Annoying DnD stereotypes

[AgentofHellfire]

So in the large amount of time the game's been around, certain character archetypes have formed. Certain character archetypes have been maintained. And certain character ideas have never been tested. If you want a place to bitch about any of this, look no further.

Here is the place to complain about how every goddamn X is a Y, or A is a B, or example I'm giving you is a letter. And I'll start us off with some of my own complaining.


Every Rogue is a Thief: Those of you who mentioned this, well, you aren't alone. I find it intensely aggravating as well.

Every Good-Aligned Character Fights in the Name of Justice: On this forum, at least, I see the stereotype doesn't hold sway, but there are many people I've met that believe alignment and motivation are the same thing. They are not.

Every Druid is a Hippie: There are four possible alignments a Druid can have, why does there only seem to be one personality? To say nothing of the fact that what "nature's way" is isn't exactly set in stone.

Every Wizard is Only Good for Spellcasting: The amount of backlash I've gotten in the past for playing wizards with worldly knowledge, or even a social focus...

[Rallicus]

Every ranger is a silent, stoic type who constantly wears a green cloak.

Every plate-wearing female character has boob plate.

Anything to do alignments. Alignments are retarded... at least in DnD.

[Dark Elf Bard]

Every Paladin "guides" his party

Every Halfling is a kleptomaniac or a Belkar rip-off

Many more will come soon.

[Falconer]

Evil PCs will by nature backstab the party, kill orphans, and otherwise loot, pillage, and burn their way through a campaign just to be a ****. And you know what? There's arguably even a time and place for that. But some of us like playing evil characters that actually have, you know, personalities--ones that exist beyond where they ping on the good-evil axis.

[Pokonic]

When a monster race mates with a non-monster race, the result will be a paladin who strives to be unfettered by his less civilised half.

[Averis Vol]

half orcs

elves

Y'all know exactly what i mean.

but to specify for those who don't, every half orc is a mindless dolt useful for nothing more the "Grok smash!!!" and born of rape.

And every elf is an arrogant, stuffed up prick who thumbs his nose to the other races while trying to systematically push their ways upon others in a close to genocidal way.

Also

The DM is god.

The player should always win every fight ever.

[Korivan]

Our stereotypes that we deal with are the ones that deal outside the game.
for example: People that play DnD are all virgins that can't get a girl (truth is the guy that taught me, his brother, me, two of my friend that I taught DnD to are all married.)

[Eldan]

Paladins can't eat babies. Pleease. I can have legitimate reasons, you know.

[Mastikator]

Whenever a village is raided it's by orcs or goblins or something, never by humans, elves, dwarves, halflings or gnomes.

[Slipperychicken]

Every Princess is Hot. Haven't seen one mediocre-looking princess yet.

Barons are Always Lawful Evil. Back in the early medieval days, there wasn't much distinguishing a Baron from a King except the title. Sometimes, a Baron might even be politically/militarily stronger than a King.

Kingdoms are good, and Empires are Bad. This only applies to worlds where both exist.

Orcs are always child-eating barbarians. I really want to see Orcs living in cities, doing heavy-lifting and other jobs no-one else will. Even an exceptionally-smart Orc serving as a manager would help break the tedium.

Nobles-kids constantly run away and join bands of adventurers. The attrition rate is pretty crazy, considering nobles have plenty of adventuring opportunities already (between the army, expeditions, and straight-up world-traveling).

[Roguenewb]

Every Sorcerer is gay. Goddamn that guy in the PHB with his ridiculous outfit.

Every bard is silly.

Every barbarian is just an mindless rage machine. All Conan, no wise man of the wild.

Every favored soul is hated by his church.

(This one may be limited to my group) Every Spellthief is a genocidal evil antiimage.

[Slipperychicken]

(This one may be limited to my group) Every Spellthief is a genocidal evil antiimage.

I got one who self-identified as a thief, and constantly attacks the party before teleporting away. For some reason, the PCs never get around to finishing him off.

Every Sorcerer is gay. Goddamn that guy in the PHB with his ridiculous outfit.

