D&D 5E Access to Races in a Campaign

[jgsugden]

Generally, I do not have restrictions on a vageuly reasonable choice. Roleplaying involves a lot of improvisation and Rule #1 for improvisation is "Never Say No". Instead, say "Yes, and..." D&D is a storytelling game and it works best when the players and DM all get to participate in shaping the story by contributing the elements that most intrigue them.

This obviously has some limits, but I extend them as far as reasonableness will allow. If the race comes from reputable source material and the player has a backstory that fits in with the campaign (or is willing to work with my suggestion for one), I have no problem allowing the player to play the PC concept that they want to play - even if it seems to clash with my concept of the universe as a DM. Adapt and perform.

If they try to bring a home brew race that is clearly over powered, I would ask them to modify it back to reasonable levels, but in general I want the players to play something that sounds fun to them - so I'd allow homemade stuff as well.

If the race doesn't exist in my universe, then we'll talk about why that PC is the exception to the rule: Were they a wizard's experiment? A visitor from another plane? Perhaps they were inexplicably born to parents of another race - with no explanation (yet) for why a dragonborn was born from elven parents?

In the past, when PCs wanted to play unusual races or classes, we introduced them with:

* A PC of a unique race was turned to stone a long time ago. When returned to flesh, thousands of years had passed - and his race was extinct (and forgotten).
* A Warforged PC in the Forgotten Realms was the creation of a powerful Cleric of Gond.
* Dragonborn PC in a world generally without the race turned out to the the illegitimate child of a dragon that took a queue from Zues...
* A Kender in a world that generally only knew halflings - kender were just a particular clan of troublemaking halflings.
* A Dark Sun campaign featured a player that really wanted to play a paladin. His PC found a Holy Symbol in the Silt Sea and felt a connection to a higher power... and he spent years believing he was a clpaladin of "Odin" - raising a church with followers, when in fact he was serving in a plot by a secret plane-traveling Sorcerer King seeking to ascend to greater power by becoming a God in a world without Gods. The reveal came near the end of the campaign with him making contact with the real Odin and really becoming a paladin - and returning real faith to Athas.
* ... and the greatest example: We wrapped up a Gamma World game and the player didn't want to stop playing his mutant golden retriever PC with high tech guns, power armor, etc... We were switching to a D&D campaign. When his PC stepped through a portal and ended up in Oerth, we worked him into the game and enjoyed seeing a Mark V Blaster rip holes in everything. Technology versus magic became a storyline for that (short) campaign and he had to contend with the ramifications of introducing technology that could be duplicated with magic that was so destructive.... thousands of lives lost....

 

[Mercule]

As long as the end result is that you, the DM, got your way, sure. I just see a bit of a disconnect is all.

So, you're pretty much calling me a liar. Got it. We're done.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

You'd lose. The actual offer made was, "Make up characters and I'll build a new world around them." I used my very, very established home brew in the second example to reflect that not every custom setting is infinitely flexible.

I'll take your word for it.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

So, you're pretty much calling me a liar. Got it. We're done.

How is my thinking there is a disconnect between several of your points calling you a liar?

The way your described the situation was clear. The consensus was Eberron. A player expressed interest in playing a warforged. You don't like Eberron warforged and proceeded to alter the setting until the player turned away from the idea. You got your way. The player stopped being interested in the thing you don't like. That is the end result I was speaking to. And the disconnect it points to WRT the rest of your post.

 

[Lanefan]

That's a matter of preference. I prefer a campaign pace at which characters can go from starting level dealing with minor issues up to and through major events that have potential for lasting impact on the setting at large in about 6-9 months.

Which by extension means your characters are levelling up every 3 sessions or so. As a player I'd still be figuring out what I could do at one level and along would come the next.

I hear of people playing the same campaign for numerous years - I just can't imagine what that is like, because it really can't be what it seems like it would from my current point of view.

Well, it happens if all involved want it to; and you're willign to accept some player turnover and probably lots of character turnover as it goes along.

I'm not adversarial at all - never have been. Even when I was 12 and reading the DMG for the first time, I identified a few things as bad advice and chose to ignore them; those being the various ways in which the book encouraged adversarial practices.

Where I've always seen it as adversarial at least to this extent: the DM sets the challenges in the game world and it's up to the players via their characters to overcome said challenges.

Yeah, it's just a difference of approach. You do all that stuff in advance and it's done whether you actually need it or not in the course of play, and I do that stuff the instance that it is actually needed at not a moment sooner (and someone jots it down for consistency in case it needs referenced later).

Having it done beforehand allows for much greater consistency within the setting...a.k.a. much less risk that I'm going to contradict myself on something important.

