[WellsIDidIt]

Min-Max is minimizing weaknesses and maximizing strengths. Powergaming/Munchkinizing is maximizing strength regardless of the weakness it creates, because you never intend to allow the weakness to occur. Optimizing is making a character optimal mechanically.

It all comes down to limits. The heaviest supporters of Powergaming/Munchkinizing will tout the Stormwind Fallacy at every turn to justify their heavily flawed character that doesn't fit their backstory but does what they want to do with as many dice as the system will allow. They make the leap that Optimization and Roleplaying being separated means they are automatic.

The line is very variable. I agree with the earlier poster that where the boundary begins to grey between optimization and powergaming is when the character you want to play isn't viable because it isn't optimal. When an Ex-Marine Tank Gunner or Sniper Street Sam becomes an augmented mind over matter adept demo expert assault trooper because the story changed (after reviewing the mechanics) it would be crystal clear.

On the other hand, changing from using Longarms (sniper rifles and shotguns) to Automatics (for a DMR Battle Rifle) isn't as shattering to the concept.

[Noble Drake]

Again I disagree. I pretty frequently see builds that center on making one stat or a group of stats irrelevant then setting them to as low a level as possible. A good example would be the "never leaves the coccoon" hacker with 1 in all physical atts or the Sniper with 1 Strength mentioned earlier.

You can't choose to have a stat be irrelevant - the GM can allow a stat to be irrelevant, but that is different.

Never leaves the cocoon hacker has the weakness that, should he ever be traced (an eventuality, not a possibility) he will be able to do almost nothing to protect himself - and will have the amazingly money-sucking endeavor of moving his cocoon or rebuilding in a new location unless he wants to never be safe again.

The 1 strength sniper is a more readily weakness-suffering character - has to have a teammate help him into position because he can barely even manage to stand while wearing armor and packing his rifle and ammo, or risks being found, shot, and killed in short order because hiding from your enemies is never a sure thing.

In both cases the GM could choose to not have reasonable consequences of those character build choices come up - but in no case can the player truly say "I don't need this."

Just like all those characters that dump charisma and never take the influence skills... it's the GM ignoring or changing the rules that lets them manage work at a reasonable pay rate, and let's them get gear on the street through their face buddy without any punitive time or cost increases - it is not the game saying "yeah, only one character needs any charisma-competence at all."

[Crunch]

Min-maxing and 'gaming the system' are two different things, and people are trying to lump them together. Square peg, round hole.

I'm not sure I accept your definition. Min Maxing and gaming the system are not identical, but a min maxer can game the system and can do so in the pursuit of min maxing.

They can, but that doesn't mean that it is always the case, which some people try to claim.

Not the claim I'm making though. However arguing that gaming the system in the pursuit of min maxing isn't min maxing seems strange to me.

[slipped]

I totally agree with the GM culpability part of that.

[All4BigGuns]

Min-maxing and 'gaming the system' are two different things, and people are trying to lump them together. Square peg, round hole.

I'm not sure I accept your definition. Min Maxing and gaming the system are not identical, but a min maxer can game the system and can do so in the pursuit of min maxing.

They can, but that doesn't mean that it is always the case, which some people try to claim.

Not the claim I'm making though. However arguing that gaming the system in the pursuit of min maxing isn't min maxing seems strange to me.

[slipped]

I totally agree with the GM culpability part of that.

Look at it this way. The weird builds that people come up with that would never function, but are billy bad-ass at something (troll tank with cha 1 and uncouth) are 'gaming the system', but they aren't min-maxing because of the inherent weakness created.

[Whiskeyjack]

Min-Max is minimizing weaknesses and maximizing strengths. Powergaming/Munchkinizing is maximizing strength regardless of the weakness it creates, because you never intend to allow the weakness to occur. Optimizing is making a character optimal mechanically.

It all comes down to limits. The heaviest supporters of Powergaming/Munchkinizing will tout the Stormwind Fallacy at every turn to justify their heavily flawed character that doesn't fit their backstory but does what they want to do with as many dice as the system will allow. They make the leap that Optimization and Roleplaying being separated means they are automatic.

