Should some Class-Race combinations be forbidden?

Of course they are, who would think otherwise? And real Aryans have no problem with homosexuality anyway

 

But merely being homosexual doesn't make you fagulous.

 

I don't consider the original (Tolkienesque that were transferred to D&D) elves fagulous.

 

Anyway, do think about another aspect.

Restrictions are a big part of what make RPGs fun. Losing access to some serious privileges is what makes the whole process of deciding your character more interesting.

For this reason, in the Neverwinter Nights games, paladins don't become blackguards because of alignment restrictions. Nothing short of a cheat code would help your paladin become a blackguard. That's good, because it blocks you off from the most obvious Class/Prestige combination. For the same reason, many would make their Half Orcs as Bards so that they can become Red Dragon Disciples. It's a very powerful combination. But that is not restricted. Yet, it should be, partly to deny you such power and partly because orcs should not make good bards.

 

No.

Paladins cannot become Blackguards because it wouldn't make any sense lore-wise. And a half-orc RDD is no more powerful than a human one, or a dwarf one, or an elven one, etc.
1. The slight str-advantages are pretty irrelevant by the time you've finished the transformation to half-dragon.
2. Even if they weren't the penalty to cha (of which you need at least 13 cha IIRC for Bard) eats up the bonus to str...

You are grasping straws.

And Tolkienesque elves were not transferred to D&D. D&D got the fagulous elves.

 

You don't seem to get it.

You require some further tweaking.

I don't know how it works in NWN, but shouldn't alignment shift sometimes? A character cannot be blackguard and paladin at the same time (makes sense, at least as far as this whole alignment shit does), but fallen paladin becoming blackguard should get some extra stuff (compensating for levels sunk into paladin). At least that's what rules say.

Good bards, or any bards?

The reason why most such restrictions are derpy is that there are many, easily conceivable misfit characters that are precluded by them. If you absolutely must have such restriction in D&Desque system, they should operate differently to make any sense - for example by allowing only multiclass characters but not single class ones, for example a dwarf could be a fighter mage or cleric mage, but not full mage.

 

An interesting take on it would be that all characters of a given race start with a few levels of a particular class. So all dwarves are inherently level 3 fighters, by virtue of their society and upbringing. Orcs are all level 2 barbarians. Elves are all Ranger 2 / Sorceror 1. Anyone can multiclass from there, but Orcs are going to make the best barbarians the most easily since they aren't 'wasting' levels elsewhere.

This would require some rebalancing to put this sort of thing in line, but it'd make a lot of sense in many ways, especially for longer lived races or those living in much more demanding societies. The idea of a 130 year old elf that can't wield a sword, play an instrument or forage for food any better than a 15 year old human always struck me as really wrong. Even if you're a merchant or craftsman, after that long you're going to have some experience in the basic shit your culture does a lot of and/or expects of you unless you're a major outlier.

 

DraQ

Well, I think Wyrmlord does have a point that restrictions are part of what makes roleplaying fun. It is just that they also should be fleshed out in some way, like by the game's "lore" or by specific rules on how to deal with them, or whatever. Otherwise, they look just dumb and unfun. For example, dwarves that can't be mages, like in AD&D, or that have a lot of trouble being mages, like in the new Hackmaster, are explained by the race's inherent resistance to magic, which affects other stuff too, like their high saving throw bonus according to their constitution. In fact, Hackmaster could have taken another step and made it harder for a dwarf to be a mage the higher his constitution is.

But a really good example of how context is important is the racial level limit from AD&D. Almost everyone I know loath those rules, claiming they make no sense and seem to be there just to make your non human character gimped. But if you take the rules in the context that different classes have different power curves and that you are not supposed to have a "one and only character", but rather have a stable of PCs which you use, sometimes using more than one at a time, it makes a lot more sense. Each character is a bet. A fighter is a safer, but less rewarding bet. An elven M.U. is riskier, but yields more if you can make him go through it all. Human M.U. is the riskiest option, but the only one with which you can get the coveted 9th level spells. Random attributes also make a lot more sense then. Even things that look like very bad bets, like halflings, can be useful in such a situation. They are a very specialized role, but if you have others, you might be able to afford to make a halfling warrior/thief.

So, my point is that restriction must make sense in a context, and this context is what will tell you how to go around or change these restrictions, or if any such methods should exist at all. Are bards barred from your orcish character because orks don't have a musical/religious tradition? Then have your ork cleric pick an instrumment and begin questing to bring about such tradition. Did you want to make a halfling M.U. in AD&D 1st edition? Then work with the DM what kind of restrictions are necessary to make this bet fun, balanced and unique. Just don't name him Willow.

