D&D 5E Class power and Subclass design space: a discussion

[Aldarc]

Not bad. Similar to how a warlock gets high level spells through Mystic Arcanum, but tied to subclass instead of class.

Thanks.

I think this is a good approach, and somehow strangely familiar. I'm not sure what game I saw which did something like this, but I think it has happened.

I'm not sure, but I would definitely be intrigued if you can remember which game(s) does.

It would be a particularly good approach, because if subclasses gave level 6-9 spells for those who wanted them, they'd need to give stuff that was equally powerful to that for people who didn't take those options, which would mean more parity there.

What I personally like is how it flattens the power curve somewhat as designers would have to assume that not every mage has or pursues high level magic. Or that DMs could prohibit subclasses that provide level 6-9 spells while still having room for wizards, clerics, druids, and the like. But yeah, designers would ideally provide options to the 1-5 spells only subclasses that made up for the loss of level 6-9 spells, possibly doubling-down or expanding class features.

 

[NotAYakk]

Thanks.

I'm not sure, but I would definitely be intrigued if you can remember which game(s) does.

What I personally like is how it flattens the power curve somewhat as designers would have to assume that not every mage has or pursues high level magic. Or that DMs could prohibit subclasses that provide level 6-9 spells while still having room for wizards, clerics, druids, and the like. But yeah, designers would ideally provide options to the 1-5 spells only subclasses that made up for the loss of level 6-9 spells, possibly doubling-down or expanding class features.

One issue is such features would be back loaded. You don't start getting 6-9 spells until level 11; so any "sword wizars" would get tiny amounts of stuff before 11.

Unless you slow progression of 1-5 spells, in which case you are reaching the point of "why is this the same class"?

 

[Aldarc]

One issue is such features would be back loaded. You don't start getting 6-9 spells until level 11; so any "sword wizars" would get tiny amounts of stuff before 11.

Unless you slow progression of 1-5 spells, in which case you are reaching the point of "why is this the same class"?

Why is that necessarily so? I'm not sure if I follow the logical necessity of your conclusion from your prior premise.

 

[Minigiant]

Ah that's where your wrong - because nobody will actually care. I mean, aside from a handful of grogs, who actually cares about Favoured Terrain? FE probably has a few more fans due to dubious memories of a time in a previous edition when it was cool, or because they really want to be dedicated to murdering innocent lovely goblins, those monsters, but there would not be many mourners at that funeral.

I never underestimate the power of people to find an excuse to blame poor execution on. I always round up. It the FE-less 6e ranger is weak again, those few grogs will blame it on the lack of FE. That blamenot going viral is possible but I would never bet on it.

Um, okay lol. I guess if you know my mind better than I do, there's not much point discussing this is there?

I'm not claiming to be reading you telepathically. I am just stating what I've found on D&D viral thoughts, articles, discussions, and memes. I'm focused on the community not you personally. I am sorry if you thought it was targeting you.

Brainstorming: remove full casters as part of the base class. Spells naturally only go up to fifth level. Subclasses may provide access to 6-9th level spells. You may be a wizard with only 5th level spells because you took the Swordmage subclass whereas another wizard may have taken the Archmage subclass and gained access to upper level spells. And similarly with other caster classes.

That is a great idea. Especially if the game still gives full casters 6th-9th level spell slots and has the natural upcasting ingrained in spells.

It also would allow DMs to give out spells scrolls, spellbooks, and artifacts that grant access to higher tier magic as quest and faction rewards. Imagine if you had to capture a genie, raid a lich's liar, slay a pit fiend, or become a pope to learn wish.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm not claiming to be reading you telepathically. I am just stating what I've found on D&D viral thoughts, articles, discussions, and memes. I'm focused on the community not you personally. I am sorry if you thought it was targeting you.

You literally specified you were talking about me using the word "Your". Check your post if you want. You claimed (twice in one post!) to know what my criticisms were about better than I did. Which would be fine if you demonstrated you were correct somehow, but it was merely an unsupported pair of assertions.

 

[Minigiant]

You literally specified you were talking about me using the word "Your". Check your post if you want. You claimed (twice in one post!) to know what my criticisms were about better than I did. Which would be fine if you demonstrated you were correct somehow, but it was merely an unsupported pair of assertions.

I was attempting to target the criticism of some aspects of the community and it leaked into this discussion. I'm sorry about that.

D&D inspired a good portion of fantasy in other media. Unfortunate many don't recognize how the other systems and media change them and fail to adjust back when those ideas come back to the game that inspired them. And it is worse when the imported ideas are from original sources not inspired by D&D. And I think classes like Druid, Ranger, Monk, and Sorcerer were harmed by this in their design space as they were poorly simulated from a clear narrative.