That's just his Charisma-score showing

[DontEatRawHagis]

Stereotypes and my way to flip them:

Trolls are stupid/idiots
Most of the time Trolls, Orges and Giants are placed the same dumb brutes stereotype. As such my next campaign I will have my players find the underground city of trolls. Where the trolls keep ancient treasure out of the hands of the idiot above worlders. They act stupid in order to throw off their enemies.

Fighters are idiots
This I manage to subvert every game I play. Most of the enemies are not Wizards or Magic Users using magic to subvert the world. Instead I favor military warlords who have the tactical minds to utilize the abilities of others through blackmail and torture. My last villain was the son of a powerful sorcerer who was cast out for not knowing magic.

Orcs are Barbarians and Orc vs Dwarf hostilities.
In one of my games Orcs were actually military tacticians who worked with Dwarves. The Dwarves supplied them weapons where they supplied labor. Also I had it that the Orcs utilized magic in order to create their armor, as such it looked like they wore little armor, but in actuallity they had the equivellent of plate mail on.

[navar100]

Every paladin "needs an operation".

Being Lawful Good means you must be a square and behave saintly.

Dwarves drink.

Elves are pompous snobs to everyone and are the best at everything except mining, of which the dwarves are the best.

Every race has a racial god except humans.

All races have one country, except humans. (Dragonlance is the exception vis-a-vis elves, and as far as I'm concerned they deserve their recent problems. See above.)

The war god is male and evil. The love god is female.

There exists a human female-dominated nation where men are treated worse than vermin.

Clerics are only good for healing.

It is always some person or entity of Goodness who gets corrupted. Could be a cleric, an angel, a god who is losing his/her power. Never once is it a Devil or Demon redeemed or an evil god who sees the light and changes his path for his followers.

The Lawful Good nation is in decline. The king is sick or recently killed while his heir is a baby. Enemy forces are figuratively or sometimes literally on the borders.

The Golden Age of magic was long ago. Powerful things PCs could never do now even with 9th level spells were the norm.

Every city has a black market.

There exists a secret powerful society of thieves/assassins that has spies everywhere and knows everything.

[Gnome Alone]

Paladins are servants of a god: They are not. They are champions of the abstract forces of Good itself. Gods do not have to come into it, it freaking says basically this in its description of paladins in the PHB. It's a conflation of the holy warrior trope from our own culture with every paladin ever in DnD and it's irritating to me. One of these days I'm gonna roll me up an atheist, anarchist paladin and embody the paladin code to the nth degree at the same time.

[AgentofHellfire]

Every barbarian is just an mindless rage machine. All Conan, no wise man of the wild.

Almost this.


Except I tend to go for less "Conan" and "wise man of the wild" and more "Lord of a Hellhole who got to the top through cunning and ruthlessness".

[Craft (Cheese)]

Every Wizard is Only Good for Spellcasting: The amount of backlash I've gotten in the past for playing wizards with worldly knowledge, or even a social focus...

This is a special case of a more specific stereotype, Every character is not allowed to have personality aside from their race/class combination, or a direct subversion thereof. Like how the Paladin (of any race) has to be either the boring pure guy who's always giving friendship speeches or the overbearing jackass who slaughters everything he sees for being "impure."

Incidentally this is also the more general case of "Rogues = Thieves."

[Morithias]

Every race has a racial god except humans.

Actually Humans do have a racial god. A Lawful Evil god called "Zairus" I think it was. Who believes the humans are the ideal race and all other races should be exterminated.

That tells you how much elves have pissed people off in what is canon for the human gods, is more often applied to the elves.

And hey, I'll actually buy his view on it. Look at it from Zairus's point of view, 90% of all min/maxed builds are human in base race, one can logically point out that from a crunch standpoint, the humans are one of the best non-la races in existence.

[Razgriez]

Every paladin "needs an operation".

Being Lawful Good means you must be a square and behave saintly.

Hilariously enough, the square is untrue, and the Saintly part only applies if you're using Book of Exalted Deeds, and even then, there's nothing that says "You must Abstain from everything fun" (Except some of the various Vows of the Exalted Feats, and some of the Sanctified spells which requires Sacrifices and Abstain requirements to use, there's nothing saying that Lawful good can't have fun, even Paladins)

Every race has a racial god except humans.

