Stormwind Fallacy - Classes != Careers?

[Endarire]

I've heard this mentioned, but I'm unsure where. What is this about classes (especially prestige classes) not necessarily being character careers?

[Tavar]

That's not the Stormwind Fallacy. The Stormwind fallacy is when you say that optimizing leads to poor roleplaying, or the reverse. There's a proper Logical Fallacy based on it's general form, but despite my logic classes I can't remember what it is.

Classes not being careers is trickier, but stems from they way that 3rd edition heavily suggests altering flavor, and the fact that most classes are generic. Plus, well, most of the classes have many, many careers that they could be, and these lists often overlap.

[true_shinken]

This has got nothing to do with Stormwind.

[Kylarra]

That's not the Stormwind Fallacy. The Stormwind fallacy is when you say that optimizing leads to poor roleplaying, or the reverse. There's a proper Logical Fallacy based on it's general form, but despite my logic classes I can't remember what it is.

Classes not being careers is trickier, but stems from they way that 3rd edition heavily suggests altering flavor, and the fact that most classes are generic. Plus, well, most of the classes have many, many careers that they could be, and these lists often overlap.

The Stormwind Fallacy is simply a specific application of the False Dilemma fallacy, that states that Optimization does not necessarily lead to poor roleplaying. Nothing more, it is often misapplied in forums such as this as if it implied that optimization never leads to poor roleplaying in any situation.

[Keld Denar]

See this thread for debate on classes vs careers.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Adding to what Keld mentioned, someone (too lazy to find the link at the moment) mentioned how in either 1E or 2E for certain classes to gain use of certain abilities, they actually had to either study, do guard duty, protect a grove, or so on.

However, as has been shown in both that thread and numerous 3.5 books (both PHBs, any book with ACFs, Hero Builder's Guide, probably more), classes need not and often do not equal careers.

[Rixx]

"Stormwind Fallacy" has to be my least favorite phrase of all time.

In any case, some classes (Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian) are more generic, while others (Druid, Paladin, Monk) are meant to be specific career / life paths. Most prestige classes are also flavored as exclusive paths of training, which is why they have prerequisites. Many of them, like Assassin, imply membership with entry.

[Kylarra]

I prefer D20 modern's "generic hero" base classes that branch into prestige classes with their own fluff.

[Greenish]

In any case, some classes (Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian) are more generic, while others (Druid, Paladin, Monk) are meant to be specific career / life paths.

Not that you couldn't take a few monk levels to help your swordsman deal with losing his sword.

[Rixx]

Not that you couldn't take a few monk levels to help your swordsman deal with losing his sword.

If you go up to a monastery and train for a few months, yeah. At least, that's what they heavy alignment and multiclassing restrictions seem to imply.

(Surprising: the role of nonmagical, unarmed brawler hasn't been officially filled as a base class. Disappointing!)

[Gorgondantess]

What I hate about the whole system is that, while 3rd edition recognizes and even explicitly states that classes are not careers, you have stuff like monk alignment requirements and even stricter stuff on PrCs like the master thrower that really, really don't need to be there.

[Greenish]

If you go up to a monastery and train for a few months, yeah. At least, that's what they heavy alignment and multiclassing restrictions seem to imply.

And my stance on such implications: to hell with them!

(Surprising: the role of nonmagical, unarmed brawler hasn't been officially filled as a base class. Disappointing!)

Barbarian, fighter, warblade and swordsage could all take a shot at it.

Then there are a few PrCs such as Fist of the Forest, which unfortunately has it's way too specific fluff actually tied to it's rules. Otherwise it'd be perfect for a ruthless brawler looking for a fight in the taverns of ground-level Sharn… Well, yay for the Ashbound, I guess.

[Draz74]

This has got nothing to do with Stormwind.

Well, it is an underline assumption that the Stormwind Fallacy essay was based on. So it's definitely related.

I've heard this mentioned, but I'm unsure where. What is this about classes (especially prestige classes) not necessarily being character careers?

Honestly I think this comic explains it better, by example, than I could hope to do on my own.

[Greenish]

Honestly I think this comic explains it better, by example, than I could hope to do on my own.

Though it takes place in a setting where "class" is an in-game concept, interestingly. Also, "hierarchy".

[Rixx]

The problem is this:

On one end, you can't have a barbarian take a level in fighter without first studying for months at a war college on the mainland. And if you want to be a monk, your training and discipline ends up setting yourself down one path of advancement for the rest of your adventuring life.

On the other end, an adventurer will take brief stints as a paladin, monk, barbarian, psychic warrior, and any other dubious compound-word-named classes on their pursuit of ultimate power, with little to no explanation as to how they learned these abilities.

[Ajadea]

Class != career. Even for paladins, in the case of one of my characters. Will to stab a demon+subconcious acceptance of the call =Smite Evil. Self-taught after that.

