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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nonei" data-source="post: 5146244" data-attributes="member: 88176">Celebrim and Chrono22, don't let me stop your fascinating conversation - but I did just want to clarify that the thread is mainly about characters that might be challenging to create with D&D rules from a mechanical standpoint.  The roleplaying/group dynamic difficulties are a separate issue that any group would have to work out for themselves. My 'vision' is basically a system that instead of flipping through books, the DM and the players can sit down and say, ok, what do we want to do this campaign? And they can use the FULL RANGE of their imaginations without flipping through pages and books of classes and races and trying to find something that "matches" or that they can squish their concept into, or worry about taking 3 levels of x and 2 levels of y and 10 levels of z, but oh-you better take z first because of the extra skill points at first level and you better be a human so you don't get that multiclass penaltiy and blah blah blah.  Ok, yes, some people like that (bully for them <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ).   Personally IME people go about character creation the wrong way.  They look at their limited options, and pick which one they want to try.  This is great for beginners, but after a few years, you start thinking... fighter? meh.  Monk? meh.  Wizard? meh. (yes I know there's a bazillion books with 10 bazillion class options, but I still get that feeling and it seems like the Really Cool Classes are cool in fluff only and I disagree with the mechanics) So, let me go back to our DM and players and give you an example of how I see this playing out.  Lets say they decide that they would like to play villagers that were slaughtered and are out to find out what happened.  So, they are ghosts.  The DM then talks with the players about their expectations of abilities, and decides how powerful they need to be to start, and all the campaign/world stuff that's needed at this point.  If you were going RAW, you'd have to apply the ghost template, which has a +5 LA, and various static things that it causes.  It has more personalization than many things but it is still a very set number of choices, adn LA +5 is pretty ridiculous. Assuming that they follow the guidelines of the ghost template, the players will have the abilities and items that they were carrying in life.  They might decide that since they are new ghosts, they don't yet have full command of their powers (and maybe only know how to manifest yet) and then as they go up in experience, the DM can allow them to gain more ghostie ability - and be able to know with pretty good confidence what ECL they are.  It would also make it easier to ensure that the players are balanced with each other. Lets say one player decides "Ok, I want to be the former Joe the Blacksmith that takes pride in his barfight abilities, he grew up on the streets.  I'd like to start with some bare-hand fighting abilities and skills related to blacksmithing.  I think I'll have a pretty good strength and dex, and a decent wisdom and con."  He can just put those abilities down, using the guidelines to establish exact numbers. Maybe in a different game, a player pictures himself as a Paladin, and holy warrior, but doesn't like the spellcasting abilities of a paladin.  Or it's a low-magic game and the DM said, no magic users this time unless you want to have to hide it all the time.  The DM - who perhaps normally would be reluctant to adjust class abilities - would be able to accept or reject alternatives relatively confidently because they have guidelines to go by. So basically: I am trying to design a system of building characters that (as much as possible) anyone can build any character they can dream of, and the mechanics are a second thought - easily adjusted to fit the character.  Because, IME, the mechanics and the numbers come before the mental picture way too often. This thread is to know what dreams are out there, so that I can build my system with them in mind and make sure it works - simply and quickly - for as many as possible.</blockquote>

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