Speculation For 5.5/6.0 Edition, what Missing Class would you like to see in the Core? [Archive]

T.G. Oskar

2021-01-21, 02:38 AM

Agree with Warlord/Marshal, though the design paradigm for classes in 5e makes it pretty difficult.

Even if a revision came to mind, the design paradigm currently applying to 5e classes is pretty tight and, IMO, very well made. It makes certain previous classes (like the Swashbuckler, the Favored Soul, the Assassin, the Avenger, etc.) superfluous, because these classes per se were more akin to specific builds. Classes like Artificer and Psion(icist) are viable because you can create multiple subclasses from it. It makes creating new classes difficult, since you have to justify the idea of creating different variants of the same class that are nonetheless distinct from each other. I'd say their trial by fire was the Paladin, since it's often observed as a class that's very difficult to make distinct, and by far I think they've succeeded - note how the Conquest Paladin (a warrior that uses terror as a weapon) feels different from a Redemption Paladin (a protector that stays its weapon until needed), or an Ancients Paladin (a protector of nature), or a Glory Paladin (a glory-hound that seeks to prove its physical prowess). While they're all Paladins, they represent different ideals and potentially even different characters - I could see lord Soth pre-Death Knight as a Conquest Paladin, or even a reimagining of Robilar, whereas I could identify someone like Lancelot as a Glory Paladin, or perhaps Perseus. The four couldn't be any more distinct.

The Warlord/Marshal, however... It stands on the same edgy terrain as the Paladin - not too narrow to be a subclass, not to broad to be a class, but somewhere in between. I don't deny that you could make it a class and even make it work, but you'd have to be very careful to determine what features should be spread through the entire class and which features should be reserved for subclasses. As to how it could work? Well, consider that a Marshal isn't necessarily meant to be a military leader, but a leader, and you'll open up possibilities. The classical would be a military leader (your Warlord), which would probably focus on combat buffing. Alternatives would include a Tactician (which could even be the magical equivalent), a Tribal Chief (akin to a Barbarian), a Captain of the Guard (which would provide skills to direct investigations, for example). The key to make the class would involve a) defining what potential subclasses can exist and b) what each of these have in common that would be part of the main class features, rather than peculiar to one subclass. Once that's resolved...I figure it'd be a pretty awesome class by itself, as mechanically it'd provide a non-magical buffer which could assist the party inside or outside battle.

But as it goes? Definitely a Warlord/Marshal. I think it was a missed opportunity to make one. Right now, you either choose a Fighter subclass that's meant to reflect 3e's Warblade (Battlemaster), a poor Fighter subclass that's in dire need of a rework (Purple Dragon Knight - good grief, that subclass sucks!), refluff a Bard subclass (College of War) or get Inspiring Leader and just be whatever you want.

Arkhios

2021-01-21, 04:00 AM

In general I despise speculating whether a 5.5/6.0 edition is within sight in the foreseeable future or not. Personally, I don't think so. If I'm wrong, I will stand corrected only after I see an official announcement.

THAT SAID, and I don't really care what they end up calling it, some kind of non-spellcaster who is equally capable of healing as a cleric or druid would be nice to have. Even in 5.0.

MoiMagnus

2021-01-21, 04:34 AM

The At-Will Mage. 3E called it Warlock. Soonest we would see it return would be 6E.

I would more generally enjoy having move variations on resource management for each "theme".
So martial characters with a lot of daily resources (including healing) and spellcasters with mostly at-will powers.

Though I would not say I hope to see them in the Core. I'd honestly be more interested in them focussing more on the current core classes, in particular design of high level features.
(Like adding "high level subclasses" unlocked at level ~12, taking the role of prestige classes from older editions)

ezekielraiden

2021-01-21, 04:43 AM

It makes certain previous classes (like the Swashbuckler, the Favored Soul, the Assassin, the Avenger, etc.) superfluous, because these classes per se were more akin to specific builds.

I'm very curious which class you feel captures the fluff and approximates the mechanics (since obviously they should not be identical) of the Avenger. I mean, I know they called the Oath of Vengeance "avengers," but other than the Channel Divinity effect giving advantage on attacks once per short rest, I really don't see it.

Waazraath

2021-01-21, 05:12 AM

noob

2021-01-21, 06:21 AM

What I'd like to see:

- No psionic classes, but leaving the design space for them open so that with a psionic addition, they can shine. So no spells for telekinesis, telepathy and all the stuff associated with psionics, so that when psionics does get released in a supplement it is truely Something Different. Same for any other subsystem-concept they think they are going to develop!

- specialist casters: following the example of 3.5's beguiler, warmage, dread necromancer. Strong specializations, but without spells outside their niche, making every caster doing the same stuff anyways (fly, invisibility, shield, polymorph, wall of force, bla bla bla). Give me for instance elementalists that are great blasters with 1 or 2 elements but much weaker in other respects. Maybe keep the wizard (but maybe not) as 'spell generalist' but give that versatility a significant price.

- a shapeshifter class, with two subclasses / paths, one more social/rogue and one combat beast forms (e.g. warshaper / master of many forms inspired).

- a warlord class; I never played 4e, but people are so damn enthusiastic about the concept that I want to see it myself :)

- warlock returned to an invocation only class (so no spells / spell slots, only invocations and special abilities); it can add a different subclass for the dragon shaman afaic, that was a really nice addition that combined invocations with custom breath weapons with buffing aura's, blast fun concept.

- binder: a really nice, balanced and flavorful addition in one of the later 3.5 splats.

- a more complicated fighter; book of 9 swords is a bit much, but maybe pick one of those classes and have a few specializations, for people who like complicated mechanical builds with lots of options and like martial characters.

- I hope they are bold! Maybe ditch a few traditional classes (wizard, ranger); reduce spell levels from 9 to 7. Make barbarian a variant of the fighter, not because it would be best but just to try out something new.

You should realise that the op seventh level spells and above are often bbeg plot tools granted to players for symmetry sake in previous editions that they brought back in 5e due to their "revert everything done to fix dnd in 4e" policy.
Simulacrum is not meant to make a copy of your strongest friend: it is supposed to be used by a bbeg to be at two places or for replacing the local leader.
Wish is not supposed to be slung around: it is supposed to be granted by bbegs as a corruption tool or reward to loyal servitors.
Mirage arcana and guard and wards are super powerful too despite being below that level because again they are bbeg tools means to secure their fortress given to the players just because some of the previous editions did.
Teleport circle is a setting building tool and was granted to players again due to the philosophy of previous editions.
Meteor swarm is supposed to just be here to allow the bbeg to commit vast amounts of murder in a short span of time(non discriminating and huge aoe) and was granted to the players too for no good reason.
True polymorph is supposed to be used by the crazy mage playing with life in unnatural ways but again it was granted to players.
Resurrect true is only here to save the time going back to high levels and so is not necessarily as much a "meant for bbeg" tool.
The bbeg tool spells could still exist but could be moved to the monster manuals with a "not for players" mention for example.

Also it is not new at all to make barbarians be a fighter subclass they already were a variant of fighter in ad&d.
Ranger was also a fighter subclass in ad&d.
And ditching ranger would be just a step toward basic edition which did not have rangers.
Maybe you should try older editions instead of looking forward to 6e?

MrStabby

2021-01-21, 06:30 AM

I loved the UA version of the rune Knight and think there is enough theme and enough material to make into its own class. Runes, hieroglyphs or any other mystic feeling writing... the power of words woven into a non-spellcasting chassis that tie back to different histories and cultures. I felt sticking it on the fighter squeezed how much could be explored; making it its own class could help here.

Something I think should be core is the martial artist capable of grapples and throws; that said a bit of rework on the monk to let you chose between a grappling path and a striking path would do just as well.

I would love to see a priest - a divine focussed caster without the martial trappings of the cleric class (d6 HP, no armour or shield proficiencies but with access to wizard power level divine spells rather than cleric power level spells). I was thinking you could get some of this just by releasing more cleric spells and taking divine soul, but that would then overpower both of those other options so a seperate class might be better.

And an intelligence based martial character that uses their knowledge of their enemies and their weaknesses to overcome them. That said, I would be happy enough for this function to be wrapped up as a secondary theme in any Rune Knight class.

Bosh

2021-01-21, 08:35 AM

Eh, if anything I'd like to see the class list pared down a bit in core. Some classes like bard and ranger seem to running more on tradition and inertia than on any real distinct niche.

Up the amount of power that each fighter sub-class hands out (especially out of combat stuff) so that fighter can handle more niches and so that each fighter sub-class has a bit more oomph.

For casters, a lot of the casters (except warlocks) in 5e are pretty samey as they all have the same basic system that'd be called spontaneous casting in 3.5ed. "I have metamagic" isn't really enough of a niche for a whole class. So break things down to:
-Old school Vancian (wizard).
-5e-style casting (cleric).
-At-will casting with some a budget of meta-magic style boosts (sorcerer/warlock).

So that leaves you with the following classes:
-Fighter.
-Rogue.
-Wizard.
-Cleric.
-Sorcerer.

Then have the other classes be sub-classes (as a lot of them were originally) and give each sub-class enough oomph to really distinguish them. Especially with casters you don't need a huge profileration of classes if they all use the same basic casting mechanic.

With that pared down a bit give races more boosts that kick in at higher levels or scale with level to make the races more distinct.

MoiMagnus

2021-01-21, 08:54 AM

Some classes like bard and ranger seem to running more on tradition and inertia than on any real distinct niche.

IMO the Bard is to spellcasters what the Rogue is to martial.
Both are "what if we took the fighter/wizard and give them more skills and RP-related abilities".
In the same way that you can "emulate" a bard through the other spellcasting classes by making a Bard-like spell selection, you can "emulate" the Rogue by making a Dex-based Fighter.

If anything, the Bard stand out to me much more than the Sorcerer does, and if I had to choose, I'd consider Sorcerer to be the one slowly running out of the inertia it has from tradition.

So that leaves you with the following classes:
-Fighter.
-Rogue.
-Wizard.
-Cleric.
-Sorcerer.

In other words, you're suggesting to only keep one class per ability score (ignoring constitution), and to reinforce how different ability score for spellcaster mean different ways of doing magic (Int -> Vancian, etc).

heavyfuel

2021-01-21, 09:13 AM

Honestly, none.

I don't think it's the Core Book's job to present classes other than the "traditional" ones.

Yeah, I would love if 5e had given us a Maneuver Class, an at-will spellcaster, and the Duskblade. These are the 3 classes I wanted more than anything in 5e. But I don't think they should've been in the PHB.

In an ideal world, we'd get everything in a single (massive) book, but when you have to come up with rules for literally everything, it's understandable that unusual character classes get left behind.

Dienekes

2021-01-21, 09:26 AM

Warlord, without question.

I am also of the opinion that there really only needs to be one dirt simple martial class. So if Barbarians and Fighters are both in 5.5/6e make one of the two of them more like a ToB class. Please. Battlemaster Fighter is just boring Warblade.

There also probably should be a dirt simple caster as well. Personally kinda think it should be Sorcerer considering I still don't think they've given the class a good identity yet outside of maybe 4e.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-21, 09:33 AM

- No psionic classes, but leaving the design space for them open so that with a psionic addition, they can shine. So no spells for telekinesis, telepathy and all the stuff associated with psionics, so that when psionics does get released in a supplement it is truely Something Different. That makes to me no sense, since spells like that have been available to PCs since the game was first invented. The psionicist was an add-on, and as the AD&D 2e treatment of it expressed quite nicely - Do we need a third system of magic? No. - situation still fits. That said, I would like the option to have psionics folded in so that it fits the general structure of the game so far.

- specialist casters: following the example of 3.5's beguiler, warmage, dread necromancer.
No thanks. This can be done via spell selection already.

- a shapeshifter class, with two subclasses / paths, one more social/rogue and one combat beast forms (e.g. warshaper / master of many forms inspired). We already have wild shape for druids.

- a warlord class; I never played 4e, but people are so damn enthusiastic about the concept that I want to see it myself :) I'd like to see it in a UA and a play test, but I see no reason not to make that a Fighter Sub Class.

- warlock returned to an invocation only class (so no spells / spell slots, only invocations and special abilities);
What, no cantrips?

- binder: a really nice, balanced and flavorful addition in one of the later 3.5 splats. Over specialization strikes me as the role for various NPCs. The PC in level 1-20 D&D progression needs to overcome a wide variety of challenges. Particularly in a small party, specialization can be a detriment.

- a more complicated fighter; You can do that with sub classes, and the battlemaster is already a step in that direction.

Maybe ditch a few traditional classes (wizard, ranger)
No and yes.
Wizard is core, dump sorcerer.
Ranger? Make it a fighter sub class again and I'm good with it.
And you could dump druid and make it a cleric sub class again without bothering me in the least.

I would love to see a priest - a divine focussed caster without the martial trappings of the cleric class (d6 HP, no armour or shield proficiencies but with access to wizard power level divine spells rather than cleric power level spells). Arcana Cleric was a nice step in that direction.

And an intelligence based martial character that uses their knowledge of their enemies and their weaknesses to overcome them.
That's called metagaming/reading the books. :smallbiggrin: You don't need a class to do that. (Were you thinking about something like The Witcher?)

If anything, the Bard stand out to me much more than the Sorcerer does, and if I had to choose, I'd consider Sorcerer to be the one slowly running out of the inertia it has from tradition. Dump the Sorcerer. It was a bad idea to begin with when introduced in 3e. (In My Opinion)

My last suggestion for the next edition would be to explicitly prohibit any arcane spell casting while wearing heavy armor - and to make heavy armor by default offer a native DR based on proficiency. (Narrative wise, some of the swords and sorcery genre use the 'degaussing effect' (Maybe it was from Poul Anderson) of iron/heavy metals on magical stuff ....) That means that if you are an Eldritch Knight or some kind of gish you need to make a choice between spell casting and the protection of heavy armor. I think that heavy armor is OK at very low levels, but requiring a feat to get the DR from heavy armor I'd like to see scrubbed again and made native to that armor type.

Choices like that, however need to be handled with care to avoid the dreaded trap options ...

All said and done, I'd like to see the class list reduced, sub classes expanded perhaps, and the artificer done away with completely. You can have it in Eberron, but for my money it needs to be a sub class of wizard.

Xervous

2021-01-21, 09:40 AM

Fighters, rogues, rangers, barbs etc that can play the same game as wizards and clerics past level X. X being the point at which What-Do concepts like “hit with sword” are far too narrow a specialty to be relevant to a majority of potential plot stubs. And preferably accomplish this NOT by cutting off the top end of casters and other fantastical details to stretch the 1-10 progression out to 1-20. There shouldn’t be classes that are by default unable to participate without GM spoon feeding. It would be nice and honest to see subclasses capped at level 10, with a separate set of subclasses (Perhaps not explicitly divided up by class) spanning 11-20 that illustrate what kinds of concepts are expected and relevant at those levels.

They’ve seen people play 1-10 plenty, might as well acknowledge and design around the divide.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-21, 09:43 AM

noob

2021-01-21, 09:54 AM

Maybe dnd 6e would remove levels and remove classes for making the whole design less convoluted?

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-21, 10:03 AM

Maybe dnd 6e would remove levels and remove classes for making the whole design less convoluted? I think we may have discussed this before.

Doing that actually makes the min-maxing worse, not better, to where a single 'best build' shows up.

I don't think that this game is interested in doing that.

