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

[FrozenNorth]

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

Yes and no. The more restrictive the design, the more likely the rules prevent you from realizing your concept.

5e though? The classes themselves aren’t particularly restrictive, people’s expectations of them are.

A bard is just someone who uses music to create magic. They might be a faithful chorist, a barbarian shaman, bugler in an army company, or an old sea salt creakily belting out sea shanties on an accordion (note that no where does it specify that you must play well for you spells to have effect).

 

[GMforPowergamers]

A thief who doesn't steal.

this is the most common one I saw, and the first one I saw. Game 1 session 0 having never played D&D but was the DM.

Player 1 wizard (named dalimar no less... and an elf 'but a dark elf)
player 2 a ranger
player 3 a bard
player 4 a fighter/thief "but I'm not a thief, I don't steal anything I'm just trained in useful skills and if i get the drop on you ican do really good strikes"
then player 4 had a 2nd character that was our wand of... i mean cleric

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Sounds like a bad experience, but I am not sure XP for “clericy” actions is the solution. Instead, better communication at session zero is.

that was my whole point... that you can play against type you just need to talk and be open about it from the start...

I’ll respond to your example with another example: in the Might Nein (by Critical Role), the party ended up with two clerics: Jester and Cad. Cas played a traditional cleric, with lots of heals. Jester was a cleric of trickery, and rarly healed anyone, but contributed to the party in a different way (Polymorph was on her spell list). Should Cad have received more XP because he played the role more traditionally ?

again... as long as they are not being a detriment to the party I don't understand teh question?
you seem to have only quoted half my post

this is something that needs to be walked through.

classes can have suggestions, things they do best (what I would call a role) but playing against type or even just a slight tweek of type should be fine and if it isn't the DM needs to be upfront about it... I love all of your examples but as a DM I want to bring up my own

But in goes further: in 5e, your subclass can greatly modify your character’s focus.

it can, I don't expect many fiend pact tome warlocks in the front line, I don't expect many necromancers in the front line... I DO expect most hexblades blade pact warlocks in the front line and most bladesingers in the front line

So, if you set the goals for sorcerers to extra XP, what do you do about divine sorcerers, who are principally healers?

again you missed the whole point

this is something that needs to be walked through.

classes can have suggestions, things they do best (what I would call a role) but playing against type or even just a slight tweek of type should be fine and if it isn't the DM needs to be upfront about it... I love all of your examples but as a DM I want to bring up my own

 

[Thomas Shey]

With this I agree.

What I'm trying to push back against is the idea that exceptions and playing-against-type can't happen and-or should be suppressed by the system.

Sure. But again, once people have joined a group, its usually because of their function to one degree or another, and for better or worse, with a class system people expect that function to relate to the class, as the class is normally a shorthand for that. At the very least if someone is going to be playing against type heavily there, they need to notify people up front and not just have "cleric" do all the heavy lifting.

(This is normally not an issue with non-classed games unless the player is being deliberately perverse, as people will talk about the job they're going to cover when bringing their character in, and that's usually at least a little more precise than D&D classes are in what can be expected, though sometimes there are buried expectations that need to be addressed)

Perhaps, though everything said here can (and sometimes does) also apply to adventuring NPCs.

Not sure why that changes anything.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One response to this is @Thomas Shey's - why would a player build a PC with abilities they don't plan to use?

But sometimes a player doesn't get to choose - eg Traveller's random PC gen. But a PC in Traveller doesn't have a class. A class is a bundle of functionally-integrated abilities, which are bundled together because they fit into the logic of the gameplay in some particular fashion. If you're not going to play a RPG in a way that cares about those functionally-integrated bundles of abilities, then why use them as a core component of your game?

Of course the fact that Traveler characters were quite as random as they were was often a weakness of the system; it could end up meaning a given group was utterly lacking in things it needed to actually function, or that a given character had no real function at all in practice. This could be particularly pronounced with characters who got booted out of the professional system early on if they didn't come from one that had an automatic gain in some area. That's over and above a group where no one had even aimed at a service that could give them what they might need.

But its also an exception here; very few games without classes were quite that random in what they awarded, either.

 

[Thomas Shey]

this is the most common one I saw, and the first one I saw. Game 1 session 0 having never played D&D but was the DM.

Player 1 wizard (named dalimar no less... and an elf 'but a dark elf)
player 2 a ranger
player 3 a bard
player 4 a fighter/thief "but I'm not a thief, I don't steal anything I'm just trained in useful skills and if i get the drop on you ican do really good strikes"
then player 4 had a 2nd character that was our wand of... i mean cleric

Edit: Since Sac corrected me below, and I don't want to confuse anyone who wasn't around at the time of the reality, I'm removing a post here that made a claim about OD&D that was very much not true, and as I note below, I clearly conflated with the later 2e approach.

Don't get old, people. Don't get old.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Thieves were that way from the day they walked in the door. Since they had built-in skills, but the assignment of values to them was at player choice, you could end up with a "thief" who was just a scout--Climbing, Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, but no Pickpocket, Pick Locks or Disarm Traps.

Player choice of how to assign % points to a thief didn't start until 2e. Prior to 2e, your skills were all level based with no player choice on how good you were with each. But even in 2e, all thieves had a base value in all of their skills.

 

[Mannahnin]

Player choice of how to assign % points to a thief didn't start until 2e. Prior to 2e, your skills were all level based with no player choice on how good you were with each. But even in 2e, all thieves had a base value in all of their skills.

I was going to say... I remember that being a big change in 2E.

For the prior 15 years every Thief of a given level had the same % chance at every skill, plus or minus adjustments for Dex score, armor worn (or lack thereof) and race.

 

[FrozenNorth]

again... as long as they are not being a detriment to the party I don't understand teh question?
you seem to have only quoted half my post

I was going back to the initial point as raised: bonus XP for acting your class, which I was very much against. I don’t know where you stand on that issue.

 

[pemerton]

Yes and no. The more restrictive the design, the more likely the rules prevent you from realizing your concept.

5e though? The classes themselves aren’t particularly restrictive, people’s expectations of them are.

A bard is just someone who uses music to create magic. They might be a faithful chorist, a barbarian shaman, bugler in an army company, or an old sea salt creakily belting out sea shanties on an accordion (note that no where does it specify that you must play well for you spells to have effect).

For my part, I don't really see the merits of setting this up as a classed-based game. I also accept @Thomas Shey's point that there's real sense in which it's not one.