Yes, full sandbox and players driving - at most I toss a few ideas into the mix by way of rumors or events the characters hear about or witness. Even when I do pre-plan for a campaign it is a bare-bones outline that only consists of events outside the party's control because I don't feel like wasting any of my own effort by spending time on something that ends up not actually coming up.

Were I to run a full sandbox it'd be even more pre-work for me, as before it started I'd want a very good idea of what was where and why; and what the party would likely find if they went in a given direction from a given place.

Why would I? I can see their list whenever I want to - making a copy of it to track myself would just waste time and paper.

Ah... I see. At my table if the characters aren't identifying an item as soon as they find it, they write it down as something along the lines of "unidentified magic oil" with a reference number so that when they do identify it later I can open the book and tell them what they need to know without me having to keep another set of notes.

We use item numbers too, even after things are IDed, so we know what's what later on. Also, sometimes they merely assume they know what something does...

That's another group difference. We don't divide loot, and I tell the players the value of items their characters find, so the player tracking the party's wealth can handle questions like "can we afford to buy spare armor before we head into those caves that are probably full of black pudding?" without my assistance.

Ah. We divide it equally between adventures, in part because it's pretty much assumed that not every character in one adventure is going to be around for the next...we tend to cycle them in and out. Only in unusual cases where an item is so useful the party can't bear to let it go but no single character can afford it is anything ever kept as a party item; and even then it's usually only until someone can afford to buy it later. Also, I have training on level-up in my game and characters need to know if they can afford it. And revival from death is also somewhat costly. (side note: revival in 5e as written is way too cheap)

Another point where I avoid the adversarial approach - I don't consider the player forgetting a detail of what happened last week fair cause to treat their character as having forgotten what likely just happened in their life, so I am proactive about reminding players of anything they seem to have forgotten that their character probably wouldn't have.

If it's something the character would for sure remember I remind them; if it's something the character might remember they get an intelligence check. But if they gather a bunch of information and don't make notes it's quite realistic to think the characters won't necessarily remember it all.

Lan-"the main trick to running a long campaign is to decide going in that it's going to be a long campaign"-efan

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Well, it happens if all involved want it to; and you're willign to accept some player turnover and probably lots of character turnover as it goes along.

When it comes to character turn over, I actually kind of feel like I've made mistakes as a DM if a player loses interest in their character before that character's tale comes to a close.

Where I've always seen it as adversarial at least to this extent: the DM sets the challenges in the game world and it's up to the players via their characters to overcome said challenges.

I only consider it adversarial if the DM is setting challenges with the intent that the players have strong chance of failing, which is a different approach from mine in which I set challenges with the intent for the players to be able to have fun while winning (which is a subtle distinction considering that part of that fun is, at least from time to time, seeing that bad choices and bad luck combined would make you fail).

Having it done beforehand allows for much greater consistency within the setting...a.k.a. much less risk that I'm going to contradict myself on something important.

That's a common misconception. Whether it is written out beforehand, or written down afterward, consistency is identical so long as it is written down and referenced when needed.

Were I to run a full sandbox it'd be even more pre-work for me, as before it started I'd want a very good idea of what was where and why; and what the party would likely find if they went in a given direction from a given place.

One can learn to reach the same answer on the spot that could be plotted out in advance - just like a pre-planning DM can change a detail during play because something "cooler" came to mind in the moment rather than binding themself to their plan. I find that I don't have any difference in answer to questions like "what is north of this town?" whether I spend a week planning out things or I have only just invented this town on the spot.

Ah. We divide it equally between adventures, in part because it's pretty much assumed that not every character in one adventure is going to be around for the next...we tend to cycle them in and out.

I'm sure if my group did that, we'd start handling the treasure inventory differently than we do.

Only in unusual cases where an item is so useful the party can't bear to let it go but no single character can afford it is anything ever kept as a party item; and even then it's usually only until someone can afford to buy it later.

My group actually uses a very loose system... specifically that each character sheet only has the character's specific equipment that no one else is allowed to use, and all other items (potions, for example) are recorded on the party inventory sheet, and any item that is on the party inventory sheet is assumed to be passed around and shared to the point that any given item is assumed to be currently carried by whichever character ends up needing to use it first.

Also, I have training on level-up in my game and characters need to know if they can afford it.

I've always been conflicted about training rules. When it comes to D&D, I don't use them because they always seem to feel like they are getting in the way, whether it is by forcing the players to choose between pursuing some seemingly time-sensitive goal or to actually get the level they've already earned, or it is by forcing me to include sufficient wealth that the players actually have the choice whether to pay for training in the first place.

