D&D 5E Archetypes Still Missing?

[Lycurgon]

Plant based Barbarian - grasping vines/difficult terrain. Basically take the 4e Warden make a Barbarian subclass.

Rune/Magic Barbarian - I don't want a spellcasting Barbarian, seen heaps of homebrew versions (Rage Mage etc), but giving magical powers that can be activated while raging. Having a choice of what effect they want during their rage.

Leader based Barbarian - inspiring battle cries or warchants, buffing allies while raging. 4e had the Thaneblooded (IIRC).

Healer focused Bard - we have a healing focused cleric, Warlock and Druid, so a Bard should be able to get in on this theme too. And we have a number of dark/edgy subclasses, it would be nice to have some good/light flavoured themes too.

Song/Aura based Bard - buffing aura/songs to boost allies.

I think their are a number of Gods profiles that are not served by the current domains for clerics...

Darkness Domain
Chaos Domain (we have order but not its counterpart)
Justice Domain
Protection Domain
Travel Domain
Earth Domain
Water Domain
Fire Domain
Air Domain (Tempest can possible cover this but could be a different focus)

Plant based Druid - Wild shaping into Treant/Groot form and plant spell/abilities

Duelist/Armourless/Speed based Fighter

Dreadnought/Defender Fighter - Heavy armoured, immovable, defensive warrior, covering the old Dwarven defender concept (but open to all races)

Tattooed Monk - Been a thing of the past but don't have it now. A Monk with a choice of buffs/powers they want. Could be a Rune based Monk instead.

Plant based Ranger -

Shadow based Rogue - The old Shadowdancer

Dagger/Throwing based Rogue - Non-magical

Melee Sorcerer - We have the Sword Bard, the Bladesinger Wizard, the Hexblade Warlock... Where is the Melee focused Sorcerer?

Dragon Warlock

 

[Mind of tempest]

Are there any archetypes you feel are still missing from 5e?

As far back as the run up to Xanathar’s, the designers claimed that most common archetypes were served by the game already, and soon they’d need to start branching out into stranger waters.

But IMO, they still haven’t filled some narrative spaces that deserve to be filled.

Keneticist - character, probably Monk, that is all about throwing things around with their mind, and/or manipulating gravity and inertia. These could be two archetypes, in fact.

The gravity does have dunamancy, from wildemount, but it deserves a more dedicated “bender” style archetype.

Telekinesis, though, is a footnote in a dozen archetypes, but no one actually specializes in it. No one fights and solves problems primarily via telekinesis.

Oh, I guess one more would be the summoner, but they have kindof serves this archetype, by now. Not well, but they’ve done it.

Oh! And the acrobat/athlete that isn’t necessarily supernatural.

What are yours?

you just described a psion specialising in telekinetics.

They actually just ran out of room in the books that they were tested for. They all tested high enough to pass IIRC.

As for me:

Plant Druids

And also something I recently realized:

The Monster-maker Wizard. Wizards are supposedly responsible for all kinds of creatures: Golems, undead, oozes, chimeric hybrids, etc. But there is no Wizard subclass dedicated to making your own monster for you to customize. Given the way new pet subclasses work, it should be trivial to port the rules into a Wizard School in order to create your own Dr. Frankenstein PC.

wait so why did they not just dump them in a big collection of options book?

 

[Leatherhead]

wait so why did they not just dump them in a big collection of options book?

"Why not put them in their own book?" Is an easy question to answer: It was back in 2017 when WotC still had the trickle flow of books coming out to prevent market glut.
"Why not put them in a different upcoming book?" Is harder to pin down. It might have something to do with using UA as a hype generator for new books.

 

[JEB]

It was in a Jeremy Crawford interview about what got in XGtE. Probably a Dragon Talk.

Honestly I can't go digging through all those videos at the moment, but I can find other people who also recall hearing about it via a quick google search, so at least I'm not going crazy.

Thanks, that helped me narrow it down: Dragon Talk #164, "Wolfgang Baur and Meagan Maricle", 20 December 2017, starting around 22m 13s:

Jeremy Crawford: So, here's an example of something in the playtest process - and again, there weren't very many of these - but there were a few that scored really high... um... but it just wasn't their time yet. And so one of those was the Stone Sorcerer. A lot of people liked it - we really liked it - uh, but... there was some more we wanted to do - uh, not just with the Stone Sorcerer but also with the Phoenix Sorcerer and the sort of some elemental things going on there, and wanting, uh, you know, to sort of approach them in a more holistic way. We were already full up on the sorcerer being super well liked, cause that - so it's basically, with the sorcerer, we had a high-class problem. Uh, we had more satisfaction for the subclasses than we expected, so we had basically more subclasses available than we had, uh, room we were planning, and- and also time on, uh, devoting to the sorcerer. Because that's something that's often invisible to people who, uh, buy our books and play our game, is every rule is - for us - has a cost of time. Uh, because getting it right, testing it, reading the feedback, uh, those are hours, if not days, if - in some cases - if not weeks, if not months of work, and... So we always are having to do the calculus of - essentially - do we have the time - this resource - do we have enough of it to do this thing right. And if we don't right now, we're gonna - we'll, we'll save it. Um, uh, 'cause it turns out there will be more D&D books, and some of these things can come later.

