"'Kill it before it grows'...he said 'Kill it before it grows'..."

[Lanefan]

And to me, that seems to be the central design philosophy of 5e: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

sidetrack

5e is based on Wicca?!?!? WOO-HOO!

I am so in!!!

/sidetrack

Lan-"blessed be"-efan

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's just a simple matter of being concerned with you want and not particularly concerned with what other participants might want.

I don't get the impression that Lanefan (or anyone else) falls into that camp. Lanefan says no halfling wizards, well, what's wrong with that? Someone who refuses to play anything other than halfling wizards probably has a more significant problem in this absurd hypothetical than a DM who doesn't allow them.

To advocate that everyone who wants character creation freedom should go off and run their own campaign does seem to leave you a lot of DM's and no players. But perhaps that is a more pragmatic solution than the atmosphere of mutual consideration that I don't think our community is ready to achieve. Well, maybe 5e will solitaire rules.

A DM without players might need to revise the level of their "control freak" dial so that the players don't feel restricted (which is a subjective viewpoint: some players feel restricted when others are fine).

A player without a DM need to revise the level of their "special snowflake" dial so that they can find something fun to play in many different games and don't get so hung up on one particular race/class combination (or whatever).

"Don't Be A Jerk" is a valuable lesson for both sides of the screen.

In an ideal scenario, in fact, every DM is also a player, every player is also a DM, and there is not one game per six people, there are six, of which one at a time is played.

I don't think forbidding halfling wizards (or whatever) is, a priori, "being a jerk." I don't think there's anything wrong with it, if that's what you want to do, and you can find a group that doesn't mind. It's not a problem in and of itself.

I also don't think it's a problem to exert some sort of local control on your own games. I don't think that's automatically a lack of mutual consideration. In fact, I think this local control is part of what makes D&D a uniquely awesome game -- the fact that Lanefan can ban halfling wizards if he wants, and my DM can ban half-elves and half-orcs if she wants, and really, that's not that big of a deal.

 

[Deadboy]

In my D&D games, if you get run through with a sword just once, you die.

But it is HIGHLY reasonable for a sword blow to be turned away or to deal a far from fatal wound. There is a vast range of in-between.

The "petrifying gaze" of Medusa (ignoring the misnomer for game mechanical expediency) either does not happen or it turns you to stone. There is no in between.

Or, similarly, just as I'm about to meet the Medusa's gaze, I turn away. Just as reasonable. Besides, we're not really talking about turning away the blade, we're talking about getting hit. You get hit with a sword, you are mortally wounded or dying; you meet the medusa's gaze, you are turned to stone. The difference in game mechanics is that one has to go through the game mechanic for hit points and the other doesn't, even though it's just as reasonable for me to turn away from the gaze as it is to turn aside the blow. It's arbitrary.