"Alright, guys, for this campaign you can choose any race you want!"
>human
>yeah, me too
>I'll be human
>I choose human
LATER
"Okay, guys, this campaign is in fairly grounded, human-only setting."
>can I be a tiefling?
>I see you have elves as NPC race, can I be an elf?
>aww, I already made an orc character... can there be orcs in your setting?
>do vampires count as humans?
why
I think part of it is indecision paralysis and part of it is contrarianism. There's this childish instinct where you want exactly what you're told you can't have, even if it makes no fuckin' sense to want it. There's also a GM vs Player mentality that some players seem to have without even realizing they have it, like a subconscious resistance to being told what to do, even if they're told in the friendliest and most reasonable way possible.
It's like with children or dogs, how if A has a toy and B doesn't, B will covet that toy even if he doesn't really want to play with it. B just wants it because A has it. That's it, that's the entire reason. He might not even like the toy, he just wants it because he doesn't have it. Couple that with a lot of people who play Veeky Forums games being emotionally-stunted turbo-autists and you get contrarian shitheads who say and do the dumbest fucking shit.
I have this one player who doesn't understand why everyone runs away from him in game.
He's a 5 foot tall humanoid eagle creature with an unpronounceable race name.
"Well man, people have some light racism towards half-orcs, but you're way the fuck out there on the 'normal' spectrum."
this guy has the right of it, I think most of my group will play more or less the same thing until their options are limited at which point they try and make weird shit. perhaps it's a desire to stand out when there's only a single mostly bland race around or something.
There was this experiment way back in the day about playgrounds and fences. If you give children an open field, they'll cluster into groups and stick together. If you give them a fenced-in area, they'll spread out more or less evenly to fill the entire area. I think it's a pretty good analogy -- give players hard limits and they'll explore to the boundaries, but give them all the options and they'll be paralyzed with indecision and just stick to what's familiar.
Didn't you just make this fucking thread?
>5 foot tall
good thing he can just fly out of the Pit
50ft fly speed at level one, if this is 5e anyway, yeah. You have to pay for that somewhere. Unless your game is set in a mountain aerie, I think it's reasonable that not a lot of people will have seen his kind, and be a bit put off.
Sometimes a nigga's gotta get it all out, and sometimes one thread isn't enough.
>Want to run a regular game with just PHB races
>Players all want to be arrocka, revenants, bugbears, wolfmen and other retarded monster/furfag races.
>Lose all motivation to log onto Discord or Roll20 for like a month and consider just making a new account so I never actually have to tell them how fucking retarded they are.
This is getting to the point of spam
So, you chickened out of an online confrontation?
It's less that and more that the motivation to even fucking bother isn't there.
"You can choose any race you want!" sounds like a high-powered game with lots of Dangerous Magic Bullshit, so obviously you'd want to pick the race with the best mechanical benefit, which is usually humans because humans have a free floating whatever-it-is that lets you specialize to hell.
With the opposite case, you might think 'a ha, now I have the chance to be a truly special and outstanding figure in the story' and just make whatever Chaotic Chaotic half-owlbear pumpslinger bullshit you drunkenly imagined.
>so obviously you'd want to pick the race with the best mechanical benefit
What? I just play interesting chars, not optimized to hell builds.
So you chickened out then
Be a fucking man and tell them how and why they're retarded and they just might improve.
>That one player who can never decide on what kind of character he wants to play
>Halfway through your campaign he actually asks you to kill his character so he can play something else because he's "not feeling it"
A buddy of mine calls that altitis, like what MMO players get when they make too many alt characters or lose interest in a class partway through and switch.
Fucking this
>Curse Of Strahd
>By the second session, two of the party get their characters killed off to switch
>Fourth, another one goes
>Fifth session and I'm the only original party member left. All deaths have been intentional.
>Most of the party and the DM have thrown caution and restraint to the wind because most of the group have a dozen backup characters they want to give a spin
>I'm a bard that's barely hanging in there because every other encounter is meant to kill one of us and I'm fighting alongside the subconsciously suicidal
>DM shoots down my request to become a revenant if I bite the dust
I know Curse Of Strahd isn't meant to be a cakewalk, but I'd like to develop at least one character for fuck's sake. Why bother creating a character with any depth if they or their companions die before they could meaningfully interact?
Wish I'd see more of "make whatever you like, and I'll design a narrative to accommodate it".
You have the perfect opportunity to develop your bard into a jaded PTSD ridden paranoid wreck of a veteran. On account of all his friends and companions being struck down every other day and only him surviving. Have it reflect your bardic music too make up depressing lyrics and work on trying to emulate a perma 1000-yard stare.
my first thought when he said all his companions kept dying
This motherfucker would think he's cursed after the first couple groups and would definitely develop survivor's guilt, PTSD, and a fear of companionship because everyone who hangs around him meets an untimely grisly death
I've sorta done this. He's gone from mild pessimism and lighthearted snarkiness to near cynical nihilism, cowardice and coldness. DM's a friend so I doubt he'll be too stubborn about the revenant thing. I want his spirit and body to be battered to its limit, but never broken beyond repair. Pic related. I shooped a before and after.
The only problem here is often that's not the kind of character that you want to play.
>Players fight furiously over the right to be the one human in the party
It was honestly kind of baffling to me
don't you understand the wookie rule?
