Barbarians and druids as player classes instead of cultures/ethnicities: why have we put up with this garbage for so...

Barbarians are clearly a race/culture but druids seem more like a class. Albeit a class which is 100% redundant with clerics.

Why not both?

4e makes barbs more explicitly use nature totems (which reminds me of Diablo 2), while druids are naturopaths that channel the natural world, and don't use heavy armor. They also often shapeshift in D&D.

Given that clerics in D&D use heavy armor, tie themselves to Heaven, and don't have shapechange as a default ability, there is room for another class in there.

That said, the idea that clerics and druids of less tamed areas and fighters and barbs should have a similar look is great.

In what possible sense were Briton Druids a separate culture/ethnicity to the rest of the people on the island?

tqhwy Druids in ttrpgs look nothing like druidic societies/cultures

Druids weren't exclusive to Britain. And to be honest, historical stuff is always a secondary consideration at best when looking at a fantasy setting.

>I don't know why they would be a culture or ethnicity rather than a class or archetype though

In D&D at least the druid class comes with a ton of cultural baggage from the flavor side of secretive druids who live in familial groves and hide from civilization. But they're still a paradox because if my druid has a son who decides he wants to be a ranger instead I'd lose my powers for teaching him our secret language, I guess?

5e doesn't.
I don't even play D&D that often but the lest you could do is actually have up to date and accurate information on the subject you whine about on Veeky Forums.

I kinda want to rename the druid to "Sage" instead and theme them around sages mastering magic through observing and living in nature.
So more like Daoist priests who live in the wilds instead of temples.

Barbarians should be a "primal" gish-like archetype for Fighters.

Monks should also become a fighter sub-class and their current features (monastic traditions) should become a list of features they can pick from if they meet the level requirement.

Fighter as player class instead of an aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat against other aircraft, why have we put up with this garbage for so long Veeky Forums?

>In D&D at least the druid class comes with a ton of cultural baggage from the flavor side of secretive druids who live in familial groves and hide from civilization.
They're not alone in that. I still don't see how 'druidic culture' replaces 'druid-as-class'.

I say we go the other way and make MORE ethnicity-class tie-ins. Fighters become knights (of the medieval variety), rogues become gypsies, monks are already a stereotype.

the secret druid language is a relic from a time where D&D had tons of weird languages, including a seperate language for each alignment. don't read too much into it.

OP was quite obviously implying he thought IRL druids were a separate culture. Otherwise his post makes no sense.

Why not both?

None of the D&D classes have a lot of fluff built in, which I like. It makes them flexible, lets you use the same mechanics for a bunch of different character concepts.

For example, the "druid" class is good for casters based on all kinds of different cultural traditions. Shamans and witches, houngans and onmyoji, anyone who does magic by talking to spirits, anyone who blesses crops or takes animal form. Played a druid who was a Yoruba priest, lots of animal masks.

Basically, OP just isn't very creative. The basic example they give you in the PHB is not the only thing you can do with a class.

Next he'll be saying dwarf and elf are character classes.

Fighters don't have rage abilities and AC bonuses for not wearing heavy armor.

And it's much more intuitive calling a class barbarian rather than fighter 2.0

A cleric gives themselves over to a god, becoming a channel of their will.

A druid deals with many lesser spirits, animals, plants, and people, and seeks balance between all of them.

A cleric is a loyal agent; a druid is a mediator. Saying they're the same is like saying that a cleric is just a kind of warlock: correct in a way, but only a pretty shallow and silly way.

>Barbarian is a perjorative term for anybody from an ass-backwards culture.

Romani Ite Domum

I've always thought that all we need are Magic Class, Skill Class, and Combat Class, with options and talents to differentiate various archetypes of those three.

Because you keep buying shit as long as it comes in a box that says Wizards of the Coast, faggot.

Go off the reservation once in a while instead of venting about problems that you're absolutely 100% choosing to have.

>Why have we put up with with a specific brand of fantasy that we are in no way obligated to use and to which there are a gorillion alternatives?

Yes and the classes are both inspired by stereotypes of these groups. The Druids are backwards tree worshiping weirdoes hanging out in the woods and turning into animals to fuck other animals as. The Barbarians are the naked, yelling, frothing, savage motherfuckers who make half descent auxiliary.

If we we never changed the descriptions of things all Succubi would be submissive ladyboy demons instead of the dominatrixes we know and love today.

>sex?
male
>age?
62
>ethnicity?
druid

Magic is a skill and you can use it in combat. You only need two classes, Combat Class and Utility Class. And frankly that's probably one too many.

You've described OD&D, congratulations.

why even have classes?
put your points in what you want to be

In all honesty - we've got literally zero idea what "Druids" were like other than being primitive and quaint as fuck.

