When is a class a career, and when is a class just a selection of abilities?

[Gavinfoxx]

I was talking with my old 3.5e DM the other day (we've moved along to other systems, but sometimes still talk about 3.5e), and he strongly disagreed with my statement that "classes aren't life paths, and there is nothing wrong with dipping and multiclassing into a large number of classes in support of getting the math to follow a specific character theme."

He said that he believed that the intention of the multiclassing penalty rule, even though it was REALLY badly written, and the idea of 3.5e as being a class-based system in the first place, was to have classes be *careers*. Otherwise, why use a class based system at all?

I countered by saying, "But unless you go splatbook diving, D&D doesn't represent many heroic fantasy archetypes without using lots of classes to build around a concept."

He asked for an example, staying within the core three books. I, of course, said, "Competent, non overt magic using, unarmed combatant.", which he said has no place in world presented in the D&D books, where it is ridiculously easy to get weapons; focusing your life at being good unarmed combat or combat with terrible farm implements only makes sense where normal weapons are greatly restricted.

Then we had a discussion about which of the core classes WERE and WERE NOT obviously life paths. We figured that Rogue was okay to not be a life path, as was Expert, and I said that Sorcerer wasn't, because it was in the blood, where he said that Sorcerer was a path, because you were encouraging and delving into the abilities from your birthright, rather than others.

So... I don't really know where I'm going with this, but does anyone have any comments on this sort of thing? At the very least, what heroic fantasy archetypes do you all think aren't portrayed well WITHOUT multiclassing, especially in core? And what classes seem to mostly be 'career' and what classes aren't?

[Vladislav]

Barbarian isn't obviously meant to be a career. I mean, you can only do the "Hulk Smash!" thing so many times before you have to diversify. It's more of a starting point than the whole path.

Wizard seems like a career to me. Study of arcane tomes demands total dedication and all that.

[Starbuck_II]

I don't think there are ever careers (unless you want them to be).

The entire idea behind favor classes is you are supposed to multiclass. Wizard only benefit from it if they are a wizard + another class.

[Ernir]

You'll probably find that the overwhelming consensus here is that a character's class and a character's career don't have to have anything to do with one another. Also that multiclass penalties are stupid.

I happen to agree with the sentiment.

[Gavinfoxx]

Well, we both agreed that the favored class subsystem was really badly designed, but the conversation steered away what it was supposed to or intended to do...

And I'm aware that the consensus here is that classes generally aren't careers, but I'm looking for some explanations why, and qualifying statements, and about the whole, "Then why have classes at all?" thing, and about what heroic archetypes NEED lots of multiclassing, and so on and so forth...

[true_shinken]

The entire idea behind favor classes is you are supposed to multiclass. Wizard only benefit from it if they are a wizard + another class.
So you think that a mechanic that restricts multiclassing in fact encourages it? I'm confused.

[Kelb_Panthera]

You're both right, and you're both wrong. A class can be a career or a set of mechanics that you can string together for a greater concept. It's up to the individual to decide which of these is true.

[Zeofar]

So you think that a mechanic that restricts multiclassing in fact encourages it? I'm confused.

It sets the precedent that multiclassing is not a bizarre, uncommon practice, but is rather common enough that certain races have no difficulty doing it with their favored class. It shows that a class isn't considered a permanent career, but one can enhance of diversify their abilities as long as their have enough life experience to handle it.

[JaronK]

Paladins seem to be a career. That's about it though.

JaronK

[Eldonauran]

To be honest, I think that the multiclass exp penalty was added as a preventative measure against overly powerful characters. Being badly implemented none-the-less, I think it had the right ideas.

On the subject of taking classes all the way through, I think it was the game designers intention to do just that. The reason I think this is because the DMG states (not exact words, i am away from books) that prestige classes are a variant option for the DM to include if he chooses. Without prestige classes, what else is there to do other than multiclass between other classes. The multiclass exp penalty seems more reasonable then, as do favored classes.

