick the player out.
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You totally cofuse min-maxing with optimizing... : 1. Min-maxing - maxing out things that define core concept of character while min everything else that does not increase power of said core concept. Example: Taking Zealot Barbarian becasue Zealot = most DPS, taking PAM and GWM becasue Reckless + 3rd attack + GWM + Rage. But at the same time, poor WIS, poor CHA, poor INT, poor saves vs spells because that's not the focus on character. That's min-maxing. 2. Optimizing - giving character as much power as possible while making sure he has as little weaknesses as possible. Example 1 Artificer/X Chrono Wizard Custom Lineage. 18 INT at start, medium armors + shield, CON prof for concentration saves, Chrono for strongest Wizard. Next ASI - Lucky to compensate for weaker saves and to counter disadvantages, Next ASI - RES (WIS) to compensate for poor WIS saves (most devastating saves). That's example of optimizing, we take powerful core concept (Wizard caster) and we maximize his power (by best/meta spells and starting with 18 INT) and then we patch all weaknesses that could be exploited - bad saves (Lucky), bad AC (Artificer multiclass), bad CON saves (Artificer), bad WIS saves (RES WIS feat). That's optimizing. That's the difference.
@@QuestGivers Bad is a subjective conclusion. People have different definitions of fun from different activities. At your table it might be bad, at others people have fun while doing it and it doesn't also affect the fun of other players, becasue a lot depends on a person who plays. And also GM that is leading the story. It's also a matter of dialogue at the table to make sure everything works together. "Only this is good and this is always bad" is very shortsighted conclusion in my opinion. But each to his own.
You worded the problem nicely. It's like pressing the insta-win button. No risk, all rewards. There won't be any interesting stories there if your character doesn't have flaws. Exactly why superman is so boring as a protagonist. Back in the old days while I was trying to DM Pathfinder 1E, I could never convince my players why minmaxing was a problem. I carefully wrote and designed my dungeons from scratch, invented cool bosses with unique abilities and interesting homebrew monsters to match them, got some nice dialogue and plot exposition for them that they could roleplay. Some puzzles for them to solve and unique treasure to find. But unfortunately, it was like pearls before swines. My min-maxy players would just use their wand of maximized scorching rays to insta-zap every enemy in front of them. Even the boss. And if he would survive 1 hit, they would fire a second one the next turn. Players would stay at a distance and all the boss could do on his turn was move, then die. Fire resistance wasn't enough to prevent it. All my hard work? Gone. Here's a summary of the story: Players come across giant crabs, they zap them. Players come across a corrupted merfolk king, they zap it. He survived, they zap him again. There's a maze, they zap the walls. There's a kraken, zap it. There's an even bigger kraken, zap it twice. There's treasure? Let's sell it because we can't use it, after all it's less good than the zappy stick. I also had to come up with all kinds of bullshit just in an attempt to thwart the zappy-stick and players called me out on my DM-cheating. I had to ban the zappy stick and my players were furious at me.
In that situation, it may have been a good story element to have an NPC steal the zappystick and the players have to travers the world to try and get it back, always tantalisingly just ahead of them. No reward is greater than players getting their beloved baubles back. The other problem is when the PCs encounter problems for which they have dumped all the stats that would have helped them. Then they end up dieing. There always needs to be a balance.
The rules are a guide. It says that in the rules. Experienced players are better at min max. Just realize that your gonna have to be as creative as your players if you go into the higher level. But if you can't find a way to challenge the players, your not trying hard enough. Leveling up monsters is easy- up their stats. Tailor things to the difficulty and strength of the party. For the noobs- you can give them more stuff to help them, for experienced players, go with low magic. Make them earn it.
I hate min/maxers. It just makes everything so incredibly boring and stops others in the party from having their moments. Especially those who go hard on the multi-classing so they can basically do everything, then all of a sudden there's no point having a party. As a new DM though, do you have a shortlist of things that we should look out for? I have a hard time absorbing rules, so I have to keep looking things up and therefore kinda trust the players with their characters, so it'd be nice to know some really clear identifiers that a player is min/maxing
Min maxers are either trying to be the best, win or be the most helpful character in the group. They tend to be obsessed with the mathematical aspects of the rules and to squeeze out the MOST optimal result from every action. You will have great difficulty stopping this. You need to determine if they are trying to win, trying to be the best, or trying to be the most helpful. You need to structure your hooks and events to lean into their mindset and balance this with the other players. An enjoyable game is where everyone is enjoying it. As the GM your role is to balance the experience of fun across all players. If you stop the game being fun for a min/maxer they will begin to derail the game. One of the reasons strict turn order is preferable is that it helps to balance the actions across all the players. Min/Maxers tend to be power gamers. Strict turn order allows you to control how much input each player has. They can power game on their turn and not force their option every time.
@@QuestGivers Completely agree and understand better now via your "strict order" after rolling initiative so thank you. The players attack in this order period. I understand it can not always fit in regards to story telling (for example, how can so and so be attacking first if such and such is happening. I understand it but Strict turn order overall I think is the best solution) Would you recommend the same via enemy attacks with multiple enemies present. To illustrate, Im a newb DM to teach my son (now 14) D&D. I started on AD&D and have been his DM for two years now via already written and structured Campaign. We currently have three characters. I run one along with DMing and he runs two. When multiple enemies are present, I roll to see which character the enemy is attacking. For example, 1-7 attacks what character Ive assigned to those numbers. 8-14 attacks what character Ive assigned to those numbers etc. Again thanks for the idea of Strict turn order. It makes sense to me.
If you are trying to solve a puzzle or engaging in social interactions does it matter if your character is min maxed for combat? In most groups I been in when the party needs to be deceive someone Its the player who is best at deceiving who does the talking not player whose character is min maxed to be as good as possible at deception . You not your character have to be good at deception in order for the party to let you try.
@munninn3823 I guess my question was more: Would the character solve it, and does that make sense from a role-playing angle. Would there be any reason for a player who is super charismatic to play a high cha character if they can use their own charisma? Or if the before mentioned barbarians party is in a room of magical silence and the dm gives a note card with the clue to the puzzle saying it is written on a column or whatever is it still reasonable for them to solve it? At what point do the skill checks start? Do you go oh your a watch maker/repairer you could definitely disarm the trap?
@@beowulf_cadmus8488 I seen this brought up in some videos. Is the player or character suppose to solve the puzzle or who is suppose to come up with a convincing lie the player or the character th-cam.com/video/JFojvzuQb04/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/qpBAdkgeJyY/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/m2ulBJ6VD2Q/w-d-xo.html
different strokes for different folks ya know. I'm legitimately curious, is it less fun for you because you seem to "always succeed" (which is untrue) or because failure can be fun? any other reasoning? also min maxing in video games makes them less fun? min maxing a video game is what progression is a b o u t. It hurts to know you've irreversibly built something that is objectively bad. not worse. bad. imagine a mage in skyrim or not upgrading anything an a batman game or perhaps just using the stock pistol in csgo
@@mtbthiccness3605 It's less fun because you go from having dozens of different choices that all work just fine to a single choice that is "the best". Min maxing is not what video games are about, and that mindset has only become a thing in recent years. "imagine not upgrading anything in a game or just using the stock pistol in CSGO" Oh you mean "imagine not using the absolute best thing at all times because if it isn't the absolute best it's not worth using"? Because that's the real question you just asked. Imagine playing a shooter where there's 500 guns and everybody uses the same 2-3 because they're 5% better at killing people than the other 495. Imagine playing an RPG where there's 10 classes each with 3 different specs and everybody plays the same two classes/specs and nothing else because they can output 5% more. Despite the fact that you can still kill people with basically any gun in that 500 gun selection, and despite the fact that every class/spec in that rpg game is completely viable, everybody uses the exact same shit because of min maxing. It makes games boring and repetitive as fuck, and these aren't examples I simply pulled out of my ass. These are real examples you see with WoW and MW2019. Which is why those games suck now.
@@mtbthiccness3605 Not to mention, what is the fun of saying "wow I just did good in this game because I used the best items" compared to "wow I just did good in this game because I'm good at it". Doing good because you can follow a meta does not mean you are skilled. Unlike what min maxers seem to think.
@@jellyfrosh9102 that's what i really wanted to get at. How i stop wanting that and switch my point of view because of EXACTLY what you just said. example warzone, I dislike that theres 2 guns in the whole game that people use out of the 100 others. exact example you made. obviously that feels good but it feels "better" to play with the gun that you like even though its technically worse, and hypothetically you'll do better with it cuz you like it. kinda honestly at this point exploring the deeper personal reasons why i min max and feel bad using a less than optimized character even though i dont play warzone like that. i hope i havent been too abrasive and you'll engage this conversation. admittedly the rum brings childishness i regret.