He/she/it (my character, like Vaarsuvius is of indeterminate gender) walked around for about five years in the backstory, able to use paladin abilities, but without knowing he/she was even a paladin.
----
Monk, druid, paladin, samurai, binder maybe...these are the base classes I think have the most complicated, strict, fluff. Most of the other stuff can be freely smashed and refluffed.

I'm fine with PrC=Career-type thing. It's something you work to get. Base class however, never equals career. It's just a mechanical representations of the abilities your character possesses.

[Greenish]

The problem is this:

On one end, you can't have a barbarian take a level in fighter without first studying for months at a war college on the mainland.

I can see how that'd be a problem. A barbarian taking a level of fighter just gets a feat a bit earlier than he'd do otherwise. Levels are an abstraction. Fighting should make you better at fighting.

And if you want to be a monk, your training and discipline ends up setting yourself down one path of advancement for the rest of your adventuring life.

But what if you don't want to be a "Monk", you just want your character to be decent at good ol' fisticuffs.

On the other end, an adventurer will take brief stints as a paladin, monk, barbarian, psychic warrior, and any other dubious compound-word-named classes on their pursuit of ultimate power, with little to no explanation as to how they learned these abilities.

Do you have strawberries on that field, or what do you need that strawman for?

A "paladin/monk/barbarian/psywarr" (there's alignment conflict there though) is a holy warrior who awakes suddenly awakes the powers of her mind due to an [RP event]. How she learned these abilities? Through her devotion and her experiences. Paladin/monk/barbarian doesn't need much explanation anyway: that's a holy warrior who learns to fight better (and with different styles) as she practices.

[Edit]: Not to mention, excessive multiclassing rarely is the road to ultimate power.

[awa]

see thats one intepretation of the class system but it's not the only one for example a man could be a "barbarian" but have the ranger clas at the same time a man born into a city who happens to have tendency to enter a berserk rage could be a barbarian. A highly skilled warrior does not need to get a special degre from a fighter college to be a fighter.

The other end of this thing is that some classes are built as if that were the case the monk and druid for example as well as many prestige clases.

The thing is while some class combinations wich aim for some bizare combo might make little sense others make playing certain charecter concepts possible in a way that would be less effective with a single class.

Lets say you want to play a warrior whos generaly skilled in many ways
A fighter/rouge or fighter/ranger might be a good way to do it. the fighter gives the feats to pick multiple combat styles and the other class give the fighter enough skill points so he can climb and jump and swimb ect.

edit
I agree generaly stacking base clases is the exact opposite of power gaming

[Keld Denar]

On one end, you can't have a barbarian take a level in fighter without first studying for months at a war college on the mainland.

Says who? War college is for fools who want to be generals and lead armies. I just wanna stab a sucker with my sword. The fastest way to a man's heart is through the ribcage, I always say. Luckily, I never miss, but it wasn't always so. Me and my little brother used to spar all the time with wooden swords down by the river behind the old shed where Mom couldn't see us. She always got so worried.

And if you want to be a monk, your training and discipline ends up setting yourself down one path of advancement for the rest of your adventuring life.

I invented my own martial arts. Its called Keld-jitsu. How'd I do it? I just did what works. Sure, I got beat up a lot, but eventually I learned how to anticipate and block attacks, and punch people so hard their eyes light up like candles. After all, Mr. Kung must have developed his Fu somehow, and Mr. Tae figured out how to Kwan Do someone in the head at some point so he could teach others.

On the other end, an adventurer will take brief stints as a paladin, monk, barbarian, psychic warrior, and any other dubious compound-word-named classes on their pursuit of ultimate power, with little to no explanation as to how they learned these abilities.

Some things you just kinda figure out. Or come from within. Or you learn from watching others. Or you've been studying the whole time, but only just recently have you become sufficiently skilled to be able to cast a spell or manifest a power. Or whatever. Stop trying to pigeonhole people into what YOU want the game to be. Not everyone who punches people learned how to punch people in a monestary while waxing Mr. Miyagi's car.

The problem is this:

I don't see a problem. If you have fun using things straight out of the box, great. I just hope you are not impinging on the fun of others in your zeal. Because then there might be a problem.

[Devils_Advocate]

What is this about classes (especially prestige classes) not necessarily being character careers?

Well, see, on the one hand, um, character classes are character classes, and on the other hand, careers are, um, careers.

... Let me try an example.

One wizard goes into underground complexes with a bunch of other violent lunatics, and uses his spells to help them kill the inhabitants and take all of their treasure. Another wizard sits at home and studies his spellbooks while he waits for someone to show up and pay him to cast a spell for them, at which point he casts the spell. They both have the Wizard class, but the first wizard is an "adventurer", and the second wizard is a professional spellcaster.

On the other end, an adventurer will take brief stints as a paladin, monk, barbarian, psychic warrior, and any other dubious compound-word-named classes on their pursuit of ultimate power, with little to no explanation as to how they learned these abilities.

"Stints" is begging the question, obviously.