I'll try to find that DMG passage when I get time

[Toliudar]

I'm somehow okay with "wizard" and "monk" being job descriptions as well as classes, but aside from a bookish priest have never had a character describe him or herself using class names. For example, I've had beguilers who are thieves, concubines, circus performers and anthropologists, but never a beguiler who self-identifies as a beguiler.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

In the absence of prestige classes, all of the full casting classes are built as career paths, as the most obvious choice is to take them all the way through. In the presence of prestige classes, advancing the core mechanic of those classes - spellcasting progression - is the most obvious career path. Bob is a [mystical dewd]. He flings magic out of every orifice. He should probably advance that unless something comes up.

The fightan man's analogue is, hilariously enough, base attack bonus, although there are better reasons not to advance that (at least not for a short while).

[Vemynal]

As long as there is a roleplay explanation I'm down. In a game I DMed I had:

a lvl 5 rogue as a Thief
a lvl 5 monk as a wandering Priest
a lvl 5 sorcerer as a sentient monkey who followed the "priest" around
and a 2monk/2fighter/1barbarian. He labeled himself a Mercenary (as a career choice). Him and the monk even came up with the idea that he once belonged to/was raised in the monk's monastery.

Heck, the Monk has no plans of going divine with his class what so ever but claimed he was a priest because he acted as a missionary and spread his ideological values

[Kylarra]

Strictly speaking a class is a career in games that are more strictly defined class-based games, and a selection of abilities in games which have more loosely defined "classes". So 3.X has "classes" given the shopping nature of many builds that aren't fullcasters (and even they have PrCs that people like to dip in and out of) and something like AD&D/2e has classes where the class choice you make at the beginning of the game generally determines what abilities are available in your future.

[Cespenar]

I'd wish the classes in D&D are balanced enough for one to say, "My character is raised as an orphan in a thieves' guild, got out when he matured and did five years of mercenary work before starting his own mercenary company. So, Rogue 3/Fighter 5/Marshal 1 is okay, I guess." and actually have a playable build.

But they're not. So in majority, classes are used just as a selection of abilities, and the career/fluff thing is held apart.

[Eorran]

In every edition of D&D except 3.X, a class was intended to be a career, with some exceptions. 2e humans could dual class (essentially starting a new career path, with limitations on how they could use their original class abilities), and demihumans could multiclass (a hybrid career).

The multiclass penalty was a carryover from earlier editions.

On further reflection, "career" might be too specific for classes. The best analogy I can come up with is "degree". Two Ph.D.s in physics can have the same degree while having very different fields of study. Similarly, a 2e thief could be a master locksmith, an acrobat, or a battlefield scout.

[Indon]

I'd say that to a large degree, it's dependent on the DM and world the characters are in.

Some base classes and a lot of prestige classes lend themselves well to professional orders, and others that don't still have a career aspect to them in some fantasy settings - the classic "Thieves guild" comes to mind.

However, few of the classes have literal mechanics based on the class as a career choice, and most of those that do are prestige classes built around being the member of some specific order or another.

[Z3ro]

In every edition of D&D except 3.X, a class was intended to be a career, with some exceptions.

This is the most revelant portion, I think. The game designers cleary thought of classes as careers. However, with the introduction of modular classes in 3.0, the players took the concept and ran with it, choosing to see it that the designers intended heavy multiclassing.

In the end the only thing that matters is how a table plays it, as either can be done and done well.

[Gavinfoxx]

What about class as...

...Lifestyle choice?

Basically his argument was this:

A Monk seems to be written as a lifestyle choice. Spend lots of time in a monestary meditating and honing the body and mind?

As is a Wizard. Forgoing physical pursuits and having your head in books all the time? Yea.

Paladin? Oh good god yes! Though Paladin needs to be a MUCH stronger class..

Druid? As someone who is a priest of nature who is outside all the time? Yes..

Ranger? As a different path for someone who defends natural areas from specific enemies? Yes

Cleric? As an invested priest who is gifted by their god with divine abilities? That's a lifestyle.

Sorcerer? Someone who spends their time awakening the arcane strength of their blood? That's a lifestyle.

Fighter? Someone who dedicates their life to the path of *killing people with metal objects*. That's a lifesytle choice...

Barbarian? Someone who dedicates themselves to fighting by awakening a supernatural rage to be capable of doing things normal folk aren't capable of? Lifestyle choice..

Hell, we started talking about the NPC classes...

Commoner... well, by definition, yes.

