Quote from: JesterRaiin;908868You're making it look like it costs you a lot to say such a thing and that it left you exhausted, broken and whatnot. One of those "hard" weeks?

Side note: "Every"? I think I can be persuaded to spare some time and seek relevant study, or find some other examples proving this, yet another "EVERY"-based claim wrong. Interested?

1: Opa's right. You are a rather pathetic troll when you try. Which this last week has been alot.

2: I think youd fail too. Even an amoeba can learn to avoid something. Apparently you failed biology class forever. This used to be a class project in schools. And Opa was also right here. You apparently failed reading comprehension forever too.

Try again please.

Quote from: Omega;908879Depending on the tales. Dwarves have been everything from super craftsmen to wizards, to thieves for example.

Yes, but they have a set series of abilities and racial attitudes already set.  Same with Elves.

Here's the problem I have with traditional 'Racial' stereo types in say, D&D is how many variants of the same 'race', like 3 Dwarven, Halfling, Gnome types and at least 5 Elven.  And yet, humans are somehow considered even more 'diverse'.  In fact, there are quite a few settings in which has real human phenotypes, Caucasian, Mongloid and Negroid, which occurs in several different climates, all in the same areas/cities.

Meanwhile, we have each fantasy race are limited to certain areas, Dwarves are Mountains and Hills, Elves are Underground, Trees and Sorta-Cities so on and so forth.

So which races are the 'mono-culture'?

Quote from: Omega;9088851: Opa's right. You are a rather pathetic troll when you try. Which this last week has been alot.

2: I think youd fail too. Even an amoeba can learn to avoid something. Apparently you failed biology class forever. This used to be a class project in schools. And Opa was also right here. You apparently failed reading comprehension forever too.

Try again please.

Trolling? Trust me. If I would want to push buttons, you'd feel that.

And no, I wouldn't fail. Seeing that you resort to such weak tactics as to deny that the original claim has been made and then run away while avoiding any further direct confrontation, I know I'd have no problem crushing your line of argumentation, even with that crappy English of mine. See, even now you're treating a simple, irrelevant discussion as a duel. And instead of dealing it in a more adult fashion, say, throwing simple "ah, kiddo, let's forget about the stuff and move on", accompanied by a relevant smile, you're adhering to the overplayed tactics of "calling for reinforcements", expressing how you sympathize with Opa's claim in hope he is gonna support you. That's desperation, bro.

Anyway. Since at this point it's obvious there's hardly any way to form an agreement between the two of us, how about you git off my lawn while I'll stay away from yours?

Quote from: Baulderstone;908850That's why I tend to feel that "race as class" was the better model for D&D. You can always have more than one class within a race, but you avoid the issue of races that are clearly geared just to be used with a particular class. If you make whole new classes to represent different aspects of a race, you can get something distinct and interesting, as opposed to doing what AD&D did, where they opened up a lot of classes to dwarves and halflings, but there was still only one obvious, optimal choice.

One thing you can count on. No matter how many race/class combinations a game offers there will be players who insist on playing a particular race/class for the sole reason that it ISN'T one of the options available. It doesn't matter how powerful or effective the combination is, and quite often it is laughably ineffective. All that matters is that it is an "off menu" choice.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;908868People were free to say "just a hyperbole, man" and that would be it - I'm far from being THAT unreasonable.

I would agree with that. That could have ended it then and there

Quote from: Exploderwizard;908896One thing you can count on. No matter how many race/class combinations a game offers there will be players who insist on playing a particular race/class for the sole reason that it ISN'T one of the options available. It doesn't matter how powerful or effective the combination is, and quite often it is laughably ineffective. All that matters is that it is an "off menu" choice.

I'm strongly of the opinion that it isn't the game designer's job to set up rules for every conceivable role unless the game is one of those 'how to make anything' systems like GURPS or HEROES. That's what homebrew is for, and I believe the OD&D set actually mentions that such things are part of the game, even if it didn't include rules for it (am I off base here, Gronan? I recall reading about someone playing a dragon or something in an early era game). Of course, then we still can critique the role choices that they did make. The dwarves mentioned above always kinda threw me for a loop. Dwarves in folklore have often had magical abilities or knowledge. I never did know where the dwarves are inherently anti-magical came from. I'm running a The Chronicles of Prydain-inspired game for the neighboring kids, and I've never had a good explanation for them for why I had to homebrew a way to make Dori the invisible Dwarf work. But again I don't mind doing so. It could well be niche protection for the elf as the magic-using demihuman.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;908903I never did know where the dwarves are inherently anti-magical came from. I'm running a The Chronicles of Prydain-inspired game for the neighboring kids, and I've never had a good explanation for them for why I had to homebrew a way to make Dori the invisible Dwarf work. But again I don't mind doing so. It could well be niche protection for the elf as the magic-using demihuman.

