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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9544780" data-attributes="member: 29398">Players can be both nice and disruptive at the same time; even more so if their disruption is unintentional.That, and I personally don't often find in-character behavior to be all that disruptive until and unless it comes out of character and produces table arguments.  If the players are roleplaying their characters to do what those characters would do, that's just part of the game; and if it means no actual adventuring gets done this session because they're all too busy playing pranks on each other then so be it - it's no skin off my nose as DM.What I do find disruptive as DM are players who want to have things I-as-DM consider to be monsters as their PCs, because (unless it's a real one-off, courtesy of some very unlikely dice-rolling during char-gen, in which case I don't care as much about balance etc. because the odds aren't great of it lasting very long anyway) it makes me do work that I don't think I should have to do in order to incorporate this new species into my system:--- coming up with rules and mechanics for the new species--- balancing the new species - if I can - against the PC-playables that already exist, preferably without making substantive changes to other PC-playable species to compensate--- doing a write-up of just what the new species is and what its benefits and drawbacks are--- rejigging the setting maps to give PCs of that species at least one place to call home--- tweaking the setting background and history to add that species in and explain why and how it is thereAnd if the species is widely viewed in the setting as a monster then there's also:--- having to warn players that playing that species might be extra challenging: it's entirely possible the rest of the party won't accept it ("I've spent years learning how to kill these things and now you want me to run with one?") and almost certain that in any number of locations in the setting it might well be shot on sight as a monster--- having to deal with complaints when that warning goes unheeded and things go south for the monster-species PC.I mean, using Dragonborn (or 3e's Half-Dragons) as an example: what possible mechanical drawback could I put on them that would cancel out their having a built-in breath weapon right from Day 1, such that they and Humans are balanced?  And yes, it would be right from Day 1; the breath weapon is intrinsic to all members of the species whether adventurers or not and thus cannot reasonably be something that only comes online at higher level and-or improves with level.Combine that with a) their scaly skin giving them what amounts to a baked-in Barkskin effect, b) their intrinsic toughness (they'd get a positive Strength ASI and maybe a Con one as well*), and c) their intrinsic resistance to their own damage type (which most characters need a rather expensive magic item to achieve) - yeah, just giving them a negative ASI on Dex and Cha isn't nearly enough to balance them against Humans (who in my game don't get ASIs on anything).* - WotC can go to hell with their floating ASIs; they are and always will be hard-tied to species round here.</blockquote>

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