How often do you min-max?

[McBeardly]

I always at least make sure to take the nobrainers, like natural spell on druids and power attack on melee characters.

[SageBahamut]

Honestly, I don't even realize I'm doing it any more.   

[InnaBinder]

Always, presuming the question isn't binary in nature.

[bhu]

I never really get teh chance.  I haven't played much in pbp, and all the local DM's I know (when they run a game at all anymore) fall under the curse of 'power gamers are incapable of roleplaying and are a cancer in the hobby' set.


As you can imagine I feel much frustration.

[Hallack]

Always. How much depends on how much is necessary, but it is always something I do on some level.

As others... This .

No matter the extent of the resources available I min/max.  The degree of mechanical power I try to attain however is contingent upon many other factors such as other characters, other players, game intent, etc...

[X-Codes]

I start with a character concept.  From there, I decide what I want to do.  From there, I push that shtick as far as I can without getting to obscene.

So... I won't say "always," because I often play styles that are sometimes considered sub-optimal, but fit what I want the character to be able to do (which a strictly superior build isn't necessarily capable of doing efficiently), but I always optimize the particular shtick I'm looking to do.

[CaptRory]

I always try and make an effective character which means I always try and min/max to some degree. What that degree is depends on the rules, the setting, the GM, and the game.

If I'm playing D&D, I'll be digging through books and supplements and handbooks and all sorts of things. It's a very combat heavy game and if you build your character poorly it'll bite you in the arse and your group. So the extent of my min/maxing is great.

If I'm playing BESM2e with my main group, it's less of an issue. Decisions are made much more in the context of "What makes sense for my character?" than "How do I become the biggest baddest character ever?". Keep in mind though that as it's a Point Buy System that is designed to work with any genre it's really open to abuse, even if you're not trying. If you don't make those decisions based on your character you're really minimizing the fun of yourself and everyone else and maximizing the suck. It's a roleplay heavy group as well, and we might only have a combat every three or four session. Granted those usually last two and are epic in scale. But it's not the focus of the game at all. Without even trying hard my character has the greatest potential damage of anyone in the group, even if the character is a bit of a glass cannon.

[Tiltowait]

I was talking to someone outside of my group about D&D. He began describing his character, and what immediately stood out to me was how terribly weak he was. To the point where I wasn't even paying attention to anything else, I just kept wondering how he was even still alive.

He noticed I was looking at him funny, and asked me to start describing my character. So I did. He starts looking at me in the same way, except he was doing it because he considered my character to be freakishly powerful. I was just doing what I needed to survive, and if anything held back some in character creation. A weaker character, much less one weak like him wouldn't have lasted a single round. Needless to say that conversation didn't go anywhere. But has anyone run into this where you're just doing what you need to do to make it through the campaign but doing so provokes reactions of that being overkill?

[veekie]

It depends on the group, really, whats survival levels of power in one group is massive overkill in another. If you're trusting the printed CRs to any extent, you'd realize any significant level of optimization(beyond picking something OTHER than skill focus) would flatten most stock encounters, even with the basic assumptions of Sword and Board, archer rogue, blaster wizard, and healbot cleric(but not monk, a standard monk won't do it).

[Wiggins]

Exactly, it depends on the group.

I like to fill the gap in a party, especially if it's one at the bottom rungs, like a front liner or at low levels a healer, and then I start optimising later on in the build so as not to get too badly left behind

[Tiltowait]

It depends on the group, really, whats survival levels of power in one group is massive overkill in another. If you're trusting the printed CRs to any extent, you'd realize any significant level of optimization(beyond picking something OTHER than skill focus) would flatten most stock encounters, even with the basic assumptions of Sword and Board, archer rogue, blaster wizard, and healbot cleric(but not monk, a standard monk won't do it).

That's not really true. Even stock enemies will two round (or less) just about any PC that isn't at least moderately optimized. And that is if there's only one of them. If there are more than one at a time you could very easily get in a situation where you either have to at least moderately optimize offense to one round all the enemies, at least moderately optimize defense, or have at least one person die a round. No way around it, it's purely a matter of insufficient numbers for the task.

If a Glitterdust/Web/Slow... is cast and you fail the save at the minimum you're out of the entire fight. The more likely that is to happen the easier it is to follow up and/or overwhelm the rest of the group.