Well said. I was trying to think of a good way to compare munchkinism, optimization, and min-maxing. I tend to have no issue with the latter two but the first is too much "have my cake and eat it too."

IMO playing black-ops illegal operatives requires a degree of optimization or yiu are just not that good at your job and a liability not an asset. Of course the exact "required" amount of optimization varies between tables and games but I think most would agree that there's some threshold below which your character, who may (or may not) have a great story, is not pulling his weight compared to teammates.

For instance your Street Sam should probably be the scariest shooter, and min-maxing with CHA 1 could probide resources to facilitate that. Does tht create a weakness? Maybe; on the other hand, a troll with CHA 1, Nasty Vibe, and the intimidation-boosting gun mods might be min-maxed and/or optimized for the role but is still somewhat effective with one particular facet of social skills.

I tend to see few things as inherently munchkiny in SR4A. Mostly just pornomancers.

[Thrass]

I would yet like to see some source and background knowledge where the term minmaxing originated.
neither http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MinMaxing nor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min-maxing have good leads and a good agreed on origin.

Dwarfs in DnD which further minimized their charisma had very little will saves iirc and thus had a big whole in their defenses... I played 3.x only 2 times though and might be mistaken.

I still insist minmaxing means minimizing stats too free up points to maximize other stats you really really want to have unless given a serious source that provides enough background on the matter to make me reconsider.

I still stand on my point that as long as the GM enforces proper roleplaying and the players are interested in roleplay Players will come up with good Characters.
Maybe not on the first session... Noble Drake provided an example of his happening.

[blackangel]

In fact I feel that optimisation and min/max are pretty the same. Just like where is the difference between influence and manipulation, they are just the two faces of the same coin.

I remember of a friend when he was asked what is your job ? His first answer was financial trick ("magouilles" in french) and as the person who asks didn't seem to understand he just triggered a : oh sorry, complex financial engineering with a smile. On one side it's just the dark side and on the other an acceptable one.

IMO the only importance is that the character is playable. Just with SR4 rules I can think of multiple ways of viable character with ones in every physical stats, some have been posted, others have been suggested in others threads. If you go this way there is still a danger of being tricked by your GM but it can be a lot of fun. Except if this one just bring you in situations that should not appear more than once in a life (and even once would be statistically a real bad luck). In this case it would be better for him to say it directly : well I have a problem with your character, can you rethink him a bit ?

In my experience in RPG, the real problem is not min/max or optimisation but how players handle the same things. That's why I really enjoy the character creation and critique where everyone try to optimise a character which is presented. Pointing out flaws, and rounding him in a more viable one. I say optimise and could say evenly min/max, we have enough threads to verify it. Some of you offer just slight adjustement on the concept, others offer  their little tricks which minimise the cost or maximise the efficiency.

Where is the frontier ? Really I don't see it, we are in the grey between black and white. But the extrems were unplayable in both cases. No direction in the creation and everything in an average range will be difficult to play (white) while an over optimisation with a 1 in cha and no influence skills will also be difficult (black)

[Noble Drake]

I would yet like to see some source and background knowledge where the term minmaxing originated.
neither http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MinMaxing nor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min-maxing have good leads and a good agreed on origin.

That's because it is a slang term originating decades before either of those things even existed, and the people that write/edit tv tropes and wikis are very rarely the now 50 to 80 year old folks among whom the term originally came into existence back in the 70s.

Dwarfs in DnD which further minimized their charisma had very little will saves iirc and thus had a big whole in their defenses... I played 3.x only 2 times though and might be mistaken.

the dwarves to which I was refering were those of AD&D, which had only their number of henchmen, the loyalty of those henchmen, and typical social reactions of NPCs meeting them for the first time to worry about their Charisma score for (as there was not a save called "will" at that time - nor did ability scores have influence on saving throws without very situational application).

I still insist minmaxing means minimizing stats too free up points to maximize other stats you really really want to have unless given a serious source that provides enough background on the matter to make me reconsider.

Please define "serious source" and I will see what I can do.

