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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6155351" data-attributes="member: 5143">I agree, I'm going to try to make this short.Some people believe that D&D should be a "generic fantasy game generator" where it's a huge toolkit of anything a DM could ever want to put in their game.  I believe that the more stuff you put into D&D the worse it becomes at doing its "core" job.  Which is, IMHO, to run games in worlds similar to Lord of the Rings, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk.  In all of these worlds the idea that anyone would be traveling and adventuring with a Bugbear strains disbelief, nevermind a giant or a dragon.  It simply doesn't fit with the theme and background of these worlds.Could it be interesting when used extremely rarely in those worlds?  Probably.  Do I think the game should be changed or a single page wasted to allow a small percentage of people to do it?  No.I don't.  I believe they should be attacked nearly everywhere they go.  Which is precisely why I don't like it.  I don't want to roleplay villagers attempting to kill them off 5 times a session.  I have more important and more fun things to roleplay.  I want to concentrate on the quest our PCs are on.  Not on random attacks by people, attempting to find ways to disguise monster PCs, and dealing with food shortages because you haven't been able to resupply.I agree for the races most likely to be in question.  Humanoid creatures, sure, I'd like to see stats for and be able to decide that Orcs are rather peaceful in this particularly game and allow them as PCs.  I think it is a waste of time and effort that designers could spend elsewhere by going to the (considerably large) effort to try to make dragon PCs work for the 5% of people who might allow it.I understand the desire to play absolutely anything and to have the rules be a toolbox.  I can tell you that having played enough systems that the ones that support more things are precisely the ones with horrible balance issues and often rules with very fiddly bits that make knowing and applying the rules difficult at best.I like Hero System/Champions, but I know that it'll take much longer to run combats and make up characters than if I play D&D...so I rarely play it.  I love the world and concept of Rifts, but in an attempt to support EVERYTHING there's no baseline power level for characters.The same thing is true in D&D.  In 1e and 2e(which had NO rules for playing any PCs other than the basic races and some subraces of them) and 4e(which has no rules for playing PCs more monstrous than Orcs) are all fairly balanced in their own ways.  They all have ways they could be improved, but for the most part you end up with PCs who don't completely overpower anyone else.Meanwhile, 3e/3.5e tried to become too generic a ruleset, putting rules in for playing all sorts of monsters(albeit none of them in core rulebooks and all of them optional) because a hot mess of imbalance and powergaming.  The more things that were allowed, the worse it got in terms of balance...and time spent arguing rules at the table.  Since PF pretty much copied 3.5e whole cloth, it still has almost all the same issues.I don't want to see D&D go down that road again.I would normally agree with you, but seeing the numbers in the polls, I don't think there's enough people who want dragons to make it worthwhile.I'd much prefer a game with more limited scope.  Maybe someone else can write DragonQuest the RPG where everyone plays dragons that fits your style better.Yep, I agree with this.  But there's also a bunch of skilled people out there who would never go on adventures.  The teacher at the Wizard Academy might be super powerful.  But he has no desire to go into dungeons and risking his life.  It's a combination of skill and bravery that makes heroes who they are.  To me, it doesn't feel like a dragon needs bravery.  He's a dragon.  He's capable of taking on cities by himself just because he was born.This is the key.  I believe you should never get any of these things.  They are too game changing and have only ever caused problems in games.  Wish especially is a contentious spell.  I can see magic items or powerful creatures granting PCs a Wish once but to have it as a spell that a PC can cast multiple times a day just makes the game unmanageable.  At that point, you can't play a game that has 5 PCs of various classes going on adventures.  You play whatever the guy with Wish wants you to play.Dragons have a similar effect on the game.  There is no good way to balance them.  So they shouldn't be allowed.It's not a matter of not liking it.  I will likely never choose to be a Hobgoblin, the race is just kind of stupid.  However, I don't think they should be removed as an option from other players, since they are pretty much just large, strong humans.  I don't want people playing dragons, because even if I choose not to play them other people will if it's an option in the rules.  