>>50955247Look at things in context. Race-as-class was a good fit when it got added in OD&D.
For the bulk of development, there were only two classes. Fighting-Men and Magic-Users.
The "Men" in Fighting-Men is there for a reason. That's the "human" class. That's standard humans.
Fighting-Men, Dwarves, and Hobbits all had the same advancement because that's "regular combat experience".
Cleric was added OD&D near the end of development, and well after race-as-class was established.
Someone wanted to play as Van Helsing to hold back vampires with holy symbols, or something?
And Thief wasn't even part of the OD&D Whitebox, it got added in Greyhawk.
By the time Basic got released, there were
for better or for worse enough classes floating around that race-as-class seemed annoying.
Nonetheless, people were used to it. So it made the system transition more comfortable.
And the initial reasoning behind it makes sense, fantasy races *are* archetypes.