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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 9662936" data-attributes="member: 7635">Skipping over the Shakespeare literary critique (I could do that all day; Shakespeare was my focus in college). I want to get to this...The OP's argument is that every class in the game is "highly skilled". That is, they have to spend time (usually years) learning swordplay, spell use, or both. They are looking for an experience where a character who has not trained in such feats but only in what a common every-day person in a D&D world would know. No weapon mastery, no spellcasting, no skill expertise, no rages, sneak attacks, or martial arts. So, when I say "unskilled", I mean lacking any special training that would constitute having one of the 14 character classes currently in the game. I would tend to think such a character class could be done, but the niche for it is extremely thin. You are playing a commoner with the power-budget of a full PC class, but it doesn't look like any class we have so far. What makes that difficult is that the Everyman can't "learn" specialized skills (by that I mean class features) because that would be anathema to the concept of the Everyman. For example, an Everyman cannot "learn" how to evade fireballs the way a Rogue does. He can still have a feature that makes damage from Dex saves half or nothing, but it cannot be something he trains to learn how to do, it's just something that happens to him. Every time he makes a save, Fate/luck/the Gods/whatever conveniently puts him close enough to a wall/pillar/cover that he never takes the full blunt of the blast. He can learn mundane things like skills or languages, but not special features like weapon masteries or cantrip. Essentially, the character survives by Dumb Luck. Literature does have such characters. We talk about LotR's hobbits like Samwise mostly surviving through luck and persistence, not training or combat prowess. His skills as a cook and gardener aren't winning him the day. I would argue Tasselhoff is a better example though; the handler class is essentially a kender-everyman class (it takes the main kender racial trait: thief skills and lets him improve them. It's the closest to a kender race-as-class as AD&D would allow). Tass is absolutely not a trained "thief", his abilities are just innate kender curiosity that manifests as thief skills. And while he lacks the full power of a proper Thief (no sneak attack/backstab) he's close enough that he can hang with the other Heroes of the Lance. (At least in AD&D, I could make an argument that the Thief class itself barely hangs with the others, but that's a debate for a different topic). So, for me, the Everyman class would feel a little like Tasselhoff: a character who innately can mimic enough of a character class's power to not feel burdensome, but not so much that he loses the feeling for playing an elevated commoner. Can such a class be done? Yes. Is it a lot of work for a class that for the most part has a limited niche? Also yes.</blockquote>

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