I don't like playing with dragons because they are way too powerful and it makes me feel like I'm playing a worthless character until I join them and also play a dragon.Plus, there is a limited amount of space in the books.  Each page devoted to playing dragons is one that isn't dedicated to something I'll use more often.  Each book that comes out explicitly about monster PCs is one that isn't produced about something else.From what I hear this option will already be in the next version of the D&D Next playtest rules and I agree it might be a nice option.You were able to do it in 2e with a poorly selling campaign book explicitly designed to run an ALL dragon campaign that warned you not to mix dragons with non-dragons(which we ignored and turned out badly).  You were able to in 3.5e.  You weren't able to at all in OD&D, 1e or 4e(and basically 2e as well).In fact, the entire idea of playing races other than basic humanoid ones pretty much entirely came from 3e/3.5e.This I can't disagree with more.  There NEEDS to be a limit.  The ability to snap your fingers and change the universe makes for a really boring game with no risk at all.  Risk is what creates tension.  Tension drives stories.DM: "So, the evil Wizard appears in the sky and says 'HAHAH...I now control this land and you are my slaves...you will bow be-"PC: "Yawn, I snap my fingers, the evil Wizard and all his henchmen stop existing.  Wait...no, they continue to exist, but now they are all fanatically devoted to me."DM: *throws out a 50 page book of notes on the adventure he had planned* "Well, that's done."The real problem was that abilities like Wish were considered to be things only NPCs were ever going to have in 1e and 2e.  PCs were required to start at 1st level according to the rules, most of them had racial limits that prevented them from every becoming powerful enough to cast Wish and even if you were Human it would take years and years of real time to play long enough to get those powers...without dying once.Basically, they were included in the book so the DM could have cool spells to use against the PCs.  They even included text that basically said "When PCs attempt to use this spell, screw them over at all costs".When 3e came out, it attempted to smooth the level curve and make high level something that was realistically possible.  Which meant players felt they entitled to get 9th level spells and that super powers were something that PCs should legitimately have.  It's had a detriment on D&D ever since.The thing is, the ability to turn a PC to stone in a combat is interesting, it creates a complication for the PCs.  They have to find a way to turn their companion back.  They have to take precautions to avoid being turned to stone.  It's a good break from constant hacking and slashing.  The ability for a PC to turn each and every one of their enemies to stone is...repetitive and overpowered.  There's a reason that in fairy tales, myths, and the like the heroes almost never have these abilities.Plus, as a DM, one of your primary goals is to make the game fun for the PCs.  You already have infinite power.  You can say "A god doesn't like you.  You all die, roll up new characters" any time you want.  A monster with the ability to do something really powerful isn't going to suddenly break the game.  You'll likely use it responsibly because you want the players to have fun.  A player doesn't have those restrictions.  They're goal is, often, to defeat the challenges put in front of them in the quickest, easiest method possible.  Many of them want to beat the DM at all costs.  If you give them an ability that will allow them to do that, they'll use it every chance they get.Though, I'd like to state for the record that abilities should be remotely balanced for monsters as well.  Still, there is a difference between an ability controlled by the DM which can realistically get used 2 or 3 times in an encounter before the monster with it dies and giving it to a PC who will use it hundreds of times during a campaign.This amounts to the same thing for me.  Under VERY controlled circumstances, PC vs PC conflict can be fun.  But more often than not it escalates as someone decides to do something that makes one of the other PLAYERS angry.  Then it becomes a player conflict with one player saying "Look, I'm just roleplaying my character" and the other player saying "You can hide behind that defense all you want, but you attacked my character and you CHOOSE the personality of your character and the decisions he makes so anything your character does is ultimately your decision.  Why didn't you choose to play a character who would work WITH us instead of against us?"Right, I understood.  This kind of roleplaying can be fun for some people and not so much for other people.  When we did it, we found it amusing for the first time.But when we had someone who was playing the 5th or 6th Ogre we had seen and we had to explain what a toilet was because they hadn't seen one before...well, it was just getting old and we wanted to move onto new territory, not rehash the same roleplaying over again.It's a matter of focus.  