D&D 5E Companion thread to "5E Survivor - Subclasses (Part VI: Fighters)"

[Ancalagon]

I know very little about psionics but my time on this site has taught me that it is a contentious thing. Replace the Psi part of Psi Warrior and it would have done better. The mechanics are pretty good in a void but if you don't think they represent psionics well then how well they work won't matter.

That - or the player/DM doesn't like psionics from a flavor/lore perspective.

Mechanically it's a bit like a simpler battlemaster where you don't get to pick the maneuvers. It can be reflavored somewhat - when I played one he was an old warrior-sage who had mastered ancient mystical gith techniques he had mastered from an old tome.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So when you say "uninspiring" - is it because it has no "fluff", no "flavor"?

In a way, I kind of like that feature. A while back I made a swashbuckler (the concept, not the rogue subclass) and played him for about 5 levels - a dex build, melee specialized battlemaster. I had to "inject" the flavor into it (the daring swashbuckler), and because the battlemaster is such a blank slate, it didn't "interfere" with the concept.

However, I can totally see why for some it would be off-putting...

There is a tightrope to walk. Personally, I prefer to have classes that are naturally quite flavorful, because I believe it's WAY easier to overcome/dismiss/rework flavor you don't like than to stare at a completely blank canvas while being told "do whatever you want! There are no limits, this is a pure creativity zone!"

My term for this is the tyranny of the empty page (though I'm sure I heard it from someone else, long ago.) It's particularly difficult with something like D&D, because the usual advice for overcoming this problem is "just get started!" But...you can't do that with a D&D character. You have to decide your starting class, ability scores, maneuvers/spells/etc. depending on what class you're playing, backstory, etc. "Just roleplay!" is not particularly useful advice when you have no touchstones to work off of, but making those touchstones is exactly where the tyranny of the empty page strikes hardest.

I'm curious--are you of the opposite opinion to that first paragraph? Do you (or anyone else, no need to restrict it to one person's answers) find it onerously difficult to overcome built-in flavor?

 

[RealAlHazred]

I will also mention a Mystic homebrew I thought was excellent, you could fighty-type Mystics or "pure" Mystics. I always liked it better than the Psi Warrior subclass, as I thought it had better flavor.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm curious--are you of the opposite opinion to that first paragraph? Do you (or anyone else, no need to restrict it to one person's answers) find it onerously difficult to overcome built-in flavor?

I do. Especially when the tag it in mechanically, but also when other people try and pigeonhole characters based on the baked in flavor.

Most onerously for me is the push to make sure rogues only get SA with certain weapons or the non-mechanical non-rule of druidic armor.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I do. Especially when the tag it in mechanically, but also when other people try and pigeonhole characters based on the baked in flavor.

Most onerously for me is the push to make sure rogues only get SA with certain weapons or the non-mechanical non-rule of druidic armor.

That's not quite what I'm referring to, though I can see where those would be issues.

I'm more referring to things like, for example, the fact that the Fighter has essentially no flavor whatsoever unless you pick specific subclasses (e.g. Rune Knight)--even the Eldritch Knight is practically devoid of any flavor whatsoever--whereas something like Bard or Paladin has a lot of flavor, but that flavor can be pretty easily ignored.

Bard colleges can be reflavored in a host of different ways, and despite the label on things like "Song of Rest" and the instrument proficiency stuff, the class isn't required to do anything related to singing or music at all. Many think of it as such, but you could quite easily do a Valor Bard warrior-poet (I actually attempted that on one of my 5e characters), or an Eloquence Bard orator, or a Swords Bard circus performer, or a Lore Bard ventriloquist, or whatever might tickle your fancy.

Paladin Oaths are super easy to recast in new lights, particularly because the tenets described are more like loose guidelines for your own stuff. I preferred the old 4e version of Lay on Hands, but as it is, it's literally just "you have a pool of HP to use." There's nothing saying a Paladin's holy smites have to look holy, and indeed the Oath of Vengeance works quite well for a Batman-style "dark knight" without actually being evil in any way.

I would consider Bard and Paladin to be high on default flavor, but extremely easy to shift to some other flavor if you want. I find classes like Fighter, where the flavor is completely nonexistent for several subclasses, WAY more difficult to do anything with. If I don't like the flavor of a class, I can almost certainly change it or at least refactor it in a more useful form.