I don't see a widespread fixation on reducing the classes to the core 4. A thread here and there, sure, but it's not like most tables are clamoring for this reduction. Certainly we shouldn't take a trending topic on enworld as the pulse of the larger D&D community. Moreover, at least some of the proponents I've read have also suggested including a subsystem to realize concepts which aren't well expressed by the core 4. These subsystems could theoretically produce hundreds of different 'classes.' The point isn't to limit player options, but to expand them, hopefully to the point where you can readily capture the vast majority of character concepts without feeling shoehorned by standard class restraints.
D&D 5E Why the fixation with getting rid of everything but fighter/cleric/rogue/wizard?
cbwjm
Seb-wejem
I tend to think of it as the 2e groups rather than 4 individual classes, even in 2e you had multiple classes, they were just grouped under similar headings. With the subclasses introduced in 5e, I think it could probably be done where you have the 4 base classes of Warrior, Rogue, Priest, and Wizard with the subclasses further defining them. However, this is more just an idea rather than advocating that DnD should change to suit. I actually wonder if it is just people seeing what they can do with the system.
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
Sorry. I was more reacting to the oft-repeated assumption that people who prefer fewer classes can't handle complexity than I was to your post specifically.
I do agree that 4 feels like too few, unless there are more opportunities for specialization later.
FWIW, I'm in favor of templates (maybe prestige classes could fill this roll) that can be added to any class. For example, you don't in theory need a Ranger class if you can add "Woodsman" to a Fighter, a Rogue, or a Fighter/Rogue (or Fighter/Rogue/Wizard if you think spellcasting is important...). The combinatorics give you more possibilities with fewer pieces. A lot of current classes/sub-classes might be better as templates: Paladin, Warlock, Barbarian, etc. Won't ever happen because it's not D&D, but if I could go back in time and hijack EGG's brain...well I would do that just because, and maybe also mention the template thing while I was at it.
Immoralkickass
Adventurer
How can I call myself a true paladin if a filthy peasant infected me with some terrible disease simply by being near me? And how can I be the shining light of justice if people cannot feel the awesomeness of my presence?
The Crimson Binome
Hero
Have you ever played one of those games that goes into super granular detail for describing damage, where it actually matters what type of damage is dealt to which part of the body, because if your arm loses half of its HP to slashing damage then you're at -3 to parry rolls but bashing damage to your head gives a penalty to concentration checks?
It's not that anyone really thinks it's a bad idea to differentiate between damage types and body parts, but the cost associated with implementing those rules is prohibitive. Combat slows way down, and you have to do a lot more bookkeeping to track penalties, and most people think that it's just not worth it. They'd rather just write down the damage, describe it however seems appropriate at the time, and get on with the game.
Classes are similar. It's not that it's necessarily a bad idea to differentiate between magic-users who learn from a book and magic-users who cast intuitively, but it adds a lot more complexity to the character creation process for very little benefit. When you add in multi-classing and feats, you get a combinatorial explosion that can take months to figure out and a week-long process to build a character after you understand how everything works. I played Pathfinder for three years, and I have no intent on going back. It's not like there are any character concepts which require mechanical differentiation to represent; if I want to describe my magic-user as casting intuitively rather than through study, or even through music, then that's a detail I can work out with the DM. (Additionally, from a setting-design standpoint, we don't necessarily want a world to have both wizards and sorcerers in it; in much the same way that we don't necessarily want mutants in the MCU, since we already have Inhumans who can fill the same role.)
So the short answer is that the cost of implementing these options outweighs the benefit, from the perspective of the person making the argument. It appears to be a fairly common opinion, particularly from those of us who survived 3E and 4E and now want to move on. We don't want the game to be about that one specific thing, so it's preferable to gloss over it so we can move on to the interesting things.
