If I remember correctly, Thieves were the only class that every race could participate in with unlimited advancement. And only Humans could be clerics (don't quote me on this one). But basically, if you were human, you had unlimited advancement in any one class, or you could change if you so chose. But if you played a Demi-human (their word, not mine), you were pretty much locked into a few class choices and all of them were limited (other than thief) in level advancement. (all of the above in Advanced).
I am kind of torn on this because I remember wanting to play an Elf Wizard only to find that they could never get 9th level spells. and I remember once that we had a Dwarf in our party who was a real demon in combat, but he could never be as good as a human. So it didn't make sense. On the other hand, 95% of my characters are human, so....... Maybe I am the hypocrite?
For the record, I think trying to control race frequency is a very reasonable goal (in fantasy games, just so no one mistakes me for a eugenicist). I just don't think it's well served by race/class restrictions. Such restrictions do affect race frequency to some extent, but only so far as "everyone who wants to play a paladin will be human." On the whole, the don't really work very well, especially when three of the four archetypal classes are open to everyone. Such restrictions have a severe restrictiveness/effectiveness tradeoff with frequency that makes me dubious about using race/class restrictions as a method of frequency control. Add to that the balance issues that actually discouraged people from playing humans, and the whole thing just doesn't work very well.
Honestly, race frequency in rpgs is a hard problem to tackle. To my knowledge, it's still largely unsolved. Some players, myself included, will naturally gravitate towards humans when all else is roughly equal, but other players will expressly avoid playing humans because they find humans boring. Levying large bonuses and large penalties for non-human races may help to steer people towards humans, but ultimately large modifiers tend to strongly pigeonhole players (see Shadowrun trolls), and often don't make a lot of sense when applied to some of the more human-like fantasy races.
Plus the DM can just say "there are a few elves/dwarves because I said so".
For the record, I think trying to control race frequency is a very reasonable goal (in fantasy games, just so no one mistakes me for a eugenicist). I just don't think it's well served by race/class restrictions. Such restrictions do affect race frequency to some extent, but only so far as "everyone who wants to play a paladin will be human." On the whole, the don't really work very well, especially when three of the four archetypal classes are open to everyone. Such restrictions have a severe restrictiveness/effectiveness tradeoff with frequency that makes me dubious about using race/class restrictions as a method of frequency control. Add to that the balance issues that actually discouraged people from playing humans, and the whole thing just doesn't work very well.
Honestly, race frequency in rpgs is a hard problem to tackle. To my knowledge, it's still largely unsolved. Some players, myself included, will naturally gravitate towards humans when all else is roughly equal, but other players will expressly avoid playing humans because they find humans boring. Levying large bonuses and large penalties for non-human races may help to steer people towards humans, but ultimately large modifiers tend to strongly pigeonhole players (see Shadowrun trolls), and often don't make a lot of sense when applied to some of the more human-like fantasy races.
Plus the DM can just say "there are a few elves/dwarves because I said so".
Of course that is always true. But the players still may choose an all-dwarf party if they want. If the DM DOES NOT WANT such a thing to happen (for any number of atmosphere or role playing reasons) then he has a few tools to force the issue. The most heavy handed is just to say "no player character dwarves". The decision made by Gygax and friends 35 years ago was to have a series of trade offs if players want a minority race. Like class and level limits.
All things considered I think its a pretty reasonable mechanism to achieve the result. It's not quite what most DMs would do today, but I don't believe that makes it a bad option. It resulted in games many of us had a blast with for many years. I use different mechanisms to get the atmosphere I want In the world I run today, as most DMs do. It's always up to the DM to balance these things how they want. And it's up to players to decide what games they want to play in.
Plus the DM can just say "there are a few elves/dwarves because I said so".
Of course that is always true. But the players still may choose an all-dwarf party if they want. If the DM DOES NOT WANT such a thing to happen (for any number of atmosphere or role playing reasons) then he has a few tools to force the issue. The most heavy handed is just to say "no player character dwarves". The decision made by Gygax and friends 35 years ago was to have a series of trade offs if players want a minority race. Like class and level limits.
1. Yes, they COULD play an all dwarf party in a world ruled by humans where dwarves are rare... it would be AWESOME! 2. Saying "no dwarf party" is NOT being heavy handed... and it is certainly better than a passive-aggressive "surrrrre you may play a dwarf... here is a list of random arbitrary ways in which I am going to punish you for it"
PS. I am finding it odd that they felt such amounts of crunch justification was necessary for something as big and malleable as racial distributions. And yet things like the inexplicable medieval locked societies are just supposed to be accepted as is
Bottom line is, DM > God. If DM wants something because it fits in with they game they are playing, that is what happens. this applies equally to race/class restrictions and balance as it does to the frequency of any given race and any consequences associated with certain player choices.
In another game (Champions) the DM said "If you play 'Super human' then you will register as 'Super'". the players took that to mean "don't play Super human" and all died when the robots took over and started killing off all of the 'normals'. Goes to show, PAY attention to what the DM says.
I think for what it did, the reasons why they added race/class restrictions actually achieved that goal. Not to say that is necessarily the way to go today. But then again, with the virtual proliferation of 'Half Drow' and "Blood Orcs" in many campaigns today, maybe it was the right way to go after all? (personal opinion only).
I understand the race class restrictions from a RP perspective, but I still prefer 3/3.5. As a DM I can enforce my own race class restrictions to fit the world I'm hosting my campaign in. I've always used the books as guidelines but a lot of the time I just made it up as I went along.
Bottom line is, DM > God. If DM wants something because it fits in with they game they are playing, that is what happens. this applies equally to race/class restrictions and balance as it does to the frequency of any given race and any consequences associated with certain player choices.
(snip)
I think for what it did, the reasons why they added race/class restrictions actually achieved that goal. Not to say that is necessarily the way to go today. But then again, with the virtual proliferation of 'Half Drow' and "Blood Orcs" in many campaigns today, maybe it was the right way to go after all? (personal opinion only).
See, I feel that regulating the tone and composition of the campaign world is something better left to the DM than the rules set, especially in a toolbox RPG like D&D. Otherwise, every DM who homebrews their campaign setting (most of them, in my experience) has to strip out all the world-specific lore in the base rules before they can set about making it work for their game.
See, I feel that regulating the tone and composition of the campaign world is something better left to the DM than the rules set, especially in a toolbox RPG like D&D. Otherwise, every DM who homebrews their campaign setting (most of them, in my experience) has to strip out all the world-specific lore in the base rules before they can set about making it work for their game.
Bottom line is, DM > God. If DM wants something because it fits in with they game they are playing, that is what happens. this applies equally to race/class restrictions and balance as it does to the frequency of any given race and any consequences associated with certain player choices.
(snip)
I think for what it did, the reasons why they added race/class restrictions actually achieved that goal. Not to say that is necessarily the way to go today. But then again, with the virtual proliferation of 'Half Drow' and "Blood Orcs" in many campaigns today, maybe it was the right way to go after all? (personal opinion only).
See, I feel that regulating the tone and composition of the campaign world is something better left to the DM than the rules set, especially in a toolbox RPG like D&D. Otherwise, every DM who homebrews their campaign setting (most of them, in my experience) has to strip out all the world-specific lore in the base rules before they can set about making it work for their game.
