It was down to the wire, but the votes have been tallied and our latest Patreon poll has a winner. By the narrow margin of a single vote, it’s Dread Necromancer by a nose! I hope you will all join me in welcoming our gothy gal to Handbook-World! (Better luck next time, Samurai!)

Dread Necromancer has every right to be depressed. There are a lot of reasons why a GM might ask you to reconsider your character choice, and she happens to embody all of them at once. The evil thing is an obvious pitfall. Plenty of tables ban evil alignments outright, and every one of them has a “this one time there was PVP and hurt feelings” story. There are mechanical issues as well. Classes with too many pets tend to slow down games, and all those adorable zombie waifs are going to take up a lot of time at the table. Then there’s the issue of campaign theme. It’s hard to fit a necromancer into your standard Big Damn Heroes campaign. Walk into town with a retinue of unpleasant undead monstrosities and the quest givers tend to turn around and flee.

I’ve had to have this conversation myself exactly twice. The first involved a pre-errata scarred witch doctor in Pathfinder. The player in question has a talent for optimizing, and I was worried he might overshadow the rest of the group. We compared notes, came to an understanding, and wound up getting a witch doctor anyway. This one just happened to be a standard witch / investigator multiclass. (It also turned out to be a damned cool support caster.)

The second involved this frigging thing. On the off chance you don’t want to read through the full skittermander entry, suffice it to say that Starfinder’s most adorifying critters gave me some strong kender flashbacks. The player and I compared notes, came to an understanding, and mutually decided that I am a fun-hating killjoy who deserved to sleep on the couch for a few days.

How about the rest of you guys? Have you ever disallowed certain classes in one of your games? Has a GM ever asked you to rethink your character? How did the conversation go? Let’s hear it in the comments!

THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!