Annoying DnD stereotypes

[Hopeless]

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.

You mean the human half?

After all we've all heard of werewolves but when have we ever had trouble with werehumans?

[Hopeless]

Every Paladin "guides" his party

Every Halfling is a kleptomaniac or a Belkar rip-off

Many more will come soon.

Yes experienced the first for myself and I was playing the halfling as a better Paladin than the Paladin himself and she was a sorceress!

Had to multi-class as a rogue because the dm decided during the third or fourth game session to restrict the multi-class options even though i was the only original player who openly stated my character was mulit-classing from the very beginning except I was trying to have a good reason for it instead of the dwarf fighter going up a level and declaring he was taking a level of ranger for no obvious reason!
The fact the next four new players all ran Rangers was purely coincedental!

[Hopeless]

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.

And I for one would love to be present when you do so!

[Hopeless]

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

They obviously haven't watched Super Robot Wars or just not enough of the series (all of them) to properly understand why it should be so!

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

So they've never met any farmers then?

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

Sounds like they've been watching not enough Final Fantasy trailers then!

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

Well... yes they must have an influx of rings of mind shielding!

[Averis Vol]

So they've never met any farmers then?]

Ya know, my group actually ran into a farmer tonight and freaked out when i told them he was leaning on his well sharpened scythe with a scowl on his face. he was jsut tired after a day of work honestly.

[The Random NPC]

-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.

There's a reason for this one, if another party is equal or more effective, why is it your party is the one to save the world? It would be best to hire them both, and since they probably have the same leads, they'll be joining you. All of a sudden, you have a DMPC party joining the regular one. Watch them be awesome!

[Ranting Fool]

This thread is cracking me up, sadly I've seen so many of these but the one that bugs me the most is....

Halflings are ALWAYS rogues/thieves. bloody Bilbo Baggins! to often my players see a halfling and think "Ah me must be a stealthy untrustworthy little git!" and then I end up pandering to this

Dwarves are bad at magic *sigh*

and yes the all monsters are male unless they are meant to seduce the PC's

Advisers to the king/leader are always evil

Good wears white/bright colours and Evil likes black

You can always tell a cultst by his black robe

Heck just most the stuff from Here

[Hyena]

These annoy me so much, I can barely bear it.
Necromancy is evil - no, not butchering people to raise them as undead. Necromancy as a whole. Raising skeletons? Evil magic! Just because... Uh... Skulls and... uh... other evil... stuff. How exactly necromancy is evil? Does it torment spirits of the dead? It does not.
If the villain is redeemable, she is (almost always) a woman. - because men are much eviler, you know, and women are misguided. On the other hand...
If someone is kidnapped, it's a woman, never man. - I guess that's because party wouldn't want to rescue a prince.
Paladin annoys the party just because, the party thief never does something wrong. - duh.

[Mono Vertigo]

- Goblins, kobolds, and other stock humanoid monster races are always evil and deserving to be killed. The Giant and his comic are doing a much better job at explaining what's wrong with that train of thought than I.
- All adventurers are male. If they aren't, then they are defined by their unrestrained sexiness or their chastity, but are always pretty and sufficiently young. Ahahahahah... no. Just no. Look around you IRL. There are many women who have diverse goals and personalities, and few look like top models. And they almost always fall somewhere between "sex goddess" and "prude virgin". That's because they're people too. It's more than okay to play a woman whose sexuality doesn't influence most of her decisions, or who has little charisma. If you can play fantasy races "right" without actually having seen any of them IRL, then playing a 3-dimensional female shouldn't be that hard.
- Following on that, All physical warriors are male. Unless they're also stealthy or look really pretty while fighting, in which case they're female. I'm not talking about amazons, I'm talking about warriors wearing decent armor and combating with sufficient strength, who also happen to be female. Similarly, graceful mystical warriors can be male. And not gay. Really.
- Rogues are incurable kleptomaniacs. No, they don't feel obligated to steal anything that's not attached or on fire, I swear. That would be PCs.

[North_Ranger]

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

...by human standards. Who knows? Maybe elven men find their women "butterfaces"

All joking aside, I think Pathfinder manages a nice balance between beauty and otherworldly, alien charisma with its elves. Those single-colour eyes will haunt you...

[North_Ranger]

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.

Pathfinder again has a nice play on this... the CG nation of Nirmathas, essentially a country being run by a bunch of Robin Hoodesque woodsmen. Constantly getting attacked by their southern neighbour, but the pantyhose-wearing freedom fighters can't get their act together because no one has the right to tell anyone else what to do.

I giggled when reading that entry, and I love playing CG characters.

[AgentofHellfire]

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.
.

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.”

These two are actually ones I really hate the most out of everything you said, and I've actually made entire worlds subverting this--where the "Chaotic Good" types actually have become the man and are in fact ten-thousand times worse than the lawfuls ever were.

[Xuc Xac]

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

Modest reasons?

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

That's what happens when you have the benefit of superior nutrition and living conditions for your entire life starting even before birth.

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).

What do you think "adventuring" is? Back in the days of primogeniture, it was standard procedure for the non-eldest sons to join a mercenary company to try to make their own fortunes because big brother gets to inherit everything. If there had been dragon hoards in the real world in the middle ages, those guys would have been all over it.

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

Conan was a wise man of the wild. "Smarter and tougher because he's not weakened by civilization" is his core character trait.

Every city has a black market.

That's not a stereotype; that's just a fact of life. The only city in the world that doesn't have a "black market" is Mogadishu: they just have a "market" because there are no laws for them to break by selling something illegally.

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".

Rising to the top through cunning and ruthlessness is the basic plot of half the Conan stories. He even became king of a country by working his way up the ranks of their military as a mercenary and then staging a coup.

After all we've all heard of werewolves but when have we ever had trouble with werehumans?

