D&D General Your Core Classes if The Core 4 Aren't Allowed

[squibbles]

Imagine!

You are asked to make a 3pp DnD 5e competitor. The ask includes some odd restrictions.

1. No Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard.

2. No Plain Human, or Tolkein style elves, dwarves, orcs, or halflings.

3. Replacements cannot be the same thing with a different name, but it can be designed to fill the same role or niche.

What do?

(I will share mine later)

Always a fun thought exercise, even if it does seem suspiciously similar to a previous thread

If the goal was to create a genuine competitor to 5e, I think these sorts of decisions would need to be informed by market research. But I have no interest in that and am going to ignore that part of the premise.

D&D 5e has always underdelivered on low magic and sword and sorcery (not the same thing, but both difficult/absent), so I would try playing into those character types.

Classes:

• Alchemist--an intelligent and/or charismatic class that creates cures, buffing elixirs, poisons, propellants, etc. it would not be explicitly magical, but some subclasses would lean that way, it could encompass a scholar-adventurers, witch hunters, transmuters, and maybe illusionists (1/3 caster)
• Barbarian--not the same one as 5e; themed around brute force fighting and wilderness survival--rage would not be the central feature. Archetypes like beastmaster and hunter could live here along with berserker
• Knave--skill-monkey and agile fighter with lots of tricks, could lean towards swashbuckling, sneakthievery, dabbling in the occult (1/3 caster), or tactical battlemaster/warlord archetypes
• Sorcerer--using this more evocative name, but designed more like a warlock--would start out NOT having signed a pact, and finding a supernatural patron would be a major goal. A lot of it's casting would be built around rituals. Pacts would include lords of chaos, lords of law, and stranger types of things.
• Warrior-Monk--I'm a bit on the fence about what would be included / differ from 5e.

Species, a bit hard to do low magic with no humans, so more sword and sorcery facing:

• Tiefling--the majority group in the dominant civilization ruling the major cities as dens if iniquity
• Serpentman--as above, but in decline
• Lizardman
• Goliath
• Thri-kreen (or green martian)
• Birdperson
• Changeling

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Always a fun thought exercise, even if it does seem suspiciously similar to a previous thread

If the goal was to create a genuine competitor to 5e, I think these sorts of decisions would need to be informed by market research. But I have no interest in that and am going to ignore that part of the premise.

D&D 5e has always underdelivered on low magic and sword and sorcery (not the same thing, but both difficult/absent), so I would try playing into those character types.

Classes:

• Alchemist--an intelligent and/or charismatic class that creates cures, buffing elixirs, poisons, propellants, etc. it would not be explicitly magical, but some subclasses would lean that way, it could encompass a scholar-adventurers, witch hunters, transmuters, and maybe illusionists (1/3 caster)
• Barbarian--not the same one as 5e; themed around brute force fighting and wilderness survival--rage would not be the central feature. Archetypes like beastmaster and hunter could live here along with berserker
• Knave--skill-monkey and agile fighter with lots of tricks, could lean towards swashbuckling, sneakthievery, dabbling in the occult (1/3 caster), or tactical battlemaster/warlord archetypes
• Sorcerer--using this more evocative name, but designed more like a warlock--would start out NOT having signed a pact, and finding a supernatural patron would be a major goal. A lot of it's casting would be built around rituals. Pacts would include lords of chaos, lords of law, and stranger types of things.
• Warrior-Monk--I'm a bit on the fence about what would be included / differ from 5e.

Species, a bit hard to do low magic with no humans, so more sword and sorcery facing:

• Tiefling--the majority group in the dominant civilization ruling the major cities as dens if iniquity
• Serpentman--as above, but in decline
• Lizardman
• Goliath
• Thri-kreen (or green martian)
• Birdperson
• Changeling

I like the idea of only one magic user, though having the pact be something you have to go find in the world seems hard to work i to a dnd class structure.