Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6556519" data-attributes="member: 6677017">I was just thinking of this last night, so I'll share my take on it.I decide entirely based on the desired feel of the campaign and setting. Most of the feel is going to relate to what my impressions of the D&D feel were when when I started gaming, which was in the late 80s--so TSR D&D era.RacesI'm not concerned about published races being overpowered (none of them bother me in that department), and I can upgrade underpowered ones if absolutely necessary. I care about what makes sense in the game world. I'll comment based on how I decide what to allow in a campaign, and how I decide what (or how) to allow races in the game at all.In the GameTo put it into my own terms, I'd say races fall into about 3 categories: Normal, Exotic, and Monsters.Normal races are humanoid people. They are the ones that you were assumed to be playing, and generally the only ones that were assumed to be walking around in civilized towns and cities. In most worlds that translated to human, elf, dwarf, halfling, gnome, and half-elf.Exotic races are generally humanoids who are either physically or magically more exotic, or who are just generally assumed to not be peaceful citizens you see walking around town. In 5e terms, I'd include drow, half-orc, svirfneblin, genasi, and goliath. This is also where races like goblin or hobgoblin would fit.Monsters are races who aren't morphologically humanoids. Either they have tails, or animal heads, or wings, or something else that just doesn't fit in. These creatures aren't just walking around in town, and people are more likely to scream "monster" and run than to try to hawk wares to them. In 5e this would include dragonborn, (5e) tiefling, and aarakocra. This also includes things like lizardfolk, bullywugs, thri-kreen, or gnolls.That holds true in Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and is my default assumption about what a traditional D&D world is like until it is otherwise specified. Some worlds have different assumptions about what races are normal, exotic, or monsters, and many worlds lack some of the common races and add other races. In general, I accept whatever races were initially conceived of in a world, or placed into that world early in its publication.I do not allow retconning of races into worlds that didn't originally have them. For instance, I don't care that 3e and 4e plopped goliaths down willy-nilly, they don't belong in any of the settings I had in 2e because they weren't there then. Warforged are fine in Eberron, but no, you can't have one anywhere else (except in a Planescape or Spelljammer campaign, where almost anything is fair game). Allowing warforged or goliaths, or race-of-the-month into my Forgotten Realms is like allowing kender or draconians--they belong on Krynn, and that's where you have to go to get them.Dragonborn would be another example. In this case, I actually like dragonborn, but I haven't decided what to do with them yet. I have no problem allowing them in my multiverse, but I'm not sure where yet, since they weren't associated with any particular world. I'm thinking I might make a rare exception and retcon them into Spelljammer as a spelljamming race, since that seems like an interesting place to put them. If so, I might have them replace dracons (dragon-dino-taurs).Some races just rub me the wrong way. Take the 5e tiefling. It has no place in my multiverse. I use Planescape tieflings, although I have no problem using the 5e stats to represent them. Some would say I just changed that race. In my mind I entirely threw it out and seized its stats for my own purposes.But other than the non-Planescape tiefling, there are few races that I anticipate being published for 5e that I would actually outright ban--more often I'd just say that they aren't found on any of the established worlds, and in order to include them you'd have to go to, be on, or come from wherever it is they call home (probably a crystal sphere I could generate if need be).In a CampaignIn a standard campaign* I'll automatically allow the normal races of that world, and exotic races are an easy sell as long as it isn't the majority of the party playing them. I'd have a hard time allowing more than one monster race into the party unless that fits the theme of the campaign.The reason I wouldn't automatically allow everyone to play exotic and monstrous races is that they are viewed as such in the world, and people will react accordingly. NPCs will attack or run from monsters if they see a group of them walking into town, and exotic characters will at least be objects of curiosity (and often fear). You can't just go about adventuring business as usual when your party is scaring away everyone by their presence.ClassesWith regards to classes, I haven't felt the need to ban any classes or subclasses in 5e. I do, however, restrict classes based on the campaign in a similar way to how I restrict races. An example would be the monk. I don't normally allow monks unless you are playing in an Asian-themed setting. In a more traditional European-themed setting it is simply out of genre, and I don't want it to be there without a pretty good reason that doesn't detract from the overall game experience. The same principle applies for any other genre changes. Sometimes I like to run a campaign in an Asian-themed setting, and you sure as heck cannot play a paladin or an elf in it, because there aren't any of them around (perhaps not even on the world).Another example is the Oathbreaker Paladin subclass. It exists in my multiverse, but as it is the anti-paladin/blackguard archetype, it isn't normally going to be suitable for PCs.In 3e I eliminated some classes due to crazy class bloat, redundancy, and filling holes that didn't exist. I had a list of a few dozen classes (including standard PHB, a few psionic, Asian-themed, warlock, and a couple more that were world-specific) that I allowed (in their appropriate settings) and no other classes existed in my multiverse.The way I see it, a class isn't just an arbitrary combination of abilities you use in conjunction with level-dipping and multiclassing to create whatever character you can think of. They are more like dedicated fields of study that have a sense of identity associated with them. There are only so many fields of study that really make sense, and just about any character concept that fits into a particular setting will fit into those classes.</blockquote>

Verification