On a related note: on the CRPG front, Blizzard/Blizzard North/Condor ran into that design issue with the original Diablo game. They were initially thinking of having a character simply show up and there be no class template and you build as you level up; as it worked out they ended up going with three classes and it was extremely well received. The build variety for that game was fairly expansive once you got into tinkering, though I seem to recall a "god mode" Sorcerer Tank build that was insanely strong. Been ages since I played that.

I recall that the original Traveller game didn't start with classes per se, but as you went through chargen you did select various professional features ... not sure if that's a good example of what you may be driving at, since Traveller didn't have leveling.

noob

2021-01-21, 10:06 AM

I think we may have discussed this before.

Doing that actually makes the min-maxing worse, not better, to where a single 'best build' shows up.

I don't think that this game is interested in doing that.

On a related note: on the CRPG front, Blizzard/Blizzard North/Condor ran into that design issue with the original Diablo game. They were initially thinking of having a character simply show up and there be no class template and you build as you level up; as it worked out they ended up going with three classes and it was extremely well received. The build variety for that game was fairly expansive once you got into tinkering, though I seem to recall a "god mode" Sorcerer Tank build that was insanely strong. Been ages since I played that.

I recall that the original Traveller game didn't start with classes per se, but as you went through chargen you did select various professional features ... not sure if that's a good example of what you may be driving at, since Traveller didn't have leveling.

You do not have a single best build because the abilities have unrelated effects.
For example there is only one ability for participating in fights and only one ability for lying to people and so on.(and no umbrella ability for spells because it is nonsense to do that: you would get spell like abilities only for stuff that have no overlap with the rest so no mind control nor spells that can be used in a fight like grease and haste and so on(pruning of the spell concept to remove all that))
Even in gurps there is not a single best build because there is a ridiculous variety of stuff to do so you can not arbitrarily say "this build is better than all the others" (unless you get some broken content like ritual casting but that is a problem with gurps trying to do everything and you just have to not play with the books adding those)

TigerT20

2021-01-21, 10:07 AM

Ranger could definitely be kept if they made in an actual exploration-based class rather than a fighter-druid-rogue who gets a hall pass when in a certain environment.

I feel that tactical fighter/warlord/intelligent warrior could definitely be a rebuild of the fighter chassis - give them martial invocations maybe, or some kind of other perks (like what they had in 5e's playtest stage).

Now, I can think of a lot of subclasses but ideas for a whole new class - and a core one for that matter - evades me.

Runes could definitely be delved into. Maybe make it a d8 class with two core subclasses - one that goes more Rune Knight, and another that's more caster-like (a Rune Scribe? Rune Scholar?) and have extra ones with more varying themes - giants, name magic, even golems?

Eldariel

2021-01-21, 10:20 AM

Warlord is by far the worst and most egregious omission.

Morty

2021-01-21, 10:21 AM

I think we may have discussed this before.

Doing that actually makes the min-maxing worse, not better, to where a single 'best build' shows up.

I don't think that this game is interested in doing that.

On a related note: on the CRPG front, Blizzard/Blizzard North/Condor ran into that design issue with the original Diablo game. They were initially thinking of having a character simply show up and there be no class template and you build as you level up; as it worked out they ended up going with three classes and it was extremely well received. The build variety for that game was fairly expansive once you got into tinkering, though I seem to recall a "god mode" Sorcerer Tank build that was insanely strong. Been ages since I played that.

I recall that the original Traveller game didn't start with classes per se, but as you went through chargen you did select various professional features ... not sure if that's a good example of what you may be driving at, since Traveller didn't have leveling.

There are many games without classes - indeed, that's most of them. And D&D is just about the only one left that has levels. Most of those are much better balanced than D&D and "one true builds" aren't a universal problem by any stretch. D&D abandoning classes and levels isn't something that will ever happen, but the claim that it leads to min-maxing is false.

Otherwise I agree that the D&D class list has to be rebuilt from scratch, not added to - but that is also not something that will ever happen. For some reason I can't understand, the 3E list + warlock or alchemist became an inviolate tradition that can't be touched.

CheddarChampion

2021-01-21, 10:28 AM

I don't know if this is 'missing' per se, but I think an Interrogator class could be good. Kinda like a fighter, but with class features based on mental ability scores, extra skills, and expertise instead of things like fighting style, action surge, second wind, extra feats...

You could have subclasses of: detective, inquisitor, torturer, and witch hunter.

Detective would focus on using insight, investigation, and perception both in social situations and in combat.

Inquisitor would grant 1/3 cleric spellcasting.

Torturer would focus on inflicting pain and fear to debilitate enemies and get people to answer your questions. Bad for your reputation, of course, and has a chance of backfiring.

Witch Hunter would focus on seeing through/resisting tricks like charm, fear, and invisibility; weakening or banishing supernatural/extraplanar monsters; ending ongoing spells.

Catullus64

2021-01-21, 10:33 AM

psion and artificer need to be core. I'm not sure any others need to be. maybe warlord/marshal?

I'm inclined to disagree on the point of Artificer and Psionic classes. Those classes are ultimately tied to flavors of fantasy that are much narrower than the game's assumed default characteristics of traditional high fantasy. Having them as supplementary material reinforces that these are classes which are intended for specific worlds and campaigns.

Putting them in a Core book significantly shifts the needle of the game's "average" setting. Doing so would only make sense if your objective was to make the assumed settings of the game more high-magic and sci-fi influenced, which would be a mistake in my opinion. To make a slightly hyperbolic analogy, it would be like releasing a version of the game with only one spellcaster class in order to promote sword-and-sorcery and other low fantasy.

I'm also of the opinion that the Warlord only really made much sense in 4e (to be clear, it worked amazingly there), with its emphasis on movement, positioning, marking, and that kind of stuff. I think it was one of the best iterations of the fundamentally flawed "I want to play a spellcaster except fluffed to not cast any spells" class ethos that people seem really keen on.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-21, 10:41 AM

the game's assumed default characteristics of traditional high fantasy. Swords and Sorcery is the basic genre, or perhaps, it is another basic genre that is core to the general in game fiction. That genre is related to but isn't high fantasy.

Having them as supplementary material reinforces that these are classes which are intended for specific worlds and campaigns. I agree.

Otherwise I agree that the D&D class list has to be rebuilt from scratch, not added to - but that is also not something that will ever happen. For some reason I can't understand, the 3E list + warlock or alchemist became an inviolate tradition that can't be touched. We have an accord. There's an OSR kind of guy who goes by the handle of Delta (http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/) who has rescrubbed / redone some of the Original Dungeons and Dragons stuff (three books), cleaned up some of the math, and reduced the class list. He, of all things, got rid of clerics and put all magic in the hands of magic users. When I first pondered that I shook my head a little bit, but as I've thumbed through a few of his supplements/pubs, it makes a certain kind of sense to me now.
He apparently is still running games in that system, and has a good sized player base. (Not sure how COVID has impacted that, I suspect substantially). I'd love to be able to play at his table but there are a few thousand miles between where he lives and where I do.

Further agreement with you that trimming the number of classes can certainly be done successfully and it still be D&D.

Amnestic

2021-01-21, 11:06 AM

I'm inclined to disagree on the point of Artificer and Psionic classes. Those classes are ultimately tied to flavors of fantasy that are much narrower than the game's assumed default characteristics of traditional high fantasy. Having them as supplementary material reinforces that these are classes which are intended for specific worlds and campaigns.

The alchemist fits into any setting and the artillerist could be slotted in by just renaming the turrets to...idk, 'minor ioun stones' or something.

Battlesmith and armourer less easy perhaps but hardly impossible, and the general fluff of '(magic) item crafter' fits in most settings pretty easily.

da newt

2021-01-21, 11:11 AM

Just my opinion, but I think the classes/subclasses are getting bloated and could use a bit of a trim/simplification.

I'd rather see a focus on balancing the weapon vs magic power at different levels.

I'd also like the ability to MC / pick and choose from the list of options kept very simple and easy so that an individual could create their own niche/character. For example - I'd rather delete the Ranger class and make it easy for someone to build a fighter/nature caster.

Dienekes

2021-01-21, 11:25 AM

I'd like to see it in a UA and a play test, but I see no reason not to make that a Fighter Sub Class.

Eh, I don't really get this line of reasoning for the Warlord specifically.

Now don't get me wrong, there are a lot of classes that really could be just a subclass of another. Sorcerer has no real mechanical identity from the Wizard. Barbarians are just one way to play a Fighter. And so on.

But I don't really see how the Warlord can be done well with the Fighter without simply changing the Fighter to the Warlord completely.

In 5e the Fighter has two playstyles. Go up in melee and whack things with a melee weapon, or hang in the back and shoot people with a ranged weapon. That's it. That's what they do. Now they can refine those strategies somewhat, whack with a long weapon to give some control to them. Or whack them with two smaller weapons if you want a few more whacks per turn. But at their essence all their abilities are based around providing means for getting them to whack people.

Which would work great if we wanted to make Barbarians a Fighter subclass. At level 1, pick if you want Armor Proficiency and a Fighting Style or Rage and Unarmored Combat. Easy. From that point on, they pretty much do the same thing.

But the Warlord essentially had three available playstyles: Whack people in melee and provide on-hit effects, the close-ranged buffer, or the action provider. Of which only one would ever really work within the Fighter template of abilities. Otherwise every action you're taking to provide buffs means you're not using all the the generic fighter abilities to make you hit things better that a Barbarian might use. And if you're giving away actions like the third playstyle then you're definitely not using those actions yourself.

Honestly, from a mechanical outcome perspective Warlord has more in common with the Bard or Cleric than it does with the Fighter. With the exception of the aforementioned whack things and give on-hit effects version. That's really the only one that slots well into the Fighter. But if that's the only version of the Warlord done as a subclass, then I really don't think they've successfully implemented the Warlord.

Morty

2021-01-21, 11:35 AM

We have an accord. There's an OSR kind of guy who goes by the handle of Delta (http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/) who has rescrubbed / redone some of the Original Dungeons and Dragons stuff (three books), cleaned up some of the math, and reduced the class list. He, of all things, got rid of clerics and put all magic in the hands of magic users. When I first pondered that I shook my head a little bit, but as I've thumbed through a few of his supplements/pubs, it makes a certain kind of sense to me now.
He apparently is still running games in that system, and has a good sized player base. (Not sure how COVID has impacted that, I suspect substantially). I'd love to be able to play at his table but there are a few thousand miles between where he lives and where I do.

Further agreement with you that trimming the number of classes can certainly be done successfully and it still be D&D.

Trimming down, maybe. Trimming them down to what they used to be in old editions, not really. I don't think fighters, thieves and wizards make for a good basis of anything.

Xervous

2021-01-21, 11:42 AM

Dienekes

2021-01-21, 12:02 PM

As funny as it was, I don’t know if the game needs to feature Six Handing a ranger again. (The joke being warlords just swing other party members at things, so 3x warlords would take turns swinging a ranger). Lazylord was frankly too good for how little direct involvement it had in play. So you’d be playing support and your big move is “oh hey someone else take another turn”. Amazing, powerful, but I doubt people would appreciate it being a role they are forced into a la AD&D cleric.

I think the counterargument there would be, if we abandoned every concept because WotC got the balance wrong we'd be playing a very empty game.

Yeah Lazylord chaining was a problem, but I don't think it was an insurmountable one. And honestly, I don't think it even really compares to some other pretty broken combinations in D&D history.

Xervous

2021-01-21, 12:09 PM

I think the counterargument there would be, if we abandoned every concept because WotC got the balance wrong we'd be playing a very empty game.

Yeah Lazylord chaining was a problem, but I don't think it was an insurmountable one. And honestly, I don't think it even really compares to some other pretty broken combinations in D&D history.

The point is not so much that the balance is off, but that it’s a thoroughly disengaged play style that people only opted for because of the numeric superiority. Were it a middling or low performer I don’t picture many people flipping to the page all “gee whiz, I always wanted to pass my turn and watch the Barbarian attack more”

MrStabby

2021-01-21, 12:10 PM

Arcana Cleric was a nice step in that direction.

Not sure: still has medium armour, still has proficiency in shields, still has cleric HP, and the domain spells added don't raise the spell quality (I don't really rate the domain spells for the arcana cleric).

That's called metagaming/reading the books. :smallbiggrin: You don't need a class to do that. (Were you thinking about something like The Witcher?)

I never read those books, so not really sure if this is a match at all.

I was kind of thinking a bit like Abraham Van Helsing from Dracula - his contribution is knowing how to kill vampires, knowing how to keep them out and ward them off. He is a scholar rather than a caster. Obviously more diverse in knowledge, knowing the weaknesses of multiple different enemies rather than just vampires or even undead. Kind of like a ranger with favoured enemies but with different effects on each type.

Telwar

2021-01-21, 12:19 PM

I'd love a warlord class.

I'd love for psionics to be a core option, because I'd rather have an expansive view of fantasy rather than a narrow one. Also, this would make sure the design sat in core and could avoid the problem of f perceived power creep (whether real or not).

I'd love a variety of resources for classes, so you could have the At-Will Mage and the "fighter with 'spell' slots."

The possible problem is that this is going to take an absolute ton of space, especially if we have wordy spell descriptions again.

Salmon343

2021-01-21, 12:23 PM

Not sure: still has medium armour, still has proficiency in shields, still has cleric HP, and the domain spells added don't raise the spell quality (I don't really rate the domain spells for the arcana cleric).

I never read those books, so not really sure if this is a match at all.

I was kind of thinking a bit like Abraham Van Helsing from Dracula - his contribution is knowing how to kill vampires, knowing how to keep them out and ward them off. He is a scholar rather than a caster. Obviously more diverse in knowledge, knowing the weaknesses of multiple different enemies rather than just vampires or even undead. Kind of like a ranger with favoured enemies but with different effects on each type.

There's a 3.5 class called the Archivist - not played it yet, but they look quite interesting. The broken part about them is that they're divine spellcasters, who with enough finagling can get access to any spell in the game. The less broken part and the part I find most interesting is a feature called Dark Knowledge, which allows them to make knowledge checks on creatures in order to gain buffs or use special abilities against them for the rest of the encounter. E.g, Tactics allows them to gain a bonus to attack rolls, and Puissance allows them to gain a bonus to saving throws against them, while Dread Secret allows you to dazzle, daze or even stun them for a round.

I feel like the Dark Knowledge bit would work well for what you're thinking of, if it's expanded to have more uses per day, and a wider array of features. The buffs were party wide too, so it really leans in to the flavour of finding out the weak point of the monster. 5e monsters typically aren't really built for having weak points, so this method of generic buffs and status effects would work well for representing the concept of fighting tactically. The Monster Slayer Ranger subclass is an alternative example of loosely what you're looking for, on a half-caster chassis.

Amechra

2021-01-21, 01:28 PM

The point is not so much that the balance is off, but that it’s a thoroughly disengaged play style that people only opted for because of the numeric superiority. Were it a middling or low performer I don’t picture many people flipping to the page all “gee whiz, I always wanted to pass my turn and watch the Barbarian attack more”

I mean, I'd be down for that. I find combat to be somewhat dull (not just in D&D - I'm not really an action person in general), so the ability to effectively skip combat while simultaneously contributing to the party's success sounds pretty cool to me.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-21, 01:57 PM

Not sure: still has medium armour, still has proficiency in shields, still has cleric HP, and the domain spells added don't raise the spell quality (I don't really rate the domain spells for the arcana cleric). I didn't say "an exact fit" but "a step in that direction." I've played a Monk 1 /Cleric X MC (also druid) in a few one shots and they can fit very well into your idea.

