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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ondath" data-source="post: 8742918" data-attributes="member: 7031770">As you can imagine, I disagree with your assesment. When it comes to needing to replace Common to make social affinity make sense: Why? Social affinity isn't a "caste code" that only certain class of people can speak. It's not language, and that's the point. It's social capital, measuring how well you can adopt the conventions and styles of that group, which ingratiates you with them (hence the bonus to rolls). Your Urchin doesn't become incapable of speaking to the king just because he doesn't have the social affinity: It just means he doesn't talk like an aristocrat, so it's harder for him to get the king's ear.As for social affinities introducing a case system, I have to disagree again. Social classes are a part of the faux-mediaeval fantasy D&D is based on: There's a Noble background, and your example itself uses a king as an example. Sure, it's not a proper mediaeval setting and I wouldn't expect your usual D&D game to bother itself with feudalistic details like scutage and investiture controversies. But you can add specific nods to mediaeval elements while still remaining inclusive. There's a reason I chose the name Rural and Urban in my examples. I could've just as easily picked Bourgeois or Serfdom, but those have the caste-like associations that concern you and that I also want to avoid. A Social Affinity system would not fail inclusivity by default: It only measures small social differences between groups but doesn't say anything about the power dynamics within them. You can acknowledge that people have different social conventions without limiting players to specific social castes (even the Urchin could gain the Nobility Social Affinity using downtime rules for learning a language under the current rules for instance, and then they'd be just as good as a blue-blooded Paladin player at convincing the king).If we had it your way, then D&D also needs to remove the Noble and Acolyte backgrounds since those refer to mediaeval social classes.</blockquote>

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