D&D General The Tyranny of Rarity

[JiffyPopTart]

It means the same thing that the DMG says. I run the game and make the final call. Obviously I listen to my players and even if I decide what they are proposing doesn't work then I'll try to work something out. Basically "You can't do that, but what are you trying to accomplish?" Then we try to work something out. But yes, I have the final say.

In all my years of DMing I think I've had 2 instances where I made a decision that the player really disagreed with and quit the game. In one case, they wanted to play a half dragon half vampire with a cape the billowed in the nonexistent wind. In another the player wanted to play an evil PC.

So if a player says "I want to play a half dragon half vampire" what would you do? Or when it comes to ruling the player says they run so fast they create a Flash tornado? I really don't see how saying no in either of these cases is not just standard in most games. It's been the way it's worked for every DM I've ever had.

There's that cape again!

In your "What would you do" question in both those cases I would ask the player where they saw rules for self tornado vortexing or half-dragon vampires. If the rules existed (I'm guessing they dont) then I'd review them to see if they were fair, and implement them if they were appropriate to the power level of the game.

In the 3.5 days I had a player who wanted to play a hound archon as a character. They were something like a 9 level adjustment which made them unplayable in a low level campaign. We sat down and essentially built a 9 level hound archon class that the player could take to play at low level usefully and end up a proper hound archon at high enough level. This let the player work towards their concept but not overshadow the rest of the party.

 

[Faolyn]

That's good, but still an infinitesimal part of the word's creation, much less of the running of it.

No, it's not an "infinitesimal" part. It's a fairly sizable amount of what matters to the PCs.

Also, running the game is different than worldbuilding. But there are groups who do round-robin games, where each player takes a turn as the GM in the same setting with (most of) the same PCs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the principle, but surely you can see that, compared to everything a DM does to actually run the game, these contributions are really small.

So what? What's your actual goal here? To say that players should have nothing to do with the creation of their world? To say that players only ever care about about their "entitled little selves"? Both things may be true in your games, but not in mine, and not in many other games. I ask because you were very dismissive ("blah blah blah") about the idea of players contributing "even a fraction" of what the DM does. Which is a weird belief, because there would be no game at all if there weren't any any players, just worldbuilding.

There are many other ways to make the world feel like home for the players.

Didn't say there wasn't. But having the players actually create something makes it important to them. IME, players really enjoy it when they come up with an idea that you incorporate into your setting.

Our usual pantheon is made of the characters from a previous mega-campaign, those who did not die and managed to ascend to godhood. In a sense, it's a huge part of them which is in the game, but they did not do much more than playing these characters in the previous campaign. And it's not a criticism, it's just perfectly in line between their expectations as players and what they expect of their DMs.

Yeah, a DM tried that once in a game, using the PCs from the previous game and we all said nope, come up with your own pantheon. Although I'd think it's weird unless your higher-level games are all about getting the players up to god-level and there's a time-skip between that campaign and the next. But that's me. You do whatever makes your players happy.

 

[DND_Reborn]

OH! Another @Faolyn and @Lyxen exchange. This ought to be good!

I'm glad I decided to see if anything new has made it into the thread...

 

[Oofta]

There's that cape again!

In your "What would you do" question in both those cases I would ask the player where they saw rules for self tornado vortexing or half-dragon vampires. If the rules existed (I'm guessing they dont) then I'd review them to see if they were fair, and implement them if they were appropriate to the power level of the game.

In the 3.5 days I had a player who wanted to play a hound archon as a character. They were something like a 9 level adjustment which made them unplayable in a low level campaign. We sat down and essentially built a 9 level hound archon class that the player could take to play at low level usefully and end up a proper hound archon at high enough level. This let the player work towards their concept but not overshadow the rest of the party.

Actually the cape does exist now, it's a common magical item so I guess that's okay.

But you're dodging the question. The rules for what they want do not exist. What do you do? Because every DM I've ever had at times says "no". I try to say "No, but here's what we can do" after getting details and clarification on what they are attempting.

