Renaming/refluffing mechanical abilities, do you do it in your game?

[Eslin]

I have several players in my group who have feats and class features that suit their characters mechanically, but they don't like the name of and a couple have also asked me if they can change what certain spells look like (magic missile taking the form of shining silver knives, melf's acid arrow looking like a rapidly flying hawk, etc). Another wants her worg familiar to fluff wise just be a wolf, starting off with a puppy until she takes improved familiar. A third wants to play a halfling, but have it be a human with a growth problem, mostly because she likes Tyrion Lannister, and on reflection I think I'm ok with this - I wasn't expecting to be, but the more I think about it the more sense it makes to just rewrite the fluff until it suits your concept.

So, fellow D&Ders, how ok are you with changing the fluff if the mechanical bits stay the same? If the fluff behind classes and feats are mutable, should the DM set limits or should players be free to change anything they want?

Also, anyone got any ideas for refluffing feats for a dwarf bard by the name of Nigel Hornberry? He's a dwarven savage bard, the usual dwarven ball of metal, leather, muscle, beard, fat and accent and he's also got high strength, constitution and charisma, and is very into the whole slaughter, rape and pillage thing. As such, the name of feats like nymph's kiss and snowflake wardance don't really suit him very well, especially since he got the former by raping a nymph. Anyone got ideas for better names? (mechanically they're the same, except for nymph's kiss not being an exalted feat)

[Dissonance]

Refluffing should at least be available in every game. Sometimes specific character concepts could be hard to do normally but become incredibly easy if the DM is willing to refluff the old stuff. From personal experience it's incredibly fustrating to be denied a cool concept for the sole reason that the DM was married to the original concept of a power/feat/class/ect. :smallannoyed:

Your Dwarven bard is easy to do. Refluff the names of the songs/dances into harsher and more violent counterparts. "snowflake dance" would become "The Ballet of Broken Glass" or some such thing. as for Nymph's kiss, leave it the way it is, but have him drop hints as to HOW he obtained the boon. :smallamused:

[Eslin]

Yeah, my problem is the harsher counterpart thing - we've still got 'dance' and 'ballet' in the name, and the closest the dwarf has come to light on his feat is setting his shoes on fire so he could destroy crops just by charging through them.

Need a good description that works better with the heavy metal barbarian thing.

[Jeff the Green]

I'm pretty much okay with refluffing and renaming. In fact, I encourage renaming.

Nymph's Kiss could be Nymph's Rapist. (Also, ew.)

Snowflake Wardance could be Thrashing Step. Or Blood-Soaked Warchant.

[Eslin]

Hm, that last is good, if nothing else jumps out at me I'll suggest it to her.

Rapist wise, we're trying to think of something that rolls off the tongue a little better. Besides, it's not only nymphs she's been nonconsentual with.

[SciChronic]

for your halfling being a human with growth problems, a strongheart halfling (FRCS) sounds perfect as is.

[Eslin]

I shall recommend it to her immediately.

[Gwazi Magnum]

I am perfectly fine with and support this.

One thing I really hate is a DM going "No, you can't do it. Because a couple of words on a page say so". Rules shouldn't be followed if they do not make sense. If it's not changing anything mechanic wise let them reskin how they want, it does nothing but make the game more enjoyable for the players.

As for the whole Nymphs 'Kiss'.

May the character have raped other people or not, he got the effects of Nymph's Kiss by raping the Nymph so a name like Nymph Rapists works fine. He may rape other people but he ain't getting any sort of powers out of it.

Also I have to like... is this for one of those chaotic 'Lets kill, pillage and rape to hearts content' campaigns? Because never have I heard of a case like a rapist character that wasn't in such a campaign and if he is in fact in a steady flowing non-chaotic campaign I'd be very interested in hearing how you can keep the game balanced and under control with such actions being done by the player characters.

[Eslin]

It's a sort of human expansion themed campaign - I took the human tendency to be unrealistically widespread in fantasy campaigns and real life tendency towards racism and combined the two, the party consists of non humans trying to survive the human empires expanding to swallow the world.

The party has responded to the constant fear and hatred (elves will kill you as soon as look at you, gnomes trick people to their death, halflings will steal your children, dwarves will take your gold etc) by steadily becoming less moral - they pretty much let the dwarf do whatever he want as long as he keeps mostly hurting humans. They've kind of stopped discriminating between zealous human warblades and merchants trying to make a living, on the grounds that the humans haven't done so for them.

[Chronos]

The rules are in service to the story, not the story in service to the rules. The default assumption is that the players can do (or at least attempt) whatever they want. Some things they could try to do would be overpowered and make the story less interesting, so there are rules to limit those things. But if Snowflake Wardance isn't overpowered at your table, then it will likewise not be overpowered if you call it Blood-Soaked Warchant.

