D&D Min-Max-ers Are Valid

Guest Jasmine Bhullar defends the honor of min-max-ers in gaming, and puts Brennan in a few TRICKY debate stances in this Contested Roll segment.
To watch the full episode, go here: www.dropout.tv/videos/honor-the-absurd-with-jasmine-bhullar
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[@ob2kenobi388]

When she said "I'm against child soldiers" I fully expected Brennan to blurt out _"If they're smaller, they're harder to hit!!"_ or something like that

[@blockmonster2812]

The children yearn for war

[@symmetry8049]

"I'm against child soldiers IN DND" well i'm not - that can be a great worldbuilding tool to show how fucked up the villain is. And it allows the party to save them. Or a PC to have been a former child soldier. You just want to stop your villains from doing evil things? Well then what's the point?

[@nootboot9324]

"It's good exercise!"

[@ArtWithSR]

The fact she's wearing an "Enfants Terribles" shirt is making me go "METAL GEAR?!?!" all of a sudden hahahaha

[@GentleGiantJoe]

I was expecting him to be like. "But the morality factor that the enemy has to shoot children will fuck them up and some will more then likely not shoot or harm the child soldier."

[@drewe51]

When she said "If you wanted a balanced game you'd play Warhammer." Me and 5 other people laughed really hard.

[@bryannelson01]

The wink really sold it.

[@immanuelaj]

I don't even play Warhammer but I felt that can't possibly be the case seeing as how complicated it is! Glad I found this comment.

[@drewe51]

@@immanuelaj the concept of the game is really great, but the execution of the game is... Rough most of the time.

[@owenlewis6294]

(Laughs in codex creep)

[@ChrisShipway]

There are DOZENS of us!! And the Warhammer players say if you want a balanced game, play chess.

[@Mechpilot0790]

Watching Brennan reluctantly arguing against minmaxing was like watching a fish argue against water

[@Squeekysquid]

apt description. nice and succinct too.

[@UTO7]

People confuse minmaxing for powergaming too often. You can make an effective character while also being there to have fun.

[@DellikkilleD]

@@UTO7 powergaming is a lot of fun, come on now

[@link4253]

@@DellikkilleD but at what point do you tell a player to just go play Baldur's gate 3 because they want to control a party by themselves(aka use sidekicks which isn't a rule but is DM optional). I hate gamers who play TTRPGs and expect me to allow them to take over everyones game and turn it into their own personal fantasy sandbox and if you dont go along with something they will annoying demand you show them the rule where it says they cant do something, then i have to slam the emergency brakes on everyone elses fun time to account for the meta gaming player who had years to analyze the perfect race/class combo to allow him to live out his Dark Souls single player fantasy while everyone else spent maybe an hour on the books to find something they think they would enjoy playing. One player wants to win everything(probably save scums to the max on BG3) while the rest of my players are trying to roleplay and have a good time. I dont know about you but that is why metagaming/powergaming sucks. Min-maxing wasn't a thing till 3rd Edition, thats when the game went from a ttrpg that would take place in thinkspace to the WOTC D&D which we know today. 3rd to 5th edition was very tactical and technical because they wanted to the game systems to be similar to rpg video games being released at the time, therefore making in an easy transition between the way people approached video games and the way people approached TTRPGs.

[@VeisCMG]

the look on brennan's face when he realises that fantasy high is literally just child soldiers was priceless

[@zacharynguyen7286]

Hope you are doing good and staying safe. If you need to talk to someone or need help, there are people who care. Sending support and hearts. ❤️❤️❤️❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@Angriestpirate]

Brennan could not resist completing his animal fact during the zebra metaphor.

[@Vergilius314]

The completion was relevant to the metaphor! He was saying that the issue only appeared to be equally viewable two different ways.

[@Vergilius314]

​@@Angriestpirate Oh, for sure, he is very pleased with himself for having found a relevant animal fact!

[@burning1aces777]

Sad part is that that info is incorrect

[@therealjp5480]

To be honest, I was a little disappointed that Brennan got the Zebra fact wrong. They are black with white stripes

[@RealJohnnyAngel]

@@therealjp5480 Did he? or did he intentionally sabotage his argument because he is pro min-maxer.

[@vanguardchief4921]

I love having Min/Maxers in my group. I get to open the “fun section” of the monster manual.

[@westofley]

for real! No more gnolls for you! you get to fight mind flayers :)

[@smalltime0]

I had a dm punish me for min maxing in a campaign. I was deliberately derailing the campaign

[@athenaraines]

Min/maxers are great when newer players also exist in the game because, usually, the min/maxers are super dedicated and into the game and they are totally fine helping the newbies get used to the mechanics. And I tend to homebrew shit a lot so it means I can make cooler crap for my party to fight >:). As a bonus that also means I can help the less experienced player catch up with cool items that are simple to use while also giving the min/maxer more niche and situational (yet still strong) stuff for them to be creative with

[@verbfrombonsai8852]

@@athenaraines I remember this one group I had where a friend and I were tasked to handhold some of the beginners we had at the table (total beginners, no ttrpg playing or spectating background). My friend was always the RP first guy and I was the power player. My friend built this elaborate document detailing every spell in their spell lists and how to use them. Meanwhile, I instead just gave the players what combos I normally do in their respective classes. I initially thought the players prefer the non-spoonfeeding guide because it is less backseaty and has more freedom, but turns out the beginners just felt intimidated by the amount of choices and felt more confused. I guess it was because it made them more familiar with the "feel" of the class more by just doing the cool stuff the class does, then decide themselves whether they want to lean on it or deviate from it. I was pretty proud of myself, sad the table had to disband.

[@TheDedlyghost]

Hell yes

[@Tiny594]

This might be the first time Brennan's willingly and unprompted admitted defeat on camera without going down with a fight.

[@tsotate]

I think he genuinely would have made a stronger effort on the child soldier debate.

[@nicklarson8814]

@@brawlyaura5799 he was forced to argue for people that complain about people that are playing the game well and good. Thats the one thing he cant argue for lol

[@kstar1489]

@@brawlyaura5799it was a discussion, not meant to be a serious debate. Calm down

[@carmacksanderson3937]

He also admitted defeat on secret death saves in another one of these

[@reapersashpt8144]

Because he believes the opposite of what he said about minmaxing. Admitting defeat is admitting that the position he actually have doesn't have a reasonable leg to stand on

[@the3nder1]

Her saying "I'm against child soldiers" while wearing a "Enfants Terribles" shirt is great.

[@elliotlarsson7408]

I love how this series is just Brennan finding it increasingly difficult to argue with obvious truths.

[@crystalshard1349]

I wouldn't say obvious truth for this one since a lot of people really don't like min-maxers but Brennan really doesn't believe that and literally nothing he says holds any weight because of it

[@tuomasronnberg5244]

​@@crystalshard1349 But those people are in the wrong for not liking min-maxers, because this episode proved that there's nothing wrong with being a min-maxer.

[@AlmightyChastor]

​@Crystal Shard but on the reverse side of that lists of people don't like people who make everyone in the parties life harder by adding an intentual disadvantage

[@ylnysanchez3859]

This is why you do a min maxed support! Your party will enjoy suddenly feeling way stronger.

[@jakkank]

​@@tuomasronnberg5244 there is something wrong with it if the rest of the party and the dm dont like min-maxing. Context is always important when considering what's right or wrong, even with what we think are universally right or wrong.

[@shanetaylor5403]

"Aren't we both, like, ex competitive debaters?" "Yes, I believe so, uh, shit, yes. BUT!" That interaction was so funny to me, as a guy who did 4 years of high school debate. Felt that to my soul, and the feeling was comedy

[@MadWhiteNerd]

The sheer level of "Oh no" in Brennan's voice was palpable. XD

[@joemurray2523]

You can tell with Jasmine, she is good 😅

[@tarsierontherun]

Brennan got a taste of his minutes long rants from Jasmine, and he couldn't help but appreciate it and smile!

[@mason8920]

My eyes just kept getting wider when she went off. Like damn, that that woman is smart.

[@ryancparker]

The only thing I would add to this conversation as an unrepentant min-maxer who loves to roleplay is recognize the table you’re playing at and hold back at times so you don’t overshadow the other characters, giving them a chance to shine as well. If someone else is good at something that you’re also good at, help them to give them advantage and let them roll. Also, since you’re so good at the game, your turns should be quick like a bunny. Don't make your DM do math. They have enough to do already. The other thing you can do is min-max a support class and play it really really well.

[@duishungry]

I really like your POV! You're right that sometimes the "bad minmaxers" take it too far and make themselves the main character of the story by doing everything fun in the game and not giving other players a chance to play the game. I think reading through these comments my problem with min-maxers can really just boil down to them not making it about playing the game, but about knowing the mechanics of the game itself. That's fine to a certain level, but at some point it gets hard to a point where they take it soooo much more seriously than I have time/effort to dedicate to. That's why "get good" isn't good advice to me, because the min-maxers that truly bother people are the ones that dedicate so much time that if you were to dedicate similar amounts of knowledge learning about the game it would break your enjoyment. THen it just becomes homework instead of playing a game to blow of some steam.

[@ExInfamous]

Im a first time player who has watched a lot of DnD content so I like to believe I still know quite a bit. That aside, the rest of my party are completely new to DnD as a whole. I went a sorcadin that absolutely excels at smacking the fuck out of enemies, but my flavoring is sort of meant to lessen the overbearing strengths. I also went veng pally and shadow sorc so I tend to be extremely broody outside of combat. Helps give my team their own moments to shine.

[@guitarhero01234]

Personally, I'm a minmaxer who's very forgetful at the table, and I often forget situational abilities that are buried in my spell list or features from multiple classes, so there are often games where my character doesn't make as much impact just because I don't realize I can until it's too late. That tendency, along with my BardLock's 7 Wisdom that I loved to roleplay, led to that character getting the party into trouble almost as much as he bailed them out of with his damage numbers

[@shealupkes]

All I really do at unoptimised tables is hold bless and draw fire while they fuck the goblins up, even if I'm not applying the builds full potential until things get scary I'm still doing something and helping the party at all times

[@Laezar1]

The good thing about min-maxing is if you can play something strong you can easily make it weaker, the opposite isn't true. If you're too strong for your team you can decide to limit yourself but if you are a liability you can't really change that without the DM's assistance

[@GOgg13s]

"I didn't know there was a winner" brought back memories of Brennan saying "Everything is a contest"

[@doomstadt2371]

One of my tables was a min-maxer carrying a bunch of fun characters through combat while we carried them through the actual story. It was like having 1 sober character and their 5 absolutely trashed friends. It only went on for a few months but we had a blast. If you just understand why everyone's at the table and find a way to make them fit its fine.

[@TH-fu1qn]

That’s a beautiful love story. I appreciate this.

[@miked.9364]

Well when you turn the game into a running joke...you get this. I don't need to 'find a way to make them fit' When I say what I am willing to run, if someone feels they need to be something counter to that, they will not have a fun time.

[@TH-fu1qn]

I’m so lost… what are you trying to say?

[@jesusguadalupe8396]

​@@miked.9364as a dungeon master you adjust your game to what all your players enjoy. If I have a player that enjoys puzzles and a player that loves being powerful I'll be damsure to make those things relevant to our campaign

[@pendotxl822]

​@@jesusguadalupe8396 only to a certain degree tho. You are not a slave to the players, and if they actively try to spite you they dont really get to expect being catered around. If you say that you want to play an underwater campagin and someone choses to go with a hydrophobic character, thats fully on them. Same if you tell them at the start that the need to be good or atleast neutral aligned for this plot, or have loyality towards group x for that one, and they then with that prompt create a character thats outside of these bonds , they dont get to wonder about why things might not work out for them. Then again im not sure what the point of that poster was

[@Quicksilver_Cookie]

Brennan met his match. That whole bit starting from paladin/warlock multiclass played by Brennan was an absolute slam. What a joy to watch.

[@santiv4]

@@brawlyaura5799you’re stretching way too far just to hate on someone you dont even know. you made so many assumptions on a stranger just because they were efficient in making their points. quit being an ass

[@yasch3696]

​@@brawlyaura5799You do know this is just some banter between friends and the way they portay their position in this discussion is most likely not the way they would act in rl?

