History Main / MinmaxersDelight

* Meticulous from ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}''. For getting a -2 when making a skill check for which you are untrained (few skills are ever worth using untrained), you gain a bonus trait (traits are small buffs).

*** '''''[[HumanityIsSuperior Being human]]''''' falls under this in 3.5, as it grants a free feat (a rare ability normally only gained at level 1, 3, 6, etc., that has an insane number of options and can help qualify for many a PrestigeClass) and extra skill points (not ''as'' useful, but very helpful for qualifying for stuff and good for classes with the class skill options to make use of it). These tend to be far more useful than the racial abilities of other species, which are usually nothing special.
*** Power Attack for melee characters. To wit, enemy HP scales quickly. Your damage output does not scale nearly so quickly. Power Attack, and the things that build off of it, end up being responsible for offsetting the bulk of this. Of course, it's still a [[LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards losing battle]].

*** Patched later with a perk version of Off-Hand Weapon Training, letting you pick it up for one point.

*** In place of the Atronach birthsign, the game has the Atronach Stone, which does pretty much exactly the same thing. It's almost a no-brainer for any build to use the Atronach Stone, as its drawback is once again easily negated with enchanted items (with Enchanting, any mage can craft items to bring down the cost of their main schools of magic to zero anyways). This also stacks with the Atronach perk from the Alteration school of magic, giving you 80% spell absorption ''on top'' of any resistances you may also have, making you almost inured to magic. If you have either the infamous [[Gamebreaker Necromage]] perk or two of Miraak's items, you can become completely immune to magic (this is important because normal Resistances have a cap, disallowing full immunity, while absorption doesn't).

** 1st Edition AD&D, The original ''Unearthed Arcana'' sourcebook as published for the ''Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'' system had a number of these:

* ''TabletopGame/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.
** Likewise, anyone playing a Swordsage is going to pick up Adaptive Style at 1st level, as it lets you refresh (swap out) all of your maneuvers in the time it takes to recover ''one'' normally. The feat is considered good for most Martial Adepts, but key for Swordsage — and it's still not as powerful as other Adepts, to the point that this can be seen as fixing an inherent flaw in the class rather than an example of this trope.
** "Entangling Exhalation" is a must-have for any character with a BreathWeapon (particularly dragonfire adepts, who specialize in them), which lets them inflict a potent debuff in exchange for half damage.
** Divine Metamagic (Persistent Spell) allows already-frightening Cleric spells like, say, [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/divinePower.htm Divine Power]] to last the entire day, without so much as a spell level increase. Made even worse if the Cleric carries [[LoopholeAbuse lots of Nightsticks]], which give you even more turn attempts to burn...
** '''''[[HumanityIsSuperior Being human]]''''' falls under this in 3.5, as it grants a free feat (a rare ability normally only gained at level 1, 3, 6, etc., that has an insane number of options and can help qualify for many a PrestigeClass) and extra skill points (not ''as'' useful, but very helpful for qualifying for stuff and good for classes with the class skill options to make use of it). These tend to be far more useful than the racial abilities of other species, which are usually nothing special.
** Power Attack for melee characters. To wit, enemy HP scales quickly. Your damage output does not scale nearly so quickly. Power Attack, and the things that build off of it, end up being responsible for offsetting the bulk of this. Of course, it's still a [[LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards losing battle]].
** Likewise, the ability to Pounce (or something mechanically similar) is almost mandatory for higher-level melee characters. It gives the ability to make a full attack after charging, so it can mean the difference between spending your first turn getting off just one attack, or half a dozen.
** While we're on melee combat, let's talk about the two most favored weapons of Minmaxers and melee. First, we have the Greatsword. Rolls 2d6 for damage, is two-handed so it gets a Strength Bonus buff and Power Attack does more damage, has an increased Critical Threat range like all swords, is a martial weapon, and pairs well with a lot of melee builds. It's BoringButPractical. The other is the Spiked Chain. Normally, exotic weapons are the bane of minmaxers, as very few give any worthwhile bonus in exchange for a precious Feat slot. A Spiked chain, however, is a two-handed weapon, getting the same buffs as mentioned above for Greatswords, has reach so the user can strike farther than normal, and, unlike most reach weapons, can be used against adjacent opponents. It is also a weapon granting bonuses to attempts to trip or disarm opponents, making it very well-liked for technical melee builds that focus on abusing [[CounterAttack Attacks of Opportunity]], and [[CycleOfHurting limiting the mobility and options of foes]].
** Tomb-Tainted Soul is the mandatory first-level feat for dread necromancers, because it means that their many negative-energy attacks can be used to infinitely heal themselves.
** Then there's the Embrace the Dark Chaos/Shun the Dark Chaos feat shuffle. 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 likes 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 you 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).
** Leadership is such an obvious choice for any character with high Charisma, that many [=DMs=] ban it outright. You can get a cohort to loyally follow you, who will be two levels lower than your own character — but since LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards is in effect, your cohort could still easily be more powerful than other members of the party, or even more powerful than ''you''.
** Just about any guide to the [[JackOfAllTrades Factotum]] class will recommend that you take the "Font of Inspiration" feat as many times as possible, since it increases the pool of inspiration points which fuel your abilities. Likewise, since factotums have access to every skill in the game, the [[IaijutsuPractitioner Iaijutsu Focus]] skill from ''[[FarEast Oriental Adventures]]'' is oddly popular as a source of reliable bonus damage.
** The best weapon for the [[IaijutsuPractitioner Iaijutsu Focus]] skill itself is not the [[KatanasAreJustBetter katana]], but the gnome quickrazor: an odd folding weapon which can be drawn or sheathed instantly, allowing the wielder to perform iaijutsu strikes more often.
* In the ''TabletopGame/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 (i.e. good extra protection) against airborne poisons and disease (including tear gas). ButWaitTheresMore Its purchase DC is a mere 18 (meaning it can be purchased by any level one character) and it doesn't count 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.
** In the ''TabletopGame/D20Modern'' sourcebook ''D20 Future'', there are mutations. Mutations are point based, you gain points by choosing harmful mutations, and spend them in advantageous mutations. One advantageous mutation, fang, gives you a bite attack. The cost for this mutation is equal to the bonus points you gain blood hunger mutation (which requires you to have a bite attack), that forces you to drink blood once a day from a living creature. All you need is a person willing to give you blood, and you get a close combat weapon no one can take away from you, at no cost.
* Medichines in ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase''. They are cheap, they have no downsides, they give powerful and extremely important bonuses and all too often they literally mean the difference between life and death (many dangers you can't even ''try'' to save against if you don't have medichines). The only reason not to buy them is if your character has some kind of ideological thing going on against nanotech, and even then...
* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' (Other editions):
** The original ''Unearthed Arcana'' sourcebook as published for the ''Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'' system had a number of these:

