Square Race, Round Class: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
A character in an otherwise typical fantasy game/story whose profession seems at odds with their nature or appearance as assumed by tradition or the audience, like a dwarven ranger or an ogre engineer. Sometimes this is for sheer game balance and variety, while other times it's actually [[Lampshaded]] as being appropriate if [[It Makes Sense in Context|seen in the right light]].
▲A character in an otherwise typical fantasy game/story whose profession seems at odds with their nature or appearance as assumed by tradition or the audience, like a dwarven ranger or an ogre engineer. Sometimes this is for sheer game balance and variety, while other times it's actually [[Lampshaded]] as being appropriate if [[It Makes Sense in Context|seen in the right light]].
▲Ocasionally this is invoked as a reason the [[Comic Relief]] seems so inept; it's just misplaced interest into something inappropriate for them.
{{examples}}
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== Literature ==
* Ironically found in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', where your average hobbit is generally ''not'' fond of adventuring, burglary, or heroic renown even though their latent abilities imply they'd be especially good at it. Most derivations are based upon the Bagginses (who prefer sneaking and cleverness) or Pippin Took (a more moderate warrior type). Most LOTR-influenced RPGs make the class more attractive to players by having a race of halflings that all ''are'' fond of adventuring and/or burglary. Interestingly enough, this might actually be close to the wandering hobbit ancestors alluded to in the prologue.
* The very plotline of ''[[The Hobbit (novel)|The Hobbit]]'' is a bunch of dwarves, apparently not much good at anything except fighting or running away, who got in a group to do nothing other than ''sneakily steal treasure from an effectively unfightable dragon''. Fortunately, they did realize this and hired Bilbo.
* A good example of this trope is Horton from ''[[Horton Hears a Who!]]''. The title elephant character must exercise a great deal of delicacy and gracefulness in order to protect a micro universe which he discovers.
* ''[[Discworld]]''
** It may be easier to list the cases where race ''matches'' profession on the Discworld. Through the series we see vampire photographers, troll musicians, orc footballers, goblin savants, policemen of every race under the sun and hiding from it, and even ''girl wizards''.
** While ''Discworld'' plays with [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same]] a lot, they still tend to fall into a lot of the common
* In ''[[Dragaera]]'', Dragons are known as arrogant warriors who are ultra-ambitious and if angered, are direct (and brutal) about it. Kragar, who was booted out of group, has no ambition, preferring to be a [[Servile Snarker]], and is the epitome of stealthy, being an assassin with a [[Stealth Hi Bye]] ability so powerful that it's outside of his control.
* In the very first ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'' book, a young Conan's search for a thief daring enough to risk burglarizing an evil sorcerer's tower results in the disdain of the local criminal underclass, his own contempt returned... and an alliance with a master thief whom all the other rogues hail as their superior. He's massively obese and looks like a candidate for quadruple bypass surgery, yet he can shimmy up a rope faster than Conan can (a rope woven from the tresses of dead women's hair, which he stole from their coffins at night, and steeped in wine to give it strength).
* In ''[[The War Gods]]'', the Hradani are akin to Orcs. Even have a Tolkenish history of being a race of High-Men before wizardly twisted them into a race of berserkers. Bazhell, the main character is akin to an Orc Paladin chosen by the god of Justice. His best friend, Brandark, is a Bard and scholar.
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Dungeons
** An old joke regarding character creation involves an "orc bard," where the player admits he just wanted to be able to hit people with a guitar. The counter to this is that a member of a primitive or outright illiterate race is actually ''more'' likely to maintain a strong song and oral storytelling tradition. It's not called an axe for nothing...
*** Amusingly enough, there actually IS a band called "A Band of Orcs." Yeah, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiCldbmWUTU it sounds exactly like you'd expect].
*** There was an old Russian [[Heavy Mithril|FantasyRPG-oriented]] band "[http://community.livejournal.com/trollingstones/ Trolling Stones]". Mocking High Fantasy, "Dark" roleplayers, [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture
*** Funnily enough, in ''[[Pathfinder]]'', ''half-''orcs no longer get a penalty to Charisma, and in fact can get a ''bonus'' to the stat, so half-orcs can actually make pretty good bards.
** ''WOTC'' had fun with this one April: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170613090400/http://
** Also, one of the prepackaged miniature sets they released has a Halfling Barbarian... which works brilliantly with a couple of the settings that feature Halfling Barbarians as the central example of the race, just to flip common expectations. Dark Sun has them as cannibals and Eberron has tribes of dinosaur-riding halfling barbarians.
** [[The Ogre|Ogre]] Mages in nearly any setting embody this trope. There's no point in being big and brutish when you can turn most adventurers into human popsicles.
