D&D 5E Races/Classes - Revisiting Common/Uncommon and Rare

[Saeviomagy]

So.. for people rating rangers as much less common than fighters... what does your average trapper count as? Personally I see "someone who knows the woods" as a more common archetype than "someone who is a professional combatant", although I understand if things are coming from a more city-centric world view.

 

[Minigiant]

So.. for people rating rangers as much less common than fighters... what does your average trapper count as? Personally I see "someone who knows the woods" as a more common archetype than "someone who is a professional combatant", although I understand if things are coming from a more city-centric world view.

NPC trappers are NPC scouts.
NPC solders are guards and veterans.

A fighter is a professionally trained warrior or dedicated self-trained warriors. Very common for knights, guild warriors, mercenaries, professional bodyguards, commanders, and nobles.

A rangers are specialized wilderness warriors, hermits, and wardens living in or near dangerous areas. A lot less common in need or niche.

 

[Staffan]

Most trappers would just be commoners with proficiency in Survival and Nature, and maybe Stealth. The really good ones would be Scouts as per the MM.

A Ranger goes above and beyond these guys, just like a Fighter goes above and beyond a common soldier. A ranger combines elite martial training (as shown by having d10 HD, martial weapon proficiency, fighting style, and extra attack) with a primal connection to nature (spellcasting, Primeval awareness, various other abilities).

 

[steeldragons]

So.. for people rating rangers as much less common than fighters... what does your average trapper count as? Personally I see "someone who knows the woods" as a more common archetype than "someone who is a professional combatant", although I understand if things are coming from a more city-centric world view.

In terms of 5e? Well, there are some human NPCs in the back of the Monster Manual. I suppose you could try to track them to that. Seems like this might be Minigiant's way. Makes sense. A trapper as "Scout" makes sense.

I would probably look at the Backgrounds: 2 skills, 1 Tools, maybe do away with the extra Language, give equipment. Guild Artisan is fairly ready made, even though "Furriers & Trappers" does not appear on the Guild Business list. Outlander also seems a natural choice.

Trapper
Skills: Replace "Insight & Perception" from Artisan or "Athletics & Survival" from Outlander with "Nature Lore & Tracking" (or Survival?).
Tools: Herbalism Kit...or if you want to get more creative: "Trappers Tools" [use with successful Dex. check for "Setting Traps"].
Language: n.a.
Equipment: a wrought iron "bear trap", 50' rope (for snare/tripwire making), a small knife [ for "skinning", d2 damage if used as weapon], a normal set of clothes with fur-lined water-resistant ("oiled") hooded cloak.
If you want to do 'em up more class like, throw in Proficiency with Light armor and hand axe, dagger, spear, and light crossbow.

Rangers are, indeed, "wilderness warriors" specifically trained in the skills necessary for existing/surviving in borderlands and wilderness beyond "civilized/settled" areas and (here's where the ranger and the trapper deviate) finding/tracking/hunting/battling/defeating the recurring and/or imminent threats of that region when-/wherever they find them.

When the orcs raiding party moves into the valley on the other side of the hill, the trapper will slink away back through the woods. Whether in hopes of getting back to the outpost to warn them, or (less honorable individuals) maybe just in hopes of getting out of Dodge entirely ("let the outpost deal with it, themselves, if they can").

The ranger, on the other hand, possibly with some form of notification- like a tune on a horn, bird calls, smoke signals, etc...- to others of his ilk, hightails it into that valley. She does recon. She assesses and harries the force and learns about the full situation as best she can. Is this a scouting party for a larger force? Is this a hunting party that will leave in a day/not even going to the outpost? IS this a raiding party hoping to murder and pillage the ill-manned trade-post over the next hill? Is this a group of demon-worshipping cultist orcs who are going to try to raise Gruumsh from the long-abandoned druid's circle of standing stones that no one at the outpost even knows exist in this valley? If possible, she lay traps, uses stealth, ranged weaponry, and her special "against orcs" combat training to decisively and concisely take out the raiding orcs by the handful or entirely, if its within their power to do so.

