D&D 5E Heroic Archetypes and Gaps in Class coverage

Not really, no. Without class/level, you're nothing in the classic game (well, unless you have some crazy magic item - even then, you're a pop target).
There's not all that much of a difference between commoner-0th-1st levels in 0-1-2e, making it possible to play out the full journey from nobody to hero particularly in the non-castery classes. In 4e you're pretty much starting when that journey's already over, and in 5e you're kind of starting partway through.

And this really is part of the fun for me, to take someone who's pretty much a commoner and slowly build him/her into a badass (or watch him/her die along the way, they don't all work out).

Lanefan
 

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I liked the idea of 3e games where you started as a commoner or expert and had to earn class levels.
I suppose you can do that easily in 5e, using the commoner monster statblock, just modifying the stats.
 

There's not all that much of a difference between commoner-0th-1st levels in 0-1-2e, making it possible to play out the full journey from nobody to hero
Ah, yeah, totally. I was thinking of archetypes, not backstory.

But, yes, easily infered 0 level in the classic game, not so much in 4e (level was a more abstract & relative concept, a 'commoner' might be a minion, or a low-level standard - an angry mob of them could even be a single level 5 monster, depending).
5e's not so different from the classic that you couldn't still infer a 0 level - d6 HD, background abilities only, could cover it. 5e's problem is more on the other end, due to BA.

But, again, 3e's the clear winner, with not only 0 level rules, but negative level. ;) And, if you really did want to stick with the everyman archetype instead of becoming an Adventurer, there were the NPC classes...
 

The knight-in-shining-armour archetype hasn't had a decent run out since 1e's Cavalier. Paladin tries, but both the alignment restrictions and the religious aspect doom it. There's a gap here, and Cavalier fills it nicely.

Honestly, I feel the Cavalier is just a fighter. 5e is flexible enough to fill those niches with some sort of 'noble/aristocrat' background and 'mounted warrior/knight' archetype. The rest is just flavor and roleplay, and maybe filling out the build with some feats as you level up.

Barbarian - as I've been saying forever, it seems - shouldn't be a class at all. It should be a sub-race of Human, much lo=ike Wood Elves are a sub-race of Elf.

This is a good example as to why 'Barbarian' carries too much baggage to be a base class. Because in your mind, when you consider the concept of 'Barbarian', you think of it as a background, specifically an ethnic background, one which you find sufficiently different from 'High Men' to warrant it's own racial entry. And there is nothing particularly wrong with having a 'barbarian' racial package, or a 'barbarian' background package; but, if you strip off the class both it's racial assumptions (again, 'Norse' or some such) and its background assumptions ('primitive') there is still enough left to the core concept to be a class. You know this because you can still imagine characters who aren't 'chaotic', aren't 'primitive', aren't even racially distinct and yet still feel that character is best expressed as a Barbarian. For example, the Templars who have sworn to defend their deities temple and the clergy to their last breath, they may not have the skill at arms of a fighter, but they excel the fighter in will, commitment, and passion. They have the same fighting style and strength of a 'barbarian', even though they are civilized literate high men. The same is true of the handpicked body guard of the God-Emperor, each indistinguishable from the other, ready to give their lives in service to their liege. Likewise the elite shock troops of the King, nationalist zealots who hurl themselves against spears with shield and hammer, heedless of any danger, or the psychotic madman who prowls the streets of the city at night, slaking his bloodthirst induced maniacal rage. Likewise the goblin suicidal fanatics, in their drug induced battle-rage, are fundamentally the same sort of character. These all have the core abilities of the Barbarian, and in many published works you'll even see a nod of the head to this understanding, as characters who don't carry any of the baggage of being 'barbarians' yet are given the class because the abilities of a 'barbarian' like rage and indomitability suit the concept of the character. Proper class design wouldn't require us to ignore the baggage in order to make use of the class. Characters like the Norse beserker or the Aztec jaguar knight or the Maori warrior with their fear inducing and rage building Haka are just characters of this class who have particular backgrounds associated with primitive society. The class is much broader than that though.

Change the class name to "Nature Cleric" and see how those all look. Pretty much covers them all...

