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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except that both Alhazred and I have said we like 5e just fine. We're happy with the options provided. Maybe you should hypothesize a little less and listen a little more?

Yeah, 5e isn't my FAVE, but its a perfectly fine game. I'd be happier with more 4e-like monsters and a power system, etc, but as a player I don't have to think about that stuff much. Its true that 4e's handling of stat blocks is BETTER at giving you tools to model anything as a 'monster' than 5e is (from what I've seen, I don't DM 5e). So, on a continuum, 5e might be more in the direction of 2e, but it seems to me that it still lets you do 4e-like 'NPC stat blocks' at least as much as it does using class and level for them.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In short, you want to throw out the lore that disagrees with you. *shrugs* Still doesn't change how things work in FR by default. Feel free to change things for your table.

I don't agree that I'd be 'changing' anything. This may be a generational issue or something, but AFAIK D&D is a toolkit for playing fantasy RPG games. When Gygax wrote that paragraph about the Great Druid you are citing it is in the context of his statements that D&D's rules are a toolbox and that the DM is entirely responsible for how the world works and what happens in it. At most he advises sticking to the core mechanics of the game for the sake of consistency, but I firmly disbelieve that his intent was that something like the details of what the Great Druid's stats are was intended to be some sort of canon that shouldn't ever be violated, or any of the other instances of rules you invoke to support class as in-game reality.

Nothing is being thrown out here. I'm doing exactly what the game, as I learned how to play and run it, tells me to do, extrapolate and rework the narratively oriented material to fit the game being played. Even in recent editions of the game I believe that is always the intent, even if it is not so loudly proclaimed in this day of organized play and such.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It is never stated, nor even implied, that kobolds don't explode into 20 die fireballs at 0 HP either.

Absence of an explicit statement is not affirmative of the inverse.

Oh, come now, this is not even passable rhetoric. Its never stated or implied that player characters can't grow tentacles and turn green either. If the DM wants exploding kobolds, he's absolutely right to make them explode.

 

[Miladoon]

The Grand Druid is the Warlock of the Wyrmling Woods. All Challengers of Gaiea know this.

 

[steeldragons]

Exactly! And nobody is saying all we did was 'houserule', for one thing you couldn't play OD&D out of the box, it literally isn't a playable game, so any concept like 'rules as written' and then you 'house ruled it' is utterly worthless when talking about anything before 1e (and I include Holmes Basic in that too, though at least its CLOSE to being playable by the book).

-snip-

NEVER is it stated, or even implied, that characters NARRATIVELY have a concept of class. Not once anywhere in the rules does that concept appear. A very literalist (and common) reading of AD&D would have NPCs putting out there class like a shingle as if they know they're modelled as a "level 7 magic user" or something, but its NOT part of the rules. Furthermore what IS part of the rules is "the DM makes up the world"

In Mentzer's Basic EVERY class has the following entry in the explanation/description of the class, but I'll just use the Cleric on page 24, since it comes up first:

Title: Your cleric should use this title when talking with other characters. Instead of saying, "I'm Clarion, a Second Level cleric," the character should say "I'm Clarion, the Adept."

<bolding mine>

Since every class has level-titles to use, "when talking with other characters" [note: not other players, other characters] for the rest of BECM and, as I only have the Expert rules for Cook/Marsh, I am going to go out on a limb and say something to this effect and the lists of level titles must have appeared in the [Cook/Marsh] Basic version as well. (Don't have the Holmes so can't really say, but I'm guessing/betting there were level titles there, too.)

It is quite clear that, you are correct, it is not "implied, that characters have a concept of class." It is explicitly stated outright...from at least Cook/Marsh on.

Since the AD&D books all give level titles to use as well, this isn't some huge conceptual leap to make or original/new/sudden/unusual way to view/play the game [in the narrative]. It was the default assumption.

That you [the general "you"/anyone] didn't do that and played differently...great. No one's taking that away from you. No one is saying "you did it wrong." But the idea/position "The game didn't/doesn't/never did say this" is blatantly and objectively false.

 

[empireofchaos]

I think the discussion got a bit muddied by people pulling out examples from various editions of D&D. The thread, ostensibly, was about 5e. 5e, AFAIK, doesn't have any rules that mandate anything about classes in the vein of AD&D or OD&D/Basic/whatever. There's no training rule that I'm aware of, nor any 'fight the great druid' type rules in that game. So if we restrict ourselves to the original topic, then class appears clearly to be a meta-game construct.

