Reasons to have paladins and rangers as classes

[Steely_Dan]

Or more to the point... 1 year and 9 months.

Yeah, lame (I almost appreciate the humour), I want people be able to convert/play their character concept from the start.

Oh yeah, Psion.

 

[Abstruse]

If you don't have a problem with paladins existing as a class, and you also don't have a problem with avengers existing as a theme, I don't know what the complaint is anymore.

Because the discussion needs to take place over what is and is not a class in Next. That line is getting drawn and we need to discuss where it should be drawn and why. "That class has always been part of the game!" shouldn't be argument enough, and neither should "fanboys will throw a fit if it's not included!" The former doesn't apply because it's a new edition and there are changes in every edition of the game (the assassin class, for example), and the latter is simply a business argument rather than a game design argument.

My point is only that there can be more than one way to realize an archetype, and for a paladin and a ranger (and an assassin and a monk and a druid and a bard and a....), class is one way that they can be realized. WotC is pursuing these as classes because people want them as classes, and because they are legacy classes, and that's reason enough for me, since all classes are ultimately fairly arbitrary.

It shouldn't be reason enough for you. Descending AC was part of the game for a long time, as was to-hit tables and gold-for-XP and lots of other complicated weirdness. That's not a good enough reason to put them back in the game.

In order for Next to be the best overall version of D&D, there has to be a clear and concise guideline for game design. "That's how we've always done it" doesn't work if how we've always done it is wrong or there's a better way to do it. In some cases you can make the argument that it doesn't "feel" the same, like D&D without AC, HP, classes, or levels. But those mechanics can be made to work in a modern game as the current playtest is showing. If you want to keep something in the game because it's legacy, it shouldn't get a free grandfather clause pass. It should work in the game and fit the current design. If it doesn't, pound on it until it does or find another way to do it.

They may or may not do avengers like that, but if you personally want an avenger class you should have it, even if you have to make it yourself or get it from a third party. And if you don't want an avenger class, then you're not missing anything by not having it.

Again, it's a question of where to draw that line. Why should avengers be on the "theme" side but paladins and rangers be on the "class" side? There's not going to necessarily be a right or wrong answer as it's almost completely opinion based, but the discussion itself is important. What makes a class a class and not a theme? What intrinsic value does a paladin have that makes it a class versus something like an avenger or a samurai? I have my answers and other people have theirs. Me explaining my reasoning and them explaining theirs, then dissecting those reasonings is very important to coming to a consensus about what the game should be.

I've never had a problem, but part of a DM's job is in limiting the players' options to what is campaign-appropriate. I haven't seen much in a 3rd party that was any more egregious than what WotC published themselves. I have, conversely, seen a LOT of OGL stuff that was very well balanced, awesomely flavorful, and not really something I could do without in my games.

Some 3rd party material is very good. Most of it is complete crap, either broken as hell or undervalued. I'm not sure you really remember what it was like in the early 2000s with the complete glut of third party stuff out there. I don't know about you, but I have never had the time or money to buy every single book printed in order to read them all and determine how they would affect my game. Plus I had some very sneaky players, who would ask me one week if this class is okay and then next week ask me if this feat was okay and then a month later, I suddenly see how friggin' broken that combination is once they hit a certain level. And honestly, I'm not sure if that glut has gotten better or worse with Pathfinder considering the number of PDF publishers out there now since I've completely banned all non-Paizo material from my Pathfinder game for exactly that reason.

Having OGL or something similar is a good thing. It allows for a lot more options to be out there and it gives a good way for more established companies to recognize talent, the way that a lot of video game companies use the modding community as a way to scout talent. But it should not be used as a crutch by WotC for game design. "Oh, we don't need to include this class/race/whatever because some third party group will do it" is not going to cut it. We should hold them to a higher standard than that.

 

[Gryph]

To me, it's about giving people what they want. People read LotR and want to play a ranger. It's iconic. People have ideas about it. They don't need to be multiclassing fighter, rogue, and druid to get what they want.

The paladin is more of a problem because it doesn't map well to anything outside of D&D; it's strictly a D&D-ism, and a niche within that. (Which is why I would replace it with a knight/cavalier/champion/etc., something that accomplishes more in terms of representing a broad archetype).

Paladin as an archteype matches up very well to the Arthurian knights of the Grail cycle, Galahad, Percival, etc. The older mechanics for losing Paladinhood and becoming a fighter when you transgress were very evocative of the Lancelot and Gwenivere story.

Later editions that have moved Paladin towards a generic "Diety's Warrior" are more of a generic D&Dism.

I think if you try to broaden the concept of niche classes like Paladin, Ranger, Barbarian and Assassin you create the very problems that spawn this kind of thread. A broad definition of Paladin is going to overlap with Fighter and Cleric and then players will rightly question whether it needs to exist as a separate class.

I believe the niche classes are better game design if they appeal to a smaller pool of the player base looking for a well defined play experience.

 

[Mallus]

Because the discussion needs to take place over what is and is not a class in Next.

Yes. It does.

