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

[Doug McCrae]

Take the Sharpshooter feat, for example. The "fluff" says "You have mastered ranged weapons and can make shots that others find impossible. "

You could rewrite that to say "You have been cybernetically enhanced, giving you extraordinary vision and fine motor control." And then leave the benefits of the feat unchanged. Totally different fluff, different characters. The mechanical benefits are identical.

You could but it wouldn't make much sense unless the character receives many other benefits for their "extraordinary vision and fine motor control".

 

[abirdcall]

That seems to be missing the point that you can completely change the "fluff" to adapt the mechanics to a different vision of a character with no impact to how the game is played. Every interaction outside of combat is a DM judgment call to best represent what's going on in-game.

Take the Sharpshooter feat, for example. The "fluff" says "You have mastered ranged weapons and can make shots that others find impossible. "

You could rewrite that to say "You have been cybernetically enhanced, giving you extraordinary vision and fine motor control." And then leave the benefits of the feat unchanged. Totally different fluff, different characters. The mechanical benefits are identical.

That is a much bigger change to the game than something small like changing Sharpshooter to: -6 to hit for +10 damage.

Your change fundamentally changes what a lot of things in the game mean and has repercussions in narrative, story, and adjudication of other events.

Changing the penalty to hit from -5 to -6 will be barely noticeable in grand scheme of things.

One is a 'fluff' change and the other is a 'mechanical' change but the fluff change has a much larger impact on the game.

 

[Chaosmancer]

AND they learned the ability.

There isn't a discrepancy. You've just left out the step of "learning the ability."

I'm sorry, no where in the fluff or the mechanics does it talk about "learning" the ability. It just says you can do this because you think and act faster than everyone else.

So, you can homebrew it if you like, but it isn't a learned ability by RAW.

So he was slower than everyone else before he learned that ability? And after he's the same as everyone else? Not every other character hesitates, so if you stop hesitating you are just moving normally now. How did you model the penalty that hesitating would give you? Were you unable to use Dash, Hide and Disengage in the first round, because you hesitated?

His hesitation caused him to act slower, preventing him from being able to dash or hide as a bonus action (disengage never came up). By level two, he was growing more confident and was able to dash or disengage as a bonus action.

I was never unable to take actions, I simply became able to take more actions as he grew more confident. Because he actually is incredibly fast and able to act in combat faster than his companions when he is acting at full capacity.

The point being, that for my character, this ability manifested from a different source than the PHB suggested.

I think Chaosmancer's barbarian/knight is cool, and if Chaosmancer is happy with the barbarian mechanics for his knight, why change the class name? Sounds confusing if the character is following all the rules for barbarian. I might even steal the concept. Take the guardian spirit sub class, and have knightly ancestors appear, or totem barbarian because there is a shamanistic tradition running through the family from ages past, or maybe lycanthropy. This whole mix has got me going.

I'm glad something good is coming out of this thread. Hope you have a ton of fun with your concepts. The Lycanthropy thing sounds particularly awesome if you are going in the direction I'm thinking. Which is that the "spirit" of the curse was bound, but appears during the rage and other abilities.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

That is a much bigger change to the game than something small like changing Sharpshooter to: -6 to hit for +10 damage.

Your change fundamentally changes what a lot of things in the game mean and has repercussions in narrative, story, and adjudication of other events.

Changing the penalty to hit from -5 to -6 will be barely noticeable in grand scheme of things.

One is a 'fluff' change and the other is a 'mechanical' change but the fluff change has a much larger impact on the game.

Not really. In the typical cyberpunk setting that I think Maestrino's game is set, thats a good representation of a "smartgun" system which uses existing rules. Heck, works fine for an artificer or in the Eberron setting as well.

Furthermore, I think that the majority of tables would accept you fluffing your character's new precision with ranged weapons as something like that that, as long as it fits the world, where they would treat changing the rules of the feat as very much houserule territory, requiting DM intervention.

 

[Fenris-77]

That is a much bigger change to the game than something small like changing Sharpshooter to: -6 to hit for +10 damage.

Your change fundamentally changes what a lot of things in the game mean and has repercussions in narrative, story, and adjudication of other events.

Changing the penalty to hit from -5 to -6 will be barely noticeable in grand scheme of things.

One is a 'fluff' change and the other is a 'mechanical' change but the fluff change has a much larger impact on the game.

Pardon? The change to the fluff has no impact on the game. None. It doesn't matter if the character is cybernetically enhanced, a reincarnation of the god of archery, or just a really good shot. Those are all descriptions of rule X, in in each case the effect in the game is the same - i.e. how the rule changes the character's ability to interact with the game world. Changing the rules for the Sharpshooter feat change how the character actually interacts with the game world. In short, so long as it makes sense it doesn't matter why he's a great shot, it just matters that he is now and wasn't before.

 

[raif11152]

People can absolutely play their class wrong. As a DM, I just don't stop them from playing it "wrong". There of course may be consequences, however.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Pardon? The change to the fluff has no impact on the game. None. It doesn't matter if the character is cybernetically enhanced, a reincarnation of the god of archery, or just a really good shot. Those are all descriptions of rule X, in in each case the effect in the game is the same - i.e. how the rule changes the character's ability to interact with the game world. Changing the rules for the Sharpshooter feat change how the character actually interacts with the game world. In short, so long as it makes sense it doesn't matter why he's a great shot, it just matters that he is now and wasn't before.

I think what @ad_hoc is getting at is that changing the feat to include cybernetics necessarily adds cybernetics to the game world.

That creates a massive change to the world, if it is a low-tech, low-magic world to suddenly have cybernetically enhanced archers. You would have to find where they came from and many other aspects which would ripple out and make massive changes to the world.

So, I understand their position on this one. That is a setting changing difference, unless the setting supports magi-tech already.

People can absolutely play their class wrong. As a DM, I just don't stop them from playing it "wrong". There of course may be consequences, however.

I am sure I don't actually want to know but

1) How do you think people can play their class wrong?

2) Since you would not step in and "stop" them, what sort of consequences are you talking about for a player like that?

 

[Fenris-77]

I was assuming we were talking about a world with cybernetics. Obviously adding a little cyberpunk to your Faerun is a huge deal. In Eberron you could probably figure out how to re-skin that lightly and make it work just fine though. My point was more about the lack of impact the fluff has when it comes to describing abilities.

I am also dying to hear all about how people can play their class wrong. [insert popcorn eating gif here]

 

[Chaosmancer]

I was assuming we were talking about a world with cybernetics. Obviously adding a little cyberpunk to your Faerun is a huge deal. In Eberron you could probably figure out how to re-skin that lightly and make it work just fine though. My point was more about the lack of impact the fluff has when it comes to describing abilities.

I am also dying to hear all about how people can play their class wrong. [insert popcorn eating gif here]

I understand, but I think ad_hoc was taking a much more... I don't know if I want to say conservative view, but I believe they were assuming you were starting with a standard fantasy world

 

[Fenris-77]

I understand, but I think ad_hoc was taking a much more... I don't know if I want to say conservative view, but I believe they were assuming you were starting with a standard fantasy world

I'm going to guess that's the royal 'you' since that example wasn't mine. Anyway, I think we've cleared that up. Now we can wait with baited breath for the down low on how people play classes wrong.