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

[Maxperson]

You do not get to redefine terms.

Whatever dude. Fight the good semantical fight!! My point still remains intact.

 

[Maxperson]

The beginning of the entire class section (p. 45) indicates that the flavor text is not set in stone.

I never claimed it was. The general class concept that the mutable specific flavor demonstrates is necessary to the class, though. Class =/= mechanics.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Whatever dude. Fight the good semantical fight!! My point still remains intact.

My computer crashed mid-post, so I need to rewrite it.

Your point seems to be that any setting written is homebrew, but that is not what the terms means.

If you go to a table and they say "we do not accept homebrew classes, but anything official is fine" yo would be rightfully upset if they then kicked you from the group for bringing an Artificer, under the claim that all of Eberron is homebrew.

And I would say this is not a pointless semantic argument, you cannot just choose to redefine the term the community uses.

Peter Jackson did not make a "fan video" when he directed the multi-million dollar Lord of the Rings trilogy for a major motion pciture company.

Dante's Inferno and Paradisio are not simply "fan fics" of the content of the Bible.

The gaming company releasing an official product is not homebrew. It cannot be by definition.

I never claimed it was. The general class concept that the mutable specific flavor demonstrates is necessary to the class, though. Class =/= mechanics.

Right, it isn't set int stone, it just has to be followed or you are breaking or changing the rules.

And despite specific trumping general, the specific background does not trump the general barbarian. The specific race does not trump the general barbarian, and the specific barbarian does not trump the general barbarian.

For that last one, I am making the assumption that you would find a "warrior of [insert homebrew diety from Greyhawk here]" raised in the church, but using the Zealot barbarian stats for combat would be breaking with the general lore about the barbarian unless they were uncivilized and tribal, because being a holy warrior blessed by the powers of a diety isn't enough for the Barbarian who is specifically tied to that trope, they must also follow the general lore of the barbarian as well.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Right, but which rules are fluff and which aren't?

By the definition: if it is a mechanical rule (crunch), it is not fluff.
However fluff can impact rules, and vice versa. For example I would regard the tenets of the Paladin oaths as crunch, but the tenets of the Oath of Devotion are what lead to the fluff statement "A Paladin swears to uphold justice and righteousness, to stand with the good things of the world against the forces of darkness, and to hunt the forces of evil wherever they may lurk."
Other Paladins such as Conquest for example, do not abide by that flavour text.

People define fluff as not rules then argue endlessly about what is fluff.

Is 'Druids won't wear metal armour' fluff and thus not a rule according to some?

I'd probably regard it as a rule, but one that the application and interpretation is hazy.

For example I'd regard the example of the Star Wars Jedi (assuming built with valid D&D mechanics) in the FR game as against the base precepts of the game as laid out by the DM. Its not technically against the rules in the same way that generating your character at 5th level when the DM says characters start at level 1, or rolling for ability scores when the group uses the point-buy variant are also not technically against the rules.

How much of races are fluff? Is everything that doesn't have a 'balance' impact fluff? Can I pick the elf mechanics but use the human 'fluff' since those aren't rules?

I'd generally regard that as an "ask your DM" call. I've had a warforged character be the animated guardian of an ancient temple rather than a soldier created en mass through a semi-industrialised arms dealership for example, and not regarded that as homebrew or changing the rules.

Fluff are rules, it's just people tend to be more lax about changing them.

This opinion seems to be the major source of contention in this thread. You and some others believe that the flavour text is part of the rules. I and some others believe that it is simply a guideline. For example the class flavour text is there to "broadly describe a character's vocation".

Everyone has a line past which they say, wait, no, you can't actually do that.

True, but people draw that line differently, and in many cases there will be some things that are within the rules on the "no" side, and things against the rules on the "fine" side.

I would like to think that most of us would draw that line in reasonably similar places, and it would just be whether they regarded it as homebrew or not where the main difference of opinion lies.

 

[Maxperson]

My computer crashed mid-post, so I need to rewrite it.

Your point seems to be that any setting written is homebrew, but that is not what the terms means.

If you go to a table and they say "we do not accept homebrew classes, but anything official is fine" yo would be rightfully upset if they then kicked you from the group for bringing an Artificer, under the claim that all of Eberron is homebrew.

I would not be rightfully upset. They would be well justified in kicking me from the group for trying to bring an Artificer from House Cannith into their Dark Sun game. Artificers belong to one specific setting, just like a homebrew class. You are arguing semantics. My point remains perfectly intact, despite your attempts.

