Level Up (A5E) How might Original 5e Subclasses interact with LU A5e?

[AurorN]

Hey everyone! New community member here, just supported the kickstarter because I love Morrus' stuff and see a lot of cool potential in LU.
One question I have is: How might original 5e subclasses interact with LU A5e classes, and how are you all, the community, planning on running them?
For example, I have a player that really wants to be a beastmaster ranger (and don't we all?). However, I look at the LU beastmaster and I instantly like the TCE beastmaster (or, more specifically, the Primal Companion) better. I don't like the temp HP mechanic as much as a flat, easy way of calculating HP, and I think Bestial Fury just works better than Friend of a Friend.
Or, say I want to being my favorite wizard subclass, the bladesinger, into LU.
How far does backwards compatibility go? Would you all just use the original subclass features, adapt features to fit better with the LU design philosophy, or something else altogether? Is there anything that we're supposed to do, listed in the forums or books that I haven't found? Should this all be done on an individualized and case-by-case basis?
I'm eager to see what you all think

 

[Larnievc]

I’d say to my players: which one do you prefer? Use that.

 

[tetrasodium]

Most of my players were itching to play something from vrgtr or fizban's & kept fishing for an answer more concrete than some variant of wait a bit, we can decide things like that when the new campaign is closer. All of them seem to have descended into a frenzy of excitement to play the adventurers guide stuff exclusively.

I'm only about a hundred pages in but largely the idea of o5e archetypes being attached to the levelup classes feels similar to deliberately putting a donut of a racecar and going to the track. I haven't looked through the wizard (or fightrr)archetypes yet but there is a wizard/fighter synergy feat tree for blsdesinger type stuff

 

[VanguardHero]

I respect the marketability of backwards compatibility, and it in no way makes EN responsible for o5e's busted balance, but as a DM I would absolutely make anything from o5e something that had to be cleared before taking it. For both sides of the tier list. Admittedly, "Wizard Subclass that makes Wizard a better Martial than an o5e Fighter" is a lot less egregious when the a5e Fighter is actually dynamic and fun. Beast Master I'm unsure about, Ranger is a whole new beast (lol) since it now has Maneuvers and doesn't lean on Conjure Animals and Pass Without Trace for relevancy. It's hard to say for Ranger especially.

The main o5e Subclass that stands out to me as synergizing super well is Astral Self Adept. With the extra Exertion, and some careful resource management, you could run an Adept relying solely on WIS with CON as secondary and have killer saves on Stunning/Paralyzing Strike. I've had the most time to consider Adept options though, since we got an early look at it. Duelist Fighter eclipses any o5e options there, except maybe Echo Knight for cool flavor and for using Maneuvers through maybe. Hexblade Warlock is basically baked into the class though, which opens up everything else to me, but Alienist seems like the stand out for me personally.

tl;dr: The more o5e content you use, the more you chance undercutting the effort that went into actually balancing things. Some things will work well, some things will still be busted, not necessarily tied to how effective they were in o5e. It'll take time to figure that out.

 

[Satirical Bard]

I agree with @VanguardHero - one I noticed is that the Druid Wildshape ability has been overhauled so much that you'd need to use the new Skinchanger subclass, rather than the moon druid archetype it's essentially replacing (one of the few new subclasses that clearly replaces an o5e subclass, from my first impression).

There will definitely be others where the o5e subclass is expecting a base class feature that has been removed, replaced or overhauled, and thus doesn't really work as-is (either in an OP or broken way).

 

[AurorN]

@Satirical Bard

one I noticed is that the Druid Wildshape ability has been overhauled so much that you'd need to use the new Skinchanger subclass, rather than the moon druid archetype it's essentially replacing (one of the few new subclasses that clearly replaces an o5e subclass, from my first impression)

I don't think it's necessarily changed that much, but I'm interested by the way it's been cleaned up. The tHP is nice and the AC calculation is cool, and while I have one player that's disappointed by the number of wildshapes known (which doesn't feel too bad to me), I have another that's excited about Wildshaping into a plant.
I think I'll have to wait to playtest to see how much I like LU archetypes - I like that some are kept from O5e and others are somewhat new and yet much less specific, but it does seem that, in some places they just used different wording wording to avoid naming archetypes the same as O5e subclasses (Thief -> Burglar, all the warlock archetypes). Others, I think sound really cool, like Oath of the Ancients -> Green Knight

 

[AurorN]

@Larnievc

but there is a wizard/fighter synergy feat tree for bladesinger type stuff

Oh wow lol. I didn't even go look for that before I posted this. didn't know about that. Thank you!