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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tarchon" data-source="post: 424363" data-attributes="member: 5990">The point you're now making was not what you expressed in your first post.If you're talking about retiring a character after a long career, yeah sure.  If you're just messing around with a new game system, great!  Try different stuff.If we're talking about a real long-term RPG campaign in its juvenile and adult phase, things are different.  You're saying there's a motivation to change characters to fit the DM style, with the admonishment:  "Make sure you are doing everything possible yourself in the campaign before you dictate how a player should act."I agree totally that the DM should be adjusting for unsatisfied players, but there are much better ways to do that than letting them change characters willy nilly.  It's also possible to allow them to adapt by constantly giving them free magic items or new abilities, but that is also a bad solution.  Just because allowing them to change characters freely or giving lots of free magic items lets players adapt, that doesn't make either of them a good way to do it.In your pick-pocket example, the better answer is not for the DM to keep making everything a pitched battle and let the player run, say, a barbarian instead; the better answer is to introduce elements in the game that are more suitable to the character .  Let there be crowds of normal easy marks, not supermen who can instantly detect the slightest rustle of a pursestring.  Put interesting things in their pockets.  Remind the player that Pick Pockets also allows various forms of legerdemain, and introduce opportunites for it to be used (having an NPC do it is usually a slick and subtle way).  As I've said, I can see letting a new player adjust or maybe even change his character initially, just because he may not be used to the game, but you're recommending that willy-nilly character switching should be a regular part of the game, so that the characters can accomodate to however the DM happens to be running the game.  I get this point; I disagree with it.  The only way this should be necessary is if the DM constantly, radically changes the nature of the game and does nothing to give the PCs a way to adapt.Now, the players should be making some adjustments to how they play as the situation in the game warrants, but it's the DM's responsiblity to give them the tools in the game to do that.  If the DM just capriciously changes the campaign without regard to the characters, we shouldn't be recommending "oh, so let them change characters all the time," but rather we should be recommending "set up your game to suit your players' characters."  I can conceive of a game format in which constant character changing is the norm, but that's really more in the realm of computer and wargaming, in which what the players have are more like character sheets, collections of statistics, than characters.  There's a place for that kind of game, but it's not exactly an RPG and I don't think that's what we're talking about here.I haven't seen anybody yet say "completely disallow character switches," if that's what you're objecting to.  What most people are saying is "discourage it a little in most cases,  and especially discourage doing it frequently."   This is perfectly reasonable, as it does tend to disrupt a long-term RPG campaign to have the characters constantly being replaced.</blockquote>

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