2:15 A boulder is rolling behind you and will hit you. Do you? A. Make an acrobatics check to get out of the way. (Specializing mobile characters) B. Have someone cast a spell to destroy the boulder (Specializing spellcasters) C. Find a large uprooted tree or something to put in the path that will slow it down (Specializing high strength characters) D. Lie on the ground and hope the DM rolls low damage and that you can pass all your death saves. Now that the boulder incident is over. Are you inside or outside? If inside maybe like a dungeon have someone look for traps, maybe someone else is here or it's abandoned. Why is it occupied? Why was it abandoned? Outside was the boulder caused by nature or did some creature send the boulder? Maybe someone could use perception to see where it came from. Maybe someone knows nature about the area being prone to rock falls and avalanches. Either way your players need to press on. 2:42 The players overcame the problem of the boulder when they blew it up. GM's job is keep things interesting, sometimes it's challenges, sometimes it's plot hooks, sometimes it's worldbuilding. All depends. Issue with the boulder as problem is no one wants to pick D, here failure means death. Failing to persuade the shop keeper to lower price of an item just means you pay full price. Humans are afraid of risk of failure to make attempts. Encourage players. Don't punish them for willing to take that risk though with a grain of salt. A problem with the whole I win thing goes like this. Ok so the heroes are summoned by the king of this country and he needs you to go on this long arduous quest to defeat an unholy creature. You will be rewarded handsomely. One of the characters decides he can sneak pass the guards into the king's treasury and take as much loot as he wants giving no need or incentive to go on this question. He has low combat and strength and high stealth specifically for this. Here is where as a DM you put your foot down and say no. Or play it out They get into the treasury, but getting out is hard. The guards found their entry and are suspicious. Reinforcements are coming and carrying all that loot gives disadvantage to their stealth. If they are caught the king will blame the whole party or if any of them are seen with large amounts of gold rumors will spread and guards will come to investigate and bring you before the king. Now the king will offer you nothing and tell you to never come into his kingdom again or he will have all of you hanged. Your infamy spreads, how will it affect your characters. What personal journeys did they have? Do some decide to continue the quest to redeem themselves, to find glory, because they were entrusted to do this thing? 5:32 Why is Superman's enemy Lex Luthor? It's because while Superman can punch a meteor about to hit the Earth and save Metropolis, Lex can twist how people see it and be nervous of him. When Superman used his power to kill people like Lex or the Joker or whoever usually it ends in some crap sack world where he rules with martial law. His story was never about stopping the meteor from destroying Metropolis it was about stopping himself from going too far, cue his Justice league tissue paper speech. Some players can't think that way true and they try to minimize risk because to them success is the story not failure. Failure means being stuck at a problem and not moving on while success means continuing forward. Again find way that a character not afraid of failure. Think if they go this route what would they find if they succeed and if not that is ok it was a small side gig anyway the main path continues and no matter how many times they fail something the adventure continues. 15:01 Rules in one book are just as valid as they are in another official book as long as it is the same game and version. Players can use classes or spells from PHB or SWAG or Xanth and the DM can pull creatures from Volo's or MToF or wherever. Just have it available the DM can see, read and put his say on it. He can put his foot down if he feels it is too powerful or doesn't understand it but doesn't mean it isn't part of the game just because it came later. 16:15 Making random characters can be fun. I have done the 4 d6 reroll 1 drop the lowest and then roll a d6 to see which stat gets it. Makes things interesting. The "not getting classes" thing kind of makes it seem like you are detached from Dnd...(similar with casting a level 3 spell fireball at level 1) and sure it's a general example the issue is when you pretend to know medicine in front of a group of people with a couple of doctors those couple of doctors might call you as being quacks. I mean to put it into perspective and sorry to detract the screen set up is to make it appear both of you are playing a game together but the reality is you aren't even in the same room. It's not an issue in of itself at all, but the perception comes when someone interprets you to be trying to be something you are not. I don't know your experience with GM or roleplay games or anything else just be aware of how your credibility looks to others for what you say. Take mind for example, I know I have low credibility because I spent all this time making a TH-cam comment instead of actually living in the real world so just goes to show how much I actually "know" about what I'm talking about Your philosophy of role playing boils down to characters being strong enough to overcome my challenges because how they optimized their players is bad. The video doesn't seem to address what minmaxing is or how it negatively affected the experience of DMs and other players at the table. A die roll means there will be success and failure equally and your game doesn't stop at their success just as it doesn't stop at their failure and what is important is to find they are having fun. Ask them in between session anything they would like to try, maybe a heist or participate in a sky chariot race with hippogriff pulling or finding a lost temple or battling a lich. Experience and levels and items and gold mean they have more things to do they things YOU want but maybe not what they want. Find out what in this fantasy world appeals to them they would like to try and think how you can have it even if just 1 session or half a session. When they fail and not beat their thing right away they can get up and keep going being adventurer's in the world. Problem with this though it only works for one player but the reprise will give time to continue where the game goes next and development on it more
You know there are a lot of games, not just D&D and min-maxing is something people do in a lot of games and not just D&D. D&D is not a very robust rule system. It is not well balanced and breaks down in similar ways across editions as the designers continue to try to keep "D&D" features alive which just perpetuate the issues that go all the way back to 1st edition. D&D features permeate a variety of games like DNA, some games are able to remove aspects that unbalance the game, while others are merely thinly disguised clones. D&D was never really designed to play beyond 7th or 8th level. For marketing and product expansion they opted to go to 20 and beyond in epic levels, because the players wanted it. This is why D&D becomes ridiculous after these levels. It is also why the spells stop at 9 and don't go on to 20 to 30 levels. As you get more powerful, the monsters match your power, ad infinitum. As monsters get more hit points you do more damage. This constant rebalancing reveals the fact that it is unbalanced. It is forced to add arbitrary numbers to increase arbitray counter numbers so that it all boils back down to you hit it 3 or 4 times and it dies. The concept of min-maxing is to minimise the risk of failure and maximise success. However, only in defined aspects of the character created. To maximise success in ONE aspect of the character, other aspects need to be minimised. Failure becomes more prevalent when those minimised aspects are tested. The boulder and every problem faced is solved by that ONE maximised aspect... I fireball it, or I dodge, or I jump over it... and that is all they EVER do. Meet an NPC... fireball. Come across a locked door... fireball. Need to light a campire... fireball. No one has claimed to be experts. What we do is assert an opinion to start you thinking. Whether that opinion is 100% accurate or understood by medical professionals doesn't stop it from doing its job - as evidenced by your lengthy reply. Don't fall into the trap of believing that one way of doing things is the only way of doing things. There are plenty of examples of our GM styles and skills on other channels on TH-cam. You can watch those and judge for yourself whether they are good or bad. In the end, it is just another opinion and has no more weight than any other person's opinion. In order for a game to remain interesting it requires variety. Min-maxing is the very opposite of variety.
@@QuestGivers "D&D was never really designed to play beyond 7th or 8th level" Really? are you serious? I been in groups using 1st edition that lasted well over 10 years with players getting up to around level 20 . I see cases where it about 1 year to go up 1 level. When you leveled you had to find someone to train you which can months for certain classes like ranger then you had to do something for them which may take a couple of months then after that it took 1 to 4 weeks for your training I seen comments how the original groups for d&d retired a character when they reached level 10 partly because most of the characters were human and were just getting too old or the characters would quit being adventuring and move on to something else or just got bored with the character . Those guys stopped at level 10 or so more out of personal preference and play style. Other groups go past level 10, they largely quit adventuring and run a business or a school. They move away from combat and take part in the politics or economics
I do treat it as a game, but I don't like the focus of it being solely on combat or being perfect. I'll save this one to create a DMing playlist. This is great. Btw, I tend to like adventure paths.
@@QuestGivers I completely agree. I've seen a few of your videos already, and I wish I had resources like TH-cam and published campaigns then. The social interaction, exploration and adventure, problem solving, action and comeraderie all combine to make roleplaying games unique. But beyond having adventures to run I've never felt more empowered than when I discovered Quest Givers and similar channels. You people are invaluable to players like me who struggle with the roleplaying aspect because it's something not everyone learns. I'm used to people demanding it and assuming it's obvious rather than really teaching players. Thank you 🙂
Meh. "Don't min max" is a lazy DM's message to high functioning players. Presenting challenges to the players even in the face of an "I win" button is the job of the DM, and if you fail to do so, that's not the players' fault. In your own example of the giant rolling Indiana Jones boulder, that's a clear threat that the players have to deal with immediately or get squished. A nice challenge. The player who uses fireball to destroy said boulder is using one of their resources to deal with the problem. THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM. You, the DM, presented a challenge, and the players used a valuable resource (a spell slot) to solve said problem. This is not "min maxing sucks." You as the DM should present more of a challenge. Perhaps said rolling boulder awakened a swarm of giant spiders who immediately descend upon the party, who now have to deal with a bunch of spiders WITHOUT THEIR WIN BUTTON. Case in point: Instead of complaining about min maxing, rise to the power level the players are presenting. As the DM, you have way more tools at your disposal for presenting challenges to them than they have for dealing with said challenges. Use them.
The reference was to a low level character being overpowered to a low level threat. If I were actually DMing that situation the boulder would shatter into thousands of super heated lava blobs and a rather angry rock golem.
Seems to me that anyone who becomes an adventurer has something that sets them apart and al the very least has the potential to become among the best of best. I see one of three happing you die or you quit or you become very very good. How did you make it to first level/ pass training without being at least decent? I feel you 2 are saying is unless your character is mechanically bad your min maxing I played 1st edition d&d with using 3d6 in order method and doing dudgeon crawls. I had bad experiences where most if not all of the party was killed in 1st round of combat due to being surprised and everyone having 1 to 4 hit points . We had to make save or die rolls and even if you made your save you still died because you only had 1 or 2 hat points to start with I see The Lord of the Rings as showing min maxing has it place. Frodo never would destroyed the ring without a min maxer like Legolas doing what he did. Having 1 or 2 players min maxing in a large group is not necessary a bad thing as everyone can their moment of glory
The point is that you optimise your way out of a character with a diverse role to play in different adventures, rather than JUST the pile of points that approaches every situation as the same problem and performs the same sequence of actions because that is what they are optimised to do. Legolas is an "NPC", a supporting character. Merry, Pippin, Sam and Frodo are the "party". Each grows significantly through the saga. They all start out as "farmers" with little to no skill.
@@QuestGivers Roleplaying your character well and optimizing your character are independent of each other. Min-maxing doesn't stop you from having character growth and development, from finding ways to being useful in a variety of situations I see this more of player and possible DM issue. . With good role-players and a good DM is min-maxing really a issue? Is the DM taking the players out of their comfort zone and how does the player react? What size group are we taking about? A group of 4 or a group of 12 players? Granted that Legolas is just supporting character however on some level it doesn't matter. The Hobbits would have failed unless Legolas and others did what they did first. Is that the way you think a campaign should go ? That the players cant optimize their characters but they will fail unless helped by some npc who is
What I tend to hear when people say that min-maxing is bad, is essentially “You shouldn’t try to put most of your points into charisma, yet you’re a sorcerer.” It makes sense for a wizard to have high int and low strength, or a paladin high cha and low int. I don’t see the problem with it. You’re simply making your characters stats work with the class that they are
Yeah, min maxing and power gaming isn't really a thing in 5e. Powergaming was only really a thing in 3.x/pathfinder, and even then there's still very clear weaknesses for a gm to target or the gm can utilize puzzles or rp scenarios to challenge the players and characters(create scenarios where success isn't determined by stats). Powergaming and roleplaying aren't mutually exclusive either. I always thought these arguments against powergaming and minmaxing were dumb, the issues in this video aren't real issues for an experienced gm.
If powergaming isn't a thing in 5e why are there so many optimised builds? People who start at levels other than 1? Ultimately it is not about whether a game allows for powergaming, but whether a player searches for the ability to manipulate rules for more arbitrary points instead of playing the game. Try getting people to roll 3d6 straight down the line... "This character is too weak!" "I can't play this character", "I can't make a good character with these stats". The argument is about enjoying the experience for what it is rather than trying to win an unwinnable game.
