D&D General The rapier in D&D

[Chaltab]

BG2 had a whole companion built around “halflings can’t be paladins”.

Justice for Mazzy!

 

[Remathilis]

I know Mystara Dwarves being non-magical was a thing but I didn't think that applied to other settings.

Is that why Dwarves in Dragon Age can't use magic?

It's a long thing. AD&D dwarves had high bonuses on saving throws vs magic and a 10% chance magic items would not work for them (except for things like weapons and armor). They also could only originally be fighters, and then later thieves and eventually clerics.

Supposedly it's based on the notion that Tolkien's dwarves were highly resistant to magic. Unlike elves (who learned some simple magic) dwarves did not. I'm no Tolkien scholar, so I'm not the person for details, but between Tolkien and D&D's influence on the fantasy gaming sphere, dwarves not using magic was a long standing tradition for many different systems. That seemed to be less and less as thing as other games moved away from D&Ds tropes and D&D itself moved away from antimagical dwarves.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's a long thing. AD&D dwarves had high bonuses on saving throws vs magic and a 10% chance magic items would not work for them (except for things like weapons and armor). They also could only originally be fighters, and then later thieves and eventually clerics.

Supposedly it's based on the notion that Tolkien's dwarves were highly resistant to magic. Unlike elves (who learned some simple magic) dwarves did not. I'm no Tolkien scholar, so I'm not the person for details, but between Tolkien and D&D's influence on the fantasy gaming sphere, dwarves not using magic was a long standing tradition for many different systems. That seemed to be less and less as thing as other games moved away from D&Ds tropes and D&D itself moved away from antimagical dwarves.

I suppose the same Tolkienesque* argument also applied to halflings, but for some reason that never seemed to be so controversial.

Of course, that doesn't explain why half orcs couldn't use arcane magic, given the usual Tolkienesque explanation for their origin.


*It's one of those things people get wrong, actually. In the Hobbit, the dwarves cast spells to protect the fat troll loot they stash, and in Dale they crafted magical toys.