min-maxing in online games promotes an environment of elitism that forces anyone who plays with the min-maxer to conform to a very narrow play-style; this by-default limits gameplay options for other players, and often leads to ridicule and negative experiences when the non-min-maxer does not have the “perfect build for tanking Odin” or whatever.
min-maxers are boa constrictors wrapped around innocent little field mice. the mice just want some cheese but the snakes are eating them alive and i am the mongoose
stop min-maxing. start max-mining.
discuss.
this is super problematic when you’re DMing for a tabletop campaign. I had a campaign where one player’s character was a good deal stronger than all the others. Maybe it wasn’t a result of min-maxing alone, but also of good stat rolls and it just so happened that the build this player picked was very strong. But it was always super difficult to come up with enemies that could threaten the strong character while not being at risk to 1-hit kill the weaker ones.
I sort of saw it coming when I looked at the character sheets, but didn’t want to make players change anything about their characters. But maybe a good DM (or good game designer) can anticipate this really well and make it so the strongest and weakest characters aren’t that far apart?
I’m not a DM, but yeah I think you must have options. From having the enemies try to gang up on what they perceive as the biggest threat (admittedly, this could go wrong a lot of ways), to contriving story reasons to give the weaker characters better gear or buffs to bring them up to the same level… to just rolling with it and letting that one guy be strong, balancing the encounters against the median player.
None of them are ideal but I feel like I might try a combination of subtle buffs for the others with the “roll with it” option.
Of course also as a DM you can – and perhaps should – just explain the issue to your players so they might understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. Your primary job as DM is to help everyone have a good time, after all. :)
This is pretty much how I (tried to) handle it. And also talking about it openly. Luckily the players are all mature enough to just laugh it off. (That strong character was a bit lacking in the mental department, and since it wasn’t such a combat focused campaign it also evened out somewhat. The great merits of tabletop being more than the hack & slay that most of its computer game adaptions are. :)