Unique class niches

[Sadrik]

So I thought this thread could be tied to the jettison thread in discussing unique niches:

I only want to speak only to the core 11 base classes. I would like to strip the cultural and/or geographic trappings from each one of these classes and let the setting define what those cultural or geographic trappings are.

Pretty strongly not culturally or geographically biased classes:
Fighter - None
Rogue - None
Wizard - None
Sorcerer - None

Strongly culturally or geographically biased classes:
Barbarian - Savage, Wilderness
Bard - Entertainer, Sage
Cleric - Priestly
Druid - Wilderness
Monk - Asian, Punching
Paladin - European, Priestly
Ranger - Wilderness

Cultural or geographic problems, these should be options for the class but should not define the class. Choices here first.
Savage- Illiterate and not smart and angry. These are pretty stringent cultural issues with the class that need to change to break the class out of its mold.

Wilderness- required hard written tie to nature and either worshiping it or just required to be in it. Wilderness cultural trapping stripped away allows these classes to thrive in more roles than being out in the sticks. Point is why can't any class have a nature bent, wilderness rogue = scout, wilderness fighter = brigand, wilderness cleric = shaman, wilderness wizard = witch doctor etc.

Entertainer- requires them to be singing or playing an instrument. This is a major straight jacket.

Sage- more than just the Bard should have a sage like ability, the Wizard should definitely have it as well.

Priestly- it is pretty deeply seated that the gods grant powers in D&D but I can see removing them and making the "god" classes just more mystical in nature- not necessarily powers granted by a god.

Asian- hello, I am from a different culture and I only really fit there.

Punching- I punch and that signals my asian trappings. Letting them use weapons without losing their mystical focus training shtick is a key concept to opening up this class from its straight jacket.

European- Where the asian trapping yells hey I am from asia this is the opposite.

My ideas on broadening them:
Barbarian
First of all the name needs to change, it has too much cultural stigma. Also, their savage nature makes them angry and dumb. Barbarian as your standard frenzied berserker could be broadened to encompass dwarven defenders, whirling dervishes, honorable death trance samurai, crazy ass thugs in a dark alley and any other similar mechanical role. Basically the class would represent someone going into a near mystical stance that they draw melee benefits from.

Bard
Get rid of singing and instruments as a default, tie their class features to any skill you want. Alchemy for a potion maker, diplomacy for a diplomat, perform for musician, acrobatics for jester, knowledge for sage (bardic knowledge). Or better yet tie it to a group of skills. Then let them pick class features that link with those skills. Make them the ultimate skill class and that is there niche. Also get rid of their unique spell list. Allow them to select spells from any list instead. Another Bard idea is to make them the core Mentalist and give them a spell list that reflects that. Essentially a psion for the core game. This would require some shifting priorities but the entertainer theme could mesh well with a Mentalist type.

Cleric
It is a very deeply seated sacred cow that the cleric be a god worshiper. In the PHB they can already choose to not worship a god. Honestly, I have never seen a player ever do that in all my years, but I suppose it can be done. I think the text could simply be re-written from a stand point that the cleric is not a deity worshiper as default and then add in the gods aspect via a campaign setting. I would also tie, the turn undead power to the sun and good domains only and switch around the domain abilities to all work off the channeling energy class feature.

Druid
Druid is an elementalist at heart and its celtic and wildshape tie the druids hands. It could stand in for many different roles and none the least a shugenja, making them able to be from a city and allowing them to shuck their naturey thing really opens up this cool class. I think that moving the wildshape class features to their spell list makes a whole bunch of sense. Rather than having them summon animals spontaneously have them wildshape spontaneously or heck give them the choice. Anyway doing this in no way makes the druid less a druid it only makes them more broad and easily adapted to a campaign setting.

Monk
A Monk has all kinds of mystical Asian cultural trappings. If you strip those you wind up with a guy (or girl) who uses their body as a weapon and has hyper focused in controlling their body. An almost unnatural ability to dodge and weave in combat and to strike quickly. They could represent "jedi" like characters, sword saints (kensai), duelists, heck even certain kinds of swashbucklers... not just I punch you characters.

