Human Fighters Most Common Race/Class Combo In D&D

Satyrn said:

I don't think you do.

I don't think she was talking about banning a race from a setting. Rather, those who would ban the race from their game no matter the setting.

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What about DMs that only ever run one setting?

WayOfTheFourElements said:

What about DMs that only ever run one setting?

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If the players are OK with playing in that setting, no problem. If they want to do something different, then it's time to rely on a different DM - one that will run a different setting.

WayOfTheFourElements said:

What about DMs that only ever run one setting?

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I don't know.

I'd think it depends on why the DM only ever runs the one setting.

But mostly, I think it all really depends on if they talk like "this race doesn't fit my game" compared to elfcrusher's "this race doesn't fit the setting."

EzekielRaiden said:

See, I don't even necessarily think this is correct either. Tieflings aren't assumed to be evil in Planescape, as I understand it--no more than Aasimar are assumed to be good. Because Planescape is intentionally a cosmopolitan world (in several meanings of the term!). I can certainly grant that "I physically look like a demon, a creature known to be Pure, Living Evil," is going to mean that *many* settings will produce exactly this kind of knee-jerk distrust. At the same time, assuming that 100% of all worlds that anyone could ever imagine WILL have that feature? How small the sandbox we choose to play in, when given all the beaches the mind might summon!

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The comment was mostly a joke. In my campaign, demons are not widely known to be Pure, Living Evil, and tieflings are the ruling class of one particular nation, so the reaction in most places is "decadent foreign aristocrat with unnatural breeding customs" -- think Habsburg, not Faust.

But as you say, Planescape is an intentionally cosmopolitan world. The fact that tieflings, and indeed full-blooded fiends, can be found casually browsing the market stalls alongside creatures of every other description is very much playing with the standard expectations by flipping them on their head. It's like a setting where dwarves live in trees, or halflings are cannibals. Given the genre context, those are not and cannot be neutral worldbuilding facts. Our prior understanding gives them extra meaning.

And yes, some players do have designs to play with expectations like this. But others really just the powers, or maybe the badass look, without embracing the tiefling race as a whole. So my honest reaction would be "Are you sure tiefling is what you want? Let's talk about what you're looking for in this character."

Mephista said:

While its true that tieflings aren't assumed to be evil, it is also true that the official details of the race have always included "distrusted by many." Tieflings are, and always have been, the target of fantasy racism. They're forced to the fringes of society, where they have to pick up favored occupation Rogue and learn to lie really well (bluff bonus), which in turn increases distrust... its a vicious cycle, but one humans have engendered throughout real world history. Half-orcs tend to face a similar prejudice from humans, though ironically not from the orc tribes.

That said, its pretty nice that tieflings favor warlocks in 5e, because you can just pick up the Disguise Self Invocation. Want to avoid trouble? Snap, I look like an elf. Oh, look, Friends cantrip. Now you like me for a minute, and when I walk away, snap, I'm now human that looks nothing alike to the elf. So, its not like hiding from people isn't easy to manage to facilitate rp either, even in the most prejudiced setting.

Side Note - aasimar were said to face a similar prejudice, but I always found that a bit strained outside Planescape. In Planescape, I always assume Paladins to be part of the Mercy killers, so the association of aasimar to fanatic kill-them-all types is pretty strong, and that kind of bias is reasonable. But in other worlds, paladins tend to be highly regarded, so having them suffer prejudice from humans feels... odd.

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And people wonder why Tieflings aren't trusted....

The acceptability of races, imo, depends on the setting. The acceptability (to Humans, the dominant race in the setting) varies from being acceptable, to mild social prejudice, to intolerance to violent rejection. Depending on the history, culture and society.

I've run my current setting since 1974. It was originally designed as a campaign for the Chainmail fantasy supplement and then converted to D&D. The big bads were Orcs (with the usual evil overlords) and Demon worshippers. Half Orcs were acceptable because the original Half Orcs were pretty much indistinguishable from Humans (1E). You might suspect but you could not know. And they did their best to hide it. Everybody hates Orcs, especially Half Orcs. Anything vaguely demonic was dead at birth (Cambions etc. were absent at first and rare NPCs when they became a "monster" ). I still assume Half Orcs look basically Human (because my setting demands it). And no Tiefling PCs because the settings NPCs would kill them on sight. I never worried about Dragonborn. That's just an upscale Lizard man They are exotic and people whisper about them. They may face discrimination. So do Goblins. Whose males have some serious issues with sanity (in my game). Hobgoblins are militarized fanatics who don't fraternize btw. High Elfs are aloof but acceptable and Wood Elfs are claustrophobic xenophobes who don't hang out with others. Especially *shudder* in towns / cities. Half Elfs are exotic but OK. Still, people talk Dark Elfs are a myth to most surface dwellers and a subject of genocide by other Elfs. Dwarfs, Gnomes and Halflings are routine residents if different from the norm (Humans). It's all based on the setting and it's history and cultures. If I ran another setting I'd be reconsidering the race relations in the game.

