D&D 5E Should the Paladin be changed into a more generic half-caster magic knight?

[Steampunkette]

Swordmage, or the only lightly implied Swordsage, to me, is better than "Pendragon" -because- it lacks a strict narrative element while providing hints at a narrative in a broad manner.

That's the allure of the Fighter. Any kind of fighter can be a fighter. You can make a Samurai or a romantic Knight or a scruffy Nerfherder or a Soldier all within the same class.

Putting too much narrative into a class, defining it so precisely that it essentially needs a specific setting, causes problems. I'm worried about my Warcaster for that reason, even though they're a cantrip-casting fighter-type class with a gishy subclass.

I made them students of war. Of military schools the same way a Wizard might have a mentor in a tower. Which implies that any setting with warcasters needs to have military schools capable of training magical artillery.

I still think it'll work, though, because I tried to keep it light beyond that.

But the Pendragon is a Fighter-Sorcerer of a powerful, presumably noble, bloodline. That definitely shrinks the options for character creation significantly. And the fact that it's named after characters in Arthurian Legend, specifically, adds another narrative expectation onto all of them.

Mechanically, I think it's very cool. The ability to multi-attack but if you miss your first shot swap to a cantrip is a neat 'Failsafe' gishiness. Though the opportunity cost is kinda nutty when you've got them swinging a Weapon+1d12 attack at level 1 and if they swing with a regular attack and hit they're gonna trade 2d12 damage for a single weapon attack's swing.

It does hit a big part of the 'Core' of gishiness, which is spellcasting and melee and armor. But I think a stronger flavor of gishing would be to attack -and- cast, rather than attack -or- cast, on a given turn.

Which I haven't even fully figured out how to do in a balanced manner, even using only cantrips. The closest I got was splitcasting cantrips to make multiple attacks as you gain levels (four 1d10 Firebolts rather than one 4d10 Firebolt) and a Spellstrike ability to put cantrips into your weapon (dealing weapon+cantrip damage on a hit) with a Multistrike replacement for Extra Attack making it so you can only swing twice on your action and a weak bonus-action attack with the same weapon.

But that's only for the Swordsage archetype.

 

[Shardstone]

Swordmage, or the only lightly implied Swordsage, to me, is better than "Pendragon" -because- it lacks a strict narrative element while providing hints at a narrative in a broad manner.

That's the allure of the Fighter. Any kind of fighter can be a fighter. You can make a Samurai or a romantic Knight or a scruffy Nerfherder or a Soldier all within the same class.

Putting too much narrative into a class, defining it so precisely that it essentially needs a specific setting, causes problems. I'm worried about my Warcaster for that reason, even though they're a cantrip-casting fighter-type class with a gishy subclass.

I made them students of war. Of military schools the same way a Wizard might have a mentor in a tower. Which implies that any setting with warcasters needs to have military schools capable of training magical artillery.

I still think it'll work, though, because I tried to keep it light beyond that.

But the Pendragon is a Fighter-Sorcerer of a powerful, presumably noble, bloodline. That definitely shrinks the options for character creation significantly. And the fact that it's named after characters in Arthurian Legend, specifically, adds another narrative expectation onto all of them.

Mechanically, I think it's very cool. The ability to multi-attack but if you miss your first shot swap to a cantrip is a neat 'Failsafe' gishiness. Though the opportunity cost is kinda nutty when you've got them swinging a Weapon+1d12 attack at level 1 and if they swing with a regular attack and hit they're gonna trade 2d12 damage for a single weapon attack's swing.

It does hit a big part of the 'Core' of gishiness, which is spellcasting and melee and armor. But I think a stronger flavor of gishing would be to attack -and- cast, rather than attack -or- cast, on a given turn.

Which I haven't even fully figured out how to do in a balanced manner, even using only cantrips. The closest I got was splitcasting cantrips to make multiple attacks as you gain levels (four 1d10 Firebolts rather than one 4d10 Firebolt) and a Spellstrike ability to put cantrips into your weapon (dealing weapon+cantrip damage on a hit) with a Multistrike replacement for Extra Attack making it so you can only swing twice on your action and a weak bonus-action attack with the same weapon.

Agree to disagree, only because I think it highlights the ability to become a legend, not that you start as a hero of a bloodline. I see the work as a recontextualization of the myth that puts it into everyones hands and moves it away from royalty and into the realm of general fantasy heroism. Alas, your perspective is valid!

 

[Micah Sweet]

(Edit) Should the Paladin become a generic magic knight? No.

We should get a separate class for that function. An actual magic knight. One might say a mage who uses swords, even.

Cool! What's their class fiction? What does the base description of the class look like? In short, what is the magic knight outside of mechanics?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Swordmage, or the only lightly implied Swordsage, to me, is better than "Pendragon" -because- it lacks a strict narrative element while providing hints at a narrative in a broad manner.

That's the allure of the Fighter. Any kind of fighter can be a fighter. You can make a Samurai or a romantic Knight or a scruffy Nerfherder or a Soldier all within the same class.