I never read those books, so not really sure if this is a match at all.
The joke I attempted failed to land. So it goes.
I was kind of thinking a bit like Abraham Van Helsing from Dracula - his contribution is knowing how to kill vampires, knowing how to keep them out and ward them off. He is a scholar rather than a caster. Obviously more diverse in knowledge, knowing the weaknesses of multiple different enemies rather than just vampires or even undead. Kind of like a ranger with favoured enemies but with different effects on each type. That's good for one adventure arc, and of course awesome for Curse of Strahd. In D&D, you face a wide variety of monsters, hence the Witcher reference. In the short stories and in the novels, Geralt is very much "I know monsters as well as or better than anyone" such that he is uniquely qualified to go around as monster exterminator in locales all over the fictional world. I think that template would fit your idea pretty well.

ezekielraiden

2021-01-21, 02:28 PM

I'd like to see it in a UA and a play test, but I see no reason not to make that a Fighter Sub Class.
It's very simple: There's not enough room.

The Fighter chassis is too focused, on its own, to achieve the desired end. You automatically get the best armor, the most attacks, the most actions. These things are fine as they are, but they conflict with what a balanced Warlord class would imply. In order to work as a proper Warlord, you have to be able to support others to a degree comparable to a Cleric. Not identical--they should be different, just as they were different in 4e--but comparable. A Fighter subclass that was as ally-supportive as a 5e Cleric or Bard would be unequivocally overpowered. And, as we've seen with the Battlemaster and PDK, a Fighter subclass that focuses on support will never be sufficient at supporting others to fulfill that role.

In order to make something that is satisfyingly support-focused yet still balanced, the Warlord cannot be shackled to the Fighter's design elements.

The point is not so much that the balance is off, but that it’s a thoroughly disengaged play style that people only opted for because of the numeric superiority. Were it a middling or low performer I don’t picture many people flipping to the page all “gee whiz, I always wanted to pass my turn and watch the Barbarian attack more”
Okay so, three things.

Firstly? I really gorram wish the Lazylord weren't the place EVERY critic IMMEDIATELY leaps to. It wasn't something the 4e designers ever set out to make. You had to stitch together bits and pieces that were only all available after Martial Power 2, meaning at least two full years after 4e launched. The Lazylord was one SMALL part of the Warlord' s existence, and should not be held up as what ALL of them were like. Though the option did have its fans, the popularity of the class overall has NOTHING to do with the lazy build. Especially since, as stated, for a significant portion of 4e's run it wasn't even POSSIBLE to be a lazy Warlord!

Secondly, your disparagement actually does you a disservice. The lazy build actually had a number of genuinely neat roleplay concepts that people came up with. Whether these were after the fact justifications or "oh man finally I can do X" is beyond our ability to determine (though I think it's fair to say that both almost certainly happened). Two examples I personally thought were really good were the "professor" and "princess" (implicitly of white-gloved-mouse style) ideas. The Professor is a mild-mannered, unassuming but devilishly clever guy. Can't hit very hard, he's getting on in his years. But he's excellent at seeing the weaknesses in defenses, and at coaching others to exploit them, and the party relies on him to always have a plan or three. (Mechanically, an Int/Wis focused warlord, presumably Tactical.) The Princess, meanwhile, is charismatic and inspiring, able to find the best in everyone (but especially her friends) and push them to higher heights than they'd ever achieve normally. She won't be a Lady of War, but relies on her retainers and allies for protection, and in return she assures them victory. (Bravura Warlord, Int/Cha focus, lots of social skills on top of support abilities.)

Third, your disparagement isn't even all that accurate to what a Lazylord build does. Yes, they don't do much damage personally and instead work through allies. But positioning, setting up flanking (for Combat Advantage), keeping tactical options open/ready, and tracking everyone else's powers and resources were all equally important parts of playing one. You were only 'lazy' in the sense of not personally making many attack rolls; an actually effective 'lazy' Warlord definitely could not be played lazily. If anything, it was possibly the most demanding of all warlord types to play, because you were always at risk of not having anything to contribute! Now, some of the above stuff isn't going to matter as much in 5e, where positioning is often less of a concern and movement can happen before, during, and after attacking. But that doesn't mean that even if we DID make a 5e Lazy Warlord option, it would inherently always boil down to "repeatedly make the Barbarian attack on your behalf, and otherwise check out of the game."

And as a final note...keep in mind, Warlord-type characters really do exist in fiction. Sokka is a Warlord. He has some skill at arms (he's not a lazy Warlord), but his greatest skills are his observational and tactical acumen. He may be a terribly silly person, but no one questions his genius as a commander of forces. Not even his own father.

Xervous

2021-01-21, 03:12 PM

Okay so, three things.

At what point have I directly classified all warlords as being lazy?

Shared point on the RP concepts, however again note it is an RP concept driving the choice and not a matter of optimization. I will note it is a niche pairing of concept and implementation that is more likely to prove sour when it stands up as the front runner, which is where my critique was focused.

Brushing aside the matter of higher optimization and tactics, the baseline functionality was exceptional from the start at PHB where the strike+rider you granted was on par with encounter powers.

I’m simply advocating that lazylords not start with such a high baseline relative to other facets of the class and other classes that serve similar functions. Flex OPfu and make an amazing one? Sure. But have an above average turn passer as what new players first see and comprehend before they get to the intricacies of its more limited resources? That is what I am cautioning against.

Waazraath

2021-01-21, 03:41 PM

That makes to me no sense, since spells like that have been available to PCs since the game was first invented. The psionicist was an add-on, and as the AD&D 2e treatment of it expressed quite nicely - Do we need a third system of magic? No. - situation still fits. That said, I would like the option to have psionics folded in so that it fits the general structure of the game so far.

I don't really care that these spells were available 50 or something years ago. That's a long time. For me its pretty obvious that if you want psionics, it is better if it has its own niche. 3.5 did it quite nice, with a focus on mind conctrol, telekinis, telepathy, the manipulation of time, ectoplasm... addint a distinctive esthetic, it really was something different. If you don't want it to be something different, it's redundant. The most boring psionics in 3.5 were 'psionic dispel magic', 'psionic invisibility', etc - just the spell with 'psionic' written before it. If you don't want an extra (third? not second? but nvm) system of magic, fine, but if it is there, it

No thanks. This can be done via spell selection already. No. But we had this type of discussion already once, here: https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24484931&postcount=19 Most relevant part of my argument there was: So no, I don't want more specializations, my problem is that 'specialization' has very little impact. Both the enchanter and necromancer and evoker all will know invisibility, counterspell, and polymorph (defining spells for illusion, abujuration and transmutation schools). The subclass offers some minor abilities, and aren't defining. This is maybe even worse for the classes that only know a few spells, because with very few spells known, few players choose to pick that flavorfull level 3 spell that goes well with the theme if that means they don't get to known Fireball or Fly.

To eleborate: there is in 5e hardly any incentive for casters than to do anything then spread your spells to cover as much options as possible. You can make a 'fire mage' but it'll be not much better than any other caster who knows a few fire spells, and when needed, the fire mage can just as well fly, dominate somebody, cast a cone of cold, or animate some skeletons. For wizards, with all their spells known and no longer opposing schools, there isn't any options not to know as much different spells as possible. This damages diversity.

We already have wild shape for druids. For me: inadequate, and bad design. The latter because stacking wildshape on a spellscaster class is double; double a compex ability (respectively spellcasting and wildshape) that can function to solve a lot of different situations. A wildshape-like ability would work much better on a non-spellcaster chasis imo. And the former, by making the combat form only a specific type of druid limits it a lot conceptually - druid is very niche. I'd rather see a broad shapechanger type that could also change in humanoids (for social interaction) and different combat forms, but without the casting.

I'd like to see it in a UA and a play test, but I see no reason not to make that a Fighter Sub Class. Agreed, but if the UA would be succesful, of course there would be a reason.

What, no cantrips? Yeah, they can keep cantrips, but no reason to replace those with low level invocations as well. As long as you have a simple caster, for people who want to play a caster without having to read half an extra book with rules (the 'spells' section).

Over specialization strikes me as the role for various NPCs. The PC in level 1-20 D&D progression needs to overcome a wide variety of challenges. Particularly in a small party, specialization can be a detriment. I miss the point what this has to do with the Binder class I think? It wasn't a specialized class at all, but a broad generalist that could change its party role on a daily basis, being competent in this role but not the best (and with weird unusual combinations at the later levels, giving it a special charm).

You can do that with sub classes, and the battlemaster is already a step in that direction. Agreed. I once wrote an entire thread about that: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?612915-Probably-unpopular-take-%96-we-have-large-portions-of-Bo9S-ToB-in-5e-already But 1) for quite some folks what we have isn't enough, and 2) you could go quite a bit more complex than battlemaster.

No and yes.
Wizard is core, dump sorcerer.
Ranger? Make it a fighter sub class again and I'm good with it.
And you could dump druid and make it a cleric sub class again without bothering me in the least. [/quote]

Or dump wizard, and replace it with a necromancer, beguiler (illusion/charm), and evoker. But these were just examples, I hope they just take the liberty to toy around a bit. Maybe ranger as rogues subclass, and get rid of the discussion 'if it should have spells'. Remove bards, or make them a rogue subclass. Etc.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-21, 03:59 PM

For me its pretty obvious that if you want psionics, it is better if it has its own niche. 3.5 did it quite nice, with a focus on mind conctrol, telekinis, telepathy, the manipulation of time, ectoplasm... addint a distinctive esthetic, it really was something different. Having a well built niche is right, I think. I didn't stay with 3.x long enough (stopped D&Ding for a while thanks to RL and raising a family and other things) to explore how that edition handled psionics. Have heard good things about the last splat they put out on that. Did 4e do a good job with psionics? Never 4e'd so have no point of reference.

Your specialization stance looks to me like we are not going to come to an accord on that.
This damages diversity. No, it doesn't. If a six person party you'll get a different benefit from spcializations than in a three person party. Now, for one-shots, I think your idea that specialization is beneficial has merit - and not a small amount.

For me: inadequate, and bad design.
For me, good design as it does not pigeon hole the player. You can specialize if you want to but you are not forced into it.

Yeah, they can keep cantrips, but no reason to replace those with low level invocations as well. As long as you have a simple caster, for people who want to play a caster without having to read half an extra book with rules (the 'spells' section). Hmm, I like where you are going with this thought. I have a campaign idea for next year that restricts classes available a great deal: only arcane caster is Warlock. Not sure if the group wants to do that, I need to work on my sales pitch.

Or dump wizard, and replace it with a necromancer, beguiler (illusion/charm), and evoker. You can make any of those by using the sub class structure. I think you might want to tweak how subclasses work, in that (I hope I am understanding you correctly) you'd like that choice made at second level be more impactful that it feels to you now. Did I catch your drift?

Waazraath

2021-01-21, 04:33 PM

Having a well built niche is right, I think. I didn't stay with 3.x long enough (stopped D&Ding for a while thanks to RL and raising a family and other things) to explore how that edition handled psionics. Have heard good things about the last splat they put out on that. Did 4e do a good job with psionics? Never 4e'd so have no point of reference.

Don't know... I skipped 4e completely. You for very good reasons, me for just not liking it enough compared to the earlier version :) As for 3.5, the first splat (expanded psionic handbook - XPH) was very good, though totally overpowered in some ways (not ulike how magic was overpowered in that edition); the second splat (complete psionic) was a bit of a mess; some heavily underpowered classes, some nonsencical fluff (psionic divine-like magic with psionic gods), stupidly overpowered combination for the earliest levels... meh. The good thing about XPH was that it had its own esthetic, in art work, materials, monsters, races, it was a really coherent package. But it had all the flaws the rest of the edition had.

No, it doesn't. Could you elaborate? Cause I when I look at casters in 5e, every caster tries to have x) a teleport spell x) a spell to fly with x) a spell to do area damage x) something to counter or dispel magic x) and then some. And since most categories have 1 or 2 obvious 'best' spells, a level 7 draconic sorcerer looks not that much different than simalar level wizard illusionist, land druid or GOO warlock (in spells known/prepared for the day). They all try to cover all bases, which leads to a very similiar spell selection in practice.

If a six person party you'll get a different benefit from spcializations than in a three person party. Now, for one-shots, I think your idea that specialization is beneficial has merit - and not a small amount. I don't follow you here I think.

For me, good design as it does not pigeon hole the player. You can specialize if you want to but you are not forced into it. But this pigeon holing is exactly my problem when shapeshifting is tied exclusively to the moon druid. I can't play a Beorn, or a warrior decended from lycantrope, or a rogue scoundrel using his shapechanging to avoid traps and deceive others. I'm tied to this full caster relying on 'magic from nature'. I do think there is room for a 'generalist' caster - but in 5e, I feel almost every caster is a generalist caster, and specializing in something doesn't make you much better than any other random caster with a few spells in that direction.

Hmm, I like where you are going with this thought. I have a campaign idea for next year that restricts classes available a great deal: only arcane caster is Warlock. Not sure if the group wants to do that, I need to work on my sales pitch. For me, seems like a cool idea. I experimented with much more restricted schools. In (I think) early 3e ran a campaign where only 1 specific (and very secluded) race had access to necromancy and illusion. Pick that race, and you only know 2 schools of magic (nothing else), but the rest of the campaignworld didn't have them, and knew little about them. It was blast fun.

You can make any of those by using the sub class structure. I think you might want to tweak how subclasses work, in that (I hope I am understanding you correctly) you'd like that choice made at second level be more impactful that it feels to you now. Did I catch your drift? Yes, you can, but I think 5e did a bad job in them. You understand me correctly, but if I had my way, subclasses (in this case for wizard) wouldn't be chosen at level 2 but at level 1, would include a number of opposed schools, and its subclass abilities were much stronger in advancing the specialized school. So yes, but taken much further, and at that point I wonder if you not might just as well say farewell to the wizard and replace it with beguiler etc;

carrdrivesyou

2021-01-21, 04:36 PM

Honestly, I would be super hyped about an aura class similar to the marshal or dragon shaman from 3.5 They don't give extra dice and are decent in melee, but passively help by just being around. Also, bring psionics into the fold with a PHB base class. kill the stigma around it, and have it as a separate type of caster, akin to a strange wizard.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-21, 05:06 PM

As for 3.5, the first splat (expanded psionic handbook - XPH) was very good, though totally overpowered in some ways (not ulike how magic was overpowered in that edition); the second splat (complete psionic) was a bit of a mess; some heavily underpowered classes, some nonsencical fluff (psionic divine-like magic with psionic gods), stupidly overpowered combination for the earliest levels... meh. The good thing about XPH was that it had its own esthetic, in art work, materials, monsters, races, it was a really coherent package. But it had all the flaws the rest of the edition had. Thanks.

Could you elaborate? For one thing, magic items are a thing. One can fill in the fly feature with a magic item, for example. (Broom of Flying for the win). For another, in Tier 3 somewhat and in Tier 4 for sure, both teleporting and interplanar travel seem to become necessary for the kind of adventure that being at that level stipulates. What I think is wrong is that the limitation on sorcerer spells went a bit too far, not that every class looks the same.
Cause I when I look at casters in 5e, every caster tries to have x) a teleport spell x) a spell to fly with x) a spell to do area damage x) something to counter or dispel magic x) and then some. and

They all try to cover all bases, which leads to a very similiar spell selection in practice. And every cleric has some healing spells. So?

