How Far Would You Change Fluff or Feature

[Visivicous]

Often times I'll read a class description or see a specific feature, and think 'This would be fun, except for x.' So I decided to start a thread to find out how flexible other DMs or players are. (Please note that I am not talking about game breaking stuff, but mostly fluff.)

Some possible examples:

Archivist. They need a prayer book to cast their spells. Would you allow a refluff that the spells would be something like sigils or runes, as opposed to prayers? Nothing mechanically would change, but the fluff would be more in line with agnostic study of creation?

Ur-Priest. Do they need to be evil? Wouldn't chaotic good fit just as well? Sort of Robin-hooding the power away from evil deities, and doing good with it? Or is the evil requirment seen as a moderating condition, to block certain combinations?

Power source. When I was reading Magic of Incarnum I loved the description of 'heavy magic'. Why couldn't a normal spellcaster, say a Sorcerer, refluff their power source as 'heavy magic'? Or, how about homebrewing a few feats, based on the 'Shadow Weave Magic' line, but with Incarnum as the source instead of the shadow weave?


These seem reasonable to me, and I'd allow such things in my game. I'd be more hesitant to allow things that are heavily setting dependent and might not mesh well. Like using the Wizard of High Sorcery prestige class from Dragonlance, in a Forgotten Realms campaign (could be refluffed as some distant -almost monastic- order, but seems really problematic). Opinions, comments, counter viewpoints?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'm fully on the side of "use their mechanics, write your own fluff." Heck, I'm a lot more on the side of "write your own mechanics and fluff (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?329161-Giants-and-Graveyards-Grod-s-collected-3-5-revisions)." I could honestly care less what WotC says a [class/feat/spell] is "supposed" to be. And I'm quite willing to change fluff-related mechanics to match.

[Karnith]

The fluff in 3.5 is usually generic in the extreme, laughably bad, or some combination of the two. It also tends to be married extremely poorly to the crunch, when there is even an attempt at it. Fluff also doesn't really have any impact on balance in the game. I have zero hesitation to re-fluff anything not tied directly to mechanics, and frequently disregard or change the fluff of mechanics (e.g. regional feats, setting-specific material, alignment restrictions, and so on).

As a DM, I also am fully willing to work with my players on fixing or altering the mechanics of classes to suit fluff or concept, but that comes up a lot less on (this part of) the Playground because it's rarely productive in discussions here; anything but the most common houserules/revisions/what have you don't merit mention when talking about someone else's game.

All of the examples presented in the OP (including using Wizard of High Sorcery in FR, provided there's some refluffing - maybe making the class a sect of the Red Wizards? Maybe just drop the organizational ties entirely) would be perfectly acceptable in my games.

[jedipotter]

Opinions, comments, counter viewpoints?

I'm very open to changing things and do it all the time. I change fluff a lot, though I change mechanics a lot too.

[torrasque666]

Jedi, there's an entire thread devoted to how you love to change mechanics. Its pretty much Knowledge:Local for this place.


In my own taking, I'm more than happy to change fluff around a bit, but I never go for those "adaptations" clauses included in certain classes. Usually they're to allow for different races to take the class, but race reqs just seem to be something that's integral to classes usually, in my opinion.

[Tvtyrant]

Shouldn't be a problem. Heck if they wanted to "remember" all of their spells and just needed special incenses which they keep a book of formulas for so they can remember the spells I would do it.

I would ban Ur-Priest if I didn't play E6, so that one is out.

I am not sure where this is going. Heavy magic was meant to make it difficult to dispel, and created a pseudo-permanency effect correct? If the Sorcerer wants to say they have some sort of Snowflake magic let them. The feats would be dependent on what they want it to do.

With the High Sorcerery prestige class I would probably make the prestige class a line of research made by the refugees of Netheril, where they attempted to regain the no longer possibly proficiency their ancestors had. They do this by combining magic from the shadow weave with their normal spells, but this is so complicated it takes incredible devotion to specific branches of magic to do correctly.

