Troll Lord Games

Sometimes a player comes in and wants to play something other than the C&C core classes and races. What do you typically deem to be a reasonable request? There are a wide range of power levels among the core classes and races, but there is still a balance to be struck, and not every campaign world reasonably accommodates every concept or borrowing.

I'm especially interested in concrete examples of what you have and have not allowed and why.

I am pretty conservative. i like verisimilitude and am not really interested in pop-culture anachronisms mixed in with my already strained fantasy anachronisms. Even within the wide ranging power levels of the core races and classes, I don't want anything too far outside of them. I get that a lot of people like something more gonzo and awesome.

I think you can get just about anything you want from the core classes and multi-classing / class-and-a-half. Sometimes you just have to re-conceptualize the classes a bit. The barbarian is a good example. It's easy to think Conan, but the class could accommodate a dervish just as well. Same goes for the monk: he doesn't have to be the standard eastern martial artist; he could be a boxer or wrestler just as well.

The only place where the core classes might not work for certain character types is with certain kinds of spell casters, but then I think you don't need more classes so much as different spell lists.

Races are definitely a different story, though I'm leaning more and more toward all or mostly human centered campaigns with different nationalities / ethnicities for cultural variety.

Too many examples to list. It ALL comes down to what fits into your campaign world. If your world doesn't have Orcs, ya can't play one, for example...

I had a player who wanted to play something that, superficially, is in the books -- a sort of knightly druid, an oath-sworn defender of the land with some minor magical abilities granted by a deity of the wilds to help, but with some things not directly given to either class. For this, we worked on breaking it down to decide what was needed, what could be replicated with existing abilities, and what might need to be "spell-like." In the end, we ended up having a darkwood elf (no different than a regular elf, except for where they live -- deep in the eldest forests) "warden." He kept the knightly code, modified to fit the concept, and lost horsemanship (and a few other things) and dropped some of the druid stuff too, but gained the ability to detect snares/hazards and set wilderness traps, got an animal buddy, and some minor druid abilities, some of which are given "1/day" at higher levels like "tree step" (limited teleport).

I encourage my players to think of things they want to play -- I don't care if its in the rules. I can make rules.

Generally I have a pretty wide range of races and classes beyond the books already. However, I'm not adverse to sitting down with a player whom has such a desire and discussing what it is they want out of the race/class. Then I'll fiddle with the concept to make it work in my world. I still retain control and they get some/most of what they are wanting, within reason.

Aergraith wrote:Sometimes a player comes in and wants to play something other than the C&C core classes and races. What do you typically deem to be a reasonable request? There are a wide range of power levels among the core classes and races, but there is still a balance to be struck, and not every campaign world reasonably accommodates every concept or borrowing.

I'm especially interested in concrete examples of what you have and have not allowed and why.

I am pretty conservative. i like verisimilitude and am not really interested in pop-culture anachronisms mixed in with my already strained fantasy anachronisms. Even within the wide ranging power levels of the core races and classes, I don't want anything too far outside of them. I get that a lot of people like something more gonzo and awesome.

This one's easy. Say, "No."

Seriously, if you're running a C&C campaign, it's reasonable to assume that you're looking for something rules-light and likely enjoy C&C because of the Old School charm. Don't let players with their heads in the clouds ruin that experience for yourself and everyone else at the table. If they can't make something interesting out of the 13 available classes and provided multi-classing options, and then supplement the rest of their needs with vivid descriptions and good role playing, then tell them "no." This person doesn't want to play C&C, this person wants to play 4th edition. Politely ask them to get their dice out and start rolling up a C&C character, or go find a 4th edition game to their liking.

But, that's just my opinion. I'm very flexible on the multi-classing rules and players can "build" just about anything interesting that fits reasonably into the old school fantasy theme. The "Knightly Druid" identified by Serl above could easily have been accomplished by a class-and-a-half Druid / Knight, with very little tweaking, for example.

The "Knightly Druid" identified by Serl above could easily have been accomplished by a class-and-a-half Druid / Knight, with very little tweaking, for example.

For the most part, it was. Except I do not like the class-and-a-half system. It rewards too greatly for very little, except for the spellcasters which it hinders too much. But, that's my lonely opinion.

We actually do a lot of "melding" in our games. My wife is playing a "valkyrie" which is basically a mixing of paladin and cleric. I tend to look at The Arcanum with its single classed vs double classed characters for what I might consider to allow in C&C.

As long as the player doesn't seem to be trying to min/max his way to an ubercharacter, nothing wrong with giving him a chance to try something unusual. Going back to the early '70s Dave Arneson had Balrogs and Vampires and other strange characters in his campaign, so the tradition of allowing players to be creative has been out there for a long time. (Heck, the Cleric class was created to counter a Vampire PC.)

For a racial choice, the advice that OD&D gives is to let a player start off as a weak creature and advance from there. In other words, if he wants to be a dragon start him off as a young and weak one the same way that any other PC would be young and weak. If you typically run campaigns up to 10th level, for example, take the powers of the monster and divide them into ten piles so that each level of advancement adds more. That way, by the end, he gets to be a full-powered whatever. All of this assumes that the rest of the party doesn't object to having this guy play something unusual.

If he wants a class not in the rulebook, I'd be more cautious. I'd advise him to try to "build" the class using a combination of classes there already. Building and properly balancing classes is a lot more work.

This depends a lot more on the player for me than it does the race or class. I'd allow some weaker races with very little change from M&T. Want to play a kobold in my world? Go for it! Don't expect other adventuring parties and people who don't know you to just let you wander the city, however. Kobolds in a small farming village get attacked on sight by fearful farmers protecting their kith and kin. For the record, my campaign world is also one in which the "monster" races were a very recent development in a long war. I allow the characters a chance to help influence and decide the fate of these races, so it makes sense in my game for a kobold or group of kobolds to end up as just another player race.

Does it make sense in your game? If it does, is it a race that can easily be ported in; i.e. a 1HD or less race? Are they wanting to play something outrageous like a Fire Giant, half-dragon, sphinx, etc.?

If they can dream it and I can dream it, why not? It'll start at first level -- and no first level anything is more powerful than a first level anything else in my worlds. First level Kryptonian? You haven't stored enough solar power yet, and you're about as useful as Superbaby. And as funny. First level god? First level god is mortal or semi-mortal on quest toward godhood. (Herakles, for example.) First level Thor is Dr Don Blake. Etc.