D&D 5E Do Classes Have Concrete Meaning In Your Game?

[empireofchaos]

I stand by my point that any sensible sub-species definition does indeed define Pygmies and Masai as belonging to different races. Pygmies are quite highly divergent, as far as I recall Masai would be closer to all non-Africans than to Pygmies.

OK, then your "sensible definition" is at variance with both biological and social sciences, so I rest my case.

 

[S'mon]

The descent groups (such as they are) that are classified by population genetics are not racial groups. Generally, in humans, 85% of all genetic variation is within such groups, and only 15% is between such groups. For biologists, the common threshold for defining a distinct species is 25-30% intergroup variation.

That doesn't seem to make any sense to me. It's the differences that matter, not the similarities, and these can be almost arbitrarily small while having huge phenotype effects. We share 40% of our genes with lettuce, something over 98% with chimpanzees. There is no accepted point of genetic variation at which distinct species are defined - there are some rules of thumb such as "will not interbreed with each other when given the chance to do so" or "will not produce fertile offspring", but these are far from universally applied.

 

[S'mon]

OK, then your "sensible definition" is at variance with both biological and social sciences, so I rest my case.

Since you are the empireofchaos, I am sceptical of your veracity.

 

[empireofchaos]

Since you are the empireofchaos, I am sceptical of your veracity.

I am empireofchaos simply as a mirror, for this and other shenanigans.

Races may exist in humans in a cultural sense, but biological concepts of race are needed to access their reality in a non-species-specific manner and to see if cultural categories correspond to biological categories within humans. Modern biological concepts of race can be implemented objectively with molecular genetic data through hypothesis-testing. Genetic data sets are used to see if biological races exist in humans and in our closest evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee. Using the two most commonly used biological concepts of race, chimpanzees are indeed subdivided into races but humans are not. Adaptive traits, such as skin color, have frequently been used to define races in humans, but such adaptive traits reflect the underlying environmental factor to which they are adaptive and not overall genetic differentiation, and different adaptive traits define discordant groups. There are no objective criteria for choosing one adaptive trait over another to define race. As a consequence, adaptive traits do not define races in humans. Much of the recent scientific literature on human evolution portrays human populations as separate branches on an evolutionary tree. A tree-like structure among humans has been falsified whenever tested, so this practice is scientifically indefensible. It is also socially irresponsible as these pictorial representations of human evolution have more impact on the general public than nuanced phrases in the text of a scientific paper. Humans have much genetic diversity, but the vast majority of this diversity reflects individual uniqueness and not race.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23684745

Alan R. Templeton is an American geneticist and statistician at Washington University in St. Louis, where he holds the Charles Rebstock professorship in biology,[1] and also at the University of Haifa, where he holds a professorship in the Institute of Evolution and the Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Templeton

 

[Ovinomancer]

Gah! My thread about classes and fiction had become an argument about race.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Okay. Your evidence about this is interesting (though I know for a fact that there have been challenges to the "only a tiny fraction of variation is between groups" argument, which apparently could be, in part, due to the type of statistical analysis performed on the data).

Bigger question: what races in (typical) D&D are the product of evolution? It's generally accepted that the worlds of D&D are created by a deity (or deities), and that the organic beings present on them are either the product of divine creation or later experimentation by magic-using mortals.

Also: sure, half elves in Tolkien have a choice. Where else does anything even remotely like it appear in fiction? Dwarves don't get to decide one day that hey, I feel like being human. And D&D goes MUCH further afield than that. The obvious case is of course Dragonborn, who lay eggs. Or is using that as a basis for distinction PURELY socially constructed? Are you next going to say that talking of "male" and "female" is purely, 100% social, with neither reason nor motive in biology, because a small sliver of the population is difficult to analyze physiologically? Again, I have no question whatsoever that social factors apply. My problem simply lies in your insistence that, because social factors are *present*, nothing else matters and it is unrecoverable inconsistency to view RPG class in a different way than RPG race.