That, imho, is how it should be. That it should be setting based that is. To each (DM), their own.

*Edited and added to (in far too much detail for my original point) as things occurred to me. I have degrees in history and cultural anthropology. Pedantry comes naturally to me...

Elfcrusher said:

And people wonder why Tieflings aren't trusted....

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No tiefling fan is surprised that tieflings aren't trusted. Since their inception in 2e, tieflings have always had a bonus to Bluffing others. Even 4e, who swapped focus from being sneaky types to more obvious, pseudo-fire elementalists, kept the bluff bonus. 5e is pretty much the first game to lose it. Deception is pretty much bread and butter for tieflings by both necessity (having to hide) and natural inclination (devils lie all the time).

EzekielRaiden said:

Honestly, a serious problem here is simply that you refuse to see them as anything other than monsters. That is, it sounds like you literally can't understand how someone can look at a Dragonborn or Tiefling and not immediately, intuitively, and without the tiniest shade of doubt think "that's a monster." If you truly can't understand that, you'll never be able to grok a group that wants those things.

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Oh - agreed - probably not.

I find that kind of...disappointing, I guess. As I have said before, we have a game which lets us imagine any world we choose, and so of course we always imagine perfectly identical ones...

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Fair enough...and that's what optional extras are for, be they official WotC or homebrew or whatever.

Which is fine...for that character.

But what about worlds where the next fishing village over was established by dragonborn refugees from some horrible war or other that never mattered to your apprentice-of-the-village-elder? Or ones where a peaceful merger of two kingdoms means that, technically, there are two royal families that always ritually marry each other--one human, one dragonborn--but must seek gigolos/concubines because they're not interfertile? Does literally every character you make grow up "learning to kill these" sentient beings with a cultural penchant for honoring their deals? Does literally every world ever consider them "things" and not people?

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Part of what makes a demon a demon and a dragon a dragon is that they rarely if ever even give their word, never mind keep it once given.

The same can be said of half-Orcs - they too are usually distrusted at best and completely shunned at worst by civilized societies, and that's consistent with their origins (as in, Tolkein).

The antithetical alignment stuff certainly doesn't help. Especially if one of you was Good-aligned and the other Evil. Of course, this also means you actually gave them a chance to act, rather than immediately saying "MONSTER, KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!" (Though, frankly, I cannot square being "Good" and being 100% okay with instantly resorting to lethal force upon encountering a sentient of unknown disposition, regardless of how much one's been taught not to trust them.)

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Oh I gave him a chance to act alright...grudgingly ran with him for two (I think, might have been more) adventures until in mid-dungeon a dispute he had with another PC blew up and turned ugly, he went murderously PvP and the part of the party that disagreed with him realized quickly he was too much for us to handle. (the half-Dragon was kind of a power-build in an otherwise not very powergamed party) Needless to say the rest of that adventure was a bit of a gong show, though top marks for its entertainment value!

In character I left the party once we'd done the adventure and were back in town.

See, I don't even necessarily think this is correct either. Tieflings aren't assumed to be evil in Planescape, as I understand it--no more than Aasimar are assumed to be good. Because Planescape is intentionally a cosmopolitan world (in several meanings of the term!). I can certainly grant that "I physically look like a demon, a creature known to be Pure, Living Evil," is going to mean that *many* settings will produce exactly this kind of knee-jerk distrust. At the same time, assuming that 100% of all worlds that anyone could ever imagine WILL have that feature? How small the sandbox we choose to play in, when given all the beaches the mind might summon!

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Planescape is a setting in which many races and beings exist in a kind of overall (and slightly artificial) detente because to do otherwise would ruin the point of the setting. Quite different from the core game/setting in that regard.

Lanefan

Wezerek suggests a reason for the popularity of human fighters: "It lets you focus on creating a good story rather than spending time flipping through rulebooks to look up spells."

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Really? That is the completely off-the-wall, out of left field, assumption the guy makes? "lets you focus on killing monsters and taking their loot" is equally pulled out of the air, but most likely more on point.

WayOfTheFourElements said:

What about DMs that only ever run one setting?

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"Hey guys, this is fun, but I really like race X, and they don't fit here, so if anyone has some time, I was thinking of DMing a game every other week in a setting where race X fits."