D&D 5E What Races (classes) do you allow or disallow in your campaign?

[GreenTengu]

So I guess your one of those DM's that allow any alignments, any race and basically anything goes huh? Well, to us "bad" DM's that is just plain disruptive to the flow of the game. Players say they want a long running campaign, yet they want to play races and alignments that are disruptive to the harmony and to other players enjoyment of the campaign and my enjoyment to boot.

about 4 months ago, I ran 5 individuals through my Pathfinder campaign, all of them were playing either half orcs or that cat race whet ever it is called. All of them were chaotic stupid (neutral) and really disrupted the flow of the campaign with their murder hobo alignments and crazy ass character builds. For me as a DM it was not fun (especially when one of them likes killing kids), so I told them either you are good aligned and stick with core races or I am outta here. They decided not to play in my campaign. Funny thing is, like WoW, find players for a game is easy, finding DM's is not.

So stick that in your hat and call it macaroni lol

Scott

Your problems are not with the particular race. You failed to demonstrate that anything about a particular race is the disruptive element. First, your problem has to do with ALIGNMENT.

If a town is under attack by a horde of zombies and they have a group of mercenaries consisting of a Warforged, a Kender, a Goblin, an Orc, a Githyanki and a Tinker Gnome who wander into town and then agree to help the town end this undead plague and get rid of the thing causing it, then you are off to the races. Nothing about the group is absolutely necessarily disruptive. And maybe the personalities and styles clash a bit, but so long as they are generally on the same page and the only Evil alignment is Lawful Evil and the only Chaotic alignment is Chaotic Good, things will generally progress fine.

But if you have a town under attack by a horde of zombies and you have a group of mercenaries consisting only of humans (or elves or dwarves or whatever you consider the "good guyest" race) come into town... and one agrees to help save them free of charge, another decides to take advantage of their desperate state to rob them, another ignores the danger and strips off all their clothes and run through the town naked before masterbating publicly in the town square and another basically just sits on his hands and refuses to engage with the danger no matter what.... well, your adventure is not going to progress despite the lack of "disruptive" races.

And any race can be any alignment. In fact, for those who are breeding races that must feed and raise their young and pass on skills to the next generation, it is stupid world building to ever assert that an entire race consists exclusively of selfish individuals who only look out for their own self-interest and actively try to do harm to all others around them at all opportunities... such a society could not function, even at a tribal level, that means even Orcs and Goblins MUST fundamentally act "good" to one another, at least often enough when the stakes are low enough that they manage to get enough members to survive to the next generation and raise that next generation to maturity. How they treat those outside their tribe is where they are going to exhibit their "evil" traits. That's the whole thing about alignment, fundamentally it cannot be about how you generally act towards members of your own social circle, your own kind, but must be expressed in how you act towards the greater populace of the world... but, I guess in a way, that would require reexamination of the Dwarf and Elf "good" alignment presumptions.

Anyway, point is-- you can have a Neutral Good Orc or a Chaotic Good Goblin or a Lawful Good Lizardfolk without fundamentally removing the aspects of their culture.

The Neutral Good Orc might still believe it is perfectly fine to cannibalize the body of fallen enemies or even allies to gain their strength because the spirit has already departed the body and just burying it and letting it rot or burning it would be a waste of the meat and thus disrespectful to the fallen warrior. And they might insist that they can hear the voices of the clouds and the rocks and the trees even though no one else can. And they might take any offer of comfort or rest as an insult, and instead insist on living in the roughest manner possible. But this same individual might be the first to step up to defend those smaller than themself and happily offer their healing abilities to those who are injured or tired and generally try to make friends with others and try to understand them across the cultural divide.


The second issue it seems likely that you have is that while you feel you have created your games rewards system in a "rational" way, in fact you have probably set it up in such a way that "bad" behavior is that which is most rewarded. I am guessing it is a situation where, given my previous example, it is clearly considerably easier to slay all the people in the town than to take on the zombie horde, pillaging the town would award far more gold, experience and equipment than defeating the zombie horde would and there are no actual consequences for having turned on the town and slaughtered every last person within it and similarly no real long-term rewards for having fought the Zombie horde.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen bad player behavior simply boil down to the understanding that the goal of the game is to collect as much experience and gold as possible and for players to have plenty of distance to look at the situation objectively aside from any actual morality (after all, the denizens of this fictional world are just numbers on a piece of paper), do some basic calculations and decide to take the easier and faster route towards acquiring those requisite experience points and gold to level up.