[GameSpawn]

Basically, it's your game; do what you want with it. With fluff, it's pretty easy to change stuff without having unforeseen consequences, and there's no reason to feel like you're required to use fluff that appears in published books. If it's enhancing your game keep it, if not, discard it. Just make sure your players aren't coming into your game with preconceptions that won't apply.

As for things like alignment requirements that are "sort-of fluff", it's nearly always fine to change them (from a mechanical perspective). There are certainly some broken combinations that you'll enable this way, but there are plenty more broken options that are already legal by RAW. For the specific example of Ur-Priest, I can't off hand think of any problems you'd introduce, except that you'd make it more likely someone would play that class.

[VoxRationis]

I change either but little, and I think that the mentality that is so prone to discard the given fluff is primarily a well-spoken way to rationalize powergaming. But I'm not entirely against changing things to suit my settings. At one of my player's behest last session, we adapted summon nature's ally to call animals from nearby, rather than teleport them in. (The campaign is a low-magic one, and of more down-to-earth tone than most.)

[gc25774]

Made my own Gods. Gave everyone SOUL cancer and called it a day. I also don't add prestige classes in until a player wants them.

[Phelix-Mu]

I allow refluffing as long as it is part of a flavorful concept and not just a covert bid to sneak in some bit of stealth char-op (which is actually pretty easy to do, since the fluff in the RAW is very restrictive at times). I don't mind it supporting a trick, but if you don't back up your refluff with decent role play or creativity, expect me to either say no from the start or to suggest you try more seriously to justify a collaborative rules change for player convenience. Nothing without price and Law of Equivalent Exchange and all that.

If a campaign is largely by-the-book, I may be more restrictive. On the other hand, in high-op where stuff is loose and wild, I would really err on the side of "allow everything fluff-wise" since most of my challenge as DM at that point is keeping challenge up while not turning it into a pure numbers game. If player-instigated refluff helps, then by all means, yes.

[Jeff the Green]

Well, let's put it this way: in my campaign setting

Elves are universally darkskinned, are descended from humans kidnapped by fae, and follow a dominionist religion.
Gnomes live in a socialist paradise where everyone has a fairly high standard of living due to government monopoly over shipping through a dangerous but important strait. They also are the only major group to hold slaves, their favorite entertainment is colosseum blood sports, and they have the best spy network in the world.
Half-orcs are equestrian nomads. On one continent they worship auroch spirits and sometimes minotaur a are born among them and are specially revered (other races think it's because half-Orc women dally with bulls). The other controls oases and trade routes through a desert.
Kobolds are still obsessed with dragons, but they're obsessed with a particular one who is not yet born; a dragonwrought kobold will one day find the secret to true dragonhood, become a physical god, and rule the world. They also frequently have primitive feathers.
Halflings are mostly poor farmers, with Paladins and pirates making up the majority of adventurers.
Humans are dominat nowhere, and a plurality in only one citystate.
True dragons don't exist.
Warlocks are born with their abilities (primarily due to too much prenatal exposure to magic), while sorcerers are gifted with theirs by elementals or outsiders.
Incarnum is just magic given solid form.
Vestiges are powerful outsiders or elementals who, when they died, left a strong imprint on the universal field of magic.
Wu Jen get their power from ancestral spirits and must be lawful.
The archdevils, demon princes, yugoloth generals, Celestial Hebdomad, ten companions, Court of Stars, and Primus exist, but were sealed away long ago by the fae.
There are no planes, just Faerie, which acts more like a demiplane.


So yeah, I'm pretty comfortable with refluffing. As a player I've also played or considered playing an archivist who, instead of a prayer book, had a spirit of intellect grafted to his soul and who manifested as a crystal (an Aureon's spellshard), a necropolitan Illumian who didn't go through the normal ritual but instead was brought back wrong by his dad who was cursed to slowly turn into an undead, a dryad who grew branches and vines out of her back to let her climb and fire her bow at the same time (girallon's blessing and a spider kit), and a beguiler whose Shape Soulmeld: Blink Shirt wasn't soul energy but the result of inappropriately mixed potions.

