Cultural trappings

[Sadrik]

I know this sounds a bit crazy but I would like to strip out all cultural references from the classes so that they can culturally be plugged into any cultural situation.

Some of the big offenders are barbarian and monk. Barbarian as your standard frenzied berserker could be broadened to encompass anybody who is stout and enters some kind of stance that gives them melee benefits. Dwarven defenders, whirling dervishes, honorable death trance samurai, crazy ass thugs in a dark alley all could fit the "barbarian" role mechanically.

A Monk has all kinds of mystical Asian cultural trappings. If you strip those you wind up with a guy (or girl) who uses their body as a weapon and has hyper focused in controlling their body. An almost unnatural ability to dodge and weave in combat and to strike quickly. They could represent "jedi" like characters, sword saints, kensai, duelists, heck even certain kinds of swashbucklers... not just I punch you characters.

Rangers and druids also could be stripped of their nature bent. I know it sounds crazy but why couldn't those just be option for them. Urban ranger is not a new concept and using the druid as just an elemental master, a shugenja or simply someone tied to the "old ones", or anything similar. Point is why can't any class have a nature bent, wilderness rogue = scout, wilderness fighter = brigand, wilderness cleric = shaman, wilderness wizard = witch doctor etc.

The cultural stuff could be stripped out of these classes so that they could stand in for many different cultural situations. Some classes are that way fighter wizard and some don't. It would be nice to have the classes consistent in that.

So out of the core 11 classes, what are the cultural or geographic issues with the classes. Here is my list.

Strongly culturally or geographically biased classes:
Barbarian - Savage and Wilderness
Bard - Instrument and singing entertainer only
Druid - Wilderness
Monk - Asian, punching
Paladin - European
Ranger - Wilderness

Pretty strongly not culturally or geographically biased classes:
Cleric - None
Fighter - None
Rogue - None
Wizard - None
Sorcerer - None

What can be done to rectify the situation?

 

[Celebrim]

I know this sounds a bit crazy but I would like to strip out all cultural references from the classes so that they can culturally be plugged into any cultural situation.

Doesn't sound crazy at all. It's one of my big problems with the 3e base classes. I know why the 3e pretty much had to do it, but I'm not happy about it either.

Barbarian => Fanatic

A 'Barbarian' is a relatively primitive member of a fanatic warrior cult. You might also find fanatic members of a religious cult, fanatical members of an elite martial unit, or simple plain crazies. I made various other changes as well, but that's the base idea.

Druid => Shaman

The 3.5 Druid is problimatic anyway, with combat power approaching or exceeding the top martial classes once you factor in buffs, wildshape, and an animal companion and spell-casting ability approaching that of a wizard. The addition of the fact that the Druid is simply one particular shamanistic tradition unique to Northern Europe makes the entire class suspect. I prefer the Green Ronin shaman. Druid spells not already on the shaman spell list or available through domains, can be moved over to the shaman list.

Monk => Fighter

The Monk is at heart a variant fighter specializing in wearing no armor and making unarmed attacks. IMO, virtually all the combat abilities can be ported over to feat trees. Many of the class abilities are simply feats anyway. All that is left is finding some way to expand the skill list/skills per level. If you must retain the Monk as a separate class, see if you can find a Duelist/Swashbuckler base class and assume that Monks are one flavor of same, and then provide a martial artist feat tree for general use. About the only thing you are likely to loose if you go this route is the extraordinary fast movement ability and the capstone ability (which is flavor specific). If you must have them, I'd recommend making them part of a PrC.

Paladin => Champion

My base inspiration here is Green Ronin's 'Book of the Righteous', which includes rules for a wide variaty of variant Paladin's under the more general 'Holy Warrior' class. A supplement for 'Unholy Warriors' was released using the same material and setting, but its by a different author and the quality isn't as good. The rules could use some cleaning up and updating (originally for 3.0 and hewed closely to the 3.0 Paladin), but its a good solid start.

Ranger => Hunter

The Ranger has all sorts of problems. First, it is too heavily tied to the wilderness. Second, it is too heavily tied legacy issues related to being loosely a 'Tolkieneque' class. Thirdly, it is too heavily tied to being a spell-casting class. A more base class to cover bounty hunters, detectives, mundane hunters, ghost hunters, etc. is required. If you really insist on having Rangers in your setting, they can be either multiclassed Ranger/Shamans or if you prefer Prestige Classes then Ranger can be a suitable PrC.

