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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kaomera" data-source="post: 3196592" data-attributes="member: 38357">Well, for one thing, the reason I posted this idea (and the reason I didn't put it up in House Rules) is that I'm not 100% sure I do want to add a house-rule for this (I think I'm currently leaning against). The reason I would want to make it an actual house-rule would be to provide my players with more structure in terms of what exactly they are and are not allowed to do. Unfortunately, anything I make "at GM's approval" ends up being biased twords those among my players who are better at coming up with stuff I think is cool and/or explaining to me why they think their idea is cool. My players are fun to DM for, but some of them will, given the chance, come up with characters that make absolutely no sense to me. If the character works out, that's fine; I don't have to play the character, so it doesn't really no reason I need to be super-excited by the concept and/or build. It does make it very hard for me to "shine the spotlight" on that character, however, and if the character does not perform well things get even worse...IMC, it has been brought up. More aggravating to me was the time that one of my players convinced over half the party to "dip" rather unexpectedly and against several character concepts (at least as stated to me). I swayed several players away from the idea (ironically including the guy who had started the idea), but the Fighter (Human) and Rogue (1/2 Elf) each picked up a level of Cleric so they could use wands and such, and the Druid (Elf) picked up a level of Wizard for the same reason. It wasn't against the rules, and it wasn't broken (in fact it proved pretty useless), but it was annoying. Much, much worse was the Paladin of Freedom (1/2 Orc) picking up a level of Barbarian. I told him that he wouldn't be able to take another level of PoF, and I made him give me a reply ("Sure, whatever!"), and I probably should have refused to let him do it anyway. I'm 90% sure that he wasn't paying any real attention to what I was saying and just gave me a response to shut me up, he certainly seemed genuinely surprised when he found out (several sessions later) he couldn't ever get that 8th level of PoF... It pretty much ruined the character for him, I offered to let him drop the level of Barbarian (losing a level in the process), but he felt I was unfairly punishing him because the guy who had come up with the idea had "screwed him". It's really easy for me to say that this was the player's fault, and it's fairly easy to see this as "self-correcting", but it still ruined several sessions worth of fun for me, and I don't like that (and sometimes I doubt the ability of some of my players to learn from their mistakes).Eh, sorry 'bout the rant there...I think that by 3.x RAW, yes, this is the case. By 3.x RAW you don't even really need any training, just the desire of an outside influence (the player) that you develop in that direction (gain a level in that class). And I don't think it makes any sense. If I could I'd love to make a nice big "Make Reasonable Characters" a house-rule, except that there's no viable standard by which to judge if a character is reasonable or not. I make unreasonable characters (as NPCs and PCs too when I'm not DMing), I don't think I can very well expect my players not to, but I can set up rules (or at least guidelines) that limit the kinds of things that are likely to really bug me.</blockquote>

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