What is wrong with race class limits?

[PapersAndPaychecks]

But, on the main topic, the problem with class and level limits is that they don't do the job they were intended to do. I don't think anyone would deny that the array of special abilities gained by nonhuman races in Oe/1e/2e were, in general, superior to the race based special abilities gained by human characters. The question is how do you create some sort of equity so that playing an elf is not an obviously superior game choice to playing a human? The method Gygax chose was race and level limits. But that doesn't do much to solve the problem.

Sure it does. If you play the game as written.

The issue is that the "game as written" assumes conditions as they were in the mid-1970's, i.e., you play the game straight through from 1st level to level 14+, and the DM's campaign stays static (when you roll a new character, it's in the same world as the old), and each player has a main character and multiple henchmen (so if your main character dies and can't be rezzed or whatever, you can take over the hench instead of starting again at level 1), and there are 8-12 players who compete with each other rather than always co-operating... and the big assumption which is that everyone's a wargamer who wants to "win," and making their choices with an eye to having the most powerful character later in the game.

These are the players who forced Gygax etc. to come up with the alignment mechanism because without it, there was too much acting Chaotic Selfish. D&D's the only game that's ever needed an alignment system (which is why it surprises me that alignment wasn't one of the sacred cows that 3e sacrificed).

Most of those players would go with humans because they're destined to be the ultimate "winners" of D&D. (We didn't get the "you can't win at a RPG" thing at all!)

I remember sitting round with my fellow players earnestly figuring out the optimal party for us (which was 5 fighters, 3 clerics, 3 mages and a thief, iirc) and needing to roll the dice to decide who would have to play the elf and who would have to play the dwarf. Because you needed one of each in the party; the elf spotted the secret doors and fought the ghouls, and the dwarf had the extra detect traps thing and the incredibly good saving throws and the huge AC bonus against ogres and giants...

If you play the game as if it were 3e -- i.e. with about 4 or 5 players, one character each and that character representing the player's entire investment in the game, no henchmen, people regularly dropping old campaigns and starting new ones to experiment with different settings or because the old campaign was just boring, then no, the mechanic isn't going to work for you.

 

[Melan]

As it has been mentioned, 1st ed AD&D is based off the campaigns of the writers, mainly Arenson and Gygax. In those games, 10th level was nearly epic in and of itself. 15th level was almost unreachable. Look at those early modules. "High Level" modules like Tomb of Horrors and Queen of the Demonweb Pits was reccomended for parties of 10th to 14th level. (I think in his first appearance in print, Mordenkainen was listed as a 14th level wizard, please correct me if I'm wrong.)
...
In an environment where characters were expected to retire at around level 14, the level restrictions weren't so harsh. An elf limited to 11th level magic-user would most likely be multiclassed as a fighter, thus said elf would be a F/M-U of 7/11 level adventuring with the 14th level human.

In all the thread, this is probably the best point. Given the time required to gain levels in 1e and 2e, level limits were a much lesser nuisance than people suggest. Going from personal experience, characters above 10th level were extremely rare. In all the campaigns I have run, only one PC could advance to the 14th level, and I removed him from play by allowing him to become a demigod. That's a whole different mindset than a game where there are several epic-level characters running around.

AD&D and OD&D also had a different power scale. Advancement peaked at 9th level and greatly slowed afterwards. You just didn't get that much better - a bit more hit points, and a few high level spells, but that was it. And in a game where low level spells remained brutally effective and monsters didn't advance much, a nonhuman PC who had hit level limits could easily play and be effective in a higher level party. Once you were around 9th level, you already had a chance against giants, dragons and demons, and in large parties, challenge lesser gods and win. Juiblex only had 88 hit points, and Orcus had maybe double that amount. What more could you want?

Of course, I get while people don't like the rule. It just didn't bother me, or my companions, and had little effect on our games.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The issue is that the "game as written" assumes conditions as they were in the mid-1970's, i.e., you play the game straight through from 1st level to level 14+, and the DM's campaign stays static (when you roll a new character, it's in the same world as the old), and each player has a main character and multiple henchmen (so if your main character dies and can't be rezzed or whatever, you can take over the hench instead of starting again at level 1), and there are 8-12 players who compete with each other rather than always co-operating... and the big assumption which is that everyone's a wargamer who wants to "win," and making their choices with an eye to having the most powerful character later in the game.

FWIW I was playing in the mid-70's, and this doesn't match our experience at all. Playing in campaigns in those days was much rarer, and the most common experience was that everyone had a 'stable' of PCs, who would get together for a given adventure and then next week or two get a different collection of PCs together for a different adventure run by a different DM.

There was nothing in the 'game as written' (sic) in those days that suggested your experience was the norm rather than my experience as far as I can see - people just played the game. I played one style of D&D with 18+ players at my local wargames club and another style of D&D with 3-6 players amongst my friends.

i.e. your experience is just as valid as mine, but it doesn't naturally follow that the rules promoted the particular play style that you mention.

Cheers

 

[Raven Crowking]

Seriously, DMs are free to impose whatever restrictions they want, and players are free to find another DM or run a game themselves if they don't like the restrictions.

QFT.