[@stm7810]

@@brawlyaura5799 I have played broken builds other characters can still shine in other moments, sure Titan the Solo I made really did solo combat, the GM having to pull out more and more enemies, including a sniper and 2 guys with a machine gun on a Jeep to deal with me, but the net runners still got to do their nerd thing and social encounters were fun for all. it's only a problem if the game is only combat and people can't think of other things to try.

[@SweetDeath777]

@@brawlyaura5799 do you know the concept of... commiting to the bit? like when she said no I think i came from a rib looking dead serious did you think that was genuenly her opinion or just being contrarian because that's the premise of contested roll

[@kamshik]

In my view it was a terrible angle on her behalf. Obviously, Brennan is arguing against his beliefs and her bringing out that intrinsic discrepancy serves her no good. She should defend her position and let Brennan at least try to defend the opposite instead of her arguing that Brennan is actually a min-maxer, which is a well-known fact. It's a classic case of at hominem in a format, where Brennan is essentially playing a character.

[@JediJess1]

Goddamn! This is currently the strongest argument I've seen for a side in Contested Roll. She just shut down any opportunity for counters and argument. Very well played!

[@michaeldejean3742]

Brennan had no where to go because she didn’t really attack his position as much as she attacked evidence that he didn’t believe his own position.

[@TheHonestSage]

She min-maxxed the arguement holy moly

[@seasnaill2589]

Afterwards they really got to the crux of the argument, the entire problem is just DMs not knowing how to handle a Min-Maxxer. Its a table issue, not a player issue.

[@Setzer]

@@seasnaill2589 I mean, I do think that if everyone else at the table comes in with unoptimized builds, and you the one min-maxer guy comes in with a build that does x2 the damage as anyone else while also having better skill checks than anyone else, then it does feel kind of bad to be that monk PC. You likely won't be better than everyone at everything, but you can definitely have a character that is better at everything than one specific other character, and then it kind of feels like you're shitting on that character a bit.

[@slayonce]

For real and she perfectly used his own points against him. GGWP

[@justice5188]

Brennan sitting in silent glee as Jasmine absolutely cooks him on the spot. God bless.

[@thegmwitch]

Also the friggin' "..... I lost" Ahahahahaha! He KNOWS he is getting slammed!

[@thegmwitch]

@@brawlyaura5799 okay… that was pretty obvious in the video.. But I still love the way it was played out. Lots of good natured humor as it was hard for him to argue the side he didn’t agree with and he was obviously getting slammed and didn’t want to argue.. but sorry, I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at here or why you @ me specifically 🤷🏽‍♀️

[@verbfrombonsai8852]

@@thegmwitch That is fair, but I did feel she could have picked a better topic where both sides could have had equally entertaining arguments. I really liked Matt Mercer and Brennan duking out whether milestone or XP was better. It was entertaining and both sides are swinging till the very end. I kinda didn't like that the debate was over as soon as it started, but I do agree there is still entertainment and valuable points (just not as much on an argument with a level playing field)

[@dyeager152]

As a min maxer one point I want to be made is that, researching how to create over powered builds IS part of the fun for me. Like ‘how do I make a ranger the face of the party’ or ‘how can I be a tank front line wizard’ are characters I was able to build because I started off with ‘how do I create the strongest archer’.

[@Sheph100]

I really appreciate this comment. I'm a not min-maxer. The fun for me is dreaming up character ideas that aren't bound or limited by any system and slotting into the system in ways that seem like it makes the most sense. In D&D this results in tough decisions - like, ideally my character would have both of these feats because they're cool, but darn I'm only level 2 so I can only get one of them - and lo and behold, I think the one that doesn't help me in combat is more important to the theme I'm going for. It's not that I'm bad at min maxing, I just value different things. Another part of it is that I can usually trust the DM to make me feel powerful anyway despite the limitations of the system (I couldn't get the two feats I feel describe my character well enough) (or we're low level so it doesn't make sense that my character can do these things yet) ... if the DM can't do that, I could just as easily say git gud to the DM. I admit, there can be some tension between us because often we tie the DMs hands in mutually exclusive ways. I think we should be less critical of DMs trying to work through this very real problem and more understanding to each other in general.

[@johnalderton5857]

As a fellow min-maxer, I would love to hear about your tank wizard

[@mutedknght]

Big same for me. I went from "how I go absolutely crazy making the most combat destroying character possible" to "I want a druid who is the most threatening utility caster ever with no damage spells" to making a charlatan wizard that was more face than anything. It's gotten to the point where I wait for everyone else to make something so I can see what I can brew up on the spot to fill the niche we need filled in while using none of the classes or races chosen.

[@cjwunsch1754]

@@johnalderton5857 Not OP, but my favorite characters are front line wizards of some variety. My two favorite so far are Eldritch Knight 7 / War Wizard X and Blade Singer 6 / Echo Knight 3 / Blade Singer X. Your AC is absurd and you have the ability to spike it. Your hp is a little lacking so 1/2 damage on successful save spells will still whittle you down, but you won't get hit by most single target attacks and you even do have spells to help mitigate your damage on those as well. The main downside is that you're highly effective for a short period of time before needing that long rest.

[@nathanielgomez8350]

@@johnalderton5857 Abjuration mountain Dwarf decked in armour

[@rosaevans-lombe3851]

One thing that’s often overlooked about min-maxing characters is the role playing and storyline it supports. So many of my min-maxed characters are BECAUSE of storyline. How I am supposed to say my character is a phenomenal archer without backing it up with game mechanics.

[@Sindrihelga]

On the other hand starting out as a phenomenal archer leaves little room for growth?

[@Orobascientia]

​@@Sindrihelgathat's only true if you let it be true. Maybe my incredible archer's growth isn't in the archery, but in magic. Maybe my archer is incredible, yes, but nowhere near what they could be, explaining the level progression, maybe they even get humbled by a bad guy who's an archer that makes them notice just how much they still have to learn. Maybe they're extremely good at archery and yet, in a anime-sensei kind of situation, they just want a quiet life after experiencing the terrors of war. The "little room for growth" is self-handicapping and could even actually help build the character. Imagine an archer so good, they don't have any challenges anymore. Even if there is room for growth for them, they don't want it because it'd only mean even less challenges, they lose whatever little passion. All of a sudden they're forced into a situation where they have to fight again and suddenly, they have to regain their passion and slowly learn new ways to apply their archery, once again explaining the level progression. What I'm trying to say is that, don't let that stop you narratively, especially since in one way or another, there will ALWAYS be mechanical room for improvement because of the level system :)

[@KingBobbito]

@@Sindrihelga No amount of min-maxing leaves zero room for growth though. It's genuinely impossible to make a level 1 archer that doesn't get huge boosts at 3 (subclass), 4(sharpshooter feat), and 5(second attack).

[@seasnaill2589]

@@Orobascientia Agreed. You can start with a powerful character and still have them grow emotionally as well. Many stories start with characters that already know what they are doing, and then develop in other ways as the story unfolds.

[@averagejoey2000]

​@@SindrihelgaLegolas Slander

[@ikaemos]

The optimization community generally uses the terms "practical" vs. "theoretical optimization." Practical optimization builds characters with a theme, whether mechanical or narrative (e.g., a sword-and-sorcery character), looks at the options available (e.g., a Conan-like character could be a barbarian/rogue), analyzes them, and finds the most mechanically harmonious ways to marry them (e.g. our Conan might not take Arcane Trickster because Rage prevents spellcasting, and they might not take Berserker because the Frenzy bonus action attack conflicts with Cunning Action). Theoretical optimization, on the other hand, is the glitch-skip speedrun of D&D - it exploits unintended or underdeveloped rules interactions for purely mechanical benefit (e.g. a Blinded character would only benefit from dropping Prone because they would reduce ranged attacks against themselves to a straight roll instead of advantage, but would not be hampered in any way they weren't already by being Blinded - it's a weird quirk of the (dis)advantage stacking rules, and makes little sense in the narrative).

[@kashtrey]

Casting revivify on this old comment. But narratively to me it makes sense that someone blinded would go prone. When trying to avoid gun or arrow fire most people "hit the deck" and if you're blinded with both melee and ranged folks around you, why not take an action that at least makes you harder to hit for the guys with bows. There are things that only serve mechanical purposes, I get that. But I do think you can role play yourself into something narratively satisfying to cover many of those.

[@SoralaxPlays]

I like what this comment is saying a lot. There's a world of difference between finding the best mechanical cohesion of your character idea and the options provided to you vs. making a build you found on a Reddit post that can deal 700+ damage in one round at Level 3. The game never intended for the second one to be an option. People who try to sneak builds like this into their games are intentionally taking advantage of jank in order to make something unreasonable happen to the detriment of the game experience for everyone else at the table.

[@ss3nm0dn4r8]

actually irl you would lay on the ground and roll if you're being shot at to try to make yourself a harder target

[@NovaHorizon]

lmao. Brennan, the man who "Will die on literally any hill!" accepting defeat in such a pouty manner is an absolute gem. 😂

[@mtheoryx83]

"I think I came from a rib" gets me every time

[@nickmillar999]

As a forever DM who enjoys coming up with interesting, theoretical characters, I really feel like there's a difference between "min-maxing" and optimizing. While creating a character, it's fun to figure out not only where their strength's lie, but how to feel truly powerful as that character. When my players are looking at their stats and character sheets, I want them to get the absolute most out of that character

[@KingBobbito]

I can't tell you how many times I've been accused of min-maxing because I've suggested optimizing things like giving yourself even stats when you're using point buy. A 12 is exactly the same as a 13 unless you're taking a +1 feat, so I try to avoid odd ones. All the time I see players with all odd stats and no dump stat, so they end up being disappointed that all their checks are +1 while everyone else specialized and have a +5 (or more) in something.

[@fazebooquifius3186]

I watch all sorts of DnD optimisation content. And read all sorts of articles about broken builds and combos. But I don't play broken characters. I just want to take the idea I have in my head and make it as mechanically functional as I can. Because with how DnD works, you can't effectively roleplay without your character being able to back it up mechanically. Lie my current fighter is a spearfisher/whalehunter who fights by throwing harpoons. So I tried to find a build that could do that in a fun way. And doing no damage because your build sucks isn't fun.

[@seasnaill2589]

@@KingBobbito Min-Maxxing is when you break the game by exploiting every little loophole and multiclass option imo. I agree with you, its very different from optimizing.

[@nickmillar999]

@@fazebooquifius3186 doing your research ain’t a crime just cause no one else did

[@nickmillar999]

@@KingBobbito exactly, if I want to make sure my character is effective at the kind of things I’m going for I’m going to do my homework. For example, I came up with an undead hunter recently inspired by Van Helsing and making sure to read up on the appropriate feats, race options, and ability bonuses is half the fun

[@Evravon]

My very first ttrpg that was not played with my "core group" of friends (I stepped outside my comfort zone and joined a campaign with some people in my WoW guild I didn't know very well, but who seemed cool, and I really wanted someone to be available to teach me Pathfinder), I went into it how I usually did, not min/maxing too hard, trying to do my best, and role playing how I think my character would behave. There was a specific moment, where I made a choice for my character, and the table made fun of me for it. They laughed at me and almost acted like I was doing something weird or wrong in the moment, like I was a creep (we found a lost girl in the woods and I wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and patted her on the head, then gave her my rations for the night so she had something to eat). In my head, this was a pretty normal action to make someone feel welcome and not afraid (she was very uneasy around our party and wouldn't come near anyone). I was relentlessly laughed at for this, and left the campaign a few sessions later (for a mostly unrelated reason, but I did make my decision to leave with that event in mind). Ever since then, I haven't been able to freely role play the way I want to. I kind of clam up or play dumb characters who speak mono-syllabically. It kind of turned me away from wanting to just become a character within the game world, when even the DM was laughing and making fun of me for how I portrayed my cleric.

[@SwordlessNinja]

That really sucks to hear, this is awful to go through in TTRPGs definitely wrong to do to a player but I recommend trying to rp freely again, find a group that you're more comfortable with. There are lots of people who are very supportive in the community. Don't let a bully change who you are

[@er4din903]

Is there any explanation offered as to what exactly the other people at the table found funny about that?

