Why are certain race/class restrictions even a thing?

[Raisen223]

I get the reason for some of those, like the lore and whatnot, but the others just seem completely arbitrary or done just to force an artificial distribution of races throughout the game. For starters, why can't Halflings be bards? They've historically been bards in fantasy in general. Why can't they be rangers? Why can't elves be monks? None of this makes sense to be honest.

[wuanahto]

god fucking damnit the marr twins made barbarians why cant they be paladins fuck
but a on THJ start as a barbarian rogue, then pick paladin and ranger for your other classes and boom. dual wield, slam(not really tho), 5 or so different procs, plate, heals over time, dots and damage shields

[Ennewi]

IMO if the race/class combination exists in Norrath as an NPC, there's an argument to be made for players to have access to it. That gnome druid in Ocean of Tears comes to mind, but there have to be other examples.

[Jimjam]

The guilds are racist.

There is a self-taught half elf wizard among the West Karana bandits. Probably stole a spell book!

[Jimjam]

IRL the designers probably CBA making too many guild halls, npcs, quests, etc. Also likely wanted to pigeonhole class diversity as a primarily human thing.

[Ennewi]

At least three examples in Firiona Vie.

https://wiki.project1999.com/A_pirate_destroyer
Despite him being an Ogre. This NPC is a rogue and will backstab you! Beware, you have been warned.

https://wiki.project1999.com/A_Pirate
Race: Human, Dwarf, Barbarian, Half Elf, Iksar
Class: Rogue

https://wiki.project1999.com/A_Pilgrim
Race: Human, Barbarian, Half-Elf, Dwarf
Class: Paladin

[Jimjam]

There are plenty of iksar rogues, it is just the iksar from cabilis city are too good to allow for that sort of behaviour.

[Ennewi]

Ah right, duh. Iksar bandits and whatnot. The underground areas in FoB would have been the perfect loc for rogue GMs.
Kerosh Blackhand

[CrazyPro]

Originally Posted by Raisen223 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I get the reason for some of those, like the lore and whatnot, but the others just seem completely arbitrary or done just to force an artificial distribution of races throughout the game. For starters, why can't Halflings be bards? They've historically been bards in fantasy in general. Why can't they be rangers? Why can't elves be monks? None of this makes sense to be honest.

Halflings can be rangers and paladins in Luclin. A lot of the gripes people have with the game are fixed in later expansions and of course we won't have those fixes here because "That change happened in Luclin and Luclin BAD!"

[Ciderpress]

I think the logic was something like "which classes would it make sense for this race to offer?" hence humans get almost every class as an option, the big dumb races only have three cause they haven't developed as much yet.

I still prefer it to the EQ2 system where every race can be every class. Made everything feel generic and homogenized.