Why would you want to play *that*??

[Crothian]

Quoted for truth.

But it's not always true. Not everyone does that and if I had what I felt was a solid idea for a character even an unusual one and the DM accused me of just doing it for the stats of the cvombo I'd be insulted and a bit pissed off. I don't play that way and to assume wrongly that I do really shows me the DM has zero trust in me as a player.

 

[Chimera]

While I'm quite sure that there ARE people out there who play such bizarre combinations for role-playing reasons, my only experience has been with people who want them for some unique combination of stats and abilities. Thus I have a rather high level of disdain for people who want to do this sort of thing.

Then again, I seem to have a track record, despite now playing with my 11th group in the last five years, of playing with people who do very little actual ROLE-PLAYING.

I would posit another option, which is sort of the same as the "they're only doing it for the stats/abilities":

I know one player who is addicted to "Kewl Powerz". Won't play anything unless it's got cool powers and abilities. Limited to core races and classes, he sticks to Druids and Psions. Anything less meets with a sneer of disdain.

 

[Glyfair]

The problem I run into with this mentality in other players is that they often tire of their new experiment after 5 or 6 gamesessions, and then there must be a change either in the game itself or their character -- often times both, since I like to build the campaign around the PCs and their races, classes, background, etc.

Yes, this does happen, but not always.

Indeed, I have a player like this right now. He can't stick with a character. He went through 5 or 6 different ideas before the current character. He decided to stick with a Hexblade/Marshal. Now, after 6-8 sessions, he's realizing it's not a great character choice. I'm going to be building some plots around the character, and giving him some character focus options (such as the Hexblade feats from the Dragon magazine), to try to interest him again.

 

[Crothian]

While I'm quite sure that there ARE people out there who play such bizarre combinations for role-playing reasons, my only experience has been with people who want them for some unique combination of stats and abilities. Thus I have a rather high level of disdain for people who want to do this sort of thing.

You might be causing your own problems. If I was a new player and you showed unfounded prejudice to what I was doing and made bad assumptions of my motives I doubt I'd stick around long enough for you to realize that I'm one of these exceptions you've never met.

 

[haakon1]

For my money, I would be content if I could play nothing more than fighter, wizard, rogue or cleric for the rest of my natural life. I can think of an infinite number of possibilities within just those guidelines. Why the need for all the bizarre character concepts?

I agree. Core classes, at most the DMG prestige classes (though those aren't "necessary"), and core races (plus a possibility for a few nearly-normal creatures like a lizardman, with big painful role-playing costs to those choices) are enough for me. And they're what I limit the campaigns I run to.

I think there are definitely gamers who like a lot of complex rules. Maybe they just play too often and get bored of straight-up D&D, so they want play a mutated version. Or maybe they just enjoy complexity for complexity's sake.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Some enjoy complexity for complexity's sake. Some enjoy trying new things. And some enjoy looking through a dozen books and pulling from each to create the character that they have in their head.

While it can be taken to an extreme, players shouldn't be automatically dissed for doing this.

At the end of my friend's campaign, I had a dragonwrought kobold spirit shaman with draconic feats(as per sorceror) and half the spirit shaman abilities traded out for more 'draconic' stuff.

Was it because I wanted to powergame? No. It was because I wanted to have a kobold shaman who channeled the powers of his tribe's dragon, while slowly becoming one himself. I went through several classes and systems to get there (warmage, sorceror, Elements of Magic mage, spirit shaman, some Iron Heroes stuff, Complete Arcane's draconic feats), but all of it was in service to the character concept, not powergaming.

If I'd wanted a powerful mage character, I'd just have rolled up a grey elf wizard...