I am not sure if you are looking at how people play and what you see in optimized build ideas. This discussion takes me to where wizards are, to me, the arcane caster without peer. Their objective is to get as many different spells into the book as they can so that, for a given adventure, they can help that party. Over their career they'l be faced with different demands. Not all adventures need the same approach

And that's the thing. Helping the party is the whole point, since this game isn't built conceptually as a solo adventure.

I don't follow you here I think. Your party, if there are three total PCs, pays a price in mission capability if you over specialize, whereas if the party has 6 PCs, a PC's decision to specialize may not have the same impact since there are five, not two, other PCs' to take up the slack/fill the gaps thanks to someone specializing. That's what was behind that point.

But this pigeon holing is exactly my problem when shapeshifting is tied exclusively to the moon druid. I can't play a Beorn, or a warrior decended from lycantrope, or a rogue scoundrel using his shapechanging to avoid traps and deceive others. I think Beast Barbarian had the potential to remedy some of that. Maybe they didn't go far enough.

I'm tied to this full caster relying on 'magic from nature'. I do think there is room for a 'generalist' caster - but in 5e, I feel almost every caster is a generalist caster, and specializing in something doesn't make you much better than any other random caster with a few spells in that direction.
OK, this may be a matter of taste.

Pick that race, and you only know 2 schools of magic (nothing else), but the rest of the campaignworld didn't have them, and knew little about them. It was blast fun. Interesting idea, glad the campaign worked out. :smallsmile:

Yes, you can, but I think 5e did a bad job in them. You understand me correctly, but if I had my way, subclasses (in this case for wizard) wouldn't be chosen at level 2 but at level 1, would include a number of opposed schools, and its subclass abilities were much stronger in advancing the specialized school. The game wasn't built for optimizers, I don't think, and for whatever reasons they staggered the "you are a full up round" decision point for the classes - cleric and sorcerer at 1, wizard and druid at 2, Rogue and Fighter and Warlock at 3, but Warlock at 1 with patron ... with an idea that beginning players needed fewer choices in the beginning, not more (while we veterans are happy with more choices earlier ... )

Me, I wish all of the archetypes/sub classes came on line at level 2. For consistency. As to restricting schools: I never liked that. Glad it's not in this edition. A matter of taste, to be sure.

GooeyChewie

2021-01-21, 05:06 PM

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-21, 05:10 PM

Charisma: Bard, Sorcerer
Also not much change, but an OoTS inspired Bard subclass would use finesse for Cha. If you went Bard, Paladin, I'd buy what you are selling here. I like your thematic organization there. If you have warlock and wizard you do not need sorcerer. (Rant curtailed)

noob

2021-01-21, 05:21 PM

GooeyChewie

2021-01-21, 06:12 PM

If you went Bard, Paladin, I'd buy what you are selling here. I like your thematic organization there. If you have warlock and wizard you do not need sorcerer. (Rant curtailed)
Acceptable change. :thumbsup:

I suggest barbarian and ranger and monk becoming fighter subclasses too.
cleric and druid could very well be merged.
sorcerer and wizard could be combined too.

Part of the point of setting the classes up this way is to make Fighter more mechanically distinct. They would not be proficient in Ranged weapons (but they could use Thrown weapons). Basically, it's designed in such a way that if you aren't casting spells you can tell what class a character is by their weapons/armor. Or more accurately, you could ask a newer player who isn't yet comfortable with spellcasting what kind of weapons/armor they'd like to use and determine what class best fits that concept.

Zevox

2021-01-21, 06:13 PM

I don't think we'll be seeing a new edition, even a 5.5, anytime soon, personally. Or at least, I hope not, as I certainly don't feel one is in any way necessary, and still want them to add more to 5E. But, if we were to add any class to core, there's no question that my pick would be the Psion. Nothing else is even a blip on my radar there. It's distinct, covers a flavor of fantasy character that no other class does, and is long-running popular addition to past editions. Seems like the obvious pick to me.

MrStabby

2021-01-21, 06:23 PM

There's a 3.5 class called the Archivist - not played it yet, but they look quite interesting. The broken part about them is that they're divine spellcasters, who with enough finagling can get access to any spell in the game. The less broken part and the part I find most interesting is a feature called Dark Knowledge, which allows them to make knowledge checks on creatures in order to gain buffs or use special abilities against them for the rest of the encounter. E.g, Tactics allows them to gain a bonus to attack rolls, and Puissance allows them to gain a bonus to saving throws against them, while Dread Secret allows you to dazzle, daze or even stun them for a round.

I feel like the Dark Knowledge bit would work well for what you're thinking of, if it's expanded to have more uses per day, and a wider array of features. The buffs were party wide too, so it really leans in to the flavour of finding out the weak point of the monster. 5e monsters typically aren't really built for having weak points, so this method of generic buffs and status effects would work well for representing the concept of fighting tactically. The Monster Slayer Ranger subclass is an alternative example of loosely what you're looking for, on a half-caster chassis.

Woah... I looked this up. This is... perfect.

From the fluff to the abilities to the skills... all just right. Even the spells - the ability to aquire new non-cleric divine spells from other lists. It is exactly what I want to play. Now I have a name for what is missing.

Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

Interestingly enough I homebrewed a class I called an Archivist, but it was much more of a divine Artificer type character that collected and created blessed relics.

Dienekes

2021-01-21, 06:39 PM

If I were making 6e, I would have 12 classes, two for each of the six ability scores. Finesse weapons do not default to allowing Dex; instead certain classes/subclasses will allow alternate ability scores to be used.

Strength: Fighter, Barbarian
Fighter for armored, barbarian for armorless. Paladin would go back to being a Fighter subclass. Barbarian would not necessarily need to go 2H.

Dexterity: Rogue, Ranger
Rogue for melee, with an ability to use finesse for Dex. Ranger for ranged combat. Ranger spellcasting comes from a subclass, not the base class.

Constitution: Monk, Warlock
Monks would still be MAD; their subclasses would determine which ability score is their secondary score. Warlocks trade their life-force for magic, offsetting their higher hit points.

Intelligence: Warlord, Wizard
Warlord would focus on fighting smart, using finesse for Int and manipulating the battle through abilities. Wizards wouldn't change much.

Wisdom: Cleric, Druid
Not much change for these class concepts.

Charisma: Bard, Sorcerer
Also not much change, but an OoTS inspired Bard subclass would use finesse for Cha.

Hmm, interesting idea for a format. Though personally, I would change things a bit to make a mundane/magical split

Strength: Fighter, Paladin.
Fighter absorbs Barbarian becomes the heavy hitter. Paladin is like we expect Paladins to be, they also hit things and wear heavy armor, but they get magical boosts.

Dexterity: Rogue, Warmage/Swordsage
Rogue is pretty much unchanged. Warmage I see as your usual Dex Gishes.

Constitution: Ranger, Warlock
I like your take on Warlocks. I'd put Rangers in this position, because wild man who doesn't let up is kind of what Rangers are and gives them the flexibility to go range or not.

Intelligence: Warlord, Wizard
You got this one down.

Wisdom: Monk, Cleric
Cleric and Druids seem far too similar. Wisdom vaguely spiritual magic users and all. Druids can easily be a Cleric subclass. Meanwhile Monks being all ascetic and wise is kinda their shtick.

Charisma: Noble, Bard
Noble/Leader/Aristocrat/Charmer whatever name. I'm thinking a mundane control/buffer class to compare it to the magical bard. Or, make Bards mundane boosters and have Sorcerer being your magical charisma class. Personally, I prefer Noble/Bard because Bard is just a more interesting and unique class than Sorcerer's just a wizard but not.

Luccan

2021-01-21, 11:08 PM

I think it would be easier on everyone if the psionics of an edition were packaged with core. Throw it in the DMG as an optional rule if you're worried about players assuming it's default (btw, many or perhaps most 1st party D&D settings have psionics somewhere, it's not just in Dark Sun). If I were reducing the number of classes, I'd argue the Warlock concept doesn't need its own special class. Mechanically, the invocations as ala carte, at-will powers make sense for the Sorcerer if we want to keep them. Much as it pains me to say, Bard doesn't need to be its own class either. Look at it now: Jack-of-all-trades whose subclasses are just about leaning in to one of the things it can do. Other than the full casting progression, it could totally be a Rogue subclass.

Edit: Also, the only reason Artificer doesn't fit some settings is that it gets a bunch of Magipunk stuffed into it. Sand that stuff off (Oh your Battle Smith has a stone golem, not a magic robot) and it's just a magic craftsmen. Perfectly reasonable core class.

jas61292

2021-01-22, 12:18 AM

So the interesting thing for me with the question in the thread title is that my answer would be very different depending on which we are talking about: 5.5 or 6.0.

If we are talking a 5.5, then presumably we are working on a base that heavily resembles 5e, and the existing classes would all remain relatively similar. So if I was picking something new to add to core, it would probably be some kind of non-magical support class. That could be a warlord, but I think I would personally love something with a less martial feel, that could compare to a spell caster in social and exploration situations.

However, if we are talking 6.0, we are looking at an entirely new system, and if I had my way, things would be very different than they are now. Specifically, spellcasting classes would be totally torn apart. I think one of the biggest things I would love to change would be to have most casters be more specialized and not have the "do everything" generalist. And simply by forcing the spellcasters to be more specialized, I think it allows the classic non-magical classes to feel more equal without needing to add any new ones. So really, I guess my "new" class for 6.0 would be something like an Enchanter or Beguiler or Necromancer or whatever specialist caster you want. But it would be new because Wizard (and possibly Sorcerer) would be gone, and the new classes draw from its remnants.

Justin Sane

2021-01-22, 01:06 AM

First, a version of the Warlord that allows for the Dragon Shaman as a subclass.

Second, the Swordmage. Bonus points if the class abilities wind up not being actual spells, so there's enough conceptual space left over for a Duskblade subclass.

Third, everyone's favourite at-will "spell"caster, the Psion.

Kane0

2021-01-22, 01:26 AM

anthon

2021-01-22, 02:37 AM

Enchanter, but maybe not called that... More like enchanting from elder scrolls than d&d.

Imagine a character with a set of wands, each holding a different enchantment to cast various spells, but without spell slots. Instead, each item has a charge system (as is common today), but you can recharge them with energy from the souls of those you destroy. You have proficiency with enchanter tools, that include soul gems to hold charges and apply to your items. You make your own enchanted items with these soul gems, determining their strength (equivalent spell slot level) by the CR of the creature's soul you use to make them.

It would be a lot like an artificer with infusions to make these magical trinkets, but each level you gain a known enchantment that follows the full caster spell level progression.

Some class abilities might be siphoning charges between items, right off enemies mid-fight, and enchanting "constant" effects on worn items (+1 ac, resistance to an element, etc).

i agree PLAYER based CORE RULES for PLAYERS making magic items should be right there in the rule books. In AD&D we had Enchant an Item, Enchanted Weapon, and Permanency, right in the PHB, plus notes in the classes on when they got to make potions, scrolls, and holy water, so the notion of a magic item creation class was, at least for a few editions, part of the CORE rules (wizards and clerics)

Millstone85

2021-01-22, 06:08 AM

One class that fights, one that has skills and one that has magic.

Then one class that is a fighting/skill blend, one that is a skill/magic blend and one a fighting/magic blend.AKA the Triforce:

fighter

ranger

cleric

rogue

bard

wizard

Though I would expand it:

fighter

warlord

cleric

ranger

artificer

hexblade

rogue

monk

bard

wizard

ezekielraiden

2021-01-22, 06:43 AM

At what point have I directly classified all warlords as being lazy?
Honestly, if all you took out of that was the single sentence where I weakly implied that's what you were saying, I'm pretty frustrated that you got so little out of what I said. But, fine. You aren't saying that. But I absolutely think you're blowing a problem out of proportion. Further, I would be extremely shocked if you haven't seen the trend of anyone who wants to crap on Warlords immediately leaping to "but lazylord is the WORST THING EVER." To very nearly say exactly the same things, without (initially) stating that you're merely cautioning against a potential pitfall rather than decrying the class as a whole, does little to make me feel that my response was unjustified.

Shared point on the RP concepts, however again note it is an RP concept driving the choice and not a matter of optimization. I will note it is a niche pairing of concept and implementation that is more likely to prove sour when it stands up as the front runner, which is where my critique was focused.
Except that it's not the front-runner. Choosing to be a purely lazy Warlord is worse than choosing to have moderately competent personal damage. Exclusive specialization in attack-granting has far too many weaknesses and situations where it's not actually capable of helping out--and, importantly, if all you ever do is grant others attacks, you're presuming a lot about what your fellow players are going to play. That's why I said what I said; the "lazy" playstyle is always put front and center, as though it is the most important, most powerful, most perfect Warlord and nobody plays anything else. Even if you didn't say that, the excessive attention paid to a niche playstyle that makes a lot of (often false!) presumptions and sacrifices is, simply, silly.

Brushing aside the matter of higher optimization and tactics, the baseline functionality was exceptional from the start at PHB where the strike+rider you granted was on par with encounter powers.
I'm gonna need actual numbers on that one. That doesn't reflect my experience with the class in play, nor my experience discussing it with other players. Commander's Strike is literally just an ally's MBA plus your Intelligence modifier. That's not at all bad, but unless you've got allies optimizing their MBAs, it's not "on par with encounter powers."

Morty

2021-01-22, 07:12 AM

Hmm.

One class that fights, one that has skills and one that has magic.

Then one class that is a fighting/skill blend, one that is a skill/magic blend and one a fighting/magic blend.

So six classes. Deepen the subclass concept to flesh out all the different flavors. Hopefully that will finally put a nail in the ‘rangers shouldnt be their own class’ argument.

This is brought up a lot, but it has never worked and is not likely to. There are two major problems with it.

1) "Fighting" skills and "other" skills is an utterly arbitrary distinction. Unless we want "fighting" characters to be completely inept at anything except hitting things repeatedly, they'll need skills too. And in a game like D&D, you're not going to play someone who has a wide range of skills but can't do anything in a fight. So what's the line between a fighting character, a skilled character and a mixed character?

2) Magic can cover everything in the two other categories or overshadow them and then some. So it's not really useful as a category, because a magic-using character is going to have to be defined further anyway. Besides, magic-using characters being inept at everything that doesn't involve magic isn't something we want either.

Eldan

2021-01-22, 07:21 AM

Seconding Binder. That class came far too late in 3.5, it should have a lot more support. I'd love to see it in core. With subclasses, too. Vestige Binder, Spirit Binder, Divine binder...

Amnestic

2021-01-22, 07:31 AM

Seconding Binder. That class came far too late in 3.5, it should have a lot more support. I'd love to see it in core. With subclasses, too. Vestige Binder, Spirit Binder, Divine binder...

I do like Binder, I do want it in current+future editions, but I'm not sure it should be core.

The reason being that it operates on an entirely separate pretty extensive subsystem. Only warlock with its invocations really breaks the mold for subsystems and invocations are generally pretty simple and straightforward. A full set of vestiges with all its binding rules may be too much to put in the PHB, if only because of pages required. Most classes in the PHB average around ~5 pages, some more, some less, but a lot of their details can be shunted off to the Spell List section in the back, which works fine because it crosses over for a bunch of classes. Binder's standalone, and could take potentially dozens of pages all on its own for fully detailed vestiges.

