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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 8249153" data-attributes="member: 6796468">You're really bad at picking up what people think from their posts, Jasper. Might I suggest accepting what people are saying rather than trying to make a bunch of insulting inferences about their thoughts and ideas?Oh my goodness, Jmartkdr...I don't know if I have a better way of getting my point across to you, but I don't see how I'm going to do it if you keep trying to sidetrack the overall argument with pigeonholes and tangents.This isn't about any one setting. It's about all of them that leave class concepts flapping in the wind rather than making them a part of the world, and the design processes that go into that ideology.You know one of my -absolute- favorite settings for -exactly- this reason? Dark Sun. Every class had a role, a purpose, a narrative driving force. Yeah, you could ignore it for your character, maybe make a Warrior Bard rather than an Assassin, for example. But it fit into the world from the Sorcerer-Kings and their Paladin-Lackeys through to Druids and Psionicists.Character classes were members of dysfunctional societies, or nomads, or wasteland raiders. Their powers came from terrible sources or benign ones. And their use of those powers occasionally had serious and lasting repercussions.I pretty much entirely agree with you, Squibbles, except for this:Generic Fighters always have setting ties. Whether it's knightly orders or armies of fighting men or something else. There's always plenty of different narrative-specific places to put a fighter. The whole class isn't any one of them, sure. I'm not saying it should be. But even the most generic fighter can be a part of the world. Even if you don't choose to be a member of a particular subclass "Hired Sellsword" is still a common enough identity to tie yourself to the world through the people buying your skills.Same goes for Rogues. Thieves Guilds provide natural connection to the world, and are generally a core part of whatever the "Biggest City" is in a given setting. Your rogue doesn't have to be a part of the guild or anything, but it's there. And it creates a sense of context for Rogues, thiefly or otherwise.And Wizards? There's always some Tower or Guild or School or other... Or dozens of them. Or potential mentors and figures who have been around forever. Ancient spellbooks and works of great magic to study and seek out...Clerics and Heralds, by their very nature, have setting-specific narrative positions in various churches and faiths, orders or knighthoods. Not to mention direct quests from their divine sugar-parent.Bards always have a long list of potential taverns to frequent, nobles to seek patronage from, and adventuring parties to team up with and sing about.And there's plenty of places to put a Berserker whether in back alley fighting rings or vast open plains or deep jungles with tribes of like-minded people.We kind of think of Fighters, Wizards, Rogues, and Clerics as not needing any hooks... But that's because the very process of fleshing out the most basic details of the world (Politics, Nations, Magic, Religion, Cities, Wildlands, Etc) grants them just -so- much to work with. Sorcerers, Druids, Warlocks, Artificers, Rangers, and Monks often, but not always, get the short end of this stick. Rather than have specific setting-lore they're often relegated to whatever lore can be cobbled together from their class abilities and a high level overview of their class fantasy. Yeah, artificers are tinkers... who do they tinker -for-? What kind of people do they associate with? Where do they wind up in a social hierarchy? The Circle of the Land is a subclass, but is there -actually- a druidic circle in the world tied to that identity or are druids and their works just kind of background assumptions with no serious development?The general answer is shrug because the setting rarely says.It's maddening, to me.</blockquote>

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