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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 6777099" data-attributes="member: 16814">Your framing, while perhaps true in for others, doesn't work for me.  Everyone who casts fireball by memorizing the formula isn't a wizard class in my game.  NPCs do not follow PC rules for the most part.  Most NPCs don't have a class at all.  They do similar things, but they aren't wizards or clerics or rogues or fighters. To me, class is an entirely mechanical device that exists between the player and the game world, but isn't in the game world.  It's an interface only, designed to offer modelling to a themed array of abilities using mechanics that try to balance the experience across the players.  The NPCs, though, existing in the game world only, don't need that interface and can adopt any mechanics necessary to properly model the challenge they represent.So, yeah, my player may be playing a wizard class, but there aren't a bunch of other NPCs around with the same set of mechanics governing their abilities.  This severely limits the usefulness of 'well, I know he's a fighter even if he calls himself a boogabooga.'  There's no way to know that he's a fighter class, because he may be the only one in the area, while there are a bunch of NPCs calling themselves boogaboogas, because boogaboogas are known as fearsome warriors of the plains and they live on the plains and are fearsome warriors without a single level of any class whatsoever.</blockquote>