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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6767475" data-attributes="member: 42582">To me, this makes it seem like your issue is with 3E-style multi-classing rather than how class mechanics and systems are interpreted within the fiction of the game.Also, why is a barbarian's "otherness" a downside? Are you assuming that all campaigns are set in "civilised" lands?I don't understand this at all.I am currently GMing a Burning Wheel game. BW is not a class-based system; PC building is via a Lifepath system.The PCs in my game are an elven princess plus her naive human retainer, a young widow who can speak to spirits; a forest-dwelling sorcerer-assassin; a sorcerer whose player has modelled him loosely on the blue Istari; an elven "ronin" who is seeking redemption among the humans after his lord was killed by orcs; and a mad serpent-handling healer who roams the barren hills.I think these are all pretty recognisable as fantasy types, and there is nothing there that would be out-of-place in any bog standard D&D game (an elven fighter with her lower-level druid retainer; an elven ranger; a wizard; a multi-class wizard/assassin or wizard/ranger; a druid with snake pets).Classes are one way of packaging PC abilities so as to push them towards fantasy archetypes. Burning Wheel uses its LP system to achieve the same sort of outcome. Archetypes don't become meaningless just because a game system pushes towards them in one way rather than another.At least over the last few pages where I have joined this thread, it is [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] who seems mostly to be using the word "fluff" - presumably not with dismissive intentions, given he agrees with you.And rules aren't limited to the quantitative - the whole longsword discussion spun off a post that I made in which I pointed to the location of longswords on a weapon table, as part of a system for handling equipment in the game, as an example of a rules system that is quite different from (say) the flavour text that tells us that gnomes have large noses or that dwarves are gruff or that monks train in monasteries.The rulebooks can, of course, assert that by the rules of the game, a monk must have trained in a monastery. But if that rule is not integrated into any larger game systems, then it is likely to be widely ignored. In 1st ed AD&D the connection between monks and monasteries wasn't just an assertion that a piece of flavour text must be adhered to: it was built into the advancement, follower and permissible wealth rules for monk characters.It's probably good in some ways - if you think about the AD&D DDG, which has Hiawatha as a paladin, it was always a bit hard to know how that fit with the elements of the AD&D paladin that pushed the character very hard into the "knight in shining armour" role.I think Hiawatha as a paladin is probably easier to pull off in 5e (and maybe 3E; definitely not 4e) precisely because these aspects of the class system have been relaxed or abandoned.On the other hand, the AD&D approach makes the default or "background" setting more immediate and vivid.Personally I don't think it's a coincidence that 5e's class systems are flexible and don't mandate these sorts of social/background elements, but the class entries are written with all the default flavour text that has been noted in this thread. For those who want to pick up on that default flavour, it's there for them with no need to look any further. But for those who want to treat classes as mechanical and system frameworks to be clothed by a wider range of fiction, that is quite feasible also.One common complaint about 4e, after all, was that it's class design pushed PCs into overly narrow fictional spaces (eg no bow wielding paladins - they're all knights in shining armour; fighters all as heavy foot; barbarians all as totem warriors; etc). Personally I find this a strength of 4e - the classes, the races, the monsters, the default campaign setting outlined across the 3 core books all work together to establish (what I find to be) a fictional situation that is very compelling for fantasy RPGing. But given how widespread the complaints were, I'm not surprised that 5e has been deliberately designed to permit more flexibility, and reduce at various key points the interdependence of class systems and default flavour text.</blockquote>

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