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.
I legitimately wondered if there was any exception to the curated list. My players bring me 3pp options and I will review it and make a call on it. I can't know everything that exists, so I review them and make a call. I just wondered if you did the same or if the list was finite and unchanging.
Omce again that doesn't matter because there have been many many attempts to talk about the process of gm<>player cooperative collaboration on an abstract level many times. Often those were with intentionally absurd examples involving things Jedi and Klingons on TOS era federation ships that should have allowed the example to stand as an unreasonable one purely for purpose of discussing the process at an abstract. However ach time someone on the tortle side of the discussion would ignore that effort and try to justify how the trek verse could accommodate those things if only the gm were willing to be more accommodating.
About the closest that the tortle advocates ever came to making attempts at talking about the process was a few times where they suggested peppering the gm will throw away race/class combos with no further details that were regularly ascribed as things with deep player attachment the gm needs to endlessly dig through. No matter what critique was given to each of those shotgun blast process proposals it would just be ignored and go back to specifics about how the gm could make those work now that the player has fulfilled their end of simply listing a few PCs they might like to play
I disagree that that is what is happening here; I strongly disagree with your characterization of the "Jedi and Klingons in TOS ships" thing, because that was always the people proposing it being disingenuous jerks trying to paint EVERYONE who wants ANYTHING the GM doesn't like.
I have no desire to interact with this assertion beyond what I have just said, and will not respond to further about this.
That goes both ways. I shudder at the thought of playing in a campaign where action has do little consequence or concern that the gm doesn't even bother to consider tracking the impacts of play on it.
Maybe it's a symptom of a willingness to toss out anything previously established to be replaced by any spur of the moment throwaway idea supplied by a player during character creation?
Could you try a little harder to insult people who don't share your preferences? I don't think you've done enough to emphasize just how horrific, destructive, and cringey it is to spend five minutes caring about what players think rather than ploughing ahead with your own views, players be damned.
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.
I was just curious whether "If they can be adventurers they can be PCs" was liable to come up against some species that are humanoid and theoretically can do that, but have too many baked in special abilities to make much sense to be placed in the same framework as standard PC species.
That bolded bit is just hyper technical hair splitting by misusing a dictionary.
When you pull back from that sophistry there is still the huge problem you've been defending while claiming otherwise. What you keep blatantly ignoring in your zeal to shift the entire burden of making characters fit onto the gm and absolve players as a whole of bearing even the slightest speck of responsibility to work with their GM is that what you are pointlessly calling "conversation" is still an example of players showing a complete refusal to engage in collaboration with their gm or a refusal accept that their gm is a human not gifted with mind reading capability rather than some flavor of an ai training robot.
Despite your claims to the contrary in 1297, this is not a problem rooted in the mere format of it being a forum discussion between two sides with no willingness to compromise and the discussion itself has demonstrated that repeatedly. Time and time again there have been efforts to talk about what the process of players working with the gm, and each time those efforts are crushed by either you reminding everyone of a point nobody is arguing about how players aren't required to join or keep playing a game they don't want to play --OR-- that effort to discuss a process of collaborative working with is blatantly dismissed and some suggestion is made for how deliberately absurd examples like Luke Skywalker Klingons and so on could totally fit settings they are violently in conflict with if only the gm was more flexible and changed the setting to make a deliberately absurd example if only the GM would ignore the absurd result.
Even beyond that there is the problem that this is on some levels a problem that wotc's choices in design marketing and community interaction§ 5e. All of those combined have shifted this from a past minor issue where the gm could reasonably expect a player with a poor approach to collaboration to engage with them on some level other than indignation and outrage after explaining things like how d&d works as a game between one DM and an average 3-5 players to an endemic problem where even trying to explain that gets the gm immediately labeled some kind of toxic control freak as we've seen many times through the thread.
§ ie tell your story, we designed this subclass to frustrate dms, the crushing video game mentality design focus.
I disagree that that is what is happening here; I strongly disagree with your characterization of the "Jedi and Klingons in TOS ships" thing, because that was always the people proposing it being disingenuous jerks trying to paint EVERYONE who wants ANYTHING the GM doesn't like.
I have no desire to interact with this assertion beyond what I have just said, and will not respond to further about this.
Did you notice that you proved the point by ignoring the effort to discuss the process of the process of gm<>player collaboration cooperative collaboration and choosing to call it disengenuius?
I legitimately wondered if there was any exception to the curated list. My players bring me 3pp options and I will review it and make a call on it. I can't know everything that exists, so I review them and make a call. I just wondered if you did the same or if the list was finite and unchanging.
