Fun RP-enabling classes.

[SangoProduction]

Sometimes, the benefits of a class go beyond the mechanics, and into what they "justify" you RPing. When those two line up, it's truly magical, and thus why I love SoP above all other 3.P content, but let's ignore that for now.

So, my go to example would be the Barbarian, who is basically the only class where "I'm stupid" is accepted as a character trait in a typical D&D group. Even though their only mechanical hint towards stupidity is being illiterate, and maybe the rage ability.

Are there any classes or races which you find have good RP-enabling traits or characteristics?

[Mike Miller]

Binder is the go to, I feel. Lots of good RP to be had with Binder.

[ElderDarren]

So I personally really like Sorcerer and Artificer. Fluff on Sorcerer spells allows for the interpretation that they don't pick their spells and that those are the powers they inherited or awoke. I've found applying this mentality makes my sorcerer builds have more depth of character even if sometimes their combat options suffer for it a bit. Artificer is in my opinion a pinnacle of RP potential, you can make almost anything but the class doesn't force you to. If your DM allows custom items this power opens even further. My artificer made almost everything as jewelry that he gave to his party, you could always pick one of his items out of a lot because it was always ornate and predominately made of silver.

[Particle_Man]

Warlock is dripping with Role play flavour. Pact with Mysterious forces? The “dark” names for some of their invocations, etc.?

Wu Jen has those vows that can add colour to role play situations.

And while it is a long-standing source of problematic dm vs. player interpretations, the Paladin has a code of conduct baked into the class. If the dm and player are on the same page the role play opportunities are right there.

Sapphire Hierophant has a great role playing kookiness to it as they flip the alignment battle to make law vs. chaos primary, and they venerate a talking precognitive rock.

While mechanically weak, Green Star Adept is flavourful. Always hunting for that powdered magical meteorite score to get that rush of green metal transformation.

Continuing the colour theme there is the Ruby Knight Vindicator, those badass secret agents of Wee Jas.

I think a case could be made for the three level racial classes. as well as the three level “elf-friend” and “dwarf/gnome/goliath friend” classes. What does it mean to be more elvish than the average elf? What does it mean to be an elf-friend?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Oddly enough, psion.

Unlike with classes like the wizard, who are saddled with tons of crap to force you to play them a certain way (spellbook, verbal components, somatic components, material components, and so many spells) psions actually have almost no fluff that is entirely immutable, aside from their pet rock being a construct (and even that isn't 100% set in stone -- geddit? I mean, it could be a wind-up clockwork toy, for all the actual rules care). Everything else is easily refluffed, and the powers themselves seem like they're actually fiddling with physics, rather than creating a mansion with servants, or whatever.

So my psion can be a crystal-wearing psychic, a sorcerer, or of a racial-SLA-using race who is an exceptional member of his kind. Almost any anime or fantasy character you care to name can be approximated using psionics, so long as they have some sort of supernatural ability they can fling around.

It's really freeing to be able to come up with unusual character concepts and be able to fluff my psionic powers in so many ways.

I come up with my character's fluff; the developers have no business telling me I can't play what I want to play fluff-wise, so long as it's within the boundaries of RAW and fitting for the tone of the campaign I'm in.

[SangoProduction]

Oddly enough, psion.

Unlike with classes like the wizard, who are saddled with tons of crap to force you to play them a certain way (spellbook, verbal components, somatic components, material components, and so many spells) psions actually have almost no fluff that is entirely immutable, aside from their pet rock being a construct (and even that isn't 100% set in stone -- geddit? I mean, it could be a wind-up clockwork toy, for all the actual rules care). Everything else is easily refluffed, and the powers themselves seem like they're actually fiddling with physics, rather than creating a mansion with servants, or whatever.

So my psion can be a crystal-wearing psychic, a sorcerer, or of a racial-SLA-using race who is an exceptional member of his kind. Almost any anime or fantasy character you care to name can be approximated using psionics, so long as they have some sort of supernatural ability they can fling around.

It's really freeing to be able to come up with unusual character concepts and be able to fluff my psionic powers in so many ways.

