How to Encourage Min/Maxing?

[Toliudar]

Not by any stretch an expert on 4E, so forgive me if this is impractical in that context. I have a player who seems to have no optimization instincts to speak of, but loves combat - the blasting and the hurting. He has actively resisted build advice, so I've given up on that. So, as DM, I'll just occasionally tweak damage and attacks from him, so that he succeeds about as often as the other, slightly more optimized builds in the group. It's a very relaxed group, friends first and players second, so in the unlikely event that anyone noticed, I doubt that they'd care.

Depending on the group dynamic in the OP's game, since he's the one perceiving the problem, he might be the best one to fix it.

[Indon]

That's not what I asserted.

All right, fair point.

Not forcing everyone to optimize has no reason to be offensive or disruptive either.

But if you must: Traveling with Elan is like say, adventuring with Syphilis. It can be done, for a while, but it's not easy, and it's not pretty.

Elan's character is annoying. In-character.

That doesn't mean weak players become annoying to be with because they're weak.

I'm confused as to what you're attempting to say here. Could you elaborate?

The heart of the Stormwind Fallacy is that it is theoretically possible to roleplay an optimized concept well.

No part of that implies that it's possible to roleplay any optimized concept well, or that optimizing does not require you to sacrifice the ability to play a given concept, or any number of very real tradeoffs between optimization and characterization.

Because the OP said that there's an apparent problem.

The problem, however, isn't that the players aren't optimized.

The most prominent problem is that combat pacing is slow, and a possible solution would be to get encounter difficulty more in-line with party power. Increasing the party's power is not the only way to approach that solution.

[Eldariel]

The heart of the Stormwind Fallacy is that it is theoretically possible to roleplay an optimized concept well.

The heart of it is that there's no correlation between optimized and well roleplayed character. That is to say, whether you optimize or not is irrelevant to whether you roleplay well or not. Which is, at least in my experience, true. Optimization tends to happen before game anyways so there's no real overlap there.

[HidaTsuzua]

While I'm not sure what to do about the friend, the biologist shouldn't be that bad. Just set up ways for his character to grow the right way, meeting mentors, seeing examples of certain actions (like wearing no armor), and other ways people learn and charge. Hopefully he'll take the bait and grow along those lines much like shaping a vine. Though this doesn't stop the whole STR 12 fighter issue since by the time you're a STR 12 fighter it's too late.

[Sinfire Titan]

Throw a brick at them. No, I mean an actual brick, at your actual players.


The smart ones will dodge. The Min/Maxers will put their mortal nemesis in the path of the brick.


Incidentally, this is a good way to find out if your players hate you as a DM.

[awa]

The problem seems to be not winning fast enough you haven't told us how close the fights are.

If all you want to do is make the fights faster i would modifies the monster reduce their defense and increase their offense give them lower ac and less hit points but in exchange give them more damage and more accurate attacks.

[randomhero00]

Explain the stormwind fallacy (I was probably ninja'd already but just in case.)
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40903

Your bio dude should especially understand that. Tell them its actually less realistic for them to be weak.

If they don't go for it then its your job as a DM to accommodate them. One possible solution though (if you have other people unwilling to weaken themselves) is to give them 2 separate advancements. You can homebrew this as much as you want but basically let them develop their weak characters how they please. Then automatically give them extra feats/powers you think appropriate. Tell them its something they'd automatically know as characters. Keep giving them extras until they catch up in power.

Only problem would be if your other players that aren't weak take offense at the special treatment. Just try to explain it to them. Or maybe bump them up in secret. There's no rules that say that all characters are created equal. We frequently do things like that in our game in fact. But we like it, it adds quite a bit of surprise at some point. Really amusing too, since they try to hide their powers.

[Ozymandias9]

The heart of it is that there's no correlation between optimized and well roleplayed character. That is to say, whether you optimize or not is irrelevant to whether you roleplay well or not. Which is, at least in my experience, true. Optimization tends to happen before game anyways so there's no real overlap there.

Spoilered as slightly OT

Spoiler

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No, it's that we can't demonstrate an inverse correlation-- that one does not necessarily go down because you focus on the other. It does not say (or even attempt to demonstrate) that there is no correlation.

