DragonLancer
Hero
I run 3.5
No non-standard races, and no evil characters.
No non-standard races, and no evil characters.
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Verboten! What do you NOT allow in your campaigns?
- Thread starter AFGNCAAP
- Start date
Aeolius
Adventurer
I feel I need to balance things out a bit. so...
No human PCs
Granted, the campaign does take place underwater; water-breathing races that can swim are preferred. With that in mind, there is a human PC in the party, but he has been modified with fish hag grafts.
No evil PCs.
I side with those who keep this rule out of respect for intra-party harmony. As the DM, I'll keep track of the bad guys....though, as most of them are hags, that'd be "bad girls".
No human PCs
Granted, the campaign does take place underwater; water-breathing races that can swim are preferred. With that in mind, there is a human PC in the party, but he has been modified with fish hag grafts.
No evil PCs.
I side with those who keep this rule out of respect for intra-party harmony. As the DM, I'll keep track of the bad guys....though, as most of them are hags, that'd be "bad girls".
I think I would like this group.
I hate saying "no" to my players. Of course sometimes you have to but I'll at least listen to anything.
I try to tell the players what their options are up front (races available, PrC rules, etc) so they know going what their choices are. Just letting the players run wild and then having to say no to every character they want to create takes away from the fun. The DM isn't donig his job if he has to say no to everything IMO.
I played in games where everything was extremely restrictive. When I hear some of these lists of what's not allowed, it seems that some DM's have vendettas against min/maxing even if they don't know what it is. In the game I'm running now, I actually wish my players would take advantage of some of the PrC's and feats and options that are out there.
In general though, I start everyone at 2nd level so you can use +1 ECL races. I don't like monstrous races because it doesn't fit into my campaign to try to justify monsters wandering around in civilized towns. I allow all the core classes and most PrC's (but I modify most of them). I also don't allow evil alignments. Even the best players can get carried away when they see that big E at the top of their character sheet.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot:
NO VoP!!!
Joshua Randall
Legend
Elves.
Maybe I should be playing Skyrealms of Jorune instead....
Maybe I should be playing Skyrealms of Jorune instead....
Similar to others
I have a lot of the same restrictions already mentioned above:
- No evil PCs - I am all the evil the campaign needs
- No psionics - never got into it, not even when I played AD&D
- Stuff from outside core rules has to be approved by me (usually not a problem)
- No 2 for 1 when power attacking (3.5) - still use 3.0 rules
- Same problem as Gnarlo
Bigwilly
I have a lot of the same restrictions already mentioned above:
- No evil PCs - I am all the evil the campaign needs
- No psionics - never got into it, not even when I played AD&D
- Stuff from outside core rules has to be approved by me (usually not a problem)
- No 2 for 1 when power attacking (3.5) - still use 3.0 rules
- Same problem as Gnarlo
Gnarlo said:2) no time to play
Bigwilly
WayneLigon
Adventurer
The only real carry-over I have from campaign to campaign is 'No Evil PC's'. There really isn't anything anyone can do to convince me otherwise.AFGNCAAP said:
Generally, I use the three core rulebooks with some elements from the splat-books, plus one or two things from some of the Books of Eldritch Lore. Normal PHB races only. Nothing else.
Campaign-specific:
The Greatwood campaign generally discourages clerics in favor of druids; clerics belong to the enemy culture of that campaign. You could play a cleric, but your life would probably be very difficult and short.
The desert campaign had no elves at all (but it did have half-elves), because they were all wiped out a long time ago (and in fact were the reason most of the world was desert).
mhacdebhandia
Explorer
These are my personal guidelines:
1) The campaign setting demands that some things be left out. Frex, in the archipelago game I'm currently (slowly) designing, the culture is an ahistorical mix of 18th-century guilds and late-Republic Roman political structures, with no concept of primogeniture, et cetera et cetera ad nauseam. Therefore all feudal concepts are pretty much inappropriate; I've consequently excluded the paladin from the list of allowed base classes, because the feel of the class is very "holy-knight-in-shining-armour". Similarly, the island chain setting doesn't really suit elves and halflings, so I've excluded them as well.
2) Anything not inappropriate for the world or mechanically unbalanced is generally allowed. I like to adjust things rather than ban them outright for mechanical reasons; I'm less interested in taking the time to rework a class's flavour, for the simple reason that the d20 market offers a great deal of alternatives for most archetypes. For example, I'm allowing most of the non-spellcasting Arcana Unearthed classes into the game; the champion ought to suffice for anyone who would like to play a paladin, as long as the feudal knight element of the paladin wasn't what attracted them to it.