When you sit down and watch Game of Thrones, you expect it to be a medieval story about empires rising and falling with a hint of magic everywhere.  If suddenly someone with Q(from Star Trek) level power showed up and started turning people blue and teleporting them to random places on the planet, it would change the focus of the story dramatically.When I sit down to play a D&D game, I expect the focus to be on adventuring, killing monsters, and acquiring magic items.  When the focus instead becomes "trying to find ways into cities without dying and explaining culture to our ogres" it's a very different game.  One, that I agree, can be fun in the right circumstance, with the right people, and only once in a while.Right, I just assumed he could defeat them easily from your statement.  If it was up in the air...well, then caution is understandable.  However, coward PCs are a pet peeve of mine.  This recently came up in another discussion I was having in a Facebook group about PCs taking "non-tactical actions" i.e. any action that didn't help the party win.  I hate when PCs spend actions hiding under tables, cowering, or just plain not being helpful.  Too often DMs plan encounters assuming all the PCs attack every round and when one PC is a coward, we all die.I agree, it's mostly semantics.  The point is the word "imbalanced" simply means "not balanced".  So the idea that something could be balanced while simultaneously imbalanced makes no sense to me.  What you are talking about is that PCs need to be more powerful in some areas of their character while weaker in others.  I completely agree with this.I just want to make sure the total sum of all abilities on a character roughly equal the sum total of all abilities on another character.Savage Species, I believe.  It's been a long time.  It might have been a nearly equally powerful giant.It has to do with mind flayers because it is also a powerful creature that was allowed at 1st level.  In fact, in that book there were a number of powerful races allowed at 1st level.It definitely sounds like you've found a group of roleplayers above all else.  This clouds your opinion.  Trust me.We played 4e until recently and it was considered a cardinal sin that would get you made fun of every couple of minutes until you changed your character to play a race that didn't get a +2 stat bonus to the primary stat for your class.  As far as we were concerned, there was no such thing as a Dwarven, Elf, Halfling, or Half-Orc Wizard.  They didn't get bonuses to Int, so they were(as far as anyone in my group was concerned) barred from taking Wizard entirely.If there was a race that gave +4 to Int, it would then become the ONLY race that could be a Wizard.  Thus, even ONE race allowed that was more powerful than another changes the game dramatically.Wait, how did a group whose composition was mandated by the DM manage to get away with breaking those rules?Also, let's say my experience is quite a bit different.  Your group is used to playing weird races.  Mine is not.  We played 2e D&D for years and there WERE no non-PHB races for the longest time.  When they eventually came out, people played them but "weird" in those groups was playing a Grey Elf as opposed to a normal elf out of the PHB(which we did because none of the PHB races got bonuses to Int.  See above).In 90% of my 3e/3.5e games, all races except those from the PHB weren't allowed by the DM.  We took occasional forays into campaigns where they were allowed.  Those campaigns ended up being no fun or fell apart and it gave our DMs more reason to ban all "weird" races in the first place.There's a difference between "I can cast 3 fireballs a day" and "I can use breath weapons forever and fly forever"The evoker casts a couple of spells, causes significant damage and then is tackled by random guards when he doesn't have any spells left, imprisoned and sentenced to death.  A dragon continually flies over a city at high speed roasting people forever without really worrying.  A Fire Giant likely has a bunch of powers he can use at will as well.  As well as the ability to just step on buildings.  It's the difference between Godzilla attacking a city and some guy with a flamethrower.I still believe that roleplaying disadvantages aren't disadvantages in most games.  Sure, you are a fire giant and people want to kill you.  So, you simply don't go near cities or talk to anyone.  You go on adventures in dungeons and haunted forests where you don't so much worry about people and use your impressive combat powers to more easily defeat the enemies.If you're forced to deal with people and these situations come up, your DM is left with 2 options: Kill your character or Not.  If your DM wants the fun to continue, he'll purposefully use encounters weak enough to defeat or have people get angry but never to the point of actually attacking you.  That just gives you more XP and more attention.  