Crawford later notes how material can be delayed to more appropriate books where it fits better. That said, we're over four years on from this interview, and they haven't found a place to put them, so I wonder what happened? Maybe the Wildfire Druid or Genie Warlock from Tasha's are meant to be successors, but they're pretty different...

(Incidentally, someone would really do amateur D&D historians a service by making full transcripts of those Dragon Talks... lot of additional design info in there I left out. One tidbit was that the War Wizard got in the book mainly because all the other UA wizard subclasses had scored worse - and even it only squeaked by on the minimum 70% satisfaction rate.)

 

[Leatherhead]

(Incidentally, someone would really do amateur D&D historians a service by making full transcripts of those Dragon Talks... lot of additional design info in there I left out. One tidbit was that the War Wizard got in the book mainly because all the other UA wizard subclasses had scored worse - and even it only squeaked by on the minimum 70% satisfaction rate.)

Oh gosh yes, transcripts would be awesome. It's a shame the Happy Fun Hour streams were pulled before someone could do the same with them. A lot of interesting information was lost to the either.

Also, yeah, people really give a lot of pushback against Wizard Subclasses because "They already have so many." Which I blame on diving the School-Specialist Wizard up into 8 different Subclasses, most of which aren't even all that popular.

 

[JEB]

Oh gosh yes, transcripts would be awesome. It's a shame the Happy Fun Hour streams were pulled before someone could do the same with them. A lot of interesting information was lost to the either.

Huh, that is a shame, especially since some of the class options mentioned in this thread made near-official appearances there. That said, while they have been purged from YouTube, looks like at least some are still on Twitch: here Someone may want to archive them before they join the YouTube versions in the void, though...

Also, yeah, people really give a lot of pushback against Wizard Subclasses because "They already have so many." Which I blame on diving the School-Specialist Wizard up into 8 different Subclasses, most of which aren't even all that popular.

Crawford also justified not having more wizard subclasses in Xanathar's in another way - he noted that there were more new spells for wizards in the book than for other classes, and agreed with Tito's statement that subclasses are less important to wizards than having more spells. (For customization purposes, I assume they mean.)

 

[Minigiant]

• Barbarian
  • Barbarian Chief/King/Thane- Barbarian with Face abilities and Warcry Support
  • Whirling Barbarian- Agile Dual Wielding Barbarians
• Cleric
  • Hunt Domain
  • Sea Domain
• Fighter
  • Anime Fighter- Fighter with flash steps, after images, and other anime/manga/manhua warrior features
  • Gladiator Fighter- Partial armor and exotic weapons
  • Simple Weapon Fighter- Fighter that can use daggers, clubs and spears
• Monk
  • Anime Monk- Ki blsts, all around attacks, power-ups
• Paladin
  • Saint Paladin- Focuses of heals and gets boosted cantrips
• Ranger
  • Beastcaster- Has smll beast and casts magic on the beast to turn it into a sentry and magic projectile.
  • Detective- Better tracking and divination to hunt and find anyone.
  • Geologist Ranger- Rocks and Stone
  • Herbalist Ranger- Plants and potions.
• Rogue
  • Brutal Scoundrel- Strength based Medium Armor Brawler
• Sorcerer
  • Arcane Sorcerer- Classic Magic in the blood Sorcerer. Gets ritual book and more sorcery points
  • Noble Sorcerer- Bred for magic bloodline of nobility. Face features. Better armor and weapons.
• Wizard
  • Blood Mage- Can use HD or wounded foes for magic features

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Maybe my players are simpletons, but they've hardly moved beyond PHB stuff despite having access to most WotC books. I give them pretty much free hands to reskin stuff like spell effects and such to match their character concept and background though, but they haven't used it much.

So I don't really miss any archetypes. Almost everything can be solved by some reskinning and freeform refluffing.

 

[Corinnguard]

The number of missing subclasses from WoTC is why I go looking for classes/subclasses in places like D&D Wiki and GM Binder. Some of the fan-made material is better than what WoTC comes out with.