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

[Lanefan]

For instance, to make a longsword attack I have to be equipped with a longsword, which is a bladed weapon purchased from the "weapon" section of the equipment list. To use a bow, I need to be equipped with a bow and with arrows, both of which are purchased from the same list.

To use a shield, I need to be equipped with an item called a "shield" purchased from the "armour" section of the equipment list.

To obtain a longsword, bow, arrows and-or shield I merely need to loot them from the drunk I just mugged with my fists. What's this "purchase" you speak of?

That said, unless I'm a pretty good Illusionist I still need said equipment - however obtained - in order to attack or defend with same; and to suggest otherwise as some are doing is a bit absurd.

4e has no "martial fireballs" - no martial fire damage, no martial area attacks, etc.

Maybe not 4e, but the few times I saw whirlwind attack used in 3e the end result was sometimes pretty much the same, only centered on the cast...uh...fighter.

If someone takes the view that his/her PC's spellbook is written in hieroglyphs rather than alphabetical sigils, does that fundamentally break the divide between martial and magical? I don't see how. If someone takes the view that his/her PC became a wild sorcerer after reading a cursed tome that infused him/her with chaos energy, is that any sort of violation of the concept of a sorcerer? I don't see how. If someone takes the view that his/her PC learned supernatural martial arts because s/he was taught by a magical animal that s/he used to meet with at the end of the garden as a child, is that any sort of violation of the concept of a monk? I don't see how.

The answer to all these is not "I don't see how" but rather "it depends on how the DM views her world as to whether this fits in".

Lan-"does equipment have concrete meaning in your game?"-efan

 

[I'm A Banana]

It can certainly be a help for new players to have fluff examples to get their heads around some game concepts (like 'class and level'), but this in no way limits (or is intended to limit) players from making their own fluff.

This is kind of missing the point - if a class is an element of fiction, not just an abstract rules chassis, then the story material associated with it isn't a "fluff example," it's as much a part of the class as the mechanics are - they are a package deal. That doesn't "limit" a player from making their own fluff any more than any other group decision does - it removes certain character concepts. I can't play Bugs Bunny in a gothic horror setting, I can't play a gnome barbarian in Dark Sun, and in a world where the mechanics of the barbarian class are embodied in the fiction, I can't just play a simple re-skin.

Of course, I could play that friar as someone who was trained as a barbarian warrior, but learned from a priest who was spreading the word of their god that my rage was akin to a divine state.

And I could also play that friar as, say, a cleric with Unarmored Defense instead of armor proficiency and a domain that let me rage with a Channel Divinity. Or as a monk with an option to spend 2 ki points to rage like a barbarian.

Personally, I like both of those options much better than a re-skin.

Face it, the writers already fluffed three different concepts to fluff each class in the PHB. It's absurd to think there are only exactly three possible concepts that match the crunch of each class.

No one thinks that. For one, subclasses are seen as descriptive, not proscriptive - these are three (ish) examples of different takes on this class. There may be more. Heck, in a game that uses the SCAG + PHB, there explicitly ARE more! And part of the fun of linking fiction and mechanics is in finding a new fictional home for any novel mechanics that your table might need.

Do you think that there are many RPGers who have a different preference from this?

I imagine there are many who don't really care what the fiction is as long as the mechanics "work," and vice versa. I've certainly played with players that would fall into those camps. It's a legit preference - some folks love the flexibility of a system where the fluff doesn't matter (I still miss some of the flexibility of 4e!), some folks don't care what the mechanics do as long as they can pretend to be their awesome character and talk in funny voices with their friends (this can be especially true of newbies - a newbie in my in-person game is useless when it comes to remembering how his character works, but his PC is notable and prominent and interesting).

It doesn't tell us anything about the (imaginary) conditions in which someone learns to fight with supernatural martial arts, nor in which someone learns to be exceptionally accurate with their attacks. In the case of the latter, we don't even know whether the accuracy is due to luck or skill.

The conditions for getting supernatural martial arts are right there in the class that gets supernatural martial arts - training and asceticism, just to go by the prominent header.

And we do know if the accuracy is luck or skill, because a fighter can come up and tell you "I trained with the Warriors of Valhalla to improve my skill at arms," while someone who just rolls a lot of lucky 20's doesn't have that narrative.

For instance, to make a longsword attack I have to be equipped with a longsword, which is a bladed weapon purchased from the "weapon" section of the equipment list. To use a bow, I need to be equipped with a bow and with arrows, both of which are purchased from the same list. While fighting with a longsword, I am liable to effects that are triggered by weapon attacks (eg parry effects that improve AC vs weapon attacks or mitigate damage dealt by them). And I can continue to fight effectively in an anti-magic field. (Similarly with a bow.)

To use a shield, I need to be equipped with an item called a "shield" purchased from the "armour" section of the equipment list. And I don't need to have defeated any enemies (bony or otherwise).

It's all fluff. Mechanically, all that's happening is rolling a d20, adding a particular modifier, and rolling damage. Even what is "magic" and what is "not magic" is fluff. "Spells" are "Maneuvers." "Summoned Creatures" are "hirelings." "Magic items" are "items of exceptional craftsmanship." D&D tends to value this fluff distinction, but there's no reason an individual table needs to, and if they're looking to maximize flexibility, they probably shouldn't!

