D&D 5E We Would Hate A BG3 Campaign

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

"Tadpole powers" ... Aaaaaargh!

There are a couple that I found super useful. Most were crap. Honestly, the whole thing is just about boosting your party members abilities. Not a whole lot storywise.

 

[Zardnaar]

I mean, that's certainly how it seems from this side. "Nuh-uh" isn't exactly a meaningful response to the criticism, "So...you forbid players from using things you didn't specifically plan for, but you allow yourself to use things you didn't specifically plan for." Or, succinctly, "Rules for thee, not for me."


Not to my knowledge. I have, repeatedly, said that I think there are reasonable limitations. I have given an example of one that applies to myself.


It would seem so. For being--allegedly--so unimportant, it sure seems like people get rather a bee in their bonnet about saying absolutely no not ever, no discussion, like it or leave it.


Or illusionists, for that matter.


So you ban Druids? Classes with access to polymorph? The entire school of illusion?


I really wasn't expecting anyone to be so up-front about it being a double standard.


Not just "not for me." If the DM earnestly responds to any player's request for a reasonable, good-faith discussion about something they've said or done with "I'm too tired to talk about it, just do what I say or leave," they shouldn't be DMing. Period. They don't have the energy to do one of THE most important things a DM needs to do. If it's "let's do that later," that's one thing. But to just reject it, or pretend such a discussion will be forthcoming and then infinitely defer it? No. That's a clear sign this hypothetical person does not actually have the energy to do critical parts of the DM's role.


But it was one of the rallying cries against 4e--explicitly. People were really bent out of shape about it, and made a huge stink.


I should think there would be rather a big difference between, "We are using this system, which happens to share the absolute rock-bottom underlying mechanics, but only one particular splat" and "Well, we're actually using the exact same book as everyone else using this system, and most of the same contents, but I'm picking and choosing which ones in that book, and I refuse to ever even slightly entertain a moment's discussion about why I picked some and not others."


Perhaps not always--but it is very close to being so. Accommodation is almost always possible, so long as everyone is willing to make, and work with, good-faith discussion and compromise. (I repeat, everyone, all persons, each individual participant, every player and every DM, genuinely actually all sapient intelligences involved, hopefully that's specific enough so that I won't be told yet again that I'm somehow only talking about DMs when I say that even though I've literally never said anything other than "everybody needs to play ball" and "nobody gets a free pass.")

It's not so much rules for me but not for thee.

Flyers NPC only. You only have to deal with it as PCs those rare times the DM uses them.
DM has to deal with a flying PC every encounter. And it's overpowered in exploration.
If a flyer was allowed how would said player like it if every encounter now has ranged NPCs, flyers or constrained dungeons limiting mobility.

Same argument applies to twilight clerics if DM uses one. It's just one encounter vs every encounter.

Drow as phantom menace or Dray before the events of CBtSS. Just because they exist somewhere in the world doesn't mean you can be one. Either they're cit off, unavailable or DM wants to focus on the locals. Or they just don't fit eg aquatic race desert campaign.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, that's a shame, because it sounds like your crew is going to be missing out on some top-notch yuks from their DM.

Although...

I'm no prude, but I can see myself red-carding because there is a difference between being amusing and just being creepy. Occasional jokes because the opportunity is just too good to pass up vs. making that type of your comment your main method of interaction with the group.

Yeah, I've got a player whose past RPG experience included some real gems, up to and including "DM conspiring with another player to have <my player's> character hook up with their character, specifically with intent to get <my player's> character pregnant." Player is also ace, so...all the sexual stuff is really not for them.

Now, emotional intimacy and tenderness is perfectly fine, and I have used some of that. The player has made clear, however, that any questions about the characters', ahem, recreational activities, should be answered with "what happens behind closed doors happens completely off-camera."

For me I would weigh out the reasons and the importance of wish lists and decisions made.

I believe in occasionally taking one for the team as player and DM.