I tend to think of and describe them as the "Int-base/Skill Fighters" (using their skills, wits, and guile) vs. normal Str-base/Trained Fighters, the "Con-base/Wild Fighters" a.k.a. Barbarians, "Wisdom-base/Divine Fighters" a.k.a. Paladins). Part of their skill set includes long kept, passed down, and/or secret lore lost or forgotten by most other "fighting men" (or society as a whole) and so includes skill with using magical items and [perhaps, eventually] a bit of minor magic/spellcasting.

[When I get to play 5e, rangers will default to a non-casting variant and not be spellcasting until later levels...if at all.]

 

[TrippyHippy]

So.. for people rating rangers as much less common than fighters... what does your average trapper count as? Personally I see "someone who knows the woods" as a more common archetype than "someone who is a professional combatant", although I understand if things are coming from a more city-centric world view.

It depends on how you see Rangers. I see them as a dedicated order, in the same manner as Paladins, who seek to protect people from the threats found in the wilderness. Similar to Rangers of the North from LotR - and it’s the reason why they get spells for example. An average trapper would be either a Rogue or a Fighter with requisite survival skills provided from their background.

 

[guachi]

I'm running a Mystara campaign. Well... not running it yet! But I have players for the new year lined up. Enough to run the same campaign for two groups. So hopefully by the time it ends there are enough players left for at least one group.

Races:
Common - human
Uncommon - elf, dwarf, halfling. Sub-races don't exist outright but the player can choose any but Drow as there are enough clans to fit any of the sub races.
Rare - Gnomes. They exist but have no large kingdom. The only numbers I can think of on the main continent are 6500 but luckily it's near the default town in the default duchy.
Not allowed - tieflings, dragonborn, Half-orcs, half-elves. Tieflings and dragonborn were never in existence anywhere in D&D when Mystara still had product coming out. I believe Half-elves were specifically mentioned as not existing and any offspring of an elf and a human was either fully elf or fully human. I'd have to check on half-orcs.

Classes:
Common - Fighter/Rogue
Uncommon - Barbarian/Ranger
Uncommon** - Cleric/Wizard (some places a Cleric is vastly more commom than a Wizard and vice-versa. No clerics in Glantri. No wizards among the Dwarves)
Rare - Sorcerer/Paladin/Bard (Sorcerers exist because they draw their power directly from the Radiance)
Don't Exist - Warlock

 

[Saeviomagy]

Ah see to me 'rarity' applies not to classes but to archetypes. The average man on the street can't tell the difference between an an NPC guard or veteran and a fighter, nor can they distinguish between a thug and a rogue or a scout and a ranger, at least without witnessing them achieving something out of the ordinary. Others here seem to be assuming that a rogue is some sort of elite thug that can be identified with ease (and the same for other archetypes)

 

[Li Shenron]

In your games, do you restrict Races and Classes in this way? What breakdown do you use and why?

I've done a little bit of everything, many times I just had to accept DMing fairly vanilla D&D, in which case I don't have the luxury of planning a fantasy setting, and I just go by books (typically startting with "core only"). In this case it's a bit pointless to suggest players what they should or shouldn't play within the allowed books.

I have of course also run the game using published settings (Forgotten Realms and Rokugan), in which case I stick with the campaign settings own restrictions and ideas of rarity. I hope I will manage to run my 5e conversion of Rokugan, in which case I will probably restrict everyone to Rokugani noble humans, because everything else is difficult to roleplay satisfactorily in this setting.

In the early days I've attempted to create a few settings of my own, and should I use a top-down (DM-driven) approach again to fantasy settings design, I will definitely restrict Races and Classes. This is one of the key methods to establish a unique flavor to a fantasy setting! I would definitely try to avoid both the "everything allowed" idea and the usual Human+Elf+Dwarf+Halfling starting point. These two choices leads too easily to a vanilla setting, which is not bad per se, but makes me feel I'm wasting my time to design it since it's identical to 1000s others.