[Segev]

The fluff behind magic in the setting I ran for 5+ years had a somewhat animist view of things. "Spirits" were everywhere, and heavily involved in natural processes. It was never made clear (because I didn't feel a need) whether physics and forces and the like worked without them, but they were intimately involved in just about everything, just out of sight and perception.

Magic came from getting the spirits to do what YOU wanted, rather than their normal behavior. Or from getting the spirits to manipulate things to work outside of their natural course.

Divine magic, therefore, came from the priest - cleric or druid, generally - being a worshiper and follower of one of the big bosses of entire hierarchies. Like lieutenants, captains, generals, and bureaucratic middlemen, they were given authority by their god to have spirits do things for them. Their prepared spells were blessings they were authorized to call forth, and the ritual prayers of the spellcasting were the language and wording that even the simplest-minded spirits who hear and obey wound understand and recognize. They could cast in armor because precision was less important than authority; it just helped.

Arcane magic was, instead, getting the spirits to obey your will via other forms of influence. Sorcerers tended to befriend minor spirits who would learn "tricks" (or teach the Sorcerer how to call for such tricks), and to seek out greater entities with whom to make bargains. Sorcerers had entourages of familiar spirits and had fame amongst certain courts; their spells still required precision to the point they couldn't wear armor because the spirits had to be convinced each time, and their authority was not that of a potentate's representative but that of a friend of said potentate. Sorcerers, therefore, needed to be precise enough that the spirits would recognize exactly what he wanted.

Wizards, on the other hand, were contract lawyers. Far from "magic-as-science," wizards used their immense intelligence to create, draft, learn, memorize, and master the laws and traditions and centuries (or even millenia) of agreements between mortals and the spirit courts and between the spirit courts themselves. Wizard spells were carefully-researched collections of contracts (or clauses thereof) which dictated situations in which the spirits of magic had to behave in certain ways. These usually involved arcane (no pun intended) combinations of actions the wizard had to perform in order to make himself the proper beneficiary of these contractual obligations, and were almost invariably so complex and delicate that they had to be "reset" after use. That's what wizards did when preparing their spells: they weren't memorizing anything; they were performing the ritual activities to render themselves "valid" as beings owed the services they would later demand.

When wizards cast their spells, they're usually just invoking their rights. Still, it has to be precise and correct, just like a sorcerer invoking his rights granted by his relationship with the spirits. In the wizard's case, the precision is because he's invoking a contract, and if he screws up the invocation, he's likely to be ignored because he didn't do it right. If he's lucky, nothing happens. If he's unlucky, he cashed in his preparation for nothing (or, worse, got a mishap). Same with a Sorcerer who screws up, though his "friends" might not MEAN to be screwing him over. They just got confused.

I used the D&D rules for all of that; mechanically, this changes nothing. It's all just fluff. But it makes it feel a little more magical, to me, if only because it's not science. It's law. And law is all about semantics, and semantics can get you in all sorts of fun trouble in fantasy stories about magic. The wizard really is doing magic, not science. He's bargaining with and compelling obedience by ancient agreements and oaths.


Spell research - particularly for wizards - involved a combination of finding what spirits might do what they want, and (more commonly) a thorough hunt through the existing agreements, laws, other spells, and known loopholes or strange consequences which may not have been intended. They find interactions between various oaths' requirements and contracts' clauses, and construct new spells by combining the preparatory requirements and proper ritual invocations in such a way that they get the effect they want.

Kind of like the optimization crowd does with rules: find interactions that may or may not be at all what was "intended," but which achieve exactly the goal the wizard--er, optimizer--sought. Very occasionally, a particularly unique or powerful new spell might require the same sort of bargain-making in which sorcerers engage; when wizards do it, though, they go in armed with reams of precedent, knowledge of etiquette and guest-right for the being they're seeking, and a plan to exploit this for the maximum efficiency in face-time while hammering out a new aspect of a deal (or a new contract altogether). Smart wizards remember that the loopholes will only get them in the door; they have to have a plan for what they can offer the spirits in return for this new agreement. A plan to sell it to them, so they decide agreeing to it is in their best interests. They're not sorcerers, to go in and make friends and influence people. They're negotiators and contract lawyers with a plan for mutual benefit to which they want to convince the spirits to agree.

