Arguments and assumptions against multi classing

[Greg K]

Why couldn't a good DM make it work in their campaign?

How about that it introduces elements and flavor into the *campaign and setting* that the DM does not want. Just because the game rules or specific settings include something does not mean that they are included in an individual setting created by the DM which is even stated in the Basic set under Worlds of Adventure. It is even stated that the DM is not required to include specific elements of a published setting. However, even if something such as illithid are included, the DM can always change their mythology for his or her campaign.

 

[5ekyu]

I believe the DM has the power to disallow any fluff changes made by a player. But then I question why they would necessarily want to do that. I argue that if it is about the PC, it really cannot alter the world much if the PC is an exception and if the DM desires, the only exception.

It is really a taste thing. Much of the fluff in the PHB is not as clear cut as some would assume. Read the warlock text for example and count the contradictions. Uncaring power, micomanaging power, power uninterested in patron, willing contract, contract done unwillingly, tricked into contract, learn and grow in power, power granted....

the list goes on. There is a lot of room to play here. What is the hexblade patron, really? I say it is a connection to the power of death for my PC...another says it is Raven Queen or a weapon that might be made by her etc etc etc

If I am DM, I don't feel a need to prescribe the specifics for a specific PC. I can, but why? How would this enhance their fun? How would it enhance mine?

"my character is a cleric class character.
he once ate a magic carrot that gives him all the cleric stuff and no diety or church or code of conduct or gaols involved so i can do anything i want and no tithes no nothing.
You must include this in your world because it is fluff and nothing says i can't."

That changes the world.

It adds to the world another option that makes the entire set of cleric-divine choices seem quite a bit "questionable" and "dubious."

Same with "patrons as pets or slaves or powers-r-us vending machines"

For "following divine credo and advancing the wishes of my god grants me these favors" to make sense getting those favirs and powers for none of that cannot be the case.

if someone sells 10,000 sq foot homes built wherever you want to for same quality and time - but at no cost - then the bulk of the world buying the same for "50k" has to be seen in the world as stupid or odd or at best antiquated and on the way out.

The character is not in a white room vacuum packed but the character and those forces interacting with him are part of the world and whether that world is created by the GM or by a collaboration they benefit from making sense together - to whatever degree the players care.

To insist to me that your background and backstory and fluff doesn't have to have any tie-in or any effect on the world is definitely telling me "it should not have any imapct on the world" (so it wont figure into any storyline aspects presented and close to "my character shouldn't have any impact either" (since your character is a direct product of that backstory and fluff which you insist doesn't have to change anything.)

I do not normally seek players who want that much "meaninglessness" for their characters.

 

[5ekyu]

Honestly I could deal with that. There are plenty of alien elements in the game (any of the illithids mythology) and plenty of lycanthropy tropes in the game. Why couldn't a good DM make it work in their campaign?

I mean Jim Butcher was able to turn a bet about combining the Lost Roman Legion and Pokémon into a best selling fantasy series. You can handle aliens and werewolves in D&D.

Why do folks keep coming back to whether or not a Gm or group of players "can handle" it or "are you a good Gm"?

its back to the fragile slur and such.

"If you dont let me, you must be weak-sauce as GM"

not convincing from a 3 year old and my game has a higher age limit than that.

 

[Mistwell]

How about that it introduces elements and flavor into the *campaign and setting* that the DM does not want. Just because the game rules or specific settings include something does not mean that they are included in an individual setting created by the DM. Even if something such as illithid are included, the DM can always change their mythology for his or her campaign.

And I say use it as an opportunity to say "Challenge Accepted!" I doubt it's an issue of "doesn't want" as opposed to "hadn't considered". Tell me a campaign that is unable to deal with the concepts of an otherworldly being and a shape-changing being, which is all we're really talking about here. It's D&D - the campaign should be able to deal with those concepts without some massive break or juggling of core concepts. Use it as an opportunity to be creative.

 

[Mistwell]

Why do folks keep coming back to whether or not a Gm or group of players "can handle" it or "are you a good Gm"?

its back to the fragile slur and such.

"If you dont let me, you must be weak-sauce as GM"

not convincing from a 3 year old and my game has a higher age limit than that.

You can choose take offense while not answering the core question of my post all you want. But it's still there waiting for you to answer it. I am not saying you "have" to do anything and I am not in any way being negative. If you really don't want to do something, then don't do it. But, I am encouraging you and others to try. You're a good enough DM to not only make any concept "work" in your setting, but to make it thrive and likely better your setting for pushing you to imagine something different you had never considered before. You can do it! Why is my saying "you can handle whatever background your players throw at you and be awesome," a bad thing?

I mean hey, if a player throws you a serious curve ball and you don't have a quick answer for how that could work in your setting, that's perfectly understandable. We all run into challenges like that sometimes. So, my advice is just tell the player you will think about it, and then work on it for a while. And if you're really stuck, just post about it here and see what others think about how to make that concept work. I bet someone will have an imaginative inspiration that will spark your imagination as well, and find a great way to fit it in your setting.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It is not part of this ruleset that ANY and EVERY creature that, conceptually, has a higher AC through the concept of a tough hide MUST realise that concept with exactly +1 to AC, just like leather armour!

