Silly kits
gaerrent
Member Posts: 14
This might have been pointed out earlir, but I haven't seen any thead.
I came to think about the different classes and kits and how the bhaalspawn actually should have come to be trained in them. The original classes are all rather well explained. A fighter trained by the watchers, a cleric trained in the temple or a mage trained by Gorion. But what about som of the kits? How would he have become a swashbuckler? That's just ridiculous. The monk has some explanation involving visiting monks, but what about kensai? A barbarian, why would he become a barbarian growing up in a castle-library with mages?
I came to think about the different classes and kits and how the bhaalspawn actually should have come to be trained in them. The original classes are all rather well explained. A fighter trained by the watchers, a cleric trained in the temple or a mage trained by Gorion. But what about som of the kits? How would he have become a swashbuckler? That's just ridiculous. The monk has some explanation involving visiting monks, but what about kensai? A barbarian, why would he become a barbarian growing up in a castle-library with mages?
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Comments
and yes i also agree that some/most of the kits make more sense after charname has some initial experience in the corresponding vanilla class
Other problematic classes for this are the woodsy ranger and druid. Assassin is another.
There are visitors to Candlkeep and Gorion could have his Harper friends come train you in whatever. But the prologue states you have spent most of your 20 years within Candlekeep's cloistered walls. If the bio references the class/kit I'll have to start checking to see how they fudge that for some of the more problematic ones.
Gorion allowing CHARNAME to be trained as the cleric of an evil god is very implausible, though. I suppose it could be a masterful subterfuge on the part of that deity's clergy, with the cleric providing the training masquerading as something else. But an epic level Harper such as Gorion failing to see through that is hard to believe.
Perhaps the PC gains spells and powers directly from the deity, including via dreams.
It's true they lived in Candlekeep for 20 years, but that doesn't mean they were locked up inside the keep itself all this time. I do imagine they took strolls through the surrounding woods etc., where they very well may have developed some basic connection to nature if they are, say, a Ranger or Druid.
Then there's also the fact that Candlekeep is an enormous repository of knowledge. It shouldn't be hard for someone living there to educate themselves on all manners of subjects. Grab a nasty book of poison-brewing and some general sneakiness and presto: you are on your way to becoming an Assassin!
And as you rightly mentioned, Candlekeep is a destination for all sorts of people - people that may well stay there for a while, inspiring and teaching impressionable young Bhaalspawn in whatever ways they represent.
Always remember you are lvl 1 - the journey is only just beginning, you haven't had years and years of intense training or anything.
Anyway, the idea is that charnames class doesn't have to reflect growing up in Candlekeep; rather it can be reflective of charnames training after leaving it.
Edit: @Mykra
Rangers and Druids were the horse and cow whisperers of candlekeep, always feeling a close tie to nature, despite being mostly cutoff from it.
Barbarians were always wild children, unable to be controlled by any nanny or tutor you were assigned, until gorion showed you a book about the barbarians of the frozen north, whom you decided to emulate.
A priest of talos, long bored by the ohgma(sp?) worship, finds a dusty tome in a dark corner of the library, detailing the practices and proper worship of dark deities.
An assassin spends years reading tomes on anatomy and medicine, those watching him mistakenly thinking he is learning the science of healing.
As was stated by others, since Charname is only level one, all you need are the building blocks and interests, the skills come from adventuring.
And, speaking as someone with no martial training, if you dropped me in a den of kobolds, handed me a longsword, and told me to defend myself, you could be darn sure I wouldn't fare as well as a level 1 fighter would.
Even though a level 1 character is pretty terrible relative to an experienced adventurer, they still possess skills and abilities far beyond what an average mud farmer would have, and so one would expect CHARNAME's chosen class to be something for which training was available in Candlekeep.
This fact makes Wizards even grouchier than they would normally be. If he lacked proficiency in longswords, you might have the same chance to hit. There would be differences due to physical stats, and the class non-proficiency penalty might be different, since you're real (and real people have no class).
Anyway, among PnP folks, opinions vary. Some groups decide that training is an on-the-job kind of thing and that you're basically thrown into 1st level with little more than a handshake and a "good luck new recruit!", while others decide that 1st level represents years of training and/or backstory. Neither is well supported by the rules.
In real life, soldiers with years of training don't suddenly become twice as tough after two days of stabbing people, nor does attack accuracy improve at a fixed rate with relation to stabbings. The whole experience level thing isn't really a good model for reality, nor are HP a perfect model for injury, so "realism" can't be particularly compelling as an argument one way or the other.
What we're left with is what works for the game, and there's no reason for every PC to be shoe-horned into one or the other.
In AD&D there actually are rules for zero-level characters. And yes, they are even weaker than 1st level characters, but they already have a few months of training. And zero level is what ordinary soldiers and guards were supposed to be. Hoards of 5th level fighters is an invention of the CRPG for balancing reasons.
Thank you.
Well, maybe Wizard Slayers got sick of all the wizards in the keep and decided to do something about them when they left.
The forest classes like ranger and druid can also come from theory; that person would have studied animals and their behavior and/or types and uses of plants. So your starting efficiency is - you know which mushrooms you can eat without dying, where someone else would eat the first thing they see and die from poison. Or happily approach a bear and be eaten, where a ranger knows how to act to appear non-threatening to wild animals and not get attacked. It's not like theoretical knowledge is useless.