Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
In my B/X setting there are four races which all have access to the same four basic classes. Right now I simply ignore any kinds of racial modifiers at all and stats are based entirely on class.
B/X is a system for which many people have created huge numbers of racial classes and in particularly Adventurer Conqueror King recommends to give multiple classes for races instead of just one class for all nonhuman races. Simply ignoring race completely works well enough for me, but alternatively I could also make 16 custom racial classes for all the possible combinations. Even with classes being pretty simple this would still be a bit of work.
Has anyone experiences with the benefits of going through that trouble?
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Yora
In my B/X setting there are four races which all have access to the same four basic classes. Right now I simply ignore any kinds of racial modifiers at all and stats are based entirely on class.
B/X is a system for which many people have created huge numbers of racial classes and in particularly Adventurer Conqueror King recommends to give multiple classes for races instead of just one class for all nonhuman races. Simply ignoring race completely works well enough for me, but alternatively I could also make 16 custom racial classes for all the possible combinations. Even with classes being pretty simple this would still be a bit of work.
Has anyone experiences with the benefits of going through that trouble?
So, you're looking at say human, dwarf, elf and halfling. Then the human has four classes: warrior, magic-user, cleric, thief. The dwarf has lets say fighter, rune-priest, holy-dwarfer and treasure hunter. The elf has a ranger, healer, dargoon and scout. The halfling gets a sneak, burglar, pickpocket and assassin. That seems like a lot of work for not much gain.
Honestly the classes in most games are supposed to fairly generic archetypes that apply to any character. It is vastly less work to just go with a bunch of generic classes. At a certain point what's the difference between say a thief and burglar? Or a warrior, a scout, and a ranger? If you can come up with a solid mechanic difference sure, go nuts otherwise I honestly think its wasted effort.
If you want to have that I'd maybe make one class unique to each race, plus the generics. So only a human can be a paladin, only an elf can be a ranger, only dwares are rune-priest and only halflings can be buglars.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
If you're going to give each race a set of identical classes, there's no point in doing it that way, keep them as separate. If you use race-as-class, don't think of them as races at all. Just design the set of classes so that each one has its benefits and drawbacks and can fill a somewhat unique role in the game.
ACKS actually has a nice system for creating your own classes, in the player's companion.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
I'd look at the marginal utility of doing this. If you're going to create extra classes for each race, do you get a lot out of it? ACKS elf classes are essentially "Fighter/Mage" and "Thief/Mage", which works for them. How is it better to do this, rather than create racial abilities which modify the classes? Do your halflings NEED their own thief class, with its own take on things, or can you do just fine with a generic thief with "halfling" slapped onto it?
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
I've done it in Rules Cyclopedia, simply stated that each of the races could pick a class and that for demi-humans, they simply ignore any benefits directly tied to level. Works really well, though it's better for me to use AD&D anyway.
No balance issues or confusion issues at all as far as I can tell and it makes people happy to have a dwarf monk or whatever.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
Everything is directly tied to level. The only exceptions are what equipment the character is allowed to use.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
I don't think you need a class for every possible race/class combo, unless those combos will be significantly different from one another. I think it's better for each non-human race to occupy a certain niche or two. There's no point having multiple classes that are nearly identical.
If you want every race to be allowed access to every set of class skills, it's easier just to keep them separate. There's no reason that the races can't have their own level-dependent abilities, in addition to those of the class, if that's what you're doing. Maybe it's not quite as simplified as B/X, but that's a choice you can make.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Yora
Everything is directly tied to level. The only exceptions are what equipment the character is allowed to use.