No, but it is established through precedent that wolf-like hide gives a +1 to AC. When the DM is later evaluating a creature, and trying to determine what its AC should be, this is a valuable data point. If a beast has hide which conceptually like a wolf, then that's +1. If it's conceptually like an elephant, then that's worth +3. Every single creature in the book sets precedent for the language by which mechanics and fluff are inter-related.

Really? If I statted up a werecreature with +2 rather than +1 of its AC coming from its tough hide, then I wouldn't be playing D&D 5e anymore?
[...]
Let's say we have a perfectly RAW D&D 5e PC. If we gave ten game designers a pure fluff description of what our PC can do, no game mechanics or class names mentioned, and then asked each game designer to invent 5e game mechanics to match that description, then they would produce ten different sets of game mechanics. They would not magically produce One True Way ten sets of identical mechanics!

Now you're getting it! There is no One True Way that every game setting has to work by. Some settings will have werewolves with a thick hide that gives them +4 AC, and others will have all of their durability tied up into their magical Damage Immunity power. The DM (or setting designer) is free to modify the rules in order to better fit their own specific ideas about how the world should work.

The setting where werewolves have +1 AC from their hide, and immunity to most weapons, is a default world that sets up the specific way in which D&D 5E correlates the werewolf-level of durability into game mechanics. That is the official D&D translation of what their default werewolf looks like. Any given DM is free to give them +4 AC instead, but if they want to use the language precedent for how D&D is supposed to describe such things, then they also need to change the narrative in order to reflect the change in the mechanics.

Going back to the 'lines of demarcation' (yes, we all acknowledge that the game is all about cooperation! We don't disagree on that!), while the DM can always say 'no' to ANY part of any PC, the player can always say 'no' to playing a concept, class, mechanic or fluff that they feel has been changed too far from what they want to play.

If they cannot agree, then there is no game! Both player and DM know that, hence the cooperation.

I've already said that the DM can refuse some element of a player's fluff, and that the DM should have a rational reason for doing so.

I'm glad we're in agreement.

Have you really already established that in your game world the fiend has x, y and z powers but definitely cannot mess with conception....before I told you my fluff? Really? Or did you decide, after I told you the fluff, that one thing the fiend cannot do is mess with conception, just so you feel you have justification for saying 'no', when you could more easily have just gone with it?

No, what you did was invent a reason to be unhappy about it.

That is an unfair assumption on your part. Whenever an uncertainty comes into question, the role of the DM is to be impartial - to try and discern the truth of the world, given what they already know about other truths. Whether this sort of thing could happen in a given world is going to be a judgment call from the DM, and they owe it to everyone there to give it fair consideration. It might be easier to just go with it, but it's doing a disservice to the players, by biasing their judgment based on what they want to happen. If the DM just ruled whichever way would make things easier for them, every time, then there would be no point in playing the game.

Even in games where players use DM created pre-gens, in my experience the players are encouraged to customise said pre-gens.

In my experience, pre-gens are mostly used in one-shot games where the DM isn't significantly invested in world creation.

I simply don't recognise our hobby in terms that players aren't allowed to create their own PC's backstory!

And I don't recognize our hobby in terms that a player can unilaterally impose anything upon the GM. If you want to do something weird with your character - such as any concept which isn't even mentioned as a possibility within the book - then you should consult the GM first, and don't be surprised if they say no. Showing up with the expectation that anything you think of will automatically be accepted is a degree of entitlement which ruins the hobby for the GMs.

 

[TwoSix]

But if as a a Gm when i lay out some basic set of guidelines for what characters can be - something short of a list of everything that can be imagined - if the player then claims the absolute right to invent background "fluff" for their character and i am not allowed to cross that line at all to say "no" then where is my "walk away" option?

Do i now have to drop the entire campaign and go home and sit alone?
Do i now have to play the game Gm it even though its not something i want to run?
Do i have the right to tell the player "yeah thats legal here but you cannot play it at all so leave" but not to instead say "how about we change this..."

I don't tend to think of it in terms of whether the DM has the "right", it's simply a question of what practice is better for your game as a whole. If a player comes up with some concept that you just completely cannot be OK with, than sure, you have a right to say "I'm sorry, but I just can't run a game with that character. Let's see if we can come up with something else."

The single best rule for facilitating a good game, whether player or DM, is to put your ego aside and play what's going to work best for the group. If your group lacks a healer, play a healer. If your DM adds a bunch of races and classes to his homebrew setting, play one of those, because they obviously mean something. If everyone else is on board with a Dark Sun game, maybe it's not the time to play your gnome wizard. If 3 of your players want to play gnomes, though, maybe it's not the time to run a Dark Sun game.

If being denied your cyber-ninja character in a D&D game makes you pout, learn to be a more flexible player. If the existence of a civilized wolfblooded barbarian makes you pout, learn to be a more flexible DM.

