History Main / MinMaxing

* ''[[Literature/BofuriIDontWantToGetHurtSoIllMaxOutMyDefense BOFURI: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense]]''
** The protagonist Maple puts all her stat points in vitality for purposes of boosting her defense, because she doesn't like the idea of getting hurt. And we mean ALL points; she has big fat zeroes in pretty much everything else. As a result, she can't fight normally, she can't cast spells, and she moves at the speed of frozen molasses... but she's pretty much invulnerable, and can often defeat powerful foes by sheer attrition, the use of StatusEffects skills she's gained from surviving constant attacks, unique boss equipment she's acquired, and [[SummonMagic the ability to summon an incredibly powerful poisonous hydra]]. Even better, [[AchievementsInIgnorance she didn't even realize she would be able to do any of this when she started]].
** Similar to Maple, the twins Mai and Yui put all their stats points in one attribute, with them putting it towards [[CuteBruiser strength]]. Because of them being {{Glass Cannon}}s, they are initially low-level players who were unable to join any quest parties. However, once they meet Maple, they manage to grind their levels and gain abilities that not only increase their strength, but also allow them to [[DualWielding use two giant hammers at once]] [[spoiler:(with them eventually being able to wield up to ''eight'' hammers after receiving an accessory that provides them with an extra set of hands and equipping it in all of their accessory slots)]]. As such, the two become some of the strongest characters in [=NewWorld=] Online, with them [[spoiler: being able to take out numerous game bosses with just one blow]] and giving the second-best player of the game, Dread, a run for his money during the fourth event.

* ''Literature/Overlord2012'': While many of Ainz' YGGDRASSIL guildmates were minmaxers, he himself was more of a roleplayer, meaning he's only in the middle tier of level 100 players. However, as the game was extremely stingy with information and encouraged exploration, Ainz ended up gaining very powerful spells and classes that he would never have discovered if he'd been more focused on combat rather than roleplaying (including some that allow him to beat the combat-[=MinMaxed=] [[spoiler:Shalltear]]). While most of the higher-powered spells are useful or even more powerful in the new world (undead summons no longer have a time limit if corpses are used as resources, ContractualBossImmunity to OneHitKill attacks is almost unheard-of), his more mundane ones are more useful (such as translating written words or modifying memories), and he has ''hundreds'' of spells.
* ''Literature/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'': Satoru Mikami ended up doing this entirely by accident when he was reincarnated as [[BlobMonster Rimuru Tempest]]. The skills he inadvertently chose for his reincarnation ([[TheAssimilator Predator]], [[FeelNoPain Pain Nullification]], various elemental resistances, [[BenevolentAI Great]] [[AwesomeByAnalysis Sage]]) make a perfect combination with his status as a [[HealingFactor sli]][[NoSell me]] for endless growth into a nigh-unstoppable opponent that gets stronger with each unique opponent he defeats. Being named by Veldora, one of the most powerful beings in the world, and getting a power boost from it was just icing on top of the cake.

*** Most memorably was the Gifted trait, which sacrificed skill points (which with a good intelligence score you should have plenty of already), to instead gain a bonus to all the SPECIAL stats, that play a much greater role than in the third game. Part of the reason Gifted is so powerful is because Tagging skills doubles the rate they level in those two games. In addition, any particularly useful skill in Fallout 1 has a skill book that could be purchased from a merchant that restocked her inventory. Even with the time limit, you could max every really useful skill and then Tag any one that couldn't be easily raised with skill books.
*** Fallout 2 generally lent itself even more to this sort of thing because, despite featuring basically the same character creation system as the first game, the game was about four times as big. Consequently many of the traits or character build choices that offered legitimate tradeoffs that needed careful consideration in the first game became complete no brainers in the second, such as taking Gifted as described above, and not taking Skilled (all but useless in Fallout 2 where you'll be swimming in skill points anyway) or more than about 4 in Endurance (in the long run it only meant a few extra hit points).

*** Each level the player gains grants a number of "skill-up" points. The number of points you gain is dependent on the character's Intelligence stat, so many would-be min-maxers treat it as the OneStatToRuleThemAll and max it out as early as possible so as to maximize skill gains. {{Subverted}}: high Intelligence early on won't make a character much stronger by end-game. Many skills are nearly useless. It is literally impossible to lower Intelligence enough to prevent the PC from eventually getting 10's in all SPECIAL and 100's in all skills. Then again, a high Intelligence early on will allow the character to max out their useful skills very early, without gaining a huge number of levels, using DLC, or hunting down hundreds of skill books, so you might say that Intelligence is the ideal stat of BrilliantButLazy characters. Doing a "Rivet City run" to grab the Intelligence bobblehead as soon as possible after leaving the tutorial is still ''de rigeur'' for min-maxers, as there's no down side to doing so other than the bother of avoiding encounters on the way there.
** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' takes steps to avert this. Armor and weapon choice play a much bigger role in your combat success, and it's a lot harder to min-max your stats, forcing you to either focus on a few choice ones or get a decentish spread over half a dozen or so skills. There are still a few exceptions in the form of MinMaxersDelight perks and {{Dump Stat}}s, though.

** Imoen seems to be a direct invocation of this trope as her useful stats are all quite high - 18 Dex, 16 Con (the max any non-Fighter class still benefits from) and 16 Charisma, which easily lets her get more favorable NPC interactions if the player built a low-Charisma protagonist. (She's unavailable for a good chunk of Baldur's Gate II, but you get access to a ring that grants 18 Charisma immediately after she leaves, so it's a rather moot point.). She also has 17 Intelligence, which is enough to Dual-class to a Mage. Indeed, even if the player never does so in the first game, it still happens canonically - she's an apprentice in Siege of Dragonspear and by the time the second game occurs she's a full-fledged Thief/Mage (a bit meta as a pure Thief class is much less useful in Baldur's Gate II, and her thief skills are conveniently just high enough to spot and disarm any traps or locks you run across). Her Strength and Wisdom are both quite low, but Strength isn't particularly important for her chosen build and Wisdom has little utility for non-Clerics anyhow. As a result she remains consistently useful throughout the entire trilogy, serving as the third-best thief and the second-best mage among all the prefab characters.

