User:Yanied/Philosophy Game
For my fun. And my use. Use at your own peril. These are not meant to be balanced. Because why are you even here. Also, if you get offended that all or most of these are Western ideas, just go away then. There's also some inappropriate jokes here and there maybe.
Subclasses
Within the mundane forms of games, there are questions that can be asked of every role, every class. There are certain thought processes and methods that can be approached differently if one gets into the mind enough. The philosophical subclasses explore this side of the spectrum.
Artificer
The artificer is the furthest removed from the core classes, breaking typical 5e design by relying on magical items outside the player's control. In normal lore, they use magic, which is total weaksauce since they're no freer than your usual arcane spellcaster then. The excuse is that they figured out the formula behind magic or its logarithms, but that means nothing when they are still totally endogenous to the system. The philosophical subclasses for this class aim to get at the human hubris and powers of technology which change reality... without necessarily relying on pseudo-understandings of the unexplained and unknowable.
Brain In A Jar
Reality is based on a series of synapses and firings of chemicals in the brain. From our taste to love, it is all chemicals. If our brains were simulated in a vat of chemicals with electrical impulses to control it, the brain could even think it was alive and a whole person. Reality is endogenous, and we have the means to control it. If something simulates the same reactions, it is no different than the "real" thing... or what we think is real anyway.
Panopticon
Imagine a world where everyone's behavior was guaranteed on the basis of publicity. Everyone can see anyone doing anything, but they are never sure they are being watched, or by who. Thus, this facilitates obedience and good behavior. It is the all-seeing which guards the guards. Bentham meant for this to be used in all facets of life, from prisons to factories, and even schools. It is echoed by the Big Brother figure in Orwell's 1984 as a dictatorial form of surveillance. But for good or evil, its use is up to you.
Trolley Problem
If you want to play the agonized role of god, decide in a vacuum who would die, one or many? Who is the one, and who are the many? Does it matter who is on the trolley or if the lever malfunctions? There are so many questions you could ask that throw a wrench in the problem, but that's a lot of thought experiments. Those are just ways to avoid the unsavory decision. But the artificer cannot run from this. Here, you are asked to objectively weigh life as a value. Can you do it?
Utilitarian Calculator
Unlike the Trolley Problem which weighs life, you are now tasked to weigh happiness. What is happiness in this meta? Why, buffs! Advantages and condition-removals for your allies! It seems nice and easy, right? Maximize happiness by buff, buff, buff! In reality, the calculus actually comes from the need to allocate away. Maximal happiness can be achieved by both raising the bar, or lowering some and raising others. What is the optimal formula? There are only so many ways you can think outside the box that will work in life.
Barbarian
You might think it weird a barbarian or all people have a philosophical side. Even perceived barbarians like Hannibal Lecter or Genghis Khan had their motives and ideologies, however. Force itself after all is thought to be a form of philosophy manifested. The questions asked may be different of course, but the thought process is philosophical all the same. Additionally, since the barbarian is essentially the class that gives 0 fucks about everything, they are the freest, in a philosophical sense.
Path of Authentic Freedom
To Sarte, authenticity lies in living true to oneself, free of the social constraints of conformity. People exist and are naturally free by existing. But their situations are what bind their freedom. Thus, to be truly free, one must actively resist these shackles on themselves. That is, they embrace their own existence wholly and become ascendant of the world's hindrances.
Path of Puissance
Power, that is, force, is considered one of the driving forces of history, along with ideas and materials. Simone Weil held that it was oppression that moved people to mobilize and revolt. The oppressors would then continually seek new ways of power to oppress, and the cycle would thus facilitate the wheels which turn history. Taking on this path, you seek the same raw, unopposable force to oppress others. You will move the world.
Bard
The bard is an obvious choice for a philosopher. But in some ways, they are a poor choice as well. The stereotypical bard is a playboy, a non-commital person who looks at the moment. They are characterized as lustful hedonists nowadays rather than the keeper of stories. But that lifestyle in itself is also a testament to a way of philosophy on how to live. They could also just be assholes.
College of Eudaimonia
The essence of happiness was debated for years on end without a conclusion between philosophers. What makes happiness? Knowledge? Virtue and balance? Food, pleasure, and freedom from responsibility? This is the feel-good bard who just wants to find the key to happiness. But what makes one happy can make another miserable. Eudaimonia is elusive indeed.
College of Skepticism
It's easier to doubt other people's ideas than to come up with your own. This bard just doubts everything, from his own existence, gods, all of it. Eventually, he even gets a little post-modern and then nothing has objective meaning anymore.
