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<blockquote data-quote="Sepulchrave II" data-source="post: 5501030" data-attributes="member: 4303">The goalposts have been shifted so many times by so many different people in this thread that I can no longer keep up.I think everyone has a notion - based on their own preferences and expectations - of how the game world should look with regard to class and level. I also think that notions of level and class are inseparable in this regard: the status of a Ftr 1 in a world where most people are Com 1s is different to one where most people are Com 2s or Com 3s.The extent to which the Fighter class is treated as objectively &quot;real&quot; with regard to the game world and the extent to which it is a convenient mechanical shorthand to represent a particular character within the game world also seems to be shifting, often within the same post. I would suggest that in editions prior to 3e, ideas of character class had more of an independent existence: 3.x was the first edition to explicitly state that classes should be treated flexibly with regard to characterization; that classes were not objectively &quot;real&quot; with regard to the game world itself.In the 1e DMG there is an assumption - clearly spelled out on p.35 - that1 character in 100 is eligible for level advancementThis ratio is sufficient for me to characterize PC classes as &quot;unusual&quot;. The extent to which one regards them as &quot;exceptional&quot; or &quot;extraordinary&quot; is largely a semantic quibble. But 99% of people don't have classes at all.In 1e, only 1% of humans even have the potential to become übermenschen and gain class levels. Perhaps the elitism implied by this is what makes some people uncomfortable.I freely concede that many of my own 1e expectations with regard to the game world were transferred to 3e. One of them was that town guards, thugs, soldiers and men-at-arms - typically represented by 0-level characters in 1e - translated to low-level Warriors (NPC class) in 3.x.Fortunately, you can use whatever you want to represent whatever you want as it's just a bunch of numbers.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Sepulchrave II, post: 5501030, member: 4303"] The goalposts have been shifted so many times by so many different people in this thread that I can no longer keep up. I think everyone has a notion - based on their own preferences and expectations - of how the game world should look with regard to class and level. I also think that notions of level and class are inseparable in this regard: the status of a Ftr 1 in a world where most people are Com 1s is different to one where most people are Com 2s or Com 3s. The extent to which the Fighter class is treated as objectively "real" with regard to the game world and the extent to which it is a convenient mechanical shorthand to represent a particular character [I]within[/I] the game world also seems to be shifting, often within the same post. I would suggest that in editions prior to 3e, ideas of character class had more of an independent existence: 3.x was the first edition to explicitly state that classes should be treated flexibly with regard to characterization; that classes were not objectively "real" with regard to the game world itself. In the 1e DMG there is an assumption - clearly spelled out on p.35 - that [B]1 character in 100 is eligible for level advancement[/B] This ratio is sufficient for me to characterize PC classes as "unusual". The extent to which one regards them as "exceptional" or "extraordinary" is largely a semantic quibble. But 99% of people don't have classes at all. In 1e, only 1% of humans even have the [B]potential[/B] to become [I]übermenschen[/I] and gain class levels. Perhaps the elitism implied by this is what makes some people uncomfortable. I freely concede that many of my own 1e expectations with regard to the game world were transferred to 3e. One of them was that town guards, thugs, soldiers and men-at-arms - typically represented by 0-level characters in 1e - translated to low-level Warriors (NPC class) in 3.x. Fortunately, you can use whatever you want to represent whatever you want as it's just a bunch of numbers. [/QUOTE]

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