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

[cbwjm]

Aside from the fact that no one was referencing AP Shows...

Actual Play shows aren't representative At All of the average 5e D&D group.

WOTC has turned out plenty of official D&D AP's and sourcebooks, which have sold rather well.

The 5e RAW culture can be seen on this very forum; I've seen you in enough threads to know you have come across it.

Considering all of the homebrew classes, subclasses, creatures, systems, and settings I see daily when browsing reddit, I think that RAW culture isn't as strong as you believe. Plenty of people here have shown how they mod their games, someone in this thread posted a link to their blog about how they modded the game to run Dark Sun. RAW is one thing, and it's great to be able to point to something which shows how something works, but often times that thing is followed up with "But check with your DM, they might do things differently."

 

[Jaeger]

I agree with all of this, yeah. The d20/OGL stuff had an unfortunate habit of either not going far enough, or abandoning almost everything except the d20 resolution mechanism. Spycraft was a great example of not going far enough for my group.

I'm continually surprised we don't just see more games which minimize HP growth. If every PC started with like 30 HP and never went beyond say 60 (at most), you could build a really tight game around that. Make dropping below 0 give you a few simple injuries (or maybe you can take an injury to avoid X points of HP loss) and you're about 4 million miles closer to 90% of fantasy and you've made the game more interesting.

This is a big one for me as well. I agree 100%

A relatively low or even Fixed HP flattens out the math and actually makes the game easier to mod.

There is no reason you cannot emulate the kind of feel you get from WHFRP or BRP fantasy games. But everyone who has put out a d20 based game seems to think HP must increase with level. Period.

Considering all of the homebrew classes, subclasses, creatures, systems, and settings I see daily when browsing reddit, I think that RAW culture isn't as strong as you believe. Plenty of people here have shown how they mod their games, someone in this thread posted a link to their blog about how they modded the game to run Dark Sun. RAW is one thing, and it's great to be able to point to something which shows how something works, but often times that thing is followed up with "But check with your DM, they might do things differently."

Finding those kinds of things on hobbyist forums is not surprising. But we are a very tiny portion of the RPG playing hobby.

And yet we still see the RAW culture on all these platforms as well! Not even the die hard hobbyists can completely get away from it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Aside from the fact that no one was referencing AP Shows...

Okay? So what?

Actual Play shows aren't representative At All of the average 5e D&D group.

Who said they were? I referenced them as an indicator of the fact that new players aren't starting out in a community that rejects homebrew and houserules, or that views the game as only correct if played RAW.

WOTC has turned out plenty of official D&D AP's and sourcebooks, which have sold rather well.

What on earth could this possibly have to do with anything?

The 5e RAW culture can be seen on this very forum; I've seen you in enough threads to know you have come across it.

Most people who stick to talking about RAW on these forums have said that they homebrew and change things at home, but stick to RAW in discussions because it simply makes sense to do so, because we aren't at eachother's tables.

Agree completely but AP shows don't even slightly resemble normal tables.

None of us know whether that is true or not, or rather to what degree it is true and untrue.

What we do know is that they are vastly more popular than this forum, or any dnd related subreddit.

Even here, with the sort of people most likely to do that, including published designers and so on, it's relatively rare.

What? Do you think that I'm saying that normal tables stream their games? What is rare?

Reading the reddit where people are a bit more normal, people will make up minor variants on stuff (esp. on the main D&D reddit people often have variant Tieflings or Dragonborn or the like, most of whom seem to exist for Original-Character-Do-Not-Steal-type reasons), and they'll absolutely use UA stuff, but they don't even use 3PP stuff much (esp. if not Kickstartered), let alone original stuff by themselves.

I'm on those reddits (there are several), and...yeah people homebrew and houserule quite a lot.

And most of the APs I'm aware of exist in a pretty narrow range of the fantasy spectrum, albeit sometimes leaning a bit steampunk/space fantasy. I don't see much stuff that resembles the kind of fantasy you see in APs of other games.

I think you and I probably have very different definitions of words like "narrow".

Considering all of the homebrew classes, subclasses, creatures, systems, and settings I see daily when browsing reddit, I think that RAW culture isn't as strong as you believe. Plenty of people here have shown how they mod their games, someone in this thread posted a link to their blog about how they modded the game to run Dark Sun. RAW is one thing, and it's great to be able to point to something which shows how something works, but often times that thing is followed up with "But check with your DM, they might do things differently."

Exactly. I talk about dnd on here, reddit, twitter, and used to use tumblr as well before they nerfed nsfw blogs and I finally got tired of that format. In all of those places, I see people talking about homebrew, houserules, their OCs and homebrew worlds, etc. Much more than they talk about 3pp, although 3pp sells very well these days.

I mean, look at the kickstarters for dnd 3pp, the sales on dmsguild, and the traffic in places like r/unearthedarcana (which is all about homebrew, not wotc's UA articles). The dnd community isn't a RAW community.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm continually surprised we don't just see more games which minimize HP growth. If every PC started with like 30 HP and never went beyond say 60 (at most), you could build a really tight game around that. Make dropping below 0 give you a few simple injuries (or maybe you can take an injury to avoid X points of HP loss) and you're about 4 million miles closer to 90% of fantasy and you've made the game more interesting.