I think it's perfectly cromulent to treat either one as "concrete" and the other as purely mechanical. "Concrete" classes is how Guild Wars 2 views it: you've trained for years in a particular field, and would not have the time or possibly even ability to cross to another. Whether you learned your (say) ice magic from the Blood Legion, the Mages' Guild, the memories that came before you in the Dream, Raven Shamans, or whatever else, you are still manipulating ice, and that's what Elementalists do; observing a person manipulating ice, or the dead, or minds, is sufficient to show that that person is an elementalist, necromancer, or mesmer respectively. (Magical categories, I'll note, were defined by the human gods, not mortals, so they emphatically cannot be socially constructed.) Concrete race basically cashes out the same way: if you're possessed of a particular physiology, you also have specific, identifiable secondary characteristics, which you (the character) cannot change and, within the fiction, cannot choose either.

Or, the group may decide that one or both of those facts is not true. Just because you see a char manipulating ice, doesn't mean they're a Wizard. Alternatively, just because a person is 3 feet tall and can't see in the dark may not mean they aren't an elf. Deciding that vocations are siloed or not siloed is completely orthogonal to deciding whether physiology is uniformly associated with particular labels or not.

 

[Arial Black]

"monk" means someone who studied a certain discipline to learn how to manipulate ki and unarmed combat, not "unarmed strike 1d4, +Wis to AC, and Con-save-or-stunned attack".

Ah, that's where you've gone wrong, I get it now.

The fluff explains how you got your abilities, but there is no such thing as 'One True Fluff' for any class.

What is 'true' is the crunch; the abilities you have. Any fluff that believably explains those abilities is golden. How believable does it need to be? Well, at least as believable that attending a monastery enables you to run on water.

No fluff in the book represents the only possible way to gain those exact abilities in a world with so many paths to magical effects. In such a world, it would be a mistake to imagine that Jason Bourne-type training undertaken by the elves of The Lachrymae Shevarash is entirely mundane and cannot weave the magic of the world into their techniques, to get the results shown in the (Shadow) Monk class table.

If I say that their god, Shevarash, grants ki abilities, or that ki abilities just represent the natural magic that flows through the world and it can be harnessed by a disciplined mind, the idea that an elven mind can be disciplined through the particular brand of 'secret agent' training undertaken by some Lachrymae Shevarash is just as plausible as getting that kind of training in a monastery.

As DM, you can disallow any game mechanics that you want in your house. You may rule that there are no 'fighters' (in terms of the class) in your world. But this debate only makes sense if we talk about the PHB, not how you've altered it; that's not a common frame of reference.

But if you have allowed a class in your game, it's wrong to say that players are only allowed to use your concept, not their own. You can make sure that they do have an explanation for those abilities, but the threshold should not be 'I wouldn't have thought of it that way', but 'Is that explanation at least as reasonable as any of the examples in the PHB'.

Some of the classes were inspired by real-world legends. Monks by eastern martial arts, paladins by the twelve peers of Charlemagne. But whatever the original inspiration, we are not limited by those exact concepts.

Lets say you set a game in Charlemagne's world, but altered to include the PHB. The Twelve Peers, the Paladins, are an in-game noble private club. They were typical knights in shining armour...except the ones that weren't. Archbishop Turpin was a Paladin, but was actually the inspiration for the D&D cleric!

In such a game, having levels in the paladin class wouldn't mean you were a Paladin in game, and being a Paladin wouldn't mean you had any paladin class levels.

In 2E I made a paladin with the Savage kit, all without breaking any rules. She was a bit Tarzan-y (okay, a LOT Tarzan-y), but she gained her holy powers from her god (The White Jaguar, god of the natives of the island), disdained armour and used a spear. One comment I got (thankfully not from the DM) was "She's not a paladin; paladins wear heavy armour!" You make your paladins how you want, but there is no rule that paladins only get their powers while wearing heavy armour.

If I wanted to play a monk in the Charlemagne game, and the DM quite reasonably didn't want any eastern influence on this particular campaign, I'd have to come up with a plausible explanation of how I could do those things. TBH, I wouldn't want to, in a game which is all about knights in shining armour! But if someone else could come up with a plausible explanation and could fit it into the narrative, more power to him!

The DM could certainly say 'No monks....barbarians, non-human PCs...', whatever he wanted. But saying that there are monks, but only if your character concept matches mine, is not the way forward.

If the campaign were based on ancient China, would you ban every class that was inspired by western concepts? No paladins, that's for certain, because paladins are only allowed in France, right? For me, there are plenty of Chinese character concepts that would allow a paladin. Every man and his dog can get abilities that leak into the supernatural, so a bit of Smiting powered by your Devotion...or Vengeance...no problem.

