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

[Remathilis]

Frex, the character that started this whole discussion (at my table and here) is a knowledge domain cleric who identifies as a field archaeologist and acts much more like Indiana Jones than anything else. His devotion to his god is backgroundish to him, just something he does, and isn't the central feature of his daily life. Granted, the central feature of his daily life is the uncovering of lost knowledge, which is also the central tenant of his god, but that's how he rationalizes his clerical abilities -- so long as he keeps at it, he'll retain the favor of his god. He doesn't dress in clerical dress, his display of his holy symbol is on the order of many sages that are lay followers of his faith, and he doesn't openly praise his god at all times. Some of his faith do this, but he chooses to be a follower of action, which clearly sets him apart from most of his faith. So, when people ask him if he's a cleric (actually, clerics and priests in my world are titles, and mostly held by non-casting devotees of the faiths) he says no, because to him and others, that would imply a position in the church hierarchy. But his class is cleric.

Surprisingly, this isn't as far off the mark as you might think.

He's a cleric. He is drawing off the power of his God, furthering his god's goals, and while he might not be able to cite chapter-and-verse, is doing his God's work (and God's work in in strange ways). What he's NOT is a priest; which in 5e is represented by the Acolyte background. He doesn't work in a temple, bless babies, perform marriages, or preach sermons. Not all clerics are priests, not all priests are clerics. What's he's not also is the stereotypical cleric; and that's also good. Not all clerics need maces, vestments, and chainmail. The important thing is that he's conforming to the ideal of a cleric: to serve his god and uses divine magic to do it.

What wouldn't work for me would be trying to break that core ideal. For example, trying to make him some sort of "white mage" (an arcane healer with no divine connection) or some form of nonmagical leader type who uses bless and healing word via "inspiration". Those wouldn't work if the world I was running was bog-standard. (Now, in a custom game, where all clerics would be white mages, then that's different). Its also important that you know Frex is unique; he's breaking the stereotype and assumptions the rest of the world has about clerics. (The proverbial "good drow", if you will).

So we agree far more than we disagree on this. Playing against the stereotype is good;, but it acknowledges the stereotype is real.

 

[Shasarak]

Meh. Race and class both try to model genre characters. Race models ancestry, place in the world, physical appearance, and so forth. A D&D 'elf' isn't exactly like a Tolkien elf or an ElfQuest elf or an Aldriyami or a lot of other things that are on some level 'elves,' but it's probably the closest race for a lot of 'em. A human is a single race in D&D, IRL there are some people who'll disagree with being told their the 'the same' as another human with very different ancestry.

It is like Captain Carrot who thinks he is a Dwarf.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Surprisingly, this isn't as far off the mark as you might think.

He's a cleric. He is drawing off the power of his God, furthering his god's goals, and while he might not be able to cite chapter-and-verse, is doing his God's work (and God's work in in strange ways). What he's NOT is a priest; which in 5e is represented by the Acolyte background. He doesn't work in a temple, bless babies, perform marriages, or preach sermons. Not all clerics are priests, not all priests are clerics. What's he's not also is the stereotypical cleric; and that's also good. Not all clerics need maces, vestments, and chainmail. The important thing is that he's conforming to the ideal of a cleric: to serve his god and uses divine magic to do it.

What wouldn't work for me would be trying to break that core ideal. For example, trying to make him some sort of "white mage" (an arcane healer with no divine connection) or some form of nonmagical leader type who uses bless and healing word via "inspiration". Those wouldn't work if the world I was running was bog-standard. (Now, in a custom game, where all clerics would be white mages, then that's different). Its also important that you know Frex is unique; he's breaking the stereotype and assumptions the rest of the world has about clerics. (The proverbial "good drow", if you will).

So we agree far more than we disagree on this. Playing against the stereotype is good;, but it acknowledges the stereotype is real.

I use cleric and priest interchangeably, so.... Also, I have characters that have the acolyte background that aren't either. :shrug:

It is like Captain Carrot who thinks he is a Dwarf.

Carrot is a dwarf, though.