Paladin
The Paladin is stuck in pseudo euro-knight-hood. Remove that whole thing and it opens up the class as a champion who is adhered to a cause. Whether they be religious zealots or obligated nobles or honorable samurai I think this class could also remove the religious shtick and alignment restriction to good effect. Perhaps completely dropping the spell list (let them multi-class into cleric) and going more for the obliged noble swordsman with a cause.

Ranger
Could be a hunter of undead from the city (van helsing), a bounty hunter etc. Being not tied to the wilderness only makes them open up to many more roles. Drop the nature spell list. Make them more like bounty hunters or heck even assassins and give them straight up bonus fighter feats instead of weapon style choices. Make them tacticians and guys that use their smarts to outperform others with special tactics via terrain knowledge or simply knowing their opponents weaknesses. Perhaps that means giving them some sneak attack. Allow them to multi-class into druid if they want the spell casting back.

 

[Kerrick]

Here's what I see, looking at the classes:

Barbarian: savage, one-trick pony. I ditched it, gave most of its abilities to the fighter and ranger, and made the rest into a PrC.

Bard: I don't see any cultural or geographical trappings on this class. Every society has entertainers who dance, sing, juggle, tell stories, etc. I agree that the need to perform is a limitation, but I'm not sure how to fix it. The Mentalist angle is interesting, but how would you go about doing it?

Cleric: I completely disagree on this score, to the point where I made it a requirement that clerics have a god. Every culture has gods (one god or a pantheon; they all believe in something Up There); it's just the priest's role that changes.

Druid: Protectors and caretakers of nature. Sure, the name is Celtic, but what else would you call them? "Druid" most easily carries across the image of a "protector and caretaker of nature". Wildshape is a holdover from 1E, and I don't know where Gygax got it. There are two main problems with the druid:

1) They're assumed to work only in the forests, which only enhances the Celtic angle;

2) They're around the wildshape ability - they're effectively Shifters, not druids.

Fortunately, both of these are easy to fix: I did it by adding favored terrains and scaling wild shape way back in favor of a variety of other abilities that better typefied what druids are all about.

Monk: No arguments there. The problem, again, is that a martial artist is almost always going to have Asian trappings, simply because that's where martial arts originated. They already have the ability to use weapons for their flurry attack; making them less "culture-centric" is simply a matter of letting them choose a different set of weapons they can use with their flurry.

Paladins: Yeah, they're most likely based on the Knights Templar. But then, no other culture really has an analogue to "knights" or "paladins", except maybe the samurai. You could make them into knights (though that would make them little different than fighters), or just make them generic "holy warriors" with no alignment restriction and abilities based on their gods' domains.

Ranger: The base concept is a good one, IMO. If you want to go bounty hunter, vampire hunter, or whatever, that's what PrCs are for. As with druids, though, they're stuck with the assumption that the only terrain type in D&D is Forest. Broadening this (adding favored terrains) will go a long way toward making rangers better able to fit into any culture. Want an Arabic/Egyptian culture? No problem - make the rangers able to walk on sand, call up a stinging wind, or infuse scorpion venom into their weapons. Underwater? Pfft. They'd have superior scent, tremorsense (can sense the presence of others via disturbances in the water) and maybe free action.

 

[Sadrik]

I'd like to point out I do not like PrCs. I think the are overblown and their scope ruins play from my own personal perspective. So, keep that in mind with my comments.

Barbarian: savage, one-trick pony. I ditched it, gave most of its abilities to the fighter and ranger, and made the rest into a PrC.

I don't disagree with your approach. However I do want to keep the class. I don't mind undermining its premise majorly. Changing it to a stance warrior is great as an addition. I am thinking of three different possible stances.
Toughness (Like a dwarven defender)
Power (like the standard rage)
Speed (Like the UA whirling dervish alternate rage ability)

Have each one level up and get more chances to get them. Remove the rogue abilities from them (let them multi-class into rogue) and give them some more class features to select from including allowing their stance to boost up in smaller chunks. Finally, change the name of the class to Warlord, lol or something.

