Minmaxer's Delight: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote| ''"I have no clue. I don't think it would be much fun honestly. Pun-Pun was never created with the intention of being played, and any game that allows a Pun-Pun character will quickly degenerate from there."'' Khan_the_Destroyer on the [[Dungeons and Dragons
The advantage/power/feat/character option equivalent of [[One Stat to Rule Them All]].
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** Not to mention the Fast Shot and Small Frame Traits. Fast Shot makes all weapons (Fallout 1) or all ranged weapons (Fallout 2) fire faster at the expense of being unable to make called shots. Since burst-fire guns can't make called shots anyway, the drawback vanishes around the second town, and at high levels can be used with a few traits to dish out six critical hits each turn (which can very easily make for six kills each turn). Small Frame grants one stat point (which is keyed to Agility, but points can be manually redistributed anywhere) in exchange for reduced carrying capacity. Not so great in Fallout 1 (followers aren't too bright and can't level up or equip better armour), and but in Fallout 2 you can get an NPC/Permanent Companion/pack mule in the very first town you enter.
** Skilled in New Vegas. Instead of reducing perk rate (very bad) as in the first two games, it reduces your XP gain, which doesn't matter in a game where you hit the level cap far before end-game.
* In ''[[
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[
** ''[[The Order of the Stick
** Likewise, anyone playing a Swordsage is going to pick up Adaptive Style at 1st level, as it lets you refresh (swap out) all of your maneuvers in the time it takes to recover ''one'' normally (The feat is considered good for most Martial Adepts, but key for Swordsage).
*** Though might not be a [[Min Maxers]] delight since even with it they don't compare to the two other martial adept classes. more fixing an inherant flaw in the class than [[Min-Maxing]].
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** Tomb-Tainted Soul is the mandatory first-level feat for dread necromancers, because it means that their many negative-energy attacks can be used to infinitely heal themselves.
** Then there's the Embrace the Dark Chaos/Shun the Dark Chaos feat shuffle. To explain, Embrace the Dark Chaos replaces one of your feats with a vile feat, but forces you to be evil, damned when you die, and no-one like you (not to mention that vile feats generally suck). Shun the Dark Chaos means you can swap out that vile feat for a normal one. This allows one to replace all the sucky mandatory feats with any other feat. Where it really gets broken is that some races, like Elves, get weapon proficiency feats instead of just weapon proficiencies like everyone else that can then be shuffled away to get much better feats (in the case of Elves that's six extra feats).
* In the [[
* Combat Reflexes in ''[[
** The ability to assemble advantages by modifying pre-existing ones makes inventing these an amusement for some. [http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=239055&postcount=216 M.U.N.C.H.K.I.N.] is one classic (though not actually legal) example. [[Game Master|Game Masters]] are expected to regulate player-designed advantages.
* ''[[BESM]]'' has the same thing with Extra Actions. A single extra action essentially doubles your combat prowess (making two attacks instead of one), a second is tripling your ability, etc. Most GMs either ban the ability completely or limit it to speedster-type characters.
* Earlier versions of the merit Silver Resistance in ''[[Werewolf: The
** Similarly, Fair Glabro. Glabro Form is one of the five werewolf shapes, and while it typically boosts your Strength and Stamina, it leaves you looking like Lawrence Talbot under the full moon. That is, unless you take this two-point Merit that merely leaves you looking like a very hirsute bodybuilder.
*** Of course, you have to balance that against the fact that ''Werewolf'' was never heavy on the sorts of situations where looking weird would actually be a problem.
* In 4th edition ''[[
** To clarify for those who haven't played it, player modifiers only automatically scale at +1 every two levels while monster modifiers scale at +1 per level meaning that you needed to come up with +15 in modifiers over 30 levels through feats, magic items, ability score increases, and tactics just to keep up. The game comes prebuilt to require this minmaxing and tells you the basics of how to do it.
** The Essentials supplement line added variant versions that also give specific secondary benefits based on the type of weapon (or magical implement) they're taken for, in order to add a little more consequence to weapon type as well as make the feat do more than just dully ratchet up your attack roll bonus.
* Though the specific rule has since been removed, the original ''[[The Legend of Zelda
** Not to mention the fact that Fairies are known to never shut up. [[Most Annoying Sound|"Hey, Listen!"]].
* In ''[[
** Friend of the Elements is also very good because it gives you a free Raise on all rolls involving a Ring of your choice for only a few points. For those keeping track, this means that you get roughly the equivalent of a +1 to two traits for a fraction of the cost of improving one.
