D&D 5E How Do You Incorporate D&D Races & Classes Into Campaign Settings?

[Bawylie]

1. What about bards, eldritch knights and arcane tricksters then?

What about them? I don’t exclude them.

 

[Tallifer]

Players have to adventure in my world, so I at least give them say in their class, background and race. Whatever they want, I try to accommodate. As for the NPCs and monsters, I run in a multiverse, so anything could show up from anywhere.

 

[Coroc]

What about them? I don’t exclude them.

But why wizards and sorcerers and not semicasters? I did not get your reason to (try to) exclude them?

 

[Bawylie]

But why wizards and sorcerers and not semicasters? I did not get your reason to (try to) exclude them?

Usually, I run games with themes or a feel. To build that feel into the game, I put in a lot of conflicts, opportunities, and challenges. Wizards and Sorcerer’s spell lists have too many spells that sidestep those obstacles. The result is, instead of reinforcing the feel of the campaign, the party just waggles its fingers and moves on.

Instead of revising the spell list every game, I just drop those two classes.

Sometimes, it’s not just those two though. I’ve excluded clerics and paladins from Ravenloft/Horror campaigns, for example. And, depending on the setting, will allow either Fighter OR Barbarian (but not both). I also cut certain subclasses.

The players still have plenty of options. But since we’ve all agreed on the type of game we want to play ahead of time, they’re cool excluding stuff that plays hard against the tone and setting.

Side story - my kids’ group did character creation as part of the game itself. A royal wedding was attacked and they were commoners caught in the audience. I used their decisions (what they did in the battle and who they saved) to determine what was available to them as classes and stuff. They let the prince die but saved his squire (an old samurai) so the only heavy they could pick was fighter with subclass samurai. They let the priest die but saved the princess, so they couldn’t pick cleric as a class but saving the princess gave them some other in-game benefits (among the populace). They helped a goblin (disguised as a gnome) into the wedding to play music and so they got Bard (subclass college of valor, reflavored as a goblin skald) as their caster class.

Anyway, no wizards or sorcerers.

 

[Coroc]

Usually, I run games with themes or a feel. To build that feel into the game, I put in a lot of conflicts, opportunities, and challenges. Wizards and Sorcerer’s spell lists have too many spells that sidestep those obstacles. The result is, instead of reinforcing the feel of the campaign, the party just waggles its fingers and moves on.

Instead of revising the spell list every game, I just drop those two classes.

Sometimes, it’s not just those two though. I’ve excluded clerics and paladins from Ravenloft/Horror campaigns, for example. And, depending on the setting, will allow either Fighter OR Barbarian (but not both). I also cut certain subclasses.

The players still have plenty of options. But since we’ve all agreed on the type of game we want to play ahead of time, they’re cool excluding stuff that plays hard against the tone and setting.

Side story - my kids’ group did character creation as part of the game itself. A royal wedding was attacked and they were commoners caught in the audience. I used their decisions (what they did in the battle and who they saved) to determine what was available to them as classes and stuff. They let the prince die but saved his squire (an old samurai) so the only heavy they could pick was fighter with subclass samurai. They let the priest die but saved the princess, so they couldn’t pick cleric as a class but saving the princess gave them some other in-game benefits (among the populace). They helped a goblin (disguised as a gnome) into the wedding to play music and so they got Bard (subclass college of valor, reflavored as a goblin skald) as their caster class.

Anyway, no wizards or sorcerers.

I tend to heavily restrict options to get a certain feel in my campaigns also.
E.g. I allow (PC) barbarians only when the tech level is <1300 equivalent. When every fighter runs around in sophisticated plate armor, they will not be bested by naked wildlings.
In ravenloft I allow clerics but not paladins.
I disallow classes/subclasses/spells which got easy ways to go around a settings core challenges (monk and barbarian in Darksun come to mind)
I disallow sorcerers in campaigns where there are established magic schools DL would be an example or where they just have no fundamental lore e.g. Greyhawk Darksun. So of the big official campaign worlds where I would allow sorcerers only ravenloft comes to mind (where they fit explixcitely good imho) FR (because they do not contradict much there and its a kitchen sink these days anyway) and maybe planescape also.

So you got some very nice ideas, not like I would do it exactly like that but finally someone who is not afraid of the "less is more in some cases" - approach that I also use.