D&D (2024) 6e, how would you sort the classes/sub-classs?

[NaturalZero]

The first thing i would do is toss out the 3-18 ability scores and make the actual ability score number and the modifier number the same thing. There's no reason to have 18, 16, 13, etc, on the page when 4, 3, and 1 are the numbers you use. I know, this is a class thread and this isn't a class critique but it's the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to streamlining the game.

As for class structure, I'd actually like to see things modeled on the Legend d20 system. There, each class has 3 "tracks" of abilities. A barbarian might have a "rage" track and an "ancestral spirits" track and a "weapon master" track, for example. The way multiclassing works in this paradigm is that you choose to sacrifice one of your tracks of abilities in order to replace it with a track from a different class. A wizard might swap out a track that grants direct-damage spells in order to get a fighter's martial maneuvers, or a cleric might sacrifice the healing track in order to get the druid's shapeshifting track. Certain things, like tracks that increase damage (rage, sneak attack, hunter's quarry, et al), wouldn't stack with each other, nor would the ability to command multiple types of summons (so no zombie horde + golem legion + elemental servants at the same time on the same turn) encouraging players to make characters with a broader set of abilities. Feats are present to represent dipping and changes that occur as the character evolves during the campaign, since the system won't have people dipping classes levels left and right as they progress.

Subclassese here are just additional tracks that can be swapped into a build. Want a plant control build? That's a new track that replace one of your druid (or any class) tracks. Need more elemental flavor? An elementalist track can take the place of one of your 3 default choices. Racial tracks could also be a thing too. Swap one of your fighter tracks out for a progression of dwarf abilities or remove a wizard track and put your special elven bladesinger subclasses in it's place.

 

[Lanefan]

The first thing i would do is toss out the 3-18 ability scores and make the actual ability score number and the modifier number the same thing. There's no reason to have 18, 16, 13, etc, on the page when 4, 3, and 1 are the numbers you use. I know, this is a class thread and this isn't a class critique but it's the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to streamlining the game.

As for class structure, I'd actually like to see things modeled on the Legend d20 system. There, each class has 3 "tracks" of abilities. A barbarian might have a "rage" track and an "ancestral spirits" track and a "weapon master" track, for example. The way multiclassing works in this paradigm is that you choose to sacrifice one of your tracks of abilities in order to replace it with a track from a different class. A wizard might swap out a track that grants direct-damage spells in order to get a fighter's martial maneuvers, or a cleric might sacrifice the healing track in order to get the druid's shapeshifting track. Certain things, like tracks that increase damage (rage, sneak attack, hunter's quarry, et al), wouldn't stack with each other, nor would the ability to command multiple types of summons (so no zombie horde + golem legion + elemental servants at the same time on the same turn) encouraging players to make characters with a broader set of abilities. Feats are present to represent dipping and changes that occur as the character evolves during the campaign, since the system won't have people dipping classes levels left and right as they progress.

Subclassese here are just additional tracks that can be swapped into a build. Want a plant control build? That's a new track that replace one of your druid (or any class) tracks. Need more elemental flavor? An elementalist track can take the place of one of your 3 default choices. Racial tracks could also be a thing too. Swap one of your fighter tracks out for a progression of dwarf abilities or remove a wizard track and put your special elven bladesinger subclasses in it's place.

This sounds interesting on the surface but looking under the hood there's a big red flag as without some very careful design and likely banning a bunch of possible combinations this could get crazy unbalanced in a hurry once people figure out what combinations work best/worst.

I almost think that to push toward inter-dependent party play the philosophy wants to go the other way: to somehow promote specialization in one's own field (so each character is good at one general thing and bad at various others, thus needing the other characters to compensate), rather than encourage characters with broad ability sets.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

The first thing i would do is toss out the 3-18 ability scores and make the actual ability score number and the modifier number the same thing. There's no reason to have 18, 16, 13, etc, on the page when 4, 3, and 1 are the numbers you use. I know, this is a class thread and this isn't a class critique but it's the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to streamlining the game.

And that lot is its own separate can o' worms. Here, I think I'll just stick to classes.

 

[Eubani]

The first thing i would do is toss out the 3-18 ability scores and make the actual ability score number and the modifier number the same thing. There's no reason to have 18, 16, 13, etc, on the page when 4, 3, and 1 are the numbers you use. I know, this is a class thread and this isn't a class critique but it's the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to streamlining the game.

