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

[ClaytonCross]

I don't think we disagree as much as maybe you think we do. I'm pretty relaxed about multiclassing in my campaigns. My main reasons for wanting to look carefully at someone wanting to combine the two classes are A) They can heterodyne extraordinarily well and B) I want to make sure it fits (or can be made to fit) into the setting I'm running in. Coming to a mutual understanding with the player about the character is part of this, too.

I actually don't think that most people hear disagree in general. This thread is mostly about conflict resolution of preconceived and differing opinions. My reply is less a disagreement of your position and more a description of how to look at the same conflict. Instead of "I don't like paladin/warlock multi-classing" up front, I find it better to say "I would like to support on all multi-classing in context of setting and circumstance which will mean a mutual agreement of lore between the player and the GM, because the GM has to live with your character decisions in the world the GM is creating for you, despite those decisions being your decisions to make." While the first is easier to say, its like getting ready to fight while the second tends to more about working together to resolve it. The second prepares me and them (which ever side I am on) to start negotiations and suggestions. The first tends to make people shut down and get butt hurt.

So, we may not disagree at all but your going to trigger a lot of "uh uh" replies because of the direction of your mental approach to the same direction and possibly results. Sometimes it is less about what your saying and what your goal is than how you say it and the path you take to get there that causes everyone to lose there minds despite being able to find the same result and move on in actual practice at the table.

 

[ClaytonCross]

I think I said everything significant I have to say in earlier posts but I am long winded. So I am going to say it again as concise as I can.

1. "Your Class is Not Your Character" is not a rule in any book. its not wrong and its not right. Its just an opinion on style of play.

2. "Your Class is Your Character" is not a rule in any book. its not wrong and its not right. Its just an opinion on style of play.

- Wizards of the coast staff has come out at almost any chance they could get to say this is deliberate to allow as much freedom as possible.

Also most every player and GM holds "Your Class is Your Character" true on some classes (usually Paladin, Warlock, Cleric, and/or Druid specific to them) and "Your Class is Not Your Character" on all other class.

Their is only conflict when a player or GM invests into one of these opinions and the player or gm disagrees with that investment with investment into their opposing opinion. This boils down to opinion vs opinion conflict resolution that is just part of life not anything to do with the game. This escalates and results in them both digging in because people don't see any evidence saying they are wrong, correctly assume that their opinion is right (since it is not wrong) but all so, incorrectly assume all other opinions must there for be wrong (because they are right and directly opposite). The problem is that people have difficulty excepting opposites as not being mutually exclusive. I said above that the opinion are not right or wrong and in this paragraph they are correct in assuming they are right. That is not a contradiction. An opinion is not right or wrong. Your opinion is always right to you, because you have the right to make it so. That doesn't make it right to anyone else unless they choose it.

So you ether work out an understanding of your opinions you can both live with or you avoid the conflict by not involving the factors that bring it up. In this case, avoid specific classes and/or multi-class combinations. The thing is this a life skill more than D&D class topic because you will find this EVERYWHERE once your aware of it and know to look for it. Politics, Relgion, Morals, and the list goes on. It's the reason for the rule of not talking about religion and politics in public because often you can't resolve it so you just have to avoid the drama.

Not really shorter hu? Fail.

 

[Xetheral]

From my standpoint, when I sit down to play, the "game" I'm playing is the campaign, not the system. I see the system as a tool for running that campaign. Like any other tool, it has strengths and weaknesses, and what's a strength in the context of one campaign may be a weakness in another.

For the campaigns I run, strong class identities would be a weakness. I heavily emphasize verisimilitude, and for me that goal is best realized by characters whose depth and complexity reflect the diversity seen in the real world. A character whose identity can be defined by their class (or even by their race/background/class/subclass combination) would stick out in my campaigns like a caricature rather than a character.

At the same time, the class structure of D&D 5e is a strength in my campaigns. In comparison to a point-based system: character creation is simpler and faster, there is less tension between specialization and breadth (e.g. you can't trade in a fighter's skill proficiencies to get more points to spend on their sword skill), and character creation is less impacted by the point cost the developers chose to assign to each ability.

When class identity gets in the way in my campaigns, it's simple enough to ignore without losing any of the benefits of the class structure. So ultimately, I choose to use 5e for my campaigns because the strengths outweigh the weaknesses, not because I universally appreciate all the aspects of a class-based system.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If my character isn't my class, what's the point of playing a Bard if I can't sing a musical number during the game?

If my character isn't my class, can I be a multi class Bard/Fighter and call myself a Warlord?

 

[Maxperson]

Your paladin and my paladin might look completely different, depending on our different sub-classes. Telling me you are playing a paladin, in 5e, doesn't really tell me anything about your character anymore. The days when class=character are long gone. Niche protection has eroded to the point where there are multiple paths towards representing the same archetype.

Strange. It tells me that the person is playing a holy warrior that is most likely dedicated to a god and has tenets that are strictly followed.

Is that Raven Queen Battle Nun a paladin, a cleric, a monk, a warlock? Who knows. All four classes could easily represent that concept even before we get into reflavoring anything. My last priest of Kord was a rogue who believed (after eating a stew of mushrooms of rather questionable provenance) that he had dined with Kord and had thus been chosen by Kord to be his representative on the world and was thus tasked with building a tabernacle to Him. His holy symbol was the very spoon that touched Kord's lips.

Reflavoring is home brew and confuses things. And even if that priest of Kord was a rogue, he wasn't a cleric of Kord. Clerics of Kord have clerical spells.

 

[Maxperson]

You do realize that areas like race or background might end up with a character who's a different reflection of the class than some people might expect, right? Especially if one brings Traits, Bonds, et al., into the picture.

I think the point is that no matter what race, trait, bond, etc. the PC cleric has, he's still going to have clerical spell casting, a holy symbol, channel divinity, etc., which will all play into how the cleric is played. Those will be a part of the PC regardless of whether he calls himself a cleric, holy servant or Batbane.

 

[Seramus]

I play clerics and call myself a paladin. I'm even thinking of playing an artificer and calling it a paladin!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

By definition, re-fluffing is covered by the rules. The crunch is staying the same. Its the fluff that is changing.

The rules are specifically concerned with how the fluff and crunch relate to each other. The rules say that a given bit of fluff is represented by its respective bit of crunch.

If you change either the fluff or the crunch, then you've changed the rule which connects them.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So your answer is to homebrew up an entirely new class?

What if I homebrewed it up by taking an existing class and simply changing all the names of the features without changing how those features actually worked?

Then your representation would be disingenuous, because the mechanics would only reflect the fluff of the existing class, rather than actually reflecting the fluff of the new class.

 

[Panda-s1]

If my character isn't my class, what's the point of playing a Bard if I can't sing a musical number during the game?

If my character isn't my class, can I be a multi class Bard/Fighter and call myself a Warlord?

who said you had to sing to be a bard? you can play an instrument, and unless I'm mistaken I'm sure other performative arts are used by bards.

also not sure how an artsy warrior wouldn't be allowed to lead a small army that terrorizes the countryside. ransacking a town is one big musical number for them!