D&D General The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

[AlViking]

So if a player came to you with an option from a brand new book (say, a new subclass) and asked "can I play this?" You would have to say no because if you allowed it, you would have to allow Tortle gunslingers as well?

Corollary question: how through is your list and how often do you update it?

Is it a book I've had a chance to read? Not all subclasses are going to fit if we're talking hypotheticals with no other info.

By and large any book I own is fair game but for example some Eberron subclasses may not make sense or maybe it would work with tweaking. Dragonmarks for example don't exist in my world any more than guns.

As far as my curated species list I don't update it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh yea. For recording characteristics of something already introduced into the game, then I would definitely want to record it for consistency.

My original statement way back before was purely in the context of "not stopping the session because I don't have a NPC statted up".

Yeah, that seems excessive. I just got my oar in because there are a lot of cases where I think ongoing NPCs on the fly is kind of a bad idea in the kinds of games I tend to play (your description suggests this is less true in D&D 5e).

 

[Mecheon]

If I allow one "special" species I have to allow every "special" species any other player wants to play. All because someone is not willing to give even an inch on their concept or actually just accept the restrictions I have in place that I made them aware of when I told them about my game.

Hardly. You can value each thing on its impact to the overall world

I doubt there is going to be much impact to your overall world to say "Yeah some lizardman took up adventuring after you guys helped them" and letting them roll up that lizardman, if your characters have already ran into friendly lizardmen NPCs who they've helped with things. They're established as existing, lizardmen have been in the game for the better part of forever and playable. That's a lot simpler to add in than some race that needs redoing the entire cosmology so someone can play some random succubus homebrew they found because they want the Grace from PS:T vibes (which is incredibly understandable as PS:T is great).

If its a pre-existing race that's been around in the world before and has free will, it can be an adventurer.

 

[gban007]

The morality of orcs in Lord of the Rings is a complicated long-running topic, but the generally accepted answer is "Orcs could theoretically do good its just the ones we encounter are in the particular force they're in is an enemy force", not that they're always evil no matter the circumstances

I like the way Lord of the Rings Online has been handling Orcs and Goblins in recent years, showing some variation in attitudes as such.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If its a pre-existing race that's been around in the world before and has free will, it can be an adventurer.

If I may ask, how does 5e handle PCs from races with more baked in special abilities? Otherwise, it helps to have potentially playable races written up so that's practical from the get go.

 

[Marc17]

The entire tortle question is a wide spread for me. It reminds me of a friend who works in theater and discussion about work led to talking about both prima donnas and divas, so I had to ask "what is the difference". His answer was that "divas are worth all the extra effort they demand." I have a very allowing homebrew, I just built it to accommodate things like 'circus troupe parties". Stiil, theres a wide difference between in the PHB, in a book I own, another book that is for 5E, some book from three editions ago, or just because. If a regular player of mine wanted to play some weird tortle character, sure. If a new player posited the idea during character creation with everybody else and they didn't have any issues, sure, I'd make it work. You get to a player coming in the middle of campaign and waiting choices the others didn't have that may go against the flavor of the game, I'd have to really wonder if they were worth the extra effort. If another player I trusted and who knew them started talking about making a ranger that hunted tortles, I'd probably be worried when I pulled them over to ask what was up and already thinking of ways I could say "sorry, we're full".

As for lynch mobs and massacres of villages, I'm probably not worried about them burning down my setting. It's mean to be a sand box. Still, by that time, they would have gotten several warnings including an OOC "Are you sure? This is an action that your charatcer would know will have drastic consequences." For simulation sake, I've always been up that polities are very concerned about up and coming heroes. Things like annoying taxes and other bits are there just to highlight lower level adventurers so those that aren't willing to play the game can be prunned before they become a real problem. Triple so for a setting where the commoner is just a 0-level and population doesn't work off the same rules as the PC. The idea being that such people who toe the line will be allowed to buy into the system. Like I said, in a game where the campaign was about overthrowing the Lich King, the party would have known all that before they massacred all those gnoll men, women and children.

ETA: I will also say that I have been trying to catch up with this thread for the past four days and finally did so since I took the day off work today.

 

[Mecheon]

If I may ask, how does 5e handle PCs from races with more baked in special abilities? Otherwise, it helps to have potentially playable races written up so that's practical from the get go.

I mean, depends on the ability. Dragonborn had their breath weapon and they were the weakest race in the game because of it for the longest time. Aarakocra on the other hand, well. Depends on your take on how strong flying is

Generally speaking each race has its one little gimmick ability that handles that which is typically just a 'can cast spell X times a day'. Firbolg and gnomes get speak with animals, duergar get enlarge self, so on and so forth. Little once in a while abilities like that tend to be how people represent that. Some even have it as a detriment, though that tends to be the charity options loacanth and grung who both have 'keep moist or perish' passives, due to being fish and frog respectively

In terms of balance, said once in a while abilities are also notoriously underpowered compared to passive abilities and the powerhouse that is the free feat humans get.

 

[AlViking]

Hardly. You can value each thing on its impact to the overall world

I doubt there is going to be much impact to your overall world to say "Yeah some lizardman took up adventuring after you guys helped them" and letting them roll up that lizardman, if your characters have already ran into friendly lizardmen NPCs who they've helped with things. They're established as existing, lizardmen have been in the game for the better part of forever and playable. That's a lot simpler to add in than some race that needs redoing the entire cosmology so someone can play some random succubus homebrew they found because they want the Grace from PS:T vibes (which is incredibly understandable as PS:T is great).

If its a pre-existing race that's been around in the world before and has free will, it can be an adventurer.

If I make one exception there's no reason for me to not make another and another. The fluff of how it happens doesn't change anything.

 

[Mecheon]

If I make one exception there's no reason for me to not make another and another. The fluff of how it happens doesn't change anything.

No? There's plenty of reasons. Heck, it even makes a good reward for doing things in-game as its an overall meta reward with long lasting consequences, showing their changes to the world

Players helped lizardfolk in a quest? Cool, they can roll lizardfolk next time they need to roll a new race. That's rewarding player involvement in the world and they see exactly why they're now unlocked. Their actions getting more options. You're rewarding the players, what the players have done in the game, and giving them long lasting victory stuff rather than "Well here's X more loot to the massive loot pile". They're making real, active changes to the world with their action that they can feel the results of

Just because they do that doesn't mean they need to suddenly get Vedalken available if they don't exist in your world. That's an easy "Yeah they're just MTG stuff" right there

 

[AlViking]

No? There's plenty of reasons. Heck, it even makes a good reward for doing things in-game as its an overall meta reward with long lasting consequences, showing their changes to the world

Players helped lizardfolk in a quest? Cool, they can roll lizardfolk next time they need to roll a new race. That's rewarding player involvement in the world and they see exactly why they're now unlocked. Their actions getting more options. You're rewarding the players, what the players have done in the game, and giving them long lasting victory stuff rather than "Well here's X more loot to the massive loot pile". They're making real, active changes to the world with their action that they can feel the results of

Just because they do that doesn't mean they need to suddenly get Vedalken available if they don't exist in your world. That's an easy "Yeah they're just MTG stuff" right there

You do you, I'm done.