Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Min-maxing good? Bad?

The not so obvious thing about finding the "perfect build" is that it very rarely can be figured out in advance. And this procedure is a completely minmaxer's thing. Any scientific breakthrough is driven by experiment and chance. Only by playing a sub-optimal build and seeing for yourself what works and what not, one can find the "perfect build". And minmaxers tend to overthink stuff like stats, feats, classes in advance and that makes their build strong, but rarely perfect. Because perfect is more of a personal, subjective thing, imo. And you can't fine tune your build to your own liking without starting somewhere and improving on the idea afterwards.

Those can be larger issues at a D&D table...but BG3 allows you to respec at any time and throws wildly powerful items your way that are basically designed to make you want to respec your class and build around them.

True. I don't like playing with minmaxers at the table. The last memory I have is about the guy who played a Warlock. He named it John and used Eldritch blast each turn and used a raven familiar to scout. That was all his gameplay. It was very effective but it felt like I was playing with a bot.

I am glad that BG3 has the respec system, btw.

First, let me say that I understand the desire to make a mechanically strong character. In fact, I almost always do. Of course, that said, I completely understand where Ixal is coming from. And I can see how min/maxing negatively impacts the enjoyment someone else gets from solely roleplaying.

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But regarding the quote above, I'd argue that min/maxed characters aren't exactly "memorable." The reason being is that they all pretty much look alike. These are typically carbon copy builds, or very close to. They're using the same dump stats; they're hiking up the same stats; they're using the same weapons and feats and charting out all the same progressions.

Now you’re selling me on the idea That does sound interesting in its own way. Not something I’d prefer to picking a roleplay concept and making it work, but I’ll follow what conclusions others draw about the “best” builds with interest.

It is one way to play the game, it's the standard way to play the game for some people. Others have different preferences.
Maxing the primary stat isn't necessary, you can play just fine without a maxed primary stat. A 14 - 15 in your primary stats will not render a character unplayable. Granted, it will be harder to play but still possible.

Wrong.
For example in a game I am currently playing another player plays a mildly successful writer of detective and action novels who thinks he can emulate the deeds of his characters and thus is a tad bit aggressive when pirates board the ship despite playing the "support class" with rather poor combat stats. Just because you can't fathom how to role play doesn't mean others also can't. Which is why people get rather annoyed if everything gets designed for the lowest common denominator, meaning seeing RPGs as nothing more than a wargame you minmax.

I have to ask, what are people talking about when they say "min-maxing"? Because I get the impression we're talking about different things.

What "illegitimate" (recognizing that in an SP game nothing really is) mix-maxing means for me is to make characters that are implausible in terms of lore, because the things sacrificed are never relevant in terms of gameplay. For instance, I would consider it bad roleplaying to make a main character with any attribute of 3, because such a character would be unlikely to survive as an adventurer in any context not circumscribed by the inflexible mechanics of a video game. I'm not saying such a character is strictly impossible, but as a GM I'd require quite a bit of an explanation for such a choice, and I would impose significant costs. If a video game does not do that because it's not smart enough, then dumping a stat to 3 means making a character who is not real. In essence, just a template.

Another example of this kind of min-maxing is, say, setting CHA to 3 in your BG2 character because you know you can find an item that raises CHA to 18 a little later in the game. Or setting INT to 3 in BG3 because you know you'll find that item that raises it to 17. However, starting with an 8 for the same reason might be borderline implausible in most cases, but in that case, as the GM, I'd only ask if you really want to play a character who is actually dumb but has some "AI assistant" telling them what they need to know when things get tricky. And that item would be high on the priority list if a plot required something to be stolen from the party.

So in many cases, min-maxing is a matter of perspective. My concern, meanwhile, is this: is the game balanced in a way that places undue importance on combat effectiveness? Do I need to sacrifice a plausible level of non-combat utility to be able to fluidly play the game to its end without frustration? Do I need to resolve every situation with a fight in order to gain enough xp to be able to play the game to its end without frustration? Do I need to choose my party for combat effectiveness exclusively to be able to fluidly play the game on standard difficulty? In most games of this kind, I have to do most of that on higher difficulties and that's fine, but at standard difficulty I expect some freedom to choose my party and my skills with more balanced priorities in mind. And at the moment, I am not quite confident that BG3 is balanced in a balanced way. DOS2 is most definitely not balanced that way. It does not matter for character creation because non-combat skills use their own skill point pool and you can use different attributes for persuasion, but if you resolve a significant number of encounters without a fight (and thus getting no xp at all as a rule), you will definitely regret that later. I'm afraid BG3 might be too much like DOS2 in that.

I'd argue most people start with an idea for a build and then build a character around it.

Also when stat rolling is in lots of people roll till they 16+ in every stat.

You're right, naturally there's nothing memorable about the 1000th character following the same very specific min-maxed build. I made the mistake of using the terms min-maxing (always picking the best options out of all with some specific goal in mind, e.g. 'highest damage per turn') and optimizing (creating a concept and making it work the best you can) interchangeably. Or at least I think that's what the right definitions are. Are they? Does anyone even know?

