BECMI-style Racial Classes (Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, etc)

So, I am growing more and more dissatisfied with the handling of non-human races in D&D-- they're not sufficiently different from humans, race has too little effect on character design, racial abilities are a one-time deal at 1st, and so forth. (Ironic, given that 4th and 5th have actually improved upon this compared to AD&D and 3e.) Increasingly, I am thinking that BECMI (and later, Savage Species) had the right idea about this, and that every non-human race should be its own whole character class with special abilities from 1st through 20th level. This would be combined with AD&D/Gestalt multiclassing, so while every Elf is an Elf, you can also be an Elf/Fighter or an Elf/Cleric if you needed to. You could also consolidate this entire subrace business-- which I hate-- into subclasses of the racial classes without requiring the existence of narrowly specialized racial subtypes.

Problem is, I'm stuck on the abilities. The Elf is probably easiest, since they're originally a Fighter/Mage. Give them Ranger casting, tune the spell list, and then fill out their other stuff. Gnome isn't hard, either, since it's got a lot of magical abilities to play with. The ones that are killing me are Dwarf and Halfling, because I don't know what sort of toys to give them without making them inferior clones of the Fighter and Rogue.

I think you are pretty alone on this subject. People like options, not just what one person thinks a species can be. What you are proposing is something like "THE STEREOTYPICAL" Species class.
Otherwise, all you have is Gimli and Gimli or legolas, and legolas. Honestly i'm finding this post speciesist.

Why not just encourage characters of certain races to take certain character classes/paths in your campaign?

To emulate BECMI
Dwarf: Fighter (Champion)
Elf: Fighter (Eldritch Knight) or Wizard (with light and medium armor proficiency)
Halfling: Rogue (Thief)

To emulate AD&D (with Unearthed Arcana)
Dwarf, Gray, Hill, or Mountain: Cleric (War), Fighter (Champion), or Rogue (Thief or Assassin)
Elf, High or Gray: Cleric (Light), Druid (Land), Fighter (Champion or Eldritch Knight), Ranger (Hunter), Rogue (Thief, Assassin, or Arcane Trickster), or Wizard
Elf, Wood, Wild, or Valley: Cleric (Nature), Druid (Land), Fighter (Eldritch Knight), Ranger (Hunter), Rogue (Thief, Assassin, or Arcane Trickster), or Wizard
Elf, Drow:: Cleric (Trickery), Fighter (Champion or Eldritch Knight), Ranger (Hunter), Rogue (Thief, Assassin, or Arcane Trickster), or Wizard
Gnome, Deep or Surface: Cleric (Trickery), Fighter (Arcane Trickster), Rogue (Thief, Assassin, or Arcane Trickster), or Wizard (Illusionist)
Half-Elf: Bard (Lore), Cleric (any), Druid (Land), Fighter (Champion or Eldritch Knight), Paladin (Devotion), Ranger (Hunter), Rogue (Thief, Assassin, or Arcane Trickster), or Wizard
Halfling: Cleric (Life), Druid (Land), Fighter (Champion), Rogue (Thief or Assassin)
Half-Orc: Cleric (any), Fighter (Champion), Rogue (Thief or Assassin)

cperkins said:

Why not just encourage characters of certain races to take certain character classes/paths in your campaign?

Click to expand...

Because the word "encourage" is meaningless in this context? In any case, it's not nearly the same thing.

For BECMI emulation, only allow 1 choice for demihumans. For humans only allow Clerics (War), Fighters (Champions), Rogues (Thieves), and Wizards (whichever you think best emulates BECMI wizards).

If you want to allow for later diversity, make the starting demihuman class mandatory for 1st level or, if you really want to drive home that certain classes are best-suited for a particular class, for 1st level and once at character levels 3,6,9,12,15,18, and 20 (8 of 20 levels must be taken in the mandatory class).

I think one of the reasons (probably the only reason) the other races aren't much different than humans is game balance. If you take the Lord of the Rings movies the elves are just plan awesome. If you want differences between races you are probably going to open up wide differences in character abilities. Like maybe elves should have +4 DEX with no cap at 20. I have no problem with breaking game balance, but even in my pretty mature group it can cause a little resentment over time.

I don't think making the races into classes really fixes this. If you look hard enough you will probably see that a human can emulate the "elf class" through multiclassing. Also as others have said most player like choices. They don't want to always have to play an elf as a fighter/mage. Like I said in order to really make the races profoundly different you probably need to impose much higher bonuses and penalties to ability scores or offer more radial special powers.

I think you have your work cut out for you.

In BECMI, at low levels, demihumans were basically strictly superior to their human counterparts. There were also a notable lack of character concepts, in that BECMI didn't really put an emphasis on character exploration or melodrama as a focus of play and didn't need diverse character concepts. Halflings just were thieves. Dwarves just were fighters. Elves were just fighter/magic users. Each demihuman race had but a single representative character type, and arguably a single personality, because really, personality wasn't that important to the default game.

Worst, I don't agree that this made demihumans feel different or play different from humans. They didn't really have a lot of unique abilities, just a few extra abilities tacked on, on top of those of a single class. Very little forced you to play from the perspective of say a being that would live for 1000 years and was intimately in a relationship with nature, or of an earth dwelling craftsman with strong family ties, obsessed with the making of things to the point of seemingly autistic in human terms, and more at home underground than on the surface. Instead, in general, my experience with BECMI was the demihumans were basically indistinguishable in how they played from other classes. They didn't feel different at all, nor did I observe players typically treating them as different.

Beyond that, you are fighting a strong historical trend against restriction in racial build. Even such mild attempts to force similarity and tropes upon a race as 3e's favored class were more widely ignored than observed. The truth is that very few players want to play that way, and you'll have to build a case for it that justifies any kludginess observed in your rules or have unhappy players in the long run.

For my part, I'm building house rules off of 3.0e D&D, and it strengthen racial tropes I enforce favored class, 3e's racial modifiers, minimum ability score requirements to enter a class, and a wide selection of homebrew selectable racial traits which can be taken initially or as feat replacement. But none of that is nearly as important has forcing the player to think about the race as being an alien thing, and giving the race a unique social role.

Personally, I think your entire approach is wrong if you think "The Elf is probably easiest, since they're originally a Fighter/Mage." If Elf is just a fighter/mage, then you won't accomplish your goal of having Elf feel unique. To make Elf feel unique, it must actually be unique and not merely a group of combat powers. And if everyone is using gestalt classing, that will be even more true, since you'll be able to make 'elf' in at least an approximation by multi-classing. And if you try to import 1e gestalt classing straight up, you are likely to have huge balance issues that will need to be worked out. I've been working on a racial paragon class for my 3e homebrew for a half-dozen years now and coming up with a solid design is not easy.

Nothing to add mechanically, but I think a Demigod class would be really cool. I've always wanted to play someone with 'important' divine/infernal ancestry, like Hercules or Hellboy. But it's typically hard to do that without taking Templates, which basically make you a superhero at lower levels. I was thinking of the concept of templates and races that 'level up' over time, the same as your class, but man that would be so much to micro manage. I know I personally would hate it, even as I'm thinking of ways to do it.

So, just making everything part of your class could be interesting. Keep going, I think you all have something here.

I always liked the Race classes personally. I liked how they did it with the Vampire in 4e and the races in the Gamma World game.

I'd be interested in seeing these. I can't guarantee I'd use them, but as something to offer players who might want their race to be a bit more special and make themselves more "unlike" the other PCs (even if they include dwarf bards and halfling wizards and elf clerics).

Fun creative experiment to redo BECM races in 5e class terms.