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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6283768" data-attributes="member: 4937">It is also not what I said.  There are tons of ways to disagree with me, many of which weren't covered by my observation - which incidently really wasn't about disagreement.   Since you choose to be nettled, I might as well say that your position as far as I'm concerned has already logically unravelled, become self-contridictory and turned on itself.  There is no more merit in us arguing.  There is no basis for agreement possible.  I'm only responding because I hate being misquoted.I said that I doubt the motivations of someone who would claim that they wanted to play a concept, when what hindered them wasn't the freedom to implement that concept, but the fact that the concept was not optimal.   I'm not fully sure I doubt there ability to play the character, since some of the best RPers I've ever met were also power gamers, but then again - I've never had a power gamer want to play an unoptimized concept.  Their imaginations tend to begin with what they can do mechanically, and then they (or the best of them) rationalize within the narrative (because they know being a great character is a power unto itself).  Look, we both know that we look at the game completely and utterly in contridiction to each other and we agree about just about nothing.  You start talking about a character concept being "a leader of men", and immediately you assert that either you must have the leadership feat or else you must have house rules.  My mind boggles.  Neither leads to being the character who is a "leader of men".  If you want to be a "leader of men" as your character concept, nothing less or more is necessary than role-playing a character who is a leader of men... and if the setting is in any way fair and impartially run at all, people will flock to your banner to serve you.  No house rules will be necessary.  You want to lead people, mechanically at most you just need a high charisma and (maybe) drop some points in social skills and then play the part of someone people would want to follow.  One of the most epic and famous leaders in my homebrew setting was an arthritic beggar.  If I had to implement her mechanically, Leadership feats and the like would pay no role in it.  She'd likely have been a low level commoner.  Do you think every king, lord, or leader in the world requires a series of feats to pay for every character that holds them as their leige?  The Hurin of Talernga is an 8th level character that commands 50 or more cohorts and 10,000 followers merely because he was born Higher King over Talernga.  He doesn't have enough feat slots to represent that mechanically.  Why should PC's be any different and obey different rules, and be handicapped from recieving what ought to be due them on the basis of story?  I don't have Leadership or anything like it in my setting, in part because I wouldn't want anyone to feel cheated for spending mechanical resources on something someone could better achieve without them.  And in part because it is unfair to the player; it forces him to pay for and play by rules the NPCs don't.  It's something I learned from GURPS.  Transient aspects of the narrative shouldn't be, and perhaps even can't be, accounted for mechanically.  It's one thing to say, "I want to start with/without a resource other characters don't."   But you can't perpetually maintain the gamist fictions without harming your narrative ones, so you'd be better off not having them.We just don't agree on anything. We just have to leave it that.That's not house rules!!  No rules of any sort are required.  All the PC has to do is say, "I want to seek out a squire and convince him to swear fealty to me.", and then we have an story where he tries to find a likely/worthy squire and convince him to swear fealty to him.  Done.  No rules are violated.  That's called an adventure.   It's more a violation of the rules to acquire squires than it is a violation of the rules to acquire gold or magic items.  Not having a Leadership feat is a house rule.  The fact that you can have meaningful relationships with NPCs isn't a house rule.I never said it was badwrongfun or poor play to level however you like.  I have freely admitted that you can start at 10th or 20th level if you like, level as fast as you like, or play as gritty or as Monte Haul as you like.  What I have said is that there is a high cost to playing at high level or to leveling up fast, and it is a cost that often as not need not be paid in order to obtain the same thing.  If it really is "a wash", then it isn't a wash.  The only reason to pay the cost of D&D's extreme fiddliness, slow play, and imbalances at high level is if you are buying something you cant' have at low level.  Now, I do play at high(ish) level, so obviously I do obviously feel something can be purchased there but we don't agree as to what it is.</blockquote>

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