DM's word is final... and illogical?

[Zesty Gordita]

You lost me on this- proof of what?

Proof that either I should have a template, the character should not exist the way he is right now, or I should not have a template.
Something to get this bump in the campaign done and over with, as he doesn't seem to be trying to fix it in any way, shape, or form

 

[Dandu]

You want the truth?

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

 

[JamesonCourage]

Proof that either I should have a template, the character should not exist the way he is right now, or I should not have a template.
Something to get this bump in the campaign done and over with, as he doesn't seem to be trying to fix it in any way, shape, or form

Based on your most recent information, you have no claim to any mechanical gain. The story is plausible, in my mind, and just because you cannot see where it is headed does not mean that you are entitled to.

When my players ask me a question they don't know, I just mirror the question back to them. It started out like this:

Player: "What do liches have to do to become liches? What sort of evil act?"
GM: "What do they have to do?"
Player: "I don't know, that's why I'm asking."
GM: "That's right, you don't know."

Obviously, Knowledge checks can come into play when appropriate. The thing is, just because you have no idea where the story is headed, you are in no way entitled to know.

If you wanted mechanical gain in my campaign based off background, I'd just ask you if your class got that mechanical gain. "You want a breath weapon... do rogues get that?" Obviously, the mechanical gain is pretty much never gained by their current class. The players often say something like, "I just thought it would be cool to work into the story, somehow." I'll reply with something along the lines of, "I agree. How about we make a prestige class together that you like?" They usually agree, and we weave it in together.

Story can be fun if you work with it. If you see story as merely background setting while you play a character, it takes away from the roleplay experience, in my group (IN MY GROUP... OPINIONS WILL DIFFER).

These is just my views on things. If you want proof to take back saying "you're doing it wrong, look" then I doubt you'll find things here. As a setting designer, it is best to leave much of the world vague, so that GMs can fill in what they'd like with their creativity. GMs love being creative. It's the biggest draw to most of us.

If you strongly dislike where your character is going story-wise, I'd have a civil discussion with your GM, where you both sit down to a burger, and you tell him that you don't like how he's turning out. I doubt the GM will want to change much (he probably has plans by now), but you should be able to swap him out for a new character. Who knows, he might even convince you that everything is under control, and that you should trust him, even if there are bumps along the way.

Bumps make for a more interesting story, anyways. People always want to hear the story with bumps over the story where nothing went wrong.

 

[Zesty Gordita]

Based on your most recent information, you have no claim to any mechanical gain. The story is plausible, in my mind, and just because you cannot see where it is headed does not mean that you are entitled to.

Obviously, Knowledge checks can come into play when appropriate. The thing is, just because you have no idea where the story is headed, you are in no way entitled to know.

If you wanted mechanical gain in my campaign based off background,

These is just my views on things. If you want proof to take back saying "you're doing it wrong, look" then I doubt you'll find things here.

If you strongly dislike where your character is going story-wise, I'd have a civil discussion with your GM, where you both sit down to a burger, and you tell him that you don't like how he's turning out.

The story is no longer plausible. Through talking with another member of the campaign, we remembered what happened with mah pa:
My father was the Black Dragon at the end of The Forge of Fury. I met him when he was a Black Dragon. He turned into a human to talk to me (polymorph) and when he died, he reverted back into Dragon form. By the rules of polymorph and the game, once a creature in polymorph dies, it reverts back to it's normal form. Thus, mah pa was a Black Dragon. Mah ma was a Half-Dragon (Bronze). Making me at least a half-black dragon. But more likely 1/2 Black dragon 1/4 Bronze Dragon and 1/4 Human.
BTW, later in the campaign, the DM told us that Dragons do not get innate spellcasting, nor can they take character classes. So... yeah. I have no idea what is happening in the world anymore...

If I was a Half-dragon from birth, then I should have the Half-dragon stats. Regardless of whether my character knows about his heritage or not.

A knowledge check has no bearing in this situation at all. A knowledge check cannot, in no way, EVER, change a person stats, race, ability scores, scales, eyes, tail, wings, color of blood, or anything of that sort. If it could, then my blood would be neon green, cause I'm radioactive with awesome.

I don't want mechanical gain, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT I AM!
I DON'T CARE WHAT RACE IT IS! IT'S BETTER THAN BEING NO RACE!

