# Human Fighters Most Common Race/Class Combo In D&D



## Cognomen's Cassowary (Oct 12, 2017)

An article by Gus Wezerek on FiveThirtyEight looks at race and class combination in D&D, using data from D&D Beyond. Wezerek suggests a reason for the popularity of human fighters: "It lets you focus on creating a good story rather than spending time flipping through rulebooks to look up spells."

Image from Curse via FiveThirtyEight​


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## rczarnec (Oct 12, 2017)

Multiclass characters count for both classes, so I wonder how many of the fighters are actually fighter dips. 

I assume that this might also prop up warlock numbers.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 12, 2017)

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## TwoSix (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> Counterpoint- despite the grognard dislike of the new races, Dragonborn, Tieflings, and Genasi are all more popular than halflings and half-orcs.



Reminds me of WoW race selection tendencies, people just avoid the races that are ugly and/or short.  Even in a tabletop game where you can't see them.


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## OB1 (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> There are many threads here about class design. That the Ranger and Fighter are bad designs. That the Paladin, Bard, and Monk are good designs (for what they are trying to accomplish). I think that what I'm seeing is that many people care less than we do about whether or not a class is all it can be (or "properly designed") and just want to play a class because it is what it is.




Great observations all around, and I quoted the above for truth. 

One other observation I had is that when it comes to class, the more straighforward the class is the more popular it is. Bards, Sorcerers and Druids require a fair degree of work from the player, where fighters and rogues are pretty simple to run and are chosen nearly 25% of the time.  The core 4 are chosen 40% of the time as a whole.

Additionally, I wonder how much the fact that certain choices are free to use and others require a purchase comes into play in the numbers.

I've listed the results as a percentage of the total below for easy of comparison.

HUMAN	23.1%
ELF	       15.1%
HALF-ELF	9.6%
DWARF	8.7%
DRAGONBORN	7.5%
TIEFLING	7.0%
GENASI	5.5%
HALFLING	5.4%
HALF-ORC	4.6%
GNOME	4.2%
GOLIATH	4.1%
AARAKOCRA	3.5%
AASIMAR	1.6%

FIGHTER	12.7%
ROGUE	10.4%
WIZARD	9.0%
BARBARIAN	8.3%
CLERIC	8.3%
RANGER	8.1%
PALADIN	8.1%
WARLOCK	8.0%
MONK	7.2%
BARD	7.1%
SORCERER	6.9%
DRUID	5.8%


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 12, 2017)

Cognomen's Cassowary said:


> Wezerek suggests a slightly silly reason for the popularity of human fighters: human because they get +1 to everything, and fighters because they let you focus on storytelling over mechanics. He doesn't even broach the subject of the variant human and its potentially game-breaking fighter synergy in combat.



 Heh.  "Focus on storytelling over mechanics?"  Wow.  

Fighter - well, two PH sub-classes of fighter - is about the only class option to represent the lion's share of heroes from the broader fantasy genre, be it fiction, myth or legend, book, film or TV.  
Of course a lot of people play it.  



lowkey13 said:


> And, of course, the boring, bland Fighter is by far the most popular. Because of course it is. Which just goes to show that the internet is not always representative of actual play.



 It is precisely because the fighter covers so many common, familiar, popular, and relatable fantasy archetypes that it's mechanical shortcomings are such a big issue - and why they remain un-solved for so long ("it can't be that bad, people keep playing it!").

Likewise, human is, necessarily, the most familiar, relatable race.  All players being reasonably human - no matter what mundanes may say about us nerds being from other planets.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 12, 2017)

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## flametitan (Oct 12, 2017)

That said, We don't know how many of these characters are actually characters _intended to be played_ or just for messing around with in D&D Beyond.


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## Blue (Oct 12, 2017)

They don't differentiate between "characters getting played" and "character builds I'm playing around with".  I'll often build out sample characters at a few levels to see if they work mechanically - something successful, sometimes not, sometimes _too_ successful for my normal table.  But that's a big difference between what I'm playing because I find it interesting.

This is likely not inherent in the data in any way, but if they track XP over time they can probably see it.  Any that the XP/level never changes, or ones where the XP is only at a few set points, often jumping more than one level, are most likely theoretical builds.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 12, 2017)

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## Tony Vargas (Oct 12, 2017)

Blue said:


> This is likely not inherent in the data in any way, but if they track XP over time they can probably see it.  Any that the XP/level never changes, or ones where the XP is only at a few set points, often jumping more than one level, are most likely theoretical builds.



 My intuition is that those experimental 'builds' would probably not be single-class fighters (there's not a lot to experiment with).  



lowkey13 said:


> This isn't an argument from popularity



 What, the argument that lost of people play fighters, so it can't possibly be overly generic or mechanically inferior or 'boring' or any of the various other things it's been accused of?

Sounds like a fair example of an appeal to popularity.



> there are popular things that aren't good, and unpopular things that are good.



 That's right, illustrating that popular necessarily implies good is a fallacy.  



> ... perhaps there comes a time when you think to yourself, "Hey, I think that New Coke tastes better, but maybe they have a good reason for sticking with the formula."



 Then you remind yourself, oh yeah, ad populum is a fallacy, popularity doesn't affect how things actually taste, so keep drinking what you like.

(Personally, I don't much care for any formulation of Coke - without plenty of rum...)

For another example, millions of people really enjoy smoking, but, it actually does contribute to emphysema (I think they call it COPD, these days, actually) and lung cancer.  Even tobacco companies don't try to spin that as "perhaps people like smoking because it helps free them from the burden of retirement planning..."


And, frankly, it's a good thing unpopularity doesn't mean something bad, because D&D, would be provably terrible if that were the case.  ;P


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## TwoSix (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> Perhaps the things about the fighter that appeal to so many ("people keep playing it") just aren't appealing to you, and that's ... okay?
> 
> Maybe if they changed the fighter in ways that appeal to you, then so many people wouldn't play it?



I don't think that's necessarily true.  I'm pretty sure surveys showed that the 4e fighter was also the most popular class during 4e's run, and the 4e fighter was probably the polar opposite of the 5e fighter in complexity and design goals.  I think the fighter's enduring popularity is simply a case of generic beating specific; vanilla is the most popular ice cream flavor because it's good on its own AND because it can mix and match with almost everything else.  Fighter is what you use when you want race, or background, or a roleplaying hook you like to be at the forefront, and you want a strong but basic framework in the background.

And that's isn't a knock on the fighter!  A generic framework is good!  Complexity can be added on via other mechanisms; a simple mechanical core for a class is best,


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## Mephista (Oct 12, 2017)

I'm surprised elf beat out half-elf.   I see so many people taking half-elf for the power of it over other options. That said, elf is the quinsential wizard / druid / ranger / arcane trickster / eldritch knight option, so its not too big a surprise there. I'm honestly surprised on dwarf, however.   That got a much larger return than I expected.

tiefling warlocks are a big thing, no surprise - the phb version is pretty much warlock built only.   Dragonborn paladin, with a minor in sorcerer and fighter, likewise no surprise; despite the writer showing surprise, it was actually one of the big dragon things since 3e.  Halfling is primarily rogue (no surprise) with a touch of bard, but still surprised that elf beat out halflings at their own game.   

Gensasi, are definitely a dark horse here.   Most especially for the very wide spread - now, I know there's four sub-races, but still!  That's a nice spread.

Gnomes... we got some rogues (presumably arcane tricksters), wizards, and bards as main, but far less than elves in all three categories.  Gnome paladin gets very few hits.  ^^  Perhaps in the future, there will be more gnome artificers, but now?  It seems that gnomes aren't as popular as other races, even in their forte.

The only less popular races are Aasimar (because of DMG spot? clearly doesn't have Volo races atm) and non-genasi EE races.  Genasi, given its popularity in other games, likely gets a bump, but the rest are ignored in favor of core races.


Honestly, I think the writer of the article shows some ignorance over the why human fighters are popular - while they are simple, its also a case that many people think of free feat + fighter is one of the most powerful melee options in the game, and people like their warriors.  A very simple and powerful option.  Spellcasters don't benefit from feats nearly as much.


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## TwoSix (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> The only real surprise from this data, IMO, is the over-representation of the Barbarian, and, perhaps, the Cleric falling to 5.



Barbarian might be overpopulated simply because it's alphabetically first.  I made one test character in Beyond, and it was a Barbarian simply because it was the option on top.


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## ro (Oct 12, 2017)

It's worth noting that Human is the most straightforward race and Fighter sounds like the simplest class to pick up for new players or people jumping into a game. I would guess that the complexity of spellcasting moves people toward the martial-focused classes. Those classes may be weaker in the long run, but they are easier to start with.

The big exception is Wizards, which are so central as an archetype that they are frequently attempted, unlike the other full casters. (Clerics get attention, but my guess it is a simple, "I can fight and heal people!")


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## lowkey13 (Oct 12, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## OB1 (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> The only real surprise from this data, IMO, is the over-representation of the Barbarian, and, perhaps, the Cleric falling to 5.




I think we may be seeing two trends happening here both related to the core audience of 5e being a more casual gamer. 

One is in regards to the difficulty in playing full casters, where 3 out of 5 take up the bottom positions.  Wizard may be buoyed as the default option for the more dedicated player in a group and also benefits iconic representation in popular culture (including Harry Potter) and has a power set well suited to overcome many challenges.   Whereas the Cleric has less representation and the need for it's skill set (particularly healing) isn't as prominent in 5e.

As for the rise of the Barbarian, it is perhaps the ultimate class for the casual player, even more so than the Fighter given it's robustness in battle and the ease of understanding it's mechanics.  It's made for new players.


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> No, I appreciate your position, so it would be pleasant if you could understand the positions of other people.



 I /do/ understand the position of "it's popular so it's good," I just also understand that it's fallacious.  



> Everyone who participates in these forums knows that you desire more complex martial options, up to and including the class that shall not be named. That's fine! That is a perfectly reasonable desire!



 It's funny that you can, in the same breath, say it's OK, but not actually bring yourself to type 'Warlord.'  Obviously, it's very, very not-OK.  



> What you fail to understand is that



Wrong again. 







> there are a large number of people who 100% do not want this. They want a generic "boring" fighter.



 Which is an odd point, because wanting the one need in no way deny the other.


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## Mistwell (Oct 12, 2017)

This data lines up pretty close with data from a year and a half ago on race and class popularity as well.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 12, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> A. The fighter is good because so many people like it.
> 
> B. A lot of people like the fighter, so it has something appealing about it, even if that doesn't appeal to you.
> 
> Do you understand the difference?



 Of course there are things appealing about the fighter!  I've mentioned some.  Look at the archetypes you actually see in the broader genre, from modern novels back to the mists of myth/legend.  You try to take a lot of them into D&D, the fighter is the only place they fit, because they weren't spell-casters, nor sneaky glass cannons, nor savage berserkers.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 12, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## Cognomen's Cassowary (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> I really wish, however, that you wouldn't be quite so dismissive of the fact that there are those who don't share your exacting requirements for martial characters.




This is practically inviting him to start in on his rant about sorcerers. 

(kidding, kidding)


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## Satyrn (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> That said, I have always wanted you to get everything you want from a complex martial character, seriously. For your Christmas, I hope WoTC releases a plethora of Wuxia options, a Warlord, a martial archetype that does damage on a miss, and every possible combination of martial character with all sorts of options that you have dreamed of, and even those you haven't, that rival and surpass the options of spellcasters.



Well, now I know what I want for Xmas. Thanks for writing my wishlist for me!

Now, I just need to get @_*Santa Claus*_ to read this.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 12, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> The first which I will not belabor (as I have previously) is it really bugs me when people do the whole "straw man," "ad hominem," "appeal to authority," "argumentum ad verecundiam," on enworld...



 Nod, this isn't formal logic, sure, I get that.  It's a convenient short-hand in this instance, but it's outside it's proper usage, yes.



> That doesn't mean that the Fighter is the best class ever, or the best design of a martial class. But it definitely appeals to people not in spite of, but because of the simplicity.



 Ironically, if I had to nominate a best-class-design-ever for a D&D martial class, it would unhesitatingly be the 3e Fighter.  Primarily because it was not just actually simple (as opposed to choice-poor), but elegant, yet had depth.  It just had the misfortune of being in the same edition with CoDzilla.  



> That said, I have always wanted you to get everything you want from a complex martial character, seriously. For your Christmas, I hope WoTC releases a plethora of Wuxia options, a Warlord, a martial archetype that does damage on a miss, and every possible combination of martial character with all sorts of options that you have dreamed of, and even those you haven't, that rival and surpass the options of spellcasters. Because I genuinely want people to get what they want, and people getting what they want does not impact my game.



 And I in no way want to prohibit people from continuing to play their Champions.

I just found the theory about 'story vs mechanics:'







Cognomen's Cassowary said:


> Wezerek suggests a slightly silly reason for the popularity of human fighters: human because they get +1 to everything, and fighters because they let you focus on storytelling over mechanics. He doesn't even broach the subject of the variant human and its potentially game-breaking fighter synergy in combat.



more like spin than theory.  Mechanics don't get in the way of story, they can support it.  OTOH, the most-relatable race, human, being the other half of that most-popular combo, points to a more meaningful reason, the concepts that necessarily fall to the fighter are more relatable than those that require a berserker, assassin, warlock, druid*, etc...​


lowkey13 said:


> Is that Tony?
> 
> I always associate Sorcerer rants with Cap'n Zapp!



Moonsong.  I'm a sympathizer, though.













* I should really be more upset that my favorite 5e class finished dead last, but, hey, it's in the PH, and, I guess, it just means it's that much less likely I'll ever here "nah, we already have 3 druids, play something else..."


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## Cognomen's Cassowary (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> Is that Tony?
> 
> I always associate Sorcerer rants with Cap'n Zapp!




I picked a class out of the air, though, to be honest, I have come to expect Tony to have an assertive opinion on nearly everything.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 12, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## Satyrn (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> Me? I have no strong or irrational opinions.



That's only semantically true. Your opinion in question is strong *and* irrational.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 12, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> Different posters eventually get associations over time.
> 
> IIRC, CapnZapp has a thing for sorcerers and magic item prices.



 ...and Day Length.



> Tony has a strong desire for more complex martial options and/or the Warlord.



 Definitely a Warlord.  

'More complex' is a bit of a misnomer.  Complexity isn't desirable in and of itself, it has to accomplish something.  In a game where most classes are extremely versatile, balancing an historically-limited class meant increasing it's complexity, some, though still nowhere near that of others, historically.  The complexity was seized upon not just as a downside abhorred by those who wanted the class returned to it's former state, but as the shorthand for the balanced, versatile alternative.  It's... unfortunate.



> Me? I have no strong or irrational opinions.



 Heh.


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## billd91 (Oct 12, 2017)

Cognomen's Cassowary said:


> Wezerek suggests a slightly silly reason for the popularity of human fighters: human because they get +1 to everything, and fighters because they let you focus on storytelling over mechanics.




Note to those of you not actually checking into the very short article - the author doesn't attempt to infer why people play fighters from the data. At all. He's posting *his* thought on that topic and how it might appeal to players like himself. And he's got a point. Fighters are, relatively speaking, easy to get a handle on and play without needing to reference the rules as often as spellcasters or classes with more fiddly bits.


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## Dausuul (Oct 12, 2017)

Two interesting observations:


Of the four most popular classes, three are noncasters (meaning they don't have spellcasting as part of the base class, though they might have a caster subclass). Considering there are only four noncaster classes in the game, that's pretty substantial.
Elves, humans, and half-elves together make up more than 50% of all characters.


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## Coroc (Oct 12, 2017)

Ahh that feelgood when you are confirmed to be doing the right thing in preventing your players to take ridiculous combos like dwarfen wizards or Halfling barbarian gwm builds by simply banning them from your campaign in shameless and remorseless appliance of RULE ZERO yessss


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## Lanefan (Oct 12, 2017)

This sort of thing always catches my interest...but what I'd really like to know is how much of that data is tainted by multiclassing.  Anyone know if there's a version of this data that either strips out multiclass characters or gives a % of each total that comes from multis?

I'm surprised to see Druid so underplayed.  Too weak due to design-level over-reaction to CoDzilla in 3e, maybe?

But Human Fighters for the win!  Yeah, baby! 

 [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - Fighters are supposed to be simple.  Failing that, there needs to be another core class that is simple and basic and mechanics-light to mechanics-none* for people like me to play when we just want to hit things and not think about it, and not fuss with feats or mechanics or anyhting else beyond plusses to hit and damage.

* - yet still vaguely capable of contributing as much to the game/party as more complex characters.

And some things never change.  Even back in 1e there were articles etc. suggesting the expected split would be roughly 40-30-20-10 where 40% of the PCs would be Fighters (or subclasses), 10% would be Magic-Users (or Illusionists), 20% would be one of Cleric or Thief and 30% would be the other - I can never remember which order those two go in.  Doesn't account for Monks.

Long-term data from our own 1e games shows closer to a 40-25-15-15-5 split Fighter-Cleric-Thief-MU-Other.

Lanefan


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## Parmandur (Oct 12, 2017)

Hmmmmmm, solid data.


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## MechaTarrasque (Oct 12, 2017)

I will be curious to see what results they get if they do something like this around this time next year (preferably if the results are broken down by year).  Trends are the key.


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## Parmandur (Oct 12, 2017)

MechaTarrasque said:


> I will be curious to see what results they get if they do something like this around this time next year (preferably if the results are broken down by year).  Trends are the key.



Broadly, probably not very different, given that this mostly matches with WotC previous shared findings.

But time shall tell.


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## GreenTengu (Oct 12, 2017)

Guess my next character will be an Aasimar Druid.

But, yes, I imagine that this result is because humans are the most powerful race and fighter is the most powerful class, at least at lower levels before options really start opening up for the others.


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 12, 2017)

Dausuul said:


> Of the four most popular classes, three are noncasters (meaning they don't have spellcasting as part of the base class, though they might have a caster subclass). Considering there are only four noncaster classes in the game, that's pretty substantial.



They're also the three classes that even have an option of not using magic, at all (Monk has one non-caster sub-class, but it's still using magic, as Ki is explicitly magical in 5e).  I guess a further test would be sub-class:  Are there a lot of Totem Barbarians, EKs, & ATs, or a lot of Champions, Berserkers, and Assassins?



Lanefan said:


> I'm surprised to see Druid so underplayed. Too weak due to design-level over-reaction to CoDzilla in 3e, maybe?



That was the 4e Druid ("XOMG! That Druid! Let's cut it up into three pieces, so that no one Druid PC gets more than one Cool Thing to do, yeah, that'll learn 'em!").  The pendulum's swung back the other way.  
No, it's just never been a popular concept.  Too 'tree hugger,' maybe, or too obscure?  

I mean, I didn't start playing Druids because I saw it and went "awesome!  a class for the ancient-Celtic priest/judge/seer history knows next to nothing about!"  No, I read "the Druid is what the ancient Celtic Druids might have become had they survived..." in the PH, got curious, and that grew into a fascination with Cletic mythology.  It also turned out to be a pretty amazing class in 1e, in certain ways - some of which are (finally) back in 5e.



> Long-term data from our own 1e games shows closer to a 40-25-15-15-5 split Fighter-Cleric-Thief-MU-Other.
> Lanefan



 Clerics were more obligatory in 1e, and armor a more decided advantage.  Could have had something to do with the Cleric ranking.


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## kenmarable (Oct 12, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> This sort of thing always catches my interest...but what I'd really like to know is how much of that data is tainted by multiclassing.  Anyone know if there's a version of this data that either strips out multiclass characters or gives a % of each total that comes from multis?




Not sure if someone else mentioned this, but at a rough estimate (if my off the top of my head math is right), there is about a 9% increase in the numbers due to multiclassing. There's about 109,000 per 100,000 characters. So at least [-]81[/-] 91% of characters are not multiclass.

(If there are only 2 class multiclassers, than it's [-]81[/-] 91/9, but with multiclassers with 3+ classes, it shifts even more. However, I'd imagine - completely anecdotally - that 3 classes are less common, and 4+ are very rare.)

The other thing to note - many of the totals are wrong and are off slightly. So these numbers are quite likely rounded (although some are off by 2 which makes less sense of rounding??). So when they say "per 100,000" that does seem accurate and there are likely at least an order of magnitude more PCs in the data and then rounded off here.

_Edited: Fixing a brain fart caught by Dausuul. Thanks! *facepalm* Is it the weekend yet? _


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## Leatherhead (Oct 12, 2017)

Worth mentioning: 







			
				that graph said:
			
		

> Among races available for free. Characters with multiple classes count once for each class.




I wonder how many of those human fighters were made just so that people could use them to argue about GWM/SS/PM  
Partially a jab, but look at that insanely lop-sided the race distribution when compared to every other combination, and remember that variant humans get a feat at level one, which makes them ideal for both low level feat testing and circumventing the main penalty when multi-classing (which is not getting ASI on time)

More interestingly: 

The Cleric has been knocked out of the "core 4". 

Aasimar are the rarest of all characters, even more rare than birdmen. Though it doesn't specify if this is the DMG's or the Volo's Guide's take of the race.


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## Caliban (Oct 12, 2017)

Cognomen's Cassowary said:


> An article by Gus Wezerek on FiveThirtyEight looks at race and class combination in D&D, using data from D&D Beyond. Wezerek suggests a reason for the popularity of human fighters: "It lets you focus on creating a good story rather than spending time flipping through rulebooks to look up spells."




Or, alternatively - Variant Human Fighters get the greatest number of ASI's and Feats.


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## iserith (Oct 12, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> The second is that I tried to explain that there are those of us who really, genuinely, enjoy having the simple martial character. I use it both for the games I run for kids to introduce them to D&D (simplicity to learn) and the grognard campaigns (because they prefer gameplay to fiddly bits). I think that there are many people that enjoy a simple martial option. That doesn't mean that the Fighter is the best class ever, or the best design of a martial class. But it definitely appeals to people not in spite of, but because of the simplicity. Personally, I prefer the monk when I get to play because it is (very slightly) more complex.




You can add me to the camp that likes simple fighters. I always play Champions and turn my nose up at those other subclasses. Having said that, warlord was my favorite class in D&D 4e. So something is clearly wrong with me.


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## MechaTarrasque (Oct 12, 2017)

Parmandur said:


> Broadly, probably not very different, given that this mostly matches with WotC previous shared findings.
> 
> But time shall tell.





That is true.  I am mostly curious about changes in the lesser-used races and classes after XGtE comes out.  If aasimar sorcerers go up after the divine soul gets on Beyond and tiefling paladins go up after the conquest paladin gets on Beyond and that sort of thing.  One thing that did catch my eye was genasi monk, especially given how much disdain (much of it justified in my opinion) that the elemental monk gets on the forums (assuming that most genasi monks are elemental).  If they decide to go deeper into racial feats, genasi feats that have good synergy with the monk seem appropriate.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 12, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## Kobold Stew (Oct 12, 2017)

A few observations stand out for me:

1. I'm really impressed with the number of halforc bards and sorcerers. The clearly unoptimized builds for a low-popularity phb race are substantial (the numbers aren't that much lower than the halforc rangers, which is a completely viable build). Cynically, we could say that even they're not being played, that gives a good benchmark of the #s that may be experimenting with builds, or trying to bend the system. But I am heartened by the dwarf wizards and halforc bards.

