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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Marandahir" data-source="post: 8535586" data-attributes="member: 6803643">Honestly, I think the Blood Hunter steps all over the Ranger's toes. It's a refluffed Ranger with the Monster Slayer archetype, select feat choices, and using Int instead of Wis. And I guess the spells are reflavoured as blood maledicts. More to the point, it fills the exact same NARRATIVE as the Monster Slayer, which is its biggest offense. The point of subclasses was to simplify and reduce classes for classes sake. In past editions, 3.5e and 4e especially, there were dozens of classes that tread the same territory but did it in slightly different mechanical ways. This is the "glut" problem that D&D has faced for decades and that 5e tried to do away with by reducing concepts down. So no, we can't build a Warden character from 4e that has the same exact powers in 5e. The main class feature was replicated as Druid spells, but they're of 6th level and thus off limits to Paladins and Ranger halfclasses that you might consider using as the Warden base. But NARRATIVELY, the Oath of the Ancients Paladin, various Rangers, and even some Barbarians serve the purposes that the Warden did in 4e. The Warden is therefore NOT NECESSARY as a class, and creating it in an officially published capacity would be more harmful than helpful. You shouldn't be writing your your character's narratives to justify CharOps purposes, instead you should be designing the character options to tell the story that you want to tell with that character. CharOps is fine in theoretical play, but it's a peripheral audience. The main audience of D&D needs simple and few and highly distinct options that tell key archetypal narratives that they can select from. The alternative is options paralysis and options for options sake.Now, bells and whistles may be added to the game with variant class features, variant lineage features, etc that the table can opt into if they're up for it. But these are not reasons to justify entire new classes. Every class needs to be uniquely and distinctly itself. The Blood Hunter fails that test. The Artificer passes it. There's a reason that Blood Hunter, for all its popularity, only appeared as a MONSTER in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount. WotC is committed to only letting classes get published if they can prove their identity as separate from alll the other classes.</blockquote>

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