If someone takes the view that his/her PC's spellbook is written in hieroglyphs rather than alphabetical sigils, does that fundamentally break the divide between martial and magical? I don't see how. If someone takes the view that his/her PC became a wild sorcerer after reading a cursed tome that infused him/her with chaos energy, is that any sort of violation of the concept of a sorcerer? I don't see how. If someone takes the view that his/her PC learned supernatural martial arts because s/he was taught by a magical animal that s/he used to meet with at the end of the garden as a child, is that any sort of violation of the concept of a monk? I don't see how

Similar to the above point - classes are descriptive, not prescriptive. They say "these are things that members of this class can do," not "these are the ONLY things that members of this class can do." I'm not interested in saying X is allowed and Y is forbidden, I'm interested in saying "tell me more and lets find a way to represent that mechanically."

The fundamental problem I have with each of the above character concepts is that they have no tethers to the rest of the game via the world or the other characters to help describe their differences. They all fail to ask why this happens. They are different, but they don't get specific or relevant about their differences. It's all empty color, calling a rabbit a smeerp, making a distinction without a real difference. So if a player wanted to play these PC's, I'd want to add flesh to these bare bones and make them distinct and meaningful in ways that anchor them mechanically and to the fiction.

If you write your PC's spellbook in hieroglyphs, why don't you use normal wizard sigils? Where did you learn these hieroglyphs? Who taught them to you? Did they use hieroglyphs in their spellbook? What languages do you know - are any of them hieroglyphs? Explain them to me, and explain what their context is. And maybe I'll ask you to use one of your language selections to invent or learn this special hieroglyphic magical language (which could be helpful in that enemy mages aren't likely to know it!), and connect an NPC or a dozen to this foreign wizardry tradition that you are now a part of. Mechanical connection (heiroglyphic language). World connection (a group of heiroglyph-using wizards).

If your PC acquired wild sorcery through a cursed tome, what's the story of that tome? Where did you find it? What happened to it afterwards? Is it unique, or do others exist? Did you fear your family reading it? Did you meet other wild mages when you transformed? How did you learn to control this weird tome curse? Explain it to me, explain what its context is. And maybe I'll say that there's an ancient empire of magic whose spells are becoming unstable as they age and decay and that book is still a part of your inventory, in fact it's a cursed item that you can't seem to get rid of, and there's several known wild sorcerers who come from this empire's rotting magic and they all have strange cursed items that are a part of them and are seeking ways to remove the curse and master the wild sorcery as much as possible in the meantime. Mechanical connection (cursed tome). World connection (sorcerers linked to the dying magic of a fallen empire).

If your PC learned their monastic tradition from a talking magpie, what's the story of that magpie? Is it some cursed monastic master who travels the world teaching children his nearly lost tradition? Is the martial arts you were schooled in similar to one of these other monasteries that exist, or is it something new? Are you the magpie's only student, or does its migratory route feature several stop-overs where it teaches young apprentices its spiritual ways? Did your family think you were mad when you, say, sat and meditated under a waterfall because a magpie told you to? Explain it to me, explain what its context is. And maybe I'll say there's a missing grand master of flowers from a distant monastery of the Open Fist who betrayed a witch and is training students to extract his vengeance. And when a strange-looking man from a distant land shows up at your garden with some bright orange pajamas for you to wear and insists that you come with him, your life of adventure began. Mechanical connection (Way of the Open Fist). World connection (other Way of the Open Fist monks).

 

[empireofchaos]

Here is a list of various class configurations I threw together, partly building on what's already been done here. The list is obviously incomplete (and has only one entry for some classes simply because that's all I thought of when writing it, not because I think it's the only possible option). At the end, I offer a few general thoughts about the general structure and organization of different classes, how such structure is affected by the setting type, its history, and the type of interactions their members experience with others.

--

Barbarians:
• Trained combatants in a clan of outlanders

Bards:
• Members of a bardic college
• Minstrels of a lose musical genre/emulating a certain master

Clerics:
• Priests of a certain deity, trained explicators of sacred text, leaders of a congregation (mullahs)
• Personnel of a temple
• Religious caste (no/little intermarriage – brahmin, kohain)
• Ordained members of a large priestly hierarchy (Catholic Church, shi’a imamate)

Druids:
• Initiates into partly secret religious-magical society
• Priesthood of a dethroned religion driven to margins

Fighters:
• Warrior caste (no intermarriage – kshatriya; hoplites)
• Noble estate (virtual monopoly on military training, mounted combat – knights, samurai)
• Professional soldiers, perhaps organized into mercenary houses
• Corps of slave soldiers (mamluks/ghulams)

Monks:
• Individual monasteries of ascetics (e.g. Shaolin)
• Secret societies and sects practicing similar disciplines (e.g. ninja; dervish orders; Cathari)
• Hermits practicing meditation techniques passed down by a master
• Vast, interconnected monastic networks connected by a doctrine (e.g. Buddhist sangha)

Paladins:
• Companions of a prince or hero (e.g. posse comitatus, Chingiz Khan’s nökers Charlemagne’s paladins, Knights of the Round Table, Vladimir’s bogatyrs)
• Monastic fighting orders (e.g.Templars, Hospitalers, Teutonic Knights)
• Individuals who receive god’s call to martial heroism (e.g. Joan of Arc)

