Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 8329600" data-attributes="member: 7023887">Theme and flavor text is an important part of D&D 5e classes. There's a reason we have different classes for the Sorcerer (a person whose magic is innate) and the Warlock (a person that got their magic from a magical patron). If they didn't have different themes, they wouldn't warrant different classes, and even with this difference between them, some people argue that they are still too similar in theme to warrant different classes. (Which is why I have Sorcerers be CON-casters in my campaigns, not CHA.)A player decides who their character is, but their class decides how they do that. There's a difference between a pirate that is a Rogue, a pirate that is a Barbarian, and a pirate that is a Wizard, not just in mechanics, but also in theme and how the character is roleplayed. A wizard, a rogue, and a barbarian will all be roleplayed differently, even if they're all pirates. In a large part this is due to mechanics (like a Wizard using spells to help them at sea and a Barbarian being a furious, raging war-machine), but it will also be influenced by the theme of the class (Wizards being studiers of the arcane and Barbarians being primal warriors). But that requires you to expend feats to play your character. Feats should be add-ons to your character identity, IMO, not how you achieve your character identity. That's why feats are optional and classes/subclasses aren't, because your class is a more integral part of your identity as a character than a feat is. Bladesingers can't use half of the GWM feat, and Tavern Brawler is a really bad feat for a Bladesinger to take (assuming you're using BB/GFB). Furthermore, Bladesingers have a restriction on what armor (only light armor), weapons (only one-handed weapons), and shields (none) they can use, which severely detriments its ability to serve as a general "arcane gish" character. Why the heck shouldn't an Arcane Gish be allowed to wear heavy armor, use a Maul, and cast a fireball into their heavy weapon? Why should an Arcane Gish be forced to take feats to emulate their core identity when a Paladin or Ranger gets theirs from just doing their class? That's one of the main problems I have with this argument. Bladesingers have too many spells and are too limited on their martial choices, Eldritch Knights are too limited with spell choices and frankly suck at merging arcane and martial power in any satisfying way, Artificers have too much baggage from their core class that forces an arcane gish to be a magical Eberron-style tinker, and Hexblades are too tied to the identity of the Warlock class. Paladins and Rangers don't have those kinds of restrictions to their identity, so why should an Arcane Gish?</blockquote>

Verification