There are certainly a lot of situations that force you to make decisions between role playing and CharOp. There are also situations that allow you to improve both. Pretending that either set of those situations doesn't exist is foolish.

@OP
The basic issue coming up with "the friend" is that they aren't divorcing the fluff from the crunch like a lot of CharOp assumes. Find fluff they like, adapt it, give it some better crunch, and insert it into the storyline. In this case, homebrew a race, find an excuse to include it, and let the players know its available for PCs in the future.

"The Biologist" is a more drastic problem. This strikes me as a person who has a hard time sustaining suspension of disbelief. In 3rd, I'd generally encourage such a player to enter a skill-monkey class. In 4E, that's simply not an option. The character he wants to play simply isn't an option for 4E. You might be able to get him enjoying an archer-- which has less obvious breaks with verisimilitude (or maybe an arcane caster if you provide a strong enough alchemical flavor), but otherwise I imagine you'll just have to wait for him to adapt to the basic, highly fantastic flavor of 4th before you can make significant progress.

[Tengu_temp]

1. Once you see what kinds of characters they make, suggest them classes that play to the strengths they have. 4e has so many classes with similar flavour, yet different important stats, that it's definitely doable.

2. If that fails, ask them how do they expect their characters to choose Class X as their profession, if they're terrible at it. Remind them that (for example) a fighter who has low strength and refuses to wear armor wouldn't be fitting enough for this career to finish his apprenticeship - he'd most likely get kicked out from Fighter School and have to look for another job.

3. You can just let them suck it up. In 4e, the difference between a highly optimized and a weak character is something like 25%, at most. That's not so high. If they complain that they feel useless, give them a chance to rebuild their characters.

[krossbow]

I really fail to see how a fighter without armor is realistic. Go back to medieval periods and see how long such idiots would last

[randomhero00]

Yeah I agree about the fighter-armor thing. Perhaps you could try creating an NPC of their own class that they meet. He is friendly to them but totally makes fun of and calls their characters crazy.

"Ahahah, you're a fighter?! You're a fighter? You don't even have armor on! Why are you giving my career a bad name boy?" etc.

[QuantumSteve]

Yeah I agree about the fighter-armor thing. Perhaps you could try creating an NPC of their own class that they meet. He is friendly to them but totally makes fun of and calls their characters crazy.

"Ahahah, you're a fighter?! You're a fighter? You don't even have armor on! Why are you giving my career a bad name boy?" etc.

Inigo Mantoya wears no armor. Probably has a Str of 12, too.

[Kylarra]

Inigo Mantoya wears no armor. Probably has a Str of 12, too.

Inigo Montoya is probably closer to a rogue that doesn't use sneak attack though. He uses sly flourish for his damage.

[The Glyphstone]

Inigo Mantoya wears no armor. Probably has a Str of 12, too.

Inigo Montoya is not a fighter. He's a Rogue, or if you're in 3.5, a Swashbuckler.

[Tinydwarfman]

Inigo Mantoya wears no armor. Probably has a Str of 12, too.

Yes but he probably has levels in swordsage(3.5), or a least a good swashbuckler class. He's a DEX based fighter. If OP's guy had some kind of alternate DEX or INT synergy I think he would have said.

[Godskook]

Not forcing everyone to optimize has no reason to be offensive or disruptive either.

Elan's character is annoying. In-character.

That doesn't mean weak players become annoying to be with because they're weak.

Note that Elan's treatment is distinctly different from Belkar. Belkar is annoying, but unlike Elan, he's effective since page 1. He's also a valued combat member of the team that they want to have around, right up until he kills the oracle(Seriously, that's the one and only reason anyone in the OotS ever wanted to actually get rid of him)

The heart of the Stormwind Fallacy is that it is theoretically possible to roleplay an optimized concept well.

No, the heart of the Stormwind Fallacy is that it is practically possible to do that.

Also, note that optimized is among the least powerful terms in the PC's power handbook. You can have an optimized evoker, or an optimized paraplegic. You don't have to make pun-pun to qualify for optimization, just play something that brings at least level-appropriate abilities to the table.

No part of that implies that it's possible to roleplay any optimized concept well, or that optimizing does not require you to sacrifice the ability to play a given concept, or any number of very real tradeoffs between optimization and characterization.