[Eslin]

Cool, this is all pretty logical - was just hesitant about refluffing, trying to figure out if it would wreck anything.

[Gwazi Magnum]

It's a sort of human expansion themed campaign - I took the human tendency to be unrealistically widespread in fantasy campaigns and real life tendency towards racism and combined the two, the party consists of non humans trying to survive the human empires expanding to swallow the world.

The party has responded to the constant fear and hatred (elves will kill you as soon as look at you, gnomes trick people to their death, halflings will steal your children, dwarves will take your gold etc) by steadily becoming less moral - they pretty much let the dwarf do whatever he want as long as he keeps mostly hurting humans. They've kind of stopped discriminating between zealous human warblades and merchants trying to make a living, on the grounds that the humans haven't done so for them.

So basically it's a 'Humanity sucks and their genocidal ways as caused all the other races to go corrupt' sort of thing?

Also question, how the hell did the dwarf pull off raping the Nymph? Couldn't she of just turned on her appearance ability and left him paralyzed and dazed.

[Eslin]

Originally it was 'humanity is xenophobic and expansionist (thanks Zarus (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20041203a)!), how will the PCs react to not having a stable support network or base of operations and a constant sense of being hunted and fear?

The answer turned out to be by becoming the monsters they were accused of being, for the most part. Nymph wise, the bard is as mentioned previously a dwarven savage bard, he has good fortitude. Anyway, he figured out where she would dimension door to when threatened, hid there and created an image of a group of grimlocks to startle her and grabbed her when she appeared.

[Gwazi Magnum]

Originally it was 'humanity is xenophobic and expansionist (thanks Zarus (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20041203a)!), how will the PCs react to not having a stable support network or base of operations and a constant sense of being hunted and fear?

The answer turned out to be by becoming the monsters they were accused of being, for the most part. Nymph wise, the bard is as mentioned previously a dwarven savage bard, he has good fortitude. Anyway, he figured out where she would dimension door to when threatened, hid there and created an image of a group of grimlocks to startle her and grabbed her when she appeared.

Ah I see, that's a pretty cool concept for a campaign.
I actually once tried something similar where humans were expansionist and considered themselves the better of all the races, enslaving almost every other race.

Though the players simply complained and said I was being too negative about humanity and that people are better than I give them credit for.

As for the Dwarf, clever.

[charcoalninja]

In the general sense refluffing is great, and I generally encourage it as much as possible in my games. All it does is make the players more engaged with their characters and has them making up interesting, and entertaining quarks or stories for their guys.

Where the refluffing roadblock lies sadly for 3.X or Pathfinder is that you can't refluff the mechanics of spellcasters without drastically changing the game. If I want my buffs and holy powers as a cleric to be cool ass ninja tricks, or superhuman martial skill, I can't do that without trying to come up with a reason for them:
A) being instantly recognizable as having the same effect of a spell by a spellcaster with ranks in spellcraft
B) have them able to counter it exactly as they would a standard spell.
C) have it vulnerable to dispelling as a normal spell
D) have it vulnerable to spell resistance

etc.

While in a game like 4e, where you don't have hard coded dispel mechanics or a power recognition scheme like you do in 3.X, you could take a wizard and refluff all his attacks to be alchemical items and the game doesn't bat an eye (other than the whole daily thing, but that's not that much of a work around).

So though I love 3.x it is one aspect of the game that is saddening. I've made far more unique characters in 4e because I've been able to freely change the fluff of the mechanics to such a degree.

[Gwazi Magnum]

In the general sense refluffing is great, and I generally encourage it as much as possible in my games. All it does is make the players more engaged with their characters and has them making up interesting, and entertaining quarks or stories for their guys.

Where the refluffing roadblock lies sadly for 3.X or Pathfinder is that you can't refluff the mechanics of spellcasters without drastically changing the game. If I want my buffs and holy powers as a cleric to be cool ass ninja tricks, or superhuman martial skill, I can't do that without trying to come up with a reason for them:
A) being instantly recognizable as having the same effect of a spell by a spellcaster with ranks in spellcraft
B) have them able to counter it exactly as they would a standard spell.
C) have it vulnerable to dispelling as a normal spell
D) have it vulnerable to spell resistance

etc.

While in a game like 4e, where you don't have hard coded dispel mechanics or a power recognition scheme like you do in 3.X, you could take a wizard and refluff all his attacks to be alchemical items and the game doesn't bat an eye (other than the whole daily thing, but that's not that much of a work around).

So though I love 3.x it is one aspect of the game that is saddening. I've made far more unique characters in 4e because I've been able to freely change the fluff of the mechanics to such a degree.

I'd say that's simply a matter of a counter fluff.

Fluff a reason they can identify and counter it.
Otherwise the character doing the fluffing will have to say it's a magical kind of ninja trick which is why it can be identified, countered etc.