#class roles

It's important to remember that both of these men come from very messed up family situations that have made both of them assholes. Sheng Shaoyou is ostensibly accepting of and attracted to omegas but he sees them as objects. He speaks ill of people who aren't from "legitimate" bloodlines and is pretty vain and judgmental in the ways he talks about other's appearance. Hua Yong seems like he interacts with the world mostly through manipulation and blackmail. And yet...

They are both having to face how they individually view themselves, how the world views them--which I do not think Hua Yong planned for.

Hua Yong is an illegitimate heir who clawed his way to the top and probably didn't get a lot of love, He's done bad things and he's doing them now. It seems like he had no grander scheme other than being close to this man he's been obsessively in love with since childhood and knows he did something very bad during his rut that will hurt Sheng Shaoyou in more ways than one. I think this moment is not as much of a manipulative act as previous "confessions" has been. Hua Yong is actually admitting to this man he idolizes that he is bad and not worth Sheng Shaoyou's time. And I genuinely do not think Hua Yong was expecting how Sheng Shaoyou responded.

Sheng Shaoyou is a legitimate heir and the best gender you can be in this hierarchy. I'm sure growing up he was not treated like a person, but a trophy to show off. He has always been "special" and has always expected the people around him to be "special" or at least very reverent to his "specialness". This is why he's had to be so abrasive about "illegitimate" siblings--if he belongs at the top there must be a reason for it. I'm sure this is why he's always "dated" very soft, submissive, tear-y eyed omegas--there is a certain way an s-class alpha is expected to present and he has met those expectations, therefore his partner must meet those opposite stereotypical omega gender roles.

But, deep down he knows he isn't set apart from others. Class, gender, and bloodlines actually don't make you any better than anyone else. He's just a man doing his best for his family, his company, and now the man he loves. And he wants Hua Yong to see him as just a human being because he has learned to see Hua Yong as a human being. And I think Hua Yong was so genuinely surprised and touched by that sentiment.

The Prince

The ruler of Elvenwick. The prince runs most of the legislative matters as in making laws. There are things he can’t do unless it’s an emergency like start a war, deploy military, to have a state sanctioned executions. The prince however can make executive orders on guilt, participate in foreign affairs, veto, create new laws, appoint judges and other government officials.

The Grand Prince

The Grand Prince is the Prince’s heir apparent. He can only present formally in front of the Elvish people and/or make marriage arrangements without the approval of the Prince. The heir apparent is not always the prince’s son or direct descendant. From the time the heir presumptive turns 13 he may be given permission to become the Grand Prince. At this point no one could displace his role. Including if the prince has a son.

The Royal Family

The remaining members of the Prince’s family comprise of the rest of his immediate and extended family. Including the his wife, other children, mother, siblings, and cousins. These individuals participate in ceremonial duties such as: the head of armies, head of religious organizations, and heads of political movements.

The Prince’s Governors

The 10 richest lords in Elvenwick (and relatives of the Prince that live on Governors Island). Essentially it’s the heads of the households of Governor Island. they have legislative powers such as the ability to vote to declare wars, deploy military, and have state sanctioned executions. They may also vote for the creation of new laws and the appointment of judges and other government officials however both may be vetoed by the prince.

Governors/Judges

Governors are in charge of each of the major cities. Mostly their role is to create law interpret law and judge based off of the law. All criminals are brought before the governor to be judged and receive sentencing. However, this decision could be vetoed or overruled by the prince. They also own every church, university, mage guild, and law firm in their jurisdiction. Governors nor any classes below are not nobility.

Mayors

Mayors are in charge of the little towns within each city. Their main role is to enforce the law. They receive the law from governors and they are responsible for making sure the law is enforced. Mayor’s serve as the sheriffs of their towns as they may employ Guard or police forces to help survey crime, apprehend suspects and enforce punishments.

Clergymen

These members of society provide a service that can “cure” an issue that one has. Mostly high ranking service jobs within Elvish society including religious leaders, mages, arcane, professors, and lawyers. Unlike servants who may work for an individual, family, or the town, Clergymen work for the governors.

