> How many of you (as narrators) would allow a player to take an obviously
> non-natural ability for a starting character? For instance, would you allow
> a starting character to have "Fly", "Spit Fire" or "Breathe Water"?
> (assuming that these are normal humans, not Windchildren, Dragons or Fish
> :-) ). Would you make these abilities "more expensive" than, say, "Run" or
> "Ride"? (by more expensive, would you ask for more than "Joe can Fly" in a
> 100-word character, or take up more than one slot in a List character).
I think the question is not so much one of how "non-natural", but how "unusual" it is. If something seemed very out-of-the-ordinary for the cultural or local background, I'd say it needed more explanation/ rationale in the character description. (Not sure what I'd do using the list method.) The more unusual, the more description. e.g. Joe is an Orlanthi with a stand alone flying feat, not too bad; Joe is a Doraddi -- that'll take a bit more explaining.
A related question is how one should deal with abilities that "duplicate" those of known magical practices -- in Joe's case, Vanganth's flying ability, or to take a case that somewhat flummoxed me at the time, a Yinkini that wanted to be able to shapechange, essentially the effect of the Yinkini secret, which she wouldn't have had access to as a starting character (well, noit in that game, at least). I'm pretty much happy to allow these, but I'd take care that one doesn't get a game-mechanical advantage from doing so, nor is the "one-offer" allowed to entirely match the genuine specialist in terms of the breadth of applicability of their magic.
Cheers,
Alex.
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