 

[Sadrik]

Barbarian => Fanatic

A 'Barbarian' is a relatively primitive member of a fanatic warrior cult. You might also find fanatic members of a religious cult, fanatical members of an elite martial unit, or simple plain crazies. I made various other changes as well, but that's the base idea.

I like it but he doesn't have to be a fanatic or necessarily pissed off. I like the idea of them being able to tap into some inborn reserve of power as in you were born to it and you don't like it but it sort of takes you over. Kinda like the hulk I guess.
I like them basically being a warrior with a special "stance", which when active makes them devastating.

Name:
I have no idea.

Druid => Shaman

The 3.5 Druid is problimatic anyway, with combat power approaching or exceeding the top martial classes once you factor in buffs, wildshape, and an animal companion and spell-casting ability approaching that of a wizard. The addition of the fact that the Druid is simply one particular shamanistic tradition unique to Northern Europe makes the entire class suspect. I prefer the Green Ronin shaman. Druid spells not already on the shaman spell list or available through domains, can be moved over to the shaman list.

I agree on the power for the druid. I like them being some type of spirit world type. I think uncoupling them from the euro tradition and making them more generic elementalists, spiritualist, sha'ir or shugenja is the way to go.

I also agree that they are overpowered with their animal companion, wild shape for front line fighter duties, ability to be a blaster like a mage in a pinch and heal buff to top it off.

Name:
Spiritualist or elementalist (remove the celtic tradition)

Monk => Fighter

The Monk is at heart a variant fighter specializing in wearing no armor and making unarmed attacks. IMO, virtually all the combat abilities can be ported over to feat trees. Many of the class abilities are simply feats anyway. All that is left is finding some way to expand the skill list/skills per level. If you must retain the Monk as a separate class, see if you can find a Duelist/Swashbuckler base class and assume that Monks are one flavor of same, and then provide a martial artist feat tree for general use. About the only thing you are likely to loose if you go this route is the extraordinary fast movement ability and the capstone ability (which is flavor specific). If you must have them, I'd recommend making them part of a PrC.

Yeah but I think the monk is more interesting as a duelist who specializes in an uncanny sense of combat awareness and lightning fast flurries of attacks. Then they can still be the shoa lin monk, but they could also be swashbucklers, kensai and other more mystical styled characters whose sole purpose is training for speed and precise attacks.

Name:
Duelist (remove the pseudo asian cultural references)

Paladin => Champion

My base inspiration here is Green Ronin's 'Book of the Righteous', which includes rules for a wide variaty of variant Paladin's under the more general 'Holy Warrior' class. A supplement for 'Unholy Warriors' was released using the same material and setting, but its by a different author and the quality isn't as good. The rules could use some cleaning up and updating (originally for 3.0 and hewed closely to the 3.0 Paladin), but its a good solid start.

Love it, I have no idea what to do with the paladin but simply making them a holy/unholy warrior will probably be enough. After stripping the alignment restriction... get rid of their mount, being a knight's trapping and any warriory character should be able to have a knightly horse. As a note I make all companions mounts and familiars in my game part of the leadership feat. To make them more religion specific perhaps give them a domain.

Name:
Paladin (whatever, it seems fine still despite the alignment restriction removed)

Ranger => Hunter

The Ranger has all sorts of problems. First, it is too heavily tied to the wilderness. Second, it is too heavily tied legacy issues related to being loosely a 'Tolkieneque' class. Thirdly, it is too heavily tied to being a spell-casting class. A more base class to cover bounty hunters, detectives, mundane hunters, ghost hunters, etc. is required. If you really insist on having Rangers in your setting, they can be either multiclassed Ranger/Shamans or if you prefer Prestige Classes then Ranger can be a suitable PrC.

Again I love it Hunter just makes sense, get rid of the pseudo druidical trappings and make them full on hunters who are bounty hunters, assassins and investigators. If they want the foresty stuff they can have that too, just make it not necessary.

Name:
Hunter (Removes their naturey connotations)

Bard - Lets try and figure this one out...
How do bards get their powers?
Why is it music, can it come from some other type of entertainment?
What about their sage like knowledge?
What makes them unique mechanics-wise?
Could they be "leaders" in a tactical sense?
Bard needs help, how do separate their culture from them????