 

[Aldarc]

I never claimed it was. The general class concept that the mutable specific flavor demonstrates is necessary to the class, though. Class =/= mechanics.

This is an unclear, poorly written sentence. Would you mind rephrasing your argument here more clearly?

 

[Maxperson]

This is an unclear, poorly written sentence. Would you mind rephrasing your argument here more clearly?

The flavor text of the barbarian class gives us a general overview of what it means to be a barbarian. That is part of the class. The specifics fluff examples from within the fluff categories, Barbarian, Primal Instinct and A Life of Danger are mutable. You can create other examples that meet the general themes of those categories if you don't like the specific examples written.

However, if you just pull out the mechanics and write completely new flavor that has nothing to do with being a barbarian, you have created a new class with the barbarian class mechanics. It is no longer a barbarian.

 

[Azzy]

Whatever dude. Fight the good semantical fight!! My point still remains intact.

No, your point is based on nonsense. Writing it off as semantics is disingenuous.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I would not be rightfully upset. They would be well justified in kicking me from the group for trying to bring an Artificer from House Cannith into their Dark Sun game. Artificers belong to one specific setting, just like a homebrew class. You are arguing semantics. My point remains perfectly intact, despite your attempts.

You know Max, I remember you getting upset some weeks ago at people not reading your post and assuming you said things you did not say. Would you mind looking over my post again, and looking at what I said and what I did not say?

I did not say the table was playing Dark Sun. In fact, I gave no setting whatsoever. They are playing "DnD" Generic Fantasy, no setting laid out. If I wanted a setting, I would have said which setting they were playing.

I also did not say "an artificer from House Cannith" I said "An Artificer". Artificer is a generic class. In fact, I can use the rules of Artificers to show you that. In the rules for artificers they have a sidebar, I'll go ahead and post the whole thing. I will underline some things, for clarity.

ARTIFICERS IN OTHER WORLDS

Eberron is the world most associated with artificers, yet the class can be found throughout the D&D multiverse. In the Forgotten Realms, for example, the island of Lantan is home to many artificers, and in the world of Dragonlance, tinker gnomes are often members of this class. The strange technologies in the Barrier Peaks of the World of Greyhawk have inspired some folk to walk the path of the artificer, and in Mystara, various nations employ artificers to keep airships and other wondrous devices operational. In the City of Sigil, artificers share discoveries from throughout the cosmos, and one in particular — the gnome inventor Vi — has run a multiverse-spanning business from there since leaving the world of her birth, Eberron. In the world-city Ravnica, the Izzet League trains numerous artificers, the destructiveness of whom is unparalleled in other worlds — except, perhaps, by the tinker gnomes of Krynn.

So, in fact, according to the rules of the game, Artificers belong to DnD, and they name SEVEN different worlds where they can be found.

I actually assume you know this list, since interestingly out of all of the major campaign settings (which you consider all of them to homebrew) you picked the only one not on this list to try and make my example seem less reasonable.

So, actually, if that group was in the Forgotten Realms, and they got mad at me, what should be their response when I pull out the book and inform them that, per the rules, the Island of Lantan is home to artificers and my character hails from there. I am now playing a setting approved character. Does that suddenly make the artificer not homebrew?

Please, respond to the actual point. Do not add more text to my example to make it seem false.

Artificers are an official DnD class, supported by the rules, and existing in multiple settings.

If the group is playing generic DnD from the book, with no setting information, and they specifically say they allow all official material, what rules legal reason would they have to say the Artificer is unacceptable?

 

[Maxperson]

You know Max, I remember you getting upset some weeks ago at people not reading your post and assuming you said things you did not say. Would you mind looking over my post again, and looking at what I said and what I did not say?

I did not say the table was playing Dark Sun. In fact, I gave no setting whatsoever. They are playing "DnD" Generic Fantasy, no setting laid out. If I wanted a setting, I would have said which setting they were playing.

Right, you deliberately avoided my point which has been quite clear. Setting specific fluff and crunch from WotC are the equivalent of homebrew. They exist in that setting and only that setting unless a DM alters things to allow them somewhere else.

Bringing up some sort of general class as an example of what I am saying being incorrect is disingenuous. The altered example that I gave is representative of my point. At no point did I argue that a general class like wizard would be homebrew simply because it appears in Eberron.