Expert he said could be any non heroic skillful person

Adept? As someone who is basically a Cleric-light, that requires a devotion to a deity


I don't remember what he said about Warrior.

[Greenish]

You'll probably find that the overwhelming consensus here is that a character's class and a character's career don't have to have anything to do with one another.I'm not sure how overwhelming the agreement is. There've been plenty of discussion and arguments about it before.

What about class as...

...Lifestyle choice?

Basically his argument was this:

<fluff>Yes, well. That's the canned fluff for each class. Many people prefer to use their own fluff, and pick a class or a class combo that they feel best presents the character mechanically.


I don't remember what he said about Warrior.That they were fighters who decided to suck more? :smallwink:

[Gavinfoxx]

I think the idea was, "If you follow this fluff, THEN you can be of that class. Otherwise, why have classes at all?"

[randomhero00]

I'd say rogue would be the most career oriented.

[Admiral Squish]

I think the idea was, "If you follow this fluff, THEN you can be of that class. Otherwise, why have classes at all?"

I think It's all in how you think of it. If you look at it in terms of fluff > crunch, then yeah, he's right. But if you think of it as crunch > fluff, then you're right.

I mean, half of my characters would never have come into being if it weren't for the divorce of fluff and crunch.

[Aedilred]

I think in order to work out the designer's intent we should go back to 2nd ed AD&D and have a look at the multiclass rules there, such as they were, as the 3.x system grew out of that one to a greater or lesser degree. What we'd now call multiclassing was dual-classing, and it was a one-time switch between classes. True multiclassing (similar to what we'd now call gestalt) was available only to certain races, and there weren't any prestige classes. The vast majority of characters would, or at least were intended to, choose one class at start-up and proceed with it through to level 20.

These rules, frankly, sucked, and one of the reasons I prefer 3.x as a system is that multiclassing is massively simplified. However, I suspect that, as with blaster wizards, for instance, the full impact of the rules wasn't realised at an early stage. Purely my own conjecture, but I'd imagine the designers were confident the classes themselves were balanced (ha!) and that combining two classes could be soaked up by the system, but they were wary of anyone combining three. It hadn't really been done in 2AD&D, and the combinations become so myriad that you can't playtest it to breaking point, so they fudged it and introduced the favoured class rules to discourage excessive multiclassing.

What the favoured class rules don't recognise is that excessive multiclassing applies its own penalties. You can't stick with any one class long enough to pick up the key benefits, and unless you're careful your BAB and save progression goes down the pan.

Broadly speaking, then, I'd suspect that the intent of the designers was to create archetype classes that most characters would still stick with, with the occasional two-classed character- or perhaps you'd get fighters taking a dip into rogue, or what have you. That doesn't necessarily mean, though, that the classes are careers. Some of them are so generic that it's difficult to see how they could be- fighter and rogue being the obvious examples. Meanwhile some lay down the law a bit more about the way your character is expected to behave (paladin, druid) and it's difficult to see those classes as not having some sort of career element to them.

I think where I'd draw the line is that I'd call base classes "archetypes" and prestige classes "careers". Some prestige classes are really obvious about it, but almost all of them require some sort of behaviour, training, or other entry path that means you have to think of them, to an extent, as a career. You *can* treat the base classes as careers, but I don't think you necessarily should. I'd be dismayed to hear a PC describe himself in-character as a fighter, rather than a soldier, a knight, a mercenary, a bodyguard, etc.. But I wouldn't have a problem with someone calling themselves an archmage, or a loremaster, or an Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil.

[Endarire]

Classes are convenient labels. If you call yourself a "Rogue," people have a pretty good idea of what to expect from you.

If you call yourself a "Shaman," like I did, people have a vague idea of what to expect. This character was really a Ranger1/Fighter1/WhirlPounce Barbarian1/Warblade3/Crusader1/Warblade+1 who used Martial Spirit and healing maneuvers to keep the group alive. I played him as a meditator (Diamond Mind maneuvers) who communed with spirits (going for Eternal Blade) and knew much about religion and nature (Knowledge skills).

I view classes in 3.5 as bases and building blocks. Hood (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872838/Little_Red_Raiding_Hood_A_Tale_of_38_Guide_to_the_ 35_Dragoon) is my favorite example of an archetype (an acrobatic, nimble melee fighter) that is almost completely modular. The execution and the tale you tell are up to you.

