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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6177305" data-attributes="member: 17106">I change things for balance reasons all the time. I just don't think about absolute equality of all options as a goal, or the absence of that is a failure.Your thinking is a bit too conventional here. Who says a barbarian (or other martial character) doesn't spend any resources on these areas? One of the themes of my houserule environment is trying to reward that kind of choice mechanically. I see barbarians with decent mental ability scores (not encouraged by the core rules) and some noncombat skills (which is encouraged by the core rules) and treat them accordingly.Sure. Again, there's a place for everyone. In my world, there are more people that respect combat than those that respect other things, because I'm playing in a pseudo-medieval fantasy world. In modern settings that changes. In certain subsets of the fantasy world, that changes.Okay, guess we're on the same page now. If you want to call a DM who uses a lot of low-AC creatures "biased" in favor of Power Attack, you can. I just think that's a poor choice of words.Each individual roll is unlikely to be all that impactful (then again, the same could be said of each individual attack roll). However, monster identification is rather important in my games, and I allow players to use various skills to identify magic items. I find that Arcana is thus one of the most useful, followed by Nature, Planes, and Religion, and then the others. However, I'm noted for making players pull out the whole rulebook, and I call for almost every skill in some meaningful context pretty regularly.Because you enjoy playing halflings? If I were writing a class for a light warrior it would be optimized to be the best light warrior it could. My players do tend to favor the Dex-ier warriors over the brute strength ones. I see a lot more rangers than barbarians, so clearly you're misreading exactly what I encourage. In any case, my players come to me with the concept, and the mechanics are finalized later. If someone wants to play a halfling fighter, it's incumbent on him to come up with a way to make it work. They often do come in with suboptimal concepts, and we make them work.I also think you've misattributed why players stick with warriors. It's not because of how I DM, it's more because they don't like tracking spells and they prefer being tough. I doubt they'd suddenly all play bards given a different game.For ill, I imagine. They're very logical, and they pick apart inconsistencies in design very easily. My heavy customization environment is as much a product of them constantly asking for things as me pushing that philosophy; I've adapted to them over the years. I don't know why I would ever attempt to run such a game.For example, one player insists on playing weird monstrous characters, and came up with a tauric halfling/blink dog rogue. By the RAW, this is a huge no-no as the blink dog has no LA and has abilities that a PC could run wild with it. Moreover, he wants the ability to act after jumping (like a blink dog) but also wants the ability to carry equipment (unlike a blink dog). Whoa there, tiger. And yet, I allowed it. I set a weight limit, and made the jumping and blinking swift actions, and instituted the PF version of blink (that doesn't make opponents lose their Dex), but fundamentally, I allowed something that the rules would never have allowed.And it was interesting and worked fine. If I were playing RAW, I would say no, the player would be pissed off, and the game would be more static and less interesting. Even if it were more balanced from the start, it would hardly be worth it.I'm quite confident that if I had never played D&D, and looked at the class options, I would assess the bard as being completely inept. If anything, my experience biases me in favor of bards, as I've seen how the D&D rules has made the concept somehow work, and I've seen what individual DMs and players can do to work with unconventional ideas.Personally, I think that a character that is not ideally suited to adventuring but somehow ends up doing it can be quite interesting.</blockquote>

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