D&D General Thoughts on Racial Classes?

[DammitVictor]

Why are PCs beholden to the laws of physics? Racial class restrictions aren't based on what's typical, they are based on what the race-- the nonhuman race-- in question is physically, mentally, and/or magically capable of. Stop letting the misuse of the term "race" make you mistake species for culture.

Especially in modern D&D, some of these races aren't even mammals.

 

[FrogReaver]

Why are PCs beholden to the laws of physics? Racial class restrictions aren't based on what's typical, they are based on what the race-- the nonhuman race-- in question is physically, mentally, and/or magically capable of. Stop letting the misuse of the term "race" make you mistake species for culture.

Especially in modern D&D, some of these races aren't even mammals.

I have no problem with a world where dwarves are incapable of casting magic. It's just I've yet to see a well constructed world where that is true.

 

[prosfilaes]

I have no problem with a world where dwarves are incapable of casting magic. It's just I've yet to see a well constructed world where that is true.

Then your standards of "well-constructed world" are a bit higher than strikes me as feasible for D&D. I mentioned LotR, and I'll go back to Krynn, whose savants were only of a marginalized evil subrace of dwarves. Frankly, there are a lot of things in Krynn to question, like steel pieces and the survival of kender, long before dwarves not casting arcane magic.

 

[FrogReaver]

Then your standards of "well-constructed world" are a bit higher than strikes me as feasible for D&D. I mentioned LotR, and I'll go back to Krynn, whose savants were only of a marginalized evil subrace of dwarves. Frankly, there are a lot of things in Krynn to question, like steel pieces and the survival of kender, long before dwarves not casting arcane magic.

LOTR had a handful of wizards in the whole world? I don't think it's the best analogy. In a LOTR world no PC should be able to be a Wizard. Gandalf at best is a DM PC.

 

[FrogReaver]

Why should a PC not be beholden to what is normal for the world?

There are many reasons but one of the most important reason is that the PC's are already atypical.

I don't see why removing dwarf wizards from the table is not okay, but removing warforged, or gunslingers, or dragons as a PC choice is okay.

I have no problem with removing whole races as playable for the PC's or whole technologies from the Gameworld. I also have no problem excluding Dwarven Wizards providing Dwarves are incapable of learning magic. My objection is due to the actual reason you are limiting players from those races when there is no good reason to bound players to play something typical in your world.

That's like saying that letting elves live to a thousand must mean that they overrun the world. Dwarves couldn't be wizards in any edition of D&D prior to 3rd Edition, so how did they survive in Krynn and Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms?

I can't tell you enough about those worlds to answer that. If you know them so well then give me a good reason for how they survived?

How did the halflings and humans and dwarves survive in the LotR, since IIRC, none of those races had wizards?

LOTR is a bad example for reasons I noted in my previous post.

 

[prosfilaes]

There are many reasons but one of the most important reason is that the PC's are already atypical.

There's no guarantee of that; DCC makes a big example of how all PCs are random villagers, zero-level butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. In the current Pathfinder game I'm in, all the PCs are in the same class of graduates from an adventurer's college. At the start of the Pathfinder AP Mummy's Mask, the PCs are one of a number of adventuring parties looking to get into the tombs. In some games, heroes are made, not born.

Edit: Also, that PCs are already in some sense atypical doesn't mean that they should be more atypical. That you're going to be the best wizard in the world doesn't mean you should be the only dwarven wizard in the world.

I have no problem with removing whole races as playable for the PC's or whole technologies from the Gameworld. I also have no problem excluding Dwarven Wizards providing Dwarves are incapable of learning magic. My objection is due to the actual reason you are limiting players from those races when there is no good reason to bound players to play something typical in your world.

For one, that's not my reason, and I've never given it as such. For another, I don't see the distinction; why can you have the only non-elven bladesinger or the only dwarven wizard in the world, but not be the only warforged or have the only laser rifle?

I can't tell you enough about those worlds to answer that. If you know them so well then give me a good reason for how they survived?

I don't know them so well. I could make an argument about how the dwarves survived, but as I said with Krynn, there's already the ludicrous issue of steel pieces. Most D&D economies fall apart on poking at them, but Krynn's literally has steel swords cost less than the precious metal in them. Krynn is in many ways not a well-constructed world. That didn't stop it being a main setting for three editions (and getting its own non-D&D RPG for a while), with enough love for a movie adaptation.

