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.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

So... to outline the qualities that I want 'fantasy races' to have in a D&D-like fantasy RPG:

• Choosing a 'race' should be a character-defining decision, on par with class or at least a really juicy (5e) Feat
• Racial abilities should both scale/improve with level and include more decision points after 1st level.
• Every nonhuman race already can do something humans can't do, or can do something better than any human can do; each nonhuman race should be incapable or severely restricted in something that humans take for granted.

The last bit doesn't have to be 1:1 or affect every nonhuman PC; the goal isn't 'game balance', but rather establishing that nonhuman characters are different. Their options aren't necessarily better or worse than human options, but every race's options are different from humans and each other.

I also want to make sure that each nonhuman 'fantasy race' is capable of more-or-less functioning in a magic-driven D&D fantasy world. Communities of every race should either be self-sufficient or interdependently sufficient with their canonical allies, theoretically capable of sustaining a single-race D&D campaign, etc. etc. etc.

I had mixed feelings about eliminating the class limits on races in 3.5e, even though I consider 3.5e "peak D&D" On the one hand I don't care for the aesthetics of e.g. Dwarven or Halfing wizards, and other hand there's that bit about making sure each nonhuman race is capable of functioning in a magic-driven D&D fantasy world. I'm not sure what the answer is to that one; it's strikes me as a world-building question and one where different people have different ideas about the acceptability of those Dwarven and Halfling wizards.

A place I'd start at would be to create races-as-NPC-classes. Then, maybe, have PCs be gestalts of a standard PC class and their race-as-an-NPC-class.

 

[GobHag]

I had mixed feelings about eliminating the class limits on races in 3.5e, even though I consider 3.5e "peak D&D" On the one hand I don't care for the aesthetics of e.g. Dwarven or Halfing wizards, and other hand there's that bit about making sure each nonhuman race is capable of functioning in a magic-driven D&D fantasy world. I'm not sure what the answer is to that one; it's strikes me as a world-building question and one where different people have different ideas about the acceptability of those Dwarven and Halfling wizards.

A place I'd start at would be to create races-as-NPC-classes. Then, maybe, have PCs be gestalts of a standard PC class and their race-as-an-NPC-class.

I use worldbuilding arguments but I don't actually care about worldbuilding, I'm just aesthetically against limiting classes with race because I consider believability lesser concern compared to making a character one likes.

 

[DammitVictor]

[...] and other hand there's that bit about making sure each nonhuman race is capable of functioning in a magic-driven D&D fantasy world. I'm not sure what the answer is to that one; [...]

In AD&D, class group was both role and power source: defender/striker = fighter, controller = mage, healer = priest. Utility magic, when the AD&D rules cared, followed a similar pattern.

Fantasy peoples don't need to have access to Martial/Arcane/Divine power sources, they need to have NPC solutions to role-shaped problems. Mostly economic. Any group of NPCs constantly subject to PC threats is already dead; they mostly just need walls and weapons, food and water, and health and hygiene.

It's a numbers game. 1 or 2 dead PCs is a TPK; NPCs can survive larger portions of their workforce being offline for longer periods of time. A people or culture beong able to field an entire homogenous adventuring party is a game design concern–a  choice–rather than a logical necessity for worldbuilding.

It's a choice TSR D&D avoided unintentionally, and WotC D&D embraced more or less just as unintentionally.

 

[TwoSix]

I had mixed feelings about eliminating the class limits on races in 3.5e, even though I consider 3.5e "peak D&D" On the one hand I don't care for the aesthetics of e.g. Dwarven or Halfing wizards, and other hand there's that bit about making sure each nonhuman race is capable of functioning in a magic-driven D&D fantasy world. I'm not sure what the answer is to that one; it's strikes me as a world-building question and one where different people have different ideas about the acceptability of those Dwarven and Halfling wizards.

A place I'd start at would be to create races-as-NPC-classes. Then, maybe, have PCs be gestalts of a standard PC class and their race-as-an-NPC-class.

In my settings, dwarves are always the primary wizards and magic item crafters; I’ve been doing that since 3e.

I never liked the “elven wizard” trope; elven concepts always seemed to fit better with sorcerers or clerics to me.

 

[Tigris]

I use worldbuilding arguments but I don't actually care about worldbuilding, I'm just aesthetically against limiting classes with race because I consider believability lesser concern compared to making a character one likes.

100% this. In every game many players will be annoyed if they cannot play class X with race Y.

It also just feels like an arbitrary limitation, and I do not see any calue such a limitation adds.

Having some Race/class combination feat is nice (like 4e did), since this can differentiate certain combinations more, without forbidding some completly.


Having specific races as a class (like vampire) is feeling better since it empowers playing that race.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I use worldbuilding arguments but I don't actually care about worldbuilding, I'm just aesthetically against limiting classes with race because I consider believability lesser concern compared to making a character one likes.

Worldbuilding and believability are much more important to me than making sure every possible heritage and class is available and every combination is represented. Players can almost always find something they like in the available options.

 

[TwoSix]

Having specific races as a class (like vampire) is feeling better since it empowers playing that race.

Shadow of the Weird Wizard does this nicely; all of the non-human ancestries have a base set of abilities, and also have the option to take a distinct racial class that strengthens those abilities instead of one of the starting classes like warrior or mage.