KidSnide said:
Themes provide a character's combat schtick.
The Playtest Pelor Cleric would like to have some words with you about what Themes might do in D&D5.
Personally, I think it'd be narmed to shove all combat schticks into themes. What, my rogue must pick the Stealthy Murderer theme to get Sneak Attack? My fighter can't be a sword-n-board-er WITHOUT the Defender theme? Bah.
It's cool that part of what themes are is combat styles. It would not be so cool if that was the ONLY PLACE combat styles resided.
Off the top of my head, it's not clear to me why a ranger needs to fight with two weapons in addition to a full combat schtick. Maybe thats the kind of thing where you can create a custom theme (i.e. just pick feats) if you want two-weapon fighting and some other ability. That seems like just the sort of think play testing should figure out.
There's no reason to
disentangle fighting style from class any more than there is a reason to disentangle background from class.
I mean, if all skills are backgrounds (including thief skills) and all fighting styles are themes (including sneak attacks), what does the Rogue class offer?
Sure, most rangers probably wouldn't have a need of a TWF or Archery theme, since they get it for automatic. They would take other themes -- perhaps you'd have a ranger who was a Defender as well, parrying things with their flashing blades. Perhaps you'd have a Ranger-Slayer dedicated to pwning their foes with their two weapons.
Redundancies are a good thing in a modular game. They enable a lot of flexibility.
tuxego said:
Further, WotC seems amenable to the idea that they can put abilities into more than the default buckets. Most recently, there was talk of taking the Cleric's healing abilities out of the "spells" bucket and putting them into the "class features" bucket. If they take TWF out of Themes, they'll need another bucket to put it into; but that shouldn't be a problem because they're imaginative people.
Kind of like I said above: I don't think there needs to just be ONE BUCKET for each thing.
I see no reason there can't be a Barbarian class along with a Berserker theme (which takes some Rage-related abilities) and maybe an Explorer background (with running, jumping, swimming, climbing, etc. woven in).
TWF can be both a theme AND a ranger class feature AND, I dunno, some sort of Tempest Fighter build AND...whatever else.
Healing can be spells AND class features AND a theme AND...whatever else.
Rage can be a class feature AND a theme AND...whatever else.
The more buckets you put things in, the more options people get when picking from their buckets, the more customization there is, the more modular your system is...all of this is good juju.