 

[Waterbizkit]

So I guess your one of those DM's that allow any alignments, any race and basically anything goes huh? Well, to us "bad" DM's that is just plain disruptive to the flow of the game. Players say they want a long running campaign, yet they want to play races and alignments that are disruptive to the harmony and to other players enjoyment of the campaign and my enjoyment to boot.

about 4 months ago, I ran 5 individuals through my Pathfinder campaign, all of them were playing either half orcs or that cat race whet ever it is called. All of them were chaotic stupid (neutral) and really disrupted the flow of the campaign with their murder hobo alignments and crazy ass character builds. For me as a DM it was not fun (especially when one of them likes killing kids), so I told them either you are good aligned and stick with core races or I am outta here. They decided not to play in my campaign. Funny thing is, like WoW, find players for a game is easy, finding DM's is not.

So stick that in your hat and call it macaroni lol

Scott

Not to dog-pile, but what you're talking about here is disruptive players and has nothing to do with race or class choice. It's easy enough for me, just as an example, to sit down at your table with a character sheet that says I'm playing a lawful good human fighter with the noble background... And proceed to turn your campaign upside down. If that's a players goal, it's not hard to achieve and no number of DM imposed restrictions will stop it.

I understand we all have our own experiences and those are going to shape our outlooks moving forward, but this idea so many DMs have that alignments, races, classes and any combination thereof make for disruptive players is something I've never been able to wrap my head around. Words on a character sheet don't suddenly make a mature and well-intentioned player an asshat, the same way they won't suddenly make an asshat be respectful of others. Funny thing that, the character sheet isn't a magic cure-all for immaturity.

My last campaign had a lawful evil tiefling warlock in it from the word go, in a party with a lawful good paladin and a neutral good cleric and it was never a problem. And yes, everyone played their alignments, as much as I enforce that sort of thing. They all even managed to get along with the chaotic neutral half-orc barbarian... who was also not a disruptive character.

Anyway, people will continue to play their games the way they like and that's the important thing. As long as your table is having fun that's the whole point. It's not like anyone here is strolling over to my table and dropping a pamphlet of restrictions on the table... good thing too, it'd get you laughed out of the session. I think folks just need to take a step back here and stop trying to pass their opinions off as fact.

 

[Caliban]

Well, after thinking on this some, I believe that what The_Gunslinger658 is saying is that they use race restrictions as a kind of filtering mechanism for potential players.

They believe that disruptive players are more likely to choose non-standard races, so by restricting the game to standard races (human, halfling, elf, dwarf, etc) they filter out a lot of disruptive players right away.

 

[Arilyn]

On my better part of judgment I decided to give these wacky classes and races with non core rules special abilities a chance, usually I do not allow such stuff, but I figured maybe people were grown up plus I was just getting back into D&D. I was wrong, people who want to play, chaotic stupid, wacky races, crazy character builds are just joining the campaign to disrupt it. To weed out these undesirables, I say core book only, and they are out the door in a New York minute to go and find some other DM to harass. Remember, players are a dime a dozen.

Is your campaign enjoyable to you as the DM with the added wackiness?

It is true that disruptive players often deliberately create odd combinations, but so do awesome creative players, so you don't want to turn them away with restrictions.

My suggestion is to ask the player of the "wacky" character to explain their reasoning, and provide a character background, even if just orally. This should give you a good filter. Good players will have solid, story reasons, while disruptive ones will hopefully become obvious.

I have had lots of players make what might seem like oddball combos. They usually turn out to be really interesting characters with very engaged players. They don't end up seeming wacky at all, but unique and imaginative.

During play if players decide to loot and murder, well they can be dealt with higher level NPC heroes, or if they are high level they could even be smited by agents of good gods!

 

[Zardnaar]

If I am running my standard world almost anything goes. BUT it is more of a 1-2 PCs, I don't won't a whole party of goofy races.