Before you go limiting races, you need to ask yourself "what does this add to the game (or world)?" It seems to me like you're limiting options just for the sake of it... Unless you have more reasons to limit races than their rarity in your world?

I think the OP has already thought about that. I could ask you "what does allowing all/more races and classes really adds to the game and world". It may certainly add tactical options, but tactical options don't need to be added via race or class, you could add those same options via spells, feats, tools etc. If your concern is lack of tactical variety, more races/classes is not the only solution, and furthermore it may actually even be a bad solution for some groups (e.g. introducing a race that makes the best archers, then everyone wanting to play an archer feels compelled to choose it, then they realize they have to give up on something else they wanted more which is available only to another race).

That said, I don't think tactical options are what the OP thread is about, but rather races and classes as major world-building blocks. If I ask again "what does allowing all/more races and classes really adds to the game and world" but focus on the "world" part now, I am not so sure that more is a good thing, because IMXP players tend more often than not to roleplay all races equally, and DMs tend more often than not to represent all races societies equally in the world. Using less of them can make it easier to portray them distinctly, but also can shift the focus of a campaign, and that's the main reason why I would want to do that... like have one campaign settings where Tieflings and Dwarves are major players, another where Gnomes and Dragonborn are, rather than have yet another soup with all possible flavors in it...

A final note, if you are worried about DMs having too much say in what the players can play, this is a separate matter of deciding between a top-down/DM-driven approach to world building ("DM has decided you must all be Humans, Elves or Aasimar") versus bottom-up/player-driven approach ("Bob wants to play a human, Jane wants to play an Elf, Susan wants to play an Aasimar, so the DM makes those 3 races the ones around which the campaign theme is built").

So.. for people rating rangers as much less common than fighters... what does your average trapper count as? Personally I see "someone who knows the woods" as a more common archetype than "someone who is a professional combatant", although I understand if things are coming from a more city-centric world view.

You must have quite a low esteem for Rangers if you equate them to trappers or "someone who knows the woods"

But I think the problem is probably that everybody equates Fighters to "someone who knows how to swing a sword", and then assume every guard in town or soldier in the army is of the Fighter class.

In an edition where the monsters and NPC explicitly don't follow the same rules as the PC, anybody who is not a PC doesn't have to be anything...

 

[TrippyHippy]

I think my major gist, when I get a game going is I don’t want to block players from playing the characters they want - but at the same time I want things to fit into the world that I am building. That said, I do find some Races and Classes a little easier to imagine and the whole common/uncommon/rare is really an arbitrary way of coming to terms with it, I suppose. Not every fantasy world has to be Tolkienesque, for example, and yet we arbitrarily say the Tolkien races are more common than the others regardless.

Another factor, to a degree, is balance - although I tend to shy away from this argument in favour of ‘story trumps rules’. However, I do note that Half Elves get lots of advantages compared to Humans (insofar that they get extra CHA bonuses and fey abilities, along with the inherent flexibility from their ‘human side’ - languages, skills, Ability bonuses of their choice). These sorts of advantages used to be balanced by Class (and sometimes Level) restrictions in older editions. Similarly, Class choices were actually restricted in character generation by random rolls and high prerequisite scores. Now we just get vague categorisations…

I’m not complaining, really, as I like having the choice to play Halfling Monks, Half Orc Wizards and Tiefling Paladins. Those combinations may be a bit jarring, but it’s amazing to think that obviously good combinations like Halfling Bards weren’t really allowed in older editions too.

 

[aramis erak]

Races:
Common: Human
Uncommon: Wood Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Gnome
Rare: Half-Elf, Half-orc, High Elf
Very Rare: Dragonborn, Tiefling, Drow.

Classes:
Common: Fighter
Uncommon: Rogue, Cleric, Bard, Barbarian
Rare: all the rest.

I'll note that I presume clerics are pretty readily accessible. Monks are bloody rare. This is because asceticism is historically rare, and when it occurs, it's mostly clerical; martial-asceticism is pretty rare outside china.