What exactly are you thinking of, cause typically, my concepts of characterization actually include minimum amounts of optimization in them, such as "A great swordsman" or "A powerful wizard". If I don't optimize, I'm not properly roleplaying my character. But that's only to a point.

For instance, my current character is the son of a Daggerspell Mage, and quite the child prodigy(Able Learner) of his father's. In his young days, he was local ne'er-do-well who amused himself with mild mischief such as theft(Rogue 1). He then learned of his estranged father's death, and the circumstances behind it, and set out to both right this tragedy and learn more about his lineage. Insert campaign 1 here, where Jon's magical potential is realized(Wiz 1) alongside a helpful necromancer ally. Afterwards, he worked hard to be recognized among his father's peers(Wiz +3, Practiced Spellcaster, Daggerspell Mage) while doing various things, including hunting down his father's killer(Among several others). Enter campaign 2, where he's now tasked with undoing the corruption on an island, and has only just met his new group of fellows, who include among their ranks a more powerful evoker wizard whose better knowledge of arcana is both a source of potential discussion(Leading to Jonathan learning orb spells) and disagreement as Jonathan argues with her over the applications of arcane might. He's even at one point rejected a magical dagger in favor of his father's Mwk ones, since they're his father's.

Most of Jonathan's characterizations, outside those provided by campaign-mates, is the direct result of his crunch optimizations. He's not the greatest form of optimization, but he gets L9 spells before epic, has a phenomenal skill list to choose from thanks to Able Learner, has an average of almost 10 skill points per level, despite 4 levels of wizard, and will get over that mark soon. He's a FS Conjurer, and with smartly picked banned schools as well. For a secondary arcanist and primary trapsmith, he works quite well.

And that reminds me of something. One of the key abilities of a good roleplayer(aka actor) is to be able to play the role given them. An actor who must shape the role to fit him is a poor one, but an actor who shapes himself to fit the role is great. By the same token, a roleplayer who can't roleplay an optimized character is a poor roleplayer. Example: Jim Carrey was entertaining in things like Ace Ventura and The Mask, but didn't prove his acting abilities until he started taking roles in movies like The Majestic. And then there's Heath Ledger, who's done both the Joker and starred in A Knight's Tale, another great example of acting at its best. Kevin Costner, on the other hand, is either pigeon-holed or a lesser actor, as the movies I see him in all have him playing an underdog unlikely hero type. Good movies, but I get the impression that I'm watching Kevin Costner star as Kevin Costner, not an actor portraying someone else.

@Friend, ask her to roleplay someone powerful(and then build the character appropriately), and when she responds with "But I'm a roleplayer" again, just say that a real roleplayer would enjoy the challenge.

[QuantumSteve]

Yes but he probably has levels in swordsage(3.5), or a least a good swashbuckler class. He's a DEX based fighter. If OP's guy had some kind of alternate DEX or INT synergy I think he would have said.

Touché. Can you make a DEX/INT Fighter in 4e? I've never played.

[erikun]

May I suggest something radical and perhaps unmentioned until now?

Involve less combat in your games.

This sounds like it would solve both the time-consuming combat problem and the low stats problem at the same time.

[Kylarra]

Touché. Can you make a DEX/INT Fighter in 4e? I've never played.

Well, DEX/INT tends to be a poor combination of primary/secondary stat, due to overlap. I don't believe that there's any class, offhand, that would utilize one of those as a primary and the other as a secondary, but Swordmage is INT based and Rogue/Assassin are DEX based melee classes, so there you go for the basics.

[Tinydwarfman]

May I suggest something radical and perhaps unmentioned until now?

Involve less combat in your games.

This sounds like it would solve both the time-consuming combat problem and the low stats problem at the same time.

I think drastically changing the style that the OP plays probably isn't going to happen. You can make monsters easier or harder pretty easily, but designing a whole new campaign is decidedly harder.

Touché. Can you make a DEX/INT Fighter in 4e? I've never played.

I haven't either, but from what I hear it supports ability score shuffling a lot more (DEX or INT to initiative and stuff like that, you can choose which ability score your class is based of off), so almost definitely yes.

[erikun]

I think drastically changing the style that the OP plays probably isn't going to happen. You can make monsters easier or harder pretty easily, but designing a whole new campaign is decidedly harder.