But this is exactly why I don't think WotC will ever make one-- because "generic" classes just don't interest them. The only generic ones right now in the game are the Fighter and the Rogue-- where their identity and "job title" comes from their subclass, and not the class itself. The other 11? All are flavorful classes. So if they were to make a new class, I would expect it to have a flavor as to who they are and what they do in the world-- say something like the 'Witcher' archetype-- rather than just be a warrior / arcane caster combo pile of mechanics that the player is meant to flavor however they want.

Sure, there are players out there that might happily take that... but it's not what WotC wants to make I don't believe. D&D isn't GURPS.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I don't believe that is what @DinoInDisguise is saying at all. They don't care if any individual person supports D&D 5E or does not... but rather that they think everyone should want D&D 5E to succeed and grow (even if it's other people who are making it succeed and grow) because that will make the total player base of RPGs grow bigger and bigger and bigger... thus allowing people like yourself (who eschew D&D 5E) to bring some of those new people into the games you want to play.

This is 100% correct. Individuals should support the products they enjoy. But we should all want 5e to succeed. And we should want 5e to succeed and grow because all ttrpgs benefit from 5e's success.

For example, almost all my money goes to A5e, Kobold press, or Call of Cthulhu books, I spend very little on official books. But I desperately want the new core books to sell well because I will directly benefit from the additional players and publishers that success brings in.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Cool! What's their class fiction? What does the base description of the class look like? In short, what is the magic knight outside of mechanics?

Heh... my guess is that people's answers to you would be something along the lines of "None! We want no flavor attached so we can make it whatever flavor we want ourselves!"

The irony of course being this is exactly why WotC doesn't have to make a new class. Because if all people want are just game mechanics and no story... any one of them right now could just copy-paste the Paladin or Warlock into a Word doc and then delete the feature names from each mechanic leaving only the numbers and the dice. They'd then have a pair of fighting / casting generic empty classes that they could then re-theme and rename however they wanted. Thus getting the exact same effect than if WotC had designed a flavorless half-caster from scratch.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Heh... my guess is that people's answers to you would be something along the lines of "None! We want no flavor attached so we can make it whatever flavor we want ourselves!"

The irony of course being this is exactly why WotC doesn't have to make a new class. Because if all people want are just game mechanics and no story... any one of them right now could just copy-paste the Paladin or Warlock into a Word doc and then delete the feature names from each mechanic leaving only the numbers and the dice. They'd then have a pair of fighting / casting generic empty classes that they could then re-theme and rename however they wanted. Thus getting the exact same effect than if WotC had designed a flavorless half-caster from scratch.

just because we might want aesthetically versatile 'mechanics without story', that doesn't mean the mechanics we want are those of paladin and warlock.

and it's not like 'trained to master the disparate forces of magic and martial into a seamless single fighting style' is any less generic than 'gets real angy through primal forces' or 'learned magic by studying good' or 'mastered the physical self through training and enlightenment'

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is 100% correct. Individuals should support the products they enjoy. But we should all want 5e to succeed. And we should want 5e to succeed and grow because all ttrpgs benefit from 5e's success.

For example, almost all my money goes to A5e, Kobold press, or Call of Cthulhu books, I spend very little on official books. But I desperately want the new core books to sell well because I will directly benefit from the additional players and publishers that success brings in.

I understand where you're coming from, but IMO WotC simply has far too big a piece of the pie to be supportive of their further runaway success. I don't believe any industry needs one company and one product to be vastly more profitable and visible than all the others (at least, not this much). It leads the consumer to equate the industry with the product. How does that help anyone not making (in this case) WotC D&D? I don't specifically want WotC to fail, but I don't want them as big and influential (and very aware of those facts) as they currently are.

You say, "A higher tide rises all boats". I say, "trickle-down economics doesn't really work".

 

[Frozen_Heart]

But this is exactly why I don't think WotC will ever make one-- because "generic" classes just don't interest them. The only generic ones right now in the game are the Fighter and the Rogue-- where their identity and "job title" comes from their subclass, and not the class itself. The other 11? All are flavorful classes. So if they were to make a new class, I would expect it to have a flavor as to who they are and what they do in the world-- say something like the 'Witcher' archetype-- rather than just be a warrior / arcane caster combo pile of mechanics that the player is meant to flavor however they want.

Sure, there are players out there that might happily take that... but it's not what WotC wants to make I don't believe. D&D isn't GURPS.

I do wonder if pushing into the elementalist aspect, or at least a planar aspect, could be a good class focus. 4e really pushed genasi as the 'archtypical' gish, which naturally lends itself well to an elemental theme.

In contrast to that, 5e barely touches on elemental themes, preferring to avoid them or put them as a side dish to something like dragons or giants. Pathfinder meanwhile has the extremely popular kineticist class, which does a lot of mixing magic and martial ability, but in a completely different way to the magus.

But of course, this runs into the problem where a lot of people don't want their gish to be elementalist. They want an arcane magic knight.

 

[Shardstone]

Cool! What's their class fiction? What does the base description of the class look like? In short, what is the magic knight outside of mechanics?

I literally posted it on the last page Micah, c'mon.