Thankfully my players are not likely to pick that type of stuff anytime soon.

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

You hit the nail on the head there dude, If later on down the road, I feel the players are grown up enough and it turns out I like them, then maybe in a different campaign, they can play their wacky races and chaotic stupid alignments to their hearts content. Until than, its just wait and see situation.

As a DM, I could care less if the players liked me or not, I'm not there to be liked, I am there to DM, and exercise my mind, if they like my game and behave like grown adults and respect each other then we are golden, if not, I have no qualms about kicking stupid players from my games, there are plenty of more players in that cess pool that might rise to the top.

Scott

Well, after thinking on this some, I believe that what The_Gunslinger658 is saying is that they use race restrictions as a kind of filtering mechanism for potential players.

They believe that disruptive players are more likely to choose non-standard races, so by restricting the game to standard races (human, halfling, elf, dwarf, etc) they filter out a lot of disruptive players right away.

 

[Winterthorn]

Despite the repetition I like these threads on DM game management ideas and strategies regarding races and classes. Plenty of good stuff.

So for me I employ one of 2 approaches:

1) For casual adhoc games anything goes! All options are on the table. While the campaigns last just a few months, rules get tested and people blow off steam. Much riotous fun for all!

2) For serious campaigns I invoke restrictions predicated upon the campaign setting and the flavour of game I would like to offer to entertain the players. Too much choice can be a bad thing, and risks a lack of focus, so I shorten the buffet table of choices, lol.

Just for interest: I am working on reviving an old homebrew campaign setting and making big changes, where one new feature is that humans, due to the very bad behaviour of their immortal ancestors, are denied by divine edict the spark that would allow them to be sorcerers. There is a long interesting story behind it, but the point is a setting can certainly justify restrictions of classes and races.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

On my better part of judgment I decided to give these wacky classes and races with non core rules special abilities a chance, usually I do not allow such stuff, but I figured maybe people were grown up plus I was just getting back into D&D. I was wrong, people who want to play, chaotic stupid, wacky races, crazy character builds are just joining the campaign to disrupt it. To weed out these undesirables, I say core book only, and they are out the door in a New York minute to go and find some other DM to harass. Remember, players are a dime a dozen.

Is your campaign enjoyable to you as the DM with the added wackiness?

There is nothing wacky about non Tolkien races.

Can't speak for the person you're quoting, but I don't allow evil alignments in my games, and just ban...being disruptive. It's super simple. Just evil alignments, and being disruptive. Even the evil alignment is a soft ban, that I might compromise on for the right concept.

IME, disruptive players are disruptive regardless of race or class. I've had to have out of game chats with elf wizards and dwarf fighters just as much as tabaxi warlocks or whatever. More so, actually. I've had players who looked st thing a little less you seem to, and wanted to kill goblinoids or gnolls or kobolds on sight, in worlds where they'd already been told that wasn't a thing, or the like. That was with a human ranger.

OTOH, one of my current games has no humans at all, while another has only one, whose half-brother is a half-elf. They also have a half sister who is a tiefling. polyamorous parents.

Neither campaign has any "wackiness" outside of the table jokes that any group has.


What I really roll my eyes hard at is, the whole thing folks do where race/class combos are banned. Just...really? So, dwarves and elves and gnomes are all absurdly monolithic in culture and outlook, down to the individual level, in your worlds?

That sounds unplayably boring.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You hit the nail on the head there dude, If later on down the road, I feel the players are grown up enough and it turns out I like them, then maybe in a different campaign, they can play their wacky races and chaotic stupid alignments to their hearts content. Until than, its just wait and see situation.

As a DM, I could care less if the players liked me or not, I'm not there to be liked, I am there to DM, and exercise my mind, if they like my game and behave like grown adults and respect each other then we are golden, if not, I have no qualms about kicking stupid players from my games, there are plenty of more players in that cess pool that might rise to the top.

Scott

Wow.

Welp, this thread is a good filter, apparently. Gonna filter all of that...whatever that is that I just read, and just use that ignore button.

 

[Iry]

You can have an amazing roleplay for any race or class combination. It's accidentally or intentionally disruptive players that cause the problems.