Commoners

This is mostly individuals who make a product and then sell that product. This includes artisans, blacksmiths, and other business owners. Commoners have the most freedom, as a commoner is the only class that can marry any other class.

Servants

These individuals sell a service. They may work for individuals, families, towns, or businesses. This includes many professions but some are ladies maids, teachers, secretaries, and knights.

Peasants/Farmers

Often called farmers, peasants gather resources. This is mostly as miners or lumberjacks.

Outcasts

A class mostly comprised of unemployed and unhealthy citizens, those without any form of apprenticeship, criminals, foreigners, and non elves regards of whether of not they would otherwise be apart of the servant or peasant class.

Classes are not completely rigid. With training or education it is possible for some outcasts to become servants or peasants. The higher one is up in the hierarchy, the more opportunity they have to move upwards (its easier for a Governor to be a Prince’s Governor than it is for a Peasant to be a Servant).

To determine someone’s rank in society, you go based off of the rank of their head of household. Which is usually the oldest man within the household. So if you live in a house of your father, your grandfather, your uncles your aunt your mom, sister, brother the head of your household is your grandfather. Even if your father would be considered a commoner if your grandfather is considered a servant, that’s where you are socially. Typically in families where there’s like an relative who is higher ranked that relative would adopt the members of their family. Women are the rank of their fathers family and then of their husband‘s family. If a woman was apart of the prince’s governors, social ranking, and then married to commoner, she’d be a commoner.

If an Elvish woman marries a non-elf man, she becomes an outcast as well. Non elves cannot take up jobs higher than what a commoner would have and even then non elf business owners are usually subject to discrimination. It’s hard to reach commoner roles if you are a non elf.

Gryffindor: Class Clown

Ravenclaw: Straight A Student

Hufflepuff: Teacher’s Pet

Slytherin: Class Comedian

Bonus: behold, the difference between being the Class Clown and the Class Comedian.

So….the Knight.

           The Knight is one of those classes that basically exist as a replacement paladin, since WOTC has absolutely no idea how to do the Paladin concept correct, but because they weren’t able to give the Knight any unique characteristics, despite its cool mechanics it basically fell by the wayside, forgotten.  So I decided to make the Knight a more interesting class storywise, and for that to work, they need to be moved  thematically away from the Paladin so they can be their own entity.

             “All is Fair In Love and War”

Such a sentiment is abhorrent to a Knight, in a way the Knights exists as opposition to such terms.  After all, so much of our concepts of fairness come from in regards to love and war, rules of war have existed as far back humanity, and codes of proper behavior in regards to dating date from the same era.  Love and War aren’t in opposition to fairness, they are the creators of it, and now Knights exist to personify and defend it.  Mostly the War Part because relationships get complicated real fast.  

           Knights are honorable warriors and their honor makes them strong, literally. Following their code of honor allows them maintain their powers.  Some of these powers include immunity to “Dishonorable techniques” provided the Knight themselves doesn’t employ them.  They at higher levels become immune to flanking, poison, being flat footed, certain combat tricks, and sneak attack for people not four levels higher than they.  

 The Knights code

Don’t attack an unaware opponent, especially not sleeping opponents.

Don’t stab an opponent in the back

Don’t flank an opponent

Surrenders must be honored, at least in the moment.

Don’t kill unarmed opponents (Unless they insist on fighting unarmed).

Don’t slay fleeing opponents, unless they are doing some Parthian shot shit.

Always be the last to retreat, and do so as a fighting retreat.

  Questing

The focus of a knights life beyond all things, is the ideal of the Quest.  Knighthood is all about doing extremely dangerous thing for its own sake, often with little reward, for the sake of complete adventures, some might call them the Platonic ideal of adventurers.  Others might call them “The people who get it wrong”.  

 New Powers

Questsight: Knights connection to the ideal of questing is so great they can sometimes “Feel” a quest in the area.  A certain number of times per day (varies on level) the Knight can observe the area and “feel” if certain people who have a problem and feel like they need a hero to solve the problem.  Some Knights describe the experience as a sense of certainty, that they hear the person’s need almost like a song and are drawn to it.  Others describe it as an exclaimation mark over a person’s head, but they are generally seen as gauche.  