 

[Older Beholder]

When I read the thread title originally, I thought it was referring to a player choosing a rare race as an act of tyranny in that it made the rest of the campaign adhere to them and their needs.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

In my current campaign I established that, for the most part, the campaign world was mostly humans except for specific regions, and that a humanocentric party would be normal. I clarified, however, that any race at all was available to the player so long as they understood that they will stand out in the crowded human markets....unless they start the campaign in one of the nonhuman regions. In the end, we got two campaigns going, which we rotate between, with one group consisting of almost entirely humans (with one mysterious elf) who do very normal human adventuring things, and another group is a wild menagerie that operate as monstrous detectives out of an orc-run city that serves as a safe harbor for a bewildering array of species. Both campaigns are incredibly fun, and let the players experience two very different sides of the same campaign coin. In the monstrous denizen campaign the players picked a few races I didn't even know existed as options until chosen, and we took the time to determine a bit on how they functioned and existed within the campaign world, which in turn led to building new and interesting player-driven lore for them to explore; it was a lot of fun and remains so as these campaigns are the current ongoing storyline.

 

[Faolyn]

So magical healing only on things which have souls ? Where does this come from ? And undead have souls, actually, at least the intelligent ones.

It comes from Umbran's idea. If I were to use the idea that his character had, then no, undead wouldn't have souls; they'd have negative energy spirits, and thus wouldn't heal from magic.

You are taking things from the wrong direction.

Nope. It's more likely they were listed as humanoids so they could get healed via magic, which probably most players wouldn't be happy with. I found this list on reddit of spells that only affect or don't affect certain creature types, and basically any construct would be helpless between long rests, which would suck for any warforged who was a warrior. Sure, they could come up with a heal object spell that specifically healed warforged--but they didn't. Obviously it was easier to just say that they're humanoid enough to count.

5e decreed that they are humanoids so that its simple system could accommodate them as player races when Eberron was rebooted for it. But whenever their author created them, with a rulese with more nuances, he specifically wrote: "Warforged are constructs with the living construct subtype". So this is what they are for us, and it corresponds much better to what we know of them. And it made them cool and special at the time.

Back in 3x, constructs had specific abilities: no Con score; immunity to all mind-affecting effects, immunity to poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, and necromancy effects; inability to heal any damage on their own; not being subject to crits, nonlethal damage, ability damage or drain, fatigue, exhaustion, or energy drain; immunity to any effect that required a Fort save unless it targeted objects; couldn't die from massive damage; couldn't be raised and resurrected; bonus hp; and no eating, sleeping, or breathing.

A "living construct" creature type was needed because there was no way a construct could be a PC without having a massive ECL or whatever it was called where you played a monster race but had to gain a certain number of levels before you could gain class abilities. The living construct creature type specifically didn't have many of those immunities.

In 5e, a creature type has no associated traits; it's only a tag that comes into play with some spells, magic items, and similar objects. For instance, there's nothing stopping you from creating a construct that is vulnerable to poison--you just put that in its statblock. With 3x, you'd either have to come up with a special trait to allow it, or make it a monstrosity or something else instead of constructs.

If they do change the warforged's type, it would likely to be both construct and humanoid. They could heal, but would still be affected by anything that specifically targets constructs.

 

[Older Beholder]

I didn't allow Warforged in a recent game (although I do have them in my campaign world) because it was a campaign reboot after a TPK where the characters were all reincarnated by a group of 'born again' clerics.

I just didn't like the idea of being reincarnated as a Warforged, the players agreed that that made sense.

 

[Lanefan]

I can see what you are saying, but at the same time feel like that's picking out a singular thing and making it a problem when you might have things like gargoyles, elementals, and undead that would all have a similar problem if you looked into it. In your game would Cause Wounds repair a skeleton who took damage? How is that different than cure Wounds fixing a Fire Elemental?

First off: are gargoyles, elementals, and-or undead available as playable PCs? If yes then all of this probably needs to be looked into and hammered out, almost certainly by houserule, before play begins.

