GM dislikes certain classes...

[Painfully]

Well, I could see how some DMs might not want a dwarven wizard, or a halfling paladin. As long as things like that are worked out in the beginning of the campaign, the DM has a responsibility to be fair to each of the players and their characters.

IMC, I prefer to avoid half-races. [the world is not a rampant orgy of cross breeding humanoids!] Sorcerers and wizards are famous from the very beginning of their careers, and clerics that cast spells, a wonderous gift from the gods. For a long time I could never picture dwarven wizards or halfling paladins as part of my world.

I actually liked my dwarven wizard when I made one to play as an exercise in someone else's campaign once. It made me develop a good background story that I liked enough to have been willing to allow it in my own campaign.

Maybe your DM needs the same kind of exercise?

Although I might have some race/class restrictions, I always tell my players that I will allow anything if they come up with a good, and "reasonable" background story that will fit in my campaign world. The complex part being that "reasonable" is something that needs to be figured out in the DMs mind.

To me, my dwarven wizard's background story became very reasonble to me. So, it opened up the door IMC for anybody who wanted to try a dwarven wizard character. I'm still working on the halfling paladins.

 

[Tzarevitch]

Personally, I dislike the barbarian and I have never been fond of monks outside of an Oriental Adventures setting. First of all, the name "Barbarian" is derogatory (the class should properly be called "berserker") and I think the 1st edition holdover of all of them being illiterate savages is stupid. The problem is that the work has social connotations, and all of them are very negative. Go up to someone on the street and call him a "barbarian" and see what happens. Call someone that in many eastern countries and you'd better be prepared to run.

I also think the class has no reason to exist as a separate class. I think that Rage should've been a feat (rage 1/day per feat devoted to it) not a class ability. That alllows you to modify a fighter into a berserker by taking the feat and still leaves you with a better berserker than the barbarian.

As for monks, I think that is another with a name problem that is a holdover from 1e. I like the class but the name irritates me. They they are martial artists specialists, not merely "monks". Yes some monks are kung fu, shaolin-style martial artists but most of them aren't, not even in the eastern religious traditions. The name also sees use in general english as a cloistered religious personality and this leads to a lot of confusion. ("Is he a member of the Monk class or is he an actual monk?") I refer to them as Physical Adepts a la Shadowrun because that is closer to what they are. The basically channel magic through their bodies to give themselves special abilities. I find renaming them and viewing them this way tends to make them easier to explain in most settings.

That being said, I never disallow players from playing those classes. I relize full well that the issues I have with these classes are mine alone so I never block players from using them or plot against those who do unless the setting dictates it. That does not hold true for prestige classes however. Some of them I loathe and will not permit in my games, but that is another story.

Tzarevitch

 

[Will]

I see them as the "multi-talented adventurer" class. Like Indiana Jones or James Bond.

Hee. So do I. I actually have a character in a friend's D&D game named Indiar Jonis. 13th level or so Rogue (it's been a while since we last played)

He's an archaeologist, and that's not a euphemism. Professor at a university in one of the biggest cities in the south. The rest of the party found him while in some underdark-like place... Indiar had gotten trapped during a dig. His group got munched, and Indiar only survived by finding the one place the monsters wouldn't go, and was stuck there for weeks. Eating mushrooms. (twitch)

But yeah... no pick pocket, since he's not a thief. Concerned more about finding records of ancient civilizations than actual 'treasure...' though treasure is pretty interesting, too.

Ultimately, it was the only class that combines lots of skill with general trap avoidance and evasion, etc. I even sunk huge amounts of points into Knowledge skills, despite them being cross-class.

If I had to do it over, I think I'd request the ability to swap class skills around.

 

[Davelozzi]

I'm not so much a fan of monks or sorcerors, and sometimes bards, but I would never allow a character to play a class and then purposely work against him. Also, players can convince me if they try. My original vision of my campaign was non-psionic but one of my playerse wanted to play a psion, talked it over with me, we made a place for him, and now I like the class.

 

[DarkMaster]

I like the rogue, ranger, sorcerer,
I dislike the wizard, bard, monk and the druid.
I usually never penalised them but must admit that I take great pleasure in burning the wizard spell book . I was so happy with 3.X when they introduced the sorcerer, that is the way I feel that arcane caster should be. I also like character that fits what I called the adventurer profile like the ranger and the rogue, mobile, stealthy, not fighting powerhouse that solve all their problem with the brute force approach. Bard and monk problem probably comes from 1st edition experience were they were weird class and druid was so complicated to level in 1st edition that it left a bad taste. 3.x edition is actually slowly changing my mind about it.

 

[Darklone]

Funny, that's the first low magic game without a faible for rogues...

I do love the barbarian, ranger, sorcerer, bard and rogue classes. My players are cleric, cleric, druid, druid, sorcerer and fighter. I'm doing something wrong. I gotta kick and punish them more for playing the wrong stuff. Dagnabit.

But I'm really surprised about this lack of roguish tricksters in a game without magic. What does he want, Warhammer 40K? Fighter vs Fighter combats?

The things I don't like too much about rogues: Sneak attack is scaling too fast. TWF style is very good with sneak attack but sub-par without. I'd like to see a lower magic campaign setting for D&D with less sneak attack for more classes somewhere... WoT was a nice start into that direction, but the rest... ah well.

 

[mmadsen]

I even went so far as to develop low magic Wizards and non-casting Bards...

Another option is to eliminate the Wizard class and to rename the Bard class "Wizard".

 

[mmadsen]

the world is not a rampant orgy of cross breeding humanoids!

Isn't it?

 

[Wombat]

So, do any of you out there have a STANDARD class you dislike or disallow? If so, why? I'm cool with all the classes when I run and don't understand why someone wouldn't be.

Yep. Haven't used Monk in any of my campaigns (have too much of an Asian feel for my primarily European feel games).

In my current campaign we also don't use the Paladin, since we are using Green Ronin's Holy Warrior instead (probably will not go back in any campaigns that would use the basic classes).

I have had campaigns with no Druids or Barbarians, as the setting was urban and later in era, thus these classes felt out of place.

None of my players have ever grumbled about this.

Oh, and we use a variant Rogue. Instead of the automatic Sneak Attack, we replace this with a list of Feats available (including Sneak Attack as a stackable Feat, +1d6 each time it is chose). This came about because my players were upset that every Rogue was a built-in assassin, when the rest of the class was so flexible. Now we have simply increased the flex

 

[pogre]

No Monks for me. A settings decision only. I recently, changed my campaign to allow most D&D magic back in - my last two low magic campaigns ended rather abruptly - TPKs.

[hijack] Just to echo PC - those of you who run low magic campaigns owe it to yourselves to check out Grim Tales.[/hijack]