D&D 5E Do Classes Have Concrete Meaning In Your Game?

[TheCosmicKid]

The fluff in each class write-up are not game rules. They are mere examples intended to help you launch your imagination. They have absolutely no limiting effect on my fluff. What does affect my fluff is the class's crunch. I have to be able to explain, in game, the stuff I do in game.

Do you notice a little bit of ontological reversal here? You're right that fluff is not rules, but fluff is the reason that the rules exist in the state that they do. WotC didn't collect together a random assortment of class features and then, only after the fact, decide to fluff that class as an quasi-Shaolin monk. They took the concept of a quasi-Shaolin monk and wrote the crunch to fit that concept. If instead you use crunch to determine fluff, well, hats off to you if you manage it, but isn't it kind of doing things the hard way? If a player comes to me and says she wants to play a martial artist who isn't a quasi-Shaolin monk, I'm inclined to just modify the class features to fit her concept, rather than make her come up with an explanation for why her character can speak every language and doesn't age when those abilities do nothing to advance the concept.

...then my reaction isn't so much to criticise the sentence which ends in a preposition...

A preposition is a perfectly fine word to end an English sentence with. If Winston Churchill can do it, you can do it. The notion that you can't is, like the rule that you should not be allowed to freely split infinitives, just another product of misguided 19th-Century grammarians trying to apply Latin syntax rules to a Germanic language that never had or needed them. They're linguistic follies which have not been allowed to die because pedants find them useful to use as bludgeons. But speaking as an incorrigible pedant myself, I prefer the white-hat approach, and choose instead to bludgeon other pedants with... well, with this. Join me! You too can use your powers of pedantry for good!

Of course! But they absolutely cannot say that he 'must' be an 8th level Fighter, or even 'Fighter' as a game mechanic at all. He could be a ranger and still be described as a 'fighter'.

Uh... take another look at the battlemaster's Know Your Enemy feature.

 

[Arial Black]

Do you notice a little bit of ontological reversal here? You're right that fluff is not rules, but fluff is the reason that the rules exist in the state that they do. WotC didn't collect together a random assortment of class features and then, only after the fact, decide to fluff that class as an quasi-Shaolin monk. They took the concept of a quasi-Shaolin monk and wrote the crunch to fit that concept. If instead you use crunch to determine fluff, well, hats off to you if you manage it, but isn't it kind of doing things the hard way? If a player comes to me and says she wants to play a martial artist who isn't a quasi-Shaolin monk, I'm inclined to just modify the class features to fit her concept, rather than make her come up with an explanation for why her character can speak every language and doesn't age when those abilities do nothing to advance the concept.

No. The designers create class features to cover as many character concepts as possible. There is no rule or intent to limit PCs with monk levels to Shaolin type concepts.

Uh... take another look at the battlemaster's Know Your Enemy feature.

Okay.

You may use this ability to tell if the target is your equal, superior or inferior in certain characteristics-game mechanics. For example, whether he is stronger or weaker than you. This does not mean that the character knows about the game mechanics of Strength scores, even though the player does. Having this class feature doesn't mean that he becomes aware of game mechanics directly, only their effects in game, like 'stronger than me'.

Even the abilities which talk about specific game mechanics don't mean the character knows about game mechanics. When the player compares AC, the in game effects of AC represent how difficult it is to hit and damage a creature. When the player knows that the target has a lower AC, the character knows that the target is easier to hit.

When the player knows the target has more total levels than he, the character feels that this guy is powerful, not that 'this guy must be at least 12th level', because characters are not aware of game mechanics.

Even the ability to know if the target has more or fewer fighter levels is a game mechanic that the player knows while the character only knows that the target has learned more or less than him in the specific kind of tricks in his field. It's like a classically trained french chef could work out whether or not another chef was classically trained, even though he knows that french cooking is not the only kind of cooking.

Although characters can know nothing of game mechanics, they can know things that approximate them in the game world. For example, our characters cannot know what number came up on the d20, nor can they know that the BBEG has a +11 attack bonus; the players can know these things. But the characters can certainly be in combat and sooner or later work out how skillful the opponents are.