 

[ValhallaGH]

Bards have the power of Bibliopathy! They channel parts of their songs / stories / plays / whatever into themselves to gain some of the aspects of the characters in those tales.
So they need to know a lot of lore and stories (doesn't matter what tradition or culture, just a lot of them) with a side effect of knowing a little bit about everything. How they channel it depends upon how they're trained, but their ability to channel it it manifest in their abilities and the fact that those abilities work.

 

[Celebrim]

I like it but he doesn't have to be a fanatic or necessarily pissed off. I like the idea of them being able to tap into some inborn reserve of power as in you were born to it and you don't like it but it sort of takes you over. I like them basically being a warrior with a special "stance", which when active makes them devastating.

I agree in theory, but I brainstormed about alternate Rage powers for a while and the problem is making an interesting mechanic that also has good flavor. When it comes to combat, there isn't really alot of good ideas that can't be encompassed by 'Anger'. The Dwarven Defender has a stance best described as 'Stubborn', but its almost strictly inferior to rage. I thought about making a 'Hatred' stance, but I couldn't think of anything as elegant and evocative as the Rage strength boost. I've seen a 'Fear' stance which was designed to be comical, and succeeded, but it's not really something I want to make an option in anything but a deliberately silly setting (like 'Discworld'). So, while in theory alternate stances sould like a good idea, in practice a set of interesting flavors and matching mechanics is hard to come up with. My personal feeling is that 'Rage' can just be reflavored for any other sort of intence dislike which provokes combat excellence.

Yeah but I think the monk is more interesting as a duelist who specializes in an uncanny sense of combat awareness and lightning fast flurries of attacks.

I don't really see a reason why a fighter can't do that either. I think the hard part in d20 is the whole skills/hit die trade off. However, I'm not entirely uninterested in a swashbuckler style class, provided it isn't a strictly better fighter.

Bard - Lets try and figure this one out...

Oddly, Bard I never felt the need to reflavor. I fit them into my homebrew's history and made the general idea of a singing wizard part of the culture.

Brief background, after the gods made mortals and things settled down, the gods started teaching their new creations. One nation grew to become the first global empire - the fabled 'First Kingdom' - and begin to refine magic to the level of craft and craft to the level of magic. There were spell dancers, spell forgers, spell blowers that made spells out of glass, spell chefs, spell tinkerers, spell carverers, spell growers, spell painters and indeed every sort of magic imaginable. Magic became a mundane thing and the empire grew very great. And as great empires do, it fell to hubris and the Art Mages tried to make war on the Heavens and Hells. The gods fought back and sank their kingdom and continent beneath the waves and destroyed and scattered most of the accumulated magical lore. Only two traditions survived the Iconoclasm, the spell casters who wove spells from the words written in books and the spell singers who made them from music. These became the Wizards and the Bards.

Why is it music, can it come from some other type of entertainment?

Sure. But the thing is, no one really remembers how and the gods get distinctly annoyed if anyone tries to resurrect the forgotten lore. Besides, there is a lot of lingering ill will even 10,000 years latter against magic for that whole 'nearly destroy the world' Iconclasm thing, and the wizard that looks like he might be practicing forbidden lore finds his tea and bed sheets poisoned by fearful locals - often of the 'the gods should have finished the job 10,000 years ago' inclination.

What about their sage like knowledge?

Partly it just goes with both wizards and bards attracting the curious sorts that wants to know things. But also the spellcasting tradition known cloquially as Wizardry was preserved by a group of librarians, who fled the wreckage of the First Kingdom on the back of a giant turtle and carrying the last of the surviving spell books. And I know why the Bards know, but the Bards themselves don't. I will say that the less learned of them think its just because they read books, recite poems and listen to rumors, but the more learned ones know that that is ridiculous.

What makes them unique mechanics-wise?

Other than the fact that they sing? All Bardic spells are automatically disguised per the disguised spell metamagic. They don't have to look like they are casting a spell to cast a spell.

Could they be "leaders" in a tactical sense?

They have Leadership as a class skill. Of course, you have to actually have a Leadership skill before that means anything to you.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Sorry, I have nothing to share regarding mechanics, just a little bit on how I view bards. Ymmv....