2. Compare that with the goliath barbarian -- the best represented barbarian race (38% of barbs made, with a non-php race). That's huge, and suggests that a substantial number of users are looking for straightforward optimization. 

3. Genasi are popular and spread almost equally across classes. That reflects something of their design -- the apparent equality comes (I'll bet) because players can choose which of four main stats to add a point (though, to be fair, the charisma-classes are not underrepresented in this distribution; a fact that I find encouraging).

4. I'm surprised how well Tieflings do, until I see that over a quarter of them are warlocks (and they are almost a quarter of all warlocks), which skews the numbers. 

5. Half of all clerics are humans or dwarves. The only similar clustering among two races is with fighters (also human and dwarf) and wizards (human and elf)

6. Low- or no-spellcasting classes (fighter, barb, rogue) represent 34% of all characters made (less with multiclassing). That's substantial.


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## kenmarable (Oct 12, 2017)

TheHobgoblin said:


> Guess my next character will be an Aasimar Druid.
> 
> But, yes, I imagine that this result is because humans are the most powerful race and fighter is the most powerful class, at least at lower levels before options really start opening up for the others.




Unfortunately, there's really no telling why. Given my experience with all the gamers I know, I would presume it's because humans are more "normal" and fits their concept and has zero to do with how powerful they are.

In face-to-face gaming, I have met 1 maybe 2 gamers who made decisions based on what's powerful. Even the level-dippers were just going for a way to mechanically express a prior concept they had for a character. Nothing wrong with picking what you want for any reason at all, of course! I just wouldn't presume one or the other (or a third or a combination or...) is the norm across all players. 

There are all sorts of different reasons why certain options will be more popular, and if I had to bet, I'd say there is no ONE reason why. It's likely humans and fighters have more than one reason going for them and it's the alignment of reasons that causes them to rise.

i.e. 
Those interested in more power numbers-wise might gravitate towards options A, C, D, and G.
Those who are interested in ease of use might go towards B, C, and F.
Those who like characters similar to ones in books, movies, games, etc. might tend towards A, C, and F.
(etc. for other reasons we could imagine)

So C might really stand out, with A & F in second, and E almost ignored. When people ask why so many like C but not E, all three reasons are, in some way, correct but also miss the points the others make.


----------



## TwoSix (Oct 12, 2017)

Tony Vargas said:


> That was the 4e Druid ("XOMG! That Druid! Let's cut it up into three pieces, so that no one Druid PC gets more than one Cool Thing to do, yeah, that'll learn 'em!").  The pendulum's swung back the other way.
> No, it's just never been a popular concept.  Too 'tree hugger,' maybe, or too obscure?



I imagine it's more implementation, at least for 5e.  Druid gets Wild Shape, spellcasting, and not much else.  Wildshape is powerful, but can be confusing.  It has poor multiclass synergy with almost everything, and has virtually zero potential as a dip class.  It only has two subclasses, and they're both pretty boring.  (Imagine if they had expanded Land into 6 or 7 regional circles instead, with bonus spells and wildshape bonuses into specific beasts.)  

Contrast with WoW, where the druid has a deserved reputation as a powerful, flexible class, and is the 2nd most played class.  (I reference WoW primarily because I'm extremely familiar with it, and it provides an enormous data set for contemporary but classic fantasy tropes.)


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## TrippyHippy (Oct 12, 2017)

Who would have thought that Halflings were so unpopular? People like them for Rogues but little else. The reason why is unclear, but maybe people just don't like playing small guys as the Gnome is also quite low down.  

Half Elves, as an uncommon race, are so popular is because their design is overpowered (+2 Cha, +1 to two other Abilities, extra skill, language, elf-ey abilities, etc). Personally, I prefer players not to choose Half Elves unless they have a very good back-story - otherwise I think they are powergaming. They obviously seem an iconic fit for Bards, but when people are preferring their use for Paladins, Warlocks, Sorcerers, etc, I think they could have pruned out some of the inherit bonuses all Half Elves get and toned it down some.

The Race/Class combo I would highlight as underpowered is the Dragonborn Sorcerer - which seems to have initially been built up as an iconic combination (in the art, and the Dragon-blooded archetype) but just doesn't mesh that well as a combo.  

I can understand the appeal of Humans, but most people I know prefer the Human Variant option which counts out the '+1 on all Abilitiies' argument. I think that Humans are just the easiest to relate to for most players, with the various other races often ending up as stereotypes in play. 

Fighters are also the most basic class, if people choose Champions especially, so again this may be the appeal. Honestly though, my experience has more and more players opting for more exotic choices - Paladins rather than Fighters, etc. However, the broad picture may be different.

I note that Dwarf Clerics are now more popular than Dwarf Fighters. This reflects that the combo is that potent, and will probably become even more so with the Forge Clerics about to emerge.


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## Oofta (Oct 12, 2017)

iserith said:


> You can add me to the camp that likes simple fighters. I always play Champions and turn my nose up at those other subclasses. Having said that, warlord was my favorite class in D&D 4e. So something is clearly wrong with me.




The good news is that it's not _just _because you like warlords.  Ummm ... wait ... that didn't come out right. 

But I agree on the simple fighter bit.  It was one of my biggest gripes about 4E - that until 4.5 there was no "simple" fighter.  Sometimes I just want to sit, roll some dice and make fun of enjoy the company of my friends.


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## Xaelvaen (Oct 12, 2017)

^ - Also a fan of the Fighter (though my preference is Battle Master).


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## Oofta (Oct 12, 2017)

It will be interesting to see what the numbers are six months or a year from now.  I know when I first created a character I started with something simple just to get the hang of the interface and to see what the character sheet looked like.  While my next character may be a champion fighter (or a gnomish dual-rapier wielding paladin Sir Stabs-a-Lot), they were also the first one I built because I had fewer choices as I leveled them up to 20.


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## iserith (Oct 12, 2017)

Oofta said:


> The good news is that it's not _just _because you like warlords.  Ummm ... wait ... that didn't come out right.
> 
> But I agree on the simple fighter bit.  It was one of my biggest gripes about 4E - that until 4.5 there was no "simple" fighter.  Sometimes I just want to sit, roll some dice and make fun of enjoy the company of my friends.




I think it's back to expectations. I wanted and expected my D&D 4e to be complex. I want and expect my D&D 5e to be simpler. I can play either depending on my mood. I don't need them to mix to be happy.


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## Dausuul (Oct 12, 2017)

kenmarable said:


> Not sure if someone else mentioned this, but at a rough estimate (if my off the top of my head math is right), there is about a 9% increase in the numbers due to multiclassing. There's about 109,000 per 100,000 characters. So at least 81% of characters are not multiclass.



That would be 91%, not 81%. Otherwise your math is correct.


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## JesterOC (Oct 12, 2017)

Human fighters are the go to beginning character. It feels that we are getting more and more new players. That can account for the uneven distribution.


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 12, 2017)

TwoSix said:


> I imagine it's more implementation, at least for 5e.



 I always got the impression that the Druid was very unpopular in 1e - it was one of the last classes I tried out, myself, and the only thing in the PH I never played at all was the Monk - and the implementation is back closer to the 1e version than ever.   Lovely for me, maybe not so much for everyone else.

There's certainly room for more Circles, though.  



TrippyHippy said:


> Who would have thought that Halflings were so unpopular? People like them for Rogues but little else. The reason why is unclear, but maybe people just don't like playing small guys as the Gnome is also quite low down.



 Again, seems to be perenial dislike.  The Gnome was the least popular race for a long time - why it was initially dropped from 4e.



> The Race/Class combo I would highlight as underpowered is the Dragonborn Sorcerer - which seems to have initially been built up as an iconic combination



 The Sorcerer in 4e had a 'Dragon Sorcerer' build that was very effective with the Dragonborn race (intuitive, too, I suppose).  The 4e Dragonborn was also all over the Paladin class both in stat synergy and flavor text, the race being all honorable and worshipping Bahamut, strongly associeated with pallies in that ed.



> I can understand the appeal of Humans, ...I think that Humans are just the easiest to relate to for most players, with the various other races often ending up as stereotypes in play.



 I agree that's key, yes...



> Fighters are also the most basic class, if people choose Champions especially, so again this may be the appeal.



They're also the most relatable class, just as human is the most relatable race.  
But, yes, sub-class data would be interesting to see.  If it's more about simplicity, the Champion will trounce the BM & EK who will be about equal.  If it's more about relatability, the Champion should still come out well ahead, but the BM should trounce the EK.


----------



## jgsugden (Oct 12, 2017)

Faulty data - I made dozens of sample characters just to test out the technology.  Just because I made a character does not mean I am playing it.

For those that want to see them in order from most common to least common combination:

[sblock=List]
#	Race	Class
4,888	Human	Fighter
3,076	Elf	Ranger
2,744	Elf	Wizard
2,568	Human	Wizard
2,542	Human	Rogue
2,339	Human	Cleric
2,326	Human	Paladin
2,257	Elf	Rogue
2,199	Dwarf	Cleric
2,188	Tiefling	Warlock
2,009	Dwarf	Fighter
1,946	Human	Monk
1,808	Half-Elf	Bard
1,797	Halfling	Rogue
1,779	Elf	Druid
1,729	Goliath	Barbarian
1,715	Human	Ranger
1,714	Human	Warlock
1,709	Half-Orc	Barbarian
1,688	Dragonborn	Paladin
1,454	Human	Bard
1,435	Human	Barbarian
1,401	Half-Elf	Warlock
1,360	Gnome	Wizard
1,349	Elf	Monk
1,335	Dragonborn	Fighter
1,325	Half-Elf	Rogue
1,324	Human	Sorcerer
1,323	Dwarf	Barbarian
1,258	Half-Elf	Sorcerer
1,242	Elf	Fighter
1,062	Tiefling	Sorcerer
1,031	Dragonborn	Sorcerer
996	Human	Druid
976	Half-Orc	Fighter
971	Dwarf	Paladin
921	Elf	Cleric
891	Half-Elf	Ranger
875	Dragonborn	Barbarian
865	Goliath	Fighter
841	Elf	Sorcerer
835	Aarakocra	Monk
817	Half-Elf	Paladin
806	Tiefling	Bard
801	Halfling	Bard
798	Tiefling	Rogue
755	Elf	Warlock
750	Genasi	Monk
651	Elf	Bard
648	Genasi	Sorcerer
646	Half-Elf	Fighter
628	Half-Elf	Cleric
611	Half-Elf	Wizard
600	Gnome	Rogue
584	Dragonborn	Warlock
584	Genasi	Druid
580	Genasi	Fighter
572	Aarakocra	Ranger
558	Genasi	Wizard
551	Halfling	Monk
516	Tiefling	Wizard
516	Half-Elf	Druid
510	Dragonborn	Cleric
495	Genasi	Rogue
492	Elf	Paladin
484	Dwarf	Druid
473	Tiefling	Paladin
459	Genasi	Cleric
457	Dragonborn	Monk
440	Halfling	Ranger
429	Aasimar	Paladin
427	Half-Orc	Paladin
420	Genasi	Ranger
415	Dwarf	Ranger
415	Genasi	Warlock
405	Dwarf	Monk
400	Gnome	Bard
399	Half-Elf	Monk
395	Dwarf	Wizard
394	Dwarf	Bard
389	Goliath	Paladin
388	Genasi	Barbarian
379	Tiefling	Fighter
371	Dragonborn	Bard
362	Dwarf	Rogue
362	Aarakocra	Rogue
355	Dragonborn	Ranger
353	Tiefling	Cleric
352	Genasi	Bard
346	Dragonborn	Wizard
339	Halfling	Fighter
336	Elf	Barbarian
332	Gnome	Druid
326	Goliath	Monk
325	Dragonborn	Rogue
322	Genasi	Paladin
313	Aarakocra	Barbarian
311	Gnome	Warlock
310	Halfling	Sorcerer
309	Tiefling	Monk
309	Dragonborn	Druid
308	Halfling	Cleric
306	Halfling	Barbarian
304	Gnome	Cleric
302	Halfling	Druid
296	Halfling	Warlock
286	Dwarf	Warlock
284	Half-Orc	Monk
281	Tiefling	Druid
279	Aarakocra	Bard
275	Aarakocra	Druid
274	Aasimar	Cleric
273	Aarakocra	Fighter
272	Half-Orc	Cleric
272	Tiefling	Ranger
264	Dwarf	Sorcerer
257	Gnome	Fighter
257	Halfling	Wizard
257	Gnome	Sorcerer
249	Aarakocra	Cleric
245	Half-Orc	Ranger
238	Gnome	Ranger
233	Half-Orc	Rogue
227	Gnome	Barbarian
215	Half-Orc	Druid
212	Half-Orc	Warlock
210	Aasimar	Warlock
207	Halfling	Paladin
203	Aarakocra	Warlock
199	Half-Orc	Bard
198	Tiefling	Barbarian
196	Gnome	Monk
192	Goliath	Cleric
190	Goliath	Druid
187	Goliath	Ranger
181	Aarakocra	Wizard
177	Aarakocra	Sorcerer
174	Aasimar	Sorcerer
153	Half-Elf	Barbarian
151	Gnome	Paladin
149	Aarakocra	Paladin
144	Goliath	Bard
144	Aasimar	Bard
143	Half-Orc	Wizard
139	Goliath	Rogue
136	Goliath	Warlock
126	Half-Orc	Sorcerer
116	Aasimar	Fighter
114	Goliath	Sorcerer
109	Goliath	Wizard
87	Aasimar	Monk
71	Aasimar	Rogue
70	Aasimar	Barbarian
67	Aasimar	Wizard
65	Aasimar	Druid
60	Aasimar	Ranger[/sblock]


----------



## TheCosmicKid (Oct 12, 2017)

The unpopularity of the sorcerer is surprising to me, but the druid, bard, and monk have long been the most niche classes, with their appeal only for players who have a fairly specific character concept in mind.

Overall, I'm doubtful that any of these results is a strong indicator about a race or class' mechanical implementation. Echoing what  [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] said early on in the thread, in my experience the majority of players care far less about those kinds of details than we obsessives here at EN World do. The only question is how many of that majority of players are likely to use D&D Beyond.


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## TrippyHippy (Oct 12, 2017)

The impact of a mere '+1' or '+2' on Ability scores (associated with Prime scores for Classes) tends to make a big indication of which combo to go with. On that basis, you can see how small changes could balance up some of these things. 

Halflings might be chosen for more Class combos if there was more flexibility on Ability bonuses. You could get this by having a greater variety of sub-Races. If there was a sub-Race of Halfling that gave a +1 bonus on Wisdom scores, you might see more Halfling Druids, for example. Likewise, Gnomes used to be considered excellent choices as Bards in previous editions, but because there is no Charisma bonus in this edition, the combo is sub-optimal and so Gnome Bards are practically extinct.

As I said above, the reason why Half-Elves are so highly rated (as a 'rare' Race) is because they are overpowered. They take the best bits of the Elf, an Extra +2 on Charisma _and_ have the versatility of Humans with a +1 on any two Ability scores following on. That versatility just about makes them best at every combo - which is a problem, I think.


----------



## Parmandur (Oct 12, 2017)

jgsugden said:


> Faulty data - I made dozens of sample characters just to test out the technology.  Just because I made a character does not mean I am playing it.
> 
> For those that want to see them in order from most common to least common combination:
> 
> ...



The data set is imperfect...but it matches up with what WotC has been saying for years about the spread of preferences, to a tee.


----------



## BookBarbarian (Oct 12, 2017)

TrippyHippy said:


> Half Elves, as an uncommon race, are so popular is because their design is overpowered




Maybe, but it could also be that a lot of player's like a to choose a race that is relate-able. Half-Elf has that balance that is just fantasy enough and familiar enough.

I remember playing one in NWN based on 3E when in every case a Human or Elf would have beet better, but gosh darn it, I liked the idea of making "me with pointy ears". I still do.

So I play Half-Elf Fighters, Barbarians, and Rangers. The +2 to Charisma just gets wasted every time.


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## Demetrios1453 (Oct 13, 2017)

Leatherhead said:


> Aasimar are the rarest of all characters, even more rare than birdmen. Though it doesn't specify if this is the DMG's or the Volo's Guide's take of the race.




It's the DMG version, as the chart states it only includes the races that are available for free.


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## Mephista (Oct 13, 2017)

Also, given that both humans and elves are highly rated, people are picking half-elf as an extension of liking humans and elves.   Instead of a race onto itself, we might need to consider it as an extension of human/elf popularity in general.   It having good stats might very well be an extension of that.


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## Rygar (Oct 13, 2017)

Parmandur said:


> The data set is imperfect...but it matches up with what WotC has been saying for years about the spread of preferences, to a tee.




Are those counts for the number of each row?  If so, there's a more interesting story here.  Off the cuff, that'll work out to about 45k-50k.  From that...

1.  We have to eliminate all of the people who downloaded it, played with it, then forgot about it.
2.  We have to eliminate all but one instance for all people who decided to use it to store a bunch of characters they might one day use.
3.  We have to eliminate all but one instance for each person who uses it to track more than one character.

That would give us the total subscriber account.  Which, being *very* generous and assuming people have an average of two characters, is only 25k-ish.  An average of three characters means about 17k users, etc.

Those numbers are *really* bad IMO.


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## Harzel (Oct 13, 2017)

OB1 said:


> I've listed the results as a percentage of the total below for easy of comparison.
> 
> HUMAN    23.1%
> ELF           15.1%
> ...




I haven't any interpretation to put on it, but the selection of race looks much more skewed than the selection of class.  For class, the ratio between most and least chosen is only a bit more than 2x.  For race, it's already 4x between the top and the middle.


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## Azzy (Oct 13, 2017)

JesterOC said:


> Human fighters are the go to beginning character. It feels that we are getting more and more new players. That can account for the uneven distribution.




Most traditional fantasy and mythic heroes tend to be what D&D calls fighters. And human. Plus both are some of the most relateable class and races. I seriously doubt that it's merely just new players gravitating towards them.


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## Cognomen's Cassowary (Oct 13, 2017)

Caliban said:


> Or, alternatively - Variant Human Fighters get the greatest number of ASI's and Feats.




Yeah, I pointed at that likely, alternate explanation in the post originally, but it got edited out with the jump to the front page.


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 13, 2017)

Rygar said:


> Are those counts for the number of each row? ...
> 
> Those numbers are *really* bad IMO.



No, they're statisics:  characters _per 100k_ characters.  There aren't 109k characters in DDB, there could be any number, less than 100k (if it were a lot less the numbers'd start looking weird) or more - could be a lot more, even millions.


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## cbwjm (Oct 13, 2017)

Leatherhead said:


> Worth mentioning:
> 
> I wonder how many of those human fighters were made just so that people could use them to argue about GWM/SS/PM
> Partially a jab, but look at that insanely lop-sided the race distribution when compared to every other combination, and remember that variant humans get a feat at level one, which makes them ideal for both low level feat testing and circumventing the main penalty when multi-classing (which is not getting ASI on time)
> ...




I'm not sure that human fighters would have been chosen for the feat since this is looking at the free content which includes a total of two feats, so the majority of these likely aren't taking variant human as only those who have invested in the app would have a reason to do so.

From memory, the free aasimar is the DMG version.


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## Mephista (Oct 13, 2017)

Azzy said:


> Most traditional fantasy and mythic heroes tend to be what D&D calls fighters. And human. Plus both are some of the most relateable class and races. I seriously doubt that it's merely just new players gravitating towards them.



  Well, I agree about the human part, but the fighter part?   Not so much. 

Aaragorn is totally a paladin.  Or a ranger, depending on your view.   Gimli, Sam and Merry might be fighters, but Frodo and Sam are not.  Bilbo is a rogue.
Conan the Barbarian.  Its right in the name.
Robin Hood is totally a Ranger.
Wu Xia stories default to the monk class.
You've got Eragon with the mix of magic and swordmanship, but the magic comes from the oath to the dragon, so paladin to me once again over Eldritch Knight.
King Arthur is pretty much an iconic paladin as well. 
D&D novels tend to have wizards and rangers and rogues and clerics as main characters.  Kelemvor is about the only actual fighter that I'm aware of, and there were a ton of characters in that story arc.
Heracles is totally a barbarian. 
I know of a few stories with tactician / warlord types, and that's supposed to be part of the fighter chasis in 5e... but that's not the intent I think you're going with here.

So, who are these legendary Fighter types? Most of the ones I can think of actually fit other classes better than Fighters. The only real exception I can think of is the main character stories of some MMOs seems to default to a fighter/warlord mix type.


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## Leatherhead (Oct 13, 2017)

cbwjm said:


> I'm not sure that human fighters would have been chosen for the feat since this is looking at the free content which includes a total of two feats, so the majority of these likely aren't taking variant human as only those who have invested in the app would have a reason to do so.
> 
> From memory, the free aasimar is the DMG version.




It would be more accurate to say the list excludes race options that are only available when you pay for something. Kobolds of any stripe are right out, but if you have a Eldritch Knight Human Fighter, that is counted on the list, despite being premium content.


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## Gladius Legis (Oct 13, 2017)

I wonder how much of the Ranger's relative popularity has to do with the Revised Ranger.


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## cbwjm (Oct 13, 2017)

Gladius Legis said:


> I wonder how much of the Ranger's relative popularity has to do with the Revised Ranger.



Is the revised ranger available in DnD beyond? I thought it was only the original.


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 13, 2017)

Mephista said:


> Well, I agree about the human part, but the fighter part?   Not so much.
> 
> Aaragorn is totally a paladin.  Or a ranger, depending on your view.



 Did he cast spells?  Heal with a touch?  Have an animal companion?  No.  He was the inspiration for the ranger, but since then there've been skills added to cover what spells did so haphazardly for the early ranger, and the ranger has 'evolved' to use all sorts of actual spells much earlier. He might have been a 4e ranger or UA spell-less ranger, but not a PH ranger.  Paladin is right out.  In 5e, Outlander Fighter.   







> Gimli, Sam and Merry might be fighters, but Frodo and Sam are not.  Bilbo is a rogue.



 Bilbo was at least mistaken for a Rogue.  


> Conan the Barbarian.  Its right in the name.



 Howard's depictions of Conan didn't go in so heavily for the Rage thing, and certainly didn't invoke totems...  Fighter or MC works at least as well.  And, Barbarian, should have been a background like it was a kit in 2e.  ;P



> Robin Hood is totally a Ranger.



 Doesn't cast spells, doesn't do anything D&D-identity-crisis-rangery, really.  
Folk Hero Fighter, archery style, off you go.



> Wu Xia stories default to the monk class.



Wu Xia use weapons, lots of them, often armor. 



> King Arthur is pretty much an iconic paladin as well.



 Sure, always healing people by laying on hands and casting spells.  

Lancelot had a 'fall from grace' that was paladin-appropriate enough.  And Galahad, of course, is the prototypical paladin.  They never cast spells, though.