There's no explanation of how murderin' enough monsters gives single-classed characters their crazy superpowers, either. There is no reason why practicing his archery enough should give a woodsman an animal companion and the ability to cast nature-themed divine spells, like a druid.

Leveling up is pretty near to one hundred percent unrealistic one way or the other, so far as I can see. The second of the two wizards above should by all rights be better at spellcasting. There is no causal relationship between fighting kobolds and the illicit manipulation of locking mechanisms!

[chiasaur11]

And now I'm remembering The Way of Mrs. Cosmopolite, and hordes of monks descending on a middle class Ankh Morpork business.

Enlightenment is where you find it, they say.

[Ozymandias9]

[Your base class is] just a mechanical representations of the abilities your character possesses.

See, while I generally prefer position for non-setting specific play*, I can't see it as a justifiable position for system design.

If the base classes only represents the abilities, there is little to no reason to justify a class-based system. Designing around that assumption would lead to an ability buy system (cf. E6 after the cap). That's a good option: in many respects, it has the potential to be a better system.

But it doesn't change the implicit assumption of a class-based system-- that your class represents some archetype that your character fits in.


*The disclaimer here is because I often find it useful to tie the classes to some setting element as a world-building tool.

[Coidzor]

If the base classes only represents the abilities, there is little to no reason to justify a class-based system.

D&D 3.5 is a class-based system because they made it a class-based system due to it being constructed out of the tradition of the prior class-based systems known as D&D. Ascribing purpose to whether or not D&D is class-based is...being needlessly existential. Now, for other systems, there might be an argument there, depending upon circumstances.

As it stands... D&D isn't the game for you then if you object to class-based systems that much that aren't so inter-woven with fluff as to necessitate home-brewing to get a combination of fluff and abilities that could have existed easily but was denied due to the fluff restricting mechanics.

[Kurald Galain]

That's not the Stormwind Fallacy. The Stormwind fallacy is when you say that optimizing leads to poor roleplaying, or the reverse. There's a proper Logical Fallacy based on it's general form, but despite my logic classes I can't remember what it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy

[Rixx]

What I was trying to say is that both extreme ends of the "Classes are Careers" versus "Classes are Abstractions" can be problematic.

[grautry]

Nothing more, it is often misapplied in forums such as this as if it implied that optimization never leads to poor roleplaying in any situation.

No, its you who misunderstands.

Optimization and roleplaying are completely independent of each other. Optimization can no more lead to poor roleplaying than being chaotic can lead to being more evil. They're independent concepts.

Even if there's a correlation of poor roleplaying with optimization - and frankly, good freaking luck proving that - correlation does not imply causation.

[Greenish]

What I was trying to say is that both extreme ends of the "Classes are Careers" versus "Classes are Abstractions" can be problematic.

And you managed to display why "classes are careers" is problematic.

The "extreme end" of "Classes are Abstractions" isn't "no reason given for character's abilities". Better examples would be using a warlock to represent an archer, or a fighter to represent a caster. Both could easily be done.

[Yora]

What I was trying to say is that both extreme ends of the "Classes are Careers" versus "Classes are Abstractions" can be problematic.

As it is usually when chosing between two extremes. There was once this guy in India who among other things thought that its usually the best idea to chose a middle way. Seems to have known quite a bit about fallacies, and his followers became really huge!

[Jayabalard]

That's not the Stormwind Fallacy. The Stormwind fallacy is when you say that optimizing leads to poor roleplaying, or the reverse. There's a proper Logical Fallacy based on it's general form, but despite my logic classes I can't remember what it is.

It's an application of the false dilemma fallacy, and it's actually bit more specific than what you're saying: "Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not mean that they cannot also roleplay, and vice versa." ... it doesn't actually refute the idea that doing one can cause to being bad at the other, it just refutes the idea that doing one always causes you to be bad at the other.

Optimization and roleplaying are completely independent of each other. Optimization can no more lead to poor roleplaying than being chaotic can lead to being more evil. They're independent concepts.

You are free to make arguments to that effect, but that has nothing to do with the stormwind fallacy; it might have something to do with other arguments made by some individual named stormwind, but not the actual fallacy part, which only shows the falseness of the statement "Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not mean that they cannot also roleplay, and vice versa." ... showing that statement is false (especially using the methodology he did) does not show that they're actually independent.

Sometimes roleplaying does not affect a person's optimizing, and some times it does; sometimes optimization affects person's roleplaying and some times it does not.

Personally I'm rather convinced that someone who only makes characters who have always made the optimal choices in life tends to be a poorer roleplayer than someone who makes characters who have made a mix of optimal and sub-optimal choices in life. Real people make sub optimal choices. People who focus on making their characters "real people" are better roleplayers than people who focus on getting their characters the most pluses.

Again, note that all I'm talking about is a tendency... not that one always causes the other, and not even that it's usually the case. Just that it's often enough to be noticable

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Seems to have known quite a bit about fallacies, and his followers became really huge!

Wait, there was some Indian guy who could manifest expansion?