[Thrass]

okay let's say credible source... (like a written source that sounds believable or cite someone that is known to be believable in the best case with hard proof like a paper on linguistical studies focused on slang terms in the xy, an 80 year old who forgot what was happening decades ago hardly counts as credible source though)
as you stated though it is a slang term and those tend to have different meanings in different subcultures and different time

Since we are extremely derailing the thread though I'll stop going on about this for my part though

[Reaver]

<snip>

I still insist minmaxing means minimizing stats too free up points to maximize other stats you really really want to have unless given a serious source that provides enough background on the matter to make me reconsider.

Please define "serious source" and I will see what I can do.

best I could find on short notice. Look at reference for more info....
Min/Maxing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min-maxing
Optimization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimization_(role-playing_games)
Munchkining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchkin_(role-playing_games)
Twinking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinking

http://www.philm.demon.co.uk/Miscellaneous/Vocabulary.html

yea wikipedia is NOT the best source (I know) but sometimes, it's the best you are going to find....

[Thrass]

Well I already linked the wikipedia page and quite honestly ... the information given there is very little....

the last link you provided states:
"Mini-Maxer: A player who attempts to exploit every aspect of a game's rules to maximise character power for minimum cost of any kind - hence, by implication, a variety of power-gamer."

Which is yet another take on the word min(i), and yet another source that does not say anything about minimizing weaknesses.

[Captain Karzak]

To me, personally, there's a large difference between optimization and min-maxing.

Min-maxing means pumping all resources you find into one or two specialties and dropping everything else, often even using cheesy exploits get met more max without the min. In the end, you'll get a character that's completely uber-skilled inhis 'thing', but is usually not a credible personality.  For example: An "ex-army black-ops sniper" who can kill you from 3km distance and shooting through 5 walls while doing so, but who despite the "army blackops" thing has no skills or training whatsoever in another type of combat, survival or other firearms, is asthmatic and most likely in dept with one group or the other and has no contacts that could actually get him gear, a job or useful information. He'll also be ugly as hell and be completely dumb and probably doesn't even have the strength required to properly carry a rifle, but who checks that crap anyways, right?

Optimizing, on the other hand, is something I can't NOT do when making a character. Nobody wants to play an average wageslave. But where min-maxing (to me) starts from the idea "how can I be the best in this particular skillset", Optimization starts from the basic idea and background and then builds on that. "ex-army black-ops sniper" of course means he'll have an excellent skill with a rifle, but part of his knowledge would also be camouflage, infiltration, survival and some skill with other weapons; he'll have some ex-army buddies who can supply him with weapons and put him in touch with some other ex-army mercenaries; some smugglers he might've met in the jungle while on a mission there, a drinking buddy who works for Ares and is a gun-nut too and a contact who can get him some paid work; he'll be pretty average looking and while not a complete genius won't be dumb as a brick neither.

Wat?

None of this made any sense to me.

Min-maxing means: Maximizing Strengths while Minimizing Weaknesses. This means creating a character who is very good at very useful things, while not having any crippling weaknesses. A character who is a one-trick pony who can only pull off their all-important trick under only a very specific set of idealized circumstances is NOT Min-maxed. Such a character has tried to maximize their strengths without any concern for how bad or how numerous their weaknesses are.

Min-maxing is an approach - an overall methodology -  to optimizing a character. When you min-max, you have carefully evaluated and managed both your character's strengths AND weaknesses, rather than just focusing on strengths.The two terms (Min-maxing and Optimization) are virtually synonymous because Min-maxing is the best way to optimize.  A min-maxed character is weak in areas that are useless and strong in areas that are useful. Highly proficient min-maxers are highly accurate in assessing which abilities are useful and which abilities are useless. An incompetent min-maxer will misjudge this, often resulting in the false belief that a major vulnerability is merely a minor one.

Characters can be optimized at particular tasks without regard for the relative usefulness of those tasks - like achieving the highest possible to-hit, or having the biggest possible soak pool, or the biggest social die pool for example. This is not Min-maxing. Such optimization is useful in teaching us what constitutes a low, average, and high amount of talent in a particular task, according to the mathematics on which the game system is based. But under most circumstances, the most proficiently optimized character is one that was Min-maxed.

