Fighters. Mages. Priests. Rogues. These are the primary four
character classes in Dungeons & Dragons, and they have served the
role-playing game well for over 30 years. But there are many others in addition
to these — some awesome, some weird, and some just ridiculous. Here are 24 real
D&D specialty classes that should force any player to make a saving throw
against shame.
1) Fighting Man
In the original Dungeons & Dragons game, there were
three classes: Magic-User, Cleric and Fighting Man. How Gary Gygax came up with
“Fighting Man” as opposed to “Fighter” is unknowable. A Fighter is a
profession. A Fighting Man is basically a violent drunk. It’s no wonder this
class changed names at the first opportunity
2) Beggar
This is not a joke. AD&D really gave you the options to
willingly play a beggar. Beggars had recommended skills, like
“Seamstress/Tailor.” They had to be Chaotic in alignment. It was suggested they
take the Inherent Immunity to Cold and Heat traits. This is insane.
3) Peasant Hero
In one of the best examples of TSR making things way too
complicated, they debuted the Peasant Hero class, which to be fair looked
pretty good in comparison to the Beggar. Why this needed its own set of rules
instead of just letting character play heroes who also happen to be heroes is
unknown. I guess if you really wanted to shape up the peasant-ness of your
character, the Peasant Hero does give you the awesome benefit of getting help
from other peasants, although they never have anything worthwhile, because
they’re goddamn peasants. Peasant Heroes are basically just fighters with no
money.
4) Arctic Druid
There are many different types of Druid in the 2nd Edition’s
Complete Druid’s Handbook — Desert Druid,
Gray Druid, Jungle Druid, Mountain Druid, Plains Druid, and Swamp Druid, for
example. But only one Druid has decided to celebrate his bond with nature by
going to a place devoid of nature and covered in snow, and that’s the Arctic
Druid. Sure, they get some cool ice magic, but really, these guys are basically
just magic Eskimos.
5) Defiler
In the Dark Sun
campaign, which was like Mad Max Beyond
Thunderdome but with magic instead of technology, there were evil wizards
called Defilers. They sucked the energy out of vegetation and other living
things nearby to gain their magical powers, which is a large part of the reason
the world of Dark Sun is barren and
dying. This is kind of badass, but you really can’t go around calling yourself
a Defiler without someone sniggering at you behind your back.
6) Anchorite
An Anchorite is a real term for someone who has withdrawn
from the real world to stay in one place and focus on their religion and
spiritualism. Like a monk, for example. In the Ravenloft supplement Domains
of Dread (Ravenloft being D&D’s
horror fantasy setting), an Anchorite is either a cleric or a magic-user who
loses all their magic abilities if they venture more than 100 yards from their
chosen place of anchoring. In a game that is primarily focuses on storytelling
an adventure, maybe you can see the problem with playing a character that can’t
leave his yard.
7) Barbarian Fighter
I assume this second edition AD&D class is a dude who
only fights barbarians. Because otherwise he would be called a barbarian or a
fighter, correct?
8) Clown
In the mostly forgotten Forgotten
Realms supplement City of Gold,
you could — willingly — choose to play a Clown, which combined the least cool
parts of Thieves and Bards and did away with all the cool stuff. So if you
wanted to be able to tumble around and entertain but not steal, backstab or
influence people with your music, you certainly are a fool.
9) Fetishist
On the plus side, though, at least Clowns aren’t Fetishists.
The City of Gold supplement included
a whole new type of magic called Fetishism, which I can’t find anything about
because you know what happens when you enter “dungeons” and “fetishism” into a
Google search? Nothing good, that’s what. Moving on.
10) Unicorn Rider
From the Elves of
Evermeet supplement, which features the results of the brief period when
Lisa Frank was brought on as an advisor.
11) Dandy
Another Ravenloft
supplement, Masque of the Red Death
included a great many new character classes for the horror world, of which
Dandy was hardly the worst. In the game the Dandy is a noble that can wield
social influence and has a large income, none of which matters when you could
be eaten by a vampire at practically any moment. And, if I was a vampire in Ravenloft, the first thing I would is
run around killing everyone who willingly called themselves a Dandy.
12) Laborer
But then you could also be a Laborer in Red Death, which was like a Dandy except you had no social
influence and no money, but you could build some things and you had at least
enough pride that you weren’t running around calling yourself a Dandy. Who the
hell would willingly play this class?
13) Thug
Thugs are basically fighters who start the game wanted by
the local authorities. Great. Did that really need to be its own class, TSR?
