Should some Class-Race combinations be forbidden?

No class combination should be forbidden unless it is physically impossible for a member of a race to become that class member. There is nothing wrong with Orc bards (since when orc have aversion to playing instruments?) or Dwarf mage (they are already grumpy and rarely leave home so it's a perfect career choice).

 

That example is fine with me. My problem is with character's whose sole definition, or at least a huge chunk of it, is that they're 'different'. Stuff like "Sara was unlike most other human girls because she was able to channel the Martian mental abilities known only as the Star Force". It can work sometimes, but it usually leads to Biowarian-grade characters.

 

That's a problem of human retardation and their GM accepting it. An RPG system is like science in a way. No matter how good an application, you only need one human to bring forth the worst of it.

 

Ah, another worshiper at the altar of "It should be therefore it must be"... How long will you last, I wonder?

 

Where did you get that conclusion? The post I quoted and my answer were kinda specific.

 

I think laclongquan means that, since allowing for exceptional (as in, they are the exception to the norm) characters may be misused, it is frequently better to not give the option at all. Myself, I think that as long as the GM demands a price great enough to match any benefit (preferably one that hits where it hurts for the PC), retardation will be kept at bay.

 

So they are species except when they are races?

Foiled.

Dammit.

So you're describing a world where there no rogue cryomancers whatsoever?

No, it's disgusting, because it's on par with biowarian/neobethesdian larp - no consequences, no strings attached, no nothing.

If being non-gnome cryomancer would require taking optional "rogue mage" trait, which would result in (in this case) gnomish magehunters trying to capture or outright kill your ass as soon as you broke secrecy, being half dragon would make about every less than ethical alchemist or relevant -mancer willing to stab you in the kidney and extract rare ingredients from your body, while more mundane less than ethical characters (good part of the gameworld) would be simply content to sell information to interested parties, or whack you upside the head and deliver you to their door, and using eyepatch as disguise would impose hefty penalties on your depth perception and offensive/defensive capabilities including projectile spells, while forcing change of policy on School of Arcane Cryomancy would be possible, but require nearly divine levels of statwise and reputation based awesome, then, if such character is still breathing at this point, let the player have it - because instead of declared, LARPy awesome, we'd have display of actual in universe awesome worthy of recognition and player would've worked *hard* to earn it.

If the character stopped breathing shortly after chargen due to being pursued by about half of the gameworld for various reasons after showing their second eye in the tavern then casting frost-based spell to cool their beer? Then maybe the player will consider playing character less burdened by sheer awesome next time.

Problem?

 

lol, fantastic racism.

I don't see much problem in playing as special, unique characters (as long as it is not a Mary-Sue, and even then if nobody elsecares, then whatever). The alternative is boring-average-character-who-just-happens-to-keep-running-into-adventures-and-important-business-in-general-it-is-a-coincidence-honestly.

 

The truth is mate that if the player wants to create a retarded character he will even if you tell him "you play human rouge and that's it". If you forbade her from crating "human cryomancer" she will create "magical elven princess who escaped from the world of the future to save the past", there is no way of stopping her just with game mechanic. Good player won't do that sort of shit since he's not a baby so you don't need to keep him from hurting himself.

 

I'm not sure he meant that, but who knows? It seems a lot of conclusions can be made from half a sentence.

 

I wholeheartedly agree. This is also why I consider that whether a game is about storyfaggotry (good) or about surviving encounters (boring) is something you must be sure of beforehand. Average characters will only function in the latter kind of game because their mechanical function overrules all their other functions. This is why if were to write a character for a dungeon crawling campaign, his backstory would read like this:

"______ is a [race] [class]. He is a very typical member of his [race] and eventually trained as a [class]. Now he wants to adventure and find phat lewt."

If I was to play a storyfag game, then I'd first check the setting, ask GM about the kind of game we're having, then think of someone who can function as an interesting protagonist (as that's what PCs are supposed to be) to a story like that.

 

Sometimes it's fun to play a typical character, but in atypical circumstanses and succeed not because you are special from the start with destiny to guide you, but because of the clever play. You may become special, but 1-level PC don't has to be. The problem with "anything goes" attitude is that normally atypical and nonstandard (and interesting because of it) options become typical and boring because everyone are trying to be fucking special. So to be even more unique and special one has to turn to weirdness and retardation.

 

And if the game isn't an MMO this affects you how?

 

Should some Topic-Poster combinations be forbidden?

