New Players and Leniency on Recreating Characters as Their Experience Grows

[LanSlyde]

So I have been giving this some thought and would like opinions. Remember the old days when we were all new to the game? Remember you had a pretty cool idea for a character but didn't know how to really go about implementing it? So you poured through the books and found mechanics that kind of fit the concept, but where a little off. You might have worked on it a bit more, but game time was just around the corner. So you showed up with what you made and just played with what you found. But some days down the line your browsing the books again and you find a different mechanic that fits the theme your trying to work towards better than what your currently using. So you take it to the GM and ask the question, can I swap this?

Now, from your perspectives, should a new player be allowed to respec their character as they gain a greater mastery of the system, or do you feel they should be disbarred from doing so even if they no longer gain any sense of satisfaction or enjoyment out of it? Disregarding obvious situations like character death or other situations where it would no longer be feasible to continue with that character.

[OldTrees1]

Players have a limited number of retconjuration swaps. Swaps that require stronger retconjuration eat through that limit faster or are denied. Swaps that don't involve retconjuration (like swapping something that was never used) are limited by the DM's patience.

[flappeercraft]

I would allow it while it stays within character concept so you could change maybe fighter/wizard to warblade/wizard, change an ACF, change a feat for something that stays within character concept but further than that they need to get something like DCFS or Psychic reformation. Would not allow Race changes though unless they are very minor like one kind of elf to another.

[Tiktakkat]

My focus is on having fun with the play of the game.
If that involves tweaks, revisions, and even outright retcons to enhance player interest and story cohesion then revise away!
New player, old player, whatever player - bring the character you will enjoy running to the table.
But, as a particular note:


. . . greater mastery of the system . . .

"System mastery" is the worst design mistake of the 3E/3.5/D20 system.
Indeed even the designers themselves acknowledged this, and added rules for altering characters because of it.
I have even less reservations in allowing alterations to compensate for a recognized system design flaw.

[Kelb_Panthera]

For my players, I use the PHB2 rebuild rules anyway but I -might- let them swap an option or 3 for their first couple sessions.

[icefractal]

Allowed to any extent. The only limit I'd put is that if it changes the concept significantly, then it's a new character rather than a retcon. But players are free to change characters also, so that's not a problem.

I have to wonder - what purpose do people think would be served by telling someone to play a character that they no longer want to? How will that lead to a better game?

[Diarmuid]

As Kelb stated, this is exactly what rebuilding/retraining rules can be used for.

Some "builds" dont "come online" until much later and have crazy feat prereqs. If you're starting past the "come online" level then it's usually fine, but trying to play that same character from level one with "dead" feats that arent really that useful can make the character not all that fun to play while you get to the "come online" point. If you can instead, take useful feats/abilities at lower levels and then swap those out as you get closer to your end goal then the journey to get there was much more fun.

Or maybe you had an idea for a character and through the in-game experiences your motivations or party role morphed into something else. Being able to swap out some previous character choices for ones that fit your new idea of your character better is a good thing IMO.

[Flickerdart]

I let all my players respec pretty much whenever, because I believe that forcing people to stick to poorly performing characters doesn't make for a good game. It's worked fairly well - rebuilding a character is a lot of work, and no one's yet abused it. Obviously there is potential for abuse (imagine a ranger that re-picks fighting styles and favored enemies every session - so broken!) but that's why they gotta ask for permission first.

[Khedrac]

For a new player I absolutely would allow a character rebuild, but I would watch it to ensure that they are sticking to the same build concept.
Also, when allowing a new player to re-build, I would ask more experienced players if there is anything they would like to tweak on their characters at the same time.

[Pugwampy]

Now, from your perspectives, should a new player be allowed to respec their character as they gain a greater mastery of the system

Yes thats fair . Not just noobs but everyone should be rewarded for doing some homework and research . Swop out feats anytime till you are happy with what you have .

[Zanos]

If it's a new player and they made a mistake, I'd let them swap out pretty much whatever.

If it's a veteran player trying to swap between builds that are optimally powerful at every level, I'm gonna bop 'em with a newspaper.

I generally have enough experience to tell when someone is trying to take advantage of my generosity.

[Zaq]

In practice, my groups have almost universally been very lenient with swapping around build elements if new info comes to light. We firmly believe that the game's primary purpose (i.e., having fun with friends) isn't being served if you aren't happy with your own character, so if something just isn't working out, we usually allow some reworking. Doesn't particularly matter if it's because we got a new book, we found out that an ability doesn't work the way we thought, or whatever. (This is also why we're generally pretty okay with swapping characters if someone just plain isn't enjoying the character they had. We don't want to have to completely rebalance the party every week, but again, if you're not having fun with your character, why the hell are you playing a roleplaying game where your entire body of interaction with the game happens through that character?)

This does generally assume that everyone's working in good faith (so no intentionally loading up on frontloaded options that fail to scale and then just turning them into amazing late-game abilities once you're past the early zone), but that's pretty much something that we'd hope would be true any time you're dealing with houserules. Or with the game in general, for that matter.

[Pleh]

My personal rule is keeping it fair. If one person can, make it clear either that everyone can or at least why this is an exception.

If everyone at the table felt bad because one guy decided to play monk with a group of full casters, letting him retcon into unarmed swordsage is not only okay, but good for the table overall. Everyone has more fun when everyone can have fun.

A fighter picked toughness because they wanted to meat shield. They can retrain, or retcon.

It's about honoring the rules, which goes about as far as following the rules usually goes.