Arguments and assumptions against multi classing

[Ovinomancer]

I distinctly said its not power level problem.

And since you haven't used alignment since Reagan then you wouldn't know what the difference is between playing with and without is correct? It wasn't descriptive either, see Dragon Magazine, many articles, here is a listing:

"Alignments:

Changing "Betraying Your Evil Nature" Eric Cagle 306(20) D&D3
Clarification "Alignment: A New View of the Nine Philosophies" John Lees 60(72) D&D1
"Another View of the Nine-Point Alignment Scheme" Carl Parlagreco 26(23) D&D1
Evil:
Lawful vs. Chaotic "Evil: Law Vs. Chaos" Gary Gygax 28(10) D&D1
Playing evil characters "How To Have a Good Time Being Evil" Roger E. Moore 45(60) D&D1
"Play a Villain? An Evil Idea" Brian Blume 57(50) D&D1
Good:
Definition of "Good Isn't Stupid, Paladins & Rangers..." Gary Gygax 38(22) D&D1
Paladin standards "It's Not Easy Being Good" Roger E. Moore 51(33) D&D1
Law and chaos "Meaning of Law & Chaos in Dungeons & Dragons" Gary Gygax SR6(3) OD&D
Neutral "Neutral Point of View, The" Stephen Inniss 99(8) D&D1
Ramifications of "Choir Practice At the First Church of Lawful Evil" Lawrence Schick 24(34) D&D1
Real-life* "Front-End Alignments" Rich Stump 124(44) D&D1
Redefining "For King and Country" Paul Suttie 101(18) D&D1
"Making Law Out of Chaos" J.R. Renaud 163(74) D&D1
Role of "Your Place In the Grand Scheme" Tom Little 153(36) D&D1
Roleplaying of "Get Your Priorities Straight!" Royce Wicks 173(50) D&D2
Towns, of "Towns: With and Without Pity" Robin D. Laws 295(64) D&D3
Variation "Varied Player Character and Non-Player Character
Alignment in the Dungeons & Dragons Campaign" Gary Gygax 9(5) OD&D"
​

If you have a complete game world, then Alignment is a big issue. Don't call it alignment if that bothers you, call it tendencies or philosophical viewpoints or whatever. It was a HUGE factor in the game and the game world, with planes being mapped to alignments etc. If you are not using it you are missing out on big part of the game.


But if you don't care about it and don't enforce it and don't use it then it none of it matters, everyone can do anything they like without any alignment repercussions.

Whoa, there, you're saying that if I don't use alignment as you do, I can't have a complete world? Absolutely, if I don't use alignment, there are no alignment repercussions. This doesn't, in any way, mean there aren't any repercussions, or even moral repercussions. You murder-hobo in my games, bad things happen without ever even looking at your alignment. Alignment can be a good tool, no doubt, but it's not a necessary one, and not using it doesn't lessen the ability to apply repercussions. Heck, to reach out to my favorite non-D&D game, Blades in the Dark, it doesn't have alignment as a mechanic at all and yet it's full of moral questions, dilemmas, and repercussions.

 

[smbakeresq]

If it’s full of moral questions, dilemmas and repercussions then you are using alignment you just calling it something else.

 

[Warpiglet]

I agree thatit does not. However, I would not allow a cleric of philosophy in a setting that I run, because clerics ,in my homebrew campaigns, are a specific thing and they get their powers from deities....end of story. Allowing a cleric of philosophy would change that. Therefore, player is free to choose to play a cleric of one of the established deities (including following the established tenets and strictures that I have established for the deity in question), to find another class, or to find another table.

Sounds like that would ruin your fun and therefore you would not allow it.

I would not like to play that. I don't "like it" but if a player found a way to make it fun for the table I would allow it. In my campaign world there is a lot i don't know about...there are species I did not write about, cults I have not enumerated and people I have not named.

What I wrote about still stands but there is room for a weird exception. I have more fun with fluke things being possible even if unique or very rare. If the player really had to play that concept you are right. They would probably look for another table. I just would not want to make that happen.

We have some general guidelines. Currently we play with humans, elves, dwarves...odd monster races would be a hard sell. But I would allow it if possible. I just would not make radical alterations to the world to make it happen and I would be up front about it. A full blooded orc in town is not accepted. Welcome to consequences...

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This only makes sense if the only archetypes are those within the class fiction. But, say, for the urchin/barbarian? "I'm like Mr. Hyde." Archetype done.

There's a good point that going way off the rails into strangeland has costs that may not get paid. I agree with that. But the baked-in fictions of the classes are not the only readily accessible archetypes that can be used in a fantasy setting. Others exist.

The argument about classes having codified fluff is only tangential to the argument about the merits of using established archetypes in the first place. The benefit of having an established barbarian archetype is similar to the benefit of having an established Mr. Hyde archetype, in that you don't need to explain things to the audience.

A big, related issue comes to how you see the PCs. You can frequently get away with a unique protagonist in a novel, where they aren't like their peers in some way, and you can spend a lot of page space in going through the details and ramifications thereof. If you're the one fighter in your fighter class who has a unique heritage with Hyde-like tendencies, then that's why you're the protagonist, and nobody in the audience feels cheated by it.

That's not the only way to look at it, though. If you don't assume that PCs are inherently special and that's why they're PCs, then you have to come to terms with the fact that expected archetypes stop holding. As a player, you can be fighting a group of town guards, and one of them suddenly Hulks out, and it feels like you're being cheated because this doesn't make sense for how you understand the world to work based on the archetypes you thought were in play.

