The Theory of adaptation

[Witty Username]

So, 3.5 has been on the brain, this surely has nothing to do with any recent threads discussing the subject. But I realized a thing that is absent in 5e, the Adaptation section of classes. Now this wasn't in the Player's handbook, but as supplements were release they started to show up more and more.
Now what these were, were a discussion of if a particular class was interesting, but there was stuff that didn't work with a specific character or setting, how the theme, fluff and mechanics could be adjusted to better fit for purpose.

Things like changes you might make to a class attempting to embody dragons could be adjusted to be about other monsters, adapting organizations and traditions to fit settings that didn't have such.

Here is the section for the stonedeath assassin as an example:


Adaptation

The stonedeath assassin prestige class combines traditional rogue and assassin abilities with ones related to the likely environment the class will hunt in. You could create a similar "poison thorn assassin" class, for example, that was designed for elves, not goblinoids. You would replace meld into stone, stoneskulk, and corrupt stone with forestskulk, tree shape, and perhaps tree stride or blight. Rather than stonedeath strike as a 5th-level ability, perhaps a poison thorn assassin can exude its own poison periodically for a particularly deadly attack.



I think SCAG has a section kinda like this for Bladesinger, as in the Forgotten Realms it represents an ancient tradition of elvish battle mages. But notes that the elf restriction only really makes sense in that frame of reference, and can easily be discarded if it doesn't apply.

Now, classes in 5e are much less specific, since this stuff is just a custom subclass away often times. But it does come off as strange that there is less guidance for making custom stuff, like the Witch class of 3.5, as a rough bit of advice how to create a custom spell list for a class with a theme and some balance consideration.

I realize I miss guidance like this, even if it is less necessary.
Cleric comes to mind, were the class bills itself as flexible but if you say try to do darkness and cold (Like a Shar or Auril cleric) even with a custom domain you end up with some weird stuff, like all this light and radiant damage. I think it was AD&D that had a thing that clerics of darkness Gods could cast "inverted" light spells to create areas of darkness that blinded and obscured.

But what to people think about more materials like this:
-Optional features like in Tasha's
-Additional customization advice, probably in the DMG
-specific class advice on how it could be reskinned for different concepts

[Hurrashane]

There's the whole part in the DMG for modifying a class, though that's more for mechanical and less for fluff. It's very broad strokes and like, "be sure to consider this when changing a class" but it's something.

[RogueJK]

Cleric comes to mind, were the class bills itself as flexible but if you say try to do darkness and cold (Like a Shar or Auril cleric) even with a custom domain you end up with some weird stuff, like all this light and radiant damage.

Could you provide some examples of this unavoidable light and radiant damage?

Because it seems like it'd be easy to create a custom cold/darkness domain, being that there are plenty of darkness and cold related spells that can be slotted as domain spells, and the cleric has innate access in their spell list to almost as many necrotic damage spells as radiant damage spells. As long as you provided some level-appropriate cold-related domain spells to eliminate the need for them to prepare otherwise standard Cleric spells (for example, gaining Cone of Cold and Summon Undead/Shadowspawn to obviate the need to take Flame Strike and Summon Celestial), then radiant spells could be totally avoided when making spell selections.

Sure, they'd still have them on their spell list, but it's no different than a goodly-aligned Life cleric merely choosing not to prepare and use Animate Dead, or similar.


Something like this, spitballing off the top of my head:

Winter's Gloom Domain:
Level 1: Eyes of the Mistress - Gain 120' Darkvision, and can use Bonus Action to grant PB creatures within 30' the ability to see through magical darkness to a distance of 60' for 10 minutes, usable PB times per day.
Level 1: Finger of Ice - Gain the Ray of Frost and Shape Water cantrips
Level 2: Channel Divinity Oppressive Darkness - 15' radius globe of magical darkness within 60' for 1 minute. Creatures of your choice within the darkness take 2d6+Cleric Level in cold damage when they enter the darkness or start their turn within, with WIS save for half damage.
Level 6: Chill of the Grave - You gain cold resistance, and can choose to swap cold damage dealt by your spells or abilities to necrotic damage, or vice versa
Level 8: Blessed Strikes - Cold
Level 17: Harbinger of Winter - You gain cold immunity and can see through any darkness, plus have a flying speed equal to your walking speed anytime you are in dim light or darkness.

Domain Spells:
1: Armor of Agathys, Ice Knife
2: Darkness, Rime's Binding Ice
3: Summon Shadowspawn, Slow (or potentially a refluffed Hunger of Hadar if you want to go that far)
4: Ice Storm, Shadow of Moil
5: Cone of Cold, Summon Draconic Spirit (Cold)

[RSP]

One thing that unfortunately impacts these things is how “unbalanced” different damage types are. In an ideal situation, each damage type would have its own benefits and flaws, but as is, there’s no real way to say trading an ability that does Poison damage to Force damage is an even swap.

So if you wanted to “adapt” a particular class/subclass from doing Poison damage to doing Force damage, I’d imagine most DMs aware of the differences in damage types would say “no”.

[Witty Username]

Could you provide some examples of this unavoidable light and radiant damage?

