Unpopular opinions go here

[FitzTheRuke]

More unpopular opinions: One thing that I dislike about D&D's classes is that they are a weird mix of too broad and too narrow. Like you have these classes like the Wizard and Fighter that were originally meant to encapsulate all mages and all warriors, respectively, but then a bunch of classes were added later for narrower archetypes, like Ranger, Barbarian, or Monk and Sorcerer, Warlock, and Bard. I kinda think that D&D would be better if it either gutted the narrow classes or the broad classes, but the mix of both causes a lot of redundancies. But it feels stuck with the classes they have because legacy and the backlash if they were removed or altered in any way. And this issue isn't helped by some oddities like having clerics and paladins, as seen above.

It seems smartest to me to go for 2e-style: Warrior, Priest, Rogue, & Mage. (You can call "Rogue" Expert, as they did with both the Sidekick and the UA class-category, but I think 2e had it right with Rogue).

But instead of using those names just for categories, they ARE the classes. After that, everything is subclasses (however, you make subclasses grant abilities at more than four levels).

 

[Aldarc]

It seems smartest to me to go for 2e-style: Warrior, Priest, Rogue, & Mage. (You can call "Rogue" Expert, as they did with both the Sidekick and the UA class-category, but I think 2e had it right with Rogue. But instead of using those names just for categories, they ARE the classes. After that, everything is subclasses (however, you make subclasses grant abilities at more than four levels).

I mean this is kinda how Rob Schwalb's Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard does it. Characters start off in a Novice path, which is either a Warrior, Rogue, Priest, or Mage. Then players can later take any Expert path of their choice, regardless of their Novice class, and these may include things like Wizard, Ranger, Paladin, Berserker, or Thief. Then finally, the player can take any Master path, again regardless of their previous choices, which may include more specialized roles like Abjurer, Exorcist, Geomancer, Inquisitor, etc.

 

[Reynard]

I mean this is kinda how Rob Schwalb's Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard does it. Characters start off in a Novice path, which is either a Warrior, Rogue, Priest, or Mage. Then players can later take any Expert path of their choice, regardless of their Novice class, and these may include things like Wizard, Ranger, Paladin, Berserker, or Thief. Then finally, the player can take any Master path, again regardless of their previous choices, which may include more specialized roles like Abjurer, Exorcist, Geomancer, Inquisitor, etc.

Still need to run that game one of these days.

 

[Aldarc]

Still need to run that game one of these days.

I believe that the Shadow of the Weird Wizard Kickstarter drops tomorrow.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I mean this is kinda how Rob Schwalb's Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard does it. Characters start off in a Novice path, which is either a Warrior, Rogue, Priest, or Mage. Then players can later take any Expert path of their choice, regardless of their Novice class, and these may include things like Wizard, Ranger, Paladin, Berserker, or Thief. Then finally, the player can take any Master path, again regardless of their previous choices, which may include more specialized roles like Abjurer, Exorcist, Geomancer, Inquisitor, etc.

Yup, that's what I'm talking about for sure. I always liked Schwalb. Maybe I should take a closer look at that game...

 

[Pedantic]

It seems smartest to me to go for 2e-style: Warrior, Priest, Rogue, & Mage. (You can call "Rogue" Expert, as they did with both the Sidekick and the UA class-category, but I think 2e had it right with Rogue. But instead of using those names just for categories, they ARE the classes. After that, everything is subclasses (however, you make subclasses grant abilities at more than four levels).

It gets fuzzy once you make subclasses broad enough, but I think the opposite is more generally true, and it would be better to just publish hundreds of classes. Give them shareable tagged resources (like spells or maneuvers) so you can have a level-referenced set of stuff to draw on, but go wild inside them to model whatever archetype you're shooting for. The hardest part will be convincing players and designers to adopt sufficiently dense and specific martial archetypes: Fighter is right out, Knight is better, Gryphon Dragoon is even better. Ditch multiclassing, or do some feat based system to make it more limited. Then you can experiment with different resource structures, different ways to solve problems and so on.

That gets you to a place you can actually build a Necromancer that solves all their problems with skeletons, instead of skeletons, Bestow Curse and lingering guilt that they probably should have just taken Fireball.

 

[FrogReaver]

It gets fuzzy once you make subclasses broad enough, but I think the opposite is more generally true, and it would be better to just publish hundreds of classes. Give them shareable tagged resources (like spells or maneuvers) so you can have a level-referenced set of stuff to draw on, but go wild inside them to model whatever archetype you're shooting for. The hardest part will be convincing players and designers to adopt sufficiently dense and specific martial archetypes: Fighter is right out, Knight is better, Gryphon Dragoon is even better. Ditch multiclassing, or do some feat based system to make it more limited. Then you can experiment with different resource structures, different ways to solve problems and so on.

That gets you to a place you can actually build a Necromancer that solves all their problems with skeletons, instead of skeletons, Bestow Curse and lingering guilt that they probably should have just taken Fireball.

The only downside with more classes is they tend to either overshadow previous ones or be outright bad. The more ways you give to fulfill similar concepts with slight differences the more you run into this.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been all aboard the more classes train - it’s just there tend to be practical concerns that complicate this kind of design.

 

[Thomas Shey]

More unpopular opinions: One thing that I dislike about D&D's classes is that they are a weird mix of too broad and too narrow. Like you have these classes like the Wizard and Fighter that were originally meant to encapsulate all mages and all warriors, respectively, but then a bunch of classes were added later for narrower archetypes, like Ranger, Barbarian, or Monk and Sorcerer, Warlock, and Bard. I kinda think that D&D would be better if it either gutted the narrow classes or the broad classes, but the mix of both causes a lot of redundancies. But it feels stuck with the classes they have because legacy and the backlash if they were removed or altered in any way. And this issue isn't helped by some oddities like having clerics and paladins, as seen above.

To a large extent, the more narrow classes exist because to many people, the broad ones just didn't feel like it got the job done for some concepts. You can argue about whether their expectations were reasonable or not all you want, but as long as they felt that way there were going to end up being a lot of bespoke classes (and out in fandom this was even more pronounced in the OD&D days).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I believe that the Shadow of the Weird Wizard Kickstarter drops tomorrow.

I believe you're correct. I expect that it may scoop up some people for whom the darker elements of SotDL just didn't cut it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It gets fuzzy once you make subclasses broad enough, but I think the opposite is more generally true, and it would be better to just publish hundreds of classes. Give them shareable tagged resources (like spells or maneuvers) so you can have a level-referenced set of stuff to draw on, but go wild inside them to model whatever archetype you're shooting for. The hardest part will be convincing players and designers to adopt sufficiently dense and specific martial archetypes: Fighter is right out, Knight is better, Gryphon Dragoon is even better. Ditch multiclassing, or do some feat based system to make it more limited. Then you can experiment with different resource structures, different ways to solve problems and so on.

That gets you to a place you can actually build a Necromancer that solves all their problems with skeletons, instead of skeletons, Bestow Curse and lingering guilt that they probably should have just taken Fireball.

While there's some virtue to this, unless you develop things so end users can reasonably put together their own classes when the extent ones don't work, you're still going to the odd cases that bolt-on elements attached to broad classes can help with.