@@QuestGivers There's really not that many powerbuilds, there's the coffeelock sure, but how much does that actually see play? And what does it matter if people start at slightly higher levels? That doesn't really have anything to do with powergaming, there's enough content to challenge a party that starts off at level 2 or 3 or whatever. Using alternate stats is more of a table thing determined by dm and it is still up to individual players to determine the final build which may or may not be a strong build, and most power comes from abilities in 5e, stats cap at 20 and there's very few stat boosting items that you have no guarantee of getting, so powergaming via stats is again a non issue. Even if you have higher than average stats your saves won't scale as you level, anything you're not proficient in won't scale with you. Power gaming just isn't a thing in 5e, it is a 3.x issue that newbies to the hobby like to complain about because they see old forum posts about it back from 3.5 and don't know enough to realize the issues don't carry over(or they're just bandwagoners). In 5e what people complain as "power gaming" is just an optimized build which is the more or less the default assumption of this edition.
so minmaxing is ruining fun and is a win button... so my dragon age inquisition elf - ranged DR - two handed weapon fighter - damage - templar - buffs and protection - is a minmax cause it deals with most opponents in the game with a templar follower, a spellcaster and a ranged combo activator? or am i just thinking with the game mechanics to make the game less about the grind and more about the story? in detail: portal enemies are annoying and demons in general are just a hindrance but are bags of hp or a very high amount of barrier. what gets rid of barrier? templars and mages. tank aoe taunts, player aoe knocks down, archer aoe bursts while mage puts down the force cage and fears. demons are summoning in? just dispell their areas and get the xp without expending potions. boss fight? two templars can buff. mix necro can do a lot of status effects and the archer just combos to nine hells. so is using creativity to outplay the game minmaxing? if the rules allow for it why not make the optimal thing? am i a minmaxer for playing my hexadin? or is it just cause i want a mechanically functioning character around my backstory and roleplay?
What you describe is creative. Creative from a meta-mechanical perspective. Yes, your character is good mechanically. Nothing you have described makes your character interesting in the slightest in a non-mechanical sense. There is nothing wrong with that, but consider how other people may perceive that character in your group and does that gel with the way everybody plays. If not, then it is a problem. Playing mechanical characters is fun. Just as playing overly theatrical characters is fun. However, is everyone onboard with that? If so, then you win. If not, you lose.
@@QuestGivers a group of theatrically fun characters Vs a group of mechanically fun characters with their players actually knowing how to roleplay personalities and not solely rely on fun factor to generate fun in and out of combat. I'll give you a chance to place bets on which team would win ;) You don't need to undercut your character in order to play flavorfully. Increasing combat time To take away from oh so dear RP, increasing likelihood of a character downing/dieing and the dominoes start falling - aka cascading tpk; not realising mechanics don't a character make. For that you have your imagination and a group. Also being creative is part of minmaxing. Did you know I was the one who introduced nerdarchy to the hexadin? It's minmaxing and it can be fun pending on your player.
The game should not require the players to deliberately cripple their characters. If you can't tell a story with a monk that has more than 10 dexterity, because it is succeeding too much, that is not the fault of the min-maxing player. I am not strawmanning your argument here. Down in the comments, you called casting Meteor Storm a problem. But Meteor Storm is just a spell the wizard is going to get much later when multiclassing. Later you explain characters with 3 strength and fore dexterity are more interesting. Sorry I broke your bossfight by hitting it with Stunning Strike, but actually not sorry. I am not going to use the class features on my character sheet and I am not going to dumpstat wisdom so the boss has a higher chance of succeeding the safe.
The argument is that a character is one dimensional and lacks nuance. If all the character does is the same thing over and over and over again it becomes boring. It isn’t hard to layout a story for a hammer, you just keep putting nails in front of it. However, sometimes you may want screws, or heaven forbid some glue.
@@QuestGivers I mean, if you tell players how they have to play characters based on their build, then they will lack nuance. Like the Warrior is really good with the sword, so you can't ask the witch if she knows about the 2 snakes field standard, should have invested more into social skills. But I mean, didn't you say failure is good? Let the warrior try and if he fails to see through her motives, she turns into a demon and tries to kill him. I would say it is much more difficult to layout a story for characters that are not great at anything but also not bad at anything. EDIT: What I mean is the lack of points invested into social skills may create more complications when fulfilling the personal story and I don't see how that is bad.
In table top it kinda does suck we have a player that always cherry-picks abilities from multi-classing because he knows we’re not going beyond 10th with our characters. You should have to justify your multiclassing. You just don’t learn to use stunning strike all of a sudden or how to use thieves tools just cause you took a feat. I don’t multi class because I like to focus on my characters path
Love you guys, but I disagree with some of what you said. My main experience was back in 1E AD&D in the early 80's so take my comments with a grain of salt. I don't necessarily think that min/maxing sucks, but you do have to know your table. To reference another recent video of yours about "forcing players to play your way", know your table. If everyone is in agreement about playstyle, min/maxing shouldn't really matter and the DM can alter stats, mechanics, etc... to fit the game. Have that session zero. I see Professor Dungeon Master chimed in below and from his videos he alters stats, caps character HP to 20 or 30 HP, and does other things and his table is fine with that. Other tables wouldn't be. So, know your table. Some players/tables care about story, others don't. Some care only about combat, others would rather RP with no combat. If min/maxing is how the table wants to have fun, don't tell them they are doing it wrong. And I wouldn't have a problem with DM's limiting or banning some things, like the whole summon pixies/polymorph routine that, while is legal by the rules, can break the game and the DM can say 'No'. And yes, new DM's can say yes to a combo that may break the game, but learn from your mistakes. And don't feel like you can't go back and alter previous rulings. I've seen other videos by DM's, maybe have been some of yours as well, who say in order to keep the flow of the game going, if you don't know a specific rule, etc... just make a ruling and look it up later. If you realize you had it wrong, discuss with the players and move on with the correct ruling. Not saying you should make a player reroll a character, but talking out the issues with the player and table would probably help.
A lot of people talk about the DM knowing the table. This is really about the players knowing the table. If the DM were to min-max the game would fall apart. While the DM seems to be in charge, their role is a reaction and reflection of the players. The DM creates problems for the characters and the players use the characters' skills to resolve the problem. The DM adapts the problems to suit the actions of the player characters. When you have characters that are heavily stacked in one aspect, introducing problems that negate that aspect of the character can be construed by the player as the DM working against the player. Eg, A combat attack stacked character walking into a scene without combat. The DM is then compensating for the character by adding in combat, but this then compromises the scene if combat is unnecessary. In games like DnD, which is unbalanced, this becomes a big problem. The best example of this is having level 1, 5, 10 and 15 characters in the same party. You can't. It also illustrates why Min-maxing becomes problematic as you have characters that advanced disproportionately to the rest of the group. Other games that are not "dnd" clones don't suffer this problem as you can have characters with wildly differing skill levels working together without the need to rebalance the game. While some see this as a "your fun is wrong" what it really is is beware the unbalancing! :) I enjoy a good dungeon crawl goblin bashing tank session once in a while as well, but if I do that while everyone else is not... I'm not allowing others to have fun too and then my fun IS wrong.
@@mes2370 backing the point QG is making here, if you're, as DM, constantly adjusting stats, fudging scenarios, etc... to mitigate your players' stat blocks, they broke the game. Legal, illegal, how they fun, whatever, they broke it, and in situ, the DM is trying to duct tape those breaks so you can have any game to play at all. That's just silly. Now, does everyone want to play a superhero? Maybe it's as simple as finding another game. If you're table is invested in super huge monster guys with boat sized swords, maybe Exalted is more your game than D&D? If you want to be Dr Who, maybe don't play Warhammer 40K? Feel free to look around at other games, there are a TON of great genres by whole teams of peopke ego worked hard to give us a gene with a semblance of balance. Final note here, ever read a manga called One Punch Man? The main hero, Saitama, it's constantly bored and kind of empty headed because he's so much more powerful than the world around him, he can defeat any foe with one punch. Imagine how bored and vexed min-maxed players would be if the DM wasn't beefing the world up and instead only gave them RAW challenges. Yup, they win the drinking contest, bed 8 yugoloths, kill a giant and raid his larder... cuz it's Tuesday. Didn't even need to roll dice.
I completely agree to this. Tabletop roleplaying is small where I am from. And has a small community. But even online, its not that "huge". When taking convenient timezones for everyone into consideration. it have come to such a point, where I've pretty much given up doing roleplay games. Because most Tabletop Roleplay games, even done through great sites such as Roll20. People only play for combat. And min-maxes combat stats. And all they do is combat. This is fine for people who enjoy combat. And you may ask why I complain on this, well the simple reason is that many times, you join a session that does not originally purely contain combat. but because so many people Min-max combat abilities, the GM is left with no other option than to introduce more combat into the game. In the end, it just becomes a combat-fest. Ontop of that, Min-Maxing makes things less interesting, as you mentioned, there is a certain good feeling that comes from risk vs reward. The less the risk, the less the reward feels. When you min max, you pretty much remove the enjoyment out of the reward. For some people. I know there are many people who are "sore loosers" and can't stand loosing, hence they just want to press the I-Win button. but it just gets frustrating for people like me, who just wants to enjoy a good Role-play story. people keep forgetting that Tabletop Roleplay, is a game about making a Story. if you die unexpectedly, or due to bad luck, well, that's just a part of a story! Then you simply make a new one and start over and just let faith and the dices be the one to decide how that story unfolds. And in this unfolding, that's where the entertainment, for me at least, is found. And is the core reason I even do Tabletop RPG. If I want to play a "railroaded" story where the outcome is predictable. I simply play a RPG-video game. if I want to play a pure combat experience, I simply play a RPG video game with combat in mind. But I want to experience a completely new, fresh, unpredictable story. Thats when I do Tabletop RPG. and that's the magic about it.
Min- maxing is the FUN for some players- like a legal cheat code- beating the game and the dungeon master by any means possible- usually not used by the role player type gamer
If all the players are playing with cheat codes enabled :) Otherwise, that one person who using cheat codes whilst others aren't... then we have a problem :)
This “logic” - that D&D is a game you can “beat” and the DM is something to be “beaten” - completely misses the point of the game and illustrates the problem with min-maxing in general; it’s not a video game. It’s not checkers. It’s a collaborative narrative experience. The DM WANTS you to win, but they also want to offer a simulated fantasy where verisimilitude, chance, and choices matter. The “role-player-type-gamer” is engaging in the role-playing game... the person trying to “win” D&D has missed the point.
