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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shayuri" data-source="post: 7652837" data-attributes="member: 4936">I feel like the idea that specific conflicts are represented by specific classes falls a bit flat, at least in my own experience. I don't see why the leader of the town militia can't be a bard, for example, who leads from the rear...or even a martially flavored rogue, sly and clever in his defensive strategies. Maybe the orc leader is a shaman, driven by dark visions of blood and conquest? Or even a paladin, avenging the genocide wreaked on his people in ages past?Conflicts define characters because conflicts define stories, and characters the vehicles through which players participate in storytelling.I lead towards the view that classes are defined BY characters, and serve as the interface point between the story of a character, and the necessary rules of the game.For example, if I start with a story, I might imagine the tale of a mighty warrior from a snowbound land; a tribe of people living in the shell of a dormant volcano for warmth and protection. In ages past, they were the thralls of a red dragon who laired there. One day the dragon never returned. The chiefs of the tribe have always been those who had signs of dragon blood in them though, and each must prove themselves with mighty deeds that demonstrate the potency of their dragon souls. This character is next in line...and the story is his quest.The conflict is open-ended in this case. He has to do things, great things, but there's flexibility of what exactly that means. He basically just has to impress the hell out of a ragtag band of primitives. Ideally, in the course of doing so, he'll become embroiled in other things too.But what class is he?Well, barbarian fits. In 3e or Pathfinder, there's room for some Sorceror too, possibly a Dragon Disciple.Significantly though, the question of class is really covering up the more fundamental question: "What rules best represent my story?"It's possible to go the other way. Start with rules, backbuild a story.For example, the game I'm joining needs a healer/leader. I am not interested in being a cleric, and I have a druid in another game, so I look at something I haven't tried before; Artificer. Hm, that could be fun. I have this notion of a 'techno mage,' who uses magic that has a technological flavor to it. Wands or magical blasts like weapon fire. Mystical defenses like force fields. I look at the rules, and see there are two races that jump out as appropriate for that. Warforged, and Shardminds. Both have the living construct trait, enabling them to incorporate items directly into their bodies. Both have rules reinforcing their semi-organic characteristics.After experimenting with builds, I decide to go with shardmind. The psionic flavor suits the campaign lore, and the abilities and rules make them good fits for the artificer class.Armed with my rules firmly in mind, I now proceed to create a story about an artificial mind, psionically created in a giant telepathic archive, who has been transplanted into a mobile frame for purposes of waging war, and who has by strange circumstance been freed from his control protocols and is now experiencing free will for the first time since his creation. He still clings to his old purpose when he can, and he is happy to have a leader to follow, since he feels he still has a great deal to learn about making decisions for himself, but he learns more daily; hourly, and who knows what he choices he will make then?Again though, the underlying question here is, "What is a good story that accurately accounts for the rules decisions I've made?"The conflicts of these characters define their story, but the classes are what connect those stories to the otherwise very separate world of the rules. And one can argue that the rules and the stories aren't really separate...and I agree they have to inform each other. One way in which they inform each other...the corpus callosum that binds them...is character class. A specialized subset of rules, designed to interface with the agents of the story; the characters.</blockquote>

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