 

[Celebrim]

For the most part, classes are entirely metagame constructs. They are implementations of a common related set of skills that a person might have in the same world. You can't cast 'detect class'. People in the game world do not know what class they are and do not usually describe themselves as being a member of a class. But people in the game universe do describe themselves according to the profession that they have, and those professions tend to or often have very close associations with a class.

Fighters never call themselves fighters. They call themselves soldiers, mercenaries, knights, gladiators, duelists, bodyguards, bouncers, hunters, and so forth. They don't really think of people in the same profession as having a different class than they do, although they might. That bouncer might just be a Brute. That hunter might be a Hunter. The newly recruited soldier might be a Warrior or a Fanatic. That fellow mercenary or pirate might be an Explorer. That duelist might be a Rogue. They don't know. All they know is the skills that they have, which overlap quite a bit with the skills of other people. We the persons running that game fit those skills to the class or classes that best fits the character's skills. In an overwhelmingly large number of cases, the best abstraction of a professional soldier in my game world is someone with one or more levels in fighter.

Virtually all priests in the game world are of the cleric class or at the least have some levels in cleric. A person could describe themselves as a cleric of Showna, and people would know pretty much exactly what was meant by that. Now, if you had a sufficient broad group of priests and priestesses of Showna, you'd have a group with very diverse abilities. Some - those most in the favor of Showna - would probably be straight clerics. Some would be multi-classed cleric-experts or cleric-scholars. A few might be multi-classed cleric-champions. Others may have entered the priesthood after careers of other sorts, and have a few levels of virtually any class before they came to their current calling. Many - less militant in their calling than the questing clerics - might have the Civilized trait or Noncombatant disadvantage, or the Limited Background disadvantage. So they'd all look a bit different and have some diversity of skill and abilities, but because they were all ordained Priests of Showna, everyone in the game world viewing the group would think that they share something in common. And from a metagame perspective, they'd all be right - they all have levels in cleric.

The same might generally be said to be true of Wizard. It's a specialized profession studying arcane magic. The same general things about some of the wizards not being devoted to combat arts, and some of the wizards perhaps being multi-classed would be true, but generally speaking a person in the game world's guess concerning whether they all have something in common would be true. And even to the extent that an outside observer might get this wrong, the gathering of 'wizards' themselves being experts in the subject could quickly sort out amongst them which of them had real practical knowledge (and thus were best classed in the metagame as a wizard) and which of them were mere dabblers and dilettantes whose knowledge was largely theoretical and whose focus of study was not so much on magic (and thus were best classed as scholars and experts).

But the same would not be said of a class like rogue. People in the game world seeing a group of rogues together would generally never guess that they were all of the same class. For one thing, they wouldn't be of the same profession. Many would be nobles. A few might be merchants. Some would be criminals of various sorts. And the reverse would also be true. Not every criminal is a rogue. Not every noble or merchant is a rogue.

A good way to show this, is that if you went into a monastery in my game world, everyone there would be monks. But no one in the monetary would be monk classed - because the monk class doesn't exist in my game even though the profession - 'lay servant of a cult' does. Instead, in terms of class you'd find a collection of commoners, experts, scholars, and fanatics. Depending on the deity, you might also find fighters, wizards, or rogues. And heading it all you might find a few clerics. The observer wouldn't know any of these things. All they'd know is that there was a fairly diverse range of skills and abilities on display. They be even less able to guess the class than the players are, because at least the players have knowledge of the class in their version of the world.

 

[empireofchaos]

A wire swapped somewhere in there, and you started talking about not having classes instead of classes being automatically defined in the in-game universe. I'm not talking about not having classes, and I don't recall anyone making that kind of argument. You can have classes and still not have those classes be understood, concrete things in the game fiction. I have classes in my game, wouldn't think of doing away with them, but none of them have a reality in the in-game fiction. The wizard class exists as a player choice, but in game the player is free to describe his wizard however he wants. Others may recognize how the wizard manipulated magic as one of the known and codified ways that magic can be manipulated, but most wouldn't. He's just a guy what does magic. If he told someone he was a Wizard, they're first though would not be 'ah, okay, so you memorize your spells daily and can use ritual magic' they think 'ah, you graduated from the Wizard College, you're probably well educated and use magic.' Similar to a person who introduces themselves as a Ranger -- they'd be asked who they served under, as Rangers are the name of a type of military specialty akin to special forces -- forward scout and unsupported harrassing tactics. No one would wonder if you picked Giant Slayer or Horde Breaker.

