D&D 5E Really concerned about class design

[Giltonio_Santos]

I'm going to keep leaning back on Mike Mearls's "can we make 12 subclasses with this class idea" for my opposition to a martial gish class. I don't see the fantasy archetype for it that isn't self referential. A paladin is different from a fighter/cleric, partially because it's based on something that's a more solid concept. Whether d&d popularized that concept doesn't matter at this point.

I'd argue that Gandalf is a gish more than a wizard, so, there's at least some support for the concept of a warrior-mage in popular culture.

For the need of 12 subclasses, while I think the character concept is important, I'd prefer the outlines to be traced around the need for mechanical support. I'd first ask for a subclass that supports the defender role, one that supports damage-dealing in melee and another that supports it at range. After that, a subclass that allows someone to play a gish mainly for buffing allies/debuffing enemies. So, we'd have four, at a minimal.

After that, we can think about some concepts that are hard to pull with 5e where it is today. Some, from the top of my head: the "Jedi Knight" (the UA psychic warrior is trying to do that) or a WoW-like Death Knight. In fact, the WoW Death Knight brings not one, but at least three gish concepts that are hard to pull with current official support: a disease carrier, a lord of the undead, and an expert of ice magic. There's also space for a transmutation (self) expert and a shadow warrior (Illusion/stealth/dex-based; one could argue that the Way of the Shadow monk already covers it).

Those are 10 of the top of my head. I've spent more time writing this post than trying to envision viable subclasses for gish types and almost managed to arrive at Mearls' purposed 12 subclass requisite.

 

[Einlanzer0]

That's not necessarily unfair, but all base classes would have to clear that same bar.

Any bar the hot-mess of the Ranger, unfocused mundanity of the Fighter, vanished niche-protection of the Rogue, desperate forced mechanical differentiation of the Sorcerer, cultural specificity of the Druid/Monk/Barbarian, and/or the doable-with-MCing Ranger or Paladin could clear, the Psion and Warlord soar over with yards to spare, the Artificer probably clears with little difficulty, and the Shaman at least has a shot at with a good running start. Also in the running, all the various 'Gish' classes, because, damn, the 5e Ranger brings that bar down.

But, I mean, if your point is that only classes not already 'in the bag' (the PH) need to clear that bar, by all means, make a compelling case for that double-standard.

QFT. Which is why the "nothing but subclasses" mantra lots of people are rolling with is ill-founded - it feels arbitrary and needlessly pigeonholing. The fact that it limits multiclass concepts and causes bloat and analysis paralysis within a chosen class are just extra salt on the wound.

 

[Einlanzer0]

Quite apart from the fact that all you need to do fighter/magic-user (which "Gish" is just githynaki-speak for) is remotely functional multi-classing, which 5e went & made optional, there have been so many classes, sub-classes, PrCs, themes/PPs, going there, that you could probably come up with 12 sub-classes just by listing them all.
What've we got?

Gish (of course)
Eldritch Knight
Bladesinger
Bard (3.5 bard, I'm think'n, or eSkald)
Duskblade
Hexblade
Magus

bettern' halfway to 12, and I know there have been others... like, wasn't there a magical gunfighter in PF1?

Oh, the concept of the Paladin - the pious knight in shining armor along the lines of Parsifal/Galahad and Lancelot, the highest echelon of the vassals of Charlemagne, the metaphorical name adopted by the main character in Have Gun, Will Travel, the Crusaders & Templars of history, etc - was popular enough before D&D.

It's the D&D Cleric that's lacking in distinct precedent. 2e, for instance, called out Archbishop Turpin from the Song of Roland as, like, the myth/legend exemplar of the Cleric. He was literally a Paladin (one of the Peers of Charlemagne) - in the story he used sword & lance to slaughter Saracens like everyone else, and never used a bit of magic.

I kind of agree with this also. Even though I sometimes pick on them, in my view, the paladin has less of a design/vision problem than the cleric does.

