Classes that don't fit the game

Dumarest · October 08, 2017, 07:09:16 PM

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;999336Yeah. Or maybe I'd dream up some kind of quest you needed to fulfill to become a Paladin, because happening in play is always better.

I've just always really been lucky, I guess, to have players who were good with "the whole point of character creation is to see what we end up with."

I haven't had the problem so my solution is hypothetical, but a plucky young farm boy on a quest to become a paladin is a good way to go. It worked in Star Wars.

Dumarest · October 08, 2017, 07:11:29 PM

Quote from: AsenRG;999329No, just like OD&D didn't come with extra imagination for the Referee. What's your point here, really?

My point is there are plenty of games with few players interested in playing them. Perhaps too subtly expressed, since you leapt to referee imagination which had absolutely no relationship to what I wrote.

David Johansen · October 08, 2017, 07:12:11 PM

Really, I've always liked the BXCMI version of Paladins where you had to hit tenth level before the church will even look at you. It's one of those places a "prestige class" makes a lot of sense.

Dumarest · October 08, 2017, 07:18:18 PM

Quote from: David Johansen;999368Really, I've always liked the BXCMI version of Paladins where you had to hit tenth level before the church will even look at you. It's one of those places a "prestige class" makes a lot of sense.

I don't remember there even being paladins in Basic. Which book were they in?

(Then again, we tended to get bored with D&D before double-digit levels...)

David Johansen · October 08, 2017, 07:49:11 PM

It was in Companion D&D. There were also Avengers for chaotic fighters, Knights for anyone who didn't want to get stuck in with fanatics and Druids for Clerics.

Armchair Gamer · October 08, 2017, 08:40:53 PM

Quote from: David Johansen;999378It was in Companion D&D. There were also Avengers for chaotic fighters, Knights for anyone who didn't want to get stuck in with fanatics and Druids for Clerics.

Plus Druidic Knights in DRAGON #177.

(There's a whole lot of design space in BECMI that got explored in the latter years of the game that no one's really gone back to.)

Mordred Pendragon · October 08, 2017, 08:41:34 PM

Everyone, relax.

If it fits your D&D game, then by all means include it!

Dumarest · October 08, 2017, 09:54:44 PM

Quote from: David Johansen;999378It was in Companion D&D. There were also Avengers for chaotic fighters, Knights for anyone who didn't want to get stuck in with fanatics and Druids for Clerics.

Hmm...I wonder if we never lasted to Companion levels! Either that or no one pursued those things or the fogs of time have obscured the past.

Krimson · October 08, 2017, 10:28:45 PM

Quote from: Dumarest;999430Hmm...I wonder if we never lasted to Companion levels! Either that or no one pursued those things or the fogs of time have obscured the past.

In my group, I think the only things we really used the Companion Set for was the Dominion and Warfare/War Machine rules.

AsenRG · October 09, 2017, 02:14:41 AM

Quote from: Xuc xac;999345Now I want to be a silent Trappist monk with drunken boxing style.

You and me both, brother*, you and me both;)!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;999336Yeah. Or maybe I'd dream up some kind of quest you needed to fulfill to become a Paladin, because happening in play is always better.

I've just always really been lucky, I guess, to have players who were good with "the whole point of character creation is to see what we end up with."

Actually, I'd like anyone to try a quest to become a paladin. Whether he lives or dies through it, it would be worth telling afterwards:D!
As mentioned above, see: Star Wars.

Quote from: Dumarest;999367My point is there are plenty of games with few players interested in playing them. Perhaps too subtly expressed, since you leapt to referee imagination which had absolutely no relationship to what I wrote.

No, I guessed that was what you mean, but it didn't seem relevant:).
Players are just necessary supplies, man. And so is imagination, especially with a system as loose as OD&D;).
Buying a book doesn't guarantee you'd be able to use it. But if you can gather the supplies, knock yourself out!
I guess my refutal was also too subtly expressed:p?

*As an almost irrelevant point, why the fuck the forum refuses to publish the vowels in Xuc xac's name, even when I've gone for Advanced Reply?

RPGPundit · October 11, 2017, 11:31:48 PM

Funny how in AD&D, Monks were the most gonzo thing in the game.

Christopher Brady · October 11, 2017, 11:44:15 PM

Personal thing, but to me the Monk has always felt like 'that kid'. You know the one, he has to play a Ninja. No matter what setting, could be a Stone Age, Renaissance or Post-Apoc Zombie game, it's got to have the super sword, the pajamas and its gotta be Japanese. Accept no imitations and no exceptions.

Willie the Duck · October 12, 2017, 07:29:48 AM

Quote from: Christopher Brady;999941Personal thing, but to me the Monk has always felt like 'that kid'. You know the one, he has to play a Ninja. No matter what setting, could be a Stone Age, Renaissance or Post-Apoc Zombie game, it's got to have the super sword, the pajamas and its gotta be Japanese. Accept no imitations and no exceptions.

Quick aside: it might be a generational/place-and-time thing, but in my original D&D experience, the monk was David Carradine's Kwai Chang Caine, and it was the classes in AD&D's Oriental Adventures which got used to make Japanese characters, although the rest is the same.
Y'know, I can get that, but other than the fact that 'that kid' exists, and they will naturally find something to latch onto, there's nothing inherent about either the D&D mystic or the AD&D monk that makes them 'that kid'-ish, so far as I can tell. It's really just a poly-competent class. It's not the best at any one thing but can do them all (has thief skills but worse than thief of equivalent xp, can use all magic items but no spells of one's own, can heal self only and only mildly, can fight but is a glass cannon). That's really the long and short of the class as it appears on the page. Is it perhaps just what we've affixed onto the class that makes it so objectionable?

TrippyHippy · October 12, 2017, 08:09:53 AM

Thing is, Monks are so embedded into standard D&D these days they don't feel out of place at all to me. Indeed, in my mind's eye I see them as a sort of hybrid between a western Christian Monk that take vows of self discipline, and the Eastern kung fu type.

Dumarest · October 12, 2017, 10:00:53 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit;999937Funny how in AD&D, Monks were the most gonzo thing in the game.

Maybe in your games.

For me, the craziest things in the game always turn out to be the PCs and their schemes.