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[poll] Class lockouts by race
KenFisher
Member UncommonPosts: 5,035
Really need some insight into this...
Restricting the classes that a race can play. Is it a good idea and why?
For example: If a race is very strong, very rugged, and would make a great tank melee-DPS character, should a game let the player roll that race into a Priest (magical healer dps)???
I'd like to know what you think.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Comments
I find it silly if you disallow races from classes.
Humans, elves, dwarves etc are all sentient beings. So why exactly would an Elf be able to have a class that a dwarf cant ?
I am fine, though, with each race getting their own set of classes. So the human would be a dark knight that uses necromatic death and fear magic, while the high elf would be the paladin that comes with clerical light and healing magic.
If you have all races for all classes, I am also all for race changing classes. So a dwarf fighter would have some advantages with using an axe or hammer over using a sword, compared to a human or worse elf. They would move slower. They would have some advantages against certain opponents. They could take more of a beating.
Voted Limit classes that match racial bonuses. But meant limit classes that match racial history.
If a race historically has no demon worship of any kind then warlocks shouldn't be allowed. Because the moment you allow them there will be hundreds of warlocks running around.
The developers can decide their world's history so they're free to make histories that don't limit any classes. But if you give a race a certain culture and history then stick to it.
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I think it depends upon the game. Sure, seems like a cop-out answer, but I think no restrictions or plenty of restrictions, either way works if it fits the way they designed the game.
It's not like doing it one particular way is a path of badness you can never recover from no matter how the rest of the game is.
I agree with Meowhead that it depends on the game. For example, if your rogue class is designed for stealth and evasion, the giant race or the stone golem race probably wouldn't be too suited for it. If, however, all the races could plausibly and statistically pull off the class without any major imbalances or leaps of logic, then all for all sounds like a good idea.
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Agree with above on the depending on the game, storyline sometimes restricts classes, not much of a big deal, as long as character creation is robust and lots of options, I don't see the bad part.
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Interesting concept. Never considered fit with race history. Thanks!
Excellent, I agree.
In talking with people alpha testing I get the same feedback. If there's not a good reason for a restriction it will seem out of place.
As the game designer (If that's your role), you have the power! You can make the reasons, you can pick the restrictions! I'm sure it's a pretty heady feeling. Just don't abuse it.
Instead of actually game restrictions to race/classes how about the penalties of being a certain class as a certain race make it very difficult to be. As said above a stone giant as a rogue, but his agil would be so low that he would have serious problems, but he can technically still be a rogue....just a very bad one.
Restrictions and illogical. Any sentient being could pursue any path of work. On top, it just kills creativity and makes even more copy cats in a game where individuality is one of the most desired goods already. Like limiting Chiss in TOR to Imperial Agent means we will see LEGIONS of Imperial Agent Chiss'. I recall in EQ2 an Ogre hat made a betrayal quest and made a Paladin. He roleplayed him still a bit dumb and very Ogreish, but he played him SO great and convincing. I want a MMO to allow that creativity to make strange combinations. It is just the lack of vision and creativity that can't see the richness of this.
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Make games skill driven not class driven, that solves the problem.
I would say it depends...for the crativity part....because a paladin would hvae to have a god (supposedly good god) that would grant him powers. This I would think would be rare so having billions of pally ogres running around would be the killing of a story for the land the creator is trying to make. creativity is not letting people shit all over your story if your game is story driven.
Back in old AD&D rules you were limited by race to class , But if you could convince the DM to let you play a Goblin Paildan they would but life would be hard . I agree you could have any race be any class but make some combos really unappeling , Orc Mage not such a good Idea limit mana and stuff . There also in PnP be limits to class lvl per class and race , A halfling could never be as good as a human fighter by lvl , This is also a good possiblity , But in todays MMOS this would not work becuase of all the focus on end game .
Yep, I'll go along with this viewpoint, Keep it dependent on the lore and some physical practicalities.
