Allowing / Disallowing Books for Character Creation

[NecessaryWeevil]

I may soon be DMing a campaign, and I'm considering this rule for character creation:

Every player may designate one book (outside of the Player's Handbook or the Dungeon Master's Guide) from which all players may draw classes, races, skills, feats etc. Players are encouraged to consult with each other before making their choice (e.g. if two players are making wizards, there is no point in both players choosing Complete Mage). Once the choices are made, other books do not exist for the purposes of this campaign, for both the players and the DM (except the Monster Manual, obviously).

I'm considering this because I'm a moderately experienced player but rather new at DMing. Do you think this will make my job easier?

In case it matters, I expect my players to consist of one expert Character Optimizer (by my standards), one moderately experienced player who can put together competent characters but not in the league of the first player, and one to three new players. I am familiar with the first two players and consider them both pleasant and reasonable. I have access to most books via PDF and the first player might have some of them in hardcopy.

Thank you!

[Gildedragon]

Not really. Also note that the most... well... broken stuff is in Core.
Maybe for spell selection on character creation it wouldn't be a bad idea, but see, this benefits wizards inordinately

Most books have wizard bonuses (be it PRCs or ACFs or spells) but things like Spell Compendium have nothing for mundanes.

What I might recommend is to limit the sources of spells and their maximum level. Maybe outright ban wizards sorcerers, clerics, druids, and push for fixed list casters or half casters.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Thanks Guigarci.

I should have mentioned that my concern isn't balance/brokenness so much as the work required for me to be familiar with a whole bunch of different skills, races, feats etc. Would this rule make THAT easier (without creating other problems)?

[Vhaidara]

My uncle used this rule. I didn't have a problem with it, because it was all I'd known. And actually, towards the end of my time with him (graduating high school), it really started to grate on me. I would say ask the optimizer to talk with your other players and get a feel for how strong they're going to be (don't have him give them build advice). Then ask him to build to their level, or, if he really wants to stretch his optimization fingers, ask him to optimize either a God Wizard (building purely to support the less optimized characters) or a bard.

Basically, have him make the most powerful character possible at making everyone else 3 million times more awesome.

But leave books open. It expands concepts so much, and actually can curb power gaming. My first group had 2 druids, and it would have been so much worse if they didn't go Beastmaster and Master of Many Forms.

[Giddonihah]

It will make your job easier, but it won't help to stop an Optimizer IF the optimizer likes spell casters. If the Optimizer likes melees then it will probably work alright. It does stop bloat though, most people dont source surf that much anyways.

[JusticeZero]

I don't think you need to go as formal as you are. Tell people that you need time to check any extra stuff that they want to put in. If someone wants to pull basic feats from 8 books that don't interact with the rest of the book in any special way, that really is not taking long. If they build a Wizard out of Core with lots of fiddly spell combos and interactions, it is going to be harder to get a handle on. I just take care of it in setting design and saw things down to a small number of subsystems and the like, and let people run fairly free with those.

[Gildedragon]

Thanks Guigarci.

I should have mentioned that my concern isn't balance/brokenness so much as the work required for me to be familiar with a whole bunch of different skills, races, feats etc. Would this rule make THAT easier (without creating other problems)?

A bit but not much, unless you can't easily search for the thing in question

Feats are particularly easy to search and source, at least in my experience.

Note that for ease of workload allowing the whole SRD straight up (rather than PHB and DMG) might be better, as the SRD is available online and fully searchable, and allows for psionics, which your players might like.

Now if the problem is limited access to books:
Allow only books you have access to.

The best, overall, solution for many-sourcebook dipping, is asking the players to source their builds by book and page number.

[Vhaidara]

Here is your godsend (http://dndtools.eu/). It has nearly every class, feat, spell, maneuver, and PrC in 3.5 (and a good chunk of 3.0). Only things you need to look for now are magic items, alternate class features, and racial substitution levels.

[kardar233]

Keep in mind that you don't need to familiarize yourself with every option in those books. You only need to know the ones that they actually use, and you can check all that stuff on dndtools. The only problem comes with spellcasters, because they can use all the options in those books rather than just a few.

[Faily]

Most of the GMs I run with allow most official 3.5 material, but it's all up to "GM's call".

One of them operate on an "almost anything goes, just don't abuse plz".
Second one (who is mostly my main GM for 3.5) has only banned Psionics and ToB, and we usually inform him of our builds and plans for the characters as well as let him know what we learn each level. If it's something he's not familiar with, he'll say he'll get back on it once he's checked it and let us know if he thinks it's ok or not. Not much has been banned though.


My tip: You as the GM pick something you are not comfortable with allowing (many GMs don't like having to deal with Psionics or ToB for instance), and say that it is not allowed (either because you don't like it for your game, or you just don't feel comfortable allowing something you don't know well). Leave the rest up to the players, but you have the final word on wether or not you think it will be br0ken.

[HockeyPokeyBard]

I've found that it really makes no difference what books you allow or disallow. The most important thing is to have a good relationship with your players. So maybe say to your optimiser and experienced player, "hey, its my first time as a DM, could we try to keep things simple here and cut me a little slack? That way I can focus more on making the game interesting."