Oh, you want to play a paladin, but who only wears leather armour? LEAVE MY HOUSE AND NEVER RETURN!!! Everyone knows that paladins wear heavy armour! It's my way or the highway. My players tell me they're okay with it...at least the ones who have no other game to go to...

 

[empireofchaos]

Okay. Your evidence about this is interesting (though I know for a fact that there have been challenges to the "only a tiny fraction of variation is between groups" argument, which apparently could be, in part, due to the type of statistical analysis performed on the data).

Bigger question: what races in (typical) D&D are the product of evolution? It's generally accepted that the worlds of D&D are created by a deity (or deities), and that the organic beings present on them are either the product of divine creation or later experimentation by magic-using mortals.

Also: sure, half elves in Tolkien have a choice. Where else does anything even remotely like it appear in fiction? Dwarves don't get to decide one day that hey, I feel like being human. And D&D goes MUCH further afield than that. The obvious case is of course Dragonborn, who lay eggs. Or is using that as a basis for distinction PURELY socially constructed? Are you next going to say that talking of "male" and "female" is purely, 100% social, with neither reason nor motive in biology, because a small sliver of the population is difficult to analyze physiologically? Again, I have no question whatsoever that social factors apply. My problem simply lies in your insistence that, because social factors are *present*, nothing else matters and it is unrecoverable inconsistency to view RPG class in a different way than RPG race.

I think it's perfectly cromulent to treat either one as "concrete" and the other as purely mechanical. "Concrete" classes is how Guild Wars 2 views it: you've trained for years in a particular field, and would not have the time or possibly even ability to cross to another. Whether you learned your (say) ice magic from the Blood Legion, the Mages' Guild, the memories that came before you in the Dream, Raven Shamans, or whatever else, you are still manipulating ice, and that's what Elementalists do; observing a person manipulating ice, or the dead, or minds, is sufficient to show that that person is an elementalist, necromancer, or mesmer respectively. (Magical categories, I'll note, were defined by the human gods, not mortals, so they emphatically cannot be socially constructed.) Concrete race basically cashes out the same way: if you're possessed of a particular physiology, you also have specific, identifiable secondary characteristics, which you (the character) cannot change and, within the fiction, cannot choose either.

Or, the group may decide that one or both of those facts is not true. Just because you see a char manipulating ice, doesn't mean they're a Wizard. Alternatively, just because a person is 3 feet tall and can't see in the dark may not mean they aren't an elf. Deciding that vocations are siloed or not siloed is completely orthogonal to deciding whether physiology is uniformly associated with particular labels or not.

As it stands, established scientific disciplines across the board regard race as a social construct, not because social factors are merely "present", but because the evidence of their efficacy in the formation of race is much stronger. If you have evidence of how genetic mechanisms produce "race", or even interact with social factors to produce it through co-evolution, fine. Assumptions that biological factors "must" somehow influence race, and that there must be evidence to this effect somewhere smacks of unfalsifiability - no evidence can overturn the claim that it must be so. And if you really want to have a debate about the distinction between gender and sex like the one we're having about race and heritability, fine, but I don't think it's necessary to the question at hand. Oh, and incidentally, arguments regarding classes as groups influence by biology also continue to be made - upper classes do better on IQ tests after all, so, since a few publicists are saying this, maybe we should also assume that class IRL and in D&D is grounded in concrete, biological factors also??

Even assuming that the statistical analysis in the study cited is faulty, the question is at best unsettled, and has no scientific consensus behind it. This means that people are referencing what they think the scientific evidence says, and applying that as a series of self-evident facts to fictional universes which they then assume work along similar principles.

Since real world science provides no conclusive basis for assuming that races in fictional D&D worlds must be naturally given as opposed to class, perhaps there is something in the rule books that defines it so? No, such evidence is also assumed. Is there a section on genetics in the DMG that I missed? On evolutionary biology and demographics, explaining how elves and dwarves evolved separately over long enough periods to become separate species? On how nature as opposed to nurture influences the features listed in the PHB that are common across the racial group? If not, then the assumption that it works similarly to an unproven notion of how it works in our world is the definition of metagaming race.

