1e Thief-Acrobat

[manikus]

I'm all about long in the back, as long as it's accompanied by long on the sides and long on top.

[Skepticus]

The concept of the Thief-acrobat was brilliant. One of my favorite classes for AD&D. AD&D was such a convoluted mess of a system by the time UA came out that you just had to house rule away a lot of the silly rules about what races can be what classes at which levels. Dwarven acrobats are not unusual at all(especially in a fantasy setting). I could see them having penalties to climbing, leaping(distance) and such but really there is no reason they cannot tumble and tightrope walk just like anyone else. You often see such in circuses like Cirque Du Soleil.

I don't think it is a good idea in general to ban races from certain classes(save perhaps for extremes like Ogre Jesters but even those could be a viable build in an imaginative storyteller's hands). Better to simply discourage certain builds with penalties to skills/abilities due to physical limitations or what have you.

I have always hated 1e Bards because they did not make a lot of sense. They should have been a split class much like the OA Ninja class to cover the various Bard concepts such as 'Druid Bards', Mage-Bards, Fighter-Bards etc. I think that Thief-Acrobats should be a special type of split class, open to most races(save for half ogres and such).

[manikus]

Thief-acrobats are open to all the races in 1e, including half-orcs. Gygax et al did figure penalties (and bonuses) for the various classes doing different things, such as dwarves getting a penalty for pole vaulting.

I was initially asking about thief-acrobats in the context of 1e which allowed races of human, elf, gnome, dwarf, halfling, half-elf and half-orc. I'm not sure where half-ogres get used - 3.xe? But, if they were 1e they would probably be allowed.

[Uatu]

I think half-ogres were in 2e first...

[manikus]

Were half-ogres a player race in 2e? If so, I and my whole gaming group (and a bunch of computer RPGs) missed out on that.

The first I recall seeing half-ogres as a player race was in the 3e Pools of Darkness remake...where one of the pre-made characters is a half-ogre monk.

[Uatu]

Well, they only appeared in later supplements, I think...

[manikus]

I didn't do a deep, thorough search, but I can only find 3e references...

Still, they are not going to be added into any 1e project I make, um 'cause, they're not 1e. I also don't plan on adding them into default DC, but encourage anyone who wants to add them for their own modules to go ahead and add them and give us lots of small pics and icons.

[Skepticus]

Half-ogres 1st appeared(courtesy of E. Gary Gygax) in 1e as a new PC race in a Dragon Magazine article(reprinted in Best of Dragon Vol. IV).

They later made it into 2e rules sourcebooks/supplements(though very crappily done there, as most of 2e was).

[manikus]

There's a lot of stuff in Dragon magazine, including many "alternatives" to the official rules.

[SilentThief]

Originally Posted by manikus Were half-ogres a player race in 2e?

Well, I don't remember seeing an "official", but mid-2nd edition is when I stopped being a purchaser of dnd stuff. There was a way to go all build-a-bear style on making your own classes and races and such, with experience point multipliers for various abilities (I think it was part of 2nd edition DMG but don't quote me on this as I have all my books stored up in Michigan, and I live currently in Florida).

On a side note, re-creating the existing character types (of paladin and ranger especially) made for a larger experience point total to level up than is given in the character explanation. In fact, with the paladin and the ranger had such a high experience point multiplier that when you made your own character types with that high an XP multiplier, it was explained as being super-characters with too many powers and was not recommended to use them.

Similarly you could make other playable races, but off the top of my head I don't remember much about that. I do remember a decent dragon magazine article with centaurs as playable characters, tho.

ST