Its time to tell you about Races and Classes. Creating a character is almost baffling if you're new because there were so many choices for races, sub-races, and classes. Its not like just choosing between being Black, Latino, Asian, or White. These are physically different races so its like choosing among Humans, Vulcans, Klingons, Wookies, Menbari, and Centari. Within each race, there are sub-races. For example, you'll generally know elves from the LOTR trilogy and other fantasy books, movies, or games. But did you know there are Wood Elves, Sea Elves, Dark Elves, Shadow Elves, High Elves, Winged Elves, Star Elves, Sun Elves, and more??? Neither did I until I sat down to make a character. They all have different abilities and limitations according to their sub-race. The base D&D races are Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, Half Elves, Half Dragons, Warforges, Half Vampires, and Half Orcs. There are tons more races you can play, all with specific details and head-spinning racial abilities. Needless to say, I turned to the GM for help. I'm glad the GM loves me...
There are also four different base classes, most of which are self explanatory. Warriors, Mages, Thieves, and Priests. The classes break down into sub-classes as follows
- Warriors - Barbarians, Fighters, Rangers, Monks, Samurai, Hexblades, and Paladins
- Mages - Wizards, Sorcerors, Beguilers, War Mages, Duskblades, and Warlocks
- Thieves - Rogues, Bard, Scouts, Mariners, Ninjas (DAMN THEM!!!!) and Spell Thieves
- Priests - Clerics, Druids, Dragon Shamans, Favored Souls, and Mystics
Is your head spinning? Mine was too when I sat down to develop a character. Needless to say I am not explaining all these in detail and just thinking about trying to do that makes me want a drink. Is that wrong at 11:00 AM? Moving on... Despite the fact that this is all complex gamers love their races and classes. They will discuss the pros and cons ad nauseum. A new gamer will inevitably miss the nuances of race and class in character development and then will inevitably have a tough time when adding alignments on top of all this. Its enough to drive me
Winehouse or
Spears or even
Dickinson. While I'm moving toward batty, gamers are developing stronger characters, with specific development goals do achieve specific attack abilities. There are several discussion boards dedicated to achieving unbelievable characters with sensational attacks. I can't and I won't. There are some things I have to let go and let goddess...
1 comment:
When you decide on the class you want to play you'll want to choose a race that complements that class.
No point making a Gnome fighter that gets -2 to strength with strength being the main stat for fighter. I would only 'mismatch' a class with a race if its make sense for roleplaying purposes.
For example, a Half-orc Paladin is not something you would normally hear, but perhaps you had a backstory where a nun from the church was raped and you were born while in captivity. Then when you were rescued your mom raised you as a human.
Also realize that certain races have favored classes. This mean that they don't get penalized for that class when multi-classing. The exception are humans that automatically have their highest level class their favored class.
A dwarf, for example, has a favored class fighter, which means if he was a fighter for high highest level class he could have 1 alternate class that was equal to or lower level. Once that other class was greater than his fighter levels he would have a 20% experience penalty.
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