Rangers:
• Military order or unit charged with guarding frontier (e.g. Night’s Watch, Novgorodian Ushkuiniki)
• Orders or bands charged with guarding roads or ensuring the safety of pilgrims (e.g. Aragon’s Rangers)

Rogues:
• Members of a thieves’ guild
• Members of organized crime networks or criminal underground (e.g. mafia, yakuza, Triads, thieves-in-law)
• Population that doesn’t belong to any established social group, and people within that population who think society owes them a livelihood

Sorcerers:
• Bloodlines descending from powerful being or god

Warlocks:
• Covens of witches
• People bound together by pact with a particular entity

Wizards:
• Formal students of magic relying on written traditions and regulations (possibly trained by a master – incl. diviners, astrologers, alchemists, etc.
• Members of learned guilds organized as corporations (universities) or charitable foundations (waqf), possibly divided into individual faculties (enchantment, conjuration, etc.)
• In a magocracy, the class of scholar-administrators maybe similar to the Confucian literati
• Closed caste which keeps a monopoly on texts that teach how to access magical energy

General observations:

1) Types of class structure and organization (from tightest to broadest)
a. A formal organization with specified positions and offices, regulations, and initiations
b. A collection of possibly unconnected people bound by a teaching, technique, belief, ideal, or patronage by a deity or other powerful entity
c. A broad social class or caste (which may include individuals that don’t possess class skills, but that may share its ethos and aspire to emulate its most successful members
d. People from vastly different societies who perform a broadly equivalent function within their respective societies

2) Larger (“basic”) classes (fighter, rogue, possibly cleric and wizard) likely have looser (very loose?) class structure, while smaller classes (monk, paladin, bard) have a tighter, more formal class structure

3) More distinct settings likely have more tightly organized classes, more generic settings (e.g. Forgotten Realms) that bring together characters from a wide range of societies likely have a looser class setting

4) Settings located in points of intersection between different societies (imperial capitals, merchant republics located between major empires, settlements between planes, Sigil – City of Doors) draw in people from different realms, have looser class structure; settings in places that are less well-integrated with the rest of the world/multiverse feature tighter forms of class organization (even for the basic classes)

5) On the other hand, the more different, apparently unrelated types falling under a single mechanical class rubric interact, the more defined a class will become. It will develop an organization, a hierarchy, a set of principles, and a way to expand communication more effectively among its members. One idea I had about wizards is that they were originally various casters from various classes that began collecting and writing spells down, systematizing the casting (and eliminating risks, such as the Chaos Mage’s Surges, and various complications arising from Warlock pacts). They then founded schools, where they disseminated this systematized magia, which soon broke down into individual schools (or “faculties”).

6) Hierachy. You can imagine a variety of different places for each class in the social hierarchy. The higher a class’ standing, the more “gatekeepers” formulate stringent rules that define its membership, rules, initiations, etc.

7) Class identity is situational. E.g. fighters rarely identify as such, and by that name in most surroundings in which they find themselves (they call themselves “soldier”, “guard”, “gladiator”, “knight”, etc.). However, if surrounded by others sufficiently unlike them, the broad, nearly invisible identity suddenly becomes more relevant. In the company of spellcasters, two fighters would definitely begin to think of each other as martial types in opposition to the rest. In the company of rangers or paladins, two fighters would quickly latch on to the differences, and begin wondering why these others spend so much time in the woods, or at temples, rather than just honing their fighting prowess. It’s kind of like tribal, national, and civilizational identities. In Nigeria, a person is Ibo, in England, he becomes Nigerian, and in the US – an African.

8) Needless to say, these organization types do not necessarily apply to each person in each and every instance. The margins are always going to be messy (to varying degrees). But that doesn’t mean the categories don’t exist.

 

[Ovinomancer]

In the hypothetical world where I DM'd your setting, I would want my Guild Mages and my Thaumic Knights to be classes or subclasses or maybe feats or a faction I could get rewards from or some sort of mechanical heft that I can use to express the archetype. I might say "If you want to take the Enchanter or Abjurer subclass, you'll need to work the Guild Mages into your narrative somehow. If you're going to be an Eldritch Knight, you're going to be linked to the Thaumic Knights." You then get closer fiction-mechanics reinforcement, where Guild Mages are known to have a hypnotic gaze that they teach to promising adepts that allows them to diffuse tense situations to protect their charges, and Thaumic Knights inscribe their name on a chosen sword that then comes to them when they call. Then, when the party finds a blade in the back of the King with a name scribed upon it, they've got an instant in-world association and have a place to start looking.

And yet I have all of those hooks and clues present without requiring specific classes for membership or even requiring that specific classes MUST have membership. My organizations offer benefits unique to the organizations -- membership has rewards. They don't exist as bland faceless things that you seem to assume because I don't force classes to belong to them.

I get that you feel that you get more by requiring players to be members of specific organizations as part of their class, but that strikes me as dictating to the player their concept. Want to be an abjurerer? You must be a member of XXX organization. No. I'd rather players have the option to invest in an organization that matches their character's goals, not because they chose a bag of mechanics and are therefore locked into it.

