D&D 5E New class concepts

[mellored]

The fact of the matter is... none of us need any of this stuff. When it comes to classes (and subclasses)... the only reason to make more is to placate the people who for whatever reason have to have a unique game mechanic attached to any and all story concept for what a PC is and does. Someone thinks up some bizarre Frankenstein's Monster of a character concept and wants and needs a very specific set of game mechanics they can use to embody that concept... rather than just take the few options they might find in the book and then roleplaying whatever the concept is.

Bizzar frankenstien stuff like having heavy armor and attacking multiple times?
Or choosing from a massive list of magical effects?
Or are you complaining about unique game mechanics attached to the abritraty story concept of making an attack or casting a spell?

Because there's no reason why "warrior" and "caster" mechanics shouldn't be held to the same scrutiny that any other mechanic would.

Oh yeah, my Rogue 5 / Shadowdancer 3 / Consecrated Harrier 2 / Blood Magus 2 / Mythic Exemplar 1? Let me tell you about him!

Let me tell you about my Veteran / Warrior / Swordsman / Hero / Swashbuckler / Myrmidon / Champion / Superhero / Lord

That's what a fighter was called in 1e.

Please. It was ridiculous then, and its ridiculous now. People multiclassing paladins, sorcerers and warlocks together for no other reason than uber-mechanical efficiency with Eldritch Blasts... character concept-driven reasons be damned.

And fighters take 16 Strength while dumping Int and Cha, while Wizard pick and choose from the most powerful spells.
Neither is due to concept-driven reasons.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You mean much tractions as a full class. The classic elven fighter/magic-user has tremendous traction, it's present in 5e as not one but 2 sub-classes, and via MCing, and several feats and could be managed, nominally, by appending the soldier background to a wizard. It's pretty heavily supported.

As for the poster boys for superfluous classes that could be better done via MCing, the Pally & Ranger, they don't have traction, they have inertia. They'be been around since OD&D.

Yes, as a full class. That's why I was comparing it to the paladin and ranger. The paladin and ranger have maintained a level of interest since their debut so there's been no reason not to continue with them. But the idea of the full class gish has not gained nearly the same level of interest continually over the years, mainly because there's been no interesting story ever attributed to it other than essentially "fighter/wizard multiclass".

Go for it.

- The paladin is a holy knight that takes a supreme oath to uphold a specific ideal, whether it be honor, nature, or vengeance against those who have wronged the people that the paladin defends.
- The ranger is a master of the wilderness, a scout that defends nature and the wilds from those that would do it harm.

At the heart of it, the paladin defends and upholds a specific ideal of knightly behavior, while the ranger defends and uploads nature, the wilderness and the denizens within. If any potential gish class had at the very least something it was defending or in service to... something that it was trying to accomplish other than just "use magic to make my swordfighting better"... then perhaps one might've caught on. Even the baseline Swordmage's description when you google it is: "Swordmages are powerful arcane spellcasters who blend martial combat with magic." Which is great at describing what it does, but not for who it does it for, or why it does it. And that subtle difference I believe is why people have not been demanding a gish class. There's just hasn't been a compelling story reason for it to exist.

 

[DEFCON 1]

And fighters take 16 Strength while dumping Int and Cha, while Wizard pick and choose from the most powerful spells.
Neither is due to concept-driven reasons.

The really strong fighter who's dumb as a post isn't a concept-driven reason? Seems fairly standard and trope-ish if you ask me.

Now yes, if your point is that many players are taking high strength and low INT/CHA for their fighters because they want to min-max mechanics rather than because they had a story to tell with their character, then sure I don't deny that. But at least the story that comes out of a stupid but strong fighter is pretty easy to accept, grasp and expected to show up as often as it does in all the various campaign worlds. Which is more than can be said for what seems to be an inordinate amount of sorcerer warlocks or paladin warlocks or bard sorcerers etc. etc. When we're talking the non-Core Four, they all have much more specific stories to who and what they are, and thus you need a lot more handwaving of those stories away to attribute for the number of times we see these combos showing up.

 

[mellored]

The really strong fighter who's dumb as a post isn't a concept-driven reason? Seems fairly standard and trope-ish if you ask me.

That's one person's concept, yes, but I wouldn't call it standard.
Out of the 10+ fighter's i've seen, only see 2 people actualy wanted the "strong but stupid" concept. But nearly all of them had high Str (though 5e at least gives you the option of Dex).

And even it was "standard", that doesn't mean it's get's to be treated differently.

Now yes, if your point is that many players are taking high strength and low INT/CHA for their fighters because they want to min-max mechanics rather than because they had a story to tell with their character, then sure I don't deny that. But at least the story that comes out of a stupid but strong fighter is pretty easy to accept, grasp and expected to show up as often as it does in all the various campaign worlds.

It often shows up because it's the most powerful combination.

Which is more than can be said for what seems to be an inordinate amount of sorcerer warlocks or paladin warlocks or bard sorcerers etc. etc.

No, it's exactly the same.
You take the most powerful option, not based on a concept. Whether that's a strong-but-stupid fighter, fireball wielding illusionist, or rapid-fire sorlock.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Paizo and 3rd Party publishers don't agree about there are too many classes and now we have enough.

The key of a good base class is:

- Right balance of power, of course.

- Class features with fun gameplay.

- Interesting background.


