Min-Maxing

Min-maxing is the practice of playing a role-playing game for the intent of creating the "best" character by means of minimizing undesired traits and maximizing desired ones. This is usually accomplished by improving one specific trait or ability by sacrificing ability in all other fields. This is easier to accomplish in games where attributes are generated from a certain number of points rather than in ones where they are randomly generated. Min-maxing is particularly common in games where the cost of traits does not reflect their expected usefulness; for instance, in a combat-heavy game a player may focus on physical traits, giving a character abnormally low mental and social skills so that the remaining points can all be channeled to physical statistics that are more likely to come into play.