Note that I said it was generally so for me, that in my experience it develops the play experience better, and that I find that it does.

You phrasing was that your way develops a deeper play experience. That means it's deeper that some other play experience, and since we're comparing play experiences and you didn't provide a third option as your baseline, yeah, your phrasing did imply you think your play experience is deeper than mine. I'll gladly accept that you meant something else, but I'm not the least bit guilty that I took it the way it read.

I wasn't criticizing your preference. You're welcome to offer a counter-anecdote, but you can't tell me what my experience is. If you presume I'm an honest actor, you should accept that this is my experience. If you don't presume I'm an honest actor, you should probably not be talking with me!

And then you torpedo that by saying that I can offer an counter-anecdote, presumably from my play experience, to refute your claim that you have a deeper play experience. Perhaps you'd like to rephrase before I again assume that you mean what you say?

Also, I can believe you're an honest actor and actually believe you have a deeper play experience than I do. Honest actor doesn't mean you can't think yourself better than others. So that's a true non-starter of a guilt trip attempt. I believed you meant what you said and never once thought you were engaging dishonestly.

This is part of why I say that more abstract/dissociated mechanics tend toward classless systems (and would actually include 4e in that bucket by some definitions, though that's a bit of a tangent). If the mechanics really aren't telling a particular narrative, then there's no real reason for them to be locked into a particular class (even one as broad as "magic-user" and "fighting-man"), and you should just be able to get the numbers right and then apply whatever fluff you want to it. Like, it takes 4 hits to kill a monster equal to your level, you hit on a 9+ on a d20, and PC's are KO'd after 10 hits between "rests." Every 2 levels' difference adds +/- 1 to the d20, every 5 levels' difference adds +/- 1 to the hits someone dishes out. Lets add some variety: three times per rest, you can "spike" your hit to make it count double. Everything else is description. That's a viable system! A bit bland, but well balanced and easily customizable (and not a bad core to hang a lot of more involved mechanics on).

Yes, you keep saying this, but you're circling the fallacy of the excluded middle. A class system that is entirely tied to the fiction or a classless system totally untethered from the fiction are not the only options. Classless systems tend to be detailed and crunch-heavy systems that take considerable system mastery to get the best out of (and often, with system mastery, are very breakable). I'm not interested in running GURPs or Champion at this point in my hobby-life. Too much work. I like the 5e system: it's clean, easy to use, and does what I want. So I take the middle ground -- a classed system because it behaves better and is quick and easy to pick up while still doing a decent job of being flexible to multiple character concepts. I don't have to go 'I need a classless system because I don't like the 5e class fluff,' I can just ditch/rewrite the fluff I don't like and keep the ease of the mechanics.

And, in doing so, I can supply just as much fluff and depth as I want.

The more abstract the power, generally, the better fit it is for multiple concepts. If, instead of Counterspell, any character could take a "Negate" ability that simply cancelled out an ability of equal or lower level, that could be a counterspell, or it could be a kung-fu block, a shield bash, a brief stun from a lazer, the power of a Time Lord to turn back time a few moments and all sorts of things! But Counterspell is specific, limited by the fluff of a spell being different from a sword blow.

Fluff and mechanics. You still seem to confuse the line when responding to me. You could refluff the counterspell spell any way you wanted, so long as the mechanics remained the same: it costs a spell slot of the appropriate level, the components of the spell must be used, and the spell functions within it's specified range and effect. If you can reliably reskin that in a way that doesn't change the mechanics, bully! Pass it over and let's see how we can work that into the existing fiction of the game (it may not fit, but it probably will). If your refluff changes mechanics, though, I'm going to first ask if you really need that change to model your concept, and if the answer is yes, I'll sit down with you and work through it to see what the ramifications are. If I don't like the ramifications, I'll nix it, and you can try again with a different tack or change your concept. The purpose of using the 5e ruleset is that it's consistent and works. The purpose of allowing refluffs isn't to change the mechanical function of the abilities, it's to allow for those abilities to model the widest possible range of stuff. Can that occasionally cause problems? Yes, which is why I, as the DM, retain final editorial power including the 'no' word. I try not to use it, but I also want a coherent experience in my game world (it's deep, remember).

If my own personal experience comported with WotC's findings more generally, then it would make sense for this to be an intentional choice by the team - they saw the more abstract "negate" choice, they saw the more concrete "counterspell" choice, and they chose the one that met their design goals more readily.

Speculation that everyone agrees with you is reaffirming, I suppose. I generally don't bother, but if it floats your boat....

There's plenty of variety, of course - lots of folks have specific roles for classes "except for fighters and rogues," it seems! As an aside, I kind of wonder if this is one of the keys to some of the perennial "non-magical is underpowered" complains that crop up - we have a clear vision of what we want a Wizard to do, or a Monk to accomplish. We don't necessarily know what we want a "Fighter" to do, or we all want different things. But a Knight! Or a Monster Slayer! Or a Commander! Or a Gladiator! THOSE are archetypes we'd see filled more robustly, with more agreement on how well it's doing one of those things. One class that does all those things can feel stretched thin - a class that did one of those things and ignored the others might be ultimately more satisfying.