It's not a burden for the DM! I've run many settings and thousands of game sessions using AD&D rules. I've used different tools at different times to set the mood of the world I'm running, including some that are apparently "passive aggressive" (!). But I never see it that way. Ever. There are no surprises for my players, I spell out rules, exceptions and conditions as soon as we start. I've used straight up race limits, I've used level limits, I've used experience penalties (my current favorite), and I've even just said no. As Spyder said, the DM is God of his world. The rules are a tool for the stories you want to tell. This is the first and biggest rule for the 2E rules. Read the intro to the 2E Players Handbook. Basically ALL the rules are suggestions that a DM can use, modify or ignore at their own whim (as long as they are fair and consistent).
I always find these threads kind of funny. We are all (presumably) human. As human's we want to be everything. In D&D terms we want to experience every race combination, every class combination.
The truth is, we will never understand why Gnomes do not want to be necromancers. Why Dwarves do not want to be wizards - because we are human and we want to do everything. We want to be a Dwarven Mage. We want to be a Gnomish necromancer.
It is difficult for us to acknowledge, because we will always be a human playing a gnome. Never a gnome playing a gnome. If you were a gnome and played a gnome in BG, would you want to play a necromancer? would it be distasteful to you?
If you think that is confusing, how about a gnome playing as a human in BG. Would you still be an illusionist? That's the kicker right there
Personally, I think that AD&D and 2nd edition got it right. Human's want to be everything and we cannot understand for the life of us, why other races wouldn't want the same.
In a lore sense: I think it has been explained away as humans being the most ambitious of all the races. They see their lives as short and thus want to do everything, conquer everything, accomplish everything. This translates to: No class restriction and the ability to change ones mind (dual-classing). Halfling's have short lives too, but they are explained as being 'unambitious' and 'chilled'. Half-orcs do not have the patience to do anything other than smash.
Other races, such as elves are more patient and thus would have the time in their lives to be able to focus on two professions at once.
As a frequent DM, I have found it to be so. It's the primary reason I prefer to DM more recent editions over older ones, especially when I have to teach the game to newer players (or ones who have trouble remembering the rules). I find it much preferable to be able to have my campaign document focus on lore and setting with a short addendum to the established rules, rather than having to explain which of all the "rules as suggestions" are in play.
As a frequent DM, I have found it to be so. It's the primary reason I prefer to DM more recent editions over older ones, especially when I have to teach the game to newer players (or ones who have trouble remembering the rules). I find it much preferable to be able to have my campaign document focus on lore and setting with a short addendum to the established rules, rather than having to explain which of all the "rules as suggestions" are in play.
I love designing my setting. I'm always eager to explain the setting and rules. I have hundreds of pages of written material, that are all available and open to my players. And it all uses 2E as a starting point, by far my favorite rules set. I've been tweaking stuff for over 30 years and have a pretty good feel for what works. I also have had a lot of success bringing new players, both with and without experience with other systems. In the end, it doesn't really matter much what a players "favorite" system is, its the DM who makes it work. And I've played in some good games using 3E and even 4E, in addition to wholly different games. But 2E remains my system of choice. It let's me run my game, and tell my stories the way I want to.
All things considered I think its a pretty reasonable mechanism to achieve the result. It's not quite what most DMs would do today, but I don't believe that makes it a bad option. It resulted in games many of us had a blast with for many years.
This, right here, is where I could not possibly disagree with you more strongly. Level restrictions are just another example of the "be weak now so someone else can be weak later" school of balancing that leads to some subset of the players having less fun at any given time. They're simply not good ways of balancing things, because at no point do they actually create balance. 90% of games never saw them, because advancement was so slow in early D&D, and the few games that did see the limits come into play saw demihumans suddenly become the worst races by such a huge margin that previously-beloved characters passed into uselessness. This is practically the definition of a terrible mechanic, and there is a reason it seems to be one of the most heavily house-ruled-away parts of early D&D.
Now, back to the actual subject of the thread. Race/class restrictions are, as I've said before, flawed on a directional level. Allow me to elaborate on that, because perhaps I haven't explained properly. The number one defining trait of a character is not their race, but their class. A dwarf fighter is closer to an elf fighter than a dwarf fighter is to a dwarf cleric, or even than an elf fighter is to an elf ranger. As such, given that you choose race and class at the same time, the most reasonable way to view race/class restrictions is not that races are limited in their choice of class, but rather that classes are limited in their choice of race. The decision to be a fighter is more important than the decision to be a dwarf, and so should be considered the primary choice. Race is a secondary choice. Phrased that way, we see that the idea of balancing races with race/class restrictions is just kind of silly. It'd be like saying that quarterstaves' low damage is balanced by the fact that everyone can use them. We know that doesn't make sense, because that's only an advantage for the people who have no other choice. So why do people keep insisting that race/class balance is an effective way of balancing races?
I dunno.....if you actually stop thinking like a munchkin and read into the fluff, every single one of the restrictions is actually very well defined and believable. (except for the Complete Book of Humanoids races, which everyone knows were $%#^).
And it's actually because of their life spans that they have level caps. Unless you're dealing with a munchkin DM, a human character is very unlikely to reach level 20, barring some extreme means like tracking down a philospher's stone (artifact quality component) to craft a draught to restore some youth (never more then 10 years) or finding a fountain of youth (never more then 5 years and they generally can't drink from it more then once without waiting another 5 years and then finding it again), etc. It's why they can dual-class.
If a human gets tired of the leveling being slow they've, potentially, got the option of just saying $#^# it and starting on a new class to bring more variety to their play style, and so they can get that new level feel again sooner. Demi-humans on the other hand are committed for the long haul, but due to their longer life spans aren't too worried about it.
It's also why casters get such massive personal xp boosts, the meat of their class doesn't come till later, while fighters basically cap out 9-ish...they don't really get anything above 10. Rangers and Paladin don't really need to go beyond 13-ish to get the majority of their benefits.
Thieves are in middle but doesn't really need anything above 13...by then they've gotten a massive spread of skills, can cast spells via scrolls, their maximum backstab (for what it's worth anyway) and pretty much don't get a whole hell of a lot else.
SO.......the race caps aren't actually that big of a deal...most classes are only getting empty levels anyway.
(the high level campaign guide recommends using the expanded and delayed advancement rules. IF they're single class and have high stats they can go up to +4 levels over the cap, after which it takes double the xp to advance. Double and Multi's simply require double xp for any of their class that have hit the cap. (So take a Dwarf fighter/Thief at 10/12. The fighter half continues to truck along at normal advancement till 15, while the thief half now requires double xp).
Keep in mind...due to the ridiculous stats required to dual-class...it's extremely rare for a human to get that honor. (most characters end up with stats in the early to mid teens (hence why the plethora of items and spells that set stats exist in 2nd edition).
Okay, putting aside the implied insult, let me explain why I like to think in terms of what the mechanics encourage or discourage. Have you read Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow? It's pretty popular right now, as I understand it, and goes into a reasonable amount of detail on how people actually make decisions. Not how people SHOULD make decisions, which is what economists will tell you, but how we actually DO make decisions. It's in my general field, so I'm pretty familiar with it.
Now, there are basically two take-away messages from the book (and the massive body of research it sums up). The first is that a huge portion of decision-making occurs subconsciously. That means you don't know about it and, more importantly, you don't control it. The part of you that you identify as yourself is responsible for less of your decision-making than the part of you that does not. Keep that in mind when I get to the second thing, because if you tell me "no, I don't think that way," you're simply going to be wrong. This applies to you, personally, no matter how much you think you're above it. Daniel Kahneman isn't above it, and he literally wrote the book on it.