* In 4th edition ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', 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 Unnamed Bonus (now a feat bonus under official errata) 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 5% 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.
** 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.
** The Essentials supplement line added variant versions that also give specific secondary benefits based on the type of weapon (or magical implement) they're taken for, in order to add a little more consequence to weapon type as well as make the feat do more than just dully ratchet up your attack roll bonus.
** Essentials also added a Rogue variant called a Thief, and its at-will powers Tactical Trick and Ambush Trick. To be effective in combat, thieves require combat advantage to activate their Sneak Attack power. Normally, this requires a drawn out process involving using the Stealth skill, attacking, and using Stealth again. But they also can start with up to two of a pool of Tricks, including Tactical Trick and Ambush Trick. Both are move powers, which let you move as normal, but let you gain combat advantage when attacking an enemy adjacent to another ally (for Tactical Trick), or not adjacent to anyone (for Ambush Trick). This basically means that any Thief attacking a melee-based enemy, engages in combat with a melee ally, or staying away from everything else, is an instant death dealer.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': The Lucky feat. The ability to have several free re-rolls every day would already be useful to just about everyone; to top it off, you can use it on rolls that you have disadvantage (roll two dice and pick the lowest roll) on, allowing you to roll a third time and pick the ''highest'', turning disadvantage into ''super''-advantage. There is never a wrong build to pick it on.

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** ''[[VideoGame/Fallout1 Fallout 1]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/Fallout2 Fallout 2]]'':

** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'':

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* Some of the equipment you can find in ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros for 3DS/Wii U'' have flawed abilities on them, which generally make the positive to negative stat ratio on them much more appealing, and some of them are notably not much of a problem.

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*** Alteration, Illusion, and Conjuration. Not because they are very powerful, but because they can be leveled up quite easily (if you can bring their spell costs down to zero with enchanting) with no combat at all simply by standing in place and casting one spell over and over (Telekinesis, any Calm spell, and Soul Trap, respectively) at something. Even people who don't use these magic schools at all will want to level them up just for the easy levels and perk points. Alteration also contains the invaluable Atronach skill (above), while Illusion, after you obtain its Master spells, is amazing for LevelGrinding. Make the skill Legendary, then simply stand in the center of any big populated area and cast Harmony over and over again. You can max out the skill in about a minute (gaining level-ups as you do so), then make the skill Legendary again and repeat the process ''ad nauseam''.

