The Oddball

In addition to my recent thoughts regarding the "PHB+1" policy and eliminating multiclassing, I find myself increasingly drawn to a position where the number of 'oddball' characters should be restricted. This is very much a matter of personal taste, of course, but I'm generally convinced that the game isn't actually helped if the party is made up of five characters who are each more specially special than the last. (And there's a reason that "Guardians of the Galaxy" introduces us first to Quill, the only human in that party, and why "The Lord of the Rings" introduces us to the hobbits first - in that story, it is the hobbits that are "us", with Aragorn and Boromir being super-humans.)

That being the case, I'm inclined to suggest that the party should contain no more than one member of an off-beat race, no more than one character with an off-beat class, and that those two should not be the same character. (Similarly, in Star Wars, you'd have no more than one alien, one droid, and one Jedi - with those three being different characters. Of course, that means there not being any alien Jedi in the game.)

There are a number of significant issues with this, of course. Firstly, what constitutes an 'oddball' race/class? Is it a non-human race? Anything outside of the PHB? Or something else? (My answer there would be "it depends". Gut feeling, especially since I'm keen to get away from the PHB races, would be non-human races and then non-PHB classes.)

Secondly, there's the question of whether the players would actually stand for that sort of meddling. As I've noted before, the GM gets to control everything else about the game - the setting, all the NPCs, and even the rules of the game itself. My position therefore is very strongly that when it comes to the PCs, aka the one thing the players get to control: hands off! This position, of course, very strongly contradicts that.

The third issue is probably the biggest, though: if the party gets to have one oddball race and one oddball class, who decides who gets that option? And surely, if two players each come with a burning desire to play a non-human PC, that's a recipe for at least one of them to be disappointed... perhaps even to the point of leaving, or even sabotaging the game.

The upshot of all this, after 400 words of waffle, is that I don't think this sort of a restriction is the way to go. Instead, I think a better approach is probably to limit just how oddball a single character can be (that is, you can take an oddball race or an oddball class), rather than limit the number of oddball characters in the party. Probably.

Fitting the Theme

I'm increasingly of the view that if I never again see another elf, it will be too soon. Same goes for dwarves, half-elves and half-orcs, halflings, and gnomes. Dragonborn and tieflings too, for that matter, although less so. In fact, any and every race produced by WotC (and Paizo) for the various editions for the game should probably be dropped.

My fundamental problem, as I've mentioned before, is that these are mostly treated as a package of powers, with the flavour utterly ignored in favour of a "human with funny nose" approach (like the various aliens in Star Trek). Which, frankly, sucks.

Instead, I'm increasingly inclined to think that a setting (any setting) should introduce the races that it needs to fit its theme, and only the races that fit the theme. And, additionally, that each of those races should come with a package of traits that is inherently tied to theme - both that of the setting and that of the race. And no ability modifiers*, since that's inevitably the #1 reason for choosing a race. Ideally, the setup should be that you choose to play a Warforged only because you want to be a Warforged, and in playing said character you are inevitably pushed towards Warforged-ness.

(This is as opposed to the approach where you say, "I want to be a Cleric", then look for a race with Wis and Con boosts, and choose that... and then ignore everything about the race except those lovely lovely stat boosts.)

* Of course, there is one alternative to "no ability modifiers" - just let everyone choose whatever modifiers suit them best. So everyone gets to choose to assign one +2 and one +1 (or three +1s) as they see fit. And that way, the race isn't chosen to fit the class since it makes no difference in any direction.

Oh, and incidentally... I was pleasantly surprised on Monday at the Pathfinder game to see an... interesting choice of PC races on show, that very much appear to have been chosen out of interest rather than exploit. Which is nice.

PHB plus One

One of my great horrors in late-edition 3.5e (and also in Pathfinder) is that there's so much stuff that it's pretty hard to keep track of everything. Worse, there are a lot of exploits and broken combinations scattered throughout the books (though, it should be said, some of the worst offenders are right there in the first PHB - the single-classed Wizard pretty much blows everything else out of the water). This makes constructing characters a bit of a nightmare, and makes maintaining any sort of a balance in the game a real pain, too.

On the other hand, I'm not terribly keen on the notion of just declaring "core rules only" and banning all the supplements wholesale. (Although on the other other hand, I'm increasingly of the opinion that almost all RPGs run best with only those core rules, and indeed any game that needs, or "needs", supplemental material is frankly not very good anyway.)

With 5e, WotC's Adventurer's League programme have introduced a policy where PCs can be built according to a "PHB plus One" policy - you can use anything from the PHB, and then one other source. So if you want a race from "Volo's Guide" then that's fine, or if you want a spell from "Xanathar's Guide" that's fine, but you can't have both - one or the other.

Obviously, that applies some rather tight limits to the game, and cuts out on an awful lot of fun concepts... but on the other hand, it serves as a very neat way to cut down on the complexity and eliminate broken combinations (that largely don't exist in 5e anyway, but still).

That being the case, if I should run 3e again (and if I run D&D again, it's looking increasingly like being 3e), I suspect that I'll be adding a similar restriction to my house rules - PCs can be built using the PHB, the base 'setting' book (if any), and then one other sourcebook.

(Incidentally, and technically, the DMG and MM would be free as well - so if the character buys/crafts items, or summons monsters/polymorphs, the appropriate books could be referenced... but if they wanted to go beyond those core books then that would count as their "plus one".)

First Game

Tonight is the first session in a new Pathfinder campaign that I will be playing. I don't know how long that campaign will run, or indeed how long I will be able to remain involved (likely not beyond February), but it will be good to get a chance to be playing again.

Surprisingly, this will also be my first game session in almost exactly a year - since the "Dust to Dust" campaign ended in a TPK last October.

Also surprisingly, I now find myself signed up for a "Star Trek" one-shot in November as well, which should be cool.

Maybe I should start thinking about a Christmas Game... (Or maybe it's way too early - both because we're two months from Christmas, and also because my levels of inspiration oscillate between "meh" and "non-existent" right at the moment, which is no mindset in which to run a game.)

Ten Years

I've just realised that it has been ten years this year since D&D 4th edition was announced, and ten years since Dragon magazine ceased production (Dungeon, too). Which is quite a thought.

That means it has been ten years since WotC so badly mishandled the edition change, ten years since the Edition Wars poisoned ENWorld, ten years since I started to fall out of love with D&D.

And also ten years since Pathfinder started. So it's not all bad. Though I do rather wish that things had gone differently...