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Feinoha Since: Apr, 2010

Jan 6th 2011 at 11:22:07 AM •••

Real Life

Humans. If you have enough dex to have opposable thumbs and take feats like "Sapience" and "Ingenuity", given a few thousand years your strength, constitution and dexterity will draw off a large intelligence score.
- One notable min-maxer took mute, total paralysis, and nearsighted as his flaws. He has wicked Int and specializes in several science based skills. Then he worked around the paralysis, and negated the mute flaw. Steven Hawking, we salute you.
- If your chosen race is human, you also get the "Adaptability" feat. So even if for some reason your intelligence isn't enough (failure of infrastructure, lack of resources), it's still relatively easy to build stats like stamina and strength to a degree.
Battlecruisers were capital warships that traded armor for increased speed (as referenced on the Fragile Speedster and Glass Cannon pages). This concept was taken to its logical extreme with the Courageous class battlecruisers and their unique half-sister HMS Furious, the latter of which was built as a light cruiser with two 18-inch guns, the largest ever put on a warship until the Yamato class battleships of World War II. (Note that normal light cruisers typically use a battery of 6-inch guns for its main armament.)
The monitor also qualifies in certain cases, where it acted as little more than a floating platform for a large artillery gun used in offshore bombardment. (The term can also refer to "river monitors", which are simply the largest warships that can be used in riverine combat.)
Many animals, in one form or another, but special mention to the cheetah: Traded in strength, endurance, the ability to climb, defense, and genetic diversity. Took extreme prey specialization (90+% of a cheetah's diet is one species of gazelle), and buffed speed and agility. The absolute fastest thing on legs. (And over the same terrain, don't count on wheels or tracks being as fast and agile either.) Has the best hunting percentage (kills/hunts started) of any animal besides well-equipped humans. However, it rapidly overheats during the chase, needing to subsequently rest for as much as half an hour, and often loses the kill to other predators afterwards, as they can't defend it.

Could someone explain why these are examples? Humans and animals don't have "statistics", and people usually don't "choose" which flaws they are given- they simply have them. Also some of the other examples seem to confuse specialization with min-maxing.

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Jancarius Since: Sep, 2009

Jun 7th 2011 at 1:52:06 PM •••

Most likely, humor in this case.

Alexio Since: Aug, 2012

Aug 26th 2012 at 2:15:20 PM •••

Same as most other "Real Life" sections in trope pages. For fun. You don't need to be dead-serious all the time with this stuff.

BiffJr Since: Apr, 2014

Nov 22nd 2020 at 6:58:06 AM •••

But if it's just a joke it's not an example of the trope and thus cruft and cutworthy.

He's just this guy, you know?

Underachiever Since: Nov, 2010

Dec 2nd 2012 at 4:41:00 AM •••

"Of note is the "Stormwind Fallacy," which states that a min-maxed character and a well-roleplayed character are not mutually exclusive: an effective character is not necessarily something that gets in the way of narrative. Similarly, purposefully weakened characters may not always be better for the narrative."

It's ambiguous what the actual "fallacy" is supposed to be here: is it the idea that minmaxing and 'proper' roleplaying are mutually exclusive, or conversely the notion that they're not?

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BiffJr Since: Apr, 2014

Nov 22nd 2020 at 6:57:12 AM •••

it's clear to me that it's not.

He's just this guy, you know?

johnnye Since: Jan, 2001

Nov 22nd 2013 at 7:04:16 PM •••

A lot of these examples are just complaining about Game-Breaker rules, loopholes, etc. All the 40k examples, for example; there's no stat balance in 40k, so in what sense is selecting a powerful unit and employing it in an effective (however cheesy it may be) strategy "min-maxing"?

Jancarius Since: Sep, 2009

Jun 7th 2011 at 1:51:45 PM •••

I'm not sure the sub-example of the Order of the Stick entry is correct. Unless it's in errata, I recall one of the primary dangers of high reach monsters (which is almost everything in the end game) is that you take a brutal smackdown just while closing in on them if they have Combat Reflexes and enough Dex to ruin your day. I could be wrong, I haven't played in a few years, but if you could cite the 3.5 page where this limit is from, would be appreciated.

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