Powergaming is the path to the darkside, sure you got all that power. However, did even think of level 4? Your already bored with your power, and you look on at your fellow adventurers and are envious of them - they're still joking, excited for the next level aren't they? Wallow in your self-pity in disgust munchkin!
If you're bored by level 4 you're doing it wrong. Most multiclass munchkiny builds require 1-3 in a given class to get the fun stuff, then you add to it elsewhere.
@@DMRaptorJesus Yeah, lowering the entry bar to get more profits has happened with all forms of gaming. But it doesn't have to be boring to munchkin though, honestly it's pretty fun to have a character with clear strengths and weaknesses. When you nat 20 those weaknesses it feels great. And it doesn't take a genius of a DM to make it interesting, even if a regular module's combat would be easy.
Not only did I have a party of minmaxers, I had one guy who stormed into a room with 13 low level bad guys and complain that the cannon fodder shouldn't be allowed to crit or seriously hurt him. Popularity and the generation of instant gratification ruined D&D.
I find the modern obsession with mapping out a character's story tragectory before the game even starts to be counter to the spirit of the game, where the character grows and changes as a result of the story.
AGREE with almost everything in the video! ALWAYS start at first level..I let my players have the character and/or class they want, but the focus is on the STORY & ADVENTURE... the focus is NOT "how to abuse the rules for unbeatable combinations"... remember, the classic story telling pattern is "try-fail" "try-fail" "try-succeed". GREAT video guys!
That's not what min/maxing, min maxing is when you minimize your minimums and maximize your maximums, so for a barbarian high strength low intelligence or the wizard having high intelligence low strength, what you are referring to is power builds, too totally different things
Your argument "min-maxing is a win button and the players never fail" seems to assume some sort of mythical min-maxing that makes a character succeed at everything. Really, min-maxing is being about being very good at a specific thing (or a few specific things). Yes, those characters are likely to succeed when doing those things, but importantly, will probably have problems when doing anything else. A good DM, then, throws a mix of those situations at that character, so sometimes they can be awesome at the thing they are awesome at, and sometimes their weakness bites them. A party might be able to cover some of each others' weaknesses (and I wish such teamwork mechanics were ingrained more in RPGs), but if they are covering all of the weaknesses then that's lack of imagination in the DM and not a problem of min-maxing players.
Sure, if the party is highly optimized for combat, then you can throw harder stuff at them. Let them mow through some an encounters and be combat bad-assess, because those are the characters they want to play. Give them tougher-than normal fights that other parties couldn't handle, because that's the story they want to play.
I'm sorry you throw in the towel on your campaigns before the players have the awesome fun of a barbarian that can soak a thousand points of damage during a battle, a wizard wiping out an army with a Meteor Swarm, the fighter who can stand toe-to-toe with a giant, and the Cleric who can bring back their friends who died saving the world. You miss out on a lot of fun.
A wizard who can wipe out an army with a meteor swarm requires a stockpile of armies for them to kill and the constant threat of things that eat mountains. It is obvious that you (plural) need to adapt and change in the escalation and power expansion of the characters, but that doesn't stop it becoming silly.
A barbarian doing 1,000 points of damage is matched by few things. If he is a murder hobo, there is nothing he can't kill.
@@QuestGivers That barbarian or wizard will still have weakness something they are bad at or vulnerable to. That 1000 points of damage a barbarian is capable of doing means nothing when they are running away in fear or cant reach the enemy
Exploit the barbarian's weakness and challenge them that way
@@QuestGivers That barbarian would still be slaughtered by high level caster at range, that wizard will get stomped by a rakshasha (depending on the edition) or another high level caster accompanied by brutes (you could even have a pair of wizards where one has the sole purpose of disrupting the enemy wizard via counterspell). That barbarian should struggle with anything related to magic, including deciphering the arcane runes that hold a clue or understanding some magical device; the wizard will struggle in tests or feats of strength. And then more problems arise when players don't "min-max" because now no one is very good at anything.
It's a game. Some of my players do this, some don't. Some want a wargame, some want a story. No biggie.
Some want both
I have to agree with you both coming from a DM's standpoint, as well as that of a player. I play d&d 5e, but I have had a bad history with 3.5e because of how easy it was to exploit the rules of the game. As a DM playing 5e, I recently had a player who said he was multiclassing for the sake of character story, but I saw that he simply just wanted to make his character more powerful, by exploiting a lot of rules and making complex and ridiculous combos. I play 5e and he talked endlessly about multiclassing a wizard/eldritch knight fighter to get the extra spells, cantrips, all while wearing plate armor and choosing specific feats to augment everything. He even mentioned he wanted to choose the Alert feat, merely because it is a "bane of all DMs". He begged me one time to start at 13th level, and when I refused he pouted and mopped.
As a player playing 3.5e about 6 years ago, I encountered another player who made this character just to make the most powerful grappler ever, and all I did was make a really cool druid on his pilgrimage, with a panther companion because...I like panthers! Lol. But this guy started as a monk, then Crusader (basically another type of paladin) just for the features, then into barbarian, and all this crazy stuff! He was destroying everything the DM threw at him, and all I was doing was shooting arrows, commanding my panther to sneak around and ambush enemies, and speaking in a British accent (I'm American XD).
Personally, as much as I want my character to be the best they can be mechanically, I myself prefer not to exploit the rules. Like, a paladin who is more focused on Strength and Charisma over Dexterity, who also wears plate armor and wields a greatsword (thinking Ned Stark from Game of Thrones). While I may take feats that augment that two-handed fighting style I chose, I try not to calculate every single thing and just go with the flow of the story.
Though, there is one thing I sometimes of go against in this video. Not often, but a couple times I have. In 6:50, DMG, you mention you don't like games that don't start at level 1. I agree to that, but sometimes I like to start my players off at 3rd in 5e, because of the subclasses that I believe can further flesh out a character. But more often than not, I still start at 1st level.
This. I've got one who has proficiency in almost everything and then he gets cranky if others in the party aren't investigating etc when we're all like 'what's the point, your character can do everything anyway'
Min-maxing is the natural reaction to the type of game the creators of dnd enjoyed and empowered their dms to engage in during structured play. If you hate minmaxers, blame gygax and AL and the community for empowering them both.
The reality of dnd is this, because dms want their players to be challenged at all levels the problem scales to the player level. Your character doesn’t get stronger compared to the problem they face, ever. The cgi budget just gets higher. Where this curve of difficulty starts doesnt really matter so long as you’re building a campaign for the characters and not staring impotently at a module that’s been outscaled.
If your players always succeed and there is nothing to propel the game forward because they read the rules and made an effective character then you need to learn to DM better.
I encourage my players to make effective characters and teach them how to do it.
You litterally control the entire world, challenging players is not that hard.
What does "effective" mean in the context of a character?
@QuestGivers What you call min-maxing is what I call effective. Making a character that is good at what it does.
For example, if you want to play a hippy, nature focused healer then a stars druid with a single level of life cleric is much more effective than a straight land druid. Knowing that requires reading the rules and thinking about the mechanics of your character.
Effective at what? Mechanically effective? Wouldn't be naratologically effective? How does this "effectiveness" play out? Do you have to create situations for them to be more hippy?
To my way of thinking, there is no such thing as an "effective" character - that's the point. A character is built and developed through play and narrative decisions. Not by picking items off a menu. How does this hippy come to be a hippy? That is the more emersive and interesting game in my opinion. Any character is effective in that sense, so you don't need to optimize for some mechanical advantage. Even the most useless of beings can grow in play.
@@QuestGivers 1. Your video is complaining about players who make mechanically effective characters. I specify what I mean by effective in the first line of my last post.
2. Whether a player 'minmaxes' as you call it has nothing to do with whether they roleplay well. Of course a character grows through RP choices but that's not the subject of your video.
You seem to believe the old stormwind fallacy. You use the fact that you are personally more interested in RP than mechanics as an excuse to criticise those who learn the rules and use that.
Let your players play how they want and if it's causing problems with the way you DM- talk to them to find a mutually acceptable resolution. Don't blame players for playing (mechanically) well.
I am not more interested in roleplaying than mechanics. I am interested in balancing the two.
It is a game, you can play however you wish.
If a DM played in a rules effective optomised way... the characters would all be dead pretty quickly.
You wouldn't want a DM to play an optimised narrative either... a railroad. It is far more "effective" to give characters no choices.
Ultimately, it comes down to what is fun for the whole table... DM included. If everyone at the table just wants to do one thing in the same scenarios over and over again, have at it.
I disagree. Saying that high level adventures with competent players are boring by default is a DM excuse. Yes, it requires creativity and a robust setting (plus a good understanding thereof) to plan a high level campaign, but games like DnD are ABOUT the players' power fantasy. If you want something grittier and more limiting to players, choose a different system. And if the DM doesn't want to focus on balancing challenges because it isn't fun for them, they need to talk to their players ahead of time and establish expectations for the campaign (which is what you should always do anyway).
We didn't say "with competent players". We are saying with characters that have basically had all their progress piled into a single aspect of their character.
This makes the character less dynamic and more one dimensional.
@@QuestGivers Does it really? If a character focuses on a single strength, then everything else is a weakness for them, right? If so, that leaves plenty of room for amazing roleplay.
I think we might be talking about two different things. I'm referring to min-maxing as an approach to character building that any player can use, while you're talking about power gamers who treat RPGs like games they can win. That's not about exploiting rules mastery, though - it's about players' and DMs' expectations not aligning.
@@QuestGivers Your complaint was about players having characters that are too effective.
DMG nailed it at 7:02. I've often played games where the DM started everyone on level 3,4,5. None were the better for it. It's the struggle that makes the game interesting.
Thanks Prof :) Struggle on
Hey G & Scotty, really enjoying these thought provoking videos. Back in the day when I was always the DM. We never went past level 15, by then everybody was ready to play a new character. The group would just state they are ready to start at level one again. I have always enjoyed levels 1-10 the most as a DM and a player. As far as playing an OP character, its not necessary. The dice are random, even OP characters fail. My experience as a DM, people (children & adults) who want these OP characters. Simply freak out when they fail. They just can't believe their superman has just failed or even died.
"With failure comes growth".
Thanks Scotty & G, you gentlemen have a great day.
I'm still not sure if I understand, is minmaxing when a person makes a character who is too powerful? I thought minmaxing was when a character Maxes out the things they are already good at so that they can almost never fail those specific things, BUT leaving themselves weak to other things.
