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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 6291026" data-attributes="member: 1210">That's all fine, but what does that have to do with an elf in D&D?First, I've never argued against nonhuman pcs. I'm arguing that if you want to play an elf, you have to play that elf by the rules. Specifically, in regards to your +1, +1, -1 scheme, I'm calling it out as a bad idea for a rule, both in terms of mechanics and in terms of verisimilitude. (I know, there's that word...)So, about your elf- What if that isn't the type of elf that exists in the dm's game? Do you still insist on being able to play your type of elf? Certainly, that doesn't match up with the description of elves in 4e (or really in any D&D stuff, given your dismissal of Dex), nor does it lend itself to game balance. I absolutely and categorically disagree that referring to mythology is a good way to ensure the game stays balanced. I absolutely and categorically disagree that the game MUST cater to every taste of every player in every way. Would you also argue that you should be able to play a heavily-armored, sword-wielding wizard? The no-armor, crap-weapons trope is a pure D&D thing; there are plenty of mythological counterexamples. Yet the player who makes this pitch to me is going to have to wrap his concept up in the system, rather than expecting the system to change to accommodate him. And you haven't even addressed the balance issue (+1/-1 vs. +2/-2), except to handwave it away. That's a recipe for giving freebies to the player, which I straight up DO NOT do. I don't give pcs bonus feats for fun, I don't give them a magical +2 to hit just because, and I don't give out free stat bonuses- which is the main problem with adding odd numbers to stats in 3e and later D&D, as has been repeatedly addressed by the designers themselves.I mentioned upthread that I am not a coddler. I don't pull punches in combat, I almost never fudge the dice (for or against the pcs), and I don't rearrange the milieu to insert new major cities, organizations, races, etc because someone likes the notion of them. I don't care what view you hoid, as a player, of gnomes; they have a specific nature and culture in my campaign, and no matter how much you love the idea, you don't get to play a tinker gnome. They don't exist just because you want them to; stuff in the world is stuff in the world, and you get to play with and among it. The campaign setting, to me, trumps any player's (or players') neat ideas about shoehorning whatever into it; I simply don't do that. At least not on the scale we're talking about. (It's an entirely different thing to take a pc's background elements that do fit in the world and run with them; if a pc wants to be an elf of the sort in the campaign world and wants to add, say, a noble house or trade route in an area not fully fleshed out, sure, that's fine. But wholesale rewritings of a race just to accommodate a pc's concept? I think not.)</blockquote>

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