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Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead.) #IABot (v2.0.8.6
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{{trope}}
[[File:rsz cmenow preview 1 5872.jpg|link=World of Warcraft|
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]].
{{examples}}
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== 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]]s (''[http://mp3.music.lib.ru/mp3/t/trolling_sto/trolling_sto-das_gnomen_tango-2.mp3 yes]'') and whatever. Their style is Orc'n'Troll, naturally.
*** 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.)
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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).
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** Belkar Bitterleaf of the Order of the Stick—a halfling Ranger with a level or two of Barbarian, making him the deadliest three-foot-tall dagger-wielding [[Memetic Mutation|Sexy Shoeless God of War]] in the world. He also has fairly poor stats as a Ranger, not even having enough wisdom to cast spells.
** 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].
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== Web Original ==
* The french [[MP3]] saga ''[[Le Donjon De Naheulbeuk]]'' gives us a banjo-playing orc and a guitar-playing ogre, but then, this is a fantasy setting which runs on the [[The Power of Rock|Power of World Music with wacky lyrics]], so...
* 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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