VariSami
2013-07-23, 06:16 PM
I DM'd a short-lived Eberron campaign which ended in a TPK this week and we are starting a new campaign in a fortnight or so with the same players. I consider myself a very lenient DM - probably among the most lenient 1% in the world - since I allow players basically anything in the official books as well as any third party installments I happen to own (D&D 3.X; I own Arcana Evolved, Chaositech and Dragon Compendium). However, it only seems to make a certain player want to stretch my limits even further. He could have just about anything but he wants exactly the few things out of reach. This is something of a rant, admittedly, but I am honestly curious about your similar experiences. If you have anything you wish to contribute or share, please do.
Yesterday, a player asked me if he could take Incarnate Construct with his Warforged and add templates to it in order to "buy back" the -2 LA. One of the templates he wanted was Mineral Warrior from Underdark. Being something of a theoretical build appreciator (but nothing spectacular although I know quite a few ways to abuse the rules), I had already thought about that one myself and come to the conclusion that any additional templates would have to be added at the exact time the character becomes Incarnate. Since both Incarnate constructs and Mineral Warriors are made using spells, the exact circumstances seemed quite impossible to fulfill outside of an Epic Spell. As such, I declined him the possibility, like I had previously declined his Archivist being able to add spells from ANY divine list (including the divine bard and magician variants) during character creation. He could get the Oracle domain spells he asked for due to worshiping Aureon and spells from either the Druid or Adept list, though. And the House Cannith reduction in price (75% off) included everything non-magical, including spell components. When he had asked for a venerable Dragonwrought Kobold, I had replied that it was theoretically okay but that he had better prepare a damn good reason for the little guy's existence. He had also asked me if his character could be a Dragonborn Warforged, to which I reminded him about the pseudo-template's strict alignment and storytelling restrictions which he had thought I would let him by-pass just to allow a stronger character.
So, there were two things I had flat-out denied during character creation (level 5 in both cases, by the way): one was about abusing the possibility of his character not needing to actually find the things he wanted because of higher level character creation and another about extremely shady rulings (and the best thing is - the players had themselves thought up the idea of an expedition of nothing but Warforged exactly because the idea that non-breathing, non-sleeping and non-eating people would make the ultimate explorers, and what he wanted to do would have stripped away those very features). I had also hinted that some design space would be best left unexplored for the sake of the story.
His reaction? Telling me that I never allow him anything he wants. I could not help bursting to laughter at that point, having played with a DM with the exact opposite philosophy as me: no full casters, PHB and UA only (and previously but no longer the books with base classes in the Complete series), Point Buy 29 for Tier 4-5 classes, 25 for Tier 3 (my campaign has Point Buy 36, originally 32 and +4 points or a "free" +1 LA), and the DM considers a successful session to be one where at least one character dies.
So, have any of you had similar experiences with players demanding more despite already being privileged in that regard? I think I might have pampered mine a bit too much.
Yesterday, a player asked me if he could take Incarnate Construct with his Warforged and add templates to it in order to "buy back" the -2 LA. One of the templates he wanted was Mineral Warrior from Underdark. Being something of a theoretical build appreciator (but nothing spectacular although I know quite a few ways to abuse the rules), I had already thought about that one myself and come to the conclusion that any additional templates would have to be added at the exact time the character becomes Incarnate. Since both Incarnate constructs and Mineral Warriors are made using spells, the exact circumstances seemed quite impossible to fulfill outside of an Epic Spell. As such, I declined him the possibility, like I had previously declined his Archivist being able to add spells from ANY divine list (including the divine bard and magician variants) during character creation. He could get the Oracle domain spells he asked for due to worshiping Aureon and spells from either the Druid or Adept list, though. And the House Cannith reduction in price (75% off) included everything non-magical, including spell components. When he had asked for a venerable Dragonwrought Kobold, I had replied that it was theoretically okay but that he had better prepare a damn good reason for the little guy's existence. He had also asked me if his character could be a Dragonborn Warforged, to which I reminded him about the pseudo-template's strict alignment and storytelling restrictions which he had thought I would let him by-pass just to allow a stronger character.
So, there were two things I had flat-out denied during character creation (level 5 in both cases, by the way): one was about abusing the possibility of his character not needing to actually find the things he wanted because of higher level character creation and another about extremely shady rulings (and the best thing is - the players had themselves thought up the idea of an expedition of nothing but Warforged exactly because the idea that non-breathing, non-sleeping and non-eating people would make the ultimate explorers, and what he wanted to do would have stripped away those very features). I had also hinted that some design space would be best left unexplored for the sake of the story.
His reaction? Telling me that I never allow him anything he wants. I could not help bursting to laughter at that point, having played with a DM with the exact opposite philosophy as me: no full casters, PHB and UA only (and previously but no longer the books with base classes in the Complete series), Point Buy 29 for Tier 4-5 classes, 25 for Tier 3 (my campaign has Point Buy 36, originally 32 and +4 points or a "free" +1 LA), and the DM considers a successful session to be one where at least one character dies.
So, have any of you had similar experiences with players demanding more despite already being privileged in that regard? I think I might have pampered mine a bit too much.