Remember, you can ask your players not to be %*#^£ and 98% of the time, they'll happily try to tone it down if they know it'll make things better in the long run. And if they dont tone it down, they're %*#^£. Probably not the players you want at the best of times, and definitely not what you want as a starting DM.

[Ellowryn]

Unless all the players are in agreement of this to try and make a sort of build challenge, then this is probably going to hurt more than help. The newbies aside, if you really trust the more experienced players then just tell them to run anything past you if they want to try out something interesting/stupid/broken/etc... Even for low optimization its possible to have feats and ACF from 5 or 6 differnet books and all this does is really limit ideas.

Edit: Aaaand swordsaged :smallfrown:

[Kennisiou]

If you want to use this kind of thing as a build challenge it's fine. Otherwise I'd definitely skip it. If you're worried that your experience with the rules as a player won't translate to DM'ing then don't worry, that part of your player experience totally does! The main skills that a DM has to have that a player doesn't aren't system mastery, but mastery with people. Actually running a game session often means running the players and avoiding things that are going to set players against eachother in ways that aren't conducive to the session. Don't worry about the first few sessions being "broken." You can gauge the power level the players are building at pretty easily based on that session and how the players want to build in the future, which is important

Also, if you're looking to do a build challenge like this, I do recommend making Magic Item Compendium and Spell Compendium available to all players. It's really more a boost to the half-casters and non-casters than anything, and they're the ones who will need the most sourcebook aid.

[Pluto!]

I don't think it's unreasonable at all, but I'm not sure it does what you want - a player who brings two classes and five feats from one new book will give you the same amount of reading as a player who brings two classes and five feats from seven different books.

If you're worried about more familiarization as DM, "no new subsystems" might be a better guideline, cutting new systems of character creation or development like Ghostwalk and Savage Species and alternate magic systems like Psionics, Incarnum, and the Tomes of X books.

What you might want to limit in terms of sourcebooks are open-ended effects like Polymorph/Wild Shape, Planar Binding or Mage of the Arcane Order/Skypledged's spell pools, which give characters new options that are directly proportional to the amount of splatbook content available. Those do test players' and DMs' comprehensive system literacy to capably work with and around.

Or, if you really want to cut back on new materials while you get used to DMing, you could just say "core only," and not have any unfamiliar material to deal with. That's not at all unreasonable.

[Thurbane]

We have often used the same/similar rule in our games - character creation consists of core plus one other book of the players choice.

I don't have a problem with it personally, but it can hurt some classes a lot more than others. Some lower tier classes rely on cherry picking feats, class dips, PrCs etc. from a variety of sources to be viable more than others.

In the game we are currently playing, this rule is in effect (although is expanded to include Spell Compendium as "core"), and I have a Favoured Soul. This means Complete Divine is me "+1" book. We also have a Cleric in the party, who is core + Complete Champion. I can't help but feel my FS would have shined a lot more if I'd been able to pick feats and maybe a PrC from additional sources. Still, have been quite happy with my character anyways.

For the record, NOT saying FS is a low tier class.

[icefractal]

Limiting subsystems would be more helpful, IMO, then limiting books. Ten spells from 10 books is the same amount of reading as 10 spells from one book (players should provide the text of anything they pick, obviously, you shouldn't have to go digging for it). But learning subsystems can be a bit time consuming.

Subsystems I can think of, most to least desirable:
1) ToB. Widely used, it fills a needed purpose, and is fairly simple. If you only use one subsystem, make it this one.
2) Psionics. They're awesome, and no more complex than spells (not saying much, I know). But they really are a lot of fun, so if you think you can handle it, add them too.
3) Binding. Niche, but it's also not complex - the player's only going to have a few choices of powers, and the powers are pretty simple in how they work. May as well allow it, unless you're really overloaded.
4) Incarnum. I've got nothing against Incarnum, but for being as complex as it is, it's a lot less generally used than Psionics or ToB. Maybe ditch this.
5) Shadow Magic. Not that complicated, but not super-simple either. And D&D already has loads of shadow-themed spells. Ditch it.
6) Truenaming. Whole new system, and it doesn't work correctly without house-rules. Ditch it.

[Cyrion]

What level are you planning on for your beginning characters? If they're starting at first level, the problem solves itself to a certain degree- the characters are going to start with limited options that are pretty easy for you to keep up with. Then you grow as they grow; you'll learn more about the pieces and how to manage them as players introduce them, but it will still be at a relatively reasonable pace for a while.

A more important issue might be that of drowning your newbies. Lots of source books can overwhelm them with options. Hopefully, you can rely on your experienced players to help them in their builds and choices.

An option I'm planning on using in a new campaign I'm starting soon with a bunch of newbies to 3.5: because building characters in 3.5 requires some forethought and has some traps (just like beginning DMing does), I've told them that we'll be starting with a short campaign ark and that sometime between about level 8 and 12 there will be a TPK where the players get to die heroic (or perhaps ignominious) deaths. At that point, they can restart the exact same characters with just the names changed to protect the guilty, tweak them, or rebuild completely from scratch.

You can use this idea as an opportunity to recycle- you'll have learned a lot from the initial arc and can then control anything that seemed to get out of hand or introduce new material that you think is needed.