But in other games, Exalted for example, I not only use the training times but actively use them as a means to pace the story so that it doesn't all happen within the span of a single week.

And revival from death is also somewhat costly. (side note: revival in 5e as written is way too cheap)

As strange as it may seem, my group sees the costs in 5th edition as being pretty steep (steep enough to actually cause consideration, but not so steep as to leave them preferring to simply stay dead no matter the circumstance).

If it's something the character would for sure remember I remind them; if it's something the character might remember they get an intelligence check. But if they gather a bunch of information and don't make notes it's quite realistic to think the characters won't necessarily remember it all.

Realism is very, very low on the list of qualities I want my game-play to have, especially when the options are potentially-unrealistic-and-enjoyable or realism-at-the-cost-of-enjoying-the-game, which players not having the information they need to make good choices for their characters tends to fall into, especially when the character actually did the work to get that info and it has just slipped the player's mind.

 

[Lanefan]

When it comes to character turn over, I actually kind of feel like I've made mistakes as a DM if a player loses interest in their character before that character's tale comes to a close.

You're being way too hard on yourself in that case. I turn over characters all the time. Sometimes a character concept just doesn't work out in play the way it did in my mind. Sometimes it has a better in-character reason to go off elsewhere than to stay and do whatever the party's doing (and yes, I've roleplayed myself right out of games that way in the past). Most often the character dies - they tend to have short life expectancies if I'm at their helm, particularly (and here the DM *can* make a difference) if I find things are getting boring.

I only consider it adversarial if the DM is setting challenges with the intent that the players have strong chance of failing, which is a different approach from mine in which I set challenges with the intent for the players to be able to have fun while winning (which is a subtle distinction considering that part of that fun is, at least from time to time, seeing that bad choices and bad luck combined would make you fail).

I set all kinds. Some are stupidly easy. Some are hard enough that the best and wisest solution is to simply not attempt them. Most are in the middle somewhere.

That's a common misconception. Whether it is written out beforehand, or written down afterward, consistency is identical so long as it is written down and referenced when needed.

One can learn to reach the same answer on the spot that could be plotted out in advance - just like a pre-planning DM can change a detail during play because something "cooler" came to mind in the moment rather than binding themself to their plan. I find that I don't have any difference in answer to questions like "what is north of this town?" whether I spend a week planning out things or I have only just invented this town on the spot.

I know myself well enough to realize I'm better off having at least the basics in place beforehand. North of the town might be a range of hills that have been on the map since day 1. However, once the party get into said hills I might throw a village in there that wasn't there before if it makes sense; and tweak my map accordingly.

I'm sure if my group did that, we'd start handling the treasure inventory differently than we do.
My group actually uses a very loose system... specifically that each character sheet only has the character's specific equipment that no one else is allowed to use, and all other items (potions, for example) are recorded on the party inventory sheet, and any item that is on the party inventory sheet is assumed to be passed around and shared to the point that any given item is assumed to be currently carried by whichever character ends up needing to use it first.

See below re: realism.

Realism is very, very low on the list of qualities I want my game-play to have, especially when the options are potentially-unrealistic-and-enjoyable or realism-at-the-cost-of-enjoying-the-game, which players not having the information they need to make good choices for their characters tends to fall into, especially when the character actually did the work to get that info and it has just slipped the player's mind.

I want enough realism to make it feel more...well, realistic. Having the person who needs an item the most always just happen to be the one carrying it isn't realistic at all; and in fact probably makes your party a bit stronger than they'd otherwise be. With my lot, if they need an item and it's not clear who has it (either by ownership or by notes on the treasury) I or a player will simply roll to see who's carrying it; if the result makes no sense e.g. the spindly Gnome wizard carrying a 6' greatsword, we roll again. Also, what happens if two people need a given item at once e.g. 2 or more people are dying in mid-combat and there's only one healing potion; and the healer is busy holding off the hordes?

Lan-"topic? what topic?"-efan

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

You're being way too hard on yourself in that case. I turn over characters all the time. Sometimes a character concept just doesn't work out in play the way it did in my mind. Sometimes it has a better in-character reason to go off elsewhere than to stay and do whatever the party's doing (and yes, I've roleplayed myself right out of games that way in the past). Most often the character dies - they tend to have short life expectancies if I'm at their helm, particularly (and here the DM *can* make a difference) if I find things are getting boring.

See, if the character dies or is role-played as leaving the group, I consider that being the end of that character's tale. Characters that don't work in play they way they seemed like they might in the player's head, I help the player see how the character is going to play before they commit to it. So the only times I see character turnover outside of when their tale is over is when the reason for the turnover is that I've not made the campaign enjoyable for the player with their current character - which is why I see it as mistakes being made on my part, and I don't think it is being too hard on myself.

