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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 8328533" data-attributes="member: 7635">Race-as-class is barely a blip in the D&D game.OD&D (1974) didn't have a "dwarf" class; they only allowed dwarves to advance as fighting-men. Ditto halflings. Elves could pick either fighting-man OR magic-user and switch between the two from adventure to adventure.The Holmes Basic Book (1977) allows dwarves and halflings to be either fighting-men or thieves*, and elves to be multi-classed fighting-men/magic-users, splitting XP between both (the first multi-class character). * Although they referred you to the not-yet-produced AD&D game for this. AD&D (1977-79) of course kept race and class separate and added greater options (in the form of additional multi-class options or new race and class options).The Revised Basic game (Moldvay 1981 and Metzner 1983) were the ones to go back to the drawing board and make "dwarf", "elf" and "halfling' a single class to represent race. While that was the background for B/X and later BECMI, it's worth noting that Basic itself couldn't be bothered to stick to its own rules, as the Gazetteers line for Mystara introduced variant classes like dwarf cleric, elf warrior, or elf shaman. Later still, the Princess Ark gave us races (rakasta, lupin, half-elf) that just straight-up used the "human" classes fighter/magic-user/cleric/thief effectively making them race and class separate like in AD&D.Of Course, AD&D 2nd edition (1989) and all subsequent WotC versions (3e through 5e) kept race/class separate.So, race-as-class existed in one strand of D&D that existed from 1981 through 1995, and not even consistently during that line. OD&D through Holmes to AD&D kept the concept of race/class separate from 1974 through today. If anything, it's the weird-aberrant strain of design and a gross oversimplification of what was the demihuman rules during the 1970's. It was never the dominant design strategy; it just feels that way since most of us started with some version of the Basic Rules in the 80's or 90's and then bought a Player's Handbook later which differed in design.</blockquote>

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