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Lets talk character classes

Started by Slipshot762, February 16, 2021, 07:53:34 AM

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Chris24601

#105
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2021, 02:25:01 PM
Yeah, I find the fluff in 5e to be fairly incoherent on occasion. e.g. Why is there a difference between a druid, a cleric of a nature god, and a warlock who made a pact with a nature god?
Why is there a difference between a fighter, rogue and ranger all in light armor with a bow, and two short swords?

Why are a Dominican, Jesuit and a Diocesan priest not all considered the same thing by the Catholic Church?

Everything can be lumped into one category if you abstract enough. The druid, cleric, warlock, fighter, rogue and ranger are all adventurers. Why aren't they considered all the same class?

Some people enjoy nuance; that the system makes mechanical distinctions between zombies, ghouls, ghasts and wights requiring them to be called different names for clarity. Sometimes I feel like in your world you don't want a distinction between a goldfish and a beta because they're both fish right? We can totally put them in the same tank... except not. is there a difference between a Rottweiler and a German Shepherd in your world or are they both just dogs?

So, the advantage of the classes you opened with is nuance. The druid communes with nature spirits/gods as a whole, not necessarily a single deity (there might be several with overlapping fields), the cleric is an ordained priest of a specific nature deity, and the warlock didn't make a pact with a god at all, but a potent nature spirit like an exarch or similar nature-themed celestial.

At this finer grained level we can see differences and even potential conflicts. The cleric's faith may consider pacts made outside the ordained clergy to be heretical as just one example. The druid might consider both the cleric and warlock blind to the broader interrelationships of nature (like how the winds off the seas that, to the cleric are matters for the sky and sea gods, influence the rains and climate that sustains the forest).

So where you see a clump of things to be homogenized into a bland brown stew, I see a rich variety of colors that can be used to paint a detailed portrait full of nuance.




Wicked Woodpecker of West

I've always seen warlocks as more personally bound to specific smaller but obviously very powerful beings - some of which may overlap with minor demigods (depends of rules) - but generally not main pantheon forces, and this power holds good claim for warlocks soul, so retirement or changing job is not really an option.
Cleric meditates and commune with deity, but for beings that large that's more automated relation - unless someone will do something really epic or really heretical to earn special favour/wrath.

BoxCrayonTales

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 23, 2021, 07:49:19 PM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 23, 2021, 02:25:01 PM
Quote from: Aglondir on February 21, 2021, 05:26:42 PM
I love classes, but I love skill-based systems too. My problem with classes isn't how they interact (or limit) player choice. It's that classes are typically designed with both a System function (mechanics) and a World function (fluff.) It's one thing to play a psychic warrior with a laser sword, but quite another to play a Jedi.

Point buy systems attempt to quantity the fluff via ads and disads, where class-based systems just assume the fluff works out OK. And for D20, the fluff is so ingrained it probably does for most folks. Funny thing is that players seem to vary with their involvement with the fluff. Paladin players are heavily involved, often to an annoying level. Warlock players usually aren't. I have yet to see a Warlock's patron make any demands of the PC. Or a warlock player who even role-plays the Faustian bargain. Or other party members that are concerned with it. The only factor seems to be "I'm a short rest Cha based caster" which is pure system.

At the risk of going Forgish, this might be a gamist vs Sim debate.

Yeah, I find the fluff in 5e to be fairly incoherent on occasion. e.g. Why is there a difference between a druid, a cleric of a nature god, and a warlock who made a pact with a nature god?

Consider Thulsa Doom, referred to as a sorcerer but clearly a priest of Set (in the Arnold movies at least), the knee jerk response from my "inner DM who doesn't set foot outside D&D" would say "oh yeah multi-class, totally" but thats a narrow cookie cutter view; I'm using D6 system these days and really those are all the same "class" mechanically, differing only in fluff.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 24, 2021, 05:12:35 PM
I've always seen warlocks as more personally bound to specific smaller but obviously very powerful beings - some of which may overlap with minor demigods (depends of rules) - but generally not main pantheon forces, and this power holds good claim for warlocks soul, so retirement or changing job is not really an option.
Cleric meditates and commune with deity, but for beings that large that's more automated relation - unless someone will do something really epic or really heretical to earn special favour/wrath.

I suppose my root problem is that I don't see a reason for them to be distinct classes as opposed to kits/archetypes. I've always been more a fan of using a toolkit system like Spheres of Power's casting traditions as opposed to placing whole classes into arbitrary categories. I guess that makes me a weirdo.

Wicked Woodpecker of West

Well for me it's because they are metaphysically something different and magical-classes should represent such distinctions.

Warlocks are born from pact magic, not religious practices, those are not the same.
If anything warlock - priest is most basic traditional magic/religion distinction - it's wizard and their arcana that's weird Dying Earth dropout.