This is why attack rolls should be made in the open (as long as the attacker can be seen). For example, if the DM rolls a 3 and says 'hit', then you know, as a player, that the guy must have a great attack bonus. If the DM rolls a 17 and says 'miss', then these guys must be rubbish! But if the DM rolls 19 and says 'hit' or rolls 2 and says 'miss', you haven't learned much. As combat goes on, you may very well work out the guy's exact AC and attack modifier.

This is okay, not because the character knows what the player knows (game mechanics and die rolls) but because the character has his own way of judging how good the enemy is: by engaging them in combat.

The advantage the battlemaster has is that he is so observant that he can work this stuff out by watching someone when they're not even in combat! It still doesn't mean that battlemasters are aware of D&D game mechanics!

 

[empireofchaos]

Secondly, I don't see the need to preserve class structures within the game fiction. They're perfectly well protected and central in the game aspect of D&D that they don't need further reinforcement in the fiction. The d20 is central to the game as well, and yet it's just fine without any concrete representation in the game fiction.

Finally, I love general classes. You can do so much with them. One of my favorite characters of all time was a hobgoblin fighter/rogue, who stole poorly, often ran from fights, and was generally the worst, most incompetent henchman of the evil overlord (technically apocalypse desiring demon queen, and, also technically, the henchmanning wasn't strictly voluntary) he could be.

I'm just not sure if I share your optimism. If a class is just a set of interrelated mechanics (although, on what grounds do we assume that they are in fact interrelated), it can become clunky. Case in point - the recent ranger offering in the UA (not the very last one stalker archetype, but the "complete rewrite" with the 2d6, the Ambuscade skill, and the spirit animal sidekick). IMHO, that class was a holy mess, a jumble of different mechanics thrown together primarily to placate those people who think the 5e ranger is underpowered. Can an interesting character be developed on the basis of those rules? Sure. But would the adoption of the class, with no individual flavor (again IMHO) as a core class have hurt the game as a whole? I say yes, and so did the people who responded to the survey.

On the other hand, the (relatively) recent accretions that have been successful - the sorcerer and the warlock - succeeded precisely because of the fluff, the identity. Sorcerers of a particular bloodline are surely aware of something like common descent. Whether the broader class is self-aware is a more open question, but the idea that arcane ability is passed down by blood is surely a commonly accepted one (I can even cite RL examples). Similarly, the warlock works with a pact concluded with certain powerful entities. Some which follow a particular one form into covens, and are surely aware of the source and general features of their power. Beyond individual covens, there is still a sense of the patron, and the idea of patronage generally (as there is in RL). The name for the relationship can differ - it's not a terminological or semantic issue. But the concept may be clear, and, given how initially amorphous groups form over time, they acquire concreteness, especially in areas where writing is widespread. So, once we've gotten together and discussed magical practices among ourselves, we've come to the conclusion that the way we do magic (through study and memorization, shaping wild energy, or concluding a pact) is not the way they do it.

 

[Greg K]

You have a point here. For me, the DM controls everything in the world....except the PCs. The PCs are the only thing the player controls (within the rules, of course. Fluff is not rules). The biggest crime a DM can perpetrate on his players is to take that agency away.

However, the DM can say that your fluff does not fit the campaign world that they have set up. They can also tell you to handle your concept mechanically in x,y, or z manner as it is more appropriate for how things work in the campaign . They can even tell you that the concept is inappropriate for the campaign setting that he or she is running and to pitch a completely different concept.

 

[empireofchaos]

As someone who works with texts, I admit that I find it a little strange that in the 218 posts in this thread, no one has yet turned to the primary source. Here is what it says about class:

"Class is the primary definition of what your character can do. It's more than a profession, it's your character's calling." (PHB, p. 45).

Note - not a set of "interrelated mechanics" (whatever that means), but a profession and a calling. If it's a profession, it has, at least at a certain stage of development, a corporate identity, like any other profession. And a calling goes beyond that - it is the single greatest force in your life that determines not only how you fix shoes or kill orcs, but why you do it, what greater purpose is served, that transcends you as an individual who is simply an unconscious embodiment of certain abstract features. To claim that a calling has no in-game reality is, to me, a failure to come to grips with the meaning of the term, and its role in class formation.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

No. The designers create class features to cover as many character concepts as possible. There is no rule or intent to limit PCs with monk levels to Shaolin type concepts.

