# What Is The Point of A Class?



## Shayuri (Sep 5, 2013)

I feel like the idea that specific conflicts are represented by specific classes falls a bit flat, at least in my own experience. I don't see why the leader of the town militia can't be a bard, for example, who leads from the rear...or even a martially flavored rogue, sly and clever in his defensive strategies. Maybe the orc leader is a shaman, driven by dark visions of blood and conquest? Or even a paladin, avenging the genocide wreaked on his people in ages past?

Conflicts define characters because conflicts define stories, and characters the vehicles through which players participate in storytelling.

I lead towards the view that classes are defined BY characters, and serve as the interface point between the story of a character, and the necessary rules of the game.

For example, if I start with a story, I might imagine the tale of a mighty warrior from a snowbound land; a tribe of people living in the shell of a dormant volcano for warmth and protection. In ages past, they were the thralls of a red dragon who laired there. One day the dragon never returned. The chiefs of the tribe have always been those who had signs of dragon blood in them though, and each must prove themselves with mighty deeds that demonstrate the potency of their dragon souls. This character is next in line...and the story is his quest.

The conflict is open-ended in this case. He has to do things, great things, but there's flexibility of what exactly that means. He basically just has to impress the hell out of a ragtag band of primitives. Ideally, in the course of doing so, he'll become embroiled in other things too.

But what class is he?

Well, barbarian fits. In 3e or Pathfinder, there's room for some Sorceror too, possibly a Dragon Disciple.

Significantly though, the question of class is really covering up the more fundamental question: _"What rules best represent my story?"_

It's possible to go the other way. Start with rules, backbuild a story.

For example, the game I'm joining needs a healer/leader. I am not interested in being a cleric, and I have a druid in another game, so I look at something I haven't tried before; Artificer. Hm, that could be fun. I have this notion of a 'techno mage,' who uses magic that has a technological flavor to it. Wands or magical blasts like weapon fire. Mystical defenses like force fields. I look at the rules, and see there are two races that jump out as appropriate for that. Warforged, and Shardminds. Both have the living construct trait, enabling them to incorporate items directly into their bodies. Both have rules reinforcing their semi-organic characteristics.

After experimenting with builds, I decide to go with shardmind. The psionic flavor suits the campaign lore, and the abilities and rules make them good fits for the artificer class.

Armed with my rules firmly in mind, I now proceed to create a story about an artificial mind, psionically created in a giant telepathic archive, who has been transplanted into a mobile frame for purposes of waging war, and who has by strange circumstance been freed from his control protocols and is now experiencing free will for the first time since his creation. He still clings to his old purpose when he can, and he is happy to have a leader to follow, since he feels he still has a great deal to learn about making decisions for himself, but he learns more daily; hourly, and who knows what he choices he will make then?

Again though, the underlying question here is, _"What is a good story that accurately accounts for the rules decisions I've made?"_

The conflicts of these characters define their story, but the classes are what connect those stories to the otherwise very separate world of the rules. And one can argue that the rules and the stories aren't really separate...and I agree they have to inform each other. One way in which they inform each other...the corpus callosum that binds them...is character class. A specialized subset of rules, designed to interface with the agents of the story; the characters.


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## Ahnehnois (Sep 5, 2013)

> What conflicts in your world bring about which classes? What can the classes in your current campaign contribute to thwarting the various villains in your world?



That's an interesting way of framing it. My world has always been a conflict about each individual's locus of control, or belief in one's self, with a clear slant in favor of self-reliance. The psionic classes are essentially the highest status because their source of power is internal. Similarly, rogues, fighters, and others who rely on their own skill have a certain status, while users of arcane magic who tap into power sources they don't usually understand are clearly less self-reliant. The bottom of the spectrum (for classes, anyway), is the clerics and their ilk, who are essentially begging known entities for their power. Outside of classes, outsiders like elementals and demons are another level below, because they lack the ability to function as individuals or make choices as mortals can.

The villains are usually pushing either divine worship or divine invasion, while the PCs generally contribute to preventing this from happening.


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## Andor (Sep 5, 2013)

Ahnehnois said:


> That's an interesting way of framing it. My world has always been a conflict about each individual's locus of control, or belief in one's self, with a clear slant in favor of self-reliance. The psionic classes are essentially the highest status because their source of power is internal. Similarly, rogues, fighters, and others who rely on their own skill have a certain status, while users of arcane magic who tap into power sources they don't usually understand are clearly less self-reliant. The bottom of the spectrum (for classes, anyway), is the clerics and their ilk, who are essentially begging known entities for their power. Outside of classes, outsiders like elementals and demons are another level below, because they lack the ability to function as individuals or make choices as mortals can.
> 
> The villains are usually pushing either divine worship or divine invasion, while the PCs generally contribute to preventing this from happening.




That's an interesting world. Although the axis of conflict that springs to my mind in that setting is individualism vs society. A group of rugged individualists who have to negotiate everything seperately internally and externally is much less efficient in many, many ways than a more structured society where social contracts allow fewer individuals to control numerous followers. E.G: Corporations vs Artisans. Soldiers vs Warriors. Rather off topic for the thread though.

