Its a new campaign and your DM offers you the following options

[The Cardinal]

all human

or

all monks

 

[just__al]

See this is why I asked the question, I've gotten some good suggestions and gotchas already

I might actually give the following choices (but I may go with the original proposition)

The entire group must be

All Dwarves
All Gnomes
All Elves
All Haflings
All Rogues
All Fighters
All Wizards
All Clerics
All Sorcerors
All Golliaths
All Rangers
All Paladins

 

[Angel Tarragon]

All the same race is fun. I played in Rel's Orcz! game at GenCon, and boy was it a hoot. Every character had a difeerent role in the party and so it all worked out. Playing the same race allows easy communication between players and as group, as everyone is one the same page (mentally) about the mentality of their characters. It also encourages fo actual role-playing of the character. Each player does their best to try to act their character. It is easy on the GM (I think) and can actually provide insight to the players on how to function as a team.

 

[JoeBlank]

Same race would be my preference. That reminds me I need to keep bugging howandwhy99 to someday run his all-dwarf campaign.

I played in a campaign that required each PC to have a certian number of levels in rogue, but we still ended up with a diverse group. We started at higher levels, but if you started at 1st level I would allow multiclassing at 2d level.

 

[HellHound]

Remember that multiclassing is a standard in d20, so an all-rogues campaign quickly specializes into other classes... we had an arcane trickster, a swashbuckling fighter-rogue, and soem other rogues with a few levels here and there of other classes. They were tied together by their first level of rogue and the first adventure which was to join the local thieves' guild.

that campaign ran though half of the Shackled City campaign, until one of the core players moved half-way across the country.

Our latest Arcanis campaign is all clerics and holy champions (paladins), allowing us to focus on the importance of faith and the Arcanis pantheon in Coryan.

 

[Voadam]

I would go with all race the same, although either could be viable.

Race gives you more of a unified feel of us vs them and allows more interparty family connections. It worked great for a long running campaign I ran where all the players were elves (it just worked out that way, no forced choices).

 

[Diremede]

We did a group of all dwarves once, with the dwarves being a somewhat barbaric tribe living in a network of caves, so the favored class for our dwarves was barbarian. It was ton of fun and I truly enjoyed it, and as long as you DM it right an all the same race game makes for some easy to use adventure directions.

 

[Warehouse23]

I'd go all hobbits, er, halflings. Nothing like adventures around the Shire...

 

[IronWolf]

All dwarves! Or better yet all dwarven clerics! ::shrug:: Both of which appear to have already been mentioned. But that's how I vote!

Of the two though I would lean towards an all the same race campaign versus an all the same class campaign. Though with multi-classing I guess even that could work itself out pretty quickly.

 

[Desdichado]

I'd go with same race. It'd open up some interesting opportunities for role-playing.

Same class could be interesting, but I'd be afraid that it would devolve into little more than a contest to see who is the best.

See, I'm not sure that all same class would be interesting; everyone's got the same role, more or less.

Sure, with some flexible classes like rogue, you can squeeze three or four roles out of the class itself, but that sounds like a recipe for a boring campaign, IMO.

All the same race, on the other hand, gives you an instant hook to get the game going with. Having them all be from the same place, on the same mission, etc. I'd totally vote for that. And as a DM, I'd actually seriously consider that, while all the same class I would not.