MichaelSomething
Legend
If you don't want PCs to play weird races, just do what Gygax did and make humans the most mechanically powerful race. How about Humans don't have stat limits?
And I'm, saying that this is simply untrue. Subclasses are inherently forked, limited characters. And the classes that are getting buffed are the ranger and sorcerer (which are spells known rather than spells prepared and therefore are forked limited characters) and the fighter (which is a very limited character).Level doesn’t have anything to do with it, I’m not suggesting they’re moving towards giving warlocks hurl through hell at start, I’m saying they’re doing additive character building instead of forked limited characters.
But to do that would be a complete rewrite of what the wizard class actually is. WotC chose not to do that in 2014. WotC's design philosophy can't move away from that because for 5e that has never been the design philosophy.There’s a character creation plan where wizard or cleric have 100% exclusive spells, pick one, locking you out of the other spells, then pick subclass again forever locking you out of even more, you’re a specialized conjuration wizard.
What they are doing is giving lots of toys to the sorcerer, warlock, ranger, and artificer - the limited casters. (And some cool toys to the bard but the bard started slightly overtuned).What they’re doing instead is all additive, wizard v. Cleric not that limiting to start with and then you add backgrounds and subclasses that add stuff and claw back stuff you gave up at first choice.
This is a false dichotomy. The ultimate limited character would be an inanimate carbon rod. The ultimate expansive character would be playing Calvinball. I do not think that either extreme leads to particularly good play; if given the choice you at least get to play Calvinball so if you are forcing this as a dichotomy then pure expansive beats pure limited.I’m asking if expansive characters or limited characters lead to better more interesting play.
So, what I did to solve the tension you present here, is to build an entire game.While it’s nice to sometimes just be able to just go ‘I’m going to build this character exactly as i see them in my head’ sometimes I think that you can’t fully appreciate that if you haven’t had to build a character within limitations, and there’s a satisfaction in creating something within the restrictions you’re presented with, but having more options to build a character doesn’t actually mean what you make with them is more creative,
Once upon a time, many, many moons and editions ago, we allowed our clerics to cast any spell at any time. Just flat out let it happen. If you had an open spell slot of the right level, go for it.So, it seems that WoTC design philosophy is very much going in the direction of letting players do whatever they want in creation of their characters. Imagine a character, we’re writing the rules so you can implement that dream w/o obstacles. And while I’m not opposed to this I wonder if allowing maximum freedom in character creation ultimately kneecaps creativity in play.
Like, at some extreme ends, if on the one hand you are a spellcaster with your pick of any spell you want at any time vs you are a arcane conjurer with only access to arcane spells in the conjuration school? I feel like in play, the all spells guy will have whatever is optimal at any time and has the opportunity to maybe be creative in choice, but will mostly just keep dropping whatever is the most fitting Big Hammer. On the other hand, the strict conjurer being so limited, will get creative in the use and implementation of their spells, test the boundaries of them.
As DM I like limitations and boundaries, partly for control, but also for the I believe shared fun of creative problems and creative solutions. From a player perspective, I can see these limitations as irritating obstacles to acting as I want in the fiction.
how do you handle this dynamic in your worlds? Do you just go with whatever published rules say or do you widen or narrow PC options?
I think that's an excellent way to look at itI like the system to give me open access to do anything and for the setting to have limitations.
I've always had this for Clerics, and for my current campaign I expanded it to all casters*, largely because as a player over the years I've come to loathe pre-memorization and thus don't want to inflict it on my players. The tricky bit is balancing the number of slots available per day such that the casters are neither overpowered nor over-conservative with their slots. A work in progress.Once upon a time, many, many moons and editions ago, we allowed our clerics to cast any spell at any time. Just flat out let it happen. If you had an open spell slot of the right level, go for it.
This. Some spells that would never see the light of day in a pre-mem. system get cast now, to sometimes very unexpected-by-me effects and uses.Funny thing. In play, 99% of the time, it made zero difference. The same spells were getting cast almost all the time. But, that 1% made up for all of that. I actually saw a cleric cast a Snakes to Sticks (reverse of Sticks to Snakes - an AD&D spell that did exactly what it sounds like it did) and turn a chest full of snakes into a bunch of sticks. Fantastic use of a spell that I have never seen done before or since.
We like our freedoms in different places, I think. I don't mind limitations in char-gen but I want freedom in play.So, yeah, put me strongly in the camp that allowing freedom is a better way to go. By and large, the players aren't going to do stuff too far out of line than what they would have done anyway. But, that once in a while new idea that comes from removing limitations? Golden.
Honestly i kind of see this from the other direction, yes, let people build whatever they want but the floating ASI doesn’t actually allow you to build anything you couldn’t previously, it just lets you have better numbers while typically going against the narrative of the world.I guess where I get off the train is when people are arguing against opening up elements of the game - such as floating ASI's - which do not in any way preclude playing exactly the same thing you played before (generic you, not you personally) but also allows other people to play new things. I just don't get it.