No more class titles

[Driddle]

Proposal: Character creation and development without specific reference to the class titles given in standard rules material. Allow character progression (1st-20th level and beyond) as a purely mechanical process, and give characters whatever career "title" the players want.

So for example, you could pick up a sorcerer level or two, druid levels and maybe even some rogue levels and define the character as a "Bard," without having to call the character a sorcerer, druid or rogue. ... Or pick up fighter and cleric levels but really call yourself a "Paladin."

Anyone doing this?

 

[Crothian]

Sort of. Class names rarely come up in game. The character usually iuntroduce themselves by their own name and that's it. People get described by words like "fighter", or "priest", or even "Magic user" if that's what it seems they do. But it isn't always the actually class. I've called warrior clerics Fighters, and Bards wizards depending on what they do and act.

edit: It isn't something we set out to do, it just what made sense in game.

 

[Mercule]

I've been actively discouraging using class names, in character, for years and years. It was a better alternative than killing the next player whose PC asked of an NPC, "So, are you a Fighter, Thief, or Ranger?" There are organizations named "Rangers" and "Paladins" IMC, and a thief is at least as likely to be a warrior as a rogue. Generals are sometimes wizards. For that matter, Rangers or Paladins could be (single class) wizards, to.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Anyone doing this?

Virtually everyone, I would've thought. Particularly with regards to fighters.

 

[Darkness]

Virtually everyone, I would've thought. Particularly with regards to fighters.

That matches my experience as well.

 

[Driddle]

re Everyone's doing this:

Well, that's what I figured. Or at least I would hope so.
But then I see a lot of examples here of people complaining about how bothersome it is for a player to build a character from random character classes without any logic as to how those classes fit the PC's background.

So on one hand you've got the school of thought, "Build as befits your character concept and then pick an overall career title," and the other camp is, "You've got to justify each class choice along the way."

Are these necessarily opposing perceptions?

 

[Brennin Magalus]

I try to come up with campaign specific names instead.

 

[drnuncheon]

I've been actively discouraging using class names, in character, for years and years.

Me too. When I started playing my swashbuckler online (started as Rogue, then multi'ed into Fighter) I hated telling anyone what class I was, because then they would immediately think 'thief' and expect me to open locks and disarm traps - I said I was "a sailor".

Of course, if they found out I was a rogue OOCly and I wouldn't admit to being a thief ICly, they thought that I was planning to steal from them. Thank you, earlier editions. :/

J
...of course, this is the same place where a halfling came up to us and proudly announced that he was a burglar (and did a backflip), and then wondered why nobody would trust him.

 

[shilsen]

In my campaigns, some classes have class-specific names which are liable to be recognized by some. This is especially true for spellcasters (for example, someone who knows about spellcasting knows about the difference between bards, clerics, druids, wizards and sorcerers). But other classes, such as fighters and rogues, don't have a class-specific name which is generally used.

 

[Stone Angel]

I usually use broad descriptions of character classics. A lot of it comes from how the PC or NPC is dressed. i.e. Noble, Fop, A man of the wild, wanderer, nomad, a warrior, holy warrior, a mage, a magician, minstrel, magi, sage, scholar.

These descriptions are used so my players give a feeling of assume nothing.


The Seraph of Earth and Stone