On Topic, as K.M notes there is an inherant conflict between setting or even campaign specific classes, and ones broad enough to be useful in any campaign. Or rather this conflict exists if you tie the mechanics to the classes role in the story. It's perfectly possible to bake conflict into a setting while using generic classes or even a classless system. HeroQuest for example could easily capture either of the above conflicts just by noting which keywords the two groups favor. 

Although even with generic classes it's extremely easy to run into problems based on player expectations. D&D (and it's not the only sinner to be sure) has traditionally depicted Knights and Samurai very differently with distinct classes, and associated baggage. In point of fact both were feudal lords in a militaristic society with similar concerns, skill sets and tactics. The differences that did exist arise largely from climate and culture. Do they need different classes? Maybe. If the mechanical refllections of Christian Virtue are distinct enough from those of Shinto Purity then perhaps the mystical concerns do warrent distinct classes. OTOH if you're using generic fantasy world #41Q and not actually putting Jesus and Amaterasu into your game world then probably not. 

Classes, in the end, are like everything else in the rules, tools to allow a gaming group to run a game they all enjoy. Some groups are perfectly happy conceding that a Katana is just a style of bastard sword and lumping the Knight and Samurai together, others want different classes for every martial art from Pankration to Savate to Wing-Chun to Kalaripayat to Fencing (E.G: Ninjas and Superspies or Iron Heroes.)


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## innerdude (Sep 6, 2013)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> My current Dark Sun 4e game, for instance, has my character mechanically as a swarm druid. But, as far as the story of the game is concerned, she is a druid who transforms into rainstorms and seeks to bring a blue age back to Athas. Her class mechanics – and even her _race – don’t speak to that story, they just provide a mechanical chassis on which to hang a story that I’m inventing myself. In a similar vein, I’ll soon be starting a Planescape 4e game where one character is a blink dog. Mechanically, it’s an eladrin swordmage, but that’s just about bonuses and powers: story-wise, it’s a blink dog.
> _




One of my initial, still-standing hesitancies to fully embrace "the 4e way" for D&D is tied to this. Multiclassing for 4e upon release was lackluster at best. Until "hybrid" classes arrived in PHB3, multiclassing was pretty much a non-starter. And even with "hybrids" a lot of class synergies were haphazard. When I brought up the issue on D&D's forums, 4e proponents said the lack of multiclassing wasn't an issue--"Why multiclass? If you want to play CONCEPT X, simply use CLASS Y and adjust the powers fluff as needed"--natch, an eladrin swordmage masquerading as a blink dog. To me the point of multiclassing was to represent, at least in some fashion, an "organic" character progression arc. For me it was never about character optimization, it was about creating a character I wanted to inhabit within the game world. 

I was just so hesitant to fully divorce "class" from the gameworld this way; divesting class mechanics from the game world just goes too far into "gamism" for my comfort (I am a fairly "classic" actor stance / simulationist). Taken to its logical endpoint it seems to argue that D&D doesn't really need classes at all--they're just game artifacts meant to represent player inputs, not a sense of reality.

In this light, it's pretty obvious why games like Runequest and GURPS quickly appeared on the scene post-AD&D--their creators didn't like the "gamist" disconnect to classes either (among other things).

I'm not so sure I buy the argument that _a class represents a conflict to be solved, or a natural evolution of a problem in the game world_. It's true, we adapt our economies, skillsets, livelihoods, and social structures to address and solve issues, but at the same time, representing this sort of thing in an RPG through the mechanical construct of a class feels arbitrary--"Your character can evolve and progress in these, and only these, specific directions."

I'm having a hard time putting thoughts together at the moment, but there's something about this idea percolating in my brain that I haven't quite pinned down yet.


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## Jhaelen (Sep 6, 2013)

I fully agree with this view and tried to express basically the same thing in my comments to the previous article, albeit less eloquently 
To recap: Either the setting or the central, recurring theme(s) of the game system inform the required classes. I.e. a game that is mostly about medieval politics will require classes that can deal with political encounters and have mostly social abilities and skills that will help them to survive the kind of machiavellian backstabbery that is to be expected.


Kamikaze Midget said:


> What conflicts in your world bring about which classes?



Well, I currently don't have a particular home-made game world, but I've been thinking about the Earthdawn setting a lot. It features quite a few classes that are a bit unusual for your typical fantasy setting. Good examples are the Bard and Weaponsmith classes: The (main) reason they exist is because of the way magic items work in the Earthdawn RPG: In order to use the (mostly unique) Legendary items, the pcs have to find out details about their history and sometimes even re-create the epic deeds that defined them. This allows them to magically bind the items to themselves, unlocking more and more of their potential. Bards are the keepers of history in Earthdawn, knowing all about legends and the roles that magical items played in them and Weaponsmiths know everything about crafting armor and weapons and the most famous examples of their craft.

As another example, when I was thinking about creating a new rpg system, I started wondering why I've (almost) never seen an architect or engineer class in fantasy games. Shouldn't these professions be an ideal starting point for a dungeon-delving adventurer career? Basically, they would be a more intellectual representative of the role usually covered by a thief/rogue character. They would be good at mapping, discovering secret doors and rooms, picking locks and disarming and setting traps. But they might also be helpful in defending against or taking part in a siege or selecting and securing camp sites.


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