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

[Chaosmancer]

Then you should probably talk to your DM about getting an ability that you will actually use. Having Cunning Action is worthless if you don't do those things.

Right, so your defense of the limitation you imposed is to homebrew the problem away.

Change the rules and there is no problem in your claims.

No game is perfect. Having to jump through these hoops to "prove" your point just ends up supporting mine. The game will have moments that don't make sense. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing to amplify and increase the numbers of those moments.

I see, you admit your logic is faulty, that your approach has the same problems you claimed my approach had, but that my approach is still worse because you feel like it increases the number of times it happens.

Very clever, you don't even need to defend your positon if you don't care about it leading to the same place as the position you are arguing against.

 

[Maxperson]

Right, so your defense of the limitation you imposed is to homebrew the problem away.

Change the rules and there is no problem in your claims.

ROFL Dude, YOU imposed that limit. I didn't come up with a character who didn't ever use those abilities.

 

[Hussar]

I've told this to you more than once, to Chaosmancer multiple time, and to others multiple times. At LEAST 10 times now, so this is the last time I'm going to tell you.

It's the general theme of the fluff that matters, not the specifics written. Can gnomes be in tribes? Yes. Can those tribes be in mountains? Yes. All that matters is that the gnome can meet the general theme of the barbarian class.

But, Barbarians can't come from mountains. They specifically come from, "tundra, jungle or grasslands." (PHB 46). So, according to you, gnomes do not meet the general theme of the barbarian class.

So, no, you haven't told me. You told me that dwarves could be barbarians because specific trumps general. Fair enough. But, that isn't the case here. There is no specific to trump the general. In fact, the specific, specifically, does not allow for gnome barbarians.

 

[Maxperson]

But, Barbarians can't come from mountains. They specifically come from, "tundra, jungle or grasslands." (PHB 46). So, according to you, gnomes do not meet the general theme of the barbarian class.

Go troll someone else.

 

[Hussar]

Go troll someone else.

Sorry, but, how is using the rules you set out in this thread trolling?

You have SPECIFICALLY stated that the flavor text in the books are rules and cannot be changed without house rules. They are ironclad. The flavor text for barbarians specifies three locales that barbarians can come from. So, can I make a barbarian that comes from a mountainous region or not? And, if I can, how do you justify it?

 

[Chaosmancer]

ROFL Dude, YOU imposed that limit. I didn't come up with a character who didn't ever use those abilities.

Why do I always have to go back over the discussion we just had?

You said Cunning Action was a learned ability, that a 1st level rogue hiding, disengaging and dashing learned from those experiences and "unlocked" Cunning action at level 2.

I responded that they might not get the chance to hide, disengage or dash during combat in 1st level. It is after all, the shortest level in the game.

Your response was that they must practice those skills out of combat, during their downtime (Which would be even shorter at level 1, but I'll gloss over that)

I then asked, what about a Rogue whom it would make little sense to do something like practice hiding? Investigators or Swashbucklers would not need to hide, and they might not have even taken Stealth as a skill. Nothing outside of tradition requires Rogues to be skilled in stealth after all.

And your response was that if you were not going to use your abilities, you might as well change the rules to give you an ability you would use.

Which, misses the point. Perhaps the character doesn't want to hide, but the player does want dash and hide as a bonus action, they are playing a rogue after all. But, even if the character explicitly wouldn't learn the ability, they still get it, so how do we justify that? How do we square the fact that you must train a skill that you would not train to gain Cunning Action as a rogue?

This is a weakness in the argument that all abilities have fluff and all fluff are rules that should be obeyed. It breaks down and begins making less sense the more you dig into it. And, if you are unwilling to defend your own position, why must you arguing against mine?

Edit: Unless it is your position that all rogues must take the stealth skill. Then we have a whole different issue to discuss.

Sorry, but, how is using the rules you set out in this thread trolling?

You have SPECIFICALLY stated that the flavor text in the books are rules and cannot be changed without house rules. They are ironclad. The flavor text for barbarians specifies three locales that barbarians can come from. So, can I make a barbarian that comes from a mountainous region or not? And, if I can, how do you justify it?

You should go back a few pages where Max explained this before Hussar.

You see, barbarian tribes can live in mountains, that doesn't break the general theme. So the list of Tundra, Grassland or Jungle is merely an example list, after all Max has stated repeatedly that you don't need to follow the specific rules, like a list of geographic locations, but you must instead focus on following the general themes, like all barbarians are uncomfortable within city walls and don't like crowds.

