What Classes Would You Trade Out in 5.5/6e? [Archive]

Dienekes

2021-01-22, 01:19 PM

Why get rid of sorcerer. I understand they're not the most popular, but this seems like a bit of a leap.

Not Korvin, obviously, but I'm uncertain what mechanical niche they really add to the game. They're spell focused arcane casters. The only thing that really gives them an identity is metamagic, which honestly seems more like a subclass gimmick than something to fully flesh a class around. Furthermore I don't really think it fits the fluff of the Sorcerer. They're supposed to be the natural magicians that can barely contain the magic within their bodies, so why do they get more control over their spells than other spellcasting classes?

Now, admittedly. I'm not actually against the Sorcerer exactly, but I think it would need to be pushed much further away from where it is now to remain an important class. There needs to be something more than just your wizard with Charisma instead of Intelligence.

That said it's not exactly hard to think of such variations. Giving them a distinct method of casting. Perhaps all of them are Wild Magic as a base with a bit more fleshed out mechanics on how it works. Or, I've always felt that it makes more sense for them being Short Rest casters than Warlocks since they're the ones pulling the energy from themselves so in theory they could be 1) getting tired doing it thus resulting in needing to rest between uses. 2) A bit less control over your spells which fits the flavor better.

And of course, smarter, better game designers could come up with better stuff. But as is, I'm not really seeing a point of the 5e Sorcerer other than it's expected to be there.

Anyway, answering OPs question. While I would greatly prefer if WotC instead picked one of the two and said "This one is designed to be mechanically simple and this one is designed to be mechanically complex" if they don't do that, Barbarian and Fighter do the same thing, with relatively equal mechanical complexity. They're just complete overlaps of each other with a bit more flexibility in the Fighter class. So I'd just make Barbarians fighters.

Ranger I'm on the fence on. I actually do think there is enough there to make a fully unique class that plays fundamentally different from every other with a list of unique subclasses. But it would require axing most of the sacred cows of class and starting from scratch. And would probably be easier to split the various concepts into subclasses for other classes.

Kinda also think generic Druid could just be a Cleric subclass with Skinchanger being one of those archetypes you could probably graft on to several different classes through the subclass system.

Taevyr

2021-01-22, 01:42 PM

Generally: make all classes more than just a frame to bolt a subclass onto. Mind, not every class is equally bad at this, but some give out almost no skills or features through the main class, or give little to no utility skills. I'm not saying every class should get equal utility, but every class should at least give some decent utility skills.

For removal, I'd say Sorcerer: it's more about flavor than anything else, and it's the main reason other casters "can't have metamagic", so reflavor it as subclass(es) or something, so the flavor isn't lost either. Unless you can give it more than "wizard that trades off versatility for metamagic" in mechanical terms.

Aside from that: Rangers are a beloved mainstay and fill the "lone survivalist" flavor without adding anger issues or a rogue's urban/criminal flavor, which is why I'd rather they find a way to keep it, but it reallly needs to find some sort of niche to fill. Exploration can't be all of it unless a hypothetical 5.5/6e actually makes it a proper pillar, and I wouldn't even know where to start with that. Stuff like skills related to trapping, proper animal companions and options for general terrain (ab)use would fit in there, in my opinion.

mistajames

2021-01-22, 01:43 PM

IMO, WOTC should merge Fighter, Barbarian and Rogue. I'd love to see a modular approach to this - pick your perks as you level up. Want to cast some spells? OK, but you give up something to do so. Want extra skills and abilities? Sounds good to me.

It's a real shame that Barbarian and Fighter end up with so little utility out-of-combat compared to Rogue and the caster classes. It's not like these classes are so much better in combat than the others to warrant this. Everyone deserves some out-of-combat utility.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-22, 01:55 PM

Why get rid of sorcerer. I understand they're not the most popular, but this seems like a bit of a leap.
We have wizard. Basic magic user class.
We have warlock for a completely different themed arcane caster. (It was gonna be INT but they caved to 'fan pressure' during development and swapped it back to Cha).

Sorcerer was for my money a mistake when they created it in 3e. I realize that tastes differ on this. I just noticed what Dienekes posted, and it's a nice response as well

And I don't hate sorcerers. My shadow magic sorcerer was really fun to play, especially when my doggie came on line. :smallsmile:

OldTrees1

2021-01-22, 02:14 PM

For questions about removal it is important to think about how it impacts other people playing this shared game. So I will carefully go in order.

Barbarian: This is an iconic archetype with examples like Conan. We can't remove the class if it would remove the archetype. There might be the possibility to merge it with another class, but only if we can still create a true Barbarian from the result.

Bard: Music, Magic, and Skills. This has had several implementations but often Bards are roguish. D&D differentiates the two primarily based on the magical music and higher spellcasting. It is possible to fold Bard into Rogue but only if the Bardic subclass could produce significant magical music and casting. To make room we would need to fold more base class features into subclasses. That is doable.

Cleric: Generic versions of Expert, Mage, Priest, and Warrior are unlikely to be cut.

Druid: A nature devotee that often has significant unique class features like wild shape and animal companions (reduced in 5E). Like Bard the theme is similar to another class (Cleric) but with significant unique class features used to differentiate it. It could be folded into Cleric but only if the Druid subclass could produce the wild shaping and animal companions. Cleric does not have much room in its subclass and not many base class features to trade to buff the subclass. It is still doable but it is harder.

Fighter: Generic versions of Expert, Mage, Priest, and Warrior are unlikely to be cut.

Monk: Like Barbarian, Monk is an iconic archetype. There might be the possibility to merge it with another class, but only if we can still create a true Monk from the result.

Paladin: I really like the aura based protector that is the 5E Paladin. Also, like Barbarian, Paladin is an iconic archetype. There might be the possibility to merge it with another class, but only if we can still create a true Paladin from the result. Although in this case it might be a multiclass of whatever Warrior & Priest classes exist.

Ranger: A Rogue / Druid / Fighter hybrid. This one can be removed IF multiclassing allows a comparable replacement. However in 5E the Ranger seems to be where several Druid features are hiding (possibly because Druid could not afford them?).

Rogue: Generic versions of Expert, Mage, Priest, and Warrior are unlikely to be cut. Although it might be modified by making Sneak Attack a subclass feature.

5E Warlock. ... Trade this away for an At-Will Warlock ala 3E. The 5E design clearly shows issues with the 5E magic system. So don't require it to get to 9th level magic. Make it an at will caster and balance appropriately.

Sorcerer / Wizard: Generic versions of Expert, Mage, Priest, and Warrior are unlikely to be cut. However these two could easily be merged. Whether it is Sorcerer or Wizard that is removed depends on who you ask.

Based on that analysis, I don't think you have much room with the limitation of 2. Combining Barbarian / Fighter / Monk would count as 3. Adjusting Bard / Rogue / Ranger / Druid / Cleric would count as 5. I think the only changes I could do under that limitation would be: Replace Warlock with Warlock and merge Sorcerer/Wizard. All the other changes require a more holistic approach than allowed for this challenge. At least, assuming we keep other's interests in mind.

Luccan

2021-01-22, 02:21 PM

If the concern about Druid is Wild Shape, Cleric already has a general feature to power subclass abilities: Channel Divinity. For a theoretical revamp or sequel edition that doesn't toss the baby out with the Kobolds, buffing the other Channel Divinity powers to be along the lines of base Wild Shape seems like it could work. I'd say the bigger problem is the spell list. There are some Druid spells that don't really go with the baseline Cleric.

ZRN

2021-01-22, 02:39 PM

Not Korvin, obviously, but I'm uncertain what mechanical niche they really add to the game. They're spell focused arcane casters. The only thing that really gives them an identity is metamagic, which honestly seems more like a subclass gimmick than something to fully flesh a class around. Furthermore I don't really think it fits the fluff of the Sorcerer. They're supposed to be the natural magicians that can barely contain the magic within their bodies, so why do they get more control over their spells than other spellcasting classes?

Weird that sorcerer and warlock keep coming up, because to me lore-wise they're VERY different from other options.

A wizard is a guy who learns magic from books. That's fine, but it doesn't actually map on to probably 90% of magic-users in fiction and fantasy.

A sorcerer has some inborn source of magic, usually a magical bloodline. Much more common!

A warlock makes a deal with some powerful source for their magic. Different from either a wizard or sorcerer, since the power explicitly comes from another entity, and different too from a cleric, since (a) faith isn't involved and (b) the patron usually isn't a deity.

Now, if you want to argue that in 5e there's not enough mechanical niche for all these classes, fine, but isn't the whole point of this hypothetical new edition to fix that kind of thing?

Like, if you want to be the guy that says "there should only be four classes," fine, but how can people honestly say we need fighters AND rangers AND barbarians as separate classes, but not these classes that have very clear and very significant differences in how and why they function?

(To answer the OP: every class is a precious snowflake to me, but get rid of barbarians and rangers; those classes could easily be folded into subclasses for fighters and rogues, respectively.)

MrStabby

2021-01-22, 09:08 PM

Fighter and sorcerer.

Fighter is bland. Also fighter leads to "fighter should be the best at fighting, so no other class should get fighting abilities better than the fighter does", which whilst not a hard limit does put a bit of a cap on what other classes can have. There just isn't a strong enough theme here. It would need other clases to have a somewhat more neutral flavour option though.

Sorcerer... is a cool idea but making it the home of metamagic and not much else means that there is a historically very fun tool that is denied other casters. I would think giving each casting class a signature metamagic (3rd ed style so it uses a higher spell slot to activate) would help differentiate the classes a bit.

I was going to put wizard instead - they can be a bit the same as their school doesnt make as much of a difference as it should. But then if its a new edition there is an opportunity to fix that about the wizard anyway. Personally I would give the wizard old style vancial casting where you prepared the specific spells tied to slots and give them spontanious casting of spells from their chosen school as my fix for this. Other gripes I have with other classes can be fixed within those classes, they don't need to be stripped out.

jaappleton

2021-01-22, 10:47 PM

I think a lot of people saying Fighter are saying so because of how terribly vanilla it is in 5E. It doesn't have to be that way in its next iteration.

I'd love to keep the Fighter, but with the next edition, subclasses need to take much more of a heavy role in determining identity.

If you get, say, 3 subclass features levels 1-10 in 5E, then it should be 5 subclass features next edition.

This way, for those who want to axe Sorcerer in favor of Wizard, you can end up with a lot of Wizard subclasses that feel like other classes. Classes should feel more like chassis and have little identity, IMO. The subclass should determine much more of the identity than the base class next edition.

Kane0

2021-01-22, 11:19 PM

Keep Wizard and Warlock as the full and half arcane casters.
Keep Cleric and Paldin as the full and half divine casters.
Keep Druid and Ranger as the full and half natural casters. Perhaps rename druid to Shaman.
Keep Sorcerer and Bard as the full and half crosslist casters (yes, not every class gets their own spell list)
Keep Rogue and Monk as skilled noncasters.
Fighter and Barbarian are replaced by Warrior and Warlord as the beefy noncasters, being able to assume the same roles via subclasses.

Which still leaves room for an alchemist/artificer and pair of full/half psionic classes to be added later.

Dienekes

2021-01-23, 01:24 AM

Weird that sorcerer and warlock keep coming up, because to me lore-wise they're VERY different from other options.

Fluff is mutable. Mechanics are well not completely immutable but tend to be much more fixed than fluff. If the fluff revels in being very different but the mechanics line up roughly the same then both concepts could fit within the same mechanical framework that we call a class.

Now you definitely have a point that Barbarian and Fighter are similar enough to not necessarily both need to exist. But what I find somewhat interesting is the Barbarian/Fighter fluff difference is pretty much equivalent to the Sorcerer/Wizard. One taps into “natural” talent to do things the other relies on training.

And I would pretty much say the same thing for both. If there was a distinct mechanical reason for both to be two separate fleshed out classes then I would accept them. But in 5e as is, I don’t think they’re divergent enough for either of them.

Mind you they could be. Just taking the Barbarian/Fighter divide. If they really dug into mechanical differences I’d accept them. Perhaps make all Fighters work off a maneuver/stance system like ToB to emphasize the training while Barbarians don’t get those but instead get powers solely fueled by their rage. That could make them mechanically distinct enough to warrant two separate classes. But as of now, I agree with you. The Fighter and Barbarian play similarly enough that one could very simply be a subclass of the other.

I think a lot of people saying Fighter are saying so because of how terribly vanilla it is in 5E. It doesn't have to be that way in its next iteration.

I'd love to keep the Fighter, but with the next edition, subclasses need to take much more of a heavy role in determining identity.

If you get, say, 3 subclass features levels 1-10 in 5E, then it should be 5 subclass features next edition.

Apparently, the first version of the Fighter for 5e (after subclasses were established) had each subclass being purposefully flavorful with subclasses for knights, soldiers, samurai, gladiator and that sort of thing. Only the feedback they got was overwhelmingly that people wanted a bland Fighter so they could give their own fluff to it. Which resulted in the Fighter being released with Generic Subclass 1, Generic Subclass 2, and Magic Fighter.

Which at the very least has given me the insight as to why Alpha and Beta testing is so difficult. Since some times your overwhelming response is coming from morons.

jaappleton

2021-01-23, 07:45 AM

Apparently, the first version of the Fighter for 5e (after subclasses were established) had each subclass being purposefully flavorful with subclasses for knights, soldiers, samurai, gladiator and that sort of thing. Only the feedback they got was overwhelmingly that people wanted a bland Fighter so they could give their own fluff to it. Which resulted in the Fighter being released with Generic Subclass 1, Generic Subclass 2, and Magic Fighter.

Which at the very least has given me the insight as to why Alpha and Beta testing is so difficult. Since some times your overwhelming response is coming from morons.

I know a lot of people (more than a dozen) that have playtest material for 5E for unannounced projects. I’m not talking Unearthed Arcana, I am referring to stuff at least 18 months out.

A lot of those peoples opinions are.... Pre-defined, I suppose that’s a good way of putting it. They believe there’s a set way things should be, regardless of whether there’s a ton of potential for it to be better. Lots of “Well this is how it was in 3.X!”

......these individuals give feedback on that content before anyone else can (like how UA is available to the public), and it very much helps shape WOTC internal opinion, which impacts design philosophy.

I sincerely hope, but I very much doubt, that WOTC will expand their ‘inner circle’ of people they work with because YEESH.

Unoriginal

2021-01-23, 08:06 AM

I know a lot of people (more than a dozen) that have playtest material for 5E for unannounced projects. I’m not talking Unearthed Arcana, I am referring to stuff at least 18 months out.

A lot of those peoples opinions are.... Pre-defined, I suppose that’s a good way of putting it. They believe there’s a set way things should be, regardless of whether there’s a ton of potential for it to be better. Lots of “Well this is how it was in 3.X!”

......these individuals give feedback on that content before anyone else can (like how UA is available to the public), and it very much helps shape WOTC internal opinion, which impacts design philosophy.

I sincerely hope, but I very much doubt, that WOTC will expand their ‘inner circle’ of people they work with because YEESH.

How did they get that position as playtesters?

carnomancy

2021-01-23, 11:32 AM

I feel that the Sorcerer is prime material for the chopping block. Just feels like the whole class is a failure to thrive case. The subclasses feel like the leftovers from some of the more half baked offerings of 3rd edition like the favored soul. Others are just irritating to work with like wild magic. They way they approach arcane magic feels wrong. I feel like the whole point of arcane magic is the little rituals, the spell books and weird material components. They're super redundant too, being what the 4th arcane offering in the PHB and the 4th charisma class.

ByzantiumBhuka

2021-01-23, 12:24 PM

(To answer the OP: every class is a precious snowflake to me, but get rid of barbarians and rangers; those classes could easily be folded into subclasses for fighters and rogues, respectively.)

This.

Rangers and barbarians are in a rather unique position among the classes, in which they're heavily inspired by one particular character from fiction: Aragorn in the case of the ranger and Conan in the case of the barbarian. They're archetypes. But that's what the whole idea of an subclass is for! Scout Rogue has already shown it can fit the mold of "nature scout" pretty well, and a Rager archetype for fighter could work similarly. So what excuse do they have to be classes?

Compare to the paladin, a former fighter subclass that's carved out a niche for itself. Divine Smites, Auras, Lay on Hands... if all those were made into a subclass, it would be a really, really powerful subclass. Similarly, monks have a very distinct style of fighting with ki points and flurries of blows that would be very hard to fit in. Rangers and barbarians, though? There's not much.

Morty

2021-01-23, 12:33 PM

I think a lot of people saying Fighter are saying so because of how terribly vanilla it is in 5E. It doesn't have to be that way in its next iteration.

I'd love to keep the Fighter, but with the next edition, subclasses need to take much more of a heavy role in determining identity.

If you get, say, 3 subclass features levels 1-10 in 5E, then it should be 5 subclass features next edition.

The problem is that if the fighter isn't bland, it ends up being 3-4 classes in a trenchcoat and has more content devoted to it than most other classes who aren't wizards. Which is not likely to happen, so it goes right back to being bland. The concept of a customizable blank slate just doesn't really play well with a game whose tradition is to have classes and thus not have characters be blank slates.

OldTrees1

2021-01-23, 12:54 PM

The problem is that if the fighter isn't bland, it ends up being 3-4 classes in a trenchcoat and has more content devoted to it than most other classes who aren't wizards. Which is not likely to happen, so it goes right back to being bland. The concept of a customizable blank slate just doesn't really play well with a game whose tradition is to have classes and thus not have characters be blank slates.

Heh, "3-4 classes in a trenchcoat" is more accurate that it first sounds, but is exactly why Fighter will always exist.

Imagine for a moment all the potential 5E characters, including multiclass characters. Now imagine I were designing a 6E that could support all those characters, but did not have multiclassing rules. How many more base classes or subclasses would I need to write? A lot! Multiclassing increases the effective volume of the potential character pool to cover character concepts not represented, or imperfectly represented by the limited number of base classes. Theoretically I could make 100 base classes and maybe still fail to cover the entire collection of characters.

Customizable blank slates like Fighter and Wizard are developer tools similar to multiclassing. They allow the developers to write 1 generic class instead of 8 better designed non generic classes. So while Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are better class design than Wizard, we will always see something like Wizard or Fighter as a shorthand for the developer to cover anything they missed rather than leave the game permanently in development.

But if a generic class is inevitable for IRL logistical concerns, what is the best way to handle that? That is an ongoing question.

Morty

2021-01-23, 01:18 PM

Heh, "3-4 classes in a trenchcoat" is more accurate that it first sounds, but is exactly why Fighter will always exist.

Imagine for a moment all the potential 5E characters, including multiclass characters. Now imagine I were designing a 6E that could support all those characters, but did not have multiclassing rules. How many more base classes or subclasses would I need to write? A lot! Multiclassing increases the effective volume of the potential character pool to cover character concepts not represented, or imperfectly represented by the limited number of base classes. Theoretically I could make 100 base classes and maybe still fail to cover the entire collection of characters.

Customizable blank slates like Fighter and Wizard are developer tools similar to multiclassing. They allow the developers to write 1 generic class instead of 8 better designed non generic classes. So while Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are better class design than Wizard, we will always see something like Wizard or Fighter as a shorthand for the developer to cover anything they missed rather than leave the game permanently in development.

But if a generic class is inevitable for IRL logistical concerns, what is the best way to handle that? That is an ongoing question.

Wizards are nowhere near the blank slate fighters are. A wizard is an arcane caster (as opposed to a cleric or druid) who obtains power through study (as opposed to sorcerer or warlock) and prepares them (likewise). The only thing fighters are defined by is what they don't have. There's a lot of middle ground between the genericness of the fighter or rogue and the hyper-specialization of... just about every other martial class. Which has actually been done before, with 4E fighters and warlords.

MrStabby

2021-01-23, 01:33 PM

Fighter also suffers from its lack of unique abilities.

Feats? Yeah, other classes get those.

Extra attacks? Sure, not unique.

Healing? Common enough.

It's not that it isnt powerful, it's just so... generic.

The subclasses provide all the interesting bits that you cant get through other classes, but they are too small a part of what the fighter gets overall to make them feel distinct.

Compare this with something like ranger/ranger subclasses. Horizon walker teleporting about or monster hunter breaking spellcasting or beastmaster bringing a friend to the fight.

They need more unique mechanics that achieve things other classes can't. Not just getting some things sooner or moar damage or whatever.

OldTrees1

2021-01-23, 01:39 PM

Wizards are nowhere near the blank slate fighters are. A wizard is an arcane caster (as opposed to a cleric or druid) who obtains power through study (as opposed to sorcerer or warlock) and prepares them (likewise). The only thing fighters are defined by is what they don't have. There's a lot of middle ground between the genericness of the fighter or rogue and the hyper-specialization of... just about every other martial class. Which has actually been done before, with 4E fighters and warlords.

Agreed. I just also see Wizard as a generic class hiding 8+ classes in a trenchcoat (in contrast to Fighter's 20+).

I also agree about the middle ground. However moving towards specialization generally decreases the pool of potential characters, or causes the developers to produce more base classes. So finding a balance is an interesting puzzle.

Dienekes

2021-01-23, 01:50 PM

But if a generic class is inevitable for IRL logistical concerns, what is the best way to handle that? That is an ongoing question.

I think there is generic fluff and generic mechanics. And I do not think they need to be tied together. And if you're going to have a generic class there needs to be some mechanical thing for them to unite the fluff to be something.

Like take the Wizard as you pointed out. It's fluff really is just the generic magic guy that has learned a bunch of spells. But they have taken steps to make that generic caster play a bit unique from the other casters. Now, personally, I don't think they've done it great in 5e. But the concept of them going around and gathering scrolls of spells to apply to their spell book is not a bad basis to build a character around.

Fighter suffers from both being generic, and because the creators of the game decided that martial combat must be the simple part for new players. Which shoehorned them into making the Fighter the thing it is now.

Morty

2021-01-24, 03:39 AM

I also agree about the middle ground. However moving towards specialization generally decreases the pool of potential characters, or causes the developers to produce more base classes. So finding a balance is an interesting puzzle.

In case of the fighter, specifically, there's not much potential to be lost, because it has never offered any. The 4E fighter, to continue the example, is defined as a defender, so it doesn't allow for a skirmisher or a tactician as much... but then, neither does the 3E or the 5E fighter. They're locked into standing in place and attacking, they're just coy about it.

OldTrees1

2021-01-24, 09:23 AM

In case of the fighter, specifically, there's not much potential to be lost, because it has never offered any. The 4E fighter, to continue the example, is defined as a defender, so it doesn't allow for a skirmisher or a tactician as much... but then, neither does the 3E or the 5E fighter. They're locked into standing in place and attacking, they're just coy about it.

I think that ignores the point, because Fighter does offer potential in 3E and 5E. There are plenty of martial character concepts that are not Barbarian, Monk, Paladin, or Ranger. Those character concepts have the potential to be lost. If you replace Fighter with a thematically specialized Warlord then you get better design for a subset of those character concepts, but exclude the other character concepts. If you do a little less thematic specializing, then you exclude fewer of those other character concepts but you end up with a less ideal design for Warlord.

The blank slate with extra customization options (extra feats in 3E and 5E) allows the user to instantiate a character concept that they can't with any of the more fleshed out classes. Those fleshed out classes have abilities with mechanical texture that limits how far you can refluff them. However that mechanical texture is part of what makes those classes so well designed for the theme they are trying to portray.

PS:
One way to do a 5E Skirmisher Battlemaster X / Rogue 2-3. You are very mobile, can do interesting things at range, and are competent in the related skills. I would start by looking at Ranger or Rogue, but I would understand if the divine spells or the lack of extra attacks pushed back towards Fighter.
One way to do a 5E Tactician Battlemaster X / Rogue 1. You have White Raven Tactics (mangled though it may be) and are competent in the related skills.
Another way to do a 5E Tactician Thief X / Battlemaster 5. In this case it is less about White Raven Tactics and more about changing the battlefield while still attacking.
Yes, these are worse implementations than a full devoted base class would provide, however Fighter lets you do at least this much when the base class is missing. That is the role classes like Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, (and Cleric?) provide. Fighter is just the worst designed of the set of generic classes and there is an ongoing discussion on how, if generic classes will be used as a developer shortcut for IRL logistic issues, how to best balance that design.

JNAProductions

2021-01-24, 09:29 AM

I'm of the opinion that classes like Fighter, Mage, Rogue, etc. are fine.
As are classes like Barbarian, Paladin, Warlock, etc.

But not together. Fighter is broad enough to cover Barbarian and Paladin; Mage can cover Warlock, Wizard, and Sorcerer; etc. etc. I get that D&D is full of sacred cows, but I think that, if they were to design a system to be the best it could be, Wizards of the Coast would have to make a decision on whether to have many specific classes, or a smaller number of broader classes.

It's not a huge deal-I still enjoy D&D, even if I acknowledge the design flaws. But that's my two cents.

OldTrees1

2021-01-24, 09:42 AM

Agreed. Personally I would lean towards many specific classes, but I don't want to lose the broader classes without increasing the number of classes.

Ettina

2021-01-24, 09:49 AM

I think fighter should be replaced with battlemaster. Maneuvers are a unique mechanic that can add a lot of flavor to fighters, and solidifies fighter as the training-based martial class, kind of like the martial equivalent to wizards.

Morty

2021-01-24, 05:15 PM

I think that ignores the point, because Fighter does offer potential in 3E and 5E. There are plenty of martial character concepts that are not Barbarian, Monk, Paladin, or Ranger. Those character concepts have the potential to be lost. If you replace Fighter with a thematically specialized Warlord then you get better design for a subset of those character concepts, but exclude the other character concepts. If you do a little less thematic specializing, then you exclude fewer of those other character concepts but you end up with a less ideal design for Warlord.

Which is why we don't replace the fighter with the warlord. We replace the fighter with a proper "defender" class, replace the barbarian with a less laser-focused "vanguard" class and add a warlord. It's a start.

The blank slate with extra customization options (extra feats in 3E and 5E) allows the user to instantiate a character concept that they can't with any of the more fleshed out classes. Those fleshed out classes have abilities with mechanical texture that limits how far you can refluff them. However that mechanical texture is part of what makes those classes so well designed for the theme they are trying to portray.

The 4E fighter and warlord - if we're still treating those as our starting point - are about as fluff-neutral as you can get. Their abilities are more well-defined, but they can be just about anyone in terms of background. And, again - they're really not any more restrictive than the 5E fighter, or even the 3E fighter. Their "versatility" is mostly an illusion.

PS:
One way to do a 5E Skirmisher Battlemaster X / Rogue 2-3. You are very mobile, can do interesting things at range, and are competent in the related skills. I would start by looking at Ranger or Rogue, but I would understand if the divine spells or the lack of extra attacks pushed back towards Fighter.
One way to do a 5E Tactician Battlemaster X / Rogue 1. You have White Raven Tactics (mangled though it may be) and are competent in the related skills.
Another way to do a 5E Tactician Thief X / Battlemaster 5. In this case it is less about White Raven Tactics and more about changing the battlefield while still attacking.
Yes, these are worse implementations than a full devoted base class would provide, however Fighter lets you do at least this much when the base class is missing. That is the role classes like Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, (and Cleric?) provide. Fighter is just the worst designed of the set of generic classes and there is an ongoing discussion on how, if generic classes will be used as a developer shortcut for IRL logistic issues, how to best balance that design.

If we're treating multiclassing as a solution, we admit that the class can't do it on its own. And if I can multiclass the generic, bland and one-note 5E fighter, I can do so with a hypothetical better-designed and thematic class

Dienekes

2021-01-24, 05:45 PM

Which is why we don't replace the fighter with the warlord. We replace the fighter with a proper "defender" class, replace the barbarian with a less laser-focused "vanguard" class and add a warlord. It's a start.

The 4E fighter and warlord - if we're still treating those as our starting point - are about as fluff-neutral as you can get. Their abilities are more well-defined, but they can be just about anyone in terms of background. And, again - they're really not any more restrictive than the 5E fighter, or even the 3E fighter. Their "versatility" is mostly an illusion.

