Do you have any class? The class discussion thread (Paladins and Warlocks and Clerics, OH MY!!

[Quartz]

A. Class in meaningful; a class is a fusion of "lore" and "crunch." Call this the HC (hard class) category.

B. Class isn't meaningful, but is just a descriptor for a grab bag of abilities. The only thing that matters about class is the crunch of particular abilties. Call the is the NC (no class) category.

I think you're looking at the difference betwen a role-player and a roll-player. A player who gets a bunch of abilities from another entity has a relationship with that entity. That calls for role-playing. It is, however, additional work.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I know from experience from classless games that the main point of classes is what they don't allow a character to do. In classless games everyone comes up with very similar builds consisting of all the strongest or coolest abilities available in the rules.

The class fluff is nice and provides a useful starting point when creating a character, but if a player wants to refluff it to provide a different explanation as to why they have that set of abilities, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

 

[5ekyu]

I think you're looking at the difference betwen a role-player and a roll-player. A player who gets a bunch of abilities from another entity has a relationship with that entity. That calls for role-playing. It is, however, additional work.

I would say this is in my experience separate from the roll/role aspect. I can be and have seen fantastic role playing out of those who take a class way outside its fluff and lousy role playing by someone who stayed in it. Being a "traditional" dwarven fighter or something wau outside thst can be either.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That whole, "No one true way," and all that.

Yeah, sure, of course.

Classed are inherently a sort of "one true way." Not for the whole game but for the realization of each permitted character concept.

Thus racial MCing, dual-classing, sub-classes, kits, skills, feats, modular MCing, PrCs, Gestalts, backgrounds, feat-MCing, PP/ED, Themes, and Hybrids, all emerging in the history of D&D, trying to soften the limitations inherent in its class/level foundation.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But there have been classless RPGs from pretty much the beginning. I played Runequest and Traveller back in the early 80s, and the player characters where bland and generic compared to AD&D's classes.

 

[5ekyu]

But there have been classless RPGs from pretty much the beginning. I played Runequest and Traveller back in the early 80s, and the player characters where bland and generic compared to AD&D's classes.

To me that really depended. Same kinds of experience, Traveller was right there beside AD&D as my formative initial RPGs with HERO coming right along a bit later.

I did not experience the bland and generic in Traveller bdcsuse their life path or military career development roll-thru encouraged both taking different paths but yielded different outcomes. It was not fully choice driven selection from the pool of infinity

HERO tended to produce - with a few exceptions - characters that were mechanically similar, to be sure. There were a variety of reasons - dice caps, defense caps etc. But mostly you could build the framework driven characterxeho fotted the I's and crossed the tees so, folks did.

But even then the concepts and backgrounds were different enough that as GM I could story those into playing quite different as far as campaign differences meant.

To me, classes encourage the players and enable the GM more strongly to have meaningful differences - so do lifepath plus random like Traveller... while the complete selection ad infinitum point buy has to rely on a bit more effort from both yo make it happen, if at all.

 

[Kurotowa]

To me, classes encourage the players and enable the GM more strongly to have meaningful differences - so do lifepath plus random like Traveller... while the complete selection ad infinitum point buy has to rely on a bit more effort from both yo make it happen, if at all.

It's like I said. Some people thrive in an environment of limitless creative freedom. Other people find themselves lost and adrift, or just overwhelmed by the possibilities of that much open space. I find my creative impulses are at their best when I'm given a set of pieces and asked to find the most interesting combination, rather than being asked to start from scratch. Even the legendary comic artist Jack Kirby would find himself staring blankly at a clean sheet of paper, so Stan Lee would task an intern to go make a bunch of random little dots on the paper before Kirby came in every morning. That gave Kirby enough structure to work from and let his talents shine.

There are people of all sorts of temperament and creative styles, none inherently better than the others. It's a matter of matching your innate style to the right tools for them. I mean, look at poetry. Some poets go free form, but a lot of them confine themselves to a style with highly restrictive mandates, and yet those restrictions force them to exercise their creativity to its utmost.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But there have been classless RPGs from pretty much the beginning. I played Runequest and Traveller back in the early 80s, and the player characters where bland and generic compared to AD&D's classes.

Traveller was a bit odd in lacking any sort of XP after chargen, and Scout &c were essentially classes, anyway.

RQ characters were as similar or different as what they did, as advancement was based on which skills you actually used, in play.

 

[Hussar]

There are a couple of problems with the class system in D&D.

1. As was mentioned, some classes come with a LOT more built in lore than others. Which leads to 2:

2. People are still stuck in earlier edition mindsets regarding classes that don't actually necessarily apply to 5e.

Paladin is a perfect example. I've seen numerous references to Steve Rogers (aka Captain America) as the go to archetype for paladins. But, while that would certainly be true in earlier editions, it's not true anymore. There are, what, seven different kinds of official paladins now and each of them is very, very different.

And there's a reason for this. Too much lore in a class means that the class is locked into a single archetype. Everyone who plays that class has to play within a very narrow set of parameters defined by that class. 5e, with it's Archetypes, breaks out of that. If I want to play a First Nations inspired paladin with a spear dressed in doeskin leathers, talking about the spirits of the land and how we should respect our elders, I can. That's an Oath of Ancients paladin, right there.

But, people haven't really embraced this yet. You see it all the time, like @lowkey13 says, Hard Class or Soft Class. Does a warlock's patron interfere on a regular basis or it is largely hands off? Well, there isn't really an answer to that. It's going to depend on the kind of warlock (how hands on is a Great Old Ones patron really?) and the individual group.

So, while I do think lore is indispensable from classes, I think the bigger issue is that people are unwilling to accept different interpretations of lore and insist that their singular view of a class is the only possible interpretation.

 

[Umbran]

Classed are inherently a sort of "one true way." Not for the whole game but for the realization of each permitted character concept.

The problem, Tony, is that your proclamation read as for games in general. These classes exist in one game. There's tons of games out there without classes - I daresay, more games without than with. So, really, I don't see the point as particularly valid these days.

Thus racial MCing, dual-classing, sub-classes, kits, skills, feats, modular MCing, PrCIs, Gestalts, backgrounds, feat-MCing, PP/ED, Themes, and Hybrids, all emerging in the history of D&D, trying to soften the limitations inherent in its class/level foundation.

Yes, well, folks have a sort of inertia - a tendency to make small modifications to a system, rather than seek an entirely new system that innately does what they want. And that works fine, until you stack seventeen of these small mods together, and maybe they start looking a little silly. That, however, does not constitute a flaw in the original game.

Complaining about how there's no anchovies for your pizza, when you are standing in a Burger King, doesn't seem like a fair thing, is all.