GlassJaw
Hero
I'm in a great group but aside from myself, everyone else is fairly new to D&D and 5E. The campaign I was running is on hold (lineup and scheduling issues) so another player is running Sunless Citadel from TftYP to cut his DMing teeth (which gives me a chance to play!).
Last night was our session 0 and we made characters. And as the most experienced in the group, I walked everyone through chargen. One player was new, and he asked a question that threw me a little bit. I don't remember his exact question but he was basically asking how important are race & class combinations.
I knew what he was asking but what threw me was how to describe the inherent synergies that some combinations offer without forcing my opinions on what character he could make. For example, he initially mentioned a forest gnome warlock, which is pretty cool conceptually. While discussing the mechanics of the Warlock, I explained racial stat bonuses and stat generation (we use standard array or point-buy).
To be honest, it was really hard, and after thinking about it, I feel like I may have done him a disservice. I almost felt like I "knew too much" to detach myself from the mechanics and simply go with whatever he thought was cool. I certainly didn't tell him his idea sucked - quite the opposite - but I was concerned that if I didn't explain how racial synergies worked, he might be disappointed in his choice down the road.
He eventually settled on a dragonborn warlock, and was quite satisfied with his concept. But once again, I found myself explaining that his Str bonus will largely go to waste unless he played a specific type of warlock (bladelock), but he wasn't interested in that at all (he chose Great Old One).
Anyway, everyone had fun and we are pretty flexible with letting people make changes as everyone is still learning so not a huge deal. But I wish I handled the teaching aspect a little better. Any thoughts or advice?
Last night was our session 0 and we made characters. And as the most experienced in the group, I walked everyone through chargen. One player was new, and he asked a question that threw me a little bit. I don't remember his exact question but he was basically asking how important are race & class combinations.
I knew what he was asking but what threw me was how to describe the inherent synergies that some combinations offer without forcing my opinions on what character he could make. For example, he initially mentioned a forest gnome warlock, which is pretty cool conceptually. While discussing the mechanics of the Warlock, I explained racial stat bonuses and stat generation (we use standard array or point-buy).
To be honest, it was really hard, and after thinking about it, I feel like I may have done him a disservice. I almost felt like I "knew too much" to detach myself from the mechanics and simply go with whatever he thought was cool. I certainly didn't tell him his idea sucked - quite the opposite - but I was concerned that if I didn't explain how racial synergies worked, he might be disappointed in his choice down the road.
He eventually settled on a dragonborn warlock, and was quite satisfied with his concept. But once again, I found myself explaining that his Str bonus will largely go to waste unless he played a specific type of warlock (bladelock), but he wasn't interested in that at all (he chose Great Old One).
Anyway, everyone had fun and we are pretty flexible with letting people make changes as everyone is still learning so not a huge deal. But I wish I handled the teaching aspect a little better. Any thoughts or advice?
