I love the flavour of the Spellguard Paladin. I've been trying to figure out where the Swordmage really fits in 5e for a long time. There are arcane gish characters, sure – I especially like the Battle Smith and Armorer Artificers for a purely arcane take on this. But the Swordmage often felt like it was trying to either be a Paladin but Arcane or a Ranger but Arcane.
Oath of the Watchers, and more recently Oath of the Noble Genies, shows that Paladins can inhabit arcane gishy territory just as Artificers, Bards, Fighters, Rogues, Warlocks, and Wizards can. This lets us explore a very Paladin-esque but Arcane societies style knightly protector of Mages (as well as protector against Mages). Spellguard also is not just a ref to the Spellguard Shield, but also to the Spellguards of Silverymoon.
I'd love to see an Arcane-esque Ranger subclass as well that embodies the more witchhunter/arcane hunter / Aegis of Ensnaring style of Arcane gish, maybe even in a reworking of the Monster Slayer subclass, but I love the narrative space that Paladin gives to this archetype.
If it walks like a Paladin, and it quacks like a Paladin, but it wants Wizard spells not Cleric… then maybe it's a Paladin with a few key Wizard spells added to the spel list.
I also think this type of Arcane Gish fits more with the Str/Cha than the Str/Int Armorer & Battle Smith – those are emphasizing a different type of the story. This is almost more like the warrior who serves the Magic School and picked up magic along the way (that feels less cerebral and more sorcerous).
The Spellthief in all but name baffles me, because WotC's already used the name for the capstone feature of the Arcane Trickster. I get that this is sort of like, what if instead of 1/3 castery Wizard spells, we do clearly magical but specialized abilities a la Arcane Archer and Rune Knight Fighters? That's fine. Even the idea of really fleshing out the stealing magic is fine. But in a landscape where Arcane Trickster is literally the Magic Thief // Spell Thief // Phantom Thief // Lupin // Dark Mousy tropes, how is the Magic Stealer unique? I almost wish that you have given Arcane Trickster a different capstone so that you weren't dabbling in archetypal spaces when you wanted to go more all in on stealing magic.
That all said, I could also see the Magic Stealer as a red herring, instead being a tyle of Defiler-Magic Rogue for Dark Sun, with a different final name. But as it stands, there's just no narrative space for a Spellthief in an environment with Arcane Trickster already embodying the Spell Thief.WotC, you need to prove to us why this Roguish Archetype is not just a variant of Arcane Trickster. Rune Knight and Arcane Archer figured out their differences. Even the Cavalier shown in Unearthed Arcana in October 2025 lays out a very clearly different version of a Courtly Knight from that of the revised Banneret, the Battle Master, and the old Samurai. These subclasses were all stepping on each other's narrative toes, but now I really get a sense of how they embody different spaces.I believe you can do this with the Rogue too, but this pass on it just lacks inspiration.
Master of the Mystic Arts Monk is a fascinating take on Wong and Shang-Chi and Doctor Strange, etc from the MCU – this halfway between Wuxia and Sorcery tropes. I'm in for it. That said, I still think it's crazy that we haven't had a similar Monk that does 1/3rd Cleric spells. I also think it's very risky to use the Sorcerer spell list instead of the Cleric/Druid/Wizard lists – those three lists are more balanced for multiclassing, gish subclasses, and magic initiate feat takers, while the Sorcerer like the Artificer, Bard, Paladin, Psion, Ranger, and Warlock, use very very specialized spell-lists that don't necessarily balance with other classes pilfering from their lists.
Vestige Pact Warlock is a narrative space I've been begging for since 2014, as it was a very prominent O-Warlock build in 4e, was a fascinating class in late 3.5e's Tome of Magic, and had a separate Warlock subclass take on it in Essentials (the Binder, from Heroes of Shadow onward). I'm not sure I love this version. I kinda prefer the idea of either you're drawing on the power of a dead god like Atropus floating in the Astral Sea, or else you're making various small pacts with vestige entities that when summoned do different things (kinda more like a Final Fantasy or Golden Sun Summoner). This feels instead like a Warlock Pet subclass, and I'm not sure it hits the sweet spot of what made Binders and Vestige-Pact Warlocks feel so awesome.
