History Main / MinmaxersDelight

As the trope name indicates, it is a godsend to players who enjoy {{MinMaxing}}.

* "[=SINner=]" in the new version of ''{{Shadowrun}}''. You have a SIN, an ID number (basically an American Social Security number) that allows the government to track everything you do with it. The catch? There is ''nothing'' preventing you from purchasing and using fake SIN cards (and indeed, one of the sample characters has this combo!). Five free points and legitimacy as a citizen. Not a bad catch.

* In the D20Modern sourcebook Cyberscape (a sourcebook about [[{{Cyborg}} cybernetic implants]], you get that little gem: An implant called Nasal Filter. It does ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, filtering any airborne harmful chemicals or bacterias, giving a +6 to Fortitude saves against airborne poisons and disease (including tear gas). ButWaitTheresMore! It's purchase DC is a mere 18 (meaning it can be purchased by any level one character) and it doesn't counts against implant limits (in the standard cybernetics rules, you can only have a limited number of implants, depending on how much constitution you have (that is to say how physically healthy you are)). Far from a gamebreaker in a game where gas masks can be readily bought from the Internet, but still an implant you have no legitimate reason not to take, just in case.

* Though the specific rule has since been removed, the original ''[[LegendOfZelda Zelda d20]]'' rules included the feat "Attunement", which bonded the character with any creature with intelligence of at least 3, and provided bonuses that varied based on what creature it was. Attuning a character with a fairy provided a +1 bonus to all attack rolls (which beats out weapon focus, since the latter only applies to one kind of weapon) and a +2 bonus to Reflex saves (identical to the bonus given by the feat "Lightning Reflexes"), essentially giving the character two feats for the price of one. In addition, faeries had the ability to cast ''Cure serious wounds'' once per day as a 5th level caster. There was, however, the disadvantage that the player had to be within 50ft of the attuned creature, and could thus be separated from it (or the creature could presumably be targeted and killed).

** ''FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance'' also has Concentrate, here increasing the accuracy of attacks by a flat 20% (20 of 100). This includes InstantKill moves whose only weakness was a low natural accuracy.
** ''[[FinalFantasyTacticsA2 A2]]'' {{nerf}}ed Concentration to a flat 5% accuracy bonus(as in 5% of 100%, not 5% of the current accuracy). Though it has its own in [[ReducedManaCost Halve MP]] (because MP starts at 0 and grows each turn) or [[CastFromHitPoints Blood Price]] for any Magick-user.

** ''[[FinalFantasyTacticsA2 A2]]'' {{nerf}}ed Concentration to a flat 5% accuracy bonus(as in 5% of 100%, not 5% of the current accuracy). Though it has its own in Halve MP (because MP starts at 0 and grows each turn) or [[CastFromHitPoints Blood Price]] for any Magick-user.

*** Of course, you have to balance that against the fact that [=WtA=] was never heavy on the sorts of situations where looking weird would actually be a problem.
* In 4th edition ''TabletopGame/Dungeons And Dragons'', the release of the Weapon Expertise and Implement feats was heralded by many screams and gnashing of teeth. Being a re-institution of the forbidden [[strike:Unnamed]] (now a feat bonus under official errata) Bonus that, for just a Heroic feat, still scales into Paragon and Epic tiers. Widely remarked by [=CharOp=] superstars as making every class "have one less feat" for any character that does any attacking. What's even worse is that when you break the system in half and look at the gooey math, you can see that the +1 bonus at around the half-way point at all tiers is pretty much expected -- so in some ways, this is a GameBreaker that is pre-broken to be necessary (if one considers a 15% shift in accuracy to be necessary)! Some suspect that this was pretty much a patch to the game system, albeit one accomplished through a feat rather than through more permanent adjustments.

* In LosAngeles2035, 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 ''{{Exalted}}'' merit, with a name like Brutal Attack, allowed you to use Strength instead of Dexterity for attack rolls. This was a must-have for anyone who intended to engage the enemy in close combat, for a simple reason. Until the sourcebook containing merits and flaws came along, Dexterity was OneStatToRuleThemAll and Strength was meh. As a result, there were a lot of cheap ways to increase your Strength, not so many for Dexterity. Especially absurd for Lunars, who could just take a tyrant lizard spirit shape and access, from character creation, Strength 14 in a system where 5 is defined as "peak human" strength.