> D&D novels ...



 Are self-referent.



> Heracles is totally a barbarian.



 He'd likely fly into a rage and snap you neck if you said that to his face.  Y'know, in ancient Greek...  ;P

Seriously, though, the one time he famously did 'Rage,' it was because Hera had driven him mad.



> So, who are these legendary Fighter types?



 Most of the characters you just mentioned. The rest of the Knights of the round table.  Basically every other 'knight' that didn't run around casting spells and laying on hands.   Roland and almost all of Charlemagne's Paladins, ironically (and one of them was vaguely a Warlock or something, too, weirdly enough).  Beowulf.  Hector.  Pretty much the cast of GoT who aren't clearly rogues.  

I mean, process of elimination:  do you sneak around and stab people in the back?  Do you go berserk?  Do you have magical abilities?  Three strikes and you're a fighter, there's nothing else left in 5e.


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## Parmandur (Oct 13, 2017)

Tony Vargas said:


> No, they're statisics:  characters _per 100k_ characters.  There aren't 109k characters in DDB, there could be any number, less than 100k (if it were a lot less the numbers'd start looking weird) or more - could be a lot more, even millions.



Essentially, percentages to the third decimal point.


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## mach1.9pants (Oct 13, 2017)

Robin hood was an assassin, I read it in White Dwarf years ago...


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## cbwjm (Oct 13, 2017)

In 2e, Aragorn was a paladin. I read it in a Wizard magazine years ago.


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## TrippyHippy (Oct 13, 2017)

Sqn Cdr Flashheart said:


> Robin hood was an assassin, I read it in White Dwarf years ago...




Actually, I always thought of Robin Hood as a Rogue - "steals from the rich to give to the poor" with either a noble or outlander background, depending on the tales you read. If I were to choose an archetype, then maybe the Swashbuckler would fit, although you'd want to base it on ranged combat if you could. 

Anyway, not a Ranger - which I think is more akin to Aragorn or Jon Snow. They have a terrain that they guard, a quarry to hunt and a people or noble cause to protect. For me, totally different concept to Robin Hood.


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## cmad1977 (Oct 13, 2017)

If you think the fighter is boring to play, you’re a boring fighter. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 13, 2017)

Sqn Cdr Flashheart said:


> Robin hood was an assassin, I read it in White Dwarf years ago...




Who wrote that article?  Guy Gisborn?  Jonathan Lakland?


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## Alexemplar (Oct 13, 2017)

Mephista said:


> Well, I agree about the human part, but the fighter part?   Not so much.
> 
> Aaragorn is totally a paladin.  Or a ranger, depending on your view.   Gimli, Sam and Merry might be fighters, but Frodo and Sam are not.  Bilbo is a rogue.
> Conan the Barbarian.  Its right in the name.
> ...




  D&D's version of the Ranger and Paladin rely greatly on their sorcery/supernatural abilities. I don't think anyone wanting to make an Aragon, Robin Hood, and King Aurthur character is particularly keen on their supernatural power- and definitely not in the form of charms and spells ala Gandalf or Morgan la Fay.

 I'm also challenging the idea of modeling Hercules as a Barbarian as his going crazy and murdering his family was very _out of character_ for him. He spent the entire rest of his story trying to atone for it. I'd hardly use a class that reliably flies into a murderous rage nearly every day to represent him.



> So, who are these legendary Fighter types? Most of the ones I can think of actually fit other classes better than Fighters. The only real exception I can think of is the main character stories of some MMOs seems to default to a fighter/warlord mix type.




  Aside from the ones already mentioned, most western fantasy readers/players are also familiar with Gilgamesh/Enkidu, Persus, Achilles, Odysseus, Finn McCool, Baldur, Beowulf, Samson, Link, John Snow/Brienne of Tarth/the Hound/the Mountain/Gray Worm etc.

  And before we get into the, "but they had divine aid/demigod blood so they should be Paladins/Clerics..." argument, we should note that this is the case for most everyone in old tales.

  Merlin and Morgan la Fay were of supernatural heritage. As was Circe in Greek myth.  Sorcerers in the Hyborian age get their powers from bargains with dark powers and become inhuman in the process. Magic and sorcery in nearly all cases was the work of supernatural beings in one form or another. And of course there's good ol' Gandalf- the poster child for what in D&D is a human secular arcane wizard- who was actually a nigh immortal spirit sent by a more powerful spirit of goodness and just happened to be in human form, but could have fallen to become a firery horned fiend- aka an angel.  If you really want to get pedantic about it, Tiefling/Aasimar Sorcerers and Warlocks (and to a lesser extent, Clerics) are much better representations of most any well known spellcaster than D&D's Wizards are (save Harry Potter et al).


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## TrippyHippy (Oct 13, 2017)

Alexemplar said:


> D&D's version of the Ranger and Paladin rely greatly on their sorcery/supernatural abilities.



Yes and no. A lot of the spells used by either class are actually in tune with what could be defined in mundane abilities. If a Ranger uses Cure Light Wounds, you could interpret as magical or just simply as a nature-based healing ability ("here - put this herb on the wound to heal better). Same with other 'spells'. 

When D&D was busy converting 4E to 5E, they integrated a lot of the various abilities and 'powers' for each Class into the collective spell lists. Pretty much every Class, baring the Barbarian (who still get some spirit-based abilities as options), can access 'spells' at some point. I choose to interpret them in different ways depending on Class.


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## Lanefan (Oct 13, 2017)

kenmarable said:


> Not sure if someone else mentioned this, but at a rough estimate (if my off the top of my head math is right), there is about a 9% increase in the numbers due to multiclassing. There's about 109,000 per 100,000 characters. So at least [-]81[/-] 91% of characters are not multiclass.



Fine as an average, but experience tells me some classes are multi-ed way more than others - and that's what I want to know about. 

Lanefan


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## Alexemplar (Oct 13, 2017)

TrippyHippy said:


> Yes and no. A lot of the spells used by either class are actually in tune with what could be defined in mundane abilities. If a Ranger uses Cure Light Wounds, you could interpret as magical or just simply as a nature-based healing ability ("here - put this herb on the wound to heal better). Same with other 'spells'.




  Telling the person who wants to be Aragon/Gimli/Legolas that the spells they're using are not really spells doesn't help a whole lot when they use pretty much all the same mechanics as spells.  Not any more than telling someone that throwing around alchemist fires, healing potions, and using the Arcana skills makes them Gandalf.

  After all, that's why they've introduced non-spellcasting variants of the Ranger in 3rd and 5e and removed it from the class entirely in 4e.  Although the change in 4e was met with protests because a lot of people believed explicit spellcasting (and not just refluffed) spellcasting to be an integral  part of the Ranger's identity to the point where they brought it back in Essentials and re-affirmed it as a core feature in 5e.



> When D&D was busy converting 4E to 5E, they integrated a lot of the various abilities and 'powers' for each Class into the collective spell lists. Pretty much every Class, baring the Barbarian (who still get some spirit-based abilities as options), can access 'spells' at some point. I choose to interpret them in different ways depending on Class.




   I imagine the expansion of spells into all classes is a result of them wanting to give non-spellcasters more abilities, but not wanting to give them "powers"/action points/stunts as a core mechanic.  When they do, they're often met with resistance.

    That pretty much leaves you with nothing but skill checks and spells. They tried expanding the Superiority Dice mechanic into more Fighter sub-classes so they could had more utility, but that too was dialed back after negative responses.


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## Lanefan (Oct 13, 2017)

Mephista said:


> Well, I agree about the human part, but the fighter part?   Not so much.
> 
> Aaragorn is totally a paladin.  Or a ranger, depending on your view.   Gimli, Sam and Merry might be fighters, but Frodo and Sam are not.  Bilbo is a rogue.



Aragorn is a Ranger - in fact, he's the archetypal Ranger on whom the (only true version of the) class is based.  Gimli and Legolas are both Fighters, though very different within the class.  Pippin and Merry work their way into becoming Fighters as the story goes along.  Boromir is a Fighter.  Faramir, Eowyn, and a bunch of others are all Fighters.


> Conan the Barbarian.  Its right in the name.



Except Barbarian should not be a class, but a race.  Conan is a Barbarian Fighter.


> Robin Hood is totally a Ranger.



Yes, as are most of his Merry Men; though Little John is a Fighter.


> Wu Xia stories default to the monk class.
> You've got Eragon with the mix of magic and swordmanship, but the magic comes from the oath to the dragon, so paladin to me once again over Eldritch Knight.
> King Arthur is pretty much an iconic paladin as well.



Can't speak to Wu Xia or Eregon but King Arthur's knights are the archetypal Paladins.


> D&D novels tend to have wizards and rangers and rogues and clerics as main characters.  Kelemvor is about the only actual fighter that I'm aware of, and there were a ton of characters in that story arc.



D&D novels gave us Drizz't and for that alone should be ignored for all time.


> Heracles is totally a barbarian.



No, a Fighter...and a very high level one at that.  He's not even Barbarian as a race - he's half-Human, half-deity.

Lanefan


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## Jhaelen (Oct 13, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> EDIT- And, of course, the boring, bland Fighter is by far the most popular. Because of course it is. Which just goes to show that the internet is not always representative of actual play.



Well, according to statistics 'vanilla' is the most popular ice cream flavour, and the 'Forgotten Realms' the most popular D&D setting...

If something is slightly tolerable for everyone, there's a good chance it will end up the most popular choice overall compared to more polarizing options.


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## Alexemplar (Oct 13, 2017)

Jhaelen said:


> Well, according to statistics 'vanilla' is the most popular ice cream flavour, and the 'Forgotten Realms' the most popular D&D setting...
> 
> If something is slightly tolerable for everyone, there's a good chance it will end up the most popular choice overall compared to more polarizing options.




   Something that can be said of D&D in general.


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## Li Shenron (Oct 13, 2017)

My favourite aspect of this statistics is that the MOST popular class is ONLY TWICE as popular as the LEAST popular class. It might sound like a huge difference, but it is not. This tells me that all 5e classes are good solid design.


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## TrippyHippy (Oct 13, 2017)

Alexemplar said:


> Telling the person who wants to be Aragon/Gimli/Legolas that the spells they're using are not really spells doesn't help a whole lot when they use pretty much all the same mechanics as spells.  Not any more than telling someone that throwing around alchemist fires, healing potions, and using the Arcana skills makes them Gandalf.



Well, I've found it does and have used it with groups before as a rationale. The Cure Wounds spell being a prime example, but so too things like Goodberry and Hunter's Mark, etc. The actual game mechanics operate the same, but you can imagine the rest however you want really - it's all pretty abstract.


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## TrippyHippy (Oct 13, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Except Barbarian should not be a class, but a race.  Conan is a Barbarian Fighter.



A Barbarian isn't a Race. It's a _culture_, and so it could arguably be a Background (the Outlander), but unfortunately D&D doesn't recognise a 'culture' as a thing. They use Race and Class combos - and you couldn't deny the opportunity to play a Half-Orc Barbarian could you?


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## Mephista (Oct 13, 2017)

Tony Vargas said:


> Did he cast spells?  Heal with a touch?  Have an animal companion?  No.  He was the inspiration for the ranger, but since then there've been skills added to cover what spells did so haphazardly for the early ranger, and the ranger has 'evolved' to use all sorts of actual spells much earlier. He might have been a 4e ranger or UA spell-less ranger, but not a PH ranger.  Paladin is right out.  In 5e, Outlander Fighter.    Bilbo was at least mistaken for a Rogue.



 The dude had a holy sword, and "The hands of a king are the hands of as healer."  That's totally paladin with healing magic, sorry, I'm going to flat out disagree with you here.  

You're pretty much just revising any warrior type into Fighter, by creating unrealistic definitions of other classes and leaving Fighter without its own, and not bothering to give an explanation why anyone should be one, just assuming they are by default.  That's BS.  I mean, hells, your defense of Wu Xia is "they use weapons!"  So can monks!   

Your argument is nothing more than confirmation bias.


Alexemplar said:


> D&D's version of the Ranger and Paladin rely greatly on their sorcery/supernatural abilities.



 Aragorn is defined by his healing hands, you know.  Supernatural abilities innate to the heirs of Numoir is actually a whole thing.  That's actually very central to his identity.  He also got spirits on his side, and used magical scrying orbs in a direct challenge against the Dark Lord.  He's pretty darn magical for Middle Earth's standards.




> I'm also challenging the idea of modeling Hercules as a Barbarian as his going crazy and murdering his family was very _out of character_ for him. He spent the entire rest of his story trying to atone for it. I'd hardly use a class that reliably flies into a murderous rage nearly every day to represent him.



 Hercules is renowned for his excessive strength and training in the wilderness by wrestling animals.  Fighters in 5e are known for their weaponry training and specializations and techniques.  Hercules has more in common with the barbarian than the fighter class.  None of the legends of Hercules fit with how a Fighter acts.  Trying to call Hercules a fighter is very strained.


This argument is basically boiling down to just "any warrior defaults to Fighter if it doesn't fit a narrow definition."   And that's something I call BS on.


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## clearstream (Oct 13, 2017)

Cognomen's Cassowary said:


> An article by Gus Wezerek on FiveThirtyEight looks at race and class combination in D&D, using data from D&D Beyond. Wezerek suggests a reason for the popularity of human fighters: "It lets you focus on creating a good story rather than spending time flipping through rulebooks to look up spells."
> View attachment 89642
> Image from Curse via FiveThirtyEight​



I wonder how many of those human fighters are *variant humans*? Which would represent players flipping through the rulebooks to find the best optimisation, rather than creating a good story...

By which irony, I mean to point out that the data is interesting but the conclusion seems facile. Flipping through a book doesn't prevent you contributing fully at the table: chances are you know your abilities better and spend less time trying to do stuff that doesn't work.


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## Imaro (Oct 13, 2017)

Jhaelen said:


> Well, according to statistics 'vanilla' is the most popular ice cream flavour, and the 'Forgotten Realms' the most popular D&D setting...
> 
> If something is slightly tolerable for everyone, there's a good chance it will end up the most popular choice overall compared to more polarizing options.




Lol... or more people could just genuinely like vanilla.  Same with D&D...


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## ro (Oct 13, 2017)

Jhaelen said:


> Well, according to statistics 'vanilla' is the most popular ice cream flavour, and the 'Forgotten Realms' the most popular D&D setting...
> 
> If something is slightly tolerable for everyone, there's a good chance it will end up the most popular choice overall compared to more polarizing options.




Vanilla is actually a valuable spice and not a plain/nothing flavor. Vanilla gets a bad rap.


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## Imaro (Oct 13, 2017)

ro said:


> Vanilla is actually a valuable spice and not a plain/nothing flavor. Vanilla gets a bad rap.




It's a version of the "New Coke argument" of 4e that gets bandied about by those who aren't so keen on 5e.  I want to say it's almost trying to shame the game and those who play it because it's popular.  Kind of silly actually.


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## Ancalagon (Oct 13, 2017)

Li Shenron said:


> My favourite aspect of this statistics is that the MOST popular class is ONLY TWICE as popular as the LEAST popular class. It might sound like a huge difference, but it is not. This tells me that all 5e classes are good solid design.



Excellent point... now is true for the races?

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using EN World mobile app


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## Ancalagon (Oct 13, 2017)

TrippyHippy said:


> A Barbarian isn't a Race. It's a _culture_, and so it could arguably be a Background (the Outlander), but unfortunately D&D doesn't recognise a 'culture' as a thing. They use Race and Class combos - and you couldn't deny the opportunity to play a Half-Orc Barbarian could you?



I will point out that the barbarian class can be excellent for certain character concept that aren't barbarians culturally speaking...

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using EN World mobile app


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## lowkey13 (Oct 13, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## billd91 (Oct 13, 2017)

Mephista said:


> The dude had a holy sword, and "The hands of a king are the hands of as healer."  That's totally paladin with healing magic, sorry, I'm going to flat out disagree with you here.




There's nothing about the sword that's necessarily holy. It's got quite a lineage in a setting where things like that matter, but no evidence of holy in the way D&D treats things as holy. And Aragorn's healing skills can be modeled in a number of ways from skill use (good Medicine skill or Healing from previous editions) to moderate healing spells to laying on of hands. There's nothing necessarily paladineque about it. So right back atcha.



Mephista said:


> Aragorn is defined by his healing hands, you know.  Supernatural abilities innate to the heirs of Numoir is actually a whole thing.  That's actually very central to his identity.  He also got spirits on his side, and used magical scrying orbs in a direct challenge against the Dark Lord.  He's pretty darn magical for Middle Earth's standards.




What's most central to Aragorn's identity is his lineage. He wrests control of the palantir because it's his *by right*. He calls the legion of the dead to service because he can *by right*. And he's got enough strength of will, body, and soul to pursue those things that are his *by right*. But it's ultimately Right makes Might in Middle Earth. That's an element of LotR and Tolkien's vision of Middle Earth that no D&D game has significantly covered in its mechanics.


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## Yaarel (Oct 13, 2017)

Can someone link to the raw data?


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## Fandabidozi (Oct 13, 2017)

^ nerds


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## Yaarel (Oct 13, 2017)

@_*Parmandur*_, I found your post. Thanks for the raw list of race-class combos.


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## Yaarel (Oct 13, 2017)

It seems to me, the popular classes, races, and combos, are dominated by players who choose for the flavor of the archetype, and generally ignore mechanics.

If a class is important because of its flavor, how much more important it is to make sure its mechanics are excellent!


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## Yaarel (Oct 13, 2017)

Same with races.

If a race is important because of its flavor, how much more important it is to get its mechanics right.

If players want to play a High Elf that as a Wizard, make sure that this Elf culture can be an excellent − mechanically optimal − Wizard.

And so on.


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 13, 2017)

Mephista said:


> The dude had a holy sword, and "The hands of a king are the hands of as healer."  That's totally paladin with healing magic, sorry, I'm going to flat out disagree with you here.
> 
> You're pretty much just revising any warrior type into Fighter, by creating unrealistic definitions of other classes and leaving Fighter without its own, and not bothering to give an explanation why anyone should be one, just assuming they are by default.  That's BS.  I mean, hells, your defense of Wu Xia is "they use weapons!"  So can monks!
> 
> ...




Agree with everything here.  And the same sort of thing happens in discussions about Warlords: "Oh, so-and-so was a leader so he must have been a Warlord."  

Overall this thread is entertaining for watching people trying to explain away the data because they would have designed the Fighter class differently, and therefore the WotC version can't possibly be popular.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 13, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## kenmarable (Oct 13, 2017)

Elfcrusher said:


> Agree with everything here.  And the same sort of thing happens in discussions about Warlords: "Oh, so-and-so was a leader so he must have been a Warlord."
> 
> Overall this thread is entertaining for watching people trying to explain away the data because they would have designed the Fighter class differently, and therefore the WotC version can't possibly be popular.




It's also entertaining for long-timers to see the same debates popping up every year or two and seeing how it plays out in similar and in different ways to the past. 

Personally, there's never going to be a one-to-one match since they weren't written with D&D in mind obviously. If a character is complex and interesting enough, you can get entirely different "perfect matches" depending on what aspects you take as most important to the character. As with any good fiction, different people will see different aspects as fundamental to a main character.

What is more interesting, to me at least, is looking for where the game designers pulled inspiration from and built it into the game design. (Not to stoke the flames, but in 3.x and Pathfinder, the designers specifically designed many ranger abilities based on Aragorn. Just sayin'.)


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## Yaarel (Oct 13, 2017)

Too bad we lack access to the stats for class archetypes and race cultures.

It seems significant to know if players prefer:
• variant Human v standard Human
• simpler Champion Fighter v complexer Battle Master Fighter
• Drow Elf Rogue v Wood Elf Rogue

And so on.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 13, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## OB1 (Oct 13, 2017)

Yaarel said:


> Same with races.
> 
> If a race is important because of its flavor, how much more important it is to get its mechanics right.
> 
> ...




I would argue that it is far more important to ensure that whatever flavor you want to play, the mechanics are good enough to succeed.  When something must be optimized to be able to succeed, you remove the option to make other choices.


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## kenmarable (Oct 13, 2017)

OB1 said:


> I would argue that it is far more important to ensure that whatever flavor you want to play, the mechanics are good enough to succeed.  When something must be optimized to be able to succeed, you remove the option to make other choices.




Yes, absolutely! It just needs to not be penalized/suboptimal/worse-than-average (not sure best phrasing). That's one of the reasons I really like how 5e (mostly) avoids ability score penalties. No race (for the most part) is bad at any class. Sure, some may be fit better than others, but (other than a couple in Volos  ) every race-class combo is at least viable.


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## Thurmas (Oct 13, 2017)

I guess I would look at this data in a different light and question just how close it is to being an accurate representation of played classes. As has been mentioned, just because a class is built in the character builder, doesn't mean it has been played. I would take it a step further.

I would suggest, which at least in my case is true, that the classes being made the most are often not played at all. For example, one of my current two active characters is an Eldritch Knight. To that end, I don't believe I have built a fighter in a builder in months. What I have built are various versions of the next characters that I look forward to playing in the future, but haven't played yet and may never get to play. So the characters being made are the ones that haven't been played yet. I've played and built one fighter, but I've built and theory crafted dozens of other characters.

The second thing I would consider is that, I've built more characters in concepts that I can't get to work then in ones that I have. Barbarian for example, I have never played, but I have a pretty straightforward concept and build that won't change much. I haven't spent much time on trying to redo it because it just works. In comparison, I've spent a tremendous amount of time building Rangers and Sorcerers in the hope of making one that I like. Unfortunately, I find both classes extremely underwhleming and have yet make a build I would like to play. That doesn't stop me from trying, however. In the end, I've built many, many more Rangers and Sorcerers than Barbarians, even though I would likely never play either a Ranger or a Sorcerer with the current ruleset.


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 13, 2017)

kenmarable said:


> Personally, *there's never going to be a one-to-one match since they weren't written with D&D in mind obviously*. If a character is complex and interesting enough, you can get entirely different "perfect matches" depending on what aspects you take as most important to the character. As with any good fiction, different people will see different aspects as fundamental to a main character.




Exactly.

There are common (or not-so-common) archetypes and themes that...we hope...get distilled into classes, backgrounds, races, etc.  But it's impossible to organize it into a strictly hierarchical taxonomy.

Just ask Yahoo, for those who remember what it looked like in the 90's.  (_Yet Another Hierarchically-Organized Ontology_)


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## lowkey13 (Oct 13, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## Thurmas (Oct 13, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> So, there are limitations to the data. No one is saying that it is the law, or the truth. But it is informative (if not dispositive).
> 
> The reason why it has credibility is because the data (revealed preferences) happens to closely match the survey results that have been released by WoTC.
> 
> ...




All true! My personal examples didn't happen to align the best with the point I was trying to make; namely that a good portion of the characters being made aren't actually being played and I gave some personal situations to descibe my thoughts as to why. Not a commentary on which particular combos are being made as much as the overall numbers of combinations being presented.


