What people want and what makes them happy rarely coincide.

[Winnah]

Zorro uses a whip and a pistol. When swordfighting or fisticuffs are inappropriate, he shoots people in the face.

The Punisher has no signature weapon.

Darth Vader is an accomplished pilot and Force wielder. In a game without space dogfights, his signature abilites are telekenisis and not giving a fuck. Neither of these abilities require DM intervention to function in a game like D&D.

Robin Hood is an awesome staff wielder. He totally beat Little John. A D&D version of Robin Hood totally needs magic staff drops in order to consistantly lord it over the other staff specialists.

[A Man In Black]

Zorro uses a whip and a pistol. When swordfighting or fisticuffs are inappropriate, he shoots people in the face.

The Punisher has no signature weapon.

Darth Vader is an accomplished pilot and Force wielder. In a game without space dogfights, his signature abilites are telekenisis and not giving a fuck. Neither of these abilities require DM intervention to function in a game like D&D.

Robin Hood is an awesome staff wielder. He totally beat Little John. A D&D version of Robin Hood totally needs magic staff drops in order to consistantly lord it over the other staff specialists.

The point is that Zorro, the Punisher, Darth Vader, and Robin Hood are all diminished significantly if they do not have a rapier, firearms, a lightsaber, or bow. Nobody but Frank has suggested that they never use any other weapons or fighting styles. The fact that D&D has funneled weapon specialists to swinging a particular weapon and nothing else is considered pretty retarded even by people who think that you should be able to have a signature weapon.

[Winnah]

The point is that Zorro, the Punisher, Darth Vader, and Robin Hood are all diminished significantly if they do not have a rapier, firearms, a lightsaber, or bow.

Context is important here. The comic book, pulp novel and movie versions of these characters may differ, but in the context of an RPG what is actually lost? Please, be specific.

[Username17]

Except that it was explicitly in the context of a book coming out with a samurai class, so it'd be paired with weeaboo setting content. Don't be willfully stupid. Of course samurai don't fit well into non-weeaboo game. They don't fit into a non-weeaboo-friendly game for a legion of reasons and the lack of katanas to loot is the least of those reasons. So can we agree that samurai are stupid in a non-samurai-appropriate setting and just accept that I meant to be talking about samurai-appropriate settings and that an argument about what constitutes a samurai-appropriate setting is a waste of our time?

You said it was a book for 5e that brought in the Samurai class. Therefore it is expected to be a Samurai that can be brought in to 5e games as-is. Therefore you have two choices:

• Make a Samurai Class that does not need weapon upgrades ever.
  or
• Make a Samurai Class that is balanced under the idea that he is going to jettison his starting Daisho as soon as a weapon upgrade becomes available.

Because for a standard ongoing 5e game, the assumed number of Daisho upgrades the players find is going to be zero. So there is not option 3.

This has been a breakdown of communication. I am talking about a system where people get their gear from some source other than taking it from the still-warm corpses of their enemies, or alternately doing on a once-or-twice-per-slot-per-career basis. Not a Lago-style slot machine, not a 3e-style muddle, not a 4e-style letter-to-Santa system.

OK, now you're fucking incoherent. You get gear, but you don't get it by player fiat, or MC fiat, or purchasing it out of catalogs, or procedurally generated from your missions or rolling random dice. So... what the fuck? How do you get equipment upgrades. Because if you aren't getting equipment because of the output of the game world or a discussion with the MC or some muddled in-between system there isn't a whole lot else.

-edit- Shit, I understand where the breakdown in communication is. I replaced "Christmas presents" with "slot machine payoffs." I meant to explicitly refer to the rewards from a Lago-style what-the-loot-table-gives-you-is-what-you-get system, not a wishlist system. Is this any clearer?

No. It's not clearer. How the fuck are you getting item upgrades if you aren't hoping to find them in a persistent world or asking the MC to place them into the world for you to find? If the Easter Eggs are neither placed by your parents nor already there, how the fucking fuck would there be any fucking Easter Eggs in your yard?

-Username17

[A Man In Black]

Context is important here. The comic book, pulp novel and movie versions of these characters may differ, but in the context of an RPG what is actually lost? Please, be specific.

Zorro cannot slice a Z into people's shirts, cannot cut open the female lead's blouse, and does not risk having his mask cut away dramatically if he does not have a fencing sword.