Maybe it came out of dwarves being craftsmen, combined with the idea that was popular in the '70s of magic and technology being opposing forces. Given that magic got a whole lot more mechanical support that making things in D&D, dwarves got the short end of the stick.

Quote from: Baulderstone;908908Maybe it came out of dwarves being craftsmen, combined with the idea that was popular in the '70s of magic and technology being opposing forces. Given that magic got a whole lot more mechanical support that making things in D&D, dwarves got the short end of the stick.

GIMLI: (pause; slow turn)"...Tell me you did not just say that..." :-)

Can't speak from experience about 5E, but I was told there was some Dwarf/X that's an OP combo?  I guess I'm asking if that stick is still dwarf-sized.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;908903I would agree with that. That could have ended it then and there

And I assure you I wouldn't continue with it any further.

QuoteDwarves in folklore have often had magical abilities or knowledge. I never did know where the dwarves are inherently anti-magical came from.

Probably someone thought that:

soil + stone -> isolator -> anti-magic capabilities

At least nobody thought about dwarven-kind eating rocks or similar crap. Sheeesh.

Yo, Gimli, do that trick with a granite. C'mon, man.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;908903I'm strongly of the opinion that it isn't the game designer's job to set up rules for every conceivable role unless the game is one of those 'how to make anything' systems like GURPS or HEROES. That's what homebrew is for, and I believe the OD&D set actually mentions that such things are part of the game, even if it didn't include rules for it (am I off base here, Gronan? I recall reading about someone playing a dragon or something in an early era game).

In OD&D, dragons came with a progression in ability based on age, but what I think you are referring to is the tale of the Balrog PC, and yes OD&D at the time had an expectation that the DM (and players) would invent something for any additional creatures or characters that they wanted to add to their game. As an example, in the mid 1970s I statted up Huntsman for my home OD&D game and stuck them in a creepy forest that I called the Forest of Idris. And even before the Dragon started publishing new character classes, early fanzines like Alarums & Excursions were publishing new character classes by the dozens.

QuoteThe dwarves mentioned above always kinda threw me for a loop. Dwarves in folklore have often had magical abilities or knowledge. I never did know where the dwarves are inherently anti-magical came from.

Norse dwarves crafted all the magical goodies used by the gods, so those guys were clearly able to create magic and in Tolkien, "The dwarves of yore made mighty spells", so it is an interesting question. Gronan, please enlighten us.

Quote from: Baulderstone;908908Maybe it came out of dwarves being craftsmen, combined with the idea that was popular in the '70s of magic and technology being opposing forces.

Not intended as a contradiction of your notion, but as semi-support -- in Glorantha, dwarves are quite technically adept, are a source of higher tech items like black powder guns, and have a mechanistic view of the universe, being in sense technical constructs themselves, but they still have spells of some kind just like everybody else.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;908912At least nobody thought about dwarven-kind eating rocks or similar crap.

That's Uz, not Mostali. (Trolls and dwarves to the Gloranthignorant.)

Quote from: Omega;908854Optimal is not necessarily interesting. And due to random stat rolls oft not even possible as all your dwarf may qualify for is a thief in AD&D. No so much a factor later but stats can nudge this way or that. But the overall depiction has been fairly niche with notable exceptions.

I personally agree on optimal not equally interesting. I went through a phase about 20 years ago where I tended to make terrible suboptimal choices with my character and see how I could got by. A friend of mine ran a Babylon 5 game during that time, and I made a Psi Corp character with the absolute weakest possible psi ability. I had all the social restrictions of being in Psi Corp and close to no ability. None of the other players knew this, so I held a lot of power in the party just through bullshitting.

QuoteI think 3e and on shook things up a little with dwarves as you see alot of dwarven priests as represrntative of a cleric for example.

It's true that 3E opened up some new class/race combinations, with dwarven clerics being a popular one. As a fan of "class as race", I just feel that you get could something more distinctive with a new class for divinely-inspired dwarves.

Granted, 3E had prestige classes to add that kind of additional flavor, but it was flavor that only got tapped into later in a characters career. I didn't really like prestige classes much either. 3E was supposed to be built on opening up choice, giving you all these moving parts to pick from, but prestige classes had these long lists of prerequisites. It meant that players tended to decide on a prestige class during character generation, then have to be bound by the prerequisite list in all their skill and feat choices. All the busy work that 3E added to leveling became just a hassle if the players didn't really get a choice anyway.

It seemed to me that it would be more honest to just make these prestige classes as actual classes. That would allow players to play what they wanted to play and still have free choices when choices were presented to them upon leveling.

