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

[Shasarak]

And I, on the other hand, think that the murder hobo play style is more inspired by dungeon-oriented play in which the PC's standing in the social order is not particularly relevant, so there is no reason to think through how a class might be organized precisely because all you are really doing as a member of a class is murdering monsters. So the idea that a class is nothing but bags of assorted crunch does fit really well - into that type of setting. Following the above argumentation style, of course.

My question would be - how can you enforce a social order where the PCs are so obviously more powerful then everyone else?

 

[empireofchaos]

My question would be - how can you enforce a social order where the PCs are so obviously more powerful then everyone else?

That was precisely my point. Power in the sense we usually think of in D&D (fighting prowess, casting spells, and other abilities) are all forms of power that exist in the game world, and they are either going to have to be integrated with other forms of power toward the end of upholding some sort of social order, or else power will be taken by the first murder hobos that happen to come along.

 

[Arial Black]

There is no real restriction that prevents anyone from writing a book that resembles the mechanics of DnD.

Some people may claim that it is unrealistic but certainly no more then Elric going on a magical bender is unrealistic.

The point of this was to challenge the assertion that 'class is real in game'.

Since you can use any fantasy novel as a setting for your game, and since the setting never had D&D rules affecting it before you decided to use that setting, then D&D classes were definitely not real before you chose to set your game there. At the moment you start, do D&D classes become real things that characters can discuss? How? By what mechanism?

You could even choose a period of history or legend to set your D&D game. How about the Trojan War, including the Greek gods. How do you stat up Achilles? Odysseus? Heracles?

Is Heracles a barbarian or a fighter? However you choose to model him, someone else could have chosen a different class. In Deities & Demigods the author made his own choices, based on 1st ed rules (and breaking them liberally when he wanted to).

Let's say you choose barbarian. Is 'barbarian' now a real thing about him that can be talked about? Well, apart from the fact that the word 'barbarian' literally means a person that cannot speak Greek?

What if you choose paladin? An odd choice, but would that be 'real'?

The characters are what they are, and don't care (and more crucially cannot know) which D&D stats will be given to them by gamers in 3000 years! The things we decide cannot be 'real' for them; we are just using the rules we have to help us use those people in our game.

So, no, Achilles and Odysseus cannot discuss what D&D class they are! D&D class is not real!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The point of this was to challenge the assertion that 'class is real in game'.

Since you can use any fantasy novel as a setting for your game, and since the setting never had D&D rules affecting it before you decided to use that setting, then D&D classes were definitely not real before you chose to set your game there. At the moment you start, do D&D classes become real things that characters can discuss? How? By what mechanism?

You could even choose a period of history or legend to set your D&D game. How about the Trojan War, including the Greek gods. How do you stat up Achilles? Odysseus? Heracles?

Is Heracles a barbarian or a fighter? However you choose to model him, someone else could have chosen a different class. In Deities & Demigods the author made his own choices, based on 1st ed rules (and breaking them liberally when he wanted to).

Let's say you choose barbarian. Is 'barbarian' now a real thing about him that can be talked about? Well, apart from the fact that the word 'barbarian' literally means a person that cannot speak Greek?

What if you choose paladin? An odd choice, but would that be 'real'?

The characters are what they are, and don't care (and more crucially cannot know) which D&D stats will be given to them by gamers in 3000 years! The things we decide cannot be 'real' for them; we are just using the rules we have to help us use those people in our game.

So, no, Achilles and Odysseus cannot discuss what D&D class they are! D&D class is not real!

"Class" did not exist in Azeroth prior to the existence of World of Warcraft. By your logic, "classes" don't exist in it, either.

 

[Arial Black]

"Class" did not exist in Azeroth prior to the existence of World of Warcraft. By your logic, "classes" don't exist in it, either.

I'm unfamiliar with Warcraft, but I think I get your meaning.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to construct game worlds where the inhabitants are aware of class, level, hit points, etc, whether that's the worlds of Warcraft or Order of the Stick. What I am saying is that:-

* the rules themselves do not mandate that the characters know any of the game rules, including which D&D class they are

* that it is a little piece of absurdity if it is assumed that the creatures know the D&D rules which govern them

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm unfamiliar with Warcraft, but I think I get your meaning.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to construct game worlds where the inhabitants are aware of class, level, hit points, etc, whether that's the worlds of Warcraft or Order of the Stick. What I am saying is that:-

* the rules themselves do not mandate that the characters know any of the game rules, including which D&D class they are

* that it is a little piece of absurdity if it is assumed that the creatures know the D&D rules which govern them

Alright, consider this: Is "physics" a discrete kind of knowledge? Is "chemistry"? "Biology"?