Well actually, the DnD Humans do.

Spoiler

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By technicality, we have Pelor, who in the standard DnD Pantheon of 3.X, is the one that is listed as being worshiped by humans the most. We also have Heironeous, who is often depicted as a Human man, and Hextor whose the same, but with Spikes of Villainy.

Of course, if you want some true "Human only" well look to Races of Destiny, where uhm.. we kinda get two rather annoying ones. The lesser god Urbanus, a human god of Cities. He's a Neutral Good god of Cities, Growth, and Improvement... oh... wait what's that? You're a Human and don't live in a city? Well you see, you don't fall under his protection.

And then there's Zarus, the "True" Human god. He's a Greater God, ... he's also Lawful Evil, and basically, the world of DND just won't let him fail, ever.

Other things that annoy me:
-No one ever has a problem about pillaging graveyard/tomb/cairn/catacombs ever, not even good aligned Clerics, or Paladins (Because there's always a convenient undead infestation, the grave robbi... errr "reclamation of items from those who no longer need them" is just an extra perk).

-Likewise, everyone always seems surprised, that some necromancer would go into such unguarded areas, and just start raising an army.

-Lawful Good will always use Sword and Shields if possible, Chaotic good will always use bows, two handed, and Two weapons.

-The region/world's general population and bards never openly talk and sing about the PCs' party and deeds until after the campaign has finished. (Come on, even for 25 Gold, I manage to get Bards in Skyrim to sing about me!)

-Paladins must apparently always have a stick shoved up somewhere.

-The Rogue or Bard always try to annoy the Paladin

-Samurais must apparently commit ritual suicide over the slightest misstep, or become hated, and exiled ronin.

-The Ultimate weapon of Goodness is always a sword that cleaves evil (and further annoyingly, it's never named "Sanger Zonvolt")

-Scythe wielders are always evil, or worshipers of Death gods.

-The Airship will always have Magical flapping wings, or Propeller blades, it can never be advanced looking.

-The Kingdom's one weak spot? Background and alignment checks on advisers

[Craft (Cheese)]

-The Airship will always have Magical flapping wings, or Propeller blades, it can never be advanced looking.

[Razgriez]

Don't tell me... Eberron, right?

*ahem*

All Airships (That aren't Eberron based) having the aforementioned Flapping bird wings and Helicopter like Propellers (Even though I don't play the Eberron setting, I do applaud it's vehicle designs that I've seen)

[Grimsage Matt]

On the Troll steryotypes.

In the oldest myths about them? They were powerful, cunning and ruthless mages, with enough brains and arcane power to make a dragon look like a lizard with wings.

They were the elder giants, primordial elemental beings, cast down and broken because they fought a long and bitter war with the gods themselves.... AND THE GODS COULDN'T FINISH 'EM OFF. And they've been nursing a grudge.

I hate how Trolls are dumbed down

[Jay R]

All elf women are beautiful. There's never been a plain elf in the history of the world.

[Slipperychicken]

PCs who have no problem with looting countless tombs, sarcophagi, catacombs, and generally stripping every corpse they encounter... but cannot stand the thought of looting a fallen comrade and start spouting hypocritical bull**** like: "You need to respect the dead!", "What would he think of your behavior now?", or "We're not theives! We're better than that!"

And they might even do this while robbing someone's tomb.

[MurphysLaw159]

-Evil cultists are either Sexy Seductresses or Roting Flesh Freaks.

-Insanity = Evil (huge can of worms if you give it ANY thought)

-The Ancient Being Beyond Mortal Ken is either evil or appathetic, never the least bit benevolent

-Every overly decent person trying (and succeding) at makeing a difference in the world (that's not a PC) has some evil alterior motive.

-The PC party is the only adventuring party in the world OR the other ones that are found are dead/dieing OR they are evil/join the wrong side for some reason OR are no where near as effective as the PC group OR are retired/dead legends.

[GenericGuy]

Kingdoms are good, and Empires are Bad. This only applies to worlds where both exist.

