D&D General Ditching Archetypes 6E?

[Faolyn]

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.

But see, not everyone wants to play a healing cleric. Clerics shouldn't be locked into the role of healer just because some people think they should. Nor should all gods want all of their clerics to be nothing but healers. People should be able to decide what role they want to take.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

Heh. Maybe instead of regular subclasses, each subclass should have roles as their subclass. 4e had Controller, Defender, Leader, and Striker. Daggerheart doesn't have PC roles, but their monsters are divided into (among others) Bruisers, Leaders, Ranged, Skulks, Socials, and Supports.

A warrior/bruiser is going to be the big guy with heavy weapons. A wizard/bruiser is going to use the big AOE attacks, and may even have its own spell list (or more likely, there'd be a generic wizard spell list and each role would have a handful of extra spells that get added to it, unique to that role). A rogue bruiser is going to be a thug-type. A druid/bruiser has wildshapes that turn them into things like moose or bears. And so on. The player can then flavor it through the feats and "invocations".

This does have the drawback (or possibly benefit) of preventing too many archetypes and fanbrew archetypes, since you don't need more than one warrior/bruiser. But it does open up the possibility for lots of feats and "invocations." And, of course, the PHB could only include a couple of roles and add more later, although I personally would be annoyed.

Or heck, at some point invent templates or lenses or flavors to put on top of that, so you can have flavor your class as elemental or fey or infernal or whatever.

 

[Lanefan]

Except that's not what "archetypes" means in the 5e context.

"Archetype", in the 5e context, means a branch within an "easily-identifyable [sic] class". So your "offer" here is, "Okay, here me out: We delete everything you're looking for, and replace it with something that has none of what you're looking for. Cool? Cool."

I get where you're coming from. I just fundamentally disagree with class minimalism. That doesn't mean I believe in maximalism. But it does mean you need to give me an argument more than "but what about less?"

This is one case where I really do think less is more.

You'll never succeed at killing Swordmage-type characters. People want them. They sell well. They can be quite balanced (look at the 4e one--it's arguably one of the weakest Defenders, but it was neat and tricksy, and definitely had its fans.)

Also, LOL, eliminating BOTH archetypes AND multiclassing? No, I'm sorry Lanefan, this is...not something that will ever happen in D&D. Period. There literally hasn't been a numbered edition of D&D that lacked multiclassing. Even OD&D allowed a certain limited flavor of it. The thing you're proposing is--genuinely--in contradiction to what D&D has offered for 50 years.

Frankly, I'm shocked to see you suggest something that is so radically out of step with traditional D&D. Like legit actually traditional here, not "it was done in 3e so it's traditional".

I've never been fond of multi-classing even in our own games, which go back to the 1e days. If there's a archetpye that the game really doesn't support that has room to build a halfway-balanced class around that isn't a jack of all trades*, I'd rather build that class as its own thing. Instead of multi-ing a Fighter-Thief to get to a swashbuckling type of character (a solid archetype), why not just have a Swashbuckler class and call 'er done.

I mean, as a player I play multiclass characters because the game allows me to; I'm just not sold (and never have been) that it should give me that option.

* - one such missing archetype has always been the James Bond debonair spy-assassin character; the physical killing stuff can be done with the Assassin class but the added persuasion/charm and extreme knowledge abilities Bond has take it over the top in terms of balance and do-too-much-ness.

 

[Lanefan]

Laughs in Druidic

Druids are replaced by Nature Clerics in the list I proposed upthread.

"Druid" is a terrible name, in that both it and its root concept are tightly tied to a specific culture that only existed in a small part of our world. Monk-as-concept has the same problem.

 

[Lanefan]

But see, not everyone wants to play a healing cleric. Clerics shouldn't be locked into the role of healer just because some people think they should. Nor should all gods want all of their clerics to be nothing but healers. People should be able to decide what role they want to take.

If you don't want to play a healer, choose a non-Cleric class. Or, from my list above, a War Cleric; who would heal like crap (but still be able to do it) but have better combat-oriented and combat-affecting spells.

Clerics are what I see as being mostly a support class, a concept that has its place and use.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Expand feats--slightly. Perhaps one every three levels instead of every four--and for God's sake decouple them from stats!

THAT'S WHAT I'M SAYIN'--

 

[Remathilis]

Druids are replaced by Nature Clerics in the list I proposed upthread.

"Druid" is a terrible name, in that both it and its root concept are tightly tied to a specific culture that only existed in a small part of our world. Monk-as-concept has the same problem.

I assume you also removed barbarian, bard and paladin for the same cultural naming, right?

Edit: Found the list. Disagree with a solid half of them.

 

[Scott Christian]

I find the this way -> that way debate so silly. The game accepts the fact that you make homebrew rules. But, to suppose that your way works better than the designers is even more silly.

 

[Remathilis]

I find the this way -> that way debate so silly. The game accepts the fact that you make homebrew rules. But, to suppose that your way works better than the designers is even more silly.

The secret to understanding the D&D community is to understand that they are all currently embarrassed game designers who would totally take you world by storm with their personal homebrew if it wasn't for WotCs dominance of the market...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I find the this way -> that way debate so silly. The game accepts the fact that you make homebrew rules. But, to suppose that your way works better than the designers is even more silly.

This implies three things, none of which I consider to be true.

1. Every edition of D&D has been designed perfectly correctly from the word go, so it isn't possible for anyone to improve upon what exists.
2. People who get paid to design TTRPGs are necessarily more knowledgeable, skillful, and effective at game design than anyone who is not paid to design TTRPGs.
3. It is impossible to critique design work unless (generic) you, personally, were among the people who created it--outside critique is inherently invalid.

A game can be designed badly. 3rd Edition specifically set out to be more balanced than the edition which preceded it, and objectively, unequivocally failed at that goal. This disproves point 1. Similarly, while I have more respect for professional game designers than some here do, it's simply not true that just because someone has done game design as a job that that will somehow magically make them better at game design than everyone in the world who has never done it as their job. And we would all have to be crazy or stupid to be discussing game design on a forum for a website about TTRPG news and reviews, right? Like...if criticism isn't possible, ENWorld should never have existed, yet it does.

We should not ignore nor discount the ideas of designers. They are paid for a reason! They didn't get hired out of the blue for nothing. Even designers I almost always strongly disagree with, like Mike Mearls, still deserve respectful attention to their design ideas. But this notion that we cannot do better than the old masters? Poppycock, pure and simple.