Talk:Character class

Generalization
The "generalizations" on the class description are not generalizations but rather specific to Final Fantasy games. I changed them to be more generic -Dabigdeez 22:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I gave up trying to generalize the highly specific statement and changed the article so that it states these are specific characteristics of Final Fantasy series, rather than alluding that they are common use. -Dabigdeez 22:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Something should be added about Classes in MMORPGs, basically their focus as a smaller member of a group usually not found in other forms of RPGs, they tend to be more limited in position than typical classes. IE a fighter would be either good at dealing damage or negating damage, forced from the MMO perspective of rigid class balance in a situation where Min-maxing is considered standard and the slightest unbalanced character class is very quickly realized and exploited byt he playerbase. Dabigdeez 14:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

One suggestion for a "general definition" of a character class is: "A game structure that determines not only how a character is created, but also how they advance." Call it "original research" if you like, but it's something I've found that works. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.162.158.161 (talk) 19:47, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Character Classes list
It really sucks that you guys deleted the massive Character class list that compiled names of classes from many different RPGs, which was linked from this article. It was very useful information to me because at the time, I was doing an analysis of tabletop RPGs and this information was not compiled in one place elsewhere. Thanks for REMOVING useful knowledge from Wikipedia. DJ Quinn - 12:34, November 20 2009. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.113.134.186 (talk) 17:35, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

non roleplaying games section
the non roleplaying games section says that non RPGs that have character classes is a new idea... that's totaly false: Team Fortress came out in 1996. That section needs to be completly rewritten. -Aknorals 14:10, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

NPOV?
Few modern role-playing games that are not closely modelled on Dungeons and Dragons use character classes, as many roleplayers find them to be an artifical and unnecessary constraint on their choice of character.

Seems to me the above statement is hardly NPOV and expresses a bias against D&D-style RPGs --Bill W. Smith, Jr. 05:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC)


 * It's weaselly anyway. I don't think the article would be negatively impacted by its removal. Chris Cunningham 12:52, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

RPG-MMORPG only?
I'm willing to attest that almost every character in media can be grouped into some type of character class - based on the first sentence of this article. KyuuA4 16:30, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

You're right, but seem not to have noticed that a few important things in the world were in fact discovered before the creation of "Dungeons and Dragons." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes 89.211.62.250 (talk) 05:10, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I think a list of classes should be compiled...
...a list that would organize all the classes from pen/paper and video games alike. So, rather than looking at the DnD list, Final Fantasy list, and class stereotypes, it would be possible to look at every class on the same page. Should it be done? Aga the Wolf 15:27, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Why stop there? we could have a list of classes from every RPG, their roles, strength and weaknesses! It would take ages but be interesting. It would probably need another page as well. Still I'm game if anyone wants to help!--TheMightyShoeHorn 10:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

The Article List of Character Classes was deleted a little while ago...I have no idea why. I have an archived copy, kinda; I copied the text and images (were there any?) from the about.com ripoff page, so I don't have the wiki markup. It was a pretty messy article, but could have been improved. I think a List of Fantasy Character Classes article would be warranted, though, as with Science Fiction Character Classes and Nonstandard Character Classes (Deadlands, historical non-fantasy, etc.). Join the discussion at User_talk:The_Dark_Side. Notostraca 03:28, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The deletion discussion is located at Articles for deletion/List of character classes. I skimmed over it, and it seems that it was deleted because it had too many obscure classes and not enough secondary sources, and because it was redundant with this article. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 07:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Citation Needed on the last sentance "Common types of classes".
For the line "Some RPGs restrict the classes a character can choose based on alignment, race, or other statistics" Wouldn't the perfect example be World of Warcraft's class system. Where classes are restricted by race? (For example, if you choose the "Night Elf" race you cannot choose the "Mage" class.) Or in D&D where Paladins must be Lawful Good? 81.137.195.134 (talk) 15:30, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * IMO one of the earlier editions of D&D would be a good example, since many classes have alignment, race and attribute requirements which have generally been loosened up or lifted completely in newer editions. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 04:47, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