But overall I don't object to lockouts of certain classes by race, still think it was a shame that WOW let Horde have Pallys and Alliance have Shamans, gave each side their own special flavor.
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... or you could do it the DAoC way, and have each side have its own set of classes with different strengths and weaknesses.
The problem with this can be basically summed up as the "Drizzt problem".
For those that don't know Drizzt was a D&D dark elf ( or drow ) that had forsaken his evil ways and became a good guy. This was a major thing because the Drow were evil. They had a society based on murder, cunning and violence. Their basic philosophy was the strong will survive.
Drizzt was very popular. So popular that suddenly a lot of people started roleplaying their very own good Drow.
Now imagine an MMO featuring Drow with the option of taking "good" classes as opposed to only evil classes. Their whole racial identity will be completely destroyed as hordes of players will be making "good" Drow and basically turn Drow into dark blue-skinned humans.
Strange combinations are only strange when there's serious limits on them. The moment you allow everyone to make every "creative" and strange combinations those combinations aren't strange and creative anymore. They're just standard choices.
Do I make a blue-skinned human? Do I make an extra-large human? Do I make a tall human with pointy ears?
For races to mean something you need to give them a racial identity. And then trap them inside that racial identity. Orcs are violent brutes. End of story. Sure, there might be a peaceful orc somewhere but that's not you. That's not a player. All player orcs are violent brutes. That's a race that means something. Allowing all choices means you just get buff green-skinned humans.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
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Tired of the race class restrictions. Let any race play any class. Games can use stats and other racial ablities to maybe hamper a certian class. Yes you can play it but you most likley won't be the best at it. That's just my take on it. Have been playing games with race class restrictions since the 80's it's kind of getting stale for me.
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way to go not thinking outside the box.Would it make sense for a undead / evil race to play a Paladins or a holy priest? This way one of the troubles Blizzard faced with their lore before retcon started hitting
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That summarizes my view as well. The fiction of the game is that dwarves choose to be engineers, warriors and miners. It may be cliche, but it emphasizes the fact that if you see a dwarf, he's going to be doing dwarf things. If you see an orc, he's going to do orc things.
I'd take it to the point of saying that if an orc player character sees a dwarf player character, the orc is obligated to kill the dwarf, and vice-versa. If you spot an enemy and don't attack, you take an experience hit. Or, more modestly, if you are in the vicinity of an enemy without attacking, you take a temporary stat hit that gets progressively worse the longer you hang around without attacking. The goal is to introduce a gameplay incentive to get players to roleplay their characters according to the fiction of the game.
I don't like restrictions at all. In some cases they do make sense, I think it's silly when you have Orc clerics and stuff but if someone wants to do it, why not? Unless the games lore is so deep that it's just impossible for this to happen.
I guess with ffxi being my fav MMO ever, I like every race to be able to do everything. I also wish every game had the mechanic of being able to switch classes instead of having to make a brand new character but alas that's not the norm so some people don't like it.
I like having class restrictions for certain races. It makes the games more realistic and interesting to me.
That would be my preference, though I like to have non-human races in the fantasy games I play.
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This is how I would prefer it, it would keep the racial identity that Gobla was talking about in check as well.
Have dwarf mages, but make their spells cost a bit more and be less effective.
A gnome warrior could have a slight penalty to health and damage.
And so on...
Modern race design tends to keep racial differences at a minimum, so I voted "no restriction".
Racial choice should be continue trending cosmetic for many reasons. The strongest gameplay reason being that it's a choice made by players very early in the game, when they know the least about a game and therefore shouldn't really be penalized with a permanent choice that they're dissatisfied with.
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I voted for anything goes. The way I see it, it's a game. It's not something I'd ever be interested in, but there's people out there who want to be in an all gnome guild or whatever. You can't do that if you can't have gnome warriors or gnome priests. Or you get to have the priests but not the shamans which means you're always going to have the same group composition. I think most people will stick with the expected archetypes, the barbarian warrior and the elven druid. If someone wants to be oddball, let them have their fun.
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