D&D 5E (2024) What should the 15th Class be?

[Minigiant]

Druids deal with nature, be it nature on the Material plane or what you might call nature on the Inner and Outer Planes. Shamans otoh deal with spirits and a Spirit Realm (if one exists in your setting's cosmology

D&D druids are a simplification of the narrow slice of knowledge we know of real world druids. They'd deal with the Material, Spirit, and Astral realms.

If modeled on the nonD&D lore and myth of druids, the D&D druid, D&D shaman, and some new Astrologer class would be subclasses of that same class.

But too late for that now.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

D&D druids are a simplification of the narrow slice of knowledge we know of real world druids. They'd deal with the Material, Spirit, and Astral realms.

If modeled on the nonD&D lore and myth of druids, the D&D druid, D&D shaman, and some new Astrologer class would be subclasses of that same class.

But too late for that now.

Very, very much too late, yes. The concept has taken on a life of its own beyond D&D, and that now feeds back into D&D. Folks expect a "Druid" to be someone who can shapeshift. That this is a pigeonholing of those abilities, when they could otherwise have fit into a bigger and more thematically diverse package, is not of particular concern.

You can mostly blame Warcraft for turning this into a phenomenon. D&D Druids caused the Warcraft games to make their Druids work that way. E.g. Everquest Druids are still functionally priests, who get animal taming abilities, not the ability to take on animal forms. But Warcraft? It followed D&D, and thus made Druids a magical tradition specialized in shapeshifting. Technically WoW isn't the game to do this, but rather Warcraft 3, since that's the game that introduced Night Elves and their "Druid" traditions. But WoW's enormous popularity and cultural impact is what has permanently cemented "Druid = Shapeshifting spellcaster" in the fantasy zeitgeist.

Much the way that a couple pieces of fantasy literature, such as Three Hearts and Three Lions, are almost totally responsible for the word "Paladin" coming to mean "a divinely-ordained knight who fights for good and right on the basis of a sacred oath". Because prior to that....as far as I can tell it was only used for its original meaning, namely, the retinue of Big Chuck himself, Charlemagne, being his palace knights (the Knights of the Palatine.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes, because new classes in supplemental books that those players who love simplicity would never buy

I .e third party publications.

 

[Corinnguard]

I .e third party publications.

Which can be, sometimes, better than some of the material in the core rulebooks.

 

[Tonguez]

Druids deal with nature, be it nature on the Material plane or what you might call nature on the Inner and Outer Planes. Shamans otoh deal with spirits and a Spirit Realm (if one exists in your setting's cosmology).

Thats a weird distinction, surely once you've included the Planes in your definition of 'Nature', then Nature includes Spirits? Especially as the conjure spell outright stats that Druids are conjuring nature/fey/elemental spirits

What are Shaman doing differently besides adding an 'ancestral' category?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I .e third party publications.

Don't kid yourself. The vast majority of players who prefer "simplicity" are never going to buy first-party supplements.

Because every single one of those supplements is, necessarily, guaranteed, always adding complexity. Full stop.

If people prefer simplicity, they're never going to step outside the bounds of the original three books.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Which can be, sometimes, better than some of the material in the core rulebooks.

Absolutely. I do find the insistence that “WotC has to make it” extremely tiresome. Smaller publishers have far more freedom.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Thats a weird distinction, surely once you've included the Planes in your definition of 'Nature', then Nature includes Spirits? Especially as the conjure spell outright stats that Druids are conjuring nature/fey/elemental spirits

What are Shaman doing differently?

Well, at least in my personal understanding of it, Druids deal with the essences in nature: raw elemental forces, beasts and their characteristics, weather, that sort of thing.

Shaman deal with the consciousnesses in nature. "All that is, is alive." Everything has some kind of consciousness in it, and many things which have a consciousness here in the living world have, or produce, an associated consciousness in the Hereafter as well, the "spirit world". But that "spirit world" isn't actually separate from the regular world, it's more like a different way of seeing, a different wavelength of sorts.

Druids don't woo. They don't court, barter, or negotiate with the powers they interact with. They control said powers--sometimes to nurture, sometimes to vent wrath, sometimes to protect, but in all ways, those powers simply exist and are there to be wielded for whatever purpose the Druid intends.

Shaman have to woo, court, barter, negotiate. They are inherently straddling the line between two worlds, the fulcrum point. That gives them influence, but it also subjects them to influence.

That, to me, is an interesting distinction and worth exploring.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Don't kid yourself. The vast majority of players who prefer "simplicity" are never going to buy first-party supplements.

Because every single one of those supplements is, necessarily, guaranteed, always adding complexity. Full stop.

If people prefer simplicity, they're never going to step outside the bounds of the original three books.

On that, you are simply wrong. Lots of people, the majority in fact, buy supplements, settings and adventures because they like the level of complexity WotC has set.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Absolutely. I do find the insistence that “WotC has to make it” extremely tiresome. Smaller publishers have far more freedom.

If I had had even the slightest success with getting 3PP material while playing 5e, I would take this much more seriously.

It's not players who insist on "WotC has to make it". It's GMs. Specifically 5e GMs, and their hyperconservative attitude toward this kind of content unless they specifically make it themselves. I have seen this attitude over and over again, I see it here on ENWorld all the time.