** Bugbears, despite being the biggest and toughest of the goblinoid races, are also quite stealthy.
* ''[[Hackmaster]]'', mostly a parody of ''AD&D'', is a bit of a send-up of fantasy roleplaying in general. One subrace for player characters is the ''gnome titan'', a member of a group of gnomes who follow the Gnomish God of War, and are trained from birth to be incredibly bad-ass warriors and battle mages. They still cling to their Cute/Comic Relief origins but in a decidedly twisted sort of way... one racially-specific magic item is the rightly feared ''+3 Gnomish Boots of [[Groin Attack|Groin Stomping]]''.
* ''[[Warhammer
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'''Male Human:''' How does a Tauren hide in a cherry tree? He paints his hooves red! }}
** A common joke is that there ''are'' tauren and draenei rogues; they're simply so good that they've stealthed the class selection button.
** And now, tauren and draenei hunters can actually go into stealth with [https://web.archive.org/web/20131203183726/http://www.wowhead.com/spell=51755 Camouflage.] Fear the invisible cows!
*** Sneaking animations actually exist for all playable races, as certain items may temporarily change a player's appearance into another race, thus allowing for rogues which look like tauren and draenei.
** Considering how tall orcs are, and how big and burly the male model is, orc rogues have not escaped fan criticism. (Story-wise, however, it makes plenty of sense that they'd engage in subterfuge and assassination.)
** The ursine pandaren will have the rogue class. They're as tall as orcs, [[Stout Strength|quite a bit]] [[Acrofatic|heftier]], and nearly as painfully honorable as draenei or tauren.
* The ''[[Warcraft]]'' RTS series has Ogre Magi as the ''equivalent'' of human mages, with their second head apparently making them smarter than the average Orc or Ogre and therefore capable of magic. They do put their massive frames to good use by pummeling opponents with enchanted fists.
* ''[[Mass Effect 2]]''
** You are expected to be incredulous that [[Cowboy Cop|Garrus']] team's tech specialist is a Batarian. Seeing as every other Batarian in the game is either a criminal, a slaver, or insane, you really ought to be.
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{{quote|'''Djinaen Donox:''' Some claim that bahmi are too large for proper rogues, but then I stab them.}}
* In ''[[Dragon Age]]'', there's a Dwarf you can meet in Orzammar who desperately wants to study at the [[Wizarding School|Circle of Magic]]. In the setting, Dwarves are physically incapable of using any magic, and this is pointed out to her repeatedly, but she is still dead set on studying there even if she can't sling a spell.
* ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'' henchmen are rather random, with even otherwise passable combination made dubious by other details, and backstory shoots it in the head just to be sure. I'm looking at you, Grimgnaw (LE Dwarf Monk from Mithral Hall) and Boddyknock Glinckle (LN Gnome Sorcerer from Lantan).
* In ''[[Wizardry]]'' you can try any combination... it's just that some classes will be far enough from character stats that switching requires to raise correct stats for ''very'' long time, and others are quite obviously bad ideas - especially for Fairies (who suffer a lot of equipment limitations for the obvious reason and have fast mana regeneration, so it would be a waste not to use it), or Lizardman (they have ''slow'' mana recovery and poor mental stats, so can't make good spellcasters).
== Web Comics ==
* ''[[The Order of the Stick]]''
** Belkar Bitterleaf of the Order of the
** A lesser example would be the half-orc ninja Therkla.
** Also a <s>fairy</s> elemental-kin lawyer.
* [[Yamara]] Tooke [http://yamara.com/yamaraclassic/index.php?date=2006-05-15 became a barbarian] before Belkar. Also, the strip contains [[Too Much Information]] on halflings:
{{quote|'''[http://www.yamara.com/alcott/arcalula.html Arcalula Tooke], cyborg halfling:''' And of course, who hasn't heard of the legendary '''Chibi''' -- the halfling Jester/Samurai of Japan?}}
* ''Hereville: The Webcomic''. Mirka is [https://web.archive.org/web/20130829084244/http://www.hereville.com/webcomic/ yet another troll-fighting 11-year-old orthodox Jewish schoolgirl].
* The furry fantasy comic ''[http://www.furaffinity.net/user/trpeal/ Fight, Cast, or Evade]'' has Stillwell, an surprisingly light-on-his-feet elephant thief, also the trunk comes in handy with [http://www.furaffinity.net/view/6386664/ pick-pocketing].
== Web Original ==
* The french [[
* Generally it's called "lolrandumb" and despised, especially by /tg/ crowd. While [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same|generic stereotypes]] are too boring to be valued as such, there's a distinction: the author who builds upon things that clearly exist in a setting [[Klingon Scientists Get No Respect|but never get limelight]] is praised, but woe to the poor soul who pulls something completely out of the blue. Sure, any half-decent GM can explain it away... but ''everyone knows this'', so the usual result is that a lot of people will simply assume the author failed bad enough and stooped low enough to try and take credit for output of a random number generator.
{{reflist}}
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