** Imoen seems to be a direct invocation of this trope as her useful stats are all quite high - 18 Dex, 16 Con (the max any non-Fighter class still benefits from) and 16 Charisma, which easily lets her get more favorable NPC interactions if the player built a low-Charisma protagonist. (She's unavailable for a good chunk of Baldur's Gate II, but you get access to a ring that grants 18 Charisma immediately after she leaves, so it's a rather moot point.). She also has 17 Intelligence, which is enough to Dual-class to a Mage. Indeed, even if the player never does so in the first game, it still happens canonically - she's an apprentice in Siege of Dragonspear and by the time the second game occurs she's a full-fledged Thief/Mage (a bit meta as a pure Thief class is much less useful in Baldur's Gate II, and her stats are conveniently just high enough to spot and disarm any traps or locks you run across). Her Strength and Wisdom are both quite low, but Strength isn't particularly important for her chosen build and Wisdom has little utility for non-Clerics anyhow. As a result she remains consistently useful throughout the entire trilogy, serving as the third-best thief and the second-best mage among all the prefab characters.

** Imoen seems to be a direct invocation of this trope as her useful stats are all quite high - 18 Dex, 16 Con (the max any non-Fighter class still benefits from) and 16 Charisma, which easily lets her get more favorable NPC interactions if the player built a low-Charisma protagonist. (She's unavailable for a good chunk of Baldur's Gate II, but you get access to a ring that grants 18 Charisma immediately after she leaves, so it's a rather moot point.). She also has 17 Intelligence, which is enough to Dual-class to a Mage. Indeed, even if the player never does so in the first game, it still happens canonically - she's an apprentice in Siege of Dragonspear and by the time the second game occurs she's a full-fledged Thief/Mage (a bit meta, as a pure Thief class is much less useful in Baldur's Gate II). Her Strength and Wisdom are both quite low, but Strength isn't particularly important for her chosen build and Wisdom has little utility for non-Clerics anyhow. As a result she remains consistently useful throughout the entire trilogy, serving as the third-best thief and the second-best mage among all the prefab characters.

** Imoen seems to be a direct invocation of this trope as her useful stats are all quite high - 18 Dex, 16 Con (the max any non-Fighter class still benefits from) and 16 Charisma, which easily lets her get more favorable NPC interactions if the player built a low-Charisma protagonist. (She's unavailable for a good chunk of Baldur's Gate II, but you get access to a ring that grants 18 Charisma immediately after she leaves, so it's a rather moot point.). She also has 17 Intelligence, which is enough to Dual-class to a Mage. Indeed, even if the player never does so in the first game, it still happens canonically - she's an apprentice in Siege of Dragonspear and by the time the second game occurs she's a full-fledged Thief/Mage (a bit meta, as a pure Thief isn't of much use anymore in Baldur's Gate II). Her Strength and Wisdom are both quite low, but Strength isn't particularly important for her chosen build and Wisdom has little utility for non-Clerics anyhow.
** [[spoiler: Sarvevok]] in Throne of Bhaal likewise has very optimized stats for a human fighter - 18/00 Strength, 17 Dex, 18 Con, 10 Wis, and 17 Int/15 Cha to reflect his cunning nature, giving him a whopping 95/00 overall. And yes, you can dual him to a Thief or Mage as well if you're so inclined.

* A common strategy in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' and ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'', since classes are geared towards specific skills, there wasn't much room in dialogue choices and plot twists based on your stats, and party composition could cover any deficiency. There simply wasn't reason to have 11 strength and 18 intelligence as a fighter rather than the opposite (or 18 strenght and 11 intelligence as a wizard). The only limit was that if you re-rolled your stats you risked to get a worse result, and trying to get a better one would soak up [[BoringButPractical a lot of time]]. The Enhanced Editions made it even worse by giving the option to store your dice rolls when creating a character, so that it wasn't a problem if you never got higher rolls again as you could recall your previous throw.

** Imoen seems to be a direct invocation of this trope as her useful stats are all quite high - 18 Dex, 16 Con (the max any non-Fighter class still benefits from) and 16 Charisma, which easily lets her get more favorable NPC interactions if the player built a low-Charisma protagonist. She also has 17 Intelligence, which is enough to Dual-class to a Mage. Indeed, even if the player never does so in the first game, it still happens canonically - she's an apprentice in Siege of Dragonspear and by the time the second game occurs she's a full-fledged Thief/Mage (a bit meta as a pure Thief isn't of much use anymore in Baldur's Gate II). Her Strength and Wisdom are both quite low, but Strength isn't particularly important for her chosen build and Wisdom has little utility for non-Clerics anyhow.

** Imoen seems to be a direct invocation of this trope as her useful stats are all quite high - 18 Dex, 16 Con (the max any non-Fighter class still benefits from) and 16 Charisma, which easily lets her get more favorable NPC interactions if the player built a low-Charisma protagonist. She also has 17 Intelligence, which is enough to Dual-class to a Mage. Indeed, even if the player never does so in the first gsme, it still happens canonically - she's an apprentice in Siege of Dragonspear and by the time the second game occurs she's a full-fledged Thief/Mage (a bit of meta foreshadowing, as a pure Thief isn't of much use anymore in Baldur's Gate II). Her Strength and Wisdom are both quite low, but Strength isn't particularly important for her chosen build and Wisdom has little utility for non-Clerics anyhow.