They're both. This is an example of particle-wave duality. Neither party is right and neither party is wrong. Classes are a gamist construction designed to aid the creation of character archetypes through enabling and complimentary mechanics and worldbuilding tools that establish the lore of the world describing the identity and abilities of NPCs.
When I say "my character is a wizard" it is just as meaningful as when the DM says "the villain is a wizard" or the worldbuilder muses "the leader of this nation is a wizard."
I don't know about "classic D&D", but I doubt the concept of clerics as being church leaders or wizards/mages as being academics is a 3e-ism. Thieves' guilds, wandering bards, freelance assassins. The druids are a pretty explicit example of a class that represents an in-world class of nature worshipping priests. All druids are druids, not just PCs. Most of them do not ally with non-druid adventuring parties, and most of them do not follow an adventuring lifestyle.
Well, yes. That's what's "gamist" about it (it's not a PC-specific concept, but it is a gamist construct; the abilities given clearly favor combat). All I have to do is open up my good old copy of BGII and run to the temple district to find a bunch of clerics that wear armor and have all the cleric abilities, but do not leave their temples, have adventuring parties, or function according to 4e combat roles.
Classes as in-world castes of people is a notion that is well-developed in 3e, but is hardly exclusive to that edition.
I want to address these two simultaneously because its quite clear that my post (I just reread it) was not thorough enough in conveying what I was attempting to get across. So I'll take a moment to try to extend it.
A player character sheet, which is your "conduit to resolve actions in the shared imaginary space", is a collection of numbers and words. The
primary aim of these numbers and words is as the means to facilitate task resolution and contest resolution. It is, of course, our characters that are committing to actions in the shared imaginary space (not us) and these metagame constructs bridge that gap (our lack of palpable connection to the shared imaginary space) by allowing us to mechanically resolve our character's actions.
We have:
- offensive components; initiative modifier, attacks and their modifiers/damage expressions/riders & effects.
- defensive components; saving throws/defenses, Hit Points/surges.
- miscellaneous task resolution components; ability scores, speed, vision, skills or focus areas, and other related abilities.
- equipment components; tools, magic items, etc.
These things all fascilitate task/contest resolution. No one in the game world would refer to a strong man as Strength 18. They would say something like "he's strong as an ox." No one would say, "Wow, he's a master swordsman, he must have a + 18 to hit and <insert metagame attack routine informaion>". If you started to talk about these things within the game-world, its very likely that the surveryors would look at you like you had a second head.
They don't reference metagame class constructs to fascilitate task/contest resolution because they are "within the shared imaginary space." They are not once removed as we are so they need no such conduit nor reference point. You say a guy is strong or a master swordsman and that is just it.
They don't have a concept of Experience Points and the metagame advancement of adventurers/player characters. They don't need an "advancement conduit". Again, they are in the shared imaginary space. Perhaps, if they lived in our current world where statistics are collated and long term trends are mapped, they might have an analog to the "he is a lifetime .300 hitter" and they might use that statistical jargon to describe adventurers. They might discover the "hit point formula" by conducting "fighter jumps off cliff" experiments. They might then perform physicals and hire their soldiers based on these experiments and determining level, HP rolled/dice, Constitution modifier, etc. But that is not the case.
So all of those things on our character sheets and the leveling process, fascilitate "adventurer task/contest resolution" and "adventurer level et al progression." NPCs/environment/traps etc need rudimentary stat-blocks to derive the final numbers that adventurer player character contest against. But those stat-blocks only exist to fascilitate the opposing side of these contests...they are metagame constructs for shared imaginary space interaction. That is all I need to fascilitate gameplay; opposing numbers to challenge my player characters. The common vernacular/jargon inside the shared imaginary space and outside of it will be what it is; a means to fascilitate play. This guy is strong. This guy is good with a sword. This guy (Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger or Rogue) is a soldier in my town, a highwayman on the trade road, a pub-brawler, a bravo, a cut-throat that shakes down merchants in the seedy parts of towns, a violent wildman captured when his kin attacked the city, a frontiersman who comes into town to trade furs, a mountain guide who has a cabin out in the wilderness, a professional hound handler that takes nobleman out for hunts, etc. Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Rogue...those are primarily (not exclusively) for us to fascilitate commonality of gamist language/jargon. They are "keywords."
Soloman Kane might be another good example of a religious hunter.
I don't think you can call the Crow or the Punisher or even Batman avengers. There's no religion or faith in those characters. And "implacable, single-minded, ideologically-driven zealot" is a description of a personality, not a class.
There is committment to ethos/cause/belief that animates the party toward an unflinching, unstoppable action with total, unrelenting committment to deed; in this case vengeance/justice/punishment. D&D is an odd duck in its source material. The divine is ever-present, transparent and acknowledged. If exact adherence to that eccentric world attribute was the only thing that could make someone an "Avenger", then there would be no archetypical overlap in our world or virtually any other genre fiction. However, under the auspices of fair analysis, that archetype clearly exists...and the genre characters I mentioned clearly encapsulate it. Would Captain America not be a Paladin because there is no divinity backing his ethos/beliefs/cause and corresponding defense of those things?
Beyond that, The Crow is clearly a supernatural, reincarnated spirit of vengeance...divinely inspired to avenge/punish/administer justice. There is a "divine" force of destiny/fate that inextricably guides (forces) Roland toward the fulfillment of his quest as well; ka.
You could role-play an avenger as a cheery, bouncy Pinky Pie character but it would still be an avenger.
Of course you can. Deviation from orthodox does not mean that orthodox doesn't exist. Virtually every "Avenger" character in popular fiction has the same behavioral platform that appears to correlate to ethos/life's work; seriousness, stoicism, purpose or outright zealotry, lack of connection with civilized conceits, often fatalism. You can have an "Avenger" that works outside of that standard M.O. just as you could have a happy-go-lucky, literate and well read Barbarian who is more likely to cleave logs and build territory-infringing settlers cabins than he is to cleave their heads. That doesn't tell you anything about legitimacy of archetype or orthodox expectations. Take the wildman out of Barbarian and he loses archetype potency just the same as if you take ethos/belief/cause-driven seeker of justice/hunter/assassin out of the Avenger.
And the above examples aren't so prominent that they scream "this MUST be a class."
Must? No. Warrant? That is subjective and D&D's legacy is utterly incoherent on that question. You have the Fighter and Rogue who are generic, broad and unfocused canvasses upon which you can render any number of archetypes. Then you have the focused archetype of the Ranger as "frontiersman and thankless defender of settlements that are on the boarders of the callous, malicious wild", Barbarian as "wildman and warrior who venerates his ancestors and lives a tribal life outside of the constraints of the 'civilized' world" and Paladin as "ethos/belief/cause-driven warrior who swears an oath to defend those beliefs and live by its corresponding code". Under that incoherency, I don't see why you can't have the focused archetype Avenger with thematic premise of "ethos/belief/cause-driven attacker/seeker/assassin who is ruthless, relentless, and utterly committed to tracking down and eliminating defilers."