No, it's probably because fighters and rogues have lost out on the mechanical power curve. I'm pretty sure it's not because they didn't have ready made fictional memberships in game worlds premade for them. I mean, I suppose it's possible, but I can't see how it would be so.

I tell ya, if I had mind-control powers over Mike Mearls...

You'd make a game that directly caters only to your interpretations and desires, and screw the rest of the fans that might have a different opinion? Sure, reaffirming and powerful, but forgive me if I'm thankful you don't. I'd much rather a game where you can play your way (requiring players to adhere to preset fictions for at least part of their character concepts) and I can play mine (where I do the heinous act of daring to ignore fluff).

 

[I'm A Banana]

...you seem to assume..
...your phrasing did imply you think your play experience is deeper than mine...
...I'm not the least bit guilty that I took it the way it read...
...believe you have a deeper play experience than I do...
...I can supply just as much fluff and depth as I want...
...Speculation that everyone agrees with you is reaffirming, I suppose...
...You'd make a game that directly caters only to your interpretations and desires, and screw the rest of the fans that might have a different opinion...
...I don't have to go 'I need a classless system because I don't like the 5e class fluff,' I can just ditch/rewrite the fluff I don't like and keep the ease of the mechanics...

If you read the statement "I find that it creates a deeper play experience" and see that as implying "deeper than yours" and not "deeper for me," I don't know that we can have an entirely constructive conversation, here. If you think I'm making personal attacks about you and your game and telling you what you MUST do and believe and so then you respond in that vein, it's a bad time for everyone involved.

Two brief (for me) points of clarification, though, if you'd like to entertain them:

I get that you feel that you get more by requiring players to be members of specific organizations as part of their class, but that strikes me as dictating to the player their concept. Want to be an abjurerer? You must be a member of XXX organization. No. I'd rather players have the option to invest in an organization that matches their character's goals, not because they chose a bag of mechanics and are therefore locked into it.

I like the link between organization and class because it gives a character something to either align with or align against right from the get-go. It doesn't proscribe the character's interests, but it DOES state that there is this group out there with these interests, and you have been affiliated with them in some way for some reason. It embeds the world in the character, which often leaves my players with more investment in that world. The common problem I have had is that players don't WANT to join organizations or align with kingdoms or be generally part of the world, even if those things match their characters' goals perfectly. Players will often flit atop a setting like water on a hot skillet, treating every world like a Generic Fantasy Milieu, uninterested in any engagement beyond "whack the nearest monster hard." I want to give them a reason, as players, to engage with the world, because the world plays a big role in my games, and they're missing a good chunk of the fun if they're too nervous or too much of a murderhobo to dip into it. So I incent. And this incentive carries over regardless of what class they actually play - they'd know that an NPC abjurer would likely be a member of the Guild even if no one played an abjurer.

I'm going to first ask if you really need that change to model your concept, and if the answer is yes, I'll sit down with you and work through it to see what the ramifications are. If I don't like the ramifications, I'll nix it, and you can try again with a different tack or change your concept. The purpose of using the 5e ruleset is that it's consistent and works. The purpose of allowing refluffs isn't to change the mechanical function of the abilities, it's to allow for those abilities to model the widest possible range of stuff. Can that occasionally cause problems? Yes, which is why I, as the DM, retain final editorial power including the 'no' word. I try not to use it, but I also want a coherent experience in my game world (it's deep, remember).

This experience pretty much exactly mirrors the process for coming up with novel mechanics for a player who wants something outside of the bounds of what the fiction currently describes, too.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is part of what makes tight fiction-mechanics marriage especially good for newbies. Giving a strong character concept that is then reinforced with mechanics makes the wall o' rules mastery much less intimidating, and gives them a strong character type to anchor to.

My point, exactly. Classes, like pre-generated characters, make a good set of 'training wheels' while new players get used to the concept of RPGs. Through much of the hobby's history, new players started with D&D, which did have convenient class concepts ready to go, then when the limitations of that approach palled, they'd move on to other games. But, over the years more and more options were added, and, by 3e/d20 classes could be used either as complete character packages by new players, or as modular blocks to build to a concept by more advanced ones. It wasn't, and still isn't that clean - there are many options some available/necessary enough that they still represent a barrier to entry, the building-blocks when you start using them are, well, blocky, giving you low-res customization, and can also be meta-game optimized - but it's a side benefit of combining the disparate approaches of past editions that there something there for both new players and long-time ones, even if it does, ironically, assume a little familiarity or system-mastery to point you at the right newbie option. ;P

In the hypothetical world where I DM'd your setting, I would want my Guild Mages and my Thaumic Knights to be classes or subclasses or maybe feats or a faction I could get rewards from or some sort of mechanical heft that I can use to express the archetype.

Backgrounds and PrCs seem like the ideal mechanics for that sort of thing, depending on whether the organization is something you get into before adventuring, or after proving yourself in some way. Themes would be a nice addition, in that sense, a customization option that starts & stays with the character through his career, rather than being backstory or kicking in later.

This is part of why I say that more abstract/dissociated mechanics tend toward classless systems (and would actually include 4e in that bucket by some definitions, though that's a bit of a tangent).