[All4BigGuns]

Well I already linked the wikipedia page and quite honestly ... the information given there is very little....

the last link you provided states:
"Mini-Maxer: A player who attempts to exploit every aspect of a game's rules to maximise character power for minimum cost of any kind - hence, by implication, a variety of power-gamer."

Which is yet another take on the word min(i), and yet another source that does not say anything about minimizing weaknesses.

This is because that wiki page was probably written by one of the many people who misuses the term. The above post by Captain Karzak is pretty much a perfect synopsis of what actual min-max really is, and, as you can see by the description he gives, it is not necessarily a bad thing to do.

Min-max character: A functional generalist character competent in two or three areas.

Munchkin character: A Technomancer character based off of Gary from Alphas

[Shadowjack]

The objective for me is always to make a character I can enjoy for an entire campaign. Sometimes I intentionally play very weak characters, full of many aspects many others would consider "flaws in design". Some of the most fun I've ever had rping was playing weak characters that had to be resourceful and find ways to compensate for their low power. Other times I've played extremely powerful characters, if that's what I feel like at the time. Most of the time my characters fall somewhere in between. I never make a character with the goal of being the most powerful in the group. I always, always think a lot about my character's background and design him/her appropriately, even at the cost of character power.

On the topic of dump stats. That is one way of looking it at, another way is it doesn't make sense for certain characters to have a 3 Charisma. I just played through a Shadowrun campaign with a 1 in Charisma and it was a lot of fun rping a sociopath who was very unaware socially. I rp'ed her that way the entire campaign and it had a big impact on how others perceived her. It was a fun experience. In terms of character power, She was not min-maxed and I could have made her a lot more powerful if I wanted to. I stuck with her style the whole campaign and it was really a lot of fun. It really made me want to play a higher Charisma character next time, too. I don't feel there is anything wrong with having weaknesses, especially if the GM tries to model the game accordingly.

I'd say my rp group's biggest strength is focusing on the rp aspect of rpgs. We have extensive character histories, long opening stories or speeches to begin each session and sometimes multiple. We play a different kind of character every time and try to push our rp skills as far as we can go. We have had tons and tons of sessions with no combat and even play for more than 24 hours consecutively on some occasions. There are no hard and fast rules when creating characters. Just do what you like. I will just say this though, I personally feel you will have more fun if your character really comes to life and you make a big effort to get into the mindset of that character. Having a bunch of high stats can be fun for many players, sure, but really getting into character is where the greatest rp experiences can be had, that's just my opinion.

I don't think you need to optimize your characters, just do it if you feel like it. Do what you like at the time, that's the beauty of games like this. A lot of players on these boards say things like, "I ALWAYS take X piece of cyberware on my characters." Or, "I never play will Willpower lower than 3." Stuff like that is really not realistic. Sorry to step on anyone's toes but each person in the world is different and it's fun to rp those different personalities. There is no need to place restrictions on the design of your character! It's fun to explore all aspects of games and try a little of everything over time. Having big weaknesses can be just as fun as having big strengths, at least for my group. We try something new with every character, always trying to play new races, new qualities, new gear etc. We play like that in any rpg we play.

I'm not proof reading this so it's probably a bit scattered, but my general message is to just have fun doing what you like to do. Building all your characters with the ultimate goal of being as powerful as possible is a hollow experience for me, but if you like it, great, do it! I would only recommend you try it my way at least once because it can be a lot of fun.

This sub forum I have mixed feelings on. Part of me likes to come here to look at the characters people make. But another part of me doesn't like to see those characters picked apart by people that care nothing about the role playing aspects of the character. I constantly see advice like "This character should not use blades", and then the person that made the character goes ahead and takes that skill off their sheet in favor a more cookie cutter approach. This is especially bad when the character should have a skill like that, based on their character's history. I've had some of my characters picked apart for the most absurd reasons and always because my decisions were not "optimal". I never listen to advice like that, I'm here to have fun and play what I like, optimal or not. It's not like I don't understand how to min max, I just don't enjoy it.