So, the second thing. The second thing is that our decisions are heavily influenced by outside forces. Environment, social norms, and the presentation of information are intrinsically influential to our decision-making. There is no way to be free of these things. Period. Being aware of them is helpful, but a) imperfect, and b) extremely difficult. That's why this is relevant to the issue at hand. Mechanics are both the environment and the presentation of information in the game, and to a certain extent they're the social norms. No matter how much we might want to roleplay, the mechanics have a very strong influence over us. And remember, this isn't something you get to opt out of. This is true, and it is true for YOU. So don't tell me that we don't need to think like powergamers when we make games for roleplayers. The powergamers are the only ones who really understand what the rules are saying, and so understanding powergaming and building your game to guide powergames down certain paths (or leaving them free to choose, which is far more difficult) is EXACTLY how you encourage roleplayers to follow those paths (or, more importantly, avoid pushing them down specific paths so that they're free to roleplay however they please).
TL;DR, unbalanced mechanics (such as the current race/class implementation) do, in fact, restrict roleplaying, because that's just how people think. Including you, even if you don't think so.
Now that that's done with, let me address ZK's specific points. First, I disagree that the race/class restrictions all make sense, but I further don't think it's relevant. Unless there's a solid reason why a race is physically incapable of being that class (you could make this argument for dwarf mages, as Dragon Age did), I don't see why the game should make that decision for me. This is doubly true in a game like Baldur's Gate, where, as I've noted previously, all player characters hail from exactly the same culture. There is simply no justification beyond physical incapability that races should be restricted within the context of the game at hand.
As for level caps, your argument only makes sense in a game with a timescale or years. Even then I don't agree with it, but that's beside the point. The point is that, while early D&D was made for a very long timescale, by the time 2E rolled around it was rarely played that way. The truth is that most games don't last long enough for the human characters to die of old age. Even if you enforced a "1 session = 1 year" policy (which is usually impossible for a number of reasons), a large number of campaigns simply don't last 50 sessions. As a result of this, and early D&D's slow advancement, the level caps rarely came into play. That alone would be enough for them to be bad mechanics. Add to that the fact that, when they did come into play, they simply reversed the balance problem rather than solving it (with extra strength to make up for the huge amount of time they weren't in effect for), and the result is a mechanic that utterly fails to accomplish what it's supposed to accomplish.
Dwarves and halflings can't be mages for the same same reason dwarves can't be mages in Dragon Age...they have an innate resistance to magic (which unlike magic resistance, they can't control or suppress) that prevents them from channeling arcane magic at all and makes them much less suited to channeling divine magic then most other common races.
(While dwarves and halflings can't be bards, they CAN be certain bard kits (as can gnomes and elves). Dwarves can actually be Skald, Elves can be Blades, or Gnomes/Halflings can be Jesters, for instance (there's several more), in PnP in addition to racial kits (such as the dwarven Chanter, the Elven Bladesinger, Gnomish professor, or Halfling Whistler).
But unlike other bards, Dwarves and halflings cannot use arcane spells. They instead get the ability by studying a particular spell they can strengthen their resistance to it and gain a permanent +4 bonus to all saves vs that spell, or if the spell doesn't normally allow a save, they can attempt to make one at -4) (follows the normal spell progression for that kit (if any) and they can only learn one spell per spell slot of that level. Can never be changed or unlearned once chosen).
Gnome bards go the other way and have the same restrictions as an illusion specialist. (They get +2/-2 bonus/penalty to illusion spells but can't learn Abjuration, Evocation, or Necromancy spells) (Does not get any other specialist bonuses/penalties).
What's so hard about this to understand...Humans get a few more empty levels yay....demi-humans get less empty levels but have some other very tangible benefits in the form of greatly increased saves or near immunity to several effects bonuses with weapons, infra-vision (actually pretty nice in PnP), and usually better thief skills.
Or in the case of half-orcs can potentially start with 19 str, infra-vision (again, actually nice in PnP), and ever so slightly better thief skills. But are worthless as anything besides a fighter (caps at 17) since their thief caps at 7, and cleric caps at 4.(and according to the DM guide, no race with an int penalty can ever be a mage. While they can have the capacity to be quite cunning despite their issues, they are lacking in fundamental areas that make magecraft impossible).
Oh my, this is getting silly beyond words. This is one of the few times I find myself in agreement with Zanath (we both like 2E; but I like it for flexibility and mod-ability, he's more of a purist). The 2E class restrictions and level limits absolutely WERE used quite often in the early years after the rules came out. People started tweaking and modding later. But that never meant any of it was a bad idea, only that many DMs had other ideas for what they wanted their worlds to look like. And 2E was ALL ABOUT that, from page one of the Players Handbook (the first rule book published).
But I completely agree with Zanath about its significance in planning a character for a campaign. The vast majority of games I ever played in, we went into with the expectation this would be around for a while, as in many years. So the level limits formed part of the equation on determining what you wanted to play. And THAT was exactly the point. Every race/class had different issues, advantages, weaknesses. Level limits being a part of the equation. Its a game, and its fun. I am staggered that any rule causes anyone so much grief! My gosh, if you're playing any game you either live with the rules or change them. It IS nothing to you if I apply a particular rule you don't like. Its between me and my players. And it is entitlement run amok to think you can change the published rules applied to a computer game. If you can get a mod to do exactly what you want, great. That way you can get what you want, and I don't have to use it. But getting nasty or "superior" over an attempt to rationally explain where these rules came from, why they were considered desirable by many players AND the original game designers, and why many of us are happy if they are left alone is, well, amusing.
See, I'm willing to accept that dwarves and halflings can't be mages. I'm not particularly willing to accept that gnomes can only be illusionists, or that they can't be core bards for some reason (gnomes are physically incapable of not being silly? Stereotypes aside, that doesn't make a lot of sense). I'm even more unwilling to accept things like elves not being able to be bards (other than blades), or ANYTHING not being able to be druids (since everything can be clerics), especially elves and gnomes. For that matter, I don't see why a dwarf can't be a paladin and a gnome can't be a ranger. I suppose you could argue that the dwarf's natural magic resistance makes being a paladin impossible (and their Charisma penalty makes it unlikely anyway, I'll grant), but gnomes are magical adept AND the second-woodsiest race in the game. If gnomes can't be rangers, why can humans?
What's "hard to understand" is that those bonuses and penalties don't come even close to applying at the same point in gameplay, nor are they remotely balanced against one another when they are. I could just as easily ask you what's so hard to understand about that.
Again. it's Physical. Gnomes have a wisdom penalty. This makes them all innately absent minded, and much less suited to things that require focus like divine magic (which they're horrible at). (Gnomes and Halflings both have wisdom penalties and they are both the lowest cap clerics of the standard races with the halflings innate magic resistance putting them under the gnomes who are just under the dwarf who while fit for focus and religious their magic resistance holds them back. (Half-orcs are non-standard technically for 2nd edition). Rangers have an even higher wisdom requirement then clerics do...there ya go. Also ranger groups are more of an Elf/Human thing.
