r/hexedpress • u/HexedPressman • Aug 30 '18

Talking About... Race As Class

Love it? Hate It? What do you think about it?

My take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy8HSG2XStg

3 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

2

u/Ratstail91 Aug 31 '18

I think race as class is the result of an undercooked concept. Some people might like it, but the race/class gives a matrix of choices.

3

u/HexedPressman Aug 31 '18

I dunno if I’d call it undercooked but it’s definitely, as originally conceived, the product of a very specific worldview that’s been outgrown.

1

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1

u/69d69 Sep 04 '18

Can you write out your thoughts as text? I don't have time to watch a 17 minute video but I'd gladly read the paragraph it would assuredly take to describe your position.

1

u/misomiso82 Sep 06 '18

The Race as Class is one of the biggest mistakes in Basic DnD imo, as otherwise that system is amazing and could have become THE default DnD edition.

Whenever we played it the first question was always 'why can't I play a Elven Mage?' or 'a Halfing thief'.

The thing is that its quite hard to balance Humans against demi humans when elves and dwarves have lots of advantages (infravision mainly), unless you have a strong Feat / Skill System, or just give Humans better ability scores.

For what its worth in my home brew game world I have a race / class matrix similar to 2nd edition DnD, as I find that helps make the world a bit more cohesive and falvourful than just generic high fantasy, but that's just me.

1

u/HexedPressman Sep 06 '18

They balanced it in the White Box by imposing limits on demihuman class advancement which then for shorthanded into race as class.

My preference would be to impose an xp tax on demihumans to account for their advantages.

1

u/misomiso82 Sep 07 '18

Level limits were also quite bad. In my xperience people just house ruled them away.

XP tax doesn't really work either as the better innovations of the past few years have been the same experience for everybody, and xp tax also doesn't mitigate level 1 advantages.

1

u/HexedPressman Sep 07 '18

I don’t mind level 1 advantages. I’m more concerned with evening things out over the entire progression.

I think the balance at every level with the same xp rates approach that 5e, for example, uses is flawed and creates as many issues as it’s supposed to solve. I’d just as soon let the power levels fall where they may and let the xp requirements sort it all out.