Not really, or not as 'cleric' is normally defined in D&D with its trappings of monotheism and its spell list drawn originally from the Bible, it's presumption of divine service and piety, and its relationship to the warrior-priests and crusaders of the middle ages. The animist with its pre-polytheistic viewpoint is the origin of the arcane tradition, but with much older roots than the Wizard with its loosely 19th century occult trappings, and self-referential 20th century 'fireballs' and the like. The Witch, the Vodoo priest, the Witch-Doctor, the Shaman, and truth be told the actual Finnish Bard are somewhere different than either the wizard or the cleric as it is typically represented in D&D. The Druid is an attempt at this sort of spell-list and flavor, but in my opinion one that carries too much specifics of Northern Europe as it imagined its own animist priesthoods of the distant past in the Renaissance and later and is as such ill-suited to the full range of characters you might encounter in myth and fiction. Worse, like the Ranger, it's implementation has become largely self-referential, forming an archetype of its own increasingly divorced from its original intention, so that it carries too many expectations in the reader. IMO, the best implementation of this concept in both mechanics and flavor was the 3.X Green Ronin Shaman, which is very different than a Druid (and in my game, killed the Druid and took his stuff).

The Aragorn self-sufficient hardy woodsman archetype, once the foundation of the Ranger class, has sadly been abandoned - to the point that now, ironically, it represents a big enough gap that a new class could fill it. I'd call that new class Ranger, and replace everything currently appearing under "Ranger" with it.

Or woodsman could just be a background. Aragorn IMO is a Paladin, right down to demonstrating the 'lay on hands' ability literally. Tolkien's "the hands of the King are the hands of a healer" has the exact same origin in medieval myth as the Paladin's ability to cure disease and cure wounds by laying on hands. And except for when we are introduced to him, when he was in disguise as a vagrant and woodsman, Aragorn spends most of the book as a mailed and mounted warrior. Indeed, if you read his backstory, he's spent most of his youth as a 'knight errant' and a 'black knight' in the courts of the Kings of the world. He's just a Paladin who also has some woodcraft, as a background or other skill investment. But it's a rather minor part of his character IMO.

I don't really know what you mean by filling the "self-sufficient hardy woodsman" archetype. I'm not sure what traits are so unique to that concept that it becomes a whole class on its own, but I suspect you could do a woodsman quite easily from what I call 'The Explorer' archetype, which would include not only the self-sufficient Wildman or wilderness hermit, but a huge array of other concepts as well, including for example a Pirate.

You could do this sort of thing pretty well in 0e-1e-2e, maybe even 3e. But 4e and 5e - particularly 4e - have such a huge gap between 'commoner' and '1st-level character' to make the everyman-hero archetype difficult if not impossible to reproduce. This one's not fixable by adding a class; it needs instead a few extra "levels" added in between commoner and 1st-level in order to work.

I'm not sure I understand you, but I'm sure you don't understand me. I mean this 'Folk Hero' or 'Ordinary Man Hero' to be a full 20th level class, balanced with other classes, and fully puissant as other classes at high level. I don't at all mean a 'commoner' although certainly heroes of common extraction are often heroes of this sort. Look at it this way - one way that The Fellowship is often looked at by gamers is that certain members like Merry and Pippin are but 1st level, while others like Gandalf or Aragorn or 'unimaginably high level' such as even 6th level! And there is definitely some merit to that viewpoint, but it wouldn't be much fun as a game because it's inherently unbalanced to have a party composed of 6th level characters that do the heavy lifting and 1st level characters that can't. So one other way to look at this is that the Hobbits were never low level at all, but were in fact 6th level 'Folk Heroes' and so - despite their superficial appearance of helplessness and lack of obvious prowess compared to Fighters, Paladins, and Wizards - were actually every bit as important and powerful as the rest of the party. Exactly how you capture that is another story, and I have some ideas that I think are pretty good, but it is certainly true that official D&D has never tried to make that an option.

While a valid concern, this one would be hard to implement and keep even remotely balanced at low level; as Sherlock-Holmes-like skills aren't the sort of things one learns quickly by adventuring but would have learned slowly and thus already had before 1st level.

On the contrary, the problem isn't making Sherlock Holmes over powered. The problem is making a merely extraordinary character like Sherlock-Holmes contribute amidst such extra-ordinarily powerful sword-swingers and spell-slingers. It's like trying to explain how The Batman is a full fledged and fully essential member of the Justice league when competing with characters like Superman, The Flash, Martian Manhunter, and Wonder Woman. Making 'The Adventuring Sage' or 'The Savant' or whatever we want to call him relevant is the hard part, and one I confess I've never remotely solved.

The other example of this kind of archetype that D&D simply does not do well is James Bond.

James Bond = Sherlock Holmes; fundamentally same sort of character, and in game terms same character class. In D&D though, a ridiculous array of skills and knowledge soon pales in value in most editions. This is why creating this character involves as much overhauling the way skills work as it does providing for the right sort of chargen. All those apparent high ability scores are, other than intelligence and perhaps charisma, actually just application of great skill. After all, at some point diplomacy is greater than charisma, and combat ability greater than strength.
 

