5E Only Has One Class

I want to preface this by stating, as clearly as possible, that I don't think 5e's hyper-fixation on violence is immoral or unhealthy or harmful. It's only make-believe, after all. You might get that idea, reading this post, but it's not the violence per se that bothers me. It's the way violence fills up the whole experience and eclipses everything else.

Anyway...

This essay disorganised rant was prompted by a blog post I read a couple weeks ago that I can't find anymore. I think it was by Prismatic Wasteland? Anyway, the post was about something unrelated but there was a tangent at one point where the author opined (committing OSR heresy) that 5e is Good Actually, and in particular Good because players feel like they have a ton of flexibility to create the kind of character they want to be.

This gasted my flabbers.

Now, while 5e isn't my personal cup of tea, I don't begrudge others for liking it. But I was astonished someone would describe flexibility in character creation as a strength of 5e when the lack of that flexibility is one of 5e's defining flaws, in my opinion.

I guess at first glance it seems like your imagination is the limit. You can be a swashbuckling swordswoman! A wizard who commands fire and lightning! A phantom assassin! A brilliant weaponsmith! An invincible berserker! An infallible sharpshooter! A holy crusader! Et cetera, et cetera.

But do you see what all those have in common? Those are all characters defined by the violence they can inflict. Yeah, you can kill with a sword, or a fireball, or a bear, but the end result is the same. All of 5e's classes are just subclasses of the Big Class that all PCs belong to: Killer.

This inflexibility is everywhere once you notice it. Most of the class and subclass features make you more effective in combat. Most of the spells are variations on "gun" or "bomb". Almost all characters made with point buy are combat-optimised and thus interchangable (i.e. main attribute high, DEX and CON just behind it, everything else as low as possible).

So I guess it's true that you can make whatever kind of character you want, provided you want to make a superpowered warrior of some kind. Which, hey, might be enough freedom for most people (I do not mean that condescendingly). To me it just feels like such a narrow band to work in.

The result is that PCs don't feel distinct enough for me (mechanically, at least). You can't really have a team of diverse specialists like a classic heist film; everyone is a violence specialist differentiated by their secondary skills.

Now, the (non-Bethesda) Fallout games? Those had freedom in character creation. You could, if you wanted, be hilariously incompetent at fighting in all its forms and get by solely on hacking skills or having strong friends or cheesing the casinos and buying your way to victory. You never have to put skill points into guns. You can forgo all combat-related traits and perks. And that character's journey through the wasteland will be fun and interesting in a completely different way than that of a character with maxed-out Melee and the Slayer perk.

Compare 5e: everyone has weapon proficiencies, whether they want them or not. Rogues have to have Sneak Attack. Druids have to have Wild Shape. Spellcasters always have the option to take combat spells. 

Yeah, I guess you could just ignore your combat abilities in actual play. But if an ability is on your sheet, it's informing your character even if you don't use it. Here's an example: your rogue technically can do big damage with Sneak Attack but always chooses to lie or evade or bribe instead. But that's not quite the same as in Fallout, is it? That rogue isn't not a killing machine, they're just a killing machine who has sworn an oath of pacifism.

5e can't give you the completely different experience of being a noodle-armed weakling who avoids fights because they have to,  who relies on wits and guile because they have to. The closest it can give is being a big-dick swaggering badass temporarily dwarfed by an even bigger-dicked dragon. (what the fuck am I talking about?) You can't play as a grandma who specialises in brewing potions without that granny also being able to fuck up the average bandit effortlessly. You can play a craven, silver-tongued conman only if that conman is physically able to go toe-to-toe with an owlbear and not die instantly.

Am I making any sense? Removing options can give you more freedom! (really though, what the fuck am I talking about?)

So I guess that was a very long way of saying that I disagree with the idea that 5e gives you lots of character options and, in fact, I find 5e character creation chafingly restrictive.

... why did I spend my whole morning writing this?