It's not a disadvantage.Unless the DM kills you...in which case, you've learned not to be a monster in the future because you'll just get killed.I'm sure their hitdice, bonus to a bunch of stats, ability to fly, use a breath weapon, have a large amount of natural armor, and a bunch of other abilities more than makes up for the difference in those spells.I can't speak to Pathfinder.  But keep in mind that CR is a balancing mechanic for monster, not for PCs.  A CR 14 cleric isn't a level 14 cleric(who can only cast 7th level spells, not 8th).  A CR 14 dragon isn't a 14th level dragon.This is entirely edition/specific spell power dependent.  I agree, in some games that different might be acceptable.  In other, it might not.Like I said up above, that's unique to the people you are playing with.  I'd guarantee a 100% chance my entire group would choose dragons given that choice.  Their philosophy?  Who cares what people think of you when you are more powerful than them.Well, because D&D dragons have traditionally been twice as smart and twice as powerful as the average mortal.  Reading through Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, or Greyhawk novels, setting books, and adventures will give you plenty of examples of the way dragons are treated by people in those worlds.  NO ONE rides dragons in them except for in extremely rare cases.  In Dragonlance it was a big deal when the Dragons let people ride them because the entire world was in peril.  But the riders were never in charge.  The dragons were often WAY more powerful than their riders.  There's only a couple examples where some of the most powerful people on the planet managed to become powerful enough to actually be equal to a dragon and gain its respect enough to be considered equals.These individuals were 18th+ level and were renown throughout the world.I use the standard baseline of Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk.  Angels would probably have equally bad problems.  Which is why I don't allow them either.  In these worlds pretty much all the standard races are considered close to equal.  Everything else is up in the air.Yeah, that happened when we were younger.  I admit that the DM was trying to get his point across kind of ham handedly and was a little bit of a jerk.  He didn't want a dragon in his game and explained that to the player.  But they insisted.  So, that's what happened.The thing is, one of my major hopes for 5e is that it will reduce the bookkeeping for Wizards for that exact reason.  We spent too much time at the table talking about how long the Wizard rests, which spells he prepares and so on.  We were often waiting for the Wizard when everyone else was ready to continue.This appears to be the main difference.  It sounds like you play in mostly player driven campaigns.  What adventures you go on are decided by the players or at least heavily influenced if not written around them.  In most of our campaigns, our DM buys an adventure from the store, says "Ok, I'm running this, everyone roll up 12th level characters".  Then when the first session comes along and he says "You are famous adventurers and you have all had a messenger deliver a message from the king inviting you to his court and are standing around waiting for him to enter.." and the player of the dragon says "Umm, they let me in?  How did I fit through the door?  Why did I get a note from the king?  I've never adventured before.  I'm level 1."Most kobold caves are big enough(though barely) for Medium sized people to squeeze through.  But the point is in consistency.  Most adventures take place in tunnels big enough for humans(because every race in the PHB is that size or close to that size).  If one person can't get through a tunnel, it's likely an obstacle that no one in the group can get through.  Therefore, as a DM(especially when you are planning an adventure in advance of knowing who the PCs are or running a purchased adventure), you can be assured that the PCs can all complete the adventure and won't have to be left behind.This works fine in a movie where you can write a character out of a scene and they won't complain.  In a game, I would never tell a player to "live with it".  I used to have a DM who used to do this all the time.  He'd run scenes which sometimes lasted 2 or 3 hours with one character while everyone else was told to live with it.  We'd sit there for the 1st hour or so before we'd get bored and go wander off into the other room and put on a movie.  Half the time, the DM had no idea that it was going to take that long.  He figured it would take a couple of minutes, but then circumstances just kept the scene going.Over time, I've developed a rule of thumb that says NEVER split the party for ANY reason.  Even if you think it'll only take a couple of minutes.  Obviously, this isn't completely practical.  Sometimes the PCs aren't in the same location.  But we take EVERY precaution to make sure it doesn't happen.  Which includes "please don't play PCs who might have to sit outside in the woods while we go to town".There's a difference between an ability that is limited and one that is infinite.  