D&D 5E The classes of 5e (now with 90% less speculation)

[Ichneumon]

Though not as much as I look forward to seeing the psion if they can get him to stop crying in the corner.

Indeed. The psion is supposed to make others cry in the corner, preferably from a hefty Psychic Crush.

 

[Dausuul]

Indeed. The psion is supposed to make others cry in the corner, preferably from a hefty Psychic Crush.

Actually, I'm not sure we'll see a dedicated psion class in the PHB1. After all, it has never been a PHB1 class in any edition. They mentioned "wild talents," but that's something quite different, harking back to the 1E DMG where there was a small chance for your character to have a random psionic ability.

 

[Oni]

Bruce: Wizards have magical feats (at-will, always available). Hold on to higher spells until needed.

Rob: We could bring back a whole raft of at-wills from 4e, and make those type of things Wizard feats. There are also magical feats that are non-combat oriented. Different frequency rates, as well (encounter).

So feats could essentially wind up being an alternate way of learning spells, i.e. smaller spells the wizard knows so well he doesn't have to prep them. I think that could be interesting, if they're not too conservative with it.

The only draw back to this is that there will probably be a hard cap on feats. One thing that always bothered me about the last couple of editions that you only got a pretty conservative number of feat slots but they just kept churning out more and more feats, a lot of them interesting, but because there were so many and you had access to so few most of them were never going to get used.

 

[Knightfall]

So feats could essentially wind up being an alternate way of learning spells, i.e. smaller spells the wizard knows so well he doesn't have to prep them. I think that could be interesting, if they're not too conservative with it.

The only draw back to this is that there will probably be a hard cap on feats. One thing that always bothered me about the last couple of editions that you only got a pretty conservative number of feat slots but they just kept churning out more and more feats, a lot of them interesting, but because there were so many and you had access to so few most of them were never going to get used.

Perhaps you'll be able to swap out feats as you level up.

 

[Oni]

Perhaps you'll be able to swap out feats as you level up.

I would much rather there was a mechanism to learn additional feats, i.e. remove the hard cap and treat them sort of how a Wizard can learn new spells. It shouldn't be so easy that you can just pick them up willy nilly, but it should be so that if you want to learn something new you can without having wait until X level or magically forgeting something you already knew. Give all classes the ability to expand laterally, it gives them a good reason to get out there and do stuff.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I do wonder if it is worth renaming the Warlord, though that name certainly is recognizable thanks to 4E. I also prefer it to Marshall, which I've never really liked. I'd be fine with Warlords just being called Lords, since that name has a fair amount of traction in other fantasy stuff that I've seen.

Anyways, I kind of hope we don't see the Illusionist, or any other class that is little more than a Wizard with just a few tweaks made. I'd prefer magical specialists to be given a bit more of their own identity. For example, a Ninja would work way better at the idea of a "master of illusion" class than a boring Illusionist. No class deserves to abuse the Mirror Image spell as much as that one does. It would be appropriate, too, since the lore of the ninja is probably built more on kabuki stage magic tricks than it is on history.

 

[the Jester]

Actually, I'm not sure we'll see a dedicated psion class in the PHB1. After all, it has never been a PHB1 class in any edition. They mentioned "wild talents," but that's something quite different, harking back to the 1E DMG where there was a small chance for your character to have a random psionic ability.

...psst, it was the PH, appendix A.

 

[Dausuul]

...psst, it was the PH, appendix A.

Huh, could have sworn it was the DMG. I'm sure you're right, though. I only actually played 1E a couple of times.

 

[Jack99]

I'm pretty sure that the 4e Warlock had some summoning in its repertoire, but I honestly cannot recall how much.

The E-lock had the ability to summon devils, yes. The PHB one, not so much iirc.

 

[Oni]

The E-lock had the ability to summon devils, yes. The PHB one, not so much iirc.

Well that would explain why I don't really associate summoning the 4E Warlock, though I've perused a few essentials books I had given up 4E for all practical purposes by the time they had hit. Given their ties to other worldly patrons and their propensity for making deals it would have made a great deal of sense, but the implementation was never really there prior, that was instead given to Wizards and Druids and Shamans.