 

[WayneLigon]

And despite this, for some reason, 1e engendered more vociferous and contentious rules arguments than any other edition I have played. Could it, perhaps, have been the vague and unclear rules? Could it have been the lack of guidance? Could it have been the arbitrary and unexplained nature of many of the rules? There is a reason why the primary target of the "gaming arguments" humor in Knights of the Dinner Table is a thinly disguised version of 1e D&D, complete with pronouncements from a Gygaxesque game creator.

And somehow, when I have played 3e D&D, we have always had an environment almost entirely devoid of rules arguments, and no one has thought that the rules somehow made it a part of the game to "challenge" the rules or that the DM is doing something wrong when he deviates from the rules as written. Of course, since we have decided to play D&D, we usually play D&D, and not "Bob's Egomaniacal DM Power-Tripping Variant Game", so this rarely comes up.

I hate making huge long quotes, but I've pared it down as much as I can. Every sentence above exactly parallels my experience with 1E/2E, and 3E.

 

[BroccoliRage]

Respect is earned not given. I don't respect someone just because he happens to call himself a DM. There are plenty of DMs who do not deserve my respect or anyone elses.

It's a game. Anyone who is going to put enough of an investment into playing a game that PERSONAL respect comes into play, is too much of a freak to be in my basement. We want to play a game, not have discourses. We all know the rules, we all go by the rules. If a rule doesn't cover a situation, or a new homebrew setting doesn't allow elves, so be it. How chicldish do you have to be to argue over such a thing?

When you play Monopoly, do you lose respect for your fellow players if they beat you? That's just silly.

What I said isn't egomania. It's the collective atttitude my group shows to whoever is behind the screen at the moment; "You're running the game; what you say goes." This applies to everyone who gets behind the screen, whether my 13 year old brother (the youngest in our group), or my 40 year old pal from the navy. Regardless of edition, system or whatever, in my basement with our group the D(G)M is always in charge. Visitors who want to waste time arguing are tossed out the door. It's the only way to drive the point home. Call it "draconian" and "egomaniacal" (like I really care) all you want, it's held our group together. Time spent arguing is time that could be spent gaming. If the DM makes a decision, that's the decision we stick with. Bring up your disputes AFTER gaming. If the DM was wrong, and if he is worth wearing that title, he'll remember it in the future. But that those kind of arguments should occur AFTER playing, not DURING, was my point. Try it like this, sometime. You may find that arguing over intiative order or the proper working of spell doesn't really matter in the long run, or that most DM's will be happy to say that you were right, now that the whole momentum of the game is being stopped over something negligible.

Every time I'm done playing, I say the same thing:

"Questions, comments, death threats?"

And I do not talk during that time, instead I listen. Every person in our group does the same thing, it helps strengthen all of us as players while not interrupting gameplay.

Those that mess up our collective mechanism get told to get out. By the entire mechanism. And yet, we've never had a shortage of players. Most folks understand this rule, as it's laid out on the table before a game starts.


You can now go back to telling me how gosh-darned unfair I am, and judging my personality based on my appraoch to playing a game.

 

[Storm Raven]

Sure it does. If you play the game as written.

If you played 1e as written, then by 9th level, most of the characters have reached "name" level and are ready to retire from adventuring. How do the level limits serve to provide any sort of limitation in that situation?

And more to the point, it doesn't. At no point does the class/level limitation provide any kind of real balancing factor. Through the early to mid levels, where it has no effect at all, it has no effect at all. At higher levels, where (if you were using the level limit rules) the limits might have come into play, the demi-human PCs would just be retired. How, exactly, is the rule serving its intended purpose when it never actually impacts anything in actual play?

 

[Hussar]

Sure it does. If you play the game as written.

The issue is that the "game as written" assumes conditions as they were in the mid-1970's, i.e., you play the game straight through from 1st level to level 14+, and the DM's campaign stays static (when you roll a new character, it's in the same world as the old), and each player has a main character and multiple henchmen (so if your main character dies and can't be rezzed or whatever, you can take over the hench instead of starting again at level 1), and there are 8-12 players who compete with each other rather than always co-operating... and the big assumption which is that everyone's a wargamer who wants to "win," and making their choices with an eye to having the most powerful character later in the game.

*snip*

If you play the game as if it were 3e -- i.e. with about 4 or 5 players, one character each and that character representing the player's entire investment in the game, no henchmen, people regularly dropping old campaigns and starting new ones to experiment with different settings or because the old campaign was just boring, then no, the mechanic isn't going to work for you.

I'm with Psion in saying that my experiences in no way matched this. I played in two or three different groups through the 70's and early 80's, from 13 players all the way down to 3. We pretty much always played cooperatively and no one came from a wargamer background. Granted, the powergaming was going on, but, heck, we were like what, 12? As to the regularly dropping campaigns, well, we ran almost exclusively modules, so, campaign was a pretty thin thing.

 

[Piratecat]

I hate making huge long quotes, but I've pared it down as much as I can. Every sentence above exactly parallels my experience with 1E/2E, and 3E.

Mine as well. We spent hours stopping the game and discussing - usually voluby and with great enthusiasm, enough that my friend's parents would tell us to stop arguing and go home - the rules in 1e. Part of it is age and maturity, but in 3e I have to open a rule book maybe once every three games.

I think my big dislike of race class limits is that for us they simply aren't fun. Heck, the make the game actively less fun without providing any visible benefit.

 

[Melan]

Part of it is age and maturity, but in 3e I have to open a rule book maybe once every three games.

I wonder how large a part it is.