D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[Thomas Shey]

Do y'all (on both sides) view choice of character class the same as race? Sub-classes? Alignment? Deities?

Can I do "it depends"? Classes are a weird case, because I consider classes a fundamentally artificial structure. There are a few that do imply things about a setting that I'd at least want to consider before permitting them, but honestly, an awful lot add up to "This is various odd things I do while hitting things/using magic" and those don't strike me as terribly setting specific most of the time.

(This is sometimes not true with the latter, but that usually ends up being more likely a reason that I won't use a D&D variant in the first place. D&D magic is not nearly as generic as it likes to paint itself as).

 

[Oofta]

The “player who demands to play a weird race and will not compromise” is such a specific case that always comes up in these threads but to me seems a bit of a straw man. Has anyone actually encountered one in the wild? Most of the posts here seem hypothetical.

Most of the time it hasn't been an issue. I have had it happen twice, once with a guy who really, really wanted to play a half-dragon half vampire. In another case it wasn't race but a guy who wanted to play an evil PC and wasn't interested in a campaign that didn't allow it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Experiences differ of course.

Its just hard for me to resolve the OD&D treasure tables with low magic.

(bold added)

And IME this was rarely reached because it took so long to level that even playing the same PCs for years would rarely get you above name level. There are always notable exceptions, however, and even my own experience had a couple of those, albeit not many.

Depends how frequently you played. I should note in Lake Geneva they got a fair number of name level (9-11th) characters well early on in their time with the game, just because they played a lot.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Sometimes because the lore you had about how things worked out was dependent on them or something pretty close to them for your history to make sense; you can probably find things kind of elf-like or dwarf-like if you've set it up with those in mind, but at that point you're going to also ask yourself why to bother, when elves and dwarves do the job.

Never underestimate the benefit for the simple fact the traditional races are, honestly, kind of bland.

what makes something elf-like or dwarf-like anyway?

 

[Thomas Shey]

what makes something elf-like or dwarf-like anyway?

Certain assumptions about cultural traits and habits usually. Dwarves live underground, are big into mining and crafting, and so on.

 

[Minigiant]

The “player who demands to play a weird race and will not compromise” is such a specific case that always comes up in these threads but to me seems a bit of a straw man. Has anyone actually encountered one in the wild? Most of the posts here seem hypothetical.

The player who "comes to a table with no knowledge of the DM's game but only wants to play a single specific type of PC" is just so unusual. I could see them easily be infuriating but I can only imagine them as rare.

However the "DM who curated a world with few variations of PCs" I would see just as infuriating but rare.

I am very supportive of DMs designing rich worlds. However DMs heavily restricting the PCs options starts to make me feel icky. Especially for the reason of preserving rarity or wonder without a strong pitch for buy in. I can tolerate a lot but DMs cannot design PCs. Even by proxy or restriction. The player gets to design their PC and it is their right to relinquish this power. It's the players only 2 privileges.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I don't know that I've ever seen that one, but I've absolutely seen people who aren't really happy unless they're playing some race well beyond the normal range of available species, whatever that list is. Some of it is that they're just fixated on being the odd man out, sometimes they're bored with the old standards, sometimes its less benign reasons.

Do you mean the mainers for they main a race or is this a one-off thing?

Certain assumptions about cultural traits and habits usually. Dwarves live underground, are big into mining and crafting, and so on.

is that really all that makes a dwarf I thought stubbornness and conservativeness also was a feature?
what about elves?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Do you mean the mainers for they main a race or is this a one-off thing?

Could you rephrase this sentence? I don't think I understand the question.

is that really all that makes a dwarf I thought stubbornness and conservativeness also was a feature?
what about elves?

I'm honestly not enough of a D&D or even (Pathfinder guy) to want to chase down that question much; I just chose the low-hanging fruit.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The player who "comes to a table with no knowledge of the DM's game but only wants to play a single specific type of PC" is just so unusual. I could see them easily be infuriating but I can only imagine them as rare.

However the "DM who curated a world with few variations of PCs" I would see just as infuriating but rare.

I am very supportive of DMs designing rich worlds. However DMs heavily restricting the PCs options starts to make me feel icky. Especially for the reason of preserving rarity or wonder without a strong pitch for buy in. I can tolerate a lot but DMs cannot design PCs. Even by proxy or restriction. The player gets to design their PC and it is their right to relinquish this power. It's the players only 2 privileges.

As noted, that becomes more and more problematic the wider and more extensive a set of books for a given version of D&D or its kin become. Where's the edge on that? Core book? Books by the main company, even if they're deliberately specialized? Third party books?

 

[Arilyn]

In a standard campaign it's more difficult. Long ago when the feywild goblins came to the prime material plane the group split into two. One embraced the cruel side of their mischievousness nature and became goblins. The other embraced the joyful side and became gnomes. There are some neutral and good-aligned goblins in the world but nobody has ever asked to play one. It would have to be in a very specific region of the world (where the Nug-Nug tribe of goblins live) and everyone would have to be okay with it.

But again a goblin would hit many of the issues a drow would hit. In most places the only ones anyone has come across are evil conniving little bastards. Honestly not sure how I would deal with it, my campaign world can be very harsh in a shoot first ask questions later sort of way. That happens when people fear for their very survival.

This is really cool. Now I want to make a goblin bard who starts neutral (leaning a little to good) who will slowly morph into a joyous gnome, stat changes and all.