[MUD-Dev] Min/maxing

[rayzam]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Hook" <bwh at wksoftware.com>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2001 7:09 PM
Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

> At 09:17 PM 6/4/01 -0400, Travis Casey wrote:

>> When min-maxing really becomes a problem is when min-maxed
>> characters are considerably more powerful than non-min-maxed
>> ones.

> Even "slightly" more powerful, where the additional power is for
> free, causes a huge skew in the player population towards certain
> race/class combinations.  I saw this with BG2 -- human kensai/mage
> and half-ogre fighter/cleric were incredibly popular combinations.
> Of course, you could argue that those two combinations were very
> powerful, but even having a simple +1 DEX or 19 STR is enough to
> select some combinations.

> What happens is that your entire player population starts to go to
> hell and true diversity isn't there.  Female dwarven/gnomish
> warriors?  Erudite shadow knight or paladin?  You see those only
> when someone is being particularly saucy in EQ.  They are very
> rare.

This goes back to the PowerPlay insets in Dragon Magazine. Instead
of just listing the PowerPlays, why not list combinations that make
the rarer combinations playable?

My example for this goes to the Shadowrun system. Trolls inherently
made bad mages. However, if the troll was a raven shamanic adept,
the troll would get bonuses to manipulation spells [and only cast
them]. These spells were defended by body, which the troll had lots
of. Thus the troll raven shamanic adept was great at being a
manipulation bomb. The benefits of the totem and adept status made
up for the inherent weakness of a troll in terms of using magic. And
it became a fun role-playing character too.

I'm sure there are possible examples of this sort in many pnp
rpgs. I'd find a column devoted to these ideas more enjoyable than
PowerPlays.

    -rayzam

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