Put another way, I fear that if they made Binder core they'd end up having to water it down to not bloat page length on a single class, and I'd rather have a non-core fully realised binder than a watered down core version.

Aett_Thorn

2021-01-22, 08:54 AM

I know that this would be asking for a LOT, but I'd prefer that they throw out all of the classes and start from scratch to give us something new.

D&D I know was steeped in middle ages Europe-type settings, and the class design kind of reflected that. But I wouldn't mind a system that is a bit broader, and allows for a wider range of themes.

Take the Druid, for example. It's pretty focused on northern European tropes of what they are. And while you can certainly fluff them as being other things, most of the literature and art for the editions paints them as fitting this stereotype. But imagine if we created more of a "Shaman" base class. Druid could certainly be a subclass of that, but wouldn't need to be, even if they fit the same basic roles. You could have a primal shaman that gets wildshape, but you could also have subclasses that fit more of the shaman tropes of different regions, such as a northern Native American theme (such as a weather manipulator), an African shaman trope (such as a trickster shaman), and a South/Central American trope (such as a subclass focused on dealing with the souls of friends and allies).

Similarly, the Rogue is based highly on the image we have of a middle-ages European city-dwelling rapscallion. But what if we divorced the concepts of sneaking and being good at dealing with traps from the base class? Certainly, that could be one subclass (and in my perfect world, more classes would have options that are good at dealing with traps to make up for the loss of a whole class that is supposed to deal with them), but others could really be focused on being a socialite rogue (great at pulling off in-combat bluffs and deceptions), a seafaring rogue (great at knots and maneuverability), and a Ranger (great at tracking and nature skills, and setting traps of their own).

Basically, get rid of the classes as we have them now that are largely a legacy of previous versions. Start over. Create broader themes of character classes that don't box you in as much. And allow roles to be better spread across different classes. I know it's a bit heady, and might not really work, but I think it would be great.

Millstone85

2021-01-22, 09:02 AM

One class that fights, one that has skills and one that has magic.
This is brought up a lot, but it has never worked and is not likely to.I will admit that I often imagine an all-gish D&D (Or would it still be D&D?) where every adventurer chooses a martial class, a magic class and a profession, like an archer/elementalist/tracker or a shielder/vitalist/apothecary.

Catullus64

2021-01-22, 09:12 AM

Basically, get rid of the classes as we have them now that are largely a legacy of previous versions. Start over. Create broader themes of character classes that don't box you in as much. And allow roles to be better spread across different classes. I know it's a bit heady, and might not really work, but I think it would be great.

I think that a problem with this approach (and similar throw-it-all-out-and-start-over approaches that others have mentioned) is that a sense legacy is pretty important to this game. Guessing here, but I think that even with greater pop cultural awareness of the game, most people get introduced to Dungeons & Dragons by joining the games of more experienced friends and family. It's the balancing act that D&D has been attempting for a long time now: if an edition is too traditionalist it may hedge out new players, but if it is too radical a departure it will alienate the longtime players who are still the greatest asset the game has for bringing in new ones. That sense of participating in a tradition is what I think makes this silly hobby of ours just a tiny bit more meaningful than so much other contemporary popular culture. Sacred cows, like classes, have an important role to play, as long as you make sure they don't make up the whole herd.

TigerT20

2021-01-22, 09:13 AM

Hmm.

One class that fights, one that has skills and one that has magic.

Then one class that is a fighting/skill blend, one that is a skill/magic blend and one a fighting/magic blend.

So six classes. Deepen the subclass concept to flesh out all the different flavors. Hopefully that will finally put a nail in the ‘rangers shouldnt be their own class’ argument.

Ah! So we have a class that's only useful in combat, one that's only useful in social and exploration encounters and one that's useful in all three. I don't see how this could be unbalanced or cause resentment whatsoever. After all, it's not like it's taking something that's already widely complained about and then turning it up to 11.

Edit: I do also find it somewhat ironic that there's a large sentiment in this thread to remove the ranger, but also a not-insignificant number who wish for a class that uses their knowledge of their foes to bring them down. As if this isn't exactly what the ranger is supposed to be - The Witcher is brought up in almost every single discussion about the ranger, and it's being used here to describe this "new" class.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-22, 09:27 AM

Like this

AKA the Triforce:

fighter

ranger

cleric

rogue

bard

wizard

Except dump bard and add Paladin unless paladin goes back to being a sub class of fighter.
Not this.

fighter

warlord

cleric

ranger

artificer

hexblade

rogue

monk

bard

wizard

Beginning of clutter.

Dienekes

2021-01-22, 09:49 AM

Like this
Except dump bard and add Paladin unless paladin goes back to being a sub class of fighter.
Not this.
Beginning of clutter.

Why would Paladin be the halfway point between skills and magic?

Though I would reiterate TigerT20s concern with such a system.

Being good at fighting often is shorthand for being good at hitting things and taking hits and literally nothing else.
Being good at skills is most of the ways things are handled out of combat, but are also almost always tied with additional abilities that make them do something in combat often damage, which makes the good at fighting guy only actually better than people at taking hits.
Being good at magic means they can do whatever the often extensive list of magical spells allow them to do. Many of which allows them to be excellent in combat or get around issues that would otherwise be handled with skills.

Honestly, I would gladly abandon the notion that these three categories are in any way equal to each other. And break down each class (or class/subclass combination) based on two categories: 1) Purpose in combat. 2) Purpose out of combat. And make certain the categories are roughly distinct and equal.

Xervous

2021-01-22, 09:51 AM

Would it be better to look at power sources than class concepts first? Fighter and co. lapse into irrelevance because of their narrow power source while other class concepts aren’t inherently limited.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-22, 09:53 AM

Why would Paladin be the halfway point between skills and magic? Yeah, I see your point; would not the bard then be a half caster, not a full caster?

Arkhios

2021-01-22, 09:57 AM

Yeah, I see your point; would not the bard then be a half caster, not a full caster?

Imho, bard should've been half caster, and looking back at 3.5, Paladin would've made more sense as a 1/3-caster.

Morty

2021-01-22, 10:03 AM

I will admit that I often imagine an all-gish D&D (Or would it still be D&D?) where every adventurer chooses a martial class, a magic class and a profession, like an archer/elementalist/tracker or a shielder/vitalist/apothecary.

I think it'd be an entirely valid thing to say that adventurers such as D&D portrays them need to be proficient in all these fields. But in practice it would limit available characters a fair bit. And once again the fact remains that magic can apply to every aspect of the game in some way. Which, granted, is probably something that could stand to be cut down on severely.

Bosh

2021-01-22, 10:44 AM

IMO the Bard is to spellcasters what the Rogue is to martial.
Both are "what if we took the fighter/wizard and give them more skills and RP-related abilities".
In the same way that you can "emulate" a bard through the other spellcasting classes by making a Bard-like spell selection, you can "emulate" the Rogue by making a Dex-based Fighter.

If anything, the Bard stand out to me much more than the Sorcerer does, and if I had to choose, I'd consider Sorcerer to be the one slowly running out of the inertia it has from tradition.

In other words, you're suggesting to only keep one class per ability score (ignoring constitution), and to reinforce how different ability score for spellcaster mean different ways of doing magic (Int -> Vancian, etc).

Yes, one class for each ability score except for con. Actually that came about by accident and I noticed it after I posted and thought it was a good thing to keep.

Have subclasses be powerful enough that they feel important and not a tacked on bit on the side. Also a lot of MADness would be added via the various sub-classes with different ones keying off various ability scores aside from the main ones of each class.

But what I do care about more than the exact class line up is having the different kinds of casting be less samey. I understand why people didn't like having EVERYONE be pure Vancian in TSR D&D but having EVERYONE except warlocks be a somewhat tweaked version of how 3.5ed sorcerers cast is just as aggravating. Pure Vancian is a really important part of a D&D wizard for me and it'd make me very happy if just one class was good old fashioned Vancian in 6e.

Amechra

2021-01-22, 11:53 AM

I think it'd be an entirely valid thing to say that adventurers such as D&D portrays them need to be proficient in all these fields. But in practice it would limit available characters a fair bit. And once again the fact remains that magic can apply to every aspect of the game in some way. Which, granted, is probably something that could stand to be cut down on severely.

I mean, limiting the range of viable characters is the point of class-based systems.

Also, since you keep bringing up your disappointment with the fight/skill/spell triad, what would you build the classes around?

---

Personally, I kinda like the idea of having "mundane" classes:

- Soldier
- Sneak
- Speaker
- Scholar

Those four classes would give you a pretty solid base for a game that keeps the "three pillars" design (Soldier is going to be good at fighting, Sneak and Scholar are going to be good at different aspects of exploration, and Speaker and Scholar are going to be good at different aspects of social, though each class will dip its toes into the rest of the game). And then you'd have shared subclasses for stuff like "you live in the woods and like nature" or "you bother the gods enough that they give you stuff", which would give you spellcasting or maneuvers or whatever.

carnomancy

2021-01-22, 11:56 AM

Definitively want a Psion in the 6th ed PHB. It'll head off the problems 5th ed play tests had with the home brewers and anti-psionic people trying to influence the direction WoTC would work the class.

The Psion should have at least 5 subclass options covering the first 5 disciplines that appeared in 2nd edition (Telepathy, Psychometabolism, Psychokinsis, Clairsentience and Psychoportation). 3e's Metacreativity would be a welcome addition provided it makes the astral construct it's focal point. Ardent could also be worked into a new discipline. Plenty of room to expand. Psionics in core would also allow for subclass options for other character classes.

Artificers another good core class. We've got all these magic items sitting around in the world. Golems guard tombs and treasure. Magical traps are everywhere. Who makes them. Just saying the Wizard does all of it gives them too much power like they had in 3e. Artificer feels like it should be there.

If we need space to put new options in, then the Sorcerer can be placed on the chopping block. In 3e they were just wizards without spell books and more spells per day. Used the same spell list and everything. I also feel that they weaken the flavor of arcane casting by making it a possible inborn trait. I feel they struggled trying to provide subclass options for the sorcerer too, where the other casting classes seemed to expand more naturally. They also were part of the charisma caster glut and were like the 4th arcane caster in the 5e PHB.

In short; Bring in Psionics and Artificers and dump the sorcerer if need be.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-22, 12:00 PM

Artificers another good core class.
It's a sub class of wizard, all that's needful is to build it the same way that transmuter was built, or, maybe overhaul transmuter to improve its 'artificer' potential (which means a rescrub of the crafting rules in general)

Dragonsonthemap

2021-01-22, 12:19 PM

If I were to just pick one class on the basis of what I, personally, would like to be able to play, it'd be the non-armored-divine-caster that was mentioned here earlier. That's the single, D&D-functional archetype I'd like to play the most, and it takes work to finagle as things currently stand (currently building a Divine Soul/Celestial Patron Sorlock to kinda get there).

If it was based on what I think would serve the wider interests of the player base, it'd either be a Witcher-esque class or warlord in 5.5 (personally I'd prefer warlord, but I was one of 4e's five or six fans), but probably a psion in 6e, because I think that at this point psionics needs to be in there from the get-go to avoid becoming a problem yet again, and that if you initially try to just avoid doing psionics in D&D while keeping settings that have historically had it alive, you will still wind up with psionics that is a problem.

Morty

2021-01-22, 01:13 PM

I mean, limiting the range of viable characters is the point of class-based systems.

And this would limit them more than even D&D's existing list does, which is already considerable.

Also, since you keep bringing up your disappointment with the fight/skill/spell triad, what would you build the classes around?

Do they need to be based around anything in particular? I prefer to approach it from the perspective of having up to twelve slots to fill and then thinking about which concepts deserve to occupy one of them and which can be handled using subclasses or something else? How can we use them to cover all the things we think the system needs covering? I might not be the right person to ask, because I generally don't like D&D classes, for the exact reason that they're more trouble than they're worth. Any attempt at mechanical "classes" I'd make would need to begin from seriously loosening how much a class defines and restricts your character. But I do have a theoretical model:

- "Soldier", styled after the 4E fighter but without being inept when it comes to anything that's not breaking things.
- "Vanguard", for more aggressive and mobile warrior-types. Barbarians, monks, or just people who pick up a sharp implement or ranged weapon and prefer to be quick.
- "Tactician", for warrior-types who use tactics, the environment and their allies. Could I fit both rangers and warlords in this one? Hard to say unless I put it to work.
- "Rogue", that is to say the D&D rogue without the baggage of being the "skill" class. A canny opportunist class for thieves, burglars, assassins, etc. Not sure if such a class can exist without pigeon-holing it into being stealthy or making other classes feel like they can't sneak around properly.
- "Investigator", for brainy adventurers who rely on information and analysis. Could also be a generic grab-bag for Indiana Jones types. Might be redundant with some others.
- "Loremaster", for bards and scholars who don't cast spells as such. Mostly because I think that the idea of a character whose knowledge, music or rituals invoke magic without spells is a worthwhile one, but D&D bards as they exist are too narrow.
- "Sage", for people who acquire magic through study, regardless of its source.
- "Conduit", for people who get it from an external source - be they warlocks or priests.
- "Savant", for naturally-talented spellcasters, likewise.
- "Wilder", for beastmasters, shapeshifters and the more supernatural kinds of barbarian.
- "Paladin", doesn't really need explaining.

I've got one slot left, if I do stick to 12. Not sure how I'd fill it, if at all. As you've no doubt noticed, there is a distinct warrior/skill/magic theme nonetheless. But there are also classes that don't fit it and I don't think these are wrong as emergent categories - they're just bad places to start with and sure as heck don't work if we make them the only classes.

Telwar

2021-01-22, 01:25 PM

Heh. And this is why they keep going back to the same classes... nobody can agree on what they want.

Dragonsonthemap

2021-01-22, 01:58 PM

Heh. And this is why they keep going back to the same classes... nobody can agree on what they want.

On the one hand, you're not entirely wrong, but on the other hand, going through this you can find some pretty strong trends (such as warlord and psion) that there's clearly a lot of demand for.

Dienekes

2021-01-22, 02:15 PM

I'd be interested in trying to divide classes into roles both in and out of combat.

So, for example.

Meathead: In combat they are Tanks and Damage. Through the subclasses you can choose to be like a Knight giving you Face abilities. Or Ruffian giving you Stealth abilities.
Pompous Mage: In combat focus on Damage and Control. The Illusionist gives Stealth. The Archivist gives Researcher.
Holier Than Thou: In combat they Support and Control. The Priest subclass makes them the Face. While the Monastic would make them Researchers.
Deranged Survivalist: In combat they Damage and Support. Scout subclass could make them the Stealth. Witcher Knock Off could get them Researcher

And you wouldn't even need to divide it strictly by 2 combat 1 non-combat. Take the
Untrustworthy Backstabber: All of them do Stealth, and in combat they do Damage. But from their subclasses they can choose to be Thugs to make them tanks, Tricksters to make them Control, or whatever else.

Mix and match a bit to whatever ends up working to make the classes feel fully developed. So long as the result ends with the players all getting roughly equal limelight and effectiveness in and out of combat throughout the gameplay.