* In ''[[Los Angeles 2035]]'', two levels of Aikido are almost mandatory for every character. With those two levels, you have enough to buy the Reaction technique, giving you one free defensive action per turn. In a game here you gain actions as a result of your initiative roll, which is remade every turn, and need to spend one of your action to dodge or parry once, one extra defense each turn is a really good ability.
* One ''[[
== Turn Based Strategy ==
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** ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' also has Concentrate, here increasing the accuracy of physical attacks by a flat 50% and status effects by 20% (20 and 50 of 100, not of base accuracy). This includes [[Instant Kill]] moves whose only weakness was a low natural accuracy.
** ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics a 2|A2]]'' [[Nerf|nerfed]] Concentration to a flat 5% accuracy bonus (as in 5% of 100%, not 5% of the current accuracy) and also made base accuracy for most physical attack 99% instead of tremendously varying by class. Though it has its own in [[Reduced Mana Cost|Halve MP]] (because MP starts at 0 and grows each turn) or [[Cast From Hit Points|Blood Price]] for any Magick-user.
* SP Regen in ''[[Super Robot Wars Original Generation]]''. [[Call a Hit Point
** Ditto Attacker. Giving a 1.2x multiplier to damage dealt when above a certain morale threshold makes it mandatory for any boss-slayer and arguably just any unit in general. Attacker is meant to make up for the lack among the Original Generation cast of abilities like Mazin Power which do the same thing, but it just translates into everyone getting the skill instead of it being someone's signature trait.
** SRW Alpha 3 and Z took the less minmax-friendly route of making SP Regen an inherent skill available only to a select few pilots such as [[Turn a Gundam (Anime)|Loran Cehack]] and [[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED
=== Disadvantage Examples: ===
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Flaws in ''[[
** This applies to flaws in pretty much any system where they raise their ugly head. In ''oWoD'' games and ''GURPS'' you can almost always pick a bunch of minor disadvantages that will never ever hinder you in actual play. In worse cases, these disadvantages actually give you justifications for being an asshole.
** ''[[
** The ''[[
** ''[[
** Dragon Magazine had some of the best 3.5 flaws for this trope. One of them was called "No Familiar," for Sorcerers and Wizards, which was the same as a free feat with no drawbacks, since nobody ever used the familiar anyway (a weak creature that caused you to lose XP if it was killed.) If you actually did want your familiar for some reason, there was a feat that granted you a one with abilities based on your caster level instead of your class level, so if you were going into a Prestige class, this flaw-feat combo amounted to a free net advantage.
* Abstinent (Tobacco) in ''Aces And Eights: Shattered Frontier''. Free points, plus some money saved on top of it.
* Depending on the game, a min-maxer in some ''[[
* Despite the game's nature of having deadly, deadly disadvantages, ''[[
** Touch of the Void has a chance to daze you when you use Void Points, but improves their benefit. Once you have a high enough Willpower trait to resist being dazed, it becomes purely benificial. What's more, the penalty from daze doesn't last as long as the bonus from using a Void Point for tasks that take multiple rounds to complete.
* In most tabletop RPG that have it, the [[The Gambling Addict|compulsive gambler]] disadvantage is basically free points for cool stuff. You don't have big problems with it because: 1) Having to win or lose 200 gold pieces a day or suffer stat reduction [[Money for Nothing|is no big deal when you earn mountains of gold in one adventure.]] 2) Gambling is usually legal, unlike drugs, and even if it's not, it's hard to enforce. 3) Aside from possible money loss, you don't suffer ill effects from gambling. 4) Thanks to the way disadvantages are defined, you could play a rogue addicted to games requiring high dexterity, basically ensuring you have a positive expected value with these games (ie: on the long run, you win more than you lose).
* ''[[
** On the flip side, for anyone playing on the complete other end of the heroic scale, you have disadvantages that compel you to act heroic or tell the truth (though for the latter one, there's also the possibility that you're just very blatant when you lie).
** Let's not forget the [[Weirdness Magnet]] "disadvantage." Attract all the weirdest possible events in the world? Some people call that condition "being player characters in an RPG."
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