If a race is not available and the DM explains its exclusion really is important for the tone of their long running campaign, I am probably going o pick an alternate.

If I am DM and someone really wants to play a sentient fruit person…too late. Already said yes and used pixie stats for PCs! Flight included…

Part of me being agreeable is knowing it’s not forever. Different DMs and different campaigns are there for a reason. You get to try different things different places! I don’t always have to play a warlock! (Though that seems to be the case 80% of the time…)

Of course, the problem for me is that it might as well be "forever." I so rarely find games, and games so rarely actually last past the first few weeks, that the desire has been sharpened to a rather keener edge than it would otherwise be.

Also, sounds like you'll enjoy 5.5e then. Warlock pacts are being turned into invocations. You can, in theory, have a blade-tome-chain-talisman warlock if you want! (At level 5, anyway.) If I ever find a 5.5e game that looks like it would be fun enough to overcome my frustrations with the system (unlikely, but not impossible), I could see playing a Celestial Blade/Tome warlock. Supporting two pacts' worth of invocations doesn't leave much room for off the wall stuff, but the +1 extra invocation does help, a little. (It looks like you get two, but don't forget that you no longer get a pact for free.) E.g. Blade Pact (1st level Warlock), Tome Pact/Agonizing Blast (3rd), Thirsting Blade/Eldritch Mind (5th), and see where things go from there.

According to the poll that was created as a result of this discussion 8,1% have no restrictions or limitations, at time of writing. Anything goes.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/dm-imposed-restrictions-to-the-game.701956/

Based on this discussion I would have thought it to be more like 75% for no restrictions.

I mean, I would expect most folks to have some kind of limits for at least some of their campaigns. Think of it like this: let's say for any given category on that list, a given person is 90% likely to not use that category. If that were true, then the odds of someone not ticking any of those boxes is 0.90^13 = 0.25, or about one in four. Now, obviously this is an incredibly rough shorthand and certain restrictions are far more likely than others--especially if people are voting in relation to prior editions, because the quality of each book was...spotty to say the least back in 3e (and I'm fairly sure it was no better in 2e. Looking at you, Complete Book of Elves.)

More to the point, though: categories like "some rules" or "no (or restricted) feats" are going to be very common, meaning only a few people won't tick that box. We should expect that most people won't fall into the "absolutely no restrictions at all" category. It's sort of like how the average (say) adult human male or female, doesn't exist...even though intuitively we feel like one should. Someone should be perfectly average, right? But almost nobody is average in ALL the ways. We're all weird for at least one thing, and that's all it takes to be knocked out of the running.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And the gotcha question continues. The DM builds the world. Of course they don't predefine every single aspect. The role of the DM is different from the role of a player.

"The DM builds the world" does not actually answer the question. Why is this part different? "Just because" doesn't move the needle.

If I've decided I don't want evil PCs in my game then there's not a lot of "conversation" to be had. If someone wants to discuss it, the answer is still going to be "no" and it doesn't really matter. There is no "conversation" to be had.

And I flatly disagree. "Why do you want to play an evil PC? What are you hoping to see? Is there some particular story or experience you'd like to have?" These questions can make a huge difference--they can help find a way so that the player gets whatever they truly desire out of this, while also avoiding having to run an actual evil PC. That is, really, the reason why any discussion happens between player and DM: to find what really matters to both sides. In the vast majority of cases, these things are completely reconcilable.

E.g., I can't run games (of sufficient quality to be worth playing) for totally unrepentant evil characters because I struggle to frame scenes for them and respond to their values and interests, but that means a character that has been evil before but genuinely wants to change now is something I can handle. (Again, only using this as a demonstration, not as a proffered solution for you specifically.) Perhaps, in wanting to play an evil character, the player is wanting to have someone who actually struggles with moral choices, who has bad habits or poisonous friends or debts owed to bad people etc. That's something that I can work with, without the player needing to play a formally Evil PC. Hence, by asking the questions above, and each participant drilling down to what they really care about, it is almost always possible to find a solution which legitimately gives both sides whatever that might be.