College of Suffering
Like the College of Skepticism, the bard of suffering sees no real meaning in life. But that's not because they doubt everything. It's just because life is awful and suffering. People are born as negative values and are better off dead, like Schopenhauer said. Or they become like Benatar and try to kill everyone else. Or they end up like Stirner and just do whatever they want because they have the power and ego to.
Freud's College of the Penis
This is a joke. Because Freud was not a real philosopher. Or was he? It's certainly true some people think through their gonads.
Cleric
As the poster child of good bois, clerics are usually said to be either boring or too edgy in an attempt not to be boring and moral. But their stance is actually quite interesting, as they stand on a precipice between gods and humanity. Or are there actually gods? What about just omnipotent forces? A cleric with questions may ponder this, and thus find greater things to worship, beyond that of the usual gods. It could even be something that predates them.
Categorical Imperative
There is something that is independent of god. Despite being a staunch Christian, Kant made this thing that is "always good, no matter what," which means it is good in and of itself, independent of god. This absolute is replicable and should always be upheld, like an icon. You're free to think it's something else like the ego or something. Just be sure it passes the test of logical consistency.
Daemon
This idea is like the Brain In A Jar, except, instead of a machine and chemicals, there is an omnipresence which rivals that of god that obscures the senses and makes you think things are a certain way, unlike reality. The only thing you can trust is your own mind, and god, who would never mislead you. But god coexists anyway with the daemon, and who doesn't want a reality-warping entity on their side?
Deity's Billiards
There is no way to know the truth of the universe, whether something happens in the now will be true in tomorrow or what is true will always be. Who can say? Happenings are like billiards by gods. Observing them doesn't mean you understand. Causation is false. You trust in this power which can never be explained or even observed.
Veil Of Ignorance
Rawls made this intricate veil to help people understand what it means to be empathetic ... and to get tenure. The point is that if we knew how other people felt, we would be better at making decisions that helped everyone. So the best thing to do is ignore your own position in the now, and place yourself in a removed position. From this distance, you now make your choices, which should be to benefit the largest amount of people possible. Otherwise, you may find yourself at the receiving end of the bad parts of the choice. This veil is your reverent medium, which allows you to connect with the mindset of others.
Virtue
Virtue ethics are super boring and very humanocentric in Aristotle's case. Living a balanced life, basically, is the point. Virtue isn't just doing all good or all bad, but having a balance. You need to do some bad things and balance it out to be perfect. And it's something unique to humans. So nonhumans cannot take this subclass. It's too bad that Anscombe and the other later people didn't amend this.
Druid
Druids are usually hippies. That makes them extremely philosophical. Sometimes all it takes is some alone time with hallucinogens, you know? But in all seriousness, nature is a great source of philosophy, when humans weren't being jackasses towards Mother Earth. Druids are super in-tune with the natural world, which is part of some philosophies which see civilization as stewards rather than conquerors of nature.
Circle of Omnipresence
Spinoza got kicked out of his Jewish home for questioning the existence of a single god. So he came up with the idea that god was in everything, even you. Thus, everything has significance and everything can be nature. The bad news is Spinoza also didn't believe in anything like free will. The best thing to do in life, for him, as to sit around and observe nature, that is, god. This is a circle for a lazy player who likes to do things without moving much.
Circle of the Sublime
The sublime is a concept of something which induces both suffering and happiness, fear and awe. Polar opposites are not mutually exclusive, but rather manifested in the sublime. It is the highest form of experience, and it is probably the most common in nature, whether it is in a magnificent mountain, the starry nebulas, or our very insignificant existence in the overall natural world.
Circle of Unchanging Change
Heraclitus was a clueless man who came up with this idea while staring at a moving river. "You never step in the same part of a river twice" because the water is always moving. Same as that analogy, the world is always in a state of change, and that is what does not change.
Fighter
The fighter is a "boring" class since it's the generic warrior. Warriors in history though turned out to often be somewhat enlightened people, like Napoleon, Sun Tzu, or Alexander. A bit like the barbarian, the fighter is a symbol of force, but they are a bit more spread out somewhat. Or at least, arguably so. I mean, barbarian as a name sounds pretty anti-philosophy.
Proletariat
The working class is exploited time and again throughout history. They are true fighters against their own fates of drudgery under the oppressive bourgeoisie. As one of the proletariat, you are educated but have worker roots. You rise as a champion of the workers to take the world and make a paradise for the ones who have suffered and been tricked for centuries. And Marx said it would be violent so, yeah, fighter.
Monk
Another solid philosophy choice, the monk is a mystical figure usually associated with discipline and meditation. As such, you might come up with a lot of cool ideas while doing nothing but human pretzel positions.