Categorical denial doesn't advance a conversation any. And I'm afraid it's a bit more of a balancing act between generality and specificity than you say. If the designers really just wanted to cover as many character concepts as possible, they wouldn't bother with classes. They'd do something freeform like the Fate system and say, "Here are some guidelines for how much damage you can do and so on. Work out for yourself how you describe what you're doing." The classes exist on the theory that writing specific rules for specific character concepts makes those concepts more distinctive and exciting than they would otherwise be. Rather than just give you generic rules and let you call yourself a monk, they give you monk-specific superpowers! You can catch arrows and paralyze people with pressure points and astral project! How cool! As long as you want to be a monk. If you don't want to be a monk, you're left with the task of making up ad hoc reasons why your character can do these things, or else writing your own class.

No, of course the rules don't absolutely limit your monk characters to being in-game monks. Nobody's going to come to your house and take your PHB away if they aren't. But if you speak of intent, then yes, the intent of the monk class is very obviously to reflect mystical martial artist characters in the style of wuxia films, anime, and other East Asian action-adventure media. Like I said, the designers did not sit down and put together some fluffless mechanics and then just slap on the kung fu flavor as an example. The intent from the beginning was to write a class for kung fu characters; the mechanics flowed from that. And if you disagree with this, don't just say deny it with a "no". Tell me where you think the collection of monk class features came from, if it wasn't Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Even the ability to know if the target has more or fewer fighter levels is a game mechanic that the player knows while the character only knows that the target has learned more or less than him in the specific kind of tricks in his field. It's like a classically trained french chef could work out whether or not another chef was classically trained, even though he knows that french cooking is not the only kind of cooking.

He's aware of a category distinction between the sorts of people that the PHB calls "fighters" and other sorts of people. Per these rules, every character you build with fighter levels is going to trigger this class feature, no matter how you fluff him or her. To pick up your analogy, the rules seem to demand that every such character has some classical training. I thought that's what you were arguing against.

 

[Mouseferatu]

However, the DM can say that your fluff does not fit the campaign world that they have set up. They can also tell you to handle your concept mechanically in x,y, or z manner as it is more appropriate for how things work in the campaign . They can even tell you that the concept is inappropriate for the campaign setting that he or she is running and to pitch a completely different concept.

Yes and no.

The DM can absolutely say "That concept doesn't fit my world." Cool. Done deal.

The DM can absolutely say "My world does not include the monk class in any way, shape, or form."

But...

Where I start to get an itch in my "This ain't the right table for me" bump is when the DM says, "I'm okay with your concept, and I'm okay with monks, but I don't like the combination. I'd allow your concept if it was a fighter, but I won't allow it to be based on the monk mechanics."

At that point, I feel like the DM is stepping on what agency the player has, and limiting creativity despite it not impacting either the mechanics or the setting. So you're okay with my concept and the class I want to play, but not together? As someone who DMs more than plays, I have a difficult time coming up with good reasons for that which don't boil down to "I just don't wanna." And what few reasons I can come up with are pretty narrow in scope.

 

[MechaPilot]

Several classes are designed to be fairly generic, and they often have little meaning to the game world without something like a kit or theme to tie them more strongly to the game world.

One of the classic examples of this is the Fighter. The Fighter is pretty darn generic, and is used by different DMs to represent generic military men, experienced veterans, or masters with a broad range of battle-experience. I personally just use non-classed NPCs for most of those generic military people, but other DMs do use low-level fighters for that purpose.

One example of applying a kit or theme to a generic class to bind it to my game world is that of the Darve knife-fighter. Darve is the name for the dark elves in my homebrew world. They differ in several respects from the Drow of most D&D worlds, but the pertinent difference for this discussion is that they have a special type of warrior among their ranks who fights with poisoned knives. Given that they live underground and often have to fight in caves, a warrior that uses small, fast, and light weapons seems appropriate.

A Darve knife-fighter character is a fighter, usually with proficiency in stealth skills (which have varied across different editions), who has a pared-down weapon list but is such a master at using those weapons that they do more damage with them than normal (all small, fast, and light weapons have the damage die increased by one step, so knives, the characters' namesake, do 1d6 instead of 1d4 damage), who can proficiently use poisons, and who replaces their armor proficiencies with a version of unarmored defense.

