Basic Trope: A game player only improves a few specific skills that they consider important for their character, and either ignores all other possible skills or takes penalties on them in exchange for even more bonuses.
- Straight: Minnie puts a lot of skill points into her character Maxine's offensive capabilities, but not into skills that do not involve combat.
- Exaggerated: Minnie makes Maxine a blind quadruple amputee in exchange for the mastery of all magic. Maxine is so powerful that she nearly breaks the story.
- Downplayed: Minnie gives Maxine one skill that's a little higher than most would expect.
- Justified:
- There are things that the character really won't need to do. Nobody puts equal emphasis on everything that a character could do, rather they focus on what they are going to need more, and some people just go 1-2 steps further than everybody else.
- Minnie is role-playing Maxine as a character that Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training, she even has a compelling and quite interesting backstory to support it up.
- Maxine is some kind of Super-Soldier who was created by a mad scientist who thought of the most optimal creation to assist people on their journeys.
- Each member of the team focuses on the skills related to their role within it. EG: Alice min-maxes on offense, Bob on medical skills, Charles on defense and Dennis on magic.
- Minnie is interested only in the combat aspect of the campaign and she created Maxine to reflect that interest.
- Inverted:
- Maxine is an extreme Jack of All Stats whose "useless" non-combat skills save her life on numerous occasions.
- Minnie doesn't want to feel left out, so she made Maxine a Jack of All Stats so she can participate in every aspect of the campaign.
- Subverted: When Minnie tells her party about the stats/skills she ignored to focus on combat, she finishes by saying that she was only joking.
- Double Subverted: ... because she could tell by the way they were looking at her funny that they thought she didn't know how to make a character effectively (and maybe she really didn't), and lied to hide her embarrassment.
- Parodied:
- Minnie's low level fighter has stupidly high combat related stats and abilities (including Weapon Proficiency: Furniture) by trading her abilities to read, start fires, wink, rhyme on purpose, dress herself, etc.
- Maxine has very obvious life problems that are solved by the combat skill she has. It gets to the point where, rather than simply pay a few copper for a single drink at the tavern, she routinely beats the living crap out of the owner and all the town guards because she doesn't have any barter skill to reduce the cost.
- Zig Zagged: Maxine is clearly overpowered, but in game it mostly makes sense and often she's good for the story, but even better at winning fights.
- Averted: Minnie doesn't skew Maxine's skill-set any more than anybody else in the gaming community
- Enforced: Killer Game Master. If your character keeps dying because of a ridiculously tough GM, you're going to make a character for the express purpose of surviving as long as possible.
- Lampshaded: "You know, despite her social idiocy, Maxine's really good with that hammer. really good."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: The Killer Game Master puts Maxine into a Death Trap she can't fight her way out of, knowing that she doesn't stand a chance without non-combat skills.
- Defied:
- Minnie refuses to be that guy, so she doesn't skew Maxine's skill set any more than she has to.
- Maxine wants to be a well-rounded person and is aware that adventuring is more than just combat, so she spends time working on non-combat skills.
- Discussed: Minnie defends her character: "In order to get really, really good at something, you have to study it for at least 10,000 hours. All that time spent studying has to come from somewhere."
- Conversed: ???
- Implied:
- During what is basically characters meeting with a Hero of Another Story and his group, Maxine seems socially awkward and a little dumb to the heroes, but while the characters are talking a loud crash is heard, and Maxine has not only sliced open the large door blocking their way forward, which stopped both parties, but a high level enemy is seen slain in front of Maxine.
- Minnie just shrugs when the DM states that her character, Maxine, might not be fun to play in non-combat scenarios.
- Deconstructed:
- The "worthless" skills come up in the campaign a lot more than Minnie thought that they would, and Maxine is incapable of doing the things that really matter.
- Maxine is so powerful that DM is forced to scale the campaign's enemies around her. This results in the other players quitting since they're no longer finding the campaign fun as their characters are doing Scratch Damage and/or getting One Hit Killed. As a result, the DM no longer allows Minnie to join any future campaigns due to her munchkin tendencies.
- Reconstructed:
- ...So her more competent, well-rounded teammates pick up the slack so that they can still have an impossibly powerful fighter for when they actually need one.
- The DM and other players don't mind because they knew what Minnie was up to. The DM enjoys the the challenge of making a campaign that can challenge Maxine and not leave everyone else behind and the other players like how Minnie plays Maxine as the arrogant Ax-Crazy warrior that doesn't get the "real" world and needs to be taken down a peg every one in a while.
- Plotted A Good Waste: Maxine was made to test the other players, and see how well they would take her into the story. When it's clear the other players are intent on screwing over Minnie rather than making a story around it. In the end the DM makes Maxine more unbeatable just to punish the players for being inflexible.
- Played For Laughs: Minnie is The Loonie and her character, while overpowered, acts out every single flaw taken significantly. One of the most routine scenes is somebody trying to talk with Maxine in a tavern, and every time it ends up with the tavern empty aside from the party with stories so odd they sum it up to a sentence and refused to talk about it further to avoid hours of explanation.
- Played For Drama:
- Maxine's utter incompetence at anything non-combat related means that her teammates have to pick up the slack or clean up the mess when she inevitably comes across a situation that isn't resolvable via copious amounts of violence. This causes the rest of the teammates to despise her.
- Minnie plays the campaign not for fun, but to win and her character reflects that. In contrast, the DM and the other players focus less on winning and more on storytelling. The massive disparity in play styles between her and the other players lead to arguments.
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