And I'm not going to argue (right now) about which is the better way to play, but I do have a preference (as a player), and it's probably better if we don't make unfounded assumptions at this point in the life-cycle of the thread.

 

[smbakeresq]

Yes, that is true.

Part of the reason I'm posting more aggressively is that this is an interesting topic, where people have real differences of opinions. It's an issue where it's not uncommon to have players with different takes on the topic at the same table. Glossing over it with the usual "Everyone's got a preference, and they need to be allowed to have them" doesn't give me much interesting information as to why people with the opposite take from me identify so strongly with those tropes.

I mean, I'll play any game, with anybody. The main reason I participate in these threads is to widen my exposure to different play styles, so I can go into various games and groups and know enough to recognize their preferences, and not assume they share my own. So if I run into a DM who shoots down my concept for a Noble barbarian (a character concept I've played!), at least I can recognize why they feel that way, despite the fact that not allowing reskinning defeats a lot of the fun of character building to me.

They do and this thread is pretty good

The noble barbarian is common in fiction. “Uncivilized” people showing far more “nobility” then the civilized people trying to conquer or exploit them is a recurring theme.

I also didn’t follow through on barbarian with street urchin background. Seems ok to me, I never lived in a barbarian encampment but I am pretty sure they would have orphans scrounging around somewhere. Thieves tools might be a reach, I don’t think a barbarian tribe would have the skill to make them. However I would let you use skills to break into things and once you acquired thieves tools let you learn how to use them, using the rules in the PHB with some modification, likely not taking 250 days.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The assumption of everyone playing in good faith is one I thought was true but I am seeing that it isn't.

If you want an entertaining read that works from the assumption of bad-faith gaming, try to track down a copy of Raven McCracken's seminal work, The World of Synnibarr (2nd edition). There's a significant section in the GM rules about how to call out players for cheating, as well as rules for the players to call out the GM for cheating, including the specific resolution method for what happens if a player thinks that the GM is deviating from the notes they had previously written down.

D&D 5E is a breath of fresh air, in comparison.

 

[Xetheral]

In a more general sense, familiarity with established archetypes is the major reason why fantasy is such a dominant genre in general. If everyone knows what a paladin and a barbarian are, then you don't need to spend any time explaining them, and you can get right to the game/story/whatever. The longer it takes you to explain how your setting works, the more of your audience you lose before the action starts. (It's a big problem with science fiction, because the closest thing they there is to classic archetypes in sci-fi is just Star Trek, and that's all protected IP.)

I would note that archetypes in general have the value you describe whether or not you require your players to adhere to them. A character concept can be described in terms of the achetypes it represents, but it can also just as easily be described in terms of the archetypes it contrasts with or outright subverts.

I would also note that one can infer that the descriptive utility of archetypes to describe (or contrast with) a character is limited by the degree of shared understanding of that archetype. For example, as the feral street urchin example suggests, there is no consensus in this thread on what qualifies as a "Barbarian".

 

[Hussar]

So, at the risk of being somewhat controversial, I will answer the question of, "Why would we not help a player have more fun" with an extended digression.

Let's talk about team sports! See, in team sports, it is entirely possible for one person to maximize their own fun to the detriment of other people's fun (we might call this person, for example, a Ball Hog, or a late-career Kobe Bryant). Conversely, it is also possible that by sublimating your own fun every now and then, you maximize the group's fun, and when the group's fun is maximized, your own fun becomes greater than if you were simply pursuing your own fun.

*whew* Now, D&D isn't teams sports (HA!). But the principle remains. I'll give you an easy example- let's say someone really, really, really enjoyed killing other PCs. Now, let's say that the rest of the table really didn't like that. By sublimating his own fun (not killing other PCs), the overall group fun would be maximized, and, maybe, that individual would end up have a better session (because other people wouldn't be angry at him for killing them, and so on).

Which is why people on these boards talk about communication. It's not just about "helping a[n individual] player have more fun." It's about maximizing the table's fun- that player's fun, the rest of the players' fun, and the DM's fun. And everyone should be on the same page.

If a player is ever in the situation where he is demanding to the other players (and the DM) that something should happen because it is HIS FUN, then something has gone horribly wrong, just as wrong as if the DM is saying, "NO, BECAUSE I SAY SO."

Now, you might say that in this particular example, nothing bad would happen at Maxperson's table. But you're not there- you don't know, and I don't know. Maybe his other players/DM would be annoyed? Maybe they have an informal understanding of what a Barbarian "is," and this would violate their understanding? Different strokes, and all that.

I get what you're saying here, but, let's be honest here with the example - if your enjoyment of the game is dependent upon another player at the table adhering to your specific interpretation of how a class must be played, then, well, as you said, no compromise is likely possible and those two people should not be gaming together.

And, frankly, if someone's ego is so tied up into forcing everyone at the table to adhere to their specific interpretations that they cannot compromise, then that someone is being a total asshat. They are the problem. And, as a group, we should not cater to players or DM's like that. The hobby certainly doesn't need them and they are the source of most of the worst games out there.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Ovinomancer]

If it’s full of moral questions, dilemmas and repercussions then you are using alignment you just calling it something else.

That seems to be a uselessly broad definition of alignment. I'm not certain how that definition jives with D&D's planar structure, which you seem to think is another outcome of alignment. Curiously, do you define real-world people according to alignment? If not, then you must recognize that moral interacts occur without an alignnent system, so it's weird you'd insist Blades does. If you do, well, cool, but I don't think there's a lot for us to talk about on this.