They're allowed the equipment based on class. So, if you want an elf thief, he has the inherent traits of an elf (infravision, charm immunity, whatever, but not the combat maneuver garbage that elves get at high levels) and functions as a thief with those abilities.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
I am not really taken with giving each race its own classes either. Not having ran ACKS myself, creating race specific custom classes looks somewhat superfluous. B/X classes are so simple that there isn't really much to customize without making the four standard classes redundant. If you have unique magic systems or very unusual creatures you want to make available as PCs there's some point to it,but for dwarven clerics or halfling thieves it seems more or less irrelevant.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Yora
I am not really taken with giving each race its own classes either. Not having ran ACKS myself, creating race specific custom classes looks somewhat superfluous. B/X classes are so simple that there isn't really much to customize without making the four standard classes redundant. If you have unique magic systems or very unusual creatures you want to make available as PCs there's some point to it,but for dwarven clerics or halfling thieves it seems more or less irrelevant.
Then I wouldn't bother. A class or race should offer something unique, which I think is something that AD&D had problems with... namely, fighters and humans don't really have anything unique about them. Fighters are doing something everyone can do, but slightly better, while humans don't really have a mechanical uniqueness available to them, save at high levels or through convoluted rules.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
I'm not necessarily against the idea of doing this, but it runs into some major problems - specifically, humans. Given that humans don't really have their own niche and instead use some pretty generic classes (particularly the thief and fighter; cleric and magic user work as setting specific and human specific classes just fine) the classes created for other races are likely to get kind of weird around that design space. There are two ways to handle this:
1) Define the humans in setting a bit more tightly, and specialize the thief and fighter to fit.
2) Leave thief and fighter as is and as generic classes, but have distinct priest and mage classes. There's a lot more room for distinction here - for instance, the human cleric has their spells, their healing focus, and their anti-undead capability. A dwarven runepriest could be divorced from the spell system entirely with an alternate magic system in place, has no particular reason to have an anti-undead capability, and while they should probably have healing capabilities it's entirely reasonable for them to work differently. Similarly the human magic user is a scholar-mage who works with discrete spells, maintains a spell book, and has a spell slot mechanic. Meanwhile something like an elven spell singer could be designed to not be a scholar-mage at all, work with songs that are all unlimited and have a continuous effect while sung, and only have long term ritual songs to do anything other than change current conditions in a continuous fashion. There's also the design space of how spells are generally an all or nothing affair - you launch them, they do their thing - where spell songs could easily gradually build in power with continuous use.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
I'm not sure it's a good idea to go with the racial classes, but just to give it a fair shout:
Cleric types are relatively straightforward (if not easy). Differentiate these by giving them different spell lists to show that the demi-human deities have different relationships with their followers.
Fighter types can draw on the coarse physical differences of the demi-humans. At the extreme, a halfling fighter just can't fight the same way as a human. (Arguably the B/X dwarf and halfling classes already represent what this looks like.)
Magic-users... well, that's complicated. One could rule that dwarfs and halflings are incapable of using magic and give them psionic adept characters as a substitute, essentially repeating the cleric strategy.
Thieves are a real sticking point as any skill changes would be playing at the margins. Probably the simplest solution is just to get rid of the thief class (I know that some people advocate this as a good move in itself) and use the empty "design space" to help differentiate the fighters.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
FWIW, I remember the Hollow Earth setting for BECMI had an alternative elf class that sacrificed the elf's spellcasting for a faster progression, called the Warrior-Elf. While it was supposed to be limited to certain cultures in the Hollow Earth I personally would allow a player to just say 'my elf wasn't interested in magic' and use it.
On the subject of Fighters, I personally think that in AD&D they do have a design niche (that being that they are the best at fighting with their chosen weapon) and decent enough, especially as the thief doesn't have much in the way of combat abilities. In fact, as Paladins are so rare there's nobody to take over their possibly in-setting role of members of knightly orders either. Although the Ranger will always be a little bit more interesting than the fighter due to the addition of minor thief abilities.
Personally I wouldn't go with racial classes as the standard, just the plain old cleric/fighter/mage/thief set, and leave racial classes for specific combinations (e.g. elves get access to the 'forest guardian' class which gives them access to both fighter and mage abilities at the cost of very slow progression).
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Yora
I am not really taken with giving each race its own classes either. Not having ran ACKS myself, creating race specific custom classes looks somewhat superfluous. B/X classes are so simple that there isn't really much to customize without making the four standard classes redundant. If you have unique magic systems or very unusual creatures you want to make available as PCs there's some point to it,but for dwarven clerics or halfling thieves it seems more or less irrelevant.