 

[hopeless]

Reg: Variant characters

I know of one who wanted to play somekind of "Paragon" character listing out some idiotic advantages but he plays and I think runs a game where everyone at the table could be described as "munchkins".
I know that if he wanted to run a character in one of my games there would be restrictions on what can be run but I don't agree with how some of the core classes were treated in 3.0 and even less in 3.5, BUT I'd at least discuss alterations and even have done so on athread here just to make sure I don't ruin the game over something I consider meaningless.
Stats isn't everything, one of that group I mentioned ran a character in a Sharp inspired campaign set in 2nd edition and he got seriously hurt running amok without thinking what he was doing. He's even run a White Wolf game with Highlander motifs and promptly forgot some of the details of the movies just to make his npc's cooler.
Of course the other players being smarter than he was tried to regain control with one who was playing a police inspector trying to arrest him after an extended chase up to Lakeside where he pulled heavy artillery out of his pockets and after a rival immortal picked a fight with my character in complete ignorance of said movie and series forcing the other characters to shoot said villain who possessed ridiculous stats for an introductory henchmen and after beating him I tried to spare his life he promptly attacked me again ignoring the fact there were wtinesses present.
There are just some occasions where hints just don't work and he is currently running a half dragon in that person's campaign by the way and the guy running it asked ME for help whilst in full hearing of him...
And no I didn't say start from scratch with normal characters, I doubt they would have been interested, the only drow I've ever allowed in a 3e game was based on Oriental rules and made very Lawful and NOT evil because of info in that book regarding the far east.

 

[shilsen]

Why the need for all the bizarre character concepts?

Have people lost site of the fact that this is a ROLE-playing game?

And after all of these years of this subject (and a hundred minor variations thereof) being discussed on these forums, have people lost sight of the facts that there are a myriad ways in which one can play the game, that there are just as many reasons why people play the game and enjoy it, that one person's definition of roleplaying isn't necessarily (or likely to be) someone else's, and that assuming everyone should play the game the same way is fairly narrowminded? The most exotic race I've played besides the core ones is an orc and I would be unlikely to try anything more unusual, but if someone else wants to do so, let them. I really couldn't care one way or the other.

 

[Shemeska]

Given the commonality of such things as half-dragon paragon dwarven clerics of whatever, fiendish tiefling rogue/rangers, stonechildren scouts or reticulated yellow-bellied water diggers, I have to ask WHY?


I HAVE to believe that people who play these things have no desire to come at them from a role-playing perspective. When I see something that is the cross between an earth elemental and a mortal, the roleplayer in me dies a little bit. "How would I even approach something like that as a role-playing concept?" "What is the motivation of such an individual?"

It really depends on the situation and the people.

Look at my campaigns or a lot of people who play on the planes, and you'll see concepts that range from a tiefling or a smoke para-genasi to the confused offspring of a fallen celestial and a fiend. All sorts of incredibly fun stuff that screams 'plot hook'.

When I go for a non-mundane race, I honestly don't give a damn about the mechanical abilities of the race or the template, so long as it's a cool concept and a vehicle for the RP side of it. I'll go for tieflings simply because they happen to have a serpentine tail, hooves, don't cast a shadow, or crazy abilities like such that don't impact the numbers at all. So what if I'm giving up a level to that +1 LA which is pretty weak. I don't care, the cool factor of any of the various planetouched overrides all of that.

Numbers are secondary when I'm coming up with a cool character concept. I like to think that that's how people should approach it normally: concept over crunch.

Then on the other side of the coin, its seedy underbelly perhaps, you'll have the folks who approach non standard races and templates from the perspective of munching it all to hell. These are folks who quite literally don't approach these as concepts for characters, but as 'builds' to just get more bonuses and to hell with the roleplay aspect of it all. You'll see these folks all over the COp and EPIC boards over on WotC.

 

[DragonLancer]

My current Shackled City campaign is the first time since 3.X came out that I have allowed anyone to play a template (one player out of 5 choose to take one, and that was half-celestial, though another has gained a template through game play). I normally don't like it because I feel that as DM it breaks the sense of disbelief to have these weird combo's walking around, but this time I decided to give them a try. It seems they work out ok, though the player of the half-celestial has doubts over whether he'd play a template with more than a +1 or +2 adjustment again.