Bard: I don't see any cultural or geographical trappings on this class. Every society has entertainers who dance, sing, juggle, tell stories, etc. I agree that the need to perform is a limitation, but I'm not sure how to fix it. The Mentalist angle is interesting, but how would you go about doing it?

Again, I am not trying to take away the entertainer portion of their class I want to include that with many other options so that they can be entertainers, sages, jesters, advisers, heck even military commanders could make sense. I am intrigued also with the idea that they could be mentalists as their main shtick and then entertainers is one of their paths.

Cleric: I completely disagree on this score, to the point where I made it a requirement that clerics have a god. Every culture has gods (one god or a pantheon; they all believe in something Up There); it's just the priest's role that changes.

Well, again I am not trying to remove the god-worshiping I am trying to make it so that the DM decides what their focus is in their game. In 90% of games that would be a pantheon of gods and they worship one of them. It is just that if you wanted to make a game where the players were gods and they generated their own powers or something I am sure you can think of a campaign idea where the gods have died or never existed or whatever anyway most non-D&D fantasy does not have priests with spells granted from gods. And on the other hand, in much of fantasy literature all magic is granted from gods even "arcane" style magic.

So again, yes it is deeply seated in D&D that clerics worship gods, on the flip side though writing the game so that is the not the main impetus but instead the default for the campaign setting but not the rules. For instance no need to put the gods in the PHB at all. Let the campaign setting define the class not the PHB to define the campaign setting. Am I making any sense?

Druid: Protectors and caretakers of nature. Sure, the name is Celtic, but what else would you call them? "Druid" most easily carries across the image of a "protector and caretaker of nature". Wildshape is a holdover from 1E, and I don't know where Gygax got it. There are two main problems with the druid:

1) They're assumed to work only in the forests, which only enhances the Celtic angle;

2) They're around the wildshape ability - they're effectively Shifters, not druids.

Fortunately, both of these are easy to fix: I did it by adding favored terrains and scaling wild shape way back in favor of a variety of other abilities that better typefied what druids are all about.

Druid is a toughy, I really like getting rid of the wilderness and nature stuff because I would like every class to be able to adopt a wilderness bent if they want or city bent if they want. If the druid simply becomes a "user" of nature I think that goes a long way to accomplish that goal. Again let the campaign setting define how they do that. Wildshape should be on their spell list. The cleric is primarily made up by a spell list with a couple of thrown in abilities (channel positive energy, 2 domain abililties alignment aura etc.). The druid could do the same thing, get rid of class features in favor of a couple of defining ones and moving many of their class features to the spell list.

Monk: No arguments there. The problem, again, is that a martial artist is almost always going to have Asian trappings, simply because that's where martial arts originated. They already have the ability to use weapons for their flurry attack; making them less "culture-centric" is simply a matter of letting them choose a different set of weapons they can use with their flurry.

The first thing to do is to give them a Monk damage bonus with weapons they are proficient in including unarmed attacks. Change it from how much unarmed damage they do to a +1dX damage bonus. Conceptually this is the same as the duelist PrC's precise strike on a smaller scale. In my own house rules I have been doing this for a long time. +1d4 at 4th, +1d6 at 8th, +1d8 at 12th, +1d10 at 16th and +1d12 at 20th is what I do. Change around their weapons so they are not so asian focused and alter or delete some of the weirder mystical abilities and you have something. Perhaps even create a batch of selectable abilities for them.

Paladins: Yeah, they're most likely based on the Knights Templar. But then, no other culture really has an analogue to "knights" or "paladins", except maybe the samurai. You could make them into knights (though that would make them little different than fighters), or just make them generic "holy warriors" with no alignment restriction and abilities based on their gods' domains.

