Saturday, January 16, 2010

Level Limitations By Race

Greetings!

I have been doing some thinking lately about the dreaded "Level limits" for races in AD&D. On one hand, it seems quaint to keep the restrictions in place--nostalgic, even. However, the argument that such limitations are necessary so as to maintain an uber-human dominated world, where the majority of players will desire to play *human* characters, as opposed to demi-humans, doesn't seem to add up. The few advantages that demi-humans gain are to me, not necessarily sufficient to sway myself or others, say, into avoiding humans. For high-level campaign considerations, as well as the overall general consistency of world-building, the racial level limitations seem quite weak. Thus, the racial level limitations should be thrown out, and swiftly.

Now, having said that--there is the problem of elven fighter/magic-users being able to wear armor and cast spells at the same time. If there are no level limitations, wouldn't everyone be playing elven fighter/magic-users?

Thus, I am back to my dilemma. I'm persuaded so far to keep the restrictions in place--but I hate them for the many reasons alluded to in brief previously.

What to do my friends?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

4 comments:

  1. My usual houserule, is that level limits only apply if the character is multi-classed.

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  2. Allow anyone to cast in armour, but apply a universal Dex-check (i.e., casting penalty) to those doing so, including non-humans.
    --The version I saw recently that I most liked placed restrictions on the highest level spells that could be cast depending on one's armour.

    http://blog.retroroleplaying.com/2009/10/armor-for-all-classes-in-od.html

    Best,

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree with Timeshadows--that was an interesting post.

    Rather than have multi-class characters, I have hybrid classes. The difference is subtle as the character abilities stack from both classes, but there is a unified xp table with an added 10% needed. We only have one hybrid character. I think the snails pace of his level advancement is reason enough for others to not to go that route. Or you could just create a elven mage-warrior class that has some features of each, but not all.

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  4. I use a three-fold solution, 1) As a racial ability, I give humans a +10% bonus to earned XP (this is usually sufficient to ward off hordes of demi-humans), 2) Under my houserules, any race can multi-class any allowed classes (though no more than 2 and they may not be of the same type (i.e.: Fighting-man, cleric, etc. So no cleric/druids), the rules of the classes can not be contradictory (the paladin/assassin is right out), and the PC may be the only example of that combination ever seen, which is normally the case now that I think of it... and 3) I use the by the book rules when designing NPCs, unless there's a very, very good reason I want a 12th level halfling fighter.

    ReplyDelete