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

[Chaosmancer]

While that is true, it also greatly increases the complexity of the world, and it easily gets to a point where it threatens suspension of disbelief. We have enough of that with the dragons and the wizards, so there's no reason to add to that burden if we can easily avoid it.

If we imagine one sort of upbringing which leads to a character who can accurately be represented as a Devotion Paladin, then that's the minimum amount of lore complexity which is necessary to get those mechanics into the game. If we imagine an entirely different sort of upbringing, which nevertheless bring a character to the exact same mechanical representation, then that's... odd.

If you have a thousand different origin stories, and they somehow all funnel down to the same ten mechanical models, then something really weird is going on. You shouldn't be able to follow two different roads, and have them both end up in the same place.

I don't really think so.

Let us take something somewhat real world, an person sewing a wound closed. How did they learn to do this?

1) Well, the first answer is going to medical school. Simple enough.
2) But, they could also be a veteran, having done most of their medical training through the army. Similar training, but it is different.
3) Or, perhaps they went to veterinarian school. Sewing flesh closed is pretty similar between people and animals, so it would cover the same basics.
4) Or, perhaps they did not learn sewing because of medical school, perhaps they know how to sew from patching their clothing constantly.
5) Perhaps they were taught sewing as a way to bond with their grandmother, and it is a favorite past time
6) Perhaps they are a costume designer, and being good with needle and thread came from that job
7) Fishermen are good with hooks, needles, and thread, could easily translate into the type of sewing we are talking about.

The real world is complicated, and similiar skills can arise from vastly different experiences. And, in the game, a similiar skill is reflected by the exact same mechanics. Because you aren't going to have a different skills for every different way you can do something. So, having a dozen different interpretations of how you have your skills and what they mean does not make the world incoherent or remove suspension of disbelief. If anything, I find it makes the world more realistic and easier to believe in. There is never a single way of doing something, so people with different expeirences would naturally find different ways to accomplish the same goals.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

Why, though? Why insist on adding something to the setting, beyond what's already there? Why do you even want to play in that setting, if you don't want its rules to apply to your character? Why not play in some other setting, where your new lore is the law of the land?

You already get to be a rad adventurer who saves the world. You don't need to be some unique figure who defies categorization on top of that.

Why? Because:
1) It's a collaborative game.
2) The PC is the only thing the player gets to control.
3) Players don't have an infinite number of games to choose from. Rather they usually have limited options, especially if they want to play with their friends. So it is extremely unlikely that a player will have a game available to them that is a perfect fit for their desired character.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Why, though? Why insist on adding something to the setting, beyond what's already there? Why do you even want to play in that setting, if you don't want its rules to apply to your character? Why not play in some other setting, where your new lore is the law of the land?

You already get to be a rad adventurer who saves the world. You don't need to be some unique figure who defies categorization on top of that.

Why do you insist that we are changing lore?

If I make a barbarian with the background of knight, what lore am I changing? Must all barbarians be semi-literate savages who eschew the comforts of civilization? I still rage, I still am using the barbarian mechanics, after all, barbarians get access to medium armor and shields, using those and a longsword are completely within the realm of possibility.

Does the nobility not exist in your game?

If I want to play a sinner who was forced into a pact with a Celestial, and is being forced to commit good deeds to make up for the stealing of a powerful holy relic, am I breaking the lore of the world? Do holy relics not exist? Celestials? Do the forces of good never compel people to take on quests?

And frankly, all good characters are unique. What makes Gandalf different from Dumbledore? They are both old, wise wizards. But, they are different characters. They approach problems differently. They see the world and their role in it differently. Neither one of them is the same as Merlin either.

Friar Tuck, Judge Frolo, and Saint Peter would all be religious figures, following the same religion too. They are vastly different characters, in fact, other than that single connection point of religion, they share nothing in common with each other.

So, why must we say "all clerics must follow the personality and path to clerichood" why must we say "all wizards are the exact same". Look up "gandalf ripoffs", they are all generic versions of gandalf, none of them are as interesting as the unique take that the original used.

