Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Which is you or your group inventing a rule and imposing a new restriction not present in the published game.
Once again you misunderstand, and your response doesn't address my point.
A Fighter gets to wear armor and fight regardless of what magic items they find or don't find. Magic items may enhance their capabilities or add new ones, but their capacity to ENGAGE IN THEIR CORE CLASS FUNCTIONS is not gated behind finding specific magic items (edge case: needing magic weapons to hurt higher level monsters, but those are given out like popcorn).
A Magic-User gets to cast spells regardless of what magic items they find or don't find.
A Cleric gets to cast spells, turn undead, wear armor and fight regardless of what magic items they find or don't find.
A Thief gets to use thief skills and backstab things regardless of what magic items they find or don't find.
A Fighter/Cleric gets to cast spells, turn undead, wear armor and fight regardless of what magic items they find or don't find.
A Fighter/MU gets to cast spells, wear armor and fight regardless of what magic items they find or don't find. ...except that casting spells in armor is suddenly restricted in 2nd ed. And in your house rules. In 1E they get to use their class abilities together easily and freely. But in 2E they still pay full xp for advancement, but don't get to use their abilities easily and freely together anymore. Which I think is worse design. There's some implicit worldbuilding there, and it's functional design if you want to discourage this particular multiclass combo, but I don't think game balance requires it, by any means.
Again, the topic of discussion was casting M-U spells in armor. Thieves and Druids are a tangent.
The actual class description for Druids says that metal armor spoils their magical powers. The description for MUs says no such thing. There is also to the best of my knowledge no common example of such a rationale existing in pre-D&D source fiction. Though it became common practice for people trying to use AD&D as a physics/world engine to invent such rationalizations.
A Fighter/Thief being unable to use or penalized while using Thief skills in armor is at least grounded in our common physical reality, rather than being an arbitrary imposition of a fictional rationale. Still, the AD&D penalties for use of Thief skills in armor are notoriously strict, another example of Gygax's silly zeal to handicap Thieves. Heck the UA chart for penalties for using Thief skills in Studded Leather or Elfin Chain gives penalties to skills like Open Locks and Hear Noise! Which is just obviously moronic, and people twisted themselves in knots trying to justify that nonsense. This is all still a tangent, though.
Right. You've internalized and rationalized what your table does as just "the way things are" and "how the game works". Both the parts of the rules which don't make sense but you're ok with, and the house rules that you've adopted for the parts which didn't make sense to or were un-fun for you. This can make discussions of the D&D rules with you a little challenging, because you're almost always answering from the perspective of your table rules, whether they're germane to the subject or not.My experience differs: even though we've opened up the class-species possibilities far beyond 1e RAW limits, Humans have always been the most common PC species in our games, in part I think because we still have stat penalties as well as bonuses for other species and people don't want to take the hit unless it directly lines up with their character idea.
And while our stat generation method is generous, it's nowhere near as crazy as that UA method.
That said, we're generally not hard-core optimizers here. If we were, Part-Elf would be the species-du-jour (as in, nobody would play anything else!) as they've overall got the most going for them mechanically in our system.
I never saw those class level limits etc. as being specific Human benefits, but instead saw them as variable penalties and drawbacks against other species. But then, I see Humans as the baseline.
And yeah, those level limits never made much sense anyway.
We have both roll-and-arrange and separate class-species, and (other than a few specific players who are now long gone) the min-maxing hasn't been a big issue. I mean, obviously you arrange your stats to suit your intended class, but to me that just makes sense: a low-Dex person, for example, isn't likely to take up Thieving as a career and would be laughed out of the guild if he tried.
I get that you see humans as a baseline, and the 1E PH says something similar. It does also list unlimited class selection and level advancement under the human racial description. The UA human entry is even more explicit that these are their benefits, as well as the special more powerful method of ability generation introduced in that book for them.
I could predict that you use a more generous ability score generation method than the ones in the DMG because virtually everyone playing AD&D does. Especially people playing it long-term. If your crew plays more humans than most that might be a product of a strong group culture against min-maxing, or it may relate to that more generous ability score generation method making the bonuses granted by the demi-human races less significant on a percentage basis. Of course, you having other house rules like reducing the benefits of races (elves you mentioned specifically) weighs in here too. Most likely it's a combination of these factors.
You opine that if you were "hard-core optimizers" you'd see more "Part-Elf"s, as this custom race is the most powerful mechanically, but that's impossible to assess from here. Since it's a house-ruled race, I'm betting that it's a downgraded version of Half-Elf, just as your table downgraded Elves. If the benefits are only marginal, then they may not outweigh the RP benefits of playing a human character in the setting/s you use, combined with the mechanical benefits of unlimited class and level and easier resurrection, or whatever variation of those exists in your house ruled version of AD&D.
I can have no opinion on whether min-maxing is a big issue at your table.
Obviously with you using a more generous ability score generation system than the ones in the rule book, the bonuses granted by demi-human races to ability scores are of reduced value. And obviously with you using house-ruled depowered versions of the more powerful races, their other powers and benefits are of reduced value too.
You've taken significant steps in altering the rules to reduce the impact of min-maxing, so I'd HOPE that you'd see less of it.
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