According to the 1e PHB the clerics were the knights templar and the paladins were the crusaders. This, imho, holy righteous jihadi-like warrior is really antiquated in its world view. What is evil but in the eye of the beholder? I think, going at it as a champion or heck a knight, noble warrior, or simply brave warrior might be the best. Mechanically they are on very soft ground. A paladin needs some real oomph and some solid mechanical reason for them to exist. A multi-classed fighter/cleric could be better than a paladin mechanically anyway. I don't know I am at a loss with this class. Any ideas for mechanical relevance?

Ranger: The base concept is a good one, IMO. If you want to go bounty hunter, vampire hunter, or whatever, that's what PrCs are for. As with druids, though, they're stuck with the assumption that the only terrain type in D&D is Forest. Broadening this (adding favored terrains) will go a long way toward making rangers better able to fit into any culture. Want an Arabic/Egyptian culture? No problem - make the rangers able to walk on sand, call up a stinging wind, or infuse scorpion venom into their weapons. Underwater? Pfft. They'd have superior scent, tremorsense (can sense the presence of others via disturbances in the water) and maybe free action.

Dropping the wilderness tag and broadening their role into a hunter/investigator/tactics like warrior is really cool. Get rid of the combat techniques open them up to simply bonus fighter feats. Archery and two weapon fighting are fine and dandy but letting the player decide is better imho.

 

[Bladesinger_Boy]

As I see things, pre-chosen flavour also means pre-chosen choice. I'd prefer to any class be able to chose many possible faces than be forced to have one well-done face.

Sadrick, some ideas of your I do agree with:
- Bards being eclectic, "cast anything" casters
- Wildshape as spells probably is just easier to run
- Monk definition broadened to include any "mentally developed" warrior, including duelists or sword saints or whatever
- Ranger as a broadened "Hunter" sounds fine, but I don't see the Ranger as that woodsy currently; did you have some variant in mind
- Barbarian being about various stances (rather than rages)
- Bards as "sages"; the Pathfinder version removes standard Bardic Knowledge for +1/2 Bard level as a bonus to all knowledges.
- Cleric god & domain stuff being solved.
- Monk +xd6 damage is good, as would be more talent-like abilities. Again, Pathfinder, check it out.

Paladins are fairly front-loaded and they get everything by level 6. Some mid and high level abilities would be great. I really like the idea of Auras and something to see the Paladin more as a "leader" (4E term). I mean, in am MMO, Paladin spec into Retribution or Protection; why not the same here? You want your auras to gank enemies or defense buff allies?
I'm also big on the idea of the 4 extreme alignments to help represent a Paladin's conviction to their cause. Maybe 4 different auras?

 

[Kerrick]

I was thinking about the ranger last night... I think what you're looking for, Sadrik, is something like the Scout as the "base" ranger - someone who's good at stealth, tracking, attacking from ambush, etc. Strip out some of the abilities from the ranger and add them to whatever the Scout has (I've never seen it, so I don't know; I know it has skirmish), then make the ranger a PrC. The ranger would be a druid/scout multiclass; it grants druidic spells, advanced tracking and stealth, favored enemy, and maybe even favored terrain, along with archery abilities.

BB: Check out this paladin. I think it's what you're looking for.

 

[Sadrik]

- Bards being eclectic, "cast anything" casters
- Bards as "sages"; the Pathfinder version removes standard Bardic Knowledge for +1/2 Bard level as a bonus to all knowledges.

I am begining to also really warm to the idea of the bard as a mentalist. In the computer game "guild wars" they do something like that. They are called mesmers, in that game they focus on debuffing their opponents using illusion, domination and inspiration.

To institute the mentalist idea you would have to look at the bard's spell list and make them more bent toward psion/telepath like "powers". Create a core list of "powers" out of the spell list. Then make a couple of "domains" of spells that offer a way to specialize. Perhaps splitting them into entertainer/body control/telekinesis. Also, again in this situation I would move the bardic music class features to the spell list. I might also develop a very simple power point system for the class, to give them a distinct feel and it would sort of go along with their bardic music uses.