As for class structure, I'd actually like to see things modeled on the Legend d20 system. There, each class has 3 "tracks" of abilities. A barbarian might have a "rage" track and an "ancestral spirits" track and a "weapon master" track, for example. The way multiclassing works in this paradigm is that you choose to sacrifice one of your tracks of abilities in order to replace it with a track from a different class. A wizard might swap out a track that grants direct-damage spells in order to get a fighter's martial maneuvers, or a cleric might sacrifice the healing track in order to get the druid's shapeshifting track. Certain things, like tracks that increase damage (rage, sneak attack, hunter's quarry, et al), wouldn't stack with each other, nor would the ability to command multiple types of summons (so no zombie horde + golem legion + elemental servants at the same time on the same turn) encouraging players to make characters with a broader set of abilities. Feats are present to represent dipping and changes that occur as the character evolves during the campaign, since the system won't have people dipping classes levels left and right as they progress.

Subclassese here are just additional tracks that can be swapped into a build. Want a plant control build? That's a new track that replace one of your druid (or any class) tracks. Need more elemental flavor? An elementalist track can take the place of one of your 3 default choices. Racial tracks could also be a thing too. Swap one of your fighter tracks out for a progression of dwarf abilities or remove a wizard track and put your special elven bladesinger subclasses in it's place.

Sacred Cow Hamburgers like this is what makes Grognards cry...........I approve.

 

[NaturalZero]

This sounds interesting on the surface but looking under the hood there's a big red flag as without some very careful design and likely banning a bunch of possible combinations this could get crazy unbalanced in a hurry once people figure out what combinations work best/worst.

You'd definitely want to keep things from stacking too much, just like in 5e. In the Legend system, you can't stack Sneak Attack on top of a monk's bonus damage, for example, so designing things so that basic math doesn't stack in an overpowered way would be an obvious design tenet. Using the action economy to prevent abuse could provide a universal check too. You can use your bonus/minor action to activate something special from column A or column B on your turn, but not from both columns at once, and you can only maintain one "concentration" ability at a time. Ultimately though, the issue of people finding broken combos is something you're going to have to tackle in literally every system with multiclassing and re-combinable options.

I almost think that to push toward inter-dependent party play the philosophy wants to go the other way: to somehow promote specialization in one's own field (so each character is good at one general thing and bad at various others, thus needing the other characters to compensate), rather than encourage characters with broad ability sets.

I mean, you're not necessarily going to be THAT broad from including just 3 tracks. You're going to be more broad than someone who wants to take 3 different damage boosting tracks in order to "win" at damage-dealing because you're going to get more mileage by combining different types of abilities that are complimentary instead of overlapping. A player would be encouraged to take that special mobility track that helps during exploration and that other one with clairvoyance because you can't stack every similar ability in one conceptual silo. I would probably design it so that most spell casters are less broad than many DnD classes, like the wizard, as well. You can take 3 different "schools" of magic at the very most, instead of cherry picking like previous edition, and each track has an opportunity cost such as giving up advanced swordplay or music buffs or healing, et al.

Say, you make a rogue-type character. You might want Sneak attack and there's a track to deals bonus damage with different debuffs. You can't stack other bonus damage from different track so you look for a mobility track that lets you dodge, move faster, evade, etc, and another one that lets you use shadow magic. You've basically built a class-construct that has the same gestalt effect as a classical DnD-styled class while still leaving out a bunch of niches like crowd control, healing, tanking, etc. You won't collect enough abilities to kill all the niches with one character.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This sounds interesting on the surface but looking under the hood there's a big red flag as without some very careful design and likely banning a bunch of possible combinations this could get crazy unbalanced in a hurry once people figure out what combinations work best/worst.

It reminds me of the time I tried to run a one-shot using the Generic Class variant from 3.5, where class features were just turned into feat chains, and everyone independently decided to pick up sneak attack.

 

[Lanefan]

You'd definitely want to keep things from stacking too much, just like in 5e. In the Legend system, you can't stack Sneak Attack on top of a monk's bonus damage, for example, so designing things so that basic math doesn't stack in an overpowered way would be an obvious design tenet. Using the action economy to prevent abuse could provide a universal check too. You can use your bonus/minor action to activate something special from column A or column B on your turn, but not from both columns at once, and you can only maintain one "concentration" ability at a time. Ultimately though, the issue of people finding broken combos is something you're going to have to tackle in literally every system with multiclassing and re-combinable options.

Yep - which is why I look to keeping combinable options to a dead minimum.

That said, however...

I mean, you're not necessarily going to be THAT broad from including just 3 tracks. You're going to be more broad than someone who wants to take 3 different damage boosting tracks in order to "win" at damage-dealing because you're going to get more mileage by combining different types of abilities that are complimentary instead of overlapping. A player would be encouraged to take that special mobility track that helps during exploration and that other one with clairvoyance because you can't stack every similar ability in one conceptual silo. I would probably design it so that most spell casters are less broad than many DnD classes, like the wizard, as well. You can take 3 different "schools" of magic at the very most, instead of cherry picking like previous edition, and each track has an opportunity cost such as giving up advanced swordplay or music buffs or healing, et al.