For example I've been accused of minmaxing. I'm a new player, so it's not like I actively was trying to cheat the game. I made my character in the way that made sense to me. I'm a tabaxi rogue, a sassy Mae West-type Arcane trickster. I pretty much can never fail persuasion, deception, stealth, acrobatics, slight of hand, and arcana (reliable talent in all of those.) And in most scenes I tend to roleplay, I lean towards those things and do exceptionally well (flirting with people for info, picking pockets, etc.) BUT I'm pretty useless for anything that requires intelligence, strength or constitution. I die in most combat if I'm not constantly hiding and I don't do much damage. But I also take the role playing very seriously. I think personality wise my character is very complex. Did I minmax by accident? Doesn't it make sense to play to your strengths?
Essentially min maxing is "putting all your eggs in one basket". It isn't against the rules in most games, and some games will embrace the practice, but it detracts from the experience of the game to some extent. If the only thing your character can do is flirt and pick pockets, they are only valuable in certain scenarios and in certain types of games. If your character enters a session where there is mostly combat with unintelligent undead monsters you will have a problem "being useful". This does a disservice to you firstly, and secondly to the rest of the players in the group if your character is not bringing anything to the experience.
That being said. It isn't "wrong'. You should play the character you want to play. Our advice is basically allow your character to have some other skillsets that may not be very good, but at least allow you to participate.
Would you want to be the character who's sole purpose is ONLY doing the party healing, you'd basically be the group mobile healing potion drinking fountain.
You run the risk of your character become 1 dimensional. They only do that thing. They are only good for one thing.
Minmaxing does mean that a character can be too powerful in one specific area, but on the flip side you are super weak in almost everything else, the min to the max in MinMax.
Personally I feel there is a problem with "never failing". A character that "never fails" never grows. There should always be room for failure. I have 3 decades of experience running, playing and writing games and trust me when I say, failure is where the BEST adventures happen.
As an experiment: Try running the very same character, but don't put all your effort into being the best at the arcane trickster abilities. Just put in the prescribed minimums. Play the character as if she THINKS she is THE BEST at flirting and picking pockets, but really is average. The effects on the character of coming to grips with the fact that she is NOT the best makes for a better role-playing experience.
This is also why it is super important that all characters should start at level 1. Level 1 is the seed of your character. You character grows as you play them. You backstory should evolve and adapt and be created in the game.
@@QuestGivers if every character is average at things whos going to be good at anything? I assume the minmaxer, optimizer or power gamer. Also what are your thoughts on a sorcerer that doesnt use spells and has a negative in every stat.
@@Whyvren950 no one's saying every character is going to be average. Obviously The Bard's going to have high charisma, the wizard has high intelligence, and the barbarian has high strength. The difference between average and min maxing is if all those characters have a 20 in their highest stat at level one and also took feats that cheese out some of the basic rules in order to auto win.
For instance, the one min maxer in my party made a new character who uses firearms and of course he chose feats and a class that allow him to always have advantage on attack roles meaning he also gets sneak attack damage (also he has 20 DEX). The DM in this case just needs to put the enemies out of range. But still not fun when everyone else is playing normal characters and you have the one guy in the party who's trying to be the main anime protagonist who always wins at everything.
My advice to the minmaxers is always to go into their favorite vtt or IRL D&D board and just set up a bunch of figures and play by themselves and kill all the enemies they want. Or just play a video game. TT RPGs are not about speed running a campaign it's about working through the adventure and the challenges of the game which DOES include failure
These are brain dead takes. Imagine if Elmister stopped at level 6. Boring. Maybe as a DM you should read lore and learn the mechanics of the game so you can challenge your players like most responsible DMs can do. You guys want baby parties because you don't like thinking about tactics beyond throwing kobolds at the party.
@007ohboy I think its good for DMs who struggle with game mechanics to stop at low level. It's also fine for them to ban specific powerful combos that they can't cope with- provided that's communicated in advance.
What's not OK is to suggest that the player who put effort in to learn the rules and play well is the problem.
thats like saying to not drive fast on a racing game cuz the game is all about appreciating the track
Don't drive fast in a game that isn't a racing game. The point of RPGs in not to "win". You can't win, so why race?
@@QuestGivers This depends on how you define winning
I agree to a point. Power gaming can be fun with the right group and mentality. I have played in many campaigns that our group was min-maxed and had a great story and narrative. If a GM can't handle min-maxed character, then they need to either learn how to deal with them in game, this does not mean they have to become an adversarial GM, just have to hit the PC in the dump stat or present challenges at the PC power level. Talking to the player(s) and tell them "hey I am not comfortable running PC that are this powerful, lets tone it down", is another way for GM to bring the game back down to a manageable level for them. If a party doesn't help the GM in this request then it's not the right group for them and no gaming is better than bad gaming. The biggest problems come from min-maxers who are all about the numbers and have a GM that is all about the narrative. The player isn't even wanting to engage in the story then that is a problem min-maxer.
I disagree about having to start at level 1 and rolled stats. If needing to start at level 1 is the only way to get players to be invested in the world, then I would look at your storytelling and the party. I tend to start my D&D 5e games between lv 3 to 6 (most commonly lv3) so that the meat of the campaign will happen between lv 12 - 16, where 5e was designed to plateau out (level 8 to 12 was for 1e) and I have had all my players invested in the world and the story. In my experience PC that has had their stats rolled down the line tend to be throwaway characters, or become one-note background characters in the party (often the comic relief), even more so if they have a really low stat (3-5). Point buy and assigned stats gives the players an investment into a character they want to play and not one they forced to play.
Min-maxed games aren't for everybody, I personally prefer not to play power-gamey min-maxed games (but you would call starting above level 1 min-maxed), but I also do enjoy playing in a min-maxed game, from time to time, with the right group (ie. not a number solely a number crunch feast). What it really comes down to is, if you and the rest of the gaming group are having fun, then you are doing it right.
Paul Ross you tell them and they whine and complain that they can’t play their min maxed character.
You told them in the game description and session 0 that you are a story and character centric dm and they still entered the game.
Min maxer fault.
Hey the dm can just say “please don’t min max, and make a character”. I agree that with inexperienced dms players shouldn’t try to “break the game”, but I really think that a dm can work around it, or if there is really a problem, kick the player out.
You prolly dont give a damn but does someone know of a way to log back into an Instagram account?
I stupidly forgot the login password. I love any tips you can offer me
@Baylor Jaxton instablaster :)
@Keagan Carson Thanks for your reply. I found the site through google and Im trying it out now.
Looks like it's gonna take a while so I will get back to you later with my results.
@Keagan Carson It did the trick and I actually got access to my account again. I am so happy:D
Thanks so much, you really help me out !
@Baylor Jaxton you are welcome =)
I agree 100% min max can hurt the game.. wanted to add i also find the stat array is great for new players
You totally cofuse min-maxing with optimizing... :
1. Min-maxing - maxing out things that define core concept of character while min everything else that does not increase power of said core concept. Example: Taking Zealot Barbarian becasue Zealot = most DPS, taking PAM and GWM becasue Reckless + 3rd attack + GWM + Rage. But at the same time, poor WIS, poor CHA, poor INT, poor saves vs spells because that's not the focus on character. That's min-maxing.
2. Optimizing - giving character as much power as possible while making sure he has as little weaknesses as possible. Example 1 Artificer/X Chrono Wizard Custom Lineage. 18 INT at start, medium armors + shield, CON prof for concentration saves, Chrono for strongest Wizard. Next ASI - Lucky to compensate for weaker saves and to counter disadvantages, Next ASI - RES (WIS) to compensate for poor WIS saves (most devastating saves). That's example of optimizing, we take powerful core concept (Wizard caster) and we maximize his power (by best/meta spells and starting with 18 INT) and then we patch all weaknesses that could be exploited - bad saves (Lucky), bad AC (Artificer multiclass), bad CON saves (Artificer), bad WIS saves (RES WIS feat). That's optimizing.
That's the difference.
Both are bad.
@@QuestGivers Bad is a subjective conclusion. People have different definitions of fun from different activities. At your table it might be bad, at others people have fun while doing it and it doesn't also affect the fun of other players, becasue a lot depends on a person who plays. And also GM that is leading the story. It's also a matter of dialogue at the table to make sure everything works together.
"Only this is good and this is always bad" is very shortsighted conclusion in my opinion. But each to his own.
Actually there a lot of problems that can't be solved by picking up the planet and throwing it.
True, violence never solved anything, but it does rid you of the problem :)
You worded the problem nicely. It's like pressing the insta-win button. No risk, all rewards. There won't be any interesting stories there if your character doesn't have flaws. Exactly why superman is so boring as a protagonist.
Back in the old days while I was trying to DM Pathfinder 1E, I could never convince my players why minmaxing was a problem. I carefully wrote and designed my dungeons from scratch, invented cool bosses with unique abilities and interesting homebrew monsters to match them, got some nice dialogue and plot exposition for them that they could roleplay. Some puzzles for them to solve and unique treasure to find. But unfortunately, it was like pearls before swines. My min-maxy players would just use their wand of maximized scorching rays to insta-zap every enemy in front of them. Even the boss. And if he would survive 1 hit, they would fire a second one the next turn. Players would stay at a distance and all the boss could do on his turn was move, then die. Fire resistance wasn't enough to prevent it. All my hard work? Gone.
Here's a summary of the story: Players come across giant crabs, they zap them. Players come across a corrupted merfolk king, they zap it. He survived, they zap him again. There's a maze, they zap the walls. There's a kraken, zap it. There's an even bigger kraken, zap it twice. There's treasure? Let's sell it because we can't use it, after all it's less good than the zappy stick. I also had to come up with all kinds of bullshit just in an attempt to thwart the zappy-stick and players called me out on my DM-cheating. I had to ban the zappy stick and my players were furious at me.
In that situation, it may have been a good story element to have an NPC steal the zappystick and the players have to travers the world to try and get it back, always tantalisingly just ahead of them. No reward is greater than players getting their beloved baubles back.
The other problem is when the PCs encounter problems for which they have dumped all the stats that would have helped them. Then they end up dieing. There always needs to be a balance.
The rules are a guide. It says that in the rules. Experienced players are better at min max. Just realize that your gonna have to be as creative as your players if you go into the higher level. But if you can't find a way to challenge the players, your not trying hard enough. Leveling up monsters is easy- up their stats. Tailor things to the difficulty and strength of the party. For the noobs- you can give them more stuff to help them, for experienced players, go with low magic. Make them earn it.
