"Your Class is Not Your Character": Is this a real problem?

[Fauchard1520]

You guys have heard the phrase "your class is not your character," right? the idea is that you don’t have to be an baby-eating psychopath just because your sorcerer has the Abyssal bloodline. You don’t have to be a purehearted hero just because you know your way around a smite evil.

I'm curious if this is a real problem that people have encountered, or if it's just a good soundbite. Have you ever encountered a GM or another player who told you that you were "playing your class wrong?" I may just be lucky in my groups, but I haven't ever encountered that mess out in the wild.

Comic for illustrative purposes.

 

[Maxperson]

You guys have heard the phrase "your class is not your character," right? the idea is that you don’t have to be an baby-eating psychopath just because your sorcerer has the Abyssal bloodline. You don’t have to be a purehearted hero just because you know your way around a smite evil.

I'm curious if this is a real problem that people have encountered, or if it's just a good soundbite. Have you ever encountered a GM or another player who told you that you were "playing your class wrong?" I may just be lucky in my groups, but I haven't ever encountered that mess out in the wild.

Comic for illustrative purposes.

I've been told that about Paladin once or twice, but not since 1e.

 

[Fenris-77]

Not really. Playing the class as character is a good RP handhold for newer players, and I've found most players pretty naturally branch out and separate the two ideas. Personally the phrase "playing your class" doesn't make any sense in 99% of the cases where it might be applied. I'm sure there are people who would and do say it a lot though, just not anyone I'd play with.

 

[Stoutstien]

I've had new (er) players feel that they should play class X like Y because reasons but as they get more table time that tends to disappear.

I have much bigger issue with players and DM fighting the concept that characters will and should evolve throughout their life.

 

[GlassJaw]

Not sure what you mean by "problem". It's actually a great concept to keep in mind.

I 100% subscribe to it, especially with regards to multiclassing. My "character" isn't X levels of class A and Y levels of class B. "Class" is just a way to describe the in-game abilities of the character I envision.

That's always my biggest issue with people who complain about multiclassing. What if my character is a combination of abilities across multiple classes? Choosing a class at each level is just a clunky game mechanic. I can play my fighter from level 1 as a sneaky bounty hunter and maybe I add some rogue levels along the way. That doesn't change my character.

 

[iserith]

The character is not the class.

It is, in fact,the 5-page backstory nobody reads or cares about that is barely ever mentioned during play.

 

[Shiroiken]

It really depends on the player. Most new players fall into class stereotypes because they don't know otherwise. A lot of gamers move past this, but a few do not. I know one guy who always plays a sneaky ninja-like character, because that's his ideal image of himself. Another guy never roleplays; his character is just numbers on paper that he uses to try and "win" the game.

Of course some of us go too far the other way. I've twice had a character move in a direction I didn't intend. One I played out as an object lesson to the other players, who should have put me down like a rabid dog, but didn't because I wasn't an NPC. The second I retired (he left for his own reasons) because he was becoming a disruptive influence on the game.

 

[Celebrim]

Depends on your aesthetics of play.

For some tables, your class is your character because the aesthetics of play don't really encourage your role in the play to be more than what your character can contribute to group success. And importantly, thespian and pseudo-intellectual snobbery aside, this is perfectly OK.

For others, because they want to engage in more diverse or different aesthetics of play, your class can't be your character because a class doesn't define the attributes of your character that are important to that aesthetic of play. Importantly, thespian and pseudo-intellectual snobbery aside, a system doesn't have to explicitly define your class in terms of thespian attributes and maneuvers to support melodramatic, narrative, introspective, or expressive play. Doing so may or may not help a group get in a mindset where they prize those aesthetics of play, but a group can evolve those aesthetics of play independently of the system.

In particular, I remember reading Gary Fine's 'Shared Fantasy' a few years after it came out, and he documented that many of the very crunch heavy systems of the 1980's were in practice supporting very different processes of play than you'd imagine. The insanely high levels of crunch meant that engaging with the rules was extremely expensive. As a result, many tables that enjoyed the games did so by evolving processes of play that engaged with the rules only rarely, and instead spent most of their time engaged in low melodrama that barely engaged with the rules. When combat takes hours to resolve, one viable procedure of play is to avoid combat on all but the most important occasions.

 

[Coroc]

It does depend. Especially for paladins, and if you, like me as a dm, require a paladin player to play a paladin. Thankfully my Paladin player even some times does more than I require, and instantly notices any moral dilemmas.

Other game systems are much harder: DSAs Rondra Cleric is required to never turn down a challenge and never retreat even if clearly against all odds and always fight fair, e.g. if the opponent fumbles and loses his weapon the Rondra Cleric would insist on him picking it up.
We lately had a session where one NPC (much stronger than our Rondra cleric player and probably the whole group but that does not matter because the Rondra cleric would not accept help from the others in this case, as it would be unfair) did slit the throat of a bound helpless prisoner.
This NPC was shady, but principally on our side and as such one of the major forces of "good".
The Rondra cleric PC tried to challenge him for duel for that and just survived because the NPC simply ignored him and pushed him aside and escaped.
That's a lawful good paladin like character turned up to eleven, most of them die soon, because of their code of honor being so strict.

 

[RSIxidor]

I think it's more accurate to say that your class doesn't have to define your character if you don't want it to, and that it's also okay to have your class define your character if you want it to, and not everything about your character has to come from your class. But that's a mouthful.