#bfrpg

Where Dwarves, Elves and Halflings can’t pick from the same class list as humans can. OD&D doesn’t really do a good job of telling you why. There are reasons, both mechanical and embedded in the lore.

As far as I know, the lore reasons for why a dwarf can’t become a cleric are explained in the AD&D monsteer manual. Under the entry for Dwarf.

Right there.

Dwarven clerics are 2 in 200 according to the default “world” you get in AD&D. 1% of 200 dwarves. They’re really rare, which is meant to tell you that the characters you play as are not the 1% of all characters, but the 99%, just average people.

There’s also a mechanical reason, but it’s not really what’s stated as what is not stated.

Humans get no apparent bonus in all editions of D&D prior to 3e.

Except they do.

The human bonus is the ability to choose from all the different classes available without level limits.

So as soon as you enable a dwarf cleric, you make the human cleric a little worse.

Who cares though?

This is an RPG, of course we can work around that. These limits can be completely lifted and I think all groups should discuss the removal of these limitations.

You only have to do one thing to make it possible, and we see examples of this in OSE and BFRPG.

OSE simply gives the human character an optional bonus.

BFRPG gives humans a 10% bonus to all earned XP.

(Note: BFRPG has this rule even while restricting dwarves and halflings from being magic-users so perhaps an additional bonus could be added on top of this)

I still think that simply offering any small bonus such as extra HP or XP is enough to then open the gates for a character of any race to be of any class.

Optionally, you might also extend the rules in AD&D where level limits for certain races were extended based on the attributes.

For example, you might only allow dwarves with a high intelligence to be magic-users (they’re probably going to need it anyway).

There’s many ways for this to be done and I think any way is better than telling a player who comes to your table that “sorry you can’t play a half-orc magic-user”.

Lifting the requirements is also a blessing for GMs because you can actually start making a world with different elements than the default that has been provided to you.