If we're treating multiclassing as a solution, we admit that the class can't do it on its own. And if I can multiclass the generic, bland and one-note 5E fighter, I can do so with a hypothetical better-designed and thematic class

My worry is, these are a small list of characters I have played in various D&D games over I don't know 20ish years.

A veteran grunt soldier. Relied on a spear and shield.
A cavalry archer sorta Mongolian in nature.
A farmboy with a frying pan
A peltast
An armored samurai with a katana and wakizashi that was the highest damage dealer of the party.
So many knights with horse and lance that charged a lot, most switched to sword and board or poleaxe when the horse wasn't available.
A gladiator who spent most the time taunting enemies.
A fencer that attacks with their rapier more than once per round. Wouldn't making a straight rapier warrior that can only attack once per round be stupid, WotC? You wouldn't make that a Rogue would you WotC? Wouldn't that be stupid?
Aztec Jaguar warrior
Lu Bu.

All of these concepts worked best in the editions I played them in as Fighters or Warblades (which remains the best Fighter class WotC has printed). They did not command people around (though I loved doing that too and played the Warlord in 4e a fair few times), they did not cast spells. They did not go into rages. They were essentially bog standard guys with weapons that I could put my fluff onto.

Now, I will admit, I had to jump through some hoops for some of them. Feat trees were always a pain, some of the concepts worked better in some versions of D&D than others. And I don't know if removing the Fighter these characters would still be playable without having to jump through even more hoops than I did before.

OldTrees1

2021-01-24, 06:59 PM

Which is why we don't replace the fighter with the warlord. We replace the fighter with a proper "defender" class, replace the barbarian with a less laser-focused "vanguard" class and add a warlord. It's a start.

How much less laser focused? You are adding 1 class but removing the generic class as a result you increase the danger that, even with multiclassing, you will start excluding character concepts. Consider Dienekes tiny list

My worry is, these are a small list of characters I have played in various D&D games over I don't know 20ish years.

A veteran grunt soldier. Relied on a spear and shield.
A cavalry archer sorta Mongolian in nature.
A farmboy with a frying pan
A peltast
An armored samurai with a katana and wakizashi that was the highest damage dealer of the party.
So many knights with horse and lance that charged a lot, most switched to sword and board or poleaxe when the horse wasn't available.
A gladiator who spent most the time taunting enemies.
A fencer that attacks with their rapier more than once per round. Wouldn't making a straight rapier warrior that can only attack once per round be stupid, WotC? You wouldn't make that a Rogue would you WotC? Wouldn't that be stupid?
Aztec Jaguar warrior
Lu Bu.

I don't know if removing the Fighter these characters would still be playable without having to jump through even more hoops than I did before.

If we're treating multiclassing as a solution, we admit that the class can't do it on its own. And if I can multiclass the generic, bland and one-note 5E fighter, I can do so with a hypothetical better-designed and thematic class
Multiclassing was always a possibility but the volume of character concepts supported by multiclassing generic classes is greater than that of multiclassing the same number of more thematic and this restrictive classes.

For example: I can make a Beguiler with a Rogue / Wizard multiclass but I can't with a Rogue / Dread Necromancer multiclass. Which is why people like JNAProductions recognize you need more classes if you use specialized classes to try to cover the same character concept volume.

The 4E fighter and warlord - if we're still treating those as our starting point - are about as fluff-neutral as you can get. Their abilities are more well-defined, but they can be just about anyone in terms of background. And, again - they're really not any more restrictive than the 5E fighter, or even the 3E fighter. Their "versatility" is mostly an illusion.

The 4E Fighter and warlord are more rigid in how they can be built / approach things than the 3E or 5E Fighter. They are more specialized into a subset of approaches, which makes them better designed for a thematic class, but at the cost of not being as generic of a class. I played the 3E Fighter and it was not always built as a "defender". It could be a skirmisher. It could be a striker (despite me not liking that style). It could be built as a warlord. It was never as good at those things as a specialized class would be because the specialized class had more refined support, but it could do those things and did have features than could be bent towards those ends (like 5E Fighter having an extra feat for Mobile).

So yes, if you could replace Fighter with 6 new Martial classes, you would have better support for the related character concepts. You would still miss some character concepts that Fighter supported poorly but the new classes don't support at all. However that is with 9 total instead of only 4 total. That is my point about generic classes like Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, (and Cleric?). If you want to replace them, will the developers make more classes or will you lose character classes? If the same number of classes are kept, then how generic should the generic classes be / how many character concepts should be excluded is an open discussion that will not be solved here.

Xervous

2021-01-25, 07:48 AM

On concepts being supported, the game should not present concepts applicable to levels 1-5 as full concepts that stretch up to 20. Fighter lacks both identity and progression. If it at least had ways to grow and find relevance beyond the new baseline of ‘everyone can do combat’ it wouldn’t be as problematic. Monk, rogue, ranger, they each can be ranged combatants of varying stripes but that is far from the entirety of their identity. When every other class is a matter of ‘how am I awesome?’ fighter just bumbles along saying ‘attacking is awesome’ in an edition where Syndrome’s Retirement has been applied so everyone can do the attacking.

Morty

2021-01-25, 01:09 PM

My worry is, these are a small list of characters I have played in various D&D games over I don't know 20ish years.

A veteran grunt soldier. Relied on a spear and shield.
A cavalry archer sorta Mongolian in nature.
A farmboy with a frying pan
A peltast
An armored samurai with a katana and wakizashi that was the highest damage dealer of the party.
So many knights with horse and lance that charged a lot, most switched to sword and board or poleaxe when the horse wasn't available.
A gladiator who spent most the time taunting enemies.
A fencer that attacks with their rapier more than once per round. Wouldn't making a straight rapier warrior that can only attack once per round be stupid, WotC? You wouldn't make that a Rogue would you WotC? Wouldn't that be stupid?
Aztec Jaguar warrior
Lu Bu.

All of these concepts worked best in the editions I played them in as Fighters or Warblades (which remains the best Fighter class WotC has printed). They did not command people around (though I loved doing that too and played the Warlord in 4e a fair few times), they did not cast spells. They did not go into rages. They were essentially bog standard guys with weapons that I could put my fluff onto.

Now, I will admit, I had to jump through some hoops for some of them. Feat trees were always a pain, some of the concepts worked better in some versions of D&D than others. And I don't know if removing the Fighter these characters would still be playable without having to jump through even more hoops than I did before.

How much does the non-4E fighter actually support these characters, as opposed to there simply being no better choice? Which results in all those characters and more being brought down to the same mediocre standard with some bells and whistles attached to make them slightly different?

How much less laser focused? You are adding 1 class but removing the generic class as a result you increase the danger that, even with multiclassing, you will start excluding character concepts. Consider Dienekes tiny list

My general concept is a 4E-style defender fighter, a vanguard class relying on bursts of power - like rage or action surge - a 4E-style warlord and maybe the ranger retooled as "prepared fighter". It's hard to verify that, of course.

Multiclassing was always a possibility but the volume of character concepts supported by multiclassing generic classes is greater than that of multiclassing the same number of more thematic and this restrictive classes.

For example: I can make a Beguiler with a Rogue / Wizard multiclass but I can't with a Rogue / Dread Necromancer multiclass. Which is why people like JNAProductions recognize you need more classes if you use specialized classes to try to cover the same character concept volume.

I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Dread Necromancer, since I've never suggested replacing wizards with them.

The 4E Fighter and warlord are more rigid in how they can be built / approach things than the 3E or 5E Fighter. They are more specialized into a subset of approaches, which makes them better designed for a thematic class, but at the cost of not being as generic of a class. I played the 3E Fighter and it was not always built as a "defender". It could be a skirmisher. It could be a striker (despite me not liking that style). It could be built as a warlord. It was never as good at those things as a specialized class would be because the specialized class had more refined support, but it could do those things and did have features than could be bent towards those ends (like 5E Fighter having an extra feat for Mobile).

The 3E fighter isn't good at anything, period.

So yes, if you could replace Fighter with 6 new Martial classes, you would have better support for the related character concepts. You would still miss some character concepts that Fighter supported poorly but the new classes don't support at all. However that is with 9 total instead of only 4 total. That is my point about generic classes like Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, (and Cleric?). If you want to replace them, will the developers make more classes or will you lose character classes? If the same number of classes are kept, then how generic should the generic classes be / how many character concepts should be excluded is an open discussion that will not be solved here.

It probably is beyond the scope of a forum argument, yes. But I've made a case against the fighter and even if you don't agree that it should be removed, I'm firmly convinced it can be.

OldTrees1

2021-01-25, 01:22 PM

It probably is beyond the scope of a forum argument, yes. But I've made a case against the fighter and even if you don't agree that it should be removed, I'm firmly convinced it can be.

That makes sense.

I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Dread Necromancer, since I've never suggested replacing wizards with them.

I was using Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Wizard because it is a useful example to demonstrate generic vs specialized classes. If I replaced Wizard with Beguiler and Necromancer the class quality goes up but the character concept volume goes down. By using this example I could talk about the mechanism outside of the specifics of a single generic class (Fighter) which often helps communicate a point.

It seems we are both finished with that conversation, but I wanted to explain why I mentioned Dread Necromancer so you know that I knew and recognize you were not suggesting anything about them.

Rule-Of-Three

2021-01-25, 01:33 PM

There's been quite a few good recommendations in thread so far for consolidation. I could easily see a fighter=man at arms core class, with rangers, paladins, and barbarians folded in as 9th level "prestige" options. In fact, that's the way it was back in my beginning with the D&D Rules Encyclopedia edition. Same with the other core classes.

I don't see it turning out that way. The audience now expects to be able to Rage at level one.

I think that warlocks and sorcerers step on each others toes a bit, and that the former could just get folded in. If the sorcerer gimmick is "at level one I have the blood of a _____," then it could easily also be "at level one I bartered my soul to_____."

After that, monks and artificers. WotC has no clue how to deliver on the monk schtick, always undertuned dissatisfaction unless it's Tome of the Nine Broken. I'd say shelf the design space and bring it out when they want to do a manga/anime flavored campaign world. Same with artificers.

Dienekes

2021-01-25, 01:44 PM

How much does the non-4E fighter actually support these characters, as opposed to there simply being no better choice? Which results in all those characters and more being brought down to the same mediocre standard with some bells and whistles attached to make them slightly different?

I’ll be the first to admit, some were supported much better than others. The creation of ToB made a fair few of them much easier to do. But others could be built to a reasonable degree with enough feat diving and/or Pathfinder Archetypes.

But I think there is enough potential versatility on a Subclass-esque system to make this work easier. Provided WotC lean harder into such a system instead of -as I mentioned earlier- deciding to make two of the three first subclasses essentially fluff-less wastes of space.

My general concept is a 4E-style defender fighter, a vanguard class relying on bursts of power - like rage or action surge - a 4E-style warlord and maybe the ranger retooled as "prepared fighter". It's hard to verify that, of course.

So replace Fighter with essentially 3 classes and the Barbarian. I won’t say it won’t work. I mean hell Iron Heroes essentially broke Fighter into 5 classes and the Barbarian depending how you count. Though one of those 5 was still just a Fighter.

I’d be interested in giving such a system a try to see if I can make my list of characters with it. But I do kinda doubt we’ll ever see WotC do anything like it.

Xervous

2021-01-25, 01:57 PM

I’d be interested in giving such a system a try to see if I can make my list of characters with it. But I do kinda doubt we’ll ever see WotC do anything like it.

For the sake of clarity in discussion could you spell out the characters in question?

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-25, 02:38 PM

I feel that the Sorcerer is prime material for the chopping block. Likewise.

There's been quite a few good recommendations in thread so far for consolidation. I could easily see a fighter=man at arms core class, with rangers, paladins, and barbarians folded in as 9th level "prestige" options.
Please no. If you are gonna go with that (IMO lousy) prestige class-model, make the base classes off of an E6 template and then open the chance for Prestige Class at level 7. Most games barely get to 11th level-if WoTC's 'conventional wisdom' is to be believed. OBTW, that's also my experience. The way they built the subclasses was to fold the prestige class benefits into the character from level 1, 2, or 3 when they choose their archetype/school/domain/etc. Unfortunately, the quality of the above level 10 features varies wildly. (See GOO for an example, and a few of the capstones).

I don't see it turning out that way. The audience now expects to be able to Rage at level one. True enough.

I think that warlocks and sorcerers step on each others toes a bit, and that the former could just get folded in. If the sorcerer gimmick is "at level one I have the blood of a _____," then it could easily also be "at level one I bartered my soul to_____." Yeah, that kind of 'in fiction' structure can work.
After that, monks and artificers. WotC has no clue how to deliver on the monk schtick...Same with artificers. Monk in this edition actually works. I've played a few.

In Blackmoor (Original D&D) and AD&D 1e they were an awkwardly implemented attempt to fit a TV show (Kung Fu's Kwai Chang Cain) and movie niche (Bruce Lee's movies - Enter the Dragon, etc) into a feudal / fantasy / Swords and Sorcery genre.

As to artificers: ought to be a sub class of wizard, not its own class. (IMO)

Also, for the last time: ranger is not a rogue sub class, never was. But if you want to sell me on Ranger being put into fighter as a sub class, I am all ears.

ZRN

2021-01-25, 02:39 PM

Fluff is mutable. Mechanics are well not completely immutable but tend to be much more fixed than fluff. If the fluff revels in being very different but the mechanics line up roughly the same then both concepts could fit within the same mechanical framework that we call a class.

I mean, we're making a new edition here, right? Shouldn't the whole point of a class-based system be to create mechanics that map onto the "fluff" of different character archetypes? If the 5e sorcerer isn't unique enough (agreed), you make a 6e version that is. You don't just say, "screw it, all magic-users now have to get wedged into mechanics modeled after a sci-fi series by Jack Vance that nobody under the age of 50 has ever read, because the last edition didn't bother coming up with a sufficiently different mechanical system for it."

It also seems untrue that different fluff with similar mechanics = different classes, because (IMHO) the wizard is a whole lot closer mechanically to a cleric than it is to a warlock, and nobody's saying we should fold clerics into wizards.

Willie the Duck

2021-01-25, 02:51 PM

In Blackmoor (Original D&D) and AD&D 1e they were an awkwardly implemented attempt to fit a TV show (Kung Fu's Kwai Chang Cain) and movie niche (Bruce Lee's movies - Enter the Dragon, etc) into a feudal / fantasy / Swords and Sorcery genre.
Don't forget Remo Williams/ the Destroyer novels.

I mean, we're making a new edition here, right? Shouldn't the whole point of a class-based system be to create mechanics that map onto the "fluff" of different character archetypes? If the 5e sorcerer isn't unique enough (agreed), you make a 6e version that is. You don't just say, "screw it, all magic-users now have to get wedged into mechanics modeled after a sci-fi series by Jack Vance that nobody under the age of 50 has ever read, because the last edition didn't bother coming up with a sufficiently different mechanical system for it."

It also seems untrue that different fluff with similar mechanics = different classes, because (IMHO) the wizard is a whole lot closer mechanically to a cleric than it is to a warlock, and nobody's saying we should fold clerics into wizards.

How about we agree that the current split doesn't need to happen, and exactly which 'fluf' gets rolled into what can be mutable?

I agree that the Jack Vance model doesn't need to reign supreme. Heck, the 'magic through study' concept really isn't the most prevalent in the fiction. Whether that means we need 1 class, 2, a plethora, or back down to one but multiple subclasses/archetypes/PrCs can be polished up when the rest of the system is being built. At least that's my proposal.

Rule-Of-Three

2021-01-25, 03:08 PM

Remove Sorcerer, add Warlord.

If I had to pick another, it'd probably be remove Monk, add Avenger.

Warlord filled this beautiful design space somewhere between a Battlemaster and Paladin, and was a fantastic addition to the loadout. I don't see why it hasn't shown up yet in 5e, or it was omitted in the first place. Aura affects and out-of-activation movement or actions are incredible for any party that wants chewy, tactical combat.

They should be included already, and definitely next edition as well.

Valmark

2021-01-25, 03:18 PM

Personally... Mmm... The Arteficer and that's it.

Fold the Arteficer into another kind of Wizard and leave space for an Eldritch Knight that is their own thing (which could stand along Paladins and Rangers as half-casters counterparts).

Of course it entirely depends on the supposed system. I would love to fit other classes but I'm not alright with removing any other of those currently present.

Ertwin

2021-01-25, 03:37 PM

I think both the fighter and the sorcerer could be improved by making feats class features for those two classes, rather than them being options for everyone.

5e already puts feats as an optional rule, and fighters are the biggest beneficiary already. Making the sorcerer the arcane version of the fighter is what the original intention of the sorcerer was in 3e.

Morty

2021-01-25, 03:55 PM

I spent most of this thread arguing against fighters, but really barbarians are probably the first class I'd drop. They're a pretty narrow concept that's had subclasses stacked on top of it to pad it out. But ultimately kind of boils down to "get really angry, hit things and maybe get some vaguely shamanistic powers to go with it".

Dienekes

2021-01-25, 04:14 PM

For the sake of clarity in discussion could you spell out the characters in question?

I mean, it’s been posted/quoted 3 times on this very page, but ok.

A veteran grunt soldier. Relied on a spear and shield.
A cavalry archer sorta Mongolian in nature.
A farmboy with a frying pan
A peltast
An armored samurai with a katana and wakizashi that was the highest damage dealer of the party.
So many knights with horse and lance that charged a lot, most switched to sword and board or poleaxe when the horse wasn't available.
A gladiator who spent most the time taunting enemies.
A fencer that attacks with their rapier more than once per round. Wouldn't making a straight rapier warrior that can only attack once per round be stupid, WotC? You wouldn't make that a Rogue would you WotC? Wouldn't that be stupid?
Aztec Jaguar warrior
Lu Bu.

I mean, we're making a new edition here, right? Shouldn't the whole point of a class-based system be to create mechanics that map onto the "fluff" of different character archetypes? If the 5e sorcerer isn't unique enough (agreed), you make a 6e version that is. You don't just say, "screw it, all magic-users now have to get wedged into mechanics modeled after a sci-fi series by Jack Vance that nobody under the age of 50 has ever read, because the last edition didn't bother coming up with a sufficiently different mechanical system for it."

It also seems untrue that different fluff with similar mechanics = different classes, because (IMHO) the wizard is a whole lot closer mechanically to a cleric than it is to a warlock, and nobody's saying we should fold clerics into wizards.

Sure. It’s only no one has made much a case for mechanics for the Sorcerer. My best was just pointing out the casting mechanics of the Warlock actually fit the fluff of the Sorcerer better than they do the Warlock.

That and give only that class feats. Which, seems odd to me. Since the point of feats is to make a pool of powers available to everyone. Otherwise they’re just chosen class powers which the Warlock already has, technically include a few subclasses, and arguably every class that picks spells.

As to pointing out the people speaking out against the Warlock, most of those who do seem to wish to replace it with a different version of the warlock, all at-will casting being the one I’ve seen a few times. But many seem a bit disgruntled that the implementation in 5e is kinda iffy.

And as to others? Hell if I know. I’m only claiming to know why some people have an issue with Sorcerer.

Now as to Clerics. You have a point, and there have been a few people who’ve tangentially mentioned dropping the classes down to Skill-Guy, Fighter-Dude, and Caster-Bro. So they probably very much do see it as redundant.

Personally, while I do think the mechanics of Wizards and Clerics could be separated a lot more. The end result of giving them very divergent lists means they do play more different than Wizards and Sorcerers. Having heavy armor and a lot of relatively short range buffing/healing/control effects means the Cleric doesn’t really perform the same functions as the standard Wizard. Though subclasses do mess with this and again, I think they could definitely be given more mechanical divergence.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-25, 04:35 PM

Don't forget Remo Williams/ the Destroyer novels. I remember reading them. Did Dave or Gary or one of the early TSR team allude to that as how monk came to be in Blackmoor? (Maybe an old Dragonsfoot thread?)

How about we agree that the current split doesn't need to happen, and exactly which 'fluf' gets rolled into what can be mutable?
I would love for the horribly bad premise that the books need a distinction between 'fluff and crunch' to die a horrible death. One thing I like about 5e is that the rules are written holistically, without this zero-value-added distinction, which I seem to think was explicitly spelled out in 4e.
On the other hand, Max Wilson (or maybe you, Willie?) had a few months ago a really neat idea on what would have been a good conceptual approach for presentation in the PHB: bolding specific terms that have some mechanical/specific in-game meanings. The words target and attack are but a few of these.

I agree that the Jack Vance model doesn't need to reign supreme. Heck, the 'magic through study' concept really isn't the most prevalent in the fiction. Whether that means we need 1 class, 2, a plethora, or back down to one but multiple subclasses/archetypes/PrCs can be polished up when the rest of the system is being built. At least that's my proposal. I'd love to see the entire arcane magic concept be built off of the patron system for the warlock: you can't access the magical stuff without help from some being of the outer planes: for divine casters, that's one path, for arcane casters, there's another.

This leaves Psionics and Ki to be rescrubbed, and maybe combined, such that the power itself is internal, not external (stealing the distinction from the AD&D 2e psionics concept). That way, psionics is not magic at all.

It's something else.

Xervous

2021-01-25, 05:01 PM

A veteran grunt soldier. Relied on a spear and shield.
A cavalry archer sorta Mongolian in nature.
A farmboy with a frying pan
A peltast
An armored samurai with a katana and wakizashi that was the highest damage dealer of the party.
So many knights with horse and lance that charged a lot, most switched to sword and board or poleaxe when the horse wasn't available.
A gladiator who spent most the time taunting enemies.
A fencer that attacks with their rapier more than once per round. Wouldn't making a straight rapier warrior that can only attack once per round be stupid, WotC? You wouldn't make that a Rogue would you WotC? Wouldn't that be stupid?
Aztec Jaguar warrior
Lu Bu.

With combat competency being something assumed by the system a lot of these concepts don’t actually express anything unique. I’m hearing one narrow thing that most of them do, a single still frame that defines their whole existence. Glossing over the mention of mechanical details you could have most of those still-frames be other classes that were depicted in a moment they weren’t using any obvious class boons. To say that fighter is the class for doing combat stuff is to say it’s the class for empty concepts. Everyone is sufficiently competent in combat but it’s only fighter and its close cousins that get next to nothing else in a game where [Use Sword] is the only meaningful contribution beyond the baseline that the class retains. For a game where concepts progress, fighter never grows beyond a simple, soon outmoded purpose when other classes are focused around how-do, rather than what-do. Where does the pan boy end up at level 10? What does Hawkeye do when the rest of the avengers are fighting Thanos?

Dienekes

2021-01-25, 05:18 PM

With combat competency being something assumed by the system a lot of these concepts don’t actually express anything unique. I’m hearing one narrow thing that most of them do, a single still frame that defines their whole existence. Glossing over the mention of mechanical details you could have most of those still-frames be other classes that were depicted in a moment they weren’t using any obvious class boons. To say that fighter is the class for doing combat stuff is to say it’s the class for empty concepts. Everyone is sufficiently competent in combat but it’s only fighter and its close cousins that get next to nothing else in a game where [Use Sword] is the only meaningful contribution beyond the baseline that the class retains. For a game where concepts progress, fighter never grows beyond a simple, soon outmoded purpose when other classes are focused around how-do, rather than what-do. Where does the pan boy end up at level 10? What does Hawkeye do when the rest of the avengers are fighting Thanos?

Man, we were talking about the validity of the Fighter class. I was listing characters I built as Fighters (or Warblades) since I started playing the game 20 years ago. Them not expressing unique concepts that need their own class was kind of the point.

Though honestly, I don’t really see how “this character is a knight” is any more or less an empty concept than “this is a guy who casts magic because my great-great-great-great grandma boned a dragon.” The difference is that WotC has decided that they focus on mechanical complexity of one, providing hundreds of discrete mechanical units labeled as spells, while handwaving the complexities of the other.

Personally, I am 100% for letting various Fighter types get more mechanical complexity in combat and straight up more to do out of it. Give Rogues skill tricks so they can use their Deception abilities to confuse and befuddle as equally defined and powerful abilities. Let the Knight get various courtly etiquette abilities, or some form of Reputation benefit like the great knights of old. Let the Gladiators be super stars with the ability to make people fawn over them.

I’m not saying Fighters/Warriors/Non-Mages don’t need to be dramatically improved. I am saying that in my list, I could not make them without focusing Fighter. Is the Fencer a Barbarian? No he does not go into rages. Is he a Ranger? No, he doesn’t fight with magic. Is he a Rogue? Not if I wanted to handle a rapier correctly.

Could Agile-Striker Warrior be made it’s own class to better fit my Fencer than what I had to work around as a Fighter? Yeah, probably. But then it would do a terrible job being a Knight.

Luccan

2021-01-25, 08:54 PM

Traditionally, it means: only class that gets good AC (including magic heavy armor and shields), good hit points, AND all weapon access (including magic swords!)

3e did a lot of things wrong to cause the extreme linear fighter quadratic Wizard problem, and we're still trying to work our way through them even with the current edition.

It's funny, with how they divided all the pre-3e fighter abilities up into feats so anyone (specifically warrior types) could take them, 3e would probably have been the best edition to dump the fighter as a class.

Ignimortis

2021-01-25, 10:50 PM

The issue with D&D classes isn't the list of classes, it's the perception and the design principles. Fighter at level 20 is functionally identical to Fighter at level 5, it's just "more of the same packed into one action". Wizard at level 20 is incomparable to Wizard at level 5. They're two completely different characters on a completely different scale.

So either go with the Wizard flow (each character evolves significantly and becomes capable of things previously plainly impossible, and not always because of sheer HP/damage numbers), or scale all the spellcasters back, and scale all the noncasters forward to meet halfway. As it stands, there is no reason for the last three spell levels to exist in the game as player-available abilities, and even less reason for Wizard/Cleric duo to have access to 95% of them by the dint of writing "Wizard" or "Cleric" in their charsheet.

So back on topic. Trade Fighter in for Warblade+PoW Warlord in one class with options for being just a cunning anime swordsman or a leader of men, trade Wizard in for Warmage/Beguiler/Necromancer/Summoner/Thaumaturge (divination+transmutation), trade 5e Warlock for 3e Warlock, trade 5e Bard for 3e Bard (Bards should never have been full casters), trade Cleric in for new Cleric for whom domain choice defines almost everything (cleric of War gets heavy armor, extra attack but only half casting, etc, cleric of Life gets no armor and only simple weapons, but can heal and buff better, etc) instead of some bonus spells and Channel Divinity, delete Druid (Nature Cleric is enough, with Polymorph somewhere in there), delete Ranger (make them part of Rogue or Fighter), Paladin can stay.

Sorcerers could be part of Warlock, Monk and Rogue could be one class, Barbarian has to stay so that people who want to play Conan and/or say "I attack" over and over have something to play.

Suffice to say, cleaving to tradition has done terrible things for D&D game design. People who look back at 3e PHB for design ideas do not understand that 3e's PHB was the worst D&D has ever been.

Willie the Duck

2021-01-25, 10:51 PM

Did Dave or Gary or one of the early TSR team allude to that as how monk came to be in Blackmoor? (Maybe an old Dragonsfoot thread?)
Forward to 1e's Oriental Adventures. EGG suggested it was inspired by Brian Blume wanting to make a Remo Williams character. Tim Kask (often a neutral party in the Dave/Gary credit discussions) suggests* that Arneson might have been the actual originator, although he isn't sure
*In interview with Shannon Appelcline

I would love for the horribly bad premise that the books need a distinction between 'fluff and crunch' to die a horrible death. One thing I like about 5e is that the rules are written holistically, without this zero-value-added distinction, which I seem to think was explicitly spelled out in 4e.
On the other hand, Max Wilson (or maybe you, Willie?) had a few months ago a really neat idea on what would have been a good conceptual approach for presentation in the PHB: bolding specific terms that have some mechanical/specific in-game meanings. The words target and attack are but a few of these.
We both promote the idea, I believe arriving at the ideal separately*, but I believe I saw him advocating it here first, so I usually attribute the idea to him. Just based on not having seen him a lot recently, it might very well have been me.
*makes sense, he is a software developer of some kind, and I manage a digital resource governance department, so exacting requirements and agreed-upon parameters are kind-of important.