I hate min/maxers. It just makes everything so incredibly boring and stops others in the party from having their moments. Especially those who go hard on the multi-classing so they can basically do everything, then all of a sudden there's no point having a party.
As a new DM though, do you have a shortlist of things that we should look out for? I have a hard time absorbing rules, so I have to keep looking things up and therefore kinda trust the players with their characters, so it'd be nice to know some really clear identifiers that a player is min/maxing
Min maxers are either trying to be the best, win or be the most helpful character in the group.
They tend to be obsessed with the mathematical aspects of the rules and to squeeze out the MOST optimal result from every action.
You will have great difficulty stopping this.
You need to determine if they are trying to win, trying to be the best, or trying to be the most helpful.
You need to structure your hooks and events to lean into their mindset and balance this with the other players.
An enjoyable game is where everyone is enjoying it. As the GM your role is to balance the experience of fun across all players.
If you stop the game being fun for a min/maxer they will begin to derail the game.
One of the reasons strict turn order is preferable is that it helps to balance the actions across all the players. Min/Maxers tend to be power gamers. Strict turn order allows you to control how much input each player has.
They can power game on their turn and not force their option every time.
@@QuestGivers Completely agree and understand better now via your "strict order" after rolling initiative so thank you. The players attack in this order period. I understand it can not always fit in regards to story telling (for example, how can so and so be attacking first if such and such is happening. I understand it but Strict turn order overall I think is the best solution) Would you recommend the same via enemy attacks with multiple enemies present. To illustrate, Im a newb DM to teach my son (now 14) D&D. I started on AD&D and have been his DM for two years now via already written and structured Campaign. We currently have three characters. I run one along with DMing and he runs two. When multiple enemies are present, I roll to see which character the enemy is attacking. For example, 1-7 attacks what character Ive assigned to those numbers. 8-14 attacks what character Ive assigned to those numbers etc. Again thanks for the idea of Strict turn order. It makes sense to me.
If you are trying to solve a puzzle or engaging in social interactions does it matter if your character is min maxed for combat?
In most groups I been in when the party needs to be deceive someone Its the player who is best at deceiving who does the talking not player whose character is min maxed to be as good as possible at deception . You not your character have to be good at deception in order for the party to let you try.
Is that to say that a illiterate barbarian with 3 int played by the engineer in the group is the one to solve the engineering puzzle?
@@beowulf_cadmus8488 Yes that can and will happen. That player will solve it irregardless if their character is min maxed or not
@munninn3823 I guess my question was more: Would the character solve it, and does that make sense from a role-playing angle. Would there be any reason for a player who is super charismatic to play a high cha character if they can use their own charisma? Or if the before mentioned barbarians party is in a room of magical silence and the dm gives a note card with the clue to the puzzle saying it is written on a column or whatever is it still reasonable for them to solve it? At what point do the skill checks start? Do you go oh your a watch maker/repairer you could definitely disarm the trap?
@@beowulf_cadmus8488 I seen this brought up in some videos. Is the player or character suppose to solve the puzzle or who is suppose to come up with a convincing lie the player or the character
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All these min maxing sweatlords in the comments, lol.
Min maxing takes the fun out of games. Tabletop, video game, doesn't matter.
different strokes for different folks ya know. I'm legitimately curious, is it less fun for you because you seem to "always succeed" (which is untrue) or because failure can be fun? any other reasoning? also min maxing in video games makes them less fun? min maxing a video game is what progression is a b o u t. It hurts to know you've irreversibly built something that is objectively bad. not worse. bad. imagine a mage in skyrim or not upgrading anything an a batman game or perhaps just using the stock pistol in csgo
@@mtbthiccness3605 It's less fun because you go from having dozens of different choices that all work just fine to a single choice that is "the best".
Min maxing is not what video games are about, and that mindset has only become a thing in recent years.
"imagine not upgrading anything in a game or just using the stock pistol in CSGO"
Oh you mean "imagine not using the absolute best thing at all times because if it isn't the absolute best it's not worth using"? Because that's the real question you just asked.
Imagine playing a shooter where there's 500 guns and everybody uses the same 2-3 because they're 5% better at killing people than the other 495. Imagine playing an RPG where there's 10 classes each with 3 different specs and everybody plays the same two classes/specs and nothing else because they can output 5% more. Despite the fact that you can still kill people with basically any gun in that 500 gun selection, and despite the fact that every class/spec in that rpg game is completely viable, everybody uses the exact same shit because of min maxing.
It makes games boring and repetitive as fuck, and these aren't examples I simply pulled out of my ass. These are real examples you see with WoW and MW2019. Which is why those games suck now.
@@mtbthiccness3605 Not to mention, what is the fun of saying "wow I just did good in this game because I used the best items" compared to "wow I just did good in this game because I'm good at it".
Doing good because you can follow a meta does not mean you are skilled. Unlike what min maxers seem to think.
@@jellyfrosh9102 that's what i really wanted to get at. How i stop wanting that and switch my point of view because of EXACTLY what you just said. example warzone, I dislike that theres 2 guns in the whole game that people use out of the 100 others. exact example you made. obviously that feels good but it feels "better" to play with the gun that you like even though its technically worse, and hypothetically you'll do better with it cuz you like it. kinda honestly at this point exploring the deeper personal reasons why i min max and feel bad using a less than optimized character even though i dont play warzone like that. i hope i havent been too abrasive and you'll engage this conversation. admittedly the rum brings childishness i regret.
Funny at the end of the day it's the DM that kills the monster. No matter how much power the players have the DM has more
Have you experienced the whining when a DM min-maxes the challenges? :)
2:15 A boulder is rolling behind you and will hit you.
Do you?
A. Make an acrobatics check to get out of the way. (Specializing mobile characters)
B. Have someone cast a spell to destroy the boulder (Specializing spellcasters)
C. Find a large uprooted tree or something to put in the path that will slow it down (Specializing high strength characters)
D. Lie on the ground and hope the DM rolls low damage and that you can pass all your death saves.
Now that the boulder incident is over. Are you inside or outside? If inside maybe like a dungeon have someone look for traps, maybe someone else is here or it's abandoned. Why is it occupied? Why was it abandoned?
Outside was the boulder caused by nature or did some creature send the boulder? Maybe someone could use perception to see where it came from. Maybe someone knows nature about the area being prone to rock falls and avalanches. Either way your players need to press on.
2:42
The players overcame the problem of the boulder when they blew it up.
GM's job is keep things interesting, sometimes it's challenges, sometimes it's plot hooks, sometimes it's worldbuilding. All depends.
Issue with the boulder as problem is no one wants to pick D, here failure means death. Failing to persuade the shop keeper to lower price of an item just means you pay full price. Humans are afraid of risk of failure to make attempts. Encourage players. Don't punish them for willing to take that risk though with a grain of salt.
A problem with the whole I win thing goes like this. Ok so the heroes are summoned by the king of this country and he needs you to go on this long arduous quest to defeat an unholy creature. You will be rewarded handsomely.
One of the characters decides he can sneak pass the guards into the king's treasury and take as much loot as he wants giving no need or incentive to go on this question. He has low combat and strength and high stealth specifically for this.
Here is where as a DM you put your foot down and say no.
Or play it out
They get into the treasury, but getting out is hard. The guards found their entry and are suspicious. Reinforcements are coming and carrying all that loot gives disadvantage to their stealth. If they are caught the king will blame the whole party or if any of them are seen with large amounts of gold rumors will spread and guards will come to investigate and bring you before the king. Now the king will offer you nothing and tell you to never come into his kingdom again or he will have all of you hanged. Your infamy spreads, how will it affect your characters. What personal journeys did they have? Do some decide to continue the quest to redeem themselves, to find glory, because they were entrusted to do this thing?
5:32 Why is Superman's enemy Lex Luthor? It's because while Superman can punch a meteor about to hit the Earth and save Metropolis, Lex can twist how people see it and be nervous of him. When Superman used his power to kill people like Lex or the Joker or whoever usually it ends in some crap sack world where he rules with martial law. His story was never about stopping the meteor from destroying Metropolis it was about stopping himself from going too far, cue his Justice league tissue paper speech.
Some players can't think that way true and they try to minimize risk because to them success is the story not failure. Failure means being stuck at a problem and not moving on while success means continuing forward. Again find way that a character not afraid of failure. Think if they go this route what would they find if they succeed and if not that is ok it was a small side gig anyway the main path continues and no matter how many times they fail something the adventure continues.
15:01 Rules in one book are just as valid as they are in another official book as long as it is the same game and version. Players can use classes or spells from PHB or SWAG or Xanth and the DM can pull creatures from Volo's or MToF or wherever. Just have it available the DM can see, read and put his say on it. He can put his foot down if he feels it is too powerful or doesn't understand it but doesn't mean it isn't part of the game just because it came later.
16:15
Making random characters can be fun. I have done the 4 d6 reroll 1 drop the lowest and then roll a d6 to see which stat gets it. Makes things interesting.
The "not getting classes" thing kind of makes it seem like you are detached from Dnd...(similar with casting a level 3 spell fireball at level 1) and sure it's a general example the issue is when you pretend to know medicine in front of a group of people with a couple of doctors those couple of doctors might call you as being quacks. I mean to put it into perspective and sorry to detract the screen set up is to make it appear both of you are playing a game together but the reality is you aren't even in the same room. It's not an issue in of itself at all, but the perception comes when someone interprets you to be trying to be something you are not. I don't know your experience with GM or roleplay games or anything else just be aware of how your credibility looks to others for what you say. Take mind for example, I know I have low credibility because I spent all this time making a TH-cam comment instead of actually living in the real world so just goes to show how much I actually "know" about what I'm talking about
Your philosophy of role playing boils down to characters being strong enough to overcome my challenges because how they optimized their players is bad.
The video doesn't seem to address what minmaxing is or how it negatively affected the experience of DMs and other players at the table.
A die roll means there will be success and failure equally and your game doesn't stop at their success just as it doesn't stop at their failure and what is important is to find they are having fun. Ask them in between session anything they would like to try, maybe a heist or participate in a sky chariot race with hippogriff pulling or finding a lost temple or battling a lich. Experience and levels and items and gold mean they have more things to do they things YOU want but maybe not what they want. Find out what in this fantasy world appeals to them they would like to try and think how you can have it even if just 1 session or half a session.
