Deciding to do with the world, what you will, on your own, is a type of attitude that could become irksome.
Yes, I’ll admit that I would be tempted to see it as a bit disrespectful to the lore creators, and anyone else one is playing with, to use the flexibility we’re given (at least in part so the rules can be used in various settings including ones created by individual DMs) to create characters that make no sense in the actual setting we’re playing in. But on the other hand, if some players don’t prioritise roleplay and want to focus on mechanics or just do things that they see as weird and fun, I guess it’s actually no skin off my nose. And given that the rules are there, I’d see it as officious of WotC or Larian to ban certain combinations from use in the specific Faerun or BG setting, when it is theoretically possible that someone could create a feasible if unlikely story to justify them. If the player is part of a group, though, I’d expect them to listen to their DM or fellow players and adjust their plans if the wackiness of their character concept would undermine immersion for everyone else.
I like all your character ideas, I bet it also helped having played the game beforehand writing in some points of potential conflict, but, and not to make this about generic Tav again, I've complained enough about how the world can't recognize certain contradictions people can make in their characters. The further into the lore you get the worse it becomes, see the recent Githyanki thread, and a number of Drow threads before that. Allowing people to toy with these things doesn't strike me as great if the game can't account for them.
Yes, you’re absolutely spot on that EA has been really useful in helping come up with characters I think have potential to drive some interesting roleplay opportunities and come to life in the game
. I see that as part of the challenge and responsibility for me as a player, to use what the game gives me to come up with interesting stories. If there were a human DM they’d take more of that load, but due to the limitations of a computer game I feel that I need to be willing to share the work there given that the game DM, in my view, quite correctly errs on the side of too much flexibility. To me, not every character combo seems to have the same potential for interesting roleplay, and though I do think Larian should try to do what they can to support any character a player might create, which I guess is what they’re trying with the class, race and background dialogue options, I also recognise there’s going to be a limit to what they can do if the player isn’t willing to lean in to the story they are telling and connect their character to it imaginatively. I do think they could give some hints to first time players to help them create characters for which those connections are going to be possible, but perhaps that’s what they think they’re doing with the origin characters. And I do absolutely think they can do more to create possible connection points than we’ve seen in EA. But I wouldn’t be in favour of Larian deciding themselves which combos have potential and outright preventing any others, as that would seem an unwarranted limitation on player imagination and freedom, given that the rules are already implemented to support flexibility, and just because I or Larian can’t imagine that a particular combo makes sense, that doesn’t mean there’s not a creative player out there who can do something with it.
EDIT: And I now realise that while one of the character concepts I mentioned is one of the two non-binary characters I’ve been developing, this post is not otherwise relevant to the topic at hand and I’ve probably said it before elsewhere too. Sorry!
