D&D 5E WOTC Possibly Removing "Druids" for Religious/Cultural Sensitivity Reasons

[Lanefan]

Druid and Paladin both need to go not because they are offensive, but because they are very specific to times and places in European history and D&D should ditch that whole anchor.

The names need to go. The classes can stay; each fills a niche.

Monks don't need to be there at all, but if you must have a magical kung fu class, just call it a martial artist.

"Martial artist" is a term that applies to all warriors, isn't it?

Mystic Warrior might be a better name, but still isn't brilliant.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Use Shadowrun's Martial Adept for Monk.

Or do the unthinkable and make fighters capable of fighting with their fists.

 

[Lanefan]

Eh. Priest is way more generic than cleric. We would say ’a priest of Zeus’ or ”a priest of Ra’ etc.

Every time I use a term like priests to mean all clerics, someone in the room will inevitably say "and priestesses!".

Cleric is nicely generic that way.

 

[Lanefan]

Let's go full circle and rename the Fighter as "Warlord" with lots of damage-on-a-miss mechanics and Fortune in the Middle healing,

Why not skip the middleman and just go with healing-on-a-miss?

 

[TwoSix]

Why not skip the middleman and just go with healing-on-a-miss?

That's a design I can get behind!

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

By all means, go look at the Wikipedia page for "priest": "Priests exist in many religions today, such as all or some branches of Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto and Hinduism."

For the latter three, it's not an indigenous term, it's a categorization by analogy. Like the use of the Siberian animist term Shaman to describe similar practitioners in other religions. For Christianity and Judaism, that's a thornier issue because of a their shared history, but I don't think I'll get into the weeds regarding that.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Dice & Nerds. let's just cut to the chase.

Eh.

Ampersands are offensive to people who are averse to remembering the difference between a logogram and a punctuation mark, and certainly don't want to think about the highfalutin' terms for them.

 

[Umbran]

For the latter three, it's not an indigenous term, it's a categorization by analogy.

Since when do languages only use indigenous terms?

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Since when do languages only use indigenous terms?

They don't. The question is, within this context, is that a good thing or not?

 

[MGibster]

This is why you don't design games by committee.