Your theological argument also rests on the assumption that the gods who created races and magic are kind of deist entities that think scientific laws into existence, and matter than conforms to these laws. There is nothing in the core rules, or game source material that I'm aware of, that stipulates that's how gods actually work. I can certainly point to evidence that gods in D&D are not absolutely transcendent. They can be killed, for one. Some mortals ascend to divinity. So they interact with other mortals, and the interaction changes them, which seems to me like evidence that the gods are social agents also, and participate in the social construction of magic, of races, and lots of other things. There are of course real world religions or philosophical movements that think along these lines also: God argues with Abraham about whether Sodom and Gomorrah should be destroyed, and is at one point convinced by the human's arguments. God also worries about Adam and Eve eating of the tree of Life and becoming like him. In Christianity and many other religions it's possible to escape natural, biological cycles (or even death!) through faith, divine grace, etc. Who is to say which theological doctrine of race is the correct one in the game? Did the gods create races fully formed and did they hardwire certain abilities into their heads? I don't know, but I'm not going to make the assumption that they did, because there is no evidence for it. All we know is that D&D worlds have lots of religions, and that the priests of these religions, including atheistic ones sometimes have access to divine spells, so perhaps they are all correct.

To reiterate, I have no problem with accepting that in someone's world, races were in fact breathed into being by a god, and have a concrete reality. I have no problem playing a character in such a world, and no problem with accepting that a majority of DMs might define race in their settings precisely along these lines. But that's precisely because race is such a world is concrete because it is setting-specific, not imposed by metagame considerations. And since we're speaking about theology now, class being a calling (which is the PHB definition) can have precisely the same kind of concrete reality, because a calling of course issues from god.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

[MENTION=6800918]empireofchaos[/MENTION] : You claimed that, in order to be "consistent," you had to treat both things the same.

As for the mechanics are just mechanics, you put whatever flavor you want - I'm just saying that if you are so inclined, you can say that about race no less than class (a lot of people here are making the latter claim, but rejecting the former). Personally, I'm relatively OK with races as they work in-game. I'm just making the comparison to show that if you're being consistent, you should accept both propositions equally.

EDIT: I meant Draconic bloodline sorcerers, obviously, no Dragonborn.

There is no such "should." Your initial statement, that you CAN do so, is all you can defend--but you have, multiple times, attempted (or appeared to attempt) to go beyond that, and say that treating class independently from the fiction requires that you treat race the same way.

I had already granted, in my very first post on the subject, that letting race in the fiction be independent of race in the mechanics is something, not only that can be done, but IS done by some people. I have now also clarified, since I failed to communicate it earlier, that it is entirely possible to do one or the other, or both, or neither. All four paths have rational, consistent explanations for how and why they apply to a particular campaign. If you agree with these things, I really have no idea why we're still arguing about it. Unless, as I said above, you're trying to argue that you can't treat just class as trans-fictional without treating race as trans-fictional; having re-read the above-quoted bit, I'm finding it hard to figure out what precisely you're arguing.

 

[empireofchaos]

[MENTION=6800918]empireofchaos[/MENTION] : You claimed that, in order to be "consistent," you had to treat both things the same.

There is no such "should." Your initial statement, that you CAN do so, is all you can defend--but you have, multiple times, attempted (or appeared to attempt) to go beyond that, and say that treating class independently from the fiction requires that you treat race the same way.

I had already granted, in my very first post on the subject, that letting race in the fiction be independent of race in the mechanics is something, not only that can be done, but IS done by some people. I have now also clarified, since I failed to communicate it earlier, that it is entirely possible to do one or the other, or both, or neither. All four paths have rational, consistent explanations for how and why they apply to a particular campaign. If you agree with these things, I really have no idea why we're still arguing about it. Unless, as I said above, you're trying to argue that you can't treat just class as trans-fictional without treating race as trans-fictional; having re-read the above-quoted bit, I'm finding it hard to figure out what precisely you're arguing.

Ezekiel: It is entirely possible to treat either, both or neither race or class as sets of mechanics that are independent of any in-game fiction in any given setting. What you should do is avoid saying that one (race) must have an in game reality whereas the other (class) does not because that's how it works in the real world. Because there is no evidence that it does. You told me at the outset that you accept that race can be simply mechanical in game, but then you proceeded to question (without providing evidence) the notion that scientific consensus lies heavily on the side of race as a social construct. Doing that made it appear that despite what you say above, you lay a greater weight on the in-game reality on race relative to class because science. I hope that's clear now. I'm perfectly happy to drop the science discussion because I think the point stands.