 

Maybe elves are just retarded/fagulous?

RPGs are built from restrictions, except restrictions should be provided by the mechanics rather than being restrictions from the mechanics.

Look at your example:

AD&D case is simple, nonsensical restriction from mechanics. It makes no sense - what if an intelligent dorf tried to become a wizard really hard for whatever reason? is an unanswered question in the context of this mechanics.

Now, bonus to resistance at the cost of malus to casting abilities *does* make sense. It answers such question. It would be even better if such combination, while restricted compared to non-dorf wizard would open up some unique opportunities due to it's unique resistance. Sort of like Wiz8 can surprise the player with ways seemingly crap (at least numerically) race and class combo turns out to be something uniquely powerful despite being relatively poor at its primary function.

But how does that make any sense? Shouldn't an elf have natural advantage when it comes to such experience cap, due to longevity, if nothing else?

The thing is such restriction doesn't make sense. They may be balanced in gamist terms, but sure as fuck don't make sense in-world.

Want.

 

Well, I love this approach too, using functions instead of special cases, but I don't see it as the only option. Take old D&D's system with very simple rules and jarring exceptions. Many people have taken these exceptions and smoothed them over with lore, making them make sense. If you work from the principle that the exceptions exist for a reason and try to make a cool reason for them, sometimes even suggesting ways to bypass such restrictions, it can make your gameworld full of interesting details. But yes, this kind of thing doesn't happen in a computer game, only on P&P. Still, if you are working with a P&P license, you can get away without explaining a lot of crap that gets explored in the tabletop game itself.

Well, depends a lot on what kind of game you are playing. I do agree that saying "Well, he is out of luck, then." is pretty boring. If the focus of the game is lore, then there should be a lore explanation, like "magic comes from a foreign culture and dwarves are awfully xenophobic", so the player can go and try to make the one dwarf who will break this rule. If the game is more focused on challenging the players, and the combo is too powerful, make the system have a "gotcha" so it isn't, etc. Of course, these different types of reasons will usually be all mixed up.

Sorry, I was separating the reasons by type. The best games obviously take all these types of consideration in mind.

By the way, DraQ, maybe I am repeating myself, but I really think you would enjoy the pencil and paper game Runequest. It is a very detailed world with a wonderful engaging lore. It uses the same world as King of Dragon Pass and Ken Rolston used to be the Rune Czar for it before he made Morrowind. Yes, there are anthropomorphic ducks, but if you read it enough to get through then, I really think you will like it.

 

Fagulous should be the official Codex Word Of The Month.

Personally, I prefer having a completely open character creation that uses point-buy, and if it uses classes the decision should either be completely free, or using one of those "lifepath" types of character creation. Though personally I consider class-less or class-lite systems better due the principle of flexibility, and the fact that I find pnp dungeon crawling to which tightly balanced classes are best suited for to be mind-bogglingly boring and pointless.

Also, on the subject of commoner party RPGs... I have been in a few of those, but usually there's gotta be some basic principles: 1) very, very low amount of combat or no combat at all, 2) preferably one-shot, 3) semi-serious or straight-up lulz game. One I once took part in I was pretty much just a ringleader of an Orcish workers' union that was generally just fooled by the gnomish PC, while being ineffective and bad workforce. I guess another, more serious "commoner" game was when the GM wanted to run Taiga (a post-apocalyptic game where somehow all gunsmithing skill in the world has been lost), and we were part of a large desert bandit gang. The game wouldn't have really been good for a long-running campaign due to the PCs really having no motivation for such, much less ability for, but it turned out to be a pretty good game about petty thugs strongarming and beating up anyone weaker than they are if they have something they need and avenging "gang honor" (the hook was that one member of the gang had been killed in town, so we were sent looking for the killers to show everyone not to fuck with us) with collateral damage, and generally acting unpleasant.

 

Sure, half-orcs have a charisma penalty, which makes them crappy bards, but since when has a lack of natural talent or aptitude stopped someone from becoming a bard, anyway? The REAL WORLD is full of these people!