If I am going to revise I want every class to be on firm mechanical footing and have a broad base in regard to role and fitting in culturally into a setting. From a sci-fi setting (dragonstar) all the way to primitive setting (don't know) and from asia to europe to any cultural setting have classes fit in. Anyway, this mentalist-like bard is a class I could get excited about.

- Wildshape as spells probably is just easier to run

In general, I think making the spell casters have less class features and a diverse spell selection. So the druid could lose many of their class features as they are the caster with the most...

- Monk definition broadened to include any "mentally developed" warrior, including duelists or sword saints or whatever

Think jedi and it will show you the way...

- Ranger as a broadened "Hunter" sounds fine, but I don't see the Ranger as that woodsy currently; did you have some variant in mind

I was thinking about the ranger last night... I think what you're looking for, Sadrik, is something like the Scout as the "base" ranger - someone who's good at stealth, tracking, attacking from ambush, etc. Strip out some of the abilities from the ranger and add them to whatever the Scout has (I've never seen it, so I don't know; I know it has skirmish), then make the ranger a PrC. The ranger would be a druid/scout multiclass; it grants druidic spells, advanced tracking and stealth, favored enemy, and maybe even favored terrain, along with archery abilities.

It is true they only have a few class features that are truly wilderness/nature oriented. The biggest offender is their spell list. In my own house rules I give them some sneak attack and some bonus feats in place of their spell list. I am not sure I want to do that when making this revision. I would really like to see multi-classing into rogue to get the sneak attack class feature.

I guess this gets into the rogue a bit because what is a rogue and what is a ranger? How do they differ? Mechanically in a fight are they conceptually filling the same niche? So what features should a ranger/hunter be good at. They should focus on being a demon-hunter, witch-hunter, undead hunter etc. Pretty much like they are now except the favored enemy categories could be larger. They could gain other class features to help out in that regard? Lol, this idea feel like it is treading into paladin territory too.

Is a ranger just a fighter/rogue?

- Barbarian being about various stances (rather than rages)

Yeah I like this, however, does this tread into monk mechanical territory?

- Cleric god & domain stuff being solved.

They really don't need much change other than just giving each domain a "divine feat" like ability.

- Monk +xd6 damage is good, as would be more talent-like abilities. Again, Pathfinder, check it out.

The monk damage bonus is very clean and it works very well with monster monks because a ghoul with level 4 monk attached can become pretty nast with a claw/claw/bite routine...

- Paladins are fairly front-loaded and they get everything by level 6. Some mid and high level abilities would be great. I really like the idea of Auras and something to see the Paladin more as a "leader" (4E term). I mean, in am MMO, Paladin spec into Retribution or Protection; why not the same here? You want your auras to gank enemies or defense buff allies?
I'm also big on the idea of the 4 extreme alignments to help represent a Paladin's conviction to their cause. Maybe 4 different auras?

BB: Check out this paladin. I think it's what you're looking for.

The ranger and the paladin really feel like multi-classed characters in a can. fighter/cleric and fighter/rogue. Both need some very interesting mechanics to hold water and make them exciting so that players will want the class. I think the best thing could be to combine them into one class called the hunter. Give them the smite ability and favored enemy and make them smart leadery warriors who are very aware of their surrounding and hunt monsters. This would make them pretty strong and give them some mechanical footing. Multiclass the hunter into cleric and you get a paladin and multiclass them into rogue and you get a ranger.

Kerrick, your paladin is better than the RAW.

 

[Kerrick]

I am begining to also really warm to the idea of the bard as a mentalist. In the computer game "guild wars" they do something like that. They are called mesmers, in that game they focus on debuffing their opponents using illusion, domination and inspiration.

InNteresting concept. I think I saw someone else bring that up recently, too.

I guess this gets into the rogue a bit because what is a rogue and what is a ranger? How do they differ? Mechanically in a fight are they conceptually filling the same niche?