I like the concept of archetypes and the hybrid classes from Pathfinder, and sometimes I miss the classes with special game mechanic, the martial adepts from "Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords", the binders with the vestige pact magic, and the incarnum soumelds.


What classes I would add to 5th Ed?

- Samurai, Ninja, Sohei with (ki) maneuvers.

- Warlord, martial adept with maneuvers from White Raven school

- Favored soul: Spontaneus divine magic with some incarnums soumelds about monster traits (wings, senses, natural weapons and armour..), and to create stories about conflicts with the clerics.

- Slayer/Assasin: Rogue/martial adept with maneuvers from shadow hand school.

- Psionic ardent, to create stories about love-hate relations with clerics.

- Gladiator: Archetype or variant class with some martial maneuvers.

- Nahualt: Mixture of pathfinder shifter class and incarnum totemism shaman

- Soulknife/warmind: psionic and martial adept hybrid.

- Wilder: psionic manisferter and incarnum soulmelder.

- Hexblade: arcane martial adept.

- Runescribe: a "crafter" class with soulmelds on runes in magic item instead body chakras.

- A class like a mixture of pokemon trainer/digimon tamer and pathfinder summoner but with soumelds for her "monster pet".

- Warlock with with vestige pact powers, a shadow book and a sanctuary to craft single-use magic item (amulets, scrolls, potions, runes or tattoos). The vestiges have got a great potential to create stories, for example a vestige who learn to get her redemption by way of the experiences by the binders who summon her.

- Knight, a lighter version of martial adept and some class feature about challenge enemies.

- Warmage: Arcane martial adept, like hexblade, but for remote attacks.

 

[gyor]

Double post.

 

[gyor]

Wait, I am confused...

Not releasing new classes is pretty much a way to deal with this problem. When you publish a new class in a supplement, you are pretty much guaranteed that only a minority of DMs and players will ever have that class available to use; after that, if additional books provide extras for such class, such material will be usable only by those who own the previous supplement with that class. Some people (probably those who buy nearly all books anyway) appreciate having a "books tree" or "books web" where each supplement crosses over with others, but other people really hate to buy a book that since the start seems to require others to fully usable. WotC kind of made it explicit at the beginning of 5e that they wanted the least number of required purchases, and in fact they even released Basic for free so even if someone only ever buys a single adventure, they can play it without buying any of the core books.

But these are not IMHO considerations that matter to WotC when it comes to class design, and with the SLOW releases of 5e there isn't much of a problem either. They are rather focusing on what major options (both narratively and tactically) they can add to the game, while minimizing the design cost. For that purpose, a subclass is almost always a better choice, mainly because it consists in a smaller set of features, something like 4-5 levels worth, so maybe 20-25% the design & playtest effort required by a class. A full class requires 20 levels worth of features, which means a high risk of ending up re-using a lot of stuff from other classes, thus decreasing the interest of customers.

It's not that they won't do it, in fact they will almost certainly publish the Mystic and Artificer classes. It's just that they are reserving this option to limited cases, when it seems difficult to fit all they want to fit under an existing class, and when the character concept is different enough from all the existing ones.

In parallel, they've also told us that they are exploring the design option of alternate class features. This is not going to change the narrative significantly, so it's mostly tactical variants, but it is related to the subject because it can be used in fact to substitute single levels, while subclasses are used to substitute multiple levels, to increase characters variety.

Honestly if this is the underlining issue important iconic D&D classes that couldn't properly function as subclasses like Artificer and Psion should have been included in the PHB even if the price had to increase slightly.

 

[Li Shenron]

Honestly if this is the underlining issue important iconic D&D classes that couldn't properly function as subclasses like Artificer and Psion should have been included in the PHB even if the price had to increase slightly.

I think they would have liked to do that, but there simply wasn't time to. At some point they had to stop designing and release the game. Even the Sorcerer class felt a bit rushed at the end, remember how it and the Warlock were published without public playtest.

 

[MichaelSomething]

IF you're looking for new classes, may I suggest "A Touch of Class" produced by the very people behind the site you're browsing right now.

 

[DEFCON 1]

No, it's exactly the same.
You take the most powerful option, not based on a concept. Whether that's a strong-but-stupid fighter, fireball wielding illusionist, or rapid-fire sorlock.

But at least concept for the first two make story sense.

"I'm strong but not that smart, so I become really good at killing things."
"I'm an extremely smart wizard and have learned powerful magics."

"I was born with innate magical power-- either it wildly flows through me or I have a dragon ancestor. And what do I do with that innate magical power? I forsake it and instead go learn some bizarre methods to contact some extraplanar entity and then bargain my life away to get different magical power! Because apparently the magic I was born with wasn't good enough."

Sure... the occasional player might actually design a character and history for which this set of circumstances could possibly make a little sense. But based upon the number of posters here who keep talking about their sorcerer warlocks and how it's always JUST about their "build"... tells me that most of them just handwaved away their stories for MOAR POWER!

Which is fine. Good for them. And in exchange for that, they have to accept that there are some of us here who are going to say that they think it's lame. But that really shouldn't matter to those people, because why should some rando on the internet saying their illogical storywise min-maxing is lame bother them? They should just be able to laugh it off. But if they CAN'T laugh it off and it bothers them that I was disparaging their "build" because I find "builds" that make no attempt at actual storytelling ridiculous... then that's a pretty good indication that they probably know I'm right and they have no choice but get defensive about it.