Pools of Darkness - race lvl limits wtf?

[made]

So I'm craving some Goldbox and PoD being my favorite I fired it up and started making a party.

Dorf Fighter
Human Pala
H-E Ranger
H-E Cleric
Elf Mage
Human Mage

Now I'm looking at the class/race/lvl restrictions table in the adventurer's journal and I'm wondering if this is accurate? Dwarf fighter max lvl 9? Elf MU max lvl 11? I don't remember the restrictions being that severe, pretty sure Dwarf could get max lvl in fighter and thief, but maybe I'm mixing it up with Krynn series.

So is the table in the journal correct? Guess I'm forced to make an all-human party if I don't want to multi-class.

 

[Jaesun]

Do you understand the reason behind race level limits?

 

[octavius]

So is the table in the journal correct? Guess I'm forced to make an all-human party if I don't want to multi-class.

I'm afraid the table is correct.
Only humans are viable, with the exception of Dwarf or Half Elf Fighter/Thieves.

 

[made]

Do you understand the reason behind race level limits?

No, I actually never did. Why can a Krynn Dorf be a max lvl fighter but in FR he can't?

Thanks Octavius btw.

 

[Nope]

Gygax wanted to encourage Humanocentric settings, both for implied setting reasons (why aren't these immortal Elves running around lording it over everyone else was one of the examples he used iirc) and in play. This isn't that surprising given that his inspirations were primarily the works of fantasy pulp authors with a very human focus, that more often than not portrayed Elves and the like as near villainous, and that many additions like Halflings and Rangers were only added for marketing reasons. (he had this to say about LOTR only around a year before he died: "It was so dull. I mean, there was no action in it, [...] I'd like to throttle Frodo.")
Early versions of D&D's race-classes were often mechanically superior but with the caveat that you had a level cap. Which wasn't really the huge dealbreaker of later editions or combat centric CRPGs might make it into when most games never got to tenth level.
Around when the Unearthed Arcana splatbook for AD&D 1E (which is almost a new edition in it's own right) was released this was almost completely negated by heightening the level limits which then carried over into 2E which managed to make it even more toothless until it eventuallly was removed entirely with 3E.
3E did however make up for it by giving Humans a bit of an oomph with extra feats, whereas 2E Humans have little going for them beyond the ability to play Paladins if you can swing the extreme stat requirements. (and you'd probably be better off going for one of the munchkin demihuman multiclass kits in any case)

In short: Gygax wanted Demihumans to play second-fiddle to Humanity in D&D.

 

[Sceptic]

No, I actually never did.

If Jaesun's thinking what I'm thinking then you pretty much phrased it yourself in the OP:

Guess I'm forced to make an all-human party if I don't want to multi-class.

One way to balance the races out and not make humans completely useless. Personally I don't like it, and would've preferred another solution, but there it is.

 

[Metro]

PoD is your 'favorite' and you didn't remember there are race/level restrictions in FR games?

 

[KevinV12000]

I had totally forgetten about the old 1st Ed AD&D race level limits and their inclusion in the Gold Box games. Wow, that seems like one hell of a long time ago. If I remember correctly, what it meant in practice was that all of my non-human players were multi-classed, and it did seem to me under that system that a Fighter/Mage 6/6 was more or less as powerful as a fighter 12, especially if you had house rules, as we did, waiving certain armor restrictions on figher-classed non-human multi-classed characters.....

 

[Excidium]

Welcome to D&D, the heaven of arbitrary rules.

 

[made]

Thanks bros, makes more sense now.

DOS version has unbearable controls btw, had to reroll on Amiga - the way it's meant to be played.

 

[Albers]

Yet another reason why I hate 1st Edition AD&D (did they do this in 2nd edition too?). Nostalgia must be a big factor in people's love of the older rules because the silly restrictions were never fun for me.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Yet another reason why I hate 1st Edition AD&D (did they do this in 2nd edition too?).

Yes, but it was never implemented in a 2nd Ed CRPG.

 

[made]

Yet another reason why I hate 1st Edition AD&D (did they do this in 2nd edition too?). Nostalgia must be a big factor in people's love of the older rules because the silly restrictions were never fun for me.

The Krynn games have more sensible rules, and it's not a problem in the lower lvl FR games as you don't run into the lvl cap that easily.

 

[Sceptic]

The Krynn games have more sensible rules, and it's not a problem in the lower lvl FR games as you don't run into the lvl cap that easily.

IIRC it only starts becoming a problem in Silver Blades, and becomes a BIG one in POD.

I think Savage Frontier games may have it too but they're low to mid level so not an issue there either.

 

[Daemongar]

Yet another reason why I hate 1st Edition AD&D (did they do this in 2nd edition too?). Nostalgia must be a big factor in people's love of the older rules because the silly restrictions were never fun for me.

