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

[FrozenNorth]

No game is perfect. Having to jump through these hoops to "prove" your point just ends up supporting mine. The game will have moments that don't make sense. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing to amplify and increase the numbers of those moments.

I think Chaosmancer’s point is that you are applying a double standard: unorthodox builds are scrutinized for any inconsistencies between fluff and mechanics whereas any inconsistencies that already exist in the PHB are handwaved as “not important”.

I think a better example of Chaosmancer’s point is Thieves’ Cant. There are completely standard Rogue builds that have no reason to know thieves’ cant (Scout Rogues for instance). I doubt you would argue that Scout Rogues are homebrew because of this inconsistency.

Yet you are treating Barbarian Knight as homebrew because of an equivalent inconsistency.

 

[FrozenNorth]

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.

I’m jealous. Hey Arilyn, can I interest you in a priest of Ioun? I didn’t want to go the cleric path so he is an Inquisitive Rogue with the Acolyte background and I play him like person devoted to the idea of Truth and sharing information with the world.

 

[Arilyn]

I’m jealous. Hey Arilyn, can I interest you in a priest of Ioun? I didn’t want to go the cleric path so he is an Inquisitive Rogue with the Acolyte background and I play him like person devoted to the idea of Truth and sharing information with the world.

For sure. Sounds awesome. I like the idea of a rogue dedicated to truth with the acolyte background. I'll steal that idea too.

 

[Maxperson]

The connection between stealth and dexterity only, for example, isn't a product of the game world, it's a product of the rules. Interestingly, the abstraction I'm talking about is clearly indexed in the part of your post above. Maybe we aren't as far apart on this as it seems.

Yeah. I don't think we are all that far apart. There's definitely abstraction at work. That abstraction is what forms the foundation that "teaches" the PC his new ability. Think back. How many times have you just suddenly known how to do something fairly difficult? Probably none or next to none. Your experiences, though, however they came to you, probably came together at some point and enabled you to do something. Perhaps something you previously couldn't do years before, but when you were older and had done more, it was suddenly much easier or even easy.

I've been using practice as my example, but that's not the only way such "teachings" happen. Any other appropriate abstract that works for you will suffice. I provided an example and one of my faults is that when someone challenges an example, I defend it and get caught up defending the example to vigorously instead of just saying it was an example and moving on.

 

[Maxperson]

Homebrew is changing actual rules and mechanics, or adding new feats and races. It's not just narrative fluff to explain your campaign world, which is just D&D "out of the box." The flavour text provides interest, colour and examples. It's to also help put us in the mood, just like the art does. It's not there as rules.

Homebrew is fluff based. House rules deal with mechanics. Something can be both, for example, "Elves were wiped out 15000 years ago due to a magical fast acting sickness unleashed by orcs that is still around today. We know it's still viable, because 30 years ago an elf from Sigil showed up and within 3 hours he was dead." That's the homebrew fluff. The house rule is that no PC can play an elf. They don't exist in that world.

So if a player wants a city druid, focusing on rats, pigeons, domestic animals and maybe oozes, that's cool. That's a nice change from the standard druid. And unless, some actual abilities are altered to make the class more urban, it's not homebrew. It's not a new class, it's just background. And background fluff is assumed to be highly mutable, and full of creativity. RPGers are an imaginative bunch, even when not changing mechanics.

Druids are wardens of nature. They also try to balance civilization with nature, getting it to live in harmony. The above druid is not outside the general theme of the class, so it wouldn't be homebrew in any case.

 

[Maxperson]

Would you say that my comparison between the flavor text to a line-of-best-fit is apt?

I had to look that up. I didn't really go all that far with math. Are you saying that the various aspects of the fluff are the data points and the mechanics is the drawn line?

 

[Maxperson]

I think Chaosmancer’s point is that you are applying a double standard: unorthodox builds are scrutinized for any inconsistencies between fluff and mechanics whereas any inconsistencies that already exist in the PHB are handwaved as “not important”.

I think a better example of Chaosmancer’s point is Thieves’ Cant. There are completely standard Rogue builds that have no reason to know thieves’ cant (Scout Rogues for instance). I doubt you would argue that Scout Rogues are homebrew because of this inconsistency.

