Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="N0Man" data-source="post: 4886582" data-attributes="member: 64066">People responding to an argument with "whatever" has always been a pet peeve of mine.  I find it extremely rude...However, what I responded to was clearly the extremely ridiculous hyperbole presented. A DM making godlike characters because they don't "have to follow PC rules" is being ridiculous and probably a sadistic jerk.  You can't realistically expect to make rules to prevent the DM from being a jerk who abuses rules.  If there were some rule to prevent this, don't you think such a DM would be a jerk and abuse those rule too?  This falls under, the DM is the final rulemaker, and a DM who makes bad rules will find himself without players.Furthermore, there have always been differences between PCs and NPCs.  How often do adventurers start at 0th level?  Not very often, and on the rare occasion that it does, it *usually* sucks.  Have you forgotten about classes that were designed to be NPC classes?  There were feats that were monster only.  There were spells that were written as specially researched by an NPC (sure a player could do it too, but only with DM permission; he didn't have freedom to do it all on his own).  What 4E did was make NPC creation more streamlined and allows more freedom, without burdening the process with details that would never really matter, especially given that the NPC might be designed for only 1 encounter.If NPCs with powers that players don't get bugs you that much, there's a solution for this.  Don't use those NPCs types.  Build your NPCs using the class templates.  If you are really a stickler, you can even stat out your NPCs exactly like PCs.  Considering that NPCs have no reason for saving action points and daily powers for a 2nd encounter, this would be vastly unfair to players, but it can be done.  You're also really limiting yourself on the types of encounters you can have (both in the tricks an NPC can have, as well as the variety of NPC types (i.e. minions, normals, elites, solos), but perhaps those things bothered you too.  Sure it's more trouble for me and it requires me giving up too many tools and tricks that I'm unwilling to sacrifice, but if the default approach just doesn't suit your approach, so you shouldn't mind the extra work.But even if they were still restricted, a 2nd player can come along to try to game the marks if you allow someone else an exception for a valid reason.  Either way, you having one player play by the letter of the rules while another is playing by a DM decision.  In the end, there's very little difference.Besides, even if you let the powergamer have it, is it the end of the world?  You don't have to look at this as abuse, but rather an opportunity to try to hook your powergamer into a story and maybe draw him into some more roleplay.THe Eberron books clearly indicate that Aberrant dragonmarks (either those that are "Aberrant" due to not being from the from the accepted houses, or those among the "wrong" races) are things that do have potential story repercussions.  There may be attempts to draw them into a house, but there may be the chance someone would respond violently or even hunt them down.  Is that not enough?That's if you make the hoserule that they are banned.  If you make the houserule that they require DM approval, then where is the problem?There isn't even a mention of DM approval now, but my player still asked me for permission.  I was tempted toward a knee-jerk reaction of rejecting his request, but instead I just explained to him the context and repercussions and let him decide.  It's not breaking anything, and it opens up new story possibilities.</blockquote>

Verification