Magic requires certain levels of con, dex, wis, and cha to master well. A Generalist develops enough of this to get by and cast everything, while a specialist focuses on the areas required to most effectively channel their chosen school, but due to sacrificing development in other areas they can't cast those spells at all.
Gnomes by their eccentric nature lack the focus needed to really work towards any form of spell discipline, but since Illusions are so easy and versatile and fit with their playful nature, they simply gravitate towards that. They develop enough skill to get buy in some related areas, but also lose more schools then any other specialist type as a result (not that they really miss it much...Illusion is OP as hell if you get a bonus to make your illusions harder to disbelieve. If you can cast Illusion, Alteration, and Enchantment, you don't need any other spell schools).
By the by.....what level caps are you refering to? Race caps are mostly meant as a means for handling the age discrepancy..... BG doesn't have an age system..nor does it have racial caps.
Any caps in BG are a result of the developers decision to keep the game challenging (which failed miserably when they overpowered so much crap on top of ludicrous xp rewards and over the top monty haul item drops)
(and no, if you're a Dwarf, Gnome, or Elf, you did not grow up in Candlekeep, no matter what the game says (which assumes you're a human due to bad writing), you spent time there, yes, but you spent most of your Formative years likely among your mother's people before the gathering was called at which point Gorion rescued you and took you in. Hence the mess of contradictions in your origins. The part about your character remembering the journey as a youngling makes sense as a dwarf/elf/gnome, but not as a younger race, while the game outright says you were brought to Candlekeep as a barely weened baby and lived there for 20 years, which only works for the Half-Elf and younger races (though just barely for half-elves and halflings).
BG is one of those frustrating games that the more you look into the worse it becomes as all the contradictions, inconsistencies, groundless imbalances, and other BS starts becoming more readily apparent and utterly ruins what one used to consider a great game.
Again. it's Physical. Gnomes have a wisdom penalty. This makes them all innately absent minded, and much less suited to things that require focus like divine magic (which they're horrible at).
A gnome gets -1 to wisdom... ONE POINT. The only thing it would do is slightly decrease the % of gnomish population who take those jobs. But there are gnomes out there with 17 wisdom (rolled 18, -1 racial), which is still 14 points higher than the most unwise of humans/elves/dwarves/etc
Yeah, no, I don't buy it. The thing about the Wisdom penalty is that it's already mechanically reflected. We know gnomes have a -1 Wisdom. That makes them worse at certain things. Cool, fine, makes sense. But it's already factored in. If I roll a gnome with a 17 Wisdom, I'm definitionally more focused than 98% of humans. Why should I suffer from focus problems that I don't have? Why am I being penalized for a racial tendency that the statistics (and presumably roleplaying, if I'm playing my stats remotely right) say I don't actually reflect?
Yeah, no, I don't buy it. The thing about the Wisdom penalty is that it's already mechanically reflected. We know gnomes have a -1 Wisdom. That makes them worse at certain things. Cool, fine, makes sense. But it's already factored in. If I roll a gnome with a 17 Wisdom, I'm definitionally more focused than 98% of humans. Why should I suffer from focus problems that I don't have? Why am I being penalized for a racial tendency that the statistics (and presumably roleplaying, if I'm playing my stats remotely right) say I don't actually reflect?
And if gnomes really DID suffer such debilitating lack of focus then they should not get a -1 to wisdom... but say, -5 to wis AND it maxes out at 8.
It represents a deep disability. They can still have high wisdom, but on a fundamental level, much like Half-orcs they lack something less tangible that holds them back.
Best way I can think of it is to describe them as Autistic. Bright and intelligent, and some of them can be quite astute in some ways to the point of being hyper observant (very high wisdom), but are lacking in others which holds them back from being able to apply it like someone without that disability could. (Take Jan for instance...14 wisdom. Same as Jaheria and Valygar, and only surpassed by Cernd, Keldorn, and Vicky. And what does he act like? (also note that Anomen, Nalia, Korgan, Mazzy, Edwin, Haery, Minsc, Imeon, Yoshi, SAREVOK are lower then him) (and do keep in mind that the Gnome race as a whole trend towards Chaotic. A lawful Gnome would be much more collected would still have their share issues, just less pronounced). (If you look through the gnome specific racial kits it's clear a they're an entire race of high functioning Savants (most of the kits they can take either require very analytical minds (thanks to their high racial int) or a penchant for being scatter-brained, absent-minded, or inquisitive to a fault).
That's what even a small penalty to a mental score ultimately means.
A highly intelligent Half-orc could be described as being dyslexic. They can get by and be quite intelligent, but magic leaves NO room for error when it comes to read those scrolls and memorizing spells and their disability simply makes it impossible for them.
Jan, actually, acts like someone who's perfectly capable of focusing and just doesn't care to most of the time. If there's one thing I took from his personal quest, it's that there's more to him than meets the eye.
Furthermore, let's look at clerics. Gnomes don't make very good clerics. We know this. And it makes sense. Clerics' prime requisite is Wisdom, and that's not for the situational awareness aspect of the stat. Clerics need focus, and by the definition of "prime requisite" and the evidence of minimum stat requirements, they need Wisdom more than mages do (with the exception of abjurers, diviners, and necromancers). And yet gnomes are allowed to be clerics. They might not be good at it, but they're allowed to be clerics. So why, in heaven's name, are they not allowed to be mages or bards, for whom Wisdom is not a requirement at all? Why is a gnome with a 17 Wisdom too unfocused to be a mage, but a human with a 3 Wisdom is? All the clearly-unbalanced folks in spellhold who can't focus to save their lives? No, your explanation simply does not hold up to the data.
What's more, there's a fundamental problem with your current line of reasoning. You're arguing that being disadvantaged at something is the same as being physically incapable of it. That's pretty offensive, quite frankly, to the very people your using as examples. It's like saying that someone with dyslexia could never perfectly read a speech they were just handed. Yeah, they'd be at a disadvantage, but many dyslexic people would still find that less challenging than the average non-dyslexic person. And the average non-dyslexic person is allowed to be a mage. But offensiveness aside, it also a) doesn't make logical sense, and b) doesn't logically follow from the rest of the game. If being disadvantages at something was enough to bar someone from a class, why can gnomes be clerics? Why can dwarves be thieves? Why can halflings be fighters? All those things are allowed because it doesn't make sense to restrict someone based on they'd be bad at. The only people who think in such ridiculously uncompromising terms are Olympic coaches, munchkins, and Bruno Gianelli from The West Wing.
Finally, and this is something of an aside, as a psychologist who's done research on autism, I'm not impressed with your choice of examples. Gnomes lack focus, and you call them autistic? Autism has nothing to do with the ability to focus, and it doesn't seem to be a bar to success in the sorts of academic fields that are most analogous to D&D magecraft (it does seem to be a disadvantage, but... see above).
The difference being Mages HAVE to earn their spells. It takes actual effort. Clerics are simply given spells, which is why aside from 6th and 7th level, they have no minimum requirement for casting, and actually cast spells even if they're lower then the minimum of 9 wisdom required to be a cleric, albeit anything 12 or lower has a growing spell failure penalty.
As mentioned prior, Gnomes become illusionists because it's the easiest path to take. They have an innate knack for it, and learning evocation, necromancy, and abjuration would put them out of their comfort zone, of which at least one of those is required to be any other type of specialist or to be a generalist.