In the game world, Darve knife-fighters are especially feared because the Darve have mastered the art of working Naricium, a very soft and rare metal that grows in crystal formations and is deadly poisonous. In 5e, Naricium has the following stats:

Naricium
When a living creature takes damage from a weapon made from naricium, they must attempt a Constitution save to avoid being poisoned by the naricium. The DC of the save is equal to either 10, or half the damage dealt, whichever is greater. If the creature fails the save, then it is also considered to have failed a death saving throw. The poisoned creature must attempt a DC 20 Constitution save against poison each round until it accrues either three failed death saves or three successful saves. Three failures means the creature succumbs to the poison and dies. Three successes removes all successes and failures, wiping the slate clean. However, the character must suffer a DC 20 poison save each day for the rest of the character's life. Failing any of these saves counts as failing a death save. There is NO cure for naricium poisoning (apart from dying).



Most Darve knife-fighters do not wield naricium blades. Naricium is rare, hard to work properly (it's brittle enough that any character with a 15 Str can crush it in her hand without having to make a Str check, and it emits a toxic fume when properly worked into other metals), and having a naricium weapon is a status symbol denoting one's importance. Being matriarchial, the Darve do not allow males to wield naricium weapons.

 

[Greg K]

Yes and no.

The DM can absolutely say "That concept doesn't fit my world." Cool. Done deal.

The DM can absolutely say "My world does not include the monk class in any way, shape, or form."

But...

Where I start to get an itch in my "This ain't the right table for me" bump is when the DM says, "I'm okay with your concept, and I'm okay with monks, but I don't like the combination. I'd allow your concept if it was a fighter, but I won't allow it to be based on the monk mechanics."

At that point, I feel like the DM is stepping on what agency the player has, and limiting creativity despite it not impacting either the mechanics or the setting. So you're okay with my concept and the class I want to play, but not together? As someone who DMs more than plays, I have a difficult time coming up with good reasons for that which don't boil down to "I just don't wanna." And what few reasons I can come up with are pretty narrow in scope.

I am saying take for example a player that wants a Jason Bourne type character- an assassin trained in martial arts and government sanctioned. The DM is fine with that concept as such characters exit. However, the campaign does not include the monk class or multi-classing (or even if monk is included, the class does not fit the assassins in his world, because the monk class and its abilities are tied to their own specific organizations). The assassins organizations that fit the bill are comprised of rogue (assassin) and fighters so the recommends it and would allow a feat or fighting style granting martial arts .

Perhaps the player wants to play a monk, but the closest thing in the world are the clerics of a particular deity using the armor trade-off for monk's AC (mentioned in the DMG) and a feat granting martial arts and a few battlemaster maneuvers usable unarmed. Or, maybe the closest thing in the campaign is a fighter that gives up armor for the Monk's AC bonus (perhaps inspired by John Amos's character in Beastmaster). Regardless of the option appropriate for the campaign, the DM is suggesting the closest option that fits the campaign setting that they have created.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yes and no.

The DM can absolutely say "That concept doesn't fit my world." Cool. Done deal.

The DM can absolutely say "My world does not include the monk class in any way, shape, or form."

But...

Where I start to get an itch in my "This ain't the right table for me" bump is when the DM says, "I'm okay with your concept, and I'm okay with monks, but I don't like the combination. I'd allow your concept if it was a fighter, but I won't allow it to be based on the monk mechanics."

I feel like my response to this player would be "If you want to be a monk, you adhere to the monk fluff in the PHB, including the ki and all that stuff. If that still gels with your character concept, lets do this thing. If not, lets talk about what you WANT out of being a monk, and we'll get it to you some other way. If all you want is to not wear armor and punch things, lets pick a class whose fluff is closer to your character's fluff, and give that character the ability to not wear armor and punch things."

The reason? Because that fluff means something in my games. Monks have a place in the narrative, in the world, and in the story. If that's not the same place you want your character to be, think less about what you want your character to do, and more about who you want your character to be, and lets go from there. It doesn't matter to me really if you use longswords or punch things instead. What matters is who trained you, where you're from, how you learned these abilities, what you do to use them, what that means about your skills and the potential enemy groups that oppose you, etc.