Way of the Enlightened
Buddha believed desire led to suffering. So one had to relinquish them. This would lead to nirvana, enlightenment, which is freedom from the world and opening the mind to the universe. That's a lot of stuff that is up to interpretation. Basically, this monk is someone who has no desire or attachment to the outside world, making them a singularity, unaffected by most effects.
Way of the Stoic
Not gonna lie, this is a weaker version of the Way of the Enlightened. Zeno of Citium was a weirdo who believed that not-caring was the best answer to just about anything. It's a good way to destress over things out of your control at least. Monks of this way tend to be apathetic assholes that just really don't like to show any emotions or care.
Paladin
Similar to the cleric, the paladin is a person between the divine and mundane. But they are also a sign of martial strength in the soul, which makes them less dependent than a cleric. Their oaths are like self-restrictions to temper their power.
Oath of Despair
Kierkegaard was a depressing guy who believed that while god was real, people would be suffering forever trying to keep their faith, throwing everything they had into believing. But this despair is what makes life have meaning, no matter how depressing it is. So you basically become the Little Mermaid from SINoALICE.
Oath of Evil's Banality
Pencil pushers are the evil mooks that people should never give a hoot about. They are everywhere, and possibly in everything. That's because evil is in fact everywhere, and it manifests in rather ordinary ways. Simply by following orders, a secretary commits genocide. The secretary in reality is a low-level idiot who is self-interested, without will or intelligence to cause evil. What causes it, in reality, is the unseen system, the banal mundane... And that is why this oath is a mook killer.
Ranger
This was probably the hardest to make subclasses for. It's all pretty much shooty-shooty or something.
Ambiguity
The cat in the box may be dead or alive, but it is both at the same time. "Ambi" as a root means "both." This subclass focuses on mindfucking your enemies. You're both there and not there. They've both been shot, and the shot also missed.
Non-Mover
Zeno of Elea was really lazy basically. Things cannot move and movement is an illusion because of the rule of halves. If you assume a person must move half the distance somewhere to their destination and you divide that distance by halves as they approach, it is infinite and impossible for them to ever truly reach their destination. The subclass capitalizes on this to prevent certain things from ever getting anywhere.
Rogue
Usually as amoral as the barbarian, but with a cunning edge, the rogue is the kind of person who makes people question life. They are excellent and trite existentialist figures since they stereotypically operate outside laws. But their roles are easily reduced a bit to someone who wants to be edgy about >50% of the time. They oppose things like the categorical and thrive in a grey area.
Rebel
During a meaningless and absurd life, one feels usually oppressed and helpless. The rebel, as Camus puts it, is one who rebels against that meaningless absurdity by finding meaning in pleasures of life. Thus they rebel against the things that would put them down. This probably sounds a bit more barbarian, but the rogue is sorta a rebel too. Or a wanna-be one all the time at least.
Sorcerer
Of all the classes, sorcerer is arguably another odd one out of the core 12. It is based on blood, that is, race-sounding stuff, more than how you are developed. Highly debated and valid both ways, since the subclasses literally are called bloodline after all. This makes it seem a bit determinist, as it is something of their birth which determines what they are. They, in character, should not and do not have control over their heritage. If a player is just yanking out the mixed lineage for meta purposes, it can seem rather ridiculous honestly since you're playing with blood rather than skill here. But that's the philosophy part of it. How much of a sorcerer is birth and how much of it is an actual class?
Swampman Bloodline
This is another one of those soul-mind-body thought experiments, created by Donald Davidson. Imagine you existed before. Then you died, but a sudden clone of you emerged from the swamps nearby via lightning. This clone is like your old self, with the same thought processes, physical appearance, and even your memories. From those memories, it believes itself to be you, and acts just like you. It is an even more extreme form of the sorcerer race-class dilemma. However, what makes this new you a successor rather than the original is that none of your experiences are authentic. You never experienced them for real. You only have the memory of it. Like the thought experiment, the swampman sorcerer has all the properties of its original form/ancestor, but it ultimately an inauthentic being until it can make its own experiences.
Warlock
Warlocks are a prime candidate of thought. They are aware of powers beyond their own and seek to discover their secrets. Unlike an artificer, they will never truly have control over it. Thus, part of their power lies in what they cannot grasp, and that is what makes them all the more ponderous. What lends them power may be something truly titanic and monstrous that it can only remain in the mind. But warlocks are not so passive as clerics, and have some knowledge about what it is they deal with. Usually.
Collective Unconscious
There is a connective force which binds all histories and memories, but is latent and not overt. Jung believed this unconsciousness was created of shared instincts and experiences common across all of a certain body, that is, existence. You can tap into this limitless potential as one who is aware of this unconsciousness. This gives you special control over parts of the mind people didn't even know existed in their head.