If no, it's easy to say those creatures/creature types each have different (non-)regeneration rules/methods and that cures affect each differently if at all, simply because none of them* are made of flesh and blood.

As for warforged, if I were ever to incorporate such a thing as a playable PC I'd either:

1 --- make them more "flesh-like" (thus cures etc. would work on them but they'd have lousy unarmoured AC) and dream up some origin story for how this came to be

or

2 --- make them stone or metal but unable to regenerate or recover hit points by normal means, which would mean they'd have hella good AC and crazy h.p. at low level compared to the other PCs but would inevitably be on some sort of clock/death-spiral as their h.p. slowly depleted over time. (i.e. they'd work just like other constructs)

* - vampires excepted, but they're an exception to a billion other things already so what's one more?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But if it's the latter, why on earth do they think it hasn't been considered.?

For me, it's two things.

One, many of the folks who talk about restricting (or, quite commonly, "banning"--some even do so rather gleefully) explicitly say they've done so for ages and ages, like 20+ years, and then append that with something like "and I've never seen any reason to change" or "and I've had lots of fun with that" or whatever. So it seems only appropriate to say, "hey, I've had a lot of fun doing things the opposite of that, maybe give it a try?"

Two, I very rarely get the impression from proudly "traditionalist" gamers that they ever really have considered other ways. They often (not always, but often) speak in incredibly dismissive, even uncharitable phrasing (like "Star Wars cantina on feet" or other ways of expressing how yucky and weird physiological diversity must be). They often (not always, but often) react with rather a lot of hostility to alternative approaches, even when suggested in very mild ways, such as a thread I made a while back advocating that random, irrevocable permadeath is a really pretty dull motivator and that others are much more effective. I then had easily a dozen people accuse me of wanting to strip all value and challenge out of the game e.g. "Oh so the players just win all the time forever? How boring!"

Perhaps I am uncharitably generalizing. It wouldn't be the first time and it won't be the last. But I have in general found that there's a scornful attitude toward things with insufficient pedigree (which of course makes a catch-22: You can't get the pedigree without use and representation, and you won't get any representation until you meet the pedigree requirement) or that are "too weird" or whatever. Hell, at least one designer of D&D itself make jokes like this, back during the Next playtest. He openly joked about how he couldn't understand how anyone would want to play dragonborn, with how weird and non-traditional they are, but that he'd very slowly warmed up from "nope, you can't play one in my games" to "well okay, if you really like this weird thing I guess you can play it," and very clearly presented this as a magnanimous and significant shift.

So...yeah. I do get some amount of impression that a lot of "traditionalist" DMs haven't tried, and maybe even haven't considered, these other approaches.

So let's say I was starting a new campaign and was perfectly fine with allowing evil PCs, and then one of my players said that they weren't really down with that. I'd almost certainly add the restriction for that game.

I would take a slightly (but only slightly) more nuanced approach. That is, I'd consult with the group and try to reach a consensus. Perhaps the rest of the group was really excited to play evil characters, so adding that restriction would sap the group enthusiasm overall. Or perhaps the campaign premise kind of requires characters with legitimately unsavory pasts. Whatever the reason, it's quite possible to want to talk it out.

So we do so. Is it "I'm an abuse survivor so a lot of stereotypical 'evil' deeds dredge up painful memories I'd rather not think about while gaming"? The folks wanting to play evil might find that an acceptable reason to choose something else, or that answer might push me to look for a new campaign premise, etc. But it might also suggest that we talk out the boundaries and try to find something that is acceptable to all parties. Maybe "evil" is a cosmic label so you can be morally upstanding but because you're a necromancer (e.g. one inspired by the Abhorsen books) or a half-devil (e.g. Hellboy) you're "evil" by default. Or maybe everyone used to be hardcore evil, but they've begun to reform, and this is a tale about whether that journey is possible for the various characters. Maybe the campaign premise can be reworked for people wrongfully imprisoned. No one side has a unilateral "things happen my way" power, and all participants are free to decide that this can't actually be resolved and just needs to be abandoned (though I would hope they would all bring a good-faith effort to determine that rather than keeping a finger firmly on the big red button just waiting for a reason.)

