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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 674801" data-attributes="member: 99">Henry,I may be mistaken, but I don't think that Drawmack took umbrage because he felt misinterpreted as a "drop out" when in fact he has his GED and is going on to college.  I think he was trying to point out that Education (especially what we think of as "formal education") and Intelligence are two different things.I graduated high school without any problems and got into college without any problems.  What WAS a problem was that I lacked two things:  Focus and Good Study Habits.  If anything, my problem was that I was too smart for the challenges I faced in high school.  I got by on my smarts alone and never got in the habit of studying hard.  I was lazy and disorganized and I rapidly quit college in order not to waste any more of my parents hard earned money.But I never lost a desire to learn.  It's just that I want to learn what I want to know, not what other people want me to learn in order to satisfy getting a particular degree.  I have many friends who are college graduates (virtually all of them are actually) and I read as much or more than they do.  My reading is not confined to what most people would call leisure reading and I've been known to read astronomy textbooks just because I wanted to know more about the subject.  I know far more about physics than most of my friends even though most of them took some college level physics courses.So I guess I am trying to say that I think there is a distinct difference between being educated and being intelligent while also understanding that many educated people are intelligent and many uneducated people are also unintelligent.Just so that my post here is not a total sidetrack, I also have a few opinions on the subject at hand:I try to remember that while the DM is undoubtedly the most important component to the game, he is still just a person who is playing in order to derive enjoyment.  His enjoyment is no more or less important than that of the players.I think the DM should be allowed to present a campaign idea that has certain parameters (no evil alignments, no non-humans, no 3rd party materials, etc.) and the players have the right to accept or reject those boundaries.  Once those parameters are agreed upon, I think that the players should, for the most part, be allowed to create the kind of characters they want so long as they keep the enjoyment of the group in mind as well as their own.  I would never tell a player that he had to play a certain class or race just because I felt his character concepts had become stale.As to the matter of Paladins in particular, I don't think there is a "right" way to play them.  I do think there are lots of ways to play them that are a pain in the butt to the rest of the group ("We've got to take these prisoners ALL the way back to town so they can be judged." or "We can't SNEAK up on the enemy encampment!  That would be dishonorable!") and I think that is inconsiderate of the group.  If a player does stuff like that all the time then I'd call them on the fact that they were making the game less enjoyable for everybody else.I let players play however they want but since I give out XP for roleplaying then the smart player playing a dumb character who comes off as brilliant all the time isn't going to garner much of that XP.  When it comes to skills, I let a good argument presented by the player influence the skill roll (usually a +2 circumstance bonus) but basically if the player hasn't spent the points, the character doesn't have the skill.</blockquote>

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