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** Ditto Attacker. Giving a 1.3x 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 [[TurnAGundam Loran Cehack]] and [[MobileSuitGundamSeed Lacus Clyne]]. These pilots are usually top-tier just for having SP Regen alone. SP Regen can also be given temporarily to other pilots using an extremely rare part, but only two-three of these are typically made available.

The advantage/power/feat/character option equivalent of OneStatToRuleThemAll.
May overlap with GameBreaker, though the ability just might be a no-brainer to take or very good rather than broken.

!!Advantage Examples:

[[AC:{{MMORPG}}s]]

* ''WorldOfWarcraft'' has the Talent system, which is a variant of the Alternate Advancement system from ''{{Everquest}}''. Some of the talents were so utterly ubiquitous that ''every'' specialisation branch of a class had its ultimate, mathematically proven to be the best, distribution and everybody was using it. ''Cataclysm'' redesigned the system for talent trees to still have a base skeleton of "must take" talents with everything else being useful in some cases, but optional and chosen on personal preferences.

* In the early days of ''AsheronsCall'', the Item Magic skill quickly became almost mandatory to have in order to have a viable character in the game. Item Magic allows you to buff your items, debuff enemy items, makes locks easier to pick, makes it easier to identify the stats on items, and teleport to nearly any location in the game, provided there's a portal there and you've seen said portal (though you could only be bound to one portal at a time). The game world is approximately the size of Rhode Island and one easily accessible dungeon had portals to nearly every city. It didn't take long to reach a point where even an otherwise pure melee character would find it necessary to acquire Item Magic either from character creation or as soon as possible afterward, if only for the fast travel to that dungeon.

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[[AC:TabletopGames]]

** 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.

[[AC:TurnBasedStrategy]]

[[AC:RolePlayingGame]]

[[AC:TabletopGames]]

So every monster you can beat!''

* The Gifted Trait in ''{{Fallout}} 1'' & ''2'' gave you one towards each of your SPECIAL stats at a cost of some skill points per level. Not only does a 1 to each stat mitigate some of the skill point loss in and of itself (skill levels are based on stat levels initially, and higher IN gives you more skill points per level on its own), but there are far more skillbook powerups throughout the game than PIP-Boy stat powerups. The opposite Trait, Skilled, gives more skill points per level at a cost of reducing your Perk gain rate to 1 every 4 levels instead of every 3 levels... which is actually a ridiculously huge loss, especially since Perks often give skill bonuses themselves.

** ''FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance'' also has Concentrate, here increasing the accuracy of attacks by 50, including InstantKill moves.

* In LosAngeles2035, 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 make dodge or parry once, one extra defense each turn is a really good ability.

** Then there's the Embrace the Dark Chaos/Shun the Dark Chaos. 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).

** Then there's the Embrace the Dark Chaos/Shun the Dark Chaos feat loop. To explain, Embrace the Dark Chaos gives you 5 free vile feats, but forces you to be evil, damned when you die and no-one like you. Shun the Dark Chaos means you can swap out those 5 vile feats for normal ones, and are locked into being a hero. Shun the Dark Chaos is a vile feat, meaning you can select is from the 5 feats you got from Embracing the Dark Chaos in the first place. See where this is going?

->''"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."''[[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons D & D]] character

* Flaws in ''DungeonsAndDragons'' (3.5). For the low, low price of making you worse at something you're probably never going to do (for instance, taking the "Shaky" flaw for a pure melee character that doesn't plan on ever making a ranged attack), you get bonus feats, which are very, very, very precious. In extreme cases, your new feat can make you completely immune to something the flaw gave you a weakness to.

** ''GURPS'' does price its advantages higher than the point value of the opposite-number disadvantage, though, in an attempt to mitigate this (ie. to pile up on points from disadvantages you generally have to take severe ones.)
** The new ''WorldOfDarkness'' games have a flaw system that averts this; you get no extra points at character creation for taking the flaw, the only way your flaw gives you EXP is if it actually affects you in a completely negative way ''in play''.
** And before the new ''WorldOfDarkness'', ''{{Deadlands}}'' did the same thing: Hindrances, as they were called, must come up in play to give you an advantage, though some of them were hysterically fun (like the one where your character [[GenreSavvy knows he's in a pen-and-paper RPG]] and is [[MediumAwareness paranoid about his "character sheet" burning up in a fire]].)