No, OD&D was initially Magic Class, Combat Class and Combat Medic Class. But supplements added Sneaky Class, Punchy Class and many more.

...

Because then you end up with GURPs and everybody knows how easy it is for first-time players with literally zero experience with board games to break the system with zero intent.

Mages are thematically different enough from warriors and skill-based classes that they deserve their own class.

One aspect of OD&D, maybe... but class structure is not the only thing I'm looking for in an RPG.

Which in turn is based on the Irish script ogham.

There's an old theory that it was created as a secret sign language in Gaul, but wasn't written down until later. That's pretty much where the idea comes from.

It's defunct though. Scholars are pretty sure the Irish created it, and it was either to preserve military and religious secrets from the Romans, or to enable early Irish Christians to write in a script that could reproduce their language's phones (the individual sounds people make when they speak).

So, an anachronistic relic based on a misunderstanding.

Perhaps the same could be said for all D&D-isms. But enough talk, roll initiative!

>reeeeee why don't words always have the same original meaning
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Fucking kill yourself and this useless autistic bait thread you moron.

>ACKCHUALLY

>Mages are thematically different enough from warriors and skill-based classes that they deserve their own class.

They can't be thematically different from "skill-based classes" because "skill-based classes" doesn't have a theme in the first place. You can't boil classes down into three flavourless lumps and then worry about a thing like that.

Subsaharan Kangz

It's possible you haven't been playing tabletop games for very long, but "skill-based classes" is a short-hand way of talking about a specific flavor of character often represented by classes like Rogue, Ranger, Assassin, Thief, Investigator, Alchemist, and so on. They most definitely do have their own flavor.

I'm pretty sure you already know that, though, and you're just being an ass for no good reason.

I hate this shit so much

A barbarian is someone from a culture you dislike, or even just any foreigner

Typically unsophisticated

>barbarian
>gweilo
>gringo
>mleccha
>eskimo
>obruni
>welsh
>skraeling
>oyinbo

So a bunch of completely different character types, several of which are combat oriented. You're an idiot.

We have second-hand descriptions from the Romans - albeit probably biased, and the myths and legends of Britain and Ireland have figures like Cathbad in the Ulster cycle - also depictions of what appear to be Celtic religious rituals on artefacts like the Pillar of The Boatmen.

Nah, what you described as a Druid is actually a Shaman.

Druids were the priests of the Celts; a town-dwelling theological society with an advanced material culture; minting coinage and sometimes being credited with the invention of maille.

surely you mean personal magic class divine magic class and no magic class with dropping the last one in high fantasy games?
what kind of retarded concept is skill class?

nah its more like saying paladins are clerics
which they are.

your forgot about the blades in the vagina part.
>Fucking a 10/10 qt lady
>Almost ready to cum
>Dick get's sliced off inside vagina
>Lady starts laughing before devouring your soul.
>tfw you have no dick, no soul, and must scream.

Barbarians are just undisciplined fighters and druids are just nature clerics

It does though

I'm sure that flying into an unbridled rage that pushes you beyond normal limits takes a lot more discipline than having a temper tantrum

seems like a skill unrelated to discipline really

Cleric + Ranger = Druid
Fighter + Ranger = Barbarian

D&D has a lot of classes that are better off just combinations of base classes.

Like Ranger.

You know, I'd actually like a system with a few base classes that changes small details about them depending on culture or ethnicity.

For example, you'd have the traditional four classes: fighter, rogue, cleric and caster. In a highly urbanized, generic medieval culture the fighter would be called a knight (cavalry related bonuses), the rogue a thief (bonus to social manipulation), the cleric a priest (bonus to healing) and the caster a wizard (prepared, INT-based casting through study).
Those exact same four base classes in a more Nordic culture would be called a Berserker (fights on foot, rage-related special ability), the rogue a Trickster (knife-fighting bonuses), the cleric a druid (nature-related casting) and the wizard a rune mage (doesn't so much prepare spells as he prepares runes, which are prepared items that can unleash spells for anyone proficient in them).
In a more primitive hunter-gatherer culture, the Fighter would be a Chosen Warrior (bonusses to tracking and outdoors survival), the rogue a scout (bonus to stealth, especially in the wild), the cleric a shaman (casting related to guiding spirits) and the wizard a totemist (arcane casting related to totems that provide magical strength). You could have countless variations on this based on various cultures, including pseudo-Japan, pseudo-Mongols, pseudo-Africans, pseudo-Mayans and what have you.

The four roles would always be the same and overall they'd fulfill similar functions, but they'd have minor changes in mechanics and specializations that give them a unique, entirely cultural twist.

It would also rid us of the whole cleric-paladin problem, as a culture with paladin most likely wouldn't have heavily armored warrior-clerics.

Already exists, they're called archetypes/variants.