I'd love to see the entire arcabe system be built off of the patron system for the warlock: you can't access the magical stuff without help from some being of the outer planes: for divine casters, that's one path, for arcane casters, there's another.
That certainly would be a good concept. I think there are a few who really like the 'magic in the blood' motif, and I know some people do actually like the long beard/dusty tomes/pointy hat/stars&crescent moon motif-robed scholarly wizard, despite it honestly being the rarest of all 'mages' in literature, myth, and folklore. In this proposed system, would those secretly be patron-ed bargains somehow?

Ganryu

2021-01-26, 12:07 AM

Probably going to get shot for this, but... Monk.

I don't see it's purpose in the game. Literally only thing it has that's unique is stunning strike, but well, it's expensive to use, is a con save (which becomes useless late game, and isn't GOOD early game), and can be flavored with other races. ESPECIALLY with Tasha's letting you A) Grab a fighting style. B) Unarmed fighting style.

I ran a fighter with mobile and unarmed fighting style, and the players literally forgot I wasn't a monk at times.

Not only is it able to be replaced by other classes, they can do ti better. I did 120+ damage in a single turn just punching something into submission.

Before people go 'but the unarmored'. Barbarian. Same schtick. AND they get the mobility increase too. And increased athletics means they are doing some better jumping too.

What even IS the purpose of a monk? Honestly, I feel like it should do more debuffs as it strikes to go along with the 'keen strikes aimed at weakness', but stunning strikes it. And as noted, I hate it because the con save.

I suppose short rest recharge is nice, but, well, every game I've been in has been incredibly bad about short rest vs long rest. Probably just personal experience there, and again, fighter does it too.

This has been my ted talk.

Morty

2021-01-26, 03:54 AM

Ignimortis

2021-01-26, 08:15 AM

This thread is an exercise in realizing that most classes don't have a very solid grounding besides "they've been around a while and people are used to them".

Yes. If we get down to it, maybe three classes have a solid enough foundation. Fighter, Cleric and Wizard. Everything else is "a different kind of warrior" or "a different kind of divine magic" or "a different kind of arcane magic". If you don't consider the diving/arcane magic dichotomy worth keeping and expanding upon, then you're down to two base classes - Fighter and Wizard. Everything else is just a "Fighter, but..." or "Wizard, but..." kind of thing. And Wizard isn't a "Fighter, but" only because they have probably the most vastly different mechanics from one another in the game.

Waazraath

2021-01-26, 08:31 AM

Morty

2021-01-26, 08:44 AM

Dienekes

2021-01-26, 08:59 AM

OldTrees1

2021-01-26, 09:09 AM

Sigreid

2021-01-26, 09:23 AM

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-26, 10:01 AM

As it stands, there is no reason for the last three spell levels to exist in the game as player-available abilities Heh, we are going to the Pre Greyhawk (OD&D 1e supplement) there with that concept, and it only breaks down, I suspect, when you want to start travelling between planes and world and need really powerful magic to do that.

Paladin can stay. I think this edition's version of that class is very well put together.

Sorcerers could be part of Warlock Yep.

Monk and Rogue could be one class, The Grey Mouser might not agree, but There is certainly some overlap. Use sub classes as the differentiation?
People who look back at 3e PHB for design ideas do not understand that 3e's PHB was the worst D&D has ever been. I sold mine back to second hand books and got a little beer money. :smallsmile:

Forward to 1e's Oriental Adventures. EGG suggested it was inspired by Brian Blume wanting to make a Remo Williams character. Tim Kask (often a neutral party in the Dave/Gary credit discussions) suggests* that Arneson might have been the actual originator, although he isn't sure
*In interview with Shannon Appelcline I no longer have that tome. Some things disappear during a move if you move often enough. :smallfrown:

In this proposed system, would those secretly be patron-ed bargains somehow? Yes, and with returning Warlock to INT (as they had envisioned with this new edition during the early phases) the 'scholar' aspect can be folded in via sub class.

Ignimortis

2021-01-26, 10:09 AM

I think we're shifting into combining two topics here.

Ignimortis is claiming that you can divide everything into three broad classes. No Magic, Divine Magic, Arcane Magic. Which he called Fighter, Cleric, Wizard.

You're claiming that in a defined rigid class system with multiple variations on the warrior theme Fighter is too generic.

But under Ignimortis' division Fighter is no more or less generic than Wizard as a term. They both encompass an enormous plethora of fantasy concepts.

Your attempting to impose strongly defined class identities and goals into a system that has for decades had a very strange mix of hyper specific classes and generic classes, while Ignimortis is wondering what's the point of the specific classes when we have the generic ones.

Yes, that. I have never understood the divide between Rogue and Fighter - a Fighter that encompasses anything beyond "big dumb brute with a club" should also be a skill expert class, so I'd be very comfortable folding Rogue under Fighter, and perhaps giving Sneak Attack/Generic Precision Damage Feature in exchange for some other capabilities.

I would also argue that at the point where we reduce everything to Fighter, Cleric, Wizard or Fighter, Wizard, we've lost any point to having a class system. A proper class system should have lots of classes, no less than 10, and then they shouldn't be done like D&D does them at all. But that veers far off from the topic, because my ideal D&D would have very few similarities to official D&D releases. Maybe it'd be similar to late 3.5, but that's as close as it gets.

ZRN

2021-01-26, 10:47 AM

Yes. If we get down to it, maybe three classes have a solid enough foundation. Fighter, Cleric and Wizard. Everything else is "a different kind of warrior" or "a different kind of divine magic" or "a different kind of arcane magic". If you don't consider the diving/arcane magic dichotomy worth keeping and expanding upon, then you're down to two base classes - Fighter and Wizard. Everything else is just a "Fighter, but..." or "Wizard, but..." kind of thing. And Wizard isn't a "Fighter, but" only because they have probably the most vastly different mechanics from one another in the game.

You can certainly make an argument for reducing the game to a few "core" classes and using stuff like feats and multiclassing to build other archetypes. And you could also make an argument for a 3e/PF-style system with a different class for every archetype. Which is why I think the OP's framework is useful: let's assume that we want D&D to have about a dozen base classes, and (like 5e) that it can use feats, class feature/spell selection, and subclasses to differentiate sub-archetypes within those classes. Given those assumptions, which classes should we have?

I think you can make an argument for the broad archetype of each current core class. Remember, the point of classes isn't just to make it possible for system expert nerds (like us) to build a character that successfully matches the archetype we have firmly planted in our heads. Part of the point of classes is to actually train newer players in how to "act" like various archetypes. That goes a long way towards justifying classes like the monk and even the barbarian (which I maligned above): sure, if I have a solid grasp of 5e rules and have watched a bunch of Jackie Chan movies, and have a solid grasp of roleplaying (avoiding metagaming, etc), I can build a fighter that works well as a "monk" both for RP and mechanics. But what if I'm a new player? Even if someone helps me to patch together the feats and class features I should take and explains how they work together, I have very little official guidance as to how my monk should act, and think, and relate to the world around him.

Having an actual monk CLASS, with pages of description and its very own immutable class abilities, makes it easier: starting my 5e monk, I quickly see that I should be dextrous and wise, that I don't need armor and possibly don't need weapons, that I can round around quickly and get in a flurry of rapid attacks, etc. Again, you could end up with similar mechanical impact by picking stuff like the unarmed fighting style and mobile feat, but it's not presented to the player in a clear and direct way, so new players can have a harder time figuring out and sticking to an archetype.

Willie the Duck

2021-01-26, 11:41 AM

Heh, we are going to the Pre Greyhawk (OD&D 1e supplement) there with that concept, and it only breaks down, I suspect, when you want to start travelling between planes and world and need really powerful magic to do that.
I've always thought that magic of that level could have been treated like creating a magic item instead of just being tacked onto the levelled spell system. probably would have saved a lot of headaches and LWQW discussions.

The Grey Mouser might not agree, but There is certainly some overlap. Use sub classes as the differentiation?
I think if the classes were split into full-on fighting guy, spellcaster guy, and generalist hero, then monk and Grey Mouser fit in the same bucket. At least unless monk means nothing but unarmed combat, in which case it should be a fighting guy subset.

I sold mine back to second hand books and got a little beer money. :smallsmile:
I no longer have that tome. Some things disappear during a move if you move often enough. :smallfrown:
Both are useful just for historical reference/what was tried before. The 3E PHB is good simply because I can look at section X, Y, or Z and say, 'I know why they tried that, and here is why it worked as it did.' 1e OA definitely is peek clueless (both in terms of actually knowing Eastern culture/lore/weapons&armor, and in terms of implementing new rules with absolutely no playtesting).

Yes, and with returning Warlock to INT (as they had envisioned with this new edition during the early phases) the 'scholar' aspect can be folded in via sub class.
I would have loved to see something like that come to pass

Telwar

2021-01-26, 12:01 PM

Right now, I wouldn't really want to ditch anything. I don't think barbarian has that strong an identity ("so he gets mad? That's it?"), but to be honest, very little else has a stronger identity. Really, everything we have now is in because we have had it in D&D before. I'd much rather add classes and just make sure that I saved room in the PHB by having it better and more concisely written. Maybe cut down on the spell list to begin with as a good start, and embrace keywords. Or go with a bigger PHB. Or both.

One of the risks that would come from chopping out classes is it risks alienation of a good chunk of the player base. And the experimental option of switching out all the classes to a generic magic dude/non-magic-dude makes 4e look traditional, and while I loved the hell out of 4e, clearly it didn't work very well.

Ignimortis

2021-01-26, 12:15 PM

You can certainly make an argument for reducing the game to a few "core" classes and using stuff like feats and multiclassing to build other archetypes. And you could also make an argument for a 3e/PF-style system with a different class for every archetype. Which is why I think the OP's framework is useful: let's assume that we want D&D to have about a dozen base classes, and (like 5e) that it can use feats, class feature/spell selection, and subclasses to differentiate sub-archetypes within those classes. Given those assumptions, which classes should we have?

In that case...

Barbarian - big strong dumb warrior-type. Very little support for anything other than "I attack" and feats of physical prowess, like jumping and lifting stuff, in the core class. Alright at skills.
Archetypes are: Berserker (typical Barbarian with brutal cunning and beast-like drive, surprisingly good at tracking and animal handling), Rage Mage/Runescarred (tap into primal magic for a bit, 1/3 casting out of vaguely druidic list). Not much to do here, I think.
Bard — 1/2 charisma arcane caster, excessively focusing on buffs/debuffs and teamwork. Pretty useless on their own (5e got that entirely wrong, Bards are too good), very good as a 5th party member. Keep the skillmonkey bits - second best skill user right after Rogue.
Archetypes are Loremaster (more spells known, wider list, bonuses to knowledges) and War Chanter (better buffs, better armor, still bad at actually dealing damage).
Beastmaster — noncaster, designed to appeal to people who actually like Beastmaster Ranger and Shepherd Druid. Gets a pet which cannot really die unless the character dies, and which can be taken anywhere by stuffing them into an interdimensional pocket. Yes, even at level 1. Alright at skills, just like Barbarian.
Subclasses are Hunter, focusing on buffing the pet and mostly shifting power to it, and Shifter, focusing on shapeshifting into other animals and pack tactics with an equal power spread between the character and the pet.
Cleric — full Wisdom caster. Very few features other than Channel Divinity and spellcasting. Spells are almost entirely dependent on the domain, you only get 2-3 of them outside of your domain every spell level (so maybe every Cleric can Cure Wounds and Bless, but not every Cleric can Animate Dead or Spiritual Guardians or Flame Strike). Bad at skills.
Archetypes are, obviously, Domains. Every domain gets you 4-5 spells per spell level. Yes, it's very restrictive. I think it's the way casters should be. Only Fire or Sun Clerics can Flame Strike. Only Death clerics can Animate Dead. Only Life Clerics get Regeneration or anything better than Revivify.
Fighter — your generic warrior type with a twist. Basic maneuvers are at-will or powered by a constantly generated resource like Stamina, and baked into the class. Advanced maneuvers are subclass-locked and level-locked, but they aren't really worse than magic. No more "Extra Attack (2)" or extra ASIs - this Fighter doesn't need those things. Still good at skills, probably the best behind Bard/Rogue.
Archetypes are Weaponmaster (anime hero guy, gains access to Wuxia-like maneuvers at level 7 and afterwards - jump 100 feet and crash onto someone, slice the air so hard it becomes a ranged attack, parry spells, short-range teleportation by moving too fast to see, etc), Warlord (buffs, command people, battlefield manipulation, gain impossible rulership powers at higher levels - think Exalted who inspires people to build ten times quicker than normal), Paladin (1/3 divine casting, auras, more passive benefits and burst damage in exchange for no advanced maneuvers).
Rogue — generic rogue type with a twist. Best at skills. Since I haven't mentioned this yet, skill progression is fixed, so that a trained level 20 character is completely unable to lose to an untrained level 1 character, ever. Skills have several proficiency ranks (like PF2e - Untrained, Trained, Expert, Master, Legendary), and new ranks unlock new skill uses, including physically impossible ones, like hiding in plain sight, opening a door with no lock or reviving someone freshly deceased. Rogues get tons of proficiency upgrades and at some point treat all skills as at least Trained.
Archetypes are Swashbuckler - improved combat, Sneak Attack somewhat weaker but can apply multiple times per turn, emphasises social and acrobatic skills, Artificer - better defenses, gains an array of invocation-like "Inventions" (bombs, self-deploying traps, one-shot "magic" items, etc) which can apply Sneak Attack damage and can trade it for debilitating effects, and Thief - normal rogue with lots of pilfering, using magic items but not usually making them yourself, emphasizes doing typical rogue stuff)
Warlock — 1/2 Int pseudocaster. Use 3.5 Warlock as reference - lots of at-will magic, very few limitations, etc. Eldritch Blast is a level-scaling class feature, not a cantrip. Mediocre at skills.
Archetypes are Hexblade (another gish-type? sheesh. gains invocations useful for melee combat, replaces Eldritch Blast with something more weapon-oriented), Master of Chains (familiar-focused, another take on the pet class?), Keeper of Eldritch Lore (spellcaster-type, gets more invocations emulating magic or making unique magical effects).
Wizard — full Int caster. Probably the most contentious contender. Metamagics are a core class feature, fueled by a separate pool of points. Bad at skills that aren't knowledges. Spell access severely limited by archetypes - same as Clerics, you don't get a lot of stuff outside of your archetype, and your archetype only gives you choices from your favored schools with an occasional chance to pick a lower level spell from an unfavored one.
Archetypes are Warmage (actual combat mage, Evocation/Abjuration, durable, has access to medium armor and martial weapons but can't actually use them better than normal), Beguiler (typical social/debuff mage, Enchantment/Illusion, normal wizard durability), Binder (minion master, Conjuration/Necromancy, with choices which of the two matters more to you, in archetype features, normal wizard stuff), Thaumaturge (Divination/Transmutation, probably the weirdest of all, pretty durable, can transmute self to an extent, a-la Prototype?).

There is, probably, some design space for a Monk/Scout type of class with high mobility and unorthodox tactics. But I can't seem to find it.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-26, 12:25 PM

Maybe cut down on the spell list to begin with as a good start, and embrace keywords. Yeah, spell list needs liposuction. Also, from a friend who liked 4e, the class spell lists need to be in Chapter 3, in the section that the classes are in. Organizationally, this was a foul. He really disliked that when we got him to try some 5e, and I can't blame him.

I would have loved to see something like that come to pass A few of the bits for that are in the Tome Pact, and in the class general description, but it needs a lot more to get to where I'd need it to be ... and I don't feel like trying to build an entire homebrew class. That's a lotta work to get right.

In that case...
Bard — 1/2 charisma arcane caster, excessively focusing on buffs/debuffs and teamwork. Pretty useless on their own (5e got that entirely wrong, Bards are too good), very good as a 5th party member. Keep the skillmonkey bits.

Archetypes are Loremaster (more spells known, wider list, bonuses to knowledges) and War Chanter (better buffs, better armor, still bad at actually dealing damage). Yeah, bard as half caster strikes me as a better path forward.

Beastmaster — noncaster, designed to appeal to people who actually like Beastmaster Ranger and Shepherd Druid. Gets a pet which cannot really die unless the character dies, and which can be taken anywhere by stuffing them into an interdimensional pocket. Yes, even at level 1.
Hmm, interesting idea.

Cleric — Respectfully disagree with this take. I think they got Cleric about right, except for Heavy Armor on Nature Cleric, and I won't even mention Twilight, and them failing to port Arcana into Tasha's ... :smallfurious:

Fighter — Need to think about this more before responding.

Rogue —
Hmm. Interesting ideas.

Warlock — 1/2 Int pseudocaster. Use 3.5 Warlock as reference -
Thanks, I'd rather not.

borg286

2021-01-26, 01:32 PM

Fold the Ranger into a Druid subclass that eats spell slots like Paladins do with smite. The ranger has had an identity crisis from the very early days that would benefit from the versatility that druid spells could fix up.

Kill the Monk and replace it with a fighter subclass like the Battlemaster but more stance and ki focused. The fighter does a much better job with multiple attacks and fighting styles.

While everyone is harping on the Sorcerer I propose a few small changes to make it feel different. Flexible casting is turned into a no action, and metamagics have more options and are gained 2 at level 3, +1 at level 7, +1 at level 10, and +1 at level 13, +1 at level 17. Change Subtle to Psionic. Make each archetype give 5 free known top-knotch spells, rather than the mixed bag most archetypes give. I'd also give the sorcerer more unique spells similar to what the warlock has over wizard. Give him some spells that are juicy when metamagicked. The change to flexible casting is mostly what makes him different because he becomes more of a point-based caster rather than slot based. This would make him closer to the psion of 3.5.

Add the Warlord as hybrid buff/BC control. Make him a 1/2 caster.

Add in the Swordmage and fold in the Eldritch Knight and Bladesinger, with the melee cantrips being available to only Swordmage and Warlock. 5e needs to redo its defender role. The Mark ability being optional in the DMG was a mistake. WotC failed to understand the importance of the concentration slot, and protecting the caster from losing it. Defending at range is severely lacking in 5e.

Damon_Tor

2021-01-26, 02:40 PM

More diversity in spellcasting mechanics are needed before I would start deleting spellcasting classes. Sorcerers would continue to exist, but they would become a slot-free, sorcery-point-based class to distinguish them from wizards. Clerics and Druids will each have alterations to their spellcasting to distinguish them from other spellcasters as well; only wizards would retain pure vancian casting.

Removed:
Bards become a sorcerer subclass
Paladins become a fighter subclass
Rangers become a fighter subclass

Added:
The Artificer is added as a core class with a spellcasting system that revolves more explicitly around infusing items
The Psion is added with its own unique spellcasting system
The Warlord is added, representing a non-magical buffing and leadership class

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-26, 02:43 PM

; only wizards would retain pure vancian casting.

Uh, they aren't pure vancian in this edition. They were in 3.5e. You get to move your prepared spells around in the slots. In vance you committed each slot to one spell, no take backs.

Morty

2021-01-26, 02:58 PM

Having an actual monk CLASS, with pages of description and its very own immutable class abilities, makes it easier: starting my 5e monk, I quickly see that I should be dextrous and wise, that I don't need armor and possibly don't need weapons, that I can round around quickly and get in a flurry of rapid attacks, etc. Again, you could end up with similar mechanical impact by picking stuff like the unarmed fighting style and mobile feat, but it's not presented to the player in a clear and direct way, so new players can have a harder time figuring out and sticking to an archetype.

That's more or less my take on generic classes. If I get a generic fighter and I have to work out how to make it what I want, all we've got is point-buy with extra steps. Now I prefer point-buy, in general, but I also prefer systems to be honest about what they do.

"General classes with lots of subclasses" makes me wonder why we have the first category, since the subclasses are doing all the actual work. It could work if we do it like Shadow of the Demon Lord, where we have different tiers of classes, but they're not bound to each other. We can still do better than warrior/rogue/mage/priest, though. Like strong hero/quick hero/smart hero/social hero.

Damon_Tor

2021-01-26, 03:36 PM

As to artificers: ought to be a sub class of wizard, not its own class. (IMO)

That was tried, twice, early on in 5e. As the "School of Artifice" and later as the "School of Invention". Neither worked well.

Tvtyrant

2021-01-26, 03:46 PM

Ranger out for Incarnum class, subclass divided into wilderness (totemist), Urban (incarnate) and other subclasses as they come up.

Binder in somewhere.

Barbarian moves towards the 4E Barbarian/Warden design with shapeshifting rages.

Sorcerer becomes more like said Barbarian, with transformations that grant abilities based on descent as a daily ability. Turn into dragon, turn into Devil, etc.

Battlemaster abilities are for all fighter subclasses, add on to that.

Edit: With the caveat that I prefer the game to be less about stacking and more about a wide selection of discrete abilities.

Dienekes

2021-01-26, 04:26 PM

So in the spirit of just writing what we'd like to see without any hope of WotC following through on it. Here's what I've thought about the class system and how I would try to make the mechanical differences between classes far more prevalent.

Barbarian: This is considered the simple class for noobs/people who don't want to think much more than say "I attack" every round. Their power comes form their rage. They might be able to give themselves quick boosts along with it, mostly reactive stuff that doesn't really take much mechanical know-how. Things like the Fighter ability "Indomitable." You fail a save? Reroll it. I'd make the Rage damage bonus a die because in my experience new players love rolling dice and will make their crits feel better. Subclasses would focus their combat a little, with a Dex based whirling dervish-like class (probably wouldn't use that name though), one for whacking things really hard with big weapons, and perhaps a defensive one for the guys who want to make certain their characters don't die.

Bard: Half-caster. But I would put way way way more focus on them performing music in combat. This would be their core ability really. Picking a song to play or a tempo each Action that effects either everyone/allies that can hear the performance. While a select group of spells can be cast without interrupting the performance.

Beastmaster: I agree with Ignimortis here. Focusing on a pet (or pets) is it's own unique class that could use some development. I'd abandon Rangers to be made out of either this, Nature Clerics, Fighters, or Rogues depending on how you wish to portray them. Aragorn is a Fighter playing in a system that uses a much more robust Medicine and Survival skill system.

Cleric: One of the primary casters. I wonder if a mechanic can be made in which their devotion to their deity/philosophy fuels their spells. Possibly a point system and they start out with a pool that fuels their spells and abilities. They would get a base amount per short rest (as they are implied to do their prayers then) with gaining more points based on things done in and out of combat that show devotion. These actions are determined by subclass. One method of gaining these devotion points would probably be using some form of flavorful cantrip-like ability in combat.
Druid would be one of the subclasses of the Cleric. Nature Domain kinda thing.

Fighter: Heavy emphasis on being a martial artist. Where Barbarian is the simple warrior, Fighter is complex. Honestly, I might draw inspiration from the 3.5 Crusader here. One of the (many) issues of the Battlemaster is how repetitive their playstyle ends up being once you figure out which maneuvers are best. Adding a bit of randomness to the mix would solve this, and emphasize the thinking on your feet aspect of fighting. Subclasses would be where fluff gets infused into the class, with knights and fencers and the like. One of which would probably be the Monk.

Paladin: Honestly the 5e Paladin is already pretty good. I might try to tie it closer to my Cleric's devotion points to fuel smiting and spells. Because honestly how flavorful would it be if your Devotion Paladin had some Reaction ability to take a hit meant for an ally, but doing that would give them more points to smite all the harder next round. That'd be just awesome. But again, there would need to be a fine-tuned balance point. Having them start the day at 0 is probably not the way to go.

Rogue: I'd remove Expertise and replace it with other abilities that allow more consistent use of skills out of combat. And then I would grant them a whole lot of uses for skills in combat. Let Rogues be tricky. It is so weird to me that they established this system where attacks, defenses, and skills all grow at the same rate, so they can be easily rolled against each other. And yet, the only skills used in combat are Athletics if you do grappling and Stealth if you're a Rogue archer. Have the Rogue be tricky. Use Deception to make opponents roll their Intelligence saving throw or lose their next Action. Make a Sleight of Hand check to distract people looking at you. Make the Rogue the disruption. And if they still want to do high damage Sneak Attack equivalent put it in a subclass.

Swordsage: Name stolen from the ToB honestly, but really it can be named whatever. The defined Gish class. The Arcane paladin, probably lighter armored. But using the same basic framework of marrying magic with combat. Probably steal the casting style of one of the Arcane caster classes, probably Wizard.

Sorcerer and Warlock: One of these two classes could get the current Warlock casting abilities. I've said before that I think fluff-wise having a few spells that you need to recharge by taking a quick breather that you can't really control quite how powerful they are fits the concept of a Sorcerer that has magic blood but no real training far more than it fits the guy who has a magic sugar-daddy granting them access to their abilities, or however the fluff goes. But I don't really care which one gets it. The other however should be designed from the bottom up as baby's first caster. The magic equivalent of what I wrote about the Barbarian. Still powerful, we don't want this to be weak. But in a game with a bit of mechanical variety there needs to be the outlet for the guy who wants to be magic but doesn't have to worry about spell selection or spell slots too much.

Warlord: Non-magic support class. I've said my fair share on it. Ground up abilities that are about boosting their allies. I'm contemplating the idea of making their powers based on Tactics, where they can give commands and if either they or their ally performs the Tactic a boost is performed. On the one hand, awesome and fits the fluff of the class very well. But on the other, telling your fellow players what to do can get troublesome at the table. It would have to be really simple things that your allies were probably already going to do anyway. Things like "Hit that guy." And every ally that hits that guy does more damage. Or "Try flanking" and everyone who is flanking an enemy gets a bigger boost than whatever the system's normal flanking boost is. There is a tightrope walk here between good suggestions for a boost and playing your friends characters for them. It'd be interesting to see if it could be made to work though.

Wizard: Honestly, at a core conceptual level. Wizard is doing pretty good. It learns spells, it writes them in a spell book, it prepares a certain number per day. It's unique and interesting provided we shift everyone else away from their starting point. I do think we should probably impose a stricter delineation of available spells per Wizard though. Currently it's so easy for a Wizard player to just pick each of the best spells in the game, and there is a general agreed upon frame of which spells are usually worth more than others that a lot of Wizards start to play the same. It would be interesting to think about how one could change that. ToB avoided the problem by making higher level maneuvers require knowing more of the lower level ones from the same school, which could work. Straight banning different schools of magic when you specialize could work as well, with perhaps the Generalist learning fewer spells per level to balance it out. It's an interesting problem.

Anyway, that's what I would do. Or at least this is the path of development I would go down to see which methods are as fun as I think, and which don't quite live up to how interesting they seem in my brain.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-26, 04:29 PM

That was tried, twice, early on in 5e. As the "School of Artifice" and later as the "School of Invention". Neither worked well. They haven't gotten Psionics right yet, but they have not stopped trying. :smallsmile: But, it also touches on something that is fundamentally in DM land if we go to core books: crafting. Which takes me back to: maybe artificers don't need to be in this edition. (Sorry Korvin, too late! :smalleek: )

(The old "hey, this was in 3.5, it must be OK" approach (rumored to be in the halls of WoTC) is I suspect where the problem arises). Artificer and Transmutation school wizard have some overlap, conceptually. I'd rather they went with another try at the school.

KorvinStarmast

2021-01-26, 04:38 PM

Wizard: Honestly, at a core conceptual level. Wizard is doing pretty good. It learns spells, it writes them in a spell book, it prepares a certain number per day. It's unique and interesting provided we shift everyone else away from their starting point. I do think we should probably impose a stricter delineation of available spells per Wizard though. Currently it's so easy for a Wizard player to just pick each of the best spells in the game, and there is a general agreed upon frame of which spells are usually worth more than others that a lot of Wizards start to play the same. It would be interesting to think about how one could change that. ToB avoided the problem by making higher level maneuvers require knowing more of the lower level ones from the same school, which could work. Straight banning different schools of magic when you specialize could work as well, with perhaps the Generalist learning fewer spells per level to balance it out. It's an interesting problem.