If you stick to AD&D (and some parts of OD&D/BECMI IIRC) then there are mechanics which clearly reference class, though its still not at all clear that class is intended to be a narrative in-world concept. IMHO it just wasn't a concern to Gygax, he wrote down what he did and that was what was 'rules', but we really don't know how it was presented in-game. You'd have to go over to RPG.net and invoke Old Geezer or someone like that who's still around and played with him in the days of yore. IMHO AD&D wasn't intended to be taken as strictures at all, its intended to provide ways to do things. PLAYERS might be 'breaking the rules' in some sense if they pass over those strictures, but EVERY SINGLE PLACE WHERE THEY EXIST in AD&D is related to the DM and NPCs, aside perhaps from who can use what magic items, which is a pretty weak peg to hang the whole thing on.

I won't even venture an opinion on 3.x d20-era D&D. I've played, but I don't own the books and the way MCing etc work it looks to me like 'class' is just a convenience to organize what is effectively a point-buy character system (though you can certainly play it straight up without MCing much and then it mirrors 2e fairly well). I suspect there are a few 'class mechanic' rules, but they're similar to 2e's and not as prevalent.

4e simply flat out disposes of class as any sort of in-world concept AT ALL. NPCs are universally represented as stat blocks and there are an array of tools provided outright to facilitate modelling any sort of NPC character concept. WotC NEVER ONCE presented in any material an NPC with class levels. There's a sort of rump of the concept at the back of the DMG, but they never even bothered to extend it to cover classes post-PHB1. Clearly if we were to have this discussion about 4e it would have ended on page 1 of the thread.

5e IMHO carries on where 4e left off. It does leverage class to a slightly greater extent, by for instance using spells in monster stat blocks. It doesn't however appear to contemplate that NPCs will generally be characters with class and level, though it seems to be more agnostic than 4e about whether the DM might use that technique. I don't personally know of any place in 5e where the rules clearly present a mechanic that would, even very strictly speaking, require an NPC with class levels, or that NPCs of some ilk in general are classed.

The precedent of past editions of the game is important, and it is important for both sides of the argument, albeit for different reasons. It is important for the "class is real" side because we are able to show a long-term continuity of class being recognized as as real, and argue on this basis that the current edition builds on this precedent (and not just that of a single edition). It's important for the "class is metagame only" side because they can say they are comfortable with the precedent as understood by most players, but can play around with builds simply because following the text of the rules too closely is too confining and gets boring.

So here is how class is defined in the various editions of the game (excepting B/X and its various permutations.

There are three main classes of characters: Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, and Clerics (Single-Volume edition of box set, p. 8)

OK, no definition given here or anywhere else. Inconclusive - could be interpreted either way. Moving on.

Character class refers to the profession of the player character (p.18)

. That's pretty unequivocal. I don't know how many times it has been claimed in this thread that class is not a profession, but here it is, in black and white. It doesn't literally say "and the character is aware of belonging to this profession", but obviously, that is (putting it mildly) a much more warranted inference than "but that doesn't mean the character is aware of it." Onward:

A character class is like a profession or career. It is what your character has worked and trained at during his younger years. If you wanted to become a doctor, you could not walk out the door and
begin work immediately. First you would have to get some training. The same is true of character classes in the AD&D game (internet pdf version, pp. 51-52).

So, here is an explicit comparison between D&D and real world professions, which people who belong to them are very much aware of, and in which, during the course of training, they obviously interact with others who belong to it as well, and recognize them as such.

Your character’s class is his or her profession or vocation. It determines what he or she is able to do: combat training, magical ability, skills, and more. Class is probably the first choice you make about your character (p. 21 in both cases)

Continuing in the profession vein, and underlining the centrality of class to the character.

And now - att'n!

Your class is the primary definition of what your character can do in the extraordinary magical landscape of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS world. A class is more than a profession; it is your character’s calling (p.50).

The first sentence is certainly possible to interpret as referring to powers and not to identity - but only if you ignore the second sentence, which says that class is not any old profession, but a calling, the overwhelming driving force in the character's life. A calling is by definition something you hear (physically, or at least spiritually), thus, something that registers, something you are aware of.

5e I've already quoted earlier on, and it essentially says the same thing:

Class is the primary definition of what your character can do. It is more than a profession; it is your character’s calling. Class shapes the way you think about the world and your relationship with other people in powers in the multiverse (p.45).

It has real effects in the world, and shapes peoples thinking and outlook. There is no suggestion that it does so unconsciously.

So there is a very long thread in the game that conceptualizes class as a real category in the game world. It didn't have to be that way, and it could easily have developed the notion that class is just a bundle of mechanics. Something along these lines:

Your character’s class is the most important factor in determining what your character can do. Your class determines what armor and weapons you start off knowing how to use, what skills you can learn, how many hit points you have, and— most important—the class features and powers you wield. These, in turn, determine what role you’re best suited for in combat encounters as well as in some noncombat encounters.

