37 thoughts on “Is there any logical explanation why some classes are race limited?”

  2. Yes, several!

    First, we wanted to throw in some bit of vision of the world, something for people to play off of. If every race can be every class there’s no trope to play against or to.

    Second, space. We were really committed to fitting every class on one sheet of paper, so we can’t just throw in everything.

  3. Hm. I understand point of view and idea of simplifying everything but I would assume that adding drawbacks to other races would be better but maybe that’s another DnD habit of my thinking. I’m converting characters right now and it turns that anyway – everything fits 🙂

  4. Sage LaTorra Have you yet, or do you intend to list (separately) Race moves covering the inclusion of all (standard fantasy, etc) Races to all of the base Classes?

    I have a feeling this has been done by others at this point, but I’m curious if that was considered or if in fact you have such a list somewhere already. (edit: It being essentially the “official” list).

  5. Mike Weem we haven’t made our own, no, and probably don’t intend to. The great part of having such an awesome community and an open license is that we can just make the stuff that really speaks to us and assume other people will fill in the rest. A lot of the fan-created material is every bit as good as what we make.

    The one thing I would like to do is make it easy for people to make custom character sheets by saying “okay, I want the default human move, Tim’s elf move, and the warforged move from the Guide” or whatever. Ideally it’d be a web site that spits out a character sheet customized as you like it.

  7. Jacek Brzezowski I wouldn’t give a drawback to anybody. There are very few drawbacks in DW, at least directly from the rules. I guess you could say the “drawback” to being a wizard is less HP, but there aren’t many things that say “but you get less XP” or whatever, like typical “favored class” mechanics do.

    There’s no reason not to make an elf paladin or whatever pleases you. The game is designed to be modified and hacked and changed. Small changes, like adding more races, are simple and unlikely to break anything. You’ll find plenty of options here and on various blogs.

  9. I have some ideas on how such a site could be made, but doubt I’ll have the time to actually make it. Which either means finding interested volunteers (hard) or shelling out some money to a developer (possible).

  10. It’s also a great way to customize your races. Maybe your elves worship magical ancestors, so Elf Clerics get a move that gives them a special power based on that, like an intelligent ancestor spirit that lives in their holy symbol can detect magic for them and tell them about it (whenever the cleric discerns reality) for free.

  11. A cleric can also have a god with a different domain and petition then the suggestions on the sheet. They are a very good starting point and you should probably stick to them in the beginning but don’t feel restricted by that. 

  12. A big comprehensive list is boring!  Some hints and nudges and guidelines are inspirational! Right?  I think so, at least.

    I mean, we could have written a race move for every class / race combination under the sun, but it’s more fun if we show you how it works and let you (make you / force you / inspire you to) do it yourself.

    Also, the most important race or cultural moves are the ones you don’t have to make – they’re your impact on the fiction. If you’re the only Sahuagin Fighter, guess who gets to tell the party all kinds of awesome stuff about shark men and the sea?  You, you big scaly goon.  You do.

  13. I like the Inverse World style of saying what race you are, then picking a background that suits. That said, I reckon it ends up with a bit more generic racial moves, and for Pirate World I’m planning a fairly concrete selection to fit the really quite strange races.

  14. James Hawthorne I feel like that kind of approach bleeds the color out of it. Like, each class is a facet of the culture of each race. Remember, too, that you’re the only Fighter so if you want Dwarves to be teetotalers in your world, you need to explain why your Dwarf is so good at being drunk with folks.

  17. Oh FYI 

    Merfolk Wizards can use any large body of saltwater as a place of power. They are no sahuagin though. 

    Sahuagin fighter racial move must deal with blood sniffling/frenzy in some way i feel…

  22. They are a lot of fun in DW. Used them in a one-shot and killed the Halfling in the first hour of the game. After that they have been more careful. Halfling got a sweat deal from death though. Every treasure he touched got automatically send to the underworld/graveyard temples (that wasn’t really clear at that moment)

    Messy tag+group+quite okay damage makes for a scarry monster. The bloodlust also stops them from doing “reasonable” things to the players, instead they just munch on them.

  26. First, I would LOVE some sort of program where you could choose from a list of various race moves, alignments, etc. and print out a custom sheet. Especially if it had both a library of existing options and a way to write custom moves.

    Second, the Wicked Fantasy conversion allows any race to be any class. I’m guessing that’s because you were converting Wicked Fantasy rather than creating something from scratch, but did it feel boring to you when you were writing it?

  27. John Bogart we specifically wrote the WF Conversion to fit the Pathfinder model – to be true to the original material.  It felt a little bit off, but we did what would could to make it still feel “DW”.

    I think that it forced us to make some of the moves more generic than I’d otherwise have preferred, but that’s okay.  It was a fun experiment that turned out pretty great, I think.

  33. Why shouldn’t i be the race i want and get a move? You just have to write the move (and have people agree with it). You just have to work a bit harder on it.  

  34. I got to play an Orc Fighter, with a racial move not on the sheet. Not having a decent picture editing program, I wound up copying and pasting into Excel to recreate the sheet with the appropriate racial move. It was a lot of work, and it’d be awesome if there was an automatic way to do it!

  35. Sage LaTorra have you though about using Hero Lab as a base? You could program the base Elf Wizard move, for example, then if someone wants to use a White Ape Wizard, it’d be an alternate racial trait. I’m not all that familiar with the software, and even then only through Pathfinder, but it seems like it could work.

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