Because it seems like it'd be easy to create a custom cold/darkness domain, being that there are plenty of darkness and cold related spells that can be slotted as domain spells, and the cleric has innate access in their spell list to almost as many necrotic damage spells as radiant damage spells. As long as you provided some level-appropriate cold-related domain spells to eliminate the need for them to prepare otherwise standard Cleric spells (for example, gaining Cone of Cold and Summon Undead to obviate the need to take Flame Strike and Summon Celestial), then radiant spells could be totally avoided when making spell selections.

Sure, they'd still have them on their spell list, but it's no different than a goodly-aligned Life cleric merely choosing not to prepare and use Animate Dead, or choosing not to use Necrotic damage with their Spirit Guardians, or similar.

Alright,
So first we have cantrips, going off the PHB I have sacred flame, and that's it,

So if we were going to do a cold domain, We need a first level feature for something like ray of frost or splat dive for toll of the dead. Or say that the class is going martial weapons/divine strike cold and just go with no damage cantrips.
Then we have no cold damage on the main list, even after splats I believe
So that will be our domain, just going off the PHB
1st: Armor of Agathys
2nd: whiff
3rd: Sleet Storm (no damage, but feels about right at least)
Ice: Ice Storm
5th: Cone of Cold

Sleet storm also is obscuring and Auril is kinda darkness themed with the whole fading light in winter, so we can get there for some adds
1st: Armor of Agathys, Fog Cloud
2nd: Darkness
3rd:Sleet Storm, Slow
4th: Ice Storm, Blight
5th: Cone of Cold

So we have something here of kinda damage, kinda weather effects, Need to dig up some spells from splats for 2nd level stuff (I think Ice knife and snowball swarm could work), And I am basicly accepting that past 5th level I will have no damage spells, but I be a cleric, their is only two Harm, which is a single target spell but fine, and Firestorm...

Meanwhile as a light cleric
Working cantrips, several radiant damage spells from Guiding bolt to guardian of Faith and even top end options like Flame Strike and Firestorm, several utility spells like daylight and continual flame And we haven't even gotten to the domain list yet. Not to mention the spells you are encouraged to avoid, inflict wounds, harm are kinda, uninteresting. Inflict wounds is like guiding bolt, with no secondary effect and you have to run up and hit them, And Harm can't kill (?, I forgot it had that).

I agree it is possible to make a cold domain type cleric, but it requires a chuck of build assumptions, mechanical sacrifices, and multiple books of content or homebrew.

[RogueJK]

Well yeah, if you go by just the PHB it's necessarily going to be very limited... All build/theme options are going to be very limited if you do PHB only.

But there are plenty of options within all the other non-PHB official releases that fit the theme well, as shown in my sample domain above.

(Why try to limit it to just PHB? Even your OP references 3 other non-PHB books...)

[Witty Username]

Well yeah, if you go by just the PHB it's necessarily going to be very limited... All build/theme options are going to be very limited if you do PHB only.

But there are plenty of options within all the other non-PHB official releases that fit the theme well, as shown in my sample domain above.

(Why try to limit it to just PHB? Even your OP references 3 other non-PHB books...)

Ah,
That is because the actual project that I was thinking about when I was thinking of examples was from before Tasha's and Fizban's came out.
I was able to fill out a full domain list at the time but it was still tight, and I lost the notebook it was in, but that is neither here nor there. I may have also shot myself in the foot using Tempest cleric as a reference for features, I think I played with a feature with cold damage slowing like how Tempest shoves with lightning, but then found that unsatisfying for similar reasons as it feels weird for Tempest as it only really works with spells on the domain list.
But it was just an example point for the discussion. Just the one that arived at first because I have a Shar cleric in BG3 and tried to make an Auril cleric on my own time a bit ago.

If you think the discussion would be better framed I have also run into this issue with paladin, which usually ends up running into how to reskin divine smite rather quickly.

This is more if the materials for customization in the dmg and sorcebooks is a sticking point for anyone other than me.

[Psyren]

5e actually does have this, it just isn't labelled explicitly as "Adaptation." For example, here's Lunar Sorcery from the recent Dragonlance book:


"On many worlds, the moon is a revered celestial body with magical properties. On Krynn, the gods of magic are associated with the world’s three moons. On the world of Toril, the god{dess} Selûne uses the light of the moon to battle darkness. On Eberron, scholars of the Draconic Prophecy decipher ancient secrets from the waxing and waning of that world’s twelve moons.

You or someone from your lineage has been exposed to the concentrated magic of the moon (or moons) of your world, imbuing you with lunar magic."
If this were a 3.5 prestige class rather than a 5e subclass, those sections talking about how to justify the class in FR and Eberron would have been included in an overt "Adaptation" blurb. The reason this kind of thing was more necessary in 3.5 is that a much bigger proportion of the prestige classes there are tied to specific settings, so ways to use them in other settings needed to be more directly called out; in 5e though, subclasses tend to be more setting-agnostic already.

[Witty Username]

Neat on the lunar sorcerer, I will admit to not having read it as I don't much care for 5e's take on sorcerers in Dragonlance (I prefer them being the mages that don't draw power from the moons, personally).

But it seems like the consensus is the materials we have is sufficient for reskining and such. I recall the DMG being a bit barebones, but I will give it another read.