What is wrong with race class limits?

[RFisher]

Actually, it would likely surprise you. Look at a game system like GURPS where you pay for your nonhuman racial abilities (it costs points to take a racial package). Lots of players play nonhuman characters in game systems like that, even though they gain no mechanical advantage by doing so.

I knew one player who absolutely refused to play human characters. He said he played role-playing games to take the role of someone different from himself, & that this was an important part of it.

At one point, though, I got so annoyed by the imbalances created by Gurps Fantasy Folk that I declared (after this particular player had begged me to GM since the job most often fell to him) that you could create your own race, but everyone had to play by the same rules. e.g. You couldn't take the discount on attributes by using the Fantasy Folk rules. You couldn't take the racial discount on Toughness found in the Fantasy Folk rules. Basically, if something in Fantasy Folk duplicated something in the Basic Set, you had to pay the Basic Set price.

He had a fit about that. It finally came down to me saying that this had been a problem when I GM'd before & we do it this way or he could take the GM chair back.

I had a lot more respect for the guy who admitted he min/max'd than for the one who claimed his min/max'ing was all about playing a role. (^_^)

Demihumans in Gurps (3/e at least) sometimes do have mechanical advantages, & sometimes our true motivations may be more than we are willing to admit, even to ourselves.

I'm not really trying to disagree with you, SR. But your comments just reminded me of this anecdote.

You make it sound like this is the Bible, and we need to go back to the original Greek and Hebrew to understand how God intended us to play D&D.

Not that I necessarily want to play the game the way Gygax intended, but my own gaming has been a lot more fun since I've made a concerted effort to try to understand how Gygax intended the game to be played, how he played it, & how he does play it.

The method Gygax chose was race and level limits. But that doesn't do much to solve the problem.

I don't think the race/class restrictions (which was the original topic of this thread) were so much for balance as for flavor. Gygax may have presented D&D and AD&D as generic fantasy rules, but he wrote them mostly as house rules for his own Greyhawk campaign. (Although, I believe Steve Marsh said he thought AD&D was more of Law Shick's house rules than Gary's.) To some extent it was gamish--option A opens up options X & Y while option B opens up options Z & Q--but I don't really think it was about balance.

The level caps might have been about balance, but I agree from experience that they failed. For most of us, I also don't think they have any bearing on Gygax's stated intention of creating a human-centered world. How the DM describes & plays the world is what determines that, & he can depict a dwarf dominated world just as well with level caps as without them.

Though, I am starting to think that there may be some truth to what Geoffrey said. The OD&D level limits were severe enough that they could have served as a sort of balance then. As time went on, though, perhaps Gary no longer cared much about that & so let the caps make their continual rise. He just didn't care to completely open the flood-gates either. (& Zeb--despite the many changes he did make--had a limit on how much change he wanted to make. I guess he saw bigger fish than the level caps. Although he did provide workarounds. As did Mentzer.)

 

[RFisher]

Part of it is age and maturity

I wonder how large a part it is.

For me, 100%. I think.

(edited to add Piratecat's quote for additional context)

 

[Hussar]

I dunno about the age a maturity thing. While I might be older, half the people I game with are under 20. Clarity of writing accounts for an awful lot when reducing table arguements.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

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.

I disagree. The first module published for 1e? S1, character levels 10-14. The first series? GDQ, character levels 9-14.

1e does begin to "break" past level 14 or so -- in the sense that human mages and clerics outshine other characters to a deleterious degree -- and it was supposed to take about a year (if you played weekly) to get to name level.

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?

Its purpose is to impact player choices, though, not actual play.

Truth is that 1e makes very few concessions to "balance" at individual levels. The only concession to "balance" is if you take the structure as a whole.

A 1st level cleric, who with even moderate stats has three times the number of spell slots as a mage and a selection of 12 spells instead of 4, also uses the same combat table as a fighter and gets better saving throws... but still, not everyone played clerics. We were prepared to start fighters or mages or (for some people) thieves because we knew they'd suck less later on.