Abstraction's a matter of degree. 'Dissociation' was coined for the edition war and had little meaning even in that context. I know it may /seem/ like a convenient synonym for abstraction, but we can already use abstraction when we mean abstract. If you're going to use us it as something distinct from abstract, at least pick & articulate a definition for that purpose.

Classless systems go pretty far back in the hobby's history, they're not a recent trend pioneered by 3e multi-classing or 4e class-balance/rules-clarity/mechanical-constitency. RuneQuest is a great example of a classless system and how much more versatile it is than a class-based one, and it's downright simulationist in retrospect, not very abstract at all on the scale of RPG abstraction - which, BTW ranges from highly abstract to overwhelmingly utterly abstract, and never remotely concrete, since we are sitting around a table rolling dice, not crawling through dungeons.

If the mechanics really aren't telling a particular narrative, then there's no real reason for them to be locked into a particular class (even one as broad as "magic-user" and "fighting-man"), and you should just be able to get the numbers right and then apply whatever fluff you want to it.

That's the logical extreme, yes. And it has been working extremely well for skill-based and point-buy systems for as long as they've existed, which is all but the first few years of the hobby's history.

But whether you have classes or not can be quite independent of how focused mechanics are on modeling just one thing. In Hero, for instance, you have an entirely classless point-build system, where fluff is all but entirely independent of mechanics, a 2d RKA is an attack, but it might be a laser, firearm, thrown blade, arc of lightning, divine flame, or a host of other things (with various advantages/limitations to customize it to exactly the net effect the player is going for to model the concept). In GURPS, OTOH, you still have an entirely classless point-build system, but here fluff and mechanics are linked. A fireball spell has it's own write-up and is different mechanically from a .45 or a laser or whatever, and that difference is married to the different fluff. Similarly, in 1e, the only least slightest hint you had that the same mechanic could be re-used for something even slightly different was a handful of weapon equivalencies (scimitar also includes saber or tulwar, kinda things) or the odd monster, like a young hobgoblin fighting 'as a goblin' or the like. For the most part, choice of fluff dictated choice of mechanics with no wiggle room. But, starting with 3e, you could re-fluff how things and characters looked, and thus, in a sense, what they 'were,' without changing mechanics at all. Your samurai could wear banded-mail re-skinned as O-Yori, and wield a katana (bastard sword) and hankyu (composite bow). What 3e did for the appearance of characters and gear, 4e did with descriptions of powers, though some mechanics, like Source keywords, were still inextricably coupled to certain types of fluff.

5e is as strongly class-based as ever, with things like Backgrounds layered on top of class rather than providing alternatives.

Like, it takes 4 hits to kill a monster equal to your level, you hit on a 9+ on a d20, and PC's are KO'd after 10 hits between "rests." Every 2 levels' difference adds +/- 1 to the d20, every 5 levels' difference adds +/- 1 to the hits someone dishes out. Lets add some variety: three times per rest, you can "spike" your hit to make it count double. Everything else is description. That's a viable system! A bit bland, but well balanced

Not so much 'balanced,' though. Balance requires more than just everyone being on a level playing field (that's fairness), it also requires that choices, in addition to being viable, be meaningful, and, well, exist in the first place. What you're describing is a fair system, but it isn't balanced at all, as there are no meaningful choices.

and easily customizable (and not a bad core to hang a lot of more involved mechanics on).

Once you hang more involved mechanics on it, though, it can graduate to balanced.

The more abstract the power, generally, the better fit it is for multiple concepts. If, instead of Counterspell, any character could take a "Negate" ability that simply cancelled out an ability of equal or lower level, that could be a counterspell, or it could be a kung-fu block, a shield bash, a brief stun from a lazer, the power of a Time Lord to turn back time a few moments and all sorts of things!

If you're rolling d20 vs a DC to counter/negate successfully, they're all equally abstract - and all the same mechanic, whether, the mechanic is coupled to only one narrative option (memorizing and casting one specific spell) or can be re-used for several (prepping & casting a counterspell from a book, relying on Faith to stand against hostile magic, or calling upon innate magical talent to cancel out another magical effect directly) or many (as you describe above).
The mechanic is innately very abstract, regardless. It's just a matter of the latitude given the player in deciding what available mechanic best fits his concept - or how to describe the character when using that mechanic - that's different.

There's plenty of variety, of course - lots of folks have specific roles for classes "except for fighters and rogues," it seems! We have a clear vision of what we want a Wizard to do, or a Monk to accomplish.

We've had a fairly consistent vision of the Wizard & Monk in D&D. But the vision of a Wizard, particularly, never had much to do with memorizing spells or managing 'spell slots' - those are D&Disms. For that matter the D&D Monk's odd lack of affinity for weapons & armor doesn't exactly match a lot of martial-arts traditions, either, just the 1970s American perception of martial arts.

As an aside, I kind of wonder if this is one of the keys to some of the perennial "non-magical is underpowered" complains that crop up - We don't necessarily know what we want a "Fighter" to do, or we all want different things. But a Knight! Or a Monster Slayer! Or a Commander! Or a Gladiator! THOSE are archetypes we'd see filled more robustly, with more agreement on how well it's doing one of those things. One class that does all those things can feel stretched thin - a class that did one of those things and ignored the others might be ultimately more satisfying.