 

[Azzy]

If we imagine one sort of upbringing which leads to a character who can accurately be represented as a Devotion Paladin, then that's the minimum amount of lore complexity which is necessary to get those mechanics into the game. If we imagine an entirely different sort of upbringing, which nevertheless bring a character to the exact same mechanical representation, then that's... odd.

Backgrounds already do this.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Maybe this comes from your earlier comment about playing non-class based games.

D&D is a class based game and I think if you try to turn it into one that isn't you're losing out.

Classes are packaged themes that strongly marry different design components together into cohesive themes. The classes as a whole provide a solid thematic framework to create characters, parties, and as a result, campaigns from.

I don't see classes as being cohesive themes. I see them as stuff that writers wrote. Certainly one can be inspired by what the writers wrote. I have been, probably will be again. But I also get my inspiration from a wider array of sources. Also, I find a lot of the fluff that gets tacked on to classes as kinda "meh" in terms of quality. So I'm still perfectly happy if a player, or the group as a whole, wish to re-skin the mechanics of a given class and say it works because X, Y, Z.

We agree about needing the group to be on the same page. It is a collectively played game. I don't think people are free to create and play their characters however they want. Not if it diminishes the fun of others in the group.

These discussions come up in forums regularly but I've only had 1 situation come up in real life in the last 6 years. Everyone else I've played with has seen their choices, read about the classes and races and designed characters from what it says in the books. And many were creative and interesting characters. Different tastes of course but I tend to find the gimmick and exotic race characters less interesting in general as players tend to just rely on the gimmick and 'newness'.

Anyway, to the issue. The player wanted to play a Cleric but had no interest in being religious. At all. I tried to work with her. I said, well, she can worship the divine essence or ideal of the domain and the appropriate deity will step in to get her, her powers. She even wanted the Trickery Domain which makes total sense to not have direct worship with such a deity. But nope, she just wanted her character to have those powers and abilities.

So I said no. That character was incompatible with the game we were playing.

Whether or not you would say no for whatever game you imagine playing, is that not a reasonable stance to take on some character concepts?

I think it is a strength of the game to have classes create a large part of the identity of a character. There is a lot of room there for how and why that manifests and for many other characteristics outside of class.

An absolutely reasonable stance. You have your campaign/setting fluff. The characters need to fit within it. This players' cleric did not. I see it as being exactly the same as my Jedi example from my post (#325) above.

 

[ClaytonCross]

Huh. Having that Palor Paladin and a Cleric of the Raven Queen in the same party mostly sounds pretty awesome to me. Conflict builds story. Those two characters trying to find common ground would be really interesting. Voting people off the island for making a strong character or story choice seems ... off to me. The idea of a group veto seems to imply a pretty huge lack of trust at the table, which in turn indexes a whole host of other potential issues. I mean, sure, if someone's doing that just to piss another player off that sucks, but why are you playing with that jerkwad anyway would be my first question.

Well to be clear some of my friends are jerks. We full well know they don't do this to having an interesting back story but to cause trouble. Which perhaps makes it strange that creating a rule actually works. At the same time people constantly ask why I don't pick non-jerk friends to witch I must reply, I am may not be a jerk but I am absolutely a bit weird and an acquired taste. I typically end up in a group of people largely rejected by ordinary groups of people. There is a mutual bond of friendship formed by the difficulty of trying to fit into groups of "normal" people much less D&D tables with "normal gamers". So they are friends, but because they are friends its not that I think some might be liars or cheats, its that I KNOW them and which ones are in fact liars and cheats. We make the liars role in the open so we can double check there math for inconstancies and we know the rules and call out the cheats when they try to pull something. At the same time they tolerate my oddities that would perhaps drive away others who were around me too long. The thing is despite all this we still have fun playing together. We call out the liars, we call out the cheats, and we call out the weirdos like me laughing all the time. I guess its as they say, Birds of a feather and all. In our case we are the outcasts, which breads a weird tolerance and expectance for extremely different ideas of morality, fun, and styles of play. It also makes it hard to fill holes at the table so we actually really don't want to kick a player unless we really have to because we can't fill those seats with "normal players" that will not stick around.