They keep designing the cleric around the historial 1st edition idea of a cleric when, for at least 3 editions now, they've really needed to walk the concept back and design it in a way that allows for a much greater range of archetypes that are generally less martial and more oracle/priestly. They should have done this as soon as the paladin was created and they never did.

 

[generic]

QFT. Which is why the "nothing but subclasses" mantra lots of people are rolling with is ill-founded - it feels arbitrary and needlessly pigeonholing. The fact that it limits multiclass concepts and causes bloat and analysis paralysis within a chosen class are just extra salt on the wound.

I mostly agree with you, but is important to note the difficulty of balancing full classes against multiclassing.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I mostly agree with you, but is important to note the difficulty of balancing full classes against multiclassing.

Nod. Maybe it's ironic, but the 3e/5e take on Multi-Classing would work a lot better if class designs and progression were a lot more consistent - y'know, like the were in 4e, prior to Essentials, which, of course, used a completely different, feat-based multi-classing (which seems to work better for PF2), and class-by-class 'Hybrid' system, (which, I suspect, may have worked with 5e's inconsistent class designs better than the 3e-style system does).

 

[Warpiglet]

Quite apart from the fact that all you need to do fighter/magic-user (which "Gish" is just githynaki-speak for) is remotely functional multi-classing, which 5e went & made optional, there have been so many classes, sub-classes, PrCs, themes/PPs, going there, that you could probably come up with 12 sub-classes just by listing them all.
What've we got?

Gish (of course)
Eldritch Knight
Bladesinger
Bard (3.5 bard, I'm think'n, or eSkald)
Duskblade
Hexblade
Magus

bettern' halfway to 12, and I know there have been others... like, wasn't there a magical gunfighter in PF1?

Oh, the concept of the Paladin - the pious knight in shining armor along the lines of Parsifal/Galahad and Lancelot, the highest echelon of the vassals of Charlemagne, the metaphorical name adopted by the main character in Have Gun, Will Travel, the Crusaders & Templars of history, etc - was popular enough before D&D.

It's the D&D Cleric that's lacking in distinct precedent. 2e, for instance, called out Archbishop Turpin from the Song of Roland as, like, the myth/legend exemplar of the Cleric. He was literally a Paladin (one of the Peers of Charlemagne) - in the story he used sword & lance to slaughter Saracens like everyone else, and never used a bit of magic.

Interesting thoughts on cleric...

In fact, I think the "cleric" sort of invented the idea of an armored warrior that does miracles.

Following Gygax, or perhaps his compatriots, cleric is now an archetype unto itself.

That said there was earlier discussion about the nature of clerics vis a vis Paladins.

As I see it, much of clerical magic can be found in the Abrahamic religions. Being of the cloth, one might associate them with miracle working saints of a church. The armor and blunt weapons were added with relatively few precedents in churchmen who fought.

The paladin is no doubt more Arthurian in flavor with a bit of cleric thrown in.

I personally love clerics and the idea of a questing abbot or priest taking the field and armoring up maybe even reluctantly.

That their archetypal roots aren't exactly Jungian doesn't make me want to to exclude them. They're cooler than that. They're gygaxian.

(I hear they were mapped on van helsing too...again, no heartburn for me!).

 

[Tony Vargas]

In fact, I think the "cleric" sort of invented the idea of an armored warrior that does miracles.

Certainly, before D&D, 'cleric' suggested clerical work more than anything else, or maybe the country vicar in costume drama. (Today, if you're not familiar with D&Disms, it just might suggest a fatwah-issuing instigator of terrorism - thanks for that, news media.)

(I hear they were mapped on van helsing too...again, no heartburn for me!).

Yep, thus the undead-turning niche.

 

[Einlanzer0]

Interesting thoughts on cleric...

In fact, I think the "cleric" sort of invented the idea of an armored warrior that does miracles.

Following Gygax, or perhaps his compatriots, cleric is now an archetype unto itself.

That said there was earlier discussion about the nature of clerics vis a vis Paladins.

