When it comes to special requirements for classes.....

[Masakan]

Say swiftblades:Must cast nothing but haste on the previous level or you must find a fellow jade phoenix master to be come a jade phoenix mage.
Do most just ignore that?

[eggynack]

I think it depends a lot on the particular requirements, how much they depend on the nature of a given campaign world, and as a result how plausible they are. So, for example, swiftblade, whose special requirement could be considered wholly mechanical and campaign independent, is one I'd be more inclined to enforce. It's not the easiest requirement to meet, but if you're not meeting it, it's because you won't rather than because you can't.

[elonin]

I've had DM's who were willing to hand wave or allow requirements to be altered. For example the alignment restriction on Assassin, with one DM telling me a case could be made for a good variant (swapping the evil for a cause). More odd is Green Star Adept in which they say you have to eat (use) star metal of particular value and then never list the value or amount you need.

[AnonymousPepper]

As a GM:

I tend to strictly enforce mechanical requirements such as those of Swiftblade if they needed to be met in the course of gameplay (i.e. character didn't pop in at mid-levels with already having levels in Swiftblade).

I tend to vary more on fluff requirements, depending on how long I'll have to prep for something as a GM. An example of this would be Contemplative; if a player tells me what their build will probably be early on and mentions Contemplative I'll usually write an opportunity in to meet a servant of the deity in question. If it would prove disruptive, i.e. on really short notice, but not out of necessity (say, somebody brings in a character *right before* they need to take Contemplative), I might waive it.

I tend to be willing to waive alignment requirements if I think the fluff for it (Assassin, for example) is weak and the player can provide a decent fluff reason to have it in-character. I tend to go in the middle for some other things - I'm willing to let Ur-Priest flex to neutral, for a cause, but I wouldn't go so far as to allow it to be a good character. Harder alignment requirements, such as Nightbringer Initiate, stay locked to what they were; I'd never allow a good Nightbringer Initiate druid (well, almost never, anyway; I don't like to say never).

I will not waive fluff requirements just because they're inconvenient, though. Ashbound, for example? Hah, you want double duration on your summons, you will play your druid as a jackass of some description to every wizard you meet, I'm not letting you wiggle out of that.

[Curmudgeon]

I've had DM's who were willing to hand wave or allow requirements to be altered. For example the alignment restriction on Assassin
That's got nothing to do with their Special requrement.
Special: The character must kill someone for no other reason than to join the assassins.


As a DM, I'll enforce all requirements in an ongoing campaign. I'll hand-wave the Special requirements for a character built to start with those classes, but only to the extent that they don't have quantifiable repercussions. A Green Star Adept's Special entry requirement includes a quantifiable 1,000 gp cost element, for instance, so that gets deducted from the character's allowed build resources.

[Thurbane]

One I've recently changed in my game is the entry req for Knight of the Raven, which requires you to spend the night in a module specific location.

I've swapped the req in my game and substituted that you be a worshipper of Phaulkon...

[Chronos]

A lot of special requirements are potential adventure hooks. Potential adventure hooks are good. You just have to make sure that they're not geared only to one character. So, make sure that when the swordsage/sorcerer is questing to find a Jade Phoenix Master, that the other players have some reason to go along, too. Maybe the master is the noble that the cleric's church has ordered him to rescue, and his captors have possession of the ancient artifact that the rogue's been searching for.

[nedz]

Setting specific and Fluff requirements are things which I will most likely ignore, or at the very least be open to change.

A lot of special requirements are potential adventure hooks. Potential adventure hooks are good. You just have to make sure that they're not geared only to one character. So, make sure that when the swordsage/sorcerer is questing to find a Jade Phoenix Master, that the other players have some reason to go along, too. Maybe the master is the noble that the cleric's church has ordered him to rescue, and his captors have possession of the ancient artifact that the rogue's been searching for.
All well and good, but suppose you wanted to have more interesting adventure hooks ? After all this would be an adventure driven by the character building meta-game.

[Jay R]

My experience is that:

1. If a DM has an idea how to make the requirement part of the ongoing story, he or she enforces it, and enables it.

2. If a DM doesn't like the class, and wants to discourage it, he or she enforces the requirements strictly. - and often makes it impossible to achieve.

3. If a DM likes the class, and has no clear idea how to make the requirement happen, he or she is very likely to waive it.

[BowStreetRunner]

I actually played in a mid to high level game where the DM looked at my build with Vassal of Bahamut and told me that he would run me through a solo adventure with the character just before picking up that prestige class in order to prove that I could, in fact, slay a juvenile red dragon single-handed. So much for my backstory idea that the character had gotten 'extremely lucky'. I never did come up with a build that I was confident would do it, so eventually scrapped the idea for something else.

[Afgncaap5]

If a special requirement is impossible or unrealistic, I might alter it for a player. It's impossible to join the Knight Phantom prestige class outside of the Eberron campaign setting, for instance. However, I'll always replace it with something else: finding an ancient text to read, fixing something broken, coming from a different background that fits the setting, etc.