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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6780136" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I still don't quite see why this dictates that class is an in-game construct, something that the CHARACTERS would know about. We simply NEVER played that way. If your druid had to go fight &quot;The Great Druid&quot; then I would have presumed that my opponent was an NPC with a class (assuming it wasn't a PC, which is possible but not THAT likely). However, its really entirely up to the DM. You can't talk about OD&amp;D and other early versions of the game and say that ANYTHING was 'RAW', it just wasn't that sort of game at all! The DM put you up against someone. The DM said &quot;yeah, you can atone to this guy, he can cast atonement&quot; etc. The barbarian doesn't like MAGIC, if the bard runs around casting spells he won't adventure with the bard EITHER. I mean, sure, some of these things are cast in terms of classes, just like &quot;only paladins can use a holy avenger&quot;, but again that doesn't mean the world is so cut-and-dried. I hail from a vintage of D&amp;D where nothing was set in stone, not even the way basic rule systems worked. I know for a fact that Gary didn't particularly care for the rules in terms of sticking to them, he just made them up to be workable. If a 5000 pound stone fell on your character, nobody calculated damage, you just died, even if you had 200 hit points. If you fought a duel with the 'Grand Master of Flowers' and won, you got to be the new Grand Master, regardless of how the DM did up the NPCs stats. And I don't disagree, Gygax must certainly have made a LOT of classed NPCs. There's still no evidence that I buy that he literally intended the world to be peopled with characters that ran around calling themselves 'Fighting Men', 'Clerics', 'Magic Users', and 'Thieves'. Think about that class name 'magic user', does that sound like the title of an actual person, or a generic term used for classification purposes (and here is where the word 'class' comes in, yes it presumes more than one individual COULD be so classified, but that doesn't mean they themselves use those classifications).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6780136, member: 82106"] Yeah, I still don't quite see why this dictates that class is an in-game construct, something that the CHARACTERS would know about. We simply NEVER played that way. If your druid had to go fight "The Great Druid" then I would have presumed that my opponent was an NPC with a class (assuming it wasn't a PC, which is possible but not THAT likely). However, its really entirely up to the DM. You can't talk about OD&D and other early versions of the game and say that ANYTHING was 'RAW', it just wasn't that sort of game at all! The DM put you up against someone. The DM said "yeah, you can atone to this guy, he can cast atonement" etc. The barbarian doesn't like MAGIC, if the bard runs around casting spells he won't adventure with the bard EITHER. I mean, sure, some of these things are cast in terms of classes, just like "only paladins can use a holy avenger", but again that doesn't mean the world is so cut-and-dried. I hail from a vintage of D&D where nothing was set in stone, not even the way basic rule systems worked. I know for a fact that Gary didn't particularly care for the rules in terms of sticking to them, he just made them up to be workable. If a 5000 pound stone fell on your character, nobody calculated damage, you just died, even if you had 200 hit points. If you fought a duel with the 'Grand Master of Flowers' and won, you got to be the new Grand Master, regardless of how the DM did up the NPCs stats. And I don't disagree, Gygax must certainly have made a LOT of classed NPCs. There's still no evidence that I buy that he literally intended the world to be peopled with characters that ran around calling themselves 'Fighting Men', 'Clerics', 'Magic Users', and 'Thieves'. Think about that class name 'magic user', does that sound like the title of an actual person, or a generic term used for classification purposes (and here is where the word 'class' comes in, yes it presumes more than one individual COULD be so classified, but that doesn't mean they themselves use those classifications). [/QUOTE]

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