[@Evravon]

@@er4din903 Patting a young person on the head. It's something you mostly see in anime, so they found it funny. And the DM role played that she found my character creepy for doing it. We encountered her character again later, after she had been adopted by the guild master who had given us our primary quest, and the DM made a point to role play that the girl avoided me and looked away from me like she was scared every time I was around.

[@ulfjohnsen6203]

Been one receiving end often on the "everyone misreads my action as something different than I intended effect". It sucks, but happens a lot due to the effect of differing minds eye teaters....

[@ThePentagenarian]

Simple explanation - the DM was an asshat.

[@galaxyorca2029]

The most difficult thing about Dming for min-maxers is the fact that they commonly so much more powerful than the other players, that you end up making a boss difficult for that one character and then almost impossible for the rest I feel like that's the difficulty with min-maxers

[@zynthio]

I feel like there's still some pretty simple ways to balance that out tho. Mainly the fact that if it's obvious to everyone at the table that a character is the most powerful and causing the most trouble for the baddies, it would be just as obvious to the villains - so they would focus their attacks more on them over the ones that arent causing as much trouble You can only do that so much tho before that player feels like you're singling them out just one example of a workaround

[@Denny_Boi]

You sort of have to make do, you know? I love making combat proficient characters, so yeah I'm a hard-core min-maxer, but my DM has played into that. He puts us against tough odds, but always sends the biggest hitters my way while the rest of the party deal with other threats.

[@theyoungfool.1895]

Have you heard of shadow of Mordor? There’s this amazing game mechanic that was implemented called the nemesis system, If you encountered a chieftain or someone of worth in the ranking of the orcs they would rank up both in stats and their ranks in orc society for defeating you. On the opposite end they would also lower in rank and power if you defeated them, humiliate them (a mechanic which weakens and drives the opponent insane) or even kill them off. But, they can also be resurrected and the nemesis’s gain buffs, bonuses and level ups in rank. These mechanics if used well in combination with character motifs create a characteristics to a npc that ultimately create terrific role playing moments and challenging encounters that often counter act most of the players most common actions. Steal the concept for your own DnD game, make the nemesis solely fight min maxers and it might work

[@midgardaskr362]

@@zynthio You just explained aggro lul. xD

[@michaelaliebelcreative]

I think the best way to make an encounter challenging for the min-maxer is to find out the min part of the equation. Hit them where it hurts, but make the challenge easier for other players. Maybe your monster is resistant or immune to bludgeoning, but magical attacks knock it down fast. Something like that would make your fighter have to think about how to keep the wizard safe so they can keep spell slinging.

[@mcmann2243]

As someone who likes making mechanically strong characters, I really like making characters who need to overcome problems outside of combat. You can have a lot of fun in combat, and have interesting ideas to RP with outside of it. A character I’m playing right now, for example, is a mercenary who hates his profession, but feels trapped by it. Rather than a mechanical struggle, he’s struggling to find identity and peace in the chaos of an dnd party

[@jacobbissey9311]

Yeah, my current character is a warlock with dumped INT and WIS, but an 18 CHA. I roleplay those stats appropriately, he was raised on a pirate ship so his knowledge about the world is pretty heavily skewed, he is good at exactly 2 things, escalation and de-escalation, he can fight very well and he can talk his way out of situations very well, but he's also an idiot who's naive about the world and as such makes a bunch of dumb decisions. Combat shouldn't be a challenge because of player build decisions, it's the DM's responsibility to ensure combat is adequately challenging and a good DM will try to find ways to make things work regardless, building a character who is deliberately bad at fulfilling their role in the party isn't making a flawed character, because having low modifiers isn't a character trait, so the argument of "I want to play a character with FLAWS" doesn't hold water, and yet so many anti-optimizers cling to it as though we just don't understand their "artistic vision" instead of being annoyed that they are risking our character's lives with their unwillingness to play co-operatively.

[@davidolinger3948]

Ive been playing through my first campaign and I went with a character kinda like this lol. I gave him great barbarian stats and did variant human to get great weapon master, but he basically never rages cuz of long story lore reasons as long as his opponents are humaoid. He will only rage against like demon monsters or if he has a rly good reason to, and Im happy to say it led to my fav moment ever so far in dnd when a boss of bandits who he was trying to talk reason to knocked him to 0 hit points, just for me to crit on my death save and then next turn rage for the first time all campaing into a crit on the boss to kill him, such an awesome feeling

[@Matthew14853]

It really depends on the table you're playing at. If your character is tremendously better than the rest of the party min maxing creates issues. But if you're playing with an experienced group of DND players its better everyone makes a mechanically sound character. My only real issue is when players are following a cookie cutter guide designed to max damage per round.

[@nathanrhoades6504]

@@Matthew14853 there is a huge difference between cookie cutter character and unlimited spell slots when it comes to power level.

[@Matthew14853]

@@nathanrhoades6504 ok and my comment is about players who pick a min maxed cookie cutter build

[@Kelticfury]

I like how they started with distance and somewhat guarded body language and around half way through they are facing each other and both leaning forward and the convo really starts rolling.

[@dinen2394]

my table being both RP fanatics in-session and min-maxers out-of-session is actually so fun, because the DM knows we can mess some shit up so he can throw the crazy encounters at us, but we're also crazy immersed during the social encounters and out of combat

[@Gray963]

The most fun I ever had in D&D was with my first group, a group who got so into it that we all became min-maxers and hardcore pro character builders. We were all coming up with increasingly creative and powerful characters until we were playing full on super heroes and demigods. This goes for our DM too, who got good enough to make seriously threatening super villains to pit us against. This culminated in a epic level gestalt campaign where many gods became cool characters themselves.

[@Xyronyte]

Was this 5e? Did you kill off and re-roll characters, or start with powerful build templates at level 1? Did your DM let you respec?

[@jacobbissey9311]

@@Xyronyte I'm guessing it wasn't all one campaign, but rather a group the developed over the course of multiple campaigns.

[@BrenGamerYT]

That’s pretty awesome your table is able to get along that way. Not everyone at my table (including me) is interested in pro character building, so it can get a little frustrating at times. I’m glad your game is rad tho :)

[@daftwulli6145]

Hey if the whole table is min maxers and love the challenge it is awesome. It becomes a problem when you have one min maxer who needs tro be challenged and the rest are not min maxers. You either balance the encounters for the min maxer, then the rest is basically fucked, or you balance it for the rest then the min maxer is bored that leads to an awkward table dynamic. For the rest of the table it looks like the min maxer is the problem, which is why they have a bad reputation, but the real problem is that people have different expectations of the game. You need to clear that in session zero. You either need no min maxers or mostly min maxers to make it work.

[@daftwulli6145]

@@BrenGamerYT Yea a mixed group usually leads to an awkward table dynamic. Either the min maxers are bored since the encounters are not challenging enough, or the non min maxers get frustrated since encounters are too hard, and you cannot really balance for both. I have a similar problem atm. we lost a bunch of characters and our d/m insisted on the new characters being level 1. I am a level 10 thief and a level 8 paladin (long story my character started out as an assassin, found religion, well religion found him, and became a paladin, lost the assassin stuff but can still use most of the thief stuff as long as it is for the right reasons). I nearly one shot our last boss encounter (he had like 3 health left after my first attack), and after an intense dungeon crawl i still had 2/3 of my health left and I don´t think i healed even once. Heck a lot of opoonent could not even hit me unless they crits since my ac was too damn low (first edition, the lower your ac is the better, most in my group are 10 and up, i think we have one 8 , and there is me at -1) but at least I don´t need the challenge like min maxers do so it is not as boring to me as it would be to them.

[@jst1215]

I’ve played with a whole range of min-maxers myself, from the ones who make great characters and just like to feel powerful (perfectly fair and understandable) to the less savory ‘I will abuse the rulings to create characters that can’t be beaten’ and hogged the narrative all to themselves, and ultimately I think min-maxing itself isn’t the problem. The problem is and always will be poor team players who only care about themselves and their enjoyment at the table.

[@Dave004]

Definitely! there are people on here who argued with me saying if someone chose to make a "min maxer" within the rules they were given, and others chose to dump certain stats for roleplay purposes, that those who dumped stats should be able to tell the min maxer to change their character because its making them feel inferior. Some people are very odd and have quite the entitlement complex I suppose. Just let make characters however they want (but definitely don't abuse the system or rules or else face the DM's wrath lol).

[@tuomasronnberg5244]

​@@Dave004 Honestly, I feel that those people who dump stats for "roleplay" reasons want to *say* that they have a flawed character while still kicking ass in the reality of the game i.e. they want to play the underdog but at the same time not suffer any kind of mechanical handicap because of that, and that makes them upset when they can't compete with an optimized character. I find it pretty dishonest tbh.

[@roddc7696]

Precisely. I've been DMing since the red set and have seen this happen and it does cause problems. Not min-maxing itself as you say, but diva players that continually want to hog the spotlight. It is a thorny issue and difficult to deal with. I've tried various methods with very mixed results. Ultimately I've decided on the following method. First, am I getting complaints from the other players, if not, I chalk it up to my reading too much into it. If I do get a complaint, even if it's only one player, I simply have a private conversation with Diva player and ask them to be more mindful of this issue. Usually, the player agrees because they didn't pick up on the issue. Where a player is obstinate and refuses to change their ways (and this has been mercifully rare), I usually kick them out of the game. I'd rather have the other players happy as opposed to only the one.

[@GrugTheJust]

@@tuomasronnberg5244 I disagree wholeheartedly, I don't see it as a disingenuous "flaw". I feel like a character's FLAWS make the character. The character isn't the stats, it's the outcome at the table. I've gamed with dozens of the same, "I'm gonna make the most damage heavy...blah blah blah." While playing you invariably accept that they destroy the field, so much so, that stops being special for that character, it becomes accepted. Where those character SURPRISE you is when they can't handle their flaws. That's the meat of the potato. Perfect example of this kind of character in media. One Punch Man, the combats are a forgone conclusion but the character's BATTLES, are in the flawed social engagements he's only equipped to bumble through. Of those min maxers, I can recall 3 that decapitated dragons. Boring. What I do remember was one immovable tank of a beast who killed a dire bear in single combat while tripping on his own entrails, who nearly died because his Dex was so abysmal he failed a series of saves and managed to slip into a relatively shallow river and was swept several hundreds of feet before plummeting over the falls.

[@Dave004]

@@GrugTheJust I do find there are degrees to min maxing. You can have a Fighter who takes Str and Con as their main stats, dump Int, Wis and Cha because they want to be a warrior, take GWM and Polearm and still have fun roleplaying. Thats a very optimal build, and yes min maxing. But then there's those who multi class 3 times with really powerful classes thats purpose is to just make an incredibly hard to beat combo or something. My DM always says you can multi class but you need a reason and story behind it, not just you want a dip in Cleric for heavy armor, thats not logical. But again, its good to get these intentions out session zero so everyone knows "oh this guy is going full on fighter and taking all the powerful feats so we should maybe make our characters a bit stronger so we're not just back up" kind of situation.

[@DutchDread]

In my experience min-maxing a character went hand in hand with passion for a character. I had an idea and found joy in working that out as well as possible and finding fun ways to get complimentary mechanics. So when I have a min-maxed character I will also role play better because I am excited. However, I've had a character where whenever I did something that was effective, whenever I thought of an optimal strategy or clever trick I'd get a bunch of critique, sometimes just in the constant stream off "I need to check this, does that item say that because that's too strong and". Where I was getting a level of scrutiny that no other player was getting despite it always turning out that "yes, that does work like that". And it got to the point where I was just no longer enjoying the character because I was making sub-optimal plays or plays I didn't really want to do, simply because I didn't want another conversation about "whether that's too powerful, maybe we should nerf it, bla bla". And as a result, instead of describing something cool I wanted to do, I fell into a rut of just going "yeah, I attack it, 8 damage, I end my turn", because the passion for playing my character, and therefore, playing the campaign, was gone.