This is from the 4e PHB 2 (p. 30). Now, this characterization is clearly much more in tune with what you are arguing - it's about the crunch, and its impact on combat. There is no suggestion here of class as a profession or any sort of social category that a character can identify with.

And that's the problem, from my perspective. If the long-running precedent had been build around this notion of class, class would indeed have no in-game concept. And then, it seems clear that people would either demand to have rules which allow them to design their own congeries of mechanics (called classes), increasingly more classes (which 4e did in fact deliver in numerous PHBs), or, they would begin to lose interest in a game that increasingly diverged from the class-centered game of earlier editions. Which is in fact what happened - people went elsewhere, but many of them came back once the new edition appeared (though obviously, there were numerous other reasons for the defection and return as well).

For my part, I don't know if I would stick with a game like 4e (I was kind of on gaming hiatus during those years), precisely because the class-centeredness was exchanged for something that is quite a bit closer to a skill-based system, and, without putting words in people's mouths, I have the distinct sense that a lot of people who like 5e better than 4e think a long the same lines. But if you want to see class in a more 4e framework, that's fine. I agree with those who say that's similar to houseruling alignment out of bounds (something I've done before, and still do de facto).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In Mentzer's Basic EVERY class has the following entry in the explanation/description of the class, but I'll just use the Cleric on page 24, since it comes up first:

<bolding mine>

Since every class has level-titles to use, "when talking with other characters" [note: not other players, other characters] for the rest of BECM and, as I only have the Expert rules for Cook/Marsh, I am going to go out on a limb and say something to this effect and the lists of level titles must have appeared in the [Cook/Marsh] Basic version as well. (Don't have the Holmes so can't really say, but I'm guessing/betting there were level titles there, too.)

It is quite clear that, you are correct, it is not "implied, that characters have a concept of class." It is explicitly stated outright...from at least Cook/Marsh on.

Since the AD&D books all give level titles to use as well, this isn't some huge conceptual leap to make or original/new/sudden/unusual way to view/play the game [in the narrative]. It was the default assumption.

That you [the general "you"/anyone] didn't do that and played differently...great. No one's taking that away from you. No one is saying "you did it wrong." But the idea/position "The game didn't/doesn't/never did say this" is blatantly and objectively false.

Obviously we're not going to ever agree, but again, nothing about there being level titles tells me that the expectation is that every single person in the whole world that someone calls a 'warlock' is level X magic user. It says that a level X magic user (7th IIRC, but whatever) CAN call himself a 'warlock', but WHY actually shouldn't you use your class name? Because class isn't an in-game concept! That's my conclusion! Characters don't go around calling themselves 'Fighting Men' because there's no such concept in the game world. Level 4 PCs may call themselves 'hero', but that doesn't preclude there being other heroes that aren't level 4 Fighting Men, nor that if you're level 5 you have to suddenly call yourself something different and everyone can see the stripes change on your sleeve. That's a very narrow and rigid interpretation of the game.

And, really, beyond that, early D&D wasn't focused on any sort of great high ideal of narrative coherence. It was meant to be entertainment and the tone of the game was IME largely rather informal gamist. So the rules were relatively simple, instead of trying to have a big complicated discussion of how the Druid needed to be narratively balanced against the other classes and an elaborate discussion of how a druid organization could exist in a campaign world to do that via ritual combat, they just provided a simple rule, there's so and so many druids out there and you have to fight them at X levels. Likewise the level titles, they're just some very generic descriptors you could use to make your dialog in-game a little less clunky. In a game where there's a real concern for a high fidelity campaign setting and social organizations and such that might bestow titles in a narrative fashion, then the DM would develop that and the default level titles probably wouldn't be used (they are pretty silly anyway, again, it was very gamist).

This all leads me, based on a lot of experience with those early games, to conclude that there's no real merit to the idea that levels are INTENDED to be an in-game thing. There may not be an intention of any sort. I doubt there is personally. Early D&D was a very ad-hoc thing. Today all these OSR people run around worshipping the details of how exactly this or that subsystem uses a certain type of die or claiming that the saving throw categories are some deep work of genius, but its nonsense. People just made stuff up. Surprise uses a d6 because that's the die that was near to hand on the day that Gary or Dave first needed to resolve a surprise situation (or it was grafted on from some earlier game system, I don't know). Likewise they made up opponents, monsters/NPCs in whatever way was convenient on that day, and whoever probably had no clear idea or concern about whether or not class was an in-game concept or not. If you could go back and ask Dave or Gary about that in 1975 they'd probably scratch their heads and say "I don't know, is it?"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The precedent of past editions of the game is important, and it is important for both sides of the argument, albeit for different reasons. It is important for the "class is real" side because we are able to show a long-term continuity of class being recognized as as real, and argue on this basis that the current edition builds on this precedent (and not just that of a single edition). It's important for the "class is metagame only" side because they can say they are comfortable with the precedent as understood by most players, but can play around with builds simply because following the text of the rules too closely is too confining and gets boring.

