How do we get rid of the Fighter

[Lago PARANOIA]

I was unaware of this change.

TVTropes has recently acquired a reputation of being a den of creeps who are so hugboxy that they've been unable to put up enough social barriers to prevent pedos and MRAs and general perverts from infesting the website. Fast Eddie (the site admin) is doing what he can to salvage the reputation of TVTropes but the damage has already been done. Read more about it here and here and here.

[Prak]

Drolyt- Using Barbarian to lump cultures together is really no worse than "White" or "Black" or "Native American." Or, hell, Western. Each of those terms describes a wide variety of disparate cultures and clumps them together.

But yeah, this totally isn't contributing towards anything at this point. Mostly I was having fun opposing you, it just so happens that I was doing so with my actual viewpoint. If someone wants to make an MPSIMS thread about this, that could be interesting, but here this horse is dead, Jim.

Lago- Shit. I hope he can manage something. I like the site. Though I find it interesting that a site that took away my editing privileges over mentioning the nazi sex doll is now having image problems due to pedos and MRA-fucktards. Good to know now, though.

[Drolyt]

What? No, berserker is a totally fine name for the madangry class. It's what I'm using in my own d20 heartbreaker since it's more descriptive of what the class actually does. I turned barbarian into a background. My whole issue was with barbarian being or not being racist.

I wouldn't support it as a background either, but whatever. My original point was that berserker was both more descriptive of what the class actually does and less offensive. We just ended up focusing on the second part.

But yeah, this totally isn't contributing towards anything at this point. Mostly I was having fun opposing you, it just so happens that I was doing so with my actual viewpoint. If someone wants to make an MPSIMS thread about this, that could be interesting, but here this horse is dead, Jim.

If you want to start a thread go ahead, but I've mostly lost interest. Still, I suppose there might be people with interesting viewpoints who weren't aware of this discussion because it was buried in the "yet another fighter thread".

Lago- Shit. I hope he can manage something. I like the site. Though I find it interesting that a site that took away my editing privileges over mentioning the nazi sex doll is now having image problems due to pedos and MRA-fucktards. Good to know now, though.

Fast Eddie won't be fixing anything, the only reason he ever started to clean it up was because Google threatened to pull his precious ad money. He was the idiot who instituted the hugbox to begin with. Really though, I could forgive the pedophilia and the sexism and the racism and all the other bullshit given that they were actually going to clean it up, but what really gets to me is the anti-intellectualism. That more than anything is what makes the site useless as a reference. If you want to start a thread on the awfulness of tvtropes I'd be glad to back all this up with links. It might be entertaining.

[Almaz]

Personally, I'm not much for the wholesale discarding of any given words, but examining their effect and what contexts they move in is necessary. "Fighter" is a perfectly cromulent word for a character involved in a fight, and I often sigh at having to write the more clunky "character" or "combatant" or the differently-meaning "warrior" if I'm trying to draft homebrew for use in D&D because the term exists in a different context. Because "fighter" is literally "a thing wot is fighting."

Posit: "Warrior" is a better class name than "Fighter" but still not ideal, because it implies origination from a warrior-culture and a skillset influenced by that, whereas "fighter" was entirely neutral in terms of value. That is, you could be a shitty fighter or a good fighter, but "dude who fights" is not necessarily describing something that we understand, in 21st century English, as something that is inherently a professional/qualified skill. "Warrior" is something that has connotations of fighting well, as you can be a "cowardly fighter" but "cowardly warrior" sounds oxymoronic to my ear. "Cowardly soldier" doesn't but again, implies significantly more training. There are, of course, more dimensions to "fighter is bad as a class name" than this, but it's one.

I'm not attached to this posit, it just occurred to me as a possibility, as long as we're kicking around class names.

[Kaelik]

EDIT: Misunderstood.

[sabs]

Cleric is a horrible base class name too, but it's been successful because the class is kind of fun.

Warrior, Soldier, Berserker, Man at Arms, Thief all start you down a better path than "fighter"
But They're not as good as
Thane
Scout
Hunter
Knight
Ninja
Skald

And those are not as good as
Paladin
Ranger
Sword Mage
Spirit Warrior
Tattoo Warrior
Eldritch Knight
Holy Warrior
Celestial Monk

[...You Lost Me]

This thread is basically cancer.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Delicious steamed crustacean with drawn butter?

[Darth Rabbitt]

This thread is basically cancer.

Short bus cancer, to be precise.

[Drolyt]

This thread is basically cancer.

[Mistborn]

This thread is basically cancer.

You're welcome.

[infected slut princess]

Barbarians are fucking cool. But I guess we can't have epic fucking barbarians in a fantasy game, because when the Arabs first explored East Africa, they thought Africans were barbaric since so many of them were poverty-stricken cannibal nudists and everything is racist to the people on the TGD so go fuck yourself.

