D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

[Lanefan]

Would that be like removing fireball from light clerics?

Way more than that. The arcane-divine divide becomes sacrosanct; even spells that are superficially similar e.g. Detect Magic are cast differently and give different results. Clerics get Flamestrike at 5th but never get Fireball or anything close, Mages get Fireball at 3rd but never get Flamestrike.

I'd also probably chop the number of subclasses immensely - there wouldn't be a separate "light Cleric"; instead you'd just be a Cleric with the full spell list and it'd be your own in-character choice whether to primarily use your light-based spells given the choice.

 

[Lanefan]

I think they scrapped that to get rid of the, "who's playing the cleric?" problem. Because it makes it more difficult to play a cadre of wizards or a rogue campaign etc.

Which is fine: it should be more challenging to play a less-well-rounded party.

And if nobody wants to play a Cleric but the party still needs one, go and recruit an NPC.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

6E or homebrew.
So I'e started a stretching Bounded accuracy thread. This one's about conceptually ditching archetypes. Main reason is you're the one writing this and its more work.

Do you prefer a one true way design a'la OSR/Shadowdark or something sort of build options (feats, talent tree, powers, invocations etc). Keep in mind you're the one writing it. More options more work and complexity. (4 classes to lvl 5 would be a decent start point imho).

If things go well might do monsters or feats concepts next weekend.

Why? What problem are you trying to fix? Without knowing what you are trying to achieve, The only comment I can make is “if it ain’t broke don’t try and fix it”.

 

[Lanefan]

... With a set of, say, 4-6 total subclasses for each class, ...

... So: 13 classes ...

Rough math tells me that's between 52 and 78 possible class-subclass combinations, each one needing its own rules and write-up and each one then needing to be vaguely balanced against each other both before and after the corollary variable of PC species is introduced.

Have fun with that.

I'd start - and stop - with 15-20 hard-coded and easily-identifyable classes. No subclasses. Each of those classes has clear strengths in some things and obvious weaknesses in others, with limited bleed-over and hard niche protection. Bang - there's the archetypes.

The thing we'd have to accept is that there's a few archetypes that just don't play well with a game built around party interdependence, the most obvious (and, sadly, most popular) of which are the "I can do everything" archetype and the "I'm the boss" archetype. So, those get punted.

My class list might look something like:

Warriors:
--- Knight (shiny armour, etc.)
--- Swashbuckler (light-armoured, ranged or melee)
--- Veteran (basic mercenary type)
--- Ranger (woods warriors, non-casters, no animal companion)
Rogues:
--- Thief (basic sneaky-scouty type)
--- Assassin (hired killer or spy)
--- Charmer (talky persuasive type)
--- Dancer (genericized wire-fu type, replaces Monk)
Casters:
--- Cleric (divine caster as usual)
--- Nature Cleric (a.k.a. Druid, covers Shaman as well)
--- War Cleric (covers Paladin also)
--- Diviner (divnination spells etc. mostly go here)
--- Illusionist (mind-screwers, charmers)
--- Necromancer (they make things dead then play with the corpses)
--- Summoner (summoning, gating, conjuring spells and familiars/animal companions exclusively go here)
--- Mage (artillerists and buffers)
Oddballs:
--- Psionicist (if it can be made to fit without hosing Illusionists' screw-with-your-mind niche, debatable)
--- Tactician (maybe best as a non-adventuring class?)
--- Artificer (or Tinkerer; specifically for games/settings that have lots of devices and tech)

What's intentionally missing?
--- Swordmage - the classic "I wanna do it all" class - gone in any form.
--- Bard - can't make it fit between Charmer and Illusionist - gone.
--- Warlord or Leader - classic "I'm the boss" class, also healing is strictly Clerical.
--- Barbarian - can't make it fit between the other Warrior classes except as a very boring one-trick pony - gone.
--- Multi-classing - gone.

 

[Lanefan]

Uno Reverse!

All features should be available to all characters. A feature's cost to take though depends on your class. Fighters can buy martial skills at cost, but it costs a greater amount to buy magical or skill expert abilities. You can then layer on prestige abilities that cost higher for everyone (representing niche expertise or epic abilities). No character is barred from learning anything, but it costs a lot more to go outside your field.

For example: A fighter can buy weapon mastery at cost of 1 point or buy an arcane spell slot for 2 points. He could also buy a Commander ability for 2 points as its an elite skill, but buying an elite divine skill (like divine intervention) is going to cost him 3 points. The PC gets 2 points per level and can bank them. (all numbers are made up for illustrative purposes)

Which rather defeats the whole point of distinct classes and niche protection, right?

It also blows up the idea of recognizable archetypes; and while that's the premise of this thread, it's a premise I oppose

 

[CreamCloud0]

What's intentionally missing?
--- Swordmage - the classic "I wanna do it all" class - gone in any form.

i have to disagree, swordmage isn't the 'i want to do it all' class but rather the melee spells spellcaster/my weapon attacks inflict magical status/deal elemental damage, IMO at least, nobody can agree on what swordmage is/does

--- Bard - can't make it fit between Charmer and Illusionist - gone.

if anything this is the 'i wanna do it all' one

--- Warlord or Leader - classic "I'm the boss" class, also healing is strictly Clerical.

isn't actually a boss of anyone + healing should exist for more than just the cleric

--- Barbarian - can't make it fit between the other Warrior classes except as a very boring one-trick pony - gone.
--- Multi-classing - gone.

agree

 

[MichaelSomething]

Which rather defeats the whole point of distinct classes and niche protection, right?

It also blows up the idea of recognizable archetypes; and while that's the premise of this thread, it's a premise I oppose

4E tried to have niche protection and everyone hated it. People don't want to be locked into roles based on class; they want to be whatever fictional concept then envision in their heads.

 

[CreamCloud0]

4E tried to have niche protection and everyone hated it. People don't want to be locked into roles based on class; they want to be whatever fictional concept then envision in their heads.

true but a shame, who knew that designing something with a mechanical role as your principle design goal rather than a vague thematic concept made for a better designed game widget?

 

[Lanefan]

i have to disagree, swordmage isn't the 'i want to do it all' class but rather the melee spells spellcaster/my weapon attacks inflict magical status/deal elemental damage, IMO at least, nobody can agree on what swordmage is/does

Every version of a swordmage I've ever seen has been someone's attempt to be able to have the features of both a Fighter and a Wizard, in one character. In other words, "I can do it all".

isn't actually a boss of anyone + healing should exist for more than just the cleric

Healing is the Cleric's hard-line niche. If it doesn't say "Cleric" somewhere in the class name then you can't do healing, period stop end.

 

[Lanefan]

4E tried to have niche protection and everyone hated it. People don't want to be locked into roles based on class; they want to be whatever fictional concept then envision in their heads.

From what I could gather, there seemed to be enough ways around niche protection in 4e that in the end there really wasn't very much.

For example, look at all the classes that could heal in some form or other, which is supposed to be the Cleric's niche.