[Greenish]

a Ranger1/Fighter1/WhirlPounce Barbarian1/Warblade3/Crusader1/Warblade+1I love that name. I'll have to make a character who describes him- or herself as "WhirlPounce". :smallcool:

[Sindri]

In every edition of D&D except 3.X, a class was intended to be a career

This is, to me, a ridiculous statement. Fighting Man and Magic User are careers? Elf is a career?
No, soldier, magician, and wandering spellsword are careers.

Likewise, Rogue is not a job description, it's a category that includes spies, thugs, and cat burglars. And if someone wants to play a swashbuckling thief with a penchant for stabbing people in the back and minor arcane abilities, or a witcher, or anything else that isn't perfectly within a single class, the rules say multiclass for it. And they have said so since first ed. AD&D.

Some of the prestige classes are careers (assassin, for example, leaves little to the imagination), but that person was most likely in the career before they qualified for the class, and many other classes (mystic theurge?) have no connection whatsoever to a person's path in life.

[Jack_Simth]

All righty.... assuming D&D 3.5....

Well, we both agreed that the favored class subsystem was really badly designed, but the conversation steered away what it was supposed to or intended to do...

And I'm aware that the consensus here is that classes generally aren't careers, but I'm looking for some explanations why,
It is so because of the PHB, page 21, the paragraph beginning "Your character's class is his or her profession or vocation."

It is not so because of the PHB, page 110 (in it's entirety, but mostly the right-hand column).

There's other, similar things elsewhere, but those are the two I looked at first.

and qualifying statements, and about the whole, "Then why have classes at all?"
That's easy. Game balance. If you don't package features in some manner, it becomes very, very easy to make highly unbalanced characters (see Gurps, 3rd edition).

Mind you, they blew it in a lot of ways - the Monk is in the same book as the Druid - but that's the basic reason.

thing, and about what heroic archetypes NEED lots of multiclassing, and so on and so forth...
They picked the packaging (classes) they did for game design reasons. Authors pick the character abilities they do for plot reasons. The two have nothing to do with each other. If you can manage to bash the game into making something that fits a cool character in a book? Congratulations. But fundamentally, the system is not designed for it.

[Callista]

Depends on how flexible the skill set is, and how many different ways you could explain it.

Two examples: Rogue and Paladin.

A Rogue has a skill set that can go a LOT of different ways. You could be a charming con man. You could be an Indiana-Jones style adventurer. You could be a sniper in the military or a dangerous lone-wolf assassin. You could, of course, be a cat-burglar in the thieves' guild, but that's boring. Rogue can go so many different ways that to say it's a "career" would be ridiculous.

Paladin, on the other hand--well, there's really only one way that skill set could go--a warrior who's honorable and good, usually melee, usually either religious or with a strong moral code. You can definitely make many different styles of paladin; and of course the PCs who go into the class are extremely diverse (I once played a halfling rogue/paladin who would combine sneak attack and smite evil via Improved Feint)... but they are all people who have a calling to make the world a better, more orderly place. Paladin is a career. Even one level of it will define your PC to a great degree; and if you've got five or more levels, you're pretty much going to be referred to as "the paladin" whenever you're not being called by name.

So, yeah, the more flexible the class, the less of a career it is.

But even with the classes that do the absolute most to define who a PC is--classes like the paladin--there's still a LOT of flexibility. PCs are individuals. You could play a party of four paladins and end up with four completely different people, even though it wouldn't be anywhere near the diversity you could get with rogues.

I'm highly in favor of removing the multiclass XP penalty... most classes are just skill sets that can be interpreted many different ways; why should it be more difficult to combine them and create the concept you want? Maybe in the beginning with only a few PrCs available, it made a difference; but not now.

[Lord.Sorasen]

I'm somehow okay with "wizard" and "monk" being job descriptions as well as classes, but aside from a bookish priest have never had a character describe him or herself using class names. For example, I've had beguilers who are thieves, concubines, circus performers and anthropologists, but never a beguiler who self-identifies as a beguiler.

I've always particularly hated the beguiler's name. The whole idea of lying is that people don't know you're doing it, and if your name shouts it out that's sort of a problem. I've always called beguiler, well, I've also called them sorcerer. Makes it harder for the other players to know if the beguiler wishes to keep it a secret.