I guess "race as class" might be a lot more mechanical work, but during the 3E era, I would have been fine with anything that slowed the creation of new crunch. We might have only gotten about three new classes a month, as opposed to 15 new prestige classes every month.

As an aside, the worst thing about the ridiculous bloat of player options in 3E wasn't the actual rule complexity and balance issues. It was that it always had the players in my group in a state of perpetual buyer's remorse. If only this new prestige class had been available months ago, they would have aimed for it, but now they had made too many choices that lead away from it.

It's not a new idea to suggest they tried to apply the CCG mentality to RPGs. The problem was that a M:tG player can make a new deck every day, while an RPG character can last for years. Bombarding them with options they can't ever use just creates dissatisfaction with the game.

 

QuoteHalflings seem to be perpetually stuck as thieves though. But seems more branching out into bards over time.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;908855I've seen my fair share of halfling wizards. Then by late 3.5 there's halfling shiars, erudites, and other things I never quite figured out what they were.

Yeah, I do remember halfling wizards being a big thing in 3E. They didn't have any drawbacks at being a wizard, and their small size and high DEX gave them a nice bonus to AC.

It's actually a good example of an issue I have with Race and Class as separate choices. "Halflings make really good wizards" isn't a thing in fantasy, and until this point, wasn't a thing in D&D. Yet the mechanics of 3E inadvertently created this weird combination.

Quote from: Bren;908913Norse dwarves crafted all the magical goodies used by the gods, so those guys were clearly able to create magic and in Tolkien, "The dwarves of yore made mighty spells", so it is an interesting question.

It's worth remembering that The Ring of the Nibelung was an influence on The Lord of the Rings. In that story, the titular, cursed ring that that grants the power to rule the world and fuels most of the drama and bloodshed was forged by the dwarf Alberich.

QuoteNot intended as a contradiction of your notion, but as semi-support -- in Glorantha, dwarves are quite technically adept, are a source of higher tech items like black powder guns, and have a mechanistic view of the universe, being in sense technical constructs themselves, but they still have spells of some kind just like everybody else.

Yes, Glorantha does a good job of making dwarves both impressive crafters and magical in nature at the same time.

Quote from: Baron Opal;908779All I know is when the sharks start jumping out of the water to lob flaming oil at the intelligent squirrel collective, it is time to stop camping by the lake and retreat with a squad of archers.

NO! This violates the beschmeckles out of the niche of acrobatic hobgoblin pyramids hurling flaming oil flasks from different elevations to defeat players who say they raise their shields to nullify the explosions, which everyone knows is the cornerstone of D&D monster balance intentional design. Besides, how realistic are shark fins adapted to throw oil flasks, let alone light them underwater in high-pH medieval seawater?

Quote from: Omega;908838Speaking of.

What about race protection. Some groups and even designers seem to want to typecast X race as allways this or that. Dwarves get hit hardest with that one. Followed by Halflings.

I don't know that I'd call it "race protection", unless you are thinking of protecting the human race. Humans can be anything, because we're drawing our inspiration from real life. Fantasy races are basically hyperspecialized humans, with a few unusual abilities and a lot more limitations. Often, they are designed for a specific niche. Even when they aren't, they tend to be an exaggeration of a particular human type. "Like humans, but burly and hairy and superaggressive. They like fighting." If you don't do it that way, they are just humans wearing a costume, in which case why even have races? Just tell players they can look however they want.

This, of course, is ignoring the idea of racial bonuses to primary abilities, which wasn't in OD&D and was a really bad idea.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;908903The dwarves mentioned above always kinda threw me for a loop. Dwarves in folklore have often had magical abilities or knowledge. I never did know where the dwarves are inherently anti-magical came from.

It had to come from Tolkien, although I can't think of a specific quote where he said "dwarves are anti-magical in nature". But he generally portrayed dwarves as very practical-minded and materialistic. There's some of that in C. S. Lewis's Narnia books, too. In contrast, the elves are naturally magical.

35 years ago or so, I started reading a fantasy series called The Circle of Light. It was very much a LotR knock-off. I was a little annoyed because the dwarf in the series used magic, when I "knew" dwarves couldn't use magic. I had to have gotten that idea from Tolkien, because although I had started playing D&D, I hadn't seen a rulebook yet, just lots of mimeographed reference sheets, and there was nothing about dwarves being anti-magical.

Quote from: Skarg;908942Besides, how realistic are shark fins adapted to throw oil flasks, let alone light them underwater in high-pH medieval seawater?

Jesus wept :cool:

Anti-Magic Dwarves seems to be a common wargaming trope. Maybe it came from there?

Both Dwarfs and Elves in RPGs tend to for the most part to have little to do with their folkloric counterparts. Tolkien casts a very long shadow, as does Gygax. Likewise clockpunk Gnomes which are an entirely modern invention.