D&D General Character Classes should Mean Something in the Setting

[Necrozius]

Just refluff the patron as your focus of study. Learning about devils has given you insight into acquiring fiendish abilities.

I mean, one could refluff patrons as anything because there's literally no mechanical heft to the contract. The D&D Warlock is far from a Faustian bargain at all unless the DM and player come up with something.

Warlocks could have pacts with Philosophies, Technology, to their Family, to a Sentient Stone... even to themselves. Or you could just use the mechanical rules of a Warlock for "magic user" of any type really.

 

[TwoSix]

I mean, one could refluff patrons as anything because there's literally no mechanical heft to the contract. The D&D Warlock is far from a Faustian bargain at all unless the DM and player come up with something.

Warlocks could have pacts with Philosophies, Technology, to their Family, to a Sentient Stone... even to themselves. Or you could just use the mechanical rules of a Warlock for "magic user" of any type really.

Exactly right. The warlock patron can be a fun storyline to explore if desired, but there's certainly no need to enforce it. We're a long way from 2e classes and kits that tried to balance mechanical boons with roleplaying restrictions.

 

[Necrozius]

Exactly right. The warlock patron can be a fun storyline to explore if desired, but there's certainly no need to enforce it. We're a long way from 2e classes and kits that tried to balance mechanical boons with roleplaying restrictions.

Atheist Clerics ahoy!

 

[Steampunkette]

Atheist Clerics ahoy!

Can't -really- do Athiest Clerics in D&D Settings 'cause most of the time the fact that there are gods is common knowledge. Not "Maybe there's a God" but "I saw him, last Tuesday, down at pub. He owes me 6 silver!"

But Ur-Priest, for sure. Stealing magic from the gods. Or a Cleric devoted not to a deity but to a specific ideal/domain? I could see that being a thing.

 

[steeldragons]

... which I must now -furiously- begin writing.

Get outta my lane/head! lol.

 

[Necrozius]

Can't -really- do Athiest Clerics in D&D Settings 'cause most of the time the fact that there are gods is common knowledge. Not "Maybe there's a God" but "I saw him, last Tuesday, down at pub. He owes me 6 silver!"

But Ur-Priest, for sure. Stealing magic from the gods. Or a Cleric devoted not to a deity but to a specific ideal/domain? I could see that being a thing.

If Warlock is deemed just a pile of mechanics for arcane character concepts, completely divorced from making a pact with some kind of intelligent (or alien) being (ie, drawing power from an ideology, an organization, a personal belief etc...) then why couldn't a character concept who is devoted to not-religion draw power from an ideal such as the "Cosmic Balance" or "Mathematics drive reality" or "the Multiverse" etc... I mean... could an uber Philosopher or Buddhist monk use the Cleric class mechanics? Why not?

PErhaps another take: Clerics devoted to the Philosophical concept of Chaos, Law, Neutrality, Karma, Entropy etc...

 

[jmartkdr2]

Can't -really- do Athiest Clerics in D&D Settings 'cause most of the time the fact that there are gods is common knowledge. Not "Maybe there's a God" but "I saw him, last Tuesday, down at pub. He owes me 6 silver!"

But Ur-Priest, for sure. Stealing magic from the gods. Or a Cleric devoted not to a deity but to a specific ideal/domain? I could see that being a thing.

"There are no gods" atheists are the flat-earthers of most DnD settings. "The gods are stupid and no one should worship them because they're stupid" is more in-line with modern atheism (which tends to not only reject but critique religion as a concept) - and a pretty reasonable point of view in a lot of settings.

Not sure I'd play them as a cleric, though. If they wanted that particular spell list we'd come up with something.

 

[TwoSix]

Not sure I'd play them as a cleric, though. If they wanted that particular spell list we'd come up with something.

This. Spell list swapping is an easy to customize a character to being closer to what you need.

 

[cbwjm]

Do they really represent classes, though? Or do they represent the "fluff"?

A Guard, a Veteran, a Gladiator, I don't think they represent the Fighter (some of them have abilities that not even fighters have, like Brave or Brute). They are a mechanical representation of what the fluff needs, at any given moment.

If anything, this goes to show even more that "class" is a purely mechanical artefact, that should have no fixed connection with fluff, but to be used to represent whatever fluff we need to represent.

I'm not saying they all do, but some are clearly representative of a character class. The various wizard classes get represented in NPC stat blocks, there's a master thief with some rogue class abilities, an arch druid, a wizard apprentice. I could probably find more. Others are just the fluff which is fine, not every NPC needs to represent a class in the PHB.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I'd say you're overestimating the margin between ED and D&D mechanically.

The real difference is simply that the writing for ED takes time and effort to embed the classes into the world or Barsaive. D&D could absolutely have done the same. It doesn't, but instead it makes a huge number of incredibly specific assumptions about the world, which I've discussed, which generate a hyper-specific implied world (though the exact nature of said implied world varies from edition to edition - 3.XE being the broadest and closest to "generic fantasy", I think, esp. if official-optional rules are in play).

ED didn't get popular enough, but I daresay if it had, we might well have seen it support other settings. I disagree with your claim it supports a narrow range of fantasy, at least if we're talking mechanics. That is an impossible claim to accept when Vancian casting exists, when HP exist (and there's no mechanics to get around them - you just knocked out about 90% of literary fantasy settings right there - I notice Worlds Without Number DOES have a way around HP - execution attacks - which are different to and more appropriate to most fantasy than CdGs), and so on.

I can't say ED supports a wider range of fantasy mechanically, but I can say it is at least as broad.

So you're saying that you could effortlessly run a game set in Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Dark Sun using Earthdawn? I don't think so (without serious modification). Whereas I'm pretty confident I could run a game set in Earthdawn using D&D. I'm not suggesting it would be anywhere as good as if I ran Earthdawn using Earthdawn. Just that it would work. Earthdawn has a lot of implications in its mechanics that go far beyond Vancian magic or the abstraction of HP (Horror ?points? for example). Earthdawn is pretty clearly designed to support the setting of Earthdawn, and nothing else.

D&D is obviously going to produce D&D-esque games. Just like GURPS produces games that feel like GURPS. Different mediums will produce different outcomes and encourage different input.

It's like how the Lord of the Rings movies are a different experience from the novels, which both differ from the experience of playing The One Ring RPG (even if you are replaying the LotR story). Yet they are all the Lord of the Rings. Simply translated through different mediums.

Similarly, D&D supports a broad range of fantasy. Albeit, translated through the lens of D&D. That doesn't mean it doesn't support a broad range of fantasy. It simply means that the medium informs the experience, and this is essentially true (to a greater or lesser degree) for every medium.