Ok....lets play a game...I'll strap a complicated bomb to your chest and give a dyslexic person who has shown good ability at mitigating their condition step by step instructions in written form on how to disarm it, which requires entering several paragraphs of text, on a strict time limit, the size of a 150 page novel...but any single mistake will set it off immediately.....THAT is being a mage. Every time they crack open their spell-book and start weaving spells into their BRAIN they were playing with a volatile bomb that can go off with the slightest mistake and turn them into a vegetable or make their head explode.
And that's just memorization.
The actual casting and channeling spells requires a certain degree of physical/mental conditioning to be achieved and maintained, this isn't directly related a specific score value, except in the case of specialists who do require a minimum level of a stat in order to achieve that level of conditioning, but just having that amount won't make you a specialist, it just gives you the potential to be one. Necromancy and Abjuration need focus and willpower, which gnomes lack, while Evocation requires a lot of physical conditioning to safely channel the magic needed to create the effects evocation spells require (more so then Conjuration, though it's very close) which is a lot of boring work that would take time away from them perfecting better illusions that can be just as good for much less effort, leaving for time for them to indulge in other hobbies.
Gnomes have a innate brilliance and analytical minds and can take to it well, but as before, they are lacking in fundamental areas to apply it across a broad spectrum of areas, instead focusing on areas they excel at.
(the complete book of gnomes though does allow Gnomes to be generic mages, but they suffer a -15% learning penalty for evocation, abjuration, and necromancy, and get a +15% learning bonus to Illusion spells, but they CANNOT multiclass as a generalist, because it requires much more effort to be a generalist then a Illusionist, and splitting their focus between two classes is too much). (the reason the gnome bard-kits suffer illusionist penalties is because splitting their focus to learn thief skills, combat, lore/music, AND magic is just too much)
Dwarves can be thieves due to sharing a mechanical bent with gnomes. Dwarves excel at disassembling mechanical devices and traps or building traps to help guard their tunnels and mines, and especially noticing traps hidden in architecture. They're also somewhat astute to noticing things that seem out of place due to their more orderly nature. And....well...some are just plain greedy.
Halflings can be fighters because it's easy. But they ARE penalized. Halflings can never have an Ex str score (in PnP at least) due to their smaller frames (A halfling fighter that reaches 18 str just has 18 str. If you use wishes to increase it, instead of going to 18/10 like another race would, they stay 18 until 20 wishes finally push them to 19 (normal race needs 10 wishes to get from 18 to 18/00, then 10 more from 18/00 to 19...but they at least the benefits from the Ex str as it increases, where as halflings never do). They also only have 3/4 the carry weight, force chance, and lift chance, and only half the bonus damage (rounded down) their strength would normally grant (in PnP at least).
And it makes them ill-suited to be fighters resulting in a cap at 9 (which by the expanded proficiency rules as written means they can only attain Mastery (which requires a minimum level of 9), where as more innately talented races could potentially reach high mastery at 12 (Elves and Half-Elves) (Gnomes narrowly miss it at 11, likely due to their focus penalty), or even Grand Mastery (Dwarves, Humans, Half-Orcs) at 15 (Half-elfs only barely miss it at 14).
Now of course, if you subscribe to the expanded advancement rule (which is the default rule) a single class demi-human with truly exceptional scores can surpass that cap by up to 4 levels due to being unusually gifted in that area (much the same reason a human with ridiculously high scores can quickly pick up a new class instead of taking years to do so). A multi cannot however, because splitting their attention between maintaining 2 sets of skills is too much while also trying to push a level of proficiency they're already having to struggle to reach through raw talent.
So a half-elf with 16 str could attain GM by reach 15, or could reach 17 with 18 str. (only your starting stats apply, since that was when your innate talent was set).
Because a halfling can't have more then 17 strength at creation, the highest fighter a Halfling can ever achieve is 11.
The problem with your argument about spell learning is that, again, there is no Wisdom requirement there. The mechanics simply don't support the idea that Wisdom, or anything related to it, is a factor. Until you address the case of the human mage with a 3 Wisdom, your argument holds no weight at all.
As for your bomb analogy, I'm afraid it's flawed on a fundamental level. See, I wouldn't trust the average person to do that either, and yet the average person is mechanically allowed to be a mage. If I had to trust someone, I would MUCH rather trust a dyslexic genius than the average person. Again, having a disadvantage at something is not the same thing as being physically unable to do it. Yes, I would rather trust a neurotypical genius with disarming the bomb than a dyslexic genius, but the dyslexic genius is still a much better bet than most of the people who are fully qualified, by D&D standards, to be mages.
Bottom line is, DM > God. If DM wants something because it fits in with they game they are playing, that is what happens.
I actually disagree with this kind of thinking. Rather than "DM > God", I think that it is much more a case of "DM is ultimately responsible for convincing a group of people that spending time with him is going to be fun".
From my one failed experience as a DM, way back when I was about 20 years old, attempting to manage a game for eight or so 17 year olds, I learned about this the hard way.
I bought into that "the DM is god" nonsense. But my players were not enjoying my game, and I was way more interested in controlling my creative vision than in that harsh fact.
Being a good DM is all about giving your players a good time, such that they will come back to you and spend time in your creative vision again and again.
If racial restrictions help you to accomplish that, because you have the good fortune to have a group of friends who see the potential for fun in sharing participation in the creative vision you present to them, then, by all means, use the racial restrictions from 1st and 2nd editions. If not, then jettison the whole thing, fast, for your own sake!
The only way in Heck that you are going to get away with telling a person that "nope, sorry, your character concept is against my rules,", or to do something like saying "mwahhahah, you have just changed your own alignment by being stupid, and a lightning bolt strikes you on the head, and you see a red dragon charging towards you, and your god has deserted you and taken away all your powers," is if you are dealing with an individual who wants to get into your social clique, and you have your vision and your rules being reinforced and enforced by a large group of like-minded people, who have been seen as a desirable group to join by some other individual or individuals.
The profound differences between social D&D and computer D&D are something that I don't often see understood in this forum.
For computer D&D, what is of paramount importance is to have a game that a single individual will find fun, according to his or her OWN vision of what D&D should be.
I think that @CamDawg's new version of Tweaks is a step in this direction. I am quite excited to hear about it in this thread.
And, for all the "DM is *god*, you *must* obey the pnp rules" type rules lawyer DM's around, well, I guess I congratulate you that you must have so many people to socialize with in real life who enjoy playing with you.
Well we have lots of texts here and all are very well justified with lots of reasoning, but i would just like to comment that we should be careful to avoid justify rules only to keep things as they are instead of make them as they should be.
Comments
I am kind of torn on this because I remember wanting to play an Elf Wizard only to find that they could never get 9th level spells. and I remember once that we had a Dwarf in our party who was a real demon in combat, but he could never be as good as a human. So it didn't make sense. On the other hand, 95% of my characters are human, so....... Maybe I am the hypocrite?
All things considered I think its a pretty reasonable mechanism to achieve the result. It's not quite what most DMs would do today, but I don't believe that makes it a bad option. It resulted in games many of us had a blast with for many years.
I use different mechanisms to get the atmosphere I want In the world I run today, as most DMs do. It's always up to the DM to balance these things how they want. And it's up to players to decide what games they want to play in.