 

Another thing is that it's rather shallow to think of this purely in "physical" terms when thinking of the character. It's not really any better to avoid anything atypical than to go about making Good Ranger Drows. If anything, a big problem with being TOO typical is that the most important part of the character might be extremely bland... Which means his actual character. Another thing is that in a dungeon crawling game there really isn't any motivation to create a character who'd be an interesting character in any other medium. This is why I advocate the school of thought that it's not serving mortal danger and deadly challenge that measures up for being a good DM, it's fooling the players into thinking they were in mortal danger and facing a deadly challenge.

 

Wizardry 8 did class/race perfectly.

It is based on race starting stats and class requirements and if the combination didn't equate properly then you either got bonus attribute points or you had NEGATIVE attribute points that were automatically allocated each level up to reach the requirements of the class/race you selected. Only when you reached that point could you then begin to allocate your points where you wanted them. Brilliant.

 

Don't play with faggots, play with buddybros who want to strive for believable characters and know and like picked setting enough without need to roll with orcish dragon disciples. And really, how could you forbid anything in PnP? People still would homerule what they want.

IMO, in CRPGs unusual race/class combos should be encouraged by extra dialogue, items and other sorts of gimmicks. It is possible to turn players "weakness" for characters like that into your game's strength and make it more memorable. Example: in Arcanum, you can play as dwarf mage or techno elf, but dwarf would have a lot of trouble with mana, and in the hands of magic alighmented elf tech weapons roll for critical failure more often.
I also found Mazzy Fentan from BG2 an adorable character. I think that, if designer allows something instead of forbidding it, and makes world to react to that choice player made, it would turn into better design in a long run.

 

The majority of the time it seems people's opinion in these discussions is oriented around a roleplaying system that they were first familiarized with. Indeed, something you may or may not have noticed about tabletop gamers is that they will often start insisting that all games should be more like the game they first fell in love with, usually without even being aware that they are doing so.

I'm of the opinion that there's a sort of 'brain damage' that takes place when you learn your first tabletop rules system. The principles provided therein provide a sort of metric that you begin to weigh other games against. As you become more familiar with the game, you learn how to best play the game and what kinds of scenarios it represents well, so on and so forth. Then you discover a new game, learn the rules, but you can't help but feel like it's full of mistakes. These classes aren't balanced, the players die too easily, they can't influence the world around them in a meaningful matter, what do you *mean* that my character will learn skills that I don't want him to? So on and so forth, you can find a lot 'wrong' with any system you look at. But, maybe, if you invest time in it and begin to learn a new set of nuances, putting aside your sense of what 'should be' with regard to games, you realize that the very definition you had of 'tabletop gaming' will begin to change quite immensely. You might begin to realize that balance isn't important, not all characters need to be able to influence the world meaningfully, and sometimes it's awesome when your character ends up a eunuch because of bad luck.

I think there's no reason to say that races can't be any class they wish within the context of certain games. Within the context of other games, it would make sense though. There's no 'one size fits all' way of handling it. It's largely about the roles that race and class play in your game.

However, if we're just talking about D&D, I do tend to favor something in between the way that 3rd and 2nd edition handle it. That is, I feel that when representing npcs within the world, it makes sense that fighters, clerics, and thieves/rogues are going to be a part of *any* society. There's no onus on the player to come up with a colorful idea for why any character chose any one of those professions, regardless of race. Now, of course, I also tend to favor the idea, that in reference to D&D at least, PCs are exceptional people by definition and don't fit into the mold. So, it makes sense if a player wants to select something like a dwarven druid, tiefling paladin, or a halfling barbarian. That said, I do feel that making such a decision *does* lend responsibility to the player to come up with a good reason for how that came about, that's believable within setting agreed upon by the players and GM alike. In addition to that, I don't feel that it's purely up to the GM to decide what does and doesn't make it's way into the game. I think that's something that everybody playing should have some say in, even if the final word does indeed come down to the GM. The more incredible the character concept, the stronger the consensus needs to be amongst those playing. If somebody wants to play a character that's a king of a small country, then I would say that's cool as long as everyone at the table agrees it's cool.

That said, I also think it adds a lot of fun to a game when the GM takes these wishlists and then uses them to make life a pain for the players. So you want to be an orc king? Well, there's a lot of competition for that position and you're going to be dodging a lot more bullshit than the anonymous human fighter you keep company with. So on and so forth, it's really all about how the players and the GM make the best of what's brought to the table. There are interesting and boring dynamics to be had with munchkin drizzt do'urden wannabes and generic dwarven fighters alike.