Luccan

2021-01-22, 02:16 PM

On the one hand, you're not entirely wrong, but on the other hand, going through this you can find some pretty strong trends (such as warlord and psion) that there's clearly a lot of demand for.

I didn't play 4e, but it seems Warlord was the best received class for the edition (I'm actually not sure if there were other new classes or not...) so it really is surprising they have done literally nothing to bring it back for 5e. I'd argue Battlemaster maneuvers and Banneret only kind of count, since it seems they don't hit on a lot of the class fantasy.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-01-22, 02:18 PM

However, if we are talking 6.0, we are looking at an entirely new system, and if I had my way, things would be very different than they are now. Specifically, spellcasting classes would be totally torn apart. I think one of the biggest things I would love to change would be to have most casters be more specialized and not have the "do everything" generalist. And simply by forcing the spellcasters to be more specialized, I think it allows the classic non-magical classes to feel more equal without needing to add any new ones. So really, I guess my "new" class for 6.0 would be something like an Enchanter or Beguiler or Necromancer or whatever specialist caster you want. But it would be new because Wizard (and possibly Sorcerer) would be gone, and the new classes draw from its remnants.

I agree with this. Either break apart the "generalist" caster classes entirely or enforce thematics in spell choice.

I'd possibly solve it by shattering the "class spell list" concept. Instead, themes might have spell lists, and classes allow access to particular themes. So you might (as a cleric) have the theme "Holy Warrior" and "Purifier", granting you access to martial-enhancing and sunlight/purification-themed spells. A different cleric might have "Healer" and "Gardener", granting them the specialized healing/restoration spells and spells involving plants. Or a wizard might have "Pyromancer" and "Summoner", granting them fire and summoning spells. No flight, no opening locks, etc. While another wizard might have "Necromancer" and "Witch", giving them undead-control and spooky curses. And these would be from across the current spell lists. But wizards couldn't choose "Healer" or "Holy Warrior" and clerics of undead-hating gods can't take "Necromancer".

You're a cleric of the undead-hating sun god? Your spell choices should reflect that (at a minimum). Why is your god granting you animate dead? Why do all wizards basically have the same spell loadouts? "I'm a pyromancer sorcerer, which is why I have...checks...2 fire spells. The rest are all the meta spells like haste, hold person, etc."

samcifer

2021-01-22, 02:22 PM

I'd like to see a proper Swordmage class as well as the Shaman class and maybe the Avenger class.

MoiMagnus

2021-01-22, 02:26 PM

I mean, limiting the range of viable characters is the point of class-based systems.

I disagree. For me this is the drawback of class-based systems. IMO the main points are
(1) to inspire players by showing them a variety of options (that they might not have though about) while presenting them with simple choices one at a time to not overwhelm them
(2) to give a feeling of progression toward a destination (the high level of a class)
(3) to encourage high level of specialisation of the PCs [making them rely on teamwork] rather than jack-of-all-trade
(4) to provide a framework useful to balance the game

Luccan

2021-01-22, 02:36 PM

I agree with this. Either break apart the "generalist" caster classes entirely or enforce thematics in spell choice.

I'd possibly solve it by shattering the "class spell list" concept. Instead, themes might have spell lists, and classes allow access to particular themes. So you might (as a cleric) have the theme "Holy Warrior" and "Purifier", granting you access to martial-enhancing and sunlight/purification-themed spells. A different cleric might have "Healer" and "Gardener", granting them the specialized healing/restoration spells and spells involving plants. Or a wizard might have "Pyromancer" and "Summoner", granting them fire and summoning spells. No flight, no opening locks, etc. While another wizard might have "Necromancer" and "Witch", giving them undead-control and spooky curses. And these would be from across the current spell lists. But wizards couldn't choose "Healer" or "Holy Warrior" and clerics of undead-hating gods can't take "Necromancer".

You're a cleric of the undead-hating sun god? Your spell choices should reflect that (at a minimum). Why is your god granting you animate dead? Why do all wizards basically have the same spell loadouts? "I'm a pyromancer sorcerer, which is why I have...checks...2 fire spells. The rest are all the meta spells like haste, hold person, etc."

They could do something closer to how spell schools used to work and borrow a little from the spheres or whatever of 2e's priests. I don't think WotC wants to get too restrictive, but making it matter that your Illusionist is an Illusionist and your Tempest Cleric worships a storm god beyond subclass/spell synergy could do most of this.

Dragonsonthemap

2021-01-22, 02:39 PM

I didn't play 4e, but it seems it was the best received class for the edition (I'm actually not sure if there were other new classes or not...) so it really is surprising they have done literally nothing to bring it back for 5e. I'd argue Battlemaster maneuvers and Banneret only kind of count, since it seems they don't hit on a lot of the class fantasy.
4e introduced several new(ish?) classes that I would have loved to see in 5e, which like warlord got sort-of nods in subclasses that aren't quite the same thing, included Avenger, which was more rogue-like than the Oath of Vengeance Paladin, Invoker, which was more strictly divine that the Divine Soul Sorcerer, and Warden, which had more of a shapechange theme than either the Oath of the Ancients Paladin or the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian. The transition from shaman to Circle of the Shepherd Druid went better.

Morty

2021-01-22, 02:46 PM

I disagree. For me this is the drawback of class-based systems. IMO the main points are
(1) to inspire players by showing them a variety of options (that they might not have though about) while presenting them with simple choices one at a time to not overwhelm them
(2) to give a feeling of progression toward a destination (the high level of a class)
(3) to encourage high level of specialisation of the PCs [making them rely on teamwork] rather than jack-of-all-trade
(4) to provide a framework useful to balance the game

Furthermore, as I always point out, there's many ways to do classes. D&D has a very specific approach, but it's not the only one by far. This also depends on what, precisely, we count as a class.

ezekielraiden

2021-01-22, 04:07 PM

I didn't play 4e, but it seems Warlord was the best received class for the edition (I'm actually not sure if there were other new classes or not...) so it really is surprising they have done literally nothing to bring it back for 5e. I'd argue Battlemaster maneuvers and Banneret only kind of count, since it seems they don't hit on a lot of the class fantasy.
As others noted, the Warlord was but one, though definitely the first and most popular (and most controversial). My two-line summaries of the main others.

Avenger: Ezio Auditore, but with a greatsword or battleaxe. Great defense in light armor. Divine heresy-hunters. Flavored as the "internal police" of each god's church.
Shaman: "I see dead spirit people." Very customizable (not versatile daily, but had builds for for almost any party). The most deeply spiritual Primal class.
Warden: Udyr, from LoL. Partial transformations embody nature's wrath and endurance. Very beefy, pretty versatile. Sort of midpoint between Barbarian and Druid narratively.
Invoker: Moses calling down the pillar of fire. The wrathful divine miracle-worker. Unique theme of being directly chosen by the gods, not by mortal churches.

As a related aside, I LOVED 4e's thematics for the Divine power source. Having Divine abilities meant you had been Invested: granted a small sliver of a deity's power permanently. A ritual can be conducted to take the power back, but it's not easily done and definitely CAN'T be done unilaterally by any deity. The gods no longer can just pull the plug on wayward worshippers; they have to be VERY careful who they grant power to, and they NEED people they can trust implicitly to take care of the times when they (or their churches) make a mistake and give power to the wrong people. Hence, the Avenger: a harrying, secretive, stealthy, but incredibly well-defended and lethal divine hunter of all things traitorous.

I mean, limiting the range of viable characters is the point of class-based systems.
That is not the point of class-based systems, unless you are trying to invert the definition of point-buy-based systems which is...not really very useful. Bit like saying the point of apples is to be hard, astringent, and solid while the point of oranges is to be sweet and juicy.

The point of class-based systems is to give strong, functional cores for thematic ideas. If a limited number of cores are offered, a consequence is that you limit the viable characters that can be played, but that's an unfortunate side effect, not an intentional feature. That would be like saying the point of PB systems is to eventually make every character the same by being good at everything.

A class-based supers game, for example, would almost certainly take cues from the Justice League, Teen Titans, Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-men, and so on. So there might be a Bastion class that uses barriers, a non-powered genius Gadgeteer, a Power-Armor class, a Flying Brick class, a Shapeshifter, etc. If a class isn't offered that covers (say) archery, that doesn't mean the intent was to LIMIT characters to only non-archery supers. It means that that core wasn't prioritized high enough for inclusion at that stage. It might get attention later, or support for it might arise in whatever customizability is present or added later, e.g. most archery supers have "trick" arrows to do special stuff with, so perhaps they make sense as a subset of the Gadgeteer class.

The benefit of class-based systems is that they're supposed to guarantee core competence. They may or may not prevent expanding outside of that core (3.x generally did prevent expanding outside your core unless you blended in others via MC or PrCs, while 4e supported such expansion through power choice, inherently giving everyone Paragon Paths, and diverse power choices to lean in various directions.) The detriment is that there's only so far you can go, even in systems that allow blending. The benefit of PB systems is that if the rules permit a thing at all, you can always build toward it. They may or may not make doing that thing useful or worthwhile, but they do let you DO it. And that's where the detriments of that approach come in: the lack of guaranteed baselines, the freedom to choose combinations that don't work, the eventual "if everyone has 800 build points, most people will pick up a lot of the same fundamentals."

Addressing some of the faults on either side usually means picking up some elements from the other. E.g. Werewolf: the Apocalypse is a point-buy game, but it mildly enforces class-like distinctions through characters having a Breed (whether you were born human, wolf, or werewolf), Tribe (your ethno-spiritual clan), and Auspice (your innate moon phase), each of which gives you certain base stats and normal access to only a restricted set of Gifts (magic or physical benefits that aren't raw stat values). You can still usually get things outside your innate options, but they're much more expensive, prohibitively so for most characters. This is a slight introduction of inherent, predefined competences into an otherwise purely point-buy system. D&D has used "non-weapon proficiencies," skill points, feats, kits, alternate class features, archetypes, multiclassing, and subclasses all with the goal of tweaking and customising core competencies to cover a wider variety of options: introducing a small (or not so small) amount of point-buy-like structure. Both shifts try to address the shortcomings without giving up on the heart of the fundamental approach.

4e introduced several new(ish?) classes that I would have loved to see in 5e, which like warlord got sort-of nods in subclasses that aren't quite the same thing, included Avenger, which was more rogue-like than the Oath of Vengeance Paladin, Invoker, which was more strictly divine that the Divine Soul Sorcerer, and Warden, which had more of a shapechange theme than either the Oath of the Ancients Paladin or the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian. The transition from shaman to Circle of the Shepherd Druid went better.
I had not considered Shepherd Druid as an analogue of the 4e Shaman. I'll have to check that out at some point.

Kane0

2021-01-22, 05:17 PM

As others noted, the Warlord was but one, though definitely the first and most popular (and most controversial). My two-line summaries of the main others.

Avenger: Ezio Auditore, but with a greatsword or battleaxe. Great defense in light armor. Divine heresy-hunters. Flavored as the "internal police" of each god's church.
Shaman: "I see dead spirit people." Very customizable (not versatile daily, but had builds for for almost any party). The most deeply spiritual Primal class.
Warden: Udyr, from LoL. Partial transformations embody nature's wrath and endurance. Very beefy, pretty versatile. Sort of midpoint between Barbarian and Druid narratively.
Invoker: Moses calling down the pillar of fire. The wrathful divine miracle-worker. Unique theme of being directly chosen by the gods, not by mortal churches.

Avenger I think blends with the Inquisitor concept, like a more skilled less meatshield counterpart to the paladin.

Shaman fits nicely into druid, hopefully woth druid being a subclass of a shaman-esque class rather than the other way around

Warden could be a ranger subclass that focuses more on casting ability and mild wildshaping

Invoker sounds like a divine soul sort of thing? I do like the idea of sorcerer being a base for this and being able to be very different depending on the source (completely changing spell list as well as subclass features).

Not saying these are all doable already, just that if we can play with the current class/subclass framework they are easy to fit in without adding more classes.

Sidenote: break wizard up to be more like specialist casters to make more room for these sorts of things. Not make wizard different classes but rather move the bulk of their spell list to subclasses.

Amechra

2021-01-22, 05:33 PM

To defend my "it's the point of a class-based system" comment (because I think people are taking it to mean that I don't like class systems or something):

Class systems inherently limit the range of characters you can express — I cannot sit down to play D&D and bring in a character who does not, at least partially, fall within one of the 12 classes the game has defined. And that's good, especially if your game aims for a specific genre like D&D does. As a consequence of the constraints that character creation put on what I can play, it's very difficult to build a character that isn't competent at at least one aspect of adventuring. This makes things easier to balance and allows stuff like CR to exist, since there's far less complexity for the developers to worry about.

Granted, I'm also of the opinion that 5e is not a purely class-based system once the multiclassing rules are on the table — 4e is actually closer to what I'd consider a "pure" class system, since a Fighter couldn't stop being a Fighter and become something else.

...

It comes down to your design goals, really. If you want to make a game where you can build anything, you'll want something with point-buy or Fate-style Aspects. If you want a game that reflects a specific genre and you want to make sure that people's characters will be able to fit the roles that the genre demands? A class system is a very appropriate framework.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-01-22, 05:45 PM

They could do something closer to how spell schools used to work and borrow a little from the spheres or whatever of 2e's priests. I don't think WotC wants to get too restrictive, but making it matter that your Illusionist is an Illusionist and your Tempest Cleric worships a storm god beyond subclass/spell synergy could do most of this.

I happen to strongly dislike putting any more mechanical weight on the spell schools (evocation, etc) without a serious rework that would slaughter whole herds of legacy beliefs. Because
a) they're really only valuable from a wizard point of view (thematically)--wizards are the ones all about categorizing and systematizing.
b) They're very very poor themes
c) they're nowhere near balanced as to spell distribution (hence why 2e's and 3e's specialist wizards were basically just a boon because you could trade out all the spells you didn't care about for more power in the powerful ones)
d) they can't be made either more thematic or more balanced without completely changing their identities.

Keep them as purely a wizard construct (ie wizards think about spells like this) and instead work at the thematic level.

My idea was more about tagging--each spell would have 1+ thematic tags. Each class would provide access to different tags, possibly in different ways (ie clerics get the "Healer" tag for free, but their other tags come from their domain, while wizards get to pick one tag from a broader list for their free spells and can scribe spells of other non-prohibited tags, etc). Your spell list would be the intersection of those tags: has (chosen tag) and doesn't have (prohibited tag).

Yes, it's way more complex and my first-pass design ended up with something like 30 tags, but I think it works. I use it for NPCs instead of class-based lists because it's more thematic and (more importantly) way more narrow.

Telwar

2021-01-22, 06:27 PM

Avenger I think blends with the Inquisitor concept, like a more skilled less meatshield counterpart to the paladin.

Yeah, it's somewhere between a monk/paladin/assassin. I LOVED my avenger, Cunnincula Peel, a 4'6" elf who was swinging a greataxe as tall as she was, using Wisdom as her attack stat (tbh, a really good model for using Wisdom to attack can be seen in, I kid you not, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer...seriously!). Oath of Vengeance paladin can sort of look like an Avenger, except for that whole pesky "heavy armor" thing, and being built off of Str/Cha rather than Dex/Wis. So you have to squint really, really hard.

If someone said, "Telwar, go forth and make me an Avenger in 5e," I'd probably build a monk subclass that got to treat heavy weapons as Finesse weapons, and maybe burn Ki points to give themselves advantage on attack rolls on a specific target, maybe for a turn or maybe as a Concentration thing. You'd probably have to severely nerf their Flurry of Blows, though.

