D&D 5E Archetypes to add to 5e

[Parmandur]

That's what I'm getting at. The early 5e stuff focused on the Forgotten Realms when it wasn't focused on homebrew, but these days content is being put out for all sorts of different settings.

But that's been pushed by Mearls & Crawford, not the new people...? And it fits their early statements about their long-term plans?

 

[Parmandur]

Personally, if there is any AD&D sacred cow left that needs to be killed off, it's the goddamned multiverse.

D&D has a lot of different, unique settings but the one thing that every single D&D setting has in common is that it isn't improved by chopping into pieces and throwing it into a mixing bowl with the pieces of every other D&D setting. To switch up the metaphor, when you pour all your settings into the kitchen sink, the only flavor you have left is dishwater.

If people want to mix and match all their different D&D settings, by all means have fun, but please stop asking the rest of us to accept it as the default.



Spelljammer is my favorite D&D setting, and it actually works better when you don't force it to accommodate all of the others.

WotC found in market research that the customer base prefers the interconnected story, and that 3.x and 4E made a serious business error going the opposite direction. By all means, feel free to ignore it, but don't expect different from WotC anytime soon.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

We're getting off topic a bit here it seems...

Let's get back to archetypes? What would a Rogue with a touch of Divine Power be like?

I could see something like a lesser version of divine intervention (you run into the lock you just can't pick and once a week your god cheats for you) being a part of it. Possibly also turn undead (in case your rogue needs to break into some undead-guarded temples of rival gods). If the divine rogue was a spell caster and had "most of the spells are from two schools", just to be different, I hope divination is one of the schools.

 

[DEFCON 1]

WotC found in market research that the customer base prefers the interconnected story, and that 3.x and 4E made a serious business error going the opposite direction. By all means, feel free to ignore it, but don't expect different from WotC anytime soon.

I would say its not even an "interconnected story" so much as it is just a definition used to explain why the same names, identities, and themes occur across every single campaign game.

If Eberron and the Realms are supposed to be completely different things, why do they both have a 5-headed dragon named 'Tiamat' in it? How is it that a campaign setting like Mystara, and the campaign setting of the kid down the street from you both have a spell called 'Melf's Acid Arrow'? A name that has nothing to do with either Mystara or the setting of that kid down the street? How do you explain that the same types of angels like Solars and Planetars all seem to have the exact same strengths, weaknesses, abilities, features, offensive and defensive capabilities across hundreds of thousands of different games and settings (as defined for us via the Monster Manual)?

The answer is simple... they just admit that every game of D&D is a part of D&D. If you are playing D&D it is going to have most of the same aspects of D&D regardless of who is running it and where they are setting it. The idea of a 'multiverse' is just a newfangled way of defining that concept using a single, easy-to-understand word.

Some people may way to try and divorce themselves from the idea that their D&D game is connected to the D&D games of others... but it's not. We are all using the same rules, we are all using the same concepts of what it means to have a race or a class, we are all focused on the same statistics to define who our characters are, the same exact entities, definitions and locations can show up across wildly disparate worlds and stories. All of our games are D&D. We are all a part of what it means to play D&D. We and the games we run are all by definition a part of the 'D&D multiverse'.

And if you don't want your game or your world to be a part of the D&D multiverse? Don't play D&D. Then you don't have to ever worry about it.

 

[Undrave]

I could see something like a lesser version of divine intervention (you run into the lock you just can't pick and once a week your god cheats for you) being a part of it. Possibly also turn undead (in case your rogue needs to break into some undead-guarded temples of rival gods). If the divine rogue was a spell caster and had "most of the spells are from two schools", just to be different, I hope divination is one of the schools.

I'm guessing a Divine Rogue would be a sort of agent of a Faith, or directly under order of the god, that does unsavoury but necessary tasks.

You ever read up on Erathis in 4e? She was a Lawful Neutral goddess obsessed with linking everything in the Astral Sea together in a Lattice of Heaven. She tried but her lattice basically exploded. Since then, her and her Exarchs and followers have been engaged in a 'Game of Making' where they try to recreate EVERYTHING that could exist within the universe. They build, they invent... but far from the gaze of Pelor and Ioun (with whom she shares a domain) Earths also deals in all the darker aspects of creation. Torture, necromancy, assassination methods, etc...

I could see a Divine Rogue serving a Goddess like that who is very goal oriented and doesn't care about morality beyond that.

 

[Parmandur]

Albino Assassin monks, obviously.

 

[Tony Vargas]

D&D 1e includes the possibility of any kind of religious system (especially if contemporary with medieval Europe, or alternatively occurring in any scifi novel).
The 1e Deities and Demigods is an optional supplement − separate from the core three.

In theory you could've done a lot with religion in 1e. In practice, the guidelines you got were few, and the most definitive-seeming official books on the topic were Gods, Demigods & Heroes for 0D&D, and Deities & Demigods for 1e. They painted D&D in a very polytheistic light. Heck, even little things like the character sheet having a space for 'patron deity' did that. Whatever the proto-D&D-campaigns of Gygax & Arneson may have been, they weren't readily accessible to the bulk of the D&D-playing base, who just, like, bought books. Maybe read The Dragon.
1e /did/ spell out that a Cleric's lowest-level spells were the produce of his own Faith & devotion, though, not delivered by the deity nor it's intermediaries nor any other external source, so there was a seed of the idea you see in Eberron, even then.

In 2e, esp the CPH, they expanded on the idea of philosophies & forces as well as deities being objects of faith and granting power. So you could have Clerics of philosophies that were unconnected to the gods as such, gaining spell powers just like more conventional clerics. IIRC, though it didn't make much of a splash, you could also have Clerics who, like most actual polytheists, worshipped (or at least appeased) different deities at different time for different purposes. That further opened the door to alternatives to the seeming-default (only thing presented in official books for a long time) exclusive-patron-deity-based apocryphal (almost pop-culture, really) polytheism of D&D.

 

[Undrave]

Obviously, what we need is a Dwarf Tosser archetype who can use Dwarves as Thrown Weapon.

Come to think of it, is there any Thrown Weapon specialists? The closest we get is dagger throwing rogues...

 

[Tony Vargas]

Obviously, what we need is a Dwarf Tosser archetype who can use Dwarves as Thrown Weapon.

Oh, I thought you meant a Dwarf who's, like, a complete a tosser.

 

[Mister-Kent]

The only real "divine rogue" archetype that comes to my mind is a sin-eater - maybe they have some limited Remove Curse capability?