How I got someone who had a bad experience into D&D
The rules in D&D are there for a reason, but sometimes being too much of a stickler for the rules can make things unfun for people, especially when it comes to character options. People play this game to have fun, to do things they wouldn’t normally do. The genres are called FANTASY and Science FICTION for a reason.
Here’s an example from my recent campaign:
I was bringing together quite a few people for one who had never played before. One of them had played and had a bad experience a long time ago. She said the DM pigeonholed her into creating a humanoid character, when she wanted to play some sort of quadruped. It really soured her experience, so she was really hesitant to try again.
I took that as a challenge.
I asked her what kind of character she wanted to play. It seemed like she was testing me as well, so she said, “I want to be a dragon.” I will admit, I was a bit intimidated by that. Dragons are VERY powerful. A party of four level 2 warriors would find beating a WYRMLING a challenge. Nevertheless, I made it my personal mission to give her a balanced Dragon character. To give myself time to think of a solution, I asked her about the dragon’s personality. She said she wanted to be Lawful Good. Easy enough, make her a Gold or Silver Dragon (She chose Gold). She also said she wanted to be a damage dealing class that excels at unarmed strikes. I thought about both a Barbarian and a Monk, but neither made sense for her character’s backstory. In the end, we settled on a Fighter.
I started helping her construct her backstory. She liked the idea of being raised among humans by a friendly Wizard. I began to think the easiest way to balance her stats and give us origin options was to make her fairly young, like less than 100 years old, but not TOO young like a baby. Still, a young dragon is pretty large and would create problems.
Here’s how my train of thought went:
“What do? We need a way to minimize her… Wait, wasn’t there a spell that did that? Yeah, but she’s not a… Wait, she lived with a Wizard… maybe he enchanted something like a collar that made her smaller so she could fit into his tower? Problem solved! Wait, what’s to stop her from simply removing that in combat? Hmmm… maybe there needs to be a consequence… Well, realistically, suddenly being that large would take more energy and tire you out… What if when she takes it off, and expends energy, she gets exhausted, or even unconscious? A sort of… berserker mode in a similar vein of barbarian rage?”
And that’s how I justified a Gold Dragon Fighter to be in my game and still remain balanced. Homebrewing like that is definitely a ton of work on my part, but I think seeing the player’s smile and excitement as she got to roleplay that adorable little klutz of a lizard and kick butt while doing it made it all worth it.
http://joshscorcher.deviantart.com/art/Brony-DeD-Part1-Lightning-Bliss-Ember-Hawthorn-689432824
