pming
Legend
Hiya!
Sage Advice supposedly "clarifies and classifies rules problems". Thing is...for me and other DM's who take the whole "rulings...not rules" thing as one of the, if not THE key feature of 5e...when a player comes to a game and expects some particular 'rule' to work the way SA 'clarified' it to work, and I don't subscribe to that ruling, we get back to the whole "annoyed player because DM doesn't know what he's doing" thing. That said, I do get your point about it being "advice" more than "rules/additions".
I totally get where you're coming from. Another poster upstream also gave some helpful advice. I'll have to think carefully about my "pitch" to new potential players. I think I'm going to have to update a bunch of our Obsidian Portal campaigns with more in-game account of what happened and whatnot (all manner of game systems, btw), and then point folks there to read and see if they think it's a cool way to play.
Good advice. Thanks!
^_^
Paul L. Ming
(a) The two biggest things you are disallowing -- multiclassing and feats -- are in the PHB and have been since the day it was released.
(b) You keep referring to Sage Advice as if it were a source of new player options. It is not. This makes you look like you're complaining about stuff from a position of ignorance, which is never a good place to be.
Sage Advice supposedly "clarifies and classifies rules problems". Thing is...for me and other DM's who take the whole "rulings...not rules" thing as one of the, if not THE key feature of 5e...when a player comes to a game and expects some particular 'rule' to work the way SA 'clarified' it to work, and I don't subscribe to that ruling, we get back to the whole "annoyed player because DM doesn't know what he's doing" thing. That said, I do get your point about it being "advice" more than "rules/additions".
(c) If you have your own version of underground ranger archetype, don't lead off your pitch with "You can't play Deep Stalkers!" That's just bad marketing. Sell the player on why your version is better. (It shouldn't be hard; the Deep Stalker is kind of "meh".) And if the player disagrees that your version is better, would it kill you to let them play the Deep Stalker as a substitute? After all, you've already made it quite clear that there's a place for underground rangers in your world. Do the exact mechanics matter so much? It's not as if the characters in-universe are going to realize, "Oh, hey, I learned Underdark Scout at 3rd level but you learned something else! What gives?"
I've got my own version of the ranger class. Not just a subclass -- the whole thing. I think mine is better than WotC's. And my players happen to agree. But if one of them wanted to play the WotC ranger, I'd let them play the WotC ranger. Because... why wouldn't I?
I totally get where you're coming from. Another poster upstream also gave some helpful advice. I'll have to think carefully about my "pitch" to new potential players. I think I'm going to have to update a bunch of our Obsidian Portal campaigns with more in-game account of what happened and whatnot (all manner of game systems, btw), and then point folks there to read and see if they think it's a cool way to play.
Good advice. Thanks!
^_^
Paul L. Ming