The "were-" in "werewolf" means "man". A "werehuman" makes as much sense semantically as a superhero called "Man-man" ("he has the strength of one man!").

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

It's a very awkward and ineffective weapon. The only reason to use one is for thematic or ideological purposes. Farmers who had to go to war with a scythe would remount the blade to make a polearm like a fauchard.

Ya know, my group actually ran into a farmer tonight and freaked out when i told them he was leaning on his well sharpened scythe with a scowl on his face. he was jsut tired after a day of work honestly.

If the day of work is over, why is the scythe still sharp? It's obviously a trap!

[Jay R]

If a group of people have shared several adventures together, never finding another friend they trust to join their group, and then two of them die, exactly two new friends they will trust completely will join them before their next adventure.

[The Random NPC]

If the day of work is over, why is the scythe still sharp? It's obviously a trap!

Obviously, part of his work is to sharpen everyone's scythes.

[Sir_Gabes]

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

L5R setting anyone? How about Warhammer? (No one is really a good guy in warhammer)

[toapat]

The only male elves in the world are Protagonists, or Megalomaniac Archvillians.

[Sir_Gabes]

If a group of people have shared several adventures together, never finding another friend they trust to join their group, and then two of them die, exactly two new friends they will trust completely will join them before their next adventure.

I'm not opposed or bothered by this. But, nor am I bothered by people distrusting new party members. Nothing is more painful than party members who can't work together. The game can come to a standstill because one player won't share character knowledge or something. But, I ultimately agree it is more realistic to role play in an untrusting way. Another annoying thing playing a sneaky or less than trustworthy character. Say... A spider clan goji assasin masquerading as a honorable Lion.
Acting check exceeded 50? Sorry all NPCs and PCs don't trust you for no apparent reason. It's irritating listening to player trying to justify their distrust. It's kinda silly, because sometimes my character will be a flawless liar and they magically distrust him. Despite having no clear idea of why.

[Slipperychicken]

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.)

I don't conform to this one, myself. My current DM is constantly sneaking off to his bedroom with at least two players (not during a game, thankfully), and has probably kissed each female member of the group at least once. My first DM has had two girlfriends in the time I've known him.

Most players I know do fit that description, and to be fair to them, this is the archetypical "You will never get laid"-hobby. I think I've been spared that fate by my passion for music and alleged-physical-attractiveness, which serve to neutralize the nerd-ness and make me tolerable as a boyfriend.

If a group of people have shared several adventures together, never finding another friend they trust to join their group, and then two of them die, exactly two new friends they will trust completely will join them before their next adventure.

It sure as hell beats the alternative.

[Dr.Epic]

I'm chaotic and/or evil so it's okay I can kill anyone I wish.

[Water_Bear]

Acting check exceeded 50? Sorry all NPCs and PCs don't trust you for no apparent reason. It's irritating listening to player trying to justify their distrust. It's kinda silly, because sometimes my character will be a flawless liar and they magically distrust him. Despite having no clear idea of why.

Yeah, this is an issue.

As a DM I have a (silent) dice roller and everyone's Sense Motive modifiers so that no-one knows if they're being Bluffed until they succeed at a roll. As a Player... I hope that my other Players have a sense of fair play.

But NPCs magically detecting PC lies, despite failing their Sense Motive check? That's as awful as an entire party of bad role-players. And that's terrible.

[Slipperychicken]

But NPCs magically detecting PC lies, despite failing their Sense Motive check? That's as awful as an entire party of bad role-players. And that's terrible.

More like just the DM being a bad roleplayer. Like when they automatically know every damn thing about your character without doing so much as a background check (or when they're clearly immature, impatient, and crazy enough that a background check would literally never occur to them).

[Morph Bark]

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

That is highly dependant on the region. Trolls in myths vary as much as dragons do.

[hamishspence]

That is highly dependant on the region. Trolls in myths vary as much as dragons do.

A point brought up in this OOTS strip:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0273.html

[Lord_Gareth]

Because violence is part of the D&D universe, doing anything violent to evil beings is acceptable because they are evil.

If I hear ONE more of my players say that their NG or CG character is slicing off bits of a demon or devil with a cold iron or silver knife until it talks, I'm starting a freaking Ravenloft campaign.

[MrLemon]

PCs are perfectly fine with killing sentient beings, as is everyone with the PCs killing sentient beings
or similarly
Wizards and Sorcerors always know destructive magic, even if they are college-taught.

This is especially strang in "cloistered" PCs, that didn't leave their mage academy or cloister or whatever till they started adventuring

[The Glyphstone]

That one's excusable, unless the story has them joining the party involuntarily - if you're going adventuring, you would presumably do some basic precautions like learning a magical means of killing people who want to kill you first.

[Sir_Gabes]

Because violence is part of the D&D universe, doing anything violent to evil beings is acceptable because they are evil.

If I hear ONE more of my players say that their NG or CG character is slicing off bits of a demon or devil with a cold iron or silver knife until it talks, I'm starting a freaking Ravenloft campaign.

Cool, make them evil, because that devil has clearly decided to possess a small innocent girl and is making sure she experiences all the pain of their tortures and will just dissipate back to the nine hells when their done.

[Terraoblivion]

L5R setting anyone? How about Warhammer? (No one is really a good guy in warhammer)

I wouldn't exactly call Rokugan good. It's an oppressive country in constant civil war, ruled by a prickly warrior caste obsessed with protecting their pride and keeping the population poor and ignorant. Oh, and they're all racists and fanatically orthodox. Basically Rokugan is the 1940s stereotype of Japan, with religious fundamentalism added on top.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Knights are always noble. ALWAYS.

Hear me out on this one.

Where are the Knights who lie, cheat at dice and insult people to their face, yet offers their opponent every chance in combat?