DMs, in your campaign: free ability swaps, or pay for it?

[Arnwyn]

3. Neither. I think my response would likely be: "Just stick with the PHB, d00d. It's not that hard."

(Of course, I *am* open to new ideas, and would probably consider either 1) or 2), depending on my mood and the new abilities wanted. But the player would certainly have to put forward a really good argument for me to even consider a deviation from standard - which, IMO, isn't necessary at all.)

In any case, it's never come up.

 

[Tonguez]

I have declared all first level class abilities and divine orisons (where did that word come from?) to be feats. So a player can pay a feat to get the ability they want.

Otherwise will consider swap outs on a case by case basis

 

[Ranes]

Currently, I don't allow deviation from the core rules, because I'm interested in (and still consider myself to be) learning the default game. However, I don't see anything inherently wrong with either of the approaches to flexibility you mention.

 

[BVB]

Good feedback so far. Thanks.

The original examples I posted here actually were taken from Dragon magazine articles. Remember a year or so back when they ran sort of a series focusing on the races? I tore out the gnome pages and kept them in a personal notebook. (Can't remember which issue it was.) I really liked the idea of a gnome whose magical abilities developed slightly askew of his cultural heritage, and the magazine article suggested some sort of magically adept feat that would allow him to pick three different cantrips instead of the standard three available to all gnomes. Seemed sort of fair, I supposed -- none of the other gnome PCs would be allowed that sort of flexibility, so it made sense that I would have to pay for it with a feat choice.

On the other hand... Well, what difference did it *really* make?

I could probably cite other examples over the months, but let's just skip ahead and look at the latest Dragon's approach to non-Lawful-Good paladin variant core classes and specialist fighters. Same sort of decisions being made there -- swap X for Y, as long as X and Y abilities are fairly equal and are applied at the same level as the original so the system doesn't lose its balance.

I have to wonder why the corporate game designers and editors at WotC don't pick one character design policy or the other and stick with it.

 

[TiQuinn]

The thing that I'm the most worried about with substitution is that often players want to sustitute out an ability that they are fairly confident they won't use anyways. I remember with the old Player's Option books, the mage was ditching schools such as Necromancy and Enchantment/Charm in order to get points for something else. His reasoning was that he thought they were weak schools, and didn't want them, but would gladly take the 10 points he was giving up in order to get his hitdice boosted to d6. The point is, it's not always obvious what a good tradeoff is.

 

[Silver Griffon]

Check out the customized fighter variants in Dragon 310. Very good examples of the right way to modify a class IMHO.