Time for a break guys. We're OT and neither of you is making progress by berating the other.
EDIT: not that being On Topic is gonna help much in this thread ;)
Except there is something seen wrong with, "If you play a paladin it must be of this god here. Only he has paladins." It's bad world design. Forgotten Realms gets away with requiring paladins to have a god within their constraints because they have such a massive buffet of deities of every ethos to choose from, from Hoar to Sune, but to say that the Paladin must serve one specific god is tremendously constraining (unless it's a monotheistic setting).
And even if that constraint is placed on the Paladin, that's one class. To then go on to place that constraint on six more classes, and then deny the bulk of the rest because you haven't put in a god specifically for them? That's taking the worst of the lot, making it the norm, then making it nigh inescapable.
If you want to play a Cleric or Paladin in FR, there are over a hundred ways to do it, over hundred of paths, and even room to make more. And even in Forgotten Realms, you can still have a Cleric without a god; there are Ur-Priests. And you don't need the prestige class to be an Ur-Priest. If you crack open the Book of Vile Darkness, Vashar Clerics are ur-priests, stealing their magic from the gods, even without the PrC (which appears later in the book). The same concept exists in Forgotten Realms, whether it's Ur-Priest ur-priests or Cleric ur-priests, either's equally consistent with the setting.
Further, just because ninjas are inconsistent with the setting does not mean Ninjas are inconsistent with the setting. The Ninja class is nothing more than Assassin-style base class with weird proficiencies. You can have a fully middle-eastern-style mystic assassin appropriate to bronze-age Egypt using the Ninja class. To ban the Ninja class because the ninja character concept does not fit is completely illogical and makes no sense whatsoever.
And still, you're blaming your setting for your own decision. You designed the bloody thing! You can't make a design decision on the setting then point at the setting and blame it for being poorly designed. When you decree that in your setting all Bards must be skalds and all skalds must be Bards, and then blame the setting for the restriction, that's just hiding from your own decisions.
And then if you decree, as a part of your setting, that all Psions are sci fi psychics and all sci fi psychics don't exist, then point to your setting and claim Psions are inappropriate? That's just lunacy.
None taken, The bard is a magical class, as such in a world with no such thing as natural magical ability. It must be learned The skald is the more refined more schooled and excepted leaning style, having been around for the longest time. The witch was a catchall term for those small traditions to tap into the same type of magic as the skald. My players never saw it as a restriction but part of the setting flavor.
Anyhow on the ninja, yeah a rogue would work well for such a setting( ninja being rogues anyhow) but the point was you would not ask to play a standard ninja in such a setting
Time for a break guys. We're OT and neither of you is making progress by berating the other.
Eh, the topic has a new home anyways, so this is basically free space now.
Time for a break guys. We're OT and neither of you is making progress by berating the other.
EDIT: not that being On Topic is gonna help much in this thread ;)
Yep we are, sigh sorry about that it was my fault
V ya calling me a bad GM, and bad world design gets old. I get ya don't like it but you know nothing of my setting. I could say banning wizards like you have is bad world design and bad GMing but I have not
Your whole argument it "My way is right" So really you have no augment, you have your opinion. Your welcome to do what you want in your game but if anyone is being disrespectful it is the poster telling someone else his freaking homebrew is wrong an he is a bad GM for it.
None taken, The bard is a magical class, as such in a world with no such thing as natural magical ability. It must be learned The skald is the more refined more schooled and excepted leaning style, having been around for the longest time. The witch was a catchall term for those small traditions to tap into the same type of magic as the skald. My players never saw it as a restriction but part of the setting flavor.
The logic doesn't follow.
Premise 1: There is no such thing as natural magic among humanoids.
Premise 2: All magic comes from either a long-standing magical tradition or a cosmic overpower (elemental, outsider, deity, whatever).
Premise 3: Skalds are a long-standing magical tradition of warrior/poet/minstrel/historian/blahs.
None of these premises are problematic. In fact, they are quite fine and totally appropriate. The problematic premise is this one:
Premise 4: All skalds are Bards. All Bards are skalds. Only skalds can be Bards. (Ignoring witches.)
This is the part where the logic doesn't follow. This is the part that doesn't contribute or even make sense. This is where you're muscling in on player territory. Who are skalds? They're warrior/poet/blahs. To say that they must be Bards to the last, to say that if the player's character is a skald they must be a Bard? That's where it crosses the line and becomes flat illogical. Why not the Sorcerer/Eldritch Knight with ranks in singing and history and whatever else is deemed appropriate? Why not the Beguiler, or the Psychic Warrior? Why shackle the player's character to Bard, why constrain it to a single class in a single way? And why bar the Bard class from the many, many other places where it would be wholly appropriate (for as versatile as the class is, it can fit many places)? What does denying them that choice add to the setting? Nothing.
You harp on Forgotten Realms, but that setting is, in fact, tremendously open. Most divine casters need a god, sure, but that's about it, and you don't even need magic to become clergy there (as the high-ranking single-classed Monk priests of Azuth will testify).
My players never saw it as a restriction but part of the setting flavor.
Being used to a particular brand of abuse does not make it stop being abuse.
Anyhow on the ninja, yeah a rogue would work well for such a setting( ninja being rogues anyhow) but the point was you would not ask to play a standard ninja in such a setting
You're really mincing words here. Are you talking about ninja or Ninja? Because there are no ninja in Egypt. That doesn't mean there can't be Ninja representing wholly setting-appropriate assassins.
Someone who uses the Ninja class to represent said wholly setting-appropriate assassin isn't asking to play a ninja in an Egyptian game. She's asking to play a wholly setting-appropriate assassin in an Egyptian game. That you wouldn't try to be so creative in your build is irrelevant.
V ya calling me a bad GM, and bad world design gets old. I get ya don't like it but you know nothing of my setting. I could say banning wizards like you have is bad world design and bad GMing but I have not
I've never called you a bad DM nor a bad world designer. I've called specific actions you perform bad. If I say "Lying is bad," that doesn't mean I'm calling everyone who lies a horrible human being. There's a massive distinction between the two.
And while I'm still not going to say you're a bad DM, I will say you have some very bad DMing habits. And so do I. And so does Mister Lincoln. And so does Kyrt (assuming he DMs). And so does JaronK. And so does every DM in the universe. Doesn't stop 'em from being bad.
And I would appreciate it if you would stop putting words in my mouth.
Your whole argument it "My way is right" So really you have no augment, you have your opinion. Your welcome to do what you want in your game but if anyone is being disrespectful it is the poster telling someone else his freaking homebrew is wrong an he is a bad GM for it.
And I would appreciate it if you would stop putting words in my mouth.
This still ain't "My way's right, your way's wrong," any more than any debate. It's about a specific act and aspect of gaming. It's about the issue, not about you. You're just the one who brought the main example to the table.
Premise 1: There is no such thing as natural magic among humanoids.
Premise 2: All magic comes from either a long-standing magical tradition or a cosmic overpower (elemental, outsider, deity, whatever).
Premise 3: Skalds are a long-standing magical tradition of warrior/poet/minstrel/historian/blahs.
None of these premises are problematic. In fact, they are quite fine and totally appropriate. The problematic premise is this one:
Premise 4: All skalds are Bards. All Bards are skalds. Only skalds can be Bards. (Ignoring witches.)
This is the part where the logic doesn't follow. This is the part that doesn't contribute or even make sense. This is where you're muscling in on player territory. Who are skalds? They're warrior/poet/blahs. To say that they must be Bards to the last, to say that if the player's character is a skald they must be a Bard? That's where it crosses the line and becomes flat illogical.
How is it Illogical?
1:To be a skald you need to learn the skill set and take on the traditions.2: To learn the skill set you must be tault , which can only be done by skalds
3: To be a skald you need a set of skills/magical ablitys if you do not have them you do not complete your training and are not a skald as you can not call upon the skald powers
How is this illogical?
Lets look at it like this
1: To be a wizard you must have the skill set of a wizard
2: To learn this skill set someone must teach it to you, that would be wizards
3: To be a wizard you must have the wizard ablitys, if you do not then you are not a wizard
How is that any different?
In that world you simply can not learn the "bard" skill set without someone teaching it to you. Just like in most worlds you do not train at a bardic collage and not take the bard class, unless you fail
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Villetta, I'd have to say I completely disagree with your stance on this.
I can accept a DM banning a character class because it doesn't fit their campaign world. Example, oriental flavoured classes might not be allowed in a medieval Europe setting.
