When Players don't respect the DM's rules - Help!

[Hussar]

No, I would not agree with that. The fact that most of the criticism of the various class books from WOTC is that the classes are weaker than core bears this out.

For the most part, the biggest offenders tend to come when you start mixing and matching numerous sources. For the most part, any single source is generally not broken. Granted, it greatly depends on the campaign as to what is "broken" or not, but, by and large, WOTC supplements have done an excellent job in not playing the power creep game.

 

[kigmatzomat]

You imply "broken" only means "over powered." A new GM could fear killing PCs who are too weak as well. I recall TPKs being pretty common for new GMs in previous editions. Lots of times we wouldn't even name characters until the 3rd or 4th session, especially when the new GM went with homebrewed dungeon crawls.

Even if you disagree with the potential for multiple WotC books not to play well with each other, rules overload is a reasonable fear of a new GM.

Besides, with (IIRC) 6 core races and 11 core classes you have 66 combinations at 1st level and since this was a mid-level game (9th I believe) you could dual-class to around 350 rational combinations (excluding paladin & monk multiclassing as well as sorcerer/wizard). Add in PrCs and you've got probably 500 combinations. This is still a reasonable character selection.

It's not like Elephant tried to turn 3E into OD&D with 5(?) race/classes.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

See, now this I disagree with. The assumption that anything from a non-core source is going to be broken.

But that's not really the issue.

More combinations leads to problems. Less familiarity with non-core rules leads to problems.

Players tend to pick the more powerful classes. So what if 90% of CW's PrCs are lame? Players aren't likely to take them. Sometimes they do take something underpowered, in which case...

Taking underpowered things can also cause problems in campaign. Oh look, our primary spellcaster can cast detect magic, can't identify items, and is missing out on a massive number of spells, too. Even though this isn't overpowered it's causing a problem.

 

[Elephant]

Update:

Apparently, the group voted against me. Time to find a new group!

 

[Satori]

Woah woah...they wouldn't even let you back in as a player?

What crap.

I'm sure you'll find a new group in no time.

Are you currently hosting any PbP or OpenRPG games? That could cover your fix until you get a new group.

 

[Elephant]

The group games at the problem player's house. He kicked me out of his house, and when the option of playing somewhere else to finish up the campaign that the previous DM had been running (I started DMing before the last campaign was over), PP threw a fit and said "venue doesn't matter - it's him or me." So...that kind of forced the issue.

...and apparently a few people were steamed about my "too-restrictive" character creation rules, and they didn't care about the issues of respect that I was concerned about.

 

[Felix]

Nuts to them.

Jerks.

Good luck at finding a game, man; I'm sure MN has some to offer!

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Nuts to them.

Jerks.

Good luck at finding a game, man; I'm sure MN has some to offer!

What he said. Honestly, it sounds like you're better off without them.

 

[silver_wizard]

As people said, you will be better off with another group that will understand the merit of a DM limiting class selection due to inexperience... Anyway, care for DMing a group in Greece?

 

[Hussar]

Ok, that blows. No one should be doing crap like that. That's just so immature. "It's him or me?" Gimme a break.

Dude, try out OpenRPG. So much better than that sort of crap.