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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7391349" data-attributes="member: 6775031">I never said that only one reality can have a particular mechanical reflection. I said that any particular mechanic exists because it is a reflection of the reality, and not the other way around. There are more objects within the game reality than there are simple mechanical ways to reflect them within the mechanical language of the game; some of those objects are going to have the same reflection.A battleaxe and a longsword both deal 1d8 slashing damage, because both of those realities generate the same reflection. That doesn't mean you can take the 1d8 slashing damage and just declare that it comes from anything you feel like; you need to evaluate it for what it actually is within the reality of the game world, and determine the reflection based on that reality, in order for it to have any meaning whatsoever. It's entirely possible a two-handed club would have very similar mechanics to a maul, not because the fluff doesn't matter, but simply because that is the most accurate way to reflect that reality within the game world. (Although, for the record, it's not; the greatclub already exists, and it's a simple two-handed weapon which deals 1d8. An unbalanced tree branch that you can buy for 2sp is simply no match for a precision-crafted maul that costs 10gp.)The mechanics are somewhat broad, and intended to cover a variety of similar realities, and some of those abstractions are broader than others. The fighter class is much broader than the druid class, for example. The fighter class is intended to cover samurai and non-raging vikings and less-pious knights and so on. The druid class is intended to cover only members of a specific type of organization which teaches its members very specific abilities; if your character concept isn't that you were a member of this type of organization and learned these very specific abilities, then you aren't a druid, and re-skinning the existing class as something else entirely would be a disingenuous way of representing that other thing.The fact that the druid class exists, and has this particular fluff, is valuable information about how the world works. If the class didn't exist, or if others could gain similar abilities without joining that specific organization, then we would know less about the world and it would require more work from the DM in order to define how that part of the world works.</blockquote>

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