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Oct 4, 2012 -- 7:14AM, DemoMonkey wrote:

"The general concensus was that in a "player only wants x/DM will not allow x" situation where all things are equal, the DM is probably the bigger jerk."

It would be interesting to see how many of the "The DM is a jerk" opinions were from non-DMs and how many "The player is a jerk" opinions came from DMs.

The important bit is "player only wants x".  It's pretty obvious who is being inflexible in that situation.

Oct 4, 2012 -- 11:03AM, edwin_su wrote:

For example if your planing a campaign with very litle combat and more then one combat on a day is very rare you might consider spelcasting system B becouse of insterst reason here.

If they all include Rituals, then non-combat is already covered.

Oct 4, 2012 -- 3:55PM, Avric_Tholomyes wrote:

Yes, it's obviously the fact that the player wants to play his/her character a certain way, that is the problem here. Not the DM, who has a lesser stake in the character and the system that they use to cast, that has a problem. Nope, none what so ever.

As I mentioned a few hundred posts back, not every DM is capable of regulating every casting method with only the tools available.  If the DM relies heavily on single-encounter work-days, then there's a strong risk of the Vancian/daily caster overshadowing the encounter/at-will characters, unless the particular DM knows how to prevent it.  If there's an at-will caster, then there's a much higher risk of spells being used out of combat in unconventional ways, which requires a completely different skill-set from the DM in order to keep in check.

The DM is the one most responsible for making sure that every player is having fun, and that things run smoothly.  Relegating something as huge as casting method to the player level means that the DM has even less control over things.

Oct 4, 2012 -- 9:21PM, warrl wrote:

I still say that all character-building options should be allowed unless the DM chooses to bar them, which he should do sparingly. And if there are sets of options where the DM must choose one of the set and disallow the others, they should be plainly identified as such.

But the DM who says "race X is not allowed" is cutting out one race, leaving all the others. The player who says "I only play race X"  is cutting out a great many races. In this case the player is trying to restrict the game more than the DM.

On the other hand, if the DM is saying "race X is not allowed" for some in-game reason, rather than personal preference, he really ought to say "race X is not allowed because... but you're free to refluff it in some way to make it fit".

Flip side: if the DM advertises the game as "this will be an all-dwarf party", and the players agree to that, but then someone shows up with a thri-kreen that he insists on playing or he won't play... the door is over there. 

I have to argue that you're making a false comparison between race and casting style. First of all, if a player only plays race X, he is not trying to restrict the game for anyone other than himself, nor is he imposing restrictions on any of the other players, or the DM, but more importantly, when a DM bans a certian race, it is likely due to reasons having to do with the setting. For example, if the plot revolves around the fact that no one has seen an elf for centuries, then there's a reason why elves and half elves can't be in the game. However I have never personally seen a setting where casting style has an effect that drastic on the setting. The closest you get is Dark Sun, but that really has less to do with casting style, and more to do with the nature of magic in that world, period.

And were I to see such a setting? Well, that's when you'd invoke rule zero, not before. 

Oct 4, 2012 -- 11:38PM, kadim wrote:

Just speaking as someone who has banned classes and redesigned others to fill the gap they left for campaign concept reasons at the expense of one of my players' favourite classes (totally by coincidence), I can say that players can and often do pick something else. I might even go so far as to say "almost always" or even "always." Based on my experience, they definitely have fun in spite of (or even because of) that.

The thing about magic systems is really they're just creating a bunch of caster classes and calling them all "wizard." The pure caster has almost always been defined by how they access their magic. If you cast your mind back to 3e's release, they could have easily done this with the sorcerer/wizard. They didn't really need a class to do what the sorcerer did or what the wizard did; they could have added a sidebar next to their mage class (could have been called either) and presented an alternate means of accessing the spell list.

So at that point, someone who wanted magic in a given campaign world to be a gift you were born with and not something you could really learn would be banning prepared magic instead of the wizard class in that campaign.

I agree a race is more superficial than a magic system or a class, but we ban classes all the time for lots of reasons, most of them legitimate and with the fun of the players kept in the front of our minds. Just because someone might be a self-serving jerk doesn't mean that everyone will be a self-serving jerk. If I'm playing an urban setting, I'll discourage anyone from bring a wilderness character to the session. If I'm not going to be doing any nautical adventures, then I might tell 'em that dread pirate is probably a bad move.

If they're desperate to play it, they've got a decent story reason to be the fish out of water and they're also willing to deal with the NPC reactions to their fish out of water status, I'll usually let it roll. But that final decision needs to be mine.

Actually based on what they said, I get the idea that it isn't just the Wizard that will be able to swap out casting systems. I think they will allow the Warlock and Sorcerer swap casting systems too.

The idea is that each class brings something to the table and each casting system brings something to the table. It could look something like this:

Sorcerer

1. Gets more powerful as they expend spells
2. Has 2 spells known at 1st level and 1 at each additional level
3. Gains weapon and armor proficiencies,  and hit points based on their 'Soul'
4. Gains Sorcerous powers
5. Limited spell list to choose from on level up.
6. Low attack bonus and low magic bonus
7. Gains 2 Cantrips

Warlock

1. Gains a pact that grants boons
2. Eldritch Lore
3. Gains spells from an Invocation list
4. Has Eldritch Blast + 2 more Invocations at 1st level and learns a new Invocation at every even level
5. Ritual spells
6. Low attack bonus and medium magic bonus

Wizard

1. Gains spell book that they can scribe scrolls into to increase their spell list
2. Gains 5 spells known at 1st level and Int mod spells at each additional level
3. Gains spells from a large list
4. Can cast any known spell as a ritual
5. 3 Cantrips
6. Arcane Knowledge
7. Low attack bonus and high magic bonus

Then we have the spell casting systems:

Spell Points

1. Gains a number of points per spell level from the spell point chart, these are separated out by spell level.
2. One spell per point
3. A lower level spell can be cast using a higher level spell point.

Level   Spell Points by Spell Level
          1st 2nd 3rd
1         3
2         4
3         4    2
4         4    3
5         4    3    2

Encounter, Daily

1. Gains 1 encounter, and 1 daily spell slot at 1st and then alternates between 1 encounter and 1 daily at each level up.
2. Lower level slots change into higher level slots at higher character levels
3. A lower level spell can be used in a higher level slot of the same kind
4. Spells must be prepared into the slots to use them

Level   Spell slots by Level (E = Encounter, D = Daily)
          1st          2nd        3rd
1         1E, 1D
2         1E, 1D    1D
3         1E, 1D    1D, 1E
4         1E, 1D    1D, 1E    1D
5         1E, 1D    1D, 1E    1D, 1E

Vancian

1. Gains a number of slots based on chart
2. Spells must be prepared into the slots to use them
3. Lower level spells can be prepared into higher level slots

Level   Spell Slots by Spell Level
          1st 2nd 3rd
1         3
2         4
3         4    2
4         4    3
5         4    3    2

You'll notice that I give the same number of spell points as spell slots between spell points and vancian. This is due to the classes being limited in their own way and the points and slots not needing to be limited. For instance a spell point Sorcerer will be limited to a smaller list to learn spells from as well as knowing less spells, than a spell point Wizard so there is plenty of limitations already in place.