Say, you make a rogue-type character. You might want Sneak attack and there's a track to deals bonus damage with different debuffs. You can't stack other bonus damage from different track so you look for a mobility track that lets you dodge, move faster, evade, etc, and another one that lets you use shadow magic. You've basically built a class-construct that has the same gestalt effect as a classical DnD-styled class while still leaving out a bunch of niches like crowd control, healing, tanking, etc. You won't collect enough abilities to kill all the niches with one character.

...how's this for a slight tweak to this system:

All these various tracks are put on a list and sorted into combat, exploration, and interaction - the three pillars as outlined in 5e. Then, when generating your character you get to choose 4 tracks, with the proviso that at least one track has to come from each pillar. So, your rogue-type example above would get its Sneak Attack track from combat, its Mobility track from exploration, and the Shadow Magic track could be turned into a crowd-control-via-persuasion track of some sort from the interaction list. Its fourth track might be anything: a Diplomat track (interaction; backing up the persuasion aspect of this character), or an Alertness track (exploration; gives better perception, faster reaction, less chance of being caught off guard), or a Sharpshooter track (combat; gives benefits with all ranged weapons), or whatever suits the player's fancy.

Again this would take a lot of tweaking to keep things in vague balance, but it'd at least force the players to look at each pillar during roll-up instead of the more common situation where they focus solely on combat.

Lanefan

 

[Aldarc]

I can't speak to what is "best," but I can entertain an idea that I would find interesting for my own sensibilities. Adopt more of the mechanics of Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved from the 3.X era. AE offered itself as something of a variant version of D&D that floated a variety of new concepts, mechanics, and structures. And there were several things, in particular, that I liked about AE that I think that Mearls should remember from his time at Malhavoc Press.

(1) Classes were designed primarily around broader playstyles: etc., the healer, the spell-master mage, the innate mage, the champion of a cause, the lightly-armored warrior, the heavily-armored, the wilderness warrior, the gish, the skill-master, etc. And I think that while I would want to ensure that D&D's traditions were preserved - for the sake of unity - that there is also a lot of room to reduce redundancy while also providing tremendous flexibility. I do think that we have seen this somewhat in Paizo's recent Starfinder book. For example, psionists, clerics, shamans, and druids were more or less thrown under the same umbrella of a Mystic class, which was ingenious. People already debate the redundancy of the druid as a "nature cleric," or the distinction between shamans and druids, or whether the psion should use Wisdom rather than Intellect. We could probably expand this to other classes, archetypes, and playstyles as well.

(2) AE had a universal spell system with a lot of dials and knobs. Spells at each level are organized in terms of simple, complex, and exotic. Spells had "tags" on them that were more thematic (e.g., positive, fire, draconic, plant, etc.) and less defined by D&D's traditional schools of magic (e.g., Abjuration, Illusion, etc.). Some classes only had access to spells up to 6th level. Some classes only had access to simple spells to 9th level. One class got access to all simple and complex spells up to 9th level. Many classes got access to simple spells and complex spells with certain tags (e.g., the Greenbond got access to complex spells with the Plant and Positive Energy tags). You could weave a spell up or down for a greater or lesser effect. There were also thematic templates, similar to metamagic, that you could apply to your spells.

I am not saying that I want AE verbatim. But I do think that its mechanics provide excellent inspiration for changes that would open up for a lot of flexibility in class and subclass design for D&D. Also, I find separate class spell lists to be somewhat redundant, and I think that AE's system can help streamline that entire process. For example, let's take the Draconic Sorcerer. One thing the above would help alleviate is being able, for example, to say that Sorcerers gain access to all simple spells. But the Draconic Sorcerer gains further access to all complex spells with the Draconic and X Energy (e.g., Fire, Lightning, Acid, Earth, etc.) tag reflective of their dragon bloodline.

 

[steeldragons]

I think the idea of altering the magic system is a good one...and leads to another tangent of conversation in the sphere of "Class structure/organization"...

The definitions and explanations of different supernatural and/or paranormal abilities and effects as "Magic" -for the use of and presuming 6e will end up with something resembling D&D's traditional structured class-based system, at least- must be delineated.

Is the "Nature-based" magic of the druids and shamans and (potentially rangers) really just "Divine" magic? What are the sub-categories/schools of Arcane magic? I'm on record saying I don't believe we need all 8 of D&D 2+e "Specializations" ...though, I will attest to 5e's wonderful way of finally making each one a distinct and useful for adventuring kind of wizard...

