"Your Class is Not Your Character": Is this a real problem?

[Coroc]

I don't disagree, and part of my reason for giving a player bringing a concept dependent on this multiclass combination, and ideas for lore to back it up, the sideeye is exactly what you call "perceived munchkinism." I've been pretty fortunate in not having huge powergamers in the two campaigns I'm running, and I'd prefer to continue not having to deal with the phenomenon.

Well powergaming if all agree on it is also cool for a change, but not by using system loopholes. I cannot verify if a paladin / lock multiclass would be overpowered somehow, for me that MC in 5e is considered the way to power does not seem so, since all threads about it forget the costs of MAD, levels were you not shine so much, and so on and some really only watch the end result and not the way there.
Personally I shun most MC, more often than not I did not want it at my table and I think it is subpar to optimized single classes, if you got a balanced group.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I already agreed that you can call yourself whatever you like. As for who is going to tell them that they aren't. Perhaps an NPC who knows the difference between a cleric and paladin and observes the cleric using an ability that paladins don't have, but clerics do.

It would take a particularly retentive NPC to go up to this example holy warrior, who is referring to themselves as a paladin, perhaps even proudly wearing the heraldry of their paladinic order, and tell them that they are not a paladin.

I think a more realistic scenario would be that the NPC would decide that they simply have not seen a paladin do that before, whatever it was that they did that didn't fit with the NPCs preconceptions of what a paladin could do.

 

[Maxperson]

It would take a particularly retentive NPC to go up to this example holy warrior, who is referring to themselves as a paladin, perhaps even proudly wearing the heraldry of their paladinic order, and tell them that they are not a paladin.

I think a more realistic scenario would be that the NPC would decide that they simply have not seen a paladin do that before, whatever it was that they did that didn't fit with the NPCs preconceptions of what a paladin could do.

Given the length of time that game worlds tend to be around, which is typically many thousands of years. And the correspondingly long period of time that paladins are also around, that scenario is unlikely. Paladins abilities would be very well known. Unless of course your home brew them to be rare or the paladin class is new to the world or some such.

 

[FrogReaver]

Given the length of time that game worlds tend to be around, which is typically many thousands of years. And the correspondingly long period of time that paladins are also around, that scenario is unlikely. Paladins abilities would be very well known. Unless of course your home brew them to be rare or the paladin class is new to the world or some such.

assuming that PC adventuring classes aren’t extremely rare...

there also may well be non-PC classes that are a lot more common in your world with any combination of abilities.

 

[Stoutstien]

Given the length of time that game worlds tend to be around, which is typically many thousands of years. And the correspondingly long period of time that paladins are also around, that scenario is unlikely. Paladins abilities would be very well known. Unless of course your home brew them to be rare or the paladin class is new to the world or some such.

There isn't any rule/text/suggestions on the commonality of each 'class' or even race. The player could be one of 1000s or the only 1.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think this is something of a false dichotomy (how often do you see the word "dichotomy" without the word "false" in front of it? it's like finding an escutcheon without a blotch). Class is mechanical, in that it has mechanical effects within the game, but it also reflects roles in a party and probably roles in a broader culture/society.

Well, no, because your "class" may be personal to you. There may be no-one else in that world who shares that particular set of abilities. The name of your class is never mentioned by in-world characters.

Or it might be that there are many people who share those abilities, and your class is actually a caste. NPCs in the game world frequently refer to people with those abilities by the name of your class.

There may be some grey areas in between, of course, and some groups haven't even considered the issue.

Neither interpretation is right or wrong, although there are plenty of people here who will never accept that.

As an example consider the samurai subclass. Is the samurai a dwarf from Mirabar known for his lethal axe flurries and neat handwriting, or the honourable warrior from Kara-Tur?

[The answer is the dwarf, the person from Kara-Tur is a paladin]

 

[prabe]

As an example consider the samurai subclass. Is the samurai a dwarf from Mirabar known for his lethal axe flurries and neat handwriting, or the honourable warrior from Kara-Tur?

[The answer is the dwarf, the person from Kara-Tur is a paladin]

My answer would have been "What do the players think?" I concur with your implied point, I believe.

 

[Xetheral]

Campaigns that deviate from how the rules present them, sure. There's nothing wrong with such deviations, though. Both home brew and house rules are perfectly fine and I encourage the use of both. Whatever makes the group happy.

I disagree that the rules say that classes exist as "something real within the fiction of the world". But I also don't see any utility in precisely identifying what qualifies as a "deviation" from the rules. We agree that campaigns exist where classes are an IC concept and that campaigns exist where classes are not an IC concept. We agree that both approaches are perfectly fine. Those seem to be the important points. Why is it relevant which approach (if either) qualifies as a "deviation"?

I don't think the disagreement about fluff and crunch necessarily means that we feel that you are playing your class wrong if you home brew changes and/or have your PC call himself something else. It certainly doesn't have that meaning for me. I have skipped some posts, though, so someone might have taken that stance and I missed it.

Your insistence that fluff changes be classified as homebrew comes across to me as an assertion that changing fluff is impermissible within the rules. In other words, it sounds to me like your position is that, unless the DM permits homebrew, it would indeed be wrong to play a character against type. Am I misunderstanding?

 

[Aldarc]

In the game of D&D as written, they are something real within the fiction of the world. If they weren't, they would just be a collection of mechanics with nothing else attached. The rules might then give you ideas of different ways to play certain sets of mechanics.

In "the game of D&D as written," "rulings not rules" serves as its guiding principle, so it seems antithetical to "the game of D&D as written" suggest that fluff guidelines for a "collection of mechanics with nothing else attached" should somehow be understood in themselves as rules or having some sort of necessary ontological existence in the fiction of the game world.

 

[Beleriphon]

Why is that nearly every class discussion of this nature breaks down into arguing about paladins?

Look, I like the class. Especially the 5E version where it is very clear the oaths and suggested tenets don't have to align with D&D good. They do have to align generally with not being D&D evil and working with a group, but beyond that there isn't much the class says about how the paladin plays out as a character past very broad strokes. I'd assume a player wanting to play some variety of paladin wants to at least follow the oaths in principle.

I don't really see the different between that and a Rogue (Thief) having to be a kleptomaniac. I will admint there are players that pick that class as an excuse to be a dingus, but that's a player issue, rather than a general perception that the character is "wrong" if they aren't stealing everything that isn't nailed down and using a pry bar on the stuff that is.