[MrBright01]

I tell my players the same thing I tell you: If you can justify it without being a total burk, we'll discuss it. I apply this to fluff, alignment requirements, and other non-mechanical things. A common one for myself and my crew is "no alignment requirements," because I see alignment as a role-playing crutch. If you want to play a wandering monk ala Kung Fu, be neutral good. Paladin serving the law over all else? Cool. Lawful neutral. Alignment requirements are applied only rarely, and always loosely.

ex. If a player of mine wanted to play, say, an Assassin, I would require them to be lawful something. A killer who works only for the local church for the greater good and never kills servants and bodyguards I would consider arguably good. Meanwhile, almost all assassins are just that, contract killers, and rare and few are those who break their personal code and renege on a contract. And even that I would let slide, if the player has a good enough story excuse.

I do require one thing, though. If the fluff centers on a major organization, they would be required to find something similar. And by find, I mean they tell me the class ahead of time, and I'll drop something in front of them that will fulfill the "training montage" requirement. If they ignore the plot hook handed to them (and occasionally hammered into their head,) well, then they might be out of luck. In the above example, the guy wanting to be an assassin has been playing a flat out brawler until then. I drop them into a in-progress assassin mission, where they have to help one finish the job. If they refuse, or grossly fail through role-play failure (charge the guards, when the assassin specifies a quiet job), then that concept is dead, and I'll try to help them find an alternative.

[Emperor Tippy]

Unless its rule relevant fluff and/or conflicts with the campaign setting and world fluff then I have no problem with refluffing at all.

Homebrew and other rules changes really depend on the specific change, the reason for it, and a whole host of other factors but I generally have little problem with it.

[Alent]

I don't see a problem with redesigning everything to suit the world and play group both, especially if it's to help the group with a theme.

The post-apocalypse steampunk campaign setting I've been working on off and on for a while has full on rewrites such as Totemist refluffed as a Steam Knight, with mechanics to match: PSI in place of essentia, parts in place of soulmelds, and compressor cables in place of chakras along with a simplification of the chakra slots themselves. They have a list of custom parts roughly inspired by the original source, but customized to the idea, like jump jets- which double as ghetto steam breath weapons.

For me, it's all about immersion and involvement. I'm willing to change what I need to inspire my players to help me bring the world to life.

[qwertyu63]

I'm the sort who will drop fluff at the drop of a hat to fit my desired idea. I tend not to change crunch; if I think the crunch doesn't work, I just homebrew up a replacement.

[BWR]

Generally I'm pretty flexible when it comes to refluffing things. Some mechanics are more tied to fluff than others. Most of the base classes are meant to be generic and flexible so they fit in most anywhere. Prestige classes are generally pretty specific. If I'm running d20 Rokugan then the Shintao Monk is a PrC restricted to the Brotherhood of Shinsei, and the Hida Elite Guard is restricted to the Crab clan. If I'm running Dragonlance then the Wizard of High Sorcery is restricted to and obligatory for members of the Order. If I'm running FR, the Purple Dragon Knight is only for Purple Dragons.
However, if I'm running Mystara and a player wanted to play a Purple Dragon Knight from Thyatis, I would have no problem refluffing the class to fit. It would not fit all countries in Mystara, however, like Alfheim or the Five Shires.

[VoxRationis]

Oh, incidentally, I thought of an exception to my general rule. Armor. The armor types listed are pretty restrictive, and I can think of a ton of combinations of scale, chain, and plate that historically existed but don't really fit in the provided categories nicely. I'd allow refluffing of a suit of samurai armor to several different things, potentially.
On the other hand, certain types of armor are unquestionably one particular type listed in the rules, and I'm not going to allow, as a DM, anyone to treat them as though they were not.

[Visivicous]

Snip: Awesome Stuff.

That is incredible, and very cool. Sounds much more fun than the standard way of doing things.


