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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dessert Nomad" data-source="post: 7538883" data-attributes="member: 6976536">This seems to have a lot of problems from the basic concept to specific implementation. A lot of the categories don't seem well-defined, or have huge overlaps. "Savages" is a pretty slippery term, and what category do the underclass or kings of 'savage' groups or nations fit into? Are nobles who live their lives in the countryside 'nobles' or 'rural folk'? How involved does one need to be with a cult before they stop being 'noble' and start being 'cultist'? Is a knight a noble, soldier, city folk, rural folk, or what? For a simple classic example, where do Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, Sam, and Pippin fit in this chart - are they rural, commoners, city folk, or nobles (Notably, Bilbo/Frodo are of high enough social class to afford a servant and make a living by owning property)? The mechanics of this are extremely problematic to implement, because in social situations people are often attempting to disguise themsleves. To actually use the advantage/disadvantage rules, you have to have the player roll two dice and take one, which flags the creature as 'not what it seems', and will often tell you specifically if more than one character is making rolls. This really hits 'cultists,' 'extraplanar creatures,' 'feywild/shadowfell creatures' hard as they're routinely disguised, but also makes it really easy to spot a noble trying to pass himself off as a merchant. You can accuse the players of 'metagaming' for noticing that you're having them roll advantage or disadvantage when playing, but no one is actually going to fail to notice that.But really, the fundamental problem you're assuming that each class has a VERY particular background and place in the social order, when they are actually just broad ability sets. It also completely ignores the character's background, which is really odd for something that's based on the character's upbringing. I've listed a bunch of common character archetypes that I've either seen used or are obvious from looking at class descriptions that look completely silly when you try to fit them into this system below, and this clearly isn't exhaustive. For the system to make sense, you need to take the background and adventuring career of the character into account - but if you're looking at that much stuff, An folk hero who learned music and magic (bard, folk hero background) and now roams the land tearing down tyrants and singing about adventures about gets advantage when talking to the nobles he's bringing down but his epic tales fail to impress 'savages', while a noble knight (cavalier or samurai fighter, noble background) who's lived his life among the highborn is not especially effective at talking to nobles? A professional con man (rogue, charlatan background) gets disadvantage when trying to con nobles or city folk, and can only con poor people? A flamboyant noble by day who sneaks around to assassinate his enemies at night (assassin rogue, noble background) or a swashbuckling pirate king (swashbuckler rogue, pirate or noble background) has a hard time talking to nobles or commoners, but gets advantage to poor people? A warrior from a barbarian tribe who takes a vow to eradicate evil (paladin) is good at talking to priests but not 'savages'? A warlock (fiend, GOO, any non-scholar background) who's only contact with extraplanar creatures is that he made a pact with one for power gets advantage talking to them, while a wizard (conjuration) who has spent his life studying the best techniques for summoning, controlling, and bargaining with them doesn't? A warlock (celestial, acolyte background) who's sworn a pact with an angel gets advantage dealing with 'cultists' but disadvantage with the devout? A wizard (war magic subclass, soldier background) who's spent his life campaigning with the army and learning to use spells in battle has disadvantage with the soldiers he's spent his life with but advantage with scholars he sneers at?</blockquote>

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