The Issue of Race and Class in D&D

What are some ways to make it so players are more likely to pick a race and class combination where their race's ability score increases don't match with their class?

Just to get this out of the way
>Have you tried not playing D&D?
Yes, I have. I liked the other games. I also like D&D and I'm talking about a way to maybe improve D&D.
>Don't be a power gamer
Sorry, can't help it. Stats have too much of an impact in modern D&D games for me to ignore them. Especially in 5e where +1 is huge due to bounded accuracy.

Yes, ask them - I do that most of the time and we are having fun.

Just remove racial ability adjustments and give out other benefits. You can just assume that even if a race as a whole leans one way stat wise there would be some outliers.

There are two main factors that contribute to this issue in the first place:
1. There are objectively better stats for every class. This means that the system itself doesn't encourage stat variety within most classes due to their being a clear optimum (why would you Wizard with anything but maxed out Int, etc.).
2. Races give stat bonuses. Because 1 established that there are objectively better stats for any given class, that means that races will be objectively better or worse depending on whether or not they boost the right stats.

If you absolutely must play D&D and are dead set on unorthodox class/race combos, you need to incentivize your players to do so. A couple options:
1. Replace all racial stat mods with the human one. Loses some racial flavor, but immediately removes the primary reason people might refuse to play a given class/race combo.
2. Somehow reward players who penalize their stats. Maybe taking a race that gives you a penalty to your main stat gives you a free feat or other compensating bonus.
3. Blacklist the most cliche combos. Doesn't really fix the issue, so much as avoiding the worst examples of such. It involves reducing player choices though, so likely not popular.

Have players with class-useful stats penalties start out with better equipment

Why do you care about this?

Fixer feats.

4e did this, handing out class+race specific feats; for example, Eladrin monks got a feat that let them handle Longswords better, which made them an actually pretty OK race for Monk, despite stats not really aligning otherwise.

I'm working on a D&D inspired system at the moment (yes we play other games, we picked it intentionally rather than defaulting to it) and we're removing ability score increases from races for this exact reason. It's better to define races by interesting traits and abilities instead of stats that just serve to pigeonhole players and limit the breadth of concepts available.

Generally it's desired because it defines the race and class. If the gracious elf can be just as effective a barbarian as the orc, then the class loses some of its flavor. It's no longer the tough brute with a giant weapon to compensate for his tiny brain. It's generally by making all stats matter equally to all classes, homogenizing them and making them less archetypal (and this is high fantasy, it relies very much on archetypes).

The alternative is to not give racial benefits that would make the race better for certain classes, generally ability scores but it can also be more hp/weapon damage which are somewhat wasted on a backline caster. But most races in the fluff favor certain classes and certain ways of doing warfare/battle. Humans are boring because they do everything well, that's their thing. Races would lose some of their flavor and identity if there are as many barbarian orcs as wizard orcs.

These are not strictly bad, and it's not like you ruin the entire class/race, but they are the reasons it's quite common in frpgs. You can make classes so general that you're not restricting races to classes but rather archetypes/subclasses/paths - but that's just a halfway measure without being too much better either way. You still have wizard orcs that are as viable and should be as common as certain types of barbarian orcs, and orcs are less viable for wizard in general if fewer paths are available - just as you now dislike not being able to play a wizard orc without being punished mechanically, you may not like being unable to play a non-pyromancer wizard without being punished. cont.

cont.

A common counter is to say that these are player characters and not representative of the race as a whole, and if you really dislike this I recommend removing stat bonuses from races rather than making classes benefit from all stats - I do think all characters should benefit from all stats though, D&D is quite bad at this, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having a focus on 2-4 stats for each class.

Give classes more variety. Make it so they don't have to be dependent on the same two abilities 99% of the time. Also, have the option for feats that change your basic attack stat or that give races/classes certain bonuses to certain weapons based on nonstandard attributes.

Basically, do what 4e did, but do more of it.

>2017
>Class

I really hate this meme. There are legitimate mechanical benefits to designing class systems. They shouldn't be the default, and they aren't always appropriate, but they're not implicitly worthless.

I think it is way to incite players to play appropriate class for their race. By simply having elf bonus to intelligence, you make them primary choice for anyone playing wizard.

It's not bug, it's feature.

The only reason you need classes in this day and age is to differentiate what type of maid you are

Houserule it so that ability scores aren't tied to race. IIRC nonhumans in 5e get +2 to one stat and +1 to another, so let the player choose which stats those go into. Keep using the standard ones for NPCs, but PCs are not ordinary people and aren't necessarily typical examples of their races.

I think that to really get your players to consider not picking the 'Optimal' race/class combo, you need to either ensure that they won't feel screwed down the line by their choice (AKA Borderline impossible) or build an atmosphere around your table that makes your players think of having fun first and actually playing second.

Example; The last campaign I played in, I played a Halfling Monk with a strength score of 6 - Rolled an 8, decided to go Halfling for the lulz. The only reason I, as a player in primarily powergame-y groups, didn't feel I'd get screwed hard and not have any fun whatsoever with the character, was because the entire table was in on it. It was done for shits and giggles, and everybody knew it - And I was willing to roll with it for that reason. If you want your players to have that same feeling, I think the first step could be to focus more on just having fun with the game, not so much storytelling or whoever did the most damage (As an example, dunno how your games usually go).

As someone who's played that type of character, I have to say that my DM really put in an immense amount of effort to make it work - I had to use every trick I could find to do much, to the point where I was so spec'd into trips and grapples that the DM had to specifically counter my character for combat to actually be anywhere near a challenge. As a DM, you'll have to figure out ways to challenge 'weaker' characters while also not overpowering them, if your players make them.

A way around that is just talking about it with your group and establishing an expected level of optimisation.

One of my players is super into optimisation, while the rest of the group are not. But we all discussed that and figured out where we stood, so the optimiser helps people use the mechanics to properly support the concepts they want to play, while focusing his own optimisation skills on taking what would otherwise be a non-viable or straight up bad character build or option, and making it work. Everyone gets to enjoy the game and to play the character they want to play.

Best advice I can give is to try and make it clear to players that they don't need to maximised damage dealers to be effective in your games. When how hard you hit isn't the sole thing determining your worth to the party, optimal race/class comboing becomes less important.

Rewarding roleplaying over muchkinism also helps.

Finally... it really helps if you're playing an edition where the penalties of not being an optimized race/class combo are minimized. I'm not so sure how 5e stands on this (better than 3e, though), but 4e was excellent for this - it even ran Dragon articles actively aimed at promoting unconventional race/class combos.

For example, there was an entire article on Half-Orc Gishes showing how a half-orc could both mechanically and thematically fit with the Avenger class or the Swordmage class. Heck, it had some really good material for the latter.

the whole point of races is that they are different, and thus better at different things.
your entire idea is wrong from the foundation up.
retard.

The only reason to pick nonhuman is for min/maxing, like the garbage player you are

You remove the penalties and cap stats. If you still have problems in 5e, allow them to point buy to 16 from 15 for free if they don’t get a stat bonus to their “main” ability score.

Except there are many ways to represent that which don't include stat bonuses?

As a practice of boredom and understanding mechanics, I try multiple race and class combos. Orc wizard? Yup. YT Paladin? Yes. Goliath Monk? Oh yeah.

Granted I have no one to play with, but after making your 4th orc character, you no longer care about the small stat boost your race provides.

>The only reason to pick nonhuman is for min/maxing, like the garbage player you are
fortunately for me, your opinion on anything is worth less than dogshit. and therefore can be safely ignored