2. Saying "no dwarf party" is NOT being heavy handed... and it is certainly better than a passive-aggressive "surrrrre you may play a dwarf... here is a list of random arbitrary ways in which I am going to punish you for it"
PS. I am finding it odd that they felt such amounts of crunch justification was necessary for something as big and malleable as racial distributions. And yet things like the inexplicable medieval locked societies are just supposed to be accepted as is
In another game (Champions) the DM said "If you play 'Super human' then you will register as 'Super'". the players took that to mean "don't play Super human" and all died when the robots took over and started killing off all of the 'normals'. Goes to show, PAY attention to what the DM says.
I think for what it did, the reasons why they added race/class restrictions actually achieved that goal. Not to say that is necessarily the way to go today. But then again, with the virtual proliferation of 'Half Drow' and "Blood Orcs" in many campaigns today, maybe it was the right way to go after all? (personal opinion only).
As Spyder said, the DM is God of his world. The rules are a tool for the stories you want to tell. This is the first and biggest rule for the 2E rules. Read the intro to the 2E Players Handbook. Basically ALL the rules are suggestions that a DM can use, modify or ignore at their own whim (as long as they are fair and consistent).
The truth is, we will never understand why Gnomes do not want to be necromancers. Why Dwarves do not want to be wizards - because we are human and we want to do everything. We want to be a Dwarven Mage. We want to be a Gnomish necromancer.
It is difficult for us to acknowledge, because we will always be a human playing a gnome. Never a gnome playing a gnome. If you were a gnome and played a gnome in BG, would you want to play a necromancer? would it be distasteful to you?
If you think that is confusing, how about a gnome playing as a human in BG. Would you still be an illusionist? That's the kicker right there
Personally, I think that AD&D and 2nd edition got it right. Human's want to be everything and we cannot understand for the life of us, why other races wouldn't want the same.
In a lore sense: I think it has been explained away as humans being the most ambitious of all the races. They see their lives as short and thus want to do everything, conquer everything, accomplish everything. This translates to: No class restriction and the ability to change ones mind (dual-classing). Halfling's have short lives too, but they are explained as being 'unambitious' and 'chilled'. Half-orcs do not have the patience to do anything other than smash.
Other races, such as elves are more patient and thus would have the time in their lives to be able to focus on two professions at once.
Now, back to the actual subject of the thread. Race/class restrictions are, as I've said before, flawed on a directional level. Allow me to elaborate on that, because perhaps I haven't explained properly. The number one defining trait of a character is not their race, but their class. A dwarf fighter is closer to an elf fighter than a dwarf fighter is to a dwarf cleric, or even than an elf fighter is to an elf ranger. As such, given that you choose race and class at the same time, the most reasonable way to view race/class restrictions is not that races are limited in their choice of class, but rather that classes are limited in their choice of race. The decision to be a fighter is more important than the decision to be a dwarf, and so should be considered the primary choice. Race is a secondary choice. Phrased that way, we see that the idea of balancing races with race/class restrictions is just kind of silly. It'd be like saying that quarterstaves' low damage is balanced by the fact that everyone can use them. We know that doesn't make sense, because that's only an advantage for the people who have no other choice. So why do people keep insisting that race/class balance is an effective way of balancing races?
Since they are suppose to be the race that adapts the best
And it's actually because of their life spans that they have level caps. Unless you're dealing with a munchkin DM, a human character is very unlikely to reach level 20, barring some extreme means like tracking down a philospher's stone (artifact quality component) to craft a draught to restore some youth (never more then 10 years) or finding a fountain of youth (never more then 5 years and they generally can't drink from it more then once without waiting another 5 years and then finding it again), etc. It's why they can dual-class.
If a human gets tired of the leveling being slow they've, potentially, got the option of just saying $#^# it and starting on a new class to bring more variety to their play style, and so they can get that new level feel again sooner. Demi-humans on the other hand are committed for the long haul, but due to their longer life spans aren't too worried about it.
It's also why casters get such massive personal xp boosts, the meat of their class doesn't come till later, while fighters basically cap out 9-ish...they don't really get anything above 10. Rangers and Paladin don't really need to go beyond 13-ish to get the majority of their benefits.
Thieves are in middle but doesn't really need anything above 13...by then they've gotten a massive spread of skills, can cast spells via scrolls, their maximum backstab (for what it's worth anyway) and pretty much don't get a whole hell of a lot else.
SO.......the race caps aren't actually that big of a deal...most classes are only getting empty levels anyway.
(the high level campaign guide recommends using the expanded and delayed advancement rules. IF they're single class and have high stats they can go up to +4 levels over the cap, after which it takes double the xp to advance. Double and Multi's simply require double xp for any of their class that have hit the cap. (So take a Dwarf fighter/Thief at 10/12. The fighter half continues to truck along at normal advancement till 15, while the thief half now requires double xp).
Keep in mind...due to the ridiculous stats required to dual-class...it's extremely rare for a human to get that honor. (most characters end up with stats in the early to mid teens (hence why the plethora of items and spells that set stats exist in 2nd edition).
Now, there are basically two take-away messages from the book (and the massive body of research it sums up). The first is that a huge portion of decision-making occurs subconsciously. That means you don't know about it and, more importantly, you don't control it. The part of you that you identify as yourself is responsible for less of your decision-making than the part of you that does not. Keep that in mind when I get to the second thing, because if you tell me "no, I don't think that way," you're simply going to be wrong. This applies to you, personally, no matter how much you think you're above it. Daniel Kahneman isn't above it, and he literally wrote the book on it.
So, the second thing. The second thing is that our decisions are heavily influenced by outside forces. Environment, social norms, and the presentation of information are intrinsically influential to our decision-making. There is no way to be free of these things. Period. Being aware of them is helpful, but a) imperfect, and b) extremely difficult. That's why this is relevant to the issue at hand. Mechanics are both the environment and the presentation of information in the game, and to a certain extent they're the social norms. No matter how much we might want to roleplay, the mechanics have a very strong influence over us. And remember, this isn't something you get to opt out of. This is true, and it is true for YOU. So don't tell me that we don't need to think like powergamers when we make games for roleplayers. The powergamers are the only ones who really understand what the rules are saying, and so understanding powergaming and building your game to guide powergames down certain paths (or leaving them free to choose, which is far more difficult) is EXACTLY how you encourage roleplayers to follow those paths (or, more importantly, avoid pushing them down specific paths so that they're free to roleplay however they please).
TL;DR, unbalanced mechanics (such as the current race/class implementation) do, in fact, restrict roleplaying, because that's just how people think. Including you, even if you don't think so.
Now that that's done with, let me address ZK's specific points. First, I disagree that the race/class restrictions all make sense, but I further don't think it's relevant. Unless there's a solid reason why a race is physically incapable of being that class (you could make this argument for dwarf mages, as Dragon Age did), I don't see why the game should make that decision for me. This is doubly true in a game like Baldur's Gate, where, as I've noted previously, all player characters hail from exactly the same culture. There is simply no justification beyond physical incapability that races should be restricted within the context of the game at hand.
As for level caps, your argument only makes sense in a game with a timescale or years. Even then I don't agree with it, but that's beside the point. The point is that, while early D&D was made for a very long timescale, by the time 2E rolled around it was rarely played that way. The truth is that most games don't last long enough for the human characters to die of old age. Even if you enforced a "1 session = 1 year" policy (which is usually impossible for a number of reasons), a large number of campaigns simply don't last 50 sessions. As a result of this, and early D&D's slow advancement, the level caps rarely came into play. That alone would be enough for them to be bad mechanics. Add to that the fact that, when they did come into play, they simply reversed the balance problem rather than solving it (with extra strength to make up for the huge amount of time they weren't in effect for), and the result is a mechanic that utterly fails to accomplish what it's supposed to accomplish.
