Why only Bladesinger made the jump from SCAG to TCoE?

[Yakmala]

It appears, based on the many leaks, that only the Bladesinger subclass made the jump from the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide to Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.

Mastermind, Swashbuckler, Sun Soul and Storm Sorcery already got their reprints in XGtE. But what about the others?

Battlerager, Arcana Domain, Purple Dragon Knight, Way of the Long Death, Oath of the Crown, and The Undying failed to earn a reprint.

Some of these are not particularly popular, such as Battlerager, Purple Dragon Knight and The Undying (which already has a better version of its Patron in recent UA). But Arcana Domain and Way of the Long Death are fairly popular from what I've seen and Oath of the Crown has great flavor and some good abilities as well.

So what do you think kept these other sub-classes out of Tasha's? Or, if you prefer, what was it about Bladesinging that allowed it to make the cut when the other six did not?

My personal opinion: Battlerager, PDK and Undying lost out due to lack of popularity. Arcana, Long Death and Crown were fine the way they are. But Bladesinging, while popular, had the issue of being Elf/Half Elf only, and with the new racial modification options in Tasha's, they wanted to remove the racial restrictions, which was a good excuse to make some additional tweaks as well.

Thoughts?

[Waazraath]

My personal opinion: Battlerager, PDK and Undying lost out due to lack of popularity. Arcana, Long Death and Crown were fine the way they are. But Bladesinging, while popular, had the issue of being Elf/Half Elf only, and with the new racial modification options in Tasha's, they wanted to remove the racial restrictions, which was a good excuse to make some additional tweaks as well.

Thoughts?

Seems solid, and I agree on your assessment of the subclasses. I'm not too fond on reprints anyway, I'd rather have 'em spend more pages on new content, so I'm fine.

[Aett_Thorn]

Eh, I still feel like Arcana Cleric should make jumps to new books that might have new spells in them every once in a while. The AL restriction limits them to PHB+SCAG, which can be a bit limiting.

For home tables, this isn’t a problem, but at an AL table it might if people want to pair the domain up with any new spells.

[Waazraath]

Eh, I still feel like Arcana Cleric should make jumps to new books that might have new spells in them every once in a while. The AL restriction limits them to PHB+SCAG, which can be a bit limiting.

For home tables, this isn’t a problem, but at an AL table it might if people want to pair the domain up with any new spells.

I understand it's problematic for AL, but on the other hand: wasn't that exactly the intention? To limit the amount of stuff to be used, not to over-ask DM's and other players rules knowledge, and to avoid unforseen combo's? Copy/pasting older stuff into newer books seems a bit self defeating there... Of course, using the pages not spend on c/p on new (sub)classes can also have unforseen consequences. Then again, by nature I think Arcana Cleric (which can pick at will spells from another, very strong, list) gives a higher chance on unforseen combo's.

[KorvinStarmast]

My personal opinion: Battlerager, PDK and Undying lost out due to lack of popularity. Arcana, Long Death and Crown were fine the way they are. But Bladesinging, while popular, had the issue of being Elf/Half Elf only, and with the new racial modification options in Tasha's, they wanted to remove the racial restrictions, which was a good excuse to make some additional tweaks as well.
My guess:
Fan feedback wasn't enough to keep Arcana. It's a nice kit, and it not being in Tasha's stinks.
Long Death: once again, I am guessing that fan feedback didn't rise above the noise level.
Crown: was obviously too much like a Paladin in real life. :smalltongue: (See where the term paladin comes from, Palatine (https://www.paladin-knight.co.uk/why-paladin/the-paladins/), Charlemagne's Paladins (https://www.timelessmyths.com/arthurian/peers.html) ...) but of course Oath of Conquest (who does the same thing, just evil, so it's fine, ya see). There sit the 5e devs patting themselves on the back:

"Hey, look at us. We are edgy, aren't we cool? We subeverted a trope!"

And they didn't want to be bothered to tweak the other three:

Battlerager: was garbage to start with. No loss.
PDK: with a bit of a tweak the Temp HP and bonus actions, etc, and other features for a group leader theme would work. We've had some good posts on that here. But they didn't want to tweak it to make it better. Gee, just like four Elements Monk ... maybe their attitude was

"It's Green Ronin, not invented here, who cares?"

It might also be that Mearls got moved to other projects.

Undying needed a reshuffle anyway. Looks like they went that way.

[Monster Manuel]

Initially I thought maybe it was setting-related, rather than mechanics-related. Like, the Arcana cleric was too closely tied to the idea of Mystara in the Realms as goddess to easily port to a setting-neutral book, or the same with the Battlerager being too closely tied to specifically Forgotten Relams dwarven culture. But, the more I thought about this, the more it doesn't fit; there are plenty of magic themed deities aside from Mystara, and of all the subclasses that are tightly tied to setting, the Bladesinger is probably the biggest offender, and they did get ported over. So, honestly, aside from perceived popularity, I don't see why they reprinted the ones they did, and left out the others.

[Amechra]

PDK: with a bit of a tweak the Temp HP and bonus actions, etc, and other features for a group leader theme would work. We've had some good posts on that here.

I still like the suggestion of just slamming it together with the Champion, and making them one subclass. It still impresses me that looking at the full feature list from that merged subclass still feels a bit lackluster at higher levels.


