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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 7703528" data-attributes="member: 6799649">I don't take that PHB quote the same way as you. For me, what it means is that the ability to rage (or cast spells, or beseech the gods for power, or whatever the mechanics of the class are) shapes the way you think about the world and interact with it and your relationship with other people and powers in the multiverse. Not the fluff that someone else wrote about their barbarian (or wizard or cleric or whatever)!I make my own narrative/fluff/concept for my own character. It is not dictated to me by the PHB. Each class entry starts with three paragraphs, each representing an example member of that class. These are not rules! You are not obliged to copy one of these three examples in order to be a 'real' member of that class!When I make my PC I am obliged to follow the game mechanics contained in the class descriptions (possibly modified by my DM); I am not obliged to follow the fluff! The only thing my fluff is really required to do is to explain the abilities I get from that class, and that explanation is up to me; the PHB just has suggestions, and I can go my own way if I want.For example, if I am a 1st level human barbarian I am not obliged to think of which wilderness I was raised in (on pain of the Role-Playing Police turning up and taking my role-playing privileges away for the crime of not playing my barbarian 'correctly'); I am just obliged to explain my ability to rage somehow.My Bar 1 isn't obliged to have the outlander background; he could have the noble background. His Rage may be the result of implanted organs, engineered to release massive amounts of adrenaline at will.He could be under a family curse that makes his temper tantrums really nasty.He could've been trained/altered/brainwashed to go into a cold, emotionless fury like Christian Bale's Tetragrammaton Cleric John Preston in the film Equilibrium.It doesn't matter, as long as my concept explains (as convincingly as the suggested fluff does, which isn't a high bar TBH) the abilities I've got, it's nobody else's business to tell me that I'm playing my own character 'wrong'.</blockquote>

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