The Punisher I've explained at length. He is the archetypical gun hero. That gun can be a concealable revolver or it can be a fuckoff futuristic gatling gun powered by magic to preserve the idiom, but superhero characters with different powersets come with different reader expectations even if otherwise have the same attitude, appearance, and other attributes. That would carry over into a superhero RPG. (Frank made a decent point in passing with a couple examples, though: the Punisher doesn't really need to be a gun guy in any context other than a superhero context. If you want to play Frank Castle in your hardbitten true crime game, he wouldn't need to use guns exclusively; in fact, depending on your take on the Punisher, his schtick could be "hugely varied arsenal" in that context!)

Darth Vader, like all force users, fights a fundamentally different way from everyone else because he has superpowers. He's the flipside of the Punisher: his weapon choice defines him as a superpower in a world of people who aren't. This decays the more EU crap you cram into your Star Wars game or the more commonplace Jedi become, but if you take away Darth Vader's sword, he's just another ranged combatant. (There's also a ton of other reasons, like the visual link to the Jedi, the idea that force-users are all throwbacks to a lost age, etc.)

Robin Hood is already explained upthread. Robin Hood shoots from ambush. He kills the king's deer. He is a threat to a knight on horseback. He wins the archery contest.

If you're going to make Zorro, the Punisher (in a superhero game), Darth Vader, or Robin Hood a playable character in your RPG, then you are going to need to give them their pet weapons. Where I'm not entirely convinced is whether it's worth trying to support those characters out of the box in D&D.

[Username17]

Robin Hood is already explained upthread. Robin Hood shoots from ambush. He kills the king's deer. He is a threat to a knight on horseback. He wins the archery contest.

Robin hood does not need a weapon upgrade to do any of those things. Robin Hood needs a level appropriate weapon to fight level appropriate opponents. So he needs a level appropriate staff to fight Little John, a level appropriate sword to fight the bishop and the sheriff, a level appropriate dagger to take on Will Scarlet or Maid Marion, a level appropriate mace to fight Friar Tuck, and so on. He does not need a level appropriate bow to shoot a deer or participate in an archery contest.

If it was for some reason important for Robin Hood to lead from the rear and take on the Bishop of Hereford at long range while Alan-a-Dale pressed in close and cut him up with a sword - then Robin Hood might need a bow upgrade (depending on whether the encounter happened late enough in his career to make Robin Hood's starting equipment inadequate to the task). But he does not actually do that, Robin Hood goes in with a sword and does the heavy lifting in melee for that encounter.

-Username17

[A Man In Black]

You said it was a book for 5e that brought in the Samurai class. Therefore it is expected to be a Samurai that can be brought in to 5e games as-is.

Are you done telling me what I really meant by my posts yet?

How do you get equipment upgrades.

Not by picking it up from the still-warm corpses of your enemies (or from rummaging through their luggage or any equivalent). Or by just not getting upgraded gear at all, since there are systems which are not D&D.

Literally any system which does not boil down to "Kill monster take loot". I figured I could get you to understand that there are atypical "kill monster take loot" systems that wouldn't conflict with signature weapons, but fuck it, they're really not worth discussing because nobody's seriously proposing them.

No. It's not clearer. How the fuck are you getting item upgrades if you aren't hoping to find them in a persistent world or asking the MC to place them into the world for you to find? If the Easter Eggs are neither placed by your parents nor already there, how the fucking fuck would there be any fucking Easter Eggs in your yard?

Did you not read the part of the thread where I said that I don't find your argument convincing, and think playing D&D for Easter Eggs is a shitty idea? Here it is again.

Frank's and Lago's random drop argument isn't convincing me. I don't think the RNG high is worth including in D&D. I think that players are going to take out their frustrating with RNG droughts on the GM, and that's unnecessary friction. I also think that the RNG buzz isn't an effective tool for keeping people interested in a game over the long term without a whole Christmas tree full of crap and that is a bookkeeping nightmare. I also think that making any sort of significant sacrifices to try any capitalize on the RNG buzz in tabletop RPGs is pointless now, because anyone can buy a copy of of Torchlight for about $10.

But most importantly, most GMs are just going to fucking cheat and give the players what they think the players want anyway. Even if Lago is right about how the droughts counterintuitively make the plums that much sweeter (and I actually agree with this), the players won't get that (see: every MMO forum in the history of MMOs) and the GMs won't get that so they're just going to de facto houserule the system so that there aren't any droughts, just like everyone used to do in AD&D.

