Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I'd rather just houserule in training time.
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D&D (2024) Should a general Adventurer class be created to represent the Everyman?
- Thread starter Minigiant
- Start date
That to me is short sighted design. 5e has a bunch of ideas it locked itself into that designers wished they could change.
D&D assumes you are taught the entire basis befind a class at level 1 and it take the winds of time or fire of XP to advance.
One of my hopes for 6e is that training time is built into class design and multiclassing.
Low training classes like barbarian, warlock, and sorcerer might have their core class features come online later and require a 13 to multiclass in.
High training classes like cleric, druid, monk, and wizard would be frontloaded, but require a 15 to multiclass into and add +25% of your base adult age to start in.
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On another note, what if multiclassing was limited by Intelligence. You have to be smart to study and maintain 2 or 3 full classes. And only a D&D via campaign reasons would let to bypass the Int limit (via demon pacts or time skip training).
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (He/him)
That doesn't quite capture it, and I don't think being average really comes into it. Ordinary is closer to the mark, but not average because the everyman must also display benign conduct for easy audience identification: things like being kind, gentle, good-natured, and friendly. The average person doesn't have enough of these positive qualities to make an effective everyman.
From this, it seems you would think it's a problem if a player chose the Noble or Sage background for the same character for which they chose the Everyman class, a sign, perhaps, that this formulation of the concept is too narrow for a class. Maybe that's your point. I don't recall Hamlet being portrayed as particularly academically inclined, though, just that he went to school, like a lot of people. Also, the average person in a courtly drama is noble, so you seem to be saying you can't have an everyman character in a story about these sorts of people.
I think you're confusing the fact that Hamlet's lines were written by William Shakespeare with his being a different quality of person. I mean, Charlie Brown also waxes philosophical (as does Homer Simpson too, probably), he just does it in naturalistic, 20th-century American boy sort of way.
Yes, and I think inaction is key to the identity of the protagonist everyman, whether or not Hamlet is one. Inaction through ambivalence or avoidance should be the go to for the character until something important is at stake. For Hamlet, it was the prospect of dying without exacting his revenge, which is an extreme example, but the class could offer an ability along the lines of an ability to make a special attack against an opponent when the life of the everyman or a loved one is at stake, perhaps turning their own "vile" means against them.
Well, someone agrees with you because I looked at the article, and Prince Hamlet's been removed from the examples.
I don't know where "unskilled" came from. I mean, ordinary people have all kinds of skills. And I don't agree an everyman must be strictly average. But I do agree that a character possessed of unusual skills or a special destiny is a departure from the Everyman archetype and is instead an expression of The Chosen One. Perhaps someone would like a chosen one class too.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Why would anyone want to play an everyman who's not an everyman?
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Remathilis
Legend
Skipping over the Shakespeare literary critique (I could do that all day; Shakespeare was my focus in college). I want to get to this...
I would tend to think such a character class could be done, but the niche for it is extremely thin. You are playing a commoner with the power-budget of a full PC class, but it doesn't look like any class we have so far. What makes that difficult is that the Everyman can't "learn" specialized skills (by that I mean class features) because that would be anathema to the concept of the Everyman. For example, an Everyman cannot "learn" how to evade fireballs the way a Rogue does. He can still have a feature that makes damage from Dex saves half or nothing, but it cannot be something he trains to learn how to do, it's just something that happens to him. Every time he makes a save, Fate/luck/the Gods/whatever conveniently puts him close enough to a wall/pillar/cover that he never takes the full blunt of the blast. He can learn mundane things like skills or languages, but not special features like weapon masteries or cantrip. Essentially, the character survives by Dumb Luck.
Literature does have such characters. We talk about LotR's hobbits like Samwise mostly surviving through luck and persistence, not training or combat prowess. His skills as a cook and gardener aren't winning him the day. I would argue Tasselhoff is a better example though; the handler class is essentially a kender-everyman class (it takes the main kender racial trait: thief skills and lets him improve them. It's the closest to a kender race-as-class as AD&D would allow). Tass is absolutely not a trained "thief", his abilities are just innate kender curiosity that manifests as thief skills. And while he lacks the full power of a proper Thief (no sneak attack/backstab) he's close enough that he can hang with the other Heroes of the Lance. (At least in AD&D, I could make an argument that the Thief class itself barely hangs with the others, but that's a debate for a different topic).
So, for me, the Everyman class would feel a little like Tasselhoff: a character who innately can mimic enough of a character class's power to not feel burdensome, but not so much that he loses the feeling for playing an elevated commoner. Can such a class be done? Yes. Is it a lot of work for a class that for the most part has a limited niche? Also yes.
The OP's argument is that every class in the game is "highly skilled". That is, they have to spend time (usually years) learning swordplay, spell use, or both. They are looking for an experience where a character who has not trained in such feats but only in what a common every-day person in a D&D world would know. No weapon mastery, no spellcasting, no skill expertise, no rages, sneak attacks, or martial arts. So, when I say "unskilled", I mean lacking any special training that would constitute having one of the 14 character classes currently in the game.
