The Utility of Class Rarity

[Minigiant]

I don't like the idea on the core books describing the default rarity of classes. That is the Dungeon Master to decide. For example Clerics are uncommon in my world but there are a lot of sorcerers and quite a bunch of paladins of freedom fighting the Lawful Evil Empire.

Now what I want to see is a few paragraphs per class and maybe a table of the effects of a campaign setting and gameplay if it contains a lot of or very few member of each class.

"If your setting contains few wizards...."

"If your party contains multiple paladins..."

 

[am181d]

My guess is there'll be implications for support. Common classes will get more supporting content than rare classes.

Also wouldn't be surprised if there was some general advise around complexity. (If you want to avoid super complex character classes, dump the rares. Having more than one character of the same uncommon class in a party will cause weirdness, but it's OK to have several of the same common in a party.)

 

[Lanefan]

This all sounds like something that would be trivially easy to house-rule, either to make work differently or to remove altogether.

In other words, nothing to worry about here...

Lanefan

 

[howandwhy99]

Unless it's a meta-game feature I imagine this primarily refers to demographic rarity.

Now why that is so in the campaign world may also mean the class is harder to play for the player (higher XP requirements), or be harder to qualify for competently (ability score minimums), or be restricted according to other specifics like race, and thereby being more or less rare within a given race. (Not to forget Alignment restrictions)

Is it okay if every Player can play a Sand Blasting Aqua Stealer even if they are extraordinarily rare outside of the Sandfolk race? Yeah, I think so.

 

[Buugipopuu]

Class rarity makes random encounter tables easier, as you can define NPC group makeup in terms of class rarity, rather than having to update every encounter table if you want to houserule a setting with different class demographics.

It could also be important for hirelings and cohorts. Most of the time, even if the PC can play whatever they want, they're not going to be able to find Binders and Incarnates and Paladins of Slaughter for hire, they'll be restricted to whoever they can find, which means common classes most of the time.

 

[grimslade]

Rarity is design short hand

We might see it referenced in the DMG or Campaign setting books, but I doubt it. Rarity lends itself to cheap shots like the DDM comment at Something Awful or the achieving 10th level in a common class to unlock the uncommon classes.
I think it is an idea of how classes interact, however. The rare classes might be alignment restricted or have roleplay hooks that would complicate a campaign for the DM and other players, paladin, assassin and warlock (pacts and patrons will be a nightmare to get right)
Rares will require extra work.

 

[GM Dave]

Personally, class rarity is a silly reference for players or campaign world building.

1> Amongst players telling them they can't play a class because someone else is playing an uncommon or rare class is not going to earn any fun scores. Players want to play what they want to play. RPGs are a mind kick game and anytime that a silly rule gets in the way of having that kick of fun the rule is going to get turfed.

2> As a world building tool it makes less sense because players do not represent normal people having normal encounters. Normal people don't deal with kings and assassins but these types of encounters are very common for adventurers. How many ninjas does a normal person encounter? Rare is a good description but to an adventurer or a ninja hero they appear in every restaurant in a city they might choose to eat at.

A farmer might never see a high priest of an evil god but players regularly hunt them down along with vampires, mummies, dragons, and dozens of other things that would be described as rare or unheard of to the regular person.

3> Finally, when selecting something for an encounter, I'm not going to stop from choosing a Druid because I used a Druid in my last encounter. If I've decided that I currently have a druid fetish then I'm going to select another Druid and not care how rare some person in an office looking out at the fog thinks these type of events should be. I'm just going to choose what I want for the monsters side based on what I think is a fun challenge for my players.

I'm planning for my PF sat game. I'm borrowing ideas from Warhammer Fantasy and their line of Skaven because they are kwel ideas and some of my players are familiar with the model line (a couple own Skaven armies) and one player choose a Ratling type of race from PF Bestiary 3.

I don't care whether the book says and supports rules for Slaves, Clan Rats, Doom Wheels, or Eshin Assassins or how rare these might be. I had a vision of a few interesting encounters and filled in the pieces. One of my player's is playing a Ninja so I choose to put the Eshin in the encounter to give a little counter play. I have a player using an alchemist; so, I'm putting in a Doom Wheel in one of my encounters (also gives a bypass in the lighting bolts generated for the player running around with DR 5 and Fire Protection 5).

I used slaves like minions in an encounter to give the negative channeler something to blast in another encounter.

I give people challenges and interesting story opportunities to push them from using the same tactics each time. If that means I might need to lean into one group or another then that is what I will do.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I think rarity is but a word. Say fighters are common then fighter characters are common fighters. Say wizards are rare, wizard characters are rare wizards. The difference being that nameless fighters are assumed to exist but only named wizards actually do. If the party has one wizard and the arch-nemesis of the group is a wizards those two are the only wizards in the world. Unless of course the DM specifically introduces another one.

 

[GM Dave]

I think rarity is but a word. Say fighters are common then fighter characters are common fighters. Say wizards are rare, wizard characters are rare wizards. The difference being that nameless fighters are assumed to exist but only named wizards actually do. If the party has one wizard and the arch-nemesis of the group is a wizards those two are the only wizards in the world. Unless of course the DM specifically introduces another one.

This reminds me of the word rare attached to the word Jedi in Star Wars campaigns.

Supposedly, Darth Vader and the Emperor through order 66 killed all the Jedi but it seems like every book post that point has a few Jedi that escaped the order 66 until it now seems like hundreds if not thousands of Jedi avoided being killed off.

Supposedly with the Sith they only have one apprentice but it seems like the Emperor had dozens running around.

Athas was supposed to have only 1 Dragon which then some author killed off and now there are dozens of dragons.

Dragonlance, ugh, that is so messed up now if you try to follow all the published books to the 'current' history.

Players, GMs, and authors will constantly add in and change the 'rules of rarity'.

If a GM says there are only the wizard in the party and the arch-nemis and the wizard in the party dies? Hey, guess who was just in the town over, the arch-nemis's other wizard that agrees to join the party and 'replace' the dead wizard.

Oh, someone got tired of playing the thief in the group and wants to play a wizard now. I guess are new replacement wizard has a brother/cousin that trained with him, ahh, ahh, in secret so no one knew there were actually now three, yes three wizards opposing the arch nemis of the rare wizard and one is dead now.

Rarity is a very silly word and thing to try and impose on a RPG story.

 

[Li Shenron]

Seriously, it is completely useless.