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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7819954" data-attributes="member: 996">I am, as they used to say on Fat Albert, an "out of work school teacher."D&D has more class than a tenured philosophy professor wearing a tuxedo to his lecture hall.More than fair.  D&D will always be a bastion of classism.  So stipulated. Classes are arbitrary components of a system of asymmetric power relationships in which the spellcasting Bourgeoisie exploit the surplus hit points of the hard-fighting Proletariat, expropriating experience points to expand their own power at the expense of those who actually earn them.Or something like that. Sure.  Also consider that in the context of B, class can contain disabilities, as well, and that those can be purely mechanical... or not.  So, a class with significant mechanical perks faux-balanced by lore-only drawbacks, can be exploited if the lore can be scraped off, or untenable if it's over-emphasized. Most paladin oaths don't much deviate from reasonably 'heroic' behavior that most PCs should be engaging in, anyway.  So it really depends.  In a relatively conventional heroic-fantasy party, the paladin is probably just played a little more dogmatic and strident than the next guy, but everyone's doing the same thing and the oath is just color.  Conversely, in a pragmatic or competitive style, the Pally is hosed.This is something that's varied over the editions.  Back in the day, higher level spells explicitly came from - and could be changed or withheld by - the deity and/or it's intermediaries.  More recently, your divine power has been granted more or less no-strings, and what you do with it is on you.Patron.  And there's nothing I've seen an any Warlock write-up that actually give it any teeth. All dichotomies are false dichotomies. I reject it out of hand.Whatever I want, 'cause I'm the DM, baby. No and yes.  Classes are about as beneficial to modern RPGs as tractors driving in the fast lane of a modern highway.  But, if you're gonna have them, connecting them up to the lore of the setting is one of the few things that makes them remotely worthwhile. And, if you're not going to have them, you can still create packages or perks that tie into lore in the same way.</blockquote>

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