At this point, I'm ready to set non-horizontal magic items on fire. It could be because I'm absolute fed up with my own lack of organization in my home game, though.

[Winnah]

Zorro cannot slice a Z into people's shirts, cannot cut open the female lead's blouse, and does not risk having his mask cut away dramatically if he does not have a fencing sword.

I disagree. If the character absolutely needs to brand someone, this can be achieved through a variety of means. A knife, a hot poker, a signet ring or even an elaborately embossed paddle. I'm sure that with practice, a heroic character could even cut a pattern into cloth or flesh with a whip.

As for removal of the female leads clothing, this can also be achieved by multiple means. Not just by the use of a whip or blade. I will concede that pointing a pistol at someone and demanding they disrobe lacks a certain...cinematic appeal.

As for losing the mask, I suspect this would be a risk in any form of melee combat.

[Username17]

MiB: it sounds like your solution to the "problem" of having it be verisimilitude burning to have players choose what weapon upgrades they find and frustrating to not find the weapon upgrades you hoped for is to simply remove weapon upgrades. That's a defensible position, but I suspect that in practice it would be exactly as frustrating as not getting the weapon upgrades you were hoping for off a random chart. Basically you just set the percentage chance of finding a more powerful magical weapon to zero and asked the players to be happy with whatever they walked into the game with. I am unconvinced that removing found power creep is going to make people happier.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Having all items always drop, never to be crafted, also ruins verisimilitude - or restricts it to "We cannot do what our forefathers did, we can but scavenge their relics" worlds.

And once you can craft items you can commission items, if needed in trade for items you found if gold is not accepted.

[Username17]

Having all items always drop, never to be crafted, also ruins verisimilitude - or restricts it to "We cannot do what our forefathers did, we can but scavenge their relics" worlds.

And once you can craft items you can commission items, if needed in trade for items you found if gold is not accepted.

Are you just fucking trolling this thread?

In AD&D, crafting a new magic item takes a Constitution point and a basilisk eyeball. While it can be done, good fucking luck getting anyone to do it for you for any price. In 3e, crafting a level appropriate sword for a 12th level character takes approximately 2 months and the market value for doing so is in no way worth the time of a character of that level.

The actual magic item crafting rules for the actual editions of actual Dungeons & Dragons are that there is no fucking way that an NPC powerful enough to make a magic item that a mid-to-high level character would feel the need to take out a commission for. To say that crafting rules necessarily imply the existence of powerful crafters who have nothing better to do with their time than to make equipment for high level PCs and that the high level PCs in turn can provide the raw materials and wait the required amount of time for said items to be done is just trolling. Because while D&D has had a lot of different crafting rules roll out over the years, that assumption has been true for absolutely none of them except 4e (where items literally poof into existence because you hit a pile of pixie dust with a hammer and think about the item you want).

No. Having rules for crafting does not mean that you can get the items you want when you want them. It doesn't even mean that if your character personally has access to the crafting rules, as item power level limits, material components, or time constraints may very well put something out of your reach at the time you want it. For fuck's sake, there is a bunch of low level equipment in 3e that comes with a caster level of 16 or something equally stupid - and that shit just isn't craftable by the people who actually care about owning it. And even if you find a 16th level wizard who feels like bargaining with you, are you really sure that you have something he gives a fuck about in order to set four days of his life on fire for?

When designing a character, you can either build in character abilities to get the specific items you want to have, or you can accept the very real chance that you won't get the items you want. There is no option 3, nor should there be.

-Username17

[Archmage]

"I can craft the items I want" sounds like a class feature to me.

[Fuchs]

Having all items always drop, never to be crafted, also ruins verisimilitude - or restricts it to "We cannot do what our forefathers did, we can but scavenge their relics" worlds.

And once you can craft items you can commission items, if needed in trade for items you found if gold is not accepted.

Are you just fucking trolling this thread?

In AD&D, crafting a new magic item takes a Constitution point and a basilisk eyeball. While it can be done, good fucking luck getting anyone to do it for you for any price. In 3e, crafting a level appropriate sword for a 12th level character takes approximately 2 months and the market value for doing so is in no way worth the time of a character of that level.