[@negligent2965]

In the only session I've ever run as a DM, I had 3 players and all of them were minmaxers and it was it was incredible. I was literally able to throw an ogre, a bandit captain, and a mimic at them and they shredded them without even needing to take so much as a short rest. They were level 3.

[@seiyikun1]

I just loved how Jasmine couldn't stop talking and throwing out facts like a machine gun.

[@aziouss2863]

She brought up the subject because she is passionate about it. We all have those topics that piss us off because of people who have dumb ass takes. So you practice imaginary arguments in the shower XD She probably rehearsed this for 70 hours already XD

[@jmcgann]

She absolutely went for the jugular there. I swear I heard someone say flawless victory, FATALITY!

[@lw8882]

And it wasn't even spreading. It was all coherent, rational, pertinent, and effective arguing.

[@dukstedi]

masterdebater

[@doyouwanttogivemelekiss3097]

@@dukstedi Arguably, the masterdebater himself was/is pretty effective in maximizing the rules for counterspelling - and it didn't/doesn't even detract from the story

[@tacobell2009]

Watching Brennan admit that he lost was oddly satisfying. 😂

[@sentryward8744]

He is kinda a min maxer. Sooo

[@santiv4]

@@brawlyaura5799its hard to debate on a side that you dont agree with, but especially when that side often uses illogical/unfair reasoning to support their claim. not deliberate, just expected.

[@LangerzzCPYInc]

I like optimization, I think it's so bloody fun. The biggest thing is knowing when to flaunt the power you give your PC. Keep up good RP and when the time calls for the optimized abilities we so carefully built, unless when the time is right.

[@IrisCorven]

This. Min-max, but hide the power level till the time is right.

[@Squeekysquid]

@@IrisCorven The min/maxer is there for the group when you need to come in clutch. I don't need to slaughter every combat. I just want to be ready when the group really needs the win.

[@telepathetic730]

I think a lot of it comes down to the reasons why someone is min-maxing. I recently had a player who only did it for the purpose of being the bad guy main character. But there already is a BBEG. He just wanted to be the main character of the party as an evil person just looking to be more evil in a group full of good characters.

[@cjwunsch1754]

That's Brennan's point though. The min-maxing itself isn't the problem, the problem is the player wanting to be the bad guy main character.

[@zacharynguyen7286]

Hope everyone doing good and staying safe. If you need to talk to someone or need help, there are people who care. Sending support and hearts. ❤️❤️❤️❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@duishungry]

I think I'm starting to see Brennan's POV now. I hate minmaxers because they often get so powerful and know so much about the game they take all the fun out of it by taking away my opportunities to do things. Like yeah I want to fight, but everytime I swing at an enemy that enemy is already blown up. If I wanted to get to that level of power I'd often have to devote more time/effort than I have, and it would be to a point where it breaks my enjoyment of the game because it just feels like homework. That's my problem with minmaxers, but that's a problem with the player moreso not letting anyone else play. It's the DnD equivalent of not letting anyone else get a turn on the swingset.@@cjwunsch1754

[@TricksterPrince]

I have a “min maxer” at my table and they are by far the most invested in the story. I just have to get more creative with enemies, which as a DM, is fun! It’s part of the game.

[@ShiningDarknes]

As stated, in order to min-max successfully you have to know the game very well and that often means you are very invested in the game and paying attention to everything going on.

[@Xhalph]

"I just want to kill everything really quickly so we can get back to the storytelling sooner."

[@JustAChannel11631]

@@Xhalph haha, nice quote :))

[@Marionettetc]

Take me as a player, daddy

[@mitchelltyner5670]

How do you balance encounters for the rest of the party that aren't min maxers

[@dlvnmedia]

I cannot think of a time when I’ve seen Renan look as frightened and excited at the same time as he does in this video. Bren and met his match and I’m here for it

[@jamesjoy7547]

He totally owns his loss. It is glorious! Now I want a BBEG encounter where the party completely tears the minions apart, and the BBEG just looks around and says "- I lost .." with a resigned shrug

[@pauljordantalbot4100]

Absolutely my favorite guest DM on D20, she rules, SO damn funny and a great story leader, can’t wait to watch more of her campaigns

[@jimdaqguy]

She makes an argument so great that we almost forget that the rest of us are not playing with professional actors paid to role play, but rather waiting 30 minutes for our friend/sibling/partner to read through their spell list and measure the battle map to decide which spell is going to do the most damage while we sit there and twiddle our thumbs. Then it's our turn. I swing my axe. I swing it again.... and then we wait another 30 minutes. I feel like people are often arguing different points on this particular topic. Character optimization is not the min/maxing many of us have grown to hate. It's when 4 players want to play a game and the 5th one wants to do math 😆

[@Tythas1]

I loved Jasmine before but god damn I just absorbed a whole new level of respect for her.

[@kamcio8586]

I didn't knew her before but otherwise same

[@theq86]

I kept doing a double take every time I saw this thumbnail because she looked so familiar. I finally watched this and confirmed it is the barbarian from Relics and Rarities. She was great in that.

[@Tythas1]

@@theq86 She sure is! Dang did I love Relics and Rarities, too...

[@WisakJ]

Brennan's face of absolute defeat was so funny. It's hard to find people that can debate Brennan in a quick back and forth scenario, but she didn't even let him start to get speed. Incredible debater and absolutely right. Would love to see longer versions of this segment, cause the topics are always fascinating.

[@JarrekAsF]

Well it doesn’t help that he also likes min-maxing but had to debate against it here

[@vurrunna]

I think this debate misses one of the main issues with Min-Maxers, which is how they fit into a group of non-Min-Maxers. For context, I once played in a campaign that included players of wildly varying skill level, ranging from people who'd never touched a board game above Monopoly, to people that had watched D&D series but never played, to people like me who would theory craft powerful builds in our free time. Even as someone who was only an entry-level Min-Maxer (I just like looking the the highest DPS I can manage, I don't mess with stuff like multi-classing or broken mechanics), the disparity of power levels in our group became a real and genuine problem, as encounters that were strong enough to challenge the high-power players would essentially block the low-power players from any meaningful contribution, and encounters made to be simple and easy would just be ended in two rounds because my dinosaur druid was a murder machine. I think these two may have lost sight of the fact that they're both high-level players, and so Min-Maxing is normal for them. And I want to be clear, I generally agree that Min-Maxing is a fun way to engage with the game-I also know that it can severely mess with a game's flow if the group's not on the same page together. I think Brennan shouldn't have taken the route of "Min-Maxing is always bad," but rather "Min-Maxing isn't always good." There's a lot more wiggle room there, and, I feel, some genuine arguments to be made.

[@alkabek9581]

This is why I always say create your character and then make a character sheet to match. It can be kind of tricky due to the class limitations, especially at early levels, but I find it far more enjoyable to use a character with a decent backstory and abilities to match than to build out the sheet first and figure out how to make a backstory fit. I recently wanted to create a genie warlock and was struggling to create a backstory for him because I felt hampered by the restrictions of the mechanics. It was like forcing my ideas to fit inside a box and I had to throw out things that wouldn't work with the theme.

[@rstlr01]

“Oh no the enemy laid a bunch of eggs and now there is more enemies!” Feeling a little called out here😂 I do this way too much.

[@9553shadow]

I hate that shit.

[@IceMetalPunk]

"You killed the adult dragon very quickly. Unfortunately, it laid eggs, and now ancient dragons are hatching." "Wait... how are they ancient if they're only hatching now?" "Pay no mind to the stat block, just accept it and roll a new initiative!"

[@crazyMLC]

Min-maxing is taking the character rules and treating them like a puzzle to solve, and I for one love puzzle games. It's basically the only way to "play" D&D alone, since you don't necessarily need the rules to make up a character or a setting. I guess the stigma sources from when players/DMs take that singleplayer mindset and bring it to a table. Important to remember you're playing with other people, and cooperate with them, right?

[@crazyMLC]

Also, in reference to 6:35 , I'm almost certain the term min-max comes from chess algorithms, where you choose your Maximum value move on your turn, and assume the Minimum value move on the opponent's turn (under the assumption they are trying to minimize your success). The term is inherently adversarial when viewed in that light, I suppose.

[@marclemieux4902]

Min maxing where I learned the game was involved with dump statting and creating characters that were extremely niche. The two down one up house rule had people with a couple 18 stats but a 5 in charisma, they could use their sword (usually triple specialized) or bow extremely well, but outside of situations, even combat situations where a sword or bow wasn't useful, they were worse than a level 0 peasant. It was frustrating to DM characters like that, because everything that didn't cater to the specialty felt like you were stonewalling the PC in a game with many save or die situations, but in reality, you're just running a normal campaign. It's harder to minmax in later editions because everything is a bonus, and there are fewer penalties, so you don't really get the min aspect of minmaxing.

[@ashtonhoward5582]

​@@marclemieux4902 minmaxing means minimizing weaknesses and maximizing strengths. Strictly speaking, your example is not minmaxing unless you add the caveat of minmaxing for combat. But minmaxing in a roleplaying game tends to mean being really good in situations you want to be good in, and not being super weak in others. For example, a properly built skill monkey is insane in noncombat encounters, but it's not like they gave up all combat capabilities to do so. So I think it's the opposite. It is easier to minmax now than it was in your example. Because focusing on one thing isn't completely to the detriment of everything else.

[@tri-heart]

@@ashtonhoward5582 Not necessarily. That may be the most common definition today, but another might be minimising undesired or unimportant traits and maximising desired ones. That was absolutely how it was used in older editions, as described. Edit: an example of how it was used, and some problems it could lead to, can be seen in the Goblins webcomic with "Minmax the Unstopable Warrior" who maximized combat prowess at the expense of minimizing everything else, including trading his ability to read for a +1 to hit, among other things.

[@tylerbrown8098]

Yeah, complaining about minmaxing in 5e is a little hollow because there aren't any "min" mechanics anymore. In 3.5e you really could take a shitton of flaws and lopsided traits in order to get certain facets of your character into the stratosphere by *tanking* the others. In 5e I think the better term is "optimization"

[@keyboardtechhomeworkrecord7547]

I really loved the bit at the end about DMs having a responsibility to meet powerful PCs where they're at and providing a real challenge

[@NickW855]

Classically, as in 2e and earlier, Min-Maxing was more defined by use of the point buy system raising one stat to the highest available stat at the cost of putting one stat at the lowest possible. These types of characters were difficult to justify in terms of roleplay; min-max in those days was 3-18. We don't use that style of definition anymore because the standard point array is already min-maxed. There's a 15 (highest possible pre-racial stat) and an 8 (minimum). Everyone's min-maxing by 2e definitions.

[@zahawolfe]

10:29 Having a character's rolls or actions in game be counter to their designed intention can be really interesting if you go along with it. I think Matt Mercer's Leiland from Escape from the Bloodkeep is a great example. He's this mighty warrior who's second in command of the evil forces, but due to poor rolls just keeps failing in combat and in other areas, but Matt leans into that and ends up with a very interesting character who plays at the heart of the group dynamics and is eventually able to get some redemption and uplift at the end of the campaign in a few crucial moments.

[@TerryAVanguard]

This

[@IceMetalPunk]

Ah, Leiland 😂 Leiland "I keep fucking up, and when I finally succeed, NO ONE IS WATCHING" Kraz-Thun. Man, Bloodkeep had some great character moments.

[@ocadioan]

My old group had a party where one person chose a druid and made Wisdom his dump stat because he didn't realize that druids use Wisdom for spells and that his favourite ability, Flame Blade, used his Wisdom modifier instead of Dex. We of course helped him reorganize his stats after our group had cleared the first mission, but it just goes to show that some people just straight up don't read the PHB when making their characters.

[@Lumps27]

The problem i have with having someone in the party who is super focused on maximizing all the damage possible is when they start trying to dictate other people's turns, "if you do (x) and push them in and out of this zone it'll do do much damage" just like, you play your character and let me play mine, i like doing some sub-optimal things on some turns because it makes for great flavor Which is why I'm DMing in a different system entirely that is focused a lot more on the narrative and less on giving every possible action exact numbers

[@EatsUsedTP]

There is a difference between teamplay and dictating. Coming together as a team to determine a strategy is fine.

