If we have specialities, why do we need a plethora of classes?

[Minigiant]

Then why could I build a fighter that could, with enough feats, do the paladin's smiting damage every round? A paladin's mount was not much better than any other horse, especially since you had no feat slots to learn how to ride it properly. A paladin's healing was good for stabilizing, but you had to stop attacking what was eating the party to do it. By the time you got spells, they were generally too minor to make much of a difference.

So yeah, they had their uses... but made them more useful than the fighter? I find that a little hard to swallow.

But the increased skills and minor powers that made the ranger and paladin different could be covered by the speciality. Make up a 1st level fighter with the acolyte speciality and the healer background, and it will be like your 1st level Paladin from the 3e era never left.

In core, a paladin could heal CHA X Level HP via Lay on Hands. More with supplements. A ranger could walk up to a pride of lions and between magic and wild empathy have a pride of feline warriors at his side is 30 minutes.

Many DMs would not allow those those with the Heal or Handle Animal skills respectively with class features that allow that.

I have no evidence specs and backgrounds would grant such powerful abilities.

You are confusing the Wizard (with charm monster on the purple worm) with the Ranger, and Cleric (the main healer and buffer) with Paladin here. Nobody is doubtinbg the Cleric's and Wizard's place at the table. They are called the big 4 for a reason, in that they have a defined role in the game. The rogue is the skilled one, the Cleric is the healer and buffer, the Wizard is the spellcaster, and the Fighter is the defender and slayer.

I sthink you are short changing what those classes could do. I played a ranger who on one turn charmed an angry T-Rex, then next turn charged the king's guard with the dinosaur, a pack of friendly wolves, and his bird friend, then finally jumped into a tree to teleport away when the castle exploded.

If specs and BGs can do any of that, fine.

If WotC wants to convince me of that, they have to do a better job than people have done so far. Because a ranger and paladin are just minor tweaks in D&D. With backgrounds and specialities available for minor tweaks now, there is a lot less for classes to do. So they better start justifying their existence and coming up with something better. I can already play the Ranger that is just a minor tweak of a fighter.

My point is that you can only play a naturalist fighter at the moment and not the rangers of past (except maybe the 4E one which was just a naturalist fighter). And even then you drain a you customization options to do so.

 

[Stalker0]

I think what this thread shows is that bringing in new classes is fine...but that the new mechanics need to be powerful and distinct enough so that a mere specialization could not account for it.

In other words, a paladin is not a fighter with a few holy trappings, a paladin needs to have some markedly different mechanics that a fighter just couldn't get by sticking with fighter.

 

[ferratus]

In core, a paladin could heal CHA X Level HP via Lay on Hands. More with supplements. A ranger could walk up to a pride of lions and between magic and wild empathy have a pride of feline warriors at his side is 30 minutes.

I sthink you are short changing what those classes could do. I played a ranger who on one turn charmed an angry T-Rex, then next turn charged the king's guard with the dinosaur, a pack of friendly wolves, and his bird friend, then finally jumped into a tree to teleport away when the castle exploded.

Many DMs would not allow those those with the Heal or Handle Animal skills respectively with class features that allow that.

I have no evidence specs and backgrounds would grant such powerful abilities.

Umm... yeah, I think you and your DM had a extremely liberal interpretation of the animal empathy skill, to the point that you created a new class called "the beastmaster". Animal empathy just gives you positive reaction modifiers with animals, which you can use to start training that animal as an animal companion, and when it is an animal companion it knows a few commands in combat. It is not an ability that gives you instant domestication and telepathic control over a pride of lions, much less Purple Worms and T-Rexes.

I can understand why you think this Beastmaster is worthy of its own class, because it sounds pretty damn awesome... but brother this ain't the 3e or 3.5 Ranger.

 

[CleverNickName]

I don't always want a classless RPG system.
But when I do, I play Skyrim.​

I used to be of the opinion that D&D only needed 4 classes and tons of feats. I still am, to a large extent...I still think it is the easiest way to fully customize a character to my liking. But I realize there is a place for auxiliary classes, particularly when I want to avoid the hassle of multiclassing. I'd rather play a Paladin than a fighter/cleric, I'd rather play a bard than a rogue/wizard, etc. As long as they can keep these classes distinctly different from each other, I won't mind.

