D&D General D&D Evolutions You Like and Dislike [+]

[Maxperson]

It's VERY LITERALLY "I would like to play a tortle, because I think tortles are cool."

That right there is a huge red flag.

 

[Maxperson]

Hold on just a minute there, pardner...you're overstating my position just a bit.

I have no antipathy for teamwork where participating in said teamwork is a) my proactive choice and b) has a sound rationale behind it. If being part of the team is the best/safest choice for my character's perspective, then I'll happily stick with the team because that's what the character would do.

What I greatly prefer to avoid is teamwork where I'm forced to participate, even worse if it's teamwork just for the sake of teamwork without any further supporting rationale. In game, these instances often run afoul of my "do what the character would do" mantra, where a character's obvious best move in the fiction is to act alone but (and this I do dislike) meta considerations dictate keeping the party together.

It seems my read of your position was spot on!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I never used ‘it’s not in the PHB’ as my argument, so not sure what you think you nixed


the objection that they are not in the PHB? So we are on the same page here, it is not relevant whether they are in the PHB or not.

To take this further, would you then expect a DM to accept all WotC material and do you draw a line at third party material, or should they accept that too, after all your selling point was ‘embrace the limitless creativity’?

Not really sure why my standard is relevant, to be perfectly honest.

 

[mamba]

Not really sure why my standard is relevant, to be perfectly honest.

you are the one making the argument that a DM has to have a good reason to exclude something and that one person’s ‘it is OP’ is just another person’s ‘it is good’. So either your standard is relevant or why might just all go on our merry way and not care about the case you are trying to make

Also, it feels like you are drawing a line where everything WotC is in and anything 3pp is at best something that needs to be approved first, which is pretty arbitrary and not consistent with your ‘limitless imagination’ argument.

 

[Maxperson]

The two bolded things are IME often said about the same thing, whatever that thing might be: DMs tend to say the first while players tend to say the second.

Even more than that, "Stupidly OP" and "A pretty good spell" are the exact same thing. One DM's OP is another DMs pretty good spell, which is the third DMs it's an okay spell.

 

[Maxperson]

As an example: when there's only seven PC-playable species (as was the case in 1979 1e) banning one of them is a pretty big deal and thus not done lightly. But when there's about 50 PC-playables* as is the case today, banning one or two or even five of them almost falls into the "who cares?" category.

* - or whatever the number is these days, it's a long time since I counted 'em.

It's like 183(includes all the variants) for 5e, but god forbid one of them isn't included in a setting.

 

[TwoSix]

and so that's the constructive purpose of curation, taking, or excluding, with intention, pieces to create a setting that evokes a coherent mood, tone, aesthetic, to enhance the play experience by the intentionality of what we create.

I'm all for curation. I'm simply opposed to curation that's happening strictly within the DM's purview and not in a discussion with the players.

If you're the GM and you don't like dragonborn, you don't have to include them at all unless one of your players wants to be one. I've been playing games with dragonborn as an option for 20 years, and I've only ever had one dragonborn PC, and I've never had a named NPC dragonborn.

All you have to do as a GM for D&D is make a "D&D-like setting", in which the possibility for expansion exists.

To keep this thread on topic, one of the D&D evolutions I like is the continual expansion of ancestry options that allow players to explore new concepts. Aasimar, tieflings, drow, orcs, genasi, shadar-kai have all migrated into part of the D&D "core" for the majority of the player base, and I'm all for it.

 

[Maxperson]

Absolutely not, unless you think something being playable makes it interchangeable.

Or do you think grognards would tolerate elves getting banned?

I've played in a no elf setting. It didn't bother me at all, because there are other fun playable races. My ability to have fun isn't limited to elf only.

 

[TwoSix]

It's like 183 for 5e, but god forbid one of them isn't included in a setting.

The point I want to make is that there is a gap between "inclusion" and "exclusion". Like, triton is an ancestry in Mordenkainen's. I have never once used or seen that race in any game I run. I have no idea where they would crop up in any game I'm running. I don't have them "included" in my setting.

But they also aren't "excluded". If a player wanted to try one, I would make something up. It's not difficult. I run settings where the default assumptions include room for things I haven't thought of yet. That's the key.

 

[Maxperson]

What's wrong with them? They're a core race, low power,

In my game dragonborn are not low power. They are about a CR 3 or 4 and not at all appropriate for PC play.