Kits for me - for warlock came from selection of specific patron and one of various pacts - either he gets some occult knowledge - which makes him closer to PF witch, either some accursed blade - 3,5 hexblade or some powerful familiar - PF summoner for me

BoxCrayonTales

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 24, 2021, 06:35:35 PM
Well for me it's because they are metaphysically something different and magical-classes should represent such distinctions.

Warlocks are born from pact magic, not religious practices, those are not the same.
If anything warlock - priest is most basic traditional magic/religion distinction - it's wizard and their arcana that's weird Dying Earth dropout.

Kits for me - for warlock came from selection of specific patron and one of various pacts - either he gets some occult knowledge - which makes him closer to PF witch, either some accursed blade - 3,5 hexblade or some powerful familiar - PF summoner for me
I never thought about it that way before, but that makes a lot of sense. In pretty much every real world belief in magic that I've heard of, magic comes from the divine (or the profane). Praying to a god for a miracle, utilizing esoteric knowledge handed down from the gods, etc. (I'm using "god" in a loose sense here, because non-Abrahamic religions have very broad ideas of what gods are.)

Wicked Woodpecker of West

QuoteI never thought about it that way before, but that makes a lot of sense. In pretty much every real world belief in magic that I've heard of, magic comes from the divine (or the profane). Praying to a god for a miracle, utilizing esoteric knowledge handed down from the gods, etc. (I'm using "god" in a loose sense here, because non-Abrahamic religions have very broad ideas of what gods are.)

Some religions dabbled with magic - but usually there is certain difference - in religion you sort of parley with Superior Power, in magic - even if it's of Divine - but then entire Universe is from Divine - magician is often using certain exploits in structure of World, so in some aspects magic - at least forms of magic like hermeticism had aspects closer to science than religion.

And then in imagineland you can make many ways of exploiting powers of universe to get whatever is called as Magic.

Slipshot762

One distinction for me wrt magic is "does the user of the magic have to please, serve, or appease another creature or entity, supernatural, infernal, or divine, in order to wield the power"; the answer appears in all cases except wizard/sorcerer to be "yes"; putting to my eye at least warlock/witch druid cleric etc all in one group, with sorcerer/wizard in another.

But even then, historically as magic was viewed, even these last two could be jammed in that first category if their "spells/powers" are dependant upon demons or spirits to function, if I remember correctly the biblical simon magus could fly about because he had invisible commanded demons carrying him, which one of the apostles (Peter I think?) rebuked and he fell and shattered his legs.

I looked long and hard at history for the dividing line between "he is a learned magician and his counsel is welcome" and "burn that heathen bastard at the stake"; clearly a pact with a demon/devil or a pagan "diety" (which the church would have at best viewed as a fallen angel/grigori or the offspring of such and thus a nephelim) falls squarely in the burn him category (unless arthur is king) while magicians such as dee & kelly were employed by the english royal family to decipher enochian, the language of angels/celestials and thus the language of creation.

This little point, historically, appears to be the bulk of that dividing line, are your powers making use of enochian, commanding the natural world as god intended with this programming language that enables cheat codes, or are you "cheating" by commanding the spirits of the dead or devils to manifest the effects on your behalf? This would make a witch hunters job a lot more investigation heavy and he would have to be able to recognize if a suspect is using enochian and divinely ordained practices vs short circuiting the process and having "unseen servants" do the heavy lifting for them.

One theory was that the use of symbols outside of the judaic such as what might have been employed by the biblical king solomon was a clear indicator of "burn the witch", as symbols are a form of communication and such would only be needed if ordering a 3rd party to operate on your behalf. (as opposed to speaking enochian/celestial/the language of creation to command reality itself to conform to your will as is your birthright as a being made in the image of the creator)

Pat

#112
One division of magic that I like is from the Realms of Magic supplement for the original Marvel Super Heroes game. It splits magic into three types: Personal, universal, and dimensional.

For personal energy, think mental or chi powers. Telepathy, physical enhancement, and so on. They are easy and quick to cast, and just require concentration (no gestures or vocalizations). The downside is they use the caster's own energy, so they're physically draining, and when they affect others they require consent. You can't dive into an unwilling mind.

Universal is the energy of the surrounding universe, which the caster channels into various effects. This is the most like standard magic, and can include things like blasts, shields, teleportation, and illusions. It's also easy and quick to cast, and isn't personally draining, but does require the rituals of casting like gestures and words. Some of the effects can be resisted (saves i.e. Psyche FEATs).

