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

[Maxperson]

From Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Page 18:

"The typical cleric is an ordained servant of a particular god and chooses a divine domain associated with that diety."

Not the player picks the domain. The Cleric chooses the domain. Domain is clearly an in-fiction thing.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not in my Sword Coast.

Quite. You are free to rule how you like in your own setting. But that doesn't mean people who rule otherwise are wrong.

My 2 cents: the game intentionally leaves it up to the DM to decide if Domains (or Bard Colleges, or Druid Circles, or whatever) are actual things in the setting or not.

Exactly. (athough as an aside, I think there might be some confusion over the meaning of the word "college" - it does not necessarily refer to a physical building).

But, as I said earlier:

Neither interpretation is right or wrong, although there are plenty of people here who will never accept that.

 

[Coroc]

Well, I'm not sure if I'm a Grognard or not - I've been playing D&D since LBB but I certainly won't pretend to speak for others. I do agree with your suggestion the we ("grognards", if I may) would say that the original game played such that you could define your character without specific subclasses or with particular 'fluff'. But we did constantly invent new classes, modify existing classes/races, etc, to allow playing many ideas and concepts. I personally can't think of anything then that defined 'vanilla' classes vs tightly constrained (?) classes like you are doing - and definitely not in 5e. I have no problem with it - I think it's a reasonable approach in your own game. But to suggest that it's the default or official rules frankly baffles me.

I did not suggest that these are official or even intended rules. What I tried to point out is that vanilla - something is vague. Across the editions some settings are vanilla some are not, simply because newer editions included things e.g. like drow as a PC class self evident whereas the prominence of drow as mob in 2e FR and the 2e FR underdark as such made the setting different from totally vanilla back then (also the dead magic and wild magic zones, the weave and the mythals but they were not declared standard later on) .

What I also tried to do with my posting, was to show that some classes require more in-game context than others.

Both facts are pretty generic, no matter if you are grognard or what your individual playstyle is.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

From Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Page 18:

"The typical cleric is an ordained servant of a particular god and chooses a divine domain associated with that diety."

Not the player picks the domain. The Cleric chooses the domain. Domain is clearly an in-fiction thing.

I should point out that the phrase you just quoted says "typical cleric" not "all clerics". So a PC cleric can, RAW, be atypical and do whatever they please.

But if you rule that "Domain" is a thing that exists in your setting, it gives the DM more reason to change the names of the domain, if, say there setting doesn't include any gods (powers/philosophies) associated with X, but does have Y, where Y would also suit the powers granted by X.

If domain isn't a thing, then you just choose based on which powers best suit your concept, such as using the Tempest domain to model powers granted by a Greater Mark of the Storm, as suggested in the Wayfinders Guide.

 

[Coroc]

Not in my Sword Coast.

Just get a bit intuitive and creative about it. In my greyhawk homebrew I use the blue box city map. There is a druid stone circle right beneath one of the southern gates. Although my settings tech level is quasi renaissance and I prefer nature cleric for the PCs they also might have chosen druid.
The stone circle might have been there before the city has been founded. In the official material it suggests that the circle is an area where you cannot be scryd or be spied upon by any magical means, so perfect for meetings with secret topics. I use that. I also use it as an area to fight out trial by combat scenes.
It is the perimeter for duels.

If you do not want druids in your (FR) setting at all, that is totally ok, then I misinterpreted your post. But if you have got them, there is no reason why they only should exist in very secluded areas. It is ok to rule that they shun (big) cities, but also even a garden in the center of the town which is left a bit more natural as their living place is also fine imho.

 

[Aldarc]

From Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Page 18:

"The typical cleric is an ordained servant of a particular god and chooses a divine domain associated with that diety."

Not the player picks the domain. The Cleric chooses the domain. Domain is clearly an in-fiction thing.

Actually, yes, if you read a little bit further in the same section:

Talk with your DM about the divine options available in your campaign, whether they're gods, pantheons, philosophies, or cosmic forces. Whatever being or thing your cleric ends up serving, choose a Divine Domain that is appropriate for it, and if it doesn’t have a holy symbol, work with your DM to design one.