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## Imaro (Oct 13, 2017)

Yaarel said:


> It seems to me, the popular classes, races, and combos, are dominated by players who choose for the flavor of the archetype, and generally ignore mechanics.
> 
> If a class is important because of its flavor, how much more important it is to make sure its mechanics are excellent!




I think that would depend on the trade offs and what exactly making them "excellent" means...


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## Alexemplar (Oct 13, 2017)

Mephista said:


> The dude had a holy sword, and "The hands of a king are the hands of as healer."  That's totally paladin with healing magic, sorry, I'm going to flat out disagree with you here...
> 
> Your argument is nothing more than confirmation bias.
> Aragorn is defined by his healing hands, you know.  Supernatural abilities innate to the heirs of Numoir is actually a whole thing.  That's actually very central to his identity.  He also got spirits on his side, and used magical scrying orbs in a direct challenge against the Dark Lord.  He's pretty darn magical for Middle Earth's standards.




  Being able to heal and having a magic sword, invoking promises, and using magic items are about the extent of this "magic".  Surely you think that being able to cast half a dozen spells every day using the same system that Morgan la Fay/Gandalf would use is a bit much in modeling that, right?  

  By that logic, Bilbo/Frodo is an Arcane trickster/Bard rather than a Rogue because as a Hobbit, he's preternaturally stealthy and gains the use of various magical items throughout the story.  Supernatural boons and assistance are a classic part of the hero's journey, which would make most any protagonist spellcasting 1/3, 1/2, or full progression by this logic.   



> You're pretty much just revising any warrior type into Fighter, by creating unrealistic definitions of other classes and leaving Fighter without its own, and not bothering to give an explanation why anyone should be one, just assuming they are by default.  That's BS.  I mean, hells, your defense of Wu Xia is "they use weapons!"  So can monks!




  Going to have to agree with this in that Monks have many of the tropes and conceits of Wuxia warriors staked out fairly well. 





> Hercules is renowned for his excessive strength and training in the wilderness by wrestling animals.  Fighters in 5e are known for their weaponry training and specializations and techniques.  Hercules has more in common with the barbarian than the fighter class.  None of the legends of Hercules fit with how a Fighter acts.  Trying to call Hercules a fighter is very strained.




  Not really.  He only resorted to wrestling the Nemean Lion because shooting arrows and hitting it with his club didn't work and only wrestled the Cretean Bull because it was ordered to be brought to him alive.  He ended up just shooting the Ceryneian Hind, the Stymphalian Birds, and .  His other foes were slain through a combination of firing arrows and melee combat with sword or club and the occasional bit of ingenuity. I mean one could say that because half his labors involved hunting animals, that he was a Ranger. 

 But most importantly, he did not fly into rages- the defining ability of the Barbarian that they regularly do several times a day and around which pretty much all its subclass abilities are based.  This pretty much drives them to exclusive use of the biggest two handed melee weapon they can find, which is also a defining barbarian aesthetic.



> This argument is basically boiling down to just "any warrior defaults to Fighter if it doesn't fit a narrow definition."   And that's something I call BS on.




   That's kind of how you're defining it, though.  Strong/tough?  You're a Barbarian. Magical items/boons from background? You're a Paladin/Ranger. Asian martial-artist? Monk. If a Fighter is generally defined as a "Warrior who doesn't have any kind of supernatural/magical aid or items or distinguishing exploration/social/cultural tricks" then yeah, you're going to have a very restricted list of "Fighters" both within and without.


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 13, 2017)

Alexemplar said:


> That's kind of how you're defining it, though.  Strong/tough?  You're a Barbarian. Magical items/boons from background? You're a Paladin/Ranger. Asian martial-artist? Monk. If a Fighter is generally defined as a "Warrior who doesn't have any kind of supernatural/magical aid or items or distinguishing exploration/social/cultural tricks" then yeah, you're going to have a very restricted list of "Fighters" both within and without.




I'm pretty sure his point was not that Hercules is a Barbarian and Aragorn is a Paladin.  It was that each of them (and every single other one) demonstrate characteristics of more than one D&D class.


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## Yaarel (Oct 13, 2017)

Players seem to strongly want overall character concepts that combine a specific race and specific class together into a single comprehensive idea and flavor. It is vital that D&D makes sure that these specific race-class combos synergize optimally.



The popular classes and races are an abstraction. On average, the most popular classes are Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and Barbarian. And the most popular races are Human, Elf, Half-Elf, and Dwarf. But the raw data displays the specific incidences. So the most popular *characters* are as follows. (Here the top-20 characters cluster together according to their decimal magnitudes, approximating the inverse Golden Ratio.)

*Top 20 Characters*

Human Fighter

Elf Ranger
Elf Wizard
Human Wizard
Human Rogue

Human Cleric
Human Paladin
Elf Rogue
Dwarf Cleric
Tiefling Warlock
Dwarf Fighter

Human Monk
Half-Elf Bard
Halfling Rogue
Elf Druid
Goliath Barbarian
Human Ranger
Human Warlock
Half-Orc Barbarian
Dragonborn Paladin



So, the Human Fighter is the most popular character that players play. It is at a magnitude all its own. (Would love to know about Variant Human and Battle Master Fighter!)

Then come the Elf Ranger and Elf Wizard. These are top priority race-class combos. Both of these are extremely important to make sure that the mechanics for the Ranger and Wizard classes and their respective Elf cultures, all have extremely good mechanics and synergize excellently. It is important to get a Ranger class (or several spin-off classes) that most players are happy with − especially Elf players. Already, the Wood Elf synergizes with the Ranger. It is also important that the High Elf synergizes with the Wizard.

The fact the Elf Ranger is so popular, while the Human Ranger is significantly less popular, is one of the indications that players are choosing for the sake of overall character concept and flavor.

Human Fighter, Human Wizard, and Human Rogue seem good indications for popular classes, but also typify the flavor of Human culture!

Then come the Cleric − presumably because of the perceived need for a dedicated healer − and the Paladin holy warrior. Altho these two classes to slightly less well on average when abstracting the most popular classes, they make a good showing here in overall character concepts.

The flavor of the Paladin is decisively Human. Yet the remixed fusion of the Knight-v-Dragon archetype seems to find interest and traction in the form of a Dragonborn Paladin.

The Elf Rogue makes an appearance − perhaps as much because of the flavor of physical grace and elusiveness, as much as for its Dexterity mechanics. But the most popular choices of Ranger and Wizard evidence the prevailing flavor of the Elf is innately magical.

The Wood Elf Ranger class seems to have inherited all of the traditions of the early D&D High Elf being the ‘Fighter/Magic-User’. The Eldrich Knight seems unable to serve in this capacity. Thus, in the attempts to improve the Ranger class, one of its options must have the Wood Elf in mind to synergize with it. This kind of Ranger must be a magical warrior, with strong gishy overtly magical offense spells, as well as woodsy wilderness flavor.

By contrast, the Eldrich Knight Fighter seems less significant for the Elf.

The Elf flavor is either Ranger gish or Wizard full caster. These are the vibrant archetypes for the Elf cultures.

Dwarf Cleric and Dwarf Fighter. In that order. These are virtually the only concepts that typify the D&D Dwarf cultures. Probably each should dominate one Dwarf culture. Wisdom Cleric prevailing among the Hill Dwarf, and Strength Fighter prevailing among the Mountain Dwarf. Make sure these class-culture combos synergize excellently.

The fact Tiefling Warlock enjoys significantly more popularity than Human Warlock, suggests most players want an overall character concept that combos both race and class. A comprehensive concept.

Half-Elf Bard. Half-Elf only appears in the top 20 characters as a Bard. This is currently the only place where the Fey flavor can happen for Charisma as charm, magic, beauty, and art. Similarly, the Elf of the Feywild is primarily a Charismatic Bard culture.

The only time Halfling makes an appearance is as the childlike Halfling-Rogue combo.

 The only time a Goliath makes an appearance is as the rugged Goliath-Barbarian.

The only time a Half-Orc makes an appearance is as the savage Half-Orc-Barbarian.

The only time a Dragonborn makes an appearance in the top 20 is as an ironically noble Dragonborn-Paladin.

The only time the Druid class makes an appearance is because it happens to be part of the comprehensive Elf Druid combo concept, a woodsy full caster. Nevertheless, even more so, Wood Elf flavor of the Elf is moreso a magical warrior gish, a Ranger. The High Elf flavor is moreso the full caster, a Wizard. The two types that prevail for the Elf are the Wood Elf Ranger and the High Elf Wizard. The game works better when both of these concepts are mechanically optimal.



In sum, the evidence demonstrates how players are choosing specific race-class combos, rather than races alone or classes alone. Together these comprehensive combos are what define a ‘type’, the archetype that players want to play. Players choose this because the specific combo is what creates a flavor.

Advanced players will occasionally want to play ‘against type’. But each type itself − as an optimal synergistic combo − must work well in the first place.


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## Alexemplar (Oct 13, 2017)

Elfcrusher said:


> I'm pretty sure his point was not that Hercules is a Barbarian and Aragorn is a Paladin.  It was that each of them (and every single other one) demonstrate characteristics of more than one D&D class.




  I.e. they can't be Fighters because of the idea that a "Warrior who doesn't have any kind of supernatural/magical aid or items or distinguishing exploration/social/cultural tricks" can't be modeled with a Fighter.


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## Mephista (Oct 13, 2017)

Yaarel said:


> The flavor of the Paladin is decisively Human. Yet the remixed fusion of the Knight-v-Dragon archetype seems to find interest and traction in the form of a Dragonborn Paladin.



 Dragonborn paladins of Bahamut first made their debut in 3e, and carried over into 4e.  Spellscales, a companion race to dragonborn in the same book, in 3e were the dragon sorcerers.   A mix of paladin and sorcerer for dragonborn has been a thing for two editions now, and people remember it, I'd say.  They're the two iconic classes, much like is cleric/fighter for dwarves, and informs their culture.

Its not ironically noble, its the iconic image of the race.


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## Imaro (Oct 13, 2017)

Alexemplar said:


> I.e. they can't be Fighters because of the idea that a "Warrior who doesn't have any kind of supernatural/magical aid or items or distinguishing exploration/social/cultural tricks" can't be modeled with a Fighter.




You want a fighter who heals like Aragorn... take the Healer feat as a bonus feat. Want to be really strong like Hercules... raise strength, seek out a god for a boon or find a magic item to increase your strength beyond normal means... Hercules wasn't born with super strength he achieved it because he nursed on god's milk (He nursed from Hera)...


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 13, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> There is a tendency among all people to overestimate the prominence of whatever subgroup they happen to be in.



 Interestingly, when viewing a group of people, there's also a tendency to over-estimate the overall prevalence of the 'others' in that group.  



> ... and so it goes with D&D. If you really enjoy system mastery, you tend to believe that this is the natural state of things. OTOH, if you don't value system mastery as much, you also tend to believe this is the natural state of things.



 But... but.... no, we're D&D-playing-nerds, we're a rarefied, exclusive, intellectual elite!  ;P
Seriously, though, whatever the individual bias about system-mastery or Role-not-Roll or pick-your-GNS-letter or whatever, the underlying system is the same starting point in each case.   The system master, thespian, and old-schooler may have different ideas about whether a character 'should' have a 20 or what it means - but it's a +5 bonus for each of them, regardless of that bias.  



> *One of the reasons I enjoy looking at numbers like this, and running polls and what-not on enworld is that it gives me a little insight into the great variances of opinion that we TTRPGers have. And I find the most joy not in the numbers that agree with me, but rather in the ones that challenge what I want to be true; for example, I am not a big fan of the Tieflings and Dragonborn, yet I accept that they are very popular races.



They're relatively popular - moreso than you might expect from the general prejudice against all things 4e.  Perhaps, in part, because the Tiefling is way older than that, and the Dragonborn a fair stand-in for the Munchkin-beloved Half-Dragon.  





Li Shenron said:


> My favourite aspect of this statistics is that the MOST popular class is ONLY TWICE as popular as the LEAST popular class. It might sound like a huge difference, but it is not. This tells me that all 5e classes are good solid design.



 The arguably worst-designed class is also in the middle of the pack.  I think it's more likely that the popularity of the class has nothing at all to do with the quality of the design.  If quality of design were a high priority for you, you'd likely be looking hard at 13A and indie games after suffering through a few sessions of D&D.  ;P

(I love D&D, honestly, but I'm not delusional about it.  It's designs have often been indifferent.  On the rare occasion it produces something functional or elegant, it's generally ruined by association with the rest of the current version of game and/or its environment.)



TrippyHippy said:


> Yes and no. A lot of the spells used by either class are actually in tune with what could be defined in mundane abilities. If a Ranger uses Cure Light Wounds, you could interpret as magical or just simply as a nature-based healing ability ("here - put this herb on the wound to heal better)



 That would be cool, but D&D has never actual gone there officially. (Ironically so, because EGG was letting his players do just that back in the primeval period - see if you can dig up the Giants in the Earth write-up of Myrlund, I think it was, a wizard re-skinned as an old-west inventor.)  
Starting with AD&D the game on a more and more of rule-for-everything attitude, so there was less 'need' to have "counts as" variants, even the option of changing the cosmetic appearance of a magical spell was quantified in 2e with the spell-affecting-spell 'Sense Shifting.'  The WotC era started to stray from that, even as 3e got more detailed than ever, it /did/ explicitly put the appearance of the character & it's gear in the hands of the player, so you could go pretty far afield - I once played a cleric who's caster's shield was described as a book, for a minor instance.  You could mess around with race pretty dramatically.  You just couldn't change the underlying mechanics.  But, 4e took it too far - the player was free to re-write the 'fluff' line of his powers, and that was part of the huge push-back we got about magic no longer being magical - though, even in 4e, you couldn't actually change a spell into something non-magical, the keywords, like 'Arcane' were off-limits to casual re-skinning.  5e is in no small part a reaction to that (and many other things in 4e), and has very clear lines drawn about what's magic and what isn't and a few, somewhat important mechanics, hang on that distinction.

So if you want to heal non-magically with herbs, take the skill, take the feat - the spell makes you a caster.



> When D&D was busy converting 4E to 5E, they integrated a lot of the various abilities and 'powers' for each Class into the collective spell lists. Pretty much every Class, baring the Barbarian (who still get some spirit-based abilities as options), can access 'spells' at some point.



 Yep.  Magical powers that in 4e were divied up by 'Source' in 5e are back to almost all being 'spells,' and all being explicitly magical.  That means they can't be included in a character concept that isn't overtly magical, for good or ill.  The good is that magic is 'really magical' again.  The ill is that concepts that can't accommodate magical abilities build from a very limited set of blocks:  Berserker, Campion, BM, Thief & Assassin.  

And, yes, every 5e class /can/ use spells in one form or another - the Totem Barbarian only in the form of a few rituals, Monks by fueling them with Ki, everyone else with actual spellcasting.  It's really more a case of a few classes - Monk, Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue having the option to not use spells in one or more sub-classes, and even fewer having the option to not use magic, at all - Barbarian, Fighter, & Rogue, only.

The prevalence of hard-coded magic, particularly spells, in 5e is one of the factors that channels players to those last three classes that are only soft-coded to use magic, that is, have magic abilities available in only one sub-class.  

All three of those classes, even the narrow-concept Barbarian, are in the top 4 classes in the data, and the fighter, the class the designers have lamented making 'too generic,' is firmly in the #1 spot.  




Mephista said:


> The dude had a holy sword, and "The hands of a king are the hands of as healer."



Point, the Autherian cycle did get deeply religious (even if there were uncomfortable bits, like Excalibur essentially coming from a sort of _genius loci_), and 'King's Magic' was certainly a thing.  Those abilities don't remotely map to D&D spells, but, yeah, between Lay on Hands not technically being a spell, and burning slots exclusively to smite, a Paladin could do well.  I'll relent on him - and Galahad/Percival was certainly a major inspiration for the Paladin, anyway.  Most of the rest of the Knights of the Round Table, though, didn't go that far and D&D could only attempt to model them with fighters.



> You're pretty much just revising any warrior type into Fighter, by creating unrealistic definitions of other classes and leaving Fighter without its own



 I didn't do that, the system did.  The system gives Rangers and Paladins spells, and Barbarians Rage, and makes Rogues dependent on SA in combat, the system gives Paladins & Barbarians very strongly-defined, relatively narrow, conceptual space.  
The system left the Fighter comparatively generic in both ability and concept.   

That makes them the default.  It's far from ideal - the fighter often lacks abilities a given character /should/ have, but can't gain without accepting abilities it shouldn't - but there's no other way to parse it.  



> Aragorn is defined by his healing hands, you know.



 It was an herb, and had more to do with his heritage than his 'class.'  It wasn't a spell.  Healer feat would probably be a closer fit in 5e.  A custom Background, perhaps, though things he eventually did went beyond that - more like a 4e Epic Destiny, really.   But casting spells every fight to shoot people better?  Nah.  Fighter - or spell-less Ranger were that an option.



> This argument is basically boiling down to just "any warrior defaults to Fighter if it doesn't fit a narrow definition."



One of several narrow definitions, yes, exactly.  Because the other classes are narrow definitions and 'you must cast spells' is a hard-coded part of most of those definitions.  



Imaro said:


> I want to say it's almost trying to shame the game and those who play it because it's popular.  Kind of silly actually.



 The more so because D&D, even at it's height, has been enjoyed by only a tiny minority of people.  It's positively 'elite' in that sense.  More pistachio or roasted-garlic* than vanilla in the ice cream analogy....













* not as bad as you might think, if you ever go to the Gilroy Garlic Festival, give it a try.


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## lowkey13 (Oct 13, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## Imaro (Oct 13, 2017)

Tony Vargas said:


> The more so because D&D, even at it's height, has been enjoyed by only a tiny minority of people.  It's positively 'elite' in that sense.  More pistachio or roasted-garlic* than vanilla in the ice cream analogy....
> 
> 
> 
> ...




You keep saying things like this but I'm pretty sure almost everybody understands what's meant is that it's popular within the context of roleplaying games and even editions of D&D...


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 13, 2017)

Imaro said:


> what's meant is that it's popular within the context of roleplaying games and even editions of D&D...



Nod.  It's just equally invalid reasoning in either context.

"Oh woe! D&D sucks because it's too popular!" 

Invalid.

"Oh woe! D&D sucks because it's not popular at all!"

Invalid.



lowkey13 said:


> Because D&D is a dynamic game, with (hopefully?) a DM that adjusts the challenges based upon what the players want, and what they are doing.
> So in the end, it doesn't matter whether your bonus is +3, or +5. It really, really doesn't. Because the difficulty can just be scaled against the higher bonus.



 Yeah, relatively few DMs get to the point of dynamically adjusting it for different characters:  You have a 12?  Your DC is 15... oh, you have a 20, your DC is 19...




> That's why the bias _doesn't matter._  Plus, I mean, in the long run, we're all dead anyway. So there's that.



Thank you John Maynard Keynes.  ;P


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## Lanefan (Oct 13, 2017)

lowkey13 said:


> Let's see!
> 
> People that hit stuff-
> 
> ...



Fine so far...



> People that pray and steal-
> 
> ROGUE    10.4%
> CLERIC    8.3%
> ...



But here you've mis-read what I wrote.  Cleric and Thief should add to 50% in total on a 20-30 breakdown, my problem was (and still is) I can't remember which one's supposed to be 20% and which one's supposed to be 30%.

Also Druid should go in with Cleric.

Thus what we get is:

ROGUE: 10.4%

Total 10.4% (predicted - either 20 or 30%)

CLERIC: 8.3%
DRUID: 5.8%

Total 14.1% (predicted - either 20 or 30%)



> Interesting! (Admittedly, you can mess with the numbers a little, like putting Sorcerer in the Wizard category, etc. But still!)



About the only consistency is that Fighter-types are still around 40% and Wizards around 10% - everything between seems to have been thrown in a blender.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Oct 13, 2017)

Thurmas said:


> I guess I would look at this data in a different light and question just how close it is to being an accurate representation of played classes. As has been mentioned, just because a class is built in the character builder, doesn't mean it has been played. I would take it a step further.
> 
> I would suggest, which at least in my case is true, that the classes being made the most are often not played at all. For example, one of my current two active characters is an Eldritch Knight. To that end, I don't believe I have built a fighter in a builder in months. What I have built are various versions of the next characters that I look forward to playing in the future, but haven't played yet and may never get to play. So the characters being made are the ones that haven't been played yet. I've played and built one fighter, but I've built and theory crafted dozens of other characters.
> 
> The second thing I would consider is that, I've built more characters in concepts that I can't get to work then in ones that I have. Barbarian for example, I have never played, but I have a pretty straightforward concept and build that won't change much. I haven't spent much time on trying to redo it because it just works. In comparison, I've spent a tremendous amount of time building Rangers and Sorcerers in the hope of making one that I like. Unfortunately, I find both classes extremely underwhleming and have yet make a build I would like to play. That doesn't stop me from trying, however. In the end, I've built many, many more Rangers and Sorcerers than Barbarians, even though I would likely never play either a Ranger or a Sorcerer with the current ruleset.



So maybe what we need to do to augment the data is have lots of people here post the stats on what's been played in their game(s).  Could be done via one of those wiki threads, I suppose, listing all the classes and just getting DMs to add numbers to a total - though I'm not sure how to prevent crossposts and multiple people trying to edit it at once.  If I'm bored later today maybe I'll set this up...see if it's any use or not.

Of course, this could get messy once people start including homebrew classes and suchlike, though many of these can often be linked to (and thus parsed as) an existing class or multi combo.

Lan-"and this is one case where I can be a truly neutral voice"-efan


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## EzekielRaiden (Oct 14, 2017)

For those who read skepticism about conclusions drawn from this data as burying one's head in the sand or refusal to allow one's picture to be clouded with facts:

Does being popular mean that a thing is liked for _every_ characteristic it has, or can something be popular for people liking just some subset of its characteristics, indifferent to or even in spite of others?  Does being popular guarantee that even _most_ users approve of _all_ the components thereof?

As for the data itself: nice to see Dragonborn in the top five, even if it's self-serving to say so. Might _finally_ get people to shut up about how Dragonborn don't belong in D&D. Elves being the second-most popular is no surprise, I played WoW, I know the score on that front--and even if I didn't, elf And half-elf are so overstuffed with features I _still_ wouldn't be surprised. (And if you merge elf and half-elf, the two are far and away the most popular race-group: again, no surprise.) More surprised to see dwarf so high, but not _much_ more.


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## Lanefan (Oct 14, 2017)

EzekielRaiden said:


> As for the data itself: nice to see Dragonborn in the top five, even if it's self-serving to say so.



Er...how?  Are they your invention?


> Might _finally_ get people to shut up about how Dragonborn don't belong in D&D.



Sure they belong - they make fine opponents for the PCs to fight, just like Hobgoblins, Orcs and Bugbears. 


> Elves being the second-most popular is no surprise, I played WoW, I know the score on that front--and even if I didn't, elf And half-elf are so overstuffed with features I _still_ wouldn't be surprised.



Elves being overpowered is nothing new - they were over-the-top in 1e too, even if you were strict about their level limits; and nothing's changed.  