*** The Jury Rigging perk allows you to repair just about any weapon or armor with another weapon or armor that's vaguely similar to it (rather than needing an exact copy of the item to take parts from). That means you can repair things like an incredibly powerful and expensive anti-tank sniper rifle with parts from a BB gun. It also means that if you find an expensive gun in very poor condition, you can buy a few cheap guns, use them to repair the expensive one to full condition, and then sell it for a huge profit. This is why Jury Rigging is [[BoringButPractical probably the best perk in the game]].

*** Skilled slightly increases all of your skills right off the bat. In previous games the downside to this was that you would get fewer perks, which was absolutely awful and made this trait one to avoid at all costs. In this game, however, the downside is that all of the XP you get is reduced by 10%, which is barely a downside at all since you'll still hit the level cap ages before the end of the game anyway.

*** Good Natured returns, and this time it increases ''all'' of your non-combat skills instead of just some of them, while still having the same "downside" of lowering all of your combat skills, making it even more of a Minmaxer's Delight than before.

*** In place of the Atronach birthsign, the game has the Atronach Stone, which does pretty much exactly the same thing. It's almost a no-brainer for any build to use the Atronach Stone, as its drawback is once again easily negated with enchanted items (with Enchanting, any mage can craft items to bring down the cost of their main schools of magic to zero anyways). This also stacks with the Atronach perk from the Alteration school of magic, giving you 80% spell absorption '''on top''' of any resistances you may also have, making you almost inured to magic. If you have either the infamous [[Gamebreaker Necromage]] perk or two of Miraak's items, you can become completely immune to magic (this is important because normal Resistances have a cap, disallowing full immunity, while absorption doesn't).

* Since the third generation of ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'', every Pokémon has one of 25 natures, with each lowering one non-HP stat and raising another (except the five of that twenty that raise and lower the ''same'' stat, effectively doing nothing). Natures that lower an attack stat a given Pokémon [[DumpStat will not use]] are easily the most popular, in particular Adamant (+Attack, -Special Attack), Modest (+Special Attack, -Attack), Jolly (+Speed, -Special Attack), and Timid (+Speed, -Attack). Natures that lower Speed are a close second. While Speed is an important stat for most Pokémon, there are some who are very unlikely to outspeed anything anyways, and actively lowering their Speed even further makes tactics such as Gyro Ball and Trick Room that much more viable.

* Since the third generation of ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'', every Pokémon has one of 25 natures, with each lowering one non-HP stat and raising another (except the five of that twenty that raise and lower the ''same'' stat, effectively doing nothing). Natures that lower an attack stat a given Pokémon [[DumpStat will not use]] are easily the most popular, in particular Adamant (+Attack, -Special Attack), Modest (+Special Attack, -Attack), Jolly (+Speed, -Special Attack), and Timid (+Speed, -Attack).
* In ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'', the most powerful Blood Gems (gems that you slot into your weapon to boost its stats) are "cursed" and come with a random negative effect. Some of these negative effects are far more desirable than others. For instance, your serrated fire-damage weapon you carry explicitly for killing beasts isn't going to be too terribly disadvantaged by "attack vs. the kin down" since you aren't going to be fighting kin with it anyway, and "attack vs. beasts down" is likewise a non-issue for a specialized kin-killing weapon. And neither one will matter in [=PvP=] since other players aren't beasts or kin. For general [=PvE=], "increased stamina cosumption" is typically the way to go since even stacking three of this disadvantage on the same weapon amounts to ''maybe'' one less swing before you run out of stamina, if that, and has no effect at all on guns since they cost no stamina to fire anyway. Likewise, "durability down" has no effect on guns since they never lose any durability in the first place.

* Depending on the game, a min-maxer in some ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' 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.

** Not to mention the fact that Fairies are known to never shut up. [[DarthWiki/MostAnnoyingSound "Hey, Listen!"]].

** Not to mention the fact that Fairies are known to never shut up. [[MostAnnoyingSound "Hey, Listen!"]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'' has the Sedentary species disadvantage, which reduces the odds of pops moving from a full planet to an emptier one while also making resettlement more expensive. Ultimately this winds up not mattering to almost anybody since you generally don't want your pops moving around in the first place and in the event you do resettlement isn't that expensive, penalty or not. This disadvantage is thus rendered so meaningless some people consider it borderline cheating to take it.

