D&D 5E What if everyone in the setting had a [Class]?

[Yaarel]

In our games, the most notable moments aren't in combat. We have entire sessions without attack rolls. (And then we attack a series of fortifications that takes 7 sessions of combat so in all things there is balance.)

Do those sessions count for nothing in your games? How does the Peace paladin advance? The Face character? The ghostly scout that is never seen but sees all? The cat burglar whose thefts aren't discovered until days later?

Those same events would cause Non PCs to level up. The merchant who gets better at haggling in their 40s than they were at 20. The elf that after five centuries of resolving disputes can almost smell a lie.

It's not like it's more work than bespoke npcs. I find classes easier. I've been using PCGen or it's successors for like 20 years. I want the guild master of a big city to be five levels higher than the lowest guild member. Click the stat roller until I get a set that doesn't suck, set the level, assign stats.

If an npc gets pulled into shenanigans and I level them up. The app prompts what to assign.

Bespoke is either a slapdash result made unpredictable based on how little effort I put in it or more work than it's worth, IMO.

I keep a small set of "stock" classed npc so if something unexpected happens midgame, I use those to adjudicate and, if it looks like a persistent character, I make a more detailed version. If not I note the name & demographics and which stock npc block I used (noble 5, expert 1, etc).

I support noncombat encounters, and the ability to level up at a standard pace by engaging them. Noncombat encounters happen often enough in my campaigns.

At the same time, when players opt for noncombat, the combat features of their classes go unused. The noncombat challenges are often about backgrounds and skills.

 

[Yaarel]

Right. Everything below this further cements that you are not grasping the premise in the literary sense, you are only looking at the premise in the mechanical sense. I assume by this that you also are unfamiliar with the concept of LitRPG stories. So, the closest analogy I can think of would start with The Matrix, because I can be fairly certain that you are at least passingly familiar with the movie property.

So. The Matrix, everyone is trapped in a virtual reality that appears like the real world. Some stories took this a step further and presented a story where the people are trapped inside a video game, with the video game stats. The first story I encountered that did this was .Hack\\

However, in recent years, many stories and artists have gone another step further. Instead of "you are trapped inside a video game" they have taken the literary stance of "this is just how the world works". You can look at your own status sheet, you can see that you have a +2% damage bonus while in darkness, you can physically see recorded on your character sheet which gods approve of your actions and which do not, you can see numerical pools of health/stamina/mana/ect.

You can get a [Class]. A real thing that has real tangible benefits, in the fiction of the game world. Not a mechanical consideration for a game.

Saying that, in a LitRPG context, classes must be balanced for combat is like saying that in our real world all food must be the same price. It is an absurd statement, because even a fictional world is not going to have a perfect balance. In fact, it MUST have disparity in skill, because if everyone on the entire planet must be capable of fighting at the same effectiveness, that says incredibly bizarre things about the world.

This is why I said you are not understanding the premise. You are approaching this as a GAME concern, something that needs to be mechanically balanced out of consideration for IRL people. It isn't. This is a WORLD-BUILDING decision.

I grasp well what you are describing.

I would never play a game where the classes are imbalanced.

To inflict inequity between players is unfun, and the resulting power dynamic is arguably unethical.

While I dont care about symmetric features, I do care about comparable value.


Combat is central to the D&D game, and requires balance.

In the world, not every character is the same level. Thus because of respective levels, not everyone is equal in combat.

However, a party of player characters will be the same level, in my campaigns at least. Thus they will balance with each other during combat.

 

[FrogReaver]

I grasp well what you are describing.

I would never play a game where the classes are imbalanced.

To inflict inequity between players is unfun, and the resulting power dynamic is arguably unethical.

While I dont care about symmetric features, I do care about comparable value.


Combat is central to the D&D game, and requires balance.

In the world, not every character is the same level. Thus because of respective levels, not everyone is equal in combat.

However, a party of player characters will be the same level, at least in my campaigns.

All classes in every non-symmetric game are imbalanced.

Balance in asymmetry only happens in very particular situations and most often only at particular moments.

 

[Yaarel]

All classes in every non-symmetric game are imbalanced.

Balance in asymmetry only happens in very particular situations and most often only at particular moments.

I determine the value of a feature and the value of a class by its "desirability".

Sometimes for low tier features, I literally measure the value of a feature by how many hit points players are willing to give up for it if this sacrifice is the only way to obtain it. In the aggregate, this measure becomes precisely accurate for most situations.

For higher tier features, it is mainly the spell slot levels that serve as a measure for other features.

At the same time, "perfection" is a false requirement. Only "comparability" matters. Close enough is fine. If it is possible to tweak a feature to balance even better, that is good too.

 

[FrogReaver]

I determine the value of a feature and the value of a class by its "desirability".

Sometimes for low tier features, I literally measure the value of a feature by how many hit points players are willing to give up for it if this sacrifice is the only way to obtain it. In the aggregate, this measure becomes precisely accurate for most situations.

For higher tier features, it is mainly the spell slot levels that serve as a measure for other features.

At the same time, "perfection" is a false requirement. Only "comparability" matters. Close enough is fine. If it is possible to tweak a feature to balance even better, that is good too.

Close enough is subjective.

 

[Yaarel]

Close enough is subjective.

In the aggregate, balance becomes less subjective.

When the character optimizer community scrutinizes a feature, there is rarely any ambiguity about how much it is worth.

 

[Maxperson]

I grasp well what you are describing.

I would never play a game where the classes are imbalanced.

To inflict inequity between players is unfun, and the resulting power dynamic is arguably unethical.

Two things. A lot of us enjoy play regardless of whether there is inequity. I've played in and had fun playing 3rd level PCs in a group with 15th level PCs. Depends on the group and DM.

And no, it doesn't even come close to being unethical to do that. Let's not trivialize ethics and morals.

 

[ko6ux]

If I were to design a setting like that, I'd go divine. The gods are not only very present, avatars for each reside in X major cities. On a person's 16th birthday they travel and stand before the assembled gods for a choosing. One of the gods grants the person their class with all associated 1st level knowledge. If you want class and level to be in game knowledge, perhaps leveling up would require journeying to a temple of the god who chose you and an artifact there promotes you. Part of the magic of the gods is the ability know the ranking and abilities of those around you when you concentrate on the person and no magic can mask that information.

This is just Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in the Dungeon?, the RPG.

 

[Shardstone]

What if the PCs had classes IRL too?

 

[Maxperson]

This is just Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in the Dungeon?, the RPG.

I mean, it's the best way I can see to make all of those things PC knowledge.