When they fail and not beat their thing right away they can get up and keep going being adventurer's in the world. Problem with this though it only works for one player but the reprise will give time to continue where the game goes next and development on it more
You know there are a lot of games, not just D&D and min-maxing is something people do in a lot of games and not just D&D.
D&D is not a very robust rule system. It is not well balanced and breaks down in similar ways across editions as the designers continue to try to keep "D&D" features alive which just perpetuate the issues that go all the way back to 1st edition.
D&D features permeate a variety of games like DNA, some games are able to remove aspects that unbalance the game, while others are merely thinly disguised clones.
D&D was never really designed to play beyond 7th or 8th level. For marketing and product expansion they opted to go to 20 and beyond in epic levels, because the players wanted it. This is why D&D becomes ridiculous after these levels.
It is also why the spells stop at 9 and don't go on to 20 to 30 levels.
As you get more powerful, the monsters match your power, ad infinitum. As monsters get more hit points you do more damage. This constant rebalancing reveals the fact that it is unbalanced. It is forced to add arbitrary numbers to increase arbitray counter numbers so that it all boils back down to you hit it 3 or 4 times and it dies.
The concept of min-maxing is to minimise the risk of failure and maximise success. However, only in defined aspects of the character created. To maximise success in ONE aspect of the character, other aspects need to be minimised. Failure becomes more prevalent when those minimised aspects are tested.
The boulder and every problem faced is solved by that ONE maximised aspect... I fireball it, or I dodge, or I jump over it... and that is all they EVER do. Meet an NPC... fireball. Come across a locked door... fireball. Need to light a campire... fireball.
No one has claimed to be experts. What we do is assert an opinion to start you thinking. Whether that opinion is 100% accurate or understood by medical professionals doesn't stop it from doing its job - as evidenced by your lengthy reply.
Don't fall into the trap of believing that one way of doing things is the only way of doing things.
There are plenty of examples of our GM styles and skills on other channels on TH-cam. You can watch those and judge for yourself whether they are good or bad. In the end, it is just another opinion and has no more weight than any other person's opinion.
In order for a game to remain interesting it requires variety. Min-maxing is the very opposite of variety.
@@QuestGivers "D&D was never really designed to play beyond 7th or 8th level" Really? are you serious? I been in groups using 1st edition that lasted well over 10 years with players getting up to around level 20 . I see cases where it about 1 year to go up 1 level. When you leveled you had to find someone to train you which can months for certain classes like ranger then you had to do something for them which may take a couple of months then after that it took 1 to 4 weeks for your training
I seen comments how the original groups for d&d retired a character when they reached level 10 partly because most of the characters were human and were just getting too old or the characters would quit being adventuring and move on to something else or just got bored with the character . Those guys stopped at level 10 or so more out of personal preference and play style. Other groups go past level 10, they largely quit adventuring and run a business or a school. They move away from combat and take part in the politics or economics
I do treat it as a game, but I don't like the focus of it being solely on combat or being perfect. I'll save this one to create a DMing playlist. This is great. Btw, I tend to like adventure paths.
It is a game, but treating it like other games where "you must win" leads to complications.
@@QuestGivers I completely agree. I've seen a few of your videos already, and I wish I had resources like TH-cam and published campaigns then. The social interaction, exploration and adventure, problem solving, action and comeraderie all combine to make roleplaying games unique. But beyond having adventures to run I've never felt more empowered than when I discovered Quest Givers and similar channels. You people are invaluable to players like me who struggle with the roleplaying aspect because it's something not everyone learns. I'm used to people demanding it and assuming it's obvious rather than really teaching players.
Thank you 🙂
Playing to your characters strengths just ruins the game?
No, playing a 1 dimensional character.
. What does playing an effective build have to do with being a one dimensional character?
Meh. "Don't min max" is a lazy DM's message to high functioning players. Presenting challenges to the players even in the face of an "I win" button is the job of the DM, and if you fail to do so, that's not the players' fault. In your own example of the giant rolling Indiana Jones boulder, that's a clear threat that the players have to deal with immediately or get squished. A nice challenge. The player who uses fireball to destroy said boulder is using one of their resources to deal with the problem. THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM. You, the DM, presented a challenge, and the players used a valuable resource (a spell slot) to solve said problem. This is not "min maxing sucks." You as the DM should present more of a challenge. Perhaps said rolling boulder awakened a swarm of giant spiders who immediately descend upon the party, who now have to deal with a bunch of spiders WITHOUT THEIR WIN BUTTON. Case in point: Instead of complaining about min maxing, rise to the power level the players are presenting. As the DM, you have way more tools at your disposal for presenting challenges to them than they have for dealing with said challenges. Use them.
The reference was to a low level character being overpowered to a low level threat. If I were actually DMing that situation the boulder would shatter into thousands of super heated lava blobs and a rather angry rock golem.
Why can’t you roll play a mid maxed character I think if a dm can’t address that mid maxes character it’s not on the player but the dm get good
Video games and TTRPG aren't the same.
Seems to me that anyone who becomes an adventurer has something that sets them apart and al the very least has the potential to become among the best of best. I see one of three happing you die or you quit or you become very very good. How did you make it to first level/ pass training without being at least decent? I feel you 2 are saying is unless your character is mechanically bad your min maxing
I played 1st edition d&d with using 3d6 in order method and doing dudgeon crawls. I had bad experiences where most if not all of the party was killed in 1st round of combat due to being surprised and everyone having 1 to 4 hit points . We had to make save or die rolls and even if you made your save you still died because you only had 1 or 2 hat points to start with
I see The Lord of the Rings as showing min maxing has it place. Frodo never would destroyed the ring without a min maxer like Legolas doing what he did. Having 1 or 2 players min maxing in a large group is not necessary a bad thing as everyone can their moment of glory
The point is that you optimise your way out of a character with a diverse role to play in different adventures, rather than JUST the pile of points that approaches every situation as the same problem and performs the same sequence of actions because that is what they are optimised to do.
Legolas is an "NPC", a supporting character. Merry, Pippin, Sam and Frodo are the "party". Each grows significantly through the saga. They all start out as "farmers" with little to no skill.
@@QuestGivers Roleplaying your character well and optimizing your character are independent of each other. Min-maxing doesn't stop you from having character growth and development, from finding ways to being useful in a variety of situations
I see this more of player and possible DM issue. . With good role-players and a good DM is min-maxing really a issue? Is the DM taking the players out of their comfort zone and how does the player react? What size group are we taking about? A group of 4 or a group of 12 players?
Granted that Legolas is just supporting character however on some level it doesn't matter. The Hobbits would have failed unless Legolas and others did what they did first. Is that the way you think a campaign should go ? That the players cant optimize their characters but they will fail unless helped by some npc who is
Please go back to crafting Scotty! PLEASE. I loved all of your old videos.
What I tend to hear when people say that min-maxing is bad, is essentially “You shouldn’t try to put most of your points into charisma, yet you’re a sorcerer.” It makes sense for a wizard to have high int and low strength, or a paladin high cha and low int. I don’t see the problem with it. You’re simply making your characters stats work with the class that they are
the guy on the left side looks mad and serious.
Yeah, min maxing and power gaming isn't really a thing in 5e. Powergaming was only really a thing in 3.x/pathfinder, and even then there's still very clear weaknesses for a gm to target or the gm can utilize puzzles or rp scenarios to challenge the players and characters(create scenarios where success isn't determined by stats). Powergaming and roleplaying aren't mutually exclusive either. I always thought these arguments against powergaming and minmaxing were dumb, the issues in this video aren't real issues for an experienced gm.
If powergaming isn't a thing in 5e why are there so many optimised builds? People who start at levels other than 1? Ultimately it is not about whether a game allows for powergaming, but whether a player searches for the ability to manipulate rules for more arbitrary points instead of playing the game. Try getting people to roll 3d6 straight down the line... "This character is too weak!" "I can't play this character", "I can't make a good character with these stats". The argument is about enjoying the experience for what it is rather than trying to win an unwinnable game.
@@QuestGivers There's really not that many powerbuilds, there's the coffeelock sure, but how much does that actually see play? And what does it matter if people start at slightly higher levels? That doesn't really have anything to do with powergaming, there's enough content to challenge a party that starts off at level 2 or 3 or whatever. Using alternate stats is more of a table thing determined by dm and it is still up to individual players to determine the final build which may or may not be a strong build, and most power comes from abilities in 5e, stats cap at 20 and there's very few stat boosting items that you have no guarantee of getting, so powergaming via stats is again a non issue. Even if you have higher than average stats your saves won't scale as you level, anything you're not proficient in won't scale with you. Power gaming just isn't a thing in 5e, it is a 3.x issue that newbies to the hobby like to complain about because they see old forum posts about it back from 3.5 and don't know enough to realize the issues don't carry over(or they're just bandwagoners). In 5e what people complain as "power gaming" is just an optimized build which is the more or less the default assumption of this edition.
so minmaxing is ruining fun and is a win button...
so my dragon age inquisition elf - ranged DR - two handed weapon fighter - damage - templar - buffs and protection - is a minmax cause it deals with most opponents in the game with a templar follower, a spellcaster and a ranged combo activator? or am i just thinking with the game mechanics to make the game less about the grind and more about the story?
in detail: portal enemies are annoying and demons in general are just a hindrance but are bags of hp or a very high amount of barrier. what gets rid of barrier? templars and mages. tank aoe taunts, player aoe knocks down, archer aoe bursts while mage puts down the force cage and fears. demons are summoning in? just dispell their areas and get the xp without expending potions. boss fight? two templars can buff. mix necro can do a lot of status effects and the archer just combos to nine hells.
so is using creativity to outplay the game minmaxing? if the rules allow for it why not make the optimal thing? am i a minmaxer for playing my hexadin? or is it just cause i want a mechanically functioning character around my backstory and roleplay?
What you describe is creative. Creative from a meta-mechanical perspective. Yes, your character is good mechanically. Nothing you have described makes your character interesting in the slightest in a non-mechanical sense.
There is nothing wrong with that, but consider how other people may perceive that character in your group and does that gel with the way everybody plays. If not, then it is a problem.
Playing mechanical characters is fun. Just as playing overly theatrical characters is fun. However, is everyone onboard with that? If so, then you win. If not, you lose.
@@QuestGivers a group of theatrically fun characters Vs a group of mechanically fun characters with their players actually knowing how to roleplay personalities and not solely rely on fun factor to generate fun in and out of combat.