These categories of knowledge are arbitrary. We create them because the sum total of all currently-available knowledge is far too vast for a single person to acquire. There is absolutely nothing wrong with asserting that calling particular scientists "physicists," "chemists," or "biologists" is in some sense ridiculous because the real world recognizes no such distinctions. Hell, the world doesn't recognize a distinction between "scientist" and, say, "physician" or "philosopher"--and, at one time in human history, "philosopher" was the appropriate term for one who practiced any amount of any of those three things. (Remember, Isaac Newton did not consider himself a "scientist" or "mathematician," he considered himself a "natural philosopher"--his great work on what we today call physical phenomena is the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, the "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.")

Yet, despite the arbitrariness, despite the indisputable fact that these categories are only employed because they are useful for human organization and not because they reflect any fundamental differences in the nature of reality, we still consider these terms truly meaningful things--things that can be known about a person. "He's a physicist," "she's a mathematician," "they're biologists looking at the molecular signals between cells." All of these sentences are clearly meaningful, about real-world people, despite the fact that "mathematics" and "biology" are only separate categories because we have chosen them to be so.

Similarly, one can quite easily say that classes in any given instantiation of D&D--whatever its (pseudo)historical or fictional underpinnings--are equivalent things. In order to be a licensed physician, one must meet certain qualifications, possess certain training, etc.; identically, in some possible D&D universes, being a licensed "esoteric philosopher" (my own coinage, meant to parallel "natural philosopher") may require specific qualifications and possessing a certain kind of training. Such people, in D&D parlance, would be called wizards.

Does this mean that these people have a codified understanding of what "level" is? Not necessarily. I would certainly expect them to have a codified understanding of the difference between 1st-level and 9th-level spells, seeing as it is pretty easy to test (really, they should know a distinction between spells of every level, I'm just using the extremes for emphasis; for example, in the Tales of Wyre setting, spell-levels are called "valences," by analogy to the discrete energy levels found in the real-world quantum-mechanical description of electron orbits). Further, it doesn't necessarily mean that people "know their own hit point total," though I'd expect people to have a rough intuitive sense of their proportion of HP (e.g. being at half HP, or half surges in 4e, should "feel different" from being at full or near-zero--based on the real sense of nociception).

You seem to be arguing straw men here: saying that, if class exists and is a known thing, then it must be so in every possible world, and that people have to also know statistic X, and Y, and Z, and these things are absurd, therefore knowing that class exists is also absurd. But these "it must apply everywhere" and slippery-slope-like arguments just doesn't follow. Class need not be real in all worlds to be real in some. And itt's entirely possible, in plenty of worlds, to know or be able to learn that a character is a Wizard (perhaps, as stated, "an esoteric philosopher"), a Druid (perhaps "an acolyte of The Green"), or really any other class, if the person creating that universe thinks that's worth doing. It need not involve any deeper analysis of a character's game statistics.

To give a personal example: my Dungeon World game. "Wizard" is a status that not only can be known, but is known, for all surface-dwelling races (mostly humans and elves): someone who was educated in the Conclave, the loose and fractious coalition of powerful, quasi-school-aligned magical Towers. Only one exception has been seen, and his exceptional-ness was commented on multiple times (a Kobold "priest of Tiamat"* who was mechanically a Wizard--Tiamat being a fickle goddess who wants her followers to seek power, not succor). All the Thieves (or, really, thief-assassins) we've seen have, in the end, proven to come from the same source, trained by a shadowy league of manipulators to be their perfect infiltrators; while the people who know that it's a Thing are few and far between, some actually do. Very technically, my Paladin also qualifies, but only because he's genuinely unique: there is no one else, and may never have been anyone else, that could do the things he does. In theory, the Cleric class has worked similarly--an NPC (a well-meaning but corrupt sort-of-pope-y-bishop of my character's faith) was clearly understood to have his own 'connection to the divine,' working legit miracles.

I don't know that this necessarily translates into all classes being discrete Things Which Exist And People Recognize It, but it's a wholly natural, explained-within-the-world definition of these classes. Being a Wizard means something, and barring the Kobold exception, connects you to a particular power structure, both magical and political. Being a Thief connects you to something, a particular shadowy group, at least in origin.