(While dwarves and halflings can't be bards, they CAN be certain bard kits (as can gnomes and elves). Dwarves can actually be Skald, Elves can be Blades, or Gnomes/Halflings can be Jesters, for instance (there's several more), in PnP in addition to racial kits (such as the dwarven Chanter, the Elven Bladesinger, Gnomish professor, or Halfling Whistler).
But unlike other bards, Dwarves and halflings cannot use arcane spells. They instead get the ability by studying a particular spell they can strengthen their resistance to it and gain a permanent +4 bonus to all saves vs that spell, or if the spell doesn't normally allow a save, they can attempt to make one at -4) (follows the normal spell progression for that kit (if any) and they can only learn one spell per spell slot of that level. Can never be changed or unlearned once chosen).
Gnome bards go the other way and have the same restrictions as an illusion specialist. (They get +2/-2 bonus/penalty to illusion spells but can't learn Abjuration, Evocation, or Necromancy spells) (Does not get any other specialist bonuses/penalties).
What's so hard about this to understand...Humans get a few more empty levels yay....demi-humans get less empty levels but have some other very tangible benefits in the form of greatly increased saves or near immunity to several effects bonuses with weapons, infra-vision (actually pretty nice in PnP), and usually better thief skills.
Or in the case of half-orcs can potentially start with 19 str, infra-vision (again, actually nice in PnP), and ever so slightly better thief skills. But are worthless as anything besides a fighter (caps at 17) since their thief caps at 7, and cleric caps at 4.(and according to the DM guide, no race with an int penalty can ever be a mage. While they can have the capacity to be quite cunning despite their issues, they are lacking in fundamental areas that make magecraft impossible).
The 2E class restrictions and level limits absolutely WERE used quite often in the early years after the rules came out. People started tweaking and modding later. But that never meant any of it was a bad idea, only that many DMs had other ideas for what they wanted their worlds to look like. And 2E was ALL ABOUT that, from page one of the Players Handbook (the first rule book published).
But I completely agree with Zanath about its significance in planning a character for a campaign. The vast majority of games I ever played in, we went into with the expectation this would be around for a while, as in many years. So the level limits formed part of the equation on determining what you wanted to play. And THAT was exactly the point. Every race/class had different issues, advantages, weaknesses. Level limits being a part of the equation.
Its a game, and its fun. I am staggered that any rule causes anyone so much grief! My gosh, if you're playing any game you either live with the rules or change them. It IS nothing to you if I apply a particular rule you don't like. Its between me and my players.
And it is entitlement run amok to think you can change the published rules applied to a computer game. If you can get a mod to do exactly what you want, great. That way you can get what you want, and I don't have to use it.
But getting nasty or "superior" over an attempt to rationally explain where these rules came from, why they were considered desirable by many players AND the original game designers, and why many of us are happy if they are left alone is, well, amusing.
What's "hard to understand" is that those bonuses and penalties don't come even close to applying at the same point in gameplay, nor are they remotely balanced against one another when they are. I could just as easily ask you what's so hard to understand about that.
Magic requires certain levels of con, dex, wis, and cha to master well. A Generalist develops enough of this to get by and cast everything, while a specialist focuses on the areas required to most effectively channel their chosen school, but due to sacrificing development in other areas they can't cast those spells at all.
Gnomes by their eccentric nature lack the focus needed to really work towards any form of spell discipline, but since Illusions are so easy and versatile and fit with their playful nature, they simply gravitate towards that. They develop enough skill to get buy in some related areas, but also lose more schools then any other specialist type as a result (not that they really miss it much...Illusion is OP as hell if you get a bonus to make your illusions harder to disbelieve. If you can cast Illusion, Alteration, and Enchantment, you don't need any other spell schools).
By the by.....what level caps are you refering to? Race caps are mostly meant as a means for handling the age discrepancy..... BG doesn't have an age system..nor does it have racial caps.
Any caps in BG are a result of the developers decision to keep the game challenging (which failed miserably when they overpowered so much crap on top of ludicrous xp rewards and over the top monty haul item drops)
(and no, if you're a Dwarf, Gnome, or Elf, you did not grow up in Candlekeep, no matter what the game says (which assumes you're a human due to bad writing), you spent time there, yes, but you spent most of your Formative years likely among your mother's people before the gathering was called at which point Gorion rescued you and took you in. Hence the mess of contradictions in your origins. The part about your character remembering the journey as a youngling makes sense as a dwarf/elf/gnome, but not as a younger race, while the game outright says you were brought to Candlekeep as a barely weened baby and lived there for 20 years, which only works for the Half-Elf and younger races (though just barely for half-elves and halflings).
BG is one of those frustrating games that the more you look into the worse it becomes as all the contradictions, inconsistencies, groundless imbalances, and other BS starts becoming more readily apparent and utterly ruins what one used to consider a great game.
The only thing it would do is slightly decrease the % of gnomish population who take those jobs.
But there are gnomes out there with 17 wisdom (rolled 18, -1 racial), which is still 14 points higher than the most unwise of humans/elves/dwarves/etc
Best way I can think of it is to describe them as Autistic. Bright and intelligent, and some of them can be quite astute in some ways to the point of being hyper observant (very high wisdom), but are lacking in others which holds them back from being able to apply it like someone without that disability could. (Take Jan for instance...14 wisdom. Same as Jaheria and Valygar, and only surpassed by Cernd, Keldorn, and Vicky. And what does he act like? (also note that Anomen, Nalia, Korgan, Mazzy, Edwin, Haery, Minsc, Imeon, Yoshi, SAREVOK are lower then him) (and do keep in mind that the Gnome race as a whole trend towards Chaotic. A lawful Gnome would be much more collected would still have their share issues, just less pronounced). (If you look through the gnome specific racial kits it's clear a they're an entire race of high functioning Savants (most of the kits they can take either require very analytical minds (thanks to their high racial int) or a penchant for being scatter-brained, absent-minded, or inquisitive to a fault).
That's what even a small penalty to a mental score ultimately means.
A highly intelligent Half-orc could be described as being dyslexic. They can get by and be quite intelligent, but magic leaves NO room for error when it comes to read those scrolls and memorizing spells and their disability simply makes it impossible for them.
Furthermore, let's look at clerics. Gnomes don't make very good clerics. We know this. And it makes sense. Clerics' prime requisite is Wisdom, and that's not for the situational awareness aspect of the stat. Clerics need focus, and by the definition of "prime requisite" and the evidence of minimum stat requirements, they need Wisdom more than mages do (with the exception of abjurers, diviners, and necromancers). And yet gnomes are allowed to be clerics. They might not be good at it, but they're allowed to be clerics. So why, in heaven's name, are they not allowed to be mages or bards, for whom Wisdom is not a requirement at all? Why is a gnome with a 17 Wisdom too unfocused to be a mage, but a human with a 3 Wisdom is? All the clearly-unbalanced folks in spellhold who can't focus to save their lives? No, your explanation simply does not hold up to the data.