To my mind, bards are sort of a philosophical counterpoint to nature-based classes like core druid, ranger or nature cleric. They draw their power from something that might be called the "force of civilization" or "the human experience". They somehow embody "socialness", things like art, communication, history, and the like.

This is why they are lorists and story tellers: they simply tap into what civilization knows, and everything it has learned.

Bards utilize arcane magic because imc "arcane" magic is more or less "scientific" or "engineered" magic, and is the fruit of study, collaboration, etc. In other words, arcane magic wouldn't exist with a history for people to have figured it out in.

And bards typically express themselves via music because that's an effective and powerful form of human expression. Some bards might use oratory, including poetry, story telling, soliloquy, etc. And (though I hadn't thought about it til now) experienced bards may explore other forms of expression at higher levels for other magical effects (eg, enduring or empowered ones): dance, writing, architecture, visual arts, mathematics, or arts unique to the culture (shadow puppetry, mosaics, illumination, weaving, etc).

Generally, I prefer to keep "class" a purely metagame concept, so a character is more a personality with background, and less a class. That said, characters with bard levels might be drawn from a wide range of occupations. Obvious ones are singer, actor, minstrel, artist, jester, chanter, crier, musician, poet, etc. Other possibilities include social or knowledge occupations: elder, politician, commander, teacher, priest, librarian, chronicler, coach, monk, professor, wiseman, etc.

As for what to call them? Unfortunately, I don't know. Given the way I view them, they're inherently tied to the culture, so I'm having trouble thinking up a nice neutral word! I'll chime in again if I think of something.

 

[Sadrik]

I have it, what about bard as a social "adventurer". Sort of a generic guy who can go around and do a bit of everything.

Call them adventurer. Tie their bard songs to more than just perform, for instance a common one might be knowledge arcana for a more magicy adventurer, perform for a more bardly adventurer, diplomacy for a more leadery adventurer, craft alchemy etc... Simple change but it sure changes the flavor of the class all around. The bard songs might have to get looked at to make sure they fit with multiple skills.

Being strapped to performing is devastating in my opinion for the class. During a fight I sit in the back and strum my harp will forever be the vision of the bard I have. It doesn't have to be that way. Adventurer, the bard with more to do than play a flute.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Pretty strongly not culturally or geographically biased classes:
Cleric - None
Fighter - None

I'd say the Cleric actually is, considerably so. And even the Fighter's heavy armour is, potentially, a cultural thing as much as or more than a power (or, well, wealth/status) thing. But that detail's not always going to matter, of course.

 

[Celebrim]

Being strapped to performing is devastating in my opinion for the class. During a fight I sit in the back and strum my harp will forever be the vision of the bard I have. It doesn't have to be that way.

You're right. It doesn't. You could read the Kalevala.

 

[Sadrik]

I'd say the Cleric actually is, considerably so. And even the Fighter's heavy armour is, potentially, a cultural thing as much as or more than a power (or, well, wealth/status) thing. But that detail's not always going to matter, of course.

Ive, always liked the idea of giving the fighter heavy armor or an exotic weapon. A simple option that makes them fit into a lot more cultural roles. Paladins could have the same ability.

Clerics problem is armor selection. How about losing heavy armor just because cleric is overpowered and then they have the option to lose medium armor and gain a third domain. Simple weapons are still fine for them.

Monks have cultural weapon problems. If the monk becomes a duelist, it could have simple + 3 other melee weapons - exotic, martial or improved unarmed strike. This way they could still get their singham, sai and improved unarmed strike if they wanted. Rather than an unarmed damage table they would get a small precision damage bonus (+1d4 at 4, +1d6 at 8, +1d8 at 12, +1d10 at 16 and +1d12 at 20).

Druids and Bards have similar issues but not as drastic. Druid I would rectify by giving them simple weapons and natural weapon proficiency period. This gives them a bunch of weapons but they lose scimitar. Bards I would rectify by combining the rogue and bard list together and adding scimitar (for Arabian cultures) and shuriken (for Asian cultures). So it would be simple + long sword, scimitar, short sword, rapier, short sword, hand crossbow, shuriken, sap, whip, and short bow. That way these light martial classes get a bit of a boost in weapon selection and makes them both mechanically the same and more culturally diverse.