Hacking 2e: Demihumans

Before we speak of how demihumans should function within this hack, let’s talk about race.

 

1. Race

There are deep, meaningful discussions about the negative impact of the word ‘race’ as it relates to fantasy gaming, along with reactionary pushback and a host of vitriolic opinions from different perspectives. I leave you to dive down that particular rabbit hole on your own. Beware: the internet is an awful place. Suffice to say, it’s contentious; both its use and non-use represents a statement of meaning to particular groups.

I’m in favor of dumping race as a classification. Beyond the stench emanating from the word, there’s another reason to dump it: it doesn’t serve the purpose for which it’s deployed.

AD&D’s implied setting is humanocentric. This is reinforced mechanically, with racial class restrictions and racial level limits. Yet humans find themselves alphabetically relegated to the end of the race chapter, offering barely a paragraph of text to explain how they’re worth playing, which amounts to “they’re not restricted or limited”. For a game that presupposes humans as the dominant player on the fantastical world stage, this is weak. By creating a category that encompasses both demihumans and humans, the game inadvertently makes humans just one poor choice amongst a collection of more interesting options. If humans have no distinction beyond not being demihumans, then what is the purpose of sticking them into a chapter with the demihumans?

The solution to all of this has already been supplied by Kevin Crawford’s Worlds Without Number: make humanity the default option and put demihumans into their own chapter. This method provides a triple win: it focuses humans as the base, gives an appropriate and traditional name to the chapter ("Demihumans"), and allows that chapter to become optional.

I’ll go with that.

 

2. Restrictions and Limitations in 2e

As noted earlier, AD&D encourages human PCs by handicapping demihumans. It does so via four methods: Ability Score requirements, class restrictions, level limits, and multiclass options. Let’s see if they actually do what they set out to do.

 

2.1. Minimum and Maximum Ability Scores

You must be this tall to ride the Dwarf.

The first thing you get is a gate. The highest hurdle is an 11 in Constitution, but the average minimum requirement is about 7. This is meaningless, unless you’re rolling 3d6 down the line, but even then it’s not doing much to push you toward human. There’s also the three maximum restrictions, which keep at bay the most dexterous, charismatic Dwarf or the wisest Halfling.

These are a bit dumb. If they exist to ensure a natural adeptness in demihumans, they barely do this. If they exist to steer players towards humans, they don’t do that at all. Above all, they’re actively removing a cool choice for the player. You shouldn’t get locked out because of a bad roll; you should end up not playing a demihuman because you looked at the pros and cons of playing one, and ultimately decided the trade-offs weren’t worth it.

This is getting tossed, though as we modify these folk, the table may have some use when determining a demihuman’s strengths and weaknesses.

 

2.2. Class Restrictions

Let’s start with the first of the actual restrictions. This locks demihumans out of specific classes; excepting Half-Elves (which will come back to), it gives most demihumans the option of Fighter, Cleric, or Thief. Elves are extra special and gain access to the Mage and Ranger. Gnomes get magic access through one of the Specialist Wizards – the Illusionist.

Keeping the fun and unique classes as Human-only makes sense if you want to offer a good reason for players to stick to the default. It doesn’t make complete sense – why can’t Elves be Druids or Halflings be Bards? – but it we’ve got to draw the line for these characters somewhere, and this isn’t a bad tool for that. It’s an immediate decision point for the player: do they want the demihuman traits or the class? It’s a softer version of Basic’s race-as-class functionality, providing both a reason not to choose a demihuman and options if one chooses to. For these reasons, it stays, though it may need some adjustment.

 

2.3. Level Limits

The second restriction is the big one. These determine the maximum level attainable per class, which roughly averages to about 12th level.

It’s a significant restriction, but it’s far too delayed to have actual impact. Who cares if your Elf isn’t going to make it past level 12 as a Thief? Statistically, the actual campaign isn’t going to make it that far. That’s all in the future, anyway. When creating the character, the player isn’t thinking about how this decision is going to affect their play next year. Besides, if they’re multiclassing (a feature allowed only to demihumans), they’re not ever going to feel its bite.

Also, what fun is this rule for those that actually do hit the cap? You reach level 12 with your Elf Fighter and then just… stop? While everyone else at the table keeps getting better? I guess that’ll teach you to play a human next time, but it doesn’t do much good two years into your campaign.

The DMG offers an alternative option, which has some merit.

Instead of putting a hard cap on demihuman levels, we can just tax their XP. These multipliers seem brutal, but in practice they only make demihumans lag behind by a level or two until the mid-game, where the XP requirements stop increasing multiplicatively and start becoming additive. As a result, the lag becomes significant enough to be a de facto level cap. The XP adjustment is both a psychological impediment out of the gate and has immediate impact during the early levels. It’s also a blanket rule, which makes it easier to explain in a ruleset while adding only minor overhead during leveling and play.

