What is wrong with race class limits?

[Shade]

I hated them more than any other element in 1E.

Options are good...restrictions are bad. Restrictions without explanation or justification are just plain ugly.

 

[Crothian]

These level caps just never made sense to myself and my friends.

If they did make sense would they then be okay?

 

[Mycanid]

Our group just ignored them, to be honest, but not absolutely and completely. We used them as general guidelines and reference points for further home rules. For example, we did not quite do away with the racial class limitations, but "stretched" them a little. For example, we decided that anyone could be a cleric or an assassin, and that elves could be druids also, etc.

 

[RFisher]

2. It codifies class and level = setting element. Classes and levels ultimately make very little sense except as a gameplay construct, and racial level limits made it explicitly clear that if Bob the Fighter was Boebiethel the Elf Fighter, he knew he was a Level x Fighter because he could no longer gain XP. Which I find completely ridiculous and silly.

3. In the same light, it makes no sense. What does a character who hits his level limit experience? What is the mechanism, in-setting, preventing him from advancing?

• Well, that's level limits, not class limits.
• He could still gain XP, he just didn't gain levels.
• Do you know exactly when & exactly why your abilities reach a plateau? Just because a PC reaches his maximum potential, that doesn't mean he knows he is level X.

6. Worst of all, racial level limits are just about the most anti-fun development imaginable. Getting past all the cheesiness at the lower levels, you end up with a character who can no longer advance mechanically in a meaningful way (caveat: this being AD&D, he could still load up with the millions, if not billions, of gp worth of treasure doled out by the classic modules). While his companions invariably got better.

Until you got to that last sentence, I disagree. You don't need mechanical advancement for the game to be fun. Mechanical advancement can be fun, but it isn't essential.

But when your character can't advance while his associates can--yeah, that can be annoying. I don't know that I'd call it "about the most anti-fun development imaginable", but I can agree with anti-fun.

The constant trend of extending the level limits is--to me--a clear indication that they were a bit of a kludge.

 

[Nefrast]

Even without these limitaiotns I have said no to many a player character concept and its not the end of the world.

But this should always happen because the concept was bad (or didn't fit), not because the character is impossible.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I never understood them from a setting point of view. Right - god hates elves, so no more cleric levels for you Mr Floppy ears.

And even if there was a great explanation, I think the concept was pretty badfun. Suddenly the character you spent ages playing can't advance any more. Of course, your friends still can...

We just ignored them.

Although to be fair, it wasn't uncommon for the entire class/race/multiclass/dual class stuff to get thrown right out the window. Human Fighter/Mages - sure, why not?

 

[delericho]

If a setting wishes to impose racial level limits, then that's fair enough. If a DM wishes to impose level limits, that's also fair enough. But I don't want the core rules to do so. (And, incidentally, I wouldn't play a race/class combination that a DM or setting had restricted in level, unless I was planning on only doing a few-level 'dip' anyway.)

The mechanics used in previous editions were particularly bad. Because demihumans couldn't dual-class the way humans could, the level limits represented a 'dead end' in progression. Once you'd reached the top level for your race and class, there was no reward in continuing to play the character.

The level limits were also intended to enhance game balance, but they did a bad job of it. Balancing low-level gain with high-level loss is a bad idea, since so few campaigns ever reached a level where the limits mattered, and then in virtually every case either the DM would remove the limits at that point, or the campaign would wind up and new characters would be generated. It's far better to balance all races and classes across all levels (reasonably broadly, of course).

 

[smootrk]

The 3.x edition class leveling method is inherently better than the old school multiclassing method (fixed and unchanging), or the goofy Dual-Classing method for humans. A character simply adds whatever class he/she wants to level up in.

I can understand some level limits that can be imposed. For instance, if a campaign insists that Dwarves are inherently un-magical, then the DM might say that the best a dwarf could hope to achieve is 5th level in an Arcane Caster Class. This does not stop an intrepid Dwarf character from working into other classes that he/she is more suited for (like warrior classes). Their overall character level is not limited, just the potential for certain types of classes....
and I agree, there should be some setting specific rationale built into any limitations brought into the game... but it is certainly not outside the realm of logic to include such if the setting called for it.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

As Arrellion points out, I think the thing that was the oddest about them is that they didn't make sense from an age standpoint- the shortest lived race (humans) are somehow unlimited in the amount of things they can achieve in their lifetime, but races that live many times longer (elves, dwarves) are somehow unable to equal or exceed the accomplishments of man?

The other point which others have mentioned is that it kind of put a limit on the amount of fun you could have with those races, as they would hit a plateau while humans would not, and I think one of the biggest draws of D&D is the advancement of characters. There are a lot of game systems in which advancement is non-existent or limited- and those are still fun games- but they are not D&D. (Of course, if games don't run to those high levels in the first place, which many do not- I believe research shows most games top out at the early teens in general; so it may not necessarily come into play at all.)

As for whether it would be okay with some better rationale, I don't know, but I tend to think not. It was obviously intended as a balance measure against all the abilities that demihuman races come front-loaded with, but I think the rationale behind it was flawed. Rather than enforce some artificial restriction at the end to balance the front, something needed to be done to make things more equal at the start. IMO.

 

[thedungeondelver]

I never understood them from a setting point of view. Right - god hates elves, so no more cleric levels for you Mr Floppy ears.

That's not strictly true, as there are a lot of (half)-elf cleric/n multi-class combinations.

Also, multi-classing as n/thief means you're always advancing in one way or another, plus getting an awesome skill set as a demi-human.