Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5145624" data-attributes="member: 4937">One of the problems I tend to see with fantasy player concepts is that players tend to start with concepts that really represent goals more than concepts.  A system can handle a concept like 'ghost/spirit' only if it integrates with the starting concepts everyone else brings to the table.  Systems can provide this, but the natural starting point of D&D games is characters who are at the beginning of a Bildungsroman.  I really feel this is the only limitation D&D places on your concepts.  Pretty much everything mechanical can be worked out, provided you accept that you are at the start of your heroic career, not the middle or the end.  Some other systems are much better for characters who already have long life stories and have acquired great power.  Or you can start D&D characters at a sufficiently high level provided everyone comes to the table with such a concept.  I had a player in my current campaign who'd never really played before say, "Can I play a dinosaur rider ith lasers?"  I said, "Well, you can't really start that way because it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the party and that sort of thing quickly leads to, 'My concept is so awesome I ought to be the most awesome thing in the world', which ultimately isn't fun for the whole table.  However, you can play a character who has that as a goal, and here are some things you can do that will facilitate that goal..."  That ones easy from a mechanical perspective, and I've played with child PC's in pretty much every system I've ever played: D&D, Star Wars, Chill, etc.   It's a pretty classic trope, and sooner or later someone wants to go there.  The real difficulty is with player expectations.  The problem isn't so much playing as a child as it is playing as a child without the expectation that if the game lasts for a couple of years game time that you won't get lots of free benefits.   If you take a realistic approach, being a child sucks compared to being a human.  You lose more than you gain.  You are weaker, less experienced, less knowledgable, and generally make bad decisions.   In this case, advancing time isn't really a big deal.  The character is simply on the whole gaining back what he would have started with anyway.  But if the player insists on starting off as compotent as an adult, then the player also needs to understand that as his character ages he won't on the whole be gaining any more than he would normally gain by leveling up.  Once you've worked out player expectation, the rest is easy.HIGH NOBLE RANK [TRAIT]You are a member of one of the ruling families of your society.Prerequisite: Appropriate backgroundBenefit: You automatically receive all the benefits of the Wealthy trait.  You have a notable and inheritable title, such as baron or baronet, which gives you rank and influence in your society.  You have a +5 status bonus to intimidation and bluff checks against other members of your own society which recognize your rank and which are socially inferior to it.  In all other ways you have the benefits and difficulties of the noble rank advantage - only more so.  You are assumed to not be in the direct line of succession to a more powerful position.  You are further assumed to be something of an outcast within your family, and unlikely to receive significant aid beyond a small stipend from them.  If you are not to be an outcast or expect more significant aid, you must additionally take and pay for the Patron trait. Special: You may not take both noble rank and high noble rank.  If you take the High Noble Rank trait, you must select two additional disadvantages.  (A major enemy is often appropriate.)I should say that my PC's all start as 'advantaged' characters with a a free trait, and that they can take extra traits by selecting disadvantages of various sorts.  The fundamental rule here is, "You don't get something for nothing."  I've got no problem with a player that says, "Can I start as the King's son, with lots of money, and friends in high places?", because my answer is, "Yes".   But the problem is that I have to balance that concept against everything at the table, so the answer is usually, "Yes, just so long as you know that you'll be carrying alot of baggage to balance that out as well."  But conceivably, I could also say, "Ok, this game we are all starting out as highly advantaged characters, so select 4 starting traits rather than the usual 1."This is hard for any system, not just D&D.  The problem here is again, not mechanics, which are fairly easy.  The problem here is that like 'ghost' and alot of other concepts, this is a concept where the novelty wears off very quickly.  In the long run, it's not likely to be a very satisfying character to play for more than a one shot or mini-campaign.  After you've done the basic animal tropes, you quickly find that there isn't much left to the character.   Most players will tire of this very quickly.This is hard for any system, not just D&D.   The problems here just keep coming.  Its just about impossible to balance this in terms of screen time with more traditional PC's, even if you could balance it mechanically.  The player's 'turn' just takes more time than everyone elses.   Secondly, this puts a huge burden on the DM unless the player is willing to act almost in the role of a secondary DM in terms of preperation and bookkeeping, and the player has to be willing to do this without disrupting the pace of the game.   Besides which, its impossible for anyone to fully play two characters at the same time.  As a DM, I try to avoid situations where more than one NPC have speaking roles both because it makes characterization hard and it tends to cause me as the DM to monoplize the screen time.   This is the PC version of that.  However, all that being said, ideas or at least goals like, "Playing as the leader of an organization." are perfectly valid and the hurdles not insurmountable.</blockquote>

Verification