[@burgernthemomrailer]

“Okay I’m gonna cast Web on the enemies.” “Alright cool, they fail their DEX saves, next turn.” “Uhh I’m gonna cast Fire Bolt!” “Wait don’t do that it’ll burn the Web” “Don’t dictate my actions! You play your character and I play mine! It’s what my character would do!”

[@Thatsnotgonnawork]

It sounds like you dont enjoy a team based game if you're upset that your party members want you to play like a team

[@duishungry]

I agree, after reading through this thread though I've changed my opinion on minmaxers. The problem isn't the minmaxing itself, it's the players who typically enjoy minmaxing the most. The players who have main character syndrome and make everything about making themselves the star of the show.

[@mal2ksc]

@@burgernthemomrailer Burning webs cause damage too, so I'd actually worry more about this combo being cheesed than it being a bad idea.

[@skizordrone3836]

In my opinion the issue arises when min-maxers start getting irate and bitchy when they are denied the ability do do things. like, i was running a game a while back and a player at my table had this huge plan to just one shot a boss in a very, "look at how great I am" sort of moment. when he enacts said plan, and the boss turns out to have a 2nd phase, he started saying that I was being totally unfair and threw a huge hissy fit, essentially ruining that session for the rest of the night. The issue is not min-maxxing, the issue is the kind of person/type of personality that is typically drawn to min-maxxing.

[@bartvance8805]

Oh, and on the Counterspell issue, if you are like Jasmine as a DM, look to how much havoc you can cause by having your minions able to cast the simple cantrip of Chill Touch. It hurts you with Necro damage, and keep you from healing until THEIR next turn. I have driven a party nuts using this simple cantrip!

[@regaleagle6533]

Counterspell got a huge nerf in the 5.5 anyways

[@Michael-bn1oi]

​@@regaleagle6533 Should have just removed it and kept normal spells for baddies.

[@seasnaill2589]

Is it just me, or is counterspell a bit boring? Its too easy to just *turn off* someone else's spell, and then that person is just stuck without an action. It feels anticlimactic in a sense, regardless if it happens to a player or to a boss.

[@aslandus]

I think one of the big problems with twitter debates about min-maxing is that people overuse the term to refer to anyone building a character to be effective in combat, while the term was originally created to describe a very specific kind of player. That is, the kind of player who creates a deaf, mute barbarian with a -3 to charisma, wisdom, and intelligence so they can get a +5 in strength, dexterity, and constitution along with the ability to carry a greatshield while duel-wielding battleaxes with no penalty, making a character who's incredibly effective in their niche (which is very often combat because min-maxing and murder-hoboing often go hand in hand) but borderline nonfunctional in any other situation. This kind of player (and, of course, their character) can end up dragging down a party and make it harder for the rest of the group to do what they want, which is why they have such a bad reputation. Also, I suspect part of the reason people conflate it is that it's far harder to do in popular RPG systems nowadays than it once was without significant house-ruling, since many modern rule sets like 5e tend to limit how much players can do to cook the books, as well as make stats more universally useful to disincentivize throwing away the ones a character doesn't "need". Overall, this makes it much harder to create a half god-made-flesh, half useless worm than it would be in other games and older rulesets where they didn't have mechanics like that.

[@eyflfla]

Well said, much better than I tried to say it. I've heard that 3.5 had a lot of disparity between someone who knew all the tricks and someone who was just starting. But nowadays publishers know to look out for that sort of thing.

[@huntersuper98]

Yea the biggest thing with 5E really is that there are unbeatable strategies but it usually has nothing to do with your stats and more your class and items that you have access to.

[@KingNedya]

Yeah I feel like there is an over-emphasis on combat. I admittedly most likely fall into the min-maxxer category, but my character was actually designed mostly for out of combat situations, and whenever I *was* in combat I was more of a supporting role for the more combat-focused characters in the party. Like I could use my high movement speed to give other PCs flank bonuses very easily, even though I couldn't take advantage of the bonus myself because my damage output was so low, it would be helpful for my party members, just to name an example.

[@natekanuchok1148]

I think the general impression of a min/maxer is someone who has created a character/build so capable that they no longer 'need' to count on their party. Combat? Min/maxer did it singlehandedly. Maybe the other players didn't even get a chance to go. Social encounter? Min/maxer did it. Puzzle? Min/maxer circumvented the complexity. Min/maxing isn't bad. But in a group game, hogging the spotlight is bad form. Not giving your friends the opportunity to usefully contribute makes them feel unneeded. Handling all challenges without breaking a sweat makes the other players realize that they're about as important as NPCs. So it's not about 'Is mix/maxing bad'. It's really about "Are we all getting to have fun?". If everyone is having fun, there are no problems. If people aren't having fun because they're functionally 'on the team but have been relegated to benchwarmer', then the min/maxer has the responsibility to stop doing everything so that their friends get their own moments in the spotlight. Personally, I love playing a skill-monkey Rogue. I absolutely min/max my character... BUT! I hate being the guy in the spotlight. I don't like attention or to be the one that saved the kingdom. I like playing support. Support is important because it's very important, but doesn't get the glory. The team knows that they may have died without their support, but the support character is making everyone else do better. It's cooperatively oriented. Min/maxers just need to be able to cooperate as a team. Share responsibility. Don't step on toes. The frustration against min/maxers is actually frustration at a lack of basic manners and social etiquette.

[@thodan467]

with other words the player is at fault that the system in unbalanced

[@TooDuelForSchool]

the biggest challenge with min-maxing roleplaying characters is only really when that person flakes on a session and the DM has accounted for their over-powered character and now they're not there. - min-maxing is okay, but it can put alot of work onto people to accomodate and make sure the rest don't get killed at the same time.

[@KingBobbito]

I know new DMs might struggle with this, but you are the DM. You can change literally anything anytime you want, and a missing player is hardly the only time it's necessary. Worried a combat will be too tough because someone is missing? Just put in a couple less monsters then trickle a few more in if the party is doing too well. Big boss man is killing everyone? Just bump his health down a bit, or don't have him use an ability. Heck, even lie on some rolls, if the boss only rolled 2 above their DC say he failed anyways. Players feel more powerful if you let some of their spells work.

[@joelrobinson5457]

​@@KingBobbitoOK, just balancing is hard, especially when players use different classes, then it can be one feeling targeted because the others would be one shot otherwise

[@KingBobbito]

@@joelrobinson5457 then you can fudge damage rolls a little. Rolled max damage on blight against the wizard? Drop the damage so he lives on low HP. It'll make the party adjust to keep him alive. Plus it never hurts to have a party member go down if you have a healer or your party has potions (and you're using the healing potions on bonus action house rule which everyone should do).

[@archer1088]

100% Agreed the DM can basically do whatever they like on the fly. Reading the table is important, the goal should be to maximize the enjoyment of the party and if you have to fudge roll or switch up the plan then you have the power to do so. @@KingBobbito

[@agitolive]

One of the things I always try to tell my "Role Play Focus Player" is to ask the "Min-Max Player", how they do what they do and how they can do it too. The inverse of this having the "Min-Max Player" be pulled into Role Playing cool or key moments by the "Role Play Focus Player". I agree these things are not mutually exclusive but when they are. Working together helps. I've found its the best way to remove misunderstandings and overshadowing. Ya know, being collaborative in this collaborative game. Great Video!

[@MeonLights]

Once she reached for "did you or did you not play a min-maxed character and yet your roleplay was not lacking?!" Whoooff debate mastery! The only problem I have with min-maxing is that I sometimes play in rounds with them where the DM goes "oh well this was clearly not a challenge for the group I gotta give you stronger enemies" and then that character is either caught or taken out with a trick or magic and all of us are in danger of one-hit-k.o. 😅

[@PumaPants248]

That just sounds like your dm makes the combat deadlier to equalize the min maxed character and then throwing a spell to incapacitate them anyways. That’s a dm issue and not on the min maxer

[@tash1201]

I agree. It can cause some challenges when half the party went the demigod route of good min max and the others are new, fledgling story filled pinatas. But I have just made it so these "bad asses" names have proceeded them and now they get focused a lot more due to their fame. Freeing up the new players to have more freedom in combat and at times find more success. It def is a balance to be found and grown by the table. DM and Players together

[@GamerGrovyle]

Starstruck Odyssey supposedly had all of the Intrepid Heroes make "the most busted characters I have ever seen" (Quote: Brennan Lee Mulligan) and their roleplay was never found lacking. Why does having a busted character mean you're a worse roleplayer? When I found my players started becoming a bit strong for their level I started throwing bigger enemies at them, causing environmental challenges in the encounters and giving them in world consequences (Yes. If you use firebolt in the bar fight then the house will light on fire)

[@andy2069]

@@GamerGrovyle it's only an issue when the party balance is hard. Not impossible tho. There are lots of creative ways to handle things, so long as the min maxers at the table don't claim it's not fair if you balance things harder for them and easier for others on some level. Narrative choices help a lot here. Some min maxers play that way not because they like a challenge at all, but purely because they like feeling overpowered. So if you balance their power down you can make them salty for not letting them make the entire parties battle fast and easy with 2 round kills.

[@StonedHunter]

​@@tash1201 honestly that's a really good idea I'm going to make note of

[@toddbailey8474]

I would love to see the 3e vs 5e debate

[@kylesmith7413]

Do you like wargaming? 3e. Do you want as much roleplay with as little pesky rules as possible? 5e. There isn't really an argument there, but a very simple question of preference revolving around the different design philosophies of the two editions.

[@blackfox4138]

@@kylesmith7413 you could make more of an argument for PF vs 5e since PF takes the roleplaying and adds numbers and equations to it whereas 5e simply removes rules and allows the DM to custom make their games.

[@iceman10129]

4E FOR LIFE!

[@fishfingers4548]

To make a bad analogy, it's like watching 2 professional swimmers; 1 is swimming off into the distance, the other has drowned. 3rd Isn't sleeping with the fishes btw. Does this mean that 3rd is perfect = nope, but 5th Ed just grates, it feels inferior, a childish version aimed at ppl with no attention span. The poorly written rules, the pointless artwork spanning page after page of every book, the poor class balancing, the favored classes with their always-picked specializations. I cannot take D&D seriously anymore, I moved to Starfinder a while ago (rather than Pathfinder) and I don't see any obvious opening for D&D in the near future... Hasbro, or Wizard's, or whoever constitutes the thinkers in that organization need to be locked away in a cupboard somewhere I suspect. The idea that D&D will become a service model in the future may well be the death knell of D&D, and in it's current state that might not be a bad thing.

[@t.estable3856]

@Blackfox413 "Allows the DM's to custom make their games" is the most diplomatic way of saying "Never fully fleshed out their rules, and expect the DM to do half the work for them." I've ever heard. FWIW, PF2e isn't the inviolable ruleset folks want to make it out to be, the primary difference between the two is that PF makes clear what the intent behind rules and systems are, while arming the GM with the tools to modify and add to those systems. A great example is the sheer amount of Variant Rules there are. You can look at that and say "Wow, they have rules for everything, I guess you aren't supposed to modify the base rules!" but really it's more "Wow, they expect you to modify the base rules, have thought of some common ways GM's might want to do that, and went out of their way to provide GM's with pre-altered rules. These are some GREAT examples of what I could do with the system."

[@ConfusedandFrustated]

"It is Evil to counter-spell a healing spell" "Well fuck me it's like I'm the Big Bad Evil Guy or something!"

[@PlainSquiffy]

My favorite way I have ever seen a DM deal with a min/maxer was my Pathfinder group. "John Doe" at the table was bragging to the group about his characters AC using multiclass perks and feats (we started at level 5) and it boiled down to having heavy armor w/ a tower shield. My DM pit us up again 3 goblin sorcerers using touch spells.

