D&D 5E PC Limitations vs. Do Whatever You Want

[MichaelSomething]

If you don't want PCs to play weird races, just do what Gygax did and make humans the most mechanically powerful race. How about Humans don't have stat limits?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Level doesn’t have anything to do with it, I’m not suggesting they’re moving towards giving warlocks hurl through hell at start, I’m saying they’re doing additive character building instead of forked limited characters.

And I'm, saying that this is simply untrue. Subclasses are inherently forked, limited characters. And the classes that are getting buffed are the ranger and sorcerer (which are spells known rather than spells prepared and therefore are forked limited characters) and the fighter (which is a very limited character).

The problem is that the additive characters are the wizard, the cleric, and the druid. And they are right there in the PHB. This gives WotC the choice of (a) not printing any more spells ever or (b) giving them more options.

There’s a character creation plan where wizard or cleric have 100% exclusive spells, pick one, locking you out of the other spells, then pick subclass again forever locking you out of even more, you’re a specialized conjuration wizard.

But to do that would be a complete rewrite of what the wizard class actually is. WotC chose not to do that in 2014. WotC's design philosophy can't move away from that because for 5e that has never been the design philosophy.

We do however have an arcane caster that works on even tighter limits; you pick a few spells known and you only get to change them on a long rest. That class is called the sorcerer.

What they’re doing instead is all additive, wizard v. Cleric not that limiting to start with and then you add backgrounds and subclasses that add stuff and claw back stuff you gave up at first choice.

What they are doing is giving lots of toys to the sorcerer, warlock, ranger, and artificer - the limited casters. (And some cool toys to the bard but the bard started slightly overtuned).

What they are not doing is fundamentally re-writing the wizard and cleric to change them away from the "can mix up their spells" classes they were in 2014

I’m asking if expansive characters or limited characters lead to better more interesting play.

This is a false dichotomy. The ultimate limited character would be an inanimate carbon rod. The ultimate expansive character would be playing Calvinball. I do not think that either extreme leads to particularly good play; if given the choice you at least get to play Calvinball so if you are forcing this as a dichotomy then pure expansive beats pure limited.

But it's not a dichotomy. It's a sliding scale and the question is where on it you want to be. Clearly not at either extreme - and no D&D character is or can be at either extreme unless they are the worst DMPC I ever heard of or in the absolute worst railroady game I ever heard of. The question is one of where on the scale are you comfortable - and that's a matter of taste.

 

[Faolyn]

I like the system to give me open access to do anything and for the setting to have limitations.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

While it’s nice to sometimes just be able to just go ‘I’m going to build this character exactly as i see them in my head’ sometimes I think that you can’t fully appreciate that if you haven’t had to build a character within limitations, and there’s a satisfaction in creating something within the restrictions you’re presented with, but having more options to build a character doesn’t actually mean what you make with them is more creative,

So, what I did to solve the tension you present here, is to build an entire game.

I don’t necessarily recommend it, though it’s been well worth the work for me.

The game and how it’s mechanics solved this issue for me and my group:

Spoiler

Specifically, I created a game that runs on skills, and has idiosyncratic restrictions for choosing skills, but they are fairly loose restrictions. There are 3 categories of skills (Physical, Interaction, Magical), each with about a dozen skills. Each skill has 3 specialties, like Aeromancy has: Aerokinetics, Echomancy, and Aerolocation.

You get 6 skill ranks from your Origin, 6 from Archetype, and 6 chosen without restriction. So, each character has about half as many skill ranks as there are skills in the system. You get 1 specialty rank per skill rank, and you can only have 2 ranks in a skill or specialty at level 1. (Levels exist mostly to gate such restrictions, tho you do gain a very small amount of automatic advancement from levels as well)

So, 2/3 of your skills come from limited lists, you can only specialize so much at chargen, and you cannot have all the skills.

And skills basically are the game. There are traits, but they largely create exceptions, modify skill use, or give you new resources like a team of experts you can rely on or a guy who fights beside (or in place of) you, or stuff like the ability to speak to animals.

Spells and techniques are active abilities that cost the games only real resource, and are basically packaged “advanced uses of skills”, and so can also be improvised. In fact, explicitly, if you see someone do a thing, and you have training in a relevant skill, you can try to figure out how to do it, and potentially eventually gain a new spell or technique. Same with improvised actions.

So, essentially, you can only be good at so many things, you can only specialize so much, and you only have total freedom in choosing those things for about 1/3 of your skills.

TLDR: You can only be good at so many things, you can only specialize so much, and you only have total freedom in choosing those things for about 1/3 of your skills.

The part I think could really apply to D&D or a clone of it is this:

In my game, Quest For Chevar, the skills are “physics engines” with simple parameters and general descriptions, including what sort of things are a basic use of the skill, and what sorts of thing are advanced uses, and what requires true mastery (stuff you cannot do without attaining ranks that you can’t reach at chargen or even before a decent amount of advancement.

So, you don’t have a list of conjuration spells, you have the Conjuration skill, with a few paragraphs of text setting the parameters of said skill, and a set of resource that is recovered somewhat slowly, and you can learn or invent spells using that skill, or blending it with Evocation, or with Heavy Fighting, or with Computers.