I can accept that a campaign world might have restrictions on who can be a character class or how that character class is percieved. SoS idea is perfectly fine as far as I can tell. He's not telling his players they can't be bards, he's just saying that to be one they have to accept certain limitations based on a world concept. Plenty of worlds are created like this in any number of fantasy settings you'd like to read about. (not necessarily roleplay settings, but fantasy novels) For example, if you wanted to play in the universe of David Gemmel, then clerics have major restrictions to them as followers of the source. Wizards and such would be dealing with demons to get their powers. He hasn't said "Don't play this class" he's said, "sure play what you want, but be aware that doing so means these limitations". If his setting was a society of barbarians where magic was considered a pact with evil, you could still play a magic user, you'd just have to be aware that there'd be repercussions.
What I have a problem with is banning a class completely, but then allowing another similar class to be active. That's farely restrictive and non logical within the laws of your campaign world.
You ban wizards because you think they're broken. Nothing about your game world says so, just you presonally. Yet you allow other character types to be used despite them having effectively the same magic options. (Eg Sorceror). Why does a sorceror operate in your game world but a wizard can't? Why not let a player create a wizard but put some restrictions on what they have access to in your game design? You seem to understand the power of a wizard farely well, I'm sure you could easily tweak your game world to close any power gaps. Identify the spells that cause the most issues and tweak them a little. Have the way magic functions influence the choice of spells cast (example high level summoning of intelligent creatures poses dangers of its own as you exert your will over a creature that has the potential to come back and let you know how much they dind't enjoy it).
Telling seeker his version of restrictions is worse than your level of restrictions is just incorrect I'm afraid. I can see a good in game logic behind his decision. I only see arbitrary judgement in yours.
1. I can accept that a campaign world might have restrictions on who can be a character class or how that character class is percieved. SoS idea is perfectly fine as far as I can tell. He's not telling his players they can't be bards, he's just saying that to be one they have to accept certain limitations based on a world concept. Plenty of worlds are created like this in any number of fantasy settings you'd like to read about. (not necessarily roleplay settings, but fantasy novels) For example, if you wanted to play in the universe of David Gemmel, then clerics have major restrictions to them as followers of the source. Wizards and such would be dealing with demons to get their powers. He hasn't said "Don't play this class" he's said, "sure play what you want, but be aware that doing so means these limitations". If his setting was a society of barbarians where magic was considered a pact with evil, you could still play a magic user, you'd just have to be aware that there'd be repercussions.
2. Why does a sorceror operate in your game world but a wizard can't? Why not let a player create a wizard but put some restrictions on what they have access to in your game design?
1. The only thing a player really has control over is his character concept. Most players(I have met) don't care if you ban certain classes, but to tell me I must run my guy a certain way is restrictive. The DM controls everything. The player can at least have the character concept. If the campaign is based on dwarves repelling ______ then I might understand why everyone is a dwarf, since its directly tied into the story, but I to place a restriction like that on a campaign world is too much.
2. She already said that if she put restrictions on the class it would be mechanically identical to one of the other classes anyway, and after so much house ruling you really are not playing the mechanical version of a class anyway.
If her saying wizards are houseruled with X, Y, and Z limitations, and playing another class give you the exact same thing mechanically then why insult the player's intelligence and try to make them beleive they are still playing a wizard.
Example:
DM: Yes you can be a fighter without the class abilities, and all the bonus feats.
PC: That looks like the warrior NPC class to me.
DM:No, its not. It's just my variant fighter class. -50000 on bluff check modifier.
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I can accept that a campaign world might have restrictions on who can be a character class or how that character class is percieved.
Except the campaign world can't perceive the character class. The world can't tell the character is a Bard. All it can perceive is that the character can cast arcane spells without preperation. So declaring the skald can only be represented by the Bard when another class can represent everything the skald is mechanically is limiting the player's choice.
sorry but yeah they can, bards have more magic ablitys then just arcane spells, Bardic music is a class ablity no other class has. If you want that ablity you must learn it.
Magic is a learned skill, you can not just stubble across it jogging one fine morning. You have to train for it, learn the secrets to the use of it.
Now you could fake being a skald, but if ya ever were in the presence of real skalds with you having no magical ablity they would know. A few know arcana checks ends your lie. You could not however train at the collage and not be a Skald, you simply do not have the magical ablity to pass the tests to move on in your training you wash out, maybe serve the order in another way but are not a skald.
You guys keep saying classes are invisible in world, when anyone with know acanea can spot you. They can tell what kind of ablitys you have. Magical classes are not invisible.
Also if ya cast spell without prep that leaves two options.
1> Your trained as a skald or are what the common folk call a witch
2> You have made a pact with something from beyond, and are marked by it. Sorcerers can not easily hide what they are
Still not understanding this "no one can tell" angle
sorry but yeah they can, bards have more magic ablitys then just arcane spells, Bardic music is a class ablity no other class has. If you want that ablity you must learn it.
Magic is a learned skill, you can not just stubble across it jogging one fine morning. You have to train for it, learn the secrets to the use of it.
Now you could fake being a skald, but if ya ever were in the presence of real skalds with you having no magical ablity they would know. A few know arcana checks ends your lie. You could not however train at the collage and not be a Skald, you simply do not have the magical ablity to pass the tests to move on in your training you wash out, maybe serve the order in another way but are not a skald.
You guys keep saying classes are invisible in world, when anyone with know acanea can spot you. They can tell what kind of ablitys you have. Magical classes are not invisible.
Also if ya cast spell without prep that leaves two options.
1> Your trained as a skald or are what the common folk call a witch
2> You have made a pact with something from beyond, and are marked by it. Sorcerers can not easily hide what they areStill not understanding this "no one can tell" angle
How will anyone other than your party members know if you prepped anything? Prepping seems to involve prayer for divine types, and studying a book for arcane types, assuming they would ever have to even pretend to do so.
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Like I said, they can not perceive the character class. I never said they couldn't perceive character abilities. So a 1st level Bard/7th level Sorceror is still a skald. Maybe not perceived as powerful a skald because he doesn't have the high ranking abilities of Bardic Music. The better explanation of your rules is 'all skalds have Bardic Music, and you can only be a skald if you have Bardic Music'. Which is limiting to players.
Lets look at it like this
1: To be a wizard you must have the skill set of a wizard
2: To learn this skill set someone must teach it to you, that would be wizards
3: To be a wizard you must have the wizard ablitys, if you do not then you are not a wizard
Now look at it like this.
1: To be a thief you must have the skill set of a thief.
2: To learn this skill set someone must teach it to you, that would be thieves.
3: To be a thief you must have the thief abilities. If you do not, then you are not a thief.
These are all (arguably) true, ignoring self-taught thieves. Nothing in there requires that the thief character take the Rogue class any more than the skald example requires the Bard class or your wizard example requires the Wizard class.
The thief in this example could be a Rogue. She could be an Expert. She could be a Factotum. She could be a Bard. She could be a Ninja. She could be a Spellthief. She could be any number of prestige classes. There are many, many class combinations that could generate that thief.
Likewise, there is no reason why the wizard in your example can't take the Beguiler or Warmage or Dread Necromancer class and be tremendously talented and specialized illusionists/enchanters/evokers/necromancers, or take the Psion class or the Bard class or the Wu Jen class or the Warlock class, and all of them are still wizards in every sense of the word because that is a character aspect, just as not all Rogues are thieves and not all thieves are Rogues.
The logic that all skalds must be represented by the Bard class and only the Bard class is as inappropriate as the logic that all thieves must be represented by the Rogue class and only the Rogue class.
I can accept a DM banning a character class because it doesn't fit their campaign world. Example, oriental flavoured classes might not be allowed in a medieval Europe setting.
Except an oriental-flavored class doesn't need to be used to create an oriental-flavored character, and a western-flavored class can be used to create wholly inappropriate oriental-flavored characters.
The Ninja class is overlaid with an undeniably and deliberately oriental flavor. However, it can be used to create an extremely western-style assassin with small amounts of magic, in much the same manner as the Assassin prestige class, just with
At the same time, I can take a Rogue with Unarmed Strike and create a ninja classic.
Between those two characters, the Rogue ninja classic is inappropriate, while the Ninja western-style assassin is perfectly appropriate.
You don't ban classes for flavor. You shoot down characters for flavor. Ultimately, a class cannot be either appropriate nor inappropriate for a campaign world unless there are extreme constraints like there being no or almost no magic. Classes are tools for creating characters, and those characters are what are or are not appropriate for the world. A class that normally produces inappropriate characters can very likely (and often very easily, as is the case with Ninja) be used to create perfectly reasonable characters for that particular world and game.
I can accept that a campaign world might have restrictions on who can be a character class or how that character class is percieved. SoS idea is perfectly fine as far as I can tell. He's not telling his players they can't be bards, he's just saying that to be one they have to accept certain limitations based on a world concept. Plenty of worlds are created like this in any number of fantasy settings you'd like to read about. (not necessarily roleplay settings, but fantasy novels) For example, if you wanted to play in the universe of David Gemmel, then clerics have major restrictions to them as followers of the source. Wizards and such would be dealing with demons to get their powers. He hasn't said "Don't play this class" he's said, "sure play what you want, but be aware that doing so means these limitations". If his setting was a society of barbarians where magic was considered a pact with evil, you could still play a magic user, you'd just have to be aware that there'd be repercussions.