* Depending on the game, a min-maxer in some Old WorldOfDarkness games could get points for some truly pathetic flaws. Do you wear glasses and have a mild caffeine addiction? That could be leveraged into two points in a game where new characters have only 15 discretionary ones to spend. A real munchkin could go so far as to buy shatter-resistant lenses, carry a back-up pair, and then have a small supply of caffeine pills on hand just in case the StoryTeller ever tried to put the character at a disadvantage. Such lame flaws tended to get rejected by the GM, of course, but they were there in the rules as written.
* Despite the game's nature of having deadly, deadly disadvantages, ''LegendOfTheFiveRings'' is unique in that many of the disadvantages can simply never come up. A Caster can take Elemental Imbalance at maximum ranks for up to 8 free points, and all they have to do is simply never cast from that element which would otherwise be available to them. A Fire Shugenja giving up the ability to cast Earth spells doesn't lose much. Doubt gives several points, at the expense of being slightly worse at a skill you never use. Ascetic is similarly a good choice for characters who don't rely on equipment.

* ''GURPS'' has several "disadvantages" that compel you to kill things and take their stuff.

->''"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 why would anyone want to play Pun-Pun, the theoretically perfect [=DnD=] character

* ''DungeonsAndDragons'' (3.5 Edition): The Natural Spell feat allowed a druid to cast spells while in [[{{Animorphism}} wild shape form]], making it an easy pick.

* Combat Reflexes in ''{{GURPS}}''. A poster on RPG.net claimed every player in his group took it and renamed it "Don't Suck". It [[PointBuy costs 15]] to give +1 to dodge, parry, and block, then a pile of minor effects. Enhanced Dodge ''alone'' (+1 to dodge) costs 15 points. Puzzle that out. By [[WordOfGod Word of Kromm]], it is intentionally under-priced to help lower-point characters [[http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=739090&postcount=5 "not die all the time."]]

* Earlier versions of the merit Silver Resistance in old ''WorldOfDarkness Werewolf''.

* In 4th edition ''Dungeons And Dragons'', the release of the Weapon Expertise and Implement feats was heralded by many screams and gnashing of teeth. Being a re-institution of the forbidden [[strike:Unnamed]] (now a feat bonus under official errata) Bonus that, for just a Heroic feat, still scales into Paragon and Epic tiers. Widely remarked by [=CharOp=] superstars as making every class "have one less feat" for any character that does any attacking. What's even worse is that when you break the system in half and look at the gooey math, you can see that the +1 bonus at around the half-way point at all tiers is pretty much expected -- so in some ways, this is a GameBreaker that is pre-broken to be necessary (if one considers a 15% shift in accuracy to be necessary)! Some suspect that this was pretty much a patch to the game system, albeit one accomplished through a feat rather than through more permanent adjustments.

* In ''LegendOfTheFiveRings'', there both Elemental Blessing and Enlightenment reduce the cost of increasing your traits, making them more than pay for themselves [[MagikarpPower in the long run.]] It's not even that long of a wait if you spend your points right.

* In 4th edition ''Dungeons And Dragons'', the release of the Weapon Expertise and Implement feats was heralded by many screams and gnashing of teeth. Being a re-institution of the forbidden [[strike:Unnamed]] (now a feat bonus under official errata) Bonus that, for just a Heroic feat, still scales into Paragon and Epic tiers. Widely remarked by [=CharOp=] superstars as making every class "have one less feat" for any character that does any attacking. What's even worse is that when you break the system in half and look at the gooey math, you can see that the +1 bonus at around the half-way point at all tiers is pretty much expected -- so in some ways, this is a GameBreaker that is pre-broken to be necessary! Some suspect that this was pretty much a patch to the game system, albeit one accomplished through a feat rather than through more permanent adjustments.

* In 4th edition ''Dungeons And Dragons'', the release of the Weapon Expertise and Implement feats was heralded by many screams and gnashing of teeth. Being a re-institution of the forbidden [[strike:Unnamed]] (now a feat bonus under official errata) Bonus that, for just a Heroic feat, still scales into Paragon and Epic tiers. Widely remarked by [=CharOp=] superstars as making every class "have one less feat" for any character that does any attacking. What's even worse is that when you break the system in half and look at the gooey math, you can see that the +1 bonus at around the half-way point at all tiers is pretty much expected -- so in some ways, this is a GameBreaker that is pre-broken to be necessary! Gotta sell those [=PHB2s=] somehow. Some suspect that this was pretty much a patch to the game system, albeit one accomplished through a feat rather than through more permanent adjustments.

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