> More surprised to see dwarf so high, but not _much_ more.



The one that really took me aback was that Halfling (Hobbit) was so low.

Lanefan


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## Alexemplar (Oct 14, 2017)

EzekielRaiden said:


> For those who read skepticism about conclusions drawn from this data as burying one's head in the sand or refusal to allow one's picture to be clouded with facts:
> 
> Does being popular mean that a thing is liked for _every_ characteristic it has, or can something be popular for people liking just some subset of its characteristics, indifferent to or even in spite of others?  Does being popular guarantee that even _most_ users approve of _all_ the components thereof?




  I think *most* people like a concept first and just go with whatever race/class/background is closest and then address it's shortcomings afterwards while doing what they can in spite of them.  I mean, I know some people who play certain combinations purely because they enjoy them mechanically, but I find that if someone loved playing Elven Rangers, Dwarven Clerics or Human Fighters in 5e and played in other editions, they likely played the same characters in those editions too.  And when they play other games that are D&D, they're often drawn to those so same archetypes.



> As for the data itself: nice to see Dragonborn in the top five, even if it's self-serving to say so. Might _finally_ get people to shut up about how Dragonborn don't belong in D&D. Elves being the second-most popular is no surprise, I played WoW, I know the score on that front--and even if I didn't, elf And half-elf are so overstuffed with features I _still_ wouldn't be surprised. (And if you merge elf and half-elf, the two are far and away the most popular race-group: again, no surprise.) More surprised to see dwarf so high, but not _much_ more.




  I can't say I'm surprised, seeing as people have been clamoring for Dragon-folk as far as I've been playing D&D.  There were already a dozen or so prestige classes, feats, templates, and races that allowed you to play some kind of dragon person. The introduction of Dragonborn as they work in 4e got rid of all that in favor of a single generic non- Level Adjusted Half-Dragon-ish race. 4e also had a generic Half-Vampire race in the form of Vryloka, an undead race in the form of Revenants.

 3e Eberron also introduced Warforged as non-LA construct characters, Shifters as non-LA lycantrhope characters, Changelings as non-LA shapeshifter characters.  They proved rather popular as well, as I remember players clamoring for ways to introduce them into non-Eberron settings being a rather hot topic.


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## Yaarel (Oct 14, 2017)

billd91 said:


> There's nothing about the sword that's necessarily holy. It's got quite a lineage in a setting where things like that matter, but no evidence of holy in the way D&D treats things as holy.




I was about to disagree, but ... thats probably true. If anything, the sword Excalibur probably best translates into D&D as Fey. Lady of the Lake and similar nature spirits.


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## EzekielRaiden (Oct 14, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Er...how?  Are they your invention?




They're my favorite race bar none. Being happy they're doing well is "self-serving" in the sense that "ooh, my biases have been confirmed!" My apologies for the confusing phrasing.



> Sure they belong - they make fine opponents for the PCs to fight, just like Hobgoblins, Orcs and Bugbears.




You'd be surprised how many people won't even give them _that_, but point taken I suppose.



> Elves being overpowered is nothing new - they were over-the-top in 1e too, even if you were strict about their level limits; and nothing's changed.




Fair enough I guess!



> The one that really took me aback was that Halfling (Hobbit) was so low.
> 
> Lanefan




Being tall has too much cultural cachet. It hurts literally all races that tend to be (noticeably*) shorter than average human height--dwarves, gnomes, hobbits, kobolds, etc. People feel self-conscious about their height, and are thus more likely to play taller characters. You see a similar effect in the height distribution of characters in MMOs that allow height variation: most players play the tallest characters they're allowed to play, a handful play the shortest they're allowed to play, and the veeeery tiny remainder is spread out in some way or other through the middle. Or how those races which conform to Western standards of beauty best will tend to attract the most attention, e.g. the population of the Horde _ballooned_ after Blood Elves became an option, because you could finally be pretty as a female Horde character, or svelte as a male Horde character. Nothing to do with design quality or success of implementation, everything to do with player psychology. 

It actually takes some fairly significant _divergence_ in power, favoring races that diverge from Western beliefs about height, weight, facial features, musculature, etc. to get things to shift even to being more-or-less equal in an MMO context. D&D players are remarkably _more_ adventurous than MMO players are, based on this data set, when it comes to what races they'll play.

*I say "noticeably" because, IIRC, D&D elves are traditionally a little bit shorter than humans. But they're of pretty "normal" height, in that their average height is close to average *female* height for real humans, and tall elves are still taller than the average human. A tall dwarf is still _shorter_ than the average human--indeed, probably shorter than most _very short_ humans. That hurts the bottom line.



Alexemplar said:


> I think *most* people like a concept first and just go with whatever race/class/background is closest and then address it's shortcomings afterwards while doing what they can in spite of them.  I mean, I know some people who play certain combinations purely because they enjoy them mechanically, but I find that if someone loved playing Elven Rangers, Dwarven Clerics or Human Fighters in 5e and played in other editions, they likely played the same characters in those editions too.  And when they play other games that are D&D, they're often drawn to those so same archetypes.




This was part of my intended point, just stated rather than hinted at with pseudo-Socratic questions. That is, I'm asserting that these things would absolutely be popular regardless of implementation...because they've _been_ popular across a _huge_ range of implementations. I therefore meet with a _very_ skeptical eye those saying that, _because_ it is popular, it must have been done well. That doesn't follow. It could be that it was done excellently, or merely adequately, or decently-but-could-be-better, or even a bit poorly but not _so_ bad that it drives people away (because, as noted, things typically need to be _quite_ worse-off to overcome many of our inherent attractions to that which is both "relatable" and "meriting social approval," e.g. in a range overlapping with human height but capable of being taller than an average human because height is culturally linked to social worth in the West). We cannot actually separate out these confounding variables to be able to draw such conclusions, but people freely do so all the time.

Also, to the inevitable replies I expect (likely from others): None of the above should be taken as excluding that part of the Fighter playerbase which _does_ directly value the characteristics of the 5e Fighter class. It's merely noting that, despite the 4e Fighter being _very_ different in several ways--ways which pro-"simplicity" Fighter fans disliked, but pro-"depth" Fighter fans liked--_both versions_ consistently rank as the most popular class of their edition in literally every poll I've ever seen, official or not, formal or not. This would seem to pretty clearly indicate that Fighter fans just like Fighters, and will put up with implementations whether or not they conform to their preferences _because_ they're Fighters--and that using play-frequency statistics (or, well, a loose approximation thereof) gives you little to no information about whether a particular Fighter implementation is succeeding at the mathematically-testable design goals set for it.



> I can't say I'm surprised, seeing as people have been clamoring for Dragon-folk as far as I've been playing D&D.  There were already a dozen or so prestige classes, feats, templates, and races that allowed you to play some kind of dragon person. The introduction of Dragonborn as they work in 4e got rid of all that in favor of a single generic non- Level Adjusted Half-Dragon-ish race. 4e also had a generic Half-Vampire race in the form of Vryloka, an undead race in the form of Revenants.




No race, in my experience, has received more vitriol and gleeful exclusion than Dragonborn have. I have literally been told, to my face (well, via forum post), that I should be happy that Dragonborn got included _at all_ because they don't truly belong in D&D. I have heard numerous posters openly brag about how they shut down players who like Dragonborn, how they would never allow such inappropriate races in their home campaigns. I have never seen any other race referenced so often _by official designers_, not simply everyday folks, as being weird, out there, or a thing said designer _would_ exclude if it weren't for their pesky players liking such a ridiculous option, even if it's said with tongue in cheek.

Disliking Dragonborn is practically a fad at this point.



> 3e Eberron also introduced Warforged as non-LA construct characters, Shifters as non-LA lycantrhope characters, Changelings as non-LA shapeshifter characters.  They proved rather popular as well, as I remember players clamoring for ways to introduce them into non-Eberron settings being a rather hot topic.




Can't really comment, tbh. Never played in Eberron and frankly just don't hear that much discussion of Warforged, Shifters, Changelings, or the like. Dragonborn are the hot topic, and it seems like their detractors literally can't stop talking, not just about how much they dislike them, but how _justified_ they are FOR disliking them.


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## TheCosmicKid (Oct 14, 2017)

EzekielRaiden said:


> No race, in my experience, has received more vitriol and gleeful exclusion than Dragonborn have. I have literally been told, to my face (well, via forum post), that I should be happy that Dragonborn got included _at all_ because they don't truly belong in D&D. I have heard numerous posters openly brag about how they shut down players who like Dragonborn, how they would never allow such inappropriate races in their home campaigns. I have never seen any other race referenced so often _by official designers_, not simply everyday folks, as being weird, out there, or a thing said designer _would_ exclude if it weren't for their pesky players liking such a ridiculous option, even if it's said with tongue in cheek.



Well, they're sort of a tricky subject in the official campaign settings, and any home campaign settings, that originated before 4E. (Except for Krynn, of course.)

Also, they're practically furries, so there's that stigma lurking in the background.


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## Lanefan (Oct 14, 2017)

EzekielRaiden said:


> They're my favorite race bar none. Being happy they're doing well is "self-serving" in the sense that "ooh, my biases have been confirmed!" My apologies for the confusing phrasing.



No worries! 



> Being tall has too much cultural cachet. It hurts literally all races that tend to be (noticeably*) shorter than average human height--dwarves, gnomes, hobbits, kobolds, etc. People feel self-conscious about their height, and are thus more likely to play taller characters. You see a similar effect in the height distribution of characters in MMOs that allow height variation: most players play the tallest characters they're allowed to play, a handful play the shortest they're allowed to play, and the veeeery tiny remainder is spread out in some way or other through the middle. Or how those races which conform to Western standards of beauty best will tend to attract the most attention, e.g. the population of the Horde _ballooned_ after Blood Elves became an option, because you could finally be pretty as a female Horde character, or svelte as a male Horde character. Nothing to do with design quality or success of implementation, everything to do with player psychology.



I can see how this would be relevant in MMOs where your character/avatar is right there on the screen for all to see...never mind that in what seems like a typical combat* there's so much going on that a short character would be impossible to find.

* - from what little I've seen via looking over the shoulder of someone playing WoW



> It actually takes some fairly significant _divergence_ in power, favoring races that diverge from Western beliefs about height, weight, facial features, musculature, etc. to get things to shift even to being more-or-less equal in an MMO context. D&D players are remarkably _more_ adventurous than MMO players are, based on this data set, when it comes to what races they'll play.



Quite possibly because most of it is in the imagination.  Further, the minis that we use to represent the PCs have been getting bigger over time - many Dwarf minis seem as tall as Human or Elf minis now, while Gnome and Hobbit minis have grown to Dwarf size.



> Also, to the inevitable replies I expect (likely from others): None of the above should be taken as excluding that part of the Fighter playerbase which _does_ directly value the characteristics of the 5e Fighter class. It's merely noting that, despite the 4e Fighter being _very_ different in several ways--ways which pro-"simplicity" Fighter fans disliked, but pro-"depth" Fighter fans liked--_both versions_ consistently rank as the most popular class of their edition in literally every poll I've ever seen, official or not, formal or not. This would seem to pretty clearly indicate that Fighter fans just like Fighters, and will put up with implementations whether or not they conform to their preferences _because_ they're Fighters--and that using play-frequency statistics (or, well, a loose approximation thereof) gives you little to no information about whether a particular Fighter implementation is succeeding at the mathematically-testable design goals set for it.



There's also a much more practical-at-the-table element: a party can never ever have too many front-liners.  Got 6 players?  Wizard-Rogue-Cleric-Fighter-Fighter-Fighter (or close variants thereof) is the most likely - and probably most versatile/effective - end-result party lineup in any edition, maybe after a few experiments have been culled and replaced.



> No race, in my experience, has received more vitriol and gleeful exclusion than Dragonborn have. I have literally been told, to my face (well, via forum post), that I should be happy that Dragonborn got included _at all_ because they don't truly belong in D&D. I have heard numerous posters openly brag about how they shut down players who like Dragonborn, how they would never allow such inappropriate races in their home campaigns. I have never seen any other race referenced so often _by official designers_, not simply everyday folks, as being weird, out there, or a thing said designer _would_ exclude if it weren't for their pesky players liking such a ridiculous option, even if it's said with tongue in cheek.
> 
> Disliking Dragonborn is practically a fad at this point.
> 
> Can't really comment, tbh. Never played in Eberron and frankly just don't hear that much discussion of Warforged, Shifters, Changelings, or the like. Dragonborn are the hot topic, and it seems like their detractors literally can't stop talking, not just about how much they dislike them, but how _justified_ they are FOR disliking them.



I'm not a fan of Dragonborn or half-Dragons or anything of that ilk as PCs, in all honesty; but Tieflings are even worse. 

Lanefan


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## Mephista (Oct 14, 2017)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Disliking Dragonborn is practically a fad at this point.



Huh.  Well, I usually see such addressed to the new tiefling style in the same breath, so I tend to assume its tied to 4e fan hate more than anything. Grante,d I'm a tiefling fangirl, so my bias might be standing out a bit.

More than once, I've had people tell me that they don't want tieflings because then people would freak out about them being devil people.  I'm all like, "sure, that's great.  I'm all for it."  And they look at me blankly, not getting I -like- that part of the rp.  It invariably comes down to the fact they don't like the race and want to ban it while trying to make anyone who likes them feel bad and ashamed.


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## Lanefan (Oct 14, 2017)

Mephista said:


> Huh.  Well, I usually see such addressed to the new tiefling style in the same breath, so I tend to assume its tied to 4e fan hate more than anything.



Both D'born and Tieflings existed (with different names) well before 4e.  Didn't like 'em then, either.



> Grante,d I'm a tiefling fangirl, so my bias might be standing out a bit.



Fair enough...we all have our biases. 



> More than once, I've had people tell me that they don't want tieflings because then people would freak out about them being devil people.



That's actually the one reason I *don't* have for disliking them.

The main thing I have against Tieflings or part-Demons or whatever, along with Dragonborn/half-Dragons, Drow-as-PCs, and all the rest of those "monster" races being baked into the game as PC-playable is that those sort of creatures are supposed to be what the PCs go out and fight!  I don't mind an occasional rare exception for RP reasons or whatever, but when I see a party lineup consisting racially of a couple of Tieflings, a Dragonborn and a Goliath my first response is "why is everyone playing monsters?".

Lanefan


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## Satyrn (Oct 14, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> ! I don't mind an occasional rare exception for RP reasons or whatever, but when I see a party lineup consisting racially of a couple of Tieflings, a Dragonborn and a Goliath my first response is "why is everyone playing monsters?".



Because the Federation is full of more races than just Human and Vulcan.


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## Mephista (Oct 14, 2017)

Its pretty much an old argument at this point.  Some people are "purists" for lack of a better term, and have a strong dislike of anything that varies from human / pointy eared human / short human / stout human / crazy human.  Others see this as a fantasy world and like engaging in all the various fantasy elements.  Its like the Survivor Volo Races thread - the Tabaxi had a lot of love and a lot of insults / hate in equal measure in no amount because it was so different from human.

I'm not going to pretend to understand why the difference, but its clear that everyone has their own comfort zone while playing.  I personally find it a bit annoying to be banned from a race I like because a GM wants to call it a monster and something to kill.  That reeks of forcing what they want to play on others.  If you don't like to play the race, then... don't.   Banning others, if they're not disruptive, is kind of heavy handed in my mind.


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## MiraMels (Oct 14, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> The main thing I have against Tieflings or part-Demons or whatever, along with Dragonborn/half-Dragons, Drow-as-PCs, and all the rest of those "monster" races being baked into the game as PC-playable is that those sort of creatures are supposed to be what the PCs go out and fight!  I don't mind an occasional rare exception for RP reasons or whatever, but when I see a party lineup consisting racially of a couple of Tieflings, a Dragonborn and a Goliath my first response is "why is everyone playing monsters?".




That's what 4th edition tried to address with their changes to the origins of dragonborn and tieflings though. By giving them a culture, and a history in the world, they cease to be "monsters" while still being marked as "other".  Human villagers don't have to *like* dragonborn or tieflings, but with the 4th and 5th edition origin stories, those villagers all have a context for their existence.


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## TheCosmicKid (Oct 14, 2017)

Mephista said:


> More than once, I've had people tell me that they don't want tieflings because then people would freak out about them being devil people.  I'm all like, "sure, that's great.  I'm all for it."  And they look at me blankly, not getting I -like- that part of the rp.



Heh. Yeah, if someone wants to play a tiefling but then complains about their character being presumed evil, _that's_ when you start making... _pointed critiques_ of their choices and tastes.


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## Alexemplar (Oct 14, 2017)

EzekielRaiden said:


> ....Can't really comment, tbh. Never played in Eberron and frankly just don't hear that much discussion of Warforged, Shifters, Changelings, or the like. Dragonborn are the hot topic, and it seems like their detractors literally can't stop talking, not just about how much they dislike them, but how _justified_ they are FOR disliking them.




   When Eberron first launched, the races were popular and write ups in DMGs have tips on how to integrate them into other settings. In 4e, when "everything became core", they even made it into the later PHBs.

  I think Dragonborn are more of a hot topic because they were in the first PHB for 4e and 5e.  The classes/races in the first PHB always tend to receive more support/exposure/attention than those that appear later.


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## Erechel (Oct 15, 2017)

This doesn't surprise me at all. All my tables had at least 1 fighter and 1 human, many times in the same character. Heck, when I get bored of DM'ing, I begin to play... guess what... a Human Fighter! A beefy Folk Hero shieldmaster. Plenty of RP to do, plenty of ground covered by skills alone (Athletics is one heck of a skill, and as a Folk Hero I've chosen Smith Tools, so more often than not instead of picking locks we cut the chains or force the doors), and a total beast in combat (with 281 different Saving Throws between MM and VGTM, by far the most common along with the Barbarian, and followed far behind by the Ranger and Monk with 201); my action economy is _great_ and I never run out of things to do, and if I want to go boring and only doing damage, I'm the best at it also.

I would not dare to say that fighters are bad designed... at all. I'm a bit surprised of the half-orc lack of popularity. They are very popular in Argentina (and I know a LOT of different tables).


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## Lanefan (Oct 15, 2017)

MiraMels said:


> That's what 4th edition tried to address with their changes to the origins of dragonborn and tieflings though. By giving them a culture, and a history in the world, they cease to be "monsters" while still being marked as "other".  Human villagers don't have to *like* dragonborn or tieflings, but with the 4th and 5th edition origin stories, those villagers all have a context for their existence.



Orcs have a culture and a history.  So do Hobgoblins (and in my game their history goes back way farther than anyone else's).  Both are basically Human-ish variants, no more so than are D'born or Tieflings or Elves.

Doesn't make 'em PC-playable races.

I can only refer to my Human Ranger's reaction in a 3e campaign when a half-Dragon PC came into the party: "I've spent most of my adult life learning how to kill things like this and now I'm expected to run with one and trust it with my life?  You're kidding, right?"

Of course, it didn't help that our alignments were almost diametrically opposed...

Lanefan


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## EzekielRaiden (Oct 15, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> The main thing I have against Tieflings or part-Demons or whatever, along with Dragonborn/half-Dragons, Drow-as-PCs, and all the rest of those "monster" races being baked into the game as PC-playable is that those sort of creatures are supposed to be what the PCs go out and fight!  I don't mind an occasional rare exception for RP reasons or whatever, but when I see a party lineup consisting racially of a couple of Tieflings, a Dragonborn and a Goliath my first response is "why is everyone playing monsters?".
> 
> Lanefan




Honestly, a serious problem here is simply that _you refuse to see them as anything other than monsters._ That is, it sounds like you literally can't understand how someone can look at a Dragonborn or Tiefling and not immediately, intuitively, and without the tiniest shade of doubt think "that's a monster." If you truly can't understand that, you'll never be able to grok a group that wants those things. I find that kind of...disappointing, I guess. As I have said before, we have a game which lets us imagine any world we choose, and so of course we always imagine perfectly identical ones...



Lanefan said:


> Orcs have a culture and a history.  So do Hobgoblins (and in my game their history goes back way farther than anyone else's).  Both are basically Human-ish variants, no more so than are D'born or Tieflings or Elves.
> 
> Doesn't make 'em PC-playable races.




Then what does? Seriously. How do you get into the club?



> I can only refer to my Human Ranger's reaction in a 3e campaign when a half-Dragon PC came into the party: "I've spent most of my adult life learning how to kill things like this and now I'm expected to run with one and trust it with my life?  You're kidding, right?"
> 
> Of course, it didn't help that our alignments were almost diametrically opposed...
> 
> Lanefan




Which is fine..._for that character._

But what about worlds where the next fishing village over was established by dragonborn refugees from some horrible war or other that never mattered to your apprentice-of-the-village-elder? Or ones where a peaceful merger of two kingdoms means that, technically, there are two royal families that always ritually marry each other--one human, one dragonborn--but must seek gigolos/concubines because they're not interfertile? Does literally _every character you make_ grow up "learning to kill these" sentient beings with a cultural penchant for honoring their deals? Does literally every world _ever_ consider them "things" and not people?

The antithetical alignment stuff certainly doesn't help. Especially if one of you was Good-aligned and the other Evil. Of course, this also means you actually gave them a chance to act, rather than immediately saying "MONSTER, KILL IT WITH *FIRE!!!*" (Though, frankly, I cannot square being "Good" and being 100% okay with *instantly* resorting to lethal force upon encountering a sentient of unknown disposition, regardless of how much one's been taught not to trust them.)



TheCosmicKid said:


> Heh. Yeah, if someone wants to play a tiefling but then complains about their character being presumed evil, _that's_ when you start making... _pointed critiques_ of their choices and tastes.




See, I don't even necessarily think this is correct either. Tieflings aren't assumed to be evil in Planescape, as I understand it--no more than Aasimar are assumed to be good. Because Planescape is intentionally a cosmopolitan world (in several meanings of the term!). I can certainly grant that "I physically _look like a demon_, a creature known to be Pure, Living Evil," is going to mean that *many* settings will produce exactly this kind of knee-jerk distrust. At the same time, assuming that 100% of _all_ worlds that anyone could ever imagine WILL have that feature? How small the sandbox we choose to play in, when given all the beaches the mind might summon!


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## Mephista (Oct 15, 2017)

EzekielRaiden said:


> See, I don't even necessarily think this is correct either. Tieflings aren't assumed to be evil in Planescape, as I understand it--no more than Aasimar are assumed to be good. Because Planescape is intentionally a cosmopolitan world (in several meanings of the term!). I can certainly grant that "I physically _look like a demon_, a creature known to be Pure, Living Evil," is going to mean that *many* settings will produce exactly this kind of knee-jerk distrust. At the same time, assuming that 100% of _all_ worlds that anyone could ever imagine WILL have that feature? How small the sandbox we choose to play in, when given all the beaches the mind might summon!



 While its true that tieflings aren't assumed to be evil, it is also true that the official details of the race have always included "distrusted by many."  Tieflings are, and always have been, the target of fantasy racism. They're forced to the fringes of society, where they have to pick up favored occupation Rogue and learn to lie really well (bluff bonus), which in turn increases distrust...  its a vicious cycle, but one humans have engendered throughout real world history.  Half-orcs tend to face a similar prejudice from humans, though ironically not from the orc tribes.  