More character class articles
IMO performer classes (such as bard and dancer), brawler / martial artist classes and psychic classes are common and distinct enough to warrent their own articles. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 00:09, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I think necromancer might also warrent a separate article due to the overlap between wizard and cleric. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 00:08, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Nuker also probably warrents an article, it's one of the main three MMORPG archetypes along with tank and healer. Debuffer and buffer might also warrent articles. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 00:27, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Navbar
I think we should add a navbar for common character classes. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 00:21, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Team Fortress 2
It appears that many of the common classes are ripped directly from TF2. Spies don't also 1-hit back stab kill. For example, take a look at Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. In the battle between spies and mercenaries, spies are given technology similar to gas grenades, or "sticky shockers." What I'm trying to say, is that most of this is point of viewed. It's really an opinion as to what classes are common in games. Luna Rain HowLCry 01:24, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Examples
Please keep the examples accurate. Based on a quick google search, it seems that EverQuest's necromancer class has undead minions, cannot specialize towards affliction or destruction, and doesn't have talent trees. Furthermore, the alternate advancement system doesn't seem to have a significant effect on playstyle, making EverQuest a poor choice for an example of customization through skill points compared to games which allow heavier specialization, such as MapleStory or Ragnarok Online. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 01:07, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Character classes in first person shooters before Team Fortress
Team Fortress definitely played a major role in popularizing character classes in first person shooters, but Hexen was released three months earlier. Is anyone aware of an earlier first person shooter with formal character classes? -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 21:01, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

'Jobs'
I found the article on Job class whilst googling for any information on whether or not there's any differences between character classes and 'jobs' in JRPGS and if not why they are called Jobs in the JRPG translations. It seems they are pretty much the same and the Job class article is pretty redundant seeing that this page is here. I propose that the Jobs article be deleted and any relevant information from the Job page be merged into this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.31.15 (talk) 13:10, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably reasonable, unless the term "job class" is WP:OR in and of itself. 129.33.19.254 (talk) 16:01, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Customization examples
IMO we should revise / update the examples. For quite a few years, World of Warcraft was used as our example of a skill point / skill tree system, and IMO, it was the best option due to the game's popularity. However the latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, replaced the skill tree system with a sklll slot system (More specifically, talents are divided into tiers, each tier has 1 slot and 3 mutually exclusive talent options, most of which are active abilities.). IMO Ragnoarok Online and Rift would be good example for skill tree systems, and Guild Wars and Diablo III would be good examples of skill slot systems. IMO our first priority should be accessibility, so we should be focusing on examples which are well known, easy to concisely describe, and easy for curious readers to look up further details on. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 08:48, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I wish we had some WP:RS for these, because that would make it easy to determine what to list and where. 24.1.246.28 (talk) 15:32, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Classless characters
The second paragraph of this section needs some love. It appears to have been written by one or more people who are extremely familiar with RPGs as is used to use a lot of jargon. I've cleaned it up a bit, but there is still more work needs doing. I'm not sure whether to cut the paragraph completely, severely edit it down or just change a few lines here and there. Jaguar83 (talk) 07:43, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Potential sources
Please feel free to decide upon whether or not they are RS (and then put them into a sources template). El komodos drago (talk to me) 12:04, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
 * https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/class-design-in-games-beyond-rpgs--cms-26146
 * https://www.thefandomentals.com/introduction-tabletop-rpgs/
 * https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1vQqAwAAQBAJ (page unknown) and its squeal https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-BCrex2U1XMC (page 465)
 * https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=E9JG6JjPU-sC (page 133)
 * https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8H8bzqj6S4sC (page 82)

Exported to RPG Museum
On 10 July 2020, the Character class page and its complete edit history has been exported from here and imported at RPG Museum (page link), a growing wiki on Fandom that intends to be a resource for all tabletop RPGs. RPG Museum is using this content under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. Thanks, all! -- Supermorff (talk) 16:44, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 23 May 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Withdrawn - Withdrawn by nominator. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 21:10, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Character class → Class (role-playing games) – I don't think there is a clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC between this and Regular expression. A disambiguation should be made at character class. Furthermore, simply "class" is the more common name. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 17:30, 23 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Strong oppose. "Character class" in regular expressions is one small sub-term that many, many people who use regular expressions regularly never have to keep track of much - they can just use the concept without thinking about the name buried in the documentation. See https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html for an example, "character class" appears a little, sure, but not THAT much, and this is basically core RE documentation.  On the topic of RPGs, I suppose these can be called just "classes" for short, but "Character class" is also used and provides easy WP:NATURAL disambiguation.  If shortened to just "Class", it sounds like it could refer to lots of parts of RPGs that are in classes - social class, educational class, spell class, etc.  Even if somehow moved (which I don't think it necessary), I'd prefer Character class (role-playing games) then as a second choice. SnowFire (talk) 20:11, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose move since the article describes characters and may also be seen as ambiguous as above. I am in favour of a dab page, at Character class (disambiguation) for the full list of pages beginning with that title. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iggy the Swan (talk • contribs) 20:26, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * oppose regex char class is a pretty niche meaning—blindlynx 21:03, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.