I always figured whether it was a career choice or a set of skills more or less varied by class. The monk, in the way it was presented, feels like a job really, as does the paladin and the wizard. But then, throughout the game a multitude of feats, variants, etc etc have been made to allow the characters easier multiclassing. Prestige classes allow multiple classes entry, which honestly is just multiclassing with a twist. Whether or not it was intended originally, it was definitely intended later on.

[Ormur]

I don't know, I think some classes are more career like than other but that they're still just a collection of mechanics. Fighter is just a collection of feats so that just represents training, being a cleric requires some devotion and nets you spellcasting tied to that. But even though being a cleric is more specific in some ways you can balance that with other mechanics. D&D is filled with suggestion of clerics and this and that multiclassing (horribly suboptimally) with other classes because their mechanics fit the character's or diety's theme . Clever multiclassing in my view just aims to do something similar, except competently.

Being a wizard is a career choice and that's also a case where it makes mechanically the most sense to stay with that career or specialize further (with a prestige class). But there are prestige classes that require both arcane casting and sneak attacks or combat prowess. In those cases you're expected to take rogue or fighter levels along with the wizard levels. That might represent a character that realized dabbling in the art of wizardry would help him achieve other objectives, like swinging a sword.

There's plenty of people that change careers or study for something that's usually a lifelong career to apply it to something completely different. Finally the character might simply have gotten bored of wizardry/monastic life/praying/protecting nature etc.

[Eorran]

This is, to me, a ridiculous statement. Fighting Man and Magic User are careers? Elf is a career?
No, soldier, magician, and wandering spellsword are careers.


The name of the class isn't necessarily the name the character uses to refer to his profession; but the choice of class in previous editions put the character into a category in which they stayed for their entire lives. Within that category, there was some room for further customization (2e kits being a prime example), but "builds" in the sense of 3.X did not exist.

I'm not arguing that all members of a given class were the same, but the various fantasy archetypes generally fit one class only. Wandering spellsword would be Elf (in the BECMI), or fighter/mage in 2e, but in 3.X, there have to be dozens of base classes, prestige classes, and combinations thereof that all fit the description "wandering spellsword".

[Grelna the Blue]

Class is mechanics. Relatively unimportant to career or self image unless it has accompanying built-in fluff (paladins, clerics being the most obvious examples).

I don't remember the exact details, but before 4th Ed., Horestep III of Mulhorand had started to make changes in the way Mulhorand society treated women because he was so impressed with the female paladin who headed up the mercenaries in his legions. If a paladin can be a merc (presumably only fighting in good causes), anyone can be. And then that's their career. Not their class.

A character I enjoyed a lot for the relatively brief time I got to play him (when our GM married, his gaming career ended) technically started out as a human Druid. He had the Druid's Alternative Class Feature from the PHII allowing him a limited but long-lasting form of shapeshifting (panther form, minor stat bonuses, increased speed, natural attacks) at 1st level in exchange for giving up true wild shape and an animal companion. At 2nd level he multiclassed to Scout. However, he didn't think of himself as a druid or a scout or even a human--he was a warrior of the Kan F'liss tribe, the true children of the Cat Goddess. I gave him the Brachiation and Leap of the Heavens feats and he almost never left panther form. True, he wouldn't act in such a way as to harm nature, but that was just because he was a good son of the Cat Goddess and, besides, nature was where he liked to live and hunt. He wouldn't have felt he had a great deal in common with some guy harvesting mistletoe, wielding a scimitar, who someday learned how to turn into just about any animal in creation.

Edit: Oh, and you could ask your GM to what class belonged Elric of Melniboné. I presume he was archetypal enough.

[archon_huskie]

how does he explain the ability profession then?

[Elric VIII]

Edit: Oh, and you could ask your GM to what class belonged Elric of Melniboné. I presume he was archetypal enough.

I'd see him as a Cloistered Cleric/Malconvoker that uses a Greatsword version of the Sword of Life Stealing (a black blade that gives negative levels on a crit and heals the wielder).

In this instance the use of Cleric is not to represent a holy man, but to represent the training befitting of one who is raised in a civilization that wields magic and swords together and has a very disciplined/stoic nature.