The actual magic item crafting rules for the actual editions of actual Dungeons & Dragons are that there is no fucking way that an NPC powerful enough to make a magic item that a mid-to-high level character would feel the need to take out a commission for. To say that crafting rules necessarily imply the existence of powerful crafters who have nothing better to do with their time than to make equipment for high level PCs and that the high level PCs in turn can provide the raw materials and wait the required amount of time for said items to be done is just trolling. Because while D&D has had a lot of different crafting rules roll out over the years, that assumption has been true for absolutely none of them except 4e (where items literally poof into existence because you hit a pile of pixie dust with a hammer and think about the item you want).

No. Having rules for crafting does not mean that you can get the items you want when you want them. It doesn't even mean that if your character personally has access to the crafting rules, as item power level limits, material components, or time constraints may very well put something out of your reach at the time you want it. For fuck's sake, there is a bunch of low level equipment in 3e that comes with a caster level of 16 or something equally stupid - and that shit just isn't craftable by the people who actually care about owning it. And even if you find a 16th level wizard who feels like bargaining with you, are you really sure that you have something he gives a fuck about in order to set four days of his life on fire for?

When designing a character, you can either build in character abilities to get the specific items you want to have, or you can accept the very real chance that you won't get the items you want. There is no option 3, nor should there be.

-Username17

If the crafting rules make it unlikely that anyone will craft something, then where do you get the dropped loot from? Were the ancestors stupid to craft? Or are we in the "it worked eons ago, but not anymore" land?

Face it Frank, if you have magic items, then someone has to have made them. If the world did not change, then making magic items has to be logical still. But you cannot claim there are magic items around if crafting them did not make sense and still claim verisimilitude.

[hyzmarca]

The actual magic item crafting rules for the actual editions of actual Dungeons & Dragons are that there is no fucking way that an NPC powerful enough to make a magic item that a mid-to-high level character would feel the need to take out a commission for. To say that crafting rules necessarily imply the existence of powerful crafters who have nothing better to do with their time than to make equipment for high level PCs and that the high level PCs in turn can provide the raw materials and wait the required amount of time for said items to be done is just trolling. Because while D&D has had a lot of different crafting rules roll out over the years, that assumption has been true for absolutely none of them except 4e (where items literally poof into existence because you hit a pile of pixie dust with a hammer and think about the item you want).

The problem is with the item crafting rules, not with the concept of crafting.

If magic items exist in the game world then someone had to make them. They're not just pooped out by the magic-item fairy (except in the Wish Economy, of course).

There are obviously high-level crafters who have nothing better to do than make items for high-level PCs. If that isn't the case then high-level items simply will not exist in any way shape or form. They will not be available as random drops because no one will have ever made any.

If it's not worth a Wizard's time to make a +4 sword then +4 swords simply do not exist and no PC is ever going to get one under any circumstances.

[DSMatticus]

There are obviously high-level crafters who have nothing better to do than make items for high-level PCs. If that isn't the case then high-level items simply will not exist in any way shape or form. They will not be available as random drops because no one will have ever made any.

This (and what Fuchs said, too) are really not strictly true. It's really easy to imagine ways in which they aren't. D&D 3.5 is a perfect example of how you can have high-level crafters who make items and this still isn't true. In D&D 3.5, as it's written, there's no financial incentive to make a +5 sword over a bunch of +1 swords. Simple reason says you're better off making the many, many +1 swords (higher demand, less risk in the products). But when it comes to personal use, you don't want to do that. You want the best of the best. Having dozens of +1 swords is still worse for you personally than having the +5 sword.

So what you get is when a high-level crafter wants money (assuming he can't abuse power loopholes to just magically generate castles of gold), he makes cheap little magic items and sells them to the relatively larger market base that can afford them. And when he wants to make himself or his friends super bad-ass stuff, he takes requests. But there is no financial incentive to take requests off the street from strangers a la ye olde magic shoppe. Now you can have other incentives, like "I scratch your back, you scratch mine," and trade in something other than strictly financial incentives, but at that point acquiring your hand-tailored magic item is more like a quest than a ye olde magic item shoppe.

So, yeah. You can have high-level magic items without having people who are willingly to handcraft magic items for you. They made them for themself, and then they died and you found them, or you did them some favor that couldn't be completed by carts full of gold and they rewarded you with a fantastic personalized creation. There's no reason to think the existence of magic items implies you can get the magic item you want easily just because it's comparable in power. Whether that's a problem of the crafting rules or a feature is perspective.