I come up with my character's fluff; the developers have no business telling me I can't play what I want to play fluff-wise, so long as it's within the boundaries of RAW and fitting for the tone of the campaign I'm in.

That feeling when your last psion was a chem-punk scientist, whose power points were literally displayed via a chemical container on his back...
Nope. Never happened to me, no sirie.

Too bad fewer games have allowed me to play psionics than SoP, and SoP has even more fluff potential in the same vein.

[Particle_Man]

That reminds me of my dream of refluffing psionics as faery gem magic for my friends that hate standard psionics fluff.

[Bphill561]

Fiend of Possession. You can be the subtle influencer and never have to make a physical appearance. If you cannot get another player in on the plan, the leadership feat makes for a good ride and for once it is not over powered.

[An Enemy Spy]

Not a class but the Hellbred race from The Fiendish Codex II is really neat. A repented sinner given one last chance to avoid damnation who has to go to extreme lengths of heroism to escape their reserved place in Hell.

[Crake]

That feeling when your last psion was a chem-punk scientist, whose power points were literally displayed via a chemical container on his back...
Nope. Never happened to me, no sirie.

Too bad fewer games have allowed me to play psionics than SoP, and SoP has even more fluff potential in the same vein.


Oddly enough, psion.

Unlike with classes like the wizard, who are saddled with tons of crap to force you to play them a certain way (spellbook, verbal components, somatic components, material components, and so many spells) psions actually have almost no fluff that is entirely immutable, aside from their pet rock being a construct (and even that isn't 100% set in stone -- geddit? I mean, it could be a wind-up clockwork toy, for all the actual rules care). Everything else is easily refluffed, and the powers themselves seem like they're actually fiddling with physics, rather than creating a mansion with servants, or whatever.

So my psion can be a crystal-wearing psychic, a sorcerer, or of a racial-SLA-using race who is an exceptional member of his kind. Almost any anime or fantasy character you care to name can be approximated using psionics, so long as they have some sort of supernatural ability they can fling around.

It's really freeing to be able to come up with unusual character concepts and be able to fluff my psionic powers in so many ways.

I come up with my character's fluff; the developers have no business telling me I can't play what I want to play fluff-wise, so long as it's within the boundaries of RAW and fitting for the tone of the campaign I'm in.

How do you justify these refluffed psions as being vulnerable to psionic-targetting attacks like power leech?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

How do you justify these refluffed psions as being vulnerable to psionic-targetting attacks like power leech?How do you justify a sorcerer being targeted by things that mess with spell slots or spell points? Or a drow getting screwed by a weapon with Bane (Arcanists)?

[Luccan]

Since someone brought up sorcerer: when I was younger and more into 3.5, I really liked the implied dragon-blood fluff for sorcerers. I wish Dragon Disciple was a better PRC for it than it is, because I'd be hard pressed to play any other full caster even now if I could discover my draconic bloodline in any game.

I was brainstorming an idea for a setting where the only classes available relied on codes of conduct or other oaths. While the classes themselves aren't equal in power or restrictions, I do think the requirements placed on Druids, Healers, Knights, Paladins, Samurai, and Wu Jen can be great for characterizing your PC. Why do they do this? Not "because otherwise I receive negative mechanical effects", but how does this tie into their view of the world? Do they fully agree with it? Does it run up against something else in their personality?

[Crake]

How do you justify a sorcerer being targeted by things that mess with spell slots or spell points? Or a drow getting screwed by a weapon with Bane (Arcanists)?

sorcerers use spell slots, drow have arcane abilities, but those examples are of characters who are fluffed as non-psionic being affected by psionic things, which creates a disjunction between fluff and mechanics

[AvatarVecna]

Cleric has a ton of potential that often goes untapped because people aren't always super-creative. Firstly, mechanical access to the entirety of one of the largest lists in the game means you can more or less customize your spells each day in such a way that reflects your particular cleric's quirks. But beyond the spellcasting is the actual worship.