Here's an idea: "on each level up you get to pick one spell: one from your school, one from any another."

Spell Book Limitation: when writing new spells into your book (from, say, scrolls) you can't add one form another school if that will put the number from other schools in excess of your school's spells.
Exception: no limitation on ritual spells.

The point being: limited access to spells from other schools, but no ban. Yeah, seems fiddly and maybe too much of a pain in the butt to implement. I am just spit balling here.
Or, something like: you can only have as many spells from another school as you have proficiency level.
Again, maybe getting too fiddly, and maybe a bad idea all around.
Or,
Leave Wizard alone. Scrub the Spell List. :smallsmile:

Taevyr

2021-01-26, 06:12 PM

Well, if we're making generalized lists, I'd prefer to keep most classes, as it doesn't make sense to only have 4-5 classes in a class-based system. Unless each class diverges very strongly through subclasses, which I dislike.

- Barbarian ought to be the "I hit stuff" class anyone can pick up and use well. Most traditional subclasses of them fit with that: either hit stuff harder, shrug off every hit as an undying pile of muscle, or harness the magical power of AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH fully.

- Bard as a half-caster makes far more sense. They can still be skill monkeys (second best to one of my rogue ideas), and get some special abilities that go with their performances. Subclasses to emphasize skill monkeyhood, performance (perhaps specific types), and other ideas.

- Cleric is alright in concept, but overpowered: limit the base-class spells & skills, and give specific skills and spells with each Domain. Life cleric gets medicine and high-level healing spells, Knowledge cleric gets to choose 1-2 knowledge skills and some scrying, etc.

- Druid could be a special cleric domain, where wildshape is the channel divinity. Or it could be folded in with Ranger, which I'll mention later.

- With Barbarian being the base "I hit stuff" class, Fighter is free to become more technical, the way a master combatant should be: manoeuvers as a base feature, subclasses that focus on either ridiculous feats through specific weapon mastery, armor/footwork mastery to become untouchable, and battlefield control/command. Kensei would also fit well in here.

- Monk could largely be folded into one of my rogue ideas, which follows below

- I like how Paladins were done in this edition: I'd keep it similar to how it is.

- Rogue could be split in two, both capable of underhanded means, but quite different in execution:

a skirmisher/dirty fighter class which fuses the Sneak attack with most of the Monk's capabilities, with subclasses that emphasize one or the other. Blinding, stunning, all that stuff. For those that played pillars of eternity, think that version of the rogue, with unarmed capabilities to a degree that depends on subclass. Assassin and Open Hand both fit well here.

A sneaky/skill monkey class, with several utility and support skills. Subclasses like Thief, Mastermind and Arcane trickster would fit well here. Also fits the "social rogue" archetype.

- Ranger could be folded in with Druid as a environment controller/manipulator, aided by a base-class animal companion: nature spells/abilities to entangle, slow or poison enemies and such, use of traps, either magical or just applied survival skill/knowledge. Subclasses which emphasize one of those aspects, or add the magical component for those who want that. The kind of guys you don't want to face on home terrain.

- Sorcerer could work as a variant within either the warlock system or wizard subclasses, or be rebuilt with specific mechanics as the full CHA-caster. Perhaps something more similar to Kineticists from PF, with specific magic surges (table of 20 or something) for each element/subclass.

- Warlock makes more sense as Int-based, but beyond that they're alright. Less spells, more special abilities perhaps, but the invocation system works excellently for that.

- Wizard doesn't really need a change, aside from giving them access to metamagic. Beyond that, they're generally good the way they are.

My main problem is still Sorcerer: I love the flavor, but it direly needs proper mechanics to back that flavor. Robbing metamagic from the wizards isn't that, especially since sorcerers are supposed to have LESS control rather than more.

Kane0

2021-01-26, 06:25 PM

The class with Spells
The class with Invocations
The class with Incarnum
The class with Psionics
The class with Combat Maneuvers
The class with Tricks & Talents

Then go completely ham on mixing and matching them. That's what, 21 possible classes if we're only doing half-and-half? 12 of those in the PHB, spread the other 9 over a few splatbooks.

DigestPantheon

2021-01-26, 06:35 PM

I think that the samurai was too thematically wrong in 5e. I definitely wouldn't include it as a core class in 6e, but as a 5.5e update I think a lot of the fighter classes could use a bit of a thematic overhaul.

anthon

2021-01-26, 09:49 PM

Coming from the level 1 paladins are demigods school of AD&D,

looking at the 5e clerics with martial weapons and heavy armor and +6 to hit,
vs. the 5e paladins with martial weapons and heavy armor and +6 to hit,

all i see is some shuffling of the innate abilities, and not coming from the school of smite, see it as a non-requirement. Also, since most of my favorite 1st level paladin resistances were shunted to higher, often not playable levels, even the appeal of those wanes.

This leads me to believe in the absence of 23 points of THAC0 and the unimpressive attack matrix of a 5e paladin, the paladin could become a subclass of the Cleric. Since they already receive the same armor, same +6 to hit, turn undead, and have some access to cleric spells, the modifications would be minimal, perfunctory, or possibly even resolved by a short recommended feat list.

A feat like "Enhanced Divine Spell Casting: +1 maximum spell level" taken multiple times inversely could be seen as another cleric. Like, if your base max spell level is 5, and you took this feat 4 times, you would have a max spell level of 9, making it a full cleric table. The logic of this could thus be reversed: swapping out those 4 levels of cleric spell casting each as an ascending extra paladin ability (like disease immunity or saving throw bonuses) above and beyond the standard cleric allotment of variable abilities (which can also be edited to become paladin abilities).

I'd probably do a similar finicky realignment of the Ranger into Fighter, with more focus on two weapon fighting, double bonus for tracking, and animal companions.

Either way, dropping these two would allow me to have room to create a Psionicist Class, and extra room for a Subclass or three: the Soul Knife, Pyrokineticist, and ... whatever else comes to mind.

Maybe even toss in the Warlord under Bard with a Siege/War list of spells to do stuff like dig trenches, conjure giant soup vats of minor potion/cure disease food; march armies for 100 miles without rest; or boost morale for 1000 men/caster level. That sort of thing.

anthon

2021-01-26, 10:04 PM

I don't agree about fighters, as I spent the previous two pages arguing. "Fighter" is a label so generic as to be rather useless in a class system as strongly-defined as D&D's. If I were to point out two classes that I think strike a good balance, I'd say rogues and paladins. Or rather, what rogues could be if they got rid of all the "skill specialist" and "finesse fighter" baggage and focused on being thieves, burglars and assassins. Paladins are a strong, D&D-specific archetype that nonetheless has some wriggle room in terms of how it works.

fighter used to be defined as the guy with a THAC0 of 1 at 20th level before bonuses took it into deep negatives. He had access to all armor and all weapons, but that didn't really matter compared to a cleric's armor or a paladin's avenger. His multi attacks didn't matter compared to the ranger's two weapons, and his hit points were inferior to the barbarian, and often equal or inferior to the ranger.

So the fighter was really defined by bonuses to hit, strength specialization, and more bonuses to hit through deep levels of specialization.

Skills and Powers added magic resistance,
some games added siege engines.
Early editions added pet armies

The 5e fighter seems to be back patting and number crunching on the part of the design team, but really doesn't feel as fighter-y as other editions. The 3/3.5 Feat monster was a nice alternative to "my modified THAC0 is -9" but a lot of the later "fighter" attempts have come up short.

if it was me, i'd probably string fighter as
>consistent attack bonuses>multiple attack specialization>high weapon dps>siege warfare/devices>Magic Resist gradually climbs over levels>free army with decent minions>

this build to me is a sweet spot of "not like the other classes". We had an old paladin that had better AC and more attacks, but the Fighter had better damage, and way better bonuses to hit. Plus their Magic resistance was eventually /better/ than that provided by the holy sword because the sword was static and the fighter's was tied to level. Finally, the fighter led a small city of soldiers.

Aesthetically, our fighters were carved out. We liked them.

i saw the magic resistance thing pop up here and there, in video games of DnD etc. too. Like Mage Slayers or whatever. But trust me, since Fighters are usually not spell casters, giving them an option to be incrementally magic resistant over many many adventures works super good. And giving them some troops to boss around and set up weapons tactics is also a plus.

Finally, a fighter shouldn't be missing. That should be rare as hen's teeth.

Morty

2021-01-27, 03:07 AM

fighter used to be defined as the guy with a THAC0 of 1 at 20th level before bonuses took it into deep negatives. He had access to all armor and all weapons, but that didn't really matter compared to a cleric's armor or a paladin's avenger. His multi attacks didn't matter compared to the ranger's two weapons, and his hit points were inferior to the barbarian, and often equal or inferior to the ranger.

So the fighter was really defined by bonuses to hit, strength specialization, and more bonuses to hit through deep levels of specialization.

Skills and Powers added magic resistance,
some games added siege engines.
Early editions added pet armies

The 5e fighter seems to be back patting and number crunching on the part of the design team, but really doesn't feel as fighter-y as other editions. The 3/3.5 Feat monster was a nice alternative to "my modified THAC0 is -9" but a lot of the later "fighter" attempts have come up short.

if it was me, i'd probably string fighter as
>consistent attack bonuses>multiple attack specialization>high weapon dps>siege warfare/devices>Magic Resist gradually climbs over levels>free army with decent minions>

this build to me is a sweet spot of "not like the other classes". We had an old paladin that had better AC and more attacks, but the Fighter had better damage, and way better bonuses to hit. Plus their Magic resistance was eventually /better/ than that provided by the holy sword because the sword was static and the fighter's was tied to level. Finally, the fighter led a small city of soldiers.

Aesthetically, our fighters were carved out. We liked them.

i saw the magic resistance thing pop up here and there, in video games of DnD etc. too. Like Mage Slayers or whatever. But trust me, since Fighters are usually not spell casters, giving them an option to be incrementally magic resistant over many many adventures works super good. And giving them some troops to boss around and set up weapons tactics is also a plus.

Finally, a fighter shouldn't be missing. That should be rare as hen's teeth.

I know how fighters worked in the old editions and I don't think any of it is worth replicating.

Kane0

2021-01-27, 04:54 AM

Didnt they have good saves against almost everything, or a good progression?

That would be nice, just making them pretty resilient against all forms of attack

Dienekes

2021-01-27, 10:21 AM

Here's an idea: "on each level up you get to pick one spell: one from your school, one from any another."

Spell Book Limitation: when writing new spells into your book (from, say, scrolls) you can't add one form another school if that will put the number from other schools in excess of your school's spells.
Exception: no limitation on ritual spells.

The point being: limited access to spells from other schools, but no ban. Yeah, seems fiddly and maybe too much of a pain in the butt to implement. I am just spit balling here.
Or, something like: you can only have as many spells from another school as you have proficiency level.
Again, maybe getting too fiddly, and maybe a bad idea all around.
Or,
Leave Wizard alone. Scrub the Spell List. :smallsmile:

Hmm that still gives 22 non-main school spells before we even get into adding additional spells found through an adventuring career. That’s still quite a bit of the old “All the best spells soup.”

I’m kinda liking the idea of Spells having prerequisites. Nothing too complicated. Just like: to use a spell of Level X, you must have a number of spells in your spell book of the same school equal to X-1. So to use a cantrip or 1st level spell, you don’t need anything. But to use a 4th level Transmutation spell, you would need at minimum 3 such spells in your spell book.

This doesn’t prevent anyone from aiming to learn certain spells, but it strongly pushes a character more toward focusing down one or two schools at a time.

Willie the Duck

2021-01-27, 02:02 PM

Didnt they have good saves against almost everything, or a good progression?

That would be nice, just making them pretty resilient against all forms of attack

It was good (certainly unlike, say, 3e, where they were one of the ones with relatively poor saves)
Random example: AD&D 1st Edition at level 9 the saves (Paralyzation-Poison-DeathMagic/Petrification-Polymorph/Rod-Staff-Wand/BreathWeapon/Spell) were as follows (lower is good):
Cleric: 7/10/11/13/12
Fighter: 8/9/10/9/11
MagicUser: 13/11/9/13/10
Thief: 11/10/10/14/11
So yes, the fighter had good saves (particularly against nonmagical SoDs and the breath weapons of the dragons they were most likely to charge), but not so much that they could scoff at the dangers others would fear.

Waazraath

2021-01-27, 02:29 PM

HPisBS

2021-01-27, 05:04 PM

Barbarian has never appealed to me. At all. Neither thematically, nor mechanically.

The only - and I mean only - Barbarian concept I've ever really liked is the Zealot who just. won't. diiiiee!, combined with herbalism proficiency so he can make himself healing potions (and/or Magic Initiate: Druid for Goodberries) to consume right before the effect ends.

Dark.Revenant

2021-01-27, 06:29 PM

The only classes truly necessary are Warrior, Mage, Thief and the four mixtures thereof. Here's a possible arrangement:

Fighter (Warrior)

d10 hit die, 2 skills, no spellcasting, full combat superiority, no sneak attack, 7 feats, heavy armor and shields, simple and martial weapons
Magus (Warrior-Mage)

d8 hit die, 2 skills, half spellcasting, half combat superiority, no sneak attack, 6 feats, light armor and shields, simple and martial weapons
Wizard (Mage)

d4 hit die, 2 skills, full spellcasting, no combat superiority, no sneak attack, 5 feats, no armor, peasant weapons
Warlock (Mage-Thief)

d6 hit die, 3 skills, half spellcasting, no combat superiority, half sneak attack, 5 feats, light armor, simple weapons
Rogue (Thief)

d8 hit die, 4 skills, no spellcasting, no combat superiority, full sneak attack, 6 feats, light armor, simple weapons
Ranger (Warrior-Thief)

d10 hit die, 3 skills, no spellcasting, half combat superiority, half sneak attack, 6 feats, medium armor and shields, simple and martial weapons
Bard (Warrior-Mage-Thief)

d8 hit die, 3 skills, one-third spellcasting, one-third combat superiority, one-third sneak attack, 6 feats, light armor and shields, simple weapons

This doesn't include staples like divine spellcasting, so it's a rather clinical approach. Still, this kind of arrangement should form the core of class design; everything else is an expansion thereof.

Diovid

2021-01-28, 08:21 AM

Luccan

2021-01-28, 11:51 AM

Dienekes

2021-01-28, 11:53 AM

The only classes truly necessary are Warrior, Mage, Thief and the four mixtures thereof. Here's a possible arrangement:

So this is certainly a way to do it. And it has a very elegant efficiency to it. I personally though think it’s a terrible way to design a class system.

In D&D (and a lot of other games actually). Being good at combat is almost always demonstrated by being able to whack things and survive getting whacked in return. It is often the least mentally taxing means of playing in combat, and that’s it. They are only capable at this one area of play.

Skills on the other hand are only useful when not in combat. When you want to do literally everything else in the game. If we keep a strong divide between combat class and skill class then the result is two players that have to essentially sit out when the other player is doing things.

This is pretty dull for the guy sitting out. So skill guy almost inevitably gets things to do in combat stealing some of combat guys area of expertise. Usually they steal their ability to whack things but not necessarily. Some of the better designed games find ways to have their skills do cool things in combat so they can contribute meaningfully using what their class’ shtick is.

But combat guy often doesn’t get stuff to do out of combat, because what does that have to do with the whacking and tacking of the whacks? Why would they get that?

And then we come to Magic Guy. Magic Guy can by its nature do whatever the designers considered particularly magical. The issue here is, magic is pretty much always a short cut to doing both combat and out of combat stuff more effectively than either the combat or skill guys.

So in most cases I see such a divide like this the end result ends up being:

Warrior, is pretty dull to play in combat. And that’s all he can do.
Rogue, does a bunch of interesting stuff out of combat, and also has a useful role in combat that crowds in on Warrior’s area.
Wizard, the game ends up revolving around when whatever limiting mechanic the magic system uses allows them to upstage both the Warrior and Rogue.

With the half-classes tending to overshadow their pure role classes depending entirely upon how well they can use the awesome power of the magic system.

And I think that’s a bad system. I’d prefer for classes to be balanced around getting equal limelight and things to do both in and out of combat.

Dark.Revenant

2021-01-28, 04:16 PM

So this is certainly a way to do it. And it has a very elegant efficiency to it. I personally though think it’s a terrible way to design a class system.

In D&D (and a lot of other games actually). Being good at combat is almost always demonstrated by being able to whack things and survive getting whacked in return. It is often the least mentally taxing means of playing in combat, and that’s it. They are only capable at this one area of play.

Skills on the other hand are only useful when not in combat. When you want to do literally everything else in the game. If we keep a strong divide between combat class and skill class then the result is two players that have to essentially sit out when the other player is doing things.

This is pretty dull for the guy sitting out. So skill guy almost inevitably gets things to do in combat stealing some of combat guys area of expertise. Usually they steal their ability to whack things but not necessarily. Some of the better designed games find ways to have their skills do cool things in combat so they can contribute meaningfully using what their class’ shtick is.

But combat guy often doesn’t get stuff to do out of combat, because what does that have to do with the whacking and tacking of the whacks? Why would they get that?

And then we come to Magic Guy. Magic Guy can by its nature do whatever the designers considered particularly magical. The issue here is, magic is pretty much always a short cut to doing both combat and out of combat stuff more effectively than either the combat or skill guys.

So in most cases I see such a divide like this the end result ends up being:

Warrior, is pretty dull to play in combat. And that’s all he can do.
Rogue, does a bunch of interesting stuff out of combat, and also has a useful role in combat that crowds in on Warrior’s area.
Wizard, the game ends up revolving around when whatever limiting mechanic the magic system uses allows them to upstage both the Warrior and Rogue.

With the half-classes tending to overshadow their pure role classes depending entirely upon how well they can use the awesome power of the magic system.

And I think that’s a bad system. I’d prefer for classes to be balanced around getting equal limelight and things to do both in and out of combat.

The Fighter-Mage-Thief paradigm has been done far better in many other games (including TTRPGs) compared to D&D. Unspoken in my earlier post is an opinion of mine that the class designs as they exist in 5e should be entirely reworked for a new edition, for many of the reasons you've just given. I believe fighting men and thieves should have a variety of things they can do in and out of combat, just as magic users do. They should all just be good at different aspects of the game, in and out of combat, without being totally useless at off-specialty activities. The choice between Fighter, Mage, and Thief is more about what kind of style the player enjoys than, like, a choice between Good, Better, and Best.

Morty

2021-01-28, 05:50 PM

The Fighter-Mage-Thief paradigm has been done far better in many other games (including TTRPGs) compared to D&D. Unspoken in my earlier post is an opinion of mine that the class designs as they exist in 5e should be entirely reworked for a new edition, for many of the reasons you've just given. I believe fighting men and thieves should have a variety of things they can do in and out of combat, just as magic users do. They should all just be good at different aspects of the game, in and out of combat, without being totally useless at off-specialty activities. The choice between Fighter, Mage, and Thief is more about what kind of style the player enjoys than, like, a choice between Good, Better, and Best.

What games would those be? I can't think of Fighter-Mage-Thief ever working satisfactorily, on tabletop or in a video game.

OldTrees1

2021-01-28, 06:15 PM

Backgrounds almost completely removed the Thief/Rogue's monopoly on being the skill monkey, which I think proves pretty definitively that the archetype is unnecessary at the barest level of the game. An absolute baseline would be Magic Users and Everyone Else (cool name pending). Which is kind of what D&D started as, with I believe Magic Users, Clerics, and Fighting Men originally. Thieves were introduced later.

Personally I find Expertise and Reliable Talent to be the difference between mundane competence and Extraordinary mastery. Rogues get to be the ones that do the nigh impossible.

However you are right that Rogues only increases the skill pool from 4 to 6. A mere 50% increase.

Dark.Revenant

2021-01-28, 07:09 PM

What games would those be? I can't think of Fighter-Mage-Thief ever working satisfactorily, on tabletop or in a video game.

The examples that immediately come to mind are Trine, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, and Stars Without Number.

Dienekes

2021-01-28, 07:26 PM

The examples that immediately come to mind are Trine, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, and Stars Without Number.

I’d argue against Mass Effect on that list. While yeah, the first one basically has Tech as Rogue with their ability to unlock things no one else could, they were otherwise completely indistinguishable from the other classes out of combat (or the skills section).

And even this was realized as a silly distinction with the work around “slap magic gel on anything to open it.”

The games were actually improved when this was dropped, and the classes instead focused exclusively on what actions were available in combat and only in combat. Which is closer to what I’d argue for. Every class has a role in combat and a role out of combat. Only in ME out of combat is just diplomacy and intimidation and the only class that gets access to those skills is actually a subclass available to all classes called “Protagonist.”

Morty

2021-01-29, 11:43 AM

The examples that immediately come to mind are Trine, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, and Stars Without Number.

I'm not familiar with Trine or Stars Without Number. As for the rest...

In Diablo, the three classes absolutely do not work well. Warriors need to learn magic or they can't keep up. That's why later games replaced them with more varied and flavorful classes. Moreover, like Trine, Diablo is an action-oriented hack-and-slash game. The characters are going to be very limited by design.

I'm not sure which Final Fantasy you're talking about, because the franchise is very long and the titles I'm familiar with don't use those. Even the first FF had three mage classes and a monk in addition to the fighter and the thief. Many FF titles use a "job" system rather than a class one. The series staples that come up often are white/black/red mages, dragoons, monks... so yeah, it doesn't apply at all.

Mass Effect, as Dienekes explained, doesn't really use a warrior/mage/rogue split. The tech powers are just that - powers. ME1 had hacking and decryption that worked like lockpicking and were tech skills, but they were a pain in the butt more than anything else and got removed later.

Amechra

2021-01-29, 05:05 PM

Trine's also a really weird case where it's a game in the style of The Lost Vikings or Gobliiins, where you're controlling multiple characters with different abilities that you have to use together to win properly.

In Trine, those are "acrobatic lady who uses a bow", "big lug with a sword", and "wizard who conjures boxes". In Lost Vikings, those are "big guy with a shield", "aggressive guy with a sword", and "fast guy who can jump really well".

LordCdrMilitant

2021-01-29, 06:14 PM

Let's say you've somehow been given the authority to change some of the classes that will be in the next edition of D&D, BUT there still must be 12 and you can't remove more than two. What two would you remove, and what would you replace them with?

For me it's monk and sorcerer. Both have consistently proven themselves flavorful and mechanical messes and I think the game's probably better off without them. I think in replacement it would be better to have a psionic class right off the bat to avoid the constant problems those suffer from each and every edition, and something like the alchemist in Pathfinder/P2, since that seems to be the thing I most often see requested that isn't supported all that well.

EDIT: Right after posting this I saw that the "missing class for 6e" thread was actually still active. -_- I think this is still okay because it's a fairly specific challenge instead of that more general discussion thread, though.

Ranger and Monk, replace with Warlord and I dunno, Summoner. It's honestly easier to think of classes I would remove than classes I would add.

Without further adieu:
Ranger feels redundant to Fighter; particularly since Fighter does everything a ranger does but better. An alternative would be to take away ranged combat support from fighter to make Ranger the "shooty martial", but like that feels less elegant that folding Ranger into Fighter.

Monk is a class that I really don't like. It's entirely out of flavor with everything else in D&D, and deals with class-unique power sources and stuff that raises all kinds of questions and stuff. It was actually pretty neat as the "psionic martial" concept as opposed to a fourth power source of Ki used only by monks and completely unrelated to everything else. I would also rather see unarmed combat folded into a fighter subtype. If you strip out the very specifically east asian martial arts connotations of the monk class as an unarmed martial artist, they're a skilled combatant who has used extensive training and practice to become an expert at a specific type of martial combat without the aid of magic. So, in other words, a Fighter subclass.

Warlord, on the other hand, is a neat concept I'd like to see, of a no/limited magic martial support character based on CHA or INT and interfering with the action economy and buffs to support the party; perhaps with a good dose of talky-based skills/utility. Theoretically, this would be a best-fit replacement for Bard [Bard is another weird class I wouldn't mind to see go, because it's also weird. I get the whole association with fifers and drummers coordinating formations, but it still feels kind of weird and below-scale-of-relevance at the firefight scale D&D takes place at.] but I don't really mind Bard that much and there's room for a support martial without removing Bard.

And I don't know, Summoner is a cool concept that could stand to be a separate class from Wiz/Sorc. A streamlined set of mechanics focused on minionmancy would be pretty neat to see, particularly since minionmancy is so presently clunky. Necromancy, Animate, Daemon/Devil Summoning, and Elemental Summoning could all be shifted over to a class dedicated to the subject with integrated support for both keeping such assets relevant as the game progresses and making them function without grinding the game to a halt, so I'd like to see that.

Honorable mentions for removal would be Druid and Warlock, though I think they need a re-work more than a removal.
With Nature Cleric, Druid is thematically an unnecessarily limited Cleric subtype. That said, Wildshape is a unique mechanic that is still crunchy enough to play with, so some re-theming, possibly taking on some aspects of current Ranger like tracking and natural survival and reducing emphasis on spellcasting, would be good.

And Warlock is mechanically too unfocused as a grab bag of mechanics. I think some refocusing would be more in order than removal, which could possibly spin off another new class by separating some of the mechanical features. Also, like Monk, it's way too specific in power source [and is also like the leading source of "token evil/edgy" obnoxious characters in my games.]

C.A.M.

2021-02-03, 10:57 PM

Get rid of artificer.

Why artificer?

Yakmala

2021-02-03, 11:45 PM

Sorcerer: Could easily be a flavor of Wizard, with Meta-Magic being a sub-class ability.

Ranger: Could easily be a flavor of Fighter. Keep the environmental ribbons, make Hunter's Mark an ability and ditch spellcasting.

Nifft

2021-02-04, 12:05 AM

Remove Cleric.

Replace with Paladin, which covers the role of fighting religious person more than sufficiently -- but Bards, Druids, and Rangers (and Warlocks, etc.) also pick up the slack -- and a section on how to build your own setting-specific specialty Priests or how to expand beyond the Magic Initiate: Cleric feat to model an anointed religious authority.

Remove Wizard.

Replace with the Ritual Caster feat, which already exists, and turn Wizard spells into a weird resource for feats (Magic Initiate: Find Familiar), for long-lost rituals, and for PCs to research for their own use (e.g. Lore Bards).

Let the Ranger, Sorcerer, and Warlock expand into the newly opened space provided by the removal of Cleric and Wizard.

Add Psion, Binder, Swordsage, and Dragonfire Adept.

Zwinmar

2021-02-04, 02:14 AM

Well lets see, you only really need three classes, the rest are dual/multi-class options:
Martial: Lets call this a Warrior rather than a fighter, can branch down into two subclasses-Soldier (Con) and Barbarian (Str)
Skill-Monkeys: This is as the title suggests and would be skill based: Bard (Cha) and Thief (Dex), though Face and Shadow might be a better title.
Magic: These would be your casters of course: Arcane (Int) and Divine (Wis)

Your dual class or multiclass options give you things like:
Paladins-Soldier/Divine
Ranger-Soldier or Barbarian/Thief, in this case I dont know where they came up with the idea of them having magic.
Monks-make no sense, they are really just highly disciplined soldiers who master 'exotic' unarmed combat.

Though of course there would be issues with balancing and that should be left up to people far better at the maths than I.

To address the concerns: Sorcerer and Warlock are really just reflavored Arcane and Divine casters it depends on where the power is drawn from. Please consider that it could be argued that Clerics of the Sun are really drawing their power from an old one.

KorvinStarmast

2021-02-04, 01:48 PM

Personally I find Expertise and Reliable Talent to be the difference between mundane competence and Extraordinary mastery. Rogues get to be the ones that do the nigh impossible.

