D&D General [+] More Robust 'Fantasy Race' Mechanics for D&D-alikes / Redeeming 'Race as Class' for Modern D&D [+]

[DammitVictor]

I think the best way to have your cake and eat it too is to have different classes for each race: humans are fighters, clerics, rogues, wizards or monks, but elves are bladesingers, rangers, high mages or... clerics of elven gods (each god gets their own class though.)

I am experimenting with a hybrid approach, where ancestries have "racial classes" (possibly multiple) and occupational classes are more narrowly themed-- in a system where multiclassing is default-- and nonhuman ancestries have both a small selection of favored/discounted classes and a similarly small list of classes that are penalized and/or prohibited. With a sidebar, of course, noting that removing these restrictions won't break the game, and encouraging tables not using the game's default setting to alter them to fit the setting they're playing in.

The system you're describing is implemented very well in an excellent B/X-style OSR game called Adventurer, Conqueror, King. The system I'm developing is a hybrid between the racial classes of ACKS and the Japanese TRPG Sword World, which treats all classes as matters of specific training and assumes a much cleaner (and stronger) break between trained skills and inherited/innate abilities than D&D does.

 

[Tesral]

OK, but what then takes Human's place as the baseline?

If different species are to be measurably better or worse at certain things, something has to be the 'zero point' against which everything else is compared. Naturally, because we all know what Humans are, they default to that role because it's just easier for all involved to grok.

Now you could make Elves or Dwarves or Hobbits or whatever species the base zero point, sure, and if a campaign is very centric to a particular species (e.g. everyone has to play a Dwarf) maybe that's a good idea. But for general mass-market D&D the added mental load of a non-Human zero point probably isn't worth it.

I don;t like Human centric AD&D method of making Humans "special" by making everyone else suck. But I agree with the thinking here. The game, needs a baseline, and we know what Humans are. We is them. It make sense to make then the no adjustment race.

 

[GobHag]

OK, but what then takes Human's place as the baseline?

If different species are to be measurably better or worse at certain things, something has to be the 'zero point' against which everything else is compared. Naturally, because we all know what Humans are, they default to that role because it's just easier for all involved to grok.

Now you could make Elves or Dwarves or Hobbits or whatever species the base zero point, sure, and if a campaign is very centric to a particular species (e.g. everyone has to play a Dwarf) maybe that's a good idea. But for general mass-market D&D the added mental load of a non-Human zero point probably isn't worth it.

For Race as Classes, normal classes don't need races to exist so a player can just decide to be a fighter that's a turtle person. In Race and Classes I think it's perfectly fine to have a no baseline/Jack-Of-all race, just like it's fine that there's no baseline/Jack-of-all class.

Alternatively, Orcs or elves since they're the fantasy RPG mascot race.