So, as I said, a wire seemed to have crossed. I don't have classes pre-defined in my game setting. That, in absolutely no way, doesn't mean I don't use classes.

No, no snapped wires - I wasn't saying you (or anyone, really) thought not having classes is a good idea. I was merely routing the discussion back to the central question by underlining the centrality of class to the game. And suggesting that given that centrality, overly de-emphasizing its character as a concrete thing in the world is problematic. I agree that some classes have that more than others. For my part, the more general the class, the less I'm usually interested in it (that's why, as a rule, I don't play fighters).

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I'm confused by this. You're more than willing to change the fluff and flavor of a class (changing the name of monk and restricting it to a narrow subset of cultural origins in your game) but still insist that the classes as presented in the PHB are so iconic that you'd rather play a different system than allow a concept that didn't fit within the presented fluff of the classes. It's like having tea and no tea (tea substitute, which is, almost, but not quite, utterly unlike tea, is something no one should have).

That's not what I'm saying. Let me explain. I never claimed that the specific names of the classes are an essential part of the fluff--rather it is the specific concepts of each class that indicate the iconic fluff. The D&D Monk was clearly intended to represent practitioners of certain ascetic Asian martial arts traditions. The name "monk" is a crappy name for that concept, so I use a name that more effectively expresses the actual fluff.

Other than in 2e, D&D has expanded the range of such martial artists to allow such traditions to exist outside of Asian-inspired cultures. However, even when they do so, the original fluff is still prominently and unmistakably present, in a way that cannot be ignored without rejecting the fluff entirely. I just reread the fluff in the class entry (both in 5e and 3e) to make sure. They aren't just martial artists. They are ascetic martial artists who empower their unarmed attacks with a magical (5e) or supernatural (3e) form of energy called ki, and acquire a variety of other supernatural abilities through channeling this ki.

They are not just the "unarmed combatant" class.

So you're not talking about the game as-is; you're talking about your version of the game, where you have decided that players are only allowed to imagine their PC if they fluff it like you want. They are not allowed to learn unarmed combat unless they come from one of three monasteries.

Basically, you have invented a world where the only allowed fluff is the fluff that you have dictated...and then use that as evidence that D&D 5E itself does the same.

This fallacy even has a name: No True Scotsman.

The name of the thread is "Do Classes Have Concrete Meaning in Your Game?" So we all should be speaking from the perspective of how it works in our game.

As far as your claim that I am defining the fluff, that isn't accurate. I am using the fluff from the game materials. Where I have changed names or limited presence of certain elements, that is to represent where that official fluff is appropriately present in my world. Saying that there aren't representatives of the Monk class that lack connection to an Asian martial arts tradition is simply taking a less anachronistic view of a setting than many--it is in no way redefining the class fluff. Heck, if anything it is reinforcing it.

As I mentioned above, unless I have different books than other people, the 5e books themselves define fluff. If you aren't using the fluff in the books, then you are redefining it--not me.

"Straw Man Fallacy" comes to mind.

But D&D 5E already has the rules for creating every single D&D PC I create! How? Because I only turn up with characters that are rules-legal! The idea that my only option is to use a different game system is given the lie by the very fact that it has been executed using the 5E rules!

My Rogue/Monk spy has already been perfectly realised using the 5E rules set. I don't need to find a different game engine to model that concept.

Did your spy train in an environment of ascetic contemplation, seeking to perfect their body, mind, and spirit, and thereby acquire the ability to supernaturally empower their unarmed (and monk weapon) attacks and other physical and mental capacities?

If they did, then you are fine by the fluff. You could even stretch it outside of an Asian theme, if you can position such a tradition in another culture.

