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That depends on what sort of setting you're trying to model. A lot of fantasy realms are pretty underpopulated. The Shire is around 50,000-100,000 people, and Gondor (the largest realm in Middle Earth, is around 1 million. Historically, a large city in Mesopotamia around the "dawn of...

Well, OK. But it happens a lot less frequently than with class, because players' underlying assumptions about the two typically differ. But "half-elves" and "half-orcs" have been labeled as 'races' since AD&D. And in 5e, half-orcs have the "Relentless Endurance" and "Savage Attacks" features...

As someone who works with texts, I admit that I find it a little strange that in the 218 posts in this thread, no one has yet turned to the primary source. Here is what it says about class: "Class is the primary definition of what your character can do. It's more than a profession, it's your...

I'm just not sure if I share your optimism. If a class is just a set of interrelated mechanics (although, on what grounds do we assume that they are in fact interrelated), it can become clunky. Case in point - the recent ranger offering in the UA (not the very last one stalker archetype, but the...

No, no snapped wires - I wasn't saying you (or anyone, really) thought not having classes is a good idea. I was merely routing the discussion back to the central question by underlining the centrality of class to the game. And suggesting that given that centrality, overly de-emphasizing its...

Oh, I'll easily concede that I don't want every aspect of a class - like HD or XP to be concrete, and that there is generally speaking a continuum of more-to-less concrete classes (and that Fighters fall toward the less concrete end of the spectrum). But that's hardly the same thing as saying...

Yes, and it's not always easy, and it is time-consuming. But still, it's the kind of work that a lot of us want to do, which is why people are designing classes left and right in order to express a particular flavor in the game that they think the existing classes don't cover. And that flavor...

I have no beef with this, or anyone who says that the degree to which class is concrete depends on the setting. My only issue is with those who say that class is an abstract, metagame category to a greater extent than race or background, by definition.

Yes, this. That's precisely the point I'm making. If we can refluff class so easily, there is no earthly reason why we can't refluff race, skills, weapons, or anything else. They're all metagame if not clearly rooted in the setting. But it strikes me as strange that there is so much emphasis on...

The degree to which you can identify a naked, unconscious member as belonging to a race depends on a lot of social factors. One, the degree of mixing. Two, relatedly, the degree to which your culture places a premium on identifying distinct races as a "thing". That's why there used to be such a...

Meh. Your whole race > background > class hierarchy of greater to lesser concreteness is still based on your understanding of "biological" categories as more "real" than "social" categories is still derived from outside the game context (thus, they're metagame). And it doesn't matter whether...

My point is simply that if you emphasize the distinction between class as mechanic and character knowledge, and make that an issue for many characters, then you should in principle be prepared to accept the same kind of emphasis on the difference between race as mechanic (which it is) and...

Yup - those are the magic words. If it fits into the setting, if player and DM agree, we have no issues. It's when it doesn't and we don't... It can be a mix - again, it depends on setting. Maybe I'm a fighter in a South-Asian-flavored game. As someone trained in combat, I belong to the...

Right, but some of us think it's at least possible for all/most of the classes to match to at least some key aspect of character identity, whereas others don't care/care less. It's a stylistic question, which is precisely why it's so important, and why it generates such strong opinions about how...

Given what they say in their survey analysis, if they make the ranger a subclass of fighter again, rather than expand the beast's powers, the ranger's beast will become weaker still, and the complaints would only increase. And it's pretty clear people do like the beasts.

I like the general thrust of their conclusions drawn on the Ranger survey (NO! to the spell-less, shamanistic Ambuscadeur Ranger, yes to spells and Beasts). But, I don't think the Beast should be the core feature of the Ranger class as a whole. it would probably be better if the Ranger was built...

I've already dealt with the race is 100% correct thing, and what the out-of-game source of this claim is.

A lot of this is still semantics. Is every Cant speaker a rogue, or is everyone who establishes a pact with a powerful fae/fiend/celestial a warlock? No. it's a question of rules and exceptions. Does Joe say he is a Captain in Lord Fauntleroy's Guard, as opposed to a "Fighter"? Great! But that...

I gave another option - it might just be a question of changing the name. I don't think the people who disagree are stating an injunction; they are voicing an aesthetic preference. But the key question has already been stated:

Yes, precisely. Class is too central to the reality of this game's universes, and refluffing to obscure that seems to me unnecessary (why not play a skill-based game?) and clumsy. If a class does not seem to offer you what you want, it maybe a) a problem of nomenclature (e.g. ) - just because...