You're running a game, and your players have carefully designed their characters. So carefully, in fact, that these characters are more powerful than the average levelled characters. In the parlance of TRPGs, these player characters, with their focus on maximizing character efficacy and their attempt to use only minimal character progression, are min-maxing the system. They are focusing their efforts as players on making their characters as powerful as possible. Is this an issue? Should we be concerned that the player characters are as powerful as can be? I would argue that this indeed is a problem, but perhaps not for the reason you imagine. Read on for reasons that a min-maxed character negatively impacts the game for everyone.
Firstly, there is the cost to the player who is playing the min-maxed character. When people gather to play D&D and TRPGs like it, they are most often looking for a way to feel in control of their decisions. Min-maxing seems to resolve that by making players more connected with their character's chosen actions. But it actually creates a problem for this player. What makes choice and control so valuable in a TRPG is that there are limits to player choice; a player with a specific action in mind must be able to pass a check in order to be successful. This check creates drama and can create narrative if failed; if, on the other hand, the player character has been min-maxed, the check is almost guaranteed to be a success. There is no drama, aside from the potential of a natural 1. The player and their party mates don't get to enjoy the story of their characters being scrappy heroes; they walk in, resolve an issue, and there is no further excitement.
One of the troubles with min-maxing is that players who do it often don't realize that they are cutting themselves short. They believe that the enjoyment of the game lies in winning, which they interpret as being the victor in the gameworld's smaller struggles. Crushing an enemy team in combat becomes more important than advancing a narrative or roleplaying a character moment. That is to say, the things that make TRPGs special (their ability to provide more than a combat simulation) disappear when players min-max. If you have a player or players who are min-maxers, I recommend both speaking with them about changing strategies (unless that's the kind of campaign you're running) and shifting the game's emphasis toward the storytelling side of things.
So min-maxing short-changes the players who do it. But it also affects the players who don't. Allow me to provide an example from my mystery campaign: in this campaign, we have three players: a dwarven barbarian/druid named Beor, a tiefling wizard/monk named Ais, and an orcish bard named Montana. Montana in particular rolled exceptionally well when deciding ability scores, and as a result, Montana is the most statistically powerful of the group. Further, Montana's background states that he is a private investigator, which makes him very powerful while investigating a mystery. Further still, Montana's player chose to excel in investigative skills, and his array of magic spells allow him to use his magic to investigate in detail. Compared to Beor and Ais, Montana could be argued to be min-maxed to an extent.
And sure enough, Montana is pretty much always the face of the party. He pushes the investigation further and more effectively than anyone else. If I were running a game where skill checks determined success for the players, Montana would be so over-powered that the other characters would be devalued. (As it happens, I opt to judge roleplayed actions more seriously than dice rolls, so Beor and Ais are able to contribute just as well as Montana. Success based on roleplaying will always offer a strong alternative to dice rolls.) And the thing about Beor and Ais being devalued is that it would destroy the campaign. The party is tied together in a way that makes them each equal contributors to their goals. If solely Montana were able to successfully navigate those goals, neither of Beor's or Ais' players would be having much fun. They would just be spectators in the Montana campaign. If all your player characters in a group are min-maxed, I suppose there's nothing that would hold you back aside from slight variations in powers, but I would still remind you that so far we've addressed the ways that min-maxing ruins the fun for both the player and their party members, and it goes further still.
You as GM are affected too. Let's say that you're a GM who's interested in careful balance. No encounter exists in your game which you haven't carefully calibrated for your players. But if a character or two are min-maxed, your balance will be off. Min-maxed characters have significantly different profiles than average characters, sometimes to the tune of a character level or more. No longer are you building an encounter for a group of 5 characters of level 6; now you have to calibrate for 3 level 6 characters, 1 level 7 character, and 1 level 8 character (after inflation). But not only is your balance off, you have to content with an even more important fact: your players might not be having fun.
As I have written before, the most important thing in a TRPG is the element of fun. I would go so far as to say that creating fun is your primary job as GM. And as we saw from the above examples of how min-maxing adversely affects the players of those characters as well as their party mates, min-maxing can impact the fun being had at the table. So if we're keeping track of all the points here: min-maxing robs players of the fun of being imperfect and not having a guarantee of success; it distracts from the goals of storytelling and roleplaying; it makes other players feel comparatively less powerful and robs them of their fun; it unbalances your game; and it violates the most important principle of gaming (it negatively impact fun). So in the end, the impulse to extend player control over the story via mechanics creates more issues than it solves.
As I mentioned above, you can combat min-maxing if you are persistent about it from the beginning. Speak with your players before they've developed characters and share the idea that min-maxing will get in the way of the story you want to tell. Share this article if you think it would help. Take care to speak with your players not in an accusing way: no one is trying to ruin your game; they just need a touch of help getting in the right mindset. As people level up, offer advice to the players who seem to struggle with making strategic choices for their characters so that they have as powerful of characters as the more strategically-minded. And most of all, create challenges in your story and gameworld that don't reward min-maxing. Like I mentioned with my mystery campaign, if roleplaying rather than dice rolls is the heart of your story, you can eliminate the benefits of min-maxing and rely instead of player ingenuity.
That's all for now. Coming soon: an age calculator for D&D races, architecture by D&D race, and a one-shot based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Until next time, happy gaming!
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