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General Tabletop Discussion
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Thoughts on Racial Classes?
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<blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 7997874" data-attributes="member: 6988941"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Benjamin Olson, post: 7997874, member: 6988941"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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