As I see it, much of clerical magic can be found in the Abrahamic religions. Being of the cloth, one might associate them with miracle working saints of a church. The armor and blunt weapons were added with relatively few precedents in churchmen who fought.

The paladin is no doubt more Arthurian in flavor with a bit of cleric thrown in.

I personally love clerics and the idea of a questing abbot or priest taking the field and armoring up maybe even reluctantly.

That their archetypal roots aren't exactly Jungian doesn't make me want to to exclude them. They're cooler than that. They're gygaxian.

(I hear they were mapped on van helsing too...again, no heartburn for me!).

I think my issue with this is that vision could easily be accomplished by a MC cleric or a paladin, but a less gygaxian (or even conceptually broader) priest can't be accomplished through any official means - it requires heavy reflavoring or a homebrew class, and I find that to be a weakness within the core class roster.

 

[generic]

I think my issue with this is that vision could easily be accomplished by a MC cleric or a paladin, but a less gygaxian (or even conceptually broader) priest can't be accomplished through any official means - it requires heavy reflavoring or a homebrew class, and I find that to be a weakness within the core class roster.

I made a Cultist class (wip) for this purpose. It is a cleric with a allocating focus, weak weaponry, and traditionally Priest-like attributes.

 

[CapnZapp]

So.... I've been feeling this for a while. While, granted, we got the Artificer in the Eberron book, there's been a long term dearth of new classes for 5e. Especially in light of the new UA, it really worries me that it appears to be because WotC thinks they can/should simply turn every new class concept into a subclass for one of the existing classes.

I love subclasses, but I think that's a terrible approach, and it really needs to get called out as a problem IMO.

First, it attempts to solve the (hypothetical) problem of class bloat by adding clutter within classes, which really doesn't make much sense. 5e already addresses class bloat as a potential problem by having subclasses at all, but when the theme or fantasy represented within a class starts to take you all over the place with subclass options, that's an indicator we've departed from "elegant" and landed at "sloppy". As a practical concern, this makes it more difficult for players to digest what their options really are. They have to reverse engineer a concept or go through a layered path-choosing process.

Second, subclasses aren't multi-class friendly, so tying more and more class options to them inhibits the leveraging of multi-class rules to create a unique class concept. In other words, they result in less customization, not more.

Third, there are numerous areas where it just doesn't really make thematic sense, either in terms of edition history/lore or in terms of verisimilitude. I can easily get on board with Psychic Warrior being a subclass for Fighter - because it's a perfect use of the subclass system to expand options without class bloat. I cannot get on board with the base Psion being a "Wizarding tradition" because it is not. One of many reasons for this is the thematic need for psionics to exist as a full-enough system to potentially replace traditional magic in a more sci-fi setting based on precedents established in previous editions.

Fourth, it just feels like a lazy way to develop the system that players have weirdly adopted as a good approach when it isn't (sort of a rationalizing-the-status-quo bias). If they had started with only 4 or 5 classes, this approach might have made the most sense, but they didn't & that ship has sailed. So drawing a line now and de-emphasizing classes in favor of subclasses is starting to make the whole edition feel sloppily executed.

The bottom line is that if the concept that you're imagining is a.) very interesting, and b.) broad enough that you can easily mentally conjure many different subtypes within that class, there is no reason to not take the time to develop it into a full class instead of band-aiding it as a nonsensical subclass tacked on to an arbitrarily chosen class. My personal favorite examples of this are the witch and the shaman, but there are tons of others.

Yes, this is what I mean by breadth based design, not depth based.

Basically, you can have many characters, but you can't have complex characters.

5E isn't crunchy enough for many of us.

Most subclasses just rehash the same bonuses anyway, just handing them out in different combinations: such as getting advantage to one skill or special case. There has been little to no real invention when it comes to new mechanisms.

Basically, the success of 5E has meant WotC is treading water. They aren't going to add substantial new content for fear of disrupting their cash cow.