My personal opinion of classes is that they represent a degree of training and natural talent. Consider Wizard and Sorcerer. The Sorcerer could be the class of a forest-dwelling witch, focusing on unlocking her own natural talent. By that same example, it is easily believable that the witch's apprentice could be a wizard; someone that has the capacity to learn magic, but not the natural talent to unlock it without tutelage. In this case, bothe Wizard and Sorcerer would call themselves Witches when asked for their vocation.

[Skjaldbakka]

In core, I'd say Aristocrat, Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Commoner, Druid, Expert, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Wizard read as 'occupational' classes.

Generally only Commoner, Bard, Druid, Paladin, and Monk actually have anything tying them down in that way however. Commoner because it is the "I suck at everything, so please protect me from the rabid housecat", and the others because they have restrictions on their behavior and/or class features that tie them down.

Bards perform and can't be lawful. Druids have to respect nature and have armor restrictions (and a good progression of class features), Paladins have a code of conduct, Monks are lawful.

Of course, monks only really become a career at 3rd level or higher, since 2 level monk dips are pretty common in practice. At least, I've seen that in plenty of builds.

[Mongoose87]

If you want to look at what WotC most likely intended, what they did in d20 Modern indicates that they think classes=/= careers.

[John Campbell]

Classes are metagame concepts. They are always, always, always just a collection of features. Pretending otherwise results in ridiculous nonsense like when our priestess of Haela Brightaxe (whose player believes in... well, "classes as straitjackets" is not the most complimentary way to put it, but is pretty accurate... he doesn't know what to do if he doesn't have at least a paragraph of book text that tells him how his character must be played) came up to my half-orc barbarian nomad and asked me if I could train her to fight like I do. Where "fight like I do" did not actually mean anything that my character ever actually does - I'm primarily a mounted archer, and use lance or saber-and-buckler, preferably while mounted, if I end up in melee, and have never used a two-handed weapon in my life (well, maybe my lance while dismounted once) - but meant gaining admittance to some kind of notional Barbarian Guild so that she could learn to be really angry while hitting things with a greatsword on foot.

(Note also: Most of my barbarian's levels are actually in Ranger, because the class is a much better fit for a barbarian nomad than the so-called "Barbarian" class is. I have one level in Barbarian just because I think that half-orcs that can't rage are Wrong.)

And, yeah, approaching classes as what they actually are - metagame-level modular bundles of class features that are sliced (badly) into power tiers - rather than what they used to be - life paths that you could mix to some degree (if you were demihuman), but couldn't easily switch between (humans could, technically, dual-class, but the mechanics for it were punishing) - brings up the question, "Well, why should we even have classes, then?" And I'm not taking for granted that the answer to that question is that we should.

I'm not a big fan of class/level systems in general, but they do have their advantages - simplicity being the big one. But 3.x, and particularly 3.5, threw that away, and in a big way... building characters in 3.5 is more complex and finicky than in any classless system I've ever used... and less flexible, to boot. Seriously, any class-based system that has several dozen base classes, hundreds of prestige classes, and I don't know how many alternate class features is Doing It Wrong.

Ease of balancing is another advantage of classes, but 3.5 screwed that up completely, too. And not even by making it too easy to mix and match abilities that synergize, which is the general failure mode for classless systems, but by making the classes themselves completely unbalanced out of the box.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Classes are metagame concepts. They are always, always, always just a collection of features.
...they're really not, unless you're restricting yourself to 3.X alone.

Look at the AD&D Druid, Monk or Assassin. Each Class had its progression tied to an in-game organization and some even had provisions for progression after a high-level character "retired" from their position of power.

I'll agree with you fully that 3.X classes (largely) cannot be considered careers, but even there the progression restrictions on Paladins and Monks hints that it still existed in some form.

[toastyghost]

For one, Bard definitely seems like more of a career.

[WarKitty]

I suspect the classes were intended to be careers, at least originally. That said, there are a lot of archetypes that don't fit within the intended fluff, or cases where the fluff is too broad. Bard is actually a perfect example - a city courtesan and battlefield leader are both perfectly valid bard builds.

[DeckOneBell]

Why can't it be a little of both, with varying amounts of fluff associated with different classes?