3: When you Second Wind, up to three allies gain HP equal to your level.
3: You crit on a 19-20
7: You have Jack of All Trades for physical ability checks, and you add your Strength mod to your long-jump distance.
7: You get proficiency in Persuasion (or a few other skills, if you already have it), and Expertise in Persuasion.
10: You get an extra fighting style.
10: When you Action Surge, an ally gets to make an attack as a reaction.
15: You crit on an 18-20.
15: Whenever you use Indomitable against an Int/Wis/Cha save, you can also give that reroll to another ally affected by the same effect.
18: When you Action Surge, two allies get to make an attack as a reaction.
18: You regain 5+Con HP at the beginning of each turn as long as you're below half HP and above 0 HP.

[cutlery]

I still like the suggestion of just slamming it together with the Champion, and making them one subclass. It still impresses me that looking at the full feature list from that merged subclass still feels a bit lackluster at higher levels.


I felt the same about the battlemaster reskins (Monster Hunter, scout, early cavalier) - they could have simply been added on top of the battlemaster without being any more powerful than the battlemaster already is at levels 3-6 and without being all that crazy strong at levels 12-20.

[x3n0n]

I think there's a train of thought here that starts from Artificer: once you do that, reprints are open.

Then you look at UA subclasses, and several classes are only getting one: Bard, Cleric, Paladin, and Wizard.

3 of those have coverage in the M:tG splats, so you bring the 4 associated subclasses in as setting-agnostic.

(There's an interesting question here about why *not* the Exandria splat, and I'm not sure. Balance concerns? Not sufficiently Hasbro?)

Given that, the Everything books have all of the character options from every book except for SCAG, and Tasha's has at least 2 subclasses for every class except Wizard.

Add that to the other reasons already given in this thread (well-liked, "weird" Elf restriction to get rid of, etc), and I think adding it is obvious.

"Why *not* the others" then becomes "we don't need them to balance out the book". I would have *liked* reprints of Arcana, Long Death, and Crown, but they weren't deemed necessary. (Also, in that hypothetical version of the book, Cleric and Paladin world then be getting 2/3 of their subclasses as reprints, instead of 1/2.)

[Malinthas]

...But Bladesinging, while popular, had the issue of being Elf/Half Elf only, and with the new racial modification options in Tasha's, they wanted to remove the racial restrictions, which was a good excuse to make some additional tweaks as well.

Thoughts?

I think that this nails it. The folks at WoTC were looking for a way to highlight their new inclusive/flexible outlook with regards to race(folk/species/whatever), and loosening up the racial restrictions on Bladesinger was the perfect way to do that. So, I don't think it was so much a matter of excluding other subclasses as it was the Bladesinger being highlighted for philosophical reasons. (IMHO/YMMV)

[Unoriginal]

Maybe the UA subclasses for Wizards proved just not popular enough, and they figured the Bladesinger was a safer bet?

[RogueJK]

I think that this nails it. The folks at WoTC were looking for a way to highlight their new inclusive/flexible outlook with regards to race(folk/species/whatever), and loosening up the racial restrictions on Bladesinger was the perfect way to do that. So, I don't think it was so much a matter of excluding other subclasses as it was the Bladesinger being highlighted for philosophical reasons. (IMHO/YMMV)

If that's the reason, why not include Battlerager too? It's Dwarf only.

[Grod_The_Giant]

If that's the reason, why not include Battlerager too? It's Dwarf only.
Because not many people like Battlerager, and it doesn't really add anything new thematically or mechanically.

[Temperjoke]

Well, offhand a couple reasons could be:

Battlerager - one of it's subclass abilities involves using Spiked Armor, which isn't in the PHB, so that'd be something else that would be required to be added to Tasha's and DMs would have to add to their games. Admittedly, it's not a huge thing, but it does add to the work involved all around.

Arcane Cleric - They're not the same, but there's a pretty big overlap between this and Divine Sorcerers, so they may have decided to leave it out, especially given how many different cleric subclasses there are.

Purple Dragon Knight - well, the first strike against this one is they used a very specific title for the subclass that is part of a specific setting, which means more words to explain where it came from or to convert it to a universal title. The features also tend to more oriented towards benefitting the group more than the individual, which makes it weaker on it's own compared to other classes, so I could see why they'd leave it out

I'm not really sure about why they didn't include some of those other classes, but Bladesingers are a much more unique playstyle version of a wizard, so they really stand out.

[KorvinStarmast]

Purple Dragon Knight - well, the first strike against this one is they used a very specific title for the subclass that is part of a specific setting, which means more words to explain where it came from or to convert it to a universal title. It's also called Banneret for non FR games. (I may not have spelled that correctly)

[Temperjoke]

It's also called Banneret for non FR games. (I may not have spelled that correctly)

Yeah, but as I mentioned, if they had wanted to use it, they need to use more words to explain what/where it was, or re-write it's entire description, which means more work on a class that didn't have as much user interest.

[Naanomi]

I might suggest that they wouldn't want one book to completely negate SCAG, so that we might see 1-2 of the other Subclasses trickle in to the next few Class-option books until they are eventually all represented

[Luccan]

I think that this nails it. The folks at WoTC were looking for a way to highlight their new inclusive/flexible outlook with regards to race(folk/species/whatever), and loosening up the racial restrictions on Bladesinger was the perfect way to do that. So, I don't think it was so much a matter of excluding other subclasses as it was the Bladesinger being highlighted for philosophical reasons. (IMHO/YMMV)

This may be true. I hadn't considered it, but I suppose since most AL play happens in FR that restriction WOULD be in effect (IIRC it explicitly says in its entry that other settings don't have to follow the restriction)