The cleric's class features often refer to your deity. If you are devoted to a pantheon, cosmic force, or philosophy, your cleric features still work for you as written. Think of the references to a god as references to the divine thing you serve that gives you your magic.

Because as you see, Max, the language of the text blurs "you the player" and "you the character," using both interchangeably.

 

[ClaytonCross]

Right but the general reaction to ban Paladin Warlock is a reaction to perceived munchkinism. No amount of ironing out the lore and reasoning for such a combination is going to make it more acceptable to DM's that ban it for that reason. That is, they believe the Paladin Warlock multiclass is too powerful and so they justify the limitation of it by appealing to fluff.

Sure, but that's a GM opinion in total disregard to if the player actually picked it for that reason, if the player actually successfully made a powerful build, or if they just made something they thought was cool and fit the sorry in their head that kind of works and that they did not optimize for anything particular (aka power gaming). So a GM making a blanket ban, is punishing all players even when the reasons are not true at all. To me blankets bans are bad jerk reactions that often lead to tables becoming toxic. I have had to leave a few because of this mentality. Its better to work characters out between the GM and player before bringing them to table (why I am a fan of session 0 planning) and if a player starts power gaming talk to that player about power gaming. Also, munchkinism is not always power gaming and often leads to crap designs that are interesting in concept and story but don't function well. To be honest I see more players abandoning bad munchins that don't work then succeeding, with the exception of 1 level dips into fighter or cleric for plate armor. As a result of that I actually cheer on muchikins at my table as a sign of players leaning to role-playing over power-gaming. Most of the power gamers I know tend to stick with rogues and bards because of insane skills between expertise and Jack of all trides (not bad at anything they care about). Rogues insane damage doesn't burn any resource. Bards have some pretty powerful spells and they can give them selves bardic inspiration so they don't have to bother with failing things.

The Paladin / Warlock build for example, is not that powerful unless our a GM that loves whittling your parties resources down with a ton of short combats in the same adventure day. If your a GM who typically does one combat per adventure day the Paladin / Warlock is actually far weaker than a pure paladin. When you see players pull out monks, battlemasters, and rogue builds it likely a reaction to players getting tired of always being out of resources so they are adapting to the GMs play style. Why shouldn't they? If they are tied of something and want to lighten the load to have more fun at the table with the same group... that seems like a natural chain of events. If the GM doesn't like it then he should adapt to include more long rests the way the players adapted to short classes and sub-classes.

 

[Beleriphon]

There is something very annoying and basically...inelegant, about the idea of a setting that has a Samurai social class, and a samurai subclass, but these don't sync up in anyway. But at the same time it would seem wrong to insist someone play the subclass when a battlemaster can fulfill the concept just as well (and of course if a knight can be a paladin then why not a Samurai?).

That's becasue anything attempting to model a Japanese inspired social class would have a samurai as a title and say bushi (ie. a warrior) as a class. So you can have a samurai bushi, or a samurai sorcerer, or whatever.

 

[Maxperson]

Actually, yes, if you read a little bit further in the same section:
Because as you see, Max, the language of the text blurs "you the player" and "you the character," using both interchangeably.

Then you have no basis to argue that it's entirely metagame. Besides, the interchangability is because the cleric itself is just words on a paper. The player has to choose on behalf of the in-fiction PC what his in-fiction domain is.

 

[Maxperson]

I should point out that the phrase you just quoted says "typical cleric" not "all clerics". So a PC cleric can, RAW, be atypical and do whatever they please.

But if you rule that "Domain" is a thing that exists in your setting, it gives the DM more reason to change the names of the domain, if, say there setting doesn't include any gods (powers/philosophies) associated with X, but does have Y, where Y would also suit the powers granted by X.

Regardless of whether or not the cleric chooses a god, it's clear that clerics themselves choose domains. Gods don't own domains. They are just able grant access to them, so clerics who gain their in-fiction domains other ways, still gain an in-fiction domain.