Why would anyone hate 1st Edition for racial limitations? Because it transferred poorly into video games? That's a pretty sad reason. Just how many people actually hit those racial limits, I would wonder.
Who wouldn't play a fighter/mu/cleric if there were no level caps? Would you have rather had them not have dual classing at all? You wouldn't need the rest of the party, for one thing.

 

[KevinV12000]

Right, these earlier Gold Box games weren't impacted since they were traditional level AD&D campaigns, what people today would consider "low." Of course, this was not odd to us back then and the thought of going from 1st level to 2nd within 30 minutes of game play had not really entered our minds at that point. I understand why levelling became the mania it is today, but it's hard not to miss the time when reaching a level was a milestone, but not the goal. The goal was to try to survive and overcome the issue at hand with the characters you had. And we ate bark during game sessions. And we liked it.

 

[PorkaMorka]

If you want a humanocentric campaign world (and you usually do), then you have to do something to keep the longer lived races from becoming too powerful and taking over the campaign world. Elves live for 1000 years, that's a lot of time to accrue experience points, so why aren't 95 out of the top 100 mages elves?

 

[20 Eyes]

Yet another reason why I hate 1st Edition AD&D (did they do this in 2nd edition too?). Nostalgia must be a big factor in people's love of the older rules because the silly restrictions were never fun for me.

First Edition Party:
Human - Fighter, Human - Cleric, Dwarf - Fighter, Elf - Magic User, Human - Thief

Current D&D Party:
Minotaur - Blade Twirler, DogMan - Fire Caller, Fairy Gnome - Tribal Berzerker, Robot - Chicken Bone Seer, DragonMan - Battle Shaper

I'll take the earlier editions, thanks.

 

[deuxhero]

^^ Because they are retarded?

No seriously, by the system mechanics they are, learning at roughly a fifth the rate, taking 110 years to learn "adulthood", plus 30 years to complete the wizard training that takes humans 6.


Too bad no fantasy writer would ever have the balls to state this.

 

[Crispy]

Gygax wanted...

In short: Gygax wanted Demihumans to play second-fiddle to Humanity in D&D.

Nice summary.

 

[Telengard]

In those earlier versions, humans were the statistical norm(al). The other races receive "bonuses" and "negatives" not to make them more powerful, but to show how much they deviated from being the norm(al). Level and level limits is much the same, measuring how much less power those who are not human can attain. Which is why they are DEMI-humans. As in, almost human, human enough for humans to work with, but not really human and normal. While your enemies are humanoids, meaning sub-humans.

On top of that, there used to be a thing called Name Level, achieved around level 9-11, which was when most adventurers were to retire.

 

[mondblut]

Actually, that has more to do with balancing out multiclasses than humanocentrism. Who would want to be an 11 level wizard when you could be a 10 level fighter/cleric/wizard at the same price?

3e dropped the xp-sharing multiclasses in favor of level stacking, so there was no reason to throttle the demihumans anymore.

 

[Raghar]

Play TOEE. Level 3 wiz, or level 2/1 Wiz/Figh? You might ask question who would like to have 14 level in multiclassing when he could have level 20 in one class and starting level 3 in another?

 

[Joonas]

I found out that MS-DOS version of Pools doesn't check racial level limits if the character is already past the racial max level in certain class. So if someone wants a high-level multi-classed character, it's possible for example by changing race to human (file or memory editing), then level-upping once past the limit and then changing the race back.

Just finished my Pool to Pools run-through. The final 3 Gothemens battles were insane (veteran-difficulty) even with multi-classed characters with the best loot. Can't imagine the frustration for someone with single-classed chars almost strolling through the game until this point and then this fight comes along. Not to even start with Dave's challenge. This game almost encourages powergaming, level grinding and cheating with items.

Importing the loot from Silver is a huge help. I didn't find that many +5 items in Pools but in Silver Blades there were at least two +5 swords, shield and a plate mail.

I've put out the MS-DOS save games here:
http://personal.inet.fi/koti/jhirvonen/gbc/

 

[octavius]

Just finished my Pool to Pools run-through. The final 3 Gothemens battles were insane (veteran-difficulty) even with multi-classed characters with the best loot. Can't imagine the frustration for someone with single-classed chars almost strolling through the game until this point and then this fight comes along. Not to even start with Dave's challenge. This game almost encourages powergaming, level grinding and cheating with items.
/

Funny, I finished it back in my Amiga days with single class, not maxed out characters with less than maximum possible Hit Points, on normal difficulty, with no grinding or cheating with items. Maybe the game adjusts the number of opponents and throws extra numbers at players with maxed out characters? I know Pool of Radiance did this.
Overall I found Dark Queen of Krynn to be a harder game.

I did a playthrough of the Pool games 1.5 year ago, but got burnt out part way through Pools of Darkness. I'll resume that game soon and then I'll see how difficult that end game really was. I don't remember much of it, but I do remember being disappointed that I didn't get to play Dave's Challenge since I wasn't able to solve a stupid riddle...