[@ricciutogarcia]

I love how Jasmine rekt Brennan so badly that they had to pivot to actually share an actual conversation on the theme lol

[@talisredstar1543]

I think that was best way for it to go. The points Jasmine was making were just incontestable. And Brennan making the point that it almost always comes back to a mechanical Issue. ... get good? I have to agree. If you want to make a bad ass character min-max wise, but you don't know the rules that well. ask a Veteran player, or the GM. either most of the time will love nothing but to drop things and sit down and geek out on TTRPGs, not just D&D. But i've always like the balance that is there in the game. You want to be amazing warrior that is good with a weapon, and maybe tactics. Fighter. OMG Fighter to the max, but then you need a character that can handle the talking, and the social aspects. Bard, sorcerer, Cleric, and/or Paladin at times. Need that sneaky person that can get into the backlines, or into somewhere they should be? The Rogue, or a Ranger. But don't count out the Druid either. You need an specialist on the Arcane? Find the awkward, introverted Wizard that can recite Mordenkainen's laws of "Whatever" and can end an encounter with a spell, but guess what they can't take a hit. That is where the Fighter steps up and is like "I got this." If you got a min-maxer that doesn't rp at much or at all. Its more often than not because they feel like they will just embarrass themselves. Start little with them, don't ask them to do a voice, just get little thing out of him, and be encouraging. You work with them and show them that your not going to berate them if you don't suddenly break out into Old English. Back in college I played with guys in 3.5 edition and we were all min-maxers. I mean we bending the rules till you could hear them start to scream and crack. BUT, so was our DM. He would put things infront of us that we had no business taking out and most of the time we would sqeak by. but even then we had our moments of role play. all the while sitting back and meming before that was a thing, and laughing our asses off over some of the most stupid things. But it was fun. Most of us were in same martial arts club, so after the season, lol many times the session would become an imprompt sparring session. lol so much fun.

[@Kaladelia]

He's done that with some others too. And honestly as much as Brennan loves to debate, he knows when he is not winning/when to just discuss.

[@ROYBGP]

She didn't describe a min maxer at all. She described a player that doesn't really roleplay, which is fine.

[@swxqt6826]

@@ROYBGPWhat is your definition of a min-maxer?

[@boringstuff1542]

@@ROYBGP She said Brennan was an example of a min maxer that also roleplays.

[@cloudstone123]

I'm less of a min-max-er and more of an optimizer. I narratively theme my characters and focus my build to make them the best at what I set them up for.

[@shallendor]

Same here!

[@terrencemedders1867]

I think we're just a particular breed of min-max. More theme-based, and we can hope that gives us a natural predisposition against powergaming.

[@shallendor]

@@terrencemedders1867 Most of the people i play with are the same breed!

[@MaMastoast]

Same. I first fall in love with an idea and then do my very best at making the character be powerful within that idea

[@freddylisy10]

That is how I play the game to a tee and I feel doing this sets up my characters for role play more because of how I themed and the tropes associated with the themes

[@ogeorgiou]

The shot at 5:26 is 12 seconds of Brennan brimming with pure joy.

[@adamorth5335]

Such a great discussion on this topic. Absolutely love this take

[@Bearwiffa228]

Brennan also Roleplayed the shit out of Deadeye on NADDPOD season one, and he was straight min maxed to the gills. He practically transformed the rest of the NADDPOD crews skills just by them seeing what was possible when you really dive into your characters capabilities.

[@CarlHeyl]

This is my introduction to Jasmine Bhuller and she has my full support for life.

[@luxlightly6833]

Literally same. I had no idea who she was before watching this video and now I'm in love with her.

[@calebharding8221]

Pretty much all the issues with power gamers are other issues with the player that get exacerbated by the fact that they are more powerful than their allies. I'm a bit of a power gamer myself, and for years I've run games with a group consisting of a mix of power gamers, storytellers, and friends who just want to hang out with almost no drama, because everyone understood why everyone else was there, and wanted to help everyone have a good time.

[@edwardfrench9368]

Love how this inspired the Junior year antagonists for Adventuring Academy

[@Tickerbee]

I'm so here for this perspective, I always hate when people act like roleplay and following the rules are diametrically opposed to one another even though literally the only purpose of the rules is to facilitate drama and influence you into making more interesting choices. Roleplaying is more than just players reciting dialogue at each other during downtime, casting a healing spell is roleplaying, a barbarian drawing aggro with their high amounts of HP is roleplaying, rolling above 20 on a Deception check is roleplaying.

[@synckar6380]

I had an argument with my best friend that running and escaping from a dragon's lair is in fact, roleplaying, despite the fact that we used every single expendable resource and spell slot to make it out alive.

[@Xyronyte]

This feels like a straw man to me. It's rare for me to find Roleplayers who dump the stat they're trying to RP. If they wanna wow people in speech they don't dump charisma (generally). What rubs them the wrong way is when they get denied their moment by "big numbers guy" who clearly isn't into it ("I rolled a 23, I convinced the king even though I didn't present an argument, too bad 'impassioned argument man' rolled a 1" -suddenly the RP player was denied both the success, and the failure, of their hard work.) Their moment was stolen by someone who wanted "all the moments." Bad min-maxers, and bad non-minmaxers, do this (barb rolls 20 on intelligence 5% of the time. But the novelty wears off when the "min-maxed" rogue/ranger/bard with 8 expertises continuously out-knowledges the 20 int wizard and out wisdoms the druid).

[@IceMetalPunk]

I wouldn't say min-maxing is equivalent to "following the rules". Many people follow the rules without min-maxing.

[@Tickerbee]

@@Xyronyte Well like they discussed in the video, a player trying to have too many "moments" isn't a problem with minmaxing it's a player problem, you can totally have that kind of player without them having the stats to necessarily back it up.

[@Xyronyte]

@@Tickerbee Very true. It's just, when they fail, we get to laugh at their hubris. The m/m doesn't usually fail (unless the whole party is balanced, or the dm is a biased arbiter and gives one player a higher DC than the others). Fail enough, and they may just learn something without intervention. Anakin resembles the bad min-maxer: everyone kept trying to rein him in so he didn't hurt himself or others, but he was just OP enough that things always went his way (and he never learned the needed lesson). I personally prefer to talk things out out-of-character, but some players/dms prefer to use natural consequences. Min-maxers are hard to "punish." (I'll be clear I don't agree with punishing players)

[@tylerrobinson3066]

When Brennan mentioned them being competitive debaters it became too serious for them both. Jasmine successfully winning and Brennan saving the “debate” by furthering the actual show

[@Nyx_2142]

​@@brawlyaura5799Cope.

[@mikeharris6429]

Learning how to break the system to “min-max” has lead to me making more diverse characters.

[@EchoMirage72]

There is no such thing as breaking the system. It's using the system to it's fullest potential.

[@mal2ksc]

@@EchoMirage72 Yes, there is such a thing as breaking the system. Most of them lead to revisions to the rules, like Healing Spirit in its original form. However, it's not on the player to determine ahead of time what's broken and what's not (most players simply don't have the meta-information to make this determination), so it's the DM who either suffers, or has to make up houserules until the issue is formally addressed. When Healing Spirit first dropped without the "max heals = spellcasting modifier" restriction, it led to conga lines and everyone getting 10d6 hit points out of a second level spell slot. I didn't realize this was an error and not a design choice, and leaned into it heavily as a player when I played Sharpshooter rangers, until it got errata'd away.

[@EchoMirage72]

@@mal2ksc No. The players are using the system that has been distributed by WOTC. Using a system released by Game Designers is not "breaking the system".

[@PDAnasasis]

That warhammer line was so good, this woman is my spirit animal

[@silverfoxxflame]

5:51 Brennan's got that face of "Oh, man, this wasn't supposed to be ACTUAL debate, we're just supposed to be messing around and now I have to make this work..."

[@BigmanDogs]

It's all about the fundamental design of the game. Some tabletop rpgs lend themselves better or worse to min-maxing based on their design. D&D is definitely a game that encourages min-maxing. I'm sure there are some smaller tabletop rpgs out there that thought of some creative solution that discourages min-maxing without making those who enjoy paying attention to the rules feel punished.

[@t.estable3856]

Or, Pathfinder 2e, where the difference between an "Optimized" and "Unoptimized" characters is like, a +1 *maybe* a +2 in a couple things. It's noticeable, definitely, but not overwhelming.

[@BigmanDogs]

@T. Estable Exactly, there is of course a difficult balance between trying to make everything viable and making everything feel the same. I think if someone wants to have a game that is less concerned with optimal play, then you should probably condition your players to not necessarily always fear failure. Showing them that a failed charisma check can lead to something interesting down the line etc.

[@FaptainCalcon750]

A lot smaller tabletops tend to have more narrative focused mechanics as opposed to combat focused mechanics. Fate and PbtA games are great examples

[@solsystem1342]

​@@BigmanDogs Incomprables can help solve this problem. They're used in video games a lot but they're good in any boardgame or ttrpg too. For instance, being able to summon a dog companion to help you pick up loot vs summoning a eldritch abomination to tank damage for you. They're so different that you can't easily say which one is best (unless the balance is really off) because they do different things. If you don't use incomprables (looking at you stat based mmos) the choice between options is often just "guess I'll use the sword with more damage."

[@Spikeba11]

A common solution is to have scaling costs which tends to be point buy systems. The study of what is optimal to do in a game is called Game Theory, this does include studying how to manipulate what is optimal to get the behavior you want.

[@HellIsADarkForest]

"Yeah, and we started out as algae" goes hard.

[@jonathannash8471]

My main argument against min-maxing is when new players are involved. In my first ever game (5E) we were a party of 5. Three had never played before, one had only played a single 2nd edition one-shot, and the last player was a late addition to the party and was the boyfriend of one of our other players. He'd been playing for years. He min-maxed a sorcerer to the point that my dwarf barbarian would only ever deal damage once per combat with a ranged attack if I was lucky. To be fair, our DM had designed some of the early combat encounters quite badly insofar as I had to spend several turns moving through open space without cover just to get to an enemy, but that one guy spamming magic missile made every early combat trivial, and it just wasn't fun for over half the table given how melee oriented we were. That campaign ended after a few sessions when our fighter pulled a no-show citing boring combat and not feeling like they contributed anything. The next session our druid didn't show, and after that it was dead. If our sorcerer had been more mindful of making sure us newbies still got to do something in our first few sessions it could've been great, but he just wanted to prove to us all how good he was at DnD.

[@BigmanDogs]

You both make very good points. If these people actually only cared about role-playing, then they wouldn't be upset at party members figuring out how to create a character that is stronger than theirs. A 100% role player wouldn't care at all. In fact, it would probably contribute to immersion because it doesn't really make sense for all members of a party to arbitrarily be equally strong.

[@Dave004]

And to be honest, a 100% roleplayer probably needs min maxers at their table since they likely have very little in ways of defense or damage abilities. I dunno, roleplay to me doesn't rely on ability scores too much. I mean yes if I'm a Bard, Warlock, Paladin, etc I"ll be a bit more charming or talkative than maybe my Wizard or Druid, but there's no reason you can't still attempt it. I picture it like real life, how many of us know that person who thinks they're really funny or charming and talks alot but is really annoying and dull? There you go, thats a character who likes to talk a lot and thinks they have high charisma, but ability score wise is low. Same with INT, you could have a Barbarian whose super confident and talks about knowledge and what he knows all day long but is actually wrong in everything he says, but dang if he isn't confident in thinking he's right! So I prefer playing those ways, so that my character scores are highest in what they should be for optimizing that class, but give a good background story to roleplay them however I want.

[@alphaamino]

The worst person at a table is the min maxxer who whines endlessly about the choices made by the role players.

[@Dave004]

@@alphaamino Definitely, same with roleplayers who call out a person for "min maxing" for choosing the right abilities for the class they picked. Everyone should play how they want, as long as roleplayers don't also whine that the min maxer is destroying everything in combat because the roleplayer chose that route.

[@Melaheidi]

I think it’s more a frustration over a lack of roleplaying. I don’t mind roleplaying against a minmaxed character, as long as they have a personality and aren’t just a stack of big stats in a trenchcoat. My lifeweary old war veteran with a heart of gold and a bone to pick against authority doesn’t have much to interact with if his partner in the scene is “man who is very strong and fast and also good at magic”.

