Potential Problems In A New AD&D Campaign

[green slime]

Well, looking at 1e reasons for not being an Elf:

1) Nobody is hunting your carcass to make a potion of longevity.
2) Only elves and ½-orcs are hated by two races on Racial Preferences table.
3) You can grow a beard if you elect to play a male character.
4) If using UA, Method V for generating human ability scores is a strong argument for playing a human. (Somedragon magazine had a suggestion for this method for the demihumans, IIRC)
5) Starting Elven clerics are minimum 510 years old, most likely middle-aged, and have approxiamately 200 years of adventuring before the gain they benefit of Old age +1 Wis. Or lots of encounters with ghosts (but see next point). By contrast a human fighter has a maximum of 5 years of adventuring until he gains +1 Str +1 Wis.
6) -1 to Constitution hurts the System Shock Survival and Resurrection Survival chances.

 

[Humanaut]

Houserules for my 1e game added 4 levels to the level limits of demi-humans... then nobody wanted to play a human.

I slowly added bonuses to humans until I came up with:

+1 to any one stat
+1 Weapon Prof.
+10% xp

Then I had a solid 1/2 human party.

Otherwise they were only dwarf, elf, 1/2 elf, sometimes 1/2 orc

You could always try counterbalancing the +1 stat anywhere with a -1 stat of choice.

 

[DM_Fiery_Fist]

My experiences have been similar to those of Baron Opal. I should say that I'm speaking primarily from experience with 2e AD&D, and assuming most of the same stuff applies. Multiclass characters tend to shine at later levels (although they do struggle with low hit points initially).

I think the merits of keeping the class/race level restrictions mainly center around flavor. Balance at higher levels is tricky anyway, with each class typically becoming fairly good in a certain niche. I honestly doubt you'd really upset the game too much by removing the restrictions. I might suggest giving humans a small bonus to experience. They do have the option to dual class, which is a complete goat rodeo in terms of character balance. I've always noticed a sort of "pay your dues" mentality in these older editions, where certain classes really excel at high levels but are difficult to play at low levels (for example, first level magic-users being very breakable, but achieving incredible powers once they are at high level), or where characters are penalized at high levels (with demihuman level limits being an example here).

If you're planning on spending a considerable amount of time with the older system, I'd recommend dropping most of the class restrictions too. I don't think it really causes that many problems. I think either way you'll have to keep an eye on character balance at those high levels. I like to keep the class restrictions simply because I think it adds a bit of flavor to the game.

The real issues I encountered found with character balance came with keeping characters alive at low levels, monitoring the stuff from outside supplements, and carefully watching the amount of treasure I gave out.

Granted, I'm just getting back into second edition myself, so my memory is a little fuzzy.