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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6152995" data-attributes="member: 5143">It's not a matter of "fantasy enough".  It's that I've always considered the underlying "theme" of D&D to be that of "normal" people who are skilled bravely facing threats that seem extremely dangerous.  It's the hero's journey.  It's about people like the Fellowship of the Ring.  Relatively normal people whose abilities are comparable in power to humans with a couple of advantages that humans don't have in exchange for some disadvantages humans don't have.A human with a sword and shield fighting a dragon in a picture looks super epic.  It looks like that guy has to be super skilled and super brave.  A true hero.  You can only imagine the wondrous things he's accomplished in his lifetime.When you see a picture of two dragons fighting, it's more like "Awesome!  Two dragons are fighting!" but you don't imagine that either one of the dragons is especially skilled or heroic.  They don't have to be.  They have all the powers of a dragon.I'd like the focus of D&D to be about that skill and heroism.I've played in and run games with monster PCs before.  They never came off as satisfying as games without them.  Maybe the first 2 or 3 times they were extremely novel in a "Look, I'm playing an Amethyst Dragon!"(which I did) sort of way.  After a while, though it just felt like we were playing monsters just to play something different not because they were more fun.Plus, it always ends up with the monster PC being more powerful than everyone else in the group.  Which starts the peer pressure to either play a monster as well in order to feel like you are contributing.I'd refer you to the hundreds of threads on this message board talking about why balance is necessary in a game but let me summarize:If someone is playing a character way more powerful than everyone else the game becomes about them.  They steal the spotlight continuously.  Combats becomes about them because they have abilities no one else can ever acquire(which is often the reason they are picked by players in the first place).Why cast fireball when you have a Mind Flayer that can stun all the enemies at once, at will, for minutes, and eat all of their brains before they have a chance to react?  No point is wasting resources...or playing the game really.  You can go into the other room and play Xbox or something while the Mind Flayer defeats them single-handed and you delay.Interactions with NPCs become about them because of their high skills/ability to charm or dominate people/monstrous appearance.  You know how often other people get to talk in a group that consists of a dragon, and 4 "standard" races?  Almost never.  I've tried it.  NPCs come running up to the dragon because he's so large, he's the first one they see.  Plus, he's the dragon...he has to be in charge.  Plus, they've never seen a dragon and we need to role play their surprise upon seeing one.  They need to discuss how they are so glad to meet him and ask him questions they've always wanted to ask a dragon.While the other 4 players in your group waves your hands in the air and try to get the attention of anyone or even get NPCs in the world to acknowledge their presence.And if they don't do all that stuff, you have the player of the dragon asking "Wait, no one is running away/towards me?  No one is screaming?  They're all perfectly ok with a dragon walking into their city?  Doesn't that seem odd to everyone else?"  The rest of the players agree and it seems out of place.The game becomes ABOUT the fact that the PC is a monster rather than about whatever the DM wanted it to be about.I'm going to have to disagree with this.  They've made a LOT of changes in an attempt to balance them.  Limited spell slots, having to prepare spells in higher slots to do more damage, and increased damage as fighters go up levels come to mind.  The fighter-wizard dichotomy is much lessened in Next and I suspect you'll see it lessen even more in the next couple of playtests.Never balance a combat advantage with a roleplaying disadvantage.  I've seen the effects of this as far back as 2e kits that gave you the THAC0 of a Fighter(for a Thief) in exchange for "trouble finding you more often".  Almost everyone took the kit because it was an advantage with a nebulous disadvantage.  Most DMs had adventures planned out that didn't leave room for adding extra "trouble" for the one character.  Most of them had written their adventures long before they even knew what PCs were playing in their game.  They were either too lazy or stubborn to change their adventures in order to add "trouble" and some just felt like it would ruin the tone or flow of the adventure to add it.  