 

[Geoffrey]

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.

 

[Storm Raven]

I disagree. The first module published for 1e? S1, character levels 10-14. The first series? GDQ, character levels 9-14.

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 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.

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

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). 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?

1e does begin to "break" past level 14 or so -- in the sense that human mages and clerics outshine other characters to a deleterious degree -- and it was supposed to take about a year (if you played weekly) to get to name level.

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.

Its purpose is to impact player choices, though, not actual play.

If it doesn't impact actual play, players won't regard it as anything that will impact their choices. Hence, the level limits were useless for their intended purpose.

Truth is that 1e makes very few concessions to "balance" at individual levels. The only concession to "balance" is if you take the structure as a whole.

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.

 

[Geoffrey]

I'm reminded of Gimili's words about the caverns of Helm's Deep:

"My good Legolas, do you know tha the caverns of Helm's Deep are vast and beautiful? There would be an endless pilgrimage of Dwarves, merely to gaze at them, if such things were known to be. Aye indeed, they would pay pure gold for a brief glance!

"...immeasurable halls, filled with an everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools, as fair as Kheled-zaram in the starlight.

"And, Legolas, when the torches are kindled and men walk on the sandy floors under the echoing domes, ah! then, Legolas, gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities, such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come. And plink! a silver drop falls, and the round wrinkles in the glass make all the towers bend and waver like weeds and corals in a grotto of the sea. Then evening comes: they fade and twinkle out; the torches pass on into another chamber and another dream. There is chamber after chamber, Legolas; hall opening out of hall, dome after dome, stair beyond stair; and still the winding paths lead on into the mountains' heart...

"No dwarf could be unmoved by such loveliness. None of Durin's race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the springtime for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap - a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day - so we could work, and as the years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock. And lights, Legolas! We should make lights, such lamps as once shone in Khazad-dum; and when we wished we would drive away the night that has lain there since the hills were made; and when we desired rest, we would let the night return."

(from the chapter entitled "The Road to Isengard" in The Two Towers, emphasis mine)

Imagine a PC dwarf spending his whole life making a single small chip in rock per day. It's a wondrous and moving thing for an NPC dwarf to do, but would be unparalleled boredom for a PC dwarf.

 

[Storm Raven]

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.

Except that this sort of behaviour isn't incomprehensible. And by assuming that all elves (and dwarves) would behave in the same way, you are doing the same thing you accuse "bad" players of doing - you are simply coming up with your own stereotype for nonhuman behaviour (and claiming it to be incomprehensible to humans, when it really isn't) and then imprinting it wholesale on all the members of a race.

 

[billd91]

(from the chapter entitled "The Road to Isengard" in The Two Towers, emphasis mine)

Imagine a PC dwarf spending his whole life making a single small chip in rock per day. It's a wondrous and moving thing for an NPC dwarf to do, but would be unparalleled boredom for a PC dwarf.

Sure, that may be fine for an NPC to continue to do... it might also be part of a PC dwarf's backstory and something he talks about while on the road.
But you're missing some very important logic.

The reason the dwarf or other demi-human (or even a human) is a PC adventurer is because they feel it's their time to do something else right now, either out of necessity or design. Just like most humans in a campaign world are just going about their daily business of raising crops, making crafts, and whatever, most dwarves in the campaign world are going about their own aspects of daily life. Adventurers, by their nature, are different in all races. They've chosen or feel driven to do something else.

And maybe after they've spent a little time doing the adventurous things they'll be doing as PCs, maybe they will want to go back to contemplating the natural minerals in the caves and bringing our their beauty bit by bit. None of that has to go on during the phase of their lives they spend adventuring. Otherwise, one would expect the adventuring to be pretty boring.

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

 

[Storm Raven]

Imagine a PC dwarf spending his whole life making a single small chip in rock per day. It's a wondrous and moving thing for an NPC dwarf to do, but would be unparalleled boredom for a PC dwarf.

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.