Crazy Jerome
First Post
...As opposed to:
The Rules: What sort of a character do you want to play?
The Player: I want to be a holy paladin who charges into battle on her trusty steed and skewers monsters on a lance.
The Rules: Here are 3 classes, 8 skills, and 15 feats that might be appropriate to such a character. Out of those, there are four or five combinations that will be effective. The rest range from mediocre to pathetic.
The Player: Uh... which is which?
The Rules: Figure it out for yourself.
I got more than enough of the latter in 3E and 4E. I want as little of it as possible in D&DN.
Must spread XP, and totally agree with the distinction between appropriate versus building. I do think that even the bad way can be acceptable if the bad choices are called out as such. Or more likely, to fit more with the 5E approach as more feasible, calling out a those 4 or 5 choices as, "These work. We tested them. We know they work. Can't go wrong with that." And then some paragraph at the start that says if you start customizing outside of that, who knows what you'll get?
I think the first step in presenting that kind of design is acknowledging that because of the nature of the design, some of the choices might be bad ...