What's more, there's a fundamental problem with your current line of reasoning. You're arguing that being disadvantaged at something is the same as being physically incapable of it. That's pretty offensive, quite frankly, to the very people your using as examples. It's like saying that someone with dyslexia could never perfectly read a speech they were just handed. Yeah, they'd be at a disadvantage, but many dyslexic people would still find that less challenging than the average non-dyslexic person. And the average non-dyslexic person is allowed to be a mage. But offensiveness aside, it also a) doesn't make logical sense, and b) doesn't logically follow from the rest of the game. If being disadvantages at something was enough to bar someone from a class, why can gnomes be clerics? Why can dwarves be thieves? Why can halflings be fighters? All those things are allowed because it doesn't make sense to restrict someone based on they'd be bad at. The only people who think in such ridiculously uncompromising terms are Olympic coaches, munchkins, and Bruno Gianelli from The West Wing.
Finally, and this is something of an aside, as a psychologist who's done research on autism, I'm not impressed with your choice of examples. Gnomes lack focus, and you call them autistic? Autism has nothing to do with the ability to focus, and it doesn't seem to be a bar to success in the sorts of academic fields that are most analogous to D&D magecraft (it does seem to be a disadvantage, but... see above).
As mentioned prior, Gnomes become illusionists because it's the easiest path to take. They have an innate knack for it, and learning evocation, necromancy, and abjuration would put them out of their comfort zone, of which at least one of those is required to be any other type of specialist or to be a generalist.
Ok....lets play a game...I'll strap a complicated bomb to your chest and give a dyslexic person who has shown good ability at mitigating their condition step by step instructions in written form on how to disarm it, which requires entering several paragraphs of text, on a strict time limit, the size of a 150 page novel...but any single mistake will set it off immediately.....THAT is being a mage. Every time they crack open their spell-book and start weaving spells into their BRAIN they were playing with a volatile bomb that can go off with the slightest mistake and turn them into a vegetable or make their head explode.
And that's just memorization.
The actual casting and channeling spells requires a certain degree of physical/mental conditioning to be achieved and maintained, this isn't directly related a specific score value, except in the case of specialists who do require a minimum level of a stat in order to achieve that level of conditioning, but just having that amount won't make you a specialist, it just gives you the potential to be one. Necromancy and Abjuration need focus and willpower, which gnomes lack, while Evocation requires a lot of physical conditioning to safely channel the magic needed to create the effects evocation spells require (more so then Conjuration, though it's very close) which is a lot of boring work that would take time away from them perfecting better illusions that can be just as good for much less effort, leaving for time for them to indulge in other hobbies.
Gnomes have a innate brilliance and analytical minds and can take to it well, but as before, they are lacking in fundamental areas to apply it across a broad spectrum of areas, instead focusing on areas they excel at.
(the complete book of gnomes though does allow Gnomes to be generic mages, but they suffer a -15% learning penalty for evocation, abjuration, and necromancy, and get a +15% learning bonus to Illusion spells, but they CANNOT multiclass as a generalist, because it requires much more effort to be a generalist then a Illusionist, and splitting their focus between two classes is too much). (the reason the gnome bard-kits suffer illusionist penalties is because splitting their focus to learn thief skills, combat, lore/music, AND magic is just too much)
Dwarves can be thieves due to sharing a mechanical bent with gnomes. Dwarves excel at disassembling mechanical devices and traps or building traps to help guard their tunnels and mines, and especially noticing traps hidden in architecture. They're also somewhat astute to noticing things that seem out of place due to their more orderly nature. And....well...some are just plain greedy.
Halflings can be fighters because it's easy. But they ARE penalized. Halflings can never have an Ex str score (in PnP at least) due to their smaller frames (A halfling fighter that reaches 18 str just has 18 str. If you use wishes to increase it, instead of going to 18/10 like another race would, they stay 18 until 20 wishes finally push them to 19 (normal race needs 10 wishes to get from 18 to 18/00, then 10 more from 18/00 to 19...but they at least the benefits from the Ex str as it increases, where as halflings never do). They also only have 3/4 the carry weight, force chance, and lift chance, and only half the bonus damage (rounded down) their strength would normally grant (in PnP at least).
And it makes them ill-suited to be fighters resulting in a cap at 9 (which by the expanded proficiency rules as written means they can only attain Mastery (which requires a minimum level of 9), where as more innately talented races could potentially reach high mastery at 12 (Elves and Half-Elves) (Gnomes narrowly miss it at 11, likely due to their focus penalty), or even Grand Mastery (Dwarves, Humans, Half-Orcs) at 15 (Half-elfs only barely miss it at 14).
Now of course, if you subscribe to the expanded advancement rule (which is the default rule) a single class demi-human with truly exceptional scores can surpass that cap by up to 4 levels due to being unusually gifted in that area (much the same reason a human with ridiculously high scores can quickly pick up a new class instead of taking years to do so). A multi cannot however, because splitting their attention between maintaining 2 sets of skills is too much while also trying to push a level of proficiency they're already having to struggle to reach through raw talent.
So a half-elf with 16 str could attain GM by reach 15, or could reach 17 with 18 str. (only your starting stats apply, since that was when your innate talent was set).
Because a halfling can't have more then 17 strength at creation, the highest fighter a Halfling can ever achieve is 11.
As for your bomb analogy, I'm afraid it's flawed on a fundamental level. See, I wouldn't trust the average person to do that either, and yet the average person is mechanically allowed to be a mage. If I had to trust someone, I would MUCH rather trust a dyslexic genius than the average person. Again, having a disadvantage at something is not the same thing as being physically unable to do it. Yes, I would rather trust a neurotypical genius with disarming the bomb than a dyslexic genius, but the dyslexic genius is still a much better bet than most of the people who are fully qualified, by D&D standards, to be mages.
From my one failed experience as a DM, way back when I was about 20 years old, attempting to manage a game for eight or so 17 year olds, I learned about this the hard way.
I bought into that "the DM is god" nonsense. But my players were not enjoying my game, and I was way more interested in controlling my creative vision than in that harsh fact.
Being a good DM is all about giving your players a good time, such that they will come back to you and spend time in your creative vision again and again.
If racial restrictions help you to accomplish that, because you have the good fortune to have a group of friends who see the potential for fun in sharing participation in the creative vision you present to them, then, by all means, use the racial restrictions from 1st and 2nd editions. If not, then jettison the whole thing, fast, for your own sake!
The only way in Heck that you are going to get away with telling a person that "nope, sorry, your character concept is against my rules,", or to do something like saying "mwahhahah, you have just changed your own alignment by being stupid, and a lightning bolt strikes you on the head, and you see a red dragon charging towards you, and your god has deserted you and taken away all your powers," is if you are dealing with an individual who wants to get into your social clique, and you have your vision and your rules being reinforced and enforced by a large group of like-minded people, who have been seen as a desirable group to join by some other individual or individuals.
The profound differences between social D&D and computer D&D are something that I don't often see understood in this forum.
For computer D&D, what is of paramount importance is to have a game that a single individual will find fun, according to his or her OWN vision of what D&D should be.
I think that @CamDawg's new version of Tweaks is a step in this direction. I am quite excited to hear about it in this thread.
And, for all the "DM is *god*, you *must* obey the pnp rules" type rules lawyer DM's around, well, I guess I congratulate you that you must have so many people to socialize with in real life who enjoy playing with you.