It means the same thing that the DMG says. I run the game and make the final call. Obviously I listen to my players and even if I decide what they are proposing doesn't work then I'll try to work something out. Basically "You can't do that, but what are you trying to accomplish?" Then we try to work something out. But yes, I have the final say.

In all my years of DMing I think I've had 2 instances where I made a decision that the player really disagreed with and quit the game. In one case, they wanted to play a half dragon half vampire with a cape the billowed in the nonexistent wind. In another the player wanted to play an evil PC.

So if a player says "I want to play a half dragon half vampire" what would you do? Or when it comes to ruling the player says they run so fast they create a Flash tornado? I really don't see how saying no in either of these cases is not just standard in most games. It's been the way it's worked for every DM I've ever had.

I had not really gotten the impression, prior to this, that there was much listening to your players involved. That is, proposals made even in tangential hypothetical were met with (paraphrasing) "well I don't do that," without much room for discussion (and attempts to do so tended to then produce "well, I'm the DM, it's my job to make a final call and I've done so.") Perhaps you would face it much differently if one of your actual players had responded thus.

I, too, look for what the player is trying to accomplish, though I tend to be persuaded by "rule of cool" so long as the request does not depend on inducing other players to respond in specific ways (that is, the request must not be coercive), nor on acquiring an unfair or illegitimate advantage not otherwise available (that is, the request must not be exploitative). So if the player can sell me on it being neat or interesting or fun, I'm game, we'll figure something out. Like you, I don't run games for evil PCs, because I heavily doubt my ability to run an enjoyable game for them. Beyond that, though, I try very hard to avoid bright lines, because I am keenly aware of the limits of my ability to predict what the group will enjoy.

For the half-dragon half-vampire, honestly I find the billowy cape thing hilarious so i'd probably allow that element just because I can (and would have people comment on it regularly, e.g. "how is his cape billowing in an enclosed cellar...?") I follow Gygax's requirements for playing more extreme monstrous races: go for it, but you must grow into your power like anyone else does. Given the limit on evil characters, how does this half-vampire feed? How did they become a half-vampire? Are they weakened by something (perhaps having gone a long time without feeding on blood) and need to recover their strength? Is their body actually dead dead, or does the "half" part imply they're fully or partially alive? I'm cool with a mix of both, but that should (at least initially) come with some drawbacks or be more "worst of both worlds" than "best of both worlds" at first. Also, how does their draconic heritage affect them? Can they still use elemental breath or has it changed? Are they more humanoid with just a light touch if draconic elements (e.g. the 3.5e Spellscale race), heavily draconic (e.g. 4e Dragonborn), or somewhere in the middle? Moving from specifics to abstractions, why this specific combination? Is there a particular story they want to see play out, do they just think Castlevania and Skyrim are cool, or is it about mechanical advantages? Does it specifically need to be "the literal child of a dragon and a vampire" or could other origins or possibilities apply? Is the player okay with starting out pretty weak (as far as vampires and/or dragons are concerned) but having potential for some cool powers down the line? Are they willing to cede some control over backstory and relationships/history/past deeds to me, to enrich the experience of playing through the character's story? Are they okay with other players having similar open-ended potential even if those players choose more typical/traditional options? Etc.

As for the Flash tornado, well, what does that do? Is it powerful, or just cosmetic? On its face, the way you've phrased it, it sounds like a naked power grab, but I've no way of knowing how the original request was presented, nor how the person requesting it would have responded to questions. If the player is okay with this starting out as a weak or even purely cosmetic thing and then growing over time into something powerful, I have no innate objections. Sink enough resources into it and it could even become a truly fearsome ability. But if they just want to be able to fly and (effectively) give themselves time stop whenever they like then no, that will not be happening, because that's very clearly exploitative. Others have to work for that power, so this player should have to as well.