Playing a Commoner (Class and/or Theme)?

[Gwazi Magnum]

Without cheese, are there any effective and/or fun ways to play as a commoner in D&D?

May it be with the actual Commoner class, or using another class and roleplaying them out as some sort of everyday individual?

[supermonkeyjoe]

Depends entirely on the optimisation level of the game and your definition of fun I suppose.

Some people might get a kick out of playing ordinary bob trying to stay alive while following these mad adventurers but the chances of you being able to effectively contribute to the group without cheesing some commoner flaws or something is low, hell the Complete warrior samurai is objectively superior to commoner and that's saying something.

[Psyren]

For optimizing the actual commoner class: Commoner Handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?232822-The-Commoner-Handbook)

For being "unremarkable guy blessed/cursed by fate to be a hero" - Warlock and Binder represent this well because you can be good at both despite haivng poor stats. So you could have a farmer or waif/beggar or tavern-wench with average or even below-average stats across the board, who nevertheless ends up becoming the pawn (witting or unwitting) of forces far greater than he is, and able to use them or be used by them for various ends.

[Seppo87]

I actually played a Commoner/Paragon Human/Fortune's Friend with maxed-out CON.

No cheese, chicken infested, Iaijutsu-focus/charger build.
He also had maxed UMD while being illiterate (via flaw) :smalltongue:

He wasn't strong, but he managed to be *barely* useful in combat situations, and completely useless outside.

I had a ton of fun with him.

[torrasque666]

He also had maxed UMD while being illiterate (via flaw) :smalltongue:

*acquires scroll*
"Hey guys? What does this say?"
*casts Exploding Runes on itself*