Agreed there is a slight issue with Fighter, in that almost any "hero" that doesn't drop into Fighter in the most general terms (Some people argue that's the magic of the fighter - but that's not here or there). However, I reckon if you think about character archetype sans mechanics, and purely compare them to the Fighter, looking at where the "fighting student" breaks down into a defined subset of a character you'd be able to pick out other classes.

For example: Rand al'Thor is a magic and combat master. However, his Character Archetype is someone who has come to power unexpectedly (Awakened) and must control it lest it control him. This would fit in loosely with the sorceror Archetype
Compare that to Luke Skywalker: He is a Magic and combat Master. However, his character Archetype is someone who made a decision to train his innate talent in order to defeat his oppressors (a resistance fighter). That loosely follows a Fighter.

Now "Mechancially" WotC decided that sorcerors would throw spells, and fighters would hit things. But the inherent concepts of the class (Raw power Vs Expert Skills) still exist underneath - sort of. Now of course there is some overlap (Is the Force a "Cause" that would make a Jedi more like a Paladin, do Jedis transcend the physical world through mental discipline like a Monk), but you could argue that Multiclassing covers that. And yes I'm not counting Backgrounds here because any background can apply to any class and so by definition it transcends archetypes.

I'm too tired to get as intellectual as your intent, but your examples point out one major hole in D&D's archetype presentation, which is the lack of a dedicated class for what you described: characters who are equal part magic and combat. Fantasy fiction loves to make this archetype. The character who becomes a great warrior and a great mage. One reason for the difficulty of translating to D&D is because the hero of a story can excel at everything they need to, they are a child of prophecy or even some sort of demigod if need be. But in D&D you have to be balanced with all the other character options. Still, I think it could be done, and I wish they would do it.
 

I'm too tired to get as intellectual as your intent, but your examples point out one major hole in D&D's archetype presentation, which is the lack of a dedicated class for what you described: characters who are equal part magic and combat. Fantasy fiction loves to make this archetype. The character who becomes a great warrior and a great mage. One reason for the difficulty of translating to D&D is because the hero of a story can excel at everything they need to, they are a child of prophecy or even some sort of demigod if need be. But in D&D you have to be balanced with all the other character options. Still, I think it could be done, and I wish they would do it.

I would agree that a true 'character-archetype-as-class' approach in D&D is somewhat hamstrung by balance, but I would pinpoint it more specifically and say it's hamstrung by balance in mechanics, and not persay issues with character concepts. Using your example, there are a number of "stab and cast" mechanical builds out there....Valor Bard, Several Clerics, All Paladins, Blade-lock, Eldrich Knight, Arcane Trickster, Elemental Monk, Moon Durid......However, your point stands in that they are adaptations of the base class bias (aside from the paladin really - and even then you can argue that the core mechanics lean heavily towards melee-smiting rather than Casting).....a bard is a full caster, as is a druid, and and EK is always going to hit things predominately. WotC made mechanical choices that, in many cases, blocked off half an archetype (my Druid example above).

What you do allude to though, and you can argue the Sherlock Holmes Polymath/Samwise Gamgee Everyman mirror, is that by breaking mechanics from personality, certain classic Archetypes cannot be expressed. You mention the Combat Polymath, I would add the Flawed Genius to that list....the reason here is their balance is between personality OR mechanics, not between different aspects of their mechanics (which is where the classes are added). 5e with backgrounds did a bit to quantify parts of the personality aspect, but you can't choose negative background attributes in order to buff your mechanical prowess, such as a Sherlock Holmes type Flawed Genius. In your example, a character would need to be a full class Fighter & Wizard - and so would need some awful personality deficiency to compensate......It can only apply balance across one axis.

Personally, I don't mind D&D doing this too much....if I wanted personality and mechanics to have equal balance across the game there are other systems, such as Fate, which do this better. D&D allows me to attach any eprsonality, knowing mechanically everything is in equalibrium.

Actually, negative abilities in a class might be an interesting class mechanic.....hmmmm....
 

A few of the Archetypes being discussed, especially those like Indiana Jones and James Bond are solo Archetypes and this don't really port to D&D very well. And they shouldn't. But, I do fully support the idea that [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] is saying about broadening the Fighter to really cover the nuances of "The Hero". Similarly, the Rogue could be broadened to be "The Explorer"; really, I think the rogue covers a lot of characters very well with only a bit of baggage (Thieves' Cant is some of that baggage). Sneak Attack doesn't necessarily mean a backstab; it's a lucky strike when the opponent is occupied or has dropped their guard.