 

[Warpiglet]

"my character is a cleric class character.
he once ate a magic carrot that gives him all the cleric stuff and no diety or church or code of conduct or gaols involved so i can do anything i want and no tithes no nothing.
You must include this in your world because it is fluff and nothing says i can't."

That changes the world.

It adds to the world another option that makes the entire set of cleric-divine choices seem quite a bit "questionable" and "dubious."

Same with "patrons as pets or slaves or powers-r-us vending machines"

For "following divine credo and advancing the wishes of my god grants me these favors" to make sense getting those favirs and powers for none of that cannot be the case.

if someone sells 10,000 sq foot homes built wherever you want to for same quality and time - but at no cost - then the bulk of the world buying the same for "50k" has to be seen in the world as stupid or odd or at best antiquated and on the way out.

The character is not in a white room vacuum packed but the character and those forces interacting with him are part of the world and whether that world is created by the GM or by a collaboration they benefit from making sense together - to whatever degree the players care.

To insist to me that your background and backstory and fluff doesn't have to have any tie-in or any effect on the world is definitely telling me "it should not have any imapct on the world" (so it wont figure into any storyline aspects presented and close to "my character shouldn't have any impact either" (since your character is a direct product of that backstory and fluff which you insist doesn't have to change anything.)

I do not normally seek players who want that much "meaninglessness" for their characters.

Clearly this is absurd and a false comparison. And dollar to doughnuts, you probably are aware of this.

I use training for power more often to get power than some fellows is not a magic carrot by any stretch. If you see it as equivalent I am not sure what to say. Its no longer a reasonable debate on any level.

 

[5ekyu]

You can choose take offense while not answering the core question of my post all you want. But it's still there waiting for you to answer it. I am not saying you "have" to do anything and I am not in any way being negative. If you really don't want to do something, then don't do it. But, I am encouraging you and others to try. You're a good enough DM to not only make any concept "work" in your setting, but to make it thrive and likely better your setting for pushing you to imagine something different you had never considered before. You can do it! Why is my saying "you can handle whatever background your players throw at you and be awesome," a bad thing?

"Why couldn't a good DM make it work in their campaign?"

Nobody is saying a good Gm couldn't.
Nobody at all.
At least, nobody i have seen here on this thread.

The implied "if you say no your not a good GM" is just a slant at dismissing the other side.

As i and quite a few others have said already in this thread time and time again, we say yes a lot, we allow these things a lot, we allow lots and lots and lots of new backstories and new clever player stuff all the time.

We really, if you read even a decent number of posts really do not need you to encourage us to try what we have already been doing for years, and in some cases, decades.

A core issue at discussion here is "does a Gm have to" and there doesn't really seem to be any disagreement on "can a gm include these kinds of things" at all - except when it gets paired with "good gm" or "campaign so fragile" and so on.

Gms can allow lots of backstory and fluf and based on what i have read here most if not all of the GMs objecting to some of the "hands off must allow" examples do allow and include them a lot.

So, my deepest appreciation for you encouraging me to just try... to maybe say yes unless i have a compelling reason to say no - even though i have stated it over and over thru the thread and of course its not at all condescending of you to phrase it this way with "good gm" thrown in for good measure.

 

[5ekyu]

I don't tend to think of it in terms of whether the DM has the "right", it's simply a question of what practice is better for your game as a whole. If a player comes up with some concept that you just completely cannot be OK with, than sure, you have a right to say "I'm sorry, but I just can't run a game with that character. Let's see if we can come up with something else."

The single best rule for facilitating a good game, whether player or DM, is to put your ego aside and play what's going to work best for the group. If your group lacks a healer, play a healer. If your DM adds a bunch of races and classes to his homebrew setting, play one of those, because they obviously mean something. If everyone else is on board with a Dark Sun game, maybe it's not the time to play your gnome wizard. If 3 of your players want to play gnomes, though, maybe it's not the time to run a Dark Sun game.

If being denied your cyber-ninja character in a D&D game makes you pout, learn to be a more flexible player. If the existence of a civilized wolfblooded barbarian makes you pout, learn to be a more flexible DM.

RE the bold - pretty much what i have been saying thru the thread - and what i have been doing for much longer

as for the rest - i tend to let folks work out for their table the balance between player vs group dynamics. No "best way" for me to tell others they should be doing. part of that likely stems from having played a number of very different games with radically different expectations towards "team play".

Few of my VtM games (Gm or player) had anything like a "team building cover the roles" outlook to it and for entire sessions the PCs may not even see each other.

meanwhile, few of my DnD games came close to the "team build focus" thresholds that some of my cyberpunk (Blue Light teams) or even super-teams did.

heck, some games i ran had an actual in character interview and try-out and if your character did not meet the expectations of the "patron" you did not get to play that character. if there was only room for one pilot and two showed up... only one got the pilot slot.

Amber games had very different team vs me dynamics at play.

So, that whole "whats best for the group character selection always seemed to me to be rather fluid and depends on the campaign, the setting and the group.