Couldn’t the player and dungeon master just have agreed to that being part of
the character’s back-story? Or, god forbid, letting the player do something in
the game that would earn the ire of the police? Actually, my favorite thing
about the Thug class is that in 2nd Edition, characters gained experience
points almost exclusively by killing things, so pretty much every character was a thug, regardless
of what their class was.
14) Pest Controller
This is exactly what it sounds like, although you should
know this is a class from The Complete
Book of Dwarves. They are dwarves that specialize is a bizarre and
not-particularly-applicable-to-adventure skill set, namely ridding their
underground dwarven stronghold of small pests. As the handbook puts it, “Pest
Controllers are members of the Pest Control Guild.” Great. Awesome.
15) Rapid Response
Rider
These are essentially the Dwarven version of cavalry, which
would have been a much better name given the Rapid Response Rider immediately
implies they have glowing sirens on their heads. They usually ride ponies or
mules, and the handbook says very few dwarven strongholds even employ them,
because even the fictional setting knows this is ludicrous.
16) Ghetto Fighter
NO. JUST NO. Another completely insane and needless Dwarf specialty class,
which included the following lines in its description:” The Ghetto Fighter
never forgets his lowly origins and may harbor resentments against dwarves who
are better off. However, he stays true to his roots, and will try to better the
lives of ghetto children.”
17) Goblinsticker
Not content to let the dwarves hog all the bizarre character
classes, The Complete Book of Gnomes and
Halflings introduced the Goblinsticker, who are basically insane gnomes
determined to commit goblin and kobold genocide. The handbook suggests these
guys are motivated by some past tragedy, which makes them the Batmen of the
D&D world, which is pretty cool until you you remember they call themselves
Goblinstickers.
18) Mouseburgler
These are Gnome/Halfling specialty thieves, but they are
called mouseburglers. Because mice are small and they are small. Get it? GET IT?! Hell, even a class that specifically
stole stuff from mice would be more interesting.
19) Mine Rowdy
Not an elf, dwarf,
gnome or halfling? Then you might have ended up in The Complete Book of Humanoids, the point where TSR had clearly run
out of ideas but was going to churn out as many supplements as they could.
Enter the Mine Rowdy, which is a fighter who’s specialized in working at mines
and beating the prisoners who act up or try to stop working. Great. That was
super-necessary, guys. I really wanted to play a fighter, but I was looking for
a way to make sure he was penalized -1 for fighting outside of underground
tunnels, so this is perfect!
20) Lost Druid
From The Complete
Druid’s Handbook, of course. Lost Druids actually sound pretty cool — they’re
Druids whose elands have been completely destroyed, and they’ve devoted their
lives to getting revenge. So they’re formidable warriors, but generally lose
their Druid magic in exchange. WHICH MAKES THEM ANOTHER GODDAMN FIGHTER.
21) Pacifist
Well, you can’t say this Druid class is a Fighter. In fact,
they refuse to fight. This isn’t actually a bad character concept… for other
role-playing games. But again, 2nd Edition AD&D is a game focused almost
entirely about murdering things, so you get more experience points to get more
powers to be able to murder more things, and taking their gold so you can get
better equipment in order to be more efficient at murdering things. How a
Pacifist Druid ever advances past first level is beyond me.
22) Mountain Man
I’m sorry, Complete
Book of Rangers, but a Mountain Man is just a forest hobo, Period.
23) Paladin of
Slaughter
This 3rd edition character class is trying waaaaay too hard. First of all, the idea
of someone so completely devoted to evil as regular paladins are to good is
absurd, even for D&D. Second of all, paladin is D&D terms is a holy
heroic knight, so these guys are essentially called “holy heroic knights of
slaughter. That’s like a “superhero of death.” The most ridiculous part of
these guys is that like Paladins, they lose all their powers if they don’t
don’t constantly commit acts of evil. How much evil could you really accomplish
if you’re constantly taking candy from babies and preventing old women from
crossing the street?
24) Urban Druid
These members of this 3.5 edition class celebrate nature by…
staying as far as hell away from it as possible. Hell, at least the Arctic
Druids may occasionally encounter a penguin or something. Clearly this is just
a cheat to let players have Druid powers while ignoring everything else about
Druids, which I’m kind of down with in principle, but even just typing it
sounds completely obnoxious. These guys are the hipsters of the Druid world.
“Yeah, I liked nature all right, but then all these other Druids moved out and
ruined everything, So I’ve come to the city to get my head together. Maybe
start a band or something.”
All art comes from WotC promotional materials with the exception of the still from the movie Jeremiah Johnson. The artists are, from top to bottom: Clyde Caldwell, Brom, Larry Elmore, Clyde Caldwell again, Mathias Kollros and Eva Widermann.