So this limited but fairly broad selection of competencies, with a fairly free but still scope-limited and knowledge/power level gated system for using the skills, and a graduated action resolution using a success ladder with the ability to spend resources to Push checks up the ladder, and a “players always roll” framework, makes for a game that’s very friendly to improvisation, and gives freedom to choose your particular constraints, if that makes sense.

 

[Hussar]

So, it seems that WoTC design philosophy is very much going in the direction of letting players do whatever they want in creation of their characters. Imagine a character, we’re writing the rules so you can implement that dream w/o obstacles. And while I’m not opposed to this I wonder if allowing maximum freedom in character creation ultimately kneecaps creativity in play.

Like, at some extreme ends, if on the one hand you are a spellcaster with your pick of any spell you want at any time vs you are a arcane conjurer with only access to arcane spells in the conjuration school? I feel like in play, the all spells guy will have whatever is optimal at any time and has the opportunity to maybe be creative in choice, but will mostly just keep dropping whatever is the most fitting Big Hammer. On the other hand, the strict conjurer being so limited, will get creative in the use and implementation of their spells, test the boundaries of them.

As DM I like limitations and boundaries, partly for control, but also for the I believe shared fun of creative problems and creative solutions. From a player perspective, I can see these limitations as irritating obstacles to acting as I want in the fiction.

how do you handle this dynamic in your worlds? Do you just go with whatever published rules say or do you widen or narrow PC options?

Once upon a time, many, many moons and editions ago, we allowed our clerics to cast any spell at any time. Just flat out let it happen. If you had an open spell slot of the right level, go for it.

Funny thing. In play, 99% of the time, it made zero difference. The same spells were getting cast almost all the time. But, that 1% made up for all of that. I actually saw a cleric cast a Snakes to Sticks (reverse of Sticks to Snakes - an AD&D spell that did exactly what it sounds like it did) and turn a chest full of snakes into a bunch of sticks. Fantastic use of a spell that I have never seen done before or since.

So, yeah, put me strongly in the camp that allowing freedom is a better way to go. By and large, the players aren't going to do stuff too far out of line than what they would have done anyway. But, that once in a while new idea that comes from removing limitations? Golden.

 

[Hussar]

I like the system to give me open access to do anything and for the setting to have limitations.

I think that's an excellent way to look at it

 

[Lanefan]

Once upon a time, many, many moons and editions ago, we allowed our clerics to cast any spell at any time. Just flat out let it happen. If you had an open spell slot of the right level, go for it.

I've always had this for Clerics, and for my current campaign I expanded it to all casters*, largely because as a player over the years I've come to loathe pre-memorization and thus don't want to inflict it on my players. The tricky bit is balancing the number of slots available per day such that the casters are neither overpowered nor over-conservative with their slots. A work in progress.

* - other than Bards, who are a special subsystem unto themselves but who also don't use pre-mem.

Funny thing. In play, 99% of the time, it made zero difference. The same spells were getting cast almost all the time. But, that 1% made up for all of that. I actually saw a cleric cast a Snakes to Sticks (reverse of Sticks to Snakes - an AD&D spell that did exactly what it sounds like it did) and turn a chest full of snakes into a bunch of sticks. Fantastic use of a spell that I have never seen done before or since.

This. Some spells that would never see the light of day in a pre-mem. system get cast now, to sometimes very unexpected-by-me effects and uses.

So, yeah, put me strongly in the camp that allowing freedom is a better way to go. By and large, the players aren't going to do stuff too far out of line than what they would have done anyway. But, that once in a while new idea that comes from removing limitations? Golden.

We like our freedoms in different places, I think. I don't mind limitations in char-gen but I want freedom in play.

 

[Hussar]

I guess where I get off the train is when people are arguing against opening up elements of the game - such as floating ASI's - which do not in any way preclude playing exactly the same thing you played before (generic you, not you personally) but also allows other people to play new things. I just don't get it.

 

[Magister Ludorum]

I don't restrict anything in any game and all but two of the players build characters based on story, background and the world they're playing in. One of the others just likes weird concepts and the other builds the same basic two characters over and over again.

As a player, I won't play in a game where the GM restricts anything. That said, if I like the idea behind the setting, I'll build a character who fits that setting. I'll restrict myself, but I am completely uninterested in any game where the GM provides those restrictions for me. If I don't like the setting, I don't play. I have plenty of other hobbies I can engage in.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I guess where I get off the train is when people are arguing against opening up elements of the game - such as floating ASI's - which do not in any way preclude playing exactly the same thing you played before (generic you, not you personally) but also allows other people to play new things. I just don't get it.

Honestly i kind of see this from the other direction, yes, let people build whatever they want but the floating ASI doesn’t actually allow you to build anything you couldn’t previously, it just lets you have better numbers while typically going against the narrative of the world.

I’d be more inclined to let a nature themed orcish feylock replace their warlock spell list with the druid list than let them swap their +2 str to cha for optimisation because at least the first is a central part of the character concept and makes sense why a nature entity might give druid-ish spells rather than the typical warlock’s capacities

I’d rather have a limited number of meaningful options that make sense and are justifiable than the options to do everything simply to let you do everything.