You should always have one weird guy in a band of humans, and one human in a band of weird guys.
Not only is it fun to play the odd one out, but it also creates fun scenarios for everyone else to play off of.
Its just with every other game with this same group there were typically 2-3 humans in a party of 6
Leave me alone I just want to be Drow and stab all the racists
>but you're way the fuck out there on the 'normal' spectrum
so fucking what
Can I be an alien that looks like a human? You know like Superman
look, being the one human in the group is more fun than being the 2nd or 3rd human in the group.
I think you're a retarded faggot. Just play Pathfinder it's the best system and the best setting.
Let's try not being deceitful cunts now.
How about you post some actual logical arguments you Soros paid shill
>why?
The inability of westerners, especially 'murricans, to follow the rules.
dat extra feat, cuz
Shills DnD 3.pf of all fucking things and then has the audacity to use words like 'logical' and 'arguments'.
Pathfinder is flawless. Name one flaw.
Logic? You and i both know that logic means absolutely nothing around here, otherwise you wouldn't keep doing this. I don't need Logic. All I really need to do is have the last word.
The next 12 hours of my life is a graveyard shift where I'm free to Shitpost regularly. Combine that with being a diagnosed Sperg with depression, and I can make the next 12 hours of my life about browbeating every argument you have with sheer autism and vindictiveness.
Give up, you've already lost.
How much is Soros paying you to post? I wanna know right now
>Chaotic Chaotic
When you're so chaotic you make the alignment spectrum fold in on itself
>snowflake
The game has little to do with the finding of paths.
This is me whenever I make a character as part of the pre-session meeting. I am literally incapable of making a character on the spot, it always turns out shit.
Another problem is not fitting with my character in the party's dynamic. Many players just flow with everything, not caring about giving their characters any significant substance, I am a complete opposite.
It's actually a crowd-funding group comprised of 7/8/420 Chan users and psychologists who feel Veeky Forums has gone the way of the Roman Empire, too large and stagnant to maintain itself any longer. I was hired to make Veeky Forums, the only decent board, cannibalize itself and leave it a dying mess. It's going well so far.
Soon you'll all be using healthier, better sources to discuss Traditional Games.
>healthier, better sources
Like what?
your DM's ravenloft-fu game is weak
I know this feeling, and this feeling can't be unfelt. I am dead inside and hate my players.
They all literally just finished an entire campaign playing a human character.
That was bad timing on your part OP.
A blood Orc gets +8 to strength, if you make a half dragon blood orc and roll and 18 you will have 34 base strength and no real penalties.
>Retard
>Edge fag
>Terrible person to game with
>No real RP in an RP game.
>Not creative or fun.
>Thinks not caring about being a dumbass makes him not a dumbass.
Why do you still have humans in your games? There is literally no reason to have them in any fantasy universe, except for giving minmaxers a Mary Sue option. Humans are uninteresting and their niche can be filled by other races much better.
Humans are more relatable.
Except you'd be an ugly orc mutt
>never session 0
>Always literally just "you're all together because X"
AL was a mistake..
>Coming from a pile of burnt dead.
With a +12 modifier and a cock load of con and dex you'd be good at lower levels. And you'd have such an advantage that even as a Martial class you'd be win against casters.
>>Most of the party and the DM have thrown caution and restraint to the wind because most of the group have a dozen backup characters they want to give a spin
This is where your DM fucked up, death should be a bad thing and if the players dont view it as such then you have to make it such, like reducing the level of the new character or something.
Too many +1/-1 bonuses that constantly shift in battle/adventuring due to circumstances and abilities.
Feat Trees are back-loaded.
In a game where 90% of party never get passed level 8 anything any class who has front-loaded power is going to be a better choice. Rogues, Fighters and Barbarians have little to keep them on par with Palidins, Clerics, and Maguse in unless they highly specialize in a game where versatility is king.
It's stupidly hard to make a boss fight work without straying from base rules because of action economy. Your only normal option is to throw a huge group of minions at the party while said boss hangs back doing something ominous.
The tactical maneuvering in the game ends up being the characters running into combat then standing completely still so they don't take attacks of opportunity aside for 5ft steps. Ranged characters are either constantly +100ft away from a battle taking potshots or jumped on because of DM-fait or indoors fights.
Pathfinders base setting and races are boring, all races get along all hunky dory, elves and orcs live together in human cities buying bread from the gnome baker down the street and nobody bats an eye, but as soon as the lizard man walks in all hell breaks loose. Honeslty it's one of the reasons I kinda enjoy Starfinder, but screw Dragonborn though, they can fuck off.
Fights break down into two tactics, neutralize the enemy with a spell, or burst down the enemy with some stupidly powergamed damage. Fights easily become trivial and boring, turn into a tedious slog because of, again, DM fait, or, in rare circumstances, interestly because the DM decides the screw the rules and makes things up.
In general, Pathfinder needs to be heavily tailored by the DM to be fun, base pathfinder is boring.
I also wana play some godamn Shadowrun because the setting is cool as, but everyone just wants to play D&D. Pathfinder and D&D are the same game, I want something other then damn high fantasy.
Edgy as all fucking sin.
Yes, and I fucking love it. One of the other PCs is a dual katana wielding oni blood hunter. Give my lute playing devil boy a break.