I have absolutely no objection to a world where there is a magically talented order called skalds, with a given set of traits, and being one of their number is one of the few paths to magical power in the world.
However, then going and specifically binding a specific base class to that order is where it becomes a problem. It's infringing on the domain of the player to design their character as they deem appropriate.
To say that all wizards must deal with demons in very dangerous ways is wholly appropriate. To say that all demon-dealing wizards must be represented by the Wizard class and no other is not.
What I have a problem with is banning a class completely, but then allowing another similar class to be active. That's farely restrictive and non logical within the laws of your campaign world.
Class A is balanced. Class B is broken. They serve the exact same purpose.
I can either houserule Class A to be like Class B, or I can have people use Class B.
I could fix the Wizard. I could shunt them over to the far more reasonable spontaneous casting mechanics with finite spells known, I could adapt Wizards into super-specialists, I could cull the Wizard spell list until it was fair, I could overhaul the Wizard until I get something alien and fair. Or I could just point my players to the already extant Beguiler, Warmage, Dread Necromancer, Generic Spellcaster, Sorcerer, Bard, Wu Jen, Warlock, Psion, Dragonfire Adept, Binder, Shugenja, Dragon Shaman, Shadowcaster, Truenamer (well, maybe not those last three). All of them can be fantastic wizards, because being a wizard (a scholar whose studies grant her the ability to tell the laws of physics where to stick it) is a character aspect, and one that any one of those classes can represent. Some could use a shift of casting stat, but that's a petty change. Some might not work for a specific setting (a Binder is hardly a spellcaster in the traditional sense). However, most of them are so similar that the difference is petty.
The reason I ban the Wizard rather than fix the Wizard is that it's already been fixed so many times that anything I could do would be redundant.
And the ban is not an aspect of the world, but an aspect of the game. One of game balance, not of the world not having wizards (for the world has many, many wizards).
The logic is there. It's just about the game mechanics rather than the world.
You ban wizards because you think they're broken. Nothing about your game world says so, just you presonally. Yet you allow other character types to be used despite them having effectively the same magic options. (Eg Sorceror). Why does a sorceror operate in your game world but a wizard can't? Why not let a player create a wizard but put some restrictions on what they have access to in your game design? You seem to understand the power of a wizard farely well, I'm sure you could easily tweak your game world to close any power gaps. Identify the spells that cause the most issues and tweak them a little. Have the way magic functions influence the choice of spells cast (example high level summoning of intelligent creatures poses dangers of its own as you exert your will over a creature that has the potential to come back and let you know how much they dind't enjoy it).
I never said anyone has to ban Wizards, mind. It's just the way I run things. However there are pages upon pages of reasons Wizards are broken that go way beyond "because I said so."
The world has nothing to do with it. Also, my game world has many, many wizards who operate just fine. It also has many, many sorcerers alongside them who operate just fine, and many clerics, and I suppose it has druids, too. It's just the Wizard class isn't being used for the wizards and the Clerics and Druids have some housrules tacked on. (That is, when they're not Favored Souls, Totemists, Adepts, Experts, Commoners, Shugenja...)
I allow my players to create many, many wizards. I just don't allow the Wizard class to do it with. The Wu Jen is an almost completely unaltered Wizard that merely has a smaller and much more reasonable spell list that's actually balanced. If the player insists on some manner of houseruled Wizard, specifically, we can work something out. However, the result is almost certainly going to look like one of over a dozen fixes that have already been released, making the very effort something of a pointless exercise, save to calm the player. (Or to create, say, a Beguiler-esque Seer/Abjurer class or some such.)
Telling seeker his version of restrictions is worse than your level of restrictions is just incorrect I'm afraid. I can see a good in game logic behind his decision. I only see arbitrary judgement in yours.
"This specific thing is wrong," is not the same as, "Your way sucks, use mine." The way I do things is bizarre. I wouldn't recommend it to many. My way works for me because I process information in ways others simply can't. If most people were to try running games my way wholesale, it would probably be a disaster.
That doesn't mean the one specific subject I'm talking about isn't wrong.
Still not understanding this "no one can tell" angle
Mark the Skald Sorcerer/Edritch Knight casts Magic Circle Against Evil. The big circle of skalds knows Mark cast Magic Circle Against Evil. They may even know that very few among their number know how to cast Magic Circle Against Evil. That doesn't mean they know it's not on the Bard spell list, nor that it'll set off any alarms, nor that they know Mark is not a Bard. They just know that Mark's song has the unusual effect of a Magic Circle Against Evil. Weird? Perhaps. Rare? Probably. So extremely out there that they automatically know Mark is something different and scary? Only if you're being absurd.
Besides, these are rules to a game, not laws of the universe. You're talking about a game where a completely nonmagical character can tap dance on molten lava, walk away, and be completely healed within a few days, good as new, with zero magical intervention.
Unless you give the NPCs either full encyclopedic knowledge of the core rulebook (in other words, metagame like Hell), they have absolutely
Like I said, they can not perceive the character class. I never said they couldn't perceive character abilities. So a 1st level Bard/7th level Sorceror is still a skald. Maybe not perceived as powerful a skald because he doesn't have the high ranking abilities of Bardic Music. The better explanation of your rules is 'all skalds have Bardic Music, and you can only be a skald if you have Bardic Music'. Which is limiting to players.
And an 8th-level Sorcerer is still a Skald, as well. The single Bard level is unnecessary. There are plenty of buff spells that can serve in place of Bardic Music. That they know the effect is that of a Heroism spell doesn't mean the Sorcerer skald didn't sing it into being. After all, it never says precisely what verbal and somatic components entail.
Man, threads like this make me wish more than ever that character classes didn't have names or fluff.
It's fine for flavour, but it seems to be taken as required pigeonholing all too often.
I would have no problem with a DM saying "In my campaign Skalds are the only guys who use musical based casting."
Though I would have a problem with "In my campaign world, if you choose the Bard class, your character concept is a Skald."
I'm not sure the disconnect as to why posters think the two statements are synonomous, but to me, I would certainly see them differently.
So wait. Say we use my setting as an example (Because I'm just so rad and I don't really care either way). I have the gods all set up in a pantheon. Venerating multiple gods is AOK, even if you're a cleric, but you must worship your god to gain powers from him specifically.
Paladins are an elite order of divine warriors who travel the lands in the name of the Goddess of Justice. You can only be called a paladin if you swear loyalty to this goddess and uphold her tenets, and you can only take levels in the paladin class if you do so and take a year of special schooling. However, some "Paladins" are actually Cleric/Fighters (or plain old clerics) who let the other paladins do the smiting if injustice while they catch up on the healing and destroying of undead. Matter of fact, all you need to be a member of that particular church is that oath. But, should you want to play a character with Paladin class levels, you must work that oath and schooling into your backstory somewhere.
Now, tell me what's so horribly restricting about that.
Like I said, they can not perceive the character class. I never said they couldn't perceive character abilities. So a 1st level Bard/7th level Sorceror is still a skald. Maybe not perceived as powerful a skald because he doesn't have the high ranking abilities of Bardic Music. The better explanation of your rules is 'all skalds have Bardic Music, and you can only be a skald if you have Bardic Music'. Which is limiting to players.
No more so then saying, clerics and paladins must have a god or banning or disallowing core classes. Same thing
Another note, the skald/sorcerer would be valid , but he would be serving two masters more or less. He could be an ex-skald or an a skald who made a pact to gain sorcerer powers, both valid.
Now look at it like this.1: To be a thief you must have the skill set of a thief.
2: To learn this skill set someone must teach it to you, that would be thieves.
3: To be a thief you must have the thief abilities. If you do not, then you are not a thief.These are all (arguably) true, ignoring self-taught thieves. Nothing in there requires that the thief character take the Rogue class any more than the skald example requires the Bard class or your wizard example requires the Wizard class.
The thief in this example could be a Rogue. She could be an Expert. She could be a Factotum. She could be a Bard. She could be a Ninja. She could be a Spellthief. She could be any number of prestige classes. There are many, many class combinations that could generate that thief.
Save, your over looking the magic angle. That is where the limit is and why I used wizard. The world limits how you can access magic {rogues with the minor magic talent would prob be limited as well)
See your over looking there is no ablity to be self-taught. You simply can not learn magic ablitys without help. The bardic skill set"class" is a tradition that is taught. Same as the "wizard" is a tradition, the "cleric" is a tradition and the druid and sorcerer are traditions
You can not learn on your own.