 Questsense: More powerful Knights understand their powers so well that they realize where they must go for the sake of the quest.  A certain number of times per quest, they can just “know” what item they might have to get for the sake of continuing the quest, or what location they have to go to, or what person they have to talk to. What they are supposed to do next is unclear, but it is a good hint.  And no, it doesn’t look like a marking on a mini map, shut up.

 The Questing Beast

Should a Knight really have no ideas of what to do next, they can summon a questing beast to give them guidance.  A knight must spend a day either in prayer or meditation (if secularly inclined) alone (or with a small group of companions) in the wilderness contemplating for the answers, and then the moment the sun goes down they will see a glimpse of the questing beast, and the Knight must pursue.  The path they follow is a magical one, and they will likely find themselves in completely different locations, a knight located in the middle of the desert might pass behind a dune and emerge by a lake or on top of a mountain, the only limitations are that the Questing Beast always stays on the Material Plane and they never bring Knights to locations where they wouldn’t be able to survive (so a Water Elf Knight might go underwater but a human wouldn’t unless they had a magical item).  If the Knight losses his way, he will turn a corner and emerge back where he started.  

Along this road, the Questing Beast will bring the Knight to random locations across the Material Plane where they might do battle with great monsters, each journey contains 1-3 combat encounters.  These are almost always encounters with mindless monsters, but not always (see below).  Should the Knight or their companions die, their bodies appear back where they last rested, which confuses the attackers.  These encounters are always actual locations on the Material Plane, which means that band of knights might emerge at any point and attack random monsters, something that stresses people out (though the odds are astronomically small). Evil outsiders always have to plan for the possibility that knights might randomly attack them when they are on the Material Plane.  

After the conflicts are resolved, the Knight will find themselves at a pool, where the Questing Beast will face them, before vanishing.  It will leave behind an item or clue to help the Knight to slay the Questing Beast, who usually have a small hoard of items with them, but should the killer ever encounter another knight, they will instantly recognize them as a slayer.  Questing Beasts will answer future calls, but tend to take the knight to more dangerous encounters, provide less useful information (certainly no bonus magic items) and when they do show up, tend to have buddies with them. However they will always answers summons, and a few particularly psychotic Black Knights have made a habit out of killing them, though eventually the Questing Beasts will start to lead other Knights to these killers so they could be brought down.   Questing Beasts can choose not to answer a summons, but if a Knight asks for a questing beast for a year and a day, their request must be answered.  

           In terms of encounters, most Questing Beasts simply make it an easy combat encounter, madd cityoften against an unambiguously evil force like undead, a monster, or evil outsider (Darkspawn are also popular).  Among Questing Beasts, its considered bad form to involve politics into it, but there are always Questing Beats who buck the trend, and so knights might encounter people who the Questing Beast simply doesn’t like, or even have an ideological disagreement.  A knight might encounter a band of Harmonium, or possibly a Peasant revolt, and the Knight might be expected to talk them into going home, or slaughter them, entirely depending upon the disposition of the Questing Beast in question.  They are required to give the Knight a hint on how they want to solve the quest, but no details.  So if a knight sees an ogre war band, they might see a dove fly by as an indication that the Questing Beast wants them to make peace.  

 Knightly Orders

Knights like to form orders, much like guilds, where they work to get a bunch of different quests, normally based around a theme.  Knights are extremely honorbound and  

  Terms

 Hedge Knight- A knight who hasn’t yet joined an order.

A  knight Errant: A knight who hasn’t earned a rank in said order.

Landed Knight: A knight who commands his own lands and lords.  

Household Knight:A knight who doesn’t join an order, but instead serves a lord or other official.

Sworn Shields: Personal Bodyguards for important people.  

White Knight: The champion of the Guild, expected to answer challenges.  Only rank other than Purple which must be Appointed.

Purple Knight: The Leader of a Guild or Order, sometimes called a Grandmaster, they assign people on Quests and maintain the group.  Often call themselves kings.

Red Knight: The Knight with the highest kill count, often go out to fight big dangerous beasts.

Blue Knight: Defender of the common folk or the helpless, often assigned as a protector.

Green Knight: Guardian of a location or region.