Anyway, I was thinking more of the latter. For example, let's say your concept is a charming enchanter wizard who's a master of mind-manipulation, reading people and navigating high-society intrigue. As you begin to 'optimize' your build, you figure out you need your Charisma and Wisdom to be reasonably high in addition to Intelligence, which leaves little room for the physical abilities. This prompts you to leave Strength and Constitution in the dumpster, creating a character who's the smoothest talker that ever walked Faerun and folds like a paper crane under hydraulic press as soon as words fail them. Clearly not the "best" built character ever, but definitely memorable I'd say.

This is an extremely good way of phrasing it. You don't have to be a "min/maxer" to want your character idea to be as functional as possible.

Thank you for pointing this out. It really feels like what a lotof the anti-minmaxers are saying is that they consider "being conscious of character stats and building a character with the desire to make them good at the thing they're meant to be good at." Sure, a 14-15 in a primary stat won't make a character unpalayble, but it will be a challenge. One that not every player is going to want to del with for every character. Sometimes that's not the story they want for their character. To bring up the racial ASI issue since I feel like that's an important aspect of this discussion, what if the story you want to tell about an orc wizard isn't about how difficult learning magic was for them? What if you'd rather their difficulty be in being a perfectly fine wizard but clashing with their family over being talented in intelectual pursuits rather than physical ones? Or hell, moving away from the popular orc wizard example, what about a dwarf wizard? Why should they be restricted to stories about their difficulties in magic? Or a dwarven bard who wants to record and share the songs and tales of glory of her people? What's so terrible and min-maxy about wanting them to be as good at the stuff their class does as an elven wizard is at the stuff their class would do?

'Orc Wizard' would soon become a meme of these forums I feel.

Well, first, you can play those things without a plus two in your Int stat. You can still play a dwarf who's good at magic with a 15 Int.

And second, the reason it doesn't work for some folks is because it sullies the setting for an orc to have the same Int as a high elf wizard. Suddenly there's born a ground breaking genius orc, not because it's relevant to the plot or setting, no, but because Johnny just had to be the most unique'est.

If Johnny really wanted to play an orc who was estranged from his community because of his intellectual pursuits, he can still do that without a plus two to his Int. Rather than accepting that and really getting into the role though, Johnny needs to be equivalent to whatever race is greatest at magic because Johnny is Johnny and we all know how Johnny is.

That's why there are quite a few folks who don't necessarily enjoy gaming with Johnny.

"Reducing dnd war games" as some sort of negative is hilarious considering how dnd came about originally.

Also, let's not blame 2e for lack of non combat skill in Bg series. 2e had nonnweapon proficiencea and secondary skills. Bio chose not to use them. That's a bio oversight not a 2e failure. Stop that slander.

Also, you do not need min max to be effective in or out of combat. My favorite character of all time had 0 18s, and this was back when having a 12 ir 13 was not all that useful. Lol

Having 8 sliightly below average. If your character has 8 int you arent brain dead or strength 8 means you aren't some weakling who can't even carry an apple.

Choosing, within the limits of the plausible and with secondary priorities in mind should they exist, ability scores that fit a character's primary competence, is just playing the game with a measure of competence. Not min-maxing.

The racial ASIs are a different matter though. These games work from the principle that being an outlier is more expensive than being average. And the racial ASIs tell us something about the world, namely that the baseline average of a race is different, so a high INT half-orc is more of an outlier than a high-INT human and thus more expensive. The problematic part, from my point of view, is that there seems to be - I don't know this part of the rules, actually - a limit to the level above the average you can buy, regardless of how many points you spend. So that it is actually impossible to make a high-INT half-orc rather than expensive. That I consider undesirable, but "more expensive" is OK. It just reflects that you're more of an outlier. So I'd just remove that attribute limit for everyone. If you want to set everything to 8 and buy INT 18, fine.

Beyond that, unless you want to overhaul the system and remove any extra cost for being an outlier for *everyone*, you can't keep a race's average different from any other's without it also being more expensive to be a non-typically competent member of that race. So what do you want? Do you want to compromise the integrity of your races in terms of worldbuilding in order to make it easier to be a non-typically competent member of a race, or do you want to keep your races intact in terms of worldbuilding but also keep it more expensive to be a good half-orc wizard than a good human wizard. You can't have both. I will almost always prioritize worldbuilding. Unless you really want all races to have the same average ability scores - and why the heck would you ever want that? - you shouldn't remove racial ASIs in character creation.

If all races can be build the same, there's no need for different races. Dwarves, elves, and orcs aren't supposed to be simply different looking humans. Trying to treat them like real world different human 'races' is illogical. FYI, There are white, black, and other 'racial' human groups in dnd. They're just treated the same and maybe differently based on culture. But, they're all human.

Wrong thread. Try here or here or here.

I was replying to someone in this thread.