However you are right that Rogues only increases the skill pool from 4 to 6. A mere 50% increase. They have that additional ASI at 10 that allows for three more skills with the Skilled feat. :smallsmile:

Why artificer? Because, as I see it, (1) it's a sub class of wizard, and (2) 5e wasn't initially about crafting magic items, it was about adventuring, and (3) because I find it a bad fit for the swords and sorcery game. (But I think they fit in the Eberron setting just fine).

Waazraath

2021-02-04, 01:53 PM

JNAProductions

2021-02-04, 02:04 PM

As much as I love DFAs, I feel they're a little TOO niche to have as a core class.

Psion and Binder, though, I can get behind 100%! And Swordsage might be best as a subclass.

Luccan

2021-02-04, 03:33 PM

As much as I love DFAs, I feel they're a little TOO niche to have as a core class.

Psion and Binder, though, I can get behind 100%! And Swordsage might be best as a subclass.

Ooh, I'd like a 5e Binder

KorvinStarmast

2021-02-04, 03:41 PM

I’m kinda liking the idea of Spells having prerequisites. Nothing too complicated. Just like: to use a spell of Level X, you must have a number of spells in your spell book of the same school equal to X-1. So to use a cantrip or 1st level spell, you don’t need anything. But to use a 4th level Transmutation spell, you would need at minimum 3 such spells in your spell book.

This doesn’t prevent anyone from aiming to learn certain spells, but it strongly pushes a character more toward focusing down one or two schools at a time. After letting this gestate for a bit, I like this approach.

That 'problem' of divine spellcasting can easily be solved by giving the 'wizard', 'magus', 'warlock' and 'bard' the choice between different spheres of magic whether that is healing magic, nature magic, illusion magic and so on. I think Delta did something like that when he got rid of Cleric in his OSRIC OD&D hack.
Which is kind of what D&D started as, with I believe Magic Users, Clerics, and Fighting Men originally. Thieves were introduced later. Yes. In Greyhawk, though there were a number of proto-thief/burglar styles in proto D&D before the three books got published.

Dienekes

2021-02-04, 05:38 PM

Ranger-Soldier or Barbarian/Thief, in this case I dont know where they came up with the idea of them having magic.

Brief D&D history, the Ranger class is old. Not Fighting Man old, but old. Older than skills or as they used to be called non-weapon proficiencies. It was designed to model Aragorn in the LotR books. Now in the books Aragorn does some pretty cool stuff that is not really magical but is kinda grandiose. Stuff like healing a cursed wound with a plant he found. Reading terrain so precisely he can tell exactly what happened a day before. Hearing things before anyone else can. That sort of stuff.

The early designers thought it was easiest to model these aspects of the character by slapping magic onto it and just giving the class the spells that roughly correlate to the abilities he displayed.

And I am proud to say that thankfully now after 40 some odd years... most the stuff Aragorn does is still only really possible through spells unless you have a very lenient DM.

Kane0

2021-02-04, 07:37 PM

And I am proud to say that thankfully now after 40 some odd years... most the stuff Aragorn does is still only really possible through spells unless you have a very lenient DM.

I won’t lie, that made me sad but also laugh.

Amdy_vill

2021-02-04, 07:45 PM

ok this would be the class line up in my 5.5/6e
Artisan(bards/Artificers combination)
Barbarin
Binder/summoner(the same idea as binders or summoners from 3.5 and pathfinder)
Cleric
Cursed(Vampires, werewolves, liches and other similar ideas.)
Druid
Fighter
Paladin
Pison(Monk+ pison, but just keep the anime theme in the subclasses)
Rogue
Warlock
Wizard(Artificer, Sorcerer, and wizard combine. so just pre 5e wizards, you got mete magic and basic item creating bonuses)

Dienekes

2021-02-04, 09:40 PM

I won’t lie, that made me sad but also laugh.

Yeah, I love dnd but I’m not gonna lie. It’s pretty painfully obvious that the flagship table top roleplaying game of the world has little interest in developing much of the mundane side of things.

Luccan

2021-02-04, 10:42 PM

Brief D&D history, the Ranger class is old. Not Fighting Man old, but old. Older than skills or as they used to be called non-weapon proficiencies. It was designed to model Aragorn in the LotR books. Now in the books Aragorn does some pretty cool stuff that is not really magical but is kinda grandiose. Stuff like healing a cursed wound with a plant he found. Reading terrain so precisely he can tell exactly what happened a day before. Hearing things before anyone else can. That sort of stuff.

The early designers thought it was easiest to model these aspects of the character by slapping magic onto it and just giving the class the spells that roughly correlate to the abilities he displayed.

And I am proud to say that thankfully now after 40 some odd years... most the stuff Aragorn does is still only really possible through spells unless you have a very lenient DM.

What's surprising about the early Ranger just getting spells is they really weren't shy about giving the classes specific, non-spell abilities in early D&D. Ranger itself at least has its bonuses vs almost every biped from the Material Plane.

At this point the D&D ranger is mostly its own entity. It isn't just about recreating Aragorn anymore, so with that in mind I'm not holding my breath for a spell-less Ranger becoming mainline. Not that I would anyway, I don't actually quite get the appeal of making it the main Ranger or what people would want other than Favored Enemy/Terrain stuff.

Dienekes

2021-02-04, 10:57 PM

What's surprising about the early Ranger just getting spells is they really weren't shy about giving the classes specific, non-spell abilities in early D&D. Ranger itself at least has its bonuses vs almost every biped from the Material Plane.

At this point the D&D ranger is mostly its own entity. It isn't just about recreating Aragorn anymore, so with that in mind I'm not holding my breath for a spell-less Ranger becoming mainline. Not that I would anyway, I don't actually quite get the appeal of making it the main Ranger or what people would want other than Favored Enemy/Terrain stuff.

Non-magic healing that can still interact with the more powerful effects usually only relegated to magic, the ability to look at a field and tell what was going on there a day prior, and having a heightened awareness so you can see/hear/feel things much further away and more precisely than the normal skill rules allow would be the start I listed in the post you quoted.

Though, honestly, it's a feel thing. The survivalist going into the wild and just because they know how the world works is an attractive archetype. And I maintain, in a world where wiggling your fingers can alter the fabric of reality the guy that picks up a sword and decides to change the world by their wits and skills is the biggest badass of the bunch.

In terms of D&D I kinda agree with you, in that Ranger has more or less developed a life of its own. However, I would personally like at some point to play a game where lightly armored two-handed longsword switch hitter into short bow warrior has the breadth of abilities capable to create an entirely non-magical character that can do everything Aragorn can do in the books and not be a jumbled mess of a character that is pretty much the least efficient way to play the game.

It doesn't seem to me like it would be all that hard to design a system to let that be the case, and yet D&D consistently fails to do it.

Morty

2021-02-05, 03:56 AM

Yeah, I love dnd but I’m not gonna lie. It’s pretty painfully obvious that the flagship table top roleplaying game of the world has little interest in developing much of the mundane side of things.

It tried that twice and it resulted in about a decade of complaining. So in a way I can't blame 5E's designers.

Waazraath

2021-02-05, 04:16 AM

It tried that twice and it resulted in about a decade of complaining. So in a way I can't blame 5E's designers.

Really? Assuming you mean Tome of Battle and 4th edition: I think Tome of Battle got much more praise than complaining, and the complaining about 4e wasn't that they developed the mundane side of things. Or am I miss-asuming?

Morty

2021-02-05, 04:25 AM

Really? Assuming you mean Tome of Battle and 4th edition: I think Tome of Battle got much more praise than complaining, and the complaining about 4e wasn't that they developed the mundane side of things. Or am I miss-asuming?

Complaints about 4E were many and varied, but martial characters feeling like casters and being too complicated was prominent. In the 5E playtest, we saw non-casting complexity (which was never great to start with) hacked away at bit by bit due to feedback. Used to be every martial character, or at least every fighter, had superiority dice.

Waazraath

2021-02-05, 04:50 AM

Complaints about 4E were many and varied, but martial characters feeling like casters and being too complicated was prominent. In the 5E playtest, we saw non-casting complexity (which was never great to start with) hacked away at bit by bit due to feedback. Used to be every martial character, or at least every fighter, had superiority dice.

Ah, ok,, that's what you mean. I wouldn't know about 5e play testing. As for 4e's, I didn't see these specific complaints; I did see (among others) the complaint that all class were too much alike, but that was imo more about all of them using the same resource system than martials getting too complicated; but could be I missed it.

On the other hand: the highly favourable review of Tome of Battle (3.5) seems to indicate to me that there is conceptual room for more complicated martials. In general, I'd highly favor a design where there are simple and complicated martials, simple and complicated experts/skill users, simple and complicated casters. The disign difficulty is mainly, I think, how to balance those without having a default number of encounters in which all these options are balanced.)

Morty

2021-02-05, 07:31 AM

On the other hand: the highly favourable review of Tome of Battle (3.5) seems to indicate to me that there is conceptual room for more complicated martials. In general, I'd highly favor a design where there are simple and complicated martials, simple and complicated experts/skill users, simple and complicated casters. The disign difficulty is mainly, I think, how to balance those without having a default number of encounters in which all these options are balanced.)

ToB had its enthusiasts and detractors, but seeing how 5E D&D and PF2E alike rejected its design philosophy, I feel like it's safe to say the detractors "won". Besides, ToB concerns only martial arts and combat exploits. Non-combat options that aren't spells are even more thin on the ground. Skill tricks in late 3.5, utility powers and skill challenges in 4E, then skill feats in PF2E.

Waazraath

2021-02-05, 07:36 AM

ToB had its enthusiasts and detractors, but seeing how 5E D&D and PF2E alike rejected its design philosophy, I feel like it's safe to say the detractors "won". Besides, ToB concerns only martial arts and combat exploits. Non-combat options that aren't spells are even more thin on the ground. Skill tricks in late 3.5, utility powers and skill challenges in 4E, then skill feats in PF2E.

But this is weird, that the detrectors 'won', cause if I open the ToB entry on Amazon now, I see it getting 4,5 out of 5 with loads of reviewers.* And if I recall correctly, people (at least on forums like these) were very enthusiastic about 3.5 skill tricks. I wouldn't agree btw that ToB was 'only martial arts and combat' - mainly, yes, but it could also give abilities like 'scent' (for tracking and detecting invisible stuff was near), levitate/fly, invisibility, bonusses on skill checks, etc. Mostly grounded in 'supernatural good physical abilities' but usable outside of combat as well.

*yeah, there will be some selection bias, but if I go through reviews of other books in other editions, it seems that detractors aren't shy about writing reviews about stuff they don't like.

Amechra

2021-02-05, 07:43 AM

Xervous

2021-02-05, 07:48 AM

ToB had its enthusiasts and detractors, but seeing how 5E D&D and PF2E alike rejected its design philosophy, I feel like it's safe to say the detractors "won". Besides, ToB concerns only martial arts and combat exploits. Non-combat options that aren't spells are even more thin on the ground. Skill tricks in late 3.5, utility powers and skill challenges in 4E, then skill feats in PF2E.

I’d hesitate to point at PF2 with many delusions of it being good design intent. As the old saying goes, Paizo added 0.25 to get 3.75, pity they tried it again. It’s history repeating itself in a twisted manner.

If PF2 is indicative of anything, it’s a worship of the randomness of the D20 in resolving everything (a pale reflection of bounded accuracy), a dislike for anything that’s not attacking for damage in combat (a not entirely pale reflection of 5e), and a continuation of Martials generally not getting narrative powers (squint and that’s 5e).

KorvinStarmast

2021-02-05, 09:19 AM

Used to be every martial character, or at least every fighter, had superiority dice. A shame that didn't stay in, but I guess it was seen as 'a fiddly bit' and gated behind a sub class choice.

skill challenges in 4E I have a DM who applied something like that in our ToA campaign, and I'd like to see WoTC take another look at that and see if they can't fold it into 5e.

OldTrees1

2021-02-05, 09:25 AM

Just to elaborate on the "everyone had superiority dice" thing:

In the playtest packet I'm familiar with (the one with just the Barbarian, Cleric, Fighter, Monk, Rogue, and Wizard), everyone who wasn't a caster had a pool of d6 "martial damage dice", which refreshed every round. You also only got one attack per round normally, so that (plus a big passive damage boost later on) is how you were supposed to keep up with spells damage-wise.

Barbarians and Rogues didn't get any inherent alternate ways to spend their dice, but Fighters and Monks did — Fighters could inherently use them to parry, and Monks could use them on Flurry of Blows/Step of the Wind. On top of that, Fighters and Monks got a bunch of class-specific maneuvers.

It was a pretty different take from what we ultimately got.

I can see why it was removed. Higher mechanical complexity for little added value. Instead of "you can do qualitatively interesting things" it was "you can add a number using a new resource".

However during the 5E playtesting they saw that people polled favored simplicity in combat and complexity out of combat. So 5E made simple combat, made a few simple out of combat rules, and skimped on the out of combat class features.

:smallconfused: :smallannoyed:

Morty

2021-02-05, 09:50 AM

But this is weird, that the detrectors 'won', cause if I open the ToB entry on Amazon now, I see it getting 4,5 out of 5 with loads of reviewers.* And if I recall correctly, people (at least on forums like these) were very enthusiastic about 3.5 skill tricks. I wouldn't agree btw that ToB was 'only martial arts and combat' - mainly, yes, but it could also give abilities like 'scent' (for tracking and detecting invisible stuff was near), levitate/fly, invisibility, bonusses on skill checks, etc. Mostly grounded in 'supernatural good physical abilities' but usable outside of combat as well.

*yeah, there will be some selection bias, but if I go through reviews of other books in other editions, it seems that detractors aren't shy about writing reviews about stuff they don't like.

TOB did have out of combat applications, but they were ancillary. You can use a fireball outside of combat, but it's still a combat spell first and foremost.

I’d hesitate to point at PF2 with many delusions of it being good design intent. As the old saying goes, Paizo added 0.25 to get 3.75, pity they tried it again. It’s history repeating itself in a twisted manner.

If PF2 is indicative of anything, it’s a worship of the randomness of the D20 in resolving everything (a pale reflection of bounded accuracy), a dislike for anything that’s not attacking for damage in combat (a not entirely pale reflection of 5e), and a continuation of Martials generally not getting narrative powers (squint and that’s 5e).

I'm very far from praising PF2E for anything, but skill feats are nonetheless an attempt at more varied and granular non-combat utility without spells. Something otherwise rare in the franchise.

Jakinbandw

2021-02-05, 09:51 AM

Apparently, the first version of the Fighter for 5e (after subclasses were established) had each subclass being purposefully flavorful with subclasses for knights, soldiers, samurai, gladiator and that sort of thing. Only the feedback they got was overwhelmingly that people wanted a bland Fighter so they could give their own fluff to it. Which resulted in the Fighter being released with Generic Subclass 1, Generic Subclass 2, and Magic Fighter.

Which at the very least has given me the insight as to why Alpha and Beta testing is so difficult. Since some times your overwhelming response is coming from morons.

I'm writing an rpg right now, and I had that exact response from multiple people I had playtesting character creation.

"Why is Blade master a class? What if I want to use a spear or a mace? Why are those a separate subclass? I like the mechanics of the blade master, but it's bad because I can only use blades and it should be able to use every weapon at once."

So yeah, you can't remove fighter or make it less bland. People really just want a bland fighter and hate the idea that an archtype they don't want to play might get mechanics they want.

Willie the Duck

2021-02-05, 09:55 AM

But this is weird, that the detrectors 'won', cause if I open the ToB entry on Amazon now, I see it getting 4,5 out of 5 with loads of reviewers.* And if I recall correctly, people (at least on forums like these) were very enthusiastic about 3.5 skill tricks. I wouldn't agree btw that ToB was 'only martial arts and combat' - mainly, yes, but it could also give abilities like 'scent' (for tracking and detecting invisible stuff was near), levitate/fly, invisibility, bonusses on skill checks, etc. Mostly grounded in 'supernatural good physical abilities' but usable outside of combat as well.

*yeah, there will be some selection bias, but if I go through reviews of other books in other editions, it seems that detractors aren't shy about writing reviews about stuff they don't like.

This only tells us that the people that care about the thing at all really like it. ToB was a single 'splatbook' published late in 3e's life cycle. People not interested in what it had to offer could safely ignore it. In theory, one can just ignore the existence of 4e, but in general people didn't.

As to those reviews of other 3e books, it'd be interesting to see which books they are and look for similarities and differences.

Sception

2021-02-05, 10:29 AM

I'd add Hexblade as a separate class from Warlock. Trying to smash martial melee and spellcaster ranged archetypes into a singular class has been causing problems since day one of 5e.

The other class I'd add is Warlord a la 4e. I miss that play style, and nothing in 5e really captures it.

I don't personally think 12 should be considered any sort of necessary class limit, but if I have to drop classes I'd drop fighter and wizard. Both are poorly defined, overly broad, do-everything type classes. They're classes for a game with 2 to 4 classes, not one with 10 to 12, lacking in distinct identity of their own outside of subclasses. Some of those subclasses are compelling, but even those are diminished by being forced to exist under the fighter or wizard umbrella.

Shift warlock to int based and use the removal of bladelock concepts to put more emphasis into the pact boons, so there's still an int based book caster.

Amechra

2021-02-05, 11:07 AM

This only tells us that the people that care about the thing at all really like it. ToB was a single 'splatbook' published late in 3e's life cycle. People not interested in what it had to offer could safely ignore it. In theory, one can just ignore the existence of 4e, but in general people didn't.

As to those reviews of other 3e books, it'd be interesting to see which books they are and look for similarities and differences.

Tome of Battle was absurdly popular with homebrewers and optimizers. At the time, though, there was definitely quite a few people who hated it for being "anime nonsense".

There were actually some pretty persistent rumors that Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Battle, and Tome of Magic were all secretly a test of what kind of mechanics people wanted for 4e. This wasn't actually true, and, as far as I can tell, was mostly based off of the superficial similarities between Initiators and 4e's AEDU, but people liked to believe it. And, years later, people really do want to bring back 3/5ths of those books (binding vestiges, maneuvers, and meldshaping — mysteries and utterances don't get any love).

---

I'd trade out the Barbarian (merging it into the Ranger) and the Warlock (merging it into the Sorcerer — I just kinda prefer the name 'Sorcerer', all right?).

I'd probably trade them out for a Cha-based mundane class built around the Social pillar, and some kind of Psionic class built around the UA Psi Die.

Waazraath

2021-02-05, 11:22 AM

There were actually some pretty persistent rumors that Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Battle, and Tome of Magic were all secretly a test of what kind of mechanics people wanted for 4e. This wasn't actually true, and, as far as I can tell, was mostly based off of the superficial similarities between Initiators and 4e's AEDU, but people liked to believe it. And, years later, people really do want to bring back 3/5ths of those books (binding vestiges, maneuvers, and meldshaping — mysteries and utterances don't get any love).

Wasn't it? I never gave it much thought, but assumed it was probably correct, because it seemed kinda logical given the timing and they were obviously trying new stuff out, and I read it on the internet somewhere and then it's true, aint it?

This is for instance a place where this assertion was made: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54877 - relevant quote "We're setting the wayback machine to 2005, which means we aren't quite doing something “old school,” but are instead drinking and ranting about a transitional fossil: something that served as a waypost on the way to the catastrophe that was 4th edition D&D. In 2005, we now know, the WotC design team had begun working on a ground-up redesign of Dungeons & Dragons, codenamed Orcus. And while it is historical reality that Orcus appears to have been kind of cool, Mike Mearls convinced them to scrap it in favor of making a new new ground up redesign that had daily power use limits front and center. Ironically, Mearls then grabbed some of the stuff they had been working on with Orcus, converted it in a half-assed manner to 3rd edition rules, and released it as Tome of Battle, which got rave reviews and is the most popular book Mearls ever worked on.

But in 2005, that hadn't happened yet and WotC had just come up with the idea of focus grouping ideas for 4th edition by making books with more radical ideas in them and then selling them for real money. Essentially, they were charging people to give them 4th edition feedback. And this manifested as three books: Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, and the first release of the series: Magic of Incarnum. Magic of Incarnum did terribly enough that it probably was used as ammunition by Mearls when arguing that the entire project should be scrapped and they should start working on a system that was much more “Vancian” to be more “D&D like.” So by the time Tome of Battle actually got released, they were in essence charging people money to playtest an idea they had already decided that they weren't going to use – which made their marketing really weird in 2008 after it was clear that the Book of Nine Swords stuff they had **** canned was actually relatively popular."

clash

2021-02-05, 11:34 AM

I don't personally think 12 should be considered any sort of necessary class limit, but if I have to drop classes I'd drop [COLOR="#0000FF"]fighter and wizard. Both are poorly defined, overly broad, do-everything type classes. They're classes for a game with 2 to 4 classes, not one with 10 to 12, lacking in distinct identity of their own outside of subclasses. Some of those subclasses are compelling, but even those are diminished by being forced to exist under the fighter or wizard.

Not sure why this is blue. I couldn't agree more. The problem isn't that paladin and ranger should be subclasses of fighter. The problem is that the fighter exists. The same goes for wizard.

We have paladin as the knight and ranger to occupy archer/sharpshooter and barbarian for strong tank. I say add some type of duelist class and call it a day.

For wizard the bard takes over illusion and enchantment territory. Turn the sorcerer into an elementalist, let warlock focus on the darker artes like necromancy and add a sage of some sort to hone in on abilities like divination and transmutation.

Amechra

2021-02-05, 11:36 AM

The thing is that I've never seen any actual evidence for those claims that I actually find believable. Like, I more-or-less buy the Project Orcus part, but I've never seen anything that really proved that those books were originally intended to be test the waters for a new edition.

Jakinbandw

2021-02-05, 11:38 AM

For me, it would be warlock and druid. They are both just clerics by another name, without the coolness of the paladin.

I'd replace them with a better Truenamer and a noble class (basically a non magical minion manner, caster)

noob

2021-02-05, 11:38 AM

Wasn't it? I never gave it much thought, but assumed it was probably correct, because it seemed kinda logical given the timing and they were obviously trying new stuff out, and I read it on the internet somewhere and then it's true, aint it?

This is for instance a place where this assertion was made: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=54877 - relevant quote "We're setting the wayback machine to 2005, which means we aren't quite doing something “old school,” but are instead drinking and ranting about a transitional fossil: something that served as a waypost on the way to the catastrophe that was 4th edition D&D. In 2005, we now know, the WotC design team had begun working on a ground-up redesign of Dungeons & Dragons, codenamed Orcus. And while it is historical reality that Orcus appears to have been kind of cool, Mike Mearls convinced them to scrap it in favor of making a new new ground up redesign that had daily power use limits front and center. Ironically, Mearls then grabbed some of the stuff they had been working on with Orcus, converted it in a half-assed manner to 3rd edition rules, and released it as Tome of Battle, which got rave reviews and is the most popular book Mearls ever worked on.

But in 2005, that hadn't happened yet and WotC had just come up with the idea of focus grouping ideas for 4th edition by making books with more radical ideas in them and then selling them for real money. Essentially, they were charging people to give them 4th edition feedback. And this manifested as three books: Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, and the first release of the series: Magic of Incarnum. Magic of Incarnum did terribly enough that it probably was used as ammunition by Mearls when arguing that the entire project should be scrapped and they should start working on a system that was much more “Vancian” to be more “D&D like.” So by the time Tome of Battle actually got released, they were in essence charging people money to playtest an idea they had already decided that they weren't going to use – which made their marketing really weird in 2008 after it was clear that the Book of Nine Swords stuff they had **** canned was actually relatively popular."

I think that I would love 5e more if it was TOB, TOM and moi based rather than based on the old vancian system.
Right now I am not sure there is a point in playing 5e over ad&d or basic.

Sigreid

2021-02-05, 11:53 AM

Ah, ok,, that's what you mean. I wouldn't know about 5e play testing. As for 4e's, I didn't see these specific complaints; I did see (among others) the complaint that all class were too much alike, but that was imo more about all of them using the same resource system than martials getting too complicated; but could be I missed it.

On the other hand: the highly favourable review of Tome of Battle (3.5) seems to indicate to me that there is conceptual room for more complicated martials. In general, I'd highly favor a design where there are simple and complicated martials, simple and complicated experts/skill users, simple and complicated casters. The disign difficulty is mainly, I think, how to balance those without having a default number of encounters in which all these options are balanced.)

From where I sit, the challenge is that you have to have complex martials without them invalidating the choice of people who want to play a simpler martial by being just flat out better/stronger. This is where I had a problem with ToB. It basically made every other martial choice a bad one.

noob

2021-02-05, 12:05 PM

From where I sit, the challenge is that you have to have complex martials without them invalidating the choice of people who want to play a simpler martial by being just flat out better/stronger. This is where I had a problem with ToB. It basically made every other martial choice a bad one.

Simple: give bigger numbers to simpler martials.
Ex: You get twice as many actions and your attacks ignore concealment and cover and your saves are higher and you deal more damage per hit and you ignore resistances (as you can see half of them are meant to make the game simpler to play: you have less rules to take in account but they also make the character simpler to play).
The reason tob had classes stronger than the previous mundane classes is that they were completely undertuned(weaker than non mudane options such as druids by a wide margin) and they did not do a rewrite of all the previous mundane classes because it is not an edition change: it was a beta.

Sigreid

2021-02-05, 12:08 PM

Simple: give bigger numbers to simpler martials.
Ex: You get twice as many actions and your attacks ignore concealment and cover and your saves are higher and you deal more damage per hit and you ignore resistances (as you can see half of them are meant to make the game simpler to play: you have less rules to take in account but they also make the character simpler to play).
The reason tob had classes stronger than the previous mundane classes is that they were completely undertuned(weaker than non mudane options such as druids by a wide margin) and they did not do a rewrite of all the previous mundane classes because it is not an edition change: it was a beta.

Agree. Was just pointing out the challenge to be watched out for.

Xervous

2021-02-05, 12:14 PM

From where I sit, the challenge is that you have to have complex martials without them invalidating the choice of people who want to play a simpler martial by being just flat out better/stronger. This is where I had a problem with ToB. It basically made every other martial choice a bad one.

This old misinformation again? ToB featured a raised floor to be sure but the initiators generally exhibit lowered ceilings and comparable tuning points for mid-op characters. There’s abilities and gimmicks to do new exciting things, but dedicated full attackers will hit for just as much if not more. It’s the poorly built fighters, barbarians and rogues falling off the curve that people were griping over. Where they were accusing pounce or a Blinking rogue of being high-OP they could not point to added components with initiators, leaving them with the only option of outright rejection.

It’s not that hard to build off most 3.5 core Martials to rival or exceed the initiators. But when that degree of effort is considered HERETICAL MINMAXING of course ToB has to be ‘broken’.

patchyman

2021-02-05, 01:32 PM

Get rod of the Wizard. Give illusions and enchantment to the Bard, transmutation, divination and evocation to the sorcerer, and create a new class for abjuration, conjuration and necromancy.

Willie the Duck

2021-02-05, 01:43 PM

Tome of Battle was absurdly popular with homebrewers and optimizers. At the time, though, there was definitely quite a few people who hated it for being "anime nonsense".

There were actually some pretty persistent rumors that Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Battle, and Tome of Magic were all secretly a test of what kind of mechanics people wanted for 4e. This wasn't actually true, and, as far as I can tell, was mostly based off of the superficial similarities between Initiators and 4e's AEDU, but people liked to believe it. And, years later, people really do want to bring back 3/5ths of those books (binding vestiges, maneuvers, and meldshaping — mysteries and utterances don't get any love).

Tome of Battle was absurdly popular with people still buying new 3e products in 2006 and discussing them on the OP (and I'm guessing hombrewing) sections of message boards at that time. Exactly what proportion of people who played D&D 3rd edition (at one point or another in the game's lifespan) is much more of an open question. That's my point. If you wanted to play D&D when 4e was the active system, you likely developed an opinion on the thing, and as such probably have something to say on the matter if you run across it on Amazon. For that matter, I think you are more likely to see D&D 4e run across your feed on Amazon than you are to have ToB show up. However much people believed the "anime nonsense" meme, it wouldn't surprise me if such people either didn't hold onto that idea, or certainly do not seek out the book on Amazon simply to leave a comment saying so.

