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

[TwoSix]

AD&D is perhaps the worst when it comes to Class being a tangible thing. You might be able to argue that Post-2000 D&D is a lot more toolkit when it comes to disconnecting class features and fluff, but you cannot do that with AD&D without LIBERAL use of house rules. Simply put, it can't be done without either ignoring or changing huge swaths of the game.

Not to be overly pedantic, but if he was playing in 1975, it wasn't AD&D.

 

[Remathilis]

Not to be overly pedantic, but if he was playing in 1975, it wasn't AD&D.

I assumed he wasn't [MENTION=2885]diaglo[/MENTION] and stop at OD&D (1974) as the one-true edition...

 

[TwoSix]

I assumed he wasn't [MENTION=2885]diaglo[/MENTION] and stop at OD&D (1974) as the one-true edition...

But it is the one true edition! Everything else is a pale imitation.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm sorry, but I gotta call you out on this.

Did you never had a druid who had to fight other druids to level up, eventually becoming a hierarch of the entire Druidic Order? Or an assassin who had to assassinate the Godfather of assassins to reach max level? Or a monk who had to best his masters to become a Grandmaster of Flowers? Never had a paladin need to atone to a 9th level Cleric? How about a character who got followers with class levels like rangers, fighters, thieves, or assassins? Never had a bard who needed to learn from a thief and druid tutor to gain his class? Never had a barbarian who could not adventure with the group's magic-user? Never? Ever?

AD&D is perhaps the worst when it comes to Class being a tangible thing. You might be able to argue that Post-2000 D&D is a lot more toolkit when it comes to disconnecting class features and fluff, but you cannot do that with AD&D without LIBERAL use of house rules. Simply put, it can't be done without either ignoring or changing huge swaths of the game.

I don't recall, so this is a completely honest question (my AD&D stuff was lifted by a roommate oh so many years ago), but did it ever actually say that the Grand Druid was a member of the Druid class?

 

[Yardiff]

Is saying 'I'm a fighter, eldritch knight.' Any different then 'I'm army, special forces.' Or 'I'm a cleric, life domain.' And 'I'm a doctor, trauma surgeon.'??

 

[Remathilis]

I don't recall, so this is a completely honest question (my AD&D stuff was lifted by a roommate oh so many years ago), but did it ever actually say that the Grand Druid was a member of the Druid class?

A few bits from AD&D PH and UA

At the upper levels there are only a limited number of characters. At 12th level (Druid) there can be but nine of these nature priests. Each such 12th level druid is the leader of a body of lesser druids and will have an entourage of three of their underlings, i.e. the lowest (in experience) Druid (12th level) will have three Aspirants (1st level) to serve him or her, while the highest (in experience) will have three Initiates of the 7th Circle (9th level). Initiates of the 8th and 9th Circles are under direct supervision of the three Archdruids and The Great Druid respectively.
Above all other druids is a lone figure, The Great Druid. {...}

This process {trial by combat - ed} is repeated with respect to a Druid becoming an Archdruid and for an Archdruid becoming the Great Druid. Multiple attempts to move upwards are possible as long as the character survives.

A study of the information pertaining to druids will reveal that there must be something above The Great Druid (14th level), for each area or land can have its own druid of this sort. Ranking even higher is the Grand Druid. This druid has 3,000,001 or more experience points, is 15th level, and is attended by 9 druids of special sort having nothing to do with the hierarchy of any specific area or land. Thus, any character of druid level may, in fact, journey to seek the Grand Druid and ask to serve him.
{...}
The Grand Druid is the ultimate overseer of druidical activity. Undoubtedly, such a position is demanding, thankless, and typically unexciting for all except politicians. After a few hundred thousand experience points worth of such activity, any adventurer worthy of the appellation should be ready for something else.

Most of that info was consolidated in the 2e PH.

So in AD&D, the Great Druid is specifically a member of the Druid class who as reached 14th level in that class. He cannot belong to another class (or no class) nor can you be a 14th level druid without first becoming the Great Druid.