Being able to cast a spell once per day that lets you fly for 5 minutes is horribly different from one that allows you to fly over an entire country.One is useful for "I get over this pit trap.  It cost me one of my spells per day that I could have used for something else".  The other one has no ends to it's uses.  Not the least of which is the ability to bypass half an adventure's difficulties.Or, there's a 3rd option: Don't print it in a book so I don't have to disallow it.What if 95% of DMs are too lazy or disinclined to worry about the disadvantage because it simply didn't fit in with the game they wanted to run?  Would it be easier for them to run a game that didn't have that disadvantage or to have to create a list of disadvantages they don't want in their games.Also, this is creeping in on Stormwind Fallacy territory.  If you don't know it, it's the fallacy that says "Just because a DM can fix a problem doesn't make the rule bad".  If the disadvantage causes problems when D&D is run as a standard hack and slash dungeon crawl game...then it is a bad disadvantage.Except that all my games(and the games of most people I know) include a "no PC fighting" clause.  The PCs MUST work together and may not attack or steal anything from each other.  This is to prevent bad feelings, see above.There's one really good reason: They are friends.  You stick up for friends, even when they do some stupid things.  Especially friends who have saved your life about 30 times in combat against nasty monsters.And someone being rude is no reason to kill someone.  Just imagine if you tried this is real life:"Screw you, Mr. President!""Secret Service!  Kill that man!""Wait a second, you are going to kill our friend because he insulted you?"I understand that this is a king and D&D tends to have medieval morals.  However, most PLAYERS don't.  And you'll find that they tend to bring real world, modern morals with them into the game.  My players would see absolutely no difference between these situations and would be wondering why the king suddenly went crazy and starting killing people.Probably the same reason I allow my friend Jim to play with us.  He's belligerent in real life.  He complains constantly and he likes to say things that would be horrifying to normal people but I'm used to at this point so we ignore.  He's my friend and has been for a long time and he stuck up for me when other people wouldn't.  So, I return the favor.Some people can look past a horrifying appearance.  Especially adventurers who are often already outcasts, weirdos, slightly insane, orphans.  They tend to find similar oddballs and accept them into their "family".  Once they are in, there tends to be a lot of loyalty.We don't play games where people kill each other simply for being ugly and annoying.  No matter how ugly or annoying they are.  And if they are a PC, they have the advantage of being the player who is sitting to your left.  You know killing their character might cause them real life annoyance.  You also know killing them will cause them to have to spend time and effort making up a new character...which means they'll likely miss the rest of the session.  Which is no fun for anyone.  Especially if the DM has balanced the next couple of encounters around 5 PCs and there are only 4 now.Basically, killing another PC will tend to ruin the entire session, possibly the entire campaign.  We don't do it.There are just so many situations where you CAN'T apply a disadvantage.  You aren't being lazy.  It just doesn't come up.  Imagine a 30 level dungeon entirely filled with undead and oozes that hasn't been explored in 1000 years.  The PCs are playing an adventure where they are seeking an artifact at the bottom of it because they found a treasure map.There are no NPCs to interact with.  The PCs roleplay a little bit from time to time about how annoying that Ogre is, but otherwise the disadvantage has no affect on the campaign.  I don't think you can blame the DM for this one unless somehow you are going to claim that no DM is allowed to run a campaign without social interaction.Because it isn't a roleplaying disadvantage.  It's a physical one.The problem is that by definition roleplaying disadvantages don't HAVE combat disadvantages.  That's what makes them roleplaying disadvantages.  Which is why you can't balance around them.Some things are easier to break than others.  If your lamp has sharp, broken glass sticking out in odd angles around it, it's very dangerous to try to get to the light switch.  Even if it's useful for light once you carefully navigate all the sharp points to get to the switch.The system in question was 90% likely to break and 10% likely to come up with something good.  Which is not a good tradeoff.  It takes too much work for the DM to have to constantly adjudicate every character created with it.This is the same discussion I had with one of my friends once about why he didn't consider 3.5e broken.  