Barbarians simply represent the archtype of the Berserker, while Druids represent a flavor of nature magic that's very common in media, and falls halfway between Cleric and Wizard.

Yeah, but they're optional and usualy shit alternatives to the base class. The way I imagine it the "base class" wouldn't be playable and only exist as a template, and you'd be forced to play the variant of the culture of your character unless you have a compelling reason (at the discretion of the DM) not to. For example, a not!Nord raised in a not!Medieval monestary would end up a Priest rather than a Druid despite being Nordic in culture and heritage.

>Druid
>Nordic
You idiot.

>For example, you'd have the traditional four classes: fighter, rogue, cleric and caster.
I still say there's no need for the arcane/divine divide. Magic is magic, and your approach to magic is just flavor and talent/archetype choice.

>fighter, rogue, cleric and caster
Or defender, striker, leader and controller

the divide isn't about power source, it's about function. clerics heal, casters do...everything else?

Well played, but you're still a faggot

Doesn't change that it was a good system

Objectively false, familia.

Why would the norse culture have a trickster who fights with knives and a druid? What exactly is your "rune magic" and how does it bear down on actual norse magic.

>Chosen Warrior
Jesus Christ user-sama you're such a fucking faggot holy shit.

Okay, but remove the fighter/rogue divide while you're at it. Skills are skills, and your approach to skills is just flavor and talent/archetype choice.

I don't actually know a lot about norse culture and was just shitting out examples to get the point across.

enough with the rogue meme already there is nothing preventing people who study either combat or text from being socially adept or skilled in things outside their main interest.
nor is there anything preventing them from taking advantage of distracted foes to perform better in combat (sneak)
the whole concept of thieving men being a separate category is goddamn retarded

Norse priests were somewhat druidic, having sacred groves, performing human sacrifices and all that crazy pagan shit. And tricksters are are pretty big deal in the pantheon, what with Loki and Odin to a lesser extent

>being a non-shapeshifting magician

Srsly, why even bother?

nothing stops a wizard from learning to swing a sword of a fighter from learning to read spellbooks, yet the divide exist there

There's nothing stopping warriors from being adept at magic either. It's almost like classes are arbitrary.

Why exactly does the Ranger have a bunch of weird nature magic nonsense anyway?

All Aragorn ever did was have knowledge of healing plants and their use.

The problem is people who are bad at head on combat but good at sneaking and thieving are both real and a valid character concept.

You'd have to play Dar Sun for navigation and survival to actually matter in a D&D game.

And even then, "bad" is a relative term. A ninja would get rekt by a samurai in open and honest combat, but he'd still kick a peasant's ass.

That's basically how Druids were in 2e and such. Just nature priests. But they were super popular so, like the "Ranger" Fighter, it got its own class despite being a derivation.

these are different methods of fighting (the main thing the rules deal with in the game)
nothing a skill monkey does has anything to do with combat

And you're saying fighters and rogues fight the same way?

and these people can just be fighters who are bad at doing fighter stuff and good at skills

So what is the point of classes if they are now so broad they cover two entirely different archetypes with different strengths and weaknesses?

.... obviously yes? both mechanically in every version of the system ever and in real life counterparts

unless of course you have 0 understanding of how real combat works and think people swing swords at each other

Do tell, how does one injure a man with a sword if not by striking him with it?

in the context of trying to minimize various offshots derivations and concepts of archetypes to core classes the thief/rogue/skill monkey should not be one of the core classes
if you want to make a separate class for every possible character archetype go ahead

by either creating or exploiting an opening in their defenses to accurately strike a "critical" location

Lillith inspired succubi? well TIL, I thought that was a non Abrahamic invention

D&D is a game based on combat as a pillar of gameplay (non-combat exploring and social interestions are two others)

It's not great co-op game design to have character ideas that can't contribute meaningfully in a pillar. (This doesn't mean that characters have to be the same in combat, just that missing a player turn should be painful, regardless of who gets hit with such an effect.

But its a major archetype that is often separate from that of the skilled warrior.

the only thing you get for creating a special class for social interaction is forcing the other classes to be inept autists who cant talk to strangers for some unexplained reason

a fighter is someone that uses physical means to fight things. everything else beyond that is fluff
rogues qualify just fine

Berserker would be a much more fitting term for the class imo, because that is what the classes stereotype is mostly based on. As already has been mentioned Barbarian is more a term for a society you view as more primitive than your own.

Not all point buy games are gurps. Character creation in point buy can be fairly easy. Savage Worlds has quite simple character creation that uses point buy for example.

>What exactly is your "rune magic" and how does it bear down on actual norse magic.
I'd guess just Rune Magic as has been present in old germanic myths and religious practice? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_magic

Yeah remove some spellcasting, add smiting and you have a paladin.

>the only thing you get for creating a special class for social interaction

When did I ever say this? I never even mentioned social interaction.