Edit: (Who is going around killing off races that don't have wizards? Pre-3rd edition, humanoids (as opposed to demihumans) didn't generally have wizards. And dwarves are nestled into the mountain homes so tightly that any assault would be very challenging, even with some magic, and humans don't want to live in former dwarven homes. So much better to trade with the dwarves than try and dig them out.

But this is really all besides the point; the point is it is that way in several settings that people have played a lot in, even if you find it unrealistic.)

 

[FrogReaver]

There's no guarantee of that; DCC makes a big example of how all PCs are random villagers, zero-level butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.

Butchers, bakers and candlestick makers don't typically go off on adventures.

In the current Pathfinder game I'm in, all the PCs are in the same class of graduates from an adventurer's college. At the start of the Pathfinder AP Mummy's Mask, the PCs are one of a number of adventuring parties looking to get into the tombs. In some games, heroes are made, not born.

Sounds like atypical people to me.

Edit: Also, that PCs are already in some sense atypical doesn't mean that they should be more atypical. That you're going to be the best wizard in the world doesn't mean you should be the only dwarven wizard in the world.

If Dwarves can actually learn magic then surmising that the player made the first and only dwarven wizard seems a bit of a stretch. It's only if they can't learn magic at all which takes us back to the setting issue.

For one, that's not my reason, and I've never given it as such.

You've spoken to me an awful lot about that very reason to just now reveal it doesn't apply to you... So what is your reason?

For another, I don't see the distinction; why can you have the only non-elven bladesinger or the only dwarven wizard in the world, but not be the only warforged or have the only laser rifle?

Because the DM can say certain things do not exist in the world or are not playable. There are many reasons someone may do this - some of which are very good reasons. But saying you can't be X because it's not typical for X race to do Y thing isn't a good reason.

 

[prosfilaes]

Butchers, bakers and candlestick makers don't typically go off on adventures.

That's your opinion. In reality, many a butcher or baker left their lifeblood on some WWI or WWII battlefield, because people do what they have to. Moreover, it is a fact that in Dungeon Crawl Classics, PCs begin their careers as butchers, bakers and candlestick makers forced into adventure, which means it is a fact that some people play that way.

Sounds like atypical people to me.

Cool. Is everyone who graduates from college an atypical person, and if so, what does that mean?

You've spoken to me an awful lot about that very reason to just now reveal it doesn't apply to you...

You were the first person to use typical here. I've always spoken in terms of absolutes: the first dwarven wizard, the first non-elven bladesinger. I can't I would be terribly amused with a player who wants to insist there must have been dwarven wizards and therefore they can play one.

Because the DM can say certain things do not exist in the world or are not playable. There are many reasons someone may do this - some of which are very good reasons. But saying you can't be X because it's not typical for X race to do Y thing isn't a good reason.

It seems you're pounding on a strawman here. Nobody here has said "you can't be X because it's not typical for X race to do Y thing".

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think racial classes don't fit settings with large amounts of cultural commerce, which is why Bladesinger and Battlerager felt a bit off. Given the cosmopolitan and kitchen sink fantasy feel of the Forgotten Realms setting, and that it is filled with eccentric adventurers, it really seems improbable to me that there couldn't be some blind, grizzled old half-elf, disenchanted with the Elven culture that raised him but never really accepted him, who now teaches Bladesinging to the occasional non-elven apprentice in some broken down shanty on the bad side of Neverwinter. To say that there can be no such person arguably confines the player character not just to a particular race, but also to being an ongoing protector of racial secrets lest they become such a reprobate. All the official settings have a bit of this feel.

But, in a setting where there was not constant cultural commerce it would be a different matter. If it was a setting where elves themselves were very rare and had never taught their language to anyone else then it may make sense that they had cultural secrets no non-elves could even begin to discover. Or if it was just one tiny remote tribe of elves who had preserved this lost art that would also make sense. The problem is making a race mundane and a cultural practice ubiquitous to them and then saying that nobody else can have possibly appropriated their cultural practices. It just seems like rather overly simplistic worldbuilding.

 

[Coroc]

I do it all the time.

I restrict races classes and subclasses, I hate anything goes scenarios and I love classical archetypes. Do not ask me why, it is just my taste.

But it helps my players select something appropriate for the given setting.