D&D 5E Why the fixation with getting rid of everything but fighter/cleric/rogue/wizard?

[Einlanzer0]

By "clostered cleric" do you mean something like a stay-at-home temple cleric? If not, please elaborate.

What would distinguish a Witch from a Shaman; and what would distinguish either or both from either Sorcerer or Druid/Nature Cleric?

And by "Scholar/Expert" are you thinking of some sort of Mage/Rogue hybrid, or are you instead thinking of a (perhaps non-adventuring) sage-like class?

And for those of us who don't DMGuild, in short form what makes the Emergent tick?

For your question on the cloistered cleric, yes.

A shaman is a primal medium and a spirit user, which is very different from a druid. A witch is a mystic fortune teller or any number of other things.

The simple truth is there are tons of ways you can differentiate classes. The ways that the official classes are distinguished are arbitrary. What distinguishes a paladin from the fighter? Only what WotC says it does.

 

[Einlanzer0]

I hadn't heard of the Emergent, but a quick look at the description makes it seem to be a Summoner Gish, maybe?

Most of the other concepts suggested seem like material for subclasses or backgrounds: a witch can be a Fey Warlock Outlander, easily enough, and a Druid is a Shaman (in terms of normal usage of words).

This is not any more true of those concepts than it is of the concepts that make up the official classes. I don't think shaman fits into druid at all, and the witch is too iconic to not be its own class.

The idea that a class needs a totally unique niche to justify its existence is a fallacious belief. A class only needs to be thematically broad enough that it can have fleshed out mechanics and a full compliment of its own subclasses. There are examples of all kinds of custom classes on DMG that meet this requirement.

 

[Parmandur]

For your question on the cloistered cleric, yes.

A shaman is a primal medium and a spirit user, which is very different from a druid. A witch is a mystic fortune teller or any number of other things.

The simple truth is there are tons of ways you can differentiate classes. The ways that the official classes are distinguished are arbitrary. What distinguishes a paladin from the fighter? Only what WotC says it does.

So the Druid, who channels animal spirits to change into their shape is different how...?

How can a Warlock, Wizard or Sorcerer not fulfill the witch role as described, sounds like background or flavor description...? Diviner Wizard with an Outlander background, done, gypsy witch.

 

[Einlanzer0]

So the Druid, who channels animal spirits to change into their shape is different how...?

How can a Warlock, Wizard or Sorcerer not fulfill the witch role as described, sounds like background or flavor description...? Diviner Wizard with an Outlander background, done, gypsy witch.

The short answer to your question is that it doesn't actually matter. It's not that difficult a task to come up with a shaman that feels and plays altogether differently than the Druid. A number of people have already done this.

If a class can hold a number of different and unique subclass concepts, as witch and shaman both can, there's no reason for it not to exist. This is especially true if an iconic fantasy concept can only be sort of approximated in a half-ass way through individual subclasses. The shaman and the witch are both good examples of this. If you're going to nitpick this, you should be nitpicking what the purpose of the ranger, paladin, or several other official classes is.

 

[Parmandur]

The short answer to your question is that it doesn't actually matter. It's not that difficult a task to come up with a shaman that feels and plays altogether differently than the Druid. A number of people have already done this.

If a class can hold a number of different and unique subclass concepts, as witch and shaman both can, there's no reason for it not to exist. This is especially true if an iconic fantasy concept can only be sort of approximated in a half-ass way through individual subclasses. The shaman and the witch are both good examples of this. If you're going to nitpick this, you should be nitpicking what the purpose of the ranger, paladin, or several other official classes is.

Ranger or Paladin could have been handled as subclasses, easily. It was mainly tradition that they weren't, which is fine insofar as that goes. No reason to stretch things out too far, even when they are already strained to 12 classes.

 

[Einlanzer0]

Ranger or Paladin could have been handled as subclasses, easily. It was mainly tradition that they weren't, which is fine insofar as that goes. No reason to stretch things out too far, even when they are already strained to 12 classes.

I just simply don't see the problem with having additional classes if they are both broad and iconic enough that it's not difficult to come up with a full set of subclasses for them. After all, it's the name that tends to grab people more than anyone else. Not having a class called "witch" or "shaman" when we have "warlock", "sorcerer", "wizard", "cleric", and "druid" is just weird.

The six to eight I posted are the ones I would create to fill out the class roster in a way that I would find satisfactory. That's really all there is to it.

 

[Parmandur]

I just simply don't see the problem with having additional classes if they are both broad and iconic enough that it's not difficult to come up with a full set of subclasses for them. After all, it's the name that tends to grab people more than anyone else. Not having a class called "witch" or "shaman" when we have "warlock", "sorcerer", "wizard", "cleric", and "druid" is just weird.

The six to eight I posted are the ones I would create to fill out the class roster in a way that I would find satisfactory. That's really all there is to it.

But what mechanically differentiates the classes you are proposing? Narratively, they are all covered easily enough in the core options with no tweaking, so what is the mechanical hook?

 

[Einlanzer0]

But what mechanically differentiates the classes you are proposing? Narratively, they are all covered easily enough in the core options with no tweaking, so what is the mechanical hook?

What an odd question - there are literally tons of ways to differentiate them mechanically. The possibilities for doing this are nearly endless. Again, there are several different versions floating around for some of these concepts already. If you're curious, go look some of them up on DMG, although I'd guess you'd dismiss them out of bias. I would also disagree that they are narratively covered easily enough. Can you make a wizard that flies on a broom, uses curses and heals, and belongs to a coven that specializes in using circle magic? No, you can't - not without so much DM hand-waiving that you might as well create a class for it.

 

[cbwjm]

Over on Reddit someone created a shaman from the druid class changing nothing more than the fluff. No mechanical changes at all, it worked really well.

Sent from my [device_name] using EN World mobile app

 

[Einlanzer0]

Over on Reddit someone created a shaman from the druid class changing nothing more than the fluff. No mechanical changes at all, it worked really well.

Sent from my [device_name] using EN World mobile app

Yeah but that would not be my preferred way of doing it. There's enough behind the concept of a primal spiritual leader that's a spirit medium to make a full class out of it that is very different from the druid.