But using the class to simply represent improved unarmed combat skills is a complete refluffing of the class, it is not within the boundaries of the class as presented.

Now, I'm not actually saying that's bad. I'm just saying that that isn't how I run my D&D games, and that I'd rather preserve the iconic fluff presented in the official D&D materials, and channel other character concepts into systems that allow them to be expressed "natively", without fluff hacking.

I should add, that if I'm correctly interpreting your stance (and I may not be), we appear to be brushing up against a self-determination/self-definition issue. Since I myself am pretty passionate about a person's right to do such, I have great respect for others that feel the same way. Since we are talking about character boundaries within the scope of an RPG, and that just doesn't ping as personally important to me on my self-determination radar, I'm coming at the entire question without any reference to self-determination, and focusing on published iconic fluff and how to apply it in one's game. As such we are more likely to talk past each other than to each other.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Surprisingly, this isn't as far off the mark as you might think.

He's a cleric. He is drawing off the power of his God, furthering his god's goals, and while he might not be able to cite chapter-and-verse, is doing his God's work (and God's work in in strange ways). What he's NOT is a priest; which in 5e is represented by the Acolyte background. He doesn't work in a temple, bless babies, perform marriages, or preach sermons. Not all clerics are priests, not all priests are clerics. What's he's not also is the stereotypical cleric; and that's also good. Not all clerics need maces, vestments, and chainmail. The important thing is that he's conforming to the ideal of a cleric: to serve his god and uses divine magic to do it.

What wouldn't work for me would be trying to break that core ideal. For example, trying to make him some sort of "white mage" (an arcane healer with no divine connection) or some form of nonmagical leader type who uses bless and healing word via "inspiration". Those wouldn't work if the world I was running was bog-standard. (Now, in a custom game, where all clerics would be white mages, then that's different). Its also important that you know Frex is unique; he's breaking the stereotype and assumptions the rest of the world has about clerics. (The proverbial "good drow", if you will).

So we agree far more than we disagree on this. Playing against the stereotype is good;, but it acknowledges the stereotype is real.

No, no snapped wires - I wasn't saying you (or anyone, really) thought not having classes is a good idea. I was merely routing the discussion back to the central question by underlining the centrality of class to the game. And suggesting that given that centrality, overly de-emphasizing its character as a concrete thing in the world is problematic. I agree that some classes have that more than others. For my part, the more general the class, the less I'm usually interested in it (that's why, as a rule, I don't play fighters).

Firstly, I said 'swapped wire' not snapped. I'm not correcting this out of a need to show you quoted me wrongly, but because, to me, a 'snapped' wire sounds like I was trying to be demeaning rather than just pointing out that things switched tracks. So, apologies if that was what you read.

Secondly, I don't see the need to preserve class structures within the game fiction. They're perfectly well protected and central in the game aspect of D&D that they don't need further reinforcement in the fiction. The d20 is central to the game as well, and yet it's just fine without any concrete representation in the game fiction.

Finally, I love general classes. You can do so much with them. One of my favorite characters of all time was a hobgoblin fighter/rogue, who stole poorly, often ran from fights, and was generally the worst, most incompetent henchman of the evil overlord (technically apocalypse desiring demon queen, and, also technically, the henchmanning wasn't strictly voluntary) he could be.

 

[Arial Black]

The name of the thread is "Do Classes Have Concrete Meaning in Your Game?" So we all should be speaking from the perspective of how it works in our game.

As far as your claim that I am defining the fluff, that isn't accurate. I am using the fluff from the game materials. Where I have changed names or limited presence of certain elements, that is to represent where that official fluff is appropriately present in my world. Saying that there aren't representatives of the Monk class that lack connection to an Asian martial arts tradition is simply taking a less anachronistic view of a setting than many--it is in no way redefining the class fluff. Heck, if anything it is reinforcing it.

As I mentioned above, unless I have different books than other people, the 5e books themselves define fluff. If you aren't using the fluff in the books, then you are redefining it--not me.