It really is very simple, Max is just always right, no matter if it contradicts what he said before, because that was also right and he didn't say what you think he said. I should know, I've been responding to him for nearly three days and I seem to have gotten every single position he has taken wrong at multiple turns.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, you're right. I should know better. But, sometimes, just once in a while, playing whack a mole and spanking someone really thoroughly, is just so ... therapeutic.

 

[Fenris-77]

What on earth makes you think that happens. The PC is learning his abilities as he uses them the entire time he is gaining experience. When he levels, he has been learning things moving towards that ability for the entire level. It's not as if he's gone from 0 to 100 just because his exp counter ticked over into the next level.

The way your previous post was worded it sounded like that was your model. So we agree on that anyway, nice.

Here's the thing about class abilities - they aren't really something the character practices, they're an abstract rule meant to represent a lot of different things about the character. The actions in D&D, things like Dash, Disengage, etc, are also abstracts, they aren't skills in the way that you want them to be. Some of them come closer to that than others of course. But a Rogue isn't 'practicing' cunning action, that's an abstract rule meant to represent some combination of speed, fast hands and quick thinking and the class gets it no matter which actions they use, what the character concept is, and regardless of practice of any kind. Practice can't be the answer anyway, for reasons already brought up - if it was just about practice then any character who practiced those things, say a fast DEX-based fighter, would also get the ability, but they don't. Why not? Because the rules are abstractions, not the result of character actions within the diagetic frame. Obviously the verisimilitude goes up when there is a better connection between actual character actions and new abilities, but that isn't how the game is designed and that bit is left to role playing.

Sure they are. Both of them. From level 1 to level 2, the rogue is Dashing and Hiding, and probably Disengaging. As he does that he is learning what works well and what doesn't. Little tricks that click through a level of practice once he hits 2nd level. Same with barbarians and rage.

Again, abstractions, although the actions come a little closer to mirroring what's actually happening in the fiction. It's not 'practice' though, if it were a fighter would be the king of disengaging since that's a core part melee combat training. I'm not suggesting that most rogues don't perform those actions, they do, of course, and Cunning Action makes sense a rogue ability too, because it reflects in a general way what rogues are usually good at, but it isn't tied to actual character concept or anything else. The fit between a specific character and the class abilities is always going to be fuzzy and that's on purpose - the abilities are designed to reflect most Rogues most of the time, but not every ability clearly reflects every Rogue all of the time.

 

[Maxperson]

You have SPECIFICALLY stated that the flavor text in the books are rules and cannot be changed without house rules. They are ironclad. The flavor text for barbarians specifies three locales that barbarians can come from. So, can I make a barbarian that comes from a mountainous region or not? And, if I can, how do you justify it?

I never said that. Someone else said that they are all rules. I've maintained from the start that the specifics can be changed, but if you change all of or the vast majority of the fluff, it becomes a new homebrew class.

 

[Maxperson]

I responded that they might not get the chance to hide, disengage or dash during combat in 1st level. It is after all, the shortest level in the game.

Your response was that they must practice those skills out of combat, during their downtime (Which would be even shorter at level 1, but I'll gloss over that)

And all the rest of their lives in which they hid and ran around.

I then asked, what about a Rogue whom it would make little sense to do something like practice hiding? Investigators or Swashbucklers would not need to hide, and they might not have even taken Stealth as a skill. Nothing outside of tradition requires Rogues to be skilled in stealth after all.

That is not what you said. This is what you said, "So, we must assume that the rogue is practicing hiding, disengaging from hostile forces, and running extra fast. And if the rogue is, say, planning on being an inquisitve investigator who doesn't do those things? "

Those things. All three. Not just hide. You were forced to come up with a white room, corner case PC who walks everywhere and has never even jogged for his entire life, has never hidden(and even investigators have to hide sometimes), and who has never run and will never run away. The guy would have to stroll away from a dragon trying to eat him.

Having to come up with an absurd white room character like that is pretty much auto fail.

And your response was that if you were not going to use your abilities, you might as well change the rules to give you an ability you would use.

Yes. Someone absurd like that who has never and will never hide, move faster than a walk or run away from even the deadliest encounter should not have that ability and you should work with your DM to fix the broken PC.

This is a weakness in the argument that all abilities have fluff and all fluff are rules that should be obeyed. It breaks down and begins making less sense the more you dig into it. And, if you are unwilling to defend your own position, why must you arguing against mine?

This is a blatant Strawman. I've never claimed that all fluff are rules and should be obeyed and you know it.