That said, its pretty nice that tieflings favor warlocks in 5e, because you can just pick up the Disguise Self Invocation.  Want to avoid trouble?  Snap, I look like an elf.   Oh, look, _Friends_ cantrip.   Now you like me for a minute, and when I walk away, snap, I'm now human that looks nothing alike to the elf.  So, its not like hiding from people isn't easy to manage to facilitate rp either, even in the most prejudiced setting.

Side Note - aasimar were said to face a similar prejudice, but I always found that a bit strained outside Planescape.  In Planescape, I always assume Paladins to be part of the Mercy killers, so the association of aasimar to fanatic kill-them-all types is pretty strong, and that kind of bias is reasonable.  But in other worlds, paladins tend to be highly regarded, so having them suffer prejudice from humans feels... odd.


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 15, 2017)

Mephista said:


> Its pretty much an old argument at this point.  Some people are "purists" for lack of a better term, and have a strong dislike of anything that varies from human / pointy eared human / short human / stout human / crazy human.  Others see this as a fantasy world and like engaging in all the various fantasy elements.  Its like the Survivor Volo Races thread - the Tabaxi had a lot of love and a lot of insults / hate in equal measure in no amount because it was so different from human.
> 
> I'm not going to pretend to understand why the difference, but its clear that everyone has their own comfort zone while playing.  I personally find it a bit annoying to be banned from a race I like because a GM wants to call it a monster and something to kill.  That reeks of forcing what they want to play on others.  If you don't like to play the race, then... don't.   Banning others, if they're not disruptive, is kind of heavy handed in my mind.




I like many/most of your posts, but I think this one is a little unfair.  

I limit races in most of my games, not out of some kind of "purism" but rather because the idea of a super-cosmopolitan world in which exotic races are a common sight is aesthetically unappealing to me.  I will usually switch up which races are allowed (and thus also which the party encounters as NPCs.)  I have nothing against Tabaxi and Aarakocra and Gnomes and Dragonborn and Tortles...I just don't want them all appearing at the same time.  The races are like a palette of paints: you don't use all the colors; you pick a different subset for each piece.  A hodge-podge of every idea under the sun works great in Star Wars cantinas, but I like my fantasy worlds to involve limitations in communication and travel, at least for the masses, and too much cosmopolitanism undermines that.  

So maybe that does make me a "purist" by your definition, in that my aesthetic preferences run a certain way.  But when I see the word "purist" it evokes intolerance, that somehow the game _shouldn't_ include these things.  And that's not at all the case.


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## Satyrn (Oct 15, 2017)

Elfcrusher said:


> So maybe that does make me a "purist" by your definition



I don't think you do.

I don't think she was talking about banning a race from a setting. Rather, those who would ban the race from their game no matter the setting.


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 15, 2017)

Satyrn said:


> I don't think you do.
> 
> I don't think she was talking about banning a race from a setting. Rather, those who would ban the race from their game no matter the setting.




What about DMs that only ever run one setting?


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## billd91 (Oct 15, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> What about DMs that only ever run one setting?




If the players are OK with playing in that setting, no problem. If they want to do something different, then it's time to rely on a different DM - one that will run a different setting.


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## Satyrn (Oct 15, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> What about DMs that only ever run one setting?



I don't know.

I'd think it depends on why the DM only ever runs the one setting.

But mostly, I think it all really depends on if they talk like "this race doesn't fit my game" compared to elfcrusher's "this race doesn't fit the setting."


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## TheCosmicKid (Oct 15, 2017)

EzekielRaiden said:


> See, I don't even necessarily think this is correct either. Tieflings aren't assumed to be evil in Planescape, as I understand it--no more than Aasimar are assumed to be good. Because Planescape is intentionally a cosmopolitan world (in several meanings of the term!). I can certainly grant that "I physically _look like a demon_, a creature known to be Pure, Living Evil," is going to mean that *many* settings will produce exactly this kind of knee-jerk distrust. At the same time, assuming that 100% of _all_ worlds that anyone could ever imagine WILL have that feature? How small the sandbox we choose to play in, when given all the beaches the mind might summon!



The comment was mostly a joke. In my campaign, demons are not widely known to be Pure, Living Evil, and tieflings are the ruling class of one particular nation, so the reaction in most places is "decadent foreign aristocrat with unnatural breeding customs" -- think Habsburg, not Faust.

But as you say, Planescape is an intentionally cosmopolitan world. The fact that tieflings, and indeed full-blooded fiends, can be found casually browsing the market stalls alongside creatures of every other description is very much playing with the standard expectations by flipping them on their head. It's like a setting where dwarves live in trees, or halflings are cannibals. Given the genre context, those are not and cannot be _neutral_ worldbuilding facts. Our prior understanding gives them extra meaning.

And yes, some players do have designs to play with expectations like this. But others really just the powers, or maybe the badass look, without embracing the tiefling race as a whole. So my honest reaction would be "Are you sure tiefling is what you want? Let's talk about what you're looking for in this character."


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 15, 2017)

Mephista said:


> While its true that tieflings aren't assumed to be evil, it is also true that the official details of the race have always included "distrusted by many."  Tieflings are, and always have been, the target of fantasy racism. They're forced to the fringes of society, where they have to pick up favored occupation Rogue and learn to lie really well (bluff bonus), which in turn increases distrust...  its a vicious cycle, but one humans have engendered throughout real world history.  Half-orcs tend to face a similar prejudice from humans, though ironically not from the orc tribes.
> 
> That said, its pretty nice that tieflings favor warlocks in 5e, because you can just pick up the Disguise Self Invocation.  *Want to avoid trouble?  Snap, I look like an elf.   Oh, look, Friends cantrip.*   Now you like me for a minute, and when I walk away, snap, I'm now human that looks nothing alike to the elf.  So, its not like hiding from people isn't easy to manage to facilitate rp either, even in the most prejudiced setting.
> 
> Side Note - aasimar were said to face a similar prejudice, but I always found that a bit strained outside Planescape.  In Planescape, I always assume Paladins to be part of the Mercy killers, so the association of aasimar to fanatic kill-them-all types is pretty strong, and that kind of bias is reasonable.  But in other worlds, paladins tend to be highly regarded, so having them suffer prejudice from humans feels... odd.




And people wonder why Tieflings aren't trusted....


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## R_Chance (Oct 15, 2017)

The acceptability of races, imo, depends on the setting. The acceptability (to Humans, the dominant race in the setting) varies from being acceptable, to mild social prejudice, to intolerance to violent rejection. Depending on the history, culture and society.

I've run my current setting since 1974. It was originally designed as a campaign for the Chainmail fantasy supplement and then converted to D&D. The big bads were Orcs (with the usual evil overlords) and Demon worshippers. Half Orcs were acceptable because the original Half Orcs were pretty much indistinguishable from Humans (1E). You might suspect but you could not know. And they did their best to hide it. Everybody hates Orcs, especially Half Orcs. Anything vaguely demonic was dead at birth (Cambions etc. were absent at first and rare NPCs when they became a "monster" ). I still assume Half Orcs look basically Human (because my setting demands it). And no Tiefling PCs because the settings NPCs would kill them on sight. I never worried about Dragonborn. That's just an upscale Lizard man  They are exotic and people whisper about them. They may face discrimination. So do Goblins. Whose males have some serious issues with sanity (in my game). Hobgoblins are militarized fanatics who don't fraternize btw. High Elfs are aloof but acceptable and Wood Elfs are claustrophobic xenophobes who don't hang out with others. Especially *shudder* in towns / cities. Half Elfs are exotic but OK. Still, people talk  Dark Elfs are a myth to most surface dwellers and a subject of genocide by other Elfs. Dwarfs, Gnomes and Halflings are routine residents if different from the norm (Humans). It's all based on the setting and it's history and cultures. If I ran another setting I'd be reconsidering the race relations in the game. 

That, imho, is how it should be. That it should be setting based that is. To each (DM), their own. 

*Edited and added to (in far too much detail for my original point) as things occurred to me. I have degrees in history and cultural anthropology. Pedantry comes naturally to me...


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## Mephista (Oct 15, 2017)

Elfcrusher said:


> And people wonder why Tieflings aren't trusted....



 No tiefling fan is surprised that tieflings aren't trusted.  Since their inception in 2e, tieflings have always had a bonus to Bluffing others.  Even 4e, who swapped focus from being sneaky types to more obvious, pseudo-fire elementalists, kept the bluff bonus.  5e is pretty much the first game to lose it.  Deception is pretty much bread and butter for tieflings by both necessity (having to hide) and natural inclination (devils lie all the time).


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## Lanefan (Oct 15, 2017)

EzekielRaiden said:


> Honestly, a serious problem here is simply that _you refuse to see them as anything other than monsters._ That is, it sounds like you literally can't understand how someone can look at a Dragonborn or Tiefling and not immediately, intuitively, and without the tiniest shade of doubt think "that's a monster." If you truly can't understand that, you'll never be able to grok a group that wants those things.



Oh - agreed - probably not.  


> I find that kind of...disappointing, I guess. As I have said before, we have a game which lets us imagine any world we choose, and so of course we always imagine perfectly identical ones...



Fair enough...and that's what optional extras are for, be they official WotC or homebrew or whatever.



> Which is fine..._for that character._
> 
> But what about worlds where the next fishing village over was established by dragonborn refugees from some horrible war or other that never mattered to your apprentice-of-the-village-elder? Or ones where a peaceful merger of two kingdoms means that, technically, there are two royal families that always ritually marry each other--one human, one dragonborn--but must seek gigolos/concubines because they're not interfertile? Does literally _every character you make_ grow up "learning to kill these" sentient beings with a cultural penchant for honoring their deals? Does literally every world _ever_ consider them "things" and not people?



Part of what makes a demon a demon and a dragon a dragon is that they rarely if ever even give their word, never mind keep it once given.

The same can be said of half-Orcs - they too are usually distrusted at best and completely shunned at worst by civilized societies, and that's consistent with their origins (as in, Tolkein).



> The antithetical alignment stuff certainly doesn't help. Especially if one of you was Good-aligned and the other Evil. Of course, this also means you actually gave them a chance to act, rather than immediately saying "MONSTER, KILL IT WITH *FIRE!!!*" (Though, frankly, I cannot square being "Good" and being 100% okay with *instantly* resorting to lethal force upon encountering a sentient of unknown disposition, regardless of how much one's been taught not to trust them.)



Oh I gave him a chance to act alright...grudgingly ran with him for two (I think, might have been more) adventures until in mid-dungeon a dispute he had with another PC blew up and turned ugly, he went murderously PvP and the part of the party that disagreed with him realized quickly he was too much for us to handle. (the half-Dragon was kind of a power-build in an otherwise not very powergamed party)  Needless to say the rest of that adventure was a bit of a gong show, though top marks for its entertainment value! 

In character I left the party once we'd done the adventure and were back in town.



> See, I don't even necessarily think this is correct either. Tieflings aren't assumed to be evil in Planescape, as I understand it--no more than Aasimar are assumed to be good. Because Planescape is intentionally a cosmopolitan world (in several meanings of the term!). I can certainly grant that "I physically _look like a demon_, a creature known to be Pure, Living Evil," is going to mean that *many* settings will produce exactly this kind of knee-jerk distrust. At the same time, assuming that 100% of _all_ worlds that anyone could ever imagine WILL have that feature? How small the sandbox we choose to play in, when given all the beaches the mind might summon!



Planescape is a setting in which many races and beings exist in a kind of overall (and slightly artificial) detente because to do otherwise would ruin the point of the setting.  Quite different from the core game/setting in that regard.

Lanefan


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## thzero (Oct 16, 2017)

> Wezerek suggests a reason for the popularity of human fighters: "It lets you focus on creating a good story rather than spending time flipping through rulebooks to look up spells."





Really?  That is the completely off-the-wall, out of left field, assumption the guy makes?   "lets you focus on killing monsters and taking their loot" is equally pulled out of the air, but most likely more on point.


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## MechaTarrasque (Oct 16, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> What about DMs that only ever run one setting?




"Hey guys, this is fun, but I really like race X, and they don't fit here, so if anyone has some time, I was thinking of DMing a game every other week in a setting where race X fits."


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 16, 2017)

I can see the appeal of a world in which there are lots of playable non-standard races, including monsters, and the heroes can be anti-heroes if they want.  And I can also see the appeal of a world (yes, like Middle Earth) in which players are expected to be the good guys, orcs and other monsters are essentially always the bad guys, and only a handful of races would ever be the heroes, with other races maybe playing supporting roles.

Just because the latter version was the default back in 1977 doesn't make it bad or uncreative.  (You can still make bread with just flour, water, salt, and yeast and it may not be innovative or clever but it can still be delicious, even after all these years.  Regardless of what Nathan Myhrvold says.)

Some people just like playing D&D the traditional way.  You don't have to play with them if you don't like it.


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## Alexemplar (Oct 16, 2017)

Elfcrusher said:


> I can see the appeal of a world in which there are lots of playable non-standard races, including monsters, and the heroes can be anti-heroes if they want.  And I can also see the appeal of a world (yes, like Middle Earth) in which players are expected to be the good guys, orcs and other monsters are essentially always the bad guys, and only a handful of races would ever be the heroes, with other races maybe playing supporting roles.
> 
> Just because the latter version was the default back in 1977 doesn't make it bad or uncreative.  (You can still make bread with just flour, water, salt, and yeast and it may not be innovative or clever but it can still be delicious, even after all these years.  Regardless of what Nathan Myhrvold says.)
> 
> Some people just like playing D&D the traditional way.  You don't have to play with them if you don't like it.




  There's also "Game of Thrones-style" where it's just Humans and all other races, including Elves (children of the Wood) are NPCs/monsters.


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 16, 2017)

Alexemplar said:


> There's also "Game of Thrones-style" where it's just Humans and all other races, including Elves (children of the Wood) are NPCs/monsters.




Yeah, great example.  Also totally valid and fun.  ANd it could be that everybody plays an (insert non-human race here) and all other races are monsters, NPCs, slaves, whatever.


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## R_Chance (Oct 17, 2017)

MechaTarrasque said:


> "Hey guys, this is fun, but I really like race X, and they don't fit here, so if anyone has some time, I was thinking of DMing a game every other week in a setting where race X fits."




I guess I put too much time into my setting... unless people can wait a few years for their new game setting 

I'd say it's more likely someone else volunteer for the new time sink, er... setting. Humor aside, I've always tried to accommodate my players, just not at the expense of the setting which has seen over 40 years of play.


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## Saeviomagy (Oct 17, 2017)

Lost mines of phandelver pregen characters: 2 human fighters, 1 elf wizard, 1 dwarf cleric, 1 halfling rogue.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/character_sheets

Also seems to consist of over-represented race/class combos, with a few exceptions (human druid, elf fighter, human barbarian).

I know that my home campaign started out with the phandelver pregens, but filed the numbers off, simply to make startup easier.

Oh, and if 10% of characters are multiclassed, but a multiclass counts for each class that it takes, then they're heavily overrepresented in these numbers.


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## TheCosmicKid (Oct 17, 2017)

Alexemplar said:


> There's also "Game of Thrones-style" where it's just Humans and all other races, including Elves (children of the Wood) are NPCs/monsters.



That seems to be the norm in fantasy fiction, actually.

Mythology and folklore too, for that matter.

Strange coincidence, that...


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## Mephista (Oct 17, 2017)

There is also a trend of human religious types being the evil, prejudiced ones, while all those labelled monsters are just folk trying to live their lives


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## Satyrn (Oct 17, 2017)

TheCosmicKid said:


> That seems to be the norm in fantasy fiction, actually.
> 
> Mythology and folklore too, for that matter.
> 
> Strange coincidence, that...




Aye. The settings with numerous/countless races tends to be space fantasy, I think


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## prosfilaes (Oct 19, 2017)

Elfcrusher said:


> I can see the appeal of a world in which there are lots of playable non-standard races, including monsters, and the heroes can be anti-heroes if they want.




Which is conflating a lot of different stuff. You can play in a world where there's clear good and evil and have good people who are orcs. You can also have worlds where dragonborn and orcs are just another group of people, not monsters.

Labeling people who don't look like Cate Blanchett, Sean Bean, or Orlando Bloom as evil has some deeply problematic history. The standard mix can feel less diverse than just humans from diverse societies.


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## Ratskinner (Oct 19, 2017)

Mephista said:


> There is also a trend of human religious types being the evil, prejudiced ones, while all those labelled monsters are just folk trying to live their lives



I feel like site rules and politess prevent me from delving too far into this idea, but...I certainly will agree that that is a prevalent trope.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using EN World mobile app


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## Mephista (Oct 19, 2017)

Ratskinner said:


> I feel like site rules and politess prevent me from delving too far into this idea, but...I certainly will agree that that is a prevalent trope.
> 
> Sent from my Nexus 7 using EN World mobile app



 Eh, its actually usually nothing more than a Dark Is Good, Light Is Evil inversion of the standard GvE thing.  You still pretty much have the Ebulz villains, but they just swapped pallets with the traditional "monsters."  Its not like there's a huge social commentary here, or politics to discuss.  When you make the white skinned elves evil, and the dark skinned ones good, you'll notice that the white skinned elves have a lot in common with the followers of Lolth, what with the prejudice and killing and slavery, while the dark skinned elves act just like the goodly forest elves we're used to.


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 19, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> Which is conflating a lot of different stuff. You can play in a world where there's clear good and evil and have good people who are orcs. You can also have worlds where dragonborn and orcs are just another group of people, not monsters.
> 
> Labeling people who don't look like Cate Blanchett, Sean Bean, or Orlando Bloom as evil has some deeply problematic history. The standard mix can feel less diverse than just humans from diverse societies.




Oh please.  Last I checked, Gnomes and Dwarves don't look like Cate Blanchett or Orlando Bloom, and they're not evil. 

If this thread is becoming "if you don't allow the traditional bad guys in D&D to be good-aligned, playable races then you must be a while male oppressor in real life" then I'm out.  That's even stupider than the cultural appropriation non-debate.  

Anyway, I'm off to oppress the disenfranchised.  Toodles.


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## Lanefan (Oct 19, 2017)

Mephista said:


> There is also a trend of human religious types being the evil, prejudiced ones ...



Nothing new here...this was prevalent in fantasy fiction decades ago.  Worked then for me, still does now.



			
				prosfilaes said:
			
		

> Labeling people who don't look like Cate Blanchett, Sean Bean, or Orlando Bloom as evil has some deeply problematic history.



Doesn't matter what alignment Sean Bean is playing, his character will still be dead before the second episode so there's no need to fret over it.

Lan-"that'd be a bizarre twist on 1e rules: having a character's comeliness in part define its alignment"-efan


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## Mephista (Oct 19, 2017)

Huh.   I just read that, apparently, the most open minded race in D&D is apparently the orcs.  The only ones who are proud of their racial diversity and utter rejection of any ideas of racial purity.  That's kind of interesting.


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## Azzy (Oct 19, 2017)

Mephista said:


> Huh.   I just read that, apparently, the most open minded race in D&D is apparently the orcs.  The only ones who are proud of their racial diversity and utter rejection of any ideas of racial purity.  That's kind of interesting.




Second most. The first, of course, are the Ilithid—they open so many minds.


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## prosfilaes (Oct 20, 2017)

Elfcrusher said:


> Oh please.  Last I checked, Gnomes and Dwarves don't look like Cate Blanchett or Orlando Bloom, and they're not evil.




You don't think John Rhys-Davies could have played Sean Bean's role and vice versa?



> if you don't allow the traditional bad guys in D&D to be good-aligned, playable races




None of the races at the top of this thread are traditional bad guys in D&D. Half-orcs were a playable race in AD&D 1, and tieflings were a playable race in the Planescape Campaign Setting where they were introduced. The rest of the races are all good-to-neutral races, in many cases introduced as playable races in their first appearance.

Part of the problem of chosen the well-trodden is that it's been studied and analyzed. Nothing there is new; Tolkien's races have been analyzed and critiqued in depth in the last sixty years.


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## Mephista (Oct 20, 2017)

There mere fact that there are "evil" or "savage" races in the first place is the really the root of the problem.  Its interesting to see that all the descriptions of sapient "evil" races match what colonial europeans used to justify their conquests.  I'm sure other conquering countries in the past used the same whenever they attacked other civilizations. 

Same old story.  Dehumanize the Others, make it morally acceptable to attack them and take over their lands... I mean, let's look at orcs one more time.  According to the background story, they literally had any chance of a home taken from them by the other gods.  Really, the orcs were screwed over from the beginning - we reach our children to share, but dieties can't?

From that basis, associating others, like half-orcs and tieflings and dragonborn as an extension of the "savage" races is pretty common.  in fact, its pretty much how our brains as humans are wired.  Is it any surprise they're often called monsters?  They're literally in a book that's labeling them as monsters.  Half-orcs are part of the orc writeup.  Drow, despite being a core book PC race, is likewise labeled as a monster.  Tieflings are the children (or otherwise have the blood of) the worst monsters of D&D, the fiends.  And dragons... color coded for your killing convenience. You literally can tell if someone is evil by the color of their skin.


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## Brody Brookes (Oct 20, 2017)

Well with all these statistics..... I could still probably say that I am probably in the possible 0.001% of the world that has used a 3 way multi-class between.....
 11 levels in Monk, Way of Shadow archetype from the Players Handbook
6 levels in Warlock, The Arch-Fey archetype from the Players Handbook
3 levels in Rogue, Shadow Rogue archetype from the Dark Arts Players Companion

just to be a teleporting nut


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 20, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> Part of the problem of chosen the well-trodden is that it's been studied and analyzed. Nothing there is new; Tolkien's races have been analyzed and critiqued in depth in the last sixty years.




Yes, I will happily grant that it's somewhat narratively "lazy" to simply retrace the well-trodden paths.  That doesn't make it racist, either knowingly or sub-consciously.



Mephista said:


> There mere fact that there are "evil" or "savage" races in the first place is the really the root of the problem.




I agree with that in many ways.  So many posters harp on "realism"  (cf. "Martial healing" or "weight of plate armor") but in real life there is no such thing as a clear demarcation between good and evil.  People we would call "evil" either have mental illness, or they are considered the "good guys" by their own supporters.  The saying "the path to evil is paved with good intentions" is accurate.

However, the Good vs. Evil trope appeals, in a very Jungian way, to us humans, and so it's a useful narrative mechanism.  Is it wrong to propagate the misconception?  I dunno.  Maybe.


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 20, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> Part of the problem of chosen the well-trodden is that it's been studied and analyzed. Nothing there is new; Tolkien's races have been analyzed and critiqued in depth in the last sixty years.




Yes, I will happily grant that it's somewhat narratively "lazy" to simply retrace the well-trodden paths.  That doesn't make it racist, either knowingly or sub-consciously.



Mephista said:


> There mere fact that there are "evil" or "savage" races in the first place is the really the root of the problem.




