D&D General Thoughts on Racial Classes?

[delphonso]

After the rumor milling about Icewind Dale, I booted up the old game and was a bit disappointed to be reminded of racial limitations for classes. I understand it, and I think it particularly makes sense in a finite setting (FR, I believe is a bad example since the world is so large and races so widespread, but you might expect LotR Dwarves to not be druids, as they barely see plants). I've never liked racial classes as it seemed like unneccessary limitation. A mechanical drawback or benefit should be enough. How many Half-orc Wizards did you see in 3.5? Probably not many, but that doesn't mean zero.

I'm wondering what the thoughts on racial class restrictions are here. Would you want it to make a resurgance in the next edition, or like further racial feats/subclasses (Battlerager is dwarf only) in official rules? Perhaps if we saw some sort of prestige classes, would that be the time to narrow in on race?

I know those are rules easy to ignore, but am just curious what everyone else's opinions on it are, especially those coming from much older editions.

 

[Fenris-77]

Mostly it's bad IMO, at least once you start talking about hard restrictions. There are always specific exceptions of course, the Elven Bladesinger comes to mind, but even there, the 'restrictions' aren't water-tight, which is fine. Classes get used in all kinds of ways to build character concepts, and a whole bunch of restrictions doesn't help. It might make sense to limit classes X and Y in a particular game of course, nothing wrong with that, but those restrictions can be imposed at the table level and don't need to be restrictions in the rulebook.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

When i saw the thread title I was expecting something else - the "Race as Class" from the early days. In my experience people are either OK with it or not and it's tough to change any minds at this point.

As far as level limits, if I'm playing an old game it's fine - that's the way we played back then so it doesn't really chafe. We might quibble over the exact numbers when it comes to level limits, but that such limits existed ... it was just part of the game.

That said I don't see much of a reason to do either of those things in a new game or setting unless it a significant feature of the setting. Example - If you're elves are literally plants like in RuneQuest then maybe they shouldn't be Artificers ... but a) player characters tend to be the oddball exceptions to what's normal anyway and b) if they are interested, one of your players will work overtime to come up with a justification regardless - so make it an "up to the DM thing" or just let it go and deal with it when it comes up.

Even when WOTC put out a book trilogy about a Bladesinger (during 4th edition) the main character was a human. He was trained by elves, but he was a human. So it's tricky to just wall things off by race. If a player is interested I lean towards "let them" these days. You don't have to make it easier for them mechanically if they want to play a Half-Orc Wizard, but you don't have to forbid it. They may have to explain themselves and expect some trouble at the Mage Guild, like Caine from Kung-Fu every time he walked into a new town, but that's part of the path they have chosen with an unusual and possibly damn near unique character. Theoretically that's part of what makes it interesting ... hopefully.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Let a subclass be common among a particular race, or originate with one: fine. But there is no need to make restrictions.

 

[Horwath]

Only variant I would like to see would be some kind of "paragon" classes, like there are in 3.5e in Unearthed Arcana.

A class that builds on and improves racial abilities.

 

[Zardnaar]

I can go either way so not opposed to it at all.

Mostly depends on how it's done. I don't mind it in older editions, hell it's part of what makes them appealing.

Also it can make settings distinct.

 

[Helldritch]

I have absolutely no problem with such restrictions. If I like the restriction or if I see the logic; I'll keep it. Otherwise, I'll throw it in the garbage (the restriction) and make it available to any race I deem worthy. The barbarian battlerager is such a class. I introduced it in Greyhawk as slave gladiators. They fight and die in the gladiatorial arenas of the Pomarj. Any race can become one. It means that at some point in your life, you were slave to the humanoids of the Pomarj and you escaped.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm really only for it if the class or subclass utilizes something a racial feature. For example, you might need Fey Ancestry and Darkvision to be a Feydark Warrior or something.

But since D&D is a world of magic and enchantment, I'm not even for that so much because a fey or devil or wizard could just magic you with the features needed for the class.

Only variant I would like to see would be some kind of "paragon" classes, like there are in 3.5e in Unearthed Arcana.

A class that builds on and improves racial abilities.

I've been attempting to create a whole 5e class that does this. It's sorta like a warlock were you take racial abilities of a list like invocations. If you already have the racial ability, you can get to the higher ones faster. So if yo have resistance to poison from being a dwarf, you can take immunity to poison much earlier.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I liked the concept of racial parangon classes from 3.5 Unearthed Arcana and I miss the concept of monster/racial/template/transitional class. Why not a half-dragon, or a faytouched?

And I loved the idea from Pathfinder 2 where racial traits can be replaced by racial feats. This allows gnomes can be good in lot of different things and not only illusory magic or as rogues.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm wondering what the thoughts on racial class restrictions are here. Would you want it to make a resurgance in the next edition, or like further racial feats/subclasses (Battlerager is dwarf only) in official rules? Perhaps if we saw some sort of prestige classes, would that be the time to narrow in on race?

It's always a double edged sword. Restrict something and immediate some player wants to play the forbidden combination, allow everything and every race in the setting becomes less unique.

In vanilla D&D I prefer to say that PCs can be everything BUT never a player can pretend the fantasy world follows up. So I would have no problem with a dwarf bladesinger or a halfling battlerager PC, but you might be the only one ever existed in FR.

There are fantasy settings which are very far from vanilla and affiliations really matter. A prime example is Rokugan/L5R where you have clans rather than races and PCs are normally humans. That setting is all about each clan (and even smaller groups within a clan) preserving secret knowledge and if remove restrictions you lose a key feature of the game.

Even in vanilla D&D I like different races to have different class distributions. I would probability always say that there are a lot more wizards among the elves and fighters among the dwarves, but no hard restrictions.

Anyway the smaller the character build element, the more acceptable a restriction will be. Saying a dwarf cannot be a wizard is obviously very harsh, that you cannot be an evoker is not so bad, and that you cannot take another race's racial feats is minimal.