Illusions and enchantments, for example, go somewhat hand in hand. Do we really need an "Illusionist" and an "Enchanter" or can we just stipulate, these are the spells that fall in those categories, as a contained "school." If you want to be an "illusionist" generating images and color spraying everyone, then choose more of those spells than charms and compulsions. If you want to be a Morgan Le Faye-esque [who was known to heavily use illusions as well] or Circe-style "Enchantress," then load up on Charms and Sleep and Suggestions, rather than necessitating spell bloat to fill out the spell levels with at least a couple of options for each of 8 different kinds of magic.

To my mind, the above Illusions/Enchantments as a single facet of arcane magic is a no brainer.
Evocations and Abjurations : "Energy-based magic" creating it, controlling it, shaping and/or deleting it, seem to go hand in hand.
Conjurations and Transmutations : "Physical- or Form-based magic" bringing items and creatures, actual physical objects, into being, altering existing physical items/forms, and/or removing traits of a given form from them.

Divination rather sits apart for its universal utility, as all magic (of any type) requires accumulating knowledge. Whether or not a devoted Diviner mage is necessary or simply giving all magic-users access to varying levels of Divination is appropriate is certainly a matter for debate. Even in the lowest magic settings around, there are soothsayers rolling their bones or reading their runes, priests making sacrifices to read the entrails or the starry sky for portents and omens. It's practically built into a society's DNA to seek out more information...divining is undoubtedly the original/first form of "formal" magical practice developed...Getting answers.

Necromancy, similarly, sits alone for it's, shall we say "Soul-based magic"...rather than simply 'I make undead minions!" Necromancy, literally "Speaking with the Dead," is itself an form of Divination. But not solely, in D&D terms, of course. It is, however, the magic of Death and necrotic energies, but also, thereby, the flip-side of the last and greatest unknown, by delving into the depths of Death and Undeath, one is intrinsically defining Life at the same time...but whatever is NOT Life is where you are delving. So, I see plenty of room for Necromancers to be rather "vampiric" in nature -drawing from life around them to fuel their own health- making them stand out all the more in D&D as the "Wizards who can Heal?!" (but you might not like how it's done ). There is also the opening for flavors of "Blood Magic" type characters, of course the D&D tropes of the wizard pursuing lichdom, even a Dr. Frankenstein Johnny Deppian Ichabod Crane forensic anatomist type of "scientist" wizard.

For all of this, I am now wondering if, indeed, Necromancers are required to stand alone as a sub-class (or Necromancy as a stand alone magical type/school), or if they are more appropriately shifted into the 'prestige-style-tack-on-a-few-levels-of-archetype" class.

Thoughts?

But back to the original matter of this post, could D&D get away with defining magics as DIVINE, NATURE, and ARCANE.

With, then, each one of them broken down into limited subsets...not even the Spheres of 2e, and certainly not the cacophony of noise that were clerical spells in 3.x, but a very board, generalization and simplification of categories such as:

Mind Magic (illusions & enchantments)
Energy [or Force or Raw?] Magic (evocations & abjurations, maybe some conjurations)
Physical [or Body or Form] Magic (conjurations & transmutations, maybe some abjurations)

With Divination, then, as a catch-all for everybody's Detection spells and Scrying and, let's call it,...
"Soul" Magic (necromancy and vivomancy[healing], using necrotic and/or radiant energies, respectively, that are normally the purview of -and so, many of their spells would fall in this category- the clerics)

Does that help or hurt the dividing up of classes/subclasses? Make things simpler or more complicated? Or just distinct with no difference? [I looooathe distinctions without differences...almost as much as "change for change's sake" ]

Thoughts on Magical structure for 6e that will, presumably, impact the way in which classes and subclasses are sorted out?

 

[Blue]

As for class structure, I'd actually like to see things modeled on the Legend d20 system. There, each class has 3 "tracks" of abilities. A barbarian might have a "rage" track and an "ancestral spirits" track and a "weapon master" track, for example. The way multiclassing works in this paradigm is that you choose to sacrifice one of your tracks of abilities in order to replace it with a track from a different class. A wizard might swap out a track that grants direct-damage spells in order to get a fighter's martial maneuvers, or a cleric might sacrifice the healing track in order to get the druid's shapeshifting track.

I am not familiar with Legend d20 so it might already be like this, but the second I looked at it I thought abotu the old Shadowrun priority system (or whatever it was called) where you had an A, B, C and D priorities.

So take what you said, but then pick four tracks and prioritize them at A, B, C and D which advance at different rates.

At 1st level you start with the 1st feature from Tracks A, B and C. After that as you level up, different tracks advance. Track A progresses 2 out of 3 levels. Track B progresses every other level. Track C and D progresses 2 out of 5 levels, so you end up with 2 tracks advancing every level.

Well, technically you end up that 1 level out of 30 would only have a single advancement (that adds up to 59/30s), but even if we go back to a 30 level game, that's only 29 advances so it can still be ignored. And while C and D advance at the same rate, C starts with an advancement at 1st so it's further down the track.