Likewise, there is no reason why the wizard in your example can't take the Beguiler or Warmage or Dread Necromancer class and be tremendously talented and specialized illusionists/enchanters/evokers/necromancers, or take the Psion class or the Bard class or the Wu Jen class or the Warlock class, and all of them are still wizards in every sense of the word because that is a character aspect, just as not all Rogues are thieves and not all thieves are Rogues.
If I allowed such classes, they would be there own traditions as they do not function the same way. You can not hid how your powers work other casters. They will notice. But I did not allow none core classes in this world. I disliked wotc splat books and the world was made to clean start away from them.
Man, threads like this make me wish more than ever that character classes didn't have names or fluff.
It's fine for flavour, but it seems to be taken as required pigeonholing all too often.
I would have no problem with a DM saying "In my campaign Skalds are the only guys who use musical based casting."
Though I would have a problem with "In my campaign world, if you choose the Bard class, your character concept is a Skald."
I'm not sure the disconnect as to why posters think the two statements are synonomous, but to me, I would certainly see them differently.
What your asking for is a classless system. No a bad thing, can be fun but that is not what we have here. The classes do for the most part come with built in fluff, the fighter does not but he is the only one I can think of. There is nothing wrong with refluffing them, which is what I have done
Paladin stuff
sounds reasonable to me. I have no issue with playing a set up like that.
Depends. Can I play a vagabond dedicated to the fight against Evil with no ties to anyone, using the Paladin class?
heh, that would depend upon where the paladins powers came from wouldn't it.
Which is cool, but some worlds ya need gods to grant the powers. Your concept would work well in eberron, it would not work in FR unless a god granted you that power
Which, I could see some gods in FR just giving ya the power and not telling ya. Or you following a god, but not a member of it's church,But that is something that is world dependent
I would have no problem with a DM saying "In my campaign Skalds are the only guys who use musical based casting."
Though I would have a problem with "In my campaign world, if you choose the Bard class, your character concept is a Skald."
I'm not sure the disconnect as to why posters think the two statements are synonomous, but to me, I would certainly see them differently.
I think the problem here is the class system. Bards are the only class he's got in his game that has Bardic Song. Therefore, in order to learn Bardic Song, you need to be trained by that group.
If there were multiple classes that had Bardic Song abilities, then I could see those classes being added to the list of what Skalds teach. However since there's only one, you are kind of stuck.
I don't think seeker is saying you can't play an Eldritch Knight character, so much as saying that that character won't get Bardic Song abilities unless trained by the Skald and taking Bard levels, which is exactly how standard D&D works anyways (need to take levels in Bard, kinda stuck there).
There is a fine line between a DM being abusive in controlling what the players can do, and a DM that wants to create a specific flavour for his setting.
There's also a fine line between a Player who wants to play his particular character concept, and a Player who doesn't care about the flavour of the setting and wants to play what he wants.
If a DM wanted to make his campaign like Middle Earth, and started restricting classes and concepts until he got something resembling Lord of the Rings, and then presented it to his players saying "Here are your options", then I would consider it bad form for the Players to cry foul when they decided their Spiked Chain wielding Psychic Warrior wasn't allowed.
Yes, that's an extreme hyperbole. But when you cut down to it... the DM tells his group "I have this neat story flavour idea, and I want you guys to make characters with these kinds of restrictions"... and then a player comes up and says "But I want to play something that's completely outside of your idea and flavour! You are being abusive!".
To me, that player is being disruptive. I've seen it happen when it was a player that didn't want to give up a particular character concept that didn't fit the story/campaign world... but I've also seen it where a player was doing it on purpose to "give the DM a hard time".
.
Ultimately, the DM is telling the story. He provides the world you are living in. The players should be choosing what they play based on the world the character exists in.
If they want to play an Eldritch Knight made up to act like a Bard, then they can do so in a different game at a different time.. instead of ruining the flavour of the campaign setting for this game.
Depends. Can I play a vagabond dedicated to the fight against Evil with no ties to anyone, using the Paladin class?heh, that would depend upon where the paladins powers came from wouldn't it.
SoS, I completely agree with you. I love the fact that your world has distinct flavor associated with different ways of getting power.
Now, tell me what's so horribly restricting about that.
The problem is, the restriction on the Paladin class serves no purpose, and you're granting metagame knowledge to the NPCs.
The world does not know what the Paladin class or Cleric class or Fighter class are. They're simply character-representation tools. That there are two orders of paladin with disparate levels of training or modes of operation is well and good, but to then go back and shackle the mechanics to that model contributes nothing.
You start with a meaningful world, and then make the game more shallow without contributing to the world and credit the unrelated cheapening of the game for the enriching of the world.
No more so then saying, clerics and paladins must have a god or banning or disallowing core classes. Same thing
Big difference. It's far more imposing to say, "Divine casters have to choose from over a hundred different gods from as many churches and orders, while non-divine-casters can join those same churches and orders and rise in the ranks among the clergy as well, with such and such constraints on what it takes to get promoted," is very different from, "If you take Class X, you are in Organization Y, and all members of Organization Y take Class X."
It's a matter of degrees, on several orders of magnitude.
Save, your over looking the magic angle. That is where the limit is and why I used wizard. The world limits how you can access magic {rogues with the minor magic talent would prob be limited as well)
See your over looking there is no ablity to be self-taught. You simply can not learn magic ablitys without help. The bardic skill set"class" is a tradition that is taught. Same as the "wizard" is a tradition, the "cleric" is a tradition and the druid and sorcerer are traditions
I'm not overlooking the magic angle, nor the self-training angle. Whether you use the word "thief" or "wizard" or "star reader" or "dragoon" or "giant demon frog," the logic still doesn't flow. That you need training to become a wizard does not mean you need to take the Wizard class, and only the Wizard class applies. Being self-taught or not has nothing to do with it. There being a finite number of ways to access magic has nothing to do with it
That magic only comes from a given tradition does not mean that every member is identical. Yes, you have a teacher. That doesn't mean that teacher has to be the exact same class with the exact same abilities that manifest the exact same way when you learn them.
Yes, there is a clerical tradition that trains clerics to be Clergy. That doesn't mean you need the Cleric class to do it.
If I allowed such classes, they would be there own traditions as they do not function the same way. You can not hid how your powers work other casters. They will notice.
They don't even have to know. Yes, the Beguiler just cast an illusion, just like a thousand others. So what? The rules of the game are not the laws of physics. We're talking about a rule set where a fat guy with Enlarge Person belly flopping on you is more deadly than most high-level damage spells through falling object rules.
To say that the NPCs would notice these major, glaring, world-shaking differences between a Psion and a Wizard and a Bard is to say that they would notice that a morbidly obese, Enlarge Person'd dwarf falling ten feet deals more damage than most high-level magic spells and the logical course of action would therefore be to have most armies go around with giant tubby dwarves on mobile pillars jumping on people.
Tell me. Do armies in your world employ giant tubby dwarves belly flopping off of pedestals?
What your asking for is a classless system. No a bad thing, can be fun but that is not what we have here. The classes do for the most part come with built in fluff, the fighter does not but he is the only one I can think of. There is nothing wrong with refluffing them, which is what I have done
No, he's not asking for a classless system. The classes remain. No more than 3.5, in fact. A 'class' is a sack of mechanical abilities. You could label the Bard, Cleric, Druid, and Wizard, "Magical Effect Persons A through D" and still have a classed system.
I think the problem here is the class system. Bards are the only class he's got in his game that has Bardic Song. Therefore, in order to learn Bardic Song, you need to be trained by that group.
If there were multiple classes that had Bardic Song abilities, then I could see those classes being added to the list of what Skalds teach. However since there's only one, you are kind of stuck.
Except the Bardic Music class feature doesn't exist within the context of any world that doesn't employ morbidly obese belly flopping dwarves. Skalds teach a magical tradition based on weaving magic with music. Fine. They may even be the only people who have that ability. But Bardic Music doesn't even need to be music. A Bard priest with Perform: Oratory can give a sermon to call down her god's power as her manifestation of Bardic Music. To say that there is one and only one form of Bardic Music and there are no other ways that it's allowed to be interpreted is precisely what's so restrictive.
Likewise, you don't need Bardic Music to weave magic through song. You can have a Sorcerer whose verbal and somatic components for spells are song and dance. You can use a Sorcerer to make a musical magic-weaver just fine.
If a DM wanted to make his campaign like Middle Earth, and started restricting classes and concepts until he got something resembling Lord of the Rings, and then presented it to his players saying "Here are your options", then I would consider it bad form for the Players to cry foul when they decided their Spiked Chain wielding Psychic Warrior wasn't allowed.
And at the same time, that DM is quite likely wrong if she bars Psychic Warrior or Dragon Shaman or the like but keeps Bard, for Psychic Warrior or Dragon Shaman are quite capable of creating the kinds of combat-capable, subtle magic users that are more prominent in Lord of the Rings (or... magic user).