[A Man In Black]

Zorro stuff

None of those alternatives are things that can be done agilely and with panache. I could go into more reasons why it's important for Zorro to have a fencing sword, if it's really that important to you, although it's necessarily going to involve a bit of bullshit because of the four I'm least familiar with Zorro.

MiB: it sounds like your solution to the "problem" of having it be verisimilitude burning to have players choose what weapon upgrades they find and frustrating to not find the weapon upgrades you hoped for is to simply remove weapon upgrades. That's a defensible position, but I suspect that in practice it would be exactly as frustrating as not getting the weapon upgrades you were hoping for off a random chart. Basically you just set the percentage chance of finding a more powerful magical weapon to zero and asked the players to be happy with whatever they walked into the game with. I am unconvinced that removing found power creep is going to make people happier.

You're conflating the arguments again. Here are my positions again.

Shaking the slot machine for items is a bad idea because it's ivory tower game design that few GMs will actually implement, because it'll cause unnecessary friction between players, because you need a ton of different slots to get enough drops to make this matter, and because video games do this about a million times better. I think this LAGOe item drops are shit because inside a year, everyone's actual game will end up looking like AD&D's muddle. Even if signature weapons are also a terrible idea, this is still a shit idea.

Signature weapons are essential to certain character types, but I'm not sure how much effort it's worth going to to bend over backwards to make them work in D&D. I am ambivalent about signature weapons in D&D. Partially because I'm ambivalent about the idea of "level-appropriate gear" in D&D.

Robin hood does not need a weapon upgrade to do any of those things. Robin Hood needs a level appropriate weapon to fight level appropriate opponents. So he needs a level appropriate staff to fight Little John, a level appropriate sword to fight the bishop and the sheriff, a level appropriate dagger to take on Will Scarlet or Maid Marion, a level appropriate mace to fight Friar Tuck, and so on. He does not need a level appropriate bow to shoot a deer or participate in an archery contest.

Alternately, Robin Hood does not exist in a game where people need "level-appropriate weapons" to get shit done.

I'm not sure if D&D should be that game.

[Winnah]

None of those alternatives are things that can be done agilely and with panache.

This incarnation of Zorro rides a motorbike and wields a double lightsabre.



edit: fuck it. here is the link.

Zorro

[A Man In Black]

[quote="Winnah]This incarnation of Zorro rides a motorbike and wields a double lightsabre.
[/quote]

And looks like shit. He fights with it like a rapier (he even has an inherited rapier he practices with) except when it awkwardly has a second blade because...uh... well, kids like Darth Maul. When I talk about "diminishing a character significantly" or "doing violence to the character", I mean this right here. Watch that fucking episode. It's a shitty ripoff of Phantom 2040 and Batman Beyond by people who didn't notice that those shows had amazing animators and huge budgets (and Mark Hamill) and were still only moderately successful.

Also, Imageshack is useful.

[Prak]

None of those alternatives are things that can be done agilely and with panache.

This incarnation of Zorro rides a motorbike and wields a double lightsabre.



edit: fuck it. here is the link.

Zorro

[Winnah]

This version of Zorro wont be doing any sexy fencing with the Contessa, if you know what I mean.

[A Man In Black]

This version of Zorro wont be doing any sexy fencing with the Contessa, if you know what I mean.

HAY GUYS ZORRO THE GAY BLADE TOTALLY MAKES MORE SENSE IF YOU TAKE AWAY HIS PHALLIC SYMBOL

Can you condense all of this down to one post so people can debunk it more efficiently, Winnah?

[Fuchs]

This (and what Fuchs said, too) are really not strictly true. It's really easy to imagine ways in which they aren't. D&D 3.5 is a perfect example of how you can have high-level crafters who make items and this still isn't true. In D&D 3.5, as it's written, there's no financial incentive to make a +5 sword over a bunch of +1 swords. Simple reason says you're better off making the many, many +1 swords (higher demand, less risk in the products). But when it comes to personal use, you don't want to do that. You want the best of the best. Having dozens of +1 swords is still worse for you personally than having the +5 sword.

So what you get is when a high-level crafter wants money (assuming he can't abuse power loopholes to just magically generate castles of gold), he makes cheap little magic items and sells them to the relatively larger market base that can afford them.

Or he makes a +5 sword and charges more gold. Like when an adventuring swashbuckler drops by and offers more than "standard rates" for a +5 sword.