If you’re going to implement a leveling penalty for choosing demihumans, it’s the way to go. However, I’m not sold that this is the best way to get the player to choose a human PC. It’s not offering a trade-off for the player; it’s instituting a punishment for making a choice. The effect of that choice should be immediately impactful and last throughout the character’s time in play, but it shouldn’t make them objectively worse. At least, it shouldn’t do so in a way that makes the choice feel foolish.

So, like the Ability Score gates, I don’t think this one does the job.

 

2.4. Multi-Class and Dual-Class

Humans and Demihumans have different rules for leveling in multiple classes: Dual-Class and Multi-Class, respectively. Dual-Class has you level sequentially, while Multi-Class is simultaneous. Both have pros and cons, though Dual-Class does seem to offer an eventual mathematical advantage.

These disparate systems create a decision point when choosing to play a demihuman: are the demihuman’s advantages worth investing into this alternate leveling system? I think this is a great way to highlight demihumans as the ‘alternate’ choice. It’s known from the start, it immediately affects the PC, and it makes demihumans less adept in one aspect (multiclassing) rather than being worse overall. In other words, it does everything level limits wants to do, but better. Assuming the player decides to use multiple classes, of course.

The systems themselves need a second look, as they have a lot of jank. I’ll come back one day.

 

3. Alternative Systems

While Class restrictions and multiclass options serve to softly push demihumans into the status of secondary choice, leaving behind the more draconian tools means that I’ve actually made demihumans more palatable. To fill that gap, let’s look at three other ways to keep the party primarily human.

 

3.1. Race-as-Class

The B/X approach. Simply throw the demihumans into the Class structure and be done with it. It’s incredibly elegant, ensuring that demihumans stay in their narrative lane while reducing all the overhead needed to do so. Unfortunately, it also removes a ton of choice; this is AD&D, you should be able to make that Dwarf Thief. Pass.

 

3.2. Ability Score Adjustments

2e gives a simple one-for-one Ability Score adjustment. If one wanted to make demihumans a bit more of a gamble, we could really amp up the severity of these adjustments, slightly weighted toward the negative. This would also bring something of the Racial Ability Requirements back to the demihumans.

As an example, the Dwarf currently gets a +1 to Constitution and a –1 to Charisma. Instead, using the requirements table as a reference, the Dwarf could get a +1 to Constitution and a +1 to Strength, but a –2 to Charisma and a –2 to Dexterity.

It’s extreme and probably strays too far from even the loose ties that bind this hack to 2e. Yet, it would serve well as a final trade-off for the demihuman’s unique abilities. I’m on the fence with this one.

 

3.3. DM Fiat

Just let the DM decide.

Frankly, this is the best choice of everything listed here. There’s so much effort placed into steering players away from demihumans via mechanics, but all of this is truly in the service of the setting, not the game. The advantages of demihumans certainly require mechanical trade-offs, and there are a few options for that scattered above, but using those nerfs to force thematic elements seems silly.

I’m influenced by my own Planescape campaign. As the setting is lousy with demihumans of all types, a party comprised of mostly non-human PCs fits right in. Here, Gygax’s preference for a humanocentric theme is useless, because it just doesn’t fit the setting. On the other hand, majority human parties are the order of the day in settings like Greyhawk or, apparently, the default non-setting of AD&D.

If the setting requires a maximum number of otherworldly humanoids in the party to maintain verisimilitude, then just allow the DM to set a limit. Cordoning demihumans into their own optional chapter already gives the DM tools to set these limits, but providing explicit DM control over the demihuman spigot would remove the need for hard-coded, mechanical penalties.

As far as who gets to play the demihuman when you can only have a maximum of 2 in the party, or whatever a DM decides, we can look to the Racial Ability Requirements Table one last time. The only Ability Score in which all demihumans are assumed to be naturally superior is Constitution. Therefore, I could set the rule as follows:

The player with the highest Constitution score has the first choice of playing a Demihuman. If that player declines, the option moves to the second highest Constitution score, and so on until the maximum number of allowed Demihuman characters are chosen.

 

4. Conclusion

The demihumans get their own optional Demihuman chapter, making it explicit that humans are the default. Being optional, the DM has full control over how many demihumans make it into the party or whether they’re available at all. The advantages of demihuman characters are countered with restrictions on class and a distinct multiclass mechanic.

I think that’ll do. This gives more control over demihumans to the DM, while giving capability back to the demihuman player. It also streamlines the whole thing: the removal of caps and requirements strips some overhead from the system, leaving only simple restrictions. There’s still some tweaking that could be done here, such as implementing the more extreme Ability Score adjustments, though it’s not a necessity.

Removing some of this stuff isn’t revolutionary; most players jettisoned whole sections of the race rules. The most significant change proposed here is just not calling the whole chapter “Race”. This may not be the preference of some, but it is mine. Besides, “Demihumans” is a better title, and it means I won’t have to write a blurb for humans that explains how they’re only unique in the restrictions they do not have.

Next time, let’s start making some Demihumans.