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

[Thomas Shey]

I can see disappointed, but you should not be annoyed over it. That goes both ways, a player can reject the setting or plot idea, the DM can reject a character idea, and if the two cannot agree then they just should find others to play with. No harm, no foul, but it can be disappointing all the same

As I said, I see things that go beyond that to judgment of the other at both ends.

 

[Mecheon]

Nah. Draconians are corrupted Dragon Eggs. Thats not Dragonborn at all.

They're player friendly variants, draconians were early attempts at the idea of 'player-friendly dragon people' whereas dragonborn are a more refined attempt given the hot mess that was 3e draconians

3e dragonborn having the whole 'being reborn from a dragon egg' thing gave the whole vague vibe they were supposed to be a counterpart to them

 

[GobHag]

I might not agree with your perspective (and I wonder if maybe you're trolling just a bit), but I at least respect you for standing by your position.

I like the culture as it is now more or less, I don't want my willingness to be a responsibility,

 

[tetrasodium]

While thanks for going into it. You didn’t actually answer my question. Could I play a Dragonborn, Goliath, or Tortle?

Maybe maybe & ffs.

With dragon born my go to is to point out that dragons have a pretty important role in the setting (nearly god;analog in some cases and how all of the lore next to their race entry is mostly fr-centric in problematic ways so it would be best if they do so just saying their PC is one of the lizardmen from qbarra who went through some kind of tribal ritual that mutated them a bit. I've never heard a player say anything but "ok cool" and that avoids having a player where their PC later claims first hand knowledge of Argonnessen/past social interaction with dragons later in a game where they spent months prior acting as a native of khorvaire.

I've had players play a Goliath a couple times and we always just said "I'm from droaam", the phb Goliath lore was kicked to the curb. Tbh my frustration with Goliath is more the fact that they should be size large and have mechanics/lore trying to draw on that but get to avoid all the downsides of being size L while keeping the benefit of being able to say "no I'm only size M" any time size could be a hassle to the PC.

I've had at least one player play a tortle monk in one of my eberron games and think that they suggested "from droaam" while asking if they could. I don't think I've ever seen a tortle who wasn't a monk across all of my open AL games (twice weekly at a busy flgs for years), it's silly to pretend that tortle is any sort of deep RoLePlAyInG choice. I generally want my eberron games to have PCs from one of khorvaire's 5 nations and the default tortle island nonsense avoids both sides of being from this/some other nation of khorvaire on top of not being from the literal island chain nation either so it should be forgotten and something else should be worked out if a player wants one

 

[SableWyvern]

I've had players play a Goliath a couple times and we always just said "I'm from droaam", the phb Goliath lore was kicked to the curb. Tbh my frustration with Goliath is more the fact that they should be size large and have mechanics/lore trying to draw on that but get to avoid all the downsides of being size L while keeping the benefit of being able to say "no I'm only size M" any time size could be a hassle to the PC.

One of the many reasons I love Mythras for Dark Sun is because Mythras makes big things as destructive, dangerous and impervious as they should be. Half giants are actually half giants, with all that entails.

The problem with Mythras for Dark Sun is all the obscenely huge things in the setting end up as destructive, dangerous and impervious as they should be, and I found I had to shrink many of them in order for them to be even vaguely susceptible to physical harm.

 

[mamba]

If the instructions are unclear, why should they care about what is suitable?

if the instructions are unclear to them, why wouldn’t they ask for clarification instead of shrugging them off and acting as if there weren’t any

 

[Clint_L]

I think a bigger difference is that if you joined a game pitched as an Arctic game, you would happily turn up with a character not suited to an Arctic game and tell the GM that's their problem, not yours; whereas if I agreed to join such a game I would arrive with a suitable character (otherwise, I would politely decline the invitation in the first place).

I more or less agree with you on this. How do you handle such a player, though? These days, instead of outright rejection I’ll just say “Amazing! Seeing as this is set in a pretty cold environment, how can we tweak your awesome character so they don’t immediately die of exposure in that chainmail onesie?”

I’ve seldom met a player who isn’t open to compromise if approached positively. I suspect your experience is similar.

Which is really all I’m saying, and not really to you as I don’t think we disagree much. If you look for opportunities to embrace player ideas, however out there they seem at first, a solution usually comes up that enhances the fun.

 

[mamba]

As I said, I see things that go beyond that to judgment of the other at both ends.

I am not saying they don’t exist, only that to me they are not warranted. People have different preferences and priorities, it happens, we all should learn to live with that without being offended

 

[Distracted DM]

I more or less agree with you on this. How do you handle such a player, though? These days, instead of outright rejection I’ll just say “Amazing! Seeing as this is set in a pretty cold environment, how can we tweak your awesome character so they don’t immediately die of exposure in that chainmail onesie?”

I’ve seldom met a player who isn’t open to compromise if approached positively. I suspect your experience is similar.

Which is really all I’m saying, and not really to you as I don’t think we disagree much. If you look for opportunities to embrace player ideas, however out there they seem at first, a solution usually comes up that enhances the fun.

That's a great way to come at it

 

[SableWyvern]

I more or less agree with you on this. How do you handle such a player, though? These days, instead of outright rejection I’ll just say “Amazing! Seeing as this is set in a pretty cold environment, how can we tweak your awesome character so they don’t immediately die of exposure in that chainmail onesie?”

I’ve seldom met a player who isn’t open to compromise if approached positively. I suspect your experience is similar.

If someone is gaming at my table, either I or another member has already vetted that person and is confident they're a good fit for the group, who is not going to be intentionally disruptive or disrespectful. It's not a particularly high bar, and we've had no issues maintaining it. I can't imagine a player ignoring everything we've discussed about the nature of the game, failing to engage in any kind of constructive feedback and settling on a concept without reference to the sort of game we're actually intending to play. The whole situation feels nonsensical to me.

If a player did come to me with some option that seemed, at face value, to be completely inappropriate, I would expect that they had already considered this and had a work around in mind. If I concurred and we could reach an agreement about how it would work, then sure, we'd go ahead. If not, I'd say no, and they'd go with a different idea. In the latter case, I'd also be mindful of all this and look for ways I can help facilitate what the player was looking for in future games (I might even have an idea in mind already: "Hey, you know that I want to run such and such at some point, this concept would probably work well in that setting/system/whatever.")

Beyond that, I can't really comment on a player randomly proposing a lizard man in an arctic game without a huge amount of additional context. What are the actual themes and settings of the game? What ruleset? Why do they want a lizard man in this specific game? We use calculating gsheet character sheets, how easy will it be to modify these sheets to allow for this character in this game? (On this one, I've started making an effort to make sheets that are easier to modify to include unexpected features, even if it results in a little less automation up front.) What other impacts will this have on play?

In reality, players proposing strange things in my group are invariably doing so at the edges of, and not far beyond, the type of game we've agreed upon. When I've run truly wide open games (using HERO or Ascendant), I will have players say "Can I do X?" just because they're not sure if the system can handle it, and my response is always going to be either, "Yes, I'll show you how," or "I assume so, let's work out how." In a game with more limits on the starting condition, questions are always ones made in good faith. "I'd like to work this into this concept, is it feasible?" and, if we can find a way to do it, of course we will. I've also found it's the case that the players with the most out there concepts tend to have half a dozen interesting concepts, so they're not arriving with this single, fully-formed idea that must make it to the table in this game right now, they're testing the waters, trying to whittle down their list of options to just one, so a tentatively negative response is likely to be helpful to them, rather than a road block.