[Winnah]

Can you condense all of this down to one post so people can debunk it more efficiently, Winnah?

Sure, I'll try. You want a character to have a signature style or weapon, like a character from popular entertainment.

You want to port that character into a cooperative roleplaying game and have them do all kinds of cool things with that signature ability or weapon.

Unless the game has been specifically designed to cater to this kind of character, not just in creation, but ongoing advancement, your character concept is going to have to adapt to the setting. Hell, unless the DM throws contrived situations at you character, you're going to have to go out of your way to highlight why this signature weapon is an important aspect of your character, let alone the story.

I think people need to drop their rigid concept of what makes a character unique. Zorro is still recognisably Zorro when riding a motorboke and wielding a lightsabre. He is also recognisably Zorro when he is a camp homosexual steroetype, throwing around double entendres with reckless abandon.

Reliance on a prop to complete your character can in fact limit the way that character can interact with other PC's and the campaign world. Especially when introducing an exotic concept into an otherwise 'normal' game. This reliance on a prop becomes an even greater issue when the basic premise of the game revolves around killing things, taking their stuff, and then using their stuff to kill more things to get better stuff, like in D&D.

So, D&D Zorro does not need to find a +5 rapier in order to be a complete character. He can emphasise his uniqueness in any number of ways.

[A Man In Black]

Sure, I'll try. You want a character to have a signature style or weapon, like a character from popular entertainment.

You want to port that character into a cooperative roleplaying game and have them do all kinds of cool things with that signature ability or weapon.

Unless the game has been specifically designed to cater to this kind of character, not just in creation, but ongoing advancement, your character concept is going to have to adapt to the setting.

Totally agreed. I'm ambivalent about whether D&D should be this game. I think you're overplaying your hand when you talk about contrivances, but whatever.

I think people need to drop their rigid concept of what makes a character unique. Zorro is still recognisably Zorro when riding a motorboke and wielding a lightsabre.

He is also recognisably Zorro when he is a camp homosexual steroetype, throwing around double entendres with reckless abandon.

Zorro is still an agile fencer swashbuckling hero of the people when he's a terribly designed agile fencer swashbuckling hero of the people in the future. Sort of. That show is shit, it's not really evidence of very much at all.

Also, Zorro is still an agile fencer swashbuckling hero of the people when he's a camp gay agile fencer swashbuckling hero of the people. It doesn't really matter whose blouse he's cutting open, to be honest.

Reliance on a prop to complete your character can in fact limit the way that character can interact with other PC's and the campaign world. Especially when introducing an exotic concept into an otherwise 'normal' game. This reliance on a prop becomes an even greater issue when the basic premise of the game revolves around killing things, taking their stuff, and then using their stuff to kill more things to get better stuff, like in D&D.

For one, limitations aren't a bad thing.

For another, ...I can't really argue that D&D isn't kill guy, take stuff, can I. Shit. That's where I run into my own problem with arguing against LAGOe slot machine item drops. It's a terrible system, but nobody has yet proposed a less unsatisfying kill-guy-take-stuff system.

So, D&D Zorro does not need to find a +5 rapier in order to be a complete character. He can emphasise his uniqueness in any number of ways.

I don't recall the point where I said "D&D Zorro" should be a thing. I don't know if it should.

[Winnah]

I'm arguing from the position of what is; existing RPG's, of which D&D is the one I have the most experience with. I find the dicussion of signature weapons ridiculous in this context. Outside of a couple of limited edge cases, a character concept wlike this ill simply fail to perform without DM intervention. Insisting the DM continually prop up one players vision, without compromise, is patently selfish.

If you want to use a character with a signature weapon in a game like Exalted, I'm pretty sure the game supports that with the Artifact background. So you can have your mystic sword specialist, straight out of chargen. Where you run into issues is when a character wants to become a master swordsman during a game. Without Storyteller intervention, they players ability to make their character evolve is limited. They are still going to rely on a generous Daiklaive gift certificate (or equivelant) in order to 'complete' their character.

If you want to talk about theorycraft, then I am all for the removal of WBL and the neccesity of DM gifts in order to prop up character abilities.

As for character quirks, style and personality traits, insisting that these are dependant on a specific prop is slightly disingenous. There is very little difference between Robin Hood and Zorro. The motivation and goals of these characters are very similar; they are both outlaws that fight against oppression. The means by which they do so are a product of the setting, moreso than the character itself.