There were similar (though not exactly the same) rules for reaching top level in Monk and Assassin as well.

Now, we can all be happy that the Trial By Combat aspect of classes got ditched (much like we can be happy alignment restrictions and racial restrictions did) but it seems CLEAR that AD&D, Class had a specific, tangible element to it and that NPCs could (and did) belong to them. Specifically to Druids, you were a member of a world-spanning organization who had a specific person as its leader and your ability to advance your class was tied to your advancement to that organization. That lingers on today in the form of the SuperSecret Druidic Language that only members of the Druid class can learn to speak.

Hence my call-out; there was no way you could ignore that Druid was a tangible, concrete concept tied to a specific class UNLESS you house-ruled all of the above away.

 

[empireofchaos]

Couching the argument 'if you think this, you'd be better off playing a different game' in terms of I doesn't really change the fact that you are suggesting that people that don't agree with you would be better served playing a different game. This is belied by the fact that we're playing this game, and having a great time, while still disagreeing with your preference for how the game should be played. Please stop suggesting that we that disagree are just too stupid to realize that we'd really rather be playing a different game, however you think to phrase it. Thanks.

Here's the thing: sometimes, words actually mean what they say. I don't say, anywhere, that people who choose to interpret class as a set of mechanics are stupid, that they shouldn't disagree with me, or that they only think they're having a great time, when really they're not. I don't say for the simple reason that it's not my meaning, so if thanks are to be pleaded for, I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth.

I've said all along that the choice of viewing class as an archetype vs. viewing it as a cluster of mechanics is an aesthetic one. It hardly follows from that that those who don't accept my aesthetics are stupid. But it does follow that people who make aesthetic choices one way or the other make them for a reason. And if I reason out my aesthetic choice by hypothetically adopting the opposed position (which I reserve the right to do), I can try to think through the consequences of doing that. And if I saw class as clusters of mechanics because I approached the rules and in-game fiction in a more free-form way, I would likely want to increase my options, and those of my players, and to have the rulebooks explicitly reflect this increase by showing me and my players the best ways to do that.

Oh, and the Grand Druid was very much a member of the druid class (Unearthead Arcana, pp. 16-17). He even received an additional d8, and was the "ultimate overseer of druidic activity".

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm sorry, but I gotta call you out on this.

Did you never had a druid who had to fight other druids to level up, eventually becoming a hierarch of the entire Druidic Order? Or an assassin who had to assassinate the Godfather of assassins to reach max level? Or a monk who had to best his masters to become a Grandmaster of Flowers? Never had a paladin need to atone to a 9th level Cleric? How about a character who got followers with class levels like rangers, fighters, thieves, or assassins? Never had a bard who needed to learn from a thief and druid tutor to gain his class? Never had a barbarian who could not adventure with the group's magic-user? Never? Ever?

AD&D is perhaps the worst when it comes to Class being a tangible thing. You might be able to argue that Post-2000 D&D is a lot more toolkit when it comes to disconnecting class features and fluff, but you cannot do that with AD&D without LIBERAL use of house rules. Simply put, it can't be done without either ignoring or changing huge swaths of the game.

Yeah, I still don't quite see why this dictates that class is an in-game construct, something that the CHARACTERS would know about. We simply NEVER played that way. If your druid had to go fight "The Great Druid" then I would have presumed that my opponent was an NPC with a class (assuming it wasn't a PC, which is possible but not THAT likely). However, its really entirely up to the DM. You can't talk about OD&D and other early versions of the game and say that ANYTHING was 'RAW', it just wasn't that sort of game at all! The DM put you up against someone. The DM said "yeah, you can atone to this guy, he can cast atonement" etc. The barbarian doesn't like MAGIC, if the bard runs around casting spells he won't adventure with the bard EITHER. I mean, sure, some of these things are cast in terms of classes, just like "only paladins can use a holy avenger", but again that doesn't mean the world is so cut-and-dried. I hail from a vintage of D&D where nothing was set in stone, not even the way basic rule systems worked. I know for a fact that Gary didn't particularly care for the rules in terms of sticking to them, he just made them up to be workable. If a 5000 pound stone fell on your character, nobody calculated damage, you just died, even if you had 200 hit points. If you fought a duel with the 'Grand Master of Flowers' and won, you got to be the new Grand Master, regardless of how the DM did up the NPCs stats.