Well, the OP is requesting that the players drastically change their style of play...

And for the record, no you cannot make a DEX/INT 4e Fighter. All fighter powers use STR to hit. You either need to design a feat that changes the to-hit values from STR to another stat, or be a bard with the feat to allow all multiclass powers use CHA, or just use a different class entirely.

[Indon]

Note that Elan's treatment is distinctly different from Belkar. Belkar is annoying, but unlike Elan, he's effective since page 1. He's also a valued combat member of the team that they want to have around, right up until he kills the oracle(Seriously, that's the one and only reason anyone in the OotS ever wanted to actually get rid of him)

Belkar isn't optimized either. He's a Low-wis multiclassed Barbarian/Ranger and by all accounts would be significantly weaker in combat than even Roy, who is made fun of by his father because he didn't optimize (as a straight Fighter with Caster-level Int).

Elan didn't optimize compared to these people, because for much of the game he had almost no grasp of the game's rules. It's basically impossible in 4E to be as ineffective as Elan, even if you try.

No, the heart of the Stormwind Fallacy is that it is practically possible to do that.

A fair point - that it is possible to see an optimized character roleplayed well in practical play.

What exactly are you thinking of, cause typically, my concepts of characterization actually include minimum amounts of optimization in them, such as "A great swordsman" or "A powerful wizard". If I don't optimize, I'm not properly roleplaying my character.

And that'll work well unless you get an idea that doesn't mesh with the optimize-and-justify approach, in which you make a powerful character sheet and then base the actual character around describing why they're powerful.

Not to say it's not a valid approach to characterization. It totally is. But it's not without its' limits, even if you might not care about those limits.

One of the key abilities of a good roleplayer(aka actor) is to be able to play the role given them.

Roleplaying includes but is not limited to acting - as previously noted, characterization, and other aspects of writing, are important as well.

And maybe there are people who enjoy exploring aspects like that rather than using roleplaying as a vehicle to produce effective tactical miniature gameplay.

Edit:

May I suggest something radical and perhaps unmentioned until now?

Involve less combat in your games.

This sounds like it would solve both the time-consuming combat problem and the low stats problem at the same time.

To be fair, combat's what 4E does. Without combat, there's not too much point to playing it.

[Solarn]

The heart of it is that there's no correlation between optimized and well roleplayed character. That is to say, whether you optimize or not is irrelevant to whether you roleplay well or not. Which is, at least in my experience, true. Optimization tends to happen before game anyways so there's no real overlap there.

However:
- Roleplaying a character implies playing out the character's stats, skills, class, alignment etc. as they are written on the sheet. This is what makes Str18, Int6, NG into a dumb, but kind-hearted bruiser instead of a bunch of letters and numbers on paper that affect dice rolls.
- Roleplaying a character also implies an ability to do so; this is dependent on the player's personal roleplaying ability and theatric flair, which have nothing to do with the character sheet, but it also depends on the internal consistency of a character's fluff.
- Optimizing, or rather, over-optimizing/min-maxing a character sacrifices internal consistency for cheese.
- Therefore, the more cheesed up a character is, the less possible it is to RP it in a way that reflects its character sheet. It always remains in the realm of theoretical possibility, but practical possibility is another question.

[Just_Ice]

Double all combat damage. Don't encourage Min/Maxing.

done

[snoopy13a]

And that reminds me of something. One of the key abilities of a good roleplayer(aka actor) is to be able to play the role given them. An actor who must shape the role to fit him is a poor one, but an actor who shapes himself to fit the role is great. By the same token, a roleplayer who can't roleplay an optimized character is a poor roleplayer.

I don't think the problem is that they can't roleplay an optimized character. Instead, it is that they want to play the character that they want to play even if this character happens to be unoptimized.

For example, take two stereotypical fighter templates, the sword and board fighter and the tripper. Both can be roleplayed effectively but the tripper is a more effective fighter game-wise. However, suppose the player really wants to play a sword and boarder because he/she grew up loving the Camelot myths and that is how he or she thinks King Arthur or Sir Lancelot would fight. Telling this player that they shouldn't go this route could result in an unhappy player.

