Kitsune said:
Fine for a game, bad for a roleplaying game. Why? Shouldn't a real roleplayer be able to roleplay no matter what the game mechanics are? Yes, but if you go around telling people that you're the exiled son of a prince who had to live on the harsh back streets of a city of druids and assassinates people with secrets you learned from the trees themselves, you'll look a bit stupid in the first fight when your abilities are distinctly un-treeish.
A lot of that is why I usually don't feel my PC's really 'start' until about fourth level.
I'm not sure that what you're asking for is possible without world-building and house-ruling on the GM's part; the rules shouldn't really be handling this sort of thing. I don't really see how it's substancially different from me saying in 1E, 2E or 3E that my magic-user grew up in a community of druids and so now his spells have a 'forest-like' component to them: instead of Magic Missle, it's Magic Mistletoe, etc. I can certainly say that - indeed we see certain worlds built that way - but there's not a single shred of support for it in the rules of any edition to date. That's the job of the GM, to take the rulebook and make it useful for his vision of his world.
In regards to my first sentence, what I'd do for this character later in the game is to give him at least one level of druid to simulate his knowledge and abilities but that still requires an agreement between me and my GM as to the nature of some of my magic.
Another reason not to let roleplaying rule the roost in the main core rulebook is that 'real roleplayers' have their own dark mirror of the rules lawyer. A simple fact of life is that all backgrounds and roleplaying-based ideas are not created equal, and for a game there should at least be some notion of parity. Balance, if you will. I should expect that the fighter, the wizard and the warlord all come to the table with roughly the same capabilities. If there is a clear and obvious power imbalance in the game rules for, say, the fighter then sooner or later I'm going to wind up with an all-fighter party.
Similarly, there are some roleplayers that are so good at coming up with detail and justifications for a background that if they were to be able to do those things within the context of the game and have those things dictate their abilities, they'd soon rule that game and everyone else would get frustrated.
For example, if I come up with a character - Jon- whose concept is that he's a military scout. That basically makes me a fighter/rogue right off the bat. It is a good solid concept rife with roleplaying possibilities and it's right and good that Jon should be equally good at fighting and sneaking around. I don't know how that's going to fly, though, since now Tom the street urchin rogue is looking kinda pale in comparison. Yes, I can play and fiddle with concept and such but it remains that the rules of any edition of D&D simply don't handle that situation without either some severe tweaking on the DM's part or serious grumbling at the table from the other players.
Heck, you can break that sort of system just by saying 'My character is 30' instead of the default callow youth. Gimme my 20 points worth of knowledge skills, access to a couple of special feats that represent what I've learned in 15 years of knocking around a dangerous world. etc etc.