I'm not saying he's doing it wrong, I'm saying he's not doing it period.

You don't seem to understand, I have had nothing BUT civil conversations with him. He changes the subject or just replies indifferently. But I should consider myself lucky. When another character brings up a point or tries to cite rules, the DM says in a very loud gruff voice "I'M THE DM AND WHAT I SAY GOES!"

 

[Icyshadowlord]

See, this is what I meant. Some DMs, no matter what you say or do, just behave like little brats. (I have been a DM myself, mind you, and I have not ended up in these kind of situations yet. Maybe I'm lucky to have smart people as players and nobody demands anything illogical or stupid from me).

It's not like the players are always wrong, as both the OP and me were both being reasonable with our DMs.

And now that you said that, it seems that your DM wants the privilege of being the only one to know what you really are. But like you said, he just doesn't tell you straight. My suggestion is that you think about what the character might be in the logical sense. Then show that view to your DM and hope he will listen for once. If that doesn't work, you need to re-think about hanging out with this guy, since he seems even more inconsistent than MY former DM.

PS. Why do all these misunderstandings make me feel that people take it for granted that a DM would never be wrong or never behaves in an incorrect manner...? And as you see, not all player issues stem from a player wanting a mechanical advantage.

 

[JamesonCourage]

My father was the Black Dragon at the end of The Forge of Fury. I met him when he was a Black Dragon. He turned into a human to talk to me (polymorph) and when he died, he reverted back into Dragon form. By the rules of polymorph and the game, once a creature in polymorph dies, it reverts back to it's normal form. Thus, mah pa was a Black Dragon. Mah ma was a Half-Dragon (Bronze). Making me at least a half-black dragon. But more likely 1/2 Black dragon 1/4 Bronze Dragon and 1/4 Human.
BTW, later in the campaign, the DM told us that Dragons do not get innate spellcasting, nor can they take character classes. So... yeah. I have no idea what is happening in the world anymore...

If I was a Half-dragon from birth, then I should have the Half-dragon stats. Regardless of whether my character knows about his heritage or not.

A knowledge check has no bearing in this situation at all. A knowledge check cannot, in no way, EVER, change a person stats, race, ability scores, scales, eyes, tail, wings, color of blood, or anything of that sort. If it could, then my blood would be neon green, cause I'm radioactive with awesome.

I don't want mechanical gain, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT I AM!
I DON'T CARE WHAT RACE IT IS! IT'S BETTER THAN BEING NO RACE!

I'm not saying he's doing it wrong, I'm saying he's not doing it period.

You don't seem to understand, I have had nothing BUT civil conversations with him. He changes the subject or just replies indifferently. But I should consider myself lucky. When another character brings up a point or tries to cite rules, the DM says in a very loud gruff voice "I'M THE DM AND WHAT I SAY GOES!"

He is making changes to him game, obviously. It's a homebrew setting. In homebrew setting, normal rules don't necessarily apply. For all you know, a Wish was involved, blocking your dragon side from developing. For all you know, both parents polymorphed into human forms before you were conceived, and that makes it so that you are a human child in this setting.

There are plenty -and I mean, plenty- of explanations as to why you are what you are. You don't know in-game, but if you want to know, have your character look into it. You're obviously nothing that gives you stats (like a half-dragon), unless somehow it's been magically altered (you do have magical amnesia, after all).

That is where Knowledge checks come in. It may not change your stats, but it might explain on a high enough (appropriate) check how something like you could come to exist. It may not give you all the answers, it might only give you an idea.

I have a feeling, though, that if the GM wanted you to have some sort of magical amnesia, he has a plan in mind. You're headed somewhere, and you looking into your heritage makes sense as a story hook. Especially after meeting your father.

Side note... your father dying in one blow could be explained away, too. Assassin death attack, and he rolled a natural 1, for example. There are ways for things to be explained, and it seems to me that you are pretty set on thinking there aren't. It's a possibility, however, that he has nothing in mind, and he's winging it as he goes along. And in my mind, there's nothing wrong with that, either.

tl;dr: Your character is not entitled to know his heritage when he has amnesia. Period.

 

[Empirate]

OP, I believe you're making one critical mistake, among otherwise laudable efforts of 'getting into' the DM's game: you're not willing to suspend disbelief. When you're watching a movie, you're suspending your disbelief whenever martial artists do their wirework stuff, or when guns never run out of ammo, or when a character is acting implausibly in your opinion. Suspension of disbelief is vital if you want to enjoy many movies. It is even more vital in RPGs.