I set all kinds. Some are stupidly easy. Some are hard enough that the best and wisest solution is to simply not attempt them. Most are in the middle somewhere.

I too set that same range of encounters - only the intent is different because I am basically always rooting for the players to succeed and providing them with the tools they need to be able to do so (even when "success" is "realize you shouldn't mess with that"), rather than having an adversarial attitude.

I want enough realism to make it feel more...well, realistic. Having the person who needs an item the most always just happen to be the one carrying it isn't realistic at all; and in fact probably makes your party a bit stronger than they'd otherwise be.

I don't view "Jimmy has the potion and can use it" as being significantly more powerful than "Jimmy needs to get the potion from Ted so he can use it."

Also, what happens if two people need a given item at once e.g. 2 or more people are dying in mid-combat and there's only one healing potion; and the healer is busy holding off the hordes?

Whichever of the two someone comes to the aid of first, or recovers to 1 hp on their own, first either has the potion on them or the character coming to their aid had it. Though realistically the scenario you describe is exceedingly rare in my campaigns because I don't roll damage for monsters (other than the additional dice on a critical hit) so there is almost no case where two characters would be at 0 hp without having had the opportunity for one of them to use the singular healing item prior to that point.

In fact, there has not yet been a time that the location of an item was in dispute with our chosen inventory system.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't view "Jimmy has the potion and can use it" as being significantly more powerful than "Jimmy needs to get the potion from Ted so he can use it."

Ah, but it is - if Ted's busy getting his head stove in by one opponent and Joanne is holding off the other three, Jimmy's on his own and if left long enough he might die; either way he's probably out of the combat where if he had the potion he'd be back in it for sure. Little things like this can - and eventually will - make a big difference.

Whichever of the two someone comes to the aid of first, or recovers to 1 hp on their own, first either has the potion on them or the character coming to their aid had it. Though realistically the scenario you describe is exceedingly rare in my campaigns because I don't roll damage for monsters (other than the additional dice on a critical hit) so there is almost no case where two characters would be at 0 hp without having had the opportunity for one of them to use the singular healing item prior to that point.

In fact, there has not yet been a time that the location of an item was in dispute with our chosen inventory system.

Ah - if the first person who needs the item always has it I can see why this wouldn't arise in your game; though it occurs to me you might be missing out on some tense dramatic moments by doing it this way.

You don't roll damage? Average, then? As a player I can tell you this would pretty quickly change the way I play; after the bugbear hits me once for 7 I know every hit it gives out will be 7 and I can use that to plan exactly how many hits I can take before I have to bail (ignoring crits). But with random damage I don't know if 7 is the best it can do or just a glancing blow and the next one might be for 18; I can't plan around it, and that's a good thing.

Lanefan

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

...it occurs to me you might be missing out on some tense dramatic moments by doing it this way.

I find those moments are actually false drama or false tension, just like how having to roll a die in order to do something might appear to add tension to a situation even when it really doesn't (i.e. it is the game element which the player is feeling tension over, not the narrative which is actually tense).

You don't roll damage? Average, then?

Yes, average, though the dice added from a critical hit are rolled.

As a player I can tell you this would pretty quickly change the way I play; after the bugbear hits me once for 7 I know every hit it gives out will be 7 and I can use that to plan exactly how many hits I can take before I have to bail (ignoring crits). But with random damage I don't know if 7 is the best it can do or just a glancing blow and the next one might be for 18; I can't plan around it, and that's a good thing.

I find it very important in enabling a player to actually understand how much risk a course of action involves for there to be a more consistent and predictable quality to combat. Having no idea whether or not your character can actually match their foe is not, in my opinion, helpful beyond the very first round of engagement.

For example, in last night's session the party faced off against a chasme for the first time and were unsure how difficult it would be to face it head on and come out victorious so they could collect the treasures it was lazily sifting through when they came upon it. In the first round it scored a critical hit, and because I don't roll all of the dice there was zero chance that the players underestimate the danger of the creature because of a low roll (nothing is more misleading than a critical hit for minimum damage) and also zero chance of a single pair of lucky rolls (a crit for high damage) killing off a character with no opportunity to learn or interact.

And overall, I find that the players not knowing when a creature might score a critical hit nor being sure if the attack(s) they've seen are the only ones the creature can perform covers the "I can't plan around it" aspect - so damage doesn't actually need to be unpredictable (I'd even remove critical hits from my games if my players didn't out-vote me, since they are far more bad for the PCs than good, despite how enjoyable it is for a player to score a critical hit).