 

[MichaelSomething]

The biggest barrier to this will always be full casters, more than anything else. Just being a full caster in the 2E, 3E or 5E style means your character is incredibly powerful as a baseline, and if literally all you had was full caster spells and a reasonable (not even amazing) spell list, and say the 5E Druid/Cleric* way of casting, you'd be solidly strong (if somewhat boring). This really limits what you can do with subclasses with casters, just like it really limited what PrCs could do with full casters.

Whereas everyone else has a lot of lesser stuff that could potentially be more modular. In a more daring world, the solution would be to get rid of full casters, as 4E did. That way your design space is absolutely massive, as 4E very clearly and repeatedly demonstrated. But even ignoring that option, it's problematic, because it means you can't really have "less powerful base classes" for those classes, only for non-full-casters.

The only other way around it I can see is to perhaps further weaken spells (perfectly reasonable IMHO, and I say that as someone who plays full casters most of the time in 5E), even beyond what 5E has done, or just really fill up the subclasses of all classes with tons and tons of stuff, beyond what 5E does.

* = This made me realize that the real issue with the 5E Sorcerer, can't believe I never quite got this before, despite having touched on it, is that because everyone is a spontaneous caster in 5E, even Wizards, having a class who has the deal of "spontaneous caster", and worse access to spells as a result makes zero sense. The Sorcerer no longer has a niche, and metamagic ain't cutting it.

Another solution would be to have the subclass features eat up spell slots in order to be useable.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

D&D inspired a good portion of fantasy in other media. Unfortunate many don't recognize how the other systems and media change them and fail to adjust back when those ideas come back to the game that inspired them. And it is worse when the imported ideas are from original sources not inspired by D&D. And I think classes like Druid, Ranger, Monk, and Sorcerer were harmed by this in their design space as they were poorly simulated from a clear narrative.

If I understand correctly, that you think people should have to change their ideas, rather than the game being more open, then I think this is another idea of yours that is incompatible with accessibility. If you want people to find they have to adapt to a bunch of increasingly weird and grog-ish classes, rather than being able to use the ideas that they have, you're looking to have an ever-increasingly unaccessible, and ever-more out-of-touch version of D&D.

Some people would love that, I'm sure, but that's what the OSR and so on is for. It's not like they're asking for unreasonable things that have never been possible in D&D, or would even be difficult to do mechanically. It is possible I misunderstand because your wording is a bit confusing though.

Sorcerer was harmed by the exact reverse of this, too. Sorcerers have no real niche in 5E, as you earlier agreed, because Wizards (the class) and so on have effectively "eaten their lunch", by taking their flexibility (which helped make the Wizard class much more accessible in 5E note, it works more like pop-culture Wizards than Vancian freakshows). The right thing to have done, I would suggest would then have been to look to pop culture and see what people might expect from a class called Sorcerer, whilst retaining some of the existing flavour (like being dragon-blooded as an option and so on). They did precisely this in at least one of the playtest Sorcerers (which, by all reports here, was pretty popular, so not sure what changed there).

Instead, they looked back to 3E, and created a class which was as bizarrely incapable as the 3E Sorcerer (there's no earthly explanation as to why they're worse with weapons/armour than Bards, it's not like they had to study), and had as it's whole mechanical "thing", doing 3E-style metamagic, which is again not really something anyone, not even grogs like us (title of my autobiography), would expect. They went completely within a D&D box, and created a class is basically only even okay because it's a full caster in a game where full casters are awesome. And it's easily the least awesome of them as a result.

Monks have some similar issues. They're too focused on being D&D Monks. They did get away from that later, and they're not really as bad a showing as Sorcerers (and like all 4E and 5E classes*, "acceptable"), but because of that, they're too "inside the box" and the attempt at, for example, an Avatar (the cartoon) style for them is a bit of a dismal failure.

Rangers again are bound by D&D chains in a bad way, as has been discussed. But you seem to be advocating for them to be bound tighter, but putting a couple of grog-y concepts into the base class for no apparent reason.

Not sure what issue you have with Druids. Someone coming to D&D new but with pop culture and gaming experience of Druids isn't going to be particularly weirded out or confused by their implementation. No are they broadly OP. Moon Druid is just really OP for 2-6 and 18-20. It didn't have to be, and indeed for many levels it's kind of "meh". It's just not a very good design and not one that had to happen.

* = Interesting to me that we've had two editions now where basically no classes just totally outright sucked, very much unlike 3.XE. Some are better, some are worse, but none are total junk.