A cleric of a cause isn't bound to a particular deity and can make their own religious rules, and their own unique domain combo. You could play this as being devoted to a deity who either doesn't exist yet, or doesn't exist anymore, but the strength of your belief makes up for how that deity no longer has the power to grant spells. Or maybe you're delusional and worship a puppet, but your conviction is sufficient to make it actually work.

Even if you decide that going with a particular deity, there's still plenty of room, you don't have to be a cookie-cutter. Deities allow creatures of relatively close alignments to serve them, take advantage of that by playing heretics with odd interpretations of the faith. What does a CE Nerull cleric look like, as opposed to normal CE or normal Nerull cleric? What does a LN worshipper of Obad Hai look like, compared with a CN worshipper of the same? What's it like being the CN priest of Orcus or Gruumsh?

Cleric is a series of opportunities to establish your own belief system, and then to represent that belief system in spells known and domains. And instead, 99% of clerics decided that a particular deity was all the personality they need (at least, that's my experience with people playing clerics).

[MaxiDuRaritry]

sorcerers use spell slots, drow have arcane abilities, but those examples are of characters who are fluffed as non-psionic being affected by psionic things, which creates a disjunction between fluff and mechanics"He did a magic thing that messed my magic up."

Tell me, what is that describing, exactly? And does it matter what the exact mechanics are, or whether it affects arcane, divine, or psionic stuff from an in-world fluff perspective?

[Crake]

"He did a magic thing that messed my magic up."

Tell me, what is that describing, exactly? And does it matter what the exact mechanics are, or whether it affects arcane, divine, or psionic stuff from an in-world fluff perspective?

It's one thing when the magic is nebulous and all encompassing, but when it's specifically targetting a kind of magic, then yeah, it kinda does matter. If you come across a character that is built as an anti-psion from an in-world, fluff perspective for example, and suddenly all their abilities and powers are working on this character that is supposedly non-psionic, that definitely matters.

Consider also, that you decided to use the Annulus in your campaign, and someone fired off it's special ability to kill all psionic beings within 100ft. Should the supposed non-psion survive? Or die? Fluff is not infinitely mutable, it still has to fit within the constraints of the mechanics. Taking a psion and calling it a sorcerer would be like taking a wizard and calling it an archivist.

[SangoProduction]

sorcerers use spell slots, drow have arcane abilities, but those examples are of characters who are fluffed as non-psionic being affected by psionic things, which creates a disjunction between fluff and mechanics

Simple: It just affects them, because it's magic. Or maybe a wizard did it. I mean. It's D&D, that might might be hard to convince people of.

But I think trying to get people to just have it work, and have fun with fluff is going to be more interesting than regulating it to be ... some nebulous "standard" manifestation of spell casting. The [fluffed] spell still has its root in [magic system], and is affected by them accordingly. Simple. Done.


Cleric has a ton of potential that often goes untapped because people aren't always super-creative. Firstly, mechanical access to the entirety of one of the largest lists in the game means you can more or less customize your spells each day in such a way that reflects your particular cleric's quirks. But beyond the spellcasting is the actual worship.

A cleric of a cause isn't bound to a particular deity and can make their own religious rules, and their own unique domain combo. You could play this as being devoted to a deity who either doesn't exist yet, or doesn't exist anymore, but the strength of your belief makes up for how that deity no longer has the power to grant spells. Or maybe you're delusional and worship a puppet, but your conviction is sufficient to make it actually work.

Even if you decide that going with a particular deity, there's still plenty of room, you don't have to be a cookie-cutter. Deities allow creatures of relatively close alignments to serve them, take advantage of that by playing heretics with odd interpretations of the faith. What does a CE Nerull cleric look like, as opposed to normal CE or normal Nerull cleric? What does a LN worshipper of Obad Hai look like, compared with a CN worshipper of the same? What's it like being the CN priest of Orcus or Gruumsh?

Cleric is a series of opportunities to establish your own belief system, and then to represent that belief system in spells known and domains. And instead, 99% of clerics decided that a particular deity was all the personality they need (at least, that's my experience with people playing clerics).


