Recently, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) released Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Eventually I’ll get around to writing a review on here, but in the meantime I’ve been livestreaming my way through it.
Significantly, the book offers a fair bit in the way of allowing players more versatility by allowing things like changing cantrips whenever a character reaches a level in which they would receive an ability score improvement. For a long time I’ve gone a bit further than that, but there’s a time and a place. Let’s look a bit more, shall we?
Should I Let Players Make Changes to Their Characters?
As with so many things (virtually everything) in D&D, this is going to be a matter of opinion. The important thing is for you to make the decision that is going to be right for your campaign, and your group of players. As usual, I would encourage you to be fair in how you allow (or don’t) players to do anything. With that said:
I personally will generally allow players to make changes to their characters. Why? Because it’s a game. The point of a game is to have fun. Playing a character that isn’t working out isn’t much fun. If it’s not fun, people stop playing. If all my players stop playing, I don’t have a game anymore. Simple enough?
There’s obviously more to it than that, but here’s my biggest concerns with players making changes: 1) It will become habit, everyone will want to change their character all the time and things will become destabilized very quickly (that’s it, really my only major concern…).
And yet…
This doesn’t happen. Why? Good question.
I believe that most D&Ders want to play one character (at a time), and to do so well. Part of the fun is struggling with some of the choices that you’ve made, and being rewarded for others. Players may want to change out a character entirely, or make a few small tweaks to the one they’re playing, but in most cases they won’t routinely want to change toons mid game.
Set Some Rules
A few basic guidelines can go a long way towards controlling things as well. Here’s my normal table rules for altering characters:
New Characters
Assuming that your previous character didn’t just die outright, necessitating you making a new one; I usually allow players to change a character out between modules, or at a convenient point where their character might reasonably leave the group. There can be some really great RP to this sort of thing, and it may provide plot hooks for future modules, especially if you’re homebrewing at least some of your campaign.
When a character “retires”, they take all of their equipment and wealth with them (no passing things off to their next character or giving it over to another party member, at least in most cases), and their character comes under the full control of the DM, making them an NPC. There is a strong case for players to have “alts” in game, but I’ll talk about that another time (if I remember).
This allows players to get rid of a character that wasn’t working out the way they wanted it to, or that they’ve become bored with, while at the same time giving them incentives not to do it on a regular basis.
Changing Stuff
How much stuff can you let a player change? Well, I once had a player who had a half-orc druid, who asked me if he could change the character to a barbarian instead. From a story perspective it didn’t make any sense, since the character has used beast shape numerous times, but we simply ret-conned the character so that he had always been a barbarian.
Skills, cantrips, and subclasses can all be handled the same, or differently, depending on what you choose. If it’s early in a game, especially with newer players, I’ll allow them to change skills early on. The same goes for subclasses. By the time players are level seven or higher, they should have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing.
If you decide on a cut-off, which I think is reasonable, you may allow players to train a skill or tool proficiency. The PHB has rules on training a tool proficiency during downtime, and I usually allow the same for a skill, but at double the gold cost.
I’ll allow (at time even encourage) a player to change cantrips at lower levels for free. Reasons for this may vary: a cleric picked spells only from the PHB, but Toll the Dead is way better than Sacred Flame; they picked all damage cantrips and now wish they didn’t; they picked all flavour cantrips and now wish they didn’t; or they just didn’t know what they were doing and they’d like to fix things. Again, once players are past that first stage of adventure (over level five), they should know what they’re doing, and at that point you may want to use the optional rule from Tasha’s.
You can apply whatever rule or guideline you want to this. You can keep players locked in or let them cook up new things all the time. Figure out what works for you. This is D&D, not long division. The key is to find the balance you want and apply it consistently to all your players.
Whatever you decide, keep creating, keep play, and keep having fun!