That DM would also be wrong to ban Psion for flavor while keeping the Wizard, because they're fundamentally the same thing and the Psion does not have anything at all inherently outside the scope of Lord of the Rings any more than Wizard. The Psion class can represent fantastic wizards. It just doesn't have the metagame tag of 'Wizard.'
And that's what this is all about. Banning and shackling stuff over their completely invisible, completely mutable tags.
Also, if the DM comes to the table and says, "This is the story, this is the highly restricted world, deal with it," without consulting the players, that's horrible DMing.
Ultimately, the DM is telling the story.
No. She isn't. The DM is absolutely, positively not telling a story if she's any good at all.
The DM is presenting a scenario. The players are responding to the scenario. In the process, a story emerges, but the DM is absolutely not telling that story. The group as a whole is creating it as they go.
If they want to play an Eldritch Knight made up to act like a Bard, then they can do so in a different game at a different time.. instead of ruining the flavour of the campaign setting for this game.
Except there's absolutely nothing in the Eldritch Knight skald, or the Ninja western-style assassin, or the Bard priestess of Lliira, or the Beguiler high priest of Mask, or the Marshal priest of Red Knight, or Gandalf the Psychic Warrior, or the Beguiler illusionist wizard, or the Bard wizard, or the Bard professor, or the Bard historian, or the Bard druid that defies the flavor of the world. It's balking at nothing.
The characters are all perfectly appropriate to the world with abilities that are perfectly appropriate to the character and their station. The mechanical choices are in no way inappropriate, just unexpected. However, the player has every right to make unexpected choices in creating an appropriate character. And they have every right to make their character in the first place.
SoS, I completely agree with you. I love the fact that your world has distinct flavor associated with different ways of getting power.
It's a shame he has to go ruin it by placing all those unnecessary shackles all over the place.
Depends. Can I play a vagabond dedicated to the fight against Evil with no ties to anyone, using the Paladin class?
And can I play a paladin raised in the order but using the Monk class?
No to the first, yes to the second.
The paladin's special ability to "Smite stuff" and cast spells and be fancy comes from the goddess herself. So the wayward vagabond, cool as he is, wouldn't get divine power from the goddess unless she noticed him and was like "Yeah, I can make an exception for you 'cause I'm JUST like that." If you get raised in the order, you sure as heck can be a monk.
If you wanted to be dedicated to fighting evil real good, you could just as easily be a cleric with Good and War as domains. Being the church's noble lapdog isn't the easiest thing in the world, let me tell you.
As to where the powers come from, in this case you would have to have some tie in your background to the goddess. I would allow, for example, an older paladin (Obi-Wan) training you in the ways of being a paladin and bearing witness to your oath. You would still have to obey the paladin's code, and the old man could get killed off before game starts.
I guess what I'm trying to say is it's like an additional restriction beyond what's in the rules for paladins, since I changed their oath to "Uphold Fair and True Justice" Instead of all that crazy "Evil people are evil you should smite them" stuff. It's like the restriction that you have to be lawful and good, just it's for fluff instead of mechanics.
You do have to have a tie to the goddess, but you don't have to remain in the church. Although Paladins in the church do get sweet benefits. Like getting higher-ups to cast spells on their behalf for FREE.
Although if a player whined that he wanted to not have any ties to the goddess I would probably break down and say OK... Then include a storyline where he's hunted down by paladins for "misusing the Goddess' power". But complications like that are awesome and I might do it to someone playing by all the rules anyway.
Kaisoku wrote:
Ultimately, the DM is telling the story. He provides the world you are living in.
And if he isn't working to accommodate the players, he can go play with himself.
Why are we retreading the ages-old GM-driven/player-driven argument anyway?
The DM shouldn't have to cater to the players. I can understand working with a player to provide examples to what he can do, bending to agree with him, but you're making it sound like the players should rule the board. The DM does do a lot more work that the players and is ultimately the host of the game. If someone was demanding things of a host at the host's party after having been explained that what they were asking would involve the host bending over backwards, I would just ask them to leave if the host didn't.
I spent countless hours on my setting, making sure the fluff supported the mechanics and shaving off some bits to include more stuff later, and creating an interesting and varied environment to use as a backdrop for the players. I want the players to have come from somewhere in the setting that they can use to their advantage when roleplaying. If they want to walk out of the center of the earth, naked and alone, that's fine, but my promise is that I'll treat them like it.
In the end, they spent maybe two hours on their characters. Maybe. And they might have to spend two more if that character dies. No skin off of my nose if they don't like the way the setting is. Wanting to play something that is wall-eyed off what the setting gives you will only force me to come and make you a part of the setting. In some cases, that could be painful.
Big difference. It's far more imposing to say, "Divine casters have to choose from over a hundred different gods from as many churches and orders, while non-divine-casters can join those same churches and orders and rise in the ranks among the clergy as well, with such and such constraints on what it takes to get promoted," is very different from, "If you take Class X, you are in Organization Y, and all members of Organization Y take Class X."
Who says you get hundreds of gods on any given world? What if you have 1? what if you have 3? In mine ya got a max of 7. Who says all churches allow non clerics? The higher up are gonna know if ya can't cast spells or channel. Hard to hide that is. It like what I am talking about all depend upon your world. It is not a given fact
That magic only comes from a given tradition does not mean that every member is identical. Yes, you have a teacher. That doesn't mean that teacher has to be the exact same class with the exact same abilities that manifest the exact same way when you learn them.Yes, there is a clerical tradition that trains clerics to be Clergy. That doesn't mean you need the Cleric class to do it.
Thats why you have eat, skill points and role playing. You are not a robot, but yep tradition does indeed mean you use your powers the same way as everyone else in that tradition. You use the same technices , the same casting style, hell you might have the same hair cut
If you do not use the same style as everyone else, then you are not the same tradition
It's a shame he has to go ruin it by placing all those unnecessary shackles all over the place.
It's a shame you ruin your game by unnecessarily banning a core class a player wanted to play, dame shame
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No to the first, yes to the second.
The paladin's special ability to "Smite stuff" and cast spells and be fancy comes from the goddess herself. So the wayward vagabond, cool as he is, wouldn't get divine power from the goddess unless she noticed him and was like "Yeah, I can make an exception for you 'cause I'm JUST like that."
Excepting that I'm hypothetically talking about him just being so devoted and focused that when he chooses to 'Smite Evil' he gets bonuses to hit and damage against the foe. Not because he's channeling divine power against the enemy.
I fully admit this isn't a well-thought out or justified use of it. But I'm only pointing out that you can completely reflavor the abilities to have no tie to divine power at all.
If you get raised in the order, you sure as heck can be a monk.
But that's not what I'm saying. He's a paladin using the Monk class. He's not a monk. He just knows how to subdue enemies of the order to be brought to justice.
Then include a storyline where he's hunted down by paladins for "misusing the Goddess' power
That would be an awesome arc, Rogue paladin being hunted by the church, brought into the fold or taken out nice. I like that. I can see alot of barely got away moments in such a game
Now, tell me what's so horribly restricting about that.The problem is, the restriction on the Paladin class serves no purpose, and you're granting metagame knowledge to the NPCs.
The world does not know what the Paladin class or Cleric class or Fighter class are. They're simply character-representation tools. That there are two orders of paladin with disparate levels of training or modes of operation is well and good, but to then go back and shackle the mechanics to that model contributes nothing.
You start with a meaningful world, and then make the game more shallow without contributing to the world and credit the unrelated cheapening of the game for the enriching of the world.
First off, how am I granting metagame knowledge to the NPCs? That has nothing to do with anything.
The class represents a special set of skills acquired in this particular way. You're saying that a wizard can just say "I didn't study magic at all. In fact, I just kind of wave my hands and stuff happens. Oh look, where did this spell book come from? I guess I can cast spells!" in a game where magic is a skill acquired over years of practice, and only certain people know how to do it. Not knowing these certain ways of channeling magic will basically make you incapable of casting spells, and "figuring it out on your own" takes even the elves centuries. Nope. I call crap.
You're saying that the fluff and mechanics should be completely separate. Why? How does it cheapen the game if I restrict player's options, force them to go by the setting's rules so that the story of the game makes sense in the player's minds? Say we're playing Dragonlance, during the time of troubles. I decide that my character, a wizard, is completely unaffected by this silly "magic takes life force" rule. I decide that Felminster the great level one wizard never gets fatigued when casting his spells, because the PHB says nothing about it. Any DM who cares about running a serious game would laugh me out of their house.
Many artists actually seek out restrictions on their art because it makes their art all the more better. Getting restrictions (especially when they're as restricting as including a detail in your character's backstory) can help mold your character to the setting and vise-versa. If you told me you wanted to play a fighter who was born knowing how to swing a sword, I would tell you no, because that makes no sense. If you told me you wanted to play a cleric with no faith but somehow still spells, I would say no! DM's shouldn't have to accommodate every last thing the players tell him to, especially when it's to the detriment of their character in the game world!
