The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermTabletop term1974

Character class

A package of abilities that defines what a character does, such as fighter, wizard, cleric or thief. Classes make roles distinct and parties interdependent, and they became a backbone of computer and online RPGs, from Wizardry to World of Warcraft.

A package of abilities that defines what a character does, such as fighter, wizard, cleric or thief. Classes make roles distinct and parties interdependent, and they became a backbone of computer and online RPGs, from Wizardry to World of Warcraft.

Origin

Dungeons & Dragons (1974) introduced three classes: Fighting-Man, Magic-User and Cleric. The Greyhawk supplement (1975) added the Thief.

Quick answers

What does "Character class" mean?
A package of abilities that defines what a character does, such as fighter, wizard, cleric or thief. Classes make roles distinct and parties interdependent, and they became a backbone of computer and online RPGs, from Wizardry to World of Warcraft.
Where does the term "Character class" come from?
Dungeons & Dragons (1974) introduced three classes: Fighting-Man, Magic-User and Cleric. The Greyhawk supplement (1975) added the Thief.

Nearby in the archive

The party

General term

The group of player characters who adventure together, pooling complementary skills. Its fantasy prototype is the Fellowship of the Ring; its gaming form is the fighter, cleric, wizard and thief of early D&D, carried into computer RPGs and the holy trinity of MMOs.

The holy trinity

Digital term

The three-role party structure of group content: a tank to absorb enemy attention, a healer to keep everyone alive and damage dealers (DPS, damage per second) to kill things. It formalized the fighter-cleric-wizard balance of the tabletop The party for real-time online play.

Multiclassing

Tabletop term

Combining the abilities of more than one Character class in a single character. Early D&D reserved true multiclassing for demihumans such as elves and dwarves and allowed humans only a restrictive dual-class option; later editions opened it to all.

Painting: three small plain tan rulebooks in a wood-grain cardboard box beside strange new polyhedral dice, pencils and a graph-paper dungeon map.

Dungeons & Dragons

Tabletop RPG1974

Three little booklets in a woodgrain box, hand-assembled in Lake Geneva in January 1974: the first published roleplaying game, and the template for every tabletop and computer RPG since.

Painting: a party of six adventurers descending into a vast wireframe labyrinth of green lines, the corridors becoming stone.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

Dungeon crawler1981

Six adventurers, a ten-level maze drawn in green lines, graph paper in the box, and no saving below ground: the Apple II dungeon crawl that defined the party-based computer RPG in America and Japan.

Mentioned in 62 other exhibits