I agree with that in many ways.  So many posters harp on "realism"  (cf. "Martial healing" or "weight of plate armor") but in real life there is no such thing as a clear demarcation between good and evil.  People we would call "evil" either have mental illness, or they are considered the "good guys" by their own supporters.  The saying "the path to evil is paved with good intentions" is accurate.

However, the Good vs. Evil trope appeals, in a very Jungian way, to us humans, and so it's a useful narrative mechanism.  Is it wrong to propagate the misconception?  I dunno.  Maybe.


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## BookBarbarian (Oct 20, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Doesn't matter what alignment Sean Bean is playing, his character will still be dead before the second episode so there's no need to fret over it.




Except Richard Sharpe. 15 years playing the role. Never Died.


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## Lawrence Bryan (Oct 20, 2017)

I'm a bit surprised at how far down the sorcerer is. I suppose because they are rather power-light to start. But after level 10 or so, in a campaign where the opponents might be anything, I'd rather have a sorcerer. The versatility of available spells is an overwhelming factor versus wizards.


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## TheCosmicKid (Oct 20, 2017)

BookBarbarian said:


> Except Richard Sharpe. 15 years playing the role. Never Died.



Read between the lines. Sharpe is obviously in Purgatory.


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## prosfilaes (Oct 21, 2017)

Elfcrusher said:


> Yes, I will happily grant that it's somewhat narratively "lazy" to simply retrace the well-trodden paths.  That doesn't make it racist, either knowingly or sub-consciously.




Which conflicts with much of that analysis of the Lord of the Rings, which ignores the problems of having the people who look like us be good and the people with bad teeth and green skin be evil.



> However, the Good vs. Evil trope appeals, in a very Jungian way, to us humans, and so it's a useful narrative mechanism.  Is it wrong to propagate the misconception?  I dunno.  Maybe.




D&D is a world where, at least traditionally, a number of characters have had the ability to check for evil supernaturally, to find an evil halfling or a not-evil orc. Always evil orcs is not necessary for Good vs. Evil. Even if you prefer to keep races tightly tied to alignments, a more diverse set of good races makes it clear it's about Good vs. Evil, not humans and demi-humans against things that don't look like us.


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 21, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> Which conflicts with much of that analysis of the Lord of the Rings, which ignores the problems of having the people who look like us be good and the people with bad teeth and green skin be evil.




I think, sir, that you might be looking for a problem where isn't one. Yes, you can perform a racially charged reading and further analysis of LotR and people's D&D games, but I question how productive it will be due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of readers and players are not coming into contact with the material from a perspective other than racial conflict. If you want to battle inequality, do it. Get out into the world and make a difference. Join an NGO, talk to your local government leaders, volunteer, work abroad, etc.; looking for holes to punch in other people's fantasy worlds, however, is not a productive way to go about it.

It's a ten times easier to rip things apart than to build them up, but the latter is equally more effective in causing social and legal change.


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## Lanefan (Oct 21, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> D&D is a world where, at least traditionally, a number of characters have had the ability to check for evil supernaturally, to find an evil halfling or a not-evil orc. Always evil orcs is not necessary for Good vs. Evil. Even if you prefer to keep races tightly tied to alignments, a more diverse set of good races makes it clear it's about Good vs. Evil, not humans and demi-humans against things that don't look like us.



There's generalities, and there's specifics.

Generally, Elves are societally a bit Chaotic and somewhat Good.  But specifically, any given Elf you meet might be of any alignment.

In Human cultures parsed in D&D terms, Romans would societally trend toward Lawful Neutral while the Norse might trend more Chaotic Good/Neutral.  But any specific individual could be anything, and even sub-societies within the main one could vary greatly.

The difference, perhaps, between a Good culture and an Evil one is that a Good culture allows and more or less tolerates some diversity where an Evil one maybe doesn't...so you might well find Evil Romans along with Good ones.  But why are there very few if any Good Orcs?  Because the Evil ones killed 'em off and ate 'em.  Same with Drow - even more so as they are so very much dominated by one particularly nasty deity whose Clerics' word is often the law, such as it is among Drow.

And there's a second question: are we killing these things because they don't look like us, or because they're trying to eat us?

Lan-"wipe them out - all of them"-efan


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## prosfilaes (Oct 21, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> I think, sir, that you might be looking for a problem where isn't one.




And I think you're ignoring a problem where it's been well established there is one. Is everything open for discussion except for anything that might make you slightly uncomfortable? I think history makes it quite clear that arguing against existing problems is an important step in causing social and legal changes.


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## prosfilaes (Oct 21, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> There's generalities, and there's specifics.




Sure. I was replying to someone upset about good orcs, though, and other non-traditional races.



> But why are there very few if any Good Orcs? Because the Evil ones killed 'em off and ate 'em.




It seems quite likely that some neutral orcs could escape their community, that some young orcs might end up in an orphanage instead of getting murdered by paladins.



> And there's a second question: are we killing these things because they don't look like us, or because they're trying to eat us?




From the external perspective, the problem is defining those things that are trying to eat humans in the setting as being ugly and inhuman. D&D 5 is a lot better in this, in that the available races aren't all demihumans. There's also the difference in expectations; if a Good culture tolerates some diversity, then they should glare at kobolds trying to trade gems, or a trade caravan having a couple of orcish staffers.


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 21, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> And I think you're ignoring a problem where it's been well established there is one. Is everything open for discussion except for anything that might make you slightly uncomfortable? I think history makes it quite clear that arguing against existing problems is an important step in causing social and legal changes.




And arguing about things on the internet is absolutely the way to solve it. *shrugs*


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## prosfilaes (Oct 21, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> And arguing about things on the internet is absolutely the way to solve it. *shrugs*




You're sitting here arguing with me. If you're so concerned about solving things, go solve them. I'm discussing why 5E's racial selection is better than humans, elves, halflings and dwarves versus "monsters", why that old-school selection is known to be problematic.


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## Lanefan (Oct 21, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> It seems quite likely that some neutral orcs could escape their community, that some young orcs might end up in an orphanage instead of getting murdered by paladins.



Er...your world might be different, I suppose, but I'm not sure Orcs in most worlds really do orphanages...

That said, a Paladin who kills Orcs just because they're Orcs without bothering to use her 'Detect Evil' ability* first is not what I'd call Goodly.

* - please tell me Paladins still get this in 5e...if they don't, they should.



> From the external perspective, the problem is defining those things that are trying to eat humans in the setting as being ugly and inhuman. D&D 5 is a lot better in this, in that the available races aren't all demihumans. There's also the difference in expectations; if a Good culture tolerates some diversity, then they should glare at kobolds trying to trade gems, or a trade caravan having a couple of orcish staffers.



Did you mean to say "shouldn't" in that last sentence?  Otherwise you're undermining your own stance.

Depends on the culture.  A culture can be very insular yet still be societally Good - look at the Elves, for example, who almost never let anyone of another race into their home forests.

And one can (and in my current campaign I have) hang a huge long storyline on this, where a whole society in effect changes its alignment and nobody notices until it's almost too late.  In my case it's the Elves - while many individuals are still quite decent the underlying society has been corrupted** kind of from the top down on an almost-worldwide basis, to the point where Elves are slowly and (in most cases) quietly trying to more or less take over the world.  This process has been underway for centuries and is only just now coming to a head.

** - to tell this story would require far longer than it's probably worth...and half of it would be redacted anyway just in case any of my players were to wander by...

Lanefan


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 21, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> You're sitting here arguing with me. If you're so concerned about solving things, go solve them. I'm discussing why 5E's racial selection is better than humans, elves, halflings and dwarves versus "monsters", why that old-school selection is known to be problematic.




I just don't get why it matters. Seems rather irrelevant to real world problems. If we're just comparing setting preferences, world created from humans, real world animals, and crazy unique monsters (not a medusa, _the_ Medusa) are mine. Other humans always make the best monsters.

As for solving actually world problems, that's my day job; these are my off hours.


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## prosfilaes (Oct 21, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Er...your world might be different, I suppose, but I'm not sure Orcs in most worlds really do orphanages...




I meant a paladin delivering orcish infants to an orphanage. Yeah, an orcish orphanage would be pretty unusual in most worlds.



> That said, a Paladin who kills Orcs just because they're Orcs without bothering to use her 'Detect Evil' ability* first is not what I'd call Goodly.
> 
> * - please tell me Paladins still get this in 5e...if they don't, they should.




I'd say that's one of the arguments, about whether orcs can be killed on sight. I recall playing a paladin in B1 in D&D 3.5, and it was clear the adventure was not expecting us to try and deal peacefully with the humanoids in the caves.

And no, paladins don't get detect evil in 5e, not in the sense we're discussing. They can detect celestials, fiends and undead.



> Did you mean to say "shouldn't" in that last sentence?  Otherwise you're undermining your own stance.




I didn't write it well, but the intent was that the worst thing they would do is to glare.


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## TheCosmicKid (Oct 21, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> From the external perspective, the problem is defining those things that are trying to eat humans in the setting as being ugly and inhuman.



Orcs are inhuman, ugly, and eat people.

Real-world non-white humans are _not_ inhuman, _not_ ugly, and _don't_ eat people.

I'm afraid I don't see the resemblance you find "problematic".

I do see the resemblance between orcs and _past and present racist caricatures_ of non-white humans. But the problem with those caricatures is precisely that they're distorting the images of these humans to make them look like horrifying fantasy monsters. To interpret portrayals of actual horrifying fantasy monsters as reflecting on these humans seems to be running the logic bass-ackwards.

If I don't like Bob, maybe I draw a caricature of him with horns and a goatee to make him look like the Devil.
But it wouldn't make any sense to interpret other pictures of the Devil as portrayals of Bob.
And if you think Bob is a good guy, you're probably not going to say, "Hey, maybe the Devil is a good guy, and therefore Bob is a good guy!" You're going to say, "Hey, don't draw Bob looking like the Devil!"


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## prosfilaes (Oct 21, 2017)

TheCosmicKid said:


> Orcs are inhuman, ugly, and eat people.
> 
> Real-world non-white humans are _not_ inhuman, _not_ ugly, and _don't_ eat people.
> 
> I'm afraid I don't see the resemblance you find "problematic".




Orcs are non-white. Looking at the Lord of the Ring movies as mentioned above, the good races are consistently portrayed as white; looking at the 2ed Monstrous Manual (the first color Monster Manual), with the exception of a couple gnomes who look sort of Asian, and a one light brown human of several humans, all the PC races are white. For better or worse, most of the giants and most of the other human-like or part human creatures are also white (at least in their human parts). But orcs, kobolds, hobgoblins and goblins are all darker.

Ugly versus beautiful may be complex racially, but it's not any less problematic to say that ugly people are evil and good people are pretty.

Your last point is like saying you didn't draw Bob, because Bob doesn't have horns.



> I do see the resemblance between orcs and _past and present racist caricatures_ of non-white humans. But the problem with those caricatures is precisely that they're distorting the images of these humans to make them look like horrifying fantasy monsters. To interpret portrayals of actual horrifying fantasy monsters as reflecting on these humans seems to be running the logic bass-ackwards.
> 
> If I don't like Bob, maybe I draw a caricature of him with horns and a goatee to make him look like the Devil.
> But it wouldn't make any sense to interpret other pictures of the Devil as portrayals of Bob.
> And if you think Bob is a good guy, you're probably not going to say, "Hey, maybe the Devil is a good guy, and therefore Bob is a good guy!" You're going to say, "Hey, don't draw Bob looking like the Devil!"




Some depictions of the Devil have drawn accusations of anti-Semitism because of facial features similar to that of Eastern European Jews. It certainly doesn't always go one way, especially as the modern images of horrifying fantasy monsters are built on a previous images of "savages"; in fact, I don't know of any fantasy monsters pre-Tolkien that orcs resemble so much as certain depictions of Africans. You can't separate things from their associations simply; if people feel like orcs look like stereotypes of Africans, it will make some people uncomfortable and lead others to make racist jokes.


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## Mephista (Oct 21, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> I just don't get why it matters. Seems rather irrelevant to real world problems. If we're just comparing setting preferences, world created from humans, real world animals, and crazy unique monsters (not a medusa, _the_ Medusa) are mine. Other humans always make the best monsters.
> 
> As for solving actually world problems, that's my day job; these are my off hours.



 It's very relevant if you want to be inclusive and expand your player base.  So, it' is, to be blunt, within WotC`s interest to realize this, which directly breathes more life into the game for everyone


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## Mephista (Oct 21, 2017)

TheCosmicKid said:


> Orcs are inhuman, ugly, and eat people.
> 
> Real-world non-white humans are _not_ inhuman, _not_ ugly, and _don't_ eat people.
> 
> I'm afraid I don't see the resemblance you find "problematic".



 the difference is that racists, even modern ones, call their targets inhuman, ugly and accuse them cannibalism and worse.   We have physical documents to prove it.   

The way D&D treats and describes  non-PC races strongly mirrors real world racism.  That alone is uncomfortable for many people.  "You're ugly, no better than an animal."  And a designated race that's allowed tobe killed, no, a moral impetative to be killed, if you don't match someone else's exacting standards.

That's something people in modern life still have to deal with.  Weither or not you agree with it is immaterial.  If someone else feels that its similar to their situation, its a loss for everyone.


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## cbwjm (Oct 21, 2017)

If someone else feels that they identify with an orc then they must have major mental issues.


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 21, 2017)

Mephista said:


> It's very relevant if you want to be inclusive and expand your player base.  So, it' is, to be blunt, within WotC`s interest to realize this, which directly breathes more life into the game for everyone




Or we could try the only slightly more generous perspective that Tolkien knew his Dante and - as opposed to Milton's representation of a sly, romanticized version of the devil - decided to depict evil as ugly because to him there was nothing in the more unappealing in the world than evil. To Dante, evil wasn't temping, it wasn't seductive, it was vile, repulsive, abhorent, ignorant, and over-confident. Because darkness is one of the traditional symbols of evil, Tolkien decided to paint Mordor and its denizens with heavy brush strokes of grey and dusty brown. You can pull the race card on darkness somehow related to the dark-skinned people of Africa, but I would like to see sources; everything I've ever read links to the natural human fear of the dark (night) and the known without regard to race.


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## Mecheon (Oct 21, 2017)

cbwjm said:


> If someone else feels that they identify with an orc then they must have major mental issues.




People identify with animals

A person identifying with a human-like being clearly capable of speech and reasoning that has had a bad upbringing bringing it into a life of savage war is something people could easily identify with, and let's be honest, that's what orcs are given even Volo's practically says "Yeah, all of the issues with orcs is really their unending culture of war, war, war, and when brought up outside it they're not nearly as bad"

Orcs aren't monsters. Their culture is a monster, but orcs proper aren't monsters. Its not even debatable at this point when even the books are saying its a thing

(Now, let's all be honest, the *real* monsters are elves, those child-snatchers)


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## Lanefan (Oct 21, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> Orcs are non-white. Looking at the Lord of the Ring movies as mentioned above, the good races are consistently portrayed as white; looking at the 2ed Monstrous Manual (the first color Monster Manual), with the exception of a couple gnomes who look sort of Asian, and a one light brown human of several humans, all the PC races are white. For better or worse, most of the giants and most of the other human-like or part human creatures are also white (at least in their human parts). But orcs, kobolds, hobgoblins and goblins are all darker.



Makes sense for Kobolds at least - most versions of them I've ever seen have them as somewhat reptilian, thus snake-like skin (green or brown and somewhat scaly) similar to that of Lizardpeople or Troglodytes isn't a big stretch here.  As for the others: Orcs' skin tends to also be greenish and-or brownish in most representations, Goblins do tend to be dark, and I've never really thought about "standard" Hobgoblins as mine are very, very different to anything the original game ever had in mind. 



> Ugly versus beautiful may be complex racially, but it's not any less problematic to say that ugly people are evil and good people are pretty.



In real life, no; but in the more simplistic "heroic" game setting it's just another not-so-subtle way of hammering home the idea that evil is bad/repulsive/etc.

Lan-"beauty is in the eye of the beholder only until the beholder eats it"-efan


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## gyor (Oct 21, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> Or we could try the only slightly more generous perspective that Tolkien knew his Dante and - as opposed to Milton's representation of a sly, romanticized version of the devil - decided to depict evil as ugly because to him there was nothing in the more unappealing in the world than evil. To Dante, evil wasn't temping, it wasn't seductive, it was vile, repulsive, abhorent, ignorant, and over-confident. Because darkness is one of the traditional symbols of evil, Tolkien decided to paint Mordor and its denizens with heavy brush strokes of grey and dusty brown. You can pull the race card on darkness somehow related to the dark-skinned people of Africa, but I would like to see sources; everything I've ever read links to the natural human fear of the dark (night) and the known without regard to race.




 Absolutely,  you find it even in African cullures,  light vs darkness.


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## TheCosmicKid (Oct 21, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> Orcs are non-white. Looking at the Lord of the Ring movies as mentioned above, the good races are consistently portrayed as white; looking at the 2ed Monstrous Manual (the first color Monster Manual), with the exception of a couple gnomes who look sort of Asian, and a one light brown human of several humans, all the PC races are white. For better or worse, most of the giants and most of the other human-like or part human creatures are also white (at least in their human parts). But orcs, kobolds, hobgoblins and goblins are all darker.



The Lord of the Rings is set in prehistoric Europe. It is okay for a particular story to be set in a particular place. The assumption of earlier editions of D&D was that your campaign was set in a similar place. It is less okay for a generic roleplaying game to make that kind of assumption, which is why newer editions of D&D have more diverse humans in their art.



prosfilaes said:


> Ugly versus beautiful may be complex racially, but it's not any less problematic to say that ugly people are evil and good people are pretty.



Physical ugliness in mythology and folklore is often used to symbolize inner ugliness. The trope is also subverted and played with, of course -- see "Beauty and the Beast".



prosfilaes said:


> Your last point is like saying you didn't draw Bob, because Bob doesn't have horns.



And what you are doing here is telling creators that you understand their intentions in their own creative output better than they do.



prosfilaes said:


> Some depictions of the Devil have drawn accusations of anti-Semitism because of facial features similar to that of Eastern European Jews.



You're using the logic I'm arguing against to attempt to rebut my argument. And if you don't like the devil features in the analogy, I could just as easily have used other features that serve in our culture as visual symbols for evil.



prosfilaes said:


> It certainly doesn't always go one way, especially as the modern images of horrifying fantasy monsters are built on a previous images of "savages"; in fact, I don't know of any fantasy monsters pre-Tolkien that orcs resemble so much as certain depictions of Africans.



That's odd, because most complaints I've seen about Tolkien's description of orcs is that they resemble racist depictions of _East Asians_. See wartime anti-Japanese propaganda for an acute example. As for pre-Tolkien fantasy monsters -- well, let's actually go to Japanese folklore and point out the toothy, misshapen-faced features of the _oni_.



prosfilaes said:


> You can't separate things from their associations simply; if people feel like orcs look like stereotypes of Africans, it will make some people uncomfortable and lead others to make racist jokes.



It's not always _simple_, but I do suspect that fewer people will feel this way if we don't keep repeating that orcs look like Africans(/East Asians) and instead point out that they, well, don't. Especially if there are plenty of humans who _do_ look like Africans(/East Asians) in the game.


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## TheCosmicKid (Oct 21, 2017)

Mephista said:


> the difference is that racists, even modern ones, call their targets inhuman, ugly and accuse them cannibalism and worse.   We have physical documents to prove it.



...you might want to keep reading my post immediately after the point where you cut it off. I discuss this.


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 21, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> Or we could try the only slightly more generous perspective that Tolkien knew his Dante and - as opposed to Milton's representation of a sly, romanticized version of the devil - decided to depict evil as ugly because to him there was nothing in the more unappealing in the world than evil. To Dante, evil wasn't temping, it wasn't seductive, it was vile, repulsive, abhorent, ignorant, and over-confident. Because darkness is one of the traditional symbols of evil, Tolkien decided to paint Mordor and its denizens with heavy brush strokes of grey and dusty brown. You can pull the race card on darkness somehow related to the dark-skinned people of Africa, but I would like to see sources; everything I've ever read links to the natural human fear of the dark (night) and the known without regard to race.




Agreed.  It's possible and maybe even likely that racism is, in part, driven by an instinct that "light/beautiful is good and dark/ugly is evil", and not the other way around.

It certainly would make for a _different_ game of D&D if you couldn't guess what side anybody was on based on what they looked like.  (Insight would replace Perception as the most important skill.)  But I'm not sure it would be more fun if even more precious table time were spent trying to sort out friend from foe, and dealing with the consequences of making that decision incorrectly.  That's fun every now and then, but most of the time I want more cues.  If I were forced (say, legislatively) to be more open-minded I think I'd rather just play "monsters are the good guys, pretty things are the bad guys" so we could get to the killing and the looting with a reasonable amount of efficiency.


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## prosfilaes (Oct 22, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> Tolkien decided to paint Mordor and its denizens with heavy brush strokes of grey and dusty brown. You can pull the race card on darkness somehow related to the dark-skinned people of Africa, but I would like to see sources; everything I've ever read links to the natural human fear of the dark (night) and the known without regard to race.




Yes, arguing against the use of white skin for the good guys and dark skin for the bad guys requires establishing the intent of a writer dead for almost half a century. No matter what Tolkien intended, his racial patterns are deeply problematic. Arguing it's in Europe doesn't really change anything about that.


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## cbwjm (Oct 22, 2017)

The only thing problematic about his racial patterns are that people are trying so hard to project real world racism onto his writings. Sometimes an orc is just an orc, the footsoldiers of their evil overlords so calm down with your "EVERYTHING IS RACIST" .


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 22, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> Yes, arguing against the use of white skin for the good guys and dark skin for the bad guys requires establishing the intent of a writer dead for almost half a century. *No matter what Tolkien intended*, his racial patterns are deeply problematic. Arguing it's in Europe doesn't really change anything about that.




No matter what he intended? Intention absolutely matters. Calling someone's work problematic for some reason that he/she did not intend is significantly more problematic than your so-called offence over the roots of western symbolism, dualism. What you're arguing against isn't Tolkien or LotR, but the Western literary tradition of reoccurring symbolism and allegory.

Personally, I think Dante and Tolkien and hundred of other writers and great think calling evil out as vile and abhorrent rather than seductive and tempting is much more useful and interesting than them worrying about a standard political correctness that did not exist in their era. Expecting them to be racially sensitive is equally ridiculous as it is to expect African mythology to be filled with Anglo-Saxon and East Asia heroes, then after finding out it is not, to call African mythology racially insensitive. It's idiotic on both accounts.


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 22, 2017)

cbwjm said:


> The only thing problematic about his racial patterns are that people are trying so hard to project real world racism onto his writings. Sometimes an orc is just an orc, the footsoldiers of their evil overlords so calm down with your "EVERYTHING IS RACIST" .




Such is what the world has come to. Real problems are ignored while we all sit around calling each other racist.