Kaisoku wrote:
Ultimately, the DM is telling the story.No. She isn't. The DM is absolutely, positively not telling a story if she's any good at all.
I couldn't disagree with you more. There is a reason they call the GM the Storyteller in World of Darkness.
I've played in plenty of games where the GM let players roam arround freely. They lacked focus, and you could tell. Most of the games died fairly quickly. On the other hand, the games where the GM had 20 lvls outlined ran smoothly, even if not in the dirrection the GM planned, and survived for years of playing. The Gm guides the players where he wants them to go, and the players write the story of how they get there.
All the best games I have played were on rails, its just the players couldn't see the rails they had been on until the end.
No to the first, yes to the second.
The paladin's special ability to "Smite stuff" and cast spells and be fancy comes from the goddess herself. So the wayward vagabond, cool as he is, wouldn't get divine power from the goddess unless she noticed him and was like "Yeah, I can make an exception for you 'cause I'm JUST like that."
Excepting that I'm hypothetically talking about him just being so devoted and focused that when he chooses to 'Smite Evil' he gets bonuses to hit and damage against the foe. Not because he's channeling divine power against the enemy.
I fully admit this isn't a well-thought out or justified use of it. But I'm only pointing out that you can completely reflavor the abilities to have no tie to divine power at all.
If you get raised in the order, you sure as heck can be a monk.But that's not what I'm saying. He's a paladin using the Monk class. He's not a monk. He just knows how to subdue enemies of the order to be brought to justice.
Well, if you put it that way I would probably bend the rules as above and set the "real" paladins on you, just for fun. Maybe one of them says "the goddess has granted you her power". Since the gods in my setting are actually little magic fonts with no real consciousness it still makes sense and I would be cool with it. I see your point, though. You can still go against the grain of the setting to some degree.
Paladin is a title in the setting. Out of game, the paladin class represents people given power by the goddess of justice (even though it's unlikely a non-sentient pool of magic would notice some guy who didn't try to get its attention), like how clerics are given divine power and wizards can cast arcane spells. I just like to include fluff in the setting that describes where the players get their abilities, since in the setting you can't just wake up, put on sunglasses and say "I know magic." without having, you know, discovered he has the gift and then spent some time harnessing it.
There is a reason they call the GM the Storyteller in World of Darkness.
And there's a reason that's an entirely different system.
I've played in plenty of games where the GM let players roam arround freely. They lacked focus, and you could tell. Most of the games died fairly quickly. On the other hand, the games where the GM had 20 lvls outlined ran smoothly, even if not in the dirrection the GM planned, and survived for years of playing. The Gm guides the players where he wants them to go, and the players write the story of how they get there.
All the best games I have played were on rails, its just the players couldn't see the rails they had been on until the end.
Shilsen's Eberron Story Hour is one of, if not the, longest-running documented campaigns on ENWorld, extremely entertaining to the players, the DMs, and the readers, and Shilsen didn't even plan out level 1, let alone levels 1-20; his games are almost entirely improvisational DMing. Just because your experience doesn't carry it out doesn't mean it's true.
There is a reason they call the GM the Storyteller in World of Darkness.And there's a reason that's an entirely different system.
Shilsen's Eberron Story Hour is one of, if not the, longest-running documented campaigns on ENWorld, extremely entertaining to the players, the DMs, and the readers, and Shilsen doesn't even plan out level 1, let alone levels 1-20. Just because your experience doesn't carry it out doesn't mean it's true.I've played in plenty of games where the GM let players roam arround freely. They lacked focus, and you could tell. Most of the games died fairly quickly. On the other hand, the games where the GM had 20 lvls outlined ran smoothly, even if not in the dirrection the GM planned, and survived for years of playing. The Gm guides the players where he wants them to go, and the players write the story of how they get there.
All the best games I have played were on rails, its just the players couldn't see the rails they had been on until the end.
Nor do I say that its the only way to play. VV on the other hand outright attacks my favorite games and GMs.
Nor do I say that its the only way to play. VV on the other hand outright attacks my favorite games and GMs.
No, actually, she didn't.
VV said that DMs who tell stories are bad DMs. By that, she means that DMs who who have a story in mind before the campaign ever gets started and force the players to be the actors in that story with no input or choice on their end. That's a DM telling a story. VV specifically said that a good DM creates a scenario and puts the players in it, and collectively the DM and the players are creating the story.
To put it another way, if the DM is telling the story, the players have nothing to play. Their roles have already been determined, their actions already mapped out. If the group is telling the story, everyone has input on how it goes.
The paladin's special ability to "Smite stuff" and cast spells and be fancy comes from the goddess herself. So the wayward vagabond, cool as he is, wouldn't get divine power from the goddess unless she noticed him and was like "Yeah, I can make an exception for you 'cause I'm JUST like that." If you get raised in the order, you sure as heck can be a monk.
The goddess grants various sacred powers? Fine.
These sacred powers are these specific class abilities and the only way to get them is through the goddess? Not so much, out side of the sumo dwarf world.
The NPCs can't tell Smite Evil from various different buffs. They can't tell Lay on Hands from a healing spell. And just because the vagrant holy warrior's powers are the same list of class abilities doesn't mean they have to be the same as some goddess knight's in the world. They can, in fact, be radically different, just with the same mechanics.
I guess what I'm trying to say is it's like an additional restriction beyond what's in the rules for paladins, since I changed their oath to "Uphold Fair and True Justice" Instead of all that crazy "Evil people are evil you should smite them" stuff. It's like the restriction that you have to be lawful and good, just it's for fluff instead of mechanics.
However, taking that restriction on fully-initiated paladins and grafting it onto the Paladin class adds nothing to the world. The oath is a world aspect. The class is a mechanical aspect. The DM chaining the mechanical aspects to the world aspects and then blocking off the players use of those mechanical aspects for other things without contribution to the game is a Bad Thing.
The goddess of justice has her order of paladins you choose to represent with the Paladin class. That doesn't mean there aren't other characters for whom the mechanical class of Paladin would be appropriate, nor does it mean that forcing those characters to be Fighter/Clerics enriches the world in the slightest.
Although if a player whined that he wanted to not have any ties to the goddess I would probably break down and say OK... Then include a storyline where he's hunted down by paladins for "misusing the Goddess' power". But complications like that are awesome and I might do it to someone playing by all the rules anyway.
There's also no reason that person has to have the Paladin class.
The DM shouldn't have to cater to the players. I can understand working with a player to provide examples to what he can do, bending to agree with him, but you're making it sound like the players should rule the board. The DM does do a lot more work that the players and is ultimately the host of the game. If someone was demanding things of a host at the host's party after having been explained that what they were asking would involve the host bending over backwards, I would just ask them to leave if the host didn't.
The group is a group. The players have a part in that group. And the DM is only the DM by the players sufferance. The game is theirs every bit as much as it's the DM's.
A lot of DMs only do most of the work because they choose not to share it. There's a lot to be shared, lemme tell ya. I know before I ever took the DM's seat, I was statting up most of the game's NPCs anyways. Letting players run NPCs, make organizations, group worldbuilding... Hell, the only real work I have to do for my games is working up a good notion (usually fueled by some hook from a player or three) and keep The Big Binder full of random NPC stats that I can pull out at a moment's notice. Maybe start off with a few relationship charts. DMing ain't as hard as folks make it.
That someone chooses not to share the burden (and often chooses to pile on wasted tonnage) does not mean they can then turn around and claim superiority because they chose not to share. The DM has a great deal of authority, yes, but ultimately the DM is no greater or lesser than her friends, the players. The players' insights and feelings matter every bit as much as the DM's.
Who says you get hundreds of gods on any given world? What if you have 1? what if you have 3? In mine ya got a max of 7. Who says all churches allow non clerics? The higher up are gonna know if ya can't cast spells or channel. Hard to hide that is. It like what I am talking about all depend upon your world. It is not a given fact
I was referring to Forgotten Realms, as the default rules don't require Clerics to even be clergy. Forgotten Realms is the counterpoint we've been using, and Forgotten Realms does quite explicitly have high-ranking non-casting clergy in the most god-centric, high-magic of all official settings.
Thats why you have eat, skill points and role playing. You are not a robot, but yep tradition does indeed mean you use your powers the same way as everyone else in that tradition. You use the same technices , the same casting style, hell you might have the same hair cut
That sounds like a robot to me. Enjoy sumo dwarf world.
First off, how am I granting metagame knowledge to the NPCs? That has nothing to do with anything.
It has everything to do with the entire argument!
