The gruff dwarven fighter, the aloof elven ranger, the chaotic halfling rogue.

We all know the race and class combinations that a lot of games are bound to see spring up, 4e even made it more tempting to stick to these obvious sorts of choices from a mechanical standpoint, but do you avoid them just because they are overused? If not, how do you go about not being a sterotype or do you just not mind if you are?

Anyone have any examples of playing a cliché combination of race and class but brining a new outlook to it?

What's the most unique combination that you've played and how did it work out?

I've no problem with stereotypes in games; most of the time they exist for a reason. You get grumpy dwarf fighters 'cause dwarves take a charisma penalty and make really good fighters. Personally I prefer to shake it up a little but I have no issue with people following the road well traveled.

As for my own experiences I once played a halfling paladin which is hilarious on the face of it and only get's funnier when all 3ft of you is staring down a dragon. Especially funny since we actually had two paladins in that group and the halfling ended up being the older mentor figure to a young, hot-headed dragonborn. It was a really fun campaign.

I recently played a full elf librarian for an IRL campaign. That was kinda funny to play.

~SE++

Little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.

Sometimes you need to embrace the stereotype and be a gruff dwarf fighter or the intimidating half-orc inquisitor... taking a build that gets you the mechanical benefits for certain builds but also playing a fairly straight forward role as far as the roleplay goes.

But sometimes you have a group where the strange combinations enhance not only the group's roleplay among itself but also how it interacts with the outside world. So what if halfings aren't mechanically the best paldins, or there are better stat choices for a ranger than a minotaur or what not. Sometimes you just got to be something unique and have fun instead of worrying about it too much.

What God where you a paladin of? And how did that effect the roleplay?

Raven Queen I think. Honestly the god didn't matter too much since 4th ed had an annoying tendency of not outlining anything about the deities. So yeah it had basically no impact on roleplay. Which was a shame considering I was playing a holy warrior. You think it would have some sort of impact.

I think they expected players to remember deities from previous editions and / or find the supplemental materials themselves. To be honest, this seems to happen a lot, Paizo did the same thing for their deities. You just have to look up more online about who and what they are to get a better feel for them.

~SE++

The 4e cosmology to an extent is not as detailed intentionally though, as it is meant for GMs or players to figure out and tell the story.

@DS - While I get what you're saying, it seems like a bad philosophy to halfway generate an idea, then leave it up to everyone to fill in the blanks.

~SE++

It actually led to trouble in game as we had a Paladin and Rogue (PCs) who both worshiped the Raven Queen and ended up coming to blows with a Cleric of the Raven Queen (NPC) because we all kinda interpreted the teachings differently. If nothing else more than 1 or 2 lines outlying very basic believes would have helped.

There was a debate on that, specifically about the Raven Queen, in KotS here. It never came to blows, just people arguing ideology. Although, even with us using other information from the web, we couldn't come to an agreement. Oh well.

~SE++

I'm not surprised. For some reason death gods tend to be uncaring jackasses and leave most of their belief system up for interpretation. Doesn't help that most of them are LN or TN either so you can't even go of an alignment to help things along.

Yeah, in 4E at the very least, it seems the Raven Queen is the easiest deity to just grab and say "hey, I do what I want." Which leads to everyone grabbing her as their deity and then getting into arguments about what she wants them to do.

~SE++

yeah, it's so unusual for people who ostensibly worship the same unspeaking gods to understand those gods differently and have disagreements or even violent conflict over that

Very unrealistic. Not true to life at all.
I think stereotypical characters are fine, so long as you don't get trapped in stereotypes. You have to branch out once in a while.

I know this is D&D talk, but try not to be so unrealistic. Perhaps reference something that actually happens in the real world