 

And sure enough, some of them do become half dragons:

 

"Species" is what the old RuneQuest RPG used but the reason they did this I think was because they had separate entries for "Culture" and such. "Race" in a RPG designates not only "species" but also culture. D&D is a poor example to illustrate this because they get a lot of this wrong(i.e. 'Barbarian' is not and should not be a 'class', it is a RACE. barbarians can be of MANY classes themselves such as Fighters, Rogues, Priests/Clerics, Mages, Rangers, etc.) but ideally a game might have several 'Human' "races", each of which may be analogous to real earth cultures such as 'Vikings', 'Feudal Japanese', 'Arabs', 'Africans' etc. and each of which may be eligible for various "classes". A human race modeled after Feudal Japan might be the only race that can play "Samurai" as a character class. One modeled after somewhat primitive or rural 'barbarians' might be able to play "Shamans" and "Berserkers" but cannot play "Clerics/Priests" and "Paladins" as these latter are for more 'civilized' folk.

 

Race should be tied to innate traits, class to learned skills. Culture used to be a hardcoded aspect of race, but the multikult has diminished that.

 

That's more or less the equivalent of "mods will fix it".

It's also shit due to not being an explanation. An explanation involves telling me how and why he would be out of luck.

But what if your dorf is an outcast/misfit for some reason?
Hell, as painfully cliched as it is, "X raised by Y" is an excellent test case for this type of rules. If they can't handle it, they are not flexible enough.

Precisely, player should be allowed to do that.

 

My most favourite DnD campaign was one which was fairly standard in the adventurer set-up. But the thing is, I really enjoyed playing the fish-out-of-water type that my Grey Orc Monk (Lawful Good no less). Particularly fun was that because he was raised in a not-Shaolin monastery by humans, he had absolutely NO IDEA what real orcs were like, so he had formed this romanticized "noble savage" image of "his people" in his own head ("wild" orcs, and orcs in general, were rare in civilized parts of the game-world). Particularly fun was how he kept lecturing about things like tribe honor, warrior ethics and such (obviously all just his own imagination) to this younger Half-Orc Rogue in the party. Another interesting aspect is that in the end the Grey Orc Monk was the moral backbone of the party, and in the end ended up stopping the aforementioned Rogue who ended up turning into a spider-monster due to his inability to make any decisions on his own (he'd been bossed around in secret by this Lloth cult, but the character could never commit himself to pick a side between his party and the cult, and ended up turning into cursed half-spider-Gollum when he failed the last chance Lloth gave him).

Also, I enjoyed sneaking in Street Fighter moves in every opportunity I got. Every critical hit was usually this:

 

"I flip upside down and kick the cultist in the head!"

 

In a computer game, sure! But in PnP, it can be fun to start the game with only a couple of things known beforehand and flesh out the world as you explore it. In such a game, rather than explaining everything, the game and the setting should provide interesting, set pieces on which the players can build on.

No complaints there from me.

Yeah, and since now the restriction is something solid, breaking the rule may have a palpable price. What did the dwarf give up in order to do that? Although I could see a game where the GM might not want to have the PCs in such unique position, say, because he wished that such outcasts became so during play, rather than starting in such unique situation. Burning Wheel has this as a default assumption of its character creation system. Even there it isn't mandatory because the PC can take, for example, a trait that gives him half heritage of another race.

 

Race is for when you can have halfblood. Species for when you can not have them.

So do we have half human-half whatever? Yes? So human and whatever race is just races.

Do you have half elf- half orc? No? Mean elf and orc are two different species compared to each other.

Take that as a broad outline. There prolly will have exceptions, but I cant arse to care much more. Faggy dwarves, fagulous elves, whatever.

 

But then the option is still there, only available after chargen.

But what if elves and orcs are races relative to humans?

 

Read it again, chap. compared to each other.

ANd dont even think about sucking me into a nerdy discussion of genetic drifts between the lot of them. Fucking DnD, etc and etc...

 

In most settings, some class-race combinations should absolutely be forbidden if it makes sense to do so in the game world. Most of the time, characters that want to push the bounds are just shitty Mary-Sues anyway. "Lyldilian was a Sun Elf, but was such a unique snowflake that her graceful mannerisms forced the Council of Cold to reconsider their century-old policy of only admitting gnomes into the school of cryomancy. She went on to become the greatest cryomancer of all time. Did I mention that she was actually half dragon and that her eyes were very distinct because one was green and the other was yellow (a symbol of her dragonic heritage)?"

It's disgusting. But only offensive, to me, in such cases where it wouldn't make sense in the game world.

 

I saw the thread title and immediately wondered, why is this not in RetardoLand?

 

20 Eyes

Not necessarily. The important issue is that breaking these restrictions should have some kind of price. If you want to be the one knight in England who won't bow to any of the high king pretenders in Pendragon, go ahead! I doubt you will survive knighting, but if you want to try, you will at least get a fair shot.

Edit:

Removed stupid joke.