I'll give you a chance to place bets on which team would win ;)
You don't need to undercut your character in order to play flavorfully. Increasing combat time To take away from oh so dear RP, increasing likelihood of a character downing/dieing and the dominoes start falling - aka cascading tpk; not realising mechanics don't a character make. For that you have your imagination and a group.
Also being creative is part of minmaxing. Did you know I was the one who introduced nerdarchy to the hexadin? It's minmaxing and it can be fun pending on your player.
That is gaming everywhere now! Powergaming.
Bring back thac0! Great vid!
It's still here, just reversed.
Thac0 for the win :)
The game should not require the players to deliberately cripple their characters. If you can't tell a story with a monk that has more than 10 dexterity, because it is succeeding too much, that is not the fault of the min-maxing player.
I am not strawmanning your argument here.
Down in the comments, you called casting Meteor Storm a problem. But Meteor Storm is just a spell the wizard is going to get much later when multiclassing. Later you explain characters with 3 strength and fore dexterity are more interesting.
Sorry I broke your bossfight by hitting it with Stunning Strike, but actually not sorry. I am not going to use the class features on my character sheet and I am not going to dumpstat wisdom so the boss has a higher chance of succeeding the safe.
The argument is that a character is one dimensional and lacks nuance. If all the character does is the same thing over and over and over again it becomes boring. It isn’t hard to layout a story for a hammer, you just keep putting nails in front of it. However, sometimes you may want screws, or heaven forbid some glue.
@@QuestGivers I mean, if you tell players how they have to play characters based on their build, then they will lack nuance.
Like the Warrior is really good with the sword, so you can't ask the witch if she knows about the 2 snakes field standard, should have invested more into social skills. But I mean, didn't you say failure is good? Let the warrior try and if he fails to see through her motives, she turns into a demon and tries to kill him.
I would say it is much more difficult to layout a story for characters that are not great at anything but also not bad at anything.
EDIT: What I mean is the lack of points invested into social skills may create more complications when fulfilling the personal story and I don't see how that is bad.
In table top it kinda does suck we have a player that always cherry-picks abilities from multi-classing because he knows we’re not going beyond 10th with our characters. You should have to justify your multiclassing. You just don’t learn to use stunning strike all of a sudden or how to use thieves tools just cause you took a feat. I don’t multi class because I like to focus on my characters path
I feel it only really sucks in 5e
Bofuri manga brought me here.
FINALLY! The devious plan worked
Min-maxing is an anathema to gaming.
Love you guys, but I disagree with some of what you said. My main experience was back in 1E AD&D in the early 80's so take my comments with a grain of salt. I don't necessarily think that min/maxing sucks, but you do have to know your table. To reference another recent video of yours about "forcing players to play your way", know your table. If everyone is in agreement about playstyle, min/maxing shouldn't really matter and the DM can alter stats, mechanics, etc... to fit the game. Have that session zero. I see Professor Dungeon Master chimed in below and from his videos he alters stats, caps character HP to 20 or 30 HP, and does other things and his table is fine with that. Other tables wouldn't be. So, know your table. Some players/tables care about story, others don't. Some care only about combat, others would rather RP with no combat. If min/maxing is how the table wants to have fun, don't tell them they are doing it wrong.
And I wouldn't have a problem with DM's limiting or banning some things, like the whole summon pixies/polymorph routine that, while is legal by the rules, can break the game and the DM can say 'No'. And yes, new DM's can say yes to a combo that may break the game, but learn from your mistakes. And don't feel like you can't go back and alter previous rulings. I've seen other videos by DM's, maybe have been some of yours as well, who say in order to keep the flow of the game going, if you don't know a specific rule, etc... just make a ruling and look it up later. If you realize you had it wrong, discuss with the players and move on with the correct ruling. Not saying you should make a player reroll a character, but talking out the issues with the player and table would probably help.
A lot of people talk about the DM knowing the table. This is really about the players knowing the table. If the DM were to min-max the game would fall apart.
While the DM seems to be in charge, their role is a reaction and reflection of the players. The DM creates problems for the characters and the players use the characters' skills to resolve the problem. The DM adapts the problems to suit the actions of the player characters. When you have characters that are heavily stacked in one aspect, introducing problems that negate that aspect of the character can be construed by the player as the DM working against the player. Eg, A combat attack stacked character walking into a scene without combat. The DM is then compensating for the character by adding in combat, but this then compromises the scene if combat is unnecessary.
In games like DnD, which is unbalanced, this becomes a big problem. The best example of this is having level 1, 5, 10 and 15 characters in the same party. You can't. It also illustrates why Min-maxing becomes problematic as you have characters that advanced disproportionately to the rest of the group.
Other games that are not "dnd" clones don't suffer this problem as you can have characters with wildly differing skill levels working together without the need to rebalance the game.
While some see this as a "your fun is wrong" what it really is is beware the unbalancing! :) I enjoy a good dungeon crawl goblin bashing tank session once in a while as well, but if I do that while everyone else is not... I'm not allowing others to have fun too and then my fun IS wrong.
Quest Givers I can agree with what you said and appreciate you guys bringing up the topic and provoking further thought and discussion.
@@mes2370 backing the point QG is making here, if you're, as DM, constantly adjusting stats, fudging scenarios, etc... to mitigate your players' stat blocks, they broke the game. Legal, illegal, how they fun, whatever, they broke it, and in situ, the DM is trying to duct tape those breaks so you can have any game to play at all. That's just silly.
Now, does everyone want to play a superhero? Maybe it's as simple as finding another game. If you're table is invested in super huge monster guys with boat sized swords, maybe Exalted is more your game than D&D? If you want to be Dr Who, maybe don't play Warhammer 40K? Feel free to look around at other games, there are a TON of great genres by whole teams of peopke ego worked hard to give us a gene with a semblance of balance.
Final note here, ever read a manga called One Punch Man? The main hero, Saitama, it's constantly bored and kind of empty headed because he's so much more powerful than the world around him, he can defeat any foe with one punch. Imagine how bored and vexed min-maxed players would be if the DM wasn't beefing the world up and instead only gave them RAW challenges. Yup, they win the drinking contest, bed 8 yugoloths, kill a giant and raid his larder... cuz it's Tuesday. Didn't even need to roll dice.
I completely agree to this.
Tabletop roleplaying is small where I am from. And has a small community.
But even online, its not that "huge". When taking convenient timezones for everyone into consideration.
it have come to such a point, where I've pretty much given up doing roleplay games.
Because most Tabletop Roleplay games, even done through great sites such as Roll20. People only play for combat. And min-maxes combat stats.
And all they do is combat. This is fine for people who enjoy combat. And you may ask why I complain on this, well the simple reason is that many times, you join a session that does not originally purely contain combat.
but because so many people Min-max combat abilities, the GM is left with no other option than to introduce more combat into the game.
In the end, it just becomes a combat-fest.
Ontop of that, Min-Maxing makes things less interesting, as you mentioned, there is a certain good feeling that comes from risk vs reward.
The less the risk, the less the reward feels.
When you min max, you pretty much remove the enjoyment out of the reward. For some people. I know there are many people who are "sore loosers" and can't stand loosing, hence they just want to press the I-Win button.
but it just gets frustrating for people like me, who just wants to enjoy a good Role-play story.
people keep forgetting that Tabletop Roleplay, is a game about making a Story. if you die unexpectedly, or due to bad luck, well, that's just a part of a story! Then you simply make a new one and start over and just let faith and the dices be the one to decide how that story unfolds.
And in this unfolding, that's where the entertainment, for me at least, is found. And is the core reason I even do Tabletop RPG.
If I want to play a "railroaded" story where the outcome is predictable. I simply play a RPG-video game.
if I want to play a pure combat experience, I simply play a RPG video game with combat in mind.
But I want to experience a completely new, fresh, unpredictable story. Thats when I do Tabletop RPG. and that's the magic about it.
Min- maxing is the FUN for some players- like a legal cheat code- beating the game and the dungeon master by any means possible- usually not used by the role player type gamer
If all the players are playing with cheat codes enabled :) Otherwise, that one person who using cheat codes whilst others aren't... then we have a problem :)
This “logic” - that D&D is a game you can “beat” and the DM is something to be “beaten” - completely misses the point of the game and illustrates the problem with min-maxing in general; it’s not a video game. It’s not checkers. It’s a collaborative narrative experience. The DM WANTS you to win, but they also want to offer a simulated fantasy where verisimilitude, chance, and choices matter. The “role-player-type-gamer” is engaging in the role-playing game... the person trying to “win” D&D has missed the point.
@@matthewshroba1511 YES!
Lot of minmaxers in the comments.
LOL
Powergaming is the path to the darkside, sure you got all that power. However, did even think of level 4? Your already bored with your power, and you look on at your fellow adventurers and are envious of them - they're still joking, excited for the next level aren't they? Wallow in your self-pity in disgust munchkin!
If you're bored by level 4 you're doing it wrong. Most multiclass munchkiny builds require 1-3 in a given class to get the fun stuff, then you add to it elsewhere.
@@LolDongs69 Its really a product in the system, they made it easier for new player and munchkins. Its been happening since 3.5e.
@@DMRaptorJesus Yeah, lowering the entry bar to get more profits has happened with all forms of gaming. But it doesn't have to be boring to munchkin though, honestly it's pretty fun to have a character with clear strengths and weaknesses. When you nat 20 those weaknesses it feels great. And it doesn't take a genius of a DM to make it interesting, even if a regular module's combat would be easy.
Not only did I have a party of minmaxers, I had one guy who stormed into a room with 13 low level bad guys and complain that the cannon fodder shouldn't be allowed to crit or seriously hurt him. Popularity and the generation of instant gratification ruined D&D.
I agree with this. It takes a lot away from character development and the game in general.
Preaching to the choir here. I've been saying this for years! Unfortunately, people have been doing it for decades, even if it is the norm these days.
I find the modern obsession with mapping out a character's story tragectory before the game even starts to be counter to the spirit of the game, where the character grows and changes as a result of the story.
AGREE with almost everything in the video! ALWAYS start at first level..I let my players have the character and/or class they want, but the focus is on the STORY & ADVENTURE... the focus is NOT "how to abuse the rules for unbeatable combinations"... remember, the classic story telling pattern is "try-fail" "try-fail" "try-succeed". GREAT video guys!
DND is just unbalanced. Play something else
That's not what min/maxing, min maxing is when you minimize your minimums and maximize your maximums, so for a barbarian high strength low intelligence or the wizard having high intelligence low strength, what you are referring to is power builds, too totally different things