You seem to think that just because there are written rules, they constitue everything thats possible in the game world. They don't. They're there to adjudicate issues that might otherwise cause conflict of opinion. They're there so you don't play Cops and Robbers: "I just shot you, you're dead!""No, you missed, YOU're dead!" Rules make sure this doesn't happen in an RPG.

However, RPGs have a second instance to turn to: the DM. DMs do have the power to say "you're dead, because I say so!" They shouldn't do this without reason, and it shouldn't be done unless to further the game for everyone. But that's the DM's role: providing arbitration along with, or sometimes (if it's good for the game) also contrary to the rules.

When you're saying "I just want to know what I am!", it sounds to me (taking context into account) that you mean: "what race am I supposed to write into the commensurate field in my character sheet?", and also "what adjustments to my character's mechanical statistics should I make based on the 'race' entry?".
Now these questions are perfectly viable, but they miss the point. Not everything that happens in-game has mechanical consequences, and not everything the players and DM might envision can be modeled as an application of the rules. So you're a mystical child of a Black Dragon and a Half-Human/Half-Bronze Dragon - so what? The rules don't provide dragon or half-dragon genetics, or any explanation how draconic traits are inherited. That's because players and DMs don't need that kind of knowledge.

An RPG is a game of make-believe, not a 1-for-1 simulation of real-world physics or biology or whatever. RPG logic is not causal, it's narrative. So don't expect to reduce anything and everything to clear-cut rules text. That kind of expectation can only be disappointed. Suspension of disbelief is a necessary condition of playing an RPG.

To answer your question "Who/What am I?":
Mechanically, for the moment, you remain whatever has been written down in your original statblock, until the DM tells you to change that.
As far as role identity goes, you're whoever your character thinks he is. Really, if these questions are so important to you, they should be important to your character. Your character might develop a crisis of identity, and obsess over finding out "who he is". That's what I'd do.


BTW, if you just don't trust your DM enough to make this work for you, you do have the option of telling him just that, and creating another character who's entirely under your control. Or, you could always just leave. However, your current attitude will come into conflict with your DM's (not saying it's the fault of either of you!).

 

[the Jester]

Proof that either I should have a template, the character should not exist the way he is right now, or I should not have a template.
Something to get this bump in the campaign done and over with, as he doesn't seem to be trying to fix it in any way, shape, or form

Okay, first you should recognize that "proving" something to the dm by waving rules under his nose is not going to do you any good. Like someone else posted, follow up on this in game, not out of game. Don't try to tell the dm what you should be or ask him what you are; have your character ask npcs and do the research and stuff.

But trying to prove something to the dm is pretty much always a losing battle. Either he knows the rules and has tweaked them (or you're operating under some misleading information), he doesn't know and is running by the seat of his pants or he knows and there's an explanation you don't have enough information to figure out. In any case, arguing with the dm or insisting that he tell you what's going on is far more likely to alienate and aggravate him than to get you what you want.

Mechanically, sounds like you're human. Is that what you wanted to know? Because it sounds like the answer has been there all along.

Looking for "proof" that the dm's doing it wrong is a great way to get booted out of the game, even if the dm is doing it wrong. I would decide whether this game is worth playing and then suck it up if it is.

 

[TanisFrey]

He is making changes to him game, obviously. It's a homebrew setting. In homebrew setting, normal rules don't necessarily apply. For all you know, a Wish was involved, blocking your dragon side from developing. For all you know, both parents polymorphed into human forms before you were conceived, and that makes it so that you are a human child in this setting.

The rule is clear in 3.5, dragons who polymorph (or have the alter form ability) into a human form still produce half-dragon offspring and only if the mother stays in a human-form for the child's birth will the child be a human.

 

[the Jester]

The rule is clear in 3.5, dragons who polymorph (or have the alter form ability) into a human form still produce half-dragon offspring and only if the mother stays in a human-form for the child's birth will the child be a human.

So you are saying, "Argue with the dm!"?

Perhaps you should try running a game and seeing what it's like. "But the rules say!" is a great way to get booted out of a good dm's table. The rules are a framework for the dm to use, not a straightjacket. Rule 0 ho!