Well, since 90% of your character is class-determined, having ACKS-style specific custom classes allows different races to feel very different. Think about if, say, you'd only had a fighter-thief-cleric-mage game, and then the DM announced that now people could play Elves, and Elves (and only elves) could be Rangers and Druids. You'd be like "Man, so the Elf versions of the fighter and cleric trade heavy armor for bears, and they get all these cool wilderness abilities?"
RE: OP:
I'd suggest going this route. Have one, maybe two archetypes that you think really emphasize what a race should be about. Don't just have Dwarf Thief and Elf Thief. Also, don't make any classes until you talk to your party- Total waste of time to write racial classes for elves if nobody is going to be an elf. (Although there's a certain amount of cart-horse interactivity here, in that writing the Dwarven Laserguard might make players want to play dwarves because they didn't realize how cool dwarves were until just now)
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
Going by BX and ACKS, it might be better if you restrict the other races to two classes each.
So humans get the standard 4.
Elves might get, as per ACKS, fighter/mage and assassin/mage. Or maybe instead a priest/mage.
I don't think the dwarf vaultguard is distinct enough, so maybe increase their HD to D10. Makes their fighters *special*. Maybe their other class can be the Dwarven delver from the players companion. But that doesn't seem right as it's just a dwarf thief. Make it a fighter/thief instead.
The standard Bx halfling is amazing, but it really needs to be renamed halfling ranger. Their other class might be a halfling version of the elven enchanter from the PC.
One thing you could do is keep the idea of one racial class, but change what the class is. So dump the bx elf/spellsword and replace it with the elven enchanter. Hell, even make it a double mage, but the XP to level 2 is 6k, cap at lv8.
Similar things for the other races. Idk.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
You could run with the classic 8 easy. What I'm looking for is someone who will do it with 3; Fighter, Mage, human only. All else would be NPCs. But I've run the classic 8 with no problems. Isn't everything else archetypes and variants?
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
There are only 7 classes.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
The Dungeons and Dragons Gazetteers introduce several new but simple classes, maybe one class for every two that books that came out. For instance The Dwarves of Rockhome introduce dwarven clerics. Each seems appropriate and restrained. Maybe as someone wrote above, just one other appropriate option for each race you want to add, or if you can find the old material in some form, borrow that.
Simple option is to just allow any race to take some other human class (Cleric, Fighter, etc.) and keep some little benefit of their race at some little cost (balance). Try to keep it as simple as possible.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Yora
There are only 7 classes.
He is probably including the mystic.
Re: Just four classes or four racial classes for each race like in ACKS?
If memory serves, in '74 OD&D (my OD&D books are hidden at work were my better have can't see them and insist on my selling or throwing them out), there were 3 classes (Fighting-man, Cleric, and Magic-User), and 4 main races (Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Hobbit, though you could play other races, the example of a "young Dragon" was given, but no written rules for other races were given).
Dwarves and Hobbits could only be Fighters, and Elves could act as either a Fighters or a Magic-users, which one was declared at the start of the session by the player.
A later "The Dragon" article explained that the metal Fighters carried (armor, swords, etc) interfered with spell-casting.
The '75 "Greyhawk" supplement introduced Paladins, which only some humans could be, and Thieves, which could be any race.
The 1977 "Holmes bluebook" Basic rules were unclear on whether class was a race, and if you include "The Strategic Review", and "The Dragon" magazine articles, late OD&D was close to AD&D.
The 1978 AD&D PHB made it explicit which of multiple classes, different races could be (only half-elves and humans could be Rangers, and only half-orcs could be multi-class Cleric/Assasins for example).
1981 B/X is where "race as a class" became explicit.
When in doubt go with D&D as it was just before the PHB was printed, as that's the best version of D&D, which by sure co-incidence happens to be the first D&D I played (lucky me).
Clear?