* While the stats in VideoGame/ThisWarOfMine aren't malleable, the LackOfEmpathy characteristic becomes a moot point for those who don't harm innocents or commit atrocities, thus negating the need for morale boosting. Roman (a survivor who excels in combat), in particular, becomes a GameBreaker provided he's in a good mood. Substance addictions (coffee drinkers and smokers) are also rendered redundant as long as the player does good deeds.
* VideoGame/{{Stellaris}} has the Sedentary species disadvantage, which reduces the odds of pops moving from a full planet to an emptier one while also making resettlement more expensive. Ultimately this winds up not mattering to almost anybody since you generally don't want your pops moving around in the first place and in the event you do resettlement isn't that expensive, penalty or not. This disadvantage is thus rendered so meaningless some people consider it borderline cheating to take it.

* VideoGame/Disgaea4APromiseUnforgotten contains a scaling xp/mana(used to pay for new or upgraded abilities)/money system. Once you've gotten about half way throught he game the amount of money you're earning through grinding and story missions is so large than you can scale back the money to about 5% in exchange for almost doubling the amount of xp you earn without any real impact. Add in the enemy level up tiles and harder enemies options and it's incredibly easy to fly through the levels.
* In VideoGame/XCOM2, Dark Events that appear every month are normally meant to increase the difficulty of missions unless they're countered. However, there are some whose consequences are mild to non-existent. These events are usually considered a free-card when it comes to deciding which of the few events of the month to counter:

* ''TabletopGame/D20Modern'':In the sourcebook ''D20 Future'', there are mutations. Mutations are point based, you gain points by choosing harmful mutations, and spend them in advantageous mutations. One advantageous mutation, fang, gives you a bite attack. The cost for this mutation is equal to the bonus points you gain blood hunger mutation (which requires a bite attack to be taken), that forces you to drink blood once a day from a living creature. All you need is a person willing to give you blood, and you get a close combat weapon no one can take away from you, at no cost. In the same vein, Festering Sores is a mutation that covers your character's skin with festering sores. The effect is more aggravating than harmful, but it reduces an armor's max Dexterity bonus by 2 and increases armor penalties by 2. A fast hero with maxed out dexterity gains no benefits from armors anyway, so he/she might as well take this mutation. There is also "Neutrad Dependency" and "Poisonous blood". The first being a mutation that gives you 6 points and makes you roll fortitude saves or get Constitution damage unless you take a Neutrad dose every day (and taking a Neutrad dose fixes the damage), the second making your blood poison itself and requiring a daily [[MagicalAntidote Antitox dose]] or suffer the same effects, and gives you as many points. Sounds bad right? Except Neutrad and Antitox are cheap and freely available commodities (unless you play ''D20 Apocalypse'').

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': The Lucky feat. The ability to have several free re-rolls every day would already be useful to just about everyone; to top it off, you can use it on rolls that you have disadvantage (roll two dice and pick the lowest roll) on, allowing you to negate the disadvantage.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': The Lucky feat. The ability to have several free re-rolls every day would already be useful to just about everyone; to top it off, you can use it on rolls that you have disadvantage (roll two dice and pick the lowest roll) on, allowing you to roll a third time and pick the ''highest'', turning disadvantage into ''super''-advantage. There is never a wrong build to pick it on.

* ''TabletopGame/StarTrekAdventures'': The Quick to Action talent. During the first round of combat, the players can keep initiative for zero cost to their momentum. Since STA runs on a Players-Opponents-Players turn format this quickly results in the players essentially being able to do major damage to the opponent before they even get to start. A very common houserule amongst STA GMs is to limit it to one time.

** In Non-Combat talents, the Advanced Sensors Talent for starships is almost universally taken because it reduces the difficulty of all scans done by the ship by one. This makes it unlikely the players will have FailedASpotCheck when using the ship's sensors very unlikely as when using the ship's sensors the players are rolling three dice and the odds of a what would be a Difficulty 5 or 4 task (which would be reduced to 4 or 3 with the talent) appearing are very slim for most GMs.

*** Good Natured returns, and it's exactly the same as before, so naturally it still applies.

*** Good Natured returns, and this time it increases ''all'' of your non-combat skills instead of just some of them, while still having the same "downside" of lowering all of your combat skills, making it even more of a Minmaxer's Delight than before.

* Since the third generation of ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'', every Pokémon has one of 25 natures, with each lowering one non-HP stat and raising another (except the five of that twenty that raise and lower the ''same'' stat, effectively doing nothing). Natures that lower an attack stat a given Pokémon [[DumpStat will not use]] are easily the most popular, especially Adamant (plus Attack, minus Special Attack) and it's opposite Modest.