The fluff in each class write-up are not game rules. They are mere examples intended to help you launch your imagination. They have absolutely no limiting effect on my fluff. What does affect my fluff is the class's crunch. I have to be able to explain, in game, the stuff I do in game.

Did your spy train in an environment of ascetic contemplation, seeking to perfect their body, mind, and spirit, and thereby acquire the ability to supernaturally empower their unarmed (and monk weapon) attacks and other physical and mental capacities?

She was trained by various skilled individuals over a period of about 50 years, to do the stuff on her character sheet (and to develop the stuff that will be on her sheet as she levels up). For her people (a mixed wood/high elf population of the High Forest), 'magic' is interwoven in the very fabric of the world and of life itself. Whether you call that magic 'arcane' or 'divine' or 'ki', individuals can learn to tap it for various effects using varying methods.

From her perspective, there is no artificial divide between the stuff she does that come from the mechanics of the Rogue class and those that come from the Monk class. She doesn't consider herself 'multiclassed'; that's a game mechanic. She doesn't consider herself a 'monk' because she has no association with a monastery. She doesn't consider herself a 'rogue' because she fulfils her missions as ordered, and there is no 'disobeying an order' during a mission, just 'making a judgement call on the ground'.

What's more, no other creature could credibly meet her and come to the conclusion that she is 'monk', 'rogue', or both. She is an individual, just like everyone else. (I'm not!)(Shut up!)

In game, she is a member of The Elves of the High Forest, which is a minor faction, akin to The Harpers or The Emerald Enclave. As PotA writes, they are dedicated to the long term goal of uniting the disparate tribes of elves in the High Forest into a single kingdom based on the old elven kingdom of Earlann that included the High Forest thousands of years ago.

She is also a member of a secret group within the Elves of the High Forest, called The Tears of Shevarash, The Lachrymae Shevarash. These are hardcore field agent types, special forces, that kind of thing.

Now, it would be entirely possible for a DM to introduce a Prestige Class called Lachrymae Shevarash, and design game mechanics. But this is only coincidentally the same name in game as it is in game mechanics. The DM could have called the PrC 'Elven Special Agent', but they would still be 'Lachrymae Shevarash' in game.

But I don't want that; it would be too limiting. Not every Lachryma Shevarash has the same identical cookie-cutter abilities. They are made up of individual elves who have a useful combination of abilities that would be valuable to a secret organisation which uses stealth and information-gathering as much as it uses violence. There could be a place for members of any class, but not any type of behaviour. If you are the type of paladin that cries, "Aha! Prepare to meet your doom at the hands of the Lachrymae Shevarash!", then this organisation is not for you. But if you are the type of paladin that quietly does what needs to be done and then slips away, that could work.

If they did, then you are fine by the fluff. You could even stretch it outside of an Asian theme, if you can position such a tradition in another culture.

But using the class to simply represent improved unarmed combat skills is a complete refluffing of the class, it is not within the boundaries of the class as presented.

Again, the fluff in any class description does not define the only allowable fluff with which this class can be played.

Now, I'm not actually saying that's bad. I'm just saying that that isn't how I run my D&D games, and that I'd rather preserve the iconic fluff presented in the official D&D materials, and channel other character concepts into systems that allow them to be expressed "natively", without fluff hacking.

I might be phrasing this harshly, but it sounds like you only allow 12 character concepts in you game, or 36 if each class write-up has 3 example fluff paragraphs. And if a player wants to play using the exact mechanics in the book but explain those abilities sensibly using his own fluff, you tell him to play another system.

But the intent of the written fluff for each class is not to limit the fluff of a PC. The classes are intended to cope with a huge variety of fluff between them.

To test this, take any character from (non-D&D related) fantasy fiction, and have 10 different people separately stat him up. You would not expect 10 identical character sheets. If Conan was your choice, how many sheets would include levels of rogue? They should, yet Conan is the archetype that the barbarian character class was built upon.