I am not sure where this is going. Heavy magic was meant to make it difficult to dispel, and created a pseudo-permanency effect correct? If the Sorcerer wants to say they have some sort of Snowflake magic let them. The feats would be dependent on what they want it to do.


I may have been confusing something from another supplement, or possibly novel, with the Incarnum book. I seem to recall it being alluded to somewhere that Incarnum was closely related to 'heavy magic'. Either way, I do remember that the book described a vast expanse of soul energy that could be tapped into. I was just thinking it would be neat to have an alternative source for spells, and a homebrewed feat 'tree' similar to the shadow weave 'tree' would work nicely to that end.

[Karnith]

I may have been confusing something from another supplement, or possibly novel, with the Incarnum book. I seem to recall it being alluded to somewhere that Incarnum was closely related to 'heavy magic'.
If I had to guess, you probably saw it here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/frcc/20070808). It may also be in MoI somewhere as a variant, but I don't have an easy way to search that, as my copy is physical.

[Anlashok]

I think that the mentality that is so prone to discard the given fluff is primarily a well-spoken way to rationalize powergaming.
Run that one by me again?

How exactly is a player choice that has absolutely no benefit other than helping to facilitate creativity in roleplaying "rationalizing powergaming", given that the concept is entirely divorced from power gaming. You're saying that liking red cars is just a way to rationalize buying more lawn fertilizer.

[The Ravensong]

For my campaign setting I've actually killed off all the regular D&D gods. Not "nobody knows about them"... not "they never existed"... they're dead now. I had a previous party fail pretty spectacularly to stop a villain from cutting the material plane off from every other plane. The next party fixed that but by that time the villain had killed off the gods once they were weakened from being cut off from their source of faith.
So I've refluffed all the deity specific prestige classes to now allow any of the new gods that have a similar portfolio to the dead one and much like Jeff the Green, I'd decided that the calamity and time differences between reconnecting the material world to the multiverse caused enough strife and social change to refluff many of the races as well.

[VoxRationis]

Run that one by me again?

How exactly is a player choice that has absolutely no benefit other than helping to facilitate creativity in roleplaying "rationalizing powergaming", given that the concept is entirely divorced from power gaming. You're saying that liking red cars is just a way to rationalize buying more lawn fertilizer.

Not at all.
Assuming a DM who will not allow things which blatantly don't work for the setting, the ability to justify through fluff a particular class feature, feat, or prestige class is paramount. Consequently, by adjusting the fluff of a number of disparate features which were never meant to be used in conjunction but which synergize well, a player can be a more effective powergamer.

[Jeff the Green]

Not at all.
Assuming a DM who will not allow things which blatantly don't work for the setting, the ability to justify through fluff a particular class feature, feat, or prestige class is paramount. Consequently, by adjusting the fluff of a number of disparate features which were never meant to be used in conjunction but which synergize well, a player can be a more effective powergamer.

Yes, refluffing can be used that way. But there are so many ways to power game that have absolutely no fluff attached I have a hard time believing that it's "primarily" an excuse to power game.

[Dimcair]

Have a DM that dislikes everything 'oriental' and doesn't want you to play a monk?

Meet Lord Quentin Chamberlain, a British, quarterstaff wielding monk.

Only that his quarterstaff is actually a golf bat.
And he has multiple of them.
They are carried by his caddy, Cavendish, in a golf bag.

When a fight breaks out: "Let me try it with the iron nine Cavendish."


Case closed.

[Tvtyrant]

That is incredible, and very cool. Sounds much more fun than the standard way of doing things.



I may have been confusing something from another supplement, or possibly novel, with the Incarnum book. I seem to recall it being alluded to somewhere that Incarnum was closely related to 'heavy magic'. Either way, I do remember that the book described a vast expanse of soul energy that could be tapped into. I was just thinking it would be neat to have an alternative source for spells, and a homebrewed feat 'tree' similar to the shadow weave 'tree' would work nicely to that end.

Hmm, my heavy magic knowledge is from the Netheril books where Karsus(or whatever his name is) invented heavy magicas a way to prevent tgthe Phaerimm from eating their spells. Also in Tome of Magic.