When you come down to it, there's a D&D spell for just about anything any magic-using character in genre might have done, and a few more as foibles of the early game or mechanical artifacts on top of that, and, while there's a lot of caster classes, each has relatively few unique spells. The fighter, OTOH, doesn't begin to do everything characters in genre might do, and whenever the possibility of filling in the gaps comes up, it's in the form of a new class (Barbarian, Cavalier, Knight, Warlord, Swashbuckler, whatever), that's at least as limited in it's ability to emulate characters from genre, just with a different focus - and, generally, taking something away from the base fighter, as well.

So, no, I don't think any particular clarity of vision of the respective classes has anything much to do with casters being consistently overpowered through most of D&D's history. Unless it's a tautologically clear vision of casters as needing to be overpowered to be 'really magical.'

 

[Ovinomancer]

If you read the statement "I find that it creates a deeper play experience" and see that as implying "deeper than yours" and not "deeper for me," I don't know that we can have an entirely constructive conversation, here. If you think I'm making personal attacks about you and your game and telling you what you MUST do and believe and so then you respond in that vein, it's a bad time for everyone involved.

Physician, heal thyself!

I explained how I read your words. That wasn't an exceptional reading. You said you didn't mean them that way, and I acceded. I do not see how I can be held accountable for misunderstanding your intent, yet you can simultaneously choose to interpret my words as hostile to you. They aren't. I disagree with you, and find that your choice of words to be unfortunately easy to mistake as a superior tone, but I have already acknowledged that you are 1) honestly engaging, and 2) have said that you do not mean to be dismissive. Well and good, and I, again, acknowledge both clearly. This doesn't, however, hold me to a standard where I cannot point out where your language choices appear to drift back into being dismissive, if only to, again, make sure that I am not misreading you.

Two brief (for me) points of clarification, though, if you'd like to entertain them:



I like the link between organization and class because it gives a character something to either align with or align against right from the get-go. It doesn't proscribe the character's interests, but it DOES state that there is this group out there with these interests, and you have been affiliated with them in some way for some reason. It embeds the world in the character, which often leaves my players with more investment in that world. The common problem I have had is that players don't WANT to join organizations or align with kingdoms or be generally part of the world, even if those things match their characters' goals perfectly. Players will often flit atop a setting like water on a hot skillet, treating every world like a Generic Fantasy Milieu, uninterested in any engagement beyond "whack the nearest monster hard." I want to give them a reason, as players, to engage with the world, because the world plays a big role in my games, and they're missing a good chunk of the fun if they're too nervous or too much of a murderhobo to dip into it. So I incent. And this incentive carries over regardless of what class they actually play - they'd know that an NPC abjurer would likely be a member of the Guild even if no one played an abjurer.

And my issue is that you force fiction on characters because of the player's choice of class. I can (and do) achieve immersion in my game fiction, tying characters to my game world, without the crutch of forcing them into accepting a connection (be it membership, or conflict, or whatever) with a group based on a metagame (to me) concept. You accept that classes have in-game reality, I do not. But that doesn't, in any way, mean that I have less ability to hook players through gameworld tie-ins to their characters.

And that's my point. Forcing connections to organizations through class choice works for you, and bully, but that's not the only or even best way to accomplish hooking characters into the game world.

I tend to hook through backgrounds, not class. For instance, there's a rogue in my game that has the urchin background, and is a member in loose standing with the Halfling Mafia, one of the crime syndicates in the main focus city of my campaign. He's a member because he described his urchin background as running the streets as part of a criminal pickpocket gang under the direction of a criminal group. He's not a member of the crime syndicate because he's a rogue, he's a member because his background says that he's a member. He's hooked into the world, and that hook has both benefits (it was instrumental in making a task the party wanted to accomplish easier) and costs (he owes 'take', and even though he's not currently practicing crime, he still owes).

Similarly, another rogue (arcane trickster) picked the solider background and was a member of the Blackguard Ranger Auxillary -- not a full member of the Blackguard because they're a strict NPC organization (their duties are inconsistent with adventuring unless everyone (or most) in the party choose to be blackguard, in which case the game would be one of missions, not choices). He focused on outdoorsy skills, and was the party scout. His background as being having served the Blackguard gave him a good deal of benefit as an ex-member in that he was able to chat up other members in social places and even gain access to barrack spaces on occasion to follow up on leads. Given that the Blackguards are the premier mercenary force in my game world, that was a nice benefit. But he was a rogue.

In the first case, the character is playing to class assumptions, but because he wants to. In the second, the character is decidedly separate from class assumptions, and is playing a hard-bitten woodland scout/sniper solider type. Same class, nothing at all similar. Both firmly connected to my game world (and both have more connections that I haven't explained, I stuck with the quick and easy ones that don't involve me explaining the details of my homebrew campaign world or the 'story so far').

This experience pretty much exactly mirrors the process for coming up with novel mechanics for a player who wants something outside of the bounds of what the fiction currently describes, too. `

Yes, but I'd rather avoid coming up with new mechanics when there are class features that already exist that can do the job. I get that you say that you can just add new mechanics and classes to do the same thing that I do with a refluff (you can't really, they're different things, but at least they belong in the same concept space), but one is fiction and the other involves considering mechanical balances. I don't mind messing with the rules, but I don't want to keep track of a binder (or file, I am somewhat modern) that collects all of my rule changes/additions. That's not the point, for me, of playing 5e. So I keep any new/changed mechanics to the absolute minimum to satisfy my and my groups preferences and needs. Fluff's easier for me, and I'd rather create a new bit of fiction to add a new concept than a new bit of crunch.