[Kaelik]

Barbarians are fucking cool. But I guess we can't have epic fucking barbarians in a fantasy game, because when the Arabs first explored East Africa, they thought Africans were barbaric since so many of them were poverty-stricken cannibal nudists and everything is racist to the people on the TGD so go fuck yourself.

One guy called Barbarian racist and he joined two weeks ago.

Are you going to talk about how TGD loves 2e because of Shadzar?

[RadiantPhoenix]

Are you going to talk about how TGD loves 2e because of Shadzar?

There are better arguments to make for those things, but I'm still not sure if I agree with the conclusions.

In any language. In any civilization. In any corner of the world where you find stories of "elves" you are finding evidence of a crime so heinous and so massive that it defies description and becomes euphamistic legend. Everyone in this setting is an elf, and it's really offensive. It's supposed to be.

-Username17

The other thread failed hard before it even got going, so let's talk about what's actually wrong with Diplomacy. We can talk 3e, 3.5, PF, and 4e - since all of them fail in similar yet slightly different ways. First of all, Diplomacy is a skill that you use to get people o respond to you and your ideas better. That's what it is. But we also know that it fails pretty hard, but for a moment let's talk about 2nd Edition Diplomacy - which we will discuss because it actually worked OK.

EDIT: These are, of course, different, because:

• The historical group of people and cultures most commonly referred to as "Barbarians" (i.e., Europeans who were not considered 'cultured' by the Romans) did not die out, and in fact their descendants went on to be in charge of large swaths of the world.
• Frank isn't saying all of 2e was good, just one particular part.

[Drolyt]

Barbarians are fucking cool. But I guess we can't have epic fucking barbarians in a fantasy game, because when the Arabs first explored East Africa, they thought Africans were barbaric since so many of them were poverty-stricken cannibal nudists and everything is racist to the people on the TGD so go fuck yourself.

You are an idiot on so many levels it boggles the mind. First, as Kaelik points out I hardly represent the opinion of a forum I just joined where the majority disagreed with me. Second, no one is telling you what you are allowed to do. Third, your description of East Africa basically proves you are far and away the most racist person in this thread and that is probably the real reason you are upset.

[Lokathor]

...when I was a kid and have forever assumed that Barbarians are crazy Gauls

<image>

These are guals.

<image>

This is where guals are from. Note how that map is where modern day fucking france is? Those gual barbarians you thought about were westerners. Were the gauls actually "barbarians"? That's not the point. Westerners can be barbarians, and in fact it is your own default assumption that a "barbarian" is a westerner by your own admission.

Yeah... that was my whole point when I said that. I was speaking in response to the guy talking about how "barbarian" was always to do with primitive non-whites and colonialism and all that. I was saying that at least as many barbarians in western fiction are European Barbarians as opposed to Mongol Barbarians, if not more so.

Now, I'm so sorry that my ancient European history is fuzzy and that I picked Ancient France instead of Ancient Germany by accident when naming the place that the Romans in a movie I last saw 10 years ago were fighting. Except actually I don't fucking care because that's like saying Oregon instead of Washington on accident. I mean whatever man.

[nockermensch]

Barbarians are fucking cool. But I guess we can't have epic fucking barbarians in a fantasy game, because when the Arabs first explored East Africa, they thought Africans were barbaric since so many of them were poverty-stricken cannibal nudists and everything is racist to the people on the TGD so go fuck yourself.

Shouldn't you see a doctor about this infection?

[Sigil]

Lokathor, my argument there really only made sense when I thought it was Droylt saying that, because it would have indicated a serious change in his position. It doesn't apply to you, I only left my post mostly unedited so that later parts of this thread would make sense.

Sorry man.

[Lokathor]

Ohhhhh that makes more sense.

[rasmuswagner]

Is everyone here a white atheist

Probably. TTRPGs are the whitest pastime I know of.

[infected slut princess]

You are an idiot on so many levels it boggles the mind. First, as Kaelik points out I hardly represent the opinion of a forum I just joined where the majority disagreed with me. Second, no one is telling you what you are allowed to do. Third, your description of East Africa basically proves you are far and away the most racist person in this thread and that is probably the real reason you are upset.

You are a retard and your mind was boggled long before you heard from me.

For your first point: There are myriad other examples of people complaining about racism in the dumbest things throughout this board. Like, a ninja with "ki" power source is racist. D&D doesn't have a black guy on the cover so it's racist. Having dwarves who drink a lot and talk like Scottish dudes is racist. Having elves who prance around in the woods is racist. Lord of the Rings is a racist power fantasy. Yadda yadda. Your complaint about the word "barbarian" is just a recent example. Speaking of your compadre Kaelik, here he is:

Actually guys, you are all fucking crazy for talking about Lord of the Rings like it's racist at all.