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## prosfilaes (Oct 22, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> No matter what he intended? Intention absolutely matters. Calling someone's work problematic for some reason that he/she did not intend is significantly more problematic




So when Ebert called _North_ a "unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experience", he was wrong, because that's not what the author intended? Ebert called out a lot of movies for being problematic for some reason that the authors did not intend; it seems like your statement blows a hole in the whole idea of criticism.

In any case, Tolkien isn't relevant here; Sean Bean was not in Tolkien's _Lord of the Ring_, he was in a much later cinematic adaptation. Even that was just a visual point for the discussion, which is about D&D, and D&D in 2017. 



> What you're arguing against isn't Tolkien or LotR, but the Western literary tradition of reoccurring symbolism and allegory.




Do you think my intention matters? Or is that only for Tolkien that intention matters in what he wrote, and not for us peons?



WayOfTheFourElements said:


> Such is what the world has come to. Real problems are ignored while we all sit around calling each other racist.




If you're worried about real problems being ignored, then go work on them. I'm chatting on a discussion board just like you are.

And I brought this up in the gentlest, lightest way I could; I certainly have not accused anyone here of being racist. Hyperbole certainly doesn't help the discussion.


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 22, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> So when Ebert called _North_ a "unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experience", he was wrong, because that's not what the author intended? Ebert called out a lot of movies for being problematic for some reason that the authors did not intend; it seems like your statement blows a hole in the whole idea of criticism.
> 
> In any case, Tolkien isn't relevant here; Sean Bean was not in Tolkien's _Lord of the Ring_, he was in a much later cinematic adaptation. Even that was just a visual point for the discussion, which is about D&D, and D&D in 2017.
> 
> Do you think my intention matters? Or is that only for Tolkien that intention matters in what he wrote, and not for us peons?




I know very little about film criticism or Ebert's career, and have seen neither of the two films you mention. I do know, however, that in scholarly literary criticism it is considered in bad taste to take a particular text out of it historical context and the perspective of the author, which you seem to be doing. I will say that because =our cinematographic tradition grew out of a literary one and because one of the films you mention (LotR) has both medieval and mythological roots, ignoring them and the symbolism that flows from those antecedents is problematic.

Saying, "let's make D&D more inclusive," has absolutely nothing to do with LotR or Tolkien except, perhaps, on a very superficial level most of us ignore, anyway.



prosfilaes said:


> If you're worried about real problems being ignored, then go work on them. I'm chatting on a discussion board just like you are.




That's my day job. I'm on off hours.


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## TheCosmicKid (Oct 22, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> No matter what Tolkien intended, his racial patterns are deeply problematic.



I have a proposal. Why don't you try explaining what you mean without using the term "problematic"? Because you seem to be leaning on it rather heavily to express your views, but as far as criticism goes it is overused and frustratingly nonspecific. That's how you end up with misunderstandings like WayOfTheFourElements thinking you're calling people racist and you insisting that you're not.


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## prosfilaes (Oct 22, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> That's my day job. I'm on off hours.




I'm off hours too, so stop telling me what to do. Stop acting like I can't have this discussion because I could be working on real problems.



TheCosmicKid said:


> I have a proposal. Why don't you try explaining what you mean without using the term "problematic"? Because you seem to be leaning on it rather heavily to express your views, but as far as criticism goes it is overused and frustratingly nonspecific. That's how you end up with misunderstandings like WayOfTheFourElements thinking you're calling people racist and you insisting that you're not.




No, that's not how we end up with misunderstandings. If I say Tolkien's racial patterns are deeply problematic, that's not "sit{ting} around calling each other racist." It is a statement directed at the writings of someone, and even if you ignore the ellipsis and claim I'm calling Tolkien racist, that's still not "each other".


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 22, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> I'm off hours too, so stop telling me what to do. Stop acting like I can't have this discussion because I could be working on real problems.
> 
> No, that's not how we end up with misunderstandings. If I say Tolkien's racial patterns are deeply problematic, that's not "sit{ting} around calling each other racist." It is a statement directed at the writings of someone, and even if you ignore the ellipsis and claim I'm calling Tolkien racist, that's still not "each other".




Except that Tolkien's writing has nothing to do with race and everything to do with depictions of evil as abhorrent as opposed to seductive. Tolkien merely falls on the side of Dante as opposed to Milton. As for primarily white, protagonists, Tolkien's writing is rooted in the mythology of northern European, which when those myths were created was overwhelmingly populated by white-skinned Germanic, Slavic, and Saxon peoples.

We don't expect to find African protagonists in Chinese traditional literature/mythology, why would we expect anything different from Europeans?

Without directly refuting these two simple arguments, I have a difficult time believing you are trying to bring race into a conversation in which it hold little reliance.

As I have said, there is a world of difference between arguing that D&D should branch our from its traditional Euro-centric roots and give equal respect/acceptance/page-space to all mythological/literary traditions and saying that "Tolkien's racial patterns are deeply problematic."


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## prosfilaes (Oct 22, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> I know very little about film criticism or Ebert's career, and have seen neither of the two films you mention. I do know, however, that in scholarly literary criticism it is considered in bad taste to take a particular text out of it historical context and the perspective of the author, which you seem to be doing. I will say that because =our cinematographic tradition grew out of a literary one and because one of the films you mention (LotR) has both medieval and mythological roots, ignoring them and the symbolism that flows from those antecedents is problematic.




The historical context is of an Englishman during a period where the United Kingdom held India and much of Africa as colonies, who writes an epic story of good versus ultimate evil where good is multiple races, all white. He's not medieval, he's from 20th century Oxford.

Secondly, Roland Barthes disagrees. His "The Death of the Author" is hardly a new idea, nor is reader-response criticism. For my own play on the latter, I would argue that you cannot judge one of the best selling books of all time solely from the perspective of one person. What the Lord of the Rings meant to Tolkien is but a tiny scratch on what the Lord of the Rings means to humanity.

And lastly, you can not simply make a movie of the Lord of the Rings or use his races in a game and then dump all the responsibility on Tolkien. That's a new author, a new historical context.



WayOfTheFourElements said:


> Except that Tolkien's writing has nothing to do with race and everything to do with depictions of evil as abhorrent as opposed to seductive. Tolkien merely falls on the side of Dante as opposed to Milton. As for primarily white, protagonists, Tolkien's writing is rooted in the mythology of northern European, which when those myths were created was overwhelmingly populated by white-skinned Germanic, Slavic, and Saxon peoples.




A citizen of a nation that ruled a multi-ethnic empire, who was born in the part of that empire that invented apartheid, will always have their race tangled in the background of their writing. To ignore that is to ignore the historical context of the writing. Tolkien's writings are rooted in the sources he chose, and said mythology was greatly expanded. 



> We don't expect to find African protagonists in Chinese traditional literature/mythology, why would we expect anything different from Europeans?




Because Aladdin is Chinese, first written down by a French translator allegedly from a Syrian Christian. Because Tolkien wasn't writing from an isolated culture, he was writing from the core of a multi-racial empire. I don't expect something different in real European mythology, but Tolkien was not a writer of real European mythology. Tolkien was not medieval. 

And again, this is not about the Lord of the Rings novel, _per se._ We rewrite literature all the time. When we turn Doctor Dolittle into a movie, we don't include a white Doctor Dolittle turning an African prince white as a reward.


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 22, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> The historical context is of an Englishman during a period where the United Kingdom held India and much of Africa as colonies, who writes an epic story of good versus ultimate evil where good is multiple races, all white. He's not medieval, he's from 20th century Oxford.




Medieval is in reference to Dante. Tolkien is, of course, a modernist.



prosfilaes said:


> Secondly, Roland Barthes disagrees. His "The Death of the Author" is hardly a new idea, nor is reader-response criticism. For my own play on the latter, I would argue that you cannot judge one of the best selling books of all time solely from the perspective of one person. What the Lord of the Rings meant to Tolkien is but a tiny scratch on what the Lord of the Rings means to humanity.




Yes, the school of deconstructionism analyzes texts in that way, but is but only of many styles of critical analysis. What deconstructionism does not do, however, is disconnect a text from its literary precedents, in this case Dante and Germanic mythology. As I have said before, presenting evil as abhorrent, vile, and ignorant has nothing to do with race, nor does the association between darkness and evil, which appears even in African mythology. 



prosfilaes said:


> And lastly, you can not simply make a movie of the Lord of the Rings or use his races in a game and then dump all the responsibility on Tolkien. That's a new author, a new historical context.




I have said nothing of the LotR film. I haven't seen it, and therefore have no opinion on the matter.



prosfilaes said:


> A citizen of a nation that ruled a multi-ethnic empire, who was born in the part of that empire that invented apartheid, *will always have their race tangled in the background of their writing*. To ignore that is to ignore the historical context of the writing. Tolkien's writings are rooted in the sources he chose, and said mythology was greatly expanded.




Source? I'm not necessarily going to buy that comment, seeing as most Englishman would have no little to no contact with the Empire at large. To the average Englishman, I except the Empire was little more than an abstract concept and, possible, a source of exoticism. Most of the English population, I would assume had little knowledge of the horrors which occurred throughout the larger empire except under the obscuring lens of British propaganda. 

Furthermore, because of the deeply rooted symbolism of evil and darkness and evil as vile rather than seductive, both of which where long established before the British Empire was established, I see no reason by Tolkien's symbolism and race are _necessarily_ connected. It is just as likely that we have become a society obsessed with fighting and/or cementing racial divides and are looking at past works with an eye to discovering racial bias rather than allowing the greater picture of the western literary tradition speak for itself.

Like I said, you can argue that depicting allegoric evil as ugly, abhorrent, and ignorant is problematic in one way or another. Same with the connection of evil and darkness, but what should be replace it with? Milton's depiction of evil as seductive and alluring is one alternative. I'm sure there are other's, too (evil is present in the hearts of all men, for example). Unless you want D&D to remove the dualism of allegoric good and evil (which is one option), alternative depiction of allegoric evil is must be found.




prosfilaes said:


> Because Aladdin is Chinese, first written down by a French translator allegedly from a Syrian Christian. Because Tolkien wasn't writing from an isolated culture, he was writing from the core of a multi-racial empire. I don't expect something different in real European mythology, but Tolkien was not a writer of real European mythology. Tolkien was not medieval.
> 
> And again, this is not about the Lord of the Rings novel, _per se._ We rewrite literature all the time. When we turn Doctor Dolittle into a movie, we don't include a white Doctor Dolittle turning an African prince white as a reward.




To Tolkien is a writer of allegory, using the symbolism derived of a tradition old that predates the Empire itself.


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 22, 2017)

While I can agree that it is noble for artists to be inclusive in a positive way...such as the delightful 1-second nod to LGBT families in "Frozen"...I can't accept the inverse: that it is somehow not acceptable to do so.  While multi-cultural acceptance is a good thing, it is not the only good thing, and I don't expect artists (even blatantly commercial ones) to fight for every progressive goal.

If Tolkien had been more culturally inclusive, for which of his other progressive failings would we (by which I mean "you") be criticizing him?  

My guess is that it would be a suggestion that somehow Harad == Middle East and therefore Tolkien was an Islamaphobe.  Or maybe that Ungoliant and Shelob were both female.  Surely we can mine _that_ literary decision for misogynous intention. 

[video=youtube;joabBacXzdA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joabBacXzdA[/video]


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## Azzy (Oct 22, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> Except that Tolkien's writing has nothing to do with race and everything to do with depictions of evil as abhorrent as opposed to seductive. Tolkien merely falls on the side of Dante as opposed to Milton. As for primarily white, protagonists, Tolkien's writing is rooted in the mythology of northern European, which when those myths were created was overwhelmingly populated by white-skinned Germanic, Slavic, and Saxon peoples.




I think more troubling than orcs is that all the non-white humans (say, Haradrim and Easterlings) are all Sauron's minions.


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 22, 2017)

Azzy said:


> I think more troubling than orcs is that all the non-white humans (say, Haradrim and Easterlings) are all Sauron's minions.




Now that's something we can actually talk about.


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## Guest 6801328 (Oct 22, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> Now that's something we can actually talk about.




Amirite?  Islamaphobia right there.


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## TheCosmicKid (Oct 22, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> No, that's not how we end up with misunderstandings. If I say Tolkien's racial patterns are deeply problematic, that's not "sit{ting} around calling each other racist." It is a statement directed at the writings of someone, and even if you ignore the ellipsis and claim I'm calling Tolkien racist, that's still not "each other".



An argumentative response, not a productive one.



WayOfTheFourElements said:


> Source? I'm not necessarily going to buy that comment, seeing as most Englishman would have no little to no contact with the Empire at large. To the average Englishman, I except the Empire was little more than an abstract concept and, possible, a source of exoticism. Most of the English population, I would assume had little knowledge of the horrors which occurred throughout the larger empire except under the obscuring lens of British propaganda.



Tolkien was born in what is now South Africa, although he would have had little memory of his life there as he moved to England permanently at age three.



Azzy said:


> I think more troubling than orcs is that all the non-white humans (say, Haradrim and Easterlings) are all Sauron's minions.



Woses: Skin color not specified, but clearly a different race than the humans of Gondor and Rohan. Material culture seems to resemble Amazonian tribes. Longtime victims of persecution because of their perceived ugliness. Implied to be the descendants of the people who inhabited the whole area before the Rohirrim, um, "moved in". Sympathetic and on the side of the heroes.

There is a frequently-overlooked recurring theme in Tolkien about the grievances and concerns of the forgotten peoples, the little guys. You see it in the Woses, the Ents, and even the Hobbits themselves.


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## prosfilaes (Oct 26, 2017)

Elfcrusher said:


> If Tolkien had been more culturally inclusive, for which of his other progressive failings would we (by which I mean "you") be criticizing him?




What other things would you support including in current games if Tolkien had been more cool with them? Because that's what this is about, not Tolkien.


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## prosfilaes (Oct 26, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> Yes, the school of deconstructionism analyzes texts in that way, but is but only of many styles of critical analysis.




I didn't mention deconstructionism; I mentioned "reader-response criticism", which largely wouldn't give a flip about Dante and Germanic mythology and other junk that most readers weren't familiar with.



> I have said nothing of the LotR film. I haven't seen it, and therefore have no opinion on the matter.




That's a failure for understanding reader-response criticism of the books and of D&D's use of the races.



> To the average Englishman, I except the Empire was little more than an abstract concept and, possible, a source of exoticism. Most of the English population, I would assume had little knowledge of the horrors which occurred throughout the larger empire except under the obscuring lens of British propaganda.




Note we're talking about an Oxford don here, not the average Englishman. And the British propaganda that told them it was okay to rule over Africa and India is sort of the problem here.



> It is just as likely that we have become a society obsessed with fighting and/or cementing racial divides and are looking at past works with an eye to discovering racial bias rather than allowing the greater picture of the western literary tradition speak for itself.




Looking at the works of an Oxford don at the height of empire for how the world he lived in affected what he wrote seems quite in line with most serious literary criticism. It seems naïve, or at least narrow to act like the works of an author can be studied by just looking at ancient literary tradition.  



> Unless you want D&D to remove the dualism of allegoric good and evil (which is one option)




D&D 5 offers drow, tiefling and half-orc as core races. There's a reason why I talked about Lord of the Rings races and old-school D&D.


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## Lanefan (Oct 26, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> That's a failure for understanding reader-response criticism of the books and of D&D's use of the races.



Er...huh?

How can WotFE's lack of opinion on something s/he hasn't seen be construed as a failure of any kind?  Something doesn't make sense here...



> D&D 5 offers drow, tiefling and half-orc as core races.



One of which is there due to Tolkein and has been around since 1e if not earlier; while the other two...meh, whatever.

Lanefan


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## prosfilaes (Oct 26, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> How can WotFE's lack of opinion on something s/he hasn't seen be construed as a failure of any kind?




The point of reader-response criticism is that what's interesting about a text is how the reader responds to it; you can't know how modern-day readers respond to the books without being familiar with the movies. More importantly, modern D&D players are likely to have their perceptions of these races affected by the movies, likely more than the books. In discussing the Tolkien races and D&D, the movies are as important as the books.



> One of which is there due to Tolkein and has been around since 1e if not earlier; while the other two...meh, whatever.




But half-orc is not a Tolkien race, and it complicates this simple duality that's being argued for. The existence of the other two races tells us that stereotypically evil races can be good in D&D 5.


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## WayOfTheFourElements (Oct 26, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> I didn't mention deconstructionism; I mentioned "reader-response criticism", which largely wouldn't give a flip about Dante and Germanic mythology and other junk that most readers weren't familiar with.
> 
> That's a failure for understanding reader-response criticism of the books and of D&D's use of the races.




Reader-response opens the box of misinterpretation of the author's intention. Like with the average romantic comedy, miscommunication holds no interest for me.



prosfilaes said:


> Note we're talking about an Oxford don here, not the average Englishman. And the British propaganda that told them it was okay to rule over Africa and India is sort of the problem here.
> 
> Looking at the works of an Oxford don at the height of empire for how the world he lived in affected what he wrote seems quite in line with most serious literary criticism. It seems naïve, or at least narrow to act like the works of an author can be studied by just looking at ancient literary tradition.




As I said, bringing in the fact that all of the humans who joined Mordor where non-white changes the game and reveals a more sinister or at least discomforting side of Tolkien's writing. I'm arguing purely about orcs and other non-human monster, which much more so than the other races of men, as a symbol of allegoric evil.



prosfilaes said:


> D&D 5 offers drow, tiefling and half-orc as core races. There's a reason why I talked about Lord of the Rings races and old-school D&D.




Seeing as the races of LotR hold very little to the old school D&D races of the same name, I don't see the relevance of Tolkien in the conversation at all. LotR disinterested Gygax; it shouldn't come as a surprise that they races aren't identical and are, in many ways, quite far removed from Tolkien's depictions (see BX Elves for details).


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## Tony Vargas (Oct 26, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> But half-orc is not a Tolkien race, ....



Uruk-Hai?


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## Lanefan (Oct 26, 2017)

prosfilaes said:


> But half-orc is not a Tolkien race, and it complicates this simple duality that's being argued for.



I thought Bill Ferny's southerner friend was supposed to be, if not half-orc, at least part-orc.  He's described as "looks more than half like a goblin".


> The existence of the other two races tells us that stereotypically evil races can be good in D&D 5.



That sort of thing has been around since 2e and Drizz't, if not earlier.  As an occasional exception for story purposes it's fine...makes for good drama sometimes...but as a baked-in assumption of the overall game?  No thanks.

Lan-"and this is in no way to be construed as approval of any kind for the existence of Drizz't himself, as the world would be a better place without him"-efan


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## lowkey13 (Oct 26, 2017)

*Deleted by user*


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## prosfilaes (Oct 27, 2017)

WayOfTheFourElements said:


> Reader-response opens the box of misinterpretation of the author's intention.




Just like a scale opens the box of misinterpretation of the color of an object. Author's intention is at best overrated; many hacks grinding out what the commercial machine needs has produced much better work than many an inspired amateur with high hopes and dreams, and nobody cares about author's intention until the work or author is canonized. In the 1950s and 1960s, nobody picked up the Lord of the Rings with a good idea of who Tolkien was, and many of them with little idea who Dante or Beowulf were. The text had to stand by itself. Even today, why should what Tolkien intended be more important than what he wrote and what people read from what he wrote? Particularly when talking about D&D and Tolkien's effects on it, both the published version of D&D and what's getting played out on tables?



> Seeing as the races of LotR hold very little to the old school D&D races of the same name, I don't see the relevance of Tolkien in the conversation at all. LotR disinterested Gygax; it shouldn't come as a surprise that they races aren't identical and are, in many ways, quite far removed from Tolkien's depictions (see BX Elves for details).




Again, the authorial intent of Gygax doesn't mean much to most of the people playing D&D. Certainly quoting BX, a work by Moldvay, based on a work by Holmes, is an example of the problem of Gygax's authorial intent. While I would guess (from his recommendations) that Gygax was a subscriber to _The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction_ it wasn't huge then (60k subscribers), and even less so now. I can't tell you exactly what fantasy looked like to D&D players in the 1980s, but today it looks a lot like Tolkien, Lovecraft, and Dragonlance and Drizzt. 

The races aren't identical. But the main old-school D&D races, the elves, dwarves, humans, and hobbits halflings are exactly the major protagonist races of the Lord of the Rings, and I suspect when you say "elf" or "dwarf" to D&D players, the majority or at least the plurality of them will visualize the LotR movie versions of Legolas and Gimli.


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## R_Chance (Oct 27, 2017)

A few comments on Tolkien and race...

Dwarves were short, stout, rude and... ugly (to Elves anyway). They were not as fair (skinned) as Elves. But, they were good (if sometimes greedy).

Some of the main villains were Numenorian like the people of Gondor. The Witch King of Angmar was (before wraith-hood), a white / "European" type. As was the Mouth of Sauron. So were the Black Numenorians who ruled over the Southrons. Black referred to their hearts, not their skins. Given the Elvish blood of Numenorians you could argue they were a race of Half Elves (Elvish blood gave them the longer life span they enjoyed).

The undead army Aragorn used were (before death) white; as were the Dunlendings who fought for Saruman against the Rohirrim who had stolen their lands. I'm not sure what the Woses were, other than prehistoric and pre civilized.   

Haradrim were, by description, "middle eastern" and other Southrons were apparently black, The Variags of Khand and Easterlings were never that well described. None of these peoples were portrayed as inherently evil; they came from lands dominated / controlled and corrupted by evil (including the Black Numenorian rulers mentioned above). 

The Numenorian kingdoms, and the Dwarves and Elves of Western Middle Earth were besieged by Evil from all sides (and inside as well). Many of the men serving Evil came from outside the "European" setting of Western Middle Earth and were, probably, intended to be non European. They, when defeated were often taken prisoner and not just slaughtered. There were nationalistic rivalries in play as well (for example between the mounted Rohirrim and the mounted Haradrim cavalry forces and the Dunlendings versus the Rohirrim). The enemies were exotic and fierce but not inherently evil.

Orcs were inherently evil. They originated as Elves corrupted by Morgoth and were the polar opposite of Elves. Elves were tall, slim, straight, fair skinned and good. Orcs were short, stocky, bandy legged, swarthy and evil. They did not represent any human race. They were a representation of good corrupted into evil. Tolkiens Elves were rather "angelic" and his Orcs were fallen angels / demons. Morgoths other creations, Trolls, were inherently evil as well. None of these beings did well in sun light which represented "good". they were creatures of Darkness / Evil who hated it even if they could stand it.

Tolkien is more complex in his representation of peoples than many give him credit for. The world he created encompasses absolutes of good and evil as well as the petty evil (and nobility / good) of other beings. When you discuss it without recognizing this you are missing the point and misrepresenting the ideas encompassed in the work.


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## Frankie1969 (Oct 28, 2017)

Wow. I'm kinda intrigued by the way this thread has gone COMPLETELY away from the original post, but not "read six pages of comments" worth.


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## cbwjm (Oct 28, 2017)

Frankie1969 said:


> Wow. I'm kinda intrigued by the way this thread has gone COMPLETELY away from the original post, but not "read six pages of comments" worth.



Yeah, this has moved from an interesting look at the data from dndbeyond to what is essentially rubbish.


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