*This proved to be a very interesting partnership, given that my character is a Paladin...of Bahamut, and Lawful Good (emphasis on the Good) to boot. This isn't the normal D&D universe, but the relationship between the two draconic deities is much the same as it is in FR, or the 4e "points of light" setting. Our two characters would occasionally have theological discussions--in Draconic, naturally, since they're both fluent in it while the Kobold's "common tongue" is a bit stilted. My Paladin had to face a challenge to part of his faith--that Tiamat was purely evil, yet a clear servant of hers was at worst Chaotic Neutral. And the Kobold had to deal with Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes, or "Law-Doer" as he called my character when out of earshot, interfering. It was a wonderful storyline, eventually ending in said Kobold coming around to agreeing with my Paladin on many subjects and making amends for some of his dangerous/selfish deeds in the past--culminating in a touching scene between the two, my character expressing his deep and sincere respect for his diminutive, scaly friend.

 

[Remathilis]

It dawned on me that this conversation would go down exactly the same way if it had been changed to "Do alignments have concrete meaning in your game?"

For some, the notion of alignment being rigid and knowable is ludicrous: people don't conform to one inflexible view of the world and its nearly impossible to KNOW what that view would be; even the people themselves wouldn't think in terms of Lawful Good or Chaotic Neutral. Therefore Alignment must be a metagame construction to quickly assign a "starting personality" to a PC in terms easily understood: "Lawful Good" gives us a general view of the PC's attitude like "Paladin" does his abilities.

BUT WAIT

Alignment IS a tangible thing in the D&D rules. You can detect it magically using spells and abilities. Magic Items attune to only certain alignments. The outer planes are manifestations of these alignments. In days of yore, some alignments powered certain classes (LG Paladins, TN Druids) and alignments even had unique languages. Lawful Good wasn't an abstract moral concept, you could speak it or visit it! A paladin or wizard could tell yours with magic. It was a tangible force that made magic stronger or weaker for you, or even opened up certain abilities. Even behaving against your alignment could penalize you in XP loss or (if your class adhered to a certain alignment) loss of powers or class.

However, it never stopped endless debates as to what alignment WAS. And as the editions rolled on, the concept became more and more muted. Certainly, the effect of alignment in 5e is much lower than that of 3e or even 1e. And 4e, for all intents and purposes, rendered it so vague and unimportant that it practically was a nonentity to most characters (4e did the same to classes IMHO). However, I'm sure we could sit here and probably have the same argument, verbatim, on alignment as tangible or metagame as we are with classes.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And 4e, for all intents and purposes, rendered it so vague and unimportant that it practically was a nonentity to most characters (4e did the same to classes IMHO).

Ironically, while I am generally agreed with your arguments up to this point, the parenthetical bit is exactly the opposite of how I feel about the 4e situation. Third edition is what rendered "classes" so vague and unimportant as to be invisible--by introducing à la carte multiclassing and the rampant explosion of prestige classes (Pathfinder takes this even further, with Archetypes effectively erasing any meaning "class" has by making all or nearly all features hot-swappable). 4e gave every class an over-arching goal (with the possible exception of the Wizard, that switched from "one core class with no focus" to "way too many subclasses with no consistent focus"), and usually a handful of mechanics that were, to one degree or another, "unique." (E.g. the Paladin's Lay On Hands and, eventually, two different marking mechanics.) Drastically limiting the ability to multiclass meant you couldn't just mash together whatever smorgasbord of mechanics you wanted--you had to make choices, and those choices led to differences.

 

[Shasarak]

So, no, Achilles and Odysseus cannot discuss what D&D class they are! D&D class is not real!

The only reason that Achilles and Odysseus can not discuss what DnD class they are is because they are not real anymore then Elminster and Frodo can discuss what DnD class they are.

 

[empireofchaos]

The only reason that Achilles and Odysseus can not discuss what DnD class they are is because they are not real anymore then Elminster and Frodo can discuss what DnD class they are.

Nope - Achilles and Odysseus would have no earthly idea what class they belong to:

But nimble-witted Odysseus over-ruled him: ‘Achilles, son of Peleus, you are our finest warrior, finer than I and stronger with the spear, yet in counsel I am your superior, being older and more experienced, so suffer yourself to hear me out.

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Iliad19.htm#_Toc239246276

"But I would not listen to them, and shouted out to him in my rage, 'Cyclops, if any one asks you who it was that put your eye out and spoiled your beauty, say it was the valiant warrior Ulysses, son of Laertes, who lives in Ithaca.'

http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.9.ix.html