There's no inconsistency. Can a rogue be a scout type? Sure. The fluff of rogues and fighters is very broad and allows for the most variety in a single class. It would not be a homebrew rogue if your scout knew thieves' cant, which is reasonable. Scouts also go into towns and knowing the lingo would be useful. If a player wanted his rogue scout to not know thieve's cant, I wouldn't have a problem homebrewing that out.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Homebrew is fluff based. House rules deal with mechanics. Something can be both, for example, "Elves were wiped out 15000 years ago due to a magical fast acting sickness unleashed by orcs that is still around today. We know it's still viable, because 30 years ago an elf from Sigil showed up and within 3 hours he was dead." That's the homebrew fluff. The house rule is that no PC can play an elf. They don't exist in that world.

I know I harp on this point a bit MAx, but it bears repeating.

Just because you sue the terms that way does not mean everyone else does. If I look up "homebrew classes" I am going to get mechanics and fluff, same with homebrew feats, homebrew spells, homebrew magic system, homebrew crafting system.

I'm not even sure I could do a google search for "houserule class" because the community does not use the term in that way.

Houserules, as I understand it, are generally meant to refer to meta-game rules. Such as a houserule where you roll hp every level, but if you roll below the average you take the average.

Using terms in ways the community doesn't only creates confusion, and does not help any discussion you are trying to have.

 

[Xetheral]

Homebrew is fluff based. House rules deal with mechanics. Something can be both, for example, "Elves were wiped out 15000 years ago due to a magical fast acting sickness unleashed by orcs that is still around today. We know it's still viable, because 30 years ago an elf from Sigil showed up and within 3 hours he was dead." That's the homebrew fluff. The house rule is that no PC can play an elf. They don't exist in that world.

Personally I would define homebrew as new races, classes, feats, or spells (or similar player-facing mechanics) added to the game. I would define houserules as changes made to the mechanics of printed races, classes, feats, or spells, or to resolution mechanics. Until recently I never would have considered a custom campaign setting or monster (or other DM-facing mechanics) to be homebrew. The expectation at my tables was that the DM would create content, so it didn't make sense to us that such content should carry the patina of exceptionality that the term homebrew implied to us.

However, I'm not confident that my definition is in line with modern usage. On this forum in particular I've regularly seen homebrew to mean all new material that is neither "official" nor "third-party publisher", which would necessarily include custom campaign settings and monsters.

What I haven't seen (until this thread, anyway) is defining homebrew to mean fluff changes and house rules to mean mechanics changes. Maybe I've just not been reading the right threads, or maybe I just didn't notice the usage you're describing? In any case, your definition is unfamiliar to me. I'm not saying your definition is wrong, but at the very least my experience suggests that your definition is not universally accepted.

 

[Coroc]

Personally I would define homebrew as new races, classes, feats, or spells (or similar player-facing mechanics) added to the game. I would define houserules as changes made to the mechanics of printed races, classes, feats, or spells, or to resolution mechanics. Until recently I never would have considered a custom campaign setting or monster (or other DM-facing mechanics) to be homebrew. The expectation at my tables was that the DM would create content, so it didn't make sense to us that such content should carry the patina of exceptionality that the term homebrew implied to us.

However, I'm not confident that my definition is in line with modern usage. On this forum in particular I've regularly seen homebrew to mean all new material that is neither "official" nor "third-party publisher", which would necessarily include custom campaign settings and monsters.

What I haven't seen (until this thread, anyway) is defining homebrew to mean fluff changes and house rules to mean mechanics changes. Maybe I've just not been reading the right threads, or maybe I just didn't notice the usage you're describing? In any case, your definition is unfamiliar to me. I'm not saying your definition is wrong, but at the very least my experience suggests that your definition is not universally accepted.

Yea sometimes it is only the wording, as with fluff its all names and smoke. What people do not get these days is that class (subclass, items, deities, spells, races) is fluff, only the underlying mechanic is crunch.

So if you create a new class but model it 1:1 based on an existing classes mechanic that would be homebrew but not a houserule. A houserule (i use) is that a 1 on the d20 does something sometimes.
A houserule I use is that quarterstaff 1handed is not possible and two handed does 1d6. I altered a mechanic aka crunch.

What is not a houserule but homebrew and pure fluff is, if I create a spell which works in every aspect (damage dice save etc.) like a fireball, but does acid damage instead.

It is easy: as soon as you alter the math, or add things which have an impact on the math, e.g. a skill which gives +1 on some save or attack, then it is a houserule. If it is equal to another skill which is RAW, then it only adds fluff. E.g. keying skills of different abilities, intimidate with STR or such, is fluff.
You would start mumbling about attribute distribution etc. but keep in mind I said intimidate with STR, not every CHA skill and CHA save with STR instead, and that makes the difference.