He said that it was perfectly fine because the DM could disallow anything I could think of that was broken.  I asked him whether he wanted to spend the time and effort disallowing my character over and over and over again.  He told me that if that happened, he's just blame me for being a jerk than blaming the rules for being allowed.I told him that I'd prefer the rules create characters you DON'T have to bad 99% of the time and have to deal with the 1% edge case than deal with a system where I have to ban 90% of all characters created using them.In other words, I'd prefer that you'd need to smash the lamp in order to cut or electrocute yourself rather than having one with exposed wire and broken glass.  Even if the lamp without exposed wires was a little bit dimmer.I agree entirely.  But once again, I just have doubts that such a thing is possible.I think we mostly agree on this.  The difference is I see these creatures as being overly powerful just be their nature of being these creatures.What I'm saying is: "weaker" dragons are unsatisfying and Dragons are over powered.  Therefore, there is no option but to disallow them.  Especially if it gives us space for something I'll use 100% of the time.Mostly, I just threw it out.  I liked some of the other stuff in the book like splitting stats into 2 parts to allow people to customize their characters more.  But it often ended up splitting up stats into combat and non-combat stats.  Like Strength was separated into "Lifting things" and "Bonuses to hit and damage".  The system allowed you to lower one to increase the other one.  So, everyone increased their combat bonuses at the expense of things that were "less important to the game" like lifting things.  Which turned my players even more into combat monsters.Eventually, they just proved to me that more freedom in character creation wasn't actually a good thing and just caused more problems than it solved.It was right near the end of our 2e playing.  3e came out shortly after so we switched and didn't have to worry about it anymore.Nope, but we should definitely try to avoid that.  Or errata it when it happens.  My point isn't a specific entry, but an entire subsystem of the game.For instance, say that ALL feats printed in 5e were extremely overpowered.  But the game assumes no one will take one and doesn't put any limits on how many you could take.  Everyone will start taking them ALL.  If you limit everyone to one, it might not be very broken, but monsters might be extremely easy to defeat because they were build assuming no one had any feats.  But if you disallow feats, you have now wasted a large section of your book on something that (likely) no one will use.I feel the same way about extremely monstrous races.Yes, a game normally breaks when rules are combined.  It's fairly easy to balance a small number of options.  When you have hundreds of options and they can be combined in any way you want it starts to fray around the edges.  Especially when those options are introduced after the fact and are tacked on or are designed to be used as optional rules.  Those rules are often not playtested as well as the "core" rules.I think I'll stop you there.  Gestalt doesn't work fine and may be the most broken mechanic introduced ever.  It creates a random assortment of characters with no baseline of power at all.  If you allow ALL your PCs to take it, it is slightly more balanced.  However, it throws all assumptions of power in a campaign out the window and makes it impossible to choose enemies who aren't either extremely overpowered or underpowered for the PCs.I think you had the correct reaction.  You understand.  It was stupid.  He ended up with a character who cast spells as if he was a 1st level cleric and 1st level wizard, had all the rogue skills, 1d12s for hitpoints and THAC0 of a Fighter.  He could still wear full plate while using all his spells.  All he had to do was keep taking roleplaying disadvantages to keep taking better powers.Here's my main concern.  I like the world to make sense.  Which means that the difference between the "average" guard and a PC shouldn't be SO great as to be undefeatable until much higher levels.  D&D Next already has this going for it.  Even a PC who is level 10 can be hit and likely killed by 50 or 100 level 1 guards pretty quickly.  In 3.5e, a 10th level fighter could take on 100 level one guards without blinking or even worrying that he'd get below half his health.I'd prefer the average power of a PC is lowered to the point where the idea that they could be equal to a dragon is thrown out the window.I'd get annoyed if people showed up with an all fighter or all wizard party as well.  Because I'd likely have to modify my adventure to make up for it.  I don't have the time or inclination to do that.Though, I'd still have to modify it LESS than if they had a dragon.Hmm, not sure what PF rule prevents anyone else from detecting secret doors.  There certainly isn't one in 3.5e.  The rogue's only power was to find traps above DC 20.But, yes, I agree that a party should have everything they need to succeed.  