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

[FrozenNorth]

Narratively, perhaps. But mechanically, only one of the two classes can actually add new spells that they find and add them to their repertoire. The Warlock can do that to a smaller extent if they pick Pact of the Tome and a specific Invocation. And only Rituals, of which there are very few.

To me, this is cutting the distinction very fine.

The Wizard added 8 spells they found to their spellbook. The Warlock added 3 cantrips and 5 rituals to their Book of Shadows. I don’t see any basis to conclude that the Wizard has any basis to claim that he is more academically-oriented than that Warlock.

And second, many of the wizards I’ve seen don’t conform to the stereotype of seeking out knowledge to add to their spellbooks. So a warlock whose background is to actively seek knowledge, and who take a subclass and an invocation to do that specifically is likely to be more academically-oriented than the average wizard.

 

[Delazar]

Not using the actual rules from the 5E rulebooks they're not.

They might be playing a thing they're calling Dark Sun, but the total lack of a full Psionic class (or much in the way of Psionics rules), the lack of support for Defiling mechanics, the absence of several classes (some could be archetypes in 5E), the absence of most of the races, the lack of rules for weapon materials, the lack of rules for Dragons/Avangions, the lack of the appropriate monsters, the lack of a definition of arcane magic and so on. I mean that's practically the tip of the iceberg. I repeat - you cannot even come close to Dark Sun with the extant 5E rules.

Maybe what you mean is, by homebrewing a gigantic amount of material, including entire classes and fundamental mechanics not present in 5E, people can run a homebrew version of Dark Sun using some 5E rules and a ton of additional material? If so sure. But that's the point I'm making. Even to run a D&D setting - a setting specifically designed for an earlier edition of the same game - you'd need vast amounts of extra material - and if you generated vast amounts of extra material for ED, it could likely do the same. They're both highly specific settings with huge numbers of extremely weird and specific assumptions, and both of which lack rules for pretty common stuff from fantasy settings.

not trying to disprove your point, but I run a 2-year long campaign in Dark Sun using 5e, and all I had was a 6 pages conversion document

Fury of Freedom

A D&D 5e Campaign - Started October 2017 - Ended October 2019

darksun01.blogspot.com

 

[Ruin Explorer]

not trying to disprove your point, but I run a 2-year long campaign in Dark Sun using 5e, and all I had was a 6 pages conversion document

Fury of Freedom

A D&D 5e Campaign - Started October 2017 - Ended October 2019

darksun01.blogspot.com

Sure, and with respect, much of that would never appear in any official 5E book, and it doesn't deal with most of the issues I mentioned (it too is missing most of the stuff). It's a crude homebrew which calls itself Dark Sun. I'm sure it was fun - most crude homebrews are (metaphorical or literal)! And that's an official D&D setting which has appeared in two editions!

 

[Krachek]

It is almost a quantic question,
Do npc have a stat bloc only when they interact with PC or all the time?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It is almost a quantic question,
Do npc have a stat bloc only when they interact with PC or all the time?

Yeah I think that's an amusing question!

In earlier editions (OD&D, 1E), particularly those with a sandbox approach, it's pretty clear it was intended to be "all the time" to at least some extent - certainly much of it was diegetic, i.e. applied "off-screen". But by 4E, it was pretty much definitely "only when they interact with PCs". 5E is closer to 4E on this I think.

HP themselves have always been a bit weird but it seems like they are non-diegetic and don't apply off-screen, broadly speaking, and EGG seems to have regarded them this way. Still, them applying on-screen limits what D&D can do, and pushes it away from being particularly "generic". No system is universal, but D&D is one of the ones further from the typical events of fantasy media. Back in 2E this caused a lot of issue and hilarity when characters from D&D novels were given official stats, and often had to break pretty basic D&D rules. It got particularly bad when a character habitually or definingly did something which was completely impossible under AD&D 2E rules, like snap a neck with their bare hands. IIRC in the books listing FR heroes this ended up with people having bizarre magic items or special rules to allow them to do stuff that characters normally couldn't, and it was very irritating as a player to see the issues highlighted like that whilst the main rules did nothing to address them (even though as WWN shows, in a lot of cases they could have).

 

[Umbran]

"System doesn't matter" huh? Ok. If that's your position then well, welcome to 1991 and there's not much to discuss.

Mod Note:
Dude, if you are going to engage, you have a responsibility to be respectful. Please continue with 75% less snarky dismissiveness, if you continue at all. Thanks.

 

[TwoSix]

Even WWN with it's intentionally-peculiar system at least has a properly worked-in spell-point based caster (and you can bring in Psionics from SWN). You'd have a hell of an easier time running DS with WWN than 5E D&D (indeed I've seen some people discussing how they're doing just that). And WWN isn't a "generic" system, it's a specific one.

I'm just treating most of the non-spell using classes as Psionic classes; Healers, Vowed, Duelists, etc. Easier, and I don't need more books.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Also in Planescape there are the Athar. They don't deny the existence of powerful creatures calling themselves "gods" but they just don't consider them "divine" (whatever that means), and they do not deserve worship. For the Athar, "gods" are just super powerful individuals, like saying that an archmage is a "god" to an ant. Gods are the archmages, we are the ants.

Yep. Atheism is pretty easy in D&D.

"System doesn't matter" huh? Ok. If that's your position then well, welcome to 1991 and there's not much to discuss.

Ah yes, the condescension and assumption of ignorance rather than engage with the concept that people legitimately disagree with you.

Eberron doesn't work great with 5E - it works far worse than with 3.XE (or even 4E, arguably).

It works excellently in 5e. In fact, the game is friendlier to the assumptions of Eberron now than it was in the much less generic 3.5.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Also, just a note, making monsters/NPCs isn’t homebrew. It is literally part of the game. Part of most TTRPGSs, in fact, but especially those with an intention toward being a versatile toolkit, like D&D, or the even more generic GURPS.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Anyway, perhaps a discussion of whether D&D is generic could be its own thread?