 

[TwoSix]

You shouldn't be able to follow two different roads, and have them both end up in the same place.

But...that’s literally how roads work.

 

[abirdcall]

I don't see classes as being cohesive themes. I see them as stuff that writers wrote.

This can be said of everything really.

Certainly one can be inspired by what the writers wrote. I have been, probably will be again. But I also get my inspiration from a wider array of sources. Also, I find a lot of the fluff that gets tacked on to classes as kinda "meh" in terms of quality. So I'm still perfectly happy if a player, or the group as a whole, wish to re-skin the mechanics of a given class and say it works because X, Y, Z.

Maybe something that sets me apart is that I am glad D&D isn't just generic fantasy. I like the cohesive writing of the books.

When people seek to 'refluff,' 'retheme,' or minimize the effects of things Crawford warns them against turning the game into a 'mush'.

Take for example the idea of removing powers or stats or what have you from races. I've seen people suggest this as it would 'allow for more choices of races for character ideas' but the downside of doing this is that the races become more of a mush. They lose much of their identities.

I've also seen people say that it is a failing of D&D that it isn't supportive of all types of fantasy. People think it is designed to be a general fantasy game, probably because it is the most popular one.

An absolutely reasonable stance. You have your campaign/setting fluff. The characters need to fit within it. This players' cleric did not. I see it as being exactly the same as my Jedi example from my post (#325) above.

I think we're agreeing on a lot but showing differing taste.

All I've been saying I think, is that it is not wrong to take a game and mold it into something else. I just think people shouldn't assume that's what everyone wants and is okay with doing that. If everyone sits down to play a game of 5e the baseline is what is in the book.

Anything can be changed by a group. I don't buy into a 'fluff' and 'mechanics' delineation where the 'fluff' can be discarded and changed at will by any player of the group. All changes should be made with concern about what is being gained and what is being lost.

I think people are more likely to think hard about a change to whether a character gets a +1 in this or that than they are about a change that shapes what it means to be a class. And that can be to the detriment of the game. The latter likely having more impact than the former.

 

[Hussar]

While that is true, it also greatly increases the complexity of the world, and it easily gets to a point where it threatens suspension of disbelief. We have enough of that with the dragons and the wizards, so there's no reason to add to that burden if we can easily avoid it.

If we imagine one sort of upbringing which leads to a character who can accurately be represented as a Devotion Paladin, then that's the minimum amount of lore complexity which is necessary to get those mechanics into the game. If we imagine an entirely different sort of upbringing, which nevertheless bring a character to the exact same mechanical representation, then that's... odd.

If you have a thousand different origin stories, and they somehow all funnel down to the same ten mechanical models, then something really weird is going on. You shouldn't be able to follow two different roads, and have them both end up in the same place.

But... the descriptions of the classes themselves include different origin stories. The writeup of fighter includes the following:

All of these heroes are fighters, perhaps the most diverse class of characters in the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons. Questing knights, conquering overlords, royal champions, elite foot soldiers, hardened mercenaries, and bandit kings—as fighters, they all share an unparalleled mastery with weapons and armor, and a thorough knowledge of the skills of combat. And they are well acquainted with death, both meting it out and staring it defiantly in the face.

So, right in the rules, there are a thousand different origin stories that end up in the same mechanical space.

And this is true of every class. Even more "limited" classes like, say a monk. After all, a monk could be a ninja (Shadow monk) or a more anime style martial artist tossing fireballs from his hands with a HADOKEN! A monk could be sent out in to the world with the blessings of his teacher, or he could be exiled from fellows because of some past transgression.

So, yeah, you could have two monks standing side by side that look and act virtually nothing alike.

 

[Fenris-77]

@ClaytonCross - ok, well, if we're talking about jerks and that's your table then sure, make whatever rules seem appropriate to mitigate the gaminess, sure. You have more patience than I would for that sort of behavior. Good on you.