But that doesn't entail that class interactions have no bearing on one another. Just to give an example: the relationship between a classic paladin and a classic assassin might take any one of infinite forms, but there will infinitely many more relationships that probably don't make sense for those two particular characters.
It's a matter of spectrum and degree. The amount of bearing the class has is somewhere between everything and nothing, and we're placing our pegs in different places. I think it's also true that most examples of class interaction are not quite so fraught with implications as paladin vs assassin--and let's also take into account the impact of alignment.
We don't have to turn to great orators to encounter cases of people disliking someone and then, because of something that person says, coming to respect or be inspired by them. That's a pretty mundane part of ordinary living among fellow human beings.
And it's awesome when it happens through roleplay. Less awesome when you're on the receiving end of it being mandated by mechanics.
I also think the goals of loyal friendship and so on that you mentioned are noble goals to have in a game, and I'd enjoy playing them out. But it's ... how to say it ... declaring one person to be the gallant leader through mechanics, when the player doesn't have to do anything to earn it except to hand out buffs in battle, feels worse than fake or cheap to me. I'm afraid the only word I can come up with is manipulative, and I apologize because that's already been a little contentious in this thread, but it's the word that fits best.
It's also interesting that you mention Túrin. He's my least favorite character in Tolkien for precisely that reason: characters are always falling all over themselves to declare their love and loyalty to him and beg him to lead them, and he does
nothing to deserve or even to explain their reactions. At least with Aragorn, Gandalf, etc., I can understand why people respond positively to them, but I just have to take Tolkien's word for it (in defiance of all evidence) that Túrin is magnetic and people naturally love him. It's all "Tell, don't show." Which I think also relates to the problem with mechanical inspiration.
Wolverine doesn't like Cyclops very much; that doesn't mean that Cyclops can't inspire him (consider, for instance, the difference between Cyclops' and Prof X's approach to the team, and Wolverine's response, when Cyclops returns to earth during the Dark Phoenix arc).
My familiarity with X-Men is limited. Could you summarize?
Third, I don't understand why you think that class and (for lack of a better word, and given your rejection of the term "personality") story should be independent of one another. Gygax told us, in his PHB, that choosing class is choosing the role that one will play.
The reason I don't like "personality" is because it puts too much emphasis on the PC and his/her player, in isolation from the rest of the group. You can decide your PC's personality while sitting alone in your room; you can't, or shouldn't be able to, decide by yourself how your PC will fit in with the rest of the group. That should, IMHO, be up to the players of the other characters.
If I want to play my character as resembling Boromir: somewhat bossy, even overbearing; with a tendency to arrogance, and a relative disregard of others; why would I choose the inspirational warlord? That doesn't necessarily seem a good fit.
Okay, we agree on that. So in this hypothetical game we're talking about, what if Boromir's player chose the class first and then played the character as bossy (etc.) at the table?
D&D has no mechanics suitable for resolving PC vs PC social conflict. Hence there is not need to discourage - it just doesn't come up.
Well, yes and no. There are people out there--I've seen the threads on discussion boards like this one--who would like to use Persuade, Intimidate, etc. for PC vs PC social conflict. Problems arise when they try to do this to players who don't agree that this is an appropriate use of the skills.
Of course a player is free to play his/her PC as s/he wishes, but if the PC asserts that the bard is not charming, the rest of the gameworld is going to disagree! (Aren't they?) It will be the dissenting PC who comes off as the unpleasant person - jealousy or some sort of personal inadequacy can be one common reason why a person spitefully rejects the approaches of another genuinely good-natured and pleasant person.
See, I disagree. If the bard has 18 CHA and is trained in Persuasion, I think that means she has an excellent chance of getting any NPC to do exactly what she wants, with the roll of a die. But within the party, she is on equal footing with everyone else and dice will not be rolled unless both players agree in advance to abide by the result.
Also, it is up to the players of the other characters to decide whether their characters find the bard charming, annoying, pathetic, "just not my type," or whatever. Their relationships will be responses to the bard's character as it emerges in play, and on her interactions with the other PCs. Unless a PC takes an instant dislike to the charming bard for no reason whatsoever, I don't think this would be seen as unpleasant.
Presumably at those tables no one would play a warlord or take the Inspiring Leader feat (because these are mechanics pertaining to social interaction between PCs), no one would ever recover hit points because an ally restored his/her hope (because the game has no rules for generating hp recovery simply out of freeform RP), etc.
Quite possibly not. Or at minimum, they'd have a discussion beforehand and make sure they're all okay with it.
That's rather foreign to my experience. I work in a university, with a fairly standard bureaucratic hierarchy.
Ha, so do I! Comrade! But I don't think promotion in a bureaucracy is much like leading a team of fantasy adventurers. And even then, people who get promoted in a bureaucracy get it because they have demonstrated skills that are important for the job. In leading a fantasy adventuring party, surely motivation and/or tactics
are vital skills for the job?
Also, by play here you don't mean makes action declarations. You mean something like establishes characterisation. Except I don't think you can even mean that, because in 99% of games without warlords or bards in them, the players never bother to consider whether or not their PCs are inspired by one another.
Okay, I'll try saying it another way: Player A's Warlord does mechanical stuff during combat that carries with it implications about how Player B's character should relate to Player A's character all the time, not just during combat. Player B, therefore, may feel that an unfair burden is being placed on him/her.
with no suggestion that this was casting a mind control spell as seems to be the dominant understanding of the 5e Bless spell
I challenge "dominant understanding." We have a very small and far from unanimous sample size of opinions here.
In your warlord-free game, what happens, mechanically, when one PC inspires another?
Why does anything have to happen, at least on a regular and predictable basis?
Once you introduce inspirational mechanics into the game, you have to choose how you are going to engage with them.
YES. Yesyesyesyesyes. And Y-E-S. Both in and out of the fiction. That's what this whole discussion is about.
How else do you imagine it working out? How do you envisage having inspiration mechanics, yet it making no difference whether or not a player engages them via his/her PC?
I'd be content not to have inspiration mechanics. I think they're a bigger headache than they're worth. For people who want to have non-magical healing, I'd rather have different fluff for how they do it.
Though I suppose it could be legitimate for the players to decide to base something on a roll, much like flipping a coin. Not a matter of the player of the persuasive PC making a check and demanding obedience, but in the sense of the player of the PC that is RP-enclined towards a bad choice but open to being persuaded wanting to bring dice into his decision.