This strawman argument not only ignores the viable system I presented (which is hardly crunch-heavy!), but also ignores the fact that I said "tends to," and the fact that I pointed out that D&D 5e was something of a middle system, even if it tended more towards embodied mechanics than 4e did.

What you presented wasn't a system, though, and, again, you mixed up fluff and mechanics and treated them as interchangeable. A classless system is not what I'm looking for, nor am I looking for a simplified 53 system as you're suggesting. I know we've covered it already, but you keep suggesting that I'm looking for something either simpler or completely different from 5e because I allow refluffing class ficitons, which implies that you think that I need such things because I'm unhappy with 5e. I'm not, it's doing exactly what I want it to do. I am not going to be better served by a dumb-down, simpler version, nor is a different system going to be useful to me. I fail to understand why a difference in application means to you that I might be better served with a different game.

To restate: no, a classless system is not better for what I want to do. What I do is best for what I want to do. Explaining to me, in a different way, how I might be better off with a different method is, frankly, a complete non-starter. It's, to borrow a phrase, not even wrong.

 

[Tony Vargas]

And my issue is that you force fiction on characters because of the player's choice of class. I can (and do) achieve immersion in my game fiction, tying characters to my game world, without the crutch of forcing them into accepting a connection (be it membership, or conflict, or whatever) with a group based on a metagame (to me) concept. You accept that classes have in-game reality, I do not. But that doesn't, in any way, mean that I have less ability to hook players through gameworld tie-ins to their characters.

It means the way you use classes makes them into a different tool from the way Im a Banana does. They're still a tool you use to build a better game for your players in both cases. I'm a Banana's classes are a tool that hammers in consistency and immersion, by making any choice a player making choice of class, whether based on concept or mechanics, a choice of who/what the character is in the world. Your classes are a tool that lets each player fit the mechanics of his character to his concept of the character. Both create greater immersion. The former by hardwiring links to the world, the latter by getting player buy-in.

I tend to hook through backgrounds, not class. For instance, there's a rogue in my game that has the urchin background, and is a member in loose standing with the Halfling Mafia, one of the crime syndicates in the main focus city of my campaign. He's not a member of the crime syndicate because he's a rogue, he's a member because his background says that he's a member. He's hooked into the world.

Similarly, another rogue (arcane trickster) picked the solider background and was a member of the Blackguard Ranger Auxillary. He focused on outdoorsy skills, and was the party scout. The Blackguards are the premier mercenary force in my game world. But he was a rogue.

In the first case, the character is playing to class assumptions, but because he wants to. In the second, the character is decidedly separate from class assumptions, and is playing a hard-bitten woodland scout/sniper solider type. Same class, nothing at all similar. Both firmly connected to my game world

Good examples. Backgrounds are great world-tie-in tools, and they're much less mechanically involved in classes, so you can whip up new ones and/or modify them fairly easily.

Another tool in the works that should be ideal for world-tie-ins is Prestige Classes.

Given both of those, flogging the same functionality out of classes, when you could use the optional multiclassing rules and allow them to be fungible character-concept-building-blocks, isn't strictly necessary. We can 'get away' with using classes that 'more abstract' way, without 'losing' links to the world.

 

[TheLoneRanger1979]

If you take into account Second Wind, a 1st level 5e fighter has about the same hit points as an elite (ie, maxed hit points) NPC soldier. The fighter probably has better stats, and also has a combat style. So a 1st-level fighter is a little better than an elite soldier, and significantly better than an average soldier.

Do NPC's level as well (and how if they do)? And have you in your campaigns met any special NPC military formations like the Flaming Fist?

You're right, the soldier background is a bit odd. I wouldn't let a character with that background start with anything more than a minor rank, because high-ranked soldiers will probably use the veteran stats or be statted out with class levels, which is significantly more powerful than a starting PC.

Yeah, i think we agree on that one.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Do NPC's level as well (and how if they do)? And have you in your campaigns met any special NPC military formations like the Flaming Fist?

By default, NPCs are statted up like monsters. So your basic guard or soldier is the guard statblock, and then you have some others that a bit stronger, such as the scout or thug or berserker. Then you get the pretty solid veteran, and the most powerful warrior type is the gladiator.

By default, that's how it is handled. There are no NPC specific classes or advancement schemes. So to make more specific NPCs you'd either build them like a monster, or build them like a PC (the DMG allows for both or either).

Personally, I handle it by giving a class and level equivalency to the various NPC monster statblocks. This helps me visualize where they are in the world in comparison to PCs, and it gives me a baseline for converting them to full PCs if needed. If Captain Suchforth (a veteran) gets adopted as someone's PC (or as an important NPC), he becomes a 5th-level fighter, because I've decided that veteran represents a non-elite equivalent of a 5th-level fighter.

I also statted out versions all of the NPC statblocks for each of the standard 1e races, so if I need a mountain dwarf noble or a lightfoot halfling commoner I've got the stats right there.