What was the reason for Demihuman level and class limits in AD&D?

[Aus_Snow]

Ugh. Hideous rules, those.

As for why, well yes, it's truly a clumsy, ugly, ill-considered 'balancing' measure. Sometimes, rules in RPGs are simply bad. This is not automatically a condemnation of an entire system, say, but yes - not everything is 'just different' and all that PC crap.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

The reason for demihuman level limits is (and i don´t mean that aggressive or as an attack) a lack of flexibility in thinking. A lack of being able to create rules for class advancement and then not apply them to all people / races which exist in the world in the same way.

Once you have a PC/non-PC split and accept that classes are only balanced for use by PCs (not for all people in the world), the problem that causes demihuman level limits to be necessary vanishes. Of course, this expects that you think "PCs are really different from Joe Shmoe", and that is not that old-school.

Or the tl;dr version: not aknowledging that AD&D class-advancement made only sense in the intra-party-context and NOT when used in the world as a whole, led to the need for demihuman level limits.

 

[Runestar]

None really. It just means that prior to lv15, no one will ever play a human. Then when the campaign would exceed that lv, you retire your existing character and reroll as a human.

 

[Mircoles]

I remember from the games back then, that we just ingnored the level caps.

 

[Particle_Man]

Once you have a PC/non-PC split and accept that classes are only balanced for use by PCs (not for all people in the world), the problem that causes demihuman level limits to be necessary vanishes. Of course, this expects that you think "PCs are really different from Joe Shmoe", and that is not that old-school.

In some ways, PCs were different . . . they had fewer class options than NPCs. In 1e, many demi-humans could be clerics, but dwarves, elves and gnomes were NPC clerics not PC clerics, and halfings were NPC druids, not PC druids. This cap got lifted with the Unearthed Arcana.

 

[Hereticus]

What was the reason for Demihuman level and class limits in AD&D?

Does anyone know why? The only thing I could think of was that Gygax and Co. wanted to make a human-centric world, and simply made a game mechanic which limited the power demi-humans could achieve.

This was one of the first rules to be thrown out.

 

[amysrevenge]

I remember from the games back then, that we just ingnored the level caps.

Yup.

 

[Olli]

well, at least in BECMI, if you played low-level games, the elf was always the superior choice (spells like a MU, weapon and armor selection of a fighter and d6 HD). If one could reap up the necessary attributescores, there was no reason not to play an elf!!!!! The same does NOT apply to dwarves and halflings, as they were not much bettter then the fighter respectively!!!!!

Olli

 

[Ariosto]

Keefe the Thief: That NPCs were not bound by the same rules was understood. See the DMG section on expert hirelings, for example, or humanoid spell-casters, or the NPC-only clerics. Going back to OD&D, druids were presented first as "monsters". The rules for PCs were designed to produce the effects they did. Read that bit by Gygax about the composition of high-level adventuring parties; it was clearly the intended result.

Of course, it is not necessary for your game world to be so. The guidelines in the books are more descriptive than prescriptive. The reasoning behind them -- and behind the urge to conformity in major systems -- is laid out. As Dungeon Master, you are the final arbiter of your campaign.

Absent any evidence, I cannot take seriously claims that Gygax did not understand what he was doing, that he really had quite different goals but could not think of how to attain them. That you or I might have other goals is not relevant to the question. (I would note that Gygax went on to design two other RPGs distinctively different both from each other and from AD&D.)

 

[mmadsen]

What's fascinating about level limits is how they work almost perfectly against what seems reasonable to most people. If anything, you should have a hard time finding any nigh-immortal elves under the level limits.

Perhaps the meta-game rule should have been that you weren't allowed to play an elf until you retired another character of that (high) level...