I think that I would love 5e more if it was TOB, TOM and moi based rather than based on the old vancian system.
Right now I am not sure there is a point in playing 5e over ad&d or basic.

Racial level limits. Racial class restrictions. EGG's conception of 'balance.' Differing Xp progressions for each class. Different charts for each attributes providing different bonuses. Little enough constant framework throughout the system (the XP charts being an example) that any homebrew has to be made up from whole cloth to a significantly greater level. Thief abilities and skills (if present) using different mechanics. Thieves, though well loved for their flavor, have almost nothing going for them. AD&D spellcasting constraints (which, while needed, often can be summed up as 'balance this by making it really inconvenient'). Bizarre jump-shift at level 9-10 where some things keep going while others plateau. Idea that after level 10, fighter types mostly get the ability to become leaders while spellcasters continue to gain adventuring abilities. Ridiculous number of 'save or die' effects. Combat rules predicated on squad of henchmen that few people actually want to play. AD&D Initiative.

Let's be clear, I love me some BX/BECMI hybrid (or AD&D which is really BX with AD&D character creation rules). However, there are real, concrete, reasonable reasons why people have been trying to redesign the thing (either with subsequent D&D editions, or through the OSR) and why one would want to play 5e over them.

OldTrees1

2021-02-05, 01:43 PM

TOB did have out of combat applications, but they were ancillary. You can use a fireball outside of combat, but it's still a combat spell first and foremost.

My ToB starter kit was these maneuvers.
Iron Heart Surge (+1 prereq)
Cloak of Deception
Shadow Jaunt
Mountain Hammer
Hunter's Sense (stance)
White Raven Tactics (+1 prereq)

Is ancillary the right word?

Kane0

2021-02-05, 05:04 PM

I don't personally think 12 should be considered any sort of necessary class limit, but if I have to drop classes I'd drop fighter and wizard. Both are poorly defined, overly broad, do-everything type classes. They're classes for a game with 2 to 4 classes, not one with 10 to 12, lacking in distinct identity of their own outside of subclasses. Some of those subclasses are compelling, but even those are diminished by being forced to exist under the fighter or wizard umbrella.

Doesn’t even need to be blue, would be happy with this.

Amechra

2021-02-05, 05:15 PM

My ToB starter kit was these maneuvers.
Iron Heart Surge (+1 prereq)
Cloak of Deception
Shadow Jaunt
Mountain Hammer
Hunter's Sense (stance)
White Raven Tactics (+1 prereq)

Is ancillary the right word?

Ah, a fellow devotee of the almighty lockpick!

Sception

2021-02-05, 05:25 PM

Not sure why this is blue.

Doesn’t even need to be blue

My people. :,-)

Dienekes

2021-02-05, 05:47 PM

I'm writing an rpg right now, and I had that exact response from multiple people I had playtesting character creation.

"Why is Blade master a class? What if I want to use a spear or a mace? Why are those a separate subclass? I like the mechanics of the blade master, but it's bad because I can only use blades and it should be able to use every weapon at once."

So yeah, you can't remove fighter or make it less bland. People really just want a bland fighter and hate the idea that an archtype they don't want to play might get mechanics they want.

I’m not certain that’s the conclusion I would draw from this information. Now I may need more details here, but to me this reads less like one must always be generic and more that game design is hard and if you’re working in a subject as broad and yet focused as “warrior” you have to be really well tapped into what the audience expects as a basis for such a warrior.

For example, let’s say you have the mechanic “Parry.” Who should have such an ability? Well pretty much everyone. Definitely your fencer guy, probably them above all. But your knights, samurai, gladiator, whoever should all get to use the Parry maneuver because it is so foundational to being a warrior.

Like your blade master here, what about the mechanics makes it need to be tied to blades? Really blades have these advantages over weapons: they’re easy to carry as sidearms. The weight is closer to the hand than other sidearms making them more maneuverable than say an axe or a mace. If it has a false edge you can make a very fast kinda weak attack with it very easily. You can more easily attack in such a way that a single movement is both offensive and defensive when compared to other sidearms.

And notice most of this I’m pointing out “when compared to other sidearms” a lot of it doesn’t really hold true when compared to primary weapons like polearms.

So anyone thinking of a cool axe fighting character and seeing a mechanic that should work with axe but for some reason is gated behind the class that focuses exclusively on dance-fighting, well that would be a frustrating system.

Or to use a more directly 5e reference take the current Cavalier Fighter subclass. Crawford has said it is meant to be the subclass to represent a knight. I love knights. I don’t think it is a particularly good representation of a knight after level 3ish. The bonus proficiency does a decent enough job representing courtly training and Born to the Saddle at least involves riding a horse. There’s nothing about using your armor at all, you don’t even get an ability to be shock cavalry until level 15. And the rest of the abilities far more accurately reflect what a guard or foot soldier would be trying to do in combat.

Lokishade

2021-02-05, 10:39 PM

I wish they got rid of Sorceror.

DnD has always been about working hard to attain power which is best exemplified by the level system itself.

Two archetypes represented the identity of DnD's magic: the Cleric and the Wizard. You either beseech the power of higher beings or you work hard towards it to the detriment of everything else. Cuz in the world of DnD, magic isn't just given to you.

And then, they decided, for reasons I can't fathom, to create the Sorceror, a class whom magic is just given to. I... I can't even.

From a mechanical perspective, it's a powergamer's dream. Its casting capacity is tied to charisma, because you don't want to be awkward or ugly. In 5e, where concentration matters, the Sorceror is conveniently proficient with Con saves. And in 3.5, it introduced the concept of spontaneous casting, so you'd just cast what you liked when you liked, while everyone else was stuck with what they prepared. You'd think it would define his identity, but no. Now, everyone is a spontaneous caster.

The other classes are still thematically viable despite having something superficial removed. But not Sorceror. He doesn't fit in a world where magic is either sought from higher powers or thoroughly researched. They just have it in them through origins, which is more of a background trait and less something you can learn or attain.

So, yeah, in a world where your characters are superheroes and gain powers in completely arbitrary ways, the Sorceror is at home. But not in DnD.

Compare 5e's Bard, who casts from Charisma. Even the Bard has a coherent place in DnD. He's there to remind us that magic is art, that if you listen and feel, you too can weave the Weave. But to do so, the Bard mimics other spellcasters by singing and dancing their spells. The Bard would be nothing without the magical breakthroughs of Wizards and the revelations the Clerics received.

The other "new" casting class, the Warlock, has its place in DnD. He's essentially the Cleric, but instead of seeking the divine, he seeks the arcane, making him thematically compelling by default.

Mechanically, he's brilliant in 5e. You first take a pact, then you choose from 3 features. Add to that what is essentially feats unique to the Warlock and you have the walking definition of what 5e aims to be.

I just wish that the Warlock was more efficient in what he chooses to be. I wish the Blade Pact gave better martial prowess (Hexblade is mostly what Blade Pact should have been) and that the Tome Pact gave better spellcasting (a bonus spell slot, at minimum). Pact of the Chain was the concept of Minionmancy, but as you know, it's cumbersome to manage and almost never used.

But what if minions worked like spells? They attack when you declare an attack an give you extra abilities as long as they hang around. And when you get hit, you run the risk of having them hit and losing them. Only your familiar would be more distinct. That way, through your multiple options, you'd feel like you're commanding an army, but without cluttering the game.

An example: A Feylock conjured 8 pixies. Normally, it would clutter the game with 8 more initiatives or make the Warlock hog the spotlight for 8 more turns. But in what I propose, they hang around the Warlock or the familiar and execute their abilities from there. They could shoot blinding rays that, if the enemy fails a Con save, get disadvantage on their next attack. Or a number of them release pixie dust to spot invisible foes. And you, the player, can coordinate all of this at once on your turn. Pact of the Chain would be awesome to play.

And last thing. The concept of Mystic Arcanum. If you're going to be so restrictive on higher magic, then you should give unique spells.

Revising the Ranger. The ranger has no business casting spells. The Ranger is not a Druid. The Ranger is the Ranger.

He's a little problematic for the same reasons the Monk is problematic. He's a direct inspiration of something trying to find its place in DnD. That something, in this case, is Lord of the Rings' Aragorn. At first, they used spells that they then fluffed as uncanny skills. Now, everyone have what's called Class Features. You have no excuse anymore.

Just replace the spells with level appropriate options and make the Ranger cool again.

Jakinbandw

2021-02-05, 10:50 PM

I’m not certain that’s the conclusion I would draw from this information. Now I may need more details here, but to me this reads less like one must always be generic and more that game design is hard and if you’re working in a subject as broad and yet focused as “warrior” you have to be really well tapped into what the audience expects as a basis for such a warrior.

For example, let’s say you have the mechanic “Parry.” Who should have such an ability? Well pretty much everyone. Definitely your fencer guy, probably them above all. But your knights, samurai, gladiator, whoever should all get to use the Parry maneuver because it is so foundational to being a warrior.

Like your blade master here, what about the mechanics makes it need to be tied to blades? Really blades have these advantages over weapons: they’re easy to carry as sidearms. The weight is closer to the hand than other sidearms making them more maneuverable than say an axe or a mace. If it has a false edge you can make a very fast kinda weak attack with it very easily. You can more easily attack in such a way that a single movement is both offensive and defensive when compared to other sidearms.

And notice most of this I’m pointing out “when compared to other sidearms” a lot of it doesn’t really hold true when compared to primary weapons like polearms.

So anyone thinking of a cool axe fighting character and seeing a mechanic that should work with axe but for some reason is gated behind the class that focuses exclusively on dance-fighting, well that would be a frustrating system.

Or to use a more directly 5e reference take the current Cavalier Fighter subclass. Crawford has said it is meant to be the subclass to represent a knight. I love knights. I don’t think it is a particularly good representation of a knight after level 3ish. The bonus proficiency does a decent enough job representing courtly training and Born to the Saddle at least involves riding a horse. There’s nothing about using your armor at all, you don’t even get an ability to be shock cavalry until level 15. And the rest of the abilities far more accurately reflect what a guard or foot soldier would be trying to do in combat.

You're reinforcing my point here however. If you make a class that is focused on being a cool swordsman, then you get people upset that they can't access mechanics of the swordsman, even if they are playing a spear user. This means that you can't build a combat class around specific interesting weapons, but instead have to build it around mechanics. And since not all mechanics work for all weapon types (a cool ability an epic level blade master had was they could cut a mountain in half with their blade, hitting everyone and everything in the path of the strike), you lose out on the cool interesting stuff, and have to just have generic mechanics and abilities as well.

If we try to give a fighter class an ability that allows them to cut things, it might make sense for swords and axes (and some pole-arms), but for hammers and maces it doesn't work, so that ability has to be dropped. Same things with an ability based around letting a spear pierce through armor, it's cool, but it doesn't work with curved blades and hammers. And this goes on and on. You are left with a very generic set of abilities that may be effective, but aren't nearly as interesting as fireball.

And I think that's a good comparison point. Fireball is iconic. but you don't have ice ball, water ball, mud ball, sonic ball, and so on, even if they would make sense. Imagine if spells weren't allowed to have elemental effects because you needed to be able to use any element to cast any spell. They would lose so much flavor and the game would be less interesting (see 4e).

Basically, until you are willing to tell people that they have to use specific weapons to gain certain benefits, fighters will always be the more boring class, because nothing about them can be special. Every weapon has to work like every other weapon. That said, you need to have fighters, because people want a class that can focus on doing cool things with weapons, even though the fighter, as conceptualized can't.

Amechra

2021-02-06, 12:11 AM

Honestly, unless your classes are entirely focused on what you do in a fight, I'd skip narrow concepts like "Blademaster" when designing classes. You're going to get better results if you give each of your martial classes a concrete out-of-combat role as well.

For example, let's say that one of your classes is the Knight. In combat, you're a big ol' heavily-armored shock trooper/tank. Out of combat, you have raw charisma and a strong reputation that you can use in social encounters, and you're probably a noble so you'll also have cash reserves on hand. Contrast that with, say, the Soldier, which has great features for working in a group and excellent stamina.

Because the thing is, all of the cool classes have thematic out-of-combat things they can do. Wizards? They're good at knowing about things, because they're scholarly. Clerics? They know religious stuff really well, and will be generally well received in communities that recognize their god. Barbarians? It follows that they should be good at wilderness stuff and intimidation (which is why I think they should be merged with the Ranger).

Just don't fall into the trap where your class is just "me fight good though", and you'll be fine.

Luccan

2021-02-06, 12:48 AM

Why are Fighter and Wizard too generic but Rogue and Cleric aren't? Maybe I should start a thread on this...

Lord Raziere

2021-02-06, 01:38 AM

Why are Fighter and Wizard too generic but Rogue and Cleric aren't? Maybe I should start a thread on this...

Well, hm, the Cleric has a bunch of subclasses to teach people to the true wide range of archetypes possible to get them out of the usual "holy kind priest/white mage" archetype.

while Rogue is built in a way that it can emulate a lot of archetypes and characters that we don't have any other class to to achieve with: thief, assassin, smuggler, nonmagical scholar, archeologist, conman, down on his luck noble/politician/merchant, pirate, nonmagical performer, nonmagical hunter, detective, spy, particularly clever peasant- things like that. it does the heavy lifting of making a lot of concepts, many of them stock nonmagical fantasy characters work: as long as they don't have a lot of armor/weapons or magic, rogue can emulate it.

fighter on the other hand.....for some reason I can't think of anything for it. like I know there are tons of fighting traditions all across the world that one can draw upon. tons of weapons that people have used, many reasons why people decide to fight, and so on. I know its supposed to do a similar kind of heavy conceptual lifting the rogue does. Yet all my mind can think of is "guy with heavy armor and sword". I can't even blame knights for doing this, because knights ride on horses, and paladins really do that knight archetype much better. so in comparison, fighter just seems to be a knight....without the knightly genre aspects that made knights such a popular concept, so they're just a dude. with some armor and a blade. which is technically what knights were in reality yes, but this is romantic fantasy ideals we're talking about here, stay on topic. so....what are they supposed to be then? and if they're not supposed to be anything, how do we make them be anything warrior-like better?

while wizard.....eh....honestly I always found their abilities a bit grab bag.....and at this point, the entire concept of wizard has become kind of a silly meme by now. when I think DnD wizard, I don't picture something serious or something I can make into a character, I picture this generic meme wizard with a cartoony beard, wizard hat and robes spouting phrases like "I'm the wizard who did it!" or "I have no sense of right or wrong! hohoho!" in a sillier voice while making some silly rube goldberg contraption of magic straight out of some DnD's player demented mind to conquer the world. not exactly an image that brings creative character concepts to mind. like the whole Dnd Wizard concept has been played for comedy so much I can't even take it seriously anymore. but thats just me.

Amechra

2021-02-06, 01:42 AM

Why are Fighter and Wizard too generic but Rogue and Cleric aren't? Maybe I should start a thread on this...

The Fighter's an obvious one - it has no identity outside of "uses weapons in a fight really well", so it basically ends up being a catch-all for martial characters that don't fit into other classes.

The Wizard's a bit more abstract - it doesn't look generic on the surface, but it feels way more generic once you take into account that its sole mechanical identity is "casts spells really well", and that it covers characters as conceptually separate as necromancers and illusionists.

Both Clerics and Rogues get unique class features that push you towards a certain non-generic character concept. Clerics get a spell list that is highly thematic for a servant of the divine (i has healing + buffs + HOLY SMITING + minor miracles), the ability to deal with the undead in a unique manner, and the ability to pray for miracles. While the concept of "holy person" is certainly broad, it doesn't overlap with any other classes. Rogues are similar - the only class they really overlap with mechanically or thematically is the Bard, and those are two entirely different kettles of fish. On top of that, Rogues have class features that push them towards stealth and secrecy.

Nifft

2021-02-06, 02:28 AM

Morty

2021-02-06, 06:36 AM

Why are Fighter and Wizard too generic but Rogue and Cleric aren't? Maybe I should start a thread on this...

This is a bit more complicated. Wizards, as they exist in the game right now, aren't generic. They're defined by their differences from several other spellcasters. If you cut away some of those, wizards become a lot more generic.

Rogues I would say actually are approaching the fighter's levels of being watered down. They essentially cover any and all non-spellcasting concepts that don't cast spells. But they are still weighed down with the "thief" baggage, so it ends up a mess.

Clerics are the opposite of generic. They're a concept that exists only in D&D or things that imitate it.

Sception

2021-02-06, 09:08 AM

Why are Fighter and Wizard too generic but Rogue and Cleric aren't? Maybe I should start a thread on this...

Cleric is arguably too generic, but at least has a clear conceptual bias towards healing & party support in their spell list, with subclass themes worked into discrete domain lists that clerics of other domains don't share. Wizards all share the same overbroad, do everything spell list. But yeah, clerics ars only slightly less broad than wizards and I wouldn't argue against them being broken up into more conceptually specific & interesting classes like the druid.

Rogues, on the other hand, are actually comparatively pretty focused in their narrative & mechanical class identity already. Their sneak attack mechanic funnels them into a particular range of related weapons and a distinct ambush or skirmisher type play style. When someone tells you they're playing a rogue, that gives you a sense of the particular abilities they're bringing to the party much more so than if they say they're playing a fighter.

While 'Rogue' can cover a number of different archetypes - thieves, assassins, swashbucklers, ninjas, spies, pirates, & more - there's still shared thematic connections between them. Loose morals, a tendency towards the chaotic alignment, a willingness to resort to underhanded tactics, a preference for street smasts, cunning, & improvisation, an ironic combination of stealth and showmanship.

This gives rogues as a class the kind of distinct mechanical and narrative identity that 'fighting man' and 'magic user' just don't have.

Morty

2021-02-06, 09:41 AM

While 'Rogue' can cover a number of different archetypes - thieves, assassins, swashbucklers, ninjas, spies, pirates, & more - there's still shared thematic connections between them. Loose morals, a tendency towards the chaotic alignment, a willingness to resort to underhanded tactics, a preference for street smasts, cunning, & improvisation, an ironic combination of stealth and showmanship.

The rogue I played had approximately none of that - which is just as well, because there's no other class I could have played to realize this kind of character.

OldTrees1

2021-02-06, 10:32 AM

The rogue I played had approximately none of that - which is just as well, because there's no other class I could have played to realize this kind of character.

The benefits of WotC providing a generic class if they are unwilling to create enough classes to cover the character concepts. I have no idea what character you had, but I know there could have been a character class for it. But since that class was not made/included, it was nice that Rogue existed.

Although I wish that other class had existed as well.

Dienekes

2021-02-06, 11:46 AM

You're reinforcing my point here however. If you make a class that is focused on being a cool swordsman, then you get people upset that they can't access mechanics of the swordsman, even if they are playing a spear user. This means that you can't build a combat class around specific interesting weapons, but instead have to build it around mechanics. And since not all mechanics work for all weapon types (a cool ability an epic level blade master had was they could cut a mountain in half with their blade, hitting everyone and everything in the path of the strike), you lose out on the cool interesting stuff, and have to just have generic mechanics and abilities as well.

See, I'm not even certain about this. I don't see what makes "smack things so hard it can cut mountains in half" a cool "sword" ability other than the game designer decided to gate it behind swords. Were I told without context "Hey I have an ability that involves you hitting something so hard it can cleave through mountains" I would probably assume that it is for two-handed mass weapons that deal cutting damage. Your great axes, your halberds, that sort of stuff. Things you can get a really meaty swing with. Swords aren't actually that good at that. Even the mighty zweihanders and montantes don't pack nearly as heavy a punch as a poleaxe.

This is over top of the Amechra's observations that I agree with "Good with swords" is not really that much less generic of a class than Fighter. I could see a Feat about being good with swords, maybe even a few, but a whole class? Assuming 20 levels and enough abilities to fill out those levels that is a lot of conceptual space that is being taken out of what other weapons could be doing and given exclusively to swords. And really doesn't add much in the way of flavor to the class other than just what weapon they happen to specialize in.

When I was discussing making the Fighter less generic, I was thinking of thing like Knight, Legionnaire, Hoplite, Kheshig, or Huskarl. Each of them may have a weapon or combat style they favor, but there is a lot more to them than just that. Knights have aspects of courtly manners and chivalric codes. Legionnaires and Hoplite have organized command structures, focus on teamwork and formation tactics. Kheshig may be cavalry archers, but during their most famous period of prominence they relied on fear tactics and breaking the will of their opponents. That was the sort of stuff I was thinking about.

Which is not to say you can't make unique abilities for weapons, which leads me to:

If we try to give a fighter class an ability that allows them to cut things, it might make sense for swords and axes (and some pole-arms), but for hammers and maces it doesn't work, so that ability has to be dropped. Same things with an ability based around letting a spear pierce through armor, it's cool, but it doesn't work with curved blades and hammers. And this goes on and on. You are left with a very generic set of abilities that may be effective, but aren't nearly as interesting as fireball.

Well now we're kind of discussing how to make weapons feel different. Which I actually greatly approve of. I've done that homebrew before.

I would repeat here that there is nothing that says all abilities must work for all weapons. Hell even in 5e as it is when it was released there were abilities that only worked with certain groups of weapons. They were all relegated to feats admittedly, but they were there. And that's kind of where I think they should remain. Well feats and "Select Option" features.

Like let's say we divide weapons into groups to make it easier to work here.

Then we have damage type: Slashing, Piercing, Bludgeoning.
We have ease of motion: Finesse or Mass
Hand usage: Off-hand, One hand, Versatile, Two hand.
Special Properties: Reach, a Hook, Thrown, Murder Stroke that sort of thing

Now the hard part. Finding abilities that fit exclusively into certain groups.

I'd say a Thrust ability that increases your Reach would only really be used by those using Piercing damage.
A Cleave ability to cut through two or more people would probably only works with those using Slashing damage and maybe Two Hand.
A Bleeding Cut ability I'd stick with Slashing or Piercing damage.
A Bone Breaker style ability I'd keep to Bludgeoning damage and Mass
Shield Smasher would stick with Bludgeoning or Slashing but only with Mass weapons.
A Big Freaking Hit ability doesn't care about damage type at all, but requires you either be using a Mass weapon or a weapon in Two Hands.

Work it out so that the abilities flow logically from the weapons. You still might get some complaints. People will always complain about everything. See my quote from way earlier about morons and play testers. But grounding it in principles of what you would normally expect the weapon to do should quell at least a bit them. And not gating cool abilities behind seemingly arbitrary choices is generally good.

And I think that's a good comparison point. Fireball is iconic. but you don't have ice ball, water ball, mud ball, sonic ball, and so on, even if they would make sense. Imagine if spells weren't allowed to have elemental effects because you needed to be able to use any element to cast any spell. They would lose so much flavor and the game would be less interesting (see 4e).

Basically, until you are willing to tell people that they have to use specific weapons to gain certain benefits, fighters will always be the more boring class, because nothing about them can be special. Every weapon has to work like every other weapon. That said, you need to have fighters, because people want a class that can focus on doing cool things with weapons, even though the fighter, as conceptualized can't.

Magic of course has it easier. Because magic is inherently nonsensical so things not working like they would in reality is par for the course.

But I also think there is room to make Fighter or Fighter subclasses could be focused on doing cool things. Hell man, Warblade already did cool things with weapons and they were stuck with only a slightly more in depth weapon table than 5e had and mostly didn't really interact with it. Making the Fighter do cool things in combat is not all that hard. 5e even tried with the Battlemaster though it is a pale reflection of the Warblade in my opinion.

But my original post was less about that, and more about injecting flavor into the class. Even if we developed the fighting styles to a grand point where playing with a sword feels completely different from playing with an axe which is also unfathomably unique when playing with a polearm. That's still not adding flavor to the class. That's just making a system more deep. Which don't get me wrong is also something I think is probably a good idea to push toward.

But if it's all still saddled to Generic McGeneric who has no out of combat abilities because he's the Weapons Guy and that is all he is, then there's still no flavor.

So going by "dream game" here. I'd keep the Fighter. Or Warrior. Or whatever. Make it an in depth fighting class with cool abilities. Gated on weapons maybe, gated by fighting style more likely. Using discrete precise actions in combat that are fun, tactical, and preferably not designed in a way that you spam your best one every single round.

Then you pick your subclass which gives you a big kick up the arse of flavor. Gladiators have abilities about playing to a crowd, making people mesmerized by your presence and drawn to your grandiose personality. You're a rock star and you know it. While Legionnaire gives abilities to avoid fatigue and work as a group. Even out of combat you know how to give a helping hand in most things and can patch up a wound or two. The Guard subclass sees all, hears all. You can spot trouble coming a mile away.

That is the sort of thing I was talking about when I wrote about putting flavor into the class.

Morty

2021-02-06, 01:30 PM

The benefits of WotC providing a generic class if they are unwilling to create enough classes to cover the character concepts. I have no idea what character you had, but I know there could have been a character class for it. But since that class was not made/included, it was nice that Rogue existed.

Although I wish that other class had existed as well.

My character was a dwarven explorer and scout searching for her lost clan. She was truthful, straightforward, law-abiding and had no "street smarts" to speak of - since she spent most of her time in the wilderness or poking around ruins. But since she had a broad array of skills and her fighting style was sniping with a crossbow, she was a rogue.

TigerT20

2021-02-06, 02:30 PM

Morty

2021-02-06, 02:40 PM

That sounds a lot like a Ranger. Do rangers get lots of skills in 5e? They probably should.

I didn't want to cast spells, attack multiple times per round or deal with the rest of ranger baggage, so no.

Kane0

2021-02-06, 03:02 PM

lDo rangers get lots of skills in 5e? They probably should.

Rogues get 4, rangers and bards get 3, everyone else gets 2. Rogues and artificers also get thieves tools, which may as well be an extra skill.
Not counting race and background which give more.

TigerT20

2021-02-06, 03:09 PM

I didn't want to cast spells, attack multiple times per round or deal with the rest of ranger baggage, so no.

M'kay, makes sense

Rogues get 4, rangers and bards get 3, everyone else gets 2. Rogues and artificers also get thieves tools, which may as well be an extra skill.
Not counting race and background which give more.

Thanks :)

king_steve

2021-02-06, 03:11 PM

Rogues get 4, rangers and bards get 3, everyone else gets 2. Rogues and artificers also get thieves tools, which may as well be an extra skill.
Not counting race and background which give more.

To build on this point as well, Rogues get expertise in 4 skills (2 at lvl 1, 2 at lvl 6), Bards get expertise in 4 skills (2 at lvl 3 and 2 at lvl 10).

If you're using some of the optional class features from Tasha's then Rangers get 1 expertise at lvl 1 from Deft Explorer Canny and Barbarians get 2 additional skills at lvl 3 and lvl 10.

So excluding backgrounds, lineages and feats:

Edit: I forgot, Artificers get Tool Expertise, which lets them double proficiency with tools at lvl 6.

Class
Skills
Expertise

Artificer
2 skills
Tool Expertise (all proficient tools)

Barbarian
2 skills (optionally +2)

Bard
3 skills
4 expertise

Ranger
3 skills
optionally +1

Rogue
4 skills
4 expertise

Others
2 skills

Lokishade

2021-02-06, 05:59 PM

Why are Fighter and Wizard too generic but Rogue and Cleric aren't? Maybe I should start a thread on this...

Too generic is a question of taste. But yeah, the Fighter and the Wizard are the definition of generic and some people love it. DnD is a game where your only limitation is your imagination. Sometimes, you just want a blank canvas to create what you want.

JNAProductions

2021-02-06, 06:08 PM

Too generic is a question of taste. But yeah, the Fighter and the Wizard are the definition of generic and some people love it. DnD is a game where your only limitation is your imagination. Sometimes, you just want a blank canvas to create what you want.

Eh... D&D is pretty specific in what it's actually good at.

You CAN do a poopload with it, but it's definitely NOT a generic system.

Kane0

2021-02-06, 06:08 PM

Random thought: use sidekick classes to fill that generic spot. ‘Proper’ classes are specific, but if nothing fits for you or you want a plain, broad class you pick a sidekick class.

