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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 5384661" data-attributes="member: 2">That's kind of you. I'm glad that our musings here are of some use to other DMs, and I'm having a great time planning the transition into the next tier of play. We'll probably start a new thread when we hit 11th level 5 games from now; this thread is getting long.We're not playing this week due to Thanksgiving, so I'll muse about something else. One of the players is unhappy with their character's mechanics. Logan's player Alomir originally wanted a smart rogue, an int/dex build. That wasn't originally available so he went with the dex/str build, and mechanically his character turned out almost identical to Sagiro's. After six or seven levels (and after a few splat books came out!) we agreed to try something else, and Logan was rebuilt as a cunning sneak. My worry at the time (which I probably kept to myself) was that it just didn't seem like a very fun build to play. Sneaks live or die based on complicated stealth rules, and they're ranged. That means either you're standing back from the melee and sniping in while effectively invisible, or the enemy sees you and HOLY CRAP AUGGH YOU'RE SCREWED because you rely so heavily on stealth. I personally think getting targetted by monsters is fun and exciting, so a PC designed to never get seen or hit wouldn't be as enjoyable for me. It's taken another few levels before Alomir reached a similar conclusion. We love Logan's personality and backstory, though. So the question is: if a player isn't happy with their character's mechanics, how far do you go to tweak the character mid-game?There was a time when I'd have said "You broke it, you bought it," and allowed no changes. I no longer feel that way. Storminator's MnM game has taught me that allowing flexibility in character creation and upkeep results in excited players with high buy-in. Retraining rules help a little, of course, but we are looking at something more substantial here.And I think we have a fun solution, one that (a) makes Alomir happy, (b) makes me happy, (c) keeps Logan in the game, (d) is justifiable by the plot (you'll see in the next write-up), and (e) pushes the storyline forward in an interesting way. I'm really intrigued to see how it turns out. We'll report here.</blockquote>

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