D&D Min-Max-ers Are Valid 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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’.

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

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.

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

"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

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

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!

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.

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

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

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).

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Watching Brennan admit that he lost was oddly satisfying. 😂

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

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 😆

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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

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. 😅

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

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.

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

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!

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

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!

So I think the reason why there's a lot of discourse around "Min/Maxer's" is a confusion of terms. I think people are more worried about "Power Gamers" who's intention is to make the most broken build that the rules allow to "win" the game. They don't focus on roleplaying, they don't focus on the story, they treat DnD as just another board-game. And for new DM's, that can be a challenge! But rather than talking about how to "deal" with a player, it's always best to just communicate with the table. What intentions you have going into the campaign, what player expectations are, and move from there to find an amicable balance between the core power fantasy of DnD and its story telling mechanics. And if the player is unwilling to cooperate or put in the effort to "play with friends" rather than "play to win," then they are a problem player and they need to be talked to, and potentially even removed if they still refuse to cooperate. Now, that being said, I feel some DMs also have a challenge dealing with both Min-Max-ers and Power Gamers for more than just the reason of "they don't roleplay." There's the thing to consider that there's other people at the table who, very routinely, want to play in a completely different manner. They don't care about optimization and want to just do something goofy or fun. Which normally isn't a problem for people with experience with this situation. However, for those who don't have experience or are new to the hobby, and run things by the book without knowing they can tinker or adjust, they come across problems with balancing encounters. Even in narratively driven games, the goal is always to make an engaging encounter for all players.Tune things towards the majority players and you have one player curb stomping encounters and not giving any other players a chance to shine, or even worse, make them feel as though they aren't able to participate. Tune things towards the Power Player and you either wind up targeting one person the entire time (not a good feeling) or you curb stomp everyone else that *isn't* the Power Player. I think the core issue comes down to a lack of experience, a lack of communication in the play group, and, ultimately, a lack of confidence on the DM's part. Like Jasmine said, all players at the table and all play-styles are valid, but it shouldn't come at the cost of everyone else's enjoyment. Outside of just talking to the play group and having a dialogue to work things out, there's other options in the DM's toolbox that you can use. -Magic items are always a good thing to hand out. They don't have to be strong or rare or anything, but you can pass out items either to give more all round utility to the entire group, encouraging out-of-combat interactions, or give players struggling to keep up items that will balance them out or make up for shortcomings. Just as well, you could give the Power Player more utility based items, allowing them more chances and incentive to do out of combat things. -Reward good roleplay! Whether through tangible story rewards, or through inspiration, if your focus is to run a narrative game, reward players who interact with the narrative, and it will encourage the entire group to do the same! -Fudge stat blocks. Either through adjusting certain stats to make a monster hit a bit harder, or give opportunities for other characters to take advantage of vulnerabilities, you can always add and remove mechanics to make the fight feel more dynamic. Add in resistances or immunities! Create your own monsters! Again, make sure if you are throwing creatures, adjusted or not, don't hard focus on one player. Spread things around so everyone feels like they get their time in the sun. -Create dynamic encounters. utilize different mechanics, moving terrain, really throw people out of their comfort zone. And of course -Just talk to the player. I know I said there's other options outside of it, but it's really important to communicate. For most play groups, it's a group of friends. And you, as the DM, are there to create an experience for everyone. If you're worried about a certain playstyle, talk to them. Ask them what they want to get out of the campaign, and if they're nervous about roleplaying, open up new avenues for them to dip their toes into it. You can have Min/Maxers and Power Gamers that are also really good and fun during roleplay. If you're worried about them blowing through shit- It's your story! Add in a few more encounters, throw in a few more plot lines! But sincerely, just communicate with people.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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..."

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

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

Love how this inspired the Junior year antagonists for Adventuring Academy

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.

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?".

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For me there is a world of difference between someone that optimizes their character to work well, and someone that tries to exploit weirdly written mechanics to do some objectively OP things. Now it differs greatly per group, cause every table and campaign can function completely differently. Another big point in my opinion is how open any given player is to conversation. For example, I had the well-known Hexblade + Paladin combo in one of my longer running games. Quite early on it became clear that in combat especially he was able to solo many encounters cause of how high he could hit, whilst the others could not hope to keep up. This was fine, right up until I as a GM struggled a bit to keep the encounters fun and engaging for everyone equally whilst not forcefully trying to just do things to counter any particular build. But after a quick talk, the Player agreed it is more fun for our table if everyone is able to fight together in those combats, so on future levels he took some more RP related choices whilst the others improved their combat abilities. He still hit much higher than the rest of the crew, but the encounters felt much more fun and engaging.

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

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.

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."

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!

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

Hot take: Characters that are optimized to some degree are the most realistic characters to roleplay. Most people in real life are drawn towards pursuits that they possess at least some skill in, because consistently failing at even the most basic tasks of a certain job sucks and feels bad, while doing well at something because you are either naturally talented or well practiced feels good.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

i do both, I min-max when i can but add roleplay to it, for example, last game had a character who due to class change shenanigans ended up as a sorcadin, I was able to deliver supernova levels of damage (in the grand scheme of things didn't matter too much because I couldnt spam it and my split was sorcerer5/paladin15) and it enabled alot of fun roleplay stuff. (When I delivered the killing blow to the shadow version of my character I got to roleplay out his attack, alot of the power behind the character added to the roleplay of it)

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.

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

7:45 Flavor is the answer to a lot of the questions posed here. The roll player made the build choices for the character he wanted to make. The min maxer made the character to fit the weird build he put together in retrospect. Then he outshines other players at the table because everyone else becomes sidekicks thanks to them doijg all the heavy lifting. Just playing devils advocate here, I min max frequently as I make a build and change my backstory to fit.

You hit the nail on the head when it comes to "Min/Maxers are a mechanics issue, not a player issue." I can definitely point to times when it felt like I just didn't have ways to be useful to the party (even as an "OP" Paladin). Some of that was not understanding the mechanics of my class well, some was self-imposed RP decisions because I wanted to build characters with serious drawbacks to fuel more interesting narrative RP, but it definitely wasn't a great time. I think it has similar connective tissue to why it feels so bad when climactic roles I'm glad you delved into "give them other unique challenges" as a solution, it reminds me of how Overly Sarcastic Productions has talked about the best writers handling the character of Superman: If he can steamroll any matched opponent, give him conflicts that aren't relying on matched opponents. Hostage rescue, natural disaster, etc. Places where his powerset is absolutely useful, but the outcome is not so predetermined. Great talk and glad you guys dispensed with the debate to enjoy the conversation!

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.