D&D General What Should Today's Archetypes Be

[deganawida]

I feel that Pirates of Dark Water is both too old and too obscure to enter into this.

Oh man, but it’s so good!

Yes, I’m getting old.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i think while the 'cleric' might still exist it would take more of a white mage identity, without the armour proficiencies of the curent cleric and most likely loosing a good chunk of it's religious connotations, actually i think alot of the religious aspects of the game would be much less prominent and with the divine power source absent magic might evolve as a more structured 'elemental teirs and counterparts' maybe like pokemon's supereffective/resistance dynamics or final fantasy's paired elements.

also i think the ranger would still exist in some capacity, the hunter-explorer, wilderness-survivalist monster slaying specialist is still a very strong archetype in media, aragon and legolas would of still been an existing influence, indianna jones(?), link from the legend of zelda, castlevania's simon belmont(and perhaps also samus aran from metroid in a space themed variant of the ranger), the witcher.

 

[Aldarc]

I feel that the whole "if no D&D..." aspect of this hypothetical is pretty pointless. I think it's sufficient to ask what a "from scratch" D&D would look like if it was created in today's environment, even if today's environment has been influenced by D&D.

 

[Reynard]

Are we talking combat archetypes, character archetypes, what?

Mostly the latter.

I feel like if done today, you'd pick an archetype based on power course, combat style, and social positioning. So you've have a magic ranged intimidator, or a martial maneuvering charmer.

I like this just on principal. You could create a pretty robust chargen system based on "pick one from A, B and C."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Mostly the latter.

I like this just on principal. You could create a pretty robust chargen system based on "pick one from A, B and C."

It's not without its pitfalls though. This is what Numenera went with. I found the implementation heavily flawed. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea inherently. Just means it has just as many design hurdles as a regular class-based system (or perhaps more, since designers of systems like this have fewer examples to learn from.)

 

[Reynard]

It's not without its pitfalls though. This is what Numenera went with. I found the implementation heavily flawed. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea inherently. Just means it has just as many design hurdles as a regular class-based system (or perhaps more, since designers of systems like this have fewer examples to learn from.)

I like Numenera's system conceptually, but I don'tthink it worked with the system as presented. [Adjective] [Noun] that [Verbs] is a solid base for, say, Fate, but less so something as generally traditional as Cypher.

I think you could create "packages" for Skill Set, Action Type and Social Role -- as you said -- and by siloing those various resources allow people to create interesting and competent characters that still preserve some form of niche protection and avoid "power building" (since each choice covers a different "pillar" of play).

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

LotR is BUT it's not really something people draw their own characters from much, if at all, even for my generation.

For starters, I dunno if you noticed, but a lot more women play RPGs now, and Tolkien has approximate zero valid female characters, certainly zero adventurers (and no Arwen doesn't count and Eowyn isn't even close to counting). So that's like 30-50% of your players just right out the door right then. (Honestly LotR is way more of a sausagefest than Le Morte D'Arthur which really an achievement).

Second off, LotR doesn't have many characters that match up well with D&D classes. You've basically got... Fighters. That's it. Maybe you could make an extremely stretched case that, technically, Sam is a Paladin. It's cute but it's a stretch. The hobbits don't do Rogue stuff, really. Aragorn doesn't do really any Ranger things. At all. Gandalf doesn't even really do much Wizard stuff. Hell most of the Fighters don't even do Fighter stuff.

It's a fun set of movies (yeah I went there) but apart from a small percentage of people going "I'm going to make Legolas" before realizing D&D 5E doesn't support that all that well, that's basically got no impact (Legolas' haircut has had a profound impact on elven haircuts in like every game though I'll tell you that).

Compare and contrast with anime or video games or fantasy novels or fantasy TV shows and cartoons, all of which are vastly more diverse not just in male/female/other, or non-white ways, or disabled/able ways, but also in the simple sense that they have more different characters with different abilities, and way more of those characters have the sort of flashy magical powers most D&D characters have, and way more of them do fantastic stuff with their abilities. They also act, look and talk much more like most D&D characters.

And why do these characters have those powers and mannerisms and so on? BECAUSE OF D&D. We're on like third generation of a feedback loop here! Almost all of this stuff exists or portrayed the way it is because of D&D. Not because of Tolkien. Because of D&D. And thus it's much more relevant to D&D than a series of novels that basically only influenced D&D in any major way by putting certain races into the game. And they've been there for decades now, so their origin is almost irrelevant. They're D&D races.

I think you’re missing the point of this thread maybe. I don’t think @Reynard is interested in how this exercise relates to 5e or mechanics at all. I believe the point is just what archetypes would be have if there was no D&D (and related RPGs and media).

So it is not relevant if Legolas maps onto 5e, because there is no 5e in this thought exercise.

Now, what would we have? I’m not sure, I need to think about it more as it is really a rabbit hole of wild speculation.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A lot of fantasy adventure games and media aren't terribly interested in the cleric or priest. It's still out there, but it's either (a) secularized, (b) looks different from a D&D-style cleric (e.g., heavily armored to lightly armored), or (c) exists as something more akin to a white mage or healer.

Indeed, healers are common but most of them are secularized - often just the serious magic-users can heal - or worship Crystal Dragon Jesus because religion isn't a major factor in the setting. Indeed, it'd be a lot easier to count the modern-ish fantasy settings (across all media) where religion is significant rather than those where it isn't, which is absolutely the norm.

Though I think we can actually blame this one largely on Tolkien - there's no religion, per se, in LotR, and it very much helped set the standard for fantasy. D&D introducing Clerics was something of a freak incident that probably many alternative-but-similar worlds didn't have happen (given they were a reaction to a PC Vampire, not something people had long-wanted).

I don't think any non-D&D-derived fantasy setting would have magic-using priests, and even if it did, I think they'd lean much more towards the terrifying cult leader types (more akin to Warlocks in many ways) and much less towards the "friendly healer" types. I think we would still see nature-magic types who were more positive, but again they might well be secularized or at least not religious in the "organised religion" sense of cathedrals and churches and holy books and so on.

Expanding beyond this? I'm not sure, because I think that my own biases would factor into this a bit too strong. However, I would argue that classes would or even should be designed more around playstyles and broad-archetypes that people are drawn to playing rather than trying to emulate particular media. For example, a number of video games include what I sometimes refer to as an "edge lord" caster (e.g., warlock, necromancer, etc.). I think that if D&D was made anew nowadays, the edge lord caster would be its own class rather than locked behind different classes.

I mean, D&D does have Warlocks and they are arguably the "edge lord" caster so that's kind of happened.

I do think in general casters would lean significantly edgier and less wildly nerdy.

 

[Moonmover]

I feel that the whole "if no D&D..." aspect of this hypothetical is pretty pointless. I think it's sufficient to ask what a "from scratch" D&D would look like if it was created in today's environment, even if today's environment has been influenced by D&D.

We already have that in the form of new games on DriveThruRPG coming out every day. Today, it's Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age. Tomorrow it will be something different.

 

[deganawida]

Forgot to add: I don’t think we’d actually see that much armor if D&D were being created today.