Decoupling subclasses from their home class and having them work within other classes

So, a random idea, what do you all think of decoupling subclasses from their current home classes and having them work within other classes?
Of course, some subclasses would form more of a cohesive recoupling compared to other subclasses.

For example, currently the eldritch knight is part of the fighter, but you could essentially lift out the subclass mechanics from the eldritch knight and have them be a wizard arcane tradition instead.
You'll need to modify the Eldritch Knight martial archetype to edit out the spellcasting and to edit in fighting styles, and you'll need to reconfigure the eldritch knight archetypal class features to adhere to when the wizard arcane tradition features come into their levels, but it could work pretty well. They may also need to have something similar to the bladesinger who gets extra attack at 6th level. Being part of the wizard they may lose their name to something else.

Conversely, you could have the bladesinger branch away from the wizard and become part of the fighter. They could keep their bladesong as is, and their archetype might instead come into effect at 3rd, but they'll obviously lose spells.

What do you all think?

I remember discussing this a lot here during 5e playtest about 5-6 years ago. IMHO it would have been nice if all classes were designed with subclasses features at the same levels, which would have made it a lot easier to swap subclasses or even single features. This would have increased character design flexibility a lot, but it proved unpopular as most people preferred WotC way of different level structure for each class.

With the current rules, it requires a lot more effort, because subclass features are designed for specific levels.

For example the Warlock subclasses grant features at levels 1-6-10-14 and the Sorcerer's at 1-6-14-18. So you may have an easy time swapping them until level 10, then you need some adjustment: if you apply a Warlock subclass to Sorcerer you may either give up the level 10 metamagic boost or skip the Warlock subclass feature at the same level. But if you apply a Sorcerer subclass to a Warlock, what do you do at level 10?

And then obviously you need to double check the specific subclass features, which may not be applicable at all to the new class.

So all in all it can be fun, but unless you find a near-perfect match, it will need some significant adjustment, at which point you might consider if it ain't about the same effort to design a new subclass from scratch.

As a final note, also keep in mind that some subclasses are an attractive part of their class... think for example what would happen if you take the Battlemaster subclass and make it available to other martial classes: would your players ever choose to play the Fighter class again?

Li Shenron said:

I remember discussing this a lot here during 5e playtest about 5-6 years ago. IMHO it would have been nice if all classes were designed with subclasses features at the same levels, which would have made it a lot easier to swap subclasses or even single features. This would have increased character design flexibility a lot, but it proved unpopular as most people preferred WotC way of different level structure for each class.

With the current rules, it requires a lot more effort, because subclass features are designed for specific levels.

For example the Warlock subclasses grant features at levels 1-6-10-14 and the Sorcerer's at 1-6-14-18. So you may have an easy time swapping them until level 10, then you need some adjustment: if you apply a Warlock subclass to Sorcerer you may either give up the level 10 metamagic boost or skip the Warlock subclass feature at the same level. But if you apply a Sorcerer subclass to a Warlock, what do you do at level 10?

And then obviously you need to double check the specific subclass features, which may not be applicable at all to the new class.

So all in all it can be fun, but unless you find a near-perfect match, it will need some significant adjustment, at which point you might consider if it ain't about the same effort to design a new subclass from scratch.

Makes me want to actually come up with something concrete to present rather than just ideas on paper. Please stay tuned!

As a final note, also keep in mind that some subclasses are an attractive part of their class... think for example what would happen if you take the Battlemaster subclass and make it available to other martial classes: would your players ever choose to play the Fighter class again?

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Oh cool! Yeah, I agree with that point, it'll definitely make substitutions and replacements easier, and would in fact make for more overall choice and options. But I can understand that the team also wanted to differentiate between the classes, even if that was likely driven by player's desires and preferences.

That's also a good point, dude, yeah, the fit isn't too right for a fair number of subclasses but in this you'll likely need to have the subclasses themselves capture some of the mechanic of their parent class and gift this mechanic onto their new class.

