What is wrong with race class limits?

[Geoffrey]

Although a dwarven party I played in did spend 3 years prospecting in one campaign...

Wow. That's pretty intense.

Yes, wonderful imagery. Yet, somehow, many of Tolkien's dwarves were able to behave in ways comprehensible to humans and members of other races, and even go on several adventure-type expeditions with them. I don;t think quoting Tolkien will really support your argument here, since some of the archetypical genesis points of the D&D mixed-race adventuring party are found in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

That's true. I'm not saying that the demi-humans in my previous campaign were like Tolkien's Dwarves, Elves, and Hobbits. I was just using that passage as an example of how demi-humans in my campaign were. Further, demi-humans didn't have significant individualistic aspirations in my old campaign. The race came first, and (for example) a dwarf wouldn't hesitate to devote his 400-year life to being a cog in a wheel in a 10,000-year mining project.

I like that sort of demi-human much more than the demi-human who goes on adventures like humans, hangs-out in human cities, drinks and whores in human taverns, etc. Those sort of demi-humans just leave me flat.

YMMV.

 

[Storm Raven]

I like that sort of demi-human much more than the demi-human who goes on adventures like humans, hangs-out in human cities, drinks and whores in human taverns, etc. Those sort of demi-humans just leave me flat.

Of course, to rule out dwarves as PCs, you have to assume that all dwarves behave in exactly that fashion. There aren't dwarven oddballs who reject the system, or want to do things other dwarves would not do and so on. Basically, it makes dwarves (and other nonhuman races who share this sort of uniformity) just as bland and uninteresting - they are just bland and uninteresting in a way that is slightly different from normal. But still bland and uninteresting.

 

[Geoffrey]

Of course, to rule out dwarves as PCs, you have to assume that all dwarves behave in exactly that fashion. There aren't dwarven oddballs who reject the system, or want to do things other dwarves would not do and so on. Basically, it makes dwarves (and other nonhuman races who share this sort of uniformity) just as bland and uninteresting - they are just bland and uninteresting in a way that is slightly different from normal. But still bland and uninteresting.

There were indeed no James Dean dwarves in my old campaign. We simply have different tastes in demi-humans, and that's all right.

 

[Storm Raven]

There were indeed no James Dean dwarves in my old campaign. We simply have different tastes in demi-humans, and that's all right.

How uninteresting then. Instead of humans in funny suits, you've just made them generic charicatures in funny suits. I fail to see this as an improvement. You apparently don't even have Pierson Puppeteer type oddball insane cases to spice up their blandness.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

But don't think that was for 14th level clerics and wizards though. If you look at the level ranges, what they actually meant was "this module is for 10th level paladins, 11th level fighters and wizards, and 14th level thieves who adventure together because of the wonky experience point tables".

And 9th level druids, and you could subtract a level or two if your character was a dwarf, and then you've got to rebalance for the size of the party (7-9 players was suggested as optimal for D1-3, but there's obviously a huge difference between 7 players and 9!) and its number of henchmen and whether the group's got any exceptionally useful magic items and so on and so on ad infinitum ad nauseam.

It's a case of "engage brain while deciding your group's ready for this."

S1's definitely for 14th level clerics and wizards, and works well with higher. See the pregens listing below.

And what class was unlimited advancement for virtually every demi-human race? Yep, the thief. So the "level limits" really didn't impact the PCs much, even if they were going on these adventures, since they were high enough that most demi-humans wouldn't have hit them yet before starting the adventure.

Well, providing all the demi-humans are thieves or multiclassed, yes.

Note also that these were the highest level adventures ever produced for 1e AD&D.

No they weren't. WG6 is for 14-19. H1 is for 13-17. H2 is for 16-18. H3 is 17-20. H4 is 18-100. And there were more than a few others in the 10-14 range (CB1-2, RS1, and I think those execrably bad Lankhmar conversions were too.) A fair few for the 9-12s as well (EX1-2, WG5 etc.)

Even other modules in the "S" series were given for much lower levels - 5-10 for White Plume Mountain, and 6-10[/i] for the Lost Caverns of Tjoscanth. For 1e, the GDQ series and two of the S series comprise the almost the entirety of modules with recommended levels higher than 10. That's hardly worthwhile support for your argument.

You're talking as if the S-module series was the high-level one, and that's unwarranted. The high-level ones were called "H".

They were also originally intended as tournament modules with prefabricated characters, not characters who were part of an ongoing campaign starting at 1st level and working their way up to the challenges (contrary to the way you claim that 1e AD&D was written to be played).