This always bugs me, so I always go out of my way to subvert it. Now I’m a cynical guy so rarely do I have “good” or “bad” nations, all nations are competing against one another for their own and people’s interests, but my empires tend to be far more beneficial for the common folk and tend to be far more multi-racial (comes with conquering foreign lands) while kingdoms tend to be homogeneous run by tyrants and decrepit nobility.

Chaotic good is incorruptible: Every Lawful good character is one bad day away from becoming a fascist, while the chaotic good will always be a lovable rogue who never falls.

No Females of “monstrous” races: Orcs, trolls, goblins and even dwarves more often than not tend to be bereft of any women.

Necromancy is evil: This type of magic is “unnatural,” as appose to all other magic, and can only be done by evil people.

Good sibling evil sibling determined by gender: If two siblings are warring against one another for control of a kingdom, guild, or what have you, the good sibling will be female and the evil one male.

The pirates who don’t do anything: Thieves and pirates aren’t criminals who take advantage of the weak and helpless, but are guys who just “stick it to the man.”

[Blisstake]

All elf women are beautiful. There's never been a plain elf in the history of the world.

Well, there's Mialee.

Although she's not really plain... more of extemely disturbing to look at.

[Gamgee]

Every Sorcerer is gay. Goddamn that guy in the PHB with his ridiculous outfit.

Every bard is silly.

Every barbarian is just an mindless rage machine. All Conan, no wise man of the wild.

Every favored soul is hated by his church.

(This one may be limited to my group) Every Spellthief is a genocidal evil antiimage.

Don't know what Conan you read, but in the original stories he is often portrayed as a very smart person. Smarter than a lot of the so called civilized people, at least in some ways. People forget this when trying to make Conan rip offs.

[Gnomish Wanderer]

Every Princess is Hot. Haven't seen one mediocre-looking princess.

It is always some person or entity of Goodness who gets corrupted. Could be a cleric, an angel, a god who is losing his/her power. Never once is it a Devil or Demon redeemed or an evil god who sees the light and changes his path for his

The Ancient Being Beyond Mortal Ken is either evil or appathetic, never the least bit benevolent

Woot, this thread makes me feel good. The only three steroetypes out of all the listed ones I use are these three. ^.^

Athe one annoying stereotype I can't seem to get past is A group of strangers somehow near instantly intimitely trust one another and decide to adventure together. My players aren't always like this but it happens too frequently.

[Malimar]

Every Princess is Hot. Haven't seen one mediocre-looking princess yet.

This gives me an idea for my campaign...

A related stereotype that occurs to me by virtue of I've subverted it pretty heavily: Every Prince Or Princess Is An Only Child.

Barons are Always Lawful Evil. Back in the early medieval days, there wasn't much distinguishing a Baron from a King except the title. Sometimes, a Baron might even be politically/militarily stronger than a King.

...very guilty of this one.

Kingdoms are good, and Empires are Bad. This only applies to worlds where both exist.

Subverted! Every nation in my world is horrible and corrupt, Kingdom and Empire alike!

All races have one country, except humans.

The war god is male and evil. The love god is female.

Crud, guilty on both counts.

EDIT: Actually, huh, I just realized I don't even have a god of war. I've got a god of destruction, and I've got a god whose portfolio include righteous war against evil, but no war god. Completely guilty of the female god of love fertility and agriculture, though. Which is odd, because the goddess in question is basically a gender-flipped Bacchus/Dionysus with slightly different emphases.

No Females of “monstrous” races: Orcs, trolls, goblins and even dwarves more often than not tend to be bereft of any women.

Related to both this and to "Every Princess Is Hot": Every Female Character Is Hot.

I love to subvert both "No Females of 'Monstrous' Races" frequently. Most memorably with Big the female half-ogre paladin (and her mother, an ogress bard who left a trail of men with broken hearts and broken pelvises), but also with many NPCs. In part because mongrelfolk is the most populous race in my campaign setting.

Which in turn reminds me of another stereotype: Humans are always the most populous race.

The pirates who don’t do anything: Thieves and pirates aren’t criminals who take advantage of the weak and helpless, but are guys who just “stick it to the man.”

I have both done this one and subverted it.