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Message: <blockquote data-quote="squibbles" data-source="post: 8148475" data-attributes="member: 6937590">Apologies if I'm misrepresenting your viewpoints guys, but I'm generally confused which direction the criticism of custom lineages is coming from. 6ENow!, you seem to be stating that PCs can be expressed through role-playing, lineage options are unnecessary, and therefore lineage options are bad. Remathilis, you seem to be stating that PCs need to be expressed through mechanics, that lineage options undermine this (or that this specific set of lineage options do), and therefore lineage options are bad. Did you guys reach the same conclusion--lineage options are bad--but start from opposite premises? Not to be antagonistic, its just that this topic very easily turns muddled with several very different points of view ending up conflated by virtue of arguing for the same position.So, I'm arguing that having custom lineages be the default would work well. But I do not think they are well-balanced; they are power creep. Custom lineage is the same as a variant human--which was already considered very strong--except with an option to have darkvision, and the potential to sart with an 18 primary ability score using the standard array.But... there's a big upside to defaulting to the power-creepiest option; it makes it harder for players to create an uber character using non-standard options, i.e. as [USER=45197]@pming[/USER] noted "when everybody is a Super no one will be."Exactly, and that's a feature, not a bug. We just had a very long thread about people playing "wierd races" and that being kindof disconcerting (a point of view which I am not endorsing, only recognizing). I think that if you give players the freedom to play anything--and be mechanically above average doing it--they'll play bland generic humans and elves because, to most players, their PCs race doesn't really matter; they showed up to roll dice and make monty python jokes. If they have a really cool idea for, as I said in the OP, a purple eight-eyed anthropomorphic psychic badger, awesome!, they can play it--there's no explicit barrier to creativity.But they are less likely to play Tabaxi, Hobgoblins, and Kenku by happenstance of Ability score bonuses.Thus, breaches of campaign setting verisimilitude are more likely to be deliberate choices, rather than mechanical accidents.I'm in general agreement with your larger points in the thread but, just to clarify what seems like a misunderstanding between you and some of the other posters. Having limitations is good for creativity. Yes, as you mentioned, there is lovely poetry written in free verse. But poetry, as a medium, benefits from having lots of rules. Forcing someone to write a 5/7/5 haiku instead of any old sentence with roughly 17 syllables is going to help them produce a more beautiful work.My suggestion to give players fewer default PC creation limitations will make them less creative on average.I think that's a good thing.Sounds good to me. Though I think there's a place for rules that distinguish PCs with major physical differences, like having wings, or 6 arms, or being unusually large or small--to maintain verisimilitude.</blockquote>

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