Most non-mythic fantasy is low level. Like "the strongest people are level 8" low level low level. Characters rarely "level up" in stories and rarely more than a couple levels from first appearance to last. Only the "zero to hero" characters ever level up more than thrice.

That's why classes mean something in those settings and class based organizations and factions are common.Because everyone is weak and limited in power, sustain, and versatility.

D&D is an anomoly. It's one of the few fantasy types when the base assumption has zeroes, heroes, superheroes, and epic heroes existing at the same time. Only myths and legends are the only other types of fantasy that regularly do these. And Comics and Anime.

D&D, Myths, Anime, and Comics.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I do not get the absorb background magic for martial it ruins the basic fantasy of them, also last I checked sage chakra magic in naruto came form a space monster so why would it have anything to do with nature?

also if any magic came out of the souls it would be that mad thing from 3.5 or psionics as mind and souls have been synonymous for a very long time.

1. What do you think the basic fantasy of a Martial is exactly? For me and the people I play with, they're warriors who fight with weapons, and at high levels their physical abilities become super human, hence absorbing ambient magic as an explanation for that. We don't need them to be a nonsensichal pocket of low magic in an otherwise high magic setting.

2. As originally introduced in Naruto, Sage chakra is 'nature chakra' one gathers from the world around them.

3. The occult spell list in Pathfinder2e is psychic stuff, lovecraftian horror stuff, Hags, Shadows, and etc. Bards cast with Occult in Pathfinder, so yeah, fits.

 

[cbwjm]

Finding those kinds of things on hobbyist forums is not surprising. But we are a very tiny portion of the RPG playing hobby.

And yet we still see the RAW culture on all these platforms as well! Not even the die hard hobbyists can completely get away from it.

Exactly, we are small part of the overall picture so I wouldn't put too much emphasis on there being a RAW culture running through the hobby, for all we know, it's just the people asking those questions about rulings in these forums/subreddits. Even then, I still think I see more creativity with homebrew and houserules in these forums than I do about RAW, and most of those questions tend to be more clarifications about how something is meant to work, like can a wizard 1/cleric 19 add 9th level wizard spells to their spellbook.

 

[cbwjm]

Exactly. I talk about dnd on here, reddit, twitter, and used to use tumblr as well before they nerfed nsfw blogs and I finally got tired of that format. In all of those places, I see people talking about homebrew, houserules, their OCs and homebrew worlds, etc. Much more than they talk about 3pp, although 3pp sells very well these days.

I mean, look at the kickstarters for dnd 3pp, the sales on dmsguild, and the traffic in places like r/unearthedarcana (which is all about homebrew, not wotc's UA articles). The dnd community isn't a RAW community.

Definitely, when it comes to a query I will tend to answer how it appears by the book, I often follow it up with "But check with your DM" More often than not they are someone new trying to understand the game, better to give them the RAW answer first and foremost.

The amount of 3pp content is huge, and often covering things which are in the books but not quite how people like it. I've seen a lot of crafting rules come out for instance, but like you I see people more often than not talk about what they are doing with DnD, asking for advice on how they are setting up a kingdom, pantheon, or entire world. Asking to look over their homebrew class or subclass, or asking people to check out their houserules. There is a lot of this stuff out there.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Definitely, when it comes to a query I will tend to answer how it appears by the book, I often follow it up with "But check with your DM" More often than not they are someone new trying to understand the game, better to give them the RAW answer first and foremost.

The amount of 3pp content is huge, and often covering things which are in the books but not quite how people like it. I've seen a lot of crafting rules come out for instance, but like you I see people more often than not talk about what they are doing with DnD, asking for advice on how they are setting up a kingdom, pantheon, or entire world. Asking to look over their homebrew class or subclass, or asking people to check out their houserules. There is a lot of this stuff out there.

Absolutely, and there’s no way people aren’t being influenced by popular D&D media, but much more than that is the fact that 5e just does a good job of making it really clear that you’re encouraged to do this sort of thing.

Anyway, we are still detailing the thread lol

sorry, @Steampunkette

 

[Mind of tempest]

1. What do you think the basic fantasy of a Martial is exactly? For me and the people I play with, they're warriors who fight with weapons, and at high levels their physical abilities become super human, hence absorbing ambient magic as an explanation for that. We don't need them to be a nonsensichal pocket of low magic in an otherwise high magic setting.

2. As originally introduced in Naruto, Sage chakra is 'nature chakra' one gathers from the world around them.

3. The occult spell list in Pathfinder2e is psychic stuff, lovecraftian horror stuff, Hags, Shadows, and etc. Bards cast with Occult in Pathfinder, so yeah, fits.

I just do not like the explanation of ambient magic doing that as it makes magic bower the be all end all thing and it makes wizard egos even more annoying plus sometimes you do not need a lot of explanations for it.

true but it is later learned it came from space for some reason, haze about why have not watched it for some time.

but defining bards that way seem wrong somehow, it feels out of character for them.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think you and I probably have very different definitions of words like "narrow".

Haha yes that is probably fair!