Shaman fits nicely into druid, hopefully woth druid being a subclass of a shaman-esque class rather than the other way around

Warden could be a ranger subclass that focuses more on casting ability and mild wildshaping

Amusingly, Shaman and Warden were specifically pulled out of the 3e Druid class for 4e, to take the Tank-y and Heal-y aspects of the 3e Druid out, because it had SO MUCH capability baked in to begin with. The 4e Druid was more of a controller-type.

Order of the Shepherd is likely close enough for the 4e Shaman.

Warden accomplished it's schtick via shapeshifting (...into trees, rocks, big animals, storms, etc), so it really should be built off of a druid chassis, but not really with any of the subclasses I'm aware of. HOWEVER, I was never that fond of the warden back in the day, so I didn't pay much attention, and therefore, I could be AMAZINGLY wrong.

Invoker sounds like a divine soul sort of thing? I do like the idea of sorcerer being a base for this and being able to be very different depending on the source (completely changing spell list as well as subclass features).

It's basically a divine wizard, literally the Moses on the Mountain, Gandalf, etc. It's still someone who's doing stuff because they're Wise, not Charismatic. This was focused on AOE, summoning, and doing weird things to people. One of my never-got-to-play concepts was a dwarf angel-summoner invoker, focused on stacking defenses so his summonses were as tough as possible. One could make one fairly quickly via giving the cleric the wizard spell list, rather than the cleric spell list.

anthon

2021-01-22, 06:30 PM

psion and artificer need to be core. I'm not sure any others need to be. maybe warlord/marshal?

I second this trinity.

Warlord is a Class that is sort of like a bard-fighter hybrid, but could probably tap into those old armies and followers tables old warrior classes used to get (barbarian, fighter, etc.) to model a solid group buff class with some minions to apply those buffs to.

Artificer is an idea about constructing objects and using them in play. Whether you have an engineer, a tinker gnome, or some clockwork contraption maker from Al Qadim, this theme needs to at least have its foot in the door, with future contraptions/menu options appearing in later books.

I'm an unabashedly huge fan of psionics and they were in my Players Handbook at the back, but I'd prefer they were a character class in the front, and maybe stick wild talents in the back, in a feats menu section, or in the same place you stick social class tables or backgrounds. Background/Kits like Gypsy, Fortune Teller, Gifted, etc.

You could also have a background that specializes in Class A pretending to be Class B:
Wizard Pretending to be Priest
Psychic Pretending to be Wizard
Druid Pretending to be Inquisitor
Necromancer Pretending to be Paladin

Which are like spy and disguise builds, but specialized in cross over power sets where the public adores/accepts one Power/Magic as "the one true Source" and rejects violently, or at least with extreme prejudice, the other class that the character actually is.

anthon

2021-01-22, 06:41 PM

I think it would be easier on everyone if the psionics of an edition were packaged with core. Throw it in the DMG as an optional rule if you're worried about players assuming it's default

this is the opposite of the point of this thread.

The whole point of the thread is to inject a class into a core so people stop claiming its optional and banning it solely for that reason. I don't like all sorts of flimflam classes I see in various editions, but I don't out-right ban them simply because writers decided "lets appendix them out of existing so people complain less".

ezekielraiden

2021-01-22, 08:59 PM

Avenger I think blends with the Inquisitor concept, like a more skilled less meatshield counterpart to the paladin.

Shaman fits nicely into druid, hopefully woth druid being a subclass of a shaman-esque class rather than the other way around

Warden could be a ranger subclass that focuses more on casting ability and mild wildshaping

Invoker sounds like a divine soul sort of thing? I do like the idea of sorcerer being a base for this and being able to be very different depending on the source (completely changing spell list as well as subclass features).

Not saying these are all doable already, just that if we can play with the current class/subclass framework they are easy to fit in without adding more classes.

Sidenote: break wizard up to be more like specialist casters to make more room for these sorts of things. Not make wizard different classes but rather move the bulk of their spell list to subclasses.

Your take on Avenger is probably fine (Inquisitor would be a perfectly valid name for it, and I could see it as a Rogue subclass if absolutely necessary), and as noted I need to look deeper into the Shepherd Druid to see how that worked out. However, I honestly can't agree with either of the others. The Invoker, for example, is actually more similar to a Light Cleric than anything else...except that they aren't specifically limited to fire, and (most importantly of all) their attacks were almost always party-friendly. That is, they were in some sense divine wizards, but where arcane magic is dangerous to everyone once unleashed, the Invoker's divine wrath is solely dangerous to her enemies. They were definitely not charismatic.

And yes, you can (almost always) squint, rephrase, or speculate new alternate mechanics for any existing class to sweep away any need for other classes. That's literally what gets us into the hyperreductionist "we only need two classes, Magic-User and Fighter; everything else is just a specialty, and really you could merge those if you wanted." If you look hard enough, you can ALWAYS find something kinda-sorta-maybe-close-ish enough to a proposed class, and thus no one is ever justified in suggesting anything added to the game.

The main problem with such reductionism is exactly the same as the Warlord-as-Fighter problem, but generalized. The more you shove things into a single bin, the more you either (a) must make that bin not actually guarantee competence anymore, because it has to be everything to everyone, or (b) fail to actually fit into the bin the things you want to put into it. A "minor shapeshift Ranger" is going to be a pretty lame Warden for exactly the same reason that the Oath of the Ancients Paladin is a pretty weak warden (because, yes, that's what was supposed to pass as the class that could literally turn into a localized snowstorm or an avatar of the wyld hunt or the voice of summer's heat or whatever). A "Fighter with an inspirational subclass" is going to be a pretty weak Warlord, because the Fighter chassis biases the character far too strongly toward kicking butt and taking names personally, leaving too little room for appropriate 5e translations of the kinds of support a 4e Leader could provide--as we've seen with both the PDK and the Battlemaster. A "Wizard who makes a special bond with an outsider" is going to be a pretty lame Warlock because Wizard subclasses are far, far too narrow and restricted to cover any meaningful pact mechanics, and you'd completely lose the Invocation mechanics too (not to mention the "short busts + strong at-wills" vs "finite daily resources" distinction).

More importantly, the thread isn't about "propose your desired new classes, and we'll figure out how you can get there without a new class." It is about "if you had your druthers with a revised 5e or brand-new 6e, what would you add?" It's a bit disingenuous to respond to such things with "well we don't actually need those, properly speaking, so don't request them." I can clearly tell your intent is noble, that you're trying to offer an olive branch and a helpful suggestion. Unfortunately, it comes across more as a "be happy with what already exists, and stop making such inappropriate requests."

