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The tag was just created for the D&D 3.5e prestige class, chameleon.

Our guidance on when to create tags for individual classes is fairly vague (by necessity), and I think this one might be borderline, so I wanted to raise a discussion. Is this tag a good fit for the site?

My thoughts:

There is some merit in grouping these questions

The chameleon is a weird, weird class. It raises a lot of thorny questions, revolving around its ability to swap its class features in and out and the sheer “My ‘Not Allowed to Qualify’ T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.”-ness of it. (Not least because that “T-shirt” doesn’t resolve all questions as well as its authors probably hoped it would.)

But it is pretty specific

The chameleon is a somewhat-obscure, one-off class from one supplement to one edition of D&D, that has never re-appeared in other editions of D&D and doesn’t have a lot of comparable classes in other games (to my knowledge). Moreover, even if we did have other chameleons, they likely wouldn’t be really the same topic as the one from Races of Destiny, which is so specific to that implementation.

And I worry about “chameleon” being a generic term

I think the tag should, perhaps, be instead. Or even instead. is probably too much :P

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    \$\begingroup\$ @PlayPatrice Relevant to your interests, since you created the tag. \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Dec 14, 2022 at 16:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ I also considered asking the question, if someone comes by who thinks that the tag lands on the otherside of the line, it would be good to have their input as well. \$\endgroup\$
    – Akixkisu
    Dec 14, 2022 at 19:18

4 Answers 4

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My personal suggestion (and, I guess, the thing you’re supporting if you upvote) is:

Keep the tag, rename it to

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    \$\begingroup\$ If the class were a somewhat vanilla prestige class, I'd be in favor of synonyming it to [prestige-class], but if the class presents unique challenges that other prestige classes don't, having a separate tag is probably a good idea. \$\endgroup\$
    – Thomas Markov
    Dec 14, 2022 at 16:50
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    \$\begingroup\$ Why not keep it with our allready established naming convention. [Chameleon-3.5] would make it very clear what eddition its pointing without it being overly wordy. \$\endgroup\$
    – Play Patrice
    Dec 14, 2022 at 16:54
  • \$\begingroup\$ Or even RoD-Chameleon \$\endgroup\$
    – Play Patrice
    Dec 14, 2022 at 17:08
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    \$\begingroup\$ @PlayPatrice RoD could be ambigious. What is RoD? Repetition-on-demand? Revolution-of-Power? Race-of-Paladins? \$\endgroup\$
    – Trish
    Dec 14, 2022 at 17:49
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    \$\begingroup\$ @PlayPatrice If you wanted to answer suggesting chameleon-dnd-3.5e, I’d probably upvote that; it’s also a good suggestion. (But not just “3.5e” since in theory that could be another system’s 3.5 edition, as unlikely as that is.) \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Dec 14, 2022 at 17:54
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ESCE It’d still find it as you type either way; I actually consider that a benefit as it makes you look twice and hopefully helps people notice it’s a really specific thing. \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Dec 14, 2022 at 17:59
  • \$\begingroup\$ @KRyan huh, I'd never noticed we actually did fuzzy searches on tags. TIL. \$\endgroup\$
    – ESCE
    Dec 14, 2022 at 18:01
  • \$\begingroup\$ I might also point out that – assuming the tag's worth keeping – there's not much of a need to rename the tag in the first place unless it actually causes problems/confusion. As long as the tag wiki is clear and unambiguous (which it is), and there aren't more obvious/well-known tabletop RPGs or concepts within them that share the same name, the existing name is probably clear enough as it is. (For comparison, consider the many other tags for various base classes, archetypes, and the like that have similarly simple names.) \$\endgroup\$
    – V2Blast StaffMod
    Dec 16, 2022 at 18:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ I’m worried about the thought that people are voting for my framing and understanding of the issue, rather than my suggestion per se, and the votes might not be accurate. I’m kind of tempted to delete the answer and reset the votes, but that might be invalid. \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Dec 16, 2022 at 19:01
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Per Thomas Markov's comment on my other answer:

Perhaps of note, this would possibly be the first time we have ever used a [feature-system] tag format for a tag (I checked the first 20 pages of tags), since questions always have a system tag. For system-unique features with their own tags, we have always just specified in the description that it refers to a particular system's feature. I really don't think this is necessary, an appropriate tag description should be adequate (since it has been in the past).