If the Fighter and Rogue were cleaned up a bit, then they could serve as super classes that can be used with multiclassing to help make more characters.


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To boil it down as simply as possible, I guess I personally feel that there are a number of classic archetypes of character seen a lot in classic adventure fiction ... And having noticed that, which archetypes arn't there upon which potential new classes could be created, without essentially making just another type of, say, wizard.
This is what I'm getting at - you don't need classes for any of these. Everything you've mentioned is a Background. See below.

Bard: a wanderer and restless traveller who turns their hand to most things and fits in (Doctor Who)
Sailor background, or make a Variant that changes the Vehicle (Water) proficiency to Vehicles (Wagons) and instead of "Ship's Passage" you get "Caravan's Welcome".

Cleric: a humble servant for a higher cause or ideology (Ned Stark)
Acolyte background

Druid: a person of a place who embodies their location or society (Galadriel)
Local Hero (Sam Gamgee) or Noble (Galadriel) backgrounds, depending on their social rank

Someone who chooses to train to maximise their potential (Luke Skywalker)
Train to maximize potention? Train at what? Fighting? Magic? This is too vague to be anything. Everyone trains.

Monk: Someone who believes their will can subjucate reality ([insert generic zen kung-fu sensai])
This could just as easily be any spellcasting class.

Paladin: a zealous enforcer/defender of a belief or cause (Judge Dredd)
Acolyte background, Personality 6

Ranger: A self-sufficent outsider who has learned mastery over their environment (Aragorn)
Outlander background

Rogue: Someone who persues their personal goals that may or may not be tangentially to those of others (Han Solo)
Charlatan or Criminal background, or just some kind of Neutral Alignment

Warlock: a character with a secret driving them forward, be that a benefactor, curse or organisation (James Bond)
Criminal background with the "Spy" variant.

Wizard: a Character who studies and seeks to address problems through knowledge (Rupert Giles from Buffy)
Sage background

to me at least they feel like they are solid bases for archetypal characters, the zealot, an affable wanderer, the psuedo-criminal maverick....etc etc.....
Yes, that's why they're included as Backgrounds that any class can take.

And obviously there are lots and lots out there I haven't touched on.....Someone like Gambit for instance is interesting - He's never felt overly self-centred, but he doesn't feel overly wedded to a cause or particularly zealous.....are the motivations and outlook of Gambit prevelent enough to call him an archetype?
This is just role playing. You don't need any particular class to have Gambit's personality.

but I'm sort of talking about whats there in the PHB classes themselves.
Nothing. That's by design. The classes are deliberately vague and generic so you can add any Background and Personality to any of them. That's a feature, not a bug. It allows maximum flexibility in applying the archetype you want to play to as many classes as possible, rather than pigeon holing you into "All criminals are rogues and all rogues are criminals".
 

IMO WoTC archetypes were all tied up by those those damned dirty apes (legacy players) and their big nets (survey results) that captured the day.
There's a lot to this. R.A. Salvatore's readers had more to say about what a Ranger "is" than the game designers did. I wish they'd been a little more bold, and said "Look, Drizzt cannot be made using a straight Ranger build in 5E, and that's Ok! You can still play Drizzt, you just have to do this Multiclass and take that Feat."

The designers came up with some interesting ideas in this Class/Subclass format but eventually never fully exploited it. If you are going to make a class, at least have six subclasses for every class.
Good gravy, YES. And some need more than that. There should be at least a dozen Sorcerer bloodlines, and I'd like to see a Complete Cleric's Handbook at some point.

And let everyone start their subclass at level one. This seems so disjointed to me.
Although I hear you, the sub-class at level 3" rule was deliberately about limiting the number of choices you have to make at character creation so you can start gaming faster, and I completely agree with that. Having to pick a race, class, background, skills, and equipment is more than enough of a barrier.

One thing I like about the Mystic is that they didn't add it as a Psion subclass of Wizard.
I'm glad they made a core Psion class, but there should also have been new sub-classes for Fighter, Monk, and Rogue. This was a missed opportunity to flesh out those classes with more sub-classes and make Psionic alternatives to the Eldritch Knight, Elemental Monk, and Arcane Trickster.
 

one thing you often see in fantasy is the spellcater where spellcasting takes a lot out of the body and in many cases damahes the body.

So you could have a spellcaster tith a lower number of spellslots, but can create aditional spell slots by spending healing hitdice, or reducing hitpoint maximum
 

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