I can understand a different setting but I think "that player adjacent race (that most incoming people will have expectations to be playable) is always evil and can't be played" is dumb in the year 2026 and an excuse for not wanting actual motivations to fight. Orcs have been playable in supplements longer than I've been alive and hell knows Complete Book of Humanoids had far wilder things than them
Like I said, alignment discussion aside, you find it to be unacceptable for orcs to non-playable races. It doesn't matter what year we're in. You find it unacceptable. But for someone to say, "No, they're evil," has nothing to do with the era we're in, yet has everything to do with the way the DM expresses and explains it.
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
Which is why I specifically said the movies. Which, in truth, is much more widely known than the actual orcs in the books. And if we accept that, then we understand that a different setting doesn't have any trouble with orcs being "purely evil."
I disagree and here's why. The entire point of a compromise is to move off of your position towards the other side.
Here a player wanted a turtle person including visuals. That can't fully happen for reasons, so the DM offers the compromise of being the turtle person in all but visual. Now the player has the option to accept that compromise and move off of his position to having a turtle person, but that turtle person doesn't look like a turtle. If accepted, both parties have moved off of their positions towards the other side and met somewhere in the middle, in this case almost all the way to the player's side of things.
It's not capitulation to move towards the other side part way. That's by definition compromise. Capitulation is giving in 100% to the other party.
Again, I want to bring up that non-compromise sincerely presented in a previous thread (I don't 100% remember who floated it, so I won't name names for fear of naming the wrong one): player will be permitted to play a human (which was already permitted...) of a nomadic "Dragon clan" (which the player could already have just declared as their backstory...) who call themselves "Dragonborn", using only human appearance and only human mechanics. To which I ask, what did this GM move on? The player could always have said it is their culture to refer to themselves as such (it wouldn't be the first time in history; we know of the Ophiogenes, literally "serpent-born" in Greek, who were held to have descended from Halia, a nymph tending the grove of Artemis, and the drakon that guarded the grove.)
This "gives" something totally unimportant--literally a label and nothing else--and claims that that is a "compromise". Except that the GM never moved from their initial position. Players have always been able to give their surnames or small-scale cultural traditions, so long as they aren't in some way disruptive. Hence, it isn't a compromise, and specifically makes sure to avoid doing either of the possible things that could actually matter to the player.
Some players will care far more about the appearance than the mechanics. I'm closer to that end myself, though I value both. I would rather look like a dragonborn but actually use, say, orc, dwarf, or goliath mechanics if I absolutely have to; we could always work out a magic item that permits elemental breath later or whatever. (Perhaps a ring of dragonkind with charges, that can cast cause fear, (self-only) dragon breath, or (self-only) fly, using 1/2/3 charges out of, say, 8 or 10? Clearly very useful, probably Rare, requires attunement, etc., but not brokenly overpowered. Perhaps it could even start out damaged/drained/broken, can only use cause fear and only has 3 charges, but it can be restored, allowing the player to put effort into making it happen as opposed to just getting it all at once.)
Other players will care far more about mechanics than appearance--hence why I gave the example of someone trained in the circus. Others still will care about a bit of both (again, I'm somewhere in this area, but leaning closer to aesthetics; I want some mechanics that represent some of the dragonish nature, but they don't have to be these mechanics per se, and I want the mechanics less than the aesthetics.) Some will want the lore, and couldn't care less about either of the first two things. That's why what actually matters is, as I have said many many many many times, drilling down to find what matters most.
What does the GM want most? If it's literally nothing more than "I just want no dragonborn at all whatsoever in this world", well, frankly, that comes across as very petty and mean, and verges into "tantrum" territory--a word I am only using because one of the pro-GM people in this thread specifically used it to negatively characterize player interest. But if it's something like "I don't want to rewrite a bunch of lore I've already written", sure I can understand that. But if folks expect patience and understanding because the reasons the GM might say no are multiform, I will not accept any argument that requires dismissing the the reasons the player might have for their stuff are also multiform.
True consensus, in the vast majority of cases that aren't completely based on someone misunderstanding someone else, involves both sides drilling down (a phrase I have used dozens of times at this point) to find the bedrock of their position, the things they simply cannot let go and still feel that their position was given a fair shake. And in my experience, as long as all sides are genuinely engaged in good faith, those bedrock desires really are reconcilable.
So: What is actually important to the player about playing a tortle? What is actually important to the GM about there not being tortles in this world? Once you answer those questions, the path(s) forward toward reasonable compromise--toward actual consensus--are usually quite obvious. So, for instance...