I would tend to think such a character class could be done, but the niche for it is extremely thin. You are playing a commoner with the power-budget of a full PC class, but it doesn't look like any class we have so far. What makes that difficult is that the Everyman can't "learn" specialized skills (by that I mean class features) because that would be anathema to the concept of the Everyman. For example, an Everyman cannot "learn" how to evade fireballs the way a Rogue does. He can still have a feature that makes damage from Dex saves half or nothing, but it cannot be something he trains to learn how to do, it's just something that happens to him. Every time he makes a save, Fate/luck/the Gods/whatever conveniently puts him close enough to a wall/pillar/cover that he never takes the full blunt of the blast. He can learn mundane things like skills or languages, but not special features like weapon masteries or cantrip. Essentially, the character survives by Dumb Luck.
Literature does have such characters. We talk about LotR's hobbits like Samwise mostly surviving through luck and persistence, not training or combat prowess. His skills as a cook and gardener aren't winning him the day. I would argue Tasselhoff is a better example though; the handler class is essentially a kender-everyman class (it takes the main kender racial trait: thief skills and lets him improve them. It's the closest to a kender race-as-class as AD&D would allow). Tass is absolutely not a trained "thief", his abilities are just innate kender curiosity that manifests as thief skills. And while he lacks the full power of a proper Thief (no sneak attack/backstab) he's close enough that he can hang with the other Heroes of the Lance. (At least in AD&D, I could make an argument that the Thief class itself barely hangs with the others, but that's a debate for a different topic).
So, for me, the Everyman class would feel a little like Tasselhoff: a character who innately can mimic enough of a character class's power to not feel burdensome, but not so much that he loses the feeling for playing an elevated commoner. Can such a class be done? Yes. Is it a lot of work for a class that for the most part has a limited niche? Also yes.
Edgar Ironpelt
Adventurer
Or tone down the rapid advancement.
Remathilis
Legend
This is a bad side effect of designing large modules that are supposed to carry you over multiple levels. The timing for the adventure suggests days or weeks, but each chapter or section is its own level. Obviously, WotC's APs are a big factor in this, but I've seen a lot of 3pp modules that fall into the same pacing. To the point you don't get to enjoy the level you're at before you're adding the next one.
I REALLY wish designers would give levels a little more breathing room and maybe scale back the level range of their adventures to make leveling feel worth it rather than what you do at the end of the session.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Or both!
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
This is one advantage of not using APs. No artificial framework to determine what level you ought to be.
Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (He/him)
Okay, yeah, maybe in the Geek Talk forum, lol.
This clarifies things somewhat, but I think calling it the "Everyman" is muddling the conversation. The everyman isn't the lucky guy or the guy protected by fate or the gods. If that's the concept, then I think a better name for the class would be the Serendipitous Fool or Lucky Fool, or maybe just the Fool.
Samwise, on the other hand, is pretty much a perfect everyman. It isn't luck that makes him effective. It's two things that are both types of attributes of the everyman.
The first type, which is used in low-stakes situations, can take a variety of forms but, I think, is best described as an ability to avoid difficulties of one sort or another. Sam uses this to avoid revealing his part in the "Conspiracy" when interrogated by Gandalf, after being caught eavesdropping, by pretending to be innocently curious. He also gets Frodo to let him carry some of his baggage for him by lying about his baggage being the lightest. Another possible example is, in the Battle of the Chamber of Mazarbul, Sam receives a cut to his scalp from an orc that he kills, possibly avoiding a far worse injury, so a literal ability to dodge a significant wound which probably should have killed him since he's no great warrior himself. I think it could also be argued that Sam's moment of ambivalence, upon finding Frodo seemingly dead at Cirith Ungol, whether to pursue Gollum for revenge or to complete the quest, may have helped him avoid leaving Frodo behind, his hesitation having lasted long enough that as he departs he hears the approaching orcs.
The second type, which is particularly prominent in Sam because of his role as a protagonist, can only be used to avert a complete disaster and allows Sam to take swift decisive heroic action (in Sam's case, to save Frodo). He resists Old Man Willow's sleep spell, so he can save Frodo from drowning. He saves Frodo from the Watcher in the Water. In the Battle of the Chamber of Mazarbul, he breaks the shaft of the spear of the orc chieftain that has Frodo pinned to the wall. And, of course, there's his heroic rescue of Frodo from the Tower of Cirith Ungol in preparation for which he resists the temptation to claim the Ring as his own. It isn't luck that enables him to do this. Tolkien makes it clear that it's his love for Frodo and his "plain hobbit-sense". This seems like a good explanation or "power source" for the everyman's abilities.
I'm not familiar with Tasselhoff, but I had a somewhat similar dynamic occur with a PC in a game I was DMing which was supposed to be a "drunken fist" sort of character. The PC's class was monk, but the character's backstory was that he was a common baker in search of his missing wife. All the PC's actions and uses of monk abilities were described by the player as the result of clumsiness on the part of the PC. It worked out okay, but I think it was a lot of work for the player to constantly dissociate the mechanics of the class from PC's level of ability in the fiction.
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