If I wanted to stat up Gavin Deathstalker from R. Green's novels, I know that Gavin is a civilised noble whose family line has artificial organs implanted in their bodies that can inject large amounts of adrenaline and combat drugs into their bloodstream at will. This gives them abilities that closely resemble Rage in game mechanics. Even the limited uses per day is explained that the body only has so much of the stuff and it takes those organs time to replace it. Yet some DMs would impose their fluff on me, claiming that all barbarians 'must' come from the wilderness.

The game isn't made that way. It's made so that you can have any fluff at all, so long as that fluff somehow explains the abilities you have, and Gavin Deathstalker's implanted organs explain his Rage game mechanic at least as well as "I live outdoors" or "I like chewing the edge of my shield"

"But how does civilised, aristocratic Gavin explain his Nature skill?" Well, he needn't have that skill! Or, if he has, he can describe Gavin as a keen huntsman, or anything else that makes sense.

What is unreasonable is to claim that you cannot possibly be an expert in unarmed combat unless you were raised in a place where religious lay-persons go to contemplate philosophy.

I should add, that if I'm correctly interpreting your stance (and I may not be), we appear to be brushing up against a self-determination/self-definition issue. Since I myself am pretty passionate about a person's right to do such, I have great respect for others that feel the same way. Since we are talking about character boundaries within the scope of an RPG, and that just doesn't ping as personally important to me on my self-determination radar, I'm coming at the entire question without any reference to self-determination, and focusing on published iconic fluff and how to apply it in one's game. As such we are more likely to talk past each other than to each other.

You have a point here. For me, the DM controls everything in the world....except the PCs. The PCs are the only thing the player controls (within the rules, of course. Fluff is not rules). The biggest crime a DM can perpetrate on his players is to take that agency away.

If a DM said, "No, your character wouldn't do that!" then he's talking out of his arse. Players aren't playing a part written by someone else, they are playing a part that they themselves are creating, even if they should do so in a believable way bearing in mind the world around them.

A DM has the fluff of his campaign world, and this is impossible to do without. But if a DM says that 'Hit Points are known about in game, and the creatures in the world can sensibly ask, in character, "How many hit points are you down to?"', then my reaction isn't so much to criticise the sentence which ends in a preposition, and much more to enquire, 'Are you out of your mind?'

'Class' is a game mechanic. Creatures in the game can have no conception of the game mechanics.

The names of the classes are just words in game, not tied to game mechanics. You can call anybody a 'fighter' but that won't give away any class abilities. There may very well be organisations that use the same name as a game mechanic class, but since the class names are intended to be somewhat descriptive (you've got to call them something, and it's going to be something with an association with the stuff they can do), but the name of an in game organisation is not and cannot be exactly the same definition of the game mechanics that describe a class.

And once more, fluff is not rules.

 

[Lanefan]

Can you tell me which 5E rulebook this is from? What page?

I was actually thinking of 1e, where 9th is name level and 5th is halfway there. 5e (or 4e) tiers work as well.

Prestidigitation is your friend here.

True.

Or travellers from a far land...

Which might mean they might as well be adventurers anyway, depending how dangerous long-range travel is in that game.

Nouveau riche merchants, obviously...

Nouveau-riche merchants would probably be hanging out at the poncy high-class place where the other rich merchants hang out, not at a spit-and-sawdust just up from the docks.

Mercenaries, then.

Which is just another word for adventurers, or wanna-be adventurers.

You must take your 'deductions' with a pinch of salt. The idea that players 'must' live up to childish stereotypes or they're playing the game 'wrong' and should 'find another system instead' seems ridiculous, and ridiculously limiting in a game which is meant to free your imagination.

Stereotypes are there for a reason (and aren't childish at all, thanks); and if a crew like this walks into a dockside bar they'll probably be pinned as adventurers whether they really are or not, with the chances of accuracy well in the pinner's favour.

The list above is a list of fantasy RPG cliches, and I hate cliches! They make me....sick as a parrot!

To each their own...

But it is not required that the PCs first meet in a bar!

No, is isn't, but the original example given somewhere back there was an adventuring party (I've been assuming a party just in out of the field and thus not just meeting for the first time) going into a bar and being quickly identified as adventurers.