Even when it did get added, it felt more like an advantage than a disadvantage.  The DM paid more attention to the PC with the kit.  He became more important because he got his own storylines.  Sometimes he got more XP than everyone else because he got to fight his own personal combats while he was off alone(while the rest of us watched him fight for an hour).  The combats were never so strong as to kill him because the DM didn't want him dead.When skills and powers for 2e came out, I decided it was super cool.  A friend of mine showed me how wrong I was.  He took every roleplaying disadvantage he could find in exchange for combat abilities.  I told him the game was going to be no fun for him....he said that we'd see.  Nearly every NPC he ran into hated his guts.  He was ugly, belligerent, arrogant, unable to hold his tongue, and hated all of them twice as much as they hated him(all for points, of course).So within 5 minutes he had started a bar fight and had killed 3 random people in the bar simply because he could.  The guards showed up and he proceeded to defeat 5 guards single handedly.  Then, 5 minutes later 15 more guards showed up.  He defeated them soundly.  Then 5 minutes later 5 more showed up.  These were the elite guards.  They were all level 3 and he was level 1.  But the abilities he bought easily cancelled out the level difference.  One of them had a +1 sword and one had a suit of plate.  He looted those and equipped himself.  He then proceeded to ask for XP.  Which increased him to level 2.  I then threw wizards up against him armed with some powerful magic items figuring that he'd learn his lesson.  Though, his character was a Cleric/Wizard/Fighter/Thief because of the points he spent.  He defeated them as well and got all their magic items.Then I gave up and realized that although I could kill him, I couldn't do it in a way that made sense in the game.  The city didn't have 10th level guards.  I had figured out their resources in advance.  He was on track to kill every guard in town.We jointly agreed that he had proved his point.  Giving a character more combat power in exchange for roleplaying disadvantages is a BAD idea.I'm much more in favor of using weaker forms of creatures.  However, when it comes down to it...if you are going to use a weaker form of a creature, why allow it at all?"I'm a flightless, human sized dragon with no breath weapon or magical powers and my claws do 1d8+3 damage, just like your sword!""So, you're a human fighter then...""Yeah, basically...but I look like a dragon."At least Wizards can be balanced from the point of view of "You have limited resources and what you choose to do with them determines your focus for today."  It's impossible to balance a creature that has wings and can fly at will.  The only way to balance it is to say "Sorry, you can only fly twice a day" and that is bound to disappoint the person who wants to play that creature as well as strain disbelief as to exactly why his wings only work twice per day.I have seen people ask for it in my games before.  Especially new players:"I want to be a dragon!  That would be awesome!""Sorry, Dragons are too powerful, they have a level adjustment so you'd have to be 8th level to be a level 1 dragon.  We are starting at level 1.""Well then, I'll be a giant!""Sorry, level adjustment.  You have to be level 5 for a giant.""Ogre?""Nope, level 3.  But you could switch character to make one when we get to level 3.""But, I don't want to play a character for 2 levels and then switch to a different one.""Sorry, I guess you could play this scaled down Ogre when you start with the same strength and size as everyone else and slowly grow.""What's the point of playing an Ogre if I'm not bigger and stronger than everyone else?  I'll just be an elf."Those issues only apply to 3.5e/Pathfinder.  In D&D Next HD don't affect saves, BAB, or abilities, so it becomes kind of moot.I never liked LA.  It always seemed so clunky and never made an even remotely balanced character.  The problem is that a PC has HP, Saves, Bonuses to Attack, Bonuses to Damage, Defenses.  Normal PCs are balanced around the difference in these numbers.  One class might have 3 less hitpoints in exchange for an average of 5 more points of damage per round.  So, when a monster attacked the party, the one with less hitpoints was slightly more likely to die.However, with LA creatures, you always ended up with someone in the party who had 2 HD and a LA of +8 or something in a group with 10th level people.  The LA creature had an extremely powerful ability but had 15 hitpoints while the rest of the party had 100.  Meanwhile he had +5 to hit while everyone else had +15.</blockquote>

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