 

I agree with the whole text. And I'll say it again. Most of the times, it's not the system that is wrong. It's the GM and the players that are. Especially the GM has the greatest responsibility.

In my games, you can try to be whomever the hell you want. If you want to play a weird character, you'd better do some very good explaining. I'm good at logic so, if it stands, I will let you. I will even try and bend the game's rules for you if it makes sense. But it has to make sense for the setting and you'll have to be ready to face the challenges.

Example: If any of you is familiar with 'Legend of the 5 Rings', you will understand exactly what I'm talking about. I had a player playing a Lion clan bushi(bushido is our religion because we are Samurai, the Tao is for fools). He wanted to be trained by the Dragon clan(the Tao is the way to go) for some obscure reason he made up to munchkin his character, in an advanced class called 'student of the Tao'(sort of like a mix of warrior/monk) that accepts almost anyone.

I could have made up a big number of in game reasons for why it doesn't "make sense" for him to go there and thus forbid it through his Daimyo. But I let him and he faced the consequences of a world with very strict rules of tradition and etiquette. His character, along with another player's, were the lead candidates to become the Lion Clan Champion, because of their lineage(they were cousins and their uncle was the Champion, with no children of his own) and talent.
Guess who became, after a lot of years, a mere ambassador to the Dragon Clan, living permanently in their lands? And who sent him there? The other character that eventually became the Champion.

So, this is a typical case of something that is allowed by the rules but could be forbidden. And how you can deal with it in-game, having the player make the choices and face the consequences, generate dynamics between the characters and keeping the game true to the setting. And if it is totally retarded, then you can forbid it from the beginning, before the character is even created. But you have to be versatile and creative. Too much forbidding is not good. Too much allowing is also not good.

 

I'm not sure about "perfectly" part, but it was indeed very good. One of the greatest parts of Wiz8 character system was that it not only allowed for numerically awful class-race combos, but sometimes made them shine in unique ways, making them more desirable for certain playstyles and party builds than numerically sound ones.

Being misfit also helps in inventing reasons why are you wandering around killing things and taking their stuff rather than doing whatever typical members of your race typically do.

Well, you could say that to each character choice there should be proper consequence.

 

Apparently, Mr. Gygax once said "backstory is what happens between levels 1 and 5". I really like that quote, and I think the system could really work better if what exactly your character is is left more open until you reach a higher level. I don't mean it should do away with classes, but this could fit well instead of 2nd edition's kits. Maybe something similar to the way knights and paladins worked in the first edition, where you could start as a fighter but make your way through the ranks. Except rather than a single,"upgrade" for a single class, we could have many different paths one could follow for different classes. I guess the concept is similar to 3e's prestige classes, but I would like to see these classes really differentiated (rather than being similar to base classes with a small differential), while the base classes should be kept to the base 4 only.

The reason this could work better, I think, is that frequently, when characters have detailed backstories, the most interesting thing that happened to them happened before play started. I think allowing for these things to become part of the game would make them more meaningful, and any consequences they might have more poignant and less arbitrary. also, if the most awesome thing in your character's back story happened during play, it will be much memorable, both to you and to the other players, and having loose threads show up and resolve during game will seem a lot more natural.

If you guys don't mind me commenting about the game I am making, this is actually something I am trying to make very important in it. As things are now, new characters begin by customizing an archetype, like time traveller, sorcerer or barbarian. Each of those has certain parameters with which to create the character, but still allow for some freedom. Once he is done, however, how he evolves becomes tied to what happens in the game, to your victories and blunders. This way, as your character evolves, he becomes mechanically, as well as narratively, unique.

 

That's part of understanding the difference between backstory and actual character. However, I am absolutely against the idea that a character's inner workings should only be defined during play only, the best characters have strong character already at the start of the game even without extensive backstory. Otherwise personality, thoughts and emotions of the character are an afterthought to mechanics.

 

Vaarna_Aarne
Well, obviously some situation must be defined before the start of the game. If the character starts up with no momentum whatsoever, things do tend to fall flat. All that I meant is that it can be fun (far from me to say this is the only way to play) to have characters who have yet to bloom. Pendragon does this very well by default, and Burning Wheel leaves it up to the player's choice. Have you played either of these, Vaarna?

 

Actually, I haven't. I know people who've tried it though, but I've never talked about either game system.

 

What is so Mary Sueish about manipulating DRM? It's not like a half decent coder can't figure it out alreddy.