This deserves special recognition. I've never seen a cleric move outside of the stereotypical D&D cleric. Spicing that up ever so slightly is nice.

[Darg]

This deserves special recognition. I've never seen a cleric move outside of the stereotypical D&D cleric. Spicing that up ever so slightly is nice.

I agree. Cleric is so much more than simply proselytizing and praying once a day. You have trials of faith, conflicting world views, spell selections that further the cause of your deity over optimizing for an upcoming encounter, and confliction between self preservation over loyalty to your deity.

Favored Soul is another one that I don't see played with much variety. You aren't even required to know which god your powers stem from to use them. Hell, you could simply be the student of an archivist that awakens their ability through exposure.

If you want a class simply oozing roleplay potential and yet hamstrung by crappy gameplay mechanics, there is always the truenamer. The fluff is absolutely amazing and yet the class is so bad. I've been tempted many times to rewrite the class myself.

Shadowcaster has a lot of potential too. It even has a way to "corrupt" arcane spellcasting into shadowcasting.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It's one thing when the magic is nebulous and all encompassing, but when it's specifically targetting a kind of magic, then yeah, it kinda does matter. If you come across a character that is built as an anti-psion from an in-world, fluff perspective for example, and suddenly all their abilities and powers are working on this character that is supposedly non-psionic, that definitely matters.

Consider also, that you decided to use the Annulus in your campaign, and someone fired off it's special ability to kill all psionic beings within 100ft. Should the supposed non-psion survive? Or die? Fluff is not infinitely mutable, it still has to fit within the constraints of the mechanics. Taking a psion and calling it a sorcerer would be like taking a wizard and calling it an archivist.Magic is magic.

So, a preternatural explosive fire effect blasts one person and leaves another unscathed. Was it a spell or a power? Did one target have a special weakness and the other immunity, or did one have SR and the other failed his save? Just like the fact that a blaster wizard and blaster cleric would be affected by different things, a blaster psion and a blaster sorcerer are affected by different things. All of them result in one being affected and the other not.

But they all fling about balls of energy whenever they feel like it and make things explode, and twist reality to their liking. Your average commoner isn't going to care, and the differences between a blasty cleric, wizard, sorcerer, psion, and warmage are literally academic.

[Particle_Man]

I suppose one can build in the weakness into the fluff. To use my faery gem magic refluff of the psion as an example one could say that faery gem magic has such a weakness because long ago when faeries granted such magic to mortals they put in a catch (faeries are notorious for putting in catches) that their magic would share the weaknesses of the first mortal to learn it, and that mortal, through a separate deal with other faeries, had granted himself a Kingdom in exchange for a weakness to an at the time almost unknown (to him) thing. He kept the weakness secret and the kingdom lasted for generations. But eventually others learned that whatever affected psionics negatively could also do the same for practitioners of faery gem magic. The kingdom fell, and faery gems were scattered through the land although there are rumours that the greatest of treasures were hidden. Fortunately an old man in a tavern is willing to give a treasure map to a group of adventurers that have met there . . .

[Zaq]

Truenamers basically have to actively try to not be knowledge-monkeys. They're INT-heavy, they've got a crap skill list with basically nothing other than Knowledge to spend points on (yes, Truespeak and UMD, but that's two points and you've got 4+INT), one of their best utterances is a frequently usable +10 to an arbitrary Knowledge check (available at ECL 3, to boot), they get bonuses to Knowledge skills baked in as class features, and they gravitate VERY strongly towards the Paragnostic Assembly (which not only has a strong knowledge-is-all flavor but which also gives a mechanical incentive to invest heavily in Knowledge skills).

And you know what, I'm honestly okay with that. I like the idea that if you're the kind of person who derives power from understanding and speaking the language of the cosmos, you have to know a hell of a lot about what's going on in those cosmos and you can be counted on to be a source of lore and insight for your compatriots. Sure, you CAN optimize in a different direction (just like how, to use the example from the OP, a barbarian CAN be totally erudite), but I like that it's actually got overlap between "you'll naturally be good at this, the fluff says you're good at this, AND you've got mechanical incentives to actively make yourself better at it."