[@justforplaylists]

I sort of disagree. A 100% roleplayer might still want a character to succeed at combat because that fits the narrative of who their character is, and they would be willing to play a min-maxed build because they're fine with reflavouring as needed. I.e. I think a 100% roleplayer would be fine playing a fighter with a bow if they want to play a more combat effective ranger archetype. But someone who is actually interested in the unique mechanics of the ranger class, not just the roleplay, has to trade that off against being more combat effective. (Yes, I know there are ways to make the ranger work, it's just an example). I also think combat isn't the only issue. Someone could hypothetically make an optimized bard that is great at social interactions and then dominate all of the social interactions without giving the other characters a chance to participate.

[@Noisymedal]

When I was in high school I had a group of around 7 friends I would hang out with, but it was very rare that we were all in the same place at the same time. Each time "the group" would meet up it would be a different combination of friends, so we couldn't really have an ongoing campaign with any sort of reliability. We ended playing a long series of unrelated one-shots. I had a lot of fun with this idea but I felt like I was missing out on the "progression" element of Tabletop RPGs, so I learned how to make stronger and stronger characters over time in the systems we played. I once built a level 1 character in D&D 4e with the *technically possible* ability to 1-shot some dragons, (although to be fair, the odds were slim,) without ever having consulted the internet for builds. It was a fun time.

[@nitaishneor6214]

I tried last year to start my first game as a DM, while also being very fresh into 5e at that time. Half of my players were very experienced, some DM’s of there own games, and the other half were leaning incredibly towards the role play element. I will only say that first session, the party split, a min-maxer and another very strong character started a fight with two red wyrmlings, and won, railroad the first couple sessions. As a beginner DM, beware of players who no more than you but won’t help you.

[@syncro7740]

I am a min-maxxer, and my dm, in his infinite kindness, makes his own monsters and he and I work together in making the combat reasonable for me to not be the only method of beating down enemies. Typically this involves getting creative om his end like a monster with many limbs putting rocks over his head to partially protect himself from moonbeam. This also encourages me to come up with new good ideas to make the most out my levels. Some of the balancing I do myself, like my character being socially inept but liking to talk a lot can get just him to take damage or something like that in different scenarios.

[@meijinx9673]

I've never played D&D, but I want to someday. I've been watching videos on how to play, learning the rules and vernacular used in games, and listening to horror stories. The conclusion that I've reached is that min-maxing, power gaming, or optimizing isn't inherently bad. The true problem is that it comes with a stigma of being associated with "that guy."

[@DjG7979]

I have a min maxer at my table. I just throw harder stuff at the group.

[@meijinx9673]

@@DjG7979 how does the rest of the group feel about that? When you say "harder stuff," I'm assuming you mean combat encounters. Is the rest of the group able to contribute somehow, or does your min-maxer become the mc because they're the only one that can handle what you throw at them?

[@DjG7979]

@meijinx9673 depending on what character he plays. I have run several campaigns with him. He also DMs at times. Usually, I will create encounters that exploit his weakness. I.e. if he tents to grapple things "too" effectively, I will throw monsters of a large or huge size every few encounters. It's not outside of the range of the other players, so they still have fun and contribute equally. And there are lots of combats where I he still dominates because I don't want anyone feeling targeted. Outside of combat, if his character is "too" observant, I'll get a bit nitpicky. (He will notice the lines in the sand no one else can see. Or he will smell the smoke in the air, but I will make him roll survival or nature to see if he understands what they mean. (I make the other payers do it as well, but since it is the observant one, it comes up more with him. Communication being key we talk about this to make sure we are not ruining each others fun. After several years of playing together I think we have it down.

[@punishedwhispers1218]

@@meijinx9673 Your powerful character becoming the anchor of the group isn't a bad thing, they can prop up the other characters and create a stronger identity for them. Like how Gandalf carried the fellowship of the ring.

[@meijinx9673]

@@punishedwhispers1218 while you may be right, from what I've heard in "that guy" stories, those guys usually don't give a fuck about propping up the others and being Gandalf. You should say it "isn't NECESSARILY a bad thing." I can think of plenty of ways that shit can go wrong if the right people aren't involved

[@FeyPrevesk]

Fully agree on this one. The only time a min-maxer is really a problem is when the player themself is toxic and is using min-maxing as an excuse to abuse other players (the "OMG you're not playing your class in the specific meta way I think is best? What a noob!" type), at which point it's not min-maxing that's the problem, it's a toxic player. It's hardly limited to toxic min-maxers either, a hardcore role player can be just as toxic on the other end ("You're not using a special voice for your character and monologuing in ye olde speeke for every action that you do? Ugh! Don't you know this is a *roleplaying game*?"). Toxic people suck no matter what their preferred playstyle is.

[@troubadour0663]

Love the conversation about abilities or feats that are useful outside combat. Grim Psychometry is one of my new favourite abilities just because it works so well with the core fantasy of the blood hunter while not affecting what is an otherwise combat heavy class.

[@GuybrushTThreepwood]

I think one of the big issues in 5e is that there's a pretty drastic imbalanced in some classes. Having a min-maxed characters can make it very difficult to make any combats that are challenging and interesting. The gap between a character that's min-maxing a bad character (monk) and min-maxing a good character (caster) is pretty huge. And a lot of the most powerful things in 5e lead to fairly boring characters that just keep doing the same thing. And of course you can introduce homebrew, but it does get difficult to keep track of everything, and not everyone is a game designer. It's not like WotC did a good job at it, and they're literally professionals!

[@Thatsnotgonnawork]

DMs need to stop being obsessed with balance anyway

[@archer1088]

Agreed, the most important part is that the table is having fun@@Thatsnotgonnawork

[@duishungry]

I think the reason why I haven't looked as deeply as I could into the mechanics of the game is I don't want to know which characters are "good" or "bad". It ruins some of the magic of the game for me when things just get put into tier lists the way they do in League. It's more fun to imagine that everything has a chance of doing well

[@GuybrushTThreepwood]

@@duishungry sure, but it often becomes very obvious at the table. Personally I just choose to play rulesets that consider balance a primary concern.

[@mal2ksc]

Part of it is also poorly designed classes that can be "dipped" for one or two levels -- mostly Warlock but sometimes Artificer as well, now -- and provide massive mechanical benefits like armor and shield proficiencies, or make a two-stat class into a one-stat build because of their Hexblade weapon or similar. Multiclass combos that include at least three levels of the side class tend not to exhibit these issues, but then it becomes hard to build something powerful enough to offset all the awkward early levels before the build "gels", so I'm not sure D&D One's method of making it not worth it to take less than three levels of anything will do anything but destroy 90% of actually played multiclass builds.

[@tornagh9200]

Let's not forget she got to pick her position. Brennan is pro minmax, it is hard for him to argue against it as effectively, particularly when she starts using his tendency to minmax as an argument. It is a little like me saying "ballet is a good thing and you now have to argue against it" to a ballet dancer then I proceed to say "you are a ballet dancer so why are you arguing against this?".

[@IceMetalPunk]

Yeah, I've always hated that part of formal debate. You're *assigned* a position to argue, even if you don't believe in that position at all. At that point, you're not practicing debate anymore, you're practicing deception.

[@jamesodwyer4181]

I guess you could say she min-maxed to create an advantage effectively, for an entertaining outcome.

[@steave435]

That wasn't her argument. The standard minmaxer complaint is that they minmax instead of RPing, so she provided an example of a person and character that was able to do great RPing while still minmaxing. The fact that that person happened to be her opponent was just a bonus, not actually relevant to the argument.

[@demonzabrak]

@@IceMetalPunk Spitting cold facts out here, name checks out.

[@mbg4681]

@@IceMetalPunk >> You're assigned a position to argue, even if you don't believe in that position at all. At that point, you're not practicing debate anymore, you're practicing deception. The idea is to be able to consider different perspectives and understand their logical underpinnings well enough to use them in discourse. It can get a little goofy, but it can still be a useful mental exercise. And there are much worse problems with modern formal debate than the assignment of positions.

[@thegamebear8071]

I guess you could say that they are "Master-Debaters"

[@jon8741]

And they lasted for more than 2 minutes!

[@Lewlew97]

I thought the same thing haha

[@IceMetalPunk]

They both do seem like cunning linguists.

[@giraffedragon6110]

I like to roleplay during combat in small ways. Component pouches REALLY help with the creative lens with all the weird stuff you can do as you cast the spell. For example, invisibility (a single eyelash encased in gum) you could have a character spit out a mint gum ball, rip out an eyelash, put it in the gum, then wrap the elastic around your wrist. It’s a little gross sure but that adds character.

[@Rayziyun]

This is a really interesting topic. From what I've seen, usually when people complain about Min-maxers / optimizers what they're really complaining about is someone always hogging the spotlight. So it's not really a problem with the min-maxing in and of itself, it's a problem player trying to make everyone else their sidekick. Also, a video on how to handle or design for different types of players could be cool.

[@tieflinglesbian]

This is why turn order exists

[@jamieadams2589]

​@@tieflinglesbianyeah, so that everyone can sit and watch the min maxer do 7 things and murder 30 enemies, then the wizard can hit one guy with a firebolt and go back to ordering pizza

[@tieflinglesbian]

@@jamieadams2589 It's fair for the players who put more effort into combat to get more out of it

[@jamieadams2589]

@@tieflinglesbian so is the min maxer just supposed to breeze through every encounter or should they be ramped up in such a way make the min maxing redundant and make the rest of the party feel more useless? Neither sound like good options to me but I don't really understand the appeal of murdering custom tailored encounters just as well as an unoptimised party except with less variety

[@tieflinglesbian]

@@jamieadams2589 Balancing encounters is a skill for DMs who are willing to put in the effort.

[@woodrobin]

I think min-maxers can even be a fit within a role-playing group, depending on how adaptable the other players are. Imagine a min-maxer's character as something like a John Wick or Jason Bourne: someone who becomes precise and mechanical in battle situations (or any high-stress situation). Perhaps due to their training, or as a coping mechanism, or for any of a variety of other reasons: a cleric of a lawful deity might believe that violence must be precise, ordered, and dispassionate in its application, a warlock might have a patron which prefers its feast of blood unseasoned by the passions or preferences of the warlock who acts as the conduit for said tribute, a monk could enter a detached zen-like state while channeling their chi, or a wizard could return in their mind to the memory of their studious youth when they conjure forth their memorized spells. Min-maxers who have no interest in meeting role-players halfway, or vice-versa, can be an issue. But sufficient imagination and a desire for everyone to enjoy the game in their own ways can create a very fertile middle ground.

[@aidenbubbles]

I needed to hear this

[@PoochMG]

So true in regards to DMs resenting powerful groups. Just bring in more adds or something. One of the DMs I play with goes in hard on crowd control with us and will split us up or cast high level charms to turn a couple party members. So many things can be done. One of the best parts of D&D is feeling that power at your fingertips. It's up to the DM to bring in the extra difficulty and challenge those scrappy characters. I think something a lot of DMs are afraid to do is have a high risk of death when in reality, a lot of players want that. Last game we played, DM blasted one of the PCs with disintegrate knowing damn well nobody had true resurrection. PC got down to like 2 HP on the hit. It made for a super tense, super dire situation and the fear of catching another dis had everybody on edge and watching each others back. If a group is stacked for a fight then give them a real fight.

[@animegopher]

The problem is moreso that you make it too difficult for the players that AREN'T min maxing. So they get wiped out quickly and are affected too quickly and harshly. Another thing to keep in mind is there are certain way to build characters that are really good against everything in terms of combat. They have nearly untouchable AC and great saving throws for most spells, so you have to inflate your numbers. But because of that, everyone else on the squad gets wiped out so easily because they make builds for fun.

[@Thatsnotgonnawork]

​@@animegopherThose players still have the ability to roleplay their way into gaining advantages in combat. Skill issue

[@animegopher]

@Thatsnotgonnawork You must have a problem reading. Lmao. Brain issue high key. Some people don't play to get the best out of their characters. I would argue that mose D&D players don't. They play to craft a story with flawed characters that have skills/classes/subclasses that make sense with their backstory/lore. So, if there's a group of 4 players... And one of them is min maxing... While the other three are purely role-playing... It causes imbalance in fights. That's just how it works. Not a hard concept to understand.

