D&D General Younger Players Telling Us how Old School Gamers Played

[overgeeked]

Put another way, as long as I'm contributing in-character to the party's success I shouldn't be punished for that contribution being made in a clearly sub-optimal manner.

RPGs will be so much more fun when the notion of optimal play is dead and buried.

 

[Lanefan]

As I posted, I don't see the merits of class-based PC design if the class is not a set of expected functions.

Why is the "expected" in there?

The class is a set of functions. How or if those functions are used in play is (or should be!) entirely up to the player.

Given your usual pro-player-agency stance I'm somewhat surprised you're not backing me to the hilt on this.

 

[pemerton]

Why is the "expected" in there?

The class is a set of functions. How or if those functions are used in play is (or should be!) entirely up to the player.

If there is no expectation about the deployment of functions, then building characters around discrete functions/roles doesn't make much sense to me.

It's not like class/function/role is the only way to build a RPG character!

 

[Lanefan]

If there is no expectation about the deployment of functions, then building characters around discrete functions/roles doesn't make much sense to me.

It does to me.

If I "build" (gads, I've come to despise that term!) a Thief but decide that as a part of his character he will never in fact steal anything despite his having all sorts of baked-in abilities designed to help him do so, all I'm doing is playing against (stereo)type; and if playing against type has somehow become controversial then something's gone a bit wrong somewhere.

Same thing if I come in with a Thief, say, whose character flaw is a fear of being alone; and thus will never go out on solo scouting sorties even though within the party his baked-in abilities make him by far the best-suited for doing so.

The general expectations can be present, sure, but if one's not allowed to play against those expectations then it's more like "demands" or "dictates", which hammers one's ability to play one's character as desired.

It's not like class/function/role is the only way to build a RPG character!

True; but even if one starts at it from a different direction e.g. personality first or character-story-arc first or whatever, if the game is using a class-based system then class-function-role is still going to be in there somewhere.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For what you describe here, I don't see what class-based PC design is bringing to the table.

One has to note that at least for several decades now, in the main line of D&D and immediately related games, one can very much argue that classes are a vestigial structure still there because people expect it in D&D, not something that is followed in terms of role behavior in any consistent fashion. That was inevitable as soon as significant design choice became available in character generation and progression. The only class you can reliably expect to still land in any consistent way near its original conception is the fighter line, just because enough of its specifics are baked hard into its core abilities instead of in anything that provides much choice; that's not been true with any of the spellcasters or rogue offshoots for a very long time (in fact, one can argue how much it was really true of any of those back in day one if a player was determined to work against the tide; there's a lot more opportunities to do that these days).

Essentially, class based design only reliably brings anything to the table as long as its pretty darn rigid, or no one has any tendency not to follow the obvious direction it points.

 

[Thomas Shey]

RPGs will be so much more fun when the notion of optimal play is dead and buried.

Its not a question of whether its optimal play, just that the only real point in classes is having a bucketed set of abilities that point at a purpose. Its basically perverse to bother with that kind of structure if you're not going to use them that way; you might as well use a system that lets the player pick the abilities he wants and use the ones he picks rather than being saddled with whatever the system gives him.

 

[Thomas Shey]

True; but even if one starts at it from a different direction e.g. personality first or character-story-arc first or whatever, if the game is using a class-based system then class-function-role is still going to be in there somewhere.

That begs the question of why even bothering to have a class based structure in the system. Its not serving any purpose there.

 

[pemerton]

One has to note that at least for several decades now, in the main line of D&D and immediately related games, one can very much argue that classes are a vestigial structure still there because people expect it in D&D, not something that is followed in terms of role behavior in any consistent fashion.

Agreed. With the exception of 4e, which leans hard into class-as-function and makes it work! (This is why I liked 4e - it took all the classic D&Disms and actually made them work in the context of a modern RPG.)

 

[pemerton]

even if one starts at it from a different direction e.g. personality first or character-story-arc first or whatever, if the game is using a class-based system then class-function-role is still going to be in there somewhere.

As @Thomas Shey said, why use class-based PC building if class doesn't mean anything in terms of expected function?

 

[Lanefan]

As @Thomas Shey said, why use class-based PC building if class doesn't mean anything in terms of expected function?

Even if you don't use class-based building and the character gets its in-game abilities via other mechanics (I think it's safe to assume characters are ging to have some sort of in-game abilities), the question still remains whether the having of certian abilities carries a hard-coded expectation that those abilities have to be used by the character in a proscribed manner, or whether the player can choose to play against type and either use those abilities differently or not use them at all; and this is the question being side-stepped when asking whether class-based is useful.