Yellow: Winners of Championships

Gold: Who brings back the most money

Silver: Who brings back the most magic items

Brown: Who discovers the most new locations.

NPC Classes

These class are not designed to be played as PC, and are instead designed to be specialized classes who are useful in a single area, but can’t do much outside that.  

Pyromancer: These casters can draw from the Eternal Fire, a sort of strange force of fire that makes up the soul itself. How this interacts with Firebending or the plane of fire is not quite clear, but generally speaking the fire of the Pryomancers is more..subdued, ember like, rather than the blazing inferno that other casters can produce.  Unlike the other Magic User Classes, Pryomancers don’t have stats associated with their spell power, and don’t need a physical object, instead they have a core of their heart which contains their fire power and they just need to hold it to properly use it.  In terms of combat skills they tend to rely on light weapons little armor.  

Item: Fire Core

Soul User: These casters seem to be able to use the magic of souls themselves, though only in a very limited well.  Their magic can vary wildly depending upon the power of the souls in the area, but generally speaking they have a small range of spells they can cast all day long.  Combat wise tend to prefer a small shield and a spear or long knife.  

Item: Catylists

 Miracle Worker: The casters of Miracles, these casters are like the weaker verison of Clerics or preists, they often can wear armor and wield a heavy mace.  They can buff or heal themselves, can be quite devastating against undead, and have a few utility spells.

Item: Talisman

Deprived: These people draw their power from “The Great Darkness” a force of cold emptiness that they say existed before creation itself and will continue to exist long after, the polar opposite of Pyromancers.  They magic is extremely powerful but seen as rather sinister.  Weapon wise they tend to rely on axes or clubs, with medium armor.  

Item: Wand

Black Mage: These guys are pure offensive all the time, they just blast blast blast away with every possible tool they can for that job.  These guys are blasters personified, devastating in direct combat but not much else. They do have a wide variety of ways to hurt people, relying upon almost every element or magical style when they get to the higher levels, but if their spell doesn’t hurt somebody, they are likely doing it wrong.  The only weapons they have proficiency with is knives.  

Item: Bead

White Mage: Equally specialized, these guys can heal, and they can buff.  Yep they certainly can do that.  They do get a wide variety of healing spells, many of which are quite creative, and their ability to remove negative status effects are appreciated. Against undead though, they are absolutely devastating in terms of combat potential. In melee they can’t wear armor or use shields, but can use two handed hammers which do pack a punch.

Item: Necklace.

Green Mage: These guys are almost useless on their own, but are quite good in groups, as they rely upon buffs and debuffs. Beyond the obvious uses, they can also can make people immune to certain status effects, delay their effects, or change the nature of status effects.  In combat they tend to use crossbows or daggers.

 Blue Mage: These absolute psychotics have the unique ability to be able to borrow other people’s powers, which can be…interesting.  At its more basic they can borrow abilities from other classes and use them in erratic ways.  They also can “study” an enemy learning its strength, weaknesses, and current status. But their most noticeable ability is that they can learn and use enemy attacks that were inflicted upon them, and turn them back unto their opponent.  They do have to survive the process though.  In melee they tend to use Short Swords

 Red Mage: They can use all of the previous color mages spells, though they can only do so on a middling level.  In addition they have some basic fighting skills, mostly in swords.  However critically, they can cast multiple spells per round, or even simultaneously spells.  

Item: None

Caller: They can summon very specific creatures to fight on their behalf, and otherwise rely on Seal style magic like Sheena.  Their summons are very specific creatures with distinct personalities.  Tend to use martial arts.

This is some

Basically this role is to counter another role, to undermined other people.  PVP type classes, their primary job is to keep to other classes from using their full potential.  Since this is a class role mostly invented  by me, all of the classes listed here are new to D&D....and ripped off from other sources.  

Primary: The Templar Class, inspired by Dragon Age, exists as the anti magic class, their primary purpose is to disrupt and weakened spellcaster’s ability to function properly and thus their role in a party is to take out the enemy spell casters.  The Benders (yes as in Avatar) are also this class, in that for all of their utility, their real mechanical ability is in keeping the battlefield constantly changing and keeping the enemies from using their abilities properly.  

Hybrids: I haven’t decided yet