It's also worth noting, I wasn't personally asking for any of those myself. I was just describing them for those who never played 4e and thus have no idea what "Avenger" or "Warden" means, or who have 3.x notions of what a "Shaman" is. I really like the Avenger, Shaman, and Warlord, but the only one of the three that I feel clearly should be included is the Warlord. The Warlord is popular, represents one of the best opportunities for 5.5e or 6e to show positivity toward 4e fans, was actively a design effort for most of the Next playtest, and has enough thematic and mechanical elements to it that it merits an actual baseline chassis, not just a small bolt-on addendum to something else.

~~~~~~~~

Having reviewed the Circle of the Shepherd...it's...not awful, but it's definitely not a good translation of the 4e Shaman, IMHO. It particularly hurts that the Shepherd's spirit companion can only EVER be summoned once per short rest, whereas that was the defining feature of the 4e Shaman. At best, I'd call it a partial imitation. In large part, this is the same issue as the above: a Druid Circle is limited by the fact that the base Druid can always use wild shape, and has a large and potent spell list. You can't escape the Druidry; you can only add a spoonful of Shaman-flavored whipped cream on top. Ditto Battlemaster vs. Warlord, Oath of Vengeance vs. Avenger, and the hypothetical "wildshape Ranger" vs. Warden.

The point of asking for Shaman as a class is to get "class actually focused on being a Shaman." In fact, what I'd say is that the Shepherd Druid is to the Shaman what the Eldritch Knight is to the Wizard. Both Shepherds and EKs dabble in the tools and abilities of the other class, and no more. Try telling Wizard fans that they should be satisfied with the EK, and see how well that goes over.

Part of the problem is that "subclass" means different things for different classes. Wizard subclasses, for example, are very thin, because the fundamental Wizard chassis is so damn bloated and powerful on its own. Warlock subclasses, on the other hand, are major things and heavily define your mechanics and approaches to play (plus they're technically two-layered, since your Pact is different from your Patron and the two interact meaningfully.) Other classes fall on a spectrum between, e.g. Sorcerer subclasses are moderately dense, Monk and Barbarian ones are arguably a bit closer to Warlock, while Fighter and (to a lesser extent) Paladin subclasses are closer to Wizard.

I'd peg Druid subclasses on the slightly-closer-to-Wizard end, with the sole exception of Moon Druid because of its peak-and-trough power due to the stuttering advancement of wild shape CR. The well-known flaws of the Beastmaster Ranger, for example, are a strong demonstration of how the subclasses for a particular class can generally be pretty good, but try to do something too significant outside of its direct wheelhouse and things break down. (Note, this is not an invitation to tell me how it's totally possible to fix the Beastmaster so it doesn't suck; the fact that they published a sucky one is what's relevant to me.)

PhantomSoul

2021-01-22, 09:16 PM

this is the opposite of the point of this thread.

The whole point of the thread is to inject a class into a core so people stop claiming its optional and banning it solely for that reason. I don't like all sorts of flimflam classes I see in various editions, but I don't out-right ban them simply because writers decided "lets appendix them out of existing so people complain less".

In the case of Psionics, I think it being in a core book wouldn't just be about its "default" status, but also (mostly?) about making it more likely that the designers actually have a place for it in the game (mechanically, thematically, interactions with other core elements) and build it into the system rather than fumbling to tack it on later.

Luccan

2021-01-22, 09:34 PM

In the case of Psionics, I think it being in a core book wouldn't just be about its "default" status, but also (mostly?) about making it more likely that the designers actually have a place for it in the game (mechanically, thematically, interactions with other core elements) and build it into the system rather than fumbling to tack it on later.

This. I have no problem with it being in the PHB, but some people have a strong aversion to Psionics being recognized as part of D&D's default. I just want them to have the rules ready to go and not have people fight over how it should implemented for half an edition and then never actually getting Psionics as a result.

Kane0

2021-01-22, 10:18 PM

-Snip-

I’m going to assume most of that wasn’t directed at me, because I wasn’t arguing for reducing number of classes nor not including the ones you stated. Apologies if I didn’t quite grasp the full concept behind them.

iTreeby

2021-01-23, 12:34 AM

I want incarnum subclasses! They should be like invocations you can change on long rests with added effects from investing attunement and/or spells slots.

anthon

2021-01-23, 02:13 AM

This. I have no problem with it being in the PHB, but some people have a strong aversion to Psionics being recognized as part of D&D's default.

i dont think D&D rules should be guided by people's hate.

How many people complain about Vancian magic?

I don't think its primarily a Genre issue with Psionics. They seem perfectly happy casting Teleport, ESP, and Telekinesis.
My first guess is the DESIGN was FLAWED, (particularly attack modes) while the Concepts were mostly fine.

Despite the opposition, I've also seen tremendous love for subclasses including the Soul Knife, and Settings Like Dark Sun.

as to doesn't belong? meh. I seem to recall really famous myths about characters levitating, walking on water, and moving mountains while lecturing under a Bodhi Tree - aka the tree of awakening - aka the sacred Fig Tree.

Dudes in robes is a pretty ancient motif. Psychics are the caster class from Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria, and some would argue several Pyramid Civilizations. They are a Crystal civilization. An organic "Solar Punk" civilization. A Technogaian civilization. A people who communicate telepathically with plants and animals and have living Tree Ships or Warp Gates made of giant Monolithic structures.

They are that people that built those weird super structures buried in the mountains or deep caves or in ice at the south pole in the mountains of madness. They are the class that has first hand experience with the Aboleth, Mind Flayers, and Deep Cthonic gods forgotten in time.

They have crystal necklaces, weird tattoos, and simbiot life forms connecting to or literally inside their bodies taking the place of traditional magic or technology. They are wise, insightful, intelligent, and often naive to the ways of whatever setting you stick them in because of taboos, cultural barriers, or ethics.

There is most definitely a place for these people in low and high fantasy, without ever getting to the industrial revolution.

But certainly, I agree with many on two accounts:
1. their system should not be a cleric/mage clone
2. previous attempts at them, especially attack/defense modes were done badly.

I just want them to have the rules ready to go and not have people fight over how it should implemented for half an edition and then never actually getting Psionics as a result.
i agree with this 100%

dragon magazine once proposed a skill tree for spells for wizards to some degree. The idea that you learn burning hands before fireball, and fireball before meteor swarm is pretty logical.

Doing the same thing for Psionics could probably avoid a lot of confusion but also give it its own flavor.

Psionic Skill Tree for the Win.

ezekielraiden

2021-01-23, 03:16 AM

i dont think D&D rules should be guided by people's hate.

Well said. Or, from an exchange I just recently saw in a Youtube clip...

LUTHOR: What, do you know something I don't?
SUPERMAN: Only that this city is never going to love you...just for hating me.

Hate doesn't bring people to the gaming table. Joy does. I'm not saying that 100% of everything must always be there day 1, because that's not possible. We have to make decisions, sometimes difficult ones. But supporting genuine enthusiasm will always be better than avoiding hatred.

Morty

2021-01-23, 07:08 AM

Arkhios

2021-01-23, 08:19 AM

One thing to keep in mind with the "can it be a subclass" argument is that the existing classes aren't special, irreplaceable or even good. Making warlords a fighter subclass is a poor idea partly because fighters are a really, really bad class. And, as has been said, stapling a "warlord" subclass onto a chassis ultimately built for hitting things is not going to do them justice. You do need to draw a line and decide what should or shouldn't be a class sooner or later - else you end with the kind of class bloat 3E, PF and 4E have. But the list that 5E decided to enshrine forever isn't a good set of lines.

That is highly subjective. Are you talking about 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3.5th, 4th, or 5th edition fighter? Because all those are more or less different from each other. As 5.5/6.0th edition fighter is likely to be, should it ever end up being published. Who's to say that 5.5/6.0th edition fighter is going to be a really, really bad class? For example, 3.5 paladin was a really, really bad class, but in 5th edition it's one of the best, if not THE best class, mechanically. Same could happen to fighter. Or any other class.

I mean, if the whole design philosophy for the next edition is based on the idea that you have less classes but more sub-classes, ideally the classes are designed in a way that these sub-classes are all viable options.

Morty

2021-01-23, 12:12 PM

That is highly subjective. Are you talking about 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3.5th, 4th, or 5th edition fighter? Because all those are more or less different from each other. As 5.5/6.0th edition fighter is likely to be, should it ever end up being published. Who's to say that 5.5/6.0th edition fighter is going to be a really, really bad class? For example, 3.5 paladin was a really, really bad class, but in 5th edition it's one of the best, if not THE best class, mechanically. Same could happen to fighter. Or any other class.

I mean, if the whole design philosophy for the next edition is based on the idea that you have less classes but more sub-classes, ideally the classes are designed in a way that these sub-classes are all viable options.

I'm talking about the 5E fighter in particular, because it's the current edition and any hypothetical 6E will inevitably use it as a jumping point. The 5E fighter was specifically designed to be as bland as possible, but the entire concept of the class doesn't work. The 4E fighter is different because it's the closest not to being the generic simple beatstick class - it's a martial defender, specifically. And it's still not entirely free of the problem. If the 6E fighter retains the design of somehow trying to cover for every martial concept that's not a barbarian, paladin, monk or ranger, it won't be any better. Especially if it also gets the job of being the simple, bland option for people who don't like anything special or complicated.

anthon

2021-01-23, 12:23 PM

I'm talking about the 5E fighter in particular, because it's the current edition and any hypothetical 6E will inevitably use it as a jumping point. The 5E fighter was specifically designed to be as bland as possible, but the entire concept of the class doesn't work. The 4E fighter is different because it's the closest not to being the generic simple beatstick class - it's a martial defender, specifically. And it's still not entirely free of the problem. If the 6E fighter retains the design of somehow trying to cover for every martial concept that's not a barbarian, paladin, monk or ranger, it won't be any better. Especially if it also gets the job of being the simple, bland option for people who don't like anything special or complicated.

honestly the 5e ranger is so bad and so mini-me that it should be a subclass of Fighter.

like, Eldritch Knight or Ranger? i don't see much difference. Bumping up the ranger attacks would be a welcome improvement.

i dont think anyone ever realized the ranger is so watered down right now that it might as well be a fighter subclass. They gave it more spells than in previous editions, but the eldritch knight currently has about as many spells as early edition rangers.

thus you could literally erase the Ranger-As-Class, fold it into Fighter (which it has tremendous overlap) and then make room for actually different classes.

i had a super powerful ranger in 5e..it was awesome. Turns out we weren't following the rules correctly. Then it was awe-ful.

As to fighter, they gave back multiple attacks to the fighter, but then made those kinda lame by terminating high level THAC0 and giving you like, a few dice per day to pretend you have fighter THAC0. But when you get to your 5th or 6th attack that battle, or your third foe, in sea of foes, you realize your bonus to hit is no better than the wizard in his bathrobe swinging a magic stick.

Morty

2021-01-23, 12:29 PM

honestly the 5e ranger is so bad and so mini-me that it should be a subclass of Fighter.

like, Eldritch Knight or Ranger? i don't see much difference. Bumping up the ranger attacks would be a welcome improvement.

i dont think anyone ever realized the ranger is so watered down right now that it might as well be a fighter subclass. They gave it more spells than in previous editions, but the eldritch knight currently has about as many spells as early edition rangers.

thus you could literally erase the Ranger-As-Class, fold it into Fighter (which it has tremendous overlap) and then make room for actually different classes.

i had a super powerful ranger in 5e..it was awesome. Turns out we weren't following the rules correctly. Then it was awe-ful.

As to fighter, they gave back multiple attacks to the fighter, but then made those kinda lame by terminating high level THAC0 and giving you like, a few dice per day to pretend you have fighter THAC0. But when you get to your 5th or 6th attack that battle, or your third foe, in sea of foes, you realize your bonus to hit is no better than the wizard in his bathrobe swinging a magic stick.

If you fold rangers into a fighter subclass, they become yet another character that just hits things over and over. They'll have some bells and whistles to go with it, but they'll remain fundamentally just that. This is what happens to every class that's made "just a kind of fighter".

Now I agree that rangers, as they exist, have very little point. But "just make them a fighter subclass" isn't an answer.

Amechra

2021-01-23, 01:00 PM

How many people complain about Vancian magic?

Look, I'm just saying that we should go back to real Vancian magic, not this watered-down take that Gygax put in.

Amnestic

2021-01-23, 01:10 PM

Ranger doesn't need to be a fighter subclass.
It just needs to be a more mechanically realised class.

Like 3.5 paladin to 5e paladin became.

It's hard to argue for a theoretical 6e that ranger is more or less deserving of being a class than paladin, since they're, at their core, "fighter+divine/nature magic".

Also like idk I think the tasha's stuff made ranger pretty cool. I saw some thorn whip swarmkeeper builds which seemed very neat.

Arkhios

2021-01-23, 01:20 PM

I'm talking about the 5E fighter in particular, because it's the current edition and any hypothetical 6E will inevitably use it as a jumping point. The 5E fighter was specifically designed to be as bland as possible, but the entire concept of the class doesn't work. The 4E fighter is different because it's the closest not to being the generic simple beatstick class - it's a martial defender, specifically. And it's still not entirely free of the problem. If the 6E fighter retains the design of somehow trying to cover for every martial concept that's not a barbarian, paladin, monk or ranger, it won't be any better. Especially if it also gets the job of being the simple, bland option for people who don't like anything special or complicated.

Any hypothetical 6E is just as likely to use 5E as a jumping point as 5E was likely to use 4E. Except it didn't. From the beginning of its design and development process, the D&D team set out to gather parts from every prior edition that were perceived as best parts of those editions, and compiled them together. That's how 5th edition came to be. With parts of every edition up to this point; not only 4th edition. I would be amazed if they didn't do that again. Of course, that would mean adding best parts of 5th edition but also dropping the unwanted and disliked parts, to compile the next edition.

Talionis

2021-01-23, 01:31 PM

I would incorporate Battlemaster into the base class of Fighter and then have subclasses/archetypes on top of Battlemaster so that combat has choices for Fighters. Make them recharge quickly like at start of each combat but don’t add damage only effects.

Cikomyr2

2021-01-23, 01:53 PM

ezekielraiden

2021-01-23, 04:27 PM

One thing that I thought would be cool is allowing more modularity for casting stats.

Like, compare a Cha-based Paladin to an Int-Based Paladin (the Inquisitor) . Same overall class, maybe some variant but totally different approach to how you play it.

Why not have Intelligence Druid, Wisdom Bards? Like. Find interesting and thematic way to twist the classes for fun and DP. Make them even more modular.

This one's a difficult path to walk. On the one hand, it opens an enormously rich design space, as you can tailor things much more finely. On the other hand, it makes things much more complicated, and opens exploitable differences.

Theodoxus

2021-01-23, 09:54 PM

I'm quite enjoying the Adventure Game Engine take on 3 classes (Mage, Rogue, Warrior) and using specializations to differentiate same class builds. It also helps that the base rules assume random rolls for nearly everything outside of race and base class pick, so there's less worry about cookie-cutter builds. I did homebrew that specialization starts at 2nd level rather than 4th, to give it a more D&D feel...

I'd be thrilled if the next edition did similar. Especially since everything people are asking for in this thread, from the mundane Warlord to the quite esoteric Binder could easily be templated out as a specialization (or Archetype or Prestige Class) or whatever terminology you want to use.

Of course, knowing WotC, if they did go this route, it'd end up 4th Edition 2.0, with all three classes and every specialization variation being as closely balanced in power (basically same effect, different name) as possible and people would complain about it.

But, if it's not going this route, the one thing I'd REALLY want would be a game that starts at the sweet spot of 5th level and only progresses to 11th. You can call it levels 1 to 6 if you want, that's fine - but I want the capabilities of a 5th level character right away. Fireball? two attacks? a feat or 2? Yes please. Grinding through unheroic levels 1-4, even as quickly as 5E made the XP experience, still sucks. And generating a 5th level character from scratch isn't particularly easy... but if the rules were built in that you had all the glory of a 5th level character at 1st level? That'd be the game I want to play - even if it had 100 classes to mull over.

ezekielraiden

2021-01-24, 03:17 AM

But, if it's not going this route, the one thing I'd REALLY want would be a game that starts at the sweet spot of 5th level and only progresses to 11th. You can call it levels 1 to 6 if you want, that's fine - but I want the capabilities of a 5th level character right away. Fireball? two attacks? a feat or 2? Yes please. Grinding through unheroic levels 1-4, even as quickly as 5E made the XP experience, still sucks. And generating a 5th level character from scratch isn't particularly easy... but if the rules were built in that you had all the glory of a 5th level character at 1st level? That'd be the game I want to play - even if it had 100 classes to mull over.

Ironically, that was an explicit design goal of 4e: make as much of the game "sweet spot" as possible. 4e characters got a lot of HP at first level, but gained them slowly thereafter (not getting Con mod to HP). A big part of keeping things steady in that range is doing something like what 4e did with Rituals--forking out a lot of the powerful, game-altering utility into its own subsystem that can be both more broadly accessed for those willing to spend resources on it, and more easily restricted by a DM not wanting some or all of it readily accessible.

Personally, I completely agree with you, and still advocate for building in optional but completely non-deprecated "zero levels" or "novice levels" or the like. That way, people who enjoy spooling out that early weakness, zero-to-hero experience can have it (and, indeed, should ideally be able to spool it out as long as they like), while those who don't aren't forced to. It's especially valuable for newbies, so they don't get discouraged by the incredible lethality of the current early game.

Waazraath

2021-01-25, 04:02 PM

For one thing, magic items are a thing. One can fill in the fly feature with a magic item, for example. (Broom of Flying for the win). For another, in Tier 3 somewhat and in Tier 4 for sure, both teleporting and interplanar travel seem to become necessary for the kind of adventure that being at that level stipulates. What I think is wrong is that the limitation on sorcerer spells went a bit too far, not that every class looks the same.

But as for items: those are optional. And I still fail to see the point I think: how does the existence of items redeem the situation where many level 7 versions of sorcerer, wizard, druid and warlock have significant overlap in spells known/prepapred for the day cause each wants to be able to do 'everything'?

And every cleric has some healing spells. So? Because that's a narrow subtheme! Even taking into account that the clerics also can cure poison, disease, blindness, remove exhaustion, has several ways to raise the dead: those are all variatons on a narrow theme, which is perfect! Just like I'd love to have a caster that has loads of variety with "fire" (wall of fire, burning hands, fire shield). But the difference with every arcane caster getting (short range) teleportation, area of effect damage, invisibility, fly and counterspell is that those are wildly different abilities.

I am not sure if you are looking at how people play and what you see in optimized build ideas. This discussion takes me to where wizards are, to me, the arcane caster without peer. Their objective is to get as many different spells into the book as they can so that, for a given adventure, they can help that party. Over their career they'l be faced with different demands. Not all adventures need the same approach.

And that's the thing. Helping the party is the whole point, since this game isn't built conceptually as a solo adventure.

I agree that helping the party is the point, and wouldn't argue for solo adventures. What I would like is if that, if you look at wizards as 'problem solvers', that different wizard would effectively solve problems in a different way. Take "archers shooting party from across the chasm". I would like the conjurer to summon demons among them, the evoker to shoot a fireball, the illusionst to cast an illusionary wall, etc. I don't want the illusionist, necromancer, but also every sorcerer light cleric and fiend warlock cast the same old fireball.

Your party, if there are three total PCs, pays a price in mission capability if you over specialize, whereas if the party has 6 PCs, a PC's decision to specialize may not have the same impact since there are five, not two, other PCs' to take up the slack/fill the gaps thanks to someone specializing. That's what was behind that point.

But a party with 3 (or 4, or 6) fighters should also be playable. (I think it is, mostly, btw). But theoretically, no party should need a class that is uber versatile and can solve all different kind of problems with spells. And from there, I don't think that uber versatile class needs to exists.

The game wasn't built for optimizers, I don't think, and for whatever reasons they staggered the "you are a full up round" decision point for the classes - cleric and sorcerer at 1, wizard and druid at 2, Rogue and Fighter and Warlock at 3, but Warlock at 1 with patron ... with an idea that beginning players needed fewer choices in the beginning, not more (while we veterans are happy with more choices earlier ... ) I fail to see how optimizing is related to this? Having all subclasses start at the same level would have made sense.

As to restricting schools: I never liked that. Glad it's not in this edition. A matter of taste, to be sure.

Definitely taste. I think you earlier said you wens on a DnD sabbatical at the beginning of 3rd? If so: I wonder how you would have looked at it if you would have stayed in the edition longer. For me, the point where I deceided focus was absolutly the way to go for DnD was with the release of the splats that contained the specialist mages. Beguiler as a skillfull charm / illusion caster, Warmage as evoker/abjurer with a few extra hp and light armor, Dread necromancer as a, well, mostly necromancer with some extra undead abilities. All of them were useful in a lot of situations, but didn't had an obvious solution for every situation, leading on the one hand to more creativity, and on the other hand to reliance on other party members (hurra for the team game).

If you ever go back to that edition, I'd say: give them a try!

I do like Binder, I do want it in current+future editions, but I'm not sure it should be core.

The reason being that it operates on an entirely separate pretty extensive subsystem. Only warlock with its invocations really breaks the mold for subsystems and invocations are generally pretty simple and straightforward. A full set of vestiges with all its binding rules may be too much to put in the PHB, if only because of pages required. Most classes in the PHB average around ~5 pages, some more, some less, but a lot of their details can be shunted off to the Spell List section in the back, which works fine because it crosses over for a bunch of classes. Binder's standalone, and could take potentially dozens of pages all on its own for fully detailed vestiges.

Put another way, I fear that if they made Binder core they'd end up having to water it down to not bloat page length on a single class, and I'd rather have a non-core fully realised binder than a watered down core version.

Mhh... this is a good point. Then again, I could live with shorter spell lists and shorter descriptions (kicking out things like phantasmal force, symbol and simulacrum); reduce the spell section to 1/3rd, replace the remaining 2/3rd with 1/3rd vestiges and 1/3rd either psionic powers or martial abilities as in Book of Nine Swords. I'd be happy.

Waazraath

2021-01-25, 04:08 PM

apologies, double post, plz delete.

Morty

2021-01-25, 04:10 PM

Personally, I completely agree with you, and still advocate for building in optional but completely non-deprecated "zero levels" or "novice levels" or the like. That way, people who enjoy spooling out that early weakness, zero-to-hero experience can have it (and, indeed, should ideally be able to spool it out as long as they like), while those who don't aren't forced to. It's especially valuable for newbies, so they don't get discouraged by the incredible lethality of the current early game.

I feel like D&D would generally make things a lot easier if it provided more explicit alternate progression paths, so people can adjust the "power gain" to their taste. But the 1-20 progression is just one of those things that it can't quite get rid of.

noob

2021-01-25, 04:47 PM

I feel like D&D would generally make things a lot easier if it provided more explicit alternate progression paths, so people can adjust the "power gain" to their taste. But the 1-20 progression is just one of those things that it can't quite get rid of.

The problem is level gating.
Unlike in older editions (basic, advanced 1e,advanced 2e) of dnd where you could be excepted to try to fight the lords of hell(or simply a dragon that is not as small as a kitten) at level 9 when cornered (by the way hp progression flattened for adventurers at that level: they barely gained hp after that level).
5e excepts you to be really high level before fighting the cool stuff and does so through varied means such as badly designed hp inflation spirals giving 500 too much hp to big monster for no reason other than level gating or giving 1 or more action per turn of their opponents to monsters and automatically resisting to a bunch of things to make the fight literally impossible to win for low level adventurers.
If 5e did not do level gating then it could be adapted to a level 1 to 10 progression and have some super hard but not technically impossible fights with the end monsters when at level 10: stop with the idiotic hp and power inflation so that the power gap between the lord of hell and a party of adventurers is more reasonable.
dnd did not have that mandatory level 1-20 design mistake in earlier editions heck in one of them you even had a level cap depending on race and class and a high level cap such as magic user for elf could be around 14.(humans did not have a cap)