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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8321755" data-attributes="member: 7006">If there is no class story, there is no new class.  The game has settled on four classes that might be considered "story generic"... and that's the Core Four.  Any other new class will need to have a narrative reason for existence within a game world.  And if all you have for a reason to make the class is that you want different game mechanics... then you're never going to get it.  Because we already have the half-dozen fighter/wizard combos in the game so narratively there is no reason to make another one.  And this is exactly why the game has never had one maintain traction and stick around after all these editions.  It's always been an afterthought.Unfortunately, as has been said, the game had the chance to make a dedicated weapon-caster during the D&D Next period when the Sorcerer was going to be it.  Rather than another blaster caster, it was going to be focused (or at least highly leaning) towards the idea that your internal magic would power all the stuff you could possibly do, including fighting with weapons.  But apparently enough people weren't crazy about the shift and they went away from the idea.  Which is a shame, because Sorcerer could have been a good name to become the fighter-caster identity (or at least part of it).And if we are talking names... if you can't use Sorcerer I think your next best option is to just commandeer 'Mage' once and for all and use that.  Yes, I know in editions past that was what was used as a replacement name for the wizard... but it hasn't been that way for a long time.  And since we already had 'swordmage' used in 4E and people seemed to like it... why bother needing to append 'sword' to the name and just use 'Mage'?  Turn it into the word we need, rather than leave it as a unused synonym that we don't/  After all, isn't that why Pathfinder went with 'Magus'?  Because it was pretty much just using 'Mage' but changing the word slightly just to avoid confusing those people who'd have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that mages now used weapons and weren't just wizard-equivalents?  Make the change and force us to learn its new "definition" within D&D.  If the class was actually cool, had an interesting flavor and story, and the mechanics supported that story... 'Mages' might actually finally take off.By the same token... as far as naming conventions are concerned... I really have no idea how we've gone this long without the game ever deciding to create a single word to use to replace 'Sleight of Hand'.  Or in fact, why the English language itself hasn't create a single word to mean really good and intricate finger work for that matter.  'Sleight of Hand', 'Fine Manipulation', 'Manual Dexterity', 'Hand/Eye Coordination'... can't we all just decide on or make up a new word to use for this and make it stick?  It'd be so much easier.And let's make it up and call it 'Corraling' rather than 'Animal Handling' too while we're at it.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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