Yes, sure, Stormfront thinks that Orcs are black people and Elves are good Scandinavians, but who gives a shit.

If you wrote a story about a species of Lizards fighting a species of Bugs, and the Lizards were obviously the good guys, Stormfront would talk about how the Lizards are clearly Scandinavians and the Bugs are clearly black people. But if you wrote about the exact same two species, with the exact same cultures and traits, but made the Bugs the obvious good guys, Stormfront would tell you that the Bugs are clearly Scandinavian and the Lizards are clearly black people.

The only things that Tolkien did to make racists decide to fap to LoR as being about white people winning over black people are:

1) Write a story about good guys vs bad guys. (Not objectionable)
2) Make some species inherently bad and others inherently good. (Not objectionable)
3) Write well enough to become popular. (Not objectionable)

You could do the same thing with every other story that meets 1 and 2, and stormfront would if they were popular stories.

Your second point: Yeah sure. But here's you a few pages back:

Barbarian is a derogatory term the Greeks used to refer to people they consider "uncivilized".

You were saying that we shouldn't use the word "barbarian" because someone somewhere described some people as being barbarians and that wasn't nice. If that's your advice and that's your reasoning, you are dumb.

Third: You are an idiot. I'm making fun of you. It isn't my description of East Africa, just as your example of the Greeks calling the different European tribes "barbarians" isn't your description. That's the point.

When Arab explorers went into Africa and saw some African groups doing "barbaric" stuff, they described them as barbarians. I'm saying the significance of that for a fantasy Barbarian character class is... nil. Just because some jerks called some people barbarians for whatever reason, doesn't mean one shouldn't have a cool character class called "Barbarian" that does awesome barbarian stuff.

Shouldn't you see a doctor about this infection?

Only when it starts to drip.

[Drolyt]

Third: You are an idiot. I'm making fun of you. It isn't my description of East Africa, just as your example of the Greeks calling the different European tribes "barbarians" isn't your description. That's the point.

What's your source on that? Unless what you said was an actual quote then its was based on your (extremely inaccurate) conceptions of East Africa. Or perhaps your extremely inaccurate conception of Arab conceptions of East Africa. Let me put it another way:

poverty-stricken cannibal nudists

is both racist and historically inaccurate.

[infected slut princess]

Third: You are an idiot. I'm making fun of you. It isn't my description of East Africa, just as your example of the Greeks calling the different European tribes "barbarians" isn't your description. That's the point.

What's your source on that? Unless what you said was an actual quote then its was based on your (extremely inaccurate) conceptions of East Africa. Or perhaps your extremely inaccurate conception of Arab conceptions of East Africa. Let me put it another way:

poverty-stricken cannibal nudists

is both racist and historically inaccurate.

Oh for fuck's sake, read "Race and Slavery in the Middle East" by Bernard Lewis or something.

You think it's so unfathomable that early Arab explorers in Africa from 1300 years ago were racist? That their observations were maybe colored by that racism? Do you even realize that slavery was a big part of history in the Middle East, and that Arabs had black slaves? Fuck.

[Drolyt]

Third: You are an idiot. I'm making fun of you. It isn't my description of East Africa, just as your example of the Greeks calling the different European tribes "barbarians" isn't your description. That's the point.

What's your source on that? Unless what you said was an actual quote then its was based on your (extremely inaccurate) conceptions of East Africa. Or perhaps your extremely inaccurate conception of Arab conceptions of East Africa. Let me put it another way:

poverty-stricken cannibal nudists

is both racist and historically inaccurate.

Oh for fuck's sake, read "Race and Slavery in the Middle East" by Bernard Lewis or something.

You think it's so unfathomable that early Arab explorers in Africa from 1300 years ago were racist? That their observations were maybe colored by that racism? Do you even realize that slavery was a big part of history in the Middle East, and that Arabs had black slaves? Fuck.

My problem isn't with what you said Arabs, it is what you said about Africans. Let me quote it again:

they thought Africans were barbaric since so many of them were poverty-stricken cannibal nudists and everything

The way you phrase it makes it sound like the Arabs decided Africans were barbarians because the Africans actually were all those things, which is both nonsense and racist. If you had said that the Arabs simply perceived Africans to have those traits it would be different. As is you cannot blame me for thinking you actually believe that shit.

[Mistborn]

As captivating as this social justice derail is can we please not, or a least take it to a different thread.

So to get us back on track. Assume the fighter isn't viable as a D&D class, how would you rework the game to deal with this.