It's not what they do in combat, it's what they do outside of combat. Rogues have a very different skillset than rangers - they're focused on finding and disarming traps, breaking in and stealing things, gathering information about marks, etc. Rangers, OTOH, are focused around the wilderness, survival, hunting, and generally living off the land. At the most basic level, it's urban (rogue) vs. wilderness (ranger).

So what features should a ranger/hunter be good at. They should focus on being a demon-hunter, witch-hunter, undead hunter etc. Pretty much like they are now except the favored enemy categories could be larger.

You could make "hunter" a PrC that builds off the base ranger concept - someone who's experienced in hunting a wide variety of creatures, and gets more favored enemies, along with other abilities that help find/kill them. My Hunter PrC, while not exactly what I just stated, might be close enough to what you're looking for here.

Is a ranger just a fighter/rogue?

Maybe... except that the abilities and skillsets are quite a bit different, as I noted above.

They really don't need much change other than just giving each domain a "divine feat" like ability.

What I did was change each domain ability to be usable 1 + Cha bonus times/day; all the cleric abilities work thus, drawing from a single pool of uses (which you can expand with a feat).

The ranger and the paladin really feel like multi-classed characters in a can. fighter/cleric and fighter/rogue. Both need some very interesting mechanics to hold water and make them exciting so that players will want the class.

I've heard that before, a few times; the other stance is that they should be PrCs (I think people's opinions are pretty evenly split on keeping them as base classes vs. making them PrCs). The RAW paladin certainly gets little more than a fighter/cleric (and actually, the latter is better off, since he gets access to higher-level spells and has better saves - all he loses is 3 points of BAB).

Kerrick, your paladin is better than the RAW.

Thanks. Making it better wasn't hard to do, really, but I think it's something worth playing now - certainly better than a fighter/cleric.

 

[Sadrik]

I did some drawing up of the bard and "hunter".

First of all, the bard is looking really cool. It needs some work still but I am pretty happy so far.

Secondly, the hunter which I concieved of as a blend of both the paladina nd the ranger does not work. I think I came up with a pretty good version of the ranger but it wound up having nothing to do with a paladin.

After looking at the paladin abilities, I think they can go to the domains as domain abilities or just completely vanish. The class can vanish. Their niche is fleeting in my modern revisionist view of 3e.

Armored holy warrior, that is essentially what the cleric is. I think broadening the cleric to include the paladin's niche is the best. Perhaps war domain gives full BAB and heavy armor proficiency. I have not looked closely at the domains yet and if war domain is going to be that powerful the others will need a serious boost as well.

 

[Kerrick]

AP Heavy should be enough for the War domain, especially in combination with WF (god's weapon).

I think you could easily make the paladin into a PrC. Clerics got pigeonholed into the "holy warriors of their god" thing, which is completely inaccurate. I, for one, can't see a cleric of the god of music going forth and smiting undead, or the god of knowledge calling down holy fire on someone (unless that someone stole rare manuscripts...). That's why I sought to give the cleric a pool of generic abilities - you can make the type of cleric you want, which fits his god's domains as well as your vision of him.

Side question, since we're discussing clerics and paladins: I'm fully planning to allow paladins to draw their spells from the cleric list. There are a few that are paladin-only (holy sword, e.g.) and a few that are higher/lower level for paladins than clerics (like lesser restoration, which is Clr 2/Pal 1). I'm wavering between

a) Keeping a separate paladin list for such spells; or

b) Simply merging them so both classes get the spell at the same level, and paladin-only spells are noted as such, like Mord's lucubration.

I'm thinking the second route would be easier - less text, only one list, and the few unique spells can be noted. I haven't compared the lists to see how many spells would be affected, though (note: I gave paladins 0-level spells, so those don't count). What do you think?

 

[Sadrik]

I think the cleric spell list will be fine, like discussed in the other thread. Also I think you can include heal mount somehow in the lay on hands and holy/unholy sword can simply be a class feature at the level they would have gained it.

Agreed with the no full BAB and WF + heavy armor should be well enough.