Of course doing so you would have to ensure they are on par with ‘proper’ classes, but thats just number tweaks.

Luccan

2021-02-06, 06:44 PM

Too generic is a question of taste. But yeah, the Fighter and the Wizard are the definition of generic and some people love it. DnD is a game where your only limitation is your imagination. Sometimes, you just want a blank canvas to create what you want.

Yeah, to be clear, I actually don't think Wizard and Fighter need to be removed, nor that they necessarily need to be narrowed down, but I was just curious why it seems to be only those two, when Clerics and Rogues are also intended to represent a large grouping of characters

Witty Username

2021-02-06, 07:18 PM

I would only cut classes I think could still survive as components of other classes, probably Artificer, Barbarian, Sorcerer and warlock would be the best candidates.
If I had to cut two classes I would cut sorcerer and barbarian and rename/re flavor the warlock into sorcerer. the barbarian would be merged with either ranger or fighter.
I would try to fit in a psion as a core class, if I could. If the sorcerer is outed then the psion would possibly take over some of its flavor material.
I am against cutting classes generally though, I would prefer giving more identity to the classes that lack it.
I would modify Artificer to have a more permanent item creation system, or have a magic item creation system that artificers were designed to work with.

Captain Panda

2021-02-06, 07:23 PM

I think I'd probably remove or at least heavily rework warlock.

OldTrees1

2021-02-06, 07:24 PM

My character was a dwarven explorer and scout searching for her lost clan. She was truthful, straightforward, law-abiding and had no "street smarts" to speak of - since she spent most of her time in the wilderness or poking around ruins. But since she had a broad array of skills and her fighting style was sniping with a crossbow, she was a rogue.

Neat character concept. The characterization is heavy on wilderness skill usage and sniping. I can see why the rogue class was a good fit. Some kind of non caster scout class with a specialization in sniping (instead of multishot) might be a theoretical better fit, but Rogue was the closest that existed.

Garimeth

2021-02-09, 04:23 PM

Warlord: Non-magic support class. I've said my fair share on it. Ground up abilities that are about boosting their allies. I'm contemplating the idea of making their powers based on Tactics, where they can give commands and if either they or their ally performs the Tactic a boost is performed. On the one hand, awesome and fits the fluff of the class very well. But on the other, telling your fellow players what to do can get troublesome at the table. It would have to be really simple things that your allies were probably already going to do anyway. Things like "Hit that guy." And every ally that hits that guy does more damage. Or "Try flanking" and everyone who is flanking an enemy gets a bigger boost than whatever the system's normal flanking boost is. There is a tightrope walk here between good suggestions for a boost and playing your friends characters for them. It'd be interesting to see if it could be made to work though.

The 13th Age commander class does exactly what you are looking for, in a way that is fun and nobody feels stepped on. It was one of my group's fave classes from 13th Age.

Example abilities.

"Hit harder" the character that just went gets extra damage on their attack.
"Try again" reroll your missed attack, with a +2.
"Scramble!" everyone can move their movement as a reaction provoking no opportunity attacks.
"Follow my lead" make an attack, everyone else who attacks that enemy this rouund gets a bonus.
"Hang in there" ally gets some healing from spending an HD.
"Shake it off" roll a save against an ongoing effect or reroll a failed save.

Such a sweet class.

togapika

2021-02-20, 12:51 PM

But to do so, the Bard mimics other spellcasters by singing and dancing their spells. The Bard would be nothing without the magical breakthroughs of Wizards and the revelations the Clerics received.

Where in D&D has it said this?

Sigreid

2021-02-20, 02:40 PM

I would trade sorcerer and warlock for a fighter subclass that develops the ability to overcome resistances/immunities to non-magical weapons as they level, along with other abilities to make them able to deal with the supernatural without having to depend on magic junk.

Hytheter

2021-02-20, 10:22 PM

I'd combine Warlock and Sorcerer into a single class, personally. Both classes are similar enough in how they gain their powers and even have some shared subclass themes already (Celestial/Divine Soul, GOO/Abberant), with no real reason that the others couldn't be shared (Why not Fiend or Fey lineage Sorcerers? Draconic or Mechanus patrons?). Invocations and Metamagic could be folded into a single system (I'd call them "mutations" but maybe that's just me) and I personally feel that short rest casting would better suit the concept of sorcery (though I probably wouldn't do it exactly like warlock slots).

Theodoxus

2021-02-20, 11:44 PM

That's more or less my take on generic classes. If I get a generic fighter and I have to work out how to make it what I want, all we've got is point-buy with extra steps. Now I prefer point-buy, in general, but I also prefer systems to be honest about what they do.

"General classes with lots of subclasses" makes me wonder why we have the first category, since the subclasses are doing all the actual work. It could work if we do it like Shadow of the Demon Lord, where we have different tiers of classes, but they're not bound to each other. We can still do better than warrior/rogue/mage/priest, though. Like strong hero/quick hero/smart hero/social hero.

I know this is the the hill of sacred cows, but I honestly would prefer a classless system. It's already been discussed that a rogue is just a fighting man with less armor. That skills in and of themselves should be accessible to every class, and with bounded accuracy and proficiency bonus, a wizard with proficiency in a longsword can attack as well as a fighter (given equal strength and sub 5th level, yada yada).

So, seems like the easiest way to move forward is to remove classes entirely. You want to cast spells? great, grab the "I cast 1st level spells" ability. Want to sneak attack? Grab that instead. At 3rd level, decide if you want to upgrade your spells to 2nd level, or your sneak attack to 2d6, or maybe your spell guy wants to sneak and your sneak guy wants to cast now...

Yeah, I get it, building a character from a suite of options is lengthy, requires massive system mastery to not f' up and isn't no where near noobie friendly. Well, no reason you can't do both. Have examples of "Armored Archer like the men of Gondor"; "Burglar"; "Holy Man"; "Sir Lancelot". Iconic 5E style pre-builds to get the juices flowing. But there's no reason we need to keep these tropes.

Then, I'd make magic WAY simpler. No points, no slots. An activation roll to see if you're out of mana or not and a casting threshold to get the spell off. Cast all day, every day. Until you flub the roll. Make the flub chance go up as the more spells are cast, until the flub happens or the caster takes a moment to refocus and let the magic replenish.

OH man, if I ran the zoo, y'all would either hate or love my game.

Nagog

2021-02-21, 01:19 AM

Waazraath

2021-02-21, 06:00 AM

Druid: this one has a TON more justification. In the lore already, the in-universe difference between a Cleric and a Druid is that "Druids worship primal gods/forces", often called "Old Gods". But not Warlock Old Ones, those are different because... Uh... Reasons? Furthermore, mechanically Druids are very very lacking as a core class. Either you're a Moon Druid and you use Wild Shape, or you're any other kind of Druid and your a full caster. Combine the Cleric and Druid spell lists and give a Cleric Domain to give them Moon Druid levels of Wild Shape and you're good to go. Also, combining the spell lists allows Druids (now Primal Clerics) to have access to a large variety of non-concentration spells, a disparity Druids suffer greatly under currently.
Also this change would mean we can fold Scimitars into being a reflavored Shorts word (which they already are except for druid proficiency) and Hide Armor to be folded into reflavored Leather Armor (as once again the only point of it's existence is to be medium armor Druids can wear without DM override.

Moving forward from this line of thought: shouldn't any 5.5/6e just take more inspiration from Advanced D&D? How it was: you had 'clerics', and druid being a variant of cleric. All spells are divided up into over a dozen 'spheres', clerics have access to all of them, while druids only to animal, elemental, healing, plant and whether spells, and in addition they got other stuff that fits the flavor. In the subclass system, that would work perfect: you'd have a main cleric with a very limited number of 'spheres', and every subclass (including druid) would get additional ones that fits the theme of the domain, deity or whatever, including a number of flavourful non-spell abilities. That would make much clerics a much more divers (and flavorful) bunch.

Same could be done with wizards of course. Keep the 8 schools, have subclasses like mage (beguiler), mage (warmage), mage (necromancer), or wizard (light), wizard (grey) and wizard (black) from Dragonlance (I think), or hell, even use the 5 mana-sources from magic as a point of reference. Maybe even a generalist mage (wizard) who can know all spells but at the exclusion of most other features.

Theodoxus

2021-02-21, 08:50 AM

For me, it would be Barbarian and Druid. Make Barbarian a Fighter subclass (and make Fighter subclasses available at 1st level) and make Druid a Cleric Subclass.
And here's why:

Barbarian: Barbarians have great class flavor, but their subclasses generally don't expand or enhance that flavor much. While their subclasses do grant them some varying abilities, the overall flavor remains the same. Making it a Fighter subclass allows it to fully explore the base flavor, and enhance the fighter chassis as well rather than having the two compete.

Druid: this one has a TON more justification. In the lore already, the in-universe difference between a Cleric and a Druid is that "Druids worship primal gods/forces", often called "Old Gods". But not Warlock Old Ones, those are different because... Uh... Reasons? Furthermore, mechanically Druids are very very lacking as a core class. Either you're a Moon Druid and you use Wild Shape, or you're any other kind of Druid and your a full caster. Combine the Cleric and Druid spell lists and give a Cleric Domain to give them Moon Druid levels of Wild Shape and you're good to go. Also, combining the spell lists allows Druids (now Primal Clerics) to have access to a large variety of non-concentration spells, a disparity Druids suffer greatly under currently.
Also this change would mean we can fold Scimitars into being a reflavored Shorts word (which they already are except for druid proficiency) and Hide Armor to be folded into reflavored Leather Armor (as once again the only point of it's existence is to be medium armor Druids can wear without DM override.

Moving forward from this line of thought: shouldn't any 5.5/6e just take more inspiration from Advanced D&D? How it was: you had 'clerics', and druid being a variant of cleric. All spells are divided up into over a dozen 'spheres', clerics have access to all of them, while druids only to animal, elemental, healing, plant and whether spells, and in addition they got other stuff that fits the flavor. In the subclass system, that would work perfect: you'd have a main cleric with a very limited number of 'spheres', and every subclass (including druid) would get additional ones that fits the theme of the domain, deity or whatever, including a number of flavourful non-spell abilities. That would make much clerics a much more divers (and flavorful) bunch.

Same could be done with wizards of course. Keep the 8 schools, have subclasses like mage (beguiler), mage (warmage), mage (necromancer), or wizard (light), wizard (grey) and wizard (black) from Dragonlance (I think), or hell, even use the 5 mana-sources from magic as a point of reference. Maybe even a generalist mage (wizard) who can know all spells but at the exclusion of most other features.

This begs the question, which was quietly asked upthread. "If most or every class has your archetype available at 1st level, either why have classes, what is the 'chassis' supplying? Or why have subclasses/archetypes, just split them into their own class."

I think 5E works as well as it does because it takes that question, balls it up, tosses it over their shoulder and says "fine, we'll make different classes have different levels of differentiation. Some will be at 1st level (Cleric, Sorcerer, Warlock); some at 2nd (Druid, Wizard) and most at 3rd (the rest)."

This is ultimately why I'd prefer a classless system. 1st level, grab whatever archetypal feature you want, every level thereafter is a smorgasbord of things you can grab from - either going a specialized build with one trunk of a tree - like spellcasting or hitting really hard with a weapon. Then, every few levels, you can pick an "archetype" that bundles features ala 5E style, but each archetype has prerequisites. So, you can't grab the "Moon Druid" package if all you have are 'hitting really hard with a weapon' tree and a few leaves of 'being a sneaky bastard'.

While I love the nostalgia of reaching back to AD&D or 2nd Ed to grab class ideas, I just don't think it will work. At least not without copying 5E's format, an at that point, I'd ask what was the point?

Luccan

2021-02-21, 11:30 AM

This begs the question, which was quietly asked upthread. "If most or every class has your archetype available at 1st level, either why have classes, what is the 'chassis' supplying? Or why have subclasses/archetypes, just split them into their own class."

I think 5E works as well as it does because it takes that question, balls it up, tosses it over their shoulder and says "fine, we'll make different classes have different levels of differentiation. Some will be at 1st level (Cleric, Sorcerer, Warlock); some at 2nd (Druid, Wizard) and most at 3rd (the rest)."

This is ultimately why I'd prefer a classless system. 1st level, grab whatever archetypal feature you want, every level thereafter is a smorgasbord of things you can grab from - either going a specialized build with one trunk of a tree - like spellcasting or hitting really hard with a weapon. Then, every few levels, you can pick an "archetype" that bundles features ala 5E style, but each archetype has prerequisites. So, you can't grab the "Moon Druid" package if all you have are 'hitting really hard with a weapon' tree and a few leaves of 'being a sneaky bastard'.

While I love the nostalgia of reaching back to AD&D or 2nd Ed to grab class ideas, I just don't think it will work. At least not without copying 5E's format, an at that point, I'd ask what was the point?

I mean, one obvious reason for the class/subclass thing is if you want to introduce a mechanical concept under a single classed character (rogue/wizard with the AT, let's say), you don't have to balance an entirely new class to accomplish that. It really doesn't matter what level you introduce subclasses at, they allow you to apply different mechanics to a prebalanced baseline that's already pretty close to your idea. I also haven't seen many classless games that balance breadth of abilities to focus particularly well. It seems like you generally want one or the other. If it ends up the new theoretical system is best at building the old classes and little outside of that, you might as well keep the class system.

Nagog

2021-02-21, 11:42 AM

Moving forward from this line of thought: shouldn't any 5.5/6e just take more inspiration from Advanced D&D? How it was: you had 'clerics', and druid being a variant of cleric. All spells are divided up into over a dozen 'spheres', clerics have access to all of them, while druids only to animal, elemental, healing, plant and whether spells, and in addition they got other stuff that fits the flavor. In the subclass system, that would work perfect: you'd have a main cleric with a very limited number of 'spheres', and every subclass (including druid) would get additional ones that fits the theme of the domain, deity or whatever, including a number of flavourful non-spell abilities. That would make much clerics a much more divers (and flavorful) bunch.

Same could be done with wizards of course. Keep the 8 schools, have subclasses like mage (beguiler), mage (warmage), mage (necromancer), or wizard (light), wizard (grey) and wizard (black) from Dragonlance (I think), or hell, even use the 5 mana-sources from magic as a point of reference. Maybe even a generalist mage (wizard) who can know all spells but at the exclusion of most other features.

I think this would heavily detract from the classes as a whole. The classes themselves offer specific roles and typically playstyles, with the subclasses providing flavor and more specific playstyle mechanics. Furthermore, particularly with the Mage options, those draw heavily from how complex the magic system is now. With various schools of magic providing a plethora of different abilities, limiting the spells a Wizard can get to only a few select pools brings their power and versatility from a 9 to a 5. It's a huge nerf. And in a game that's all about living your fantasy, it's better to move upwards (buffing other things to compare) rather than nerfing the stronger ones.

This begs the question, which was quietly asked upthread. "If most or every class has your archetype available at 1st level, either why have classes, what is the 'chassis' supplying? Or why have subclasses/archetypes, just split them into their own class."

I think 5E works as well as it does because it takes that question, balls it up, tosses it over their shoulder and says "fine, we'll make different classes have different levels of differentiation. Some will be at 1st level (Cleric, Sorcerer, Warlock); some at 2nd (Druid, Wizard) and most at 3rd (the rest)."

This is ultimately why I'd prefer a classless system. 1st level, grab whatever archetypal feature you want, every level thereafter is a smorgasbord of things you can grab from - either going a specialized build with one trunk of a tree - like spellcasting or hitting really hard with a weapon. Then, every few levels, you can pick an "archetype" that bundles features ala 5E style, but each archetype has prerequisites. So, you can't grab the "Moon Druid" package if all you have are 'hitting really hard with a weapon' tree and a few leaves of 'being a sneaky bastard'.

While I love the nostalgia of reaching back to AD&D or 2nd Ed to grab class ideas, I just don't think it will work. At least not without copying 5E's format, an at that point, I'd ask what was the point?

I agree that 5e has it really good with the way they do subclasses: most classes have good play scaling and get their subclass at appropriate times for what they can do. Fighter is the notable exception. Particularly for subclasses like Eldritch Knight, Echo Knight, and other more fantastical choices, the first 2 levels are a vastly different playstyle than what you do once you start getting into the subclass. This Barbarian one would be similar: suddenly you level up and you shed your armor for Unarmored Defense: you also stop using ranged weapons entirely, and trade your dual-wielding shortswords out for a giant Greataxe to capitalize most on Brutal Criticals. And so on and so forth. Getting the subclass at level 1 prevents that from becoming such a huge turnaround on a level up.

And I agree wholeheartedly on the class ability buffet idea: so much of 5e's classes are created to synergize themselves with other abilities within the class/subclass, having no cohesion among the abilities would ruin power scaling entirely. And in such a system, they'd have to intentionally prevent such combos, otherwise there'd be such a massive disparity between powerbuilders and casual players (far more than there already are) to the extent that a mixed party of the two wouldn't work. The casual players would have nothing to do that makes any form of difference, while the powerbuilders dominate every area of play. It'd be like getting combos the like of PAM/GWM /every two levels/, across fields not just limited to combat.

Nifft

2021-02-21, 02:58 PM

This is ultimately why I'd prefer a classless system. 1st level, grab whatever archetypal feature you want, every level thereafter is a smorgasbord of things you can grab from - either going a specialized build with one trunk of a tree - like spellcasting or hitting really hard with a weapon. Then, every few levels, you can pick an "archetype" that bundles features ala 5E style, but each archetype has prerequisites. So, you can't grab the "Moon Druid" package if all you have are 'hitting really hard with a weapon' tree and a few leaves of 'being a sneaky bastard'.

1e did that. There was an optional table for building your own class. It was notable as being very easy to exploit for OP characters, all of which looked pretty much the same, since they took all the good stuff from every class.

With fewer restrictions, you'd see PCs always taking the same few optimal choices.

Removing classes would reduce choice.

Waazraath

2021-02-21, 03:18 PM

I think this would heavily detract from the classes as a whole. The classes themselves offer specific roles and typically playstyles, with the subclasses providing flavor and more specific playstyle mechanics. Furthermore, particularly with the Mage options, those draw heavily from how complex the magic system is now. With various schools of magic providing a plethora of different abilities, limiting the spells a Wizard can get to only a few select pools brings their power and versatility from a 9 to a 5. It's a huge nerf. And in a game that's all about living your fantasy, it's better to move upwards (buffing other things to compare) rather than nerfing the stronger ones.

I don't see this. For example, you can take the cleric chasis as it is now, give every cleric medium armor + shield, the same skill set to choose from, the same saves, and a bunch of 'classic' spells every cleric knows (healing, 'general', divination, protection). That's a very decent chasis I'd think, where you can have a druid by giving animal, weather, plant, elemental spells; a war cleric by adding combat, elemental and light/sun spells, a death god cleric by adding necromantic spells, etc. Just balance (the power of) extra class feature against the number of (and power of) spells added - like happens now in the subclasses, the one with arguably the best spells (trickery) has relative weak subclasses.

As for wizards, yeah, that's a thing, mostly because of 'tradition'. But on the other hand, the amount of versatility that wizards get has always been a point of discussion, especially since 3.x when the checks and balances of earlier editions were removed and only a lot of power and versatility remained. That same edition showed (but this is of course just a personal opinion) how much more fun more restricted archetypes were: the enchanter (beguiler), the (dread) necromancer, the war wizard - still very powerful and quite versatile (more versatile than many non-casters), but (again, opinion) also much more suited for 'living ones fantasy' than the standard generalist wizard/mage from D&D; in literature, the 'wizard' is more often an embermage, necromancer, or whatever, in any case: focussed. And thinking about it from the other way: buffing everything to be like the wizard, especially for tier 4, is a terrible idea imo cause it places much more restrictions on how other classes could look. You'd have to make every rogue or fighter a demigod or wushu-like, which bars lots of archetypes.

OldTrees1

2021-02-21, 06:51 PM

1e did that. There was an optional table for building your own class. It was notable as being very easy to exploit for OP characters, all of which looked pretty much the same, since they took all the good stuff from every class.

With fewer restrictions, you'd see PCs always taking the same few optimal choices.

Removing classes would reduce choice.

It might depend on the volume of options and on how much of it was non comparable vs "good vs better" stuff.

Imagine a system of 2 classes that became classless. Most characters would look similar. There are too few abilities, and if even a few are terrible then everyone starts to look the same.
Imagine a system of 2000 classes that became classless. Most characters would not look similar. There are too many abilities, you can't take the best of everything because you don't get enough feature points.

But did 2000 classes => classless create more choice or less choice? Let's say you only can swap features of the same level (low estimate). Let's also say the classes had 75% dead levels or levels with bad features. Let's further say each feature was copy pasted 4 times between classes. Let's also assume this is a 10 level game. (2000/16)^10 = 125 ^ 10 ~= 9e20. 9e20 is much greater than 2000 and that was with many ways of lowering the estimate.

But no class based game has 2000 classes (that was a deliberately excessive number). I am going to guess 3E got to maybe 50 base classes. Sure (50/16)^20 ~= 8e9 but Wizard had fewer than 5 valid class features (so more like 95% than 75%) or you count that as multiple +1 spellcasting class features in which case the feature was copy pasted way more than 4 times.

Still, I think a classless but still level based version of 3E could have had slightly more choice than 3E did (if the group set an expected tier). It is hard to say.

noob

2021-02-21, 07:26 PM

Dienekes

2021-02-21, 07:59 PM

It might depend on the volume of options and on how much of it was non comparable vs "good vs better" stuff.

Imagine a system of 2 classes that became classless. Most characters would look similar. There are too few abilities, and if even a few are terrible then everyone starts to look the same.
Imagine a system of 2000 classes that became classless. Most characters would not look similar. There are too many abilities, you can't take the best of everything because you don't get enough feature points.

But did 2000 classes => classless create more choice or less choice? Let's say you only can swap features of the same level (low estimate). Let's also say the classes had 75% dead levels or levels with bad features. Let's further say each feature was copy pasted 4 times between classes. Let's also assume this is a 10 level game. (2000/16)^10 = 125 ^ 10 ~= 9e20. 9e20 is much greater than 2000 and that was with many ways of lowering the estimate.

But no class based game has 2000 classes (that was a deliberately excessive number). I am going to guess 3E got to maybe 50 base classes. Sure (50/16)^20 ~= 8e9 but Wizard had fewer than 5 valid class features (so more like 95% than 75%) or you count that as multiple +1 spellcasting class features in which case the feature was copy pasted way more than 4 times.

Still, I think a classless but still level based version of 3E could have had slightly more choice than 3E did (if the group set an expected tier). It is hard to say.

I dunno. This talk of abilities available per level is sounding a lot like spells with every class being a Wizard. And well, while a lot of Wizards don’t have exactly the same spell list let’s just say a few key abilities have definitely risen to the top of the heap and become pretty ubiquitous.

I’m not saying it couldn’t work, of course, there are a lot of fun classless games. But I think a few that I’ve seen work may not have classes but have abilities that advance on each other. So you more or less pick a lane or two and go down it for a lot of your core abilities.

Oversimplified example: If you picked the Brawler ability at level 1, you theoretically could pick anything at level 2. But the Martial Artist ability or the Dirty Fighter ability both develop out of the Brawler ability so you’re more likely to pick one of those two.

Theodoxus

2021-02-21, 08:15 PM

I dunno. This talk of abilities available per level is sounding a lot like spells with every class being a Wizard. And well, while a lot of Wizards don’t have exactly the same spell list let’s just say a few key abilities have definitely risen to the top of the heap and become pretty ubiquitous.

That's starting to sound like 4E sans the 4 archetypes (Defender, Striker, Controller and Leader)... So, framing it that way is going to get some pretty visceral reactions. :smallwink:

I’m not saying it couldn’t work, of course, there are a lot of fun classless games. But I think a few that I’ve seen work may not have classes but have abilities that advance on each other. So you more or less pick a lane or two and go down it for a lot of your core abilities.

Oversimplified example: If you picked the Brawler ability at level 1, you theoretically could pick anything at level 2. But the Martial Artist ability or the Dirty Fighter ability both develop out of the Brawler ability so you’re more likely to pick one of those two.

That's no different than with a classed system. There's an opportunity cost for multiclassing, or at least inertia to remain in your first class. That's why I would definitely have a section like "Character building for Dummies" where the iconic classes were re-created for those who don't want to learn/are afraid of system mastery/lazy. Even then, more advanced players could use these pre-gens as a starting point, pulling out level pieces like a character Jenga and putting in things they like, without having to start from scratch. But for the individuals (and there are a LOT on these boards) who enjoy the char-gen mini game, this would be a lot of fun.

BTW, I don't understand the "slippery slope" (my phrase, just saying) of worrying about cookie-cutter builds. There is definitely an optimized build for every class in 5E, but outside of a very few gents I've met at my FLGS AL games in 2019, I've yet to encounter folks who don't play what they want, rather than the epitome of optimization. I doubt going classless would change that one iota.

Slider Eclipse

2021-02-21, 09:28 PM

If I had to choose? I'd likely say get rid of Fighter and Druid.

Fighter I feel like the class is too generic both mechanically and flavorwise. being good at fighting should be the bottom line for ANY Martial class, and the mechanics all feel like they either should be a default ability of other Martials (Extra Attack for example) or are simply some absurdly op feature that got stapled on just to make the class seem special (Action Surge is by far the most broken thing in the entire game, to the point just about any class can justify a 2 level dip in fighter as being better than any other option). In fact don't most Martial classes (and even Martially based Subclasses) already GET Fighting Styles?

Meanwhile the Druid I have the exact opposite thoughts on, it's trying to do too MUCH with a theme that is too expansive to really fit into one class. You have the powers of a full caster that also has the Wild Shape feature that wants to be a Martial character, resulting in both halfs being severely gimped in an attempt at balance. It makes more sense to me to branch out the concept of a druid into other classes that share flavor with those pieces, like say a Ranger that gets At Will Wild Shape but only into specific creatures, or a Cleric that worships Nature and as such has a focus on nature based spells.

Now as for what I'd replace them with? that is harder to grasp as there are a few ironic themes that don't have a real place yet such as Cavaliers and Psionics, I'd also love to see something more Spellsword based similar to Pathfinder's Magus. There's also a notable spot to add in a Gunslinger class now that the game is more willing to use Firearms (granted those rules as a whole really need a total overhaul anyway)

GreatWyrmGold

2021-02-21, 11:45 PM

I think a lot of people saying Fighter are saying so because of how terribly vanilla it is in 5E. It doesn't have to be that way in its next iteration.
The fighter has always been vanilla. (5e is probably the most mechanically distinctive fighter class I've seen.) The reason should be obvious from the name; the fighter fights, that's the entire identity of the class.

I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Dread Necromancer, since I've never suggested replacing wizards with them.
Because it's an extremely specific class {Scrubbed}

So this is certainly a way to do it. And it has a very elegant efficiency to it. I personally though think it’s a terrible way to design a class system...
Summarizes a lot of what I dislike about D&D's class system quite elegantly.

But this is weird, that the detrectors 'won', cause if I open the ToB entry on Amazon now, I see it getting 4,5 out of 5 with loads of reviewers.*
You're not wrong. You're also picking a very weird metric. {Scrubbed}
Beyond that, viewing the success of a game mechanic based on the book it was used in being (allegedly) a cult classic and not how well that mechanic endured in subsequent games seems foolish to me. Why measure how much some people liked it instead of whether enough people liked it well enough to want to keep playing with it?

I’d hesitate to point at PF2 with many delusions of it being good design intent. As the old saying goes, Paizo added 0.25 to get 3.75, pity they tried it again. It’s history repeating itself in a twisted manner.

If PF2 is indicative of anything, it’s a worship of the randomness of the D20 in resolving everything (a pale reflection of bounded accuracy), a dislike for anything that’s not attacking for damage in combat (a not entirely pale reflection of 5e), and a continuation of Martials generally not getting narrative powers (squint and that’s 5e).
I like a lot of what PF2 tried to do, and think it failed at a fair amount of it. {Scrubbed}

Rogues and artificers also get thieves tools, which may as well be an extra skill.
Bit of an understatement. They cover Open Lock and at least half of Disable Device, which were both skills in 3.5.