And I don't disagree, Gygax must certainly have made a LOT of classed NPCs. There's still no evidence that I buy that he literally intended the world to be peopled with characters that ran around calling themselves 'Fighting Men', 'Clerics', 'Magic Users', and 'Thieves'. Think about that class name 'magic user', does that sound like the title of an actual person, or a generic term used for classification purposes (and here is where the word 'class' comes in, yes it presumes more than one individual COULD be so classified, but that doesn't mean they themselves use those classifications).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't recall, so this is a completely honest question (my AD&D stuff was lifted by a roommate oh so many years ago), but did it ever actually say that the Grand Druid was a member of the Druid class?

I think it IS strongly implied that DMs will generally use the given classes to model specific characters like that, but no, its not literally spelled out in so many words. The DM is always free to have the Great Druid be a 20HD Treant Vampire. I expect most of us would express surprise at this eventuality, but I'd actually think it was pretty cool, assuming the in-game story on that was as interesting as it could possibly be. It certainly would fulfill the intent of the duelling rule.

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah, I still don't quite see why this dictates that class is an in-game construct, something that the CHARACTERS would know about. We simply NEVER played that way. If your druid had to go fight "The Great Druid" then I would have presumed that my opponent was an NPC with a class (assuming it wasn't a PC, which is possible but not THAT likely). However, its really entirely up to the DM. You can't talk about OD&D and other early versions of the game and say that ANYTHING was 'RAW', it just wasn't that sort of game at all! The DM put you up against someone. The DM said "yeah, you can atone to this guy, he can cast atonement" etc. The barbarian doesn't like MAGIC, if the bard runs around casting spells he won't adventure with the bard EITHER. I mean, sure, some of these things are cast in terms of classes, just like "only paladins can use a holy avenger", but again that doesn't mean the world is so cut-and-dried. I hail from a vintage of D&D where nothing was set in stone, not even the way basic rule systems worked. I know for a fact that Gary didn't particularly care for the rules in terms of sticking to them, he just made them up to be workable. If a 5000 pound stone fell on your character, nobody calculated damage, you just died, even if you had 200 hit points. If you fought a duel with the 'Grand Master of Flowers' and won, you got to be the new Grand Master, regardless of how the DM did up the NPCs stats.

So basically "We ignored the rules, house-ruled when necessary, and had a great time."

Nothing wrong with that, but be honest and admit that you were modifying the game. Assuming the Druid Organization isn't a thing that is tangibly connected to the Druid Class is akin to removing the Lawful Good restriction on Paladins or the restriction on Dwarves being Magic-users. It falls into the purview of house rules; as in "Classes are something PCs and rare NPCs belong to, they don't exist as professions, organizations, or anything anyone in the world would recognize." But don't come in and tell me the Game assumes, or ever has assumed, the same.

And I don't disagree, Gygax must certainly have made a LOT of classed NPCs. There's still no evidence that I buy that he literally intended the world to be peopled with characters that ran around calling themselves 'Fighting Men', 'Clerics', 'Magic Users', and 'Thieves'. Think about that class name 'magic user', does that sound like the title of an actual person, or a generic term used for classification purposes (and here is where the word 'class' comes in, yes it presumes more than one individual COULD be so classified, but that doesn't mean they themselves use those classifications).

To be fair, they'd be called: Prestidigitator, Evoker, Conjurer, Theurgist, Thaumaturgist, Magician, Enchanter, Warlock, Sorcerer, Necromancer, and finally Wizard at name level.