So you have reasonable limitations. You've stated that you don't allow evil PCs when you DM. You made a judgement call that allowing evil PCs would make the game less enjoyable overall, and it's simply not something you want to allow. I'm sure that if you advertised a game for evil PCs, you could find plenty of players but I'm assuming it wouldn't be a game you would enjoy running.

Now replace "evil PCs" with "PCs can be any race". We're both making limitations based on our best judgement of what will lead to a game we want to DM and will be enjoyable by our players.

Nope. I cannot do that replacement. Because the logic of the argument falls down. That was the whole point of explaining it in very careful detail. You cannot make the argument I made, because "has scales and looks like a dragon" is not at all the same as a pervasive and consistent personality profile with very specific behavioral intent on the part of the player. Race is not behavior, and thus an argument purely built around behavior and values-systems and how one interacts with them immediately falls down if you try to hot swap it to being about race.

Also, I genuinely do not believe that you think you cannot run an enjoyable game that has dragonborn in it. I think that you don't like them, and so you'd rather not see them, but that's a FAR cry from, "It would genuinely be impossible for me to run a quality game, solely because <Player N> has a reptilian character with elemental halitosis." That was, as I said, the whole point of the argument: this is not "I do not like this" (for example, I enjoy Mark Hamill's Joker, in moderation), this is "the way I run games, I cannot do what you would need me to do."

Unless you're willing to straight-up unequivocally say, "I cannot run a quality game that has even a single dragonborn character in it," these things are just not the same.

Plus...who's engaging in "gotchas" now? Is it any wonder why I avoided referencing specific limitations? I knew that as soon as I did, they would instantly be transformed into "well because you have literally any limitations at all, that means every limitation I use is perfectly identical, so you should have no problem with it." Some limitations are acceptable. Others are not. Just as some justifications are acceptable and others are not. You will need much more than "you limit in your ways and I limit in mine" to reach the point you're trying to make.

 

[Oofta]

"The DM builds the world" does not actually answer the question. Why is this part different? "Just because" doesn't move the needle.

Because the DM and players have completely different roles in the game.

And I flatly disagree. "Why do you want to play an evil PC? What are you hoping to see? Is there some particular story or experience you'd like to have?" These questions can make a huge difference--they can help find a way so that the player gets whatever they truly desire out of this, while also avoiding having to run an actual evil PC.

But the conversation is going to end the same. Neither one of us is going to allow an evil PC. If they want to discuss options for their PC that don't involve them being evil, sure. But I'm not going to pretend that I'm going to change my mind.

Nope. I cannot do that replacement. Because the logic of the argument falls down. That was the whole point of explaining it in very careful detail. You cannot make the argument I made, because "has scales and looks like a dragon" is not at all the same as a pervasive and consistent personality profile with very specific behavioral intent on the part of the player.

Which is a double standard. You've made a judgement call that evil PCs are something you don't want. There's literally nothing stopping you from allowing it, but somehow your restriction is okay and mine? Well that's just poppycock.

Also, I genuinely do not believe that you think you cannot run an enjoyable game that has dragonborn in it. I think that you don't like them, and so you'd rather not see them, but that's a FAR cry from, "It would genuinely be impossible for me to run a quality game, solely because <Player N> has a reptilian character with elemental halitosis." That was, as I said, the whole point of the argument: this is not "I do not like this" (for example, I enjoy Mark Hamill's Joker, in moderation), this is "the way I run games, I cannot do what you would need me to do."

You don't get to judge my decisions about how I run my game. We could both run games with evil PCs, we choose not to do so.

Unless you're willing to straight-up unequivocally say, "I cannot run a quality game that has even a single dragonborn character in it," these things are just not the same.