Pretty much everything proceeds from these two axioms. For example, if I were to run a Forgotten Realms campaign, I wouldn't hesitate to include material from products like Monte Cook's Chaositech to spice up the antagonists or even the PCs, if that's the kind of game my players wanted. I aspire, as a GM, to make my world a playground for the PCs and the players, rather than for my own cool storylines and whatnot.
The best game I ever played was one where the PCs went nuts with their plots and goals, and it was ruined when the DM decided to end the game not by concluding the PCs' personal stories but by railroading the party towards his vision of a "cool" ending. I don't ever want to make that mistake, myself.
The only additional guideline I would impose is more of a metagame concern: I don't want to run a game where the party is doing something that one or more players isn't interested in or comfortable with. Frex, I wouldn't use Book of Vile Darkness material if any one of my players objected, nor would I allow Book of Exalted Deeds material if the party as a whole were not all interested in playing white-hat heroes (though they don't necessarily have to want to play an all-exalted party).
This doesn't mean that the players all have to agree on everything the party does in any given session - what plot threads they follow, et cetera - but it does mean that I want to give everyone in the group a fun and interesting time, since that's all I ever expect from a game myself.
1) The campaign setting demands that some things be left out. Frex, in the archipelago game I'm currently (slowly) designing, the culture is an ahistorical mix of 18th-century guilds and late-Republic Roman political structures, with no concept of primogeniture, et cetera et cetera ad nauseam. Therefore all feudal concepts are pretty much inappropriate; I've consequently excluded the paladin from the list of allowed base classes, because the feel of the class is very "holy-knight-in-shining-armour". Similarly, the island chain setting doesn't really suit elves and halflings, so I've excluded them as well.
2) Anything not inappropriate for the world or mechanically unbalanced is generally allowed. I like to adjust things rather than ban them outright for mechanical reasons; I'm less interested in taking the time to rework a class's flavour, for the simple reason that the d20 market offers a great deal of alternatives for most archetypes. For example, I'm allowing most of the non-spellcasting Arcana Unearthed classes into the game; the champion ought to suffice for anyone who would like to play a paladin, as long as the feudal knight element of the paladin wasn't what attracted them to it.
Pretty much everything proceeds from these two axioms. For example, if I were to run a Forgotten Realms campaign, I wouldn't hesitate to include material from products like Monte Cook's Chaositech to spice up the antagonists or even the PCs, if that's the kind of game my players wanted. I aspire, as a GM, to make my world a playground for the PCs and the players, rather than for my own cool storylines and whatnot.
The best game I ever played was one where the PCs went nuts with their plots and goals, and it was ruined when the DM decided to end the game not by concluding the PCs' personal stories but by railroading the party towards his vision of a "cool" ending. I don't ever want to make that mistake, myself.
The only additional guideline I would impose is more of a metagame concern: I don't want to run a game where the party is doing something that one or more players isn't interested in or comfortable with. Frex, I wouldn't use Book of Vile Darkness material if any one of my players objected, nor would I allow Book of Exalted Deeds material if the party as a whole were not all interested in playing white-hat heroes (though they don't necessarily have to want to play an all-exalted party).
This doesn't mean that the players all have to agree on everything the party does in any given session - what plot threads they follow, et cetera - but it does mean that I want to give everyone in the group a fun and interesting time, since that's all I ever expect from a game myself.
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Pseudonym
Ivan Alias
In my 3.5 FR and Kalamar games, I didn't allow evil PCs, monks or psionics. I allowed a few Savage Species characters into my FR game, but I rapidly concluded that it had been a mistake.
For my Eberron game, I'm going to allow everything from the Core and ECS, and swashbucklers from CW. I'll try psionics and monks, but no evil PCs.
For my Eberron game, I'm going to allow everything from the Core and ECS, and swashbucklers from CW. I'll try psionics and monks, but no evil PCs.
Mercule
Adventurer
Restrictions for all settings:
- No tinker gnomes. There is a transplanar divinity that does nothing except zot gnomes who try to use tech. There is no faster way to get your character killed in my game.
- No gender bending. I know some people don't have any problems with this. I've just had my lifetime quota of drow lesbians played by men, thankyouverymuch. If I ever see one again, I think I'll cause physical harm to someone. Ergo, blanket rule.
- No halflings.
- No monks.
- No elephants. (Yes, I'm serious.)
- No sorcerers. This is really just a side effect of using a spell point system for wizards and including psions. Sorcerers become a bit reduntant.
- No weapon familiarity. Stupid rule.
- No paladins. (This may end up a global ban -- the class should be a PrC.)
- No beholders. I'm with whoever said "dumbest monster ever".
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