I mean, one obvious reason for the class/subclass thing is if you want to introduce a mechanical concept under a single classed character (rogue/wizard with the AT, let's say), you don't have to balance an entirely new class to accomplish that.
This is the big justification for subclasses, I feel. You can give as many different kinds of ideas special mechanics as you had 3.5 classes, but now players and DMs don't need to learn entire new rulesets for each. This makes for a simpler, smoother production pipeline for such classes; I'm pretty sure more subclasses for 5e have already come out than 3.5 ever had classes, even if you don't count the ones that had to be rewritten three times. It also means you won't have any cool ideas gimped by terrible mechanics, like Truenamers. On the other hand, it reduces your ability to make truly distinct "classes," like the binder (or, in my opinion, the original warlock). You're left with a bunch of...what were those shadow guys in the Tome of Magic? The ones who are only memorable for being published aside a really good class and a really bad one?

1e did that. There was an optional table for building your own class. It was notable as being very easy to exploit for OP characters, all of which looked pretty much the same, since they took all the good stuff from every class.

With fewer restrictions, you'd see PCs always taking the same few optimal choices.

Removing classes would reduce choice.
{Scrubbed}

If I was cutting classes, I'd probably cut Fighter and Sorcerer, for reasons that have been discussed before. Fighter is extremely generic, and Sorcerer doesn't really add much to the variety of arcane spellcasters. I'd probably add more nonmagical classes, probably something like a Soldier (for more disciplined nonmagical warriors) and an Herbalist (because nonmagical healing should be a thing).

If we want classes to be generic mechanical templates that players can add flavor onto, though, ranger and sorcerer would probably be better to cut. Ranger is just a very specific class, while sorcerer really has nothing if you strip away its "magic in the blood" thing (and make metamagic class-agnostic like in 3.5). In this case, new classes would need something to distinguish them mechanically first and foremost. Classes focused on noncombat things would be kinda neat; rogues have skillmonkey duties down and bards have diplomancy, but a dedicated healer class without meaningful offense could be interesting. Herbalist again, I guess? Some kind of minion-based class would be a neat idea, if it could be made to function without breaking the action economy.

Either way, though, if I'm going to be axing classes that have been in the game for decades, I'd want to change more than two classes. If we're going by class-as-character-archetype, then "rogue" and arguably "wizard" are too broad. If they're supposed to be mere mechanical frameworks, then several other classes have too hard a time distinguishing themselves from the pack and too specific a flavor associated with them (often by name alone). Paladins are the biggest example; it's hard to give them a specific mechanical identity without compromising their paladin-ness. Their only major feature a cleric/fighter wouldn't share is their Smites, and while a magic-warrior class would be neat, paladins aren't supposed to be all about the magic attacks.
It's not clear what classes are supposed to be, they don't seem to be that, and replacing two won't change either of those facts. As Morty put it:

This thread is an exercise in realizing that most classes don't have a very solid grounding besides "they've been around a while and people are used to them".

So my answer depends on what classes are supposed to be, but I'd probably replace sorcerers with herbalists after complaining about the project's limitations.

Lord Raziere

2021-02-22, 01:20 AM

BTW, I don't understand the "slippery slope" (my phrase, just saying) of worrying about cookie-cutter builds. There is definitely an optimized build for every class in 5E, but outside of a very few gents I've met at my FLGS AL games in 2019, I've yet to encounter folks who don't play what they want, rather than the epitome of optimization. I doubt going classless would change that one iota.

Besides classes are already cookie cutters by their very nature, and high op already dips and multiclasses for their some of the most optimized builds. at with going classless I can build something like a truly even gish/magus kind of character instead of the major/minor set ups we have with Eldritch Knight and Bladesinger. or a dark knight without having to conform to the paladin abilities. or an actually competent assassin without needing a fighter/rogue gestalt.

one could also probably add in psionics without needing specific subclasses for it, as well as do things like add new options like monster-like abilities that ensure someone can grow into a dragon without needing a monster class or something like the evolutionist homebrew, things like that. optimizers are always going optimize, this isn't something that can be helped, but the rest of us shouldn't be punished for it by being unable to build what we want how we want it.

PhoenixPhyre

2021-02-22, 01:30 AM

Granitecosmos

2021-02-22, 06:42 AM

Barbarian is a weird thing to have as its own class, it's mostly a warrior-class, like Fighter, and in 5e it basically trades Heavy Armor proficiency + Fighting Style for short-term Bonus Damage + Damage Reduction. So it's a tank and a damage dealer, but it trades away stuff that would make it a tank and a damage dealer. Also, not being able to wear plate mail is at best a dubious distinction between "trained warrior" and "instinct fueled berserker". Rage is an interesting mechanic, but it could easily be a subclass.
While this could work in theory, if we assume subclasses come online at level 3 it's a really bad idea. First of all, Barbarian doesn't trade away tank and damage power. Rage is as good a damage buff at level 1 as any fighting style, Dueling being the only comparable one in terms of power; except Rage actually scales with levels. Medium armor is perfectly fine when you have resistance against almost everything a low-level character would face; scale mail is only 2 AC behind chain mail, that can be as good as chain mail if the Barbarian has 14 DEX and both classes can use shields. Having resistance twice per day on top of that at level 1 makes the class incredibly durable, the only unfortunate thing being WotC didn't give the Barbarian the option of having armor and shield via starting equipment; that's the only change the class really needs.
At level 2 with Danger Sense this gets even better, while Reckless Attack allows the Barbarian to rely on the resistances in exchange for more damage via improved accuracy and more crits. All these benefits come online before level 3, when subclasses would enter the scene. Turning the Barbarian into a subclass would eliminate that early-game power.

Ranger is a much better candidate for a Fighter subclass than Barbarian.

MrStabby

2021-02-22, 07:31 AM

If we want classes to be generic mechanical templates that players can add flavor onto, though, ranger and sorcerer would probably be better to cut. Ranger is just a very specific class, while sorcerer really has nothing if you strip away its "magic in the blood" thing (and make metamagic class-agnostic like in 3.5). In this case, new classes would need something to distinguish them mechanically first and foremost. Classes focused on noncombat things would be kinda neat; rogues have skillmonkey duties down and bards have diplomancy, but a dedicated healer class without meaningful offense could be interesting. Herbalist again, I guess? Some kind of minion-based class would be a neat idea, if it could be made to function without breaking the action economy.

I am not sure about the ranger, honestly. I am in two minds.

On one side is what the ranger is, on the other what the ranger could be if done well. And yes, even with the revisions I don't thing the range has been done well.

As the ranger is, it is a bit of a fighter - OK martial skills and some spells thrown on top, a bit of a nature theme and a bit of a more damage theme. More damage isn't realy that distinctive and the nature theme overlaps with the druid to the extent that sometimes the range just feels like a fighter druid multiclass.

I think the ranger could be great, and I think there is a niche for what the ranger could be. I think there is a role for a magical hunter - divination magic, knowledge of esoteric enemies, a combination of mundane and magical mobility to keep pace and importantly they tie up together rather than just being bolted on to the class (for example bonus damage to creatures you have scryed on, advantage on saves vs a spell you chose each morning - things that reward knowledge about your enemies).

OldTrees1

2021-02-22, 09:36 AM

@OldTrees1

I'm not sure why you keep bringing up Dread Necromancer, since I've never suggested replacing wizards with them.

Because it's an extremely specific class, meaning that "replacing wizards with dread necromancers" is such a colossally stupid idea that suggesting your idea is comparable to it makes all alternatives seem better.

I believe my reply on page 2 to Morty asking on page 2 about why I was talking about Dread Necromancer is a better answer.

I was using Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Wizard because it is a useful example to demonstrate generic vs specialized classes. If I replaced Wizard with Beguiler and Necromancer the class quality goes up but the character concept volume goes down. By using this example I could talk about the mechanism outside of the specifics of a single generic class (Fighter) which often helps communicate a point.

It seems we are both finished with that conversation, but I wanted to explain why I mentioned Dread Necromancer so you know that I knew and recognize you were not suggesting anything about them.

Morty and I were discussing the cons of generic classes, the pros of specialized classes, the time limitations on developers, the usage of generic classes as a developer shortcut to deal the time issues (which is a pro for generic classes), and how well a generic class vs a few specialized classes handle the broad selection of character concepts players want to instantiate.

In general we agree that specialized classes were better design. I believe we left off disagreeing about whether generic classes were a net benefit or detraction (hence me comparing replacing Wizard with Beguiler and Dread Necromancer).

@Morty
I am still content to call that conversation closed if you want to.

MrStabby

2021-02-22, 09:50 AM

I believe my reply on page 2 to Morty asking on page 2 about why I was talking about Dread Necromancer is a better answer.

Morty and I were discussing the pros of specialized classes, the time limitations on developers, the usage of generic classes as a developer shortcut to deal the time issues, and how well a generic class vs a few specialized classes handle the broad selection of character concepts players want to instantiate.

In general we agree that specialized classes were better design. I believe we left off disagreeing about whether generic classes were a net benefit or detraction (hence me comparing replacing Wizard with Beguiler and Dread Necromancer).

@Morty
I am still content to call that conversation closed if you want to.

Possibly missing the point, but I think that there is scope for the best of both worlds with classes that encourage specialisation more.

Wizards being an example - I don't have a problem with one class covering all schools, but I do have a problem with the fact that the schools do too little to differentiate wizards from each other.

I think that if 5th edition had devolved more power to subclasses and a bit less to the main then it would have helped.

I think if the edition had more feats that promoted specialisation it would be a good thing (say make DC 7+ proficiency+stat rather than 8, but give each caster a favoured school or spell tag or damage type or whatever to specialise in and give more feat support to this as well. Elemental adept is a good start, but not enough).

I think a system that supports specialised characters is better, but I don't see that that system has to embed this specilisation specifically within the class.

OldTrees1

2021-02-22, 09:56 AM

Possibly missing the point, but I think that there is scope for the best of both worlds with classes that encourage specialisation more.

Wizards being an example - I don't have a problem with one class covering all schools, but I do have a problem with the fact that the schools do too little to differentiate wizards from each other.

I think that if 5th edition had devolved more power to subclasses and a bit less to the main then it would have helped.

I think if the edition had more feats that promoted specialisation it would be a good thing (say make DC 7+ proficiency+stat rather than 8, but give each caster a favoured school or spell tag or damage type or whatever to specialise in and give more feat support to this as well. Elemental adept is a good start, but not enough).

I think a system that supports specialised characters is better, but I don't see that that system has to embed this specilisation specifically within the class.

Finding the balance point is hard because there is a limit to how many classes the developers would make. As you got from generic towards specific on the continuum you get better representation for some character concepts but start to exclude some character concepts. Where is the ideal point? Hard to say. Is a mixed strategy of X specialized + 1 generic better or worse than X+1 partially specialized? Hard to say.

My point was just to highlight this tension as one of the merits of generic classes.

Willie the Duck

2021-02-22, 09:59 AM

On one side is what the ranger is, on the other what the ranger could be if done well. And yes, even with the revisions I don't thing the range has been done well.

As the ranger is, it is a bit of a fighter - OK martial skills and some spells thrown on top, a bit of a nature theme and a bit of a more damage theme. More damage isn't realy that distinctive and the nature theme overlaps with the druid to the extent that sometimes the range just feels like a fighter druid multiclass.

I think the ranger could be great, and I think there is a niche for what the ranger could be. I think there is a role for a magical hunter - divination magic, knowledge of esoteric enemies, a combination of mundane and magical mobility to keep pace and importantly they tie up together rather than just being bolted on to the class (for example bonus damage to creatures you have scryed on, advantage on saves vs a spell you chose each morning - things that reward knowledge about your enemies).

Agreed. There is space to make the ranger distinct. 5e's rather successful attempt at making a paladin distinct from fighters and war clerics shows that it can be done even in the basic system we already have (the existing 5e ranger is just a not-great attempt).

MrStabby

2021-02-22, 10:33 AM

Finding the balance point is hard because there is a limit to how many classes the developers would make. As you got from generic towards specific on the continuum you get better representation for some character concepts but start to exclude some character concepts. Where is the ideal point? Hard to say. Is a mixed strategy of X specialized + 1 generic better or worse than X+1 partially specialized? Hard to say.

My point was just to highlight this tension as one of the merits of generic classes.

I agree there is a tension. I very much agree. I also agree it isn't rivial to work out there the balance should be - not least as you would want to factor in what you would add with subsequent releases. I guess I am saying that if you can put enough options and incentives in place to specialise then you might be able to get the best of both worlds.

So to stick with the wizard, imagine if we had a limit to the number of subclasses.

We could have bladesinger, warmage and specialist

Specialist is then a generic subclass with "at level 2 when you take this class, select a school of magic..." and gived bonuses to spells from your school1, bladesinger is then an option that gives a range of martial bonuses to select from2 and warmage could give generic and support bonuses3. The idea would be to have a system that would allow you to specialise and to build something a bit like (if not exactly like) a dread necromancer.

1 Things like the ability X times per day to cast a spell from your school as a bonus action, recoup spell slots when casting spell from school, DC increase, level up from spell from chosen school, creatures created/amimated get a bonus etc.

2Things like weapon/armour/shield proficiencies, fighting styles, more HP, concentration bonuses

3Things like moving an ally when casting a spell, like the order cleric's reaction attack for allies, attack bonuses for allies whilst concentrating etc.

The point is that some of these could be feats for anyone to reduce overall content - a cleric or a warlock could pick some of these up as well. The aim is to allow satisfyingly specialist classes without having to have too much core content. Care would have to be taken to stop things stacking too much (no +7 to spell DC from three different mechanics) but I think this could be viable.

That said, I am one of the people who rails against some of the restrictions I see as unneeded - things like Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight not being able to pick their spell schools as much as I complain about the lack of reward for focusing.

OldTrees1

2021-02-22, 12:38 PM

I agree there is a tension. I very much agree. I also agree it isn't rivial to work out there the balance should be - not least as you would want to factor in what you would add with subsequent releases. I guess I am saying that if you can put enough options and incentives in place to specialise then you might be able to get the best of both worlds.

So to stick with the wizard, imagine if we had a limit to the number of subclasses.

We could have bladesinger, warmage and specialist

Specialist is then a generic subclass with "at level 2 when you take this class, select a school of magic..." and gived bonuses to spells from your school1, bladesinger is then an option that gives a range of martial bonuses to select from2 and warmage could give generic and support bonuses3. The idea would be to have a system that would allow you to specialize and to build something a bit like (if not exactly like) a dread necromancer.

The point is that some of these could be feats for anyone to reduce overall content - a cleric or a warlock could pick some of these up as well. The aim is to allow satisfyingly specialist classes without having to have too much core content. Care would have to be taken to stop things stacking too much (no +7 to spell DC from three different mechanics) but I think this could be viable.

Quick note: It is not about incentivizing the player to specialize. You can assume the player has a character concept in mind. The subthread was more about the continuum on how much the developers tailor the design to representing a few concepts in 4K high definition or all concepts in 8-bit resolution. Usually they pick somewhere in between and deal with the tradeoffs. [/note]

So a generic class with N subclasses which each operate as a generic class (using the "build your own class" style of generic class) for a smaller niche? With the possibility of some of those features being made into feats for cross class options?

That is a style that works well for breadth but has trouble with depth. It is a valid model that would work well. However it does have limitations primarily due to 3 factor:
1) As a class gets more customizable (a common model for generic) it takes more development time to create the class. This would mean fewer classes overall.
2) Even a build your own class type of generic class is likely to have fewer features designed for a character concept than a specialized class for that concept would. Maybe they run out of ideal features halfway through their options.
3) Some concepts will cross multiple subclasses. This is less of an issue with this design than for more specialized subclasses, but I think it should be mentioned for completeness.

To summarize with an example:

Replacing Wizard with Beguiler and Dread Necromancer would best represent a Necromancer character but struggle to represent a Hedge Mage.
Replacing Wizard subclasses with your 3 subclasses (with each having a slew of options from the gained dev time) would be worse at representing the Necromancer but better at representing the Hedge Mage (despite not having a subclass tailored to that concept).
The original Wizard is the worst at representing the Necromancer and the best at representing the Hedge Mage (despite its less than ideal representation)

Finding the right setting (or mix) is non trivial and subjective. However clever designers can make the most out of whichever config they chose. Your setting seems well designed

KorvinStarmast

2021-02-22, 02:44 PM

Oversimplified example: If you picked the Brawler ability at level 1, you theoretically could pick anything at level 2. But the Martial Artist ability or the Dirty Fighter ability both develop out of the Brawler ability so you’re more likely to pick one of those two.
IIRC, 5e went out of their way to try and remove the issue of feat chains (which if one is not careful can lead to some traps) ... but that's from a conversation quite a few years back I may be missing some details.

While a few feats do have synergy (CE and SS, for example) neither is a pre requisite for the other.

Wizard_Lizard

2021-02-22, 02:47 PM

Dienekes

2021-02-22, 02:53 PM

IIRC, 5e went out of their way to try and remove the issue of feat chains (which if one is not careful can lead to some traps) ... but that's from a conversation quite a few years back I may be missing some details.

While a few feats do have synergy (CE and SS, for example) neither is a pre requisite for the other.

Very true, but 5e isn't a classless system with a grabbag of abilities. And the abilities within a class do build on each other. Getting Extra Attack x2 doesn't happen until you have Extra Attack. Persistent Rage doesn't matter if you don't first have Rage.

I was discussing essentially how I've seen a few successful classless RPGs avoid the problem of everyone getting the same best abilities as soon as possible and it is done by essentially making it impossible to do it.

KorvinStarmast

2021-02-22, 02:55 PM

I was discussing essentially how I've seen a few successful classless RPGs avoid the problem of everyone getting the same best abilities as soon as possible and it is done by essentially making it impossible to do it. Examples off the top of your head?

My first example is Original Traveller: it didn't have classes per se, but the chargen did open up options that easily placed you in the "here's the spec ops team's pilot" - an A-Team kind of thing.

And it didn't have levels.

GreatWyrmGold

2021-02-22, 07:11 PM

I believe my reply on page 2 to Morty asking on page 2 about why I was talking about Dread Necromancer is a better answer.

I was using Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Wizard because it is a useful example to demonstrate generic vs specialized classes. If I replaced Wizard with Beguiler and Necromancer the class quality goes up but the character concept volume goes down. By using this example I could talk about the mechanism outside of the specifics of a single generic class (Fighter) which often helps communicate a point.
Morty and I were discussing the cons of generic classes, the pros of specialized classes, the time limitations on developers, the usage of generic classes as a developer shortcut to deal the time issues (which is a pro for generic classes), and how well a generic class vs a few specialized classes handle the broad selection of character concepts players want to instantiate.
And the specific examples you picked were very good for your point of view. I mean, you could have picked (say) Rogue, Bard, and Ranger; "bards" and "rangers" are both (arguably) more specialized versions of the skillmonkey rogue chassis with some unique abilities. But it would be ridiculous to say that the ranger and bard are "too specialized" in the way you were saying the Dread Necromancer is!

I'm accusing you of picking examples which supported your argument best. You didn't actually disagree with my assessment, you just framed it differently. You think the comparison between replacing Wizard with Dread Necromancer is a fair comparison to Morty's argument; I don't, so I called it out.

Classless systems?
Like I said in my earlier post, most non-D&D-based systems are classless. Some classless systems I personally have experience with:
Shadowrun. It's theoretically possible to build someone good at hacking, magic, gun-fu, etc, but it requires an absurd amount of resources to make viable. The mechanics encourage you to specialize; the most obvious example is Essence, which gives you a limit to how much cyberware you can stuff in your body and forces mages to find a trade-off between cyberware and magical power. It's possible to make it work (drop a useful but nonessential implant here, pay extra for deltaware there, initiate to recoup the lost Magic, accept smaller dice pools than normal), but it's better to pick one role to focus on.
Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia. I'm lumping these together because, for all their differences, the way they encourage character specialization is the same. In principle, everyone has approximately the same role; however, there are too many skills for anyone to master them all. Everyone puts a few points in basic combat skills, because that's how TRPGs work unfortunately, but beyond that? You have one Investigator putting points in esoteric knowledge to figure out what this cult paraphanelia is, one Troubleshooter putting ranks in bootlicking and fast-talking to deal with angry superiors, etc. (This does lead to everyone feeling more mechanically similar than they tend to in D&D, of course, but not in the way classless detractors claim.)
GURPS is the gold standard for generic classless systems. Part of how it makes the classlessness work depends on individual settings/modules/GMs, because obviously questions like whether or not magic is an option affect things a lot, but in general, players have a lot of options and need to pick ones that suit their character and complement the party's strengths/weaknesses.
The thing all good classless systems have in common, in my opinion, is a wide variety of skills and restrictions against one character doing everything. Some games have too many skills and not enough skill points; some have specific mechanics that actively weaken characters who spread themselves too thin; some just have lots of options and make the good ones really costly. But they all have variety and restrictions.
Does that make any sense?

Nagog

2021-02-22, 09:41 PM

I don't see this. For example, you can take the cleric chasis as it is now, give every cleric medium armor + shield, the same skill set to choose from, the same saves, and a bunch of 'classic' spells every cleric knows (healing, 'general', divination, protection). That's a very decent chasis I'd think, where you can have a druid by giving animal, weather, plant, elemental spells; a war cleric by adding combat, elemental and light/sun spells, a death god cleric by adding necromantic spells, etc. Just balance (the power of) extra class feature against the number of (and power of) spells added - like happens now in the subclasses, the one with arguably the best spells (trickery) has relative weak subclasses.

I agree with this, but it's also just kinda how they're already set up, isn't it?

As for wizards, yeah, that's a thing, mostly because of 'tradition'. But on the other hand, the amount of versatility that wizards get has always been a point of discussion, especially since 3.x when the checks and balances of earlier editions were removed and only a lot of power and versatility remained. That same edition showed (but this is of course just a personal opinion) how much more fun more restricted archetypes were: the enchanter (beguiler), the (dread) necromancer, the war wizard - still very powerful and quite versatile (more versatile than many non-casters), but (again, opinion) also much more suited for 'living ones fantasy' than the standard generalist wizard/mage from D&D; in literature, the 'wizard' is more often an embermage, necromancer, or whatever, in any case: focussed. And thinking about it from the other way: buffing everything to be like the wizard, especially for tier 4, is a terrible idea imo cause it places much more restrictions on how other classes could look. You'd have to make every rogue or fighter a demigod or wushu-like, which bars lots of archetypes.

I don't see where you're getting the idea that playing something more limited is more fun. 3.5 was a popular system, but it's popularity is a drop in the bucket compared to 5e. I'm convinced the only reason there is still a 3.5 following is due to 4e's failure.
As for archtypes and the like: there's nothing stopping you from building an archtypical character; I've done so on a great deal many occasions. But limiting character creation to those archtypes puts a hard limiter on player expression, and introduced heavy flavor enforcement back into the game (the very same thing that causes my stance against Druids).
As for balancing martial characters to spellcasters, I think 5e is already on a really good course for that. Obviously martial classes don't have the same breadth of ability as martials, but martials never really become obsolete, and in many cases can out-perform a spellcaster, particularly in terms of stamina. Martials never really get "tapped" like spellcasters do, they can keep going all day long without much change in their ability. The reason Casters appear so much more powerful is due to the egregious problem of single encounter adventuring days.

Gosh.. two of my favourite classes... oof.
I personally like the barbarian subclasses and think they add a lot of flavour, just looking at beast and wild magic from tasha's alone.. but yeah I see your point!!

I agree, I think both the classes have great flavor, but the mechanical interpretations of those flavors I think are where they fall flat. I love the concepts they represent, and have a great deal many character concepts for both, but when I try to build them, I find the mechanics involved fail to keep me engaged in what I'm capable of.

5eNeedsDarksun

2021-02-22, 10:19 PM

Between the fact that the Shepherd is OP as heck, and to me at least it makes no sense that a character who is supposed to care about nature focusses on summoning things for the purpose of being meat shields, I could happily live without the Druid.
Some sort of reasonably balanced subclass akin to the Nature Cleric would be preferable at this point.

OldTrees1

2021-02-22, 11:00 PM

And the specific examples you picked were very good for your point of view. I mean, you could have picked (say) Rogue, Bard, and Ranger; "bards" and "rangers" are both (arguably) more specialized versions of the skillmonkey rogue chassis with some unique abilities. But it would be ridiculous to say that the ranger and bard are "too specialized" in the way you were saying the Dread Necromancer is!

I'm accusing you of picking examples which supported your argument best. You didn't actually disagree with my assessment, you just framed it differently. You think the comparison between replacing Wizard with Dread Necromancer is a fair comparison to Morty's argument; I don't, so I called it out.

Please fight strawmen elsewhere.

1) You do not accurately describe my point. Your description was so inaccurate that I felt I needed to contradict it, out of respect for Morty, by requoting my actual position from page 2.
2) I picked examples that communicated my point best, not what supported my argument best.

Please fight strawmen elsewhere.

PS: Some rhetorical questions you might want to answer before you continue fighting strawmen.
Why did you get the idea Dread Necromancer was "too specialized"? It is specialized and wizard is generic, but where did "too" come in?
Why did you get the idea that a comparison of 1 generic class vs N specialized classes (a 1:many relationship) was somehow a 1:1 relationship?
What did morty and myself agree about?

Nifft

2021-02-22, 11:46 PM

It might depend on the volume of options and on how much of it was non comparable vs "good vs better" stuff.

Imagine a system of 2 classes that became classless. Most characters would look similar. There are too few abilities, and if even a few are terrible then everyone starts to look the same.
Imagine a system of 2000 classes that became classless. Most characters would not look similar. There are too many abilities, you can't take the best of everything because you don't get enough feature points.

But did 2000 classes => classless create more choice or less choice? Let's say you only can swap features of the same level (low estimate). Let's also say the classes had 75% dead levels or levels with bad features. Let's further say each feature was copy pasted 4 times between classes. Let's also assume this is a 10 level game. (2000/16)^10 = 125 ^ 10 ~= 9e20. 9e20 is much greater than 2000 and that was with many ways of lowering the estimate.

But no class based game has 2000 classes (that was a deliberately excessive number). I am going to guess 3E got to maybe 50 base classes. Sure (50/16)^20 ~= 8e9 but Wizard had fewer than 5 valid class features (so more like 95% than 75%) or you count that as multiple +1 spellcasting class features in which case the feature was copy pasted way more than 4 times.

Still, I think a classless but still level based version of 3E could have had slightly more choice than 3E did (if the group set an expected tier). It is hard to say.

I think you could build a classless edition of D&D, but making it balanced or even making it look like D&D would take a lot more work than just giving all PCs equal access to all of the unequally potent class abilities.

As an example of the professionals from another edition trying something less ambitions (and IMHO failing), you could look at the UA Generic Classes (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/genericClasses.htm).

BTW, since you're talking about 3e, the 3e dndtools class listing has 990 class entries, and that number ignores most class variants & most Dragon Magazine content, let alone the virtual tons of homebrew on this site alone. 2,000 classes may not be an excessive number -- you may be significantly under the actual number available in any given 3e game, especially a contemporary one where (some or all) Pathfinder classes might be included.

Of course, for a 5e game there would not be 2,000 classes available ( ... yet).

This. Very much this. You get the illusion of choice, ruined by the impossibility of not having a solved game dominated by a few strategies. And none of them would look like the classic archetypes. Which to me is a major loss. Instead you get mathammer builds, all paint by the numbers that have no relationship to the worlds they inhabit, at least if those worlds are recognizable as D&D worlds.

Yeah.

If you wanted to see D&D-ish archetypes emerge from a classless system, you'd need to write a foundational system to encode / encourage / enable / enforce some aspects of those archetypes.

I'm sure it could be done, but I'm not sure it would be worthwhile -- D&D's popularity may be (in part) due to the how easy it is to grasp classes and levels.