Class does not exist in the world. If you put a Fighter/Cleric next to a Paladin next to a Favored Soul/Knight, the world sees little appreciable difference that isn't so minute and hair-splitting that it would result in sumo dwarf world.
Smite Evil, the class feature, is invisible unto itself. It is a representation tool. That it is chosen to represent the blessings of the goddess is standard fare, but to then say that it cannot represent anything else? It's baseless. It doesn't even make sense, without bestowing a massive amount of metagame knowledge upon the world on the inner workings of classes and class features.
The class represents a special set of skills acquired in this particular way. You're saying that a wizard can just say "I didn't study magic at all. In fact, I just kind of wave my hands and stuff happens. Oh look, where did this spell book come from? I guess I can cast spells!" in a game where magic is a skill acquired over years of practice, and only certain people know how to do it. Not knowing these certain ways of channeling magic will basically make you incapable of casting spells, and "figuring it out on your own" takes even the elves centuries. Nope. I call crap.
A class is a sack of abilities. Nothing more, nothing less. It is a set of rules that can be fitted to any character type it suits.
Just because you have the Psion class does not mean you are the meditative psychic. One with the Psion class can just as easily be Merlin himself with only the slightest of imagination, for the abilities of the Psion class are appropriate to spell-slinging Merlin. That he does not have the Wizard class does not make him any less of a wizard.
And that you can fit a class to a stupid and inappropriate character does not mean that adapting classes to perfectly appropriate characters is invalid. I once DMed for a Wizard whose 'spellbook' was a crystal and who learned spells by trapping various spirits in them. I once ran a (NPC) Warmage who was an alchemist/chef whose spells were various alchemic concoctions, not unlike the current Alchemist class. Adapting existing rules to interesting character concepts is to be encouraged. Selecting the rules appropriate to the character is a good thing.
And denying access to the rules appropriate to the character in order to cheapen the game without enriching the world is a bad thing.
You're saying that the fluff and mechanics should be completely separate. Why? How does it cheapen the game if I restrict player's options, force them to go by the setting's rules so that the story of the game makes sense in the player's minds? Say we're playing Dragonlance, during the time of troubles. I decide that my character, a wizard, is completely unaffected by this silly "magic takes life force" rule. I decide that Felminster the great level one wizard never gets fatigued when casting his spells, because the PHB says nothing about it. Any DM who cares about running a serious game would laugh me out of their house.
The fluff and the mechanics are to be integrated at the time of creation.
I have this alchemist/chef who blows things up with his concoctions. Which mechanics best represent that? The Warmage. And now I knit the two together. That does not mean that Warmages can only represent alchemist chefs, nor that all alchemist/chefs must use the Warmage class, only that the Warmage was the appropriate tool for representing this alchemist chef.
To tie up the Warmage class in the alchemist/chef is to deny that tool next time a character for whom the class is appropriate comes along. Like, say, the imperial war mage.
And note that I never said a thing about flat breaking the rules. Though Dragonlance is one of the absolute worst violators of the mechanics/fluff divide ever.
Many artists actually seek out restrictions on their art because it makes their art all the more better. Getting restrictions (especially when they're as restricting as including a detail in your character's backstory) can help mold your character to the setting and vise-versa. If you told me you wanted to play a fighter who was born knowing how to swing a sword, I would tell you no, because that makes no sense. If you told me you wanted to play a cleric with no faith but somehow still spells, I would say no! DM's shouldn't have to accommodate every last thing the players tell him to, especially when it's to the detriment of their character in the game world!
When did I say to make characters who make no sense? A silly or ridiculous or bad character is a silly or ridiculous or bad character.
Now, a Fighter... no, a Paladin who was born bearing the soul of an ancient and powerful saint/swordsman, who knew from birth how to wield the sword and through birthright possesses supernatural powers? That's interesting. That's good material to build a game out of.
A Cleric without faith is easy. Go Ur-Priest style. The Cleric steals power from the gods in daily meditation. That makes perfect sense in most traditional fantasy settings. Or the Cleric collects the souls of the dead and extracts power from them. Or the Cleric made a pact with a devil for power (which is actually how priests of a lot of the evil gods work; no faith involved, only haggling). These are all interesting and have real potential that shouldn't be stifled.
And any DM who gripes about carrying all the weight in setting creation and world building who throws out awesome stuff like that aught to be slapped in the face, 'cuz that's just hypocrisy. The players can serve you gold on a silver platter if you have a little trust and aren't so caught up in your own vision that you blot out everyone else's. You don't have to accommodate everything, but the rules are tremendously flexible, and if you let them stay that way, they can create some absolutely glorious things.
All the best games I have played were on rails, its just the players couldn't see the rails they had been on until the end.
God, that's depressing. Pardon me while I turn the commander of the royal knights into my mind-controlled puppet, stage an unexpected coup at an opportune moment, and conquer an entire nation.
No, actually, she didn't.
VV said that DMs who tell stories are bad DMs. By that, she means that DMs who who have a story in mind before the campaign ever gets started and force the players to be the actors in that story with no input or choice on their end. That's a DM telling a story. VV specifically said that a good DM creates a scenario and puts the players in it, and collectively the DM and the players are creating the story.
To put it another way, if the DM is telling the story, the players have nothing to play. Their roles have already been determined, their actions already mapped out. If the group is telling the story, everyone has input on how it goes.
Precisely. Thank you kindly. (Though it is still inaccurate to refer to it as even the group telling the story, since even collectively, they don't have everything mapped out.)
Storytelling as a DM can be good. It can also be done very, very badly. It's where the "railroading" comes into play: when your players end up having little to no choices, and seem to only serve the purpose of rolling dice in combat.
Also, there's a difference between banning fluff and banning mechanics.
The issue here is that one side says "A class is a sack of mechanics," and the other said says "A class has pre-set fluff and lore attatched."
Group 1:
"Well, you're a bard. That means you have a perform of some type, spontaniously cast, and have skills edging towards knowledge and social situations. The sack of mechanics don't have any preset fluff; you can be a bard who calls himself a wizard, or you can be a factotum who plays a fiddle and goes wandering."
Group 2:
"Well, you're a bard. That means you're build from a certain set of fluff ideals, and have to fit those parameters. A bard is a skald, and a skald is a bard. In order to be one, you have to be the other."
I'm not saying one side is right and the other is wrong. I'm saying that there's a fundamental disconnect from the way the two of you view things. You're all but speaking different languages to each other. Group 1 thinks that group 2 is over restricted and iron fisted. Group 2 probably (I'm in group 1 :<) thinks that group 1 doesn't understand fluff and just cares about mechanics.
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VV you seem to be painting everyone elses words with your own vanilla flavoured spell system.
You assume that the spell, "protection from evil", looks the same no matter who casts it and therefore NPC's couldn't tell the difference. Perfectly fine if you run a vanilla flavour kind of magic system (actually that doesn't sound like a very flattering term, not trying to be insulting here).
However Seeker, and other GMs like him (myself included) may very well have varieties of flavour for every spell. For example, in my games, everyone knows what religion you belong to if you cast a healing spell, becasue your gods symbol appears and melts into the person being healed.
I have a school system for some arcane maic classes. If you get trained at a specific school, all your spells have a recognisable colour to them, because that's how you learned to cast it, and so did everyone else trained in that school.
In Seeker's game, its prefectly reasonable to think that Skalds/bards are trained to cast music based magic that is very distinct and easily recognisable.
Sure a sorceror might cast a spell that is similar to singing that a Skald gets, but it looks and feels nothing like the skalds spell, despite having the same effect.
In essence, each class has a variety of flavours to choose from for the same spell effect.
I even let my players determine the effects for their religions or schools, then let their choice be the universal one for my game world. Collaborative orld building in essence.
Now can you see why some of us have trouble understanding why you think these ideas are NPC metagaming?
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However Seeker, and other GMs like him (myself included) may very well have varieties of flavour for every spell. For example, in my games, everyone knows what religion you belong to if you cast a healing spell, becasue your gods symbol appears and melts into the person being healed.
Going back to the Bard thing, what does a healing spell cast by a Bard class character who is a priest of the god of song do?
VV you seem to be painting everyone elses words with your own vanilla flavoured spell system.
You assume that the spell, "protection from evil", looks the same no matter who casts it and therefore NPC's couldn't tell the difference. Perfectly fine if you run a vanilla flavour kind of magic system (actually that doesn't sound like a very flattering term, not trying to be insulting here).
However Seeker, and other GMs like him (myself included) may very well have varieties of flavour for every spell. For example, in my games, everyone knows what religion you belong to if you cast a healing spell, becasue your gods symbol appears and melts into the person being healed.
These statements are not opposed. You can have a flavoured spell system without irretrievably binding flavor to metagame concepts.