 

[Minigiant]

If I understand correctly, that you think people should have to change their ideas, rather than the game being more open, then I think this is another idea of yours that is incompatible with accessibility. If you want people to find they have to adapt to a bunch of increasingly weird and grog-ish classes, rather than being able to use the ideas that they have, you're looking to have an ever-increasingly unaccessible, and ever-more out-of-touch version of D&D.

No, I'm saying that they should have asked "what is a X" then plopped that idea into the world. Then see which of the X's aspects and features from past D&D match the image and aid the X in their play in D&D worlds.

Some people would love that, I'm sure, but that's what the OSR and so on is for. It's not like they're asking for unreasonable things that have never been possible in D&D, or would even be difficult to do mechanically. It is possible I misunderstand because your wording is a bit confusing though.

That's literally what I'm saying.

A Westerosi ranger, a Middle Earth ranger, or a High Middle AgeEnglish ranger would get eaten in the FR or Nethir Vale. (Which is funny because the ranger is based on Aragorn and he's probably the only ranger in ME who could survive with their skills past level 2) Whereas a WOW ranger would do find in the Underdark. Rexxar or Sylvanas would have no problem handling drow warriors and Lloth priests as they fights demons, ogres, monsters and wizards. Same with Garruk from MTG.

Some concepts from outside of D&D might have to change when imported to D&D. Some might have to change classes. You have to define the concept then adopt it to the game. You cannot import Jon Snow or Robin Hood straight into D&D as a ranger. Things would have to change as the game is built for Greyhawk not England or the Seven Kingdom..

I constantly see people wanting to import nonDD character into the game under a class with no changes. These people have to accept either either they (1) must choose another change or (2) accept D&Dism in their character to make an imperfect fit. The class systems of D&D can only handle so many archetypes before it breaks. Therefore some ideas might have to adapt on their end.

Sorcerer was harmed by the exact reverse of this, too. Sorcerers have no real niche in 5E, as you earlier agreed, because Wizards (the class) and so on have effectively "eaten their lunch", by taking their flexibility (which helped make the Wizard class much more accessible in 5E note, it works more like pop-culture Wizards than Vancian freakshows). The right thing to have done, I would suggest would then have been to look to pop culture and see what people might expect from a class called Sorcerer, whilst retaining some of the existing flavour (like being dragon-blooded as an option and so on). They did precisely this in at least one of the playtest Sorcerers (which, by all reports here, was pretty popular, so not sure what changed there).

Instead, they looked back to 3E, and created a class which was as bizarrely incapable as the 3E Sorcerer (there's no earthly explanation as to why they're worse with weapons/armour than Bards, it's not like they had to study), and had as it's whole mechanical "thing", doing 3E-style metamagic, which is again not really something anyone, not even grogs like us (title of my autobiography), would expect. They went completely within a D&D box, and created a class is basically only even okay because it's a full caster in a game where full casters are awesome. And it's easily the least awesome of them as a result.

Monks have some similar issues. They're too focused on being D&D Monks. They did get away from that later, and they're not really as bad a showing as Sorcerers (and like all 4E and 5E classes*, "acceptable"), but because of that, they're too "inside the box" and the attempt at, for example, an Avatar (the cartoon) style for them is a bit of a dismal failure.

Rangers again are bound by D&D chains in a bad way, as has been discussed. But you seem to be advocating for them to be bound tighter, but putting a couple of grog-y concepts into the base class for no apparent reason.

Not sure what issue you have with Druids. Someone coming to D&D new but with pop culture and gaming experience of Druids isn't going to be particularly weirded out or confused by their implementation. No are they broadly OP. Moon Druid is just really OP for 2-6 and 18-20. It didn't have to be, and indeed for many levels it's kind of "meh". It's just not a very good design and not one that had to happen.

Exactly. There was too much focus on replicating the past's skeleton not enough focus on replicating the mindset of the members of the class.

What does a druid, monk, ranger or sorcerer has this class feature?
How does a druid, monk, ranger or sorcerer handle the challenges they are expected to face?
How would that class feature express themselves in the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Ravnica, or Nethir Vale?
What would the core core features of a druid, monk, ranger or sorcerer?
Which class features would be optional for a druid, monk, ranger or sorcerer as a subclass?
What are the limitations of the druid's, monk's, ranger's or sorcerer's features?

A designer has to figure out how much "Aragorn of the Forgotten Realms", "Harry Potter of Eberron" or "Aang of Krynn" changes and make them fit with other concepts.

Because there is only so much design space, Add too much and you get the druid. Add too little you get the ranger.

 

[Weiley31]

I still don't get why the 5E Next Sorcerer was changed. The stuff for it was damn good.