So here is how class is defined in the various editions of the game (excepting B/X and its various permutations.

OK, no definition given here or anywhere else. Inconclusive - could be interpreted either way. Moving on.

. That's pretty unequivocal. I don't know how many times it has been claimed in this thread that class is not a profession, but here it is, in black and white. It doesn't literally say "and the character is aware of belonging to this profession", but obviously, that is (putting it mildly) a much more warranted inference than "but that doesn't mean the character is aware of it." Onward:

So, here is an explicit comparison between D&D and real world professions, which people who belong to them are very much aware of, and in which, during the course of training, they obviously interact with others who belong to it as well, and recognize them as such.

Continuing in the profession vein, and underlining the centrality of class to the character.

And now - att'n! The first sentence is certainly possible to interpret as referring to powers and not to identity - but only if you ignore the second sentence, which says that class is not any old profession, but a calling, the overwhelming driving force in the character's life. A calling is by definition something you hear (physically, or at least spiritually), thus, something that registers, something you are aware of.

5e I've already quoted earlier on, and it essentially says the same thing: It has real effects in the world, and shapes peoples thinking and outlook. There is no suggestion that it does so unconsciously.

So there is a very long thread in the game that conceptualizes class as a real category in the game world. It didn't have to be that way, and it could easily have developed the notion that class is just a bundle of mechanics. Something along these lines:



This is from the 4e PHB 2 (p. 30). Now, this characterization is clearly much more in tune with what you are arguing - it's about the crunch, and its impact on combat. There is no suggestion here of class as a profession or any sort of social category that a character can identify with.

And that's the problem, from my perspective. If the long-running precedent had been build around this notion of class, class would indeed have no in-game concept. And then, it seems clear that people would either demand to have rules which allow them to design their own congeries of mechanics (called classes), increasingly more classes (which 4e did in fact deliver in numerous PHBs), or, they would begin to lose interest in a game that increasingly diverged from the class-centered game of earlier editions. Which is in fact what happened - people went elsewhere, but many of them came back once the new edition appeared (though obviously, there were numerous other reasons for the defection and return as well).

For my part, I don't know if I would stick with a game like 4e (I was kind of on gaming hiatus during those years), precisely because the class-centeredness was exchanged for something that is quite a bit closer to a skill-based system, and, without putting words in people's mouths, I have the distinct sense that a lot of people who like 5e better than 4e think a long the same lines. But if you want to see class in a more 4e framework, that's fine. I agree with those who say that's similar to houseruling alignment out of bounds (something I've done before, and still do de facto).

Again, though, just as a long-time player I don't see ANY precedent that PCs or NPCs are aware of class. I mean you can call Michael Jordan an 'Athlete' and say that's his profession, but does that make him the same as my friend who does Triathlon? They're both Athletes, maybe you could call that a 'class' in some sense. One is a professional basketball player, which is certainly a career, and the other is a management consultant who has a fitness bug and likes to run/swim/etc. The game world, I would imagine, is much the same. Many different sorts of people might be modeled by the class mechanics of a 'fighter', but that doesn't mean they're all considered to be related to any degree in narrative game terms.

Certainly the Guard Sargeant and the Heroic Goblin Slaying Champion both know how to wield a sword and narratively that might get the recognized as akin in some way, and even perhaps they can accomplish some of the same tasks, and benefit from some of the same magic. Its nowhere clear in what I've said that they share a class. One might be a fighter, the other a non-classed 'veteran man-at-arms'. One might be a ranger, mechanically, or a barbarian, or whatever. All of those possibilities could be given the same titles and seen as having the same career, they could all answer the same want ad for a henchman, or provide training to a PC.

So, I don't see any class-centeredness that was exchanged. I think the tools for NPCs got a lot more flexible and easier to use in 4e, which lead to not using the PC rules for them anymore, and that may affect your outlook on it, but nothing I can see in the game, and none of my experience in play, says to me that D&D was meant to be, or that it normally was, a game where characters went around saying they were a certain class.