You aren't playing the game 'wrong' if you don't stick to these cliches. In fact, the further you steer away from then, the more verisimilitude the game will have.

IME if I use the cliches as a foundation and then vary off them a bit now and then it works better than when I try to avoid them completely.

Even the part about just looking at a person and knowing what game mechanics they must have based on how they dress is metagaming. Even though a person could, in-game, deduce certain things by dress, body language and so forth, creatures in-game are not aware of game mechanics, only what observable effects those mechanics might produce in the game world.

You've jumped a bit here. I can recognize a wizard-type as her class by dress but that gives me no idea what she's capable of.

Creatures may very well see a caster using VSM components, saying the magic words, wiggling the fingers, persuading the pet bat to produce the material component for a fireball ("I can't go when you're looking at me!") and see a spell come out. They may (on a successful Arcana check) recognise the spell. But there's no way they could observe a warrior attack twice and deduce that "They must be a fighter using Action Surge because we're not 5th level yet!"

No, but they could observe said warrior attacking that quickly and vaguely realize she has a certain degree of skill - clearly better than Bob the trainee, but not as good as Kariana - not yet.

If you dress in such a way that you advertise your abilities (metagaming or legitimate deduction), then you have put yourself at a disadvantage. It is in your interest to conceal your abilities in a combat situation, even if you display them in a social one. IRL, army officers wear a different style of uniform than 'the men', but officers and radio operators soon learned to conceal that as soon as enemy snipers became a threat. If you show which of you is the wizard, which the fighter, cleric, rogue, then you allow your enemies to target each with the worst thing. If you can predict which of them has a low will save, low hit points, can cast spells, etc. then you have a huge advantage. Behavior will evolve to account for this.

Assuming, of course, that no character will take pride in what it is and-or can do.

I play a lot of warrior-types. They usually wear light armour (mithral shirt under normal clothes, mithral breastplate) and could be any class. Fighter? Could be. Rogue? Possible. Elven wizards can use longswords.

That wouldn't get far in my game...mithral is ungodly expensive and I long ago did away with the idea that all Elves gain auto-proficiency with sword and bow. All I know is if I'm playing a warrior she's in the heaviest armour she can afford!

You could look at most of my PCs and not 'know' what class they are. Who guessed paladin? Well done. His holy symbol is behind his lapel, and I make sure that all my PCs wear a holy symbol anyway, regardless of whether or not they use divine magic.

Fair enough; that's how you roll. What does your Pally's deity think of such concealment of affiliation?

The cliches in your list above are much more common in actual play by players who haven't thought it through. Teenagers, older players more interested in comedy then realism....people who think that 'class' is a real thing in the game world....

Well, I've had a whole long time to "think it through" and I still say class is a real thing in the game world, much like one's profession is a real thing IRL only more obvious in some cases. If I see a guy walking down the street wearing paint-stained jeans-and-tee, a hard hat, and a 25-pound belt of assorted tools I'm guessing he's a tradesman. I might not right away know *what* trade, or what his level of skill/training is (though 30 seconds' observation of the state of the tools might give me a few clues), but chances are high his profession isn't banker.

Lan-"card-carrying member of the Fighters' union"-efan

 

[Arial Black]

they could observe said warrior attacking that quickly and vaguely realize she has a certain degree of skill - clearly better than Bob the trainee, but not as good as Kariana - not yet.

Of course! But they absolutely cannot say that he 'must' be an 8th level Fighter, or even 'Fighter' as a game mechanic at all. He could be a ranger and still be described as a 'fighter'.

In character, they cannot refer to the game mechanic of 'class' any more than they can ask you how many hit points you have left. They can ask you, or see for themselves, what type of armour you are wearing but they absolutely cannot ask what your AC is.

'Class' is just as much a game mechanic as 'hit points' or 'armour class', and the characters in the game are not aware of game mechanics.

They can certainly use words like 'fighter', 'paladin', 'wizard' and so on, but they are merely descriptive terms for them, not game mechanics. The guy they describe as a 'wizard' may or may not have any wizard class levels.