Invisible Hand
The force which motivates people to make rational decisions in self interest is the invisible hand. It was the main hand that Nozick and Friedman could count on to stroke their egos and dicks. This is usually the driving force whose proxy is money. Economies are driven by rational self interest and there is thus no interference required of the world. Let the hand go its course. As a warlock of this mysterious patron, you, too, learn to work in such mysterious ways. You can manipulate desire so people act a certain way to enable, just like the hand, moving everything towards the perfect economic equilibrium.
Leviathan
People exist in a state of war. Hobbes feared this and so Leviathan was conceived of. It is a formless entity who, at the same time, has an infinite form, representing the ultimate ruler and bringer of order. All subjects submit to it for safety from violence of their neighbors. The Leviathan is one greater than the one you know from the Monster Manual. It is not bound by the sea. It is above all. Warlocks of Leviathan are devoted to the powers of dictatorship and tyranny for the purpose of "peace."
Noumena
"The Thing In Itself" is an exogenous concept that symbolizes the objective and categorical. Similar to Plato's Forms, Noumena is the perfect ideal. What we perceive out of Noumena is Phenomena, which are subjective and fallible. Kant believed these were not only the physical world's base particle (later to be atoms), but also in the world of ideas. A warlock wielding this patron's powers holds an absolute hand over the relative and subjective, as Noumena is immune to all that jazz.
Wizard
The brainiac of the classes is sometimes not the most thoughtful. Knowing a lot doesn't mean you know how to think. Philosophical wizards, from their knowledge, would be rendered to the point of inactivity thinking all the time. As bearers of knowledge, philosophical wizards have a responsibility to be movers of ideas, not just snobby know-it-alls who love to shoot pew pew.
School of Dialectic Progression
History, contrary to what barbarians think, is a progression of ideas. Turn it on its head, and its material dialectics. Hegel believed in the former, and Marx, the latter. But let's go with Hegel since he came first. Ideas and the way they affect and change things is how history has progressed. The idea of war has changed a lot, more than we can ever say, as have ideas of enlightenment and science. Without them, we would have a different world altogether. The march towards the end of time with these ideas is what defines history. A wizard with this knowledge controls the flow and alters the very essence of these concepts.
School of the Anti-Tractatus
Wittgenstein was a person who did a 180 when he realized all his old work was garbage. Language is not objective at all. Nonsense and sense are relative. Like that kook, an Anti-Tractatus wizard goes to overturn order and normalcy. They can undo things that have happened by deconstructing them and showing that, ultimately, everything is just a construct.
School of the Cave
The allegory of the cave was to show how superior philosophers were so Plato could stoke his position in life and honor Socrates. Those who know have a duty to inform those who do not, even at the price of death. For otherwise, we would still be stuck in the cave like savages, only looking at semblances of reality. But people are stupid and will oppose the truths you know, because they fear the light you bring, and the questions you raise.
Prestige Classes
Unlike normal prestige classes that might only go up to the usual 20th level in your own character, some can achieve as high as level 40 gameplay. This signifies feats like figuring out the secrets of life, determining its meaning, creation, and the like. You become nonexistent... or you bring the nonexistent into existence. Such is the answer of philosophy.
Atlas
Despite what people may say, Ayn Rand did something for philosophy. Not too sure what it was. This figure of Atlas is supposedly her central figure in her magnum opus. The theoretical Atlas is the one who upholds the world upon his shoulders and bears all the pain. He takes the jeers from lesser beings he carries because he is the greatest and most awesome. He produces jobs unlike the stupid leeches of society who feed off his genius... or something. Regardless, you are the champion of Objectivism.
Prerequisites
- Virtue, Invisible Hand subclasses
- To be Atlas, you need to be incredibly selfish, because that is a virtue.
- You have to either be rich or have become rich through your own doing.
Captain Metaphysics
Monads, atoms, noumena, forms, and ideas are considered the grounding foundation of the world down past its physical unit of existence. Using all of them, you command not only the simplest state of existence but also perceive them in their truest, most basic form. Phenomena do not phase your eyes from reality, and the forms are within your reach. You know what is the "cupness" that makes a cup.
Prerequisites
- School of the Cave, Noumena subclasses
Übermensch
The "overman" is a being that takes many forms but has many of the same traits, known as triumphs. They see all as necessary for what they are and reject none of it. Like an immortal having lived many of the same lives, they have come to see what is truly meaningful in the life that can be all too trivial as a mortal. Reality is not something they run from, good or bad, but embraced.
Villains
The Utility Monster
This thing gets more happiness than you ever will. So it deserves more than you since it increases overall happiness more.