 

[empireofchaos]

Again, though, just as a long-time player I don't see ANY precedent that PCs or NPCs are aware of class. I mean you can call Michael Jordan an 'Athlete' and say that's his profession, but does that make him the same as my friend who does Triathlon? They're both Athletes, maybe you could call that a 'class' in some sense. One is a professional basketball player, which is certainly a career, and the other is a management consultant who has a fitness bug and likes to run/swim/etc. The game world, I would imagine, is much the same. Many different sorts of people might be modeled by the class mechanics of a 'fighter', but that doesn't mean they're all considered to be related to any degree in narrative game terms.

Certainly the Guard Sargeant and the Heroic Goblin Slaying Champion both know how to wield a sword and narratively that might get the recognized as akin in some way, and even perhaps they can accomplish some of the same tasks, and benefit from some of the same magic. Its nowhere clear in what I've said that they share a class. One might be a fighter, the other a non-classed 'veteran man-at-arms'. One might be a ranger, mechanically, or a barbarian, or whatever. All of those possibilities could be given the same titles and seen as having the same career, they could all answer the same want ad for a henchman, or provide training to a PC.

This is precisely the point - both Jordan and your friend are athletes, and recognize themselves as such. Quite possibly, your friend looks up to Jordan as an archetypal athlete (and for that reason, buys his shoes). And lots of people could train your friend, but you'd have to be a high-class athlete to train Jordan, as one would expect of a high-level member of a class.

The fact that a man-at-arms and a high level fighter may share an identity doesn't really negate class as reality. Einstein and an undergrad in physics do, too - Einstein became a classed character, and the undergrad ultimately got a job flipping burgers, but that doesn't negate the existence of a solidarity among classed characters that may also include those who did not succeed in rising up above basic trainees.

So, I don't see any class-centeredness that was exchanged. I think the tools for NPCs got a lot more flexible and easier to use in 4e, which lead to not using the PC rules for them anymore, and that may affect your outlook on it, but nothing I can see in the game, and none of my experience in play, says to me that D&D was meant to be, or that it normally was, a game where characters went around saying they were a certain class.

Again, it's not necessarily about what they say out loud when they are going around, or clear labels, it's about what they think and feel. It may be looser and more structured in the case of individual classes - I posted a long list earlier about various shapes that class can take under different circumstances.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is precisely the point - both Jordan and your friend are athletes, and recognize themselves as such. Quite possibly, your friend looks up to Jordan as an archetypal athlete (and for that reason, buys his shoes). And lots of people could train your friend, but you'd have to be a high-class athlete to train Jordan, as one would expect of a high-level member of a class.

The fact that a man-at-arms and a high level fighter may share an identity doesn't really negate class as reality. Einstein and an undergrad in physics do, too - Einstein became a classed character, and the undergrad ultimately got a job flipping burgers, but that doesn't negate the existence of a solidarity among classed characters that may also include those who did not succeed in rising up above basic trainees.

But, see, that's just it. My friend is pretty athletic, by ordinary standards, but only got interested in these (purely amateur) competitions pretty recently. So, to say her 'class' is 'Athlete' isn't really sensible, she's a management consultant (class Office Worker? lol). You could of course reflect this sort of thing in any post-2e version of D&D (somewhat in 2e perhaps as well) by various mechanisms. My point is, the man-at-arms and the hero don't particularly share a class, though they may identify with the same profession, or culture, etc. to some degree.

Again, it's not necessarily about what they say out loud when they are going around, or clear labels, it's about what they think and feel. It may be looser and more structured in the case of individual classes - I posted a long list earlier about various shapes that class can take under different circumstances.

Yeah, but think about it this way. The followers of Otillis, some of them may be hunters, guides, scouts, priests, or just ordinary folk that are woodsmen, etc. Obviously they don't share a class, but is there a class for each of these categories, and what about other aspects of each character? Maybe one scout is a devotee of Otillis, but he's also streetwise and was built as a rogue (maybe with some background that reflects his wilderness aspect). Another might be a ranger class character, more of a 'classic', and a 3rd might simply be an old codger of an NPC that doesn't have any class at all, or used to be a sergeant and has a couple levels in fighter/battlemaster. Even if you translate this to AD&D the same kind of mix can exist. In some ways they identify together, and in some ways they group with other people unrelated to their religious affiliation and nature-going ways.

I just don't think that class models identity or even profession very well. Its a general guide, but I don't think any strong conclusions should be drawn from it about a given character. Mostly I don't think if you go the other way you get far, you can't divine a class from looking at someone. You might guess, but people in-game don't have that hard and fast an idea of these categories.