Tortle Player (TP): I love playing tortles! The innate AC is fun, it means I don't have to worry about spending huge money on good armor. But really I just love turtle-people, especially Monks or Rogues because...well if I'm perfectly honest I just really loved TMNT as a kid. I like playing characters inspired by Donatello or Leonardo--not a hothead like Mikey, rather someone calm but flawed.
Gamemaster (GM): I never considered tortles, or most other races, when building this world. I just...don't really care for anything past human, but I know that folks like elves and such so I include the classics as a concession already. I wrote the campaign lore for this world, and built it up over a long period of time, so I don't want to change some huge chunk of it or invalidate past stories because of one person's character who might not even last all that long.
TP: Okay, I can understand that, but from my position, that's basically saying that choices you made ten years ago matter more than making a fun game at the table today. I don't want to make you do something you hate! But this really is what makes me happy. Is there something else we could work out? I'm not that attached to the mechanics, I just...want to be a turtle-person.
GM: Well, let's see. There are some non-aligned lizardfolk from the eastern jungles, the second campaign briefly interacted with them. Would you be okay with coming from a warrior caste of lizardfolk who have thick scales? It wouldn't be a "turtle" proper, but maybe something like a thorny devil or horned lizard.
TP: That could work. Did that previous group have good or bad relations with the lizardfolk?
GM: It started off bad, but the Bard--of course--rolled a nat 20 on a Diplomacy check, back when it was still called that, and uh...got along real well with this one chief's son. They got the lizardfolk to help them fight off a demon of darkness that wanted to ascend to godhood by eating the sun, which obviously wouldn't have been good for a cold-blooded race.
TP: Okay. Maybe then I'm...sorta like a spy? Or scout maybe? I keep my face covered most of the time because I'm trying to learn about these strange smoothskin outsiders and their weird ways.
GM: Hmm...okay, yeah, that could work. As long as you keep your mask and such on, folks will just think you're a particularly weird Monk, and you'd want to stick to the shadows anyway...does that work for you? Your people will want you to report back now and then, how do you want to handle that?
TP: Well I'm probably not the one-and-only scout...but I imagine they'd want contact. Maybe a magic item? Like a sending stone, but bigger messages, that can be used a couple times each day. They can send me orders, and I can send them reports.
GM: Alright. It'll only work between you and home though. Folks will be...very surprised to see you if you take off your disguise in public, or if your identity gets revealed in a public place though. Might get violently surprised, if you get my meaning--not all the time, but some of the time. Are you okay with that being a risk?
TP: ...well...how likely would that be? I don't want to get the party in trouble all the time...
GM: Let's say that you have to pass a DC 10 Charisma save if you get revealed in some places--I'll let you know which ones as you enter. Fail and people will shun you or charge you more, that sort of thing. Fail by 5 or more, it's torches-and-pitchforks. Particularly hostile places, or places where the party has a bad rap, it might be DC 15.
TP: Alright...I think I'll try to have high Charisma then, even though that's not that useful to a Monk. My tribe picked someone they thought could get along with "smoothskins". What level are we starting at again?
GM: 4th, I wanted to skip over the intro levels this time.
TP: Alright, I'll take Actor as my 4th level feat then. Ooh, I know--I'll take the Scribe background.
GM: ...Scribe? Why?
TP: Well, the stats are good, and it gives the Skilled feat. But I'm reflavoring it not as "someone who copied books", instead like...the rigorous training to hide in shadows and to write good reports.
GM: Ahh, alright, that's unorthodox but I can see where you're going with it. Alright, I'll allow it. So, a "hard-scaled" lizardfolk infiltrator, sent to learn about the "smoothskins" to see if they're worth engaging with more openly?
TP: Yep!
GM: Will you be telling your party members?
TP: ....I hadn't thought about that. I think, let's keep it secret for the time being. Drop hints now and then.
GM: That'll be interesting to see come to light.
Did you notice that you proved the point by ignoring the effort to discuss the process of the process of gm<>player collaboration cooperative collaboration and choosing to call it disengenuius?
No. Because I wasn't interested in engaging with you after how you had posted. So I instead chose to engage with someone else that I thought was actually receptive, and wrote the above.
Perhaps if your approach had been less about baiting others into the bad behavior you expect of them, and had focused on being constructive, I would have been more likely to respond. I appreciate that you have un-blocked me so we can interact again, but I have little reason to engage with something so openly and pointedly hostile to anything I think, believe, or say.
