D&D (2024) No Dwarf, Halfling, and Orc suborgins, lineages, and legacies

[tetrasodium]

thing is, how often does the player ever ask what kind of campaign the GM wants to run and tweak their characters around that? far less often i'm guessing, the give and take is not equal here.

IME even less frequently than they flatly ignore any efforts the GM makes to tell them about the setting. The efforts that 5e makes to ensure the players assume that they are free to use literally anything printed make this even more difficult for the GM.

would it be better to just not mention those classes or call them optional cannon?

I do not get the human drive to subvert the rules on a whim.

what is a non-core caster?

resistance is to be expected but why is it so high?

I can understand if a player loves both a set race and class and would be turned off a setting without either but few people are that focused so what makes people do this?

It's better to explicitly say that they are not normally found. Wotc proved that simply writing "optional" next to something that is generally considered core does nothing but set the GM up for failure when it is not a hill the GM chooses to die on. The settings being discussed had their own additions, but making those additions & the setting have the right themes tropes & feel also requires rules support. You can't have death note, claymore, Goblin Slayer, Tokyo Ghoul, Code Geas & so on working with the zany stakes in teen titans go or Adam West Batman. If you try crossing the genre & stakes it just sours both.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Not only classes, but also subclasses, or the magic items.

Good point about subclasses. If the core setting nixes classes, how detailed do you get with respect to subclasses? Can a player play an Eldritch Knight? An Arcane trickster? Are there special rules for defiling if you’re not a full caster? What about a divine soul sorcerer? It’s an arcane caster but very cleric-adjacent.

Do Rune Knight PCs defile when they cast? How about Phantom Rogues? What about Totem Barbarians when they cast Beast Sense, Speak with Animals or Commune with Nature? Even if certain classes are banned, are subclasses permitted? It seems that a Circle of Land (Desert) druid would be appropriate for Athas.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Ah, a bugaboo of mine.

I ALWAYS sell my next game by tipping my hand on the setting, adventure path, or both, so that my players know way in advance what to expect.

Agreed. At least some of the cases that I’ve seen where the characters did not match the DM’s concept were because the DM was too stingy with information, not too free.

Like the case where the DM told us it would be an exploration-based campaign, but forgot to mention we were part of a mercenary band, and was surprised that while all the PCs were ready to explore new horizons, none of them wanted to sign up to a mercenary band.

 

[FrozenNorth]

You can't have death note, claymore, Goblin Slayer, Tokyo Ghoul, Code Geas & so on working with the zany stakes in teen titans go or Adam West Batman. If you try crossing the genre & stakes it just sours both.

If I tell the players that I want to run a pirate adventure, I may get Luffy from One Piece, Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, and Cap’n Flint from Black Sails.

If I tell the players I’m running a spy adventure, I may get Clover from Totally Spies!, James Bond, Philip Marlowe and George Smiley.

The issue is not to assume that you were clear simply because you think you were clear. Give more information. Then give some more after that.

 

[tetrasodium]

If I tell the players that I want to run a pirate adventure, I may get Luffy from One Piece, Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, and Cap’n Flint from Black Sails.

If I tell the players I’m running a spy adventure, I may get Clover from Totally Spies!, James Bond, Philip Marlowe and George Smiley.

The issue is not to assume that you were clear simply because you think you were clear. Give more information. Then give some more after that.

No the issue is players feeling like that if they can't effectively shrug off the GM's efforts to correct misunderstandings with all the interest of a blown off shrugging speak to the hand then their GM is trying to micromanage "MY character & MY story". 5e is particularly bad here in how it avoids collaborating with others before chargen is complete & using passive voice/sentences when talking about the GM's role but active for the player creating the PC. If the players are encouraged to feel like the initial information as well as the more information are overstepping it's going to be poorly received by the time you get to "then give some more after that".

 

[Yaarel]

Good point about subclasses. If the core setting nixes classes, how detailed do you get with respect to subclasses? Can a player play an Eldritch Knight? An Arcane trickster? Are there special rules for defiling if you’re not a full caster? What about a divine soul sorcerer? It’s an arcane caster but very cleric-adjacent.

