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

[Don Durito]

Okay, I think we're making progress! Let's say I want to use the monk kit, and don't want to steal the monk title now that I've changed the fluff. What if, instead, I want to call the kit (which is the same as the monk kit), a new class called "Punchy Hobbit Bumpkin." That work?

I think you'd have to go and sit over in the corner with the Jedi.

 

[DwarfHammer]

It's just not what a normal Paladin is in 5e.

If that's your setting that's fine, I was just wondering.

I don't really understand why we're talking about real religions now though.

Just examples. But i look to have all characters that get their powers from a divine source fill a role that they would in real life. Otherwise it ruins my suspension of disbelief.

 

[abirdcall]

Okay, I think we're making progress! Let's say I want to use the monk kit, and don't want to steal the monk title now that I've changed the fluff. What if, instead, I want to call the kit (which is the same as the monk kit), a new class called "Punchy Hobbit Bumpkin." That work?

Not for me. That breaks the fiction hard. What do the powers and abilities even mean then? And why does that 'class' have them? etc. That's a hard no, makes it worse.

Also on classes, I like that there are only 12 (13). There could even be a couple less and it would be okay. I want the classes to represent strong broad archetypes.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I just made a character. A character who I was interested in, because honoring your ancestors is something that appears in many cultures, and I wanted to explore that from the idea of a traditional noble family instead of a tribal society. Why was that wrong?

This is an interesting point I want to dig into a bit more.

adhoc seems to suggest players create non-standard characters because they want the mechanics but don’t want to be restricted by the fluff, like they are trying to “game the system”.

Except, what I have seen, and which applies to pretty much every example in this thread, are cases where the player has a defined character or archetype in mind and wants to reflect that.

Chaosmancer wants to explore a member of the nobility with powers tied to the reverence of his ancestors. Ancestral Guardians Noble Barbarians does that.

5e doesn’t have cambions as a PC race, but an infernal tiefling warlock comes close, as does a red dragon tiefling sorcerer.

5e doesn’t have splatbooks that come out every 2 months with new prestige classes, races and spells, and I like that because I find refluffling existing mechanics to be better from a balance perspective.

 

[Azzy]

It's hard to imagine an RPG without fluff because it couldn't work. It just wouldn't be an RPG.

So, HERO System and GURPS (and others) aren't RPGs?

 

[DwarfHammer]

Would you allow a player to take the cleric class and say he is a fighter and just refluff his spells as martial abilites. I wouldn’t. It breaks the game for me. Although it is 100% cool if you and your group want to do that. Monk abilities just don’t fit a brawler imho. It’s good to hear the things that break other people’s immersion and hear there styles of play. I’ve done a little of this with certain specific settings in mind. But it doesn’t work for everything. It really has to be table dependent.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I don’t want to speak for Chaosmaster, but I’m not sure he would disagree with you. His character would probably not refer to himself as a barbarian, but would still be an entirely legal character.

Yeah, he would never have said "I am a barbarian" he introduced himself as "Sir Kalten of Tamuli"

 

[Captain Panda]

Would you allow a player to take the cleric class and say he is a fighter and just refluff his spells as martial abilites. I wouldn’t. It breaks the game for me. Although it is 100% cool if you and your group want to do that. Monk abilities just don’t fit a brawler imho. It’s good to hear the things that break other people’s immersion and hear there styles of play. I’ve done a little of this with certain specific settings in mind. But it doesn’t work for everything. It really has to be table dependent.

I don't think most people in this thread would. There are bounds of logic, there is a line, the primary contention here is that several people are insisting fluff isn't a set of guidelines to give players ideas, it's a rule in the same restrictive sense mechanics are, and changing fluff is the same as changing mechanics. That's... not a view many hold.

 

[Don Durito]

I don't think most people in this thread would. There are bounds of logic, there is a line, the primary contention here is that several people are insisting fluff isn't a set of guidelines to give players ideas, it's a rule in the same restrictive sense mechanics are, and changing fluff is the same as changing mechanics. That's... not a view many hold.

Well at least until they do.

If I say my character is an intelligent cat and he possesses a flesh golem with built in magic weaponry to protect him, (wizard and familiar, but playing the familiar as the character) you'd expect to get pushback at quite a lot of tables.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Well at least until they do.

If I say my character is an intelligent cat and he possesses a flesh golem with built in magic weaponry to protect him, (wizard and familiar, but playing the familiar as the character) you'd expect to get pushback at quite a lot of tables.

I love the equivalencies in this thread.

"I want to play a wizard who believes in sharing knowledge with all instead of hoarding it"

"Well, that's pretty out there for the tropes. For example, people might not like it if you play a sentient bologna sandwich"


"Do all warlocks need to have sought out their patron? What if this demon forced me to serve or die? That sounds more interesting than selling my soul on purpose."

"You people always want to change things, what else do you want, is your next character Kaladin from The Stormlight Archives"


I mean really, we talk about minor changes, following all the rules, and people bring respond as though we are asking to do anything and everything under the sun.