Dimensional energies are tapping into beings or objects of power from other dimensions. This is the equivalent of "divine" magic, except based on weird fantasy instead of religions -- you're accessing the power of weird cosmic entities, demons, semi-sentient books, and so on. Dimensional spells are difficult to cast (typically a yellow instead of a green FEAT), relatively slow (end of round instead of during your turn), and require gestures and words, but no saves (Psyche FEATs) are allowed against their effects. The spells tend to be broad, powerful and/or do things other types of magic can't -- it's the only way to do certain things like dimensional travel or blocking or duplicating powers, and it can be easier to learn (dimensional teleport costs 1 slot while the universal version costs 2; and there are group spells where you can learn 5 related spells at the cost of learning a single dimensional spell).

The most unique type of dimensional spells are the entreaty spells, where the caster beseeches an entity. This is completely open-ended because you can ask for any effect (within your power rank), but the difficulty varies based on how suited the effect is to the entity's nature (the short list of things they're known for is easy, everything else is harder), and whether they're friendly to the caster/their school or not. There is a quid pro quo of some sort, but it's implicit rather than explicit -- most of the entities grant spells pretty freely, under something like the assumption that it spreads their power and glory across the dimensions. It's possible to entreat neutral or hostile entities, but they may draw the entity's attention, with the chance increasing as the caster becomes more powerful (think a powers check from Ravenloft).

There are also various traditions, which are a mix of philosophies and magical styles, including druidic, voodoo, faerie, schools associated with specific realms or pantheons, atlantean, scientific (alchemy), and more general ones like nature, chaos, and order (Dr. Strange is order, elder gods are a type of chaos). These schools often come with specialities (druidic is powerful earth magic, voodoo is powerful with the dead, etc.), and vulnerabilities (e.g. druid and faerie are vulnerable to iron). These are overlays on top of the energy types, and different entities may be friendly with certain schools and opposed to others.

It's a solid basic framework for looking at the different types of magic, if a bit underexploited in the Marvel Universe, which tends to mix them all together into mush. It wouldn't be hard to adapt it to gods, religions, pacts, psionicists, paladins, various schools of wizardry, monks, and so on. Could have more explicit and varied schools, entities of different ranks, investiture, and so on.

Steven Mitchell

#113
When doing magic divisions, it also matters a great deal whether your intent is to be all encompassing (within the scope of your design, at least) or leaving some options for later development (including possibly so much later it will never happen by the designer).  Likewise, do you want to leave some areas of magic as mystery and non-systematic? Then, of course, there is the issue of how much mechanical complexity the players will absorb for magic, and how varied that is.  Those two constraints feed on each other, too.

For example, in my own current design, I ended up with 3 types of magic:  Holy, Primeval, and Sorcery.  I could have had 4 or 5, but 3 was good enough for now--and more important, I had 3 good ideas and several other flaky ones. :D  There are quite a few compromises in those divisions to support the primary goals of making the D&D-ish divine/arcane division more diluted, have each caster be a little more specific, but still allowing a wide variety of character archetypes, and never allowing a character to have more than one type (for simplicity).  And of course, in my case, since the magic types are freely mix and match with the classes, I've also got constraints related to the system as a whole, not just magic. I did not want Primeval to be merely "druids" pulled out separately.  But it did need some of that nature magic stuff.  I ended up putting most "spirit" themed magic in Primeval.  So necromancers are technically in that group, which will certainly strike some players as odd.  (It did me, when it happened, almost organically out of the various constraints coming together, but once I embraced it, it neatly solved a lot of edge issues.) I also split the class elemental casting across all three types, with each type having their own slant and relative strengths and weaknesses.  So there is no real chance to do the classic elementalist character concept of master of all 4 elements.  You might also note that there is no concept of bardic magic at all.  I've left room for the development of a 4th or 5th type, if I ever get an idea that I like well enough to develop.

Meanwhile, I kept the basic casting mechanic the same across all three types, but then layered the differences on top of that.  The layered differences are fairly minor but do reinforce the theme of the type.  For example, there is a "burn out" part of the basic mechanic that replaces the D&D-style slots.  Holy casters get to designate key spells that are much less susceptible to burn out--and in fact, they can still cast those long past the point where all their other magic is exhausted.  Their magic isn't as flashy (usually) or quick as the other types, but it is more reliable.  If I do decide to add another type, I can keep the basic casting mechanic or I can do a new one--whatever fits, because the types are self-contained.  I thought about being more varied than that, but my immediate play testing pool is 75% casual players and that's really the target of the game.  It was a bridge too far.

Little of the specifics of that are useful in a general purpose discussion of magic divisions, yet it seems to be working fine for the more limited goals of my game and the kinds of settings and play it is meant to encourage.  We can discuss what works and doesn't work in a specific design, used in a specific setting.  From that, some guidelines and preferences will probably emerge.  However, I think the idea of magic is too wedded to the setting to ever fully escape it.  Which is why, you can do any setting you want with Fantasy Hero, as long as you don't mind the game feeling like the Fantasy Hero lens filter on the setting.