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Feb 11, 2010 -- 8:00AM, tilobin wrote:

Feb 11, 2010 -- 7:58AM, gomeztoo wrote:

No.

can you be specific as to what in the CCG explicitly forbids this?

From the CCG v1.95, page 6:

Select a character region. Choose a region within the Forgotten Realms for your character. This is the place where your character hails from or considers their place of origin. Once you've chosen a region for your character, that choice remains for the rest of your character’s life. It’s as much a part of your character as its race. You cannot retrain your region, although you may retrain your background(s).

So, select A region, one.

Once chosen, it explicitly cannot be retrained.

However, you can add and remove the non-0regional backgrounds that your character qualifies for, and/or change which background (including your region) you take the mechanical benefit from.


Start rant:

LG interactives. The first one I would have been able to play at was the same weekend I actually started playing LG. I would have had a 2nd or 3rd level fighter in it, except...

A slot-filling game, which replaced the game I had originally signed up for, which didn't come off due to lack of players.

Unfortunately, the game was a minimum APL4. And we didn't actually have enough PCs of the appropriate level to average even close to that. And the GM didn't check, just assumed. Ad the GM is one that I have only played two games with as GM, and, in both games, at least half the PCs wound up dead. And both games were for low-level parties, where neither overcap gold, nor PC resources, were in the same neighborhood as a Raise Dead.

So, I wound up sleeping in instead of playing the BI with a virgin sorceror, as that was the only other LG legal character I had built at the time, as the fighter died in the last slot of day 2, and the BI was in the first slot of day 3...

And most of the memorable characters were either built around specialty stuff, like the teleporting Cleric, or around les-than-optimum PCs who used their weakness as a selling point, like the Orc Cleric who acted like a Barbarian most of the time...

Overall, in LG, while my main PC reached 9th level, before he died in a mod and came back back at 8th, my main memories were the difficulty in forming tables, how broiken you had to be past a certain level in order to actually be able to contribute to a table, and how I couldn't play enough local mods with my main in order to make his RP meaningful.

PC Fighter/Pious Templar (with a 10 Wis!)/Order of the Bow Initiate, who wound up worshipping Ehlonna in the Pale, but never playing enough Pale mods to worry about it, after all. I spent more time examining which spells he could cast (after getting his Periapt of Wisdom) without needing to show his holy symbol than he spent in circumstances where he had to worry about it.

Also that he played several module strings, but only the first and last module in the chain, rather than all of them.

I prefer LFR. It would have let me fix his stats, when PT became a major component, instead of having to burn his neck slot for a non-Con item.

End rant

I think the SPEC1-3 issue, which caught some of us admins by surprise, was not as well worded as to the requirement as I would have liked and in part led to the change in the CCG. (See other general rule that more recent rules override older rules.)  I think the Global Admins need to revist SPEC1-3 in light of the new CCG wording about regions and backgrounds, and make a consistent clarification.  

The confusion is that there is a third concept (based upon recent private admin discussions), where you live today (you reside) or swear allegience to is not necessarily the same as where you originated.  This allegience will be the key in many cases to be associated with a realm or group. I think in the case of SPEC1-3, they wanted the swear allegience to concept, but failed to make it clear.

So, you may be from Waterdeep (originally)
but you may swear allegience to Cormyr (and perhaps reside there)
and (in this case), your background benefit could be from Waterdeep, OR from some non-regional background.

Yes, we need to figure out the wording to make all this clear and then be consistent.

Keith

Some players want to add more complexity by saying, while their PC was born in region X, they spent years in region Y and that counts as their home region.  That is fine. What is not fine, is you just choose any regional background benefit, and that region is not part of your backstory.

So you could be:

Born in Baldurs Gate,
but moved to Waterdeep at an early age and grew up there, making it your home region (your choice)
but choose a non-regional background,
and now swear allegience to Cormyr.

We are trying to be flexible.

Keith

Feb 14, 2010 -- 1:29PM, haferka wrote:

so... as long as I choose a "home region".. I could have SEVERAL backgrounds(regional or not)... so long as I only have 1 background benfit (regional or not). Since I can change my background benfit to a non-regional benfit.. why can't I change it to a different regional benift? What is the diference.. (is it a slippery slope.. or is it a waterpark?)

I thin it falls under "waterpark."  The regional benefits are, ingeneral, way better than the other background benefits.  The idea behind the regional backgrounds is that it represents the place you lived/grew up that most influenced you.  Even though the noon-regional backgrounds can be retrained and swapped, I think disallowing it to do so with regionals, and only allowing one, is to prevent abuse.  Not only could you say you were from one place and have the benefit of another if that was allowed, you could add multiple regions willy-nilly to qualify for whatever feat/PP you wanted to regardless of regional status.

That's been debated befor eon these boards elsewhere (although I don't recall the thread).  Some say that 4e is about openness and anyoen should be able to qualify for any PP or feat regardless of region picked, others say that such choices should have meaning.  Unfortunately it looks like we've already started down the slippery slope (maybe about 3/4 of the way down) with the newest retrainign rules.  I guess we'll have to wait and see what else develops.