As previously noted, Paladin, Monk, Wizard, Druid, and Cleric are all pretty much at least somewhat of a career, if played more or less normally out of core. Obviously, there's different sorts of all of these five classes, but a cleric is almost always a worshipper of a deity who aims to act upon the deities wishes. Paladin is a holy warrior who follows a strict code of conduct. Monk is a practitioner of somewhat asian-influenced martial arts.

Other classes are not tied into any particular "job" so much, such as a fighter, rogue, or even a bard, who can inspire courage with music, poetry, oration, or even dancing... maybe.

I think though that outside of core, the base classes are generally aimed to be a bit more specific than the nonspecific base classes of core. The fighter with his bonus feats is honestly pretty lame, so we get stuff like duskblades, knights and rangers, all of which have more fluff associated with them.

I know these boards tend to think that mechanics and fluff of classes have no connection, but I'm inclined to disagree. I do believe they have SOME connection, but it's very, very easy to justify the connections. Obviously, a bard with a good dex score can easily be as much of a thief as a rogue. There are some situations where the mechanics and fluff tend to be inseparable though, or at least very intuitive. Most people would be quick to make a holy warrior a paladin, or maybe a crusader if they were playing Tome of Battle.

[WarKitty]

If you like playing a character that fits the fluff, then great. In my experience most of the problems come when you get a character archetype that just doesn't fit the published fluff properly. Especially if your group doesn't have a gajillion books.

[Choco]

In the group I am currently playing in, the only requirements the DM has is that all your classes must be explained in a believable way in your backstory, and for any future classes you plan to take that you don't currently have levels in you need to RP your intention and/or training in that class.

I find it fun creating builds comprised of all 1-2 level dips (and some PrC's taken a bit further) and coming up with a believable backstory for all of it :smallbiggrin:

[RndmNumGen]

Elf is a career?

"Hail traveler, what are you?"
"I'm an Elf!"
"No, I mean, what is your profession?"
"I said I am an Elf!"
"No no, I mean, how do you make a living?"
"Elfing!"

[Eorran]

"Hail traveler, what are you?"
"I'm an Elf!"
"No, I mean, what is your profession?"
"I said I am an Elf!"
"No no, I mean, how do you make a living?"
"Elfing!"

Those elfing Elves...:smallbiggrin:

[MeeposFire]

3.5 is the closest D&D has come to a classless game. Due to how multiclassing works each class was less important to a characters identity than ever before. That is one of the things they wanted to change in 4e which is why they made classes more a part of your identity in that edition.

[Psyren]

...they're really not, unless you're restricting yourself to 3.X alone.

Look at the AD&D Druid, Monk or Assassin. Each Class had its progression tied to an in-game organization and some even had provisions for progression after a high-level character "retired" from their position of power.

That's what PrCs are for. In 3.x you're expected to join a prestige class, which is why all the organization fluff is tied to them.

[kyoryu]

...they're really not, unless you're restricting yourself to 3.X alone.

Look at the AD&D Druid, Monk or Assassin. Each Class had its progression tied to an in-game organization and some even had provisions for progression after a high-level character "retired" from their position of power.

I'll agree with you fully that 3.X classes (largely) cannot be considered careers, but even there the progression restrictions on Paladins and Monks hints that it still existed in some form.

Agreed fully. But, then, I don't consider 3.x to be a class-based system - I consider it a skill system with *really coarse* skills.

Even classes that seem less "profession-y", like maybe fighter, still seem like professions in non-3.x. While you might have fighters with different flavor, a fighter still represented someone that had dedicated their life to learning martial abilities. So while a character may consider themselves a man-at-arms, or a mercenary, or a knight, "fighter" still represents their profession as a whole.

Even in 3.x, I dislike the "classes are just metagame concepts" line, as it mostly seems like an excuse to do whatever min-max multiclass combo the player wants to, without paying any attention whatsoever to how it actually fits the class. Which is fine, I guess, if you really do take 3.x to be more of a skill system than a class/level system.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

That's what PrCs are for. In 3.x you're expected to join a prestige class, which is why all the organization fluff is tied to them.

Except when they're not. See Eldritch Knight, Mystic Theurge, and Frenzied Beserker.