In the case of the eldritch knight coming over to the wizard, they'll likely retain only their fighting styles and lose out on their action surge, indomitable, second wind. This is to retain class balance and to give the recoupling a distinct flavor apart from what they were originally.

For other couplings to come together, you'll need to likely work within this model. As another example, I feel something like the eldritch knight going over to the paladin would be possible, but you'll need to offer another parent mechanic as the paladin themselves get fighting styles, in this case perhaps action surge would fit as the paladin doesn't gain that many spells.

With my thinking, where if you wanted to be, say, a battlemaster fighter using the barbarian chassis you'll only get the fighting style from the fighter and then apart from that you'll continue to progress as normal per the barbarian. So no second wind, or indomitable or action surge or anything like that. However, the battlemaster archetype class features will need to be rejigged to fit in with the barbarian. To fluff this, you're essentially using your maneuvers in a more animalistic, primal way.
And likewise for other instances of taking the battlemaster and porting it over to the other martial classes, in other words you're not taking the entirety of the benefit of the battlemaster and gifting it to the other classes. So hopefully that'll still make playing the fighter subclass version of the battlemaster still incredibly enticing.

Individual mechanical features can be swapped between classes and subclasses rather easily. In fact, that's usually what I prefer to just give my players rather than them taking a 1-level multiclass dip for a specific feature.

But honestly, there are not many subclasses than flavor-wise make sense to go cross-class-- probably mainly small swaps between the melee classes, or swaps between the casting classes. If a particular PC wants a specific game mechanic from a subclass, however, usually I would take a look at it and see how it integrates with the new class (to make sure it doesn't over or under-power things.) At that point, its usually easier to just take the few features they want and create a new subclass that makes more sense flavor-wise than to just port the other one over whole-cloth.

DEFCON 1 said:

But honestly, there are not many subclasses than flavor-wise make sense to go cross-class-- probably mainly small swaps between the melee classes, or swaps between the casting classes.

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That's kind of a recursive situation.

However, I will say that any Sorcerer Subclass flavor would just strait up work as a Warlock Subclass flavor, and vice-versa. Made a pact with a dragon or your great-great-grandma was a dragon? Doesn't matter! Either way you got scales and breathe fire. The real problem is that their class mechanics are so radically different, and subclasses are meant to build and improve upon class mechanics.

Mage Hand Legerdemain for my Bard without multi-classing? Yes Please!

It's a good idea, and it certainly could have worked well.

If you check out Shadow of the Demon Lord, by Robert J. Schwalb, you can see it implemented really well.

A character starts with a novice path, and gains abilities at levels 1, 2, 5, and 8
At level 3 you choose (any) Expert path, with ability gains at 3, 6, and 9.
Master paths kick in at levels 7 and 10.
(Level 4 gives you a racial bonus).

It's a really tight system, and while some combinations might be better optimized, it allows a great deal of creativity in the mixing and matching. It's worth checking out.

You know this sort of reminds me of prestige classes (if memory serves me correctly). Subclass features could work the same way, where you have requirements for the subclass, but as long as you meet those requirements your class doesn't matter.

This way, you could have the Eldritch Knight subclass with prerequisites like:

Character level 3
Proficiency in at least one Martial Weapon
etc.

Just a thought.

Subclasses across classes are wildly imbalanced against one another, because some classes get more of their power from subclasses than others, and subclasses grant more power at some levels than others. Worse, if you could take subclasses from other classes, you could wind up with some grossly overpowered combos. (The secret to effective power-gaming is to realize that abilities may be balanced in isolation but strong in combination.) An major advantage of the current design is that each subclass only needs to be balanced in the context of its main class.

I think the better solution would be to create more feats that allow you to cherry-pick abilities from other classes, the way Martial Adept lets any character get a superiority die. I actually think MOST feats should work like this. For example, the Assassin rogue has a great Impostor ability that would be perfect as part of the Actor feat; the Champion fighter's Remarkable Athlete might actually be remarkable if it had some of the features of the Athlete feat; and we know most characters who take Archery fighting style are going to want to take the Sharpshooter feat so we might as well combine them somehow (and maybe balance SS better while we're at it). Etc.