No they weren't. You can tell the tournament modules because, like A1-4 or C1-2 or others of their ilk, they have "Tournament" written on the front and a tournament scoring system.

It's true that the original characters to play the adventures were included in G1, and in slightly different form, in later printings of D1-2. It's also true that S1 included a wide variety of sample characters. Those were intended to give alternative options to the group, rather than necessarily to say that they were characters that SHOULD be used; and they served as a good benchmark against which to evaluate the actual party.

In fact, I think it's fair to say that those 1978-1979 modules were remarkably non-prescriptive about how the group should approach them (own characters, pregens, whatever).

And look at the prefabricated characters - a range of demi-humans, and humans, all within the suggested level ranges for the modules. How is this possible if the level limits are such a worthwhile brake on demi-human accessibility?

Let me see now...

G1 pregens: Human Mage 12, Human Thief 13, Human Cleric 12, Human Fighter 14, High Elf Fighter/Mage 5/8, Human Cleric 9, Dwarf Fighter 9, Human Mage 9, Half-Elf Ranger 9.

3 demihumans out of 9 characters (about the right range). Our dwarf fighter is right on the level cap. Our elf's got a little scope to advance but his fighter abilities are sadly depleted... our half-elf ranger is on the level cap. And the humans are generally a fair bit higher than the demi-humans.

S1 pregens: Human Mage 14, Human Cleric 14, Human Paladin 12, Human Ranger 13, Elf Fighter/Mage 5/11, Dwarf Fighter 9, Halfling Thief 11, Dwarf Fighter/Thief 7/8, Human Cleric 9, Half-Elf Cleric/Fighter/Mage 5/7/6...

Seeing a pattern here?

1e broke well before 14th level. More like about 9th-10th level where hit dice stopped increasing, most classes stopped getting any kind of new special abilities, and save and to hit bonuses reached the point where almost anything was easily saveable or hittable.

I'm afraid I think you're wrong about this too.

The bits of 1e that most people seem to remember best are the S1/GDQ group. They were certainly the best-selling D&D modules ever produced, with some of them edging up towards 100,000 sold. How do you explain their undoubted success and popularity in terms of a system that should have broken several levels earlier?

If you take the structure of 1e as a whole, then the hodge podge patchwork mess of stiched together rules becomes apparent, and the complete lack of any kind of workable system of "balance" or "equity" becomes readily apparent.

Absolutely. Couldn't agree with you more about this. If you want "balance" or "equity", then 1e isn't the game for you.

 

[DonTadow]

I am a big proponent for odd class/race combinations; halfling barbarian, gnome paladin, half-orc paladin of lathander, dwarf rogue. However, if something is too outrageious and goes against the race established in the setting, I often ask the player to provide me a characters background as to why the warforged is psionic.

 

[Aaron L]

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.

And yet oddly enough, that's exactly the way we played 1E for 10 years.

 

[lukelightning]

One positive aspect of racial level limits is that the DM can remove them as a plot device: "You have reached the pinnacle of magic as an elf, but legends tell of a lost temple in the heart of the Jungle of Doom that contains the lost lore of the mighty Elf Archmages of the ancient past..."

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

And yet oddly enough, that's exactly the way we played 1E for 10 years.

Presumably you feel 3e is an improvement?

 

[Particle_Man]

It is clear that the view of non-humans that my group of old crusties and myself has is considerably different than the views of many in this thread.

In my previous campaign, it wouldn't have been unusual for a dwarf to spend 20 years doing nothing but contemplating the weird beauty of a system of natural caves. An NPC dwarf can do that no problem, but for a PC dwarf it would be impossible: "Hey, guys. My dwarf character is going to spend 20 campaign years alone in some caves, so he'll be back with the group in 2017." A PC dwarf has to pretty much act like all the other PCs: go on adventures in order to acquire experience points and treasures. The non-humans in my campaign world didn't do that. That sort of behavior was solely human behavior.

Some in this thread have basically asked me, "Why do you as Judge think you are qualified to role-play anything, but your players are qualified to role-play only humans?" The above paragraph illustrates my answer. Any Judge can have his NPCs do incomprehensible (from a human point of view) things, such as having an elf NPC spend 300 years getting personally acquainted with each single flower in a mountain meadow. No player could possibly play a PC that way. If a player did in fact do that, it would be a de facto retirement.

I'm curious. Would your dwarves and elves continue to stand there and contemplate beauty if orcs attacked them, or would they defend themselves? Because the latter is an obvious adventure hook: "orcs are attacking everywhere and we must band together with these humans to repel them".