Which is partially why monster PCs cause so many problems.  If someone is a level 2 Rogue because they are also a dragon, it can cause as many problems due to them being too weak, in addition to them being too powerful.True, but as he pointed out...his character had no control over being in existence.This entire paragraph is just too rooted in 3e philosophy.  The answer to everything in 3e is: Give the monsters everything the PCs have and increase their level to counter any power the PCs have.I prefer a world where nearly every guard in the world is 1st through 5th level and the PCs are considered to be extremely special because they are some of the only people in the world who ever saw enough combat to get above that level.  Where powerful spellcasters are EXTREMELY rare.That kind of game worked fairly well in 1e and 2e.  But 3e just kind of set up a world where there were thousands upon thousands of level 20 NPCs because the PCs were level 20 and needed something to fight.Luckily, this appears to be something they are going back to in D&D Next.My assumption is that any character you can make with the rules is the same power.  If the rules let you make a character who is more powerful than everyone else, they are bad rules.This philosophy just creates an arms race that becomes really stupid after a while.  I remember near the end of Living Greyhawk where our campaign which was forced to use the rules precisely as written with no restrictions ended up having a rash of players who managed to choose a bunch of overpowered options and became so powerful that when we used standard monsters, it was simply no challenge at all.So, adventure writers responded by "using" the rules to create the best monsters they could.  Which is to say they started having monsters getting absurd combinations as well.  Oozes with levels in Monk so they could get Improved Evasion and adding their Wisdom modifier to their AC, all monsters taking 1 level in Warrior to get hitpoints and a bonus feat because one level of an NPC class didn't increase their CR, monsters who had random wizard buffs placed on them with absolutely no explanation as to how they got them since none of their allies were wizards, taking combinations of broken feats or magic items, and so on.It really became dumb and was a huge topic of conversation at conventions I went to.  Authors insisted there was no way to challenge PCs who were allowed to use ALL of the rules without having access to ALL of them as well.  Players insisted that there was no way to take on the challenges in the adventures without abusing the rules.Which is why, my point was there's a difference between starting as a character knowing you'll eventually get something and starting knowing you'll never get something.  You choose your character at 1st level knowing what powers you'll get when you get to 20 and choose accordingly.  If you want Miracle you choose Cleric.  If you want Wish, you choose Wizard.  If you want to be a dragon...you pick something else until the time you are allowed to be one in which case you abandon your character and start a new one.There technically wasn't a LA there.  The monster is considered to be 10th level without taking a class.  The monster gets nearly every benefit that a 10th level character in D&D next would have gotten except class features and he gets flight, better stat bonuses, a breath weapon, and permanent weapons and armor that can't be taken away in addition.  If anything, it's extremely overpowered.  Though I was making the numbers up on the fly, I don't expect them to be balanced.  The only thing the 10 levels thing does is prevent people from playing Dragons before 11th level and prevents there from every being a dragon with higher than 10th level in a class.I'm not sure how they could be permanently huge simply because they have money.  I can see the flight with a couple of magic items.Correct.I disagree that everything someone wants in a game should be put in.  It's apparent that over 80% of people don't want the ability to play dragons in their game.  As I've said before.  There is always limited book space/development time.  I'd prefer they don't waste it on something that the vast majority of players won't use, is hard to get right(so takes more time to develop), and might break the games of those people who decide to use it.Sometimes it's better to say no to something someone wants.  It would be nice to be a Glitterboy pilot with Glitterboy armor from Rifts in a D&D game.  It might ruin the game, but I don't think so, and I like it and would have fun playing it.  I think they need to put rules for power armor and fusion engines into D&D.  But I think it's a bad idea to give me what I want.  It changes the tone of the entire game and has a large chance to imbalance games...even though wizards can cast Stoneskin and clerics can cast Lance of Faith so people can already have metal skill and shoot lasers.</blockquote>

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