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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Starfox" data-source="post: 6110643" data-attributes="member: 2303">Not to rain on  ggeilman's and airwalkrr's parade, just reporting a different opinion. I feel the player character is very much the player's affair, and the DM should keep hands off as far as possible. Of course, if there is a balance issue that becomes serious, something might have to be done, but arbitrarily taking away something that is an important part of a character's concept is not legit. I have had a few characters defined by single extraordinary traits - one that rode a unicorn. This character was a "unicorn rder" first, everything else second. This was very central to her concept (this was a female paladin), and when the unicorn was KIA the DM did not like the idea of me retiring the character. The situation was a bit aggravated by some additional circumstances - the event that caused the death was a bit fishy, and we had hero points to save the lives of our characters, but I was not allowed to use one to save my mount even tough I explained it was a character-ending event.For me, this was method acting - the character completely lost her motivation and would spend the year until she could get a new companion in atoning for the lost one (this was in 3.0). There was no clear reason to stay on the adventure except party loyalty, no "divine mission" that I could discern.  As the rest of the party would not wait for her to return, this effectively took her out of the campaign. The DM felt I was escaping my duties as a paladin and did not want me to reroll as a new character - something about our original characters having a special fate that a replacement character would not have. In the end I quit that game. For me this was method acting, for the DM it apparently came across as whining.Now I could see that a unicorn mount had its problems, particularly the dual "lance" charge it made possible and the effectiveness of a large creature with reach being able to trip retreating foes without giving them any chance to retaliate (against a retreat action, the trip happening as a AoO when they left the reach square), but I'd much rather had the unicorn nerfed a bit than completely taken out of the game like that.</blockquote>

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