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Message: <blockquote data-quote="candidus_cogitens" data-source="post: 238432" data-attributes="member: 770">As I said in my previous post, my criticism is based on the presupposition that a class should have a broad archetypal grounding.  You seem to want to argue with my presupposition.  I would ask you to just respect my preference for archetypal authenticity.  If my personal preference means that I'm not part of your "party," then so be it.  If my idea of authenticity is skewed, it is skewed by my educated understanding of religion, history, and psychology.  My perspective is that images, symbols, and myths are grounded deep in the collective unconscious.  They are not arbitrary.  One doesn't just make them up from scratch.  Any creative expression (such as the creation of a fantasy character) taps into those archetypal wells, whether deeply or only superficially.  For example, some have been objecting that monks don't belong in D&D because they seem to disrupt the imaginitive world that they prefer (one based on medieval Europe).  By the same token, many of us would find it disruptive if a player wanted to have his character construct a nuclear bomb, or a submarine.  The reason is because the images do not cohere, and as a result, the composite image fails to tap the archetypal wells very deeply.  Everything about the image influences how authentically it represents an archetype.  The weapons a character uses, the skills, the other abilities, the character's appearance and race, AND the "label" that we give to it.  Labels are as important as anything else, in that they can either help to maintain or help to disrupt the image that we want to create.That's my perspective.  The cleric class may be fine and dandy for those whose perspectives differ from mine.  I have no problem with that.  I'm just saying that it has problems if you're interested in historical and archetypal verisimilitude.</blockquote>

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