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

Ratskinner said:

I feel like site rules and politess prevent me from delving too far into this idea, but...I certainly will agree that that is a prevalent trope.

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Eh, its actually usually nothing more than a Dark Is Good, Light Is Evil inversion of the standard GvE thing. You still pretty much have the Ebulz villains, but they just swapped pallets with the traditional "monsters." Its not like there's a huge social commentary here, or politics to discuss. When you make the white skinned elves evil, and the dark skinned ones good, you'll notice that the white skinned elves have a lot in common with the followers of Lolth, what with the prejudice and killing and slavery, while the dark skinned elves act just like the goodly forest elves we're used to.

prosfilaes said:

Which is conflating a lot of different stuff. You can play in a world where there's clear good and evil and have good people who are orcs. You can also have worlds where dragonborn and orcs are just another group of people, not monsters.

Labeling people who don't look like Cate Blanchett, Sean Bean, or Orlando Bloom as evil has some deeply problematic history. The standard mix can feel less diverse than just humans from diverse societies.

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Oh please. Last I checked, Gnomes and Dwarves don't look like Cate Blanchett or Orlando Bloom, and they're not evil.

If this thread is becoming "if you don't allow the traditional bad guys in D&D to be good-aligned, playable races then you must be a while male oppressor in real life" then I'm out. That's even stupider than the cultural appropriation non-debate.

Anyway, I'm off to oppress the disenfranchised. Toodles.

Mephista said:

There is also a trend of human religious types being the evil, prejudiced ones ...

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Nothing new here...this was prevalent in fantasy fiction decades ago. Worked then for me, still does now.

prosfilaes said:

Labeling people who don't look like Cate Blanchett, Sean Bean, or Orlando Bloom as evil has some deeply problematic history.

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Doesn't matter what alignment Sean Bean is playing, his character will still be dead before the second episode so there's no need to fret over it.

Lan-"that'd be a bizarre twist on 1e rules: having a character's comeliness in part define its alignment"-efan

Huh. I just read that, apparently, the most open minded race in D&D is apparently the orcs. The only ones who are proud of their racial diversity and utter rejection of any ideas of racial purity. That's kind of interesting.

Mephista said:

Huh. I just read that, apparently, the most open minded race in D&D is apparently the orcs. The only ones who are proud of their racial diversity and utter rejection of any ideas of racial purity. That's kind of interesting.

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Second most. The first, of course, are the Ilithid—they open so many minds.

Elfcrusher said:

Oh please. Last I checked, Gnomes and Dwarves don't look like Cate Blanchett or Orlando Bloom, and they're not evil.

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You don't think John Rhys-Davies could have played Sean Bean's role and vice versa?

if you don't allow the traditional bad guys in D&D to be good-aligned, playable races

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None of the races at the top of this thread are traditional bad guys in D&D. Half-orcs were a playable race in AD&D 1, and tieflings were a playable race in the Planescape Campaign Setting where they were introduced. The rest of the races are all good-to-neutral races, in many cases introduced as playable races in their first appearance.

Part of the problem of chosen the well-trodden is that it's been studied and analyzed. Nothing there is new; Tolkien's races have been analyzed and critiqued in depth in the last sixty years.

There mere fact that there are "evil" or "savage" races in the first place is the really the root of the problem. Its interesting to see that all the descriptions of sapient "evil" races match what colonial europeans used to justify their conquests. I'm sure other conquering countries in the past used the same whenever they attacked other civilizations.

Same old story. Dehumanize the Others, make it morally acceptable to attack them and take over their lands... I mean, let's look at orcs one more time. According to the background story, they literally had any chance of a home taken from them by the other gods. Really, the orcs were screwed over from the beginning - we reach our children to share, but dieties can't?

From that basis, associating others, like half-orcs and tieflings and dragonborn as an extension of the "savage" races is pretty common. in fact, its pretty much how our brains as humans are wired. Is it any surprise they're often called monsters? They're literally in a book that's labeling them as monsters. Half-orcs are part of the orc writeup. Drow, despite being a core book PC race, is likewise labeled as a monster. Tieflings are the children (or otherwise have the blood of) the worst monsters of D&D, the fiends. And dragons... color coded for your killing convenience. You literally can tell if someone is evil by the color of their skin.

Well with all these statistics..... I could still probably say that I am probably in the possible 0.001% of the world that has used a 3 way multi-class between.....
11 levels in Monk, Way of Shadow archetype from the Players Handbook
6 levels in Warlock, The Arch-Fey archetype from the Players Handbook
3 levels in Rogue, Shadow Rogue archetype from the Dark Arts Players Companion

just to be a teleporting nut

prosfilaes said:

Part of the problem of chosen the well-trodden is that it's been studied and analyzed. Nothing there is new; Tolkien's races have been analyzed and critiqued in depth in the last sixty years.

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Yes, I will happily grant that it's somewhat narratively "lazy" to simply retrace the well-trodden paths. That doesn't make it racist, either knowingly or sub-consciously.

Mephista said:

There mere fact that there are "evil" or "savage" races in the first place is the really the root of the problem.

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I agree with that in many ways. So many posters harp on "realism" (cf. "Martial healing" or "weight of plate armor") but in real life there is no such thing as a clear demarcation between good and evil. People we would call "evil" either have mental illness, or they are considered the "good guys" by their own supporters. The saying "the path to evil is paved with good intentions" is accurate.

However, the Good vs. Evil trope appeals, in a very Jungian way, to us humans, and so it's a useful narrative mechanism. Is it wrong to propagate the misconception? I dunno. Maybe.

prosfilaes said:

Part of the problem of chosen the well-trodden is that it's been studied and analyzed. Nothing there is new; Tolkien's races have been analyzed and critiqued in depth in the last sixty years.

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Yes, I will happily grant that it's somewhat narratively "lazy" to simply retrace the well-trodden paths. That doesn't make it racist, either knowingly or sub-consciously.

Mephista said:

There mere fact that there are "evil" or "savage" races in the first place is the really the root of the problem.

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I agree with that in many ways. So many posters harp on "realism" (cf. "Martial healing" or "weight of plate armor") but in real life there is no such thing as a clear demarcation between good and evil. People we would call "evil" either have mental illness, or they are considered the "good guys" by their own supporters. The saying "the path to evil is paved with good intentions" is accurate.

However, the Good vs. Evil trope appeals, in a very Jungian way, to us humans, and so it's a useful narrative mechanism. Is it wrong to propagate the misconception? I dunno. Maybe.