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

[Sword of Spirit]

It occurs to me that we are missing a fundamental distinction here. Both mechanics and fluff are part of D&D. The mechanics of 5e are a variant of the d20 system. 3e and 4e both treated their mechanics as separate from the game. You could license and make products with the mechanics that were not D&D! These products were generally fantasy games with a lot in common with D&D. But very few of the products licensed to use the d20 systems were actually allowed to place "Dungeons & Dragons" on them. And I can't think of any of them that were licensed as D&D products that didn't follow the official PHB class fluff. WotC most definitely makes a clear distinction between the mechanics and the fluff, and they apparently consider that both fluff and mechanics are important to considering something to be D&D.

So if you are using the mechanics in the absence of fluff (or, by inference, the fluff in absence of the mechanics) it is no longer the D&D game. It is a d20 game (or some other game with D&D lore in the case of fluff-only).

 

[Remathilis]

Edited to add: I forget if your original post was serious, or if you were using it to make a point. Buif a player in my game came to me with that approach, this is how I would handle it.

A few posts down, I stated my true intentions: I wouldn't allow a single part of that. The closest would be "fighter who works for a thieves guild", but the rest (hill dwarf = human, weapons & armor) would be absolutely no-gos, especially trying to get the most out certain rules (using a 2h weapon to override the restrictions of dual-wielding, getting chain's AC bonus without the hindrance of wearing heavy armor in public, getting all the dwarf racial goodies while looking human, etc). There is some inherent meaning those words: "greatsword" means a large 2-handed sword, not "2d6, Heavy, Two-Handed", "hill dwarf" means a race of squat humanoids who live in the mountains, not "+2 Con, darkvision, poison resistance, and extra hp", and "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".

Stereotypes are fun to break, but refluffing things makes them lose their value in the world.

 

[S'mon]

It may be wrong about Gen 27:27, but it's not wrong about Numbers 27:23. Which still predated Charlemagne by quite a bit.

http://biblehub.com/numbers/27-23.htm
"Then he laid his hands on him and commissioned him, as the LORD instructed through Moses."

No indication of any healing there.

 

[S'mon]

Height =/= race. Masai are tall, and pygmies are short. They are both human, and according to most common racial classifications, they belong to the same racial group.

Only by non-Africans who don't care about racial distinctions among Africans. Pygmies &
Bantu definitely consider themselves different groups. So does population genetics.

 

[hawkeyefan]

[MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] Understood. After I typed up my post, I realized it sounded like I was arguing with you instead of just offering my take on the examples you gave. I was pretty sure your example was made to prove a point...somehow I missed your follow up post that confirmed it.

To me, you customize things because they either don't already exist in the game mechanics, or you want to alter existing game mechanics to match a character concept that cannot be obtained through the game as is.

I first became aware of this phenomenon during my short experience with 4E when a player of an assassin character said that although he was wielding a greatsword he wanted us to consider it a dagger for roleplay purposes. The class allowed him to use the more damaging weapon, and he wanted the damage output, but stylistically he wanted the dagger because it was a better fit for his character concept. I said "then weild a dagger" and that was that.

 

[empireofchaos]

Only by non-Africans who don't care about racial distinctions among Africans. Pygmies &
Bantu definitely consider themselves different groups.

Yes, because what constitutes a racial distinction is socially defined (that's been the argument all along).

So does population genetics.

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.

And I await with baited breath the genetic data on elves, orcs, dwarves, and all the rest.

 

[delericho]

http://biblehub.com/numbers/27-23.htm
"Then he laid his hands on him and commissioned him, as the LORD instructed through Moses."

No indication of any healing there.

I didn't say there was. Laying on of hands is a Christian tradition (though less common these days) that is a successor to an older Jewish tradition that long predates Charlemagne and his peers (who, of course, were themselves Christian). My point being: the term didn't originate with him.

 

[S'mon]

Yes, because what constitutes a racial distinction is socially defined (that's been the argument all along).



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.

And I await with baited breath the genetic data on elves, orcs, dwarves, and all the rest.

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.

 

[S'mon]

Yes, because what constitutes a racial distinction is socially defined (that's been the argument all along).

Usually the social definitions accord closely with genetic distinctions, because the social definitions normally key off obvious physical differences caused by genetic differences. But yes this is not always the case. You get weird stuff (especially from America) like Europeans and Levantines being considered different races, or Pygmies and Bantu (Africans of the Bantu-speaking expansion) being considered the same race.

 

[Irennan]

A few posts down, I stated my true intentions: I wouldn't allow a single part of that. The closest would be "fighter who works for a thieves guild", but the rest (hill dwarf = human, weapons & armor) would be absolutely no-gos, especially trying to get the most out certain rules (using a 2h weapon to override the restrictions of dual-wielding, getting chain's AC bonus without the hindrance of wearing heavy armor in public, getting all the dwarf racial goodies while looking human, etc). There is some inherent meaning those words: "greatsword" means a large 2-handed sword, not "2d6, Heavy, Two-Handed", "hill dwarf" means a race of squat humanoids who live in the mountains, not "+2 Con, darkvision, poison resistance, and extra hp", and "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".

Stereotypes are fun to break, but refluffing things makes them lose their value in the world.

As I see it, the +2 Con, extra hp and poison resistance are something that a human might have. They are not some overly specific abilities that would never be found in a human, so, if it helps representing more closely the kind of character that the players has in mind (and if it isn't done just to ''cheat''), if it leads to the players having more fun, why not (in my opionion, at least)? D&D, or any ruleset, is a bunch of mechanics to simulate how things work in a given fantasy world.

Then, it also depends on what kind of stuff you want to refluff. Some rules just can't be refluffed as others, because they simply don't represent how the refluffed character works: for example, I would find it hard to refluff the mechanics of a wizard as a fighter (even if the contrary *might* be possible. We could say that the magic user-refluffed fighter uses a weapon to focus magic --and that therefore their attacks draw their force from magic--, has found ways to magically empower their body, warps time when using action surge and stuff like that. If other players are fine with that, I might even allow to treat their Str as if it were their Int).