How much does the nametag influence the roleplay of mechanics? /u/Flint_Silvermoon DnD: Roll for Initiative!

Recently I read a post about a ‘problem player’ who build a mechanically sound character, but used multi classing in a group that was more role play focused. I didn’t want to derail that thread, but it did remind me of something I have run into before. The question of how much the name tag of a mechanic should influence the roleplay.

Let me give an example of how I ran into it to illustrate what I mean by this.

Once upon a time when we still played 4th edition I was in a game as a player with a friend I still play with to this day although now I am the DM. It was just him and me as players for a short campaign so we agreed to build our characters with keeping in mind we shouldn’t make two glass canons.

Paladins have always felt like a class to me that are pretty sturdy and I started thinking about stories I might enjoy telling with a paladin character. I came up with the idea of a young man Flint who was raised at a temple and trained as a defender of the temple. Although many more stories were told of the faith he always loved hearing about paladins doing great deeds.

Especially stories of a certain paladin that once retired to this temple would be told a lot. The fact that they still held his weapon as an artifact just made that connection stronger. I liked the idea of the defenders being trained with staff weapons based on teachings of this old paladin who used a doublesword.

A raid on the temple would force my character to wield the doublesword and a sign of the goddess would give him the quest to restore this weapon to it’s former glory.

So I decided to go with that story and started building Flint. The problem though was that I couldn’t quite get the 4th edition paladin to work with a doublesword. The powers were obviously made for single weapons like a greatsword or for longsword and shield and were not made for two sided weapons.

In the end I decided to try building my character another way and I multiclassed a ranger that used two weapon fighting with a cleric to have a warrior where the mechanics really felt like I was using the doublesword and that did still have that divine connection.

Of course the story in my head hadn’t changed, so I didn’t roleplay Flint as a Ranger/Cleric, but as a young Paladin although he wasn’t officially in a paladin order or anything, just a temple defender.

My friend ended up making a paladin multiclassed into druid.

The ‘discussion’ came when the DM called my character a paladin. I think because that is what I was roleplaying him as.

My friend was rather miffed because he felt the DM shouldn’t call my character a paladin because he was the one actually multiclassed into paladin. Even though it felt he was leaning more into the transforming into a bear then anything else. I thought about it for a moment, but I felt it wasn’t that wrong for the DM to call Flint a paladin as although I didn’t use the mechanics with the name tag Paladin the result was pretty much a Paladin with a slightly different fightingstyle then that standard Paladin.

Personally I feel if you used the mechanics to build something and what you can do feels correct with your roleplay that should supersede any name tag the mechanic has.

I am wondering what you all feel. If you build a ranger/cleric are you stuck with the ranger and cleric flavor of the classes or is it valid to say roleplaywise you are a paladin with a uncommon style of fighting? How much of a class’s flavor can be repurposed into something else?

Thank you to everyone who read all that. 😉

Recently I read a post about a ‘problem player’ who build a mechanically sound character, but used multi classing in a group that was more role play focused. I didn’t want to derail that thread, but it did remind me of something I have run into before. The question of how much the name tag of a mechanic should influence the roleplay.

Let me give an example of how I ran into it to illustrate what I mean by this.

Once upon a time when we still played 4th edition I was in a game as a player with a friend I still play with to this day although now I am the DM. It was just him and me as players for a short campaign so we agreed to build our characters with keeping in mind we shouldn’t make two glass canons.

Paladins have always felt like a class to me that are pretty sturdy and I started thinking about stories I might enjoy telling with a paladin character. I came up with the idea of a young man Flint who was raised at a temple and trained as a defender of the temple. Although many more stories were told of the faith he always loved hearing about paladins doing great deeds.

Especially stories of a certain paladin that once retired to this temple would be told a lot. The fact that they still held his weapon as an artifact just made that connection stronger. I liked the idea of the defenders being trained with staff weapons based on teachings of this old paladin who used a doublesword.

A raid on the temple would force my character to wield the doublesword and a sign of the goddess would give him the quest to restore this weapon to it’s former glory.

So I decided to go with that story and started building Flint. The problem though was that I couldn’t quite get the 4th edition paladin to work with a doublesword. The powers were obviously made for single weapons like a greatsword or for longsword and shield and were not made for two sided weapons.

In the end I decided to try building my character another way and I multiclassed a ranger that used two weapon fighting with a cleric to have a warrior where the mechanics really felt like I was using the doublesword and that did still have that divine connection.

Of course the story in my head hadn’t changed, so I didn’t roleplay Flint as a Ranger/Cleric, but as a young Paladin although he wasn’t officially in a paladin order or anything, just a temple defender.

My friend ended up making a paladin multiclassed into druid.

The ‘discussion’ came when the DM called my character a paladin. I think because that is what I was roleplaying him as.

My friend was rather miffed because he felt the DM shouldn’t call my character a paladin because he was the one actually multiclassed into paladin. Even though it felt he was leaning more into the transforming into a bear then anything else. I thought about it for a moment, but I felt it wasn’t that wrong for the DM to call Flint a paladin as although I didn’t use the mechanics with the name tag Paladin the result was pretty much a Paladin with a slightly different fightingstyle then that standard Paladin.

Personally I feel if you used the mechanics to build something and what you can do feels correct with your roleplay that should supersede any name tag the mechanic has.

I am wondering what you all feel. If you build a ranger/cleric are you stuck with the ranger and cleric flavor of the classes or is it valid to say roleplaywise you are a paladin with a uncommon style of fighting? How much of a class’s flavor can be repurposed into something else?

Thank you to everyone who read all that. 😉