D&D 5E What is the appeal of the weird fantasy races?

[doctorbadwolf]

It's not a matter of percentages, but it since you insist...

I will lose 100% of my fun if I have to run a game where there are rubber forehead aliens.

I don't mean this to be rude, but that would mean you are being completely unreasonable. Full stop.

I hope this is a wildly exaggerated hyperbole.

I won't engage with bonkers hypotheticals that have no direct relationship with reality or the behavior of normal, healthy, well-adjusted, people. Why invent such absurdities when we could talk about reality?

 

[Zardnaar]

So is this even actually a real problem in real life or is this just one of these internet things? How many of you have had your must-have character idea denied by the GM? How many of you have had players insist to make characters totally incompatible with the pitch? Because I can't really recall either of those having happened to me in real life... There may have been some discussions about could this or that work, but I really cannot remember any actual serious disagreements. I mean I have played for decades, so it is possible that something like that has happened at some point and I've just forgotten, but in my experience this doesn't really seem like a common problem.

Usually you just say no and that's the end of it.

I've got a player who keeps pushing atm. Wants to mix hexblade levels onto Paladin on top of the highest stats in the group plus 3pp race.

1. MCing is optional.
2. So is hexblade.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So is this even actually a real problem in real life or is this just one of these internet things? How many of you have had your must-have character idea denied by the GM?

Well, it has really happened to me in the past, but I'm almost exclusively an internet gamer, so....it was real life on the internet...?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

We don't always play D&D only with people who are our friends.

Doesn't matter. If you aren't able to compromise with someone, you shouldn't be in a social situation with them.

If you're entering a social situation, and refusing to compromise just because they "aren't your friend", then you're in the wrong.

 

[Zardnaar]

Doesn't matter. If you aren't able to compromise with someone, you shouldn't be in a social situation with them.

If you're entering a social situation, and refusing to compromise just because they "aren't your friend", then you're in the wrong.

Same statement can apply to the player.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Usually you just say no and that's the end of it.

I've got a player who keeps pushing atm. Wants to mix hexblade levels onto Paladin on top of the highest stats in the group plus 3pp race.

1. MCing is optional.
2. So is hexblade.

Players like that, in my group, just get told to stop trying to win dnd.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Same statement can apply to the player.

Of course, who said otherwise?

 

[Zardnaar]

Players like that, in my group, just get told to stop trying to win dnd.

In gonna say no just because the other players aren't at that level of powergaming and still make mistakes.

Well one person is but she has the self control to reign it in.

 

[Maxperson]

You think people in Rural Kentucky have never heard of Halley's comet? When it has been a known and celebrated phenomena for centuries? Get real dude.

This is real. There have been countless polls about rural(and even urban) people not knowing who the current president is, what the branches of congress are and more. Do I think that the vast majority of people under the age of 40 don't know about that comet? Yep! Do I think that older people tell lots of stories about it? Nope!

That's real.

That is exactly the attitude you painted.

To people uninterested in looking at my words in an unbiased manner, sure.

Case in point, if the player's fun would be reduced, DM doesn't have to do anything. DMs fun would be reduced though, and the player either needs to change or leave.

You missed the first part, "and if they can't", meaning that they can't find a game that they would have more fun in. But that doesn't matter. They have left your table and secured your enjoyment, so what happens later doesn't matter.

Maybe they finally get desperate enough for a game they will accept your ultimatums and bend down to your whims, but if they don't return to your table, you'll never know.

This is what you aren't getting. The DM is not your slave. He doesn't exist to serve your fancy at the expense of his own fun. Unlike the DM, you actually have options(the DM sacrificing his fun is not an option). You have the option to play some other enjoyable character. You have the option to try and find another game where you can play the character you want. You have the option to play a completely different game(I recommend Terraforming Mars. Great game). You have the option to go fishing. Or bowling. Or whatever.

If you are unwilling to play another enjoyable character, the only options the DM has are to ditch you or ditch everyone, and ditching only you is the best of the options available to him.

And yet, a mechanical change was made, because the option of taking a Dwarf was removed. Which also removes the ability to take any feat related to dwarves, the dwarvish language, removes the option of attuning to dwarf specific items... you know, mechanical changes.

And yet oddly enough, how the game plays doesn't change even a little.

You mean you didn't quote this?

"Halisstra opened her eyes and found herself drifting in an endless silver sea. Soft gray clouds moved slowly in the distance, while strange dark streaks twisted violently through the sky, anchored in ends so distant she couldn’t perceive them, their middle parts revolving angrily like pieces of string rolled between a child’s fingertips. She glanced down, wondering what supported her, and saw nothing but more of the strange pearly sky beneath her feet and all around her.

She drew in a sudden breath, surprised by the sight, and felt her lungs fill with something sweeter and perhaps a little more solid than air, but instead of gagging or drowning on the stuff she seemed perfectly acclimated to it. An electric thrill raced through her limbs as she found herself mesmerized by the simple act of respiration."

Which is an excerpt from Condemnation by Richard Baker, the Third Book in the War of the Spider Queen Series, which was reprinted as an excerpt, with full sourcing in the DMG?

Or, does that not count since they decided to put a quote from a book in the DMG, so it isn't actually quoting the novel, even though the only text you quoted was from the novel? (Spoiler alert, that isn't how quoting works, since you only quoted the text from Richard Baker's work, you were quoting him, otherwise I could say that I was quoting Alan Moore while quoting the passage from Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias" that Moore used in Watchmen, crediting Moore with a work that he did not write.)

I quoted the above bold portion from the 5e DMG, not a novel. That's the important bit you are deliberately overlooking. I don't give a rats behind if it was in a novel, because the novel is completely irrelevant to my quote. The portion I quoted showed you that in 5e as written, there are lungs that are used to breathe air.

Also, to reiterate, you were wrong, Tabaxi do have retractable claws.

Until you can quote me something from an official 5e book about them having retractable claws, I was not and still am not wrong.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Doesn't matter. If you aren't able to compromise with someone, you shouldn't be in a social situation with them.

If you're entering a social situation, and refusing to compromise just because they "aren't your friend", then you're in the wrong.

A bold assertion. And self-evidently not true.