[Endless Rain]

The Armorist archetype Spirit Blade from USoP lets you play an intelligent magic weapon. It's the most unique archetype I've ever seen in Pathfinder.

[Efrate]

Binder. Your party cleric or goodie goodie sees you binding and is all you wot mate? Also the various bad pact things influencing you can be fun. I especially love anyone with a semi artificial soul (warforged), or that is technically just a soul (outsiders). Incarnum does this as well, but binders have a creepy vibe in love and it's so weird and you can alter it as needed by changing your binds.

Also from pathfinder, edgelord harbringer, played tongue in cheek to the nines or as straight as you can.

My fav cleric: I'm not required to heal you, I merely choose whether you live or die as it suits my needs, each time.

[Pinkie Pyro]

Warlock for sure.

My current character is gestalt wizard/warlock, and due to their warlock pact, set off a multi-planar war by touching a hotel-bible.

TSNM:

planeswalker campaign, warlock patron is a homebrew eldrazi titan that is basically the giant brain from futurama: it wants to collect all information from the multiverse and then destroy it. Part of the pact is you sacrifice your ability to forget information, and you basically act as a back-up drive for whatever random information he dumps on you (fluff behind "otherworldly whispers" basically). My character has gloves of scholar's touch, so i can instantly read any book via touching it. we planeswalk, i jokingly open the drawer and read the local bible in the hotel we're at. DM tells me to make a knowledge check, and my +30 means of course i succeed. My character is able to divine from the local religious script that this plane is in fact host to an ancient super artifact. Due to the pact, my patron and potentially any other cult member also now knows where this artifact is.

because I touched a book and was a warlock.

[Crake]

So, a preternatural explosive fire effect blasts one person and leaves another unscathed. Was it a spell or a power? Did one target have a special weakness and the other immunity, or did one have SR and the other failed his save?

Those are actually different outcomes though, with in-world explanations to both. The person with SR could have been asleep and still not been affected, while the person who succeeded on their reflex save with evasion had to dive out of the way of the fire blast. Just because there was a similar outcome, doesn't mean the path getting there was the same, and doesn't mean you can equate them as being the same from either an in-world fluff, or mechanical perspective.

[nedz]

All of them, even Monk.

This is another example of the old Player > Build > Class thing.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Those are actually different outcomes though, with in-world explanations to both. The person with SR could have been asleep and still not been affected, while the person who succeeded on their reflex save with evasion had to dive out of the way of the fire blast. Just because there was a similar outcome, doesn't mean the path getting there was the same, and doesn't mean you can equate them as being the same from either an in-world fluff, or mechanical perspective.And what does that have to do with playing my psion as though he's a psorcerer, perhaps the descendent of a crystal dragon? Or a dimensionally displaced superhero? Or an illithid breeding experiment? Or a Son Wukong expy? Or anything at all that isn't "Hi, I'm a new-age psychic! Have some crystals!"?

There's not much real difference between a psion and a sorcerer using spell points, aside from the fact that psions have a much better chassis and were designed from the ground up with spontaneous casting in mind, instead of being tacked-on (shoddily) to a preexisting system. Oh, and the [psionic] subtype. Big whoop. It's just a different flavor of magic, like divine and arcane, with different strengths and weaknesses, and a few different mechanics to make it work. Not much point in playing a psion if there's no mechanical differences, after all.

[SangoProduction]

The Armorist archetype Spirit Blade from USoP lets you play an intelligent magic weapon. It's the most unique archetype I've ever seen in Pathfinder.

That's the one archetype I've never been able to get literally any DM to allow me to use, and it kinda makes me sad.


All of them, even Monk.

This is another example of the old Player > Build > Class thing.

Yes, but that's kinda missing the point of the question.

[Psyren]

Binder is the go to, I feel. Lots of good RP to be had with Binder.

Came here to say this one. Then you've got Pactmaker which basically takes the concept and quadruples it.