Anyway, I'm repeating myself... just do what you like and try to have as much fun as possible. Trying new things can never hurt and being open minded is the first step to enhancing your role playing experience for yourself and everyone else at your table.

[All4BigGuns]

The objective for me is always to make a character I can enjoy for an entire campaign. Sometimes I intentionally play very weak characters, full of many aspects many others would consider "flaws in design". Some of the most fun I've ever had rping was playing weak characters that had to be resourceful and find ways to compensate for their low power. Other times I've played extremely powerful characters, if that's what I feel like at the time. Most of the time my characters fall somewhere in between. I never make a character with the goal of being the most powerful in the group. I always, always think a lot about my character's background and design him/her appropriately, even at the cost of character power.

On the topic of dump stats. That is one way of looking it at, another way is it doesn't make sense for certain characters to have a 3 Charisma. I just played through a Shadowrun campaign with a 1 in Charisma and it was a lot of fun rping a sociopath who was very unaware socially. I rp'ed her that way the entire campaign and it had a big impact on how others perceived her. It was a fun experience. In terms of character power, She was not min-maxed and I could have made her a lot more powerful if I wanted to. I stuck with her style the whole campaign and it was really a lot of fun. It really made me want to play a higher Charisma character next time, too. I don't feel there is anything wrong with having weaknesses, especially if the GM tries to model the game accordingly.

I'd say my rp group's biggest strength is focusing on the rp aspect of rpgs. We have extensive character histories, long opening stories or speeches to begin each session and sometimes multiple. We play a different kind of character every time and try to push our rp skills as far as we can go. We have had tons and tons of sessions with no combat and even play for more than 24 hours consecutively on some occasions. There are no hard and fast rules when creating characters. Just do what you like. I will just say this though, I personally feel you will have more fun if your character really comes to life and you make a big effort to get into the mindset of that character. Having a bunch of high stats can be fun for many players, sure, but really getting into character is where the greatest rp experiences can be had, that's just my opinion.

I don't think you need to optimize your characters, just do it if you feel like it. Do what you like at the time, that's the beauty of games like this. A lot of players on these boards say things like, "I ALWAYS take X piece of cyberware on my characters." Or, "I never play will Willpower lower than 3." Stuff like that is really not realistic. Sorry to step on anyone's toes but each person in the world is different and it's fun to rp those different personalities. There is no need to place restrictions on the design of your character! It's fun to explore all aspects of games and try a little of everything over time. Having big weaknesses can be just as fun as having big strengths, at least for my group. We try something new with every character, always trying to play new races, new qualities, new gear etc. We play like that in any rpg we play.

I'm not proof reading this so it's probably a bit scattered, but my general message is to just have fun doing what you like to do. Building all your characters with the ultimate goal of being as powerful as possible is a hollow experience for me, but if you like it, great, do it! I would only recommend you try it my way at least once because it can be a lot of fun.

This sub forum I have mixed feelings on. Part of me likes to come here to look at the characters people make. But another part of me doesn't like to see those characters picked apart by people that care nothing about the role playing aspects of the character. I constantly see advice like "This character should not use blades", and then the person that made the character goes ahead and takes that skill off their sheet in favor a more cookie cutter approach. This is especially bad when the character should have a skill like that, based on their character's history. I've had some of my characters picked apart for

This is a good sort of post for such a thread insofar as the poster just gave information on what works for him and his group without downing those who prefer a more "power" approach.

As to the 'extensive character histories' part, I used to do that (see Predator's bio in the VU93 Biography thread), but I stopped when I got stonewalled every time I tried to actually bring a character's goals and background into the campaign. After that, I just started doing only the barest skeleton of a background because of a feeling of "why bother if it's just gonna be ignored entirely".

I always, always think a lot about my character's background and design him/her appropriately, even at the cost of character power.

With this comment, I've had experience with gaming with someone who did this to a very big extreme, to the point where when "taking the background into account" their characters would be completely useless to the party, and it soured me on the method. It's not all that fun to have to compensate for a useless team mate after gameplay has started (that same player would throw a hissy if someone tried to guide them into being a bit more effective while still holding to the character).