The Most Embarrassing Dungeons & Dragons Character Classes
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For something a little different, I'll point you over to this article on io9 that covers the "most embarrassing" (and yet real) character classes that were ever conjured up for the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game and its many supplemental sourcebooks. Some notable mentions:
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
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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An Anchorite is a real term for someone who has withdrawn from the real world to stay in one place and focus on their religion and spiritualism.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 and adventure, maybe you can see the problem with playing a character that can't leave his yard.
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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!