Plus...who's engaging in "gotchas" now? Is it any wonder why I avoided referencing specific limitations? I knew that as soon as I did, they would instantly be transformed into "well because you have literally any limitations at all, that means every limitation I use is perfectly identical, so you should have no problem with it." Some limitations are acceptable. Others are not. Just as some justifications are acceptable and others are not. You will need much more than "you limit in your ways and I limit in mine" to reach the point you're trying to make.

Every DM makes judgement calls. What kind of campaign are they willing to run, what races to they allow, how to resolve rules disputes, do you homebrew or use modules. The list is nearly endless.

But you've decided that it's okay to restrict some things, but not others. When it's your game, that's fine. When you're telling me that I'm DMing wrong or that if someone doesn't allow something you want, that I'm not adhering to your specific requirements so I shouldn't be DMing? Go fly a kite.

I don't tell you how to DM, I don't denigrate your preferences. All I ask is that you do the same.

 

[Jaeger]

Exactly, every race aside from, 4 got invented at some point, and three of those four the rules were designed originally to discourage. Yet it is well-known that DA and EGG both allowed pretty much any race to be created and run in their games. They weren't interested in 'setting logic', they were perhaps interested in balance, to a degree. So the guy who played a dragon had to start as a BABY dragon, and the guy who played the Vampire... Well, Dave invented the cleric so they could deal with him!

If you are going to invoke that fact that EGG allowed any race for PC's in his early games; Then you have to acknowledge the opinion he formed about allowing any race for PC's based on those early experiences.

Gygax had a lot to say about this on p.21 of the AD&D DMG:

'The Monster as a Player Character'

Some cliff notes:

..."To adventure amongst the weird is fantasy enough without becoming that too!" ...

"As to other sorts of monsters as player characters, you as DM must decide in light of your aims and the style of your campaign. The considered opinion of this writer is that such characters are not beneficial to the game and should be excluded." ...

I'd venture that all these restrictions are not in the spirit of the original game at all.

D&D came out in 1974, by 1979 EGG certainly came to believe that GM's imposing restrictions on player character options for their campaigns was an absolutely acceptable practice.

 

[pemerton]

Dragonborn do not look like dragons, so the coloration isn't going to mean much of anything.

They look like known monsters and the unknown. The latter is the important part of a unique dragon man walking into town.

If they don't look like dragons, in what way do they look like "dragon men".

If they don't look like dragons, what "known monsters" do the look like?

 

[Maxperson]

If they don't look like dragons, in what way do they look like "dragon men".

If they don't look like dragons, what "known monsters" do the look like?

Scaled and lizardy and in different colors(which is only apparent if there are many of them, not one). Otherwise they are not going to be called dragonborn by the commonfolk. They will be some sort of reptile thing that isn't a lizard man, though I suppose a green dragonborn MIGHT be confused for one, depending on what it looked like.

And you also asked what monsters looked like, which was where my known monsters come from. A unique dragonborn isn't really going to look like any known monster. That's why I said that the latter is what was important, not the former that referred to known monsters.

 

[Divine2021]

I really don’t see how you could do the last battle in the upper city via tabletop, just too many moving pieces.

 

[nevin]

If you are going to invoke that fact that EGG allowed any race for PC's in his early games; Then you have to acknowledge the opinion he formed about allowing any race for PC's based on those early experiences.

Gygax had a lot to say about this on p.21 of the AD&D DMG:

'The Monster as a Player Character'

Some cliff notes:







D&D came out in 1974, by 1979 EGG certainly came to believe that GM's imposing restrictions on player character options for their campaigns was an absolutely acceptable practice.

well it's common sense. You either have a predetermined set of rules or you have Anarchy. The rules can be adjusted along the way but demanding that everyone gets to change them at will is ...well...."anarchy". This might be ok for some tables but for most it's just not going to work. How is a DM supposed to prep and prepare and do all the work of creating a game if everybody with an axe to grind, a fantasy to live or who just believes no one should ever give them rule's or consequences to follow, can just tell them what they have to do. I'd just rather not run any games than deal with those people.