Thus, trying to force a roleplayer to play a character that they don't want to play may not make them happy, even if they are capable of it. Thus, the OP could end up at an impasse.

[Zovc]

Which is strange because both of these players agree with me that 4e combat takes too long. Even with me shaving HP off of monsters, an encounter with four players and four monsters can take an hour. I’d think that with combat taking so long, they’d at least pick up Expertise (in non-TS campaigns, where feat taxes aren’t house ruled).

Obviously, these players want combat to take long.

[Indon]

Even with me shaving HP off of monsters, an encounter with four players and four monsters can take an hour.

I'd completely missed this until zovc quoted it.

A combat in 4E that takes an hour RL time is actually very fast.

In retrospect, your problem is not, at all, the optimization of your characters. It's that combat in 4E is slow.

[Eldariel]

However:
- Roleplaying a character implies playing out the character's stats, skills, class, alignment etc. as they are written on the sheet. This is what makes Str18, Int6, NG into a dumb, but kind-hearted bruiser instead of a bunch of letters and numbers on paper that affect dice rolls.
- Roleplaying a character also implies an ability to do so; this is dependent on the player's personal roleplaying ability and theatric flair, which have nothing to do with the character sheet, but it also depends on the internal consistency of a character's fluff.
- Optimizing, or rather, over-optimizing/min-maxing a character sacrifices internal consistency for cheese.
- Therefore, the more cheesed up a character is, the less possible it is to RP it in a way that reflects its character sheet. It always remains in the realm of theoretical possibility, but practical possibility is another question.

Changing the numbers does not in any way increase or decrease their roleplayability. Inherently, no character is better or worse for roleplaying (outside extreme cases like stats under 3 in anything when you're practically non-humanoid for purposes of that ability), and as such, optimizing does not in any way improve or worsen the roleplayability of your character.

Indeed, if character is good at what you want him to be good at, it should actually increase the consistency as his demeanor mirrors his ability (unless he specifically thinks too highly/lowly of him/herself); optimization ensures you have exactly the character you want, so I'd say you have it upside down there.


And min/maxing or optimization doesn't involve "cheese" by most definitions of the word. Of course, it depends on what you consider "cheese", but generally that's strictly off-limits for practical, game-intended optimization.

[Godskook]

Belkar isn't optimized either. He's a Low-wis multiclassed Barbarian/Ranger and by all accounts would be significantly weaker in combat than even Roy, who is made fun of by his father because he didn't optimize (as a straight Fighter with Caster-level Int).

Elan didn't optimize compared to these people, because for much of the game he had almost no grasp of the game's rules. It's basically impossible in 4E to be as ineffective as Elan, even if you try.

Belkar is shown to be able to handle single-classed enemies of similar tier with relative ease. He's even handled a CR = ECL+4 rogue under unpleasent circumstances. Belkar is level appropriate, and therefore, optimized as well as I or the OP desires.

And maybe there are people who enjoy exploring aspects like that rather than using roleplaying as a vehicle to produce effective tactical miniature gameplay.

Who does that?

(For reference, it isn't me. I use effective tactical miniature gameplay as a vehicle to produce enjoyable roleplaying opportunities. And yes, there's a very large difference here. If there wasn't, I'd stick to MtG and C&C for my gameplay enjoyment.)

-----------

I'm still waiting on an example where roleplaying actually interferes with level-appropriate optimization.

[Indon]

Belkar is shown to be able to handle single-classed enemies of similar tier with relative ease. He's even handled a CR = ECL+4 rogue under unpleasent circumstances. Belkar is level appropriate, and therefore, optimized as well as I or the OP desires.

The game's probably toned down for Belkar and Roy. Note the only character death was when one character tried to solo an epic-level caster.

In fact, OOTS demonstrates how the 'set the challenge to the party' approach can work extremely well.

I'm still waiting on an example where roleplaying actually interferes with level-appropriate optimization.

As noted, OOTS is likely an example of just that - by RAW, in fact, the party is very similar to the OP's group. We have one character who's intentionally unoptimized because he wants organic character growth, and another who is unoptimized because he's doing what he thinks is cool rather than what would, by the system, be effective. And of course we also have Elan, whose characterization as a hilariously inept adventurer certainly at least makes for good comedy.