Well, if you put it that way I would probably bend the rules as above and set the "real" paladins on you, just for fun. Maybe one of them says "the goddess has granted you her power". Since the gods in my setting are actually little magic fonts with no real consciousness it still makes sense and I would be cool with it. I see your point, though. You can still go against the grain of the setting to some degree.
Paladin is a title in the setting. Out of game, the paladin class represents people given power by the goddess of justice (even though it's unlikely a non-sentient pool of magic would notice some guy who didn't try to get its attention), like how clerics are given divine power and wizards can cast arcane spells. I just like to include fluff in the setting that describes where the players get their abilities, since in the setting you can't just wake up, put on sunglasses and say "I know magic." without having, you know, discovered he has the gift and then spent some time harnessing it.
There's no reason he has to call himself a paladin. He could just be a someone who really hates evil and is out to fight it.
You've already answered this, but for clarity's sake I think Tri's question could be rendered "are you willing to take the Paladin class mechanics and allow a player to play them with any other fluff". This could be anything. Time traveler with nano-bot technology, a specialized form of arcane spellcasting that deals with evil, a dude who's just really focused when he encounters people who thinks are unethical, etc.
I don't think an answer of "no" to this sort of question automatically makes anyone a bad GM. If your setting has no magic and the only way possible way to cross any arbitrary amount of distance instantly is to have access to the teleport satellite ran by the Martian empire for the exclusive use of it's military officers, then there's not going to be much leeway in having letting a concept that includes being able to teleport see the light of day, and none for one that pulls the ability to teleport from innate power.
Having that said there's a lot more leeway for alternative explanations for various mechanics than is apparent at first glance. You could take the entire wizard class and "reskin" it to be a wielder of particularly advance technology. Magic missle is a pulse cannon. Creature summoning is avtivating short-use robots. Teleportation is access to the aforementioned satellite. This will strain in a lot of places (why can I only access an arbitrary selection of my technologies, and why are they all on the same eight hour cooldown?) because the existing mechanics are integrated with a certain type of fluff. However fluff and mechanics are neither totally separate nor totally a one for one equivalence. It is possible to do some drastic fluff rewrites, even if some will impact suspension of disbelief more than others. Things like smite evil are the easy ones, it's just a bonus to an already abstract part of the game. If you (the generic you) can't think of another way to fluff smite-evil, then honestly you're just not trying too hard. Things that interact with the numbers in a game system are generally pretty easy to rewrite. It's the qualitative things that are more rigid.
For what it's worth I go out of my way to accommodate player's mechanical choices. My main setting has no gods; it's sort of a Sigil writ large where the pantheon doesn't have access into the prime material plane. The standard cleric (worship my god and receive spells from him) is right out. I still allow Clerics, though; you could pull your power from the abstract idea of your god, or from your own intense worship of your god or something totally different like you're just an arcane spellcaster with a different focus or innate psionic powers. This should really be the default way to approach these situations. If you're going to restrict certain mechanics, there should be some damn good reason (like "this game is set in the real world, there is nothing that will let you slice a car in half with one stroke of a sword. No you need not demonstrate on my car with your katana, I'll take your word for it dude").
And note that I never said a thing about flat breaking the rules. Though Dragonlance is one of the absolute worst violators of the mechanics/fluff divide ever.
Hmm, how so?
Group 2 probably (I'm in group 1 :<) thinks that group 1 doesn't understand fluff and just cares about mechanics.
Actually, group 2 is just thinking that having fluff restrict options isn't necessarily abusive to players.
The DM is absolutely, positively not telling a story if she's any good at all.
I'm sorry if my usage of the word "telling" was poor, however my intention was exactly as you used it: the DM creates a framework of the story... the players are there to interact with it and create their personal story in that framework.
Considering the DM has to come up with the whole plot (even if he's improvising), he is pretty much directing the story. The players are interacting with it, and between their decision and the randomness of dice, determining the outcome.
Except the Bardic Music class feature doesn't exist within the context of any world
What I'm talking about isn't the concept of singing while casting spells. What I'm talking about is the actual game mechanics of Bardic Performances... Inspire Courage (Su), Inspire Competence (Su), etc.
If a person wanted to make a Sorcerer that cast magic through pacts with devils.. and then picked up the Perform (oratory) skill so that their verbal components were always sung.. I don't think that's being stifled here.
I also don't think they'd even be stifled from saying, in-game, "I'm a Bard!".
They might not even be stifled from saying "I was trained by Skalds!".
What they can't do though, is to build a character with the Bardic Performance ability, with no in-game training from the Skald. Also, that last claim (I was trained by Skald) might be challenged by a real Skald if they come across one.
It's not that the DM is telling the players how to think and act, but rather where they can obtain specific sets of abilities.
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What feels strange is that ultimately, if this were proposed in a gaming system that was classless (bought class abilities instead of a class per level system), and the Skald were the only ones that taught Bardic Performance, "group 1" probably wouldn't bat an eye at this.
I am looking at the Bard as a bag of mechanics. I think the issue here is that "Bard" the word can mean a lot of things, and some people might be thinking that colloqual usage of the word in-character is being restricted, rather than just the actual mechanics.
As far as I can tell, that's not the case. Call yourself a Bard if you want. It's the Bardic Performance, and 6 spell levels that you won't get from anywhere else but the Skald training.
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And while the Skald training only being available in the form of the Bard class, instead of any class that can thematically be put together to mimic a Bard's abilities to a degree...
... that is exactly the same as limiting what classes are available.
If you ask to play a Skald, but as a Sorcerer who pick specific spells to mimic a Bard's abilities, and with certain skillpoints, and the DM says no, it's the same as saying you want to play a specific class (that has a set of abilities and skills, etc) and being told no.
If the DM doesn't want to have the headache of dealing with a character that might break out of the expected range that he set up for a particular in-game setting, he should say no to the request.
It'd be the same as if a player wanted to play a Wizard, and the DM didn't want to deal with a character that could potentially have access to an infinite selection of spells, and says no.
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Finally, I just want to say that I'm mostly playing Devil's Advocate here.
Personally, I try and create a world or setting that can accomodate the most expansive range of concepts possible. I get a kick out of the concepts players come up with.
My restrictions tend to be heavily plot related (dwarves defending against orcs, or playing evil characters, etc), and even then I'm usually open to allow some alterations
My only real rule0 rule is that a player shouldn't be disruptive in their decisions, which means no inter-player conflict (inter-character is fine, so pre-planned "I'm an assassin infiltrating this group" is fine, just not "I'm playing the exact same Fighter build as Bob, only with better optimization, just to piss him off").
That said.. I can understand the changes and restrictions seeker is suggesting, and don't think he's abusing his players by limiting their choices in this way.
It's simply a different type of game and campaign setting.
I've played in games that were highly restrictive before (World's Largest Dungeon, 3d6 stat rolling, core rules only, see how many lives it takes to get through the whole dungeon). As long as everyone involved wants the same thing (perhaps the PLAYERS want Bardic Performance to be Skald only as well?) then being argumentative here telling people they are having badwrongfun.
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Going back to the Bard thing, what does a healing spell cast by a Bard class character who is a priest of the god of song do?
Well in my world, if he/she is using their Bard spell slots to cast the healing then it looks like bardic magic learnt in their particulr bardic school. If however, you're suggesting they're a bard/cleric crossclass, then they can use their cleric slots to cast heal and they get the gods symbol.
If on the other hand your suggesting they are a Bard, who claims to be a priest of the god of music, then they aren't channeling that gods magic and everyone will know it. In fact, they won't make it very far up in the church in my world. The bard could happily go around espousing the virues of the god of magic, but unless they're channeling the gods power, they can't call themselves a priest of that church. But that's my game.
In your game you could do what you want with the bard and explain how the magic worked.
In Seekers game he says Bards are Skalds and you can't be a Skald unless you're a bard or vice versa.
No big deal really.
This isn't making restrictions on what class is played, its making players think about their choices and seeing if they can come up with a concept that matches.
When you present a game world, you try to put enough unique flavour into it that players get inspired to play a concept that matches your world. I tend to be flexible and let character concepts come through, but I fully explain the consequences of that choice (see for your example fo the Bard priest of The god of Music)
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These statements are not opposed. You can have a flavoured spell system without irretrievably binding flavor to metagame concepts.
I agree, you don't have to at all.
However you still can and its perfectly fine.
I wasn't arguing that they were one and the same, I was disagreeing with the way VV keeps mentioning metagaming NPC's because they know the spell caster wasn't a bard when they cast a certain spell. She seems to think that's metagaming. It would be in a magic system where all "cure light wounds" spells looked the same for instance.
However I was making the point that in a game world where the spells appearence depends on who casts it, not the spell name, metagaming has nothing to do with the NPC's knowing about it.
<sigh>
My time is up again. This is a fun debate, I'm enjoying both sides points of view immensley, but alas I won't be back to visit for another week or so.
Let's see how things have progressed by then.
Cheers