Checked the rest of our existing tags, we don't specify the system in any of our tags about game features, and I'd rather not create the precedent of doing so. I think just [chameleon] is fine, but KRyan's suggestion of [races-of-destiny-chameleon] is probably fine, as pointing out the source material is conceivably helpful.

Then I suggest leaving the tag as is:

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Dropping the tag makes sense - it's a very specific tag, denoting one specific non-base/advanced/prestige class in a specific version of a specific (albeit popular) game. I looked through existing tags, and couldn't find any other prestige class except for this and .

has 9 hits, has 22, and a search for some other prestige classes, that don't have tags, found me "rainbow servant", which gets 38 results, "incantatrix", which gets 53, "sublime chord", which gets 74, and "mystic theurge", which gets 160.

In fact, we do not currently have a "theurge" or "dual-progression-class" tag for the "family" of prestige classes Mystic Theurge belongs to (with dual casting/manifesting/invoking/whatnot progression).

It seems that there really should be some thought as to if and when specific prestige classes should get their own tags. Guidelines of some sort would be helpful.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Full disclosure; I love the Chameleon class and have used the tag, so it's definitely not useless even to me personally. I'm trying to make an argument for the sake of the discussion, and the best one I could think of was how inconsistent the current (lack of?) policy is. \$\endgroup\$
    – From
    Dec 17, 2022 at 9:01
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    \$\begingroup\$ A note about the count - After I made the tag I started going through and tagging the old chameleon posts I knew of and was asked to stop before going through everything with "Chameleon" in the search. 9 may or may not be an accurate tag count. \$\endgroup\$
    – Play Patrice
    Dec 17, 2022 at 9:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ See, arcane archer is pretty dubious, I think, because it doesn’t really raise many unique questions. I feel like a better case for not having the tag could be made. \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Dec 17, 2022 at 15:13
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I agree with the reasoning in KRyan's answer.

But I suggest using a less wordy name for the tag instead:

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    \$\begingroup\$ I think this is a pretty good idea. Technically, this is not wholly ambiguous—D&D 3.5e also has a chameleon psionic power, but it’s hard to imagine anyone ever wanting or expecting that to appear as a tag. (But what’s with “DK”?) \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Dec 14, 2022 at 18:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ Not to mention the Chamelon monster / familiar that has popped up in a few other questions, but those questions usually revolve around a summoning / familiar mechanic, and not the chameleon itself. \$\endgroup\$
    – Play Patrice
    Dec 14, 2022 at 18:01
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    \$\begingroup\$ Perhaps of note, this would possibly be the first time we have ever used a [feature-system] tag format for a tag (I checked the first 20 pages of tags), since questions always have a system tag. For system-unique features with their own tags, we have always just specified in the description that it refers to a particular system's feature. I really don't think this is necessary, an appropriate tag description should be adequate (since it has been in the past). \$\endgroup\$
    – Thomas Markov
    Dec 14, 2022 at 18:11
  • \$\begingroup\$ I honestly don't understand the technical details of what you're describing here. But from my perspective I've (unwittingly) already had my say [chameleon] and made a suggestion if DK's point is valid [chameleon-dnd-3.5] - at this point I'll have to let this play out. \$\endgroup\$
    – Play Patrice
    Dec 14, 2022 at 18:16
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    \$\begingroup\$ Checked the rest of our existing tags, we don't specify the system in any of our tags about game features, and I'd rather not create the precedent of doing so. I think just [chameleon] is fine, but KRyan's suggestion of [races-of-destiny-chameleon] is probably fine, as pointing out the source material is conceivably helpful. \$\endgroup\$
    – Thomas Markov
    Dec 14, 2022 at 18:18

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