But please, developers: resist the urge to make fifteen different flavors of "magic-user with a sword." Between the bard, cleric, druid, paladin, and ranger, we already have plenty. There are only so many ways you can serve up the same cold bologna...

 

[Minigiant]

[MENTION=55966]ferratus[/MENTION]

Animal Empathy?
Pbbbt Wild Empathy. AKA make animal friendly, escort it to town with food, and wait for someone to anger it, grab popcorn. Diplomacy rules were bad.

That is if you don't decide to be lazy and just use magic.

 

[pemerton]

I don't really want to get into it, but I don't wholly agree here. I think it held for some cases.

<snip>

I think they did very well for the most part, with some fumbles.

I agree. The two 4e classes that strike me as most obviously redundant are the Runepriest (should have been a cleric variant) and the Executioner Assassin (should have been a rogue variant).

Swordmage and Bladedancer are also a bit funny - mechanically distinct, but to a significant extent competing for the same mechanical space.

That said, I think the design approach of D&Dnext probably allows for a bit more compression of classes. For example, I think I could tolerate a warlord specialisation rather than a separate class, because - so far, at least - D&Dnext doesn't seem to support the degree of tactical intricacy that supports the warlord as a distinct 4e class. And the shaman and druid could perhaps also be compressed together.

in 3e/3.5 the abilities which the subclasses (Ranger, Paladin, Bard, Barbarian) had were generally weak in comparison to the abilities that they shared in common with the fighter.

<snip>

Specialities can certainly carry the weight of those minor abilties, to the same degree that they are carried in 3.5.

I think this is true. I'm not sure that 3E is the model for distinct rangers and paladins. I think either 1st ed AD&D, or even moreso 4e, is a better starting point for distinctness

a Ranger or Paladin (and many of the "also-ran" classes) in previous editions has already got that specialization baked in. Of course, whether that's true or not depends on what you consider important for these classes. If you take all the mechanical and story oomph of a traditional Ranger or Paladin, squeeze it into a 5e class, and then get to take a background and specialty in addition to that...then no.

This is a very good point. But D&Dnext seems a bit ambivalent, at present, about exactly how it wants to handle "story oomph". As can be seen in the current thread about backgrounds and skills, for example.

Which I guess reinforces the point that working out what to do with rangers and paladins is intimately connected to working out exactly how to handle backgrounds and specialties.

I like pemerton's answer best so far. A Paladin is best at being the hero, the boyscout, the selfless defender of goodness. Now, make that work mechanically, and you've got yourself a class.

Cool.

If a paladin has more hit dice than other PCs in order to fuel selflessness powers, is it going to be overpowered when used selfishly (I'm thinking of the problems with the 3E cleric who plays as a buffer/controller rather than a healer)?

 

[Ichneumon]

I don't want what I need. I want what I want, which is a baker's dozen of classes.

 

[slobster]

If a paladin has more hit dice than other PCs in order to fuel selflessness powers, is it going to be overpowered when used selfishly (I'm thinking of the problems with the 3E cleric who plays as a buffer/controller rather than a healer)?

Maybe allow the healing background to maximize hit dice spent on others? Or just straight up increase the healing somehow? That way it doesn't make the paladin more personally powerful, but does allow him to use them to his allies' great advantage.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I think you could.

I don't think you should -- I think there exists enough potential for class variations that the old sub-classes will be mechanically distinct. We just haven't seen them yet.

Though if WotC gets it wrong, rangers will only be fighters with a specialty ...

 

[jrowland]

Well, Does Fighter + Acolyte specialty equal Paladin?

I think most would agree it does not.

What about a Cleric (war domain) with Guardian Specialty and a Knight/Noble/Priest background? Does it look like a Paladin? Pretty close...I'd be happy playing it as a paladin. Highest ability, str, wis next.

I say Roll that character up and see how close to paladin it looks.

For the guy who wanted an archer paladin, I think Cleric (war domain)/Archer + Knight/Noble/Priest is pretty good.