Do Rune Knight PCs defile when they cast? How about Phantom Rogues? What about Totem Barbarians when they cast Beast Sense, Speak with Animals or Commune with Nature? Even if certain classes are banned, are subclasses permitted? It seems that a Circle of Land (Desert) druid would be appropriate for Athas.

Yeah. Subclasses are sometimes more important than the class when deciding on setting flavor.

Any Arcane magic, including Trickster and Eldritch, defiles.

Defiling is the magical equivalent of nuclear fission. For defiling rules, I prefer something visceral and concrete, such as requiring living plants within a radius, which the Defiler must personally destroy in order to catalyze the annihilation of Elemental Water. It is this Elemental annihilation that releases the arcane energy. Note, any and every arcanist destroys plants and Water. The trick of the Defilier, is knowing how to harness this release of arcane energy. The harnassing is a secret the Dragon Kings carefully guard. But when players play Defilers, they should for flavor be vividly destroying plants in front of them, and parching the earth, and sometimes desiccating the living people around one. The players should feel responsible for the extinction of the planet.

For Dark Sun, most of the 5e Druid subclasses are moreorless canon. Dark Sun turns out to handle animism well. The Dark Sun Druids form remote local communities that include the local features of nature, which are inherently psionic to various degrees, such as psionic rock formations, and pools of water that are especially sacred. Any Druid circle can be part of this natural realm.

The Dream Druid that focuses on the Feywild, isnt part of the original canon. But it too can be appropriate. The canonical Positive Material Plane is an area of enlivening Positive Energy that is unlocked where the Elements balance. This is the same thing as a Fey Crossing, and in 4e there patches of the Feywild here and there at these Crossings. There isnt an entire Fey plane or an entire Elemental plane, merely patches here and there like demiplanes, depending on the local circumstances. In this sense, the Epic tier Avangion is Fey, a luminous watery being of harmonious elements in a mode of healing to restore planet incrementally.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Philip Marlowe

He is a private investigator, not a spy.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Maybe there is good reason to explain the possible reboot of DS. Let's say Vecna wants revengue against the Dark Powers of the demiplane of the dread(Ravenloft), and whatever had happened, this is also affected DS. Something has happened with several dread domains and now these aren't controlled by the Dark Powers, but now they are joined to a demiplane in a totally different place, but not the Shadowfell. There is "Athasian Tablelands 2.0." where the events of the novels happened, but as if didn't. The killed king-sorcerers are alive again, but they can die again... several times. Why? The Athasian Tablelands are too dessertic, and this mean the zone could be used by cosmic powers as a "firewall" against some interplanar menace.

How could I explain? It is a very weird idea. Let's say Athas has got two layers, the classic version and the rebooted. It would be like two different servers of the same MMO videogame. And the king-sorcerers are the rulers of the city-stats in both "servers", but like the dark lords they can't go beyond their own domains (but they can travel to both layers), only sending agents to other zones. The migration of people among the "layers" is possible, but the visitors aren't wellcome in the other side. There is a "third layer" but this is more like a "no-man's land", and it is the new home of lots of refugees and fugitives willing to start from zero. The "third layer" allows total freedom, but it is pure anarchy and a "failed state".

What is the origin of the second and third layer? We should ask to Vecna, because this could be the maximum responsible after the action in Sigil.

And as if it was not enough, the taint by Tharizdum, the elemental elder eye also is present.

 

[Minigiant]

It is not only about banning classes and races from the PHB but from other sources. Would you allow psionic artificiers, or primal sorcerers, totemist shamans with incarnum soulmelds, or martial adepts fighting in the gladiator arenas? DS could be fabulous to sell T-shirts o a videogame, but horrible to sell more crunch sourcebooks.

Not only classes, but also subclasses, or the magic items.

Old School Dark Sun is a big ask and hard sell.

Setting that cut the PHB, add major setting rules, AND shift tones would be hard to sell without an existing IP propping it up.

 

[Remathilis]

Old School Dark Sun is a big ask and hard sell.

Setting that cut the PHB, add major setting rules, AND shift tones would be hard to sell without an existing IP propping it up.

Absolutely.

There is a version of Dark Sun that can be salvaged. It's going to look like the 4e version at minimum and undergo the same level of revision as 5e Ravenloft. The question is: is there enough of a market for this Nu Dark Sun amongst players who weren't fans of the OS DS, because you're going to lose them to the purity test.