D&D 5E Fivethirtyeight Article About D&D Race and Class Combos

[billd91]

The dude had a holy sword, and "The hands of a king are the hands of as healer." That's totally paladin with healing magic, sorry, I'm going to flat out disagree with you here.

There's nothing about the sword that's necessarily holy. It's got quite a lineage in a setting where things like that matter, but no evidence of holy in the way D&D treats things as holy. And Aragorn's healing skills can be modeled in a number of ways from skill use (good Medicine skill or Healing from previous editions) to moderate healing spells to laying on of hands. There's nothing necessarily paladineque about it. So right back atcha.

Aragorn is defined by his healing hands, you know. Supernatural abilities innate to the heirs of Numoir is actually a whole thing. That's actually very central to his identity. He also got spirits on his side, and used magical scrying orbs in a direct challenge against the Dark Lord. He's pretty darn magical for Middle Earth's standards.

What's most central to Aragorn's identity is his lineage. He wrests control of the palantir because it's his by right. He calls the legion of the dead to service because he can by right. And he's got enough strength of will, body, and soul to pursue those things that are his by right. But it's ultimately Right makes Might in Middle Earth. That's an element of LotR and Tolkien's vision of Middle Earth that no D&D game has significantly covered in its mechanics.

 

[Yaarel]

Can someone link to the raw data?

 

[Fandabidozi]

^ nerds

 

[Yaarel]

@Parmandur, I found your post. Thanks for the raw list of race-class combos.

 

[Yaarel]

It seems to me, the popular classes, races, and combos, are dominated by players who choose for the flavor of the archetype, and generally ignore mechanics.

If a class is important because of its flavor, how much more important it is to make sure its mechanics are excellent!

 

[Yaarel]

Same with races.

If a race is important because of its flavor, how much more important it is to get its mechanics right.

If players want to play a High Elf that as a Wizard, make sure that this Elf culture can be an excellent − mechanically optimal − Wizard.

And so on.

 

[Guest 6801328]

The dude had a holy sword, and "The hands of a king are the hands of as healer." That's totally paladin with healing magic, sorry, I'm going to flat out disagree with you here.

You're pretty much just revising any warrior type into Fighter, by creating unrealistic definitions of other classes and leaving Fighter without its own, and not bothering to give an explanation why anyone should be one, just assuming they are by default. That's BS. I mean, hells, your defense of Wu Xia is "they use weapons!" So can monks!

Your argument is nothing more than confirmation bias.
Aragorn is defined by his healing hands, you know. Supernatural abilities innate to the heirs of Numoir is actually a whole thing. That's actually very central to his identity. He also got spirits on his side, and used magical scrying orbs in a direct challenge against the Dark Lord. He's pretty darn magical for Middle Earth's standards.


Hercules is renowned for his excessive strength and training in the wilderness by wrestling animals. Fighters in 5e are known for their weaponry training and specializations and techniques. Hercules has more in common with the barbarian than the fighter class. None of the legends of Hercules fit with how a Fighter acts. Trying to call Hercules a fighter is very strained.


This argument is basically boiling down to just "any warrior defaults to Fighter if it doesn't fit a narrow definition." And that's something I call BS on.

Agree with everything here. And the same sort of thing happens in discussions about Warlords: "Oh, so-and-so was a leader so he must have been a Warlord."

Overall this thread is entertaining for watching people trying to explain away the data because they would have designed the Fighter class differently, and therefore the WotC version can't possibly be popular.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[kenmarable]

Agree with everything here. And the same sort of thing happens in discussions about Warlords: "Oh, so-and-so was a leader so he must have been a Warlord."

Overall this thread is entertaining for watching people trying to explain away the data because they would have designed the Fighter class differently, and therefore the WotC version can't possibly be popular.

It's also entertaining for long-timers to see the same debates popping up every year or two and seeing how it plays out in similar and in different ways to the past.

Personally, there's never going to be a one-to-one match since they weren't written with D&D in mind obviously. If a character is complex and interesting enough, you can get entirely different "perfect matches" depending on what aspects you take as most important to the character. As with any good fiction, different people will see different aspects as fundamental to a main character.

What is more interesting, to me at least, is looking for where the game designers pulled inspiration from and built it into the game design. (Not to stoke the flames, but in 3.x and Pathfinder, the designers specifically designed many ranger abilities based on Aragorn. Just sayin'.)

 

[Yaarel]

Too bad we lack access to the stats for class archetypes and race cultures.

It seems significant to know if players prefer:
• variant Human v standard Human
• simpler Champion Fighter v complexer Battle Master Fighter
• Drow Elf Rogue v Wood Elf Rogue

And so on.