"That class has always been part of the game!" shouldn't be argument enough, and neither should "fanboys will throw a fit if it's not included!" The former doesn't apply because it's a new edition and there are changes in every edition of the game (the assassin class, for example), and the latter is simply a business argument rather than a game design argument.

This isn't a game design argument. It's a popularity contest. Paladins are popular. Iconic, even. Hell, their stuff is even iconic, cf. sword +5, holy avenger.

In order for Next to be the best overall version of D&D, there has to be a clear and concise guideline for game design.

"Leave in the stuff a lot of people like" is a useful guideline.

 

[Fifth Element]

You say this as if it's a tautology, but I'm unconvinced. There isn't some magical number of classes that is the logically perfect number of classes. If a particular DM feels like they must draw a line, then more power to them, and they should. But WotC doesn't need to universally draw that line for everyone.

If you want to get really pedantic, I'll say that WotC absolutely does need to draw the line somewhere, or else the player's handbook would be infinitely large.

But I just picked some ridiculously high number of classes that D&D has never had in its core game, for purposes of illustration.

So it's not about a need. It's about a want.

No kidding. The specific discussion is not "able to play a paladin or not", but "how exactly are you able to play a paladin." Which was my point, that you were objection to an argument not being made. You want to make sure people can play a paladin if they want to. Which they can, even if it's mechanically a theme instead of a class.

Some people don't want it as a unique class. And they don't have to have it if they don't want it. That doesn't mean that others shouldn't have it, though.

This is what you're missing. The discussion is about whether the paladin should be a class or a theme, not whether it should be in the game at all.

Since WotC must necessarily draw arbitrary lines at what should and should not be a class in the PHB (because the book has a page count), then it's a discussion that must be had.

 

[Skyscraper]

Haven't read the entire thread, but...

Rangers and paladins could (and will hopefully) have unique features too, not accessible by theme or background.

 

[Abstruse]

This isn't a game design argument. It's a popularity contest. Paladins are popular. Iconic, even. Hell, their stuff is even iconic, cf. sword +5, holy avenger.

"Leave in the stuff a lot of people like" is a useful guideline.

There are more World of Warcraft players than there are D&D players. Therefore D&D should be like World of Warcraft. According to a lot of 4e haters, that's exactly what WotC did and it got them a horrible backlash. That's a big complaint with comic book movies that are in production right now, "Dark Knight was popular, so we need to do grim and gritty versions of all the characters!" Great if you're talking about characters suited to that, horrible if it's Superman or Deadpool.

Winning a popularity contest does not make something a good design choice. And if that was all they needed to design the new edition, they wouldn't be bothering with playtests. It'd just be a series of polls saying "Which is your favorite class?" "Which is your favorite race?" "Which is your favorite weapon?" and they'd just put whatever scored highest in the game. Hope you like dragonborns and vampires.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The discussion is about whether the paladin should be a class or a theme, not whether it should be in the game at all.

Since WotC must necessarily draw arbitrary lines at what should and should not be a class in the PHB (because the book has a page count), then it's a discussion that must be had.

"It has been a class in the first PHB of an edition," and "There is a demand for it," is enough criteria, I think, for WotC to make it a class in the first PHB of 5e, given the goal of unification and the idea of modular inclusiveness.

And the fact that the line between what's a class and what's something else is fundamentally arbitrary.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Once you go with a Class-system, it's so arbitrary, if we went with: Priest, Warrior, Rogue, Wizard, it would be a different story.

 

[Deadboy]

The distinction between what is a class and what is not a class is definitely arbitrary; most of these classes we're discussing date back to the earliest editions of D&D, when arbitrary game design was the only type of RPG design there was. No one thought twice about having very broad classes like Fighter, Thief, Magic-User and Cleric and then very focused classes like Paladin, Ranger and Thief-Acrobat. At the time that was acknowledged to some extent by the fact that the focused classes were subclasses, but they were still, functionally, their own thing.

So any further decision we make about what is class and what is theme is almost by definition arbitrary unless we literally decide to boil the classes down to just the big four, plus maybe Psion and Druid. However, since D&D is, and always has been, a class-based system, it makes more sense to have a larger number of classes to create more mechanical distinction outside of feat choices. I would actually argue it makes more sense to take the big four and break them down into smaller, more focused classes so that all classes are focused than it does to fold the focused classes into the broad classes. Classes are popular, classes create more mechanical distinction, therefore dividing concepts by class is a good thing.

To an extent, this has already happened over the past two editions, with the Mage being divided into the Wizard, Sorcerer, Warlock and Beguiler in 3.x and with the Druid in 4e with the Warden, Druid and Shaman. So breaking the Rogue and Fighter down as well has some precedent to it.

However, as arbitrary as the decisions have been in the past, I think we all know that legacy is going to be THE deciding factor. WotC already decided to depart from the commonly accepted ways of doing D&D last edition and that created the edition wars. So WotC is going to be very, very, very careful about how it departs from the old ways with the new edition. And getting rid of fan favorite classes is definitely NOT going to be on their agenda. So we will definitely still have the Paladin and Ranger as classes; the Avenger may become a theme, but that's only because, no matter the fact that it was a popular choice in 4e, it only has one edition behind it and thus has no strong legacy overall in D&D.