[@mal2ksc]

@@animegopher So give the "fun" builds extra features. We've got a list of homebrewed features that are roughly equivalent to half-Feats, and if someone seems to simply be unable to pull their weight in the party, I'll consider letting them "borrow" one for as long as necessary. If the imbalance is particularly severe, maybe give the weaker characters a straight-up free Feat. One of my favorite homebrewed features is "Command Temperament: Prior to either of you taking a turn in combat, you may exchange your place in the Initiative order with a willing party member within 30 feet that you can see and who can hear you. Once you have used this ability, you cannot use it again until you have completed a short or long rest." If I hand that one out, then a previously underutilized character can become useful by being a kingmaker every time they roll high Initiative.

[@andy2069]

The only think that's truly hard to adapt to is if one player at a table of flawed low maximization characters is actually super min maxed, so a challenging battle for one is an impossible battle for others, and a reasonable battle for the group is a breeze for the powerhouse. But as a DM you can still find ways to accomodate this. But ways to do this both narratively and mechanically deserves its own discussion.

[@pacman7654]

Yes this is the real issue with unbalanced characters - they make creating a challenge for both them and the rest of the party very difficult and volatile. In my game I had a ranger who did the most damage and was extremely hard to pin down (I think this happens often with ranged damage dealers, especially if they have decent defenses as well). In order to "challenge that player" I had to devise very specifically targeted mechanics that somehow did not threaten the rest of the party but threatened the ranger, or I had to use monsters so powerful they would mow through the rest of the party and be able to attack the ranger. Part of the problem is the lack of monster immunities and even effective resistances once magic weapons are in play - it would be easier if you could just throw in a monster that is highly resistant or immune to the shenanigans of the overpowered character.

[@nooooooooope3809]

That's why everyone needs to be on the same page. Have a better session zero.

[@andy2069]

@@nooooooooope3809 or you can make it narrative. Specifically tailored conditions and goals. Home brew like crazy. But it does tax the DM

[@kab6754]

I joined a group back in 2020 and one of the players was a min/maxer. Whatever character he rolled he took the highest damage and stat-boosting abilities. I honestly didn't have a problem with it; he was playing the game his way and it's impressive he knew the rules down hard. What started to bother me was he'd check out whenever there was RP or give curt responses to get thru conversations and get back to combat, looting, basically anything not RP. I don't have a problem with min/maxing, but I do have a problem with people who try and force people to game at their pace, intentionally or unintentionally PS: Brennan's mustache is so transparent I thought he had mutton chops

[@nooooooooope3809]

I mean, some people don't give a shit about RP. Like, some people's brains turn off it and they don't have control over it. Not saying that's what happened in your game, but, you know, neurodivergence is a thing to be aware of.

[@ninjadoughnut4837]

Dnd is 2 things above all else: a combat simulator and a roleplaying storytelling medium. Optimized characters can do the former better than others, and the latter, no worse than other characters. Being able to nearly 1 shot a miniboss with a hexadin is not mutually exclusive with the turbulent backstory, internal struggles, character flaws, need to overcome pride/anxiety/cowardice, and ability to form bonds with other characters that are all characteristics for good roleplay. If anything, optimizing promotes interesting characters, because if a player is creative enough to figure out how a multitude of features can work together to produde a very powerful effect that no one else has thought of, they're probably creative enough to figure out how all the facets of their backstory fit together, as well as fit into the context of the world/campaign. In addition, one of the biggest arguments ive heard against min-maxing is that it's a good thing if your character has weaknesses, because it makes them more interesting and provides room for growth. Unless you roll for stats and roll impossibly well on everything, your character will have weaknesses. Every character I've seen has had at least one dump stat. Obviously there are players who will make an optimized character and then try and steal the spotlight every combat of every session and try to overshadow the rest of the table, which isn't fun for everyone else. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with selecting something you want your character to excel at, and then centring all your build choices around that, understanding that your character will be excellent at that one thing, but won't be good at everything, and that's how you fit into your party. Plus, if certain builds can get really out of hand, you can tweak what you allow at your table as a DM, without destroying the opportunity for an optimized build altogether. For example, I think coffeelocks are a bit absurd, so there's a rule at my table that simply says that you can't convert pact magic slots into sorcery points. But there are a hundred other very powerful sorlocks you can come up with, and I fully support someone having the creativity to figure out how to exploit them.

[@terratrox7180]

I've only played a few games, but my party had 2 minmaxers who did absolutely everything in the party, because the rest of us built for flavor and/or are unlucky. I had to make 2 sets of characters, with the second set of extra characters using point buy because my dice rolls were so bad. I rolled 3 in 3 of my stats, with my highest being 7 for my first character. So my first character was a barely sentient piece of wood. So were my second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth characters, none of which had anything above an 8 in any of their stats. The point buy characters worked better, but I had to make extra because the minmaxers PvP instakilled 2 of them during their introduction to the party because they weren't paying attention and attacked the first thing they saw. The others rolled more averagely... except for the minmaxers, who were also the luckiest players in the party, with 18 in 4/6 stats and no stat below 14. So they were just better at absolutely everything than everyone else in the party. They had the highest bonus in everything, even if one of the others specialized in it. So while I don't think minmaxers are inherently bad, they can and will completely decimate any sort of balance in a party. The DM can't make anything for the party to do if one or two members are literally the best at everything.

[@hqueso]

One group I was in shortly at a game store had a very strong min-maxer who dominated combat. One of the players commented "I'm so glad MinMaxwell is so good at the fighting- I'm pretty bad at it and it's nice to let him carry me a bit so I can lean into RP."

[@lyinarbaeldeth2456]

There is nothing inherently wrong with min-maxing and optimizing your character. There is nothing inherently wrong with building to a theme and selecting abilities that seem fun or fitting to the roleplay instead of absolutely maximizing combat potential. What's important is to KNOW YOUR GROUP. If you're sitting down at a table with a gang of people who aren't here for cranking out the biggest numbers, maybe leave Chad Peak Performance's character sheet at home. Conversely, if you're settling in with a group who are all about extremely high performance combat and difficult encounters, Sheldon the Bumbling Chef probably shouldn't be your go-to.

[@Dave004]

Yep thats definitely fair, hopefully that is all well and clear at session zero vs finding out a few lvls in that something isn't quite meshing lol.

[@Xjr555kid]

I feel like the issue here is that kinda ignores that a person could simply want both? We talk a lot about roleplay and Chad Performance like they're always separate things but they don't need to be. If you want to play a prodigy swordsman who's only spent time in isolation with their master and solely studying the blade in order to be the best at it then you've created the opportunity to roleplay someone who is constantly astounded and flummoxed by the outside world, or someone who discovers new passions, or someone who realizes their upbringing was a detriment to their ability to develop meaningful friendships. Separating the two kinda ignores the real problem that people can just be honest about what they want out of a game and what makes them feel bad during the game. It's impossible to be good at everything, and people are always gonna shine in different areas. Sometimes people don't like that and how it shifts things but if that cant be solved with a conversation it wasn't gonna be a good table fit.

[@Dave004]

@@Xjr555kid Definitely agree. In one of my groups I play in i'd say I am the most "min maxed" or optimized build but i'm also the one who leans the most into roleplay. Definitely not reason not to do both, I prefer doing both, so I am able to do things well with my character and use their backstory and personality to drive the roleplay.

[@Xyronyte]

​@@Xjr555kid True. The issue occurs when it becomes fun at other's expense. For example, consider a character who is consistently expert at all aspects of the game (think min-maxed fey wanderer who has +10 in every skill check, and pumps out 50 damage a round). Is that a problem on its own? No. What if they don't roleplay? Still not a problem. If the rest of the party plays similar characters, I don't see an issue. I do see an issue if they hog the spotlight and develop main character symptom (e.g., P1 OHKO's the man who killed P2's father, before P2 gets a chance to think, talk, or strike a measly, pathetic blow, followed by that same player insisting on talking to P3's father, the king, and thereby sidelining P3's big moment to defy their father because "well, I have the better stats." The problem isn't min-maxing, but min-maxing can empower the problem player if they lack EQ

[@Xjr555kid]

@Xyronite But the problem player is gonna be a problem no matter what. Even a player who is really into roleplaying and doesn't think about the numbers can still be a problem player. My broader point about all this is that Minmaxing isn't the problem. The problem is always just a bad player. If someone feels outshined and insecure, usually that only takes a conversation, and the min maxer doesn't even need to change their build. They can just pick their moments better. Minmaxing isn't the problem, bad players are the problem. Minmaxing may enable bad players to be bad in a different way, but you could say the same about roleplayers, rules lawyers, and everything else.

[@jessemanchester8549]

On the story aspect of min-maxing my characters is that I love playing the min moments up for the comedic beat. So my barbarian is a Hulk and nothing can get past him, but intel and charisma checks are terrible-- and play up the failure. No one likes characters without flaws. This is the whole point of different classes with different +/- to each, and combining them is the soul at the center of share storytelling experience.

[@saparapatepete]

i play my arcane trickster's low wisdom and low strength for all the hilarity potential and play the high dex and int for all the coolness i can pull off

[@huntersuper98]

I think you're misunderstanding what the min in min-maxing means. It means to max your character out to to tiniest miniscule detail. But I whole heartedly agree with you. My favorite character I've ever made is my Wizard who dumped all of his physical stats for really high mental stats but still chooses to put himself in harms way to protect the rest of the party since he's sort of the big brother of the group.

[@michaelmetcalfe639]

Almost anything can be addressed as the DM. I actually had a player I thought was fudging his dice rolls so he was rolling crits way to often. Just made a monster that would flip dice rolls back an forth. So it started off by having it if you rolled a 20 against it that would count as a 1 and if you rolled a 1 it would count as a 20 and when you landed a crit on it it would flip things again so 20 would be 20s again. Anyway it was a fun interesting encounter that players thought was fun and unique. They still talk about it today a few years later. The player that was fudging his rolls knew I had caught him and ended up leaving without drama of me accusing him and him denying it. As the DM you have the power be creative in your solutions to problems and your players will love what you come up with and it will avoid drama.

[@verigone2677]

In a world of magic, one can only distinguish themselves by being the best at what they do...to do that you need to do at least some min-maxers. Min Maxers that are also good cooperative players are a god send at the table because they help elevate everyone's understanding of the rules with less direct effort from the DM. My favorite times to DM are at a table of min-maxers, and they tend to love my table because I RARELY have to make tough rulings during combat and I am free to basically just control the monsters and do some narration. So when we play for 3 hours and 1/2 is combat they get to fight massive intricate fights every session and it pushed them to engage the world more in search of even tougher fights. A table of actual Army Vets that min-max is some of the greatest joy a DM can have...these bastards will live out all of their Army Ranger dreams (or experiences) destroying an entire Kobold den in 2 rounds of initiative after 45 minutes of description of their preparations. The DMs that tend to dislike min-maxers that are also polite at the table have those feelings due to having the perception that they don't know the rules as well as the player. To that I say, DMs learn to trust your strong players to know their player rules and value fair play until they prove otherwise, use them to offload your rules knowledge so you have more mental cycles to handle the DM portion of the game instead of adjudicating the player rules.

[@mal2ksc]

It's fine if the DM doesn't know the rules as well as the player. That's why they're written down. With the sheer volume of character classes and subclasses, it's pretty much impossible for a DM to know every player's niche better than the players do. As for "power players" who want to assist with the mechanics: As long as I can make this work without giving up too much hidden information, I _absolutely love it_ when the players take over some of them, like tracking Initiative and damage. The more I can act as the interface between the mechanics and the plot rather than pushing a pencil, the better.

[@marche164]

I played a bloodhunter in a game, and went full in on the Witcher theme to the point of their job was a professional monster hunter before they became an adventurer. Literally EVERY check i made to figure out information on a monster was just absolutely beansed due to the dice just not working out. You had this person who was a pro monster hunter who literally never knew anything about monsters.

[@EchoMirage72]

This actually blends into the conversation they were having. If the dice were "just not working out" for you, would you not then turn around and say "well now my character is just pretending like he was a professional monster hunter!"