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The Forge had a great term a while ago, how 'D&D launched a thousand game designers who want to make D&D, but to fix this ONE THING with D&D', called a Fantasy Heartbreaker. It's just what people do. Everyone thinks design is easy, their ideas are fantastic, and everyone can do it. And they want the game to match some internal idealized state that has nothing to do with the playability of the game, or the amount of fun to be had, but fits some aesthetic standard only they hew to.
"How many designers does it take to change a light bulb?"
"1,001"
"1 to change the bulb"
"1,000 to say 'oh I would have done that differently by..."
It was also telling that the first wave of 'not D&D' games always took an entirely different direction than D&D. For example, the Chaosium system that was used by Runequest, and other oddball licenses like Stormbringer and Drakar och Demoner. Didn't like the idea of hit points? It made those a fixed small number, and all skill was represented by higher percentages to dodge, parry, or successfully use a shield. Didn't like d20 and having to roll high? It used d100 and roll under! Didn't like the idea of a skill improving even if you didn't use it? You only got the chance to improve if you used a skill successfully! Don't like the linear progression of skills? Your odds of improving the skill were inversely proportional to the skill rank (thank you roll under), so you improved along an s-curve - a bit slow, then quite rapidly, then more slowly until it was impossible to get that last few %.
Did that make for a more fun game? Um, not really. Some parts seemed 'oh this is better', but it ultimately bogged down just as badly in different ways and had a very different 'feel' that enabled a low-magic game much better and made a 'high fantasy' that much harder to do, and never had as much support.
Then there are systems that are just plain worse. Rolemaster, for example. You spend 4-5 hours meticulously generating a character, with glorious granularity. Finally, a game that lets me build the character I exactly want, instead of shoe-horning me into a rigid class! A Rogue with a smidgen of ritual magic capability, Then, you roll a critical, and you consult one of the dozens of fine-grained critical charts - with explicit, gruesome injuries tailor-written for the weapon size and damage type! Ooh, my dagger popped out his eyeball, for +2d6! Ooh, my battle axe broke his shoulder, reducing his (combat stuff) by 50%! It's really funny and great until you realize each round takes 5x as long because you're looking through so many charts. Then, someone rolled the first critical fumble, and literally disemboweled your character and you take extra damage each round from stepping on your own intestines. This was in the first combat. Oh, TPK. Oh, 4-5 more hours each to make the next party. And that party lasted half a session of gaming before the fighter was basically put out of commission for a game-time week. Never played it again.
So many games try to be different in so many ways, but it's hard to make a game that's good, and then after it's good, it's hard to make a game that's substantially better, and most people are looking for the game to offer hints and structure and roles and generate delightful surprises, rather than being amorphous clay that forces you to become the sole creative force. There's a reason GURPS - the supposed 'ultimate scaling RPG that worked for every single type - was boring and never really took off.
Most people who like to drive don't want to build their car, they want to pick a cool one, pick a few features, and drive. Most people who want to play don't all want to create entire characters from top to bottom, they want to pick an archetype that fires up a familiar bit of their imagination, choose an eye color and hair style, and go kill stuff.
"How many designers does it take to change a light bulb?"
"1,001"
"1 to change the bulb"
"1,000 to say 'oh I would have done that differently by..."
It was also telling that the first wave of 'not D&D' games always took an entirely different direction than D&D. For example, the Chaosium system that was used by Runequest, and other oddball licenses like Stormbringer and Drakar och Demoner. Didn't like the idea of hit points? It made those a fixed small number, and all skill was represented by higher percentages to dodge, parry, or successfully use a shield. Didn't like d20 and having to roll high? It used d100 and roll under! Didn't like the idea of a skill improving even if you didn't use it? You only got the chance to improve if you used a skill successfully! Don't like the linear progression of skills? Your odds of improving the skill were inversely proportional to the skill rank (thank you roll under), so you improved along an s-curve - a bit slow, then quite rapidly, then more slowly until it was impossible to get that last few %.
Did that make for a more fun game? Um, not really. Some parts seemed 'oh this is better', but it ultimately bogged down just as badly in different ways and had a very different 'feel' that enabled a low-magic game much better and made a 'high fantasy' that much harder to do, and never had as much support.
Then there are systems that are just plain worse. Rolemaster, for example. You spend 4-5 hours meticulously generating a character, with glorious granularity. Finally, a game that lets me build the character I exactly want, instead of shoe-horning me into a rigid class! A Rogue with a smidgen of ritual magic capability, Then, you roll a critical, and you consult one of the dozens of fine-grained critical charts - with explicit, gruesome injuries tailor-written for the weapon size and damage type! Ooh, my dagger popped out his eyeball, for +2d6! Ooh, my battle axe broke his shoulder, reducing his (combat stuff) by 50%! It's really funny and great until you realize each round takes 5x as long because you're looking through so many charts. Then, someone rolled the first critical fumble, and literally disemboweled your character and you take extra damage each round from stepping on your own intestines. This was in the first combat. Oh, TPK. Oh, 4-5 more hours each to make the next party. And that party lasted half a session of gaming before the fighter was basically put out of commission for a game-time week. Never played it again.
So many games try to be different in so many ways, but it's hard to make a game that's good, and then after it's good, it's hard to make a game that's substantially better, and most people are looking for the game to offer hints and structure and roles and generate delightful surprises, rather than being amorphous clay that forces you to become the sole creative force. There's a reason GURPS - the supposed 'ultimate scaling RPG that worked for every single type - was boring and never really took off.
Most people who like to drive don't want to build their car, they want to pick a cool one, pick a few features, and drive. Most people who want to play don't all want to create entire characters from top to bottom, they want to pick an archetype that fires up a familiar bit of their imagination, choose an eye color and hair style, and go kill stuff.
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Li Shenron
Legend
Just keep in mind that a lot of people just want to continuously reinvent the wheel. If you give them 4 classes they want 12, if you give them 12 they want 4. The focus is on what else the game could be rather that what it is and how to use it. For many it's just a hobby within the hobby, designing new variations or making up new rules and structures is fun. For less fortunate ones that have no one to play the game with, talking and speculation is the only option to be part of it.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Conservation of design space. Never do with a class what could be done with a subclass; never do with a subclass what could be done with a feat.
Look Pathfinder. That game is incredibly bloated with classes that exist just to express a very specific character concept or showcase a very specific mechanical gimic. Does the game really need a whole class worth of mechanics just so someone can play a Gunslinger? Why not just make a Feat Chain for gun tricks? Not only does that save on bloat, it also opens up more build possibilities - instead of gunfighting and trick shots being the province of one class, any character can tailor their build to be able to use it if they want.
As for why Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue specifically? Well, they are the four most iconic D&D classes, and also happen to be some of the broadest, most archetypal classes, which gives a lot of room under their umbrellas for subclasses. And Fighter, Cleric, and Wizard fit nicely as representatives of the basic power types - Martial, Divine, and Arcanr. Rogue is kind of the odd one out there, and a decent argument could be made with consolidating them into Fighter. It could also be argued that Druid is really its own archetype independent from Cleric, and deserves to be on the class list, potentially as the representative of nature magic. There’s lots of ways you could go with it, and the “core 4” classes might not necessarily be the best option, but they have so much support mostly because of their legacy as the first classes in the game (yeah, rogue came after the other three, along with ...monk, I think? But monk is one of those narrow concepts that might be better expressed as a subclass - unarmed fighters.)
I think a key is to ensure each class is "crunchy" enough to do its job.
With a focus on fewer classes, you can give each class more mechanical attention to cover a variety of niches. As class become more commonplace, there's the desire to spread the mechanical love out more, and so classes can feel thinner.
While that may or may not happen in 5e, but I think that is part of the concern.
With a focus on fewer classes, you can give each class more mechanical attention to cover a variety of niches. As class become more commonplace, there's the desire to spread the mechanical love out more, and so classes can feel thinner.
While that may or may not happen in 5e, but I think that is part of the concern.