Even unoptimized blasting will take out unoptimized characters in about three hits. Three Fireballs = entire party dead. It should go without saying they cannot withstand a Tiltowait.

[veekie]

^^
There was some exploration on the matter a while back, most monsters can 2 round a PC, provided the PC isn't particularly strong in the targeted defense and the monster does nothing but focus fire on the most vulnerable PC(which is not a given, since again, many monsters are barely intelligent). However, a minority of creatures can 2 round a party. And pretty much all parties can 3 round stock monsters or better, as long as they are actually trying.

Going by the resource measurement. A monster against an equal CR PC is supposed to be 50% chance of survival, since it takes up 100% of resources. Against a party of 4 it only took a quarter, which is more than enough to finish it.

[Tiltowait]

20%, actually. But that isn't the point. By your own logic the party needs 3 rounds and the monster needs two, so that's someone dying in every single fight. Surely you can see the problem with that, particularly when you consider that if normal enemies can do that imagine what the harder ones can manage.

It also isn't as unlikely as you think, unless prevented.

Round 1: Enemies attack one character.
Round 2: Enemies attack same character.

Not something that requires a lot of brainpower. Keep in mind two rounds is the best case scenario. It's quite possible to die in one, particularly if you are not optimizing which means one round of attacks knocks at least 70% of your HP off. This again assumes only normal fights. The harder ones are more than proportionally more lethal.

A Dire Wolf two hit KOs any level 3 PC that isn't a Con boosting raging Barbarian. Fight two at once and that's one dead PC a round. Fight 4, and that gives your party two rounds to win or everyone dies. This is standard wolf pack tactics and allows them to sate their hunger since that presumably is why they are attacking people. Yet in order to deal with the wolf pack boss fight or likely even the wolf pair mini boss without losing anyone, the party must do (at least) one of the things I mentioned.

[littha]

I once had a DM ambush our party with a group of drow with crossbows... they all shot the wizard in the first round and killed him. Intelligent enemies are liable to focus fire like that if they are played properly and there is not all that much you can do about it at level 5.

[Tiltowait]

Not just intelligent ones. Unintelligent ones are likely attacking to kill and eat someone. That means they'll be focusing their attention on one person.

[Risada]

Always. How much depends on how much is necessary, but it is always something I do on some level.

As others... This .

No matter the extent of the resources available I min/max.  The degree of mechanical power I try to attain however is contingent upon many other factors such as other characters, other players, game intent, etc...

+1.

Normally, I wait everyone else pick what they want to play, then find a class/concept to work into. It works, most of the time...

[GreatRobo]

As a newer player (less than a year) I can't exactly say where min-maxing starts and building a character ends... It just seems like common sense to try to get things the most efficient way possible... I mean why wait to do awesome stuff when you can do it just as well now? I dunno if i should say always or never to be honest.

[Entropy87]

I min/max always, to me making the best use of your abilities is half the game.  I don't like to make make mechanical decisions with my character just to add flavor.

[xaotiq1]

Always. How much depends on how much is necessary, but it is always something I do on some level.

As others... This .

No matter the extent of the resources available I min/max.  The degree of mechanical power I try to attain however is contingent upon many other factors such as other characters, other players, game intent, etc...

+1.

Normally, I wait everyone else pick what they want to play, then find a class/concept to work into. It works, most of the time...

Same here.

[Bloody Initiate]

I find the idea of NOT min-maxing to be thoroughly weird. As far as I'm concerned if you didn't want me to use the rules then you shouldn't have taught them to me. I don't just go for the most powerful options I know all the time though, and in fact I don't think I ever have. Especially in D&D I always felt the most powerful builds required you to sacrifice way too much. As much as I enjoy D&D, I genuinely hate a lot of the staples and favorites. Wizards and kobolds, for example, are a staple and a favorite respectively, and I think the first is